David Greene is a teacher, mentor, coach, the whole 100 yards. He also blogs about education, and in this post he describes what great teaching is, and gives us hope that it may survive even the current tsunami of bad ideas.
David reluctantly saw a video about High Tech High, which he was floored by, because so many “reformers” love it but never replicate it. It is a project-based school of the kind he admires.
He writes:
I learned how to teach when I was in second grade. I have often written and spoken about my second grade teacher, Rita Stafford, who taught us astronomy by allowing us to build a solar system that hung on our classroom ceiling. We learned about civil rights in 1956-7 not only by reading newspapers and learning about Birmingham and Little Rock, but by writing letters to President Eisenhower, as concerned citizens.
We learned to love learning because of her passion and creativity, so often lost in today’s “Reform World.” Learning is best done “in the company of a passionate adult who is rigorously perusing inquiry in the area of their subject matter and is inviting students along as peers in that discourse.”
“We know a good teacher by the sophistication of that teacher’s kid’s work. If a teacher’s work is worth doing, has lasting value…. and learning that is worth learning…he or she is a good teacher.” Ms. Stafford was. So, I hope, was I because of what I did following those models.
She, Mr. Rosenstock and I all want kids behaving like scientists, artists, and historians: not just studying the content, and doing only restrictive work that allows for success on multiple choice tests. What better way is there than though actually doing the work rather than learning about it. What better way is there than project learning or learning through internship programs, especially in high school? After all, “what is adolescence but trying on new roles and sampling identities? We must just give them the chance.”
Hi Diane,
I wanted to comment on the high school that I attended when I lived in Detroit. It was Cass Technical High School. We had majors and minors. My major was ChemBio and a minor in music. We did performances for music. We learned about the applications of biology and chemistry which were projected based learning. I just wonder why no one ever talks about this high performing high school Detroit as well as Renaissance High and Martin Luther King? When I went to college I did well. My brothers and sisters also did well. They are all doctors, lawyers, judges, and educators.
Lily Tomlin is also a graduate of Cass Technical HS in Detroit.
Let be sure that we aren’t now ascribing all of these hideous Ed reform ideas and policies to DeVos. All of them have been coming along quite nicely over the past decade, shepherded along wonderfully by neo-liberal democrats.
DeVos is awfulness to the highest power, but I just don’t want us somehow massaging ourselves into a narrative that somehow all of this awful stuff is part of the hideous, disgusting Trump/DeVos agenda. It’s not. In fact, DeVos is just enabling, with much more frank and blunt rhetoric, all of the things most Democrats loved….like Obama, Clinton, Cuomo, Emmanuel, Etc etc.
DeVos isn’t the thing. The ideas are. And those ideas predate her by quite a bit.
Whomever Clinton’s Sec of Ed would have been would have been just as awful but with more palatable rhetoric and narrative to those of us on the left.
AGREE, NYSTEACHER.
BAD IDEAS are BAD IDEAS no matter who is promoting them.
I agree but I felt like Clinton might have surprised us. She seemed to have a “feel” for public schools that very few of them have- a sense of why people value them, why they’re more than service providers.
Like, the opposite “surprise” of Obama who seemed actively hostile to public schools.
Nah.
She knew how to put on a front regarding public schools. She was and remains a neo-liberal. She was wise enough to know that it’s better to blow someone’s brains out when you have them look off into the distance and tell them there is a bunny out there and then quietly fire the slug into the back of their head……rather than the Trump/DeVos way which is to tell the person they are about to shoot in the head that they are going to shoot them in the head, and then they shoot them between the eyes.
So yeah, for the recipient of said slug (us), the results are the same.
C,
HRC attended public schools, as did Chelsea when they lived in Ark. I can’t fault a President who enrolls child + Secret Service in a private school; could be much harder for public district to cope.
NYSTEACHER,
No one on this blog is erasing the past. DeVos is the apotheosis of the bad ideas of the past 30 years. Give her credit!
Oh I do!
I just think that by focusing on individuals who stand for this stuff is inevitably the wrong path. It’s the ideas that need to be dismantled and destroyed. If the ideas are killed people like DeVos deflate and disappear. (Sure, as a billionaire she may find some other awful cause/ideas to attach themselves to, but so it goes). It’s always the ideas. The people are just opportunists.
Also, I am nervous about how easy it is to forget or obfuscate the past. In our case we are priming ourselves aggressively to fall for the softer, more lefty-focused rhetoric of Democratic ed reformers the more we associate the vileness of Ed reform with people like DeVos.
I give her tons of credit for her awfulness. But in the end, she hardly matters. It’s the ideas that count. Another DeVos will pop right up if she goes.
It’s like the first rule when you join the debate team: the moment one team or another resorts to ad hominum attacks, the other side wins. By focusing on the particular individuals we are harming ourselves. We must have a laser-like focus on destroying the ideas that these opportunists are buoyed by. The Duncan’s, Kings, DeVos’, Emmanuel’s, and Cuomo’s of the world are in fact interchangeable awfulness. We need to defeat the oxygen they breathe when it comes to education.
