tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5704303482494396252024-03-15T00:51:30.279-07:00Exploding the Paradigm . . .where the status quo meets a new perspective, one mind at a time.Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-84903937316350547822013-09-09T17:28:00.000-07:002013-09-09T20:41:59.768-07:00"What the Thunder Said . . . ."This morning I was greeted with the good news that Russian president Putin is leaning on Syrian president Assad to give up his chemical weapons and play nice on the world stage. Hey, I'll happily let Putin claim the next Peace Prize when he pulls this off, saving all of us from a wider conflagration, especially the Syrian people. I mention this amazing turn of events because<strong> today marks a new era in some indescribable way</strong>, as though we have passed the halfway point in our race, as though we have reached a tipping point, and in many ways, we have: The American people have overwhelmingly spoken out AGAINST an attack on Syria and, by extension, against war, not only because we are tired of war and of the billions of dollars that drain away into its big black hole, but also because we are FOR peace--and most dramatic of all, we have ignored party lines to make this statement. We are FOR humanity, and for a peaceful resolution through negotiation, and for policing of chemical weapons by the United Nations. <strong> We are FOR a resolution for Syria that does not create more death and suffering and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a huge step forward for America on the world stage.</strong> <br />
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I am encouraged by the appearance of such forward thinking organizations as <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/"><strong>YES! magazine</strong></a>, which this week featured a cogent article by its executive editor, <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/syria-six-alternatives-to-military-strikes" target="_blank">Syria: Six Alternatives to Military Strikes</a>, an article that I have made my family read, enumerating the steps all of us out here on the ground <br />
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have been talking about all week, as though someone has finally heard us. Such is the power of the alternative media to report what is really going on outside the rarified enclaves of New York and Washington and other media hubs.<br />
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At the same time today, I received a notice from <a href="http://www.aworldatschool.org/" target="_blank"><strong>A World at School</strong></a>, a new international organization committed to education for every child, everywhere in the world, following the work of the heroic Pakistani girl who stood up to the Taliban and survived their attack, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai" target="_blank"><strong>Malala Yousafzai</strong></a><strong>. </strong>Having already been recognized by the United Nations, the organization will on September 23rd present their plan for funding education for the 1.9 MILLION children between grades 1-9 who have been displaced by the ongoing Syrian civil war. This is activism on a united, global level, unprecedented for a grassroots campaign anywhere in the world. What each of us can do to help is enumerated, including<a href="http://www.aworldatschool.org/news/entry/how-to-help-the-children-of-syria" target="_blank"> a petition to sign and a well structured plan</a> that you can read on PDF. <strong>Their plan is brilliantly called Education Without Borders and nothing could be more important to the achievement of real and lasting world peace than this new effort to unite children through a commitment to their education.</strong><br />
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These and many other signs--the Occupy campaign, Elon Musk's cutting edge technology, the joining up by the millions of people all over the world through the internet, the proliferation of global businesses that further shrink the world into a malleable size--point directly to the new millennium's dawning at long last.<br />
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Having fought our way through thirteen years of horror, war, violent political infighting, a glut of bad movie remakes and comic book heroes, we seem just about to walk through a new door, at the end of that tunnel of light forming at the edge of the world. But don't be afraid. <strong> It is the door we've been seeking for hundreds of years or perhaps millennia, where our intelligence and our emotional commitment are finally mature enough to create real change in the real world,</strong> the moment when the universal pendulum stops going backward into the past, pauses at this exact moment of time, and begins its forward swing again. <br />
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For decades I have been saying <strong>Forward to the Future</strong> as the antidote to the reactionaries who drew public education Back to the Basics and began a forty-year downward spiral of American education and of American intelligence on the broadest level. <strong> I am happy to proclaim that, at this moment, the forces of good, humanism, intelligence, and compassion seem to be pushing back the darkness and making it possible for the voices of the people, all over the world, to be heard.</strong> All of us are now charged with the responsibility of continuing this movement, of extending and expanding this change of consciousness, and of speaking up at every opportunity to change the world into that dream that each of us holds in our heart of hearts. It is ALL possible!<br />
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As for me, I am taking a long break from years of web posts, newsletters, radio interviews and all the other ways I have tried to drop new memes into the zeitgeist so I can concentrate on writing my second novel, which will, indeed, be all about those changes of consciousness that change the world. If you haven't read my first novel about a school leader's death and the corruption of public education, <strong><a href="http://tinyurl.com/AngelPark" target="_blank">ANGEL PARK</a></strong>, I hope you will buy it and read it soon, since it tells the true and fully fictionalized story of what's really going on in our schools and the mystery the heroine solves to discover her own new world. Yes, I have called it a philosophical mystery at times, and <a href="http://changetheschools.com/angel_park.html" target="_blank">here are the acclaim and awards it has won</a>, along with the responses of real readers on Amazon and Barnes and Noble sites. In the meantime, you may be interested in what I have to say on my website, which will be staying as is for now, showing the many ways that <a href="http://changetheschools.com/" target="_blank">Changing the Schools Can Change the World</a>. You will find a wealth of articles and links to point you toward ways you can take part. I'll be back next summer with a completed manuscript in hand (I say, urging myself forward) and we'll see how the world is doing then . . . . "Shantih. Shantih. Shantih."Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-2205001437586823362013-07-28T21:36:00.000-07:002013-07-29T01:27:04.757-07:00The Education Gold Rush is ON . . . .I keep thinking that I'm going to be leaving education behind and writing another, more inspirational novel, and I'll probably do that, too, but I just can't turn my back on the biggest single issue on my mind: If we don't lead toward the future and prepare the way for an EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS, then what will become of the Earth and all its people, what will become of the American experiment, what will become of all our hopes and dreams? After all, the whole world is watching how we handle our appalling gun problems, our political infighting, our racial divides, our growing levels of poverty while the rich get richer. What are we doing about human progress?<br />
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The answer to this urge for evolution lies solidly within what we give to and leave future generations, and right now, we're just not doing a very good job for them, either in their education or in the example we are setting (for rational debate, for good decisions, for helping others, you name it!). Thus, the SCHOOL issue, the educating of our children, continues to hold a central place in my imagination as the ONE PLACE where a change of mind can change the world. <br />
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To that end, I offer this article from The Washington Post, on Valerie Strauss' "The Answer Sheet," an article by a teacher who learned about the complexities of changing education and drew some conclusions based on actual research. Read <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/19/five-basic-lessons-on-public-education-short-and-long-versions/" target="_blank">"Five Basic Lessons on Public Education"</a> and notice the MUCH different story it tells about the viability of the public school system. I could quote voluminously from the conclusion<span class="text_exposed_show">s reached here, since nearly every one is informative, but let me just point out the biggest inequity that makes the system as a whole appear to be failing: Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds continue to regress as they go through school based on outside factors that hamper their lives. POVERTY is the real problem, and people who listened at the time know THAT is the issue that Martin Luther King was ultimately talking about. </span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[0].[0]">This is not to condone the current industrial paradigm under which public education operates, of course, merely to point out real information that gets glossed over in the corporate drive to BUY PUBLIC EDUCATION--from the wily testing companies to the </span></span><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]">privatizers to the now-legion creators of online "textbooks" that they say will revolutionize schools. Right. Yes, the kids need to be online, so their personalized computer programs can track their responses and adjust for them, but we were doing that with stand-alone programs in 1980 and no one was very impressed. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]">What we do NOT need is a public education system that becomes a subsidiary of techno-world, where every developer and his brother is now rushing to promote his program to the multibillion dollar education industry--the biggest untapped Mother Lode since the gold rush. FOLLOW THE MONEY, and speak up!! We need to save our kids not only from faceless bureaucracy but also from mindless corporatization and economic exploitation.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]">The issue here is that we cannot allow the politicians and CEOs to call the tune. We cannot allow the privatizers with dollar signs in their eyes to raid our school budgets. We cannot allow yet another round of new "textbooks"--online this time--drain our money and homogenize our kids' brains and fit so neatly into ever-useless "standardized tests." Somewhere in this mess of mass media manipulation (such GREAT alliteration, yes?) is the real story: We need talent in our teacher pool. We need a growth model that supports our talent. We need creative approaches that focus on real work in real time so our kids don't drop out from sheer boredom. We need to lift the bureaucracy off the backs of teachers, students, and parents and create a nurturing environment for the good of those involved as well as the rest of the world and the planet. All of this moves us toward the aforementioned EVOLUTION of CONSCIOUSNESS which will take us racing into a better future, leaving the old paradigms and old arguments and older wars behind. Speak up, about a world worth working for . . . .</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0]"><span data-reactid=".r[5papr].[1][4][1]{comment526130737442930_5115049}.[0].[right].[0].[left].[0].[0].[0][2].[0].[3].[0].[0]"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-74780184932567713442013-03-14T22:17:00.000-07:002013-03-14T22:36:34.489-07:00A Texas Superintendent Takes on the LegislatureEvery once in a while, someone will make a speech that transcends its direct purpose and speaks to a universal need and a common understanding. That is the case in a speech made in a rally held last month to Save Texas Schools, by a superintendent with whom I have corresponded, the leader of a small Texas school district beset by the financial and cultural issues that are strangling all of our schools right now. His name is John Kuhn; remember it. You will be hearing it again, because he truly understands, as an educator, as a taxpayer, and as a parent why PUBLIC schools (despite all their warts and deficiencies) must be saved. They are one of the only touchstones left of the American way of life and even of the American Dream, the dream that you can become what you dream, that you can make it real. John is talking to an audience of Texans, who have a proud history of standing and fighting, and that's what he encourages them to do . . . parents, teachers, kids, all together, fighting to save our heritage and our future:<br />
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<td class="arttext"><strong><span class="artname">John Kuhn's Rally Speech</span></strong><br />
By John
Kuhn - Supt <br />
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<span class="arttext"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Are
there any teachers in this crowd?</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I
want to say something to teachers that our lawmakers should have said long ago:
Thank You! Thank you for keeping our children safe. Thank you for drying their
tears when they scrape their knees, for cheering on our junior high basketball
players, for going up to your room on Sundays to get ready to teach my kids on
Monday. Gracias por cuidarlos! As a dad, I thank you.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Coaches,
thank you for fixing little girls' softball swings and for showing our boys how
to tie their ties. Thank you for getting our children safely home on the yellow
dog after late ballgames, marching contests, and one-act plays.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Thank
you for buying all those raffle tickets, hams, pies, discount cards, Girl Scout
cookies, insulated mugs and pumpkin rolls, for buying more playoff shirts than
any one person could possibly need and on top of all that spending your own
money on pencils and prizes and supplies for your classroom.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">There
are those poor deluded souls who say you take more than you give, and I disagree
with them with everything I am. Don’t let them get you down. They wouldn’t last
a day in your classroom. You are NOT a drain on this economy; you are a bubbling
spring of tomorrow’s prosperity. You’re a fountain of opportunity for other
people’s children. As educational attainment goes up, crime, teen pregnancy,
unemployment, and prison rates all go down. Squalor and ignorance retreat.
Social wounds begin to heal. Our state progresses; our tomorrow brightens. What
you do, teacher, is priceless. You don’t create jobs. You create job
creators.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Some
people don't understand why you do what you do. They think merit pay will make
you work harder, as if you're holding back. They don’t understand what motivates
you. They think the threat of being labeled "unacceptable" will inspire you to
care about the quality of your instruction, as if the knowledge that you hold
the future in your hands on a daily basis is not incentive enough.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Maybe
these sticks and carrots work for bad teachers, but they only demoralize the
great ones, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of great
teachers in our public school classrooms today.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Some
people have forgotten that good teachers actually exist. They spend so much time
and effort weeding out the bad ones that they’ve forgotten to take care of the
good ones. This bitter accountability pesticide is over-spraying the weeds and
wilting the entire garden.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">You
stand on the front lines of poverty and plenty, on the front lines of our social
stratification. You are the people who shove their fingers into gushing wounds
of inequality that our leaders won’t even talk about, and you aren’t afraid.
You’re the last of the Good Samaritans, and you aren’t afraid, even as they
condemn you for trying but failing to save every last kid in your classroom. You
aren’t afraid, and you keep trying, and you haven’t faltered. You deserve to be
saluted, not despised. You deserve to be acclaimed. You deserve so much more
than the ugly scapegoating that privatizers peddle in the media and our halls of
government.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Teacher,
bus driver, coach, lunch lady, custodian, maintenance man, business manager,
aide, secretary, principal, and, yes, even you superintendents out there trying
to hold it all together—you serve your state with skill and honor and dignity,
and I’m sorry that no one in power has the guts to say that these days. History
will recognize that the epithets they applied to your schools said more about
leaders who refused to confront child poverty than the teachers who tried
valiantly to overcome it. History will recognize that teachers in these bleak
years stood in desperate need of public policy help that never came. Advocacy
for hurting children was ripped from our lips with a shush of “no excuses."
These hateful labels should be hung around the necks of those who have allowed
inequitable school funding to persist for decades, those who refuse to tend to
the basic needs of our poorest children so that they may come to school ready to
learn.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">They
say 100,000 kids are on a waiting list for charter schools. Let me tell you
about another waiting list. There are 5 million kids waiting for this
Legislature to keep our forefathers’ promises. There are 5 million children, and
three of them live with me, and they’re all waiting for somebody in Austin,
Texas, to stand up for them and uphold the constitution. There’s a waiting list
of 5 million kids and this government says they can just keep waiting. How long
must they wait?</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">If
you support public schools I want to tell you about a new website. Go to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><a href="http://texaskidswaiting.com/" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">texaskidswaiting.com</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and add your child's name to the public
school waiting list, the list of kids waiting for this government to provide
adequate school funding. That's Texaskidswaiting.com.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Our
forefathers’ promises must be kept. We want fair and adequate resources in our
kids' schools. We want leaders who don't have to be dragged to court to do right
by our children.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It’s
not okay to default on constitutional promises. It’s not okay to neglect schools
until they break, to deliberately undermine our public school. These traditional
institutions have honorably served their communities for generations. It’s not
okay to privatize a public school system that strong and generous people built
and left to us; it's not okay for Austin to confiscate buildings built by local
taxpayers and give them away to cronies and speculators.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">These
buildings aren't just schools, they're touchstones. They're testaments to our
local values. The Friday night lights that have illuminated our skies for
decades, the school gyms that have echoed with play since the Greatest
Generation was young—these aren’t monuments to sports. They’re monuments to
community. They’re beacons of our local control, of the togetherness we cherish
in our hometowns and city neighborhoods. We don’t want education fads imposed on
us by Austin or, even worse, out-of-state billionaires.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">What
we want is simple, tried, and true. We want what this state promised in 1876.
And to those who want to take away that promise, I know some moms and trustees
and local businesspeople who will say what brave Texans have said before: “Come
and take it.”</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Two
years ago I asked state leaders to come to our aid; they responded by cutting
school funding by billions. But help did come: it came from you. The people of
Texas are the cavalry that will save Texas schools. Two years ago may have been
the Alamo; but this year may well be our San Jacinto.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I
will end by saying this to the advocates who are bravely defending public
education: thank you. And one more thing: do not go gently into that good night.
Stand and fight, and save our schools.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/normal arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Thank
you.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Ed. Note: Yes, I thought the same thing that you are thinking now . . . Why can't we have a Secretary of Education like John, who actually BELIEVES in public education as a philosophical construct and who is not selling our entire system to the most vocal billionaire? We need massive improvement, modernization, reorganization--all true--but at the end of all that, we need a strong PUBLIC education system that stands for EVERY child.)</span><br />
Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-42322641007942877112012-11-20T15:10:00.000-08:002012-12-12T13:45:02.538-08:00What Ike Taught Us . . . and We Promptly Forgot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Why in the world, you ask, would anyone care what Ike taught us, and not a few of you would ask, "Who is Ike?" Indeed. I only came to this thought the other day when I happened upon this graphic, quoting from a speech made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (oh, <em>that </em>Ike!) sometime in the halcyon days of the 1950s when I was a little kid. I knew vaguely even then who he was because my father loved telling war stories (World War II, that is) and General Eisenhower figured in some of them. Back in that day, the Republicans were honorable people who thought that, well, people, were important; the Democrats were the hard-to-sell intellectuals, as Ike's long-suffering but brilliant opponent, Adlai Stevenson, demonstrated. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9iDXJGDa7XTwqwLRRWN6lvXgn5HcP-gdCfvDs9mpvmptAhlH0clifZHOVhaZvMLjxO_e_3NJd7Q1dpqR3VTthBAD54q3NqFbKqs-PBi91Qb8fvvxRpiLChE4tZnxgN81nk1qfa9CB3Xg7/s1600/eisenhower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9iDXJGDa7XTwqwLRRWN6lvXgn5HcP-gdCfvDs9mpvmptAhlH0clifZHOVhaZvMLjxO_e_3NJd7Q1dpqR3VTthBAD54q3NqFbKqs-PBi91Qb8fvvxRpiLChE4tZnxgN81nk1qfa9CB3Xg7/s320/eisenhower.jpg" width="320" />:</a>Those days are long gone, of course, but take a look at the photo at left and read carefully the words and, when your amazement abates, <strong><span style="color: red;">compare those thoughts of a reigning General and conservative commander-in-chief with what the recent election told us the Republicans and Democrats stand for now.</span></strong> No one among them would dare to voice this anti-military idea in today's world. It was also Ike who warned us, in his <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later" target="_blank">farewell speech in 1961</a> to beware of the military-industrial complex that would sap our resources and take our money and our attention away from what the people need: hospitals, schools, roads. These days, the consequences are even more dire: People right here in America need food, housing, medical care, and still the schools. Yet the military-industrial complex is thriving, having created such powerful lobbies that the U.S. government is hiring defense contractors, security consultants, yes, even mercenaries, to do what the regular armed forces used to take care of themselves: Take a look at the top twenty defense contractors in <a href="http://defensesystems.com/articles/2011/06/08/2011-top-20-defense-contractors.aspx" target="_blank">this article from Defense Systems</a>, noting that with even a 10% cut (the austerity measures from the Pentagon in 2010), defense contracting would still be<strong><span style="color: red;"> the largest market in the world (Those numbers in the right column are BILLIONS, by the way.)</span></strong>. And that's not counting the tertiary market of arms dealers who spread the "wealth" to developing countries where tyrants and dictators make war on their own people (read a history of Africa for apt and recent examples).</div>
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Don't get me wrong. I am glad to be protected by brave men and women; I'm happy that they have the equipment they need to do that. I am a patriot of the old school. But, somehow, over the past half-century, <a href="http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/07/americas-move-to-the-right.html" target="_blank">America has witnessed a slow but inexorable slide to the Right</a>, keying off our most horrific decade, the 1960s. Shortly after Ike's farewell speech, John F. Kennedy was sworn in and all of us who were young then, even if we couldn't vote yet, were <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/documents/ask-not.htm" target="_blank">enthralled with his optimism and his call for taking action to change the world. </a> Yet, after the terrors of one assassination after another, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, a stunned populace faded gently away from enthusiam for change and public service and became enthralled with an emerging narrative, skillfully controlled by those with the money. (Please read this excellent essay by the prolific history professor Akim Reinhardt, who calls himself The Public Professor, <a href="http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/07/americas-move-to-the-right.html" target="_blank">"America's Move to the Right," for a detailed accounting of this trend</a>.)</div>
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For those of us who lived through it, the decade of assassinations will always be the critical turning point of the 20th century, in ten years turning a nation thrilled to be moving forward and making change to a nation listening to the Big Lie Technique so well used by Richard Nixon and pretending that things would turn out all right anyway. <strong><span style="color: red;">The narrative of the ensuing decades became a slow discrediting of "liberalism" (or concern for social programs) and a rapidly escalating celebration of money</span></strong>, culminating in the deification of an actor as the hero of the modern world, President Ronald Reagan. Again, having lived through it, I am amazed every day that Reagan, who gave us the travesties of conspicuous consumption, the absurdities of "trickle-down economics," and the idiocies of rockets in space can be imagined to have been a great President and a great statesman. Nothing is a greater testament to the ability of money to control the narrative than Reagan's ascendancy and climactic role as the savior of the free world, an image carefully crafted by multimillionaires who used the simplified world of television to sell messages that made us all feel good about keeping our heads down and spending lots of money.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The point is this: <strong><span style="color: red;">Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat oversimplified ideas from spinmeisters.</span></strong> When we talk about the "dumbing down of America," it is not the schools which are to blame, but the facile work done on our minds by 40 years of television and its insatiable need for sound-bites and imagery. Those who have the money determine what people will see--and ingest and believe. Thus, more and more these days, I feel like one of the characters from the ending of Ray Bradbury's novel <em>Fahrenheit 451</em>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=the+peop&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS491US493&q=the+people+who+became+books+at+the+end+offahrenheit+451&gs_l=hp..4.0l4j41.0.0.0.59312...........0.a1dlTeshuuA&pbx=1" target="_blank">one of the people who became books</a>, each memorizing a particular text to save it for the world, a scene scarily immortalized in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060390/" target="_blank">1966 Truffaut film of the novel</a>. In my case, however, I am alone on the desolate shore, telling and retelling my history of the America I experienced, mumbling to myself, no doubt, but looking through the mist for other Baby Boomers and our elders who lived through it all, hoping they will also be saying, "Really, we were there." </span></div>
Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-70374932344338850632012-08-29T22:07:00.000-07:002012-12-12T13:43:42.978-08:00P.S. : The Last Last Word“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”<br />
--William Butler Yeats <br />
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In a nutshell, this quotation inadvertently capsulizes the conflict between quantitative and qualitative measures of learning. Students in the U.S. are told and retold by the numbers on their erroneously named "standardized tests" that their pails are nearly empty and they need to work harder at filling them with such drivel as "how to take tests," "how to get into a great college by upping your SAT scores," and other slogans of the <a href="http://changetheschools.com/pdf/How-Corporate-Culture-Warps-Our-View.pdf">corporate culture</a>. After all, if it's not about numbers or the "bottom line," how can it count at all? This is the absurd end result of the corporate double-think that has consumed what we used to consider "public" education, once one of our most treasured institutions. (Read all the details here: <a href="http://changetheschools.com/pdf/How-Corporate-Culture-Warps-Our-View.pdf">"How the Corporate Culture Warps Our View of School Reform."</a>)<br />
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Teachers who used to love their work because of their ability to "light a fire" and watch the lights go on behind a student's eyes are now bludgeoned by national policy to narrow the curriculum, follow the party line, find a way to explain this absurdity to parents, and stop spending time on "frills," i.e. music, drama, art, discussion, experimentation, group projects, peer feedback, coaching, and all the other ways that excellent teachers make valuable contact with students and parents every day. <br />
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Thus, as the infographic in the previous blog entry (The Last Word on "Testing") aptly demonstrates, the corporate culture that spawned our current love affair with numbers as measures of "worth" is enriching Pearson and the other Big Five testing companies (and their lobbyists) while draining both the spirit and the funding away from real learning. THANKS, designers and Accredited Online Colleges for helping us visualize what is really a complex argument in a very elegant form. I will be posting it on <a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools">my Facebook page</a> to promote its message and help disseminate your illuminating work! <br />
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P.P.S. After being gone from the online scene for a couple of months while relocating from Southern California to Central California (giving up the ocean for the foothills at the doorway to Yosemite, a good trade, all things considered), I am delighted to see that more and more people are becoming smarter and smarter about how to approach the testing question and how to create positive change in spite of the education bureaucracy that wastes money so lavishly. Please take a look at <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/k-12/high%20stakes">FairTest.org</a> for the latest and most authoritative information on high-stakes testing, and do sign their resolution (click on the first bullet point at the above link) to abolish these punitive testing practices in our schools. School is not a business, not a numbers game, and it's about time we all got together and SAID so!Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-13570735653404019012012-08-29T20:24:00.001-07:002012-12-12T13:44:40.437-08:00The Last Word on "Testing"Thanks to a design group dedicated to linking visualization to learning, Accredited Online Colleges was able to put up a fabulous graphic on their blog, detailing the effect of testing, retesting, and overtesting on U.S. schools. Take a look at the elegant use and display of the statistics below and the overall impact of the concise information presented in this infographic to get a real answer to all of those naysayers who keep denying the detrimental effects of "standardized testing." Just follow the money, of course, as noted below: Pearson and its cohorts in the Big Five of national testing companies are making BILLIONS from state and national policy while the kids, teachers, parents, and communities that support and work in our public schools remain underfunded and underloved. <br />
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Check it out for yourself:<br />
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<a _fcksavedurl="http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2012/standardized-testing/" href="http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2012/standardized-testing/"><img _fcksavedurl="https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Tested.jpg" alt="standardized testing infographic" border="0" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Tested.jpg" width="500" /></a> <br />
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Thanks to Allison Morris and the rest of the design team that provides these infographics for Accredited Online Colleges and other resource sites. The clever way they have combined easy reading, visual cues, and sourced statistics demonstrates the precise method for teaching that suits the 21st century learner: quick, one-stop assimilation that shows CONNECTIONS among ideas. Hey, we're ALL visual learners now!<br />
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<br />Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-13501203097355987922012-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:002012-03-25T18:31:45.927-07:00What the Activist Said . . .In a new online feature, and a clever idea by <strong>communications entrepreneur Jocelyne Rohrback</strong>, <a href="http://www.ventura101.com/">VENTURA 101</a> spotlights real people and gives them the opportunity to tell their real stories. Here's VENTURA 101's latest interview, with a local school activist (that's me!):<br />
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"When it comes to K-12 education, at least one thing can be agreed upon among teachers, unions, legislators and parents; change is a necessity. Depending on who you ask, how to best execute that change in our schools vary significantly. This week as part of Ventura101′s 10 Questions with a Ventura County Local, we speak with someone who has not only dedicated most of her professional career to public education, but to advocating change within the system as well. <strong>Patricia Kokinos (pronounced ko-keen’-us), is a Ventura resident who believes that how we choose to educate our children speaks volumes about what type of society we want to become.</strong> We talk with her about what she means by “exploding the paradigm” and developing a “New Vision,” how she paved her own way in self-publishing her book ANGEL PARK, and what parents can do to improve the homework experience."<br />