NYSTEACHER,
In a way, DeVos is the gift that keeps on giving. People who never believed there was a privatization movement targeting the public schools are startled awake by DeVos.
The Network for Public Education had 22,000 members last summer. Thanks to Betsy, we now have 350,000 and are growing. We can alert active voters in every state to oppose bad legislation and get thousands of people.
Thanks to Betsy who has stripped away the benign face of “reform” and shown what lies behind the mask.
Powder snow avalanches are just as deadly as avalanches made up of chunks of snow and ice.But while the latter sound like an approaching freight train, the former are all but silent.
Betsy DeVos is a slab avalanche (for Democrats)
Arne Duncan was a powder avalanche (again for Democrats) couching his policies in the rhetoric of civil rights so that Democrats would buy into them.
People really need to get out of the “party mode” of thinking because it distorts reality no matter which party one belongs to.
Party thinking is ideological by definition and party animals are prone to denial when it comes to their own party.
The latter is highly destructive to a democracy.
NYSTeacher is right. It’s the ideas that matter, not the people — or party – pushing them.
That is actually the basic motto of science and people would do well to adopt it when it comes to public policy as well.
Just as an elaboration, it’s not only the ideas that matter, but the interests being served. We should never fail to ask, “Cui bono?” Who benefits?
Cross posted Dave’s blog at OpEd News : https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Erosion-of-American-Ed-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Education-Curriculum_Ideas_Learning-170417-56.html
Project-based learning is great and when we had a local school planning meeting it was overwhelmingly favored but my personal experience with my kids is different.
My youngest loves it but he’s naturally “social” – if I had to say what he’s interested in I would say “other people”. My eldest was much more reserved- much more a loner and quite happy as one. He liked lectures, order, consistency and he works in tech- he has a “21st century job” but he was a “19th century learner” 🙂
I second your reservations about David Greene’s definition of good teaching.
I agree that problem based learning has some strengths, but it is not a silver bullet. For example, mathematics instruction seems to lag in a problem based only environment. I was part of a group working with teachers at the a local community college on education research. One of the CC teachers strongly felt that his students from High Tech High were not prepared for college because they had only been in a group situations and had never learned to take notes in a lecture.
You point out what I noticed with my own children as well as those I taught. There was no one teaching method that met the needs of even one child all the time. Sometimes it is to the benefit of a child to learn something even when they don’t see the need or find the task difficult. I f we had only one tool with which to teach, our task would become that much more difficult. Plus, life is going to require that one is able to approach it from more than one angle. We had better give them a range of tools to tackle it.
I don’t think project based learning necessarily means focusing on one learning modality or another.
It is very possible to have a student working on independent projects if they are more the “loner” type.
It just means that the emphasis is on a project — rather than a test, for example.
You are right, SDP, project based learning does not necessarily mean group work, and there is plenty of individual effort involved in a well developed “group” project, as well. However, like the discovery learning craze, it can get tedious to have all learning defined by an end product. I just have this visceral feeling that trying to mold all learning into a project format that purposely produces an end product to somehow be put on display could be just as stressful as a test. Perhaps I am reacting to the current demand for accountability. The rubrics that get created for monitoring the project process and product can be no less onerous than the score on a paper and pencil test. I am not explaining what I mean very well at all. I am feeling caged in by a growing feeling that projects are “the one and only way” to frame learning.
I think the real problem is all the emphasis based on “evaluation” whether that means with a test or with a grade of a project.
I also agree that focus on projects to the exclusion of everything else is not good.
We’re on the same page.
I would just ask charter and voucher supporters one question: if we had a sec of ed who had spent 30 years lobbying against charters and vouchers would they be happy with this pick?
Of course not. So why should public school supporters be happy with her? You’re asking us to “welcome” a person who either actively undermined public schools or BEST CASE done absolutely nothing for them.
Why would I support this person? Would they support her if her whole career had been devoted to opposing charters and vouchers? God, no. They’d be screaming bloody murder. In fact, she would never have been appointed.
But it’s okay that public schools get her? We’re not valued enough to worry about?
Clever word, “DeVostating.” & as for comments about watching out for DFERs–if anyone, here, has forgotten DFERs, DINOs, presently in office & those who did terrible (Obama/Duncan), irrefutable damage, I would be surprised. It does bear repeating, however, as new blog readers appear. Anyway, we haven’t forgotten, won’t forget & remain vigilant (see earlier posts & many comments about Rahm & Duncan). Also, consider Cory Booker & many, many other DINOs who have done nothing but hurt our children. Be aware, do your homework (delve into candidates’ backgrounds–previous voting records & campaign contributions) BEFORE you vote. Vote on election day, using a paper ballot–still the best bet. And–whenever you can–show up at Town Halls, campaign stops, debates, etc., & ask questions!
Finally–legislatures are on Spring Break, & Congresspeople/local legislators are home. Make appointments (visit in groups whenever possible–strength in numbers) & see/hear/question your legislators in person.
And always remember–they work for US.Don’t be shy if they need reminding.
We, the taxpayers, pay their salaries, & their job is first & foremost to serve their constituents–WE. the PEOPLE.
Project-based does not have to mean exclusively high-tech either.