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<em>Patti's Career Summary, in her own words:</em><br />
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A few years ago I took a break from being an educator so I could write a novel, which became ANGEL PARK, a book that was very well received by reviewers and won several awards. Early on I gave lots of talks at the local Barnes & Noble and spent many hours making presentations at <strong>Clarey Rudd’s Bank of Books on Main Street in downtown Ventura</strong>. In fact, a friend and I did a whole series of workshops at Clarey’s store about self-publishing that resulted in several of the participants completing their manuscripts and getting published. Recently, a local radio host, <strong>Kelli McKay, who does a great job with Locals Only on KVTA-1520</strong>, told me that ANGEL PARK seemed so radical only five years ago, but now it’s practically mainstream. That seems to be the story of my life, just about five years ahead of the curve so I always feel a little bit out of it, but still determined to lead the way!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzDeVll91bkLW6eJffRZ8NmwIuovKqEYP1I-ttQGpW15QoxssD9zH5Z7ORSnpQvQYIO4M9_NWyrZUw1dyFizOATqdlBw0wo_ajGRZRxduhZm4Gp6rYL05Ag4_cVL2XEGkSuQzEUiWFt8Ui/s1600/Angel-Park-front-cover-266x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzDeVll91bkLW6eJffRZ8NmwIuovKqEYP1I-ttQGpW15QoxssD9zH5Z7ORSnpQvQYIO4M9_NWyrZUw1dyFizOATqdlBw0wo_ajGRZRxduhZm4Gp6rYL05Ag4_cVL2XEGkSuQzEUiWFt8Ui/s200/Angel-Park-front-cover-266x400.jpg" width="132" /></a>Now, my self-publisher, iUniverse, has put out a second edition of <a href="http://changetheschools.com/angel_park.html">ANGEL PARK</a> on their own dime, as part of their STAR program, complete with an interview with the author (that would be me) and discussion questions. The authenticity of the book, which readers and reviewers immediately notice, comes from 25 years of hands-on experience as a teacher, school administrator and devoted change agent in both California and upstate New York. <strong>Scarily enough, the plot of the novel is based on actual events that happened to me during my long dance with school change</strong>–as well as the deep realization that we have to do much more than tweak the system if we want to make improvements that count!</div>
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This has become an important and popular attitude over the past few years, so I have done lots of radio all over the U.S. and Canada, talking about deep school transformation and offering both new ideas and practical help about the kinds of changes we need to make in our thinking to create schools that nurture and empower kids, parents, teachers, and communities.<br />
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People from all over the world have joined in the discussion on <a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools">my Facebook page</a>, representing Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, India, Norway, Spain, Turkey and many other areas. But the whole idea of what I think we need to accomplish and what I think is coming, not only for schools, but for our society, and, in fact, for the world, is the progress talked about on my website–HUMAN progress.<br />
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<em>Jocelyne asks: You have spent over 25 years of your professional life advocating for, and making change in public education as a teacher, school leader, and curriculum expert. Many educational advocates were raised by educators or by parents who truly valued the prioritization of education. Is this true for you? Did you grow up with parents who “brought home” this important message?</em><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Daughter Lynn Campbell <br />
and Aunt Artemis Kokinos</td></tr>
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Quite the opposite, actually. My Dad always told me that I didn’t need to go to college because I was just going to get married and have children. Plenty of us women who grew up in the 60s got that same message and had to fight for every scrap of advancement we earned. I found my way to UCLA on scholarships and only after getting my Bachelor’s degree in English/journalism did I get married and have children (pretty much a requirement for my generation!). My teaching credential, my two Master’s degrees and my work in school administration all happened after that point. But I think <strong>it was my aunt, Artemis Kokinos, a long-time elementary and reading teacher for Fresno City Schools, who influenced me most.</strong> She had me reading by the age of three or so and by the age of five I was helping her “mark papers” for her second graders. I actually started out as a journalist, never intending to be a teacher, but after I had kids and got involved with their schools and their friends, I knew I had to help make some changes, however I could. Teaching turned out to be a genetic imperative, after all! <br />
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<em>In your opinion, what’s the largest challenge public educators face or are forced to overcome?</em><br />
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The largest challenge facing educators today is the same one I faced 30 years ago and the same one we’ve all been struggling with for the past 40 years: <strong>The system itself is set up to separate, isolate, and keep people in line, as well as to shove kids into pigeonholes already determined by their race, gender, and socioeconomic status.</strong> Our 20th century drive to educate everyone was a noble effort, but by the 60s we realized that everyone was not getting an “equal” education, and that realization certainly continues today and fuels the raging debates on how we need to reform our schools. </div>
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Teachers who manage to circumvent the system by creating collaborative, creative, personalized experiences for kids are the heroes of today’s school wars. It isn’t easy and the bureaucratic, corporatized system–especially now with our small-minded emphasis on test scores–burns out good teachers and allows mediocre ones who don’t make waves to keep going on and on. That’s why parents are screaming about bad teachers, homeschooling, and charter schools–when <strong>what we really need to do is change the STRUCTURE of public education so it allows us to educate all kids at a highly intelligent level</strong> and to support teachers, parents, and communities at the same time.</div>
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<em>There’s been a recent push for the implementation of privatizing public libraries. In your opinion, why or why not is this a good idea?</em><br />
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Like the idea of privatizing the education system, privatizing libraries is another attempt to solve by corporate means a problem that needs to be part of a restructuring of society and our expectations for new public institutions. <strong>Over the past 30 years in particular, more and more money has been squeezed from social programs and funneled into military and corporate coffers so that we are no longer adequately supporting institutions that serve our social and personal needs.</strong> The better solution will be to reorganize our priorities and change our minds about what is important in our 21st century world. I am optimistic that this is exactly what’s going on now with nationwide and even worldwide movements to change the balance of power and to return to communities the funding to support essential public services, such as public schools, public libraries, public parks, and more. We have to stick up for our libraries if we want to save them, the same way we have to stick up for our schools! National Library Week (April 8-14) is a good chance to thank a librarian for protecting public knowledge and to explore what the library has to offer these days.<br />
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<em>Finish this sentence. “I can’t start my day without _______________.”</em><br />
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I can’t start my day without an hour or so of silence (and coffee) when I can write in my journal, all by myself.<br />
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<em>Your book, Angel Park, is a fictional tale that explores a new vision for public education reform. Can you explain what that new vision encompasses?</em><br />
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First of all, ANGEL PARK drops the reader into a specific place and time where the inner life of schools is exposed as a compelling human dilemma. I decided to write my ideas about school and life as fiction so the reader could be emotionally involved with a process that has become more political and more adult-oriented than we ever intended. As the heroine, Constance Demetrios, fights the system, she begins to realize that we have created a factory where kids are moved down a conveyor belt, filled with information, and pushed off at the end, ready or not. When she escapes her absurd situation, she discovers just how deep these antiquated ideas about learning really go, right down into the roots of Western civilization. That’s a LOT of mind-changing we have to do to catch up with the new millennium.<br />
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Those specific ideas about change, that new vision of exploding the paradigm and creating a new STRUCTURE based on a new SYSTEM of human interaction are discussed on my website, particularly on the “New Vision” page and in the numerous articles and the video by Sir Ken Robinson on my “Articles/Video” page. <strong>We will only make effective changes to school, and to our whole society, by CHANGING OUR MINDS and coming to more progressive expectations of what we want our schools to accomplish.</strong> That’s really the theme of my Facebook page, which I hope everyone will join. As it says there, “How we educate and treat our children determines what we want our societies to become. To change the world, we can begin by changing our schools, into the human-friendly, creative, collaborative, supportive venues they need to be . . . .” How to do that in specific terms is further elaborated in the “campaign manifesto” on both that Facebook page and on the <a href="http://changetheschools.com/new-vision.html">New Vision</a> page of my website.<br />
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<em>When you welcome people from out-of-town, what do you suggest they see, do or eat before leaving the county?</em><br />
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The beautiful beach, all the way from the Harbor to the county line, is my favorite feature of Ventura; we love Emma Wood beach and walk there often, despite some pretty scary erosion over the past decade. I also want to make sure people go downtown because Ventura actually has an historic main street, with the Courthouse and wonderful old buildings that have been beautifully restored. I like to say that Ventura is one of the last small California beach towns, which is what makes it so great!<br />
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<em>What’s your opinion on homework? Do you think elementary school children should be doing more than an hour of homework per night? Why or why not?</em><br />
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Homework is as much an outdated concept as test scores, and kids are experts at determining what is useful and what is merely “busy work.” Elementary school kids need to be PLAYING during their time away from school and certainly doing some practice with their computers, including the huge number of learning games that are available today. The problem with my concept, of course, is that all kids do not have access to computers, so this is the first aspect of public education that must change. Let’s figure out how to get a notebook, at least, into the hands of EVERY child in America (then we can work on the rest of the world). That way, “homework” can serve some useful purpose, especially if it is working with friends or parents on a school project that has some meaning to the students. I read a statistic the other day: <strong>“The Pentagon is buying 2,443 F-35 joint strike fighters, sleek, $133 million supersonic jets for battling a weapon that hasn’t been imagined by an enemy that remains unknown. If we bought just seven fewer F-35s, we could buy a handheld computer tablet for every first-grader in America.” </strong>And this is from the usually conservative opinion section of the AARP Bulletin, surely a major sign that times and priorities are changing!<br />
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<em>If Aladdin gave you one wish to enact any change at our local public schools, what would be your wish?</em><br />
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Frankly, our local public schools in the City of Ventura are the best run I have seen in a long time, thanks to excellent leadership and creative development. That is not the case for a lot of other school districts in Ventura County, however, or for most places in the rest of the nation. <strong>I would ask Aladdin’s genie to give us new, open spaces for learning with all the latest technology for every teacher and child. This alone would change the dynamic between teachers and kids and require everyone to adapt to a new, more open, more personalized, more collegial, and more transparent approach to learning.</strong> At the bottom of my website page entitled <a href="http://changetheschools.com/be-an-advocate.html">“Be An Advocate”</a> is a chart of BEST LINKS, including a place called DesignShare that shows how architecture can shape and change what goes on in schools.<br />
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<em>If you had not spent most of your professional career in education, what would you be doing?</em><br />
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I originally thought I would be a foreign correspondent, helping to change the world, but kids came along and that idea went out the window. I have been and would have continued to be a journalist, I think, but my latest dream is to be a novelist–you know, actually to make money selling fiction, beyond the serious commentary of ANGEL PARK. <strong>I am the world’s greatest defender of fiction as an instrument of change, simply because it opens our minds to new ideas in engaging ways and helps us exercise our emotions in a safe environment.</strong> So, I am working, slowly, on my next novel, moving my protagonist on to her next big adventure. Tom Clancy, that mega-military-best-seller, of all people, says it best: <strong>“The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”</strong> But my favorite quote is from the king of absurdity, Franz Kafka, who said, <strong>“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”</strong> Thus, change happens . . . .Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-21189428640113193122012-03-18T21:24:00.000-07:002012-03-18T21:34:36.253-07:00Deja Vu All Over Again"Retrospective" seems to be the key word in art, music, movies, media and even schools these days as we look back fondly on our imagined idylls in the 20th century and pay homage to the past in remake after remake. This is natural, I suppose, since it is only after some time has elapsed that we can form an intelligent perspective and decide what it all meant. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking Mural (1974) by Asco, a Chicano conceptual <br />
and performance art group from East Los Angeles.</td></tr>
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In this spirit, the Getty Institute in Los Angeles spent ten years researching, organizing, and coordinating a mammoth art happening that involved 60 installations from Santa Barbara to San Diego, from Santa Monica to Palm Springs, heralding postwar art in LA, <a href="http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/exhibitions">Pacific Standard Time</a>. The website itself is a work of art, documenting the vast richness of cultural and political statement from an array of artists working in every imaginable medium. For sheer immersion in a disturbing zeitgeist, my favorite experience was Under the Big Black Sun at the MOCA Geffen Center in Japantown, where the fractured '70s came alive in the work of 125 far-out artists from every LA microculture, viewed to the beat of video loops from the Vietnam War, Watergate and Nixon speeches, Reagan election hoopla--a cacophony of absurdity. If we survived the '70s, I thought, and the birth of post-modern cynicism, can't we find our way forward from here? <br />
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It was no surprise, then, to discover among these displays a series of stark black and white photographs documenting the visual absurdity of industrial plants in the South Bay juxtaposed to interior shots of short-haired students with blank faces lined up at proto-computer monitors or standing at conveyor belts, learning the new languages of modern media, the skills of modern manufacturing. It was regimented Big Brother stuff, of course, but what blew me away were the comments by the artist, talking about the "factory mentality" of our schools, the lack of individuality in our teaching, the lock-step learning schools expected from the students and, most of all, the clear separation of young people from low socioeconomic classes into menial, repetitive, simple-minded tasks.<br />
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Wow, I thought. An artist of the '70s could clearly see what we are still having trouble conceptualizing 40 years later. Despite all the new bells and whistles of the computer age, the tweaks to the curriculum, the concerted effort to move minority kids forward, we are still dealing with a system that defeats us at every turn. As John Goodlad is fond of saying, "The system is not broken. It is working perfectly." It's just doing something that we no longer agree with sociologically. Thus, all our cosmetic efforts to improve a program or buy more computers or train better teachers or pour more money into old ideas are doomed to failure if we do not engage with the crux of the problem: the STRUCTURE of the SYSTEM.<br />
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Yet, all around us, the retrospective continues: We were doing personalized learning in computer labs in 1982; why haven't we progressed from there? We were doing technology for teachers with hypercard stacks in 1988; why haven't we progressed from there? We were doing magnet/special interest schools in the '80s; why do we still think they are an answer? We had a huge push for science and math teachers and students in the '60s and again in the '80s. Do we have to go around that wheel again, too? We fought out phonics vs. whole language in the '90s. Can't we figure out how to do both?<br />
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I never thought I would be around long enough to be one of those old teachers who used to say to me, "Just watch. It will all come around again." And, amazingly, it does, as though none of us is smart enough to see the bigger picture and to say, "Wait a minute. We have to do something radically different!" All right, I'm exaggerating, because many people are beginning to say exactly that these days, and their voices are growing in number and having more clout: The homeschoolers, the charter schoolers, the alternative schoolers--They all understand that something radical has to happen.<br />
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And they're right. I'm just stuck on the idea that the radical change we need to make must be for EVERY child, that we need to be smart enough to agree on a SMARTER SYSTEM that will produce new, open structures where every child, every teacher, every parent, and every community will thrive. What do we do, you ask? How can I help? I invite you to reams of articles and an animated version of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson on my <a href="http://changetheschools.com/articles-video.html">Articles/Video page</a> and then join our campaign on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools">Facebook</a>, where Change the Schools becomes a function of changing our minds . . . .Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-26015310983684523302012-01-29T14:11:00.000-08:002012-01-29T14:11:37.451-08:00So, What's the Point, You Ask . . .<em>Do you just love banging your head against a wall?</em> That's only one of the provocative questions that other writers and readers, too, have asked me about ANGEL PARK and my obsessive need to write a novel about SCHOOL, as if THAT were worthy of fictional attention. "I just couldn't stop myself," I usually say, and when they go on to ask, "What's the point?"--well, I'll just quote Jonathan Franzen, the Gen-X national fiction darling: <strong><em>"Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money."</em></strong> Nothing wrong with money, of course, but sometimes the frightening story just needs to be TOLD! <br />
<br />At the same time, I have an enormous issue to reveal in all its glaring cluelessness, that we aren't running schools for kids, but to satisfy "the system." Wrong. Kids need something different. Here's what I say to the media about kids, schools, and . . . my point:<br />
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<strong><em>What do kids want out of school, particularly in high school?</em></strong> High school kids want some meaning and purpose, beyond “it’s in the curriculum.” They want what everyone else wants from their work, a sense that it’s useful and that it will make a difference to someone. No one is more attuned than high school students to what they perceive as “busy work.” And they are perfectly tuned lie detectors. <strong>They want the truth; they want to know what’s really going on. They want to know what they’re good at, and what they’re going to do with their lives</strong>. They want some freedom to explore and, even if they don’t know it yet, some freedom to grow--even some time to interact with their teachers and coaches on a more personal level for the kind of guidance every kid needs. That all implies a much bigger and better mission for high schools than we currently hold, and the opportunity for high school teachers to employ all the creativity and inspiration they can muster to keep kids involved and productive. All of that is going to take a rethinking and reinvention of the system as we currently know it. (See <a href="http://changetheschools.com/">http://changetheschools.com/</a> for articles and video that answer the question, "Like what?")<br />
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<strong><em>How do you think your novel, <u>Angel Park</u>, can have an effect on an issue this big?</em></strong> My novel can help with the most important first step, which is opening readers’ eyes to a new way of thinking and providing a new perspective not only on school systems but also on how we live our lives. You’re right, this is a big issue, and one of the most important ones we will face this century: <strong>How can we create schools that will inspire our students to be productive and happy contributors to their own lives, to our collective way of life and to the world? Isn’t that really the main question?</strong> To that end, I have created a companion website, <a href="http://changetheschools.com/">http://changetheschools.com/</a>, which takes up the issues of <em>Angel Park</em> and provides information about school change. <br />
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The theme of my site is “Changing the Schools Can Change the World,” and that’s also the title of my Facebook page (<a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools">http://Facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools</a>), where educators, parents, students, and others have gathered from numerous nations, including New Zealand, Norway, India, and Ghana to support a broad concept of cultural and school change. In the U.S., we need new national policy, not only to rescue the American Dream, but also to join with other nations to use the power of that dream to inspire and help children all over the world. <strong>The beginning of a better world, of global change, is right here in our schools and how we change our minds about what we want our kids to experience, how we want our society to change, and what we can contribute to the world. </strong><br />Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-80038971948462407712011-12-08T13:28:00.001-08:002011-12-08T14:19:30.692-08:00Critical Mass and the 100th MonkeyDespite massive and myriad attempts on the part of parents, teachers, and students to have some effect on the national (and international) dialogue about "school reform," the powers that be seem deaf to even the most well-reasoned arguments, and those of us who have acted as "voices in the wilderness" certainly feel invisible as well. It seems obvious to me, and to thousands of others like me, that after thirty years of infighting to change the schools, it’s time we realized that <strong>numbers, statistics, and political rhetoric only tell us the symptoms of out-of-date schools</strong>: drop-outs, bullying, gangs, parent unrest, a proliferation of alternatives, loud and long debates, and all the rest.<br />
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Statistics cannot, by their very nature, get to the heart of the problem. <strong>Schools are not businesses with numerical bottom lines.</strong> <strong>They are organizations of people that much more resemble families than factories. </strong> When schools are allowed, encouraged, and supported to redesign themselves as collaborative systems that inspire students, teachers, and parents to share and pursue knowledge, then we will have the kind of educational "families" that can nurture each child individually and return FUN, belonging, and excitement to the learning process--for all of us.<br />
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Thus, with the dawning of the REAL Age of Aquarius (Hey, those Mayans knew SOMETHING was happening, right?), we're approaching that moment when a critical mass of public opinion will be reached and, like the learning of <a href="http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html">the hundredth monkey</a>, we will all intuitively know what we have to do: Create a new paradigm for public education--for every child in the world--that encompasses what we know about the human brain:<br />
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<strong>Human brains are designed to synthesize multiple factors and functions and to build webs of meaning</strong>, not to be forced into narrow, linear, prescribed channels of thought. Like the Worldwide Web, schools must become smarter, faster, lighter, more adaptable, more collaborative, more open-ended, more technologically integrated, and more connected to the global community--<strong>a Renaissance of schooling for ALL kids.</strong> <br />
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Teachers must have time, training, and support to adapt to the new realities: They will learn to become coaches, facilitators, creators, nurturers, designing projects and interactive experiences that engage students with important content. They will work with parents and their communities to expand "school" beyond classrooms and into cyberspace and real-world environments. <strong>When we catch on to this concept and help teachers unlock their own creativity, just stand back, folks, because a whole universe of untapped energy will be released.</strong> <br />
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At the same time, school systems must find ways of downsizing their bureaucracies and of meeting NOT the needs of the adults, but rather the needs of the students:<br />
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<li>Kids want answers to these questions: <strong>What am I doing here, how does this relate to me, what can I do with this information, how can I help make the world a better place?</strong><strong> </strong></li>
<li>Kids need NOT more factoids, but <strong>more MEANING</strong>: How to make connections among ideas, how to value the importance of information, how to assemble a big picture and do something meaningful with it--a global picture. </li>
<li><strong>Kids need connection, a sense of belonging, inspiration, direction</strong>--and a way to use their own talents, passions and skills to build a life in the new world that is revealing itself as the new millennium progresses. </li>
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Imagine what school must look like to achieve these goals, for EVERY child at every age, and that is the starting point for “school reform”: a deeper level of learning than we have ever experienced before. What we're really talking about is breaking down barriers and false walls and bringing people together in creative, intelligent environments where all members of the community can learn, grow, and thrive. <br />
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Yes, that's right. <strong>This is an entirely NEW VISION of what schools are and what we want them to do.</strong> And the more of us who talk about this new vision and blog about it and share it with our friends, the faster we will all be able to change our minds. As we take the quantum leap of changing our minds, we will, at last, be able to change the schools in a meaningful way and, in the process, transform the world. Join in by "liking" <a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools">ChangeTheSchools</a> on Facebook, or join another group, but, somehow, let YOUR voice be heard!<br />
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<br />Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-84987191853265511522011-11-02T18:58:00.000-07:002011-11-02T20:39:14.443-07:00What Are the Parameters of Your Sandbox?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Did you ever notice that all pre-school teachers, and kindergarten teachers for that matter, have one important trait in common? They consciously, subconsciously, and unfailingly create the physical environment that will promote the desired behavior from their kids: Their placemats in a circle so kids will sit in a circle on the floor, a tricycle lane and kiddie cops to make sure trikes stay safely within the lines, books on small tables of four so kids will share pictures with each other, personal cubbyholes so everyone can store their own crayons. You know what I mean. So, my question is this: <span style="background-color: white; color: blue;"><strong>What behavior did we have in mind when we designed schools (and are still designing schools) in separate little boxes called classrooms</strong></span> with desks in careful rows and silence enforced by the teacher's presence at the front of each room (sometimes actually sitting behind a big desk)?<br />
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The answer to that would be, let's see, regimented, silent, listening behavior, uninterrupted by flights of fancy, comments, or other noise; and no moving around; and going from one classroom like this to several others every day on a permanent rotation of 55 minutes each. I'm only slightly exaggerating and anyone who has ever been to high school will certainly recognize the pattern. At one high school where I was an administrator, we actually had the teachers all shadow a student for one whole day, following him/her to every class. <span style="color: blue;"><strong>The teachers were outraged and dismayed, especially with the boring drivel their colleagues (and they, too) piled on the "general" students. </strong></span> They all complained that their rear-ends hurt and they were bored out of their minds and how could the kids stand it?<br />
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Well, it didn't take us long after that (one year of planning) to change the culture of the entire school, starting with team-taught, cross-disciplinary two-hour blocks for all freshmen, aided by a dedicated computer lab and multimedia systems for freshman teachers, plus personal and team support for each group of ninth graders. This was around 1990, when the "back-to-basics" movement that has now leached all creativity out of schools, was in its infancy. The teachers did all the research to select their integrated approach (in an ethnically diverse public high school of 2200) and even talked their colleagues into moving out of their classrooms to make a couple of special freshman pods for the new design.<br />
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Despite all the excitement and two years of very successful implementation, when personnel changed and the daily pressure lapsed, "the system" snapped back into place like an overstretched rubber band. Before long, under new "leadership," the school's reputation waned, the faculty's energy did, too, and it was back to the faceless hordes trudging from classroom to classroom. <span style="color: blue;"><strong>For one brief shining moment, we all had (gasp!) FUN; obviously, that could not be sustained over the long haul, right?</strong></span> A long way of saying that all the collaborative energy was no match for the culture of isolation and disconnection that our traditional approach to school requires: that one-classroom, one-teacher, delivering- information model. That assembly-line model where each child goes bumping down the conveyor belt, has information added, and pops out at the end either stamped "Standard" or dropped off the line like so much slag if the child doesn't fit the mold.<br />
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Having watched this entire pattern play out over 25 years in public schools as a teacher and school and district administrator, <span style="color: blue;"><strong>I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all those outraged conversations about "the system" heard in every teacher lunchroom and parent meeting were being echoed by other change agents in different fields.</strong></span> I discovered that artists, architects, writers, scientists, musicians, and other creatives were seeing the same thing, and talking about it: Here, for example, is the latest commentary by the president of an international architectural firm engaged in school design: <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/29/37nair.h30.html?tkn=XNXFDFcvWWLDmV03sm8U7i6nllsZj5Ko4SLX&cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1">The Classroom Is Obsolete</a>. In part, he says, "The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution." From the standpoint of design, we have consistently painted ourselves into a corner, the better to do the "basics" and to prevent our teachers and kids from engaging in collaborative, creative, critical thinking and doing. Wow, I thought; we are saying exactly the same thing! <br />
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An earlier commentary had enthralled me and prompted me to contact this firm, because <span style="color: blue;"><strong>nothing makes more sense than, as all pre-school teachers are wont to do, designing the environment to elicit the behavior we want to promote.</strong></span> Thus, if we want clever, other-directed, creative, smart, articulate kids who grow into creative, productive, entrepreneurial adults--as we all have to be this century--then how must schools look to achieve that effect? Read all about it (and more) on the international forum <a href="http://www.designshare.com/">DesignShare</a> and, while you are there, marvel, as I did that, in all possible ways, <a href="http://www.changetheschools.com/">Changing the Schools Can Change the World</a>. <br />
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</div>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-79256537542080963292011-11-02T18:00:00.000-07:002011-11-02T21:00:30.334-07:00A Novel Way to Promote ChangeAs an added note on the post "What Are the Parameters of Your Sandbox?" I was recently notified that the education director of <a href="http://designshare.com/">DesignShare</a> had read my novel, <strong><em>Angel Park, </em></strong>and wanted to feature it in the first newsletter for the creative design site. Wow! Fast company, I thought, and gladly provided the needed information. So, here is my novel about school reform and cultural change in the inaugural edition of this prestigious international newsletter:<br />
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<strong>A Novel Way to Promote Change Agency</strong><br />
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In ANGEL PARK, a novel about school reform that centers on the mystery surrounding the death of a school official, the characters’ lives and attitudes are shaped by the buildings that contain them. Despite its attempt at modernity, the school district reveals its real story at the ringing of each bell when “the pressure of all the classroom doors shutting simultaneously” allows students to be “vacuum-sealed into each tiny micro-climate.” Thus, the educational spaces embody and perpetuate the sense of isolation and disconnection that still permeates the traditional school system, despite a century of human progress in the outside world.<br />
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The author, Patricia Kokinos, a veteran teacher and school and district administrator in both California and New York, saw these buildings and the fictionalized but true events of the story as a microcosm of the issues of school reform. She offers the unique perspective of fiction to give readers an emotional sense of the forces, both human and societal, that stifle change and the deep beliefs we may have to uproot to make some changes that count. ANGEL PARK is available on Amazon (<a href="http://tiny.cc/AngelParkAmz">http://tiny.cc/AngelParkAmz</a>), and more about its awards and reviews can be found on the author’s school reform website, <a href="http://changetheschools.com/">http://changetheschools.com/</a>. <br />
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--from the inaugural newsletter for DesignShare, a global forum for innovative school design, <a href="http://designshare.com/">http://designshare.com/</a> See the entire newsletter for <a href="http://www.designshare.com/enews/archive/enews_1110.html">October 2011</a>.Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-21033852657092161552011-11-01T17:09:00.000-07:002011-11-01T17:09:19.063-07:00A Message from India<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">"The </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">future is unknowable</span></strong><span style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">and cannot be predicted. A child who joins school today will retire in 2065 and can be expected to live up to the age of 85. The challenge for schools is staring us in the face." These are the words of Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray, a decorated leader of <country-region w:st="on">India</country-region>'s school improvement efforts and now CEO of an independent international school in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Bangalore</place></city>. An online friend of mine who works on school change in Atlanta sent me the link to </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">this message from India, because it states so eloquently why schools in the developing world are moving ahead and schools in America continue to struggle.</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">For one thing, life in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">India</place></country-region>, the country that completely jumped over the Industrial Age and took up residence in the Information Age without a backward glance, is not about "test scores." As Gen. Ray states, "There prevails a lot of confused thinking on what is the fundamental purpose of schools." Indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Gen. Ray believes schools should have a social objective to play a worthwhile part in the progress of the 21st century, with a "new literacy" that includes </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">competencies in "higher purpose and vision, how to be creative, how to think critically, and how to be lifelong learners."</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> While <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">U.S.</place></country-region> schools may say some of these same things, they are not concepts that are valued by a system that prizes test scores above all else. As Gen. Ray sees it, </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">"Schools should, therefore, look upon themselves as agents of change and not as repositories of knowledge."</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Ah, there's the crux of the argument: What are schools trying to accomplish? If we are no longer training factory workers for the discipline of standing at conveyor belts for long boring hours, being silent and focused on their narrow tasks, then why are we still running our schools as if that were their purpose?</span><span style="color: #660099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">If we, too, want our students to be creative, to have a sense of purpose and vision, how must we change things to create that outcome? </span></strong><strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">The person with the best answer to that question is Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford professor who originally advised President Obama on education issues. She was recently featured in a webinar on Edutopia.org, explaining in great detail why the tests our students take now in NO way prepare them for their own futures.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">The challenges today, she says require "motivated and self-reliant citizens and risk-taking entrepreneurs" who have </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">a new set of abilities including solving problems, working in teams, creating, innovating and criticizing, reflecting on and improving performance. </span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> These new expectations, in turn, require a major shift in schools, away from the recall and recognition--simple, low-level abilities--that form the basis of our testing programs. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Here's an American test question in science:</span></div>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">What two gases make up most of the Earth's atmosphere?</span></li>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Hydrogen and oxygen </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Hydrogen and nitrogen </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Oxygen and carbon dioxide </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Oxygen and nitrogen</span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Contrast this simple, easy to machine-score "standardized test" question with the "rich task" from a state exam in <state w:st="on">Queensland</state>, <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region></place>:</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Students must identify, explore, and make judgments on a biotechnological process to which there are ethical dimensions. </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">They must choose and explore an area of biotechnology, identify and use laboratory practices, and research frameworks of ethical principles that apply to their issue. </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Students provide a written explanation of technological differences in techniques used and present a deep analysis of the ethical issues involved. </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Further, they must select six real-life people whose views contribute to the issue and plan materials for a conference at which these scientists will speak, based on research of their views.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">The Australian exam, and others that Dr. Darling-Hammond cites from <country-region w:st="on">England</country-region>, <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Singapore</place></country-region>, and other countries, obviously involves </span><strong><span style="color: #cc0099; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">a wide range of skills, assessing student competencies in such areas as research and analysis, understanding of ethical issues and principles, lab practices, organization and communication, understanding of biological and chemical systems, etc.</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;"> That's why it's called a "rich task" and why, as an assessment of AUTHENTIC work, it requires an entirely different mode of teaching--also richer, more in-depth, more purposeful.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8pt;">Darling-Hammond points out that worldwide school reform makes such assessments part of a "tightly integrated SYSTEM of standards, curriculum, instruction, assessment, and teacher development." A SYSTEM designed to train teachers as it trains students to think in creative ways:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The goal for the NEW American public education system. </span></div>
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<br /></div>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-78297491491782392222011-07-18T10:33:00.000-07:002011-07-18T10:33:36.727-07:00The Human Brain, Unplugged<span style="color: #990000;"> <div><span style="color: #330099;"> </span></div><div align="justify"><img alt="Energy Man Emerges" border="0" contenteditable="false" height="172px" src="http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/ff324/pkokinos/HumanBrainUnplugged.jpg" width="162px" /> <strong><span style="color: #330099;">Connections, connections, the human brain is all about connections: Pulling memories out of a storage vault with, what would you say, a zillion gigs of capacity? Shaping responses to stimuli in a nanosecond. Putting discrete pieces together into patterns with a glance. It's already the ultimate quantum computer, and getting more sophisticated by the generation, so it is no wonder that today's kids just aren't going to put up with doing traditional "school work" that is, at best, a conglomeration of isolated knowledge. <span style="color: red;">Human brains are designed to synthesize a multiplicity of factors and functions and to BUILD webs of meaning. When are we going to translate that reality into modes of learning that do NOT force children's brains into narrow, linear, carefully circumscribed channels of thought?</span> The next stage of human development is here, and we're standing flatfooted at the door, arguing about irrelevant details like "test scores" while the world passes us by. <div> </div></span></strong> </img></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color: #330099;">If you're not already feeling left behind, especially in the too-tight strictures of the education world, then you probably haven't read</span> <span style="color: red;"><em>A Whole New Mind</em>, </span></strong><a color="blue" href="http://www.danpink.com/whole-new-mind" linktype="link" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" track="on"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Daniel Pink's</strong></span></a><strong><span style="color: red;"> racy paean to Big Picture Thinkers and the need to move beyond Knowledge Workers and into "The Conceptual Age."</span> <span style="color: #330099;">I know, in schools, we're still trying to figure out the "Information Age," so somehow we're going to have to both immerse ourselves in technology and simultaneously leapfrog into what's going on right now, and Mr. Pink argues a great and compelling case, backed up by research, readings, and resources we can all use.</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong> </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color: #330099;">With the advent of Abundance, Asia, and Automation, Pink says, we're moving into a new era, where RIGHT-brain thinking (he calls it R-directed)--that part of us that schooling tends to pooh-pooh and ignore--is rising into a new prominence. You know what that's all about,</span> <span style="color: red;">the part of our brain that is simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual, the part that creates a Gestalt of experience and allows us to be "emotionally astute" and "creatively adroit."</span> <span style="color: #330099;">Well, how much of that new "success and fulfillment" modality are we stimulating in schools? That's right, very little to none at all. Instead we have defined school success as filling in the right bubbles on woefully narrow "standardized tests," an approach that has given us lots of statistics but has held us back from moving to the next stage: </span><span style="color: red;">A new agreement about the meaning and purpose of school, a smart policy that articulates a supportive structural WEB around which states, communities, and schools can spin their own designs. <div> </div></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color: #330099;">As we work piece by piece to achieve that smartbomb of national leadership, we can also work Pink's concepts into our policy discussions and teaching, subversively fulfilling our students' real needs--and our own as well. Here are the Six Essential Attributes that Pink discusses at length as</span> <span style="color: red;">markers of the new Conceptual Age:</span> <span style="color: red;">Design</span>, <span style="color: #330099;">not only functional but beautiful and engaging. </span> <span style="color: red;">Story</span><span style="color: #330099;">,</span> <span style="color: #330099;">not only argument but a compelling narrative. </span> <span style="color: red;">Symphony</span><span style="color: #330099;">, not just focus but synthesis, creating a new whole. </span> <span style="color: red;">Empathy</span><span style="color: #330099;">, not just logic but caring and understanding. </span> <span style="color: red;">Play</span><span style="color: #330099;">, creating a balance of work and play for general well-being. </span> <span style="color: red;">Meaning</span><span style="color: #330099;">, not just money but purpose, transcendence and even spiritual fulfillment. If you're like me, Pink's articulation of what we have always intuited to be true is enough to make a frustrated teacher or parent cry. </span><span style="color: red;">Finally, someone creative enough to give us a framework for a new way of thinking about how we can connect our children to the REAL "real world." </span></strong></div><div align="justify"><div> </div></div></span>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-72784428982821704702011-06-04T16:04:00.000-07:002011-06-04T16:04:10.416-07:00What's Deming Got to Do With It?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Wasn't W. Edwards Deming the management guru who transformed the Japanese economy back in the day, showing that nation how to organize for the production of quality products? Well, yes. And didn't his ideas foster the whole Total Quality Management development that occurred in the '90s? Of course. But his reach went much beyond industry to teach us about </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">SYSTEMS THINKING</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> and show us that the whole must be centered around a powerful vision of learning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition,"</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> he said. Courage, yes, that's what we need to break with the rigid patterns that define public education, and to break the stranglehold that piecemeal efforts have on the concept of school reform. After all, we have had 40 years of "school reform," where almost everything in the ballpark has been in vogue. Now, let's step back to the conceptual level with school itself and look at ways to change the system . . . .</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Deming's ideas spawned an entire generation of systems thinkers, who extrapolated his views into the growing study of organizational change. Peter Senge, the original Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT, is perhaps the most famous of these, an organizational innovator whose books <em><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The Fifth Discipline</span></em> and <em><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Schools That Learn</span></em> catapulted him to the global stage.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">In an article posted on the site of the Society for Organizational Learning (<a href="http://tiny.cc/Senge">http://tiny.cc/Senge</a>), which he founded, Senge says, </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"Building learning organizations requires personal transformations or basic shifts in how we think and interact."</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> The three major roadblocks to this shift are cultural </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">dysfunctions that promote fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness.</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> Sounds exactly like our traditional school system, doesn't it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"We continually fragment problems into pieces; yet the challenges we face are . . . systemic," Senge writes. We also revere competition, which can be fun and inventive, but needs to be balanced with cooperation. </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"We think in terms of war and sports analogies . . . when the process of developing leaders may be more like parenting than competing . . . and developing a new culture may be more like gardening than a military campaign,"</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> he says.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><strong><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></strong><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Most importantly, Senge says, "We have grown accustomed to changing only in reaction to outside forces, yet the wellspring of real learning is aspiration, imagination, and experimentation." He relates this mental state to what we ALL have learned and continue to learn in school: </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"Fitting in, being accepted, became more important than being ourselves. We learned that the way to succeed was to focus on the teachers' questions as opposed to our own." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">These dysfunctions, he believes, are "frozen patterns of thought to be dissolved," for which he proposes a </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"Galilean Shift"</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> in the way we view our places in the world, as members of a whole community that works in collaborative ways to create a new culture. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Nowhere is such a new culture more desperately needed than in our schools, where our obsession with test scores, closing the gap, evaluating and punishing teachers, and turning around failing schools is distracting us from the REAL WORK of school change: </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Building a new, coherent vision of schooling that can bring EVERY CHILD, EVERY TEACHER, EVERY PARENT, EVERY COMMUNITY into productive and positive work toward a smarter, more inclusive, and more nurturing public education system. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">I know, to those school "purists" who believe that school is for academics and all that fuzzy caring-about-the-kids stuff is just so much California "fluff," what I'm saying here is appalling and probably frightening. If we did that, what would happen to our (gasp!) test scores?!? Listen guys, if we really want schools that work for KIDS, if we really want "better teachers" and "smarter schools," </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">then we're all going to have to CHANGE OUR MINDS</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> in exactly the ways Senge suggests. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Now, this kind of change does not have to be scary and certainly not "touchy-feely," so don't despair, all you academic hardliners. We're mainly talking about </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">a NEW PERSPECTIVE from which to view schoolwork.</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> Does it really have to be drudgery for everyone involved? Or can it be a shift of thinking that does things like teach Algebra and Geometry together as a mathematical SYSTEM for problem-solving with scenarios where kids can apply what they're learning and see some use for such abstractions? Or what about Physics and Chemistry working together to reveal secrets of the physical universe? Or how about history as a human system with developing THEMES working toward equilibrium? Well, there are about a million more examples, but you get the idea: </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">A NEW WAY of engaging kids (AND teachers) in their own learning is our KEY to real change.</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Even more to the point, we need to see EACH INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL as a learning organization </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">where teachers work together to develop new, engaging projects and support each other in their implementation</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">; thus, common ground and collaboration instead of closed classroom doors. We need a flattening of the hierarchy that is sitting on the heads of teachers and schools, crushing out creativity with statistics and test scores; </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">we won't need all that paper-pushing when we finally repudiate "test scores" as our sacred cow and more highly trained people can escape the dreaded "district office" </span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">and go back to the fun of working with kids, teachers, and schools. There's a RENAISSANCE for schools right there, in that single concept. </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">We need university education faculties to be headed by people with REAL experience in real schools</span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">, and we need them to be out in schools with the fledgling teachers, helping them solve teaching dilemmas in real time. Again, a whole new concept that would revolutionize teacher training.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">But let's take these thoughts a step further: Deming was a member of the "Greatest Generation" who passed on in 1993, leaving his work to Baby Boomers like Senge. Now there are Gen-X systems thinkers who have picked up the challenge. A recent article sent to me by a colleague in Atlanta gives a fresh take on the whole concept of "standards," from a quality management professional--and a parent: Mike Micklewright says in his piece in <em><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Quality Digest (<a href="http://tiny.cc/QualityDigest"><span style="font-style: normal;">http://tiny.cc/QualityDigest</span></a>)</span></em>, "Students are taught how to take tests, not how to learn or discover or create or challenge or to gain more knowledge . . . . </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">School becomes a job and children begin to lose their natural desire to learn." </span><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">If we really wanted to focus on students, he asks, shouldn't school quality be judged by </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">"the degree to which students are fulfilled by the educational system to meet their particular and individual needs based on the unique method by which each student learns?" </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;">Sounds like a good plan to me. What about you? We're only a few steps away from a SEA-CHANGE in public thinking about what school can be. Jump on Facebook with us to help spread the word:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt;"><a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools"><span lang="ES" style="mso-ansi-language: ES;">http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools</span></a></span><span lang="ES" style="color: #003366; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><br />
</div>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-10937987281773600772011-04-10T18:15:00.000-07:002011-05-11T08:36:20.892-07:00Beyond Darwin: A New Road to EvolutionWhen Charles Darwin was hanging around the Galapagos Islands, theorizing about how species develop and what the mechanism for natural selection might be, I'm sure he never imagined that he would become the <a href="http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html"><span style="color: red;">poster boy for the Industrial Age</span></a> and the raison d'etre for a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof"><span style="color: red;">whole system of thinking</span></a> based on that competitive "law of the jungle" mentality--Social Darwinism. We like to think that this sort of misappropriation of Darwin's ideas has gone the way of high-button shoes, but, alas, it keeps cropping up, cloaked in newer terms, in the midst of budget debates, policy debates, and even school reform debates. In fact, if we pull up the corners of the 21st century and look underneath, we will be amazed to find that these Victorian-era ideas about "survival of the fittest" underpin--at this very moment--the structure of society.<br />
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We can find the symptoms everywhere, from gun-toting "cowboys" in Southern Arizona to student bullies on Facebook, to corporate loopholes for avoiding taxes--to the very fact that we are afraid, as social beings, to let go of our competitiveness because we may be eaten alive, or more importantly, be ostracized from the group. The idea that "I'm rich, what's the matter with you?" is still the foundation for Western society is not so surprising when we realize that the go-go '80s with their emphasis on "conspicuous consumption" and the ludicrous concept of "trickle-down economics" have not yet faded from the public scene, no matter how far in the past the Industrial Revolution may be. <br />
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Thus, when schools are rife with bullying, when cyberbullying takes the fight for survival to an even more dangerous level, when kids take guns to school, when gangs, drop-outs, drugs, and disaffection continue to devour student populations--<span style="color: red;"><strong>why are we not noticing that these issues are connected and tell us something troubling about our very social system?</strong></span> Surely, these are symptoms of our social dysfunction and part of our urgent need for large-scale change in our institutions, our habits, our ways of thinking.<br />
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As for the school debate, despite the rash of profiteers who want to cash in on charter schools, online learning, and bigger and better "standardized tests," at some point we need to say, "The Emperor has no clothes," and call for an end to the Darwinian fantasy that enmeshes us. (Sorry, Charles, you were just in the right place at the wrong time). I guess this is why I keep saying that <a href="http://changetheschools.com/"><span style="color: red;">"Changing the Schools Can Change the World,"</span></a> despite being labeled as a "visionary" (code word for impractical dreamer), an "idealist" (ditto), or utopian thinker (really?).<br />
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So just let me lay it out right here, succinctly: Our outdated school system that is based on dividing kids into statistical groups, academic tracks, social subgroups, racial groups, and competitive pecking orders is the very embodiment of Social Darwinism in action. The engine for this ongoing disconnect, separation, and have-vs.-have-not thinking is our overblown system of "standardized testing," a bureaucratic and corporate superstructure that has been growing exponentially (again, from the mid-'80s) as public "proof" not of our failures, but of our unwillingness to fit into tight little boxes anymore. Thus, it is not schools that are failing, but we who are failing schools.<br />
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If we want to create what the first George Bush liked to call "a kinder, gentler nation" (a phrase that I always thought out of character for a former CIA director), we must begin with changing the structure of our schools. This "visionary" foresees schools as community centers, in EVERY community, where teachers coach thinking and creativity, services are provided for families, students work to discover their gifts and hone their talents, and curriculum and instruction are based on connections among disciplines, teamwork, and the tools of technology. <strong><span style="color: red;">Schools are the <em>foundation</em> for social progress, so let's stop talking about statistics and make some changes that count . . . .</span></strong><br />
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Small, personalized, collaborative venues create students and teachers (and parents, and communities) who care about each other, and that, my friends, is the antidote to all of the ills laboriously outlined above. No more dog-eat-dog, let's-all-compete-and-see-who-dies-first, if-I-can't-get-into-Harvard-I'm-going-to-kill-myself, who-makes-the-most-money-that's-where-I'm-going scenarios for our kids. It's a new millennium and way past time to move beyond the Industrialists' high-jacking of Darwin. The new road to human evolution leads to a much different place, where (yes, idealistically, all right!) we can work together to improve the planet, our lives, others' lives, and our children's future.Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-10332878432376655782011-03-30T18:37:00.000-07:002011-03-31T08:50:58.247-07:00Surprise, Universe! Humanity Is Not Done Yet . . .For the past two months my mind has been gestating something new . . . a pattern that looks a lot like a revolution in our collective outlook, <em>revolution</em> in its most positive sense: A fundamental change in the architecture of society. Hopeful energy seems to be spinning around the Internet, from petitions to social networking sites to changes of heart among politicians to supportive work for disaster areas. At a level just below the daily news beats a strong humanizing impulse that is pulling us closer together, as though every new meme dropped into the zeitgeist morphs immediately into connection and then, amazingly, action.<br />
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Faster than we can imagine, every action produces an opposite and equal reaction, a scientific response that makes our new global camaraderie into something like an organism, shifting and responding, amoeba-like, to prods that we couldn't even register before. Tyrannical dictatorships, natural disasters, unfair political practices, monopolistic corporations, ecological dangers--all of these and more are poking the body politic in highly uncomfortable ways, and getting poked back. Who knew, when computer geniuses were talking about computers becoming faster and smarter than people, that the human brain would adapt in unforeseen ways--and operate on subliminal levels that no one has been able to explain or prove.<br />
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This is the moment when (Shazam!) Jung's collective unconscious appears to be coming alive, catapulting us a few extra steps ahead on the progression of human evolution. And, of course, not a moment too soon, forced into revealing itself under the pressure of that much bandied about "apocalypse." Surprise, Universe! Humanity is not done yet . . .<br />
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Let's just look at one example, the argument about "school reform" in the U.S., and, by extension, in the rest of the world as well. This arena is more indicative of the public mood than one would initially imagine, since schools and the way we raise and treat our children, globally, tell volumes about who we are as people and what we want our societies to become. In fact, schools are the deep reflecting pools of the values we hold as a society. In the U.S., this concept has immediately been grasped on a subliminal level by thousands of people across the country, without the words ever having been uttered. Thus, and suddenly, thousands of us are spontaneously, and in hundreds of different places, saying exactly the same thing:<br />
<ul><li>Structured, hierarchical, controlled, competitive, linear schools are no longer acceptable to society at large.</li>
<li>Narrowly conceived "standardized testing" is diametrically opposed to the kind of creative, collaborative thinking that the new millennium demands.</li>
<li>Children, teachers, parents, and communities need cooperative, entrepreneurial, engaging, innovative, and uplifting venues where we can all work together to build the future.</li>
</ul>Human progress is moving forward despite traditional society's best efforts to reign everyone in, control what they do, and maintain the status quo--or even go backward to some imagined "golden age." Ain't happenin', folks. We're breaking through those barriers right now, and it is only through the SYNERGY the internet provides that this collective power is possible. Of course, synergy is the only force strong enough to pull us through the web of inertia that has held everything in place for so long . . . .<br />
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So, want to see that happening in living color? Here's a case in point: In January, everywhere on the Web, we were still talking about teachers standing up for themselves and fighting back against the two-year campaign by school "reformers" and venture capitalists and even our own President to discredit schools and teachers--as though they had CAUSED the current structure of society. <br />
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By February, a <a href="http://saveourschoolsmarch.org/"><span style="color: magenta;">Save Our Schools campaign</span></a> was underway all across the country, supported by the biggest names in humane schooling for ALL kids. This is only the public tip of an enormous iceberg of public sentiment that says, "We won't stand for any more pointless 'testing' of our kids." Another notable site that has spread like, well, the proverbial wildfire is <a href="http://www.endtherace.org/home"><span style="color: magenta;">End the Race to Nowhere</span></a>, based on the popular film that has galvanized parent and teacher audiences across the country. There, too, the talk is about ending the competitive testing craze and the pressure we put on kids to perform tasks that are no longer even germane to their lives.<br />
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In March, articles and blogs, as though communicating through that same unseen spider web of connecting threads, were talking actively about boycotting the testing process that is soon to be upon us as spring plays out. In the past two weeks, we have seen <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/03/i_am_educator_hear_me_roar_an.html?cmp=clp-edweek"><span style="color: magenta;">a Texas school superintendent</span></a> break all precedent by speaking out against "the system," kids run away from home to avoid the testing circus, and the corporate gains of <a href="http://www.parentatthehelm.com/4612/public-school-budget-woes-for-families-as-test-publisher-makes-out-like-a-bandit"><span style="color: magenta;">the testing fad exposed</span></a>.<br />
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Just the other day, either reacting to this barrage of public opinion, or finally stepping out of the clutches of his handlers, President Obama said much the same thing to an audience of students at a town hall meeting: <br />
<blockquote>“One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math,” the President said. “All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting.”</blockquote>This from the President who has allowed high-stakes testing to form a cornerstone of his education agenda. A major turnaround, emphasizing the lightning-fast progression of public thinking over only the past three months. Apparently, once a tipping point is reached, the falling action is not only swift but exponential in its power.<br />
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The humanizing impulse at work extends far beyond the school issue, of course, and we have been watching the drama unfold daily on our internet screens. The impulse to connect, create change, and make a difference in the world is becoming universal. As we are seeing right before our eyes, change works in mysterious ways, and the ability of the people to merge and broadcast their interests beyond their individual realms is giving new meaning to the term "the will of the people" in this brand-new era.Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-89718270514055899172011-01-29T23:18:00.000-08:002011-01-29T23:18:20.354-08:00California: The New Education BattlegroundHere we were congratulating each other in California because we elected a former governor, Jerry Brown, who actually understands and supports the deep civil rights issue of equal access to excellent education for every child. (I know, such a feel-good '60s concept, but 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, shouldn't SOMEONE be saying this out loud?) Jerry is an old-school infighter, a former Jesuit and two-term governor whose father was governor before him; he's smart, he's savvy, and he's up against the fight of his life.<br />
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It is one of those grand coincidences of cosmic time that Michelle Rhee, the front-man for the moneyed interests who would turn our public school system over to venture capitalists, is engaged to be married to the mayor of Sacramento, which just happens to be the capital of California. So Michelle and Jerry will be neighbors, and the lone Democratic governor to win the most recent election is surely number one on the hit parade of those same "reformers" who can't wait to get in here and take over California schools to help our kids better serve the economy (or their economy, I forget). No, that's right, the moguls haven't figured out yet that lighting the intellectual fire for every kid would do more than any other factor to boost the American economy and upgrade our way of life far beyond that tired Sputnik level that the President mentioned just this week.<br />
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So, let's call out Michelle Rhee and see what she's really made of, shall we?<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Welcome to California, Michelle, and here's the deal: We invite you to put your money where your mouth is (Students First) and collaborate with Governor Brown to do something REALLY worthwhile for California's kids: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Use that money to UPGRADE existing schools</span></div></li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Free teachers from the outdated testing system</span></div></li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Implement creativity and critical thinking in classrooms</span></div></li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Provide technological training and support</span></div></li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Bring in private sector experts to help rebuild the educational infrastructure, including adequate technology for every classroom </span></div></li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Provide funding to support personalized learning in small, collaborative environments for every child</span></div></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial;">In other words, help this heavily populated and heavily broke state (Thanks, Arnold, you did a great job . . .) create a Renaissance for public education right now, no waiting!</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">After all, changing the schools is going to require MONEY, as every reputable charter operator has discovered, including Geoffrey Canada who has eked out millions from his supporters for this very effort. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Oh, even better, let's take that charter concept to its logical next step!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Michelle, with your national platform, help <state w:st="on">California</state> become a <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">CHARTER</placename> <placetype w:st="on">STATE</placetype></place>, where all the inhibiting rules are lifted for two years while we pull all the players together to REINVENT our entire system for the 21st century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Help <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">California</place></state> (and the nation) develop a new VISION for what our schools can become by statewide collaborative events that bring parents, teachers, students, and community INTO the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Excellent public schools for every child in every neighborhood!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Oh, that's not what the Students First money is earmarked for? Collaboration is, what did you call it, "over-rated"? Your business backers have another political agenda in mind? In fact, you have your own agenda? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Really. Well, I guess we'll all have to think of something else . . . .</span></div>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-14579194723962231492011-01-29T22:45:00.000-08:002011-01-29T22:46:55.166-08:00The State of the Union? Disappointing . . .If we were waiting to hear a bold new direction for school reform, President Obama's State of the Union address on January 25th was a deep disappointment. Nothing new, and even worse, a complete capitulation to the kind of bipartisanship that makes Americans say there IS no choice between the major political parties. The House and the Senate are cordially agreeing among themselves to tinker with No Child Left Behind, completing ignoring the head of steam building up all across the country among those of us who expected "Change" to mean . . . well, "CHANGE"! Now <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/28/19obama.h30.html?tkn=XWUFhZrt0bYMk2c0Qs2ypy/jII3/5pXBD0vf&cmp=clp-edweek"><span style="color: blue;">the press is talking</span> </a>all about the cool way the Democrats and Republicans can probably make something happen with NCLB this year.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My reaction to "reauthorization of NCLB" is quite simply WHO CARES? Congress is clueless about what would really work for education, and, quite frankly, they can help more by simply REPEALING NCLB and constructing a federal program to REWARD states that do something useful:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><strong>DOWNSIZE and restructure their state hierarchies</strong></span> to put more funding into actual public schools, cutting incredible waste and quite a bit of porkbarreling and corruption too. The public school system in a new incarnation is the only entity in this country that may have a chance of creating the equity we have talked about for half a century (Equal funding and equal technology for ALL kids!).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Get rid of meaningless "standardized tests"</strong></span> as indicators of mediocrity and engage teachers/parents/communities in, you'll pardon the jargon, "authentic assessment" of student progress (Creativity AND critical thinking--what a concept!).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Restructure funding streams for education</strong></span> to adequately support personalized learning and collaborative, creative training for teachers, integrating and SUPPLYING technology for teachers and students.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Surround schools with supportive services</strong></span> that will draw communities toward schools as centers of community life (as rural schools have always done). Schools are the only public entity that people will trust to serve this integrative purpose, thus helping trim down even more duplication of services and waste of resources.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of this is only common sense, a term that I realize is not in the <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> lexicon. Even worse, this administration is sorely lacking in follow-through on its promises, which were for POSITIVE CHANGE, not bashing of our most beloved institution and selling it to venture capitalists. The few simple ideas listed above were what I expected from this administration, a bold new approach to REIMAGINING our public education system. Nothing of the sort is coming out of Washington, however; only more feeble talk about our "Sputnik moment," as though that dated reference were relevant to today's world. Not.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Here's the best article I have read all month, by a Columbia University professor who came out first to say "The Emperor has no clothes," a sociological and well-reasoned review of the direction Washington is taking in regard to schools: <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/27/20wells.h30.html?tkn=ZURFdX8XH4I04thiO0Gn6donpdZGheaoIX7z&cmp=clp-edweek"><span style="color: blue;">"Why Bipartisanism Isn't Working for School Reform."</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span> Read it; you'll be nodding your head all the way. Then come over to Facebook to join our campaign: <a href="http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools"><span style="color: blue;">http://Facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools</span></a> ; it's time to suit up and get into the game!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-17921070453055138402011-01-25T13:21:00.000-08:002011-01-25T13:27:45.412-08:00Talking about What School Change Means . . .Here's <a href="http://1400localsonly.podomatic.com/entry/2011-01-22T09_01_44-08_00"><span style="color: blue;">my latest radio interview</span></a> on KVTA in Southern California, with host Kelli McKay. We laugh a lot because of the absurdity of the situation, but how deeply we need to promote a change of mind about what schools can be is what we talk all about. Kelli talks about my book ANGEL PARK, and how radical the book and my ideas seemed barely four years ago when the first edition was published. Now, the ideas are right in the mainstream, thanks to a crescendo of voices from parents to teachers to homeschoolers to systems analysts to professors to journalists to politicians, et al., all calling for a DEEP CHANGE in the way we do school! <br />
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Clicking the book cover at right takes you directly to my ANGEL PARK page where you can see reviews and awards for the book and link directly to its AMAZON page, so buy it today: It explains everything you need to know about WHY schools are the way they are and HOW we need to change our minds to shift into a new reality for our kids.<br />
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Then come over to Facebook, by clicking on the BOY WITH BLUE WORLD on his face and join my brand-new campaign to build a new vision for schools. You can read all about it in our "manifesto" at <a href="http://tiny.cc/SchoolChangeCampaign"><span style="color: blue;">http://tiny.cc/SchoolChangeCampaign</span></a>, a PDF that you may freely download and send to your own friends. Thanks for helping to spread the word!Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-91428640726724876992010-12-22T20:47:00.000-08:002010-12-22T20:53:49.841-08:00The Future Starts . . . in Wausau, Wisconsin?You just never know where good ideas will show up first, but even I was surprised to discover that an elementary school in Wausau, Wisconsin has a fifth-grade teacher who has been helping his students create digital portfolios for TEN years. Actually, the story was in the <em>Wausau Daily Herald</em>, but the class is held in Rib Mountain, which looks like a tranquil green (or white, as the season may be) suburb of Wausau. <br />
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The story was picked up by the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development people at ASCD Smart Brief, a group that has distinguished itself for extensive professional development for teachers and school leaders--and their advocacy for a "whole child" approach to education. Now, that "whole child" term has a kind of touch-feely, California whoo-whoo feel to it, but these are serious people backed by solid research and located near the public policy hub in Alexandria, Virginia. ASCD can actually ask questions about "Is it good for the children?" and create symposia that consider such topics as <a href="http://ascd.org/news-media/Press-Room/News-Releases/Education-Leaders-Identify-Top-10-Components-of-Personalized-Learning.aspx"><span style="color: red;">"Ten Components of Personalized Learning."</span></a> <br />
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So I am heartened to find on their news brief this <a href="http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20101221/WDH04/12210302/Digital-journals"><span style="color: red;">small article from the Wausau daily</span></a> that highlights the portfolio-producing teacher, Brad Schmicker. Even in Wausau, the daily newspaper thought to put the words "analysis" and "higher thinking" in their headline, so why is it so difficult to convince our representatives inside the Beltway that those might be admirable ways to evaluate all student work? Yes, I know, how would they "account" for schools without their numbers?!<br />
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But picture this: The ten-year-olds in Schmicker's class use PowerPoint (finally a good use of this utility) to pull together photos, audio clips of their own performances and oral reading, video snips, and their personal thoughts about what they are learning--in all their subjects. I know this may seem stunning, but imagine what these kids are learning, not only about their subject matters or their own talents, but also about how learning occurs and how they are progressing as they go through the year. <strong><span style="color: blue;">This is the area called metacognition, or reflective learning, surely the highest level of recursive thought and a seriously important way of stimulating and prolonging student self-motivation and lifelong engagement.</span> </strong>And what better way to demonstrate to parents what kids are actually doing and how they are progressing in their personal growth, as Schmicker does at the end of each year? <br />
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That's the extent of the article, and I'm going to bet that the portfolios end there and do not follow the kids into middle school, but imagine the possibilities: What if students were to begin their video portfolios in their earliest school years, when classes are smallest and personal attention is actually possible? What if students began with saying their ABC's and the next year showed their progress in a video of themselves learning to read, followed by video/audio clips of themselves progressing in their reading each year? Think kids would be interested in their own progress then? <br />
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What if schools could elaborate on that simple format to have students record orally at first, and then in writing, what they believed to be worthwhile about their learning? What if all of this were presented to parents during teacher-parent discussions each year? Do you think parents would be more involved, more responsive, more willing to participate? <br />
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<strong><span style="color: blue;">What if these portfolios could continue through middle school and high school (sometime in that wonderful future when we institute personalized learning for EVERY age level and invest real money in making that happen)?</span></strong> What if these accumulated portfolios formed the foundation for an edited version that were sent with the student's application to college, elaborated a million times by those more complex experiences and activities of later years? Can you imagine a better way of introducing each student and helping him or her find that perfect career and college fit?<br />
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Well, the questions are not all rhetorical, because more and more colleges are doing the sensible thing and moving away from ACT/SAT scores as the standards of admission, because even they realize how narrow a picture such scores paint of each student. At the center of such efforts is an organization called <a href="http://fairtest.org/"><span style="color: red;">FairTest in Boston</span></a>, which recently reported that more than 830 four-year colleges and universities are no longer basing admissions on tests, but rather on more creative forms of expression, such as student portfolios.<br />
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With the proliferation, at last, of computers in schools and even a few schools that provide laptops for each child, the day of the student portfolio--demonstrating student progress in all areas throughout their K-12 experience--cannot be far behind. This is precisely the type of reflective learning that can give all students ownership of their own learning and provide a sense of meaning and direction for their accomplishments. At last, something for parents to actually talk about with their own students and with their teachers, rather than the usual one-way dialogue of grades, test scores, and "lack of motivation" discussions.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><strong>To take this a step farther, consider the possibilities of the portfolio when combined with projects that actually engage students in their own learning.</strong></span> Here is one of the best all-time examples of a whole school and then a whole sequence of schooling built around the idea that students learn better when they are actually interested in what they are doing (I know, this is NOT brain surgery, truly!): Take a look at an <em>Edutopia</em> report on the<span style="color: red;"> </span><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-key-learning-community"><span style="color: red;">Key Learning Community</span></a>, a K-12 public school in Indianapolis. If you click on the photo at the top of the article, you will go to a 2009 update on the school, which began in 1987 and has been adding grades ever since. They have a ten-year track record as a K-12 school now: successful, collegial, creative, smart, collaborative. All the teachers who responded to the original article just want to know how to sign up; imagine how many parents would fight to get their kids admitted there!<br />
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So here's the moral of this story: If you're a teacher, start talking about portfolio-making for every child. In the computer age (a little late to education, but still . . .) this is not nearly the forbidding task that it once seemed when we first started talking about portfolios and other means of "authentic assessment" way back in the '80s. If you're a parent, start talking to teachers and board members about portfolios for every kid. If you're a homeschooler because none of this was happening in your school, I hope you're having your children maintain just such portfolios right now! <br />
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Changing the schools to something a little more about human progress and a little less about test scores has to be our work every day. Congratulations, Brad Schmicker, you are certainly doing <u>your</u> part! Hmmm . . . Rib Mountain, Wisconsin . . . Indianapolis, Indiana . . . the Midwest is just quietly going about its school reform, while on both coasts and in Washington, DC, the roar of the "school reformers" out-decibels the collaborative efforts of real educators, and the parents who support them. Come to <a href="http://facebook.com/changetheschools"><span style="color: red;">Facebook and join ChangeTheSchools</span></a> in turning the tide on that endless debate, and putting fun and meaning back into education.Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-64410543953464803792010-12-15T21:49:00.000-08:002010-12-16T10:42:12.519-08:00The Sarah Palin of Education?With all the brouhaha about Michelle Rhee's "second act," I just had to read her whole new site at <a href="http://www.studentsfirst.org/"><span style="color: red;">Students First</span></a>, a great big, expensive, business-sponsored paean to the worth of school that is all about kids. Well, what's to argue about, right? Who doesn't want school that's for kids first? Oprah loves Michelle, "the warrior woman." Who doesn't love Oprah? So, let's just all sign up now, donate money and let Michelle re-create education in her own image, yes?<br />
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It all sounds good, it's all about the right stuff, at least on the surface, and then we get to the part that just, well, sticks in my throat. Are we really all going to follow a woman who says things like "collaboration and consensus-building are over-rated"? Are we all going to let her corporate backers--the CEOs of Gatesian proportion who want to run the world--take over schools, too? Are we going to continue allowing beginners in education to run the show, telling those of us who have been doing things for kids for decades just how it's done? <br />
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The scariest part is Michelle telling the world that she is going to amass $1 billion to influence elections--and don't think she can't. <strong>If we snooze a moment longer, our public education system is going to be only a fond memory, given away without even a whimper, much less a bang, to private interests who really believe, like <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101215/ts_yblog_thelookout/rick-scotts-bold-education-plan-draws-bevy-of-critics"><span style="color: red;">the new governor of Florida</span></a> (bless his pointed little head) that giving everyone money to buy their way into private schools is somehow going to solve the problem.</strong><br />
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There is something just evil about parents having to sit on benches in the hallways of popular charter schools, crying and begging for their children to be "let in." There is something unAmerican about lotteries for spots in "high-performing" schools, so all the rest of the kids are left out. There is something just plain ugly about beating up teachers and blaming them for the failure of a thirty-year experiment in terror called "trickle-down economics." <br />
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Now we've got the school version of that same philosophy: <span style="color: blue;"><strong>"trickle-down education,"</strong></span> otherwise known as the finale of the world's most polarizing political "theory." Haves vs. have-nots? We're making more of them every day. <strong>We've now subjected the nation to the corollary--"back to basics"--to an absurd degree and discovered that--what?--we're all just plain dumber? No surprise! We've been forced to "teach to the test" for years.</strong> That's what high-stakes testing is all about, and there's nothing "standardized" about it. That would imply that the testing meets certain standards of learning, but that's not it at all. It's only about numerical standards in a self-reflecting, recursive world that operates solely within a box of statistics--and we accept those scores as the gospel truth.<br />
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<strong>The whole system is a little like being locked in an unrestored Volkswagen van from the '60s, never opening the rusty doors, never looking out the mold-encrusted windows, and imagining that only what happens within that van is the entire universe. Limited and narrow? I'll say! Backward and stubborn? You bet! <span style="color: blue;">No wonder kids are dropping out in droves, involved parents have decided to do school themselves, and teachers are wondering what happened to their dreams of making a difference . . . .</span></strong><br />
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So, imagine my surprise and delight at finding comments on Michelle's website that did more than congratulate her for being brave and standing up to the big, bad establishment. One writer, in particular, made me laugh out loud, and this is no laughing matter. Calling himself <strong>Rhee + Gates = Fail</strong>, he (or she) said "What do I think about education reform? I personally am still waiting for it to start. <strong>Until NCLB is repealed or significantly altered to do away with high-stakes standardized testing . . . there will be no true reform."</strong> Hear, hear!!<br />
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But the LOL part followed: "Michelle is out there working for herself. <strong>She is basically the Sarah Palin of education--came out of nowhere, did nothing and is now famous for being famous.</strong> Like Palin, she is trying to cash in on this fame while it lasts by starting a private corporation run on donations from suckers who buy her message."<br />
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Well, there's nothing more to add to that! Thanks, Fail. Good Night, Gracie, wherever you are . . .Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-88445724517638132262010-12-08T23:58:00.000-08:002010-12-08T23:58:00.638-08:00To Be or Not To Be--ShanghaiChina scored an international coup without firing a shot yesterday when their students from Shanghai came out on top in all three categories of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)--reading, science, and math. <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/standardized-tests/hysteria-over-pisa.html"><span style="color: red;">American students scored way down in the average ranks</span></a><span style="color: red;">,</span> where we have ranked for years, behind a lot of countries that used to be considered "developing."<br />
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Well, I don't need to tell you that fur flew among standardized testing afficionados and self-styled school reformers who worked themselves into a frenzy. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html"><span style="color: red;"><em>New York Times </em>quoted </span><span style="color: red;">an array of reactors</span></a> who were stunned by this performance, especially the Secretary of Education, who said it was our "wake-up call." He's right, we ARE being out-educated on every front, but I, for one, am very tired of hearing Secy. Duncan and everyone else on the East Coast talk about "closing the gap" in test scores as if that were some kind of reality measure, and blaming teachers for this national failing. <br />
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There's a deeper and bigger picture in this story: First, consider a rapidly industrializing and globally competing China, determined to show well on every measure; their rise is not unlike the Russian education juggernaut of mid-20th century during the Sputnik era when we were all pushed, bribed, and entreated to become scientists. Somehow American scientific progress raced on without me, producing moon landings and other coups. But we've been there, done that--both industrialization and scientific competition. Haven't we already won both of those races?<br />
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That's why I'm skeptical about this national over-reaction to China's test scores. <strong>It's certainly not the moment to go running back into the past but rather a moment to change the game! </strong>The American people are certainly not going to stand by while the "reformers" further homogenize schools or force longer hours or adherence to strict formulae. That kind of thinking is directly counter to what We the People believe schools ought to be.<br />
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Check this out: We really believe in our deepest values--independence, self-determination, progress, et al., and we care about individual people. If we really want to move forward as a nation, we need to move up to the next step in this evolution of democracy: We need to create a public school structure that emulates those concepts and provides the nurturance, coaching, and creativity to set American kids on fire about learning. I can't stand to watch any more hysteria about the symptoms of decay (drop-outs, drugs, truancy, discipline, suicides even), when we could be examining the CORE BELIEFS we share and revitalizing our public education system in that image.<br />
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<strong>New Vision for Schools is the new game in town</strong>, and we're the ones who have to break that sound barrier, too. The next step to global leadership--especially for the highly diversified population of U.S. schools--is to <strong>demonstrate that all children have inestimable gifts by designing a public education system that helps teachers and parents bring those seeds of greatness to life.</strong> That means we have to be done with haves vs. have-nots. We have to be done with intolerance. We have to be done with dividing the good test-takers from those who just don't want to play. <br />
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Here's the kicker: <strong>School reform is NOT a numbers game</strong>. It's a people game. It's a game that is played by the new rules of cooperation, collaboration, and synergy. I know, what a concept! It's only what everyone inside schools and everyone outside schools have been saying all along, but somehow we can't hear each other. People! Let's talk to each other and get something worthwhile going. That's the best investment we will ever make in both a better world and our own economic future--and you can take that to the bank!Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570430348249439625.post-9647132181068958922010-12-01T18:33:00.000-08:002010-12-07T13:50:13.655-08:00Business Leaders Take a BeatingJust when we thought Bill Gates was going to take over the schools as well as the world, there's a new awareness in town . . . a little more along the lines of "Hey! Wait a minute!! What are all these CEO's doing in here?!" That's kind of what New Yorkers wanted to know over the past few weeks in the wake of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30waiver.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a29"><span style="color: red;">the mayor's appointment of a publishing executive</span></a> to take over the job of schools chancellor. <br />
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I think I laughed out loud when I first heard the news. After all, let her try it out . . . I mean, why spoil the fun of watching another CEO discover that managing schools is just not a straightforward task? That would be a little like the Gates Foundation <a href="http://educationnext.org/high-school-2-0/"><span style="color: red;">School of the Future in Philadelphia</span></a><span style="color: red;">,</span> which has had a revival now, but which floundered for a few years while the people in charge slapped their foreheads in dismay because the students just didn't know what to make of completely computerized everything. You know, as in "where are those worksheets"?<br />
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Yes, it takes a little more than building a new structure, even if it is high-tech city, to convince the public AND the kids AND their parents that doing things a new way might be a good idea. Think of a complete rewiring of public expectations of school, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what Microsoft ran into in Philly when they first started out. The experience was right in line with what Mr. Gates said, in his own dismay, a few years ago when he was spending millions to rally the troops for school reform: He told the NY Times in an email interview that the "lack of public will" was the biggest barrier to true reform.<br />
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Well, yes, people are happy to live in the traditional world of the traditional school, because it's safe, it's familiar, it's . . . tradition! Like Tevye in <em>Fiddler on the Roof, </em>we allegedly independent and forward-looking Americans are clinging like Saran wrap to our traditions. There are precious few left in this new millennium, and our beloved public schools are primary aspects of our American identity. You know how it goes: Where did YOU go to high school? Were you on the football team or were you a nerd (a brain, a party girl, etc.)? Everyone who matters shows up at high school football games, the band parents raise tons of money to buy new uniforms for the marching band, the debate team travels to out-of-town contests . . . and the activities are just so much fun. But all of those things are NOT what school reform is about. We all love our activities and, precisely for that reason, we want to make academic work just as engaging, based on the work of real teachers with real experience in how students learn, and real school leaders who know how to create collaborative environments for teachers, parents, and kids.<br />
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As charter school operators across the country are proving to themselves every day, there's just so much to be DISCOVERED about how schools really operate! So, pay attention, CEOs: Schools are not "in trouble" because the people in charge don't know how to manage; they're in trouble because times have changed drastically over the past 50 years and schools are still struggling along with the zeitgeist of the 1950s dogging their every step. We need a reinvention of our traditional model, and it does need to be public, and the CEOs can't help us. The people in the schools need to do it themselves, with the input, support, and collaboration of all of those disenchanted parents and community members. <br />
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At last, the public is starting to ask the real questions: Why are we letting business leaders run our schools? Even in New York, the most politicized environment in the nation (well, right after the DC beltway), <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/1129/Education-reform-Have-business-savvy-officials-improved-big-city-schools"><span style="color: red;">real people are asking real questions</span>.</a> I guess it's time for all of us to stand up and say, <span style="color: #38761d;">"Hey, guys! School is NOT a business--surprise!!"</span> Find out more and join our campaign to create REAL change in schools on our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools?v=wall"><span style="color: blue;">Facebook fan page</span></a>. We need all the clout we can get to make a dent in public opinion--and those traditions!<em></em>Patricia Kokinoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140536129577705557noreply@blogger.com0