Peg Tyre, veteran journalist, needs your help. If you write her, please copy your comment here. You don’t have to, but it would be nice if you did. I know her and trust her.
Peg writes:
Japan & S. Korea Want Their Schools To Produce Innovators.
Curious About What That Looks Like? I am too!
Policy-makers and parents in Japan and S. Korea are determined to get rid of the shallow, rote learning, and high-stakes testing that characterizes their education systems. They want to adopt new models and help their public schools turn out a generation of innovators and creators. But what will that look like? Will they succeed? What does it mean for education in the U.S. where policy-makers are also facing wide-spread pushback against rote learning and testing?
I’m a seasoned journalist (New York Times, Scientific American, The Atlantic and others) and bestselling author dedicated to sophisticated, open-minded (and opened-hearted) inquiry. I’ll be traveling to Japan and S. Korea to learn from teachers, students, politicians and parents what is happening there. I’ll be sending what I hope will be six or so FREE newsletters to give you a first-hand look and feel of what I find. Read about it here, or read a more digested version in a major publication to be named later (that will be keeping it behind a paywall, I’m sure.)
You can take an active role in shaping this project. Please send me questions, observations, research, history and personal reflections about your own teaching and learning, thoughts about rote learning and your ideas about what makes an innovator. Tell me what you want to know from my reporting. Twitter: @pegtyre or email: pegtyre1@gmail.com
Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in being part of this project, kindly send me their email and I’ll add them to the mailing list.
My trip is made possible by a generous Abe Fellowship for Journalists (administered by the Social Science Research Council.) I retain full editorial control. I also appreciate the moral support of my colleagues at the EGF Accelerator, an incubator for education-related nonprofits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think we need to encourage creativity. It’s a built-in survival feature of humans. What we need to do is stop discouraging it. Let kids play, explore, discover, etc., and they will naturally create.
LikeLike
Right on!
LikeLike
Yeah, it may be enough just not to occupy them 12 hours a day with school and home work.
LikeLike
Teach facts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I think it’s important to forbid them to read Harry Potter—or Shakespeare.
LikeLike
I lump reading novels and plays under “teaching facts”. It would have been more precise if I had said, “Teach content”.
LikeLike
Little ones benefit from lots of read alouds and lots of hands-on play and interaction with others.
Older students benefit from joining the Boy, Girl Scouts or even some religious youth groups. My daughter learned how to be a good problem solver in the Girl Scouts. Many of the badges girls earned included problem solving and reaching out to the community. In classes students can learn from each other in group problem solving activities. All schools should continue to offer art, music and the performing arts.
LikeLike
I hate to bust your bubble, but Girl Scouts isn’t what it used to be. The badge component has really changed.
LikeLike
One does not create a system that fosters creativity. Creativity and uniformity do not mix; creativity and diversity compliment each other nicely. There cannot be a creativity standard or test. If a nation wants creative students, there must be allowed creativity by teachers. Free the teachers. Drop the tests. Drop the curriculum maps. Hands off. I was taught to create my own lessons from scratch. That was good. …Off to school with me now.
LikeLike
“One does not create a system that fosters creativity.” This is not right. One can definitely create a system that elicits and encourages creativity. Measurement/ assessment will be challenging; one will not have “accountability” per the currently prevailing model—but then today’s assessment model is a ludicrous passing fad in the long history of education.
LikeLike
Today, we have federal mandates that punish creativity.
LikeLike
Diane: precisely. Gives the lie to all the jawboning about critical thinking, needed 21stC skills of creativity, innovation, teamwork blah blah– & reveals the emperor’s clothes for what they are: naked greed a la selling sw/hw & mining data for pubschs while they last, meanwhile paving path for cheap union-busting low-qual privates that will lower overhead for those deigning to do biz stateside.
LikeLike
The global aspect of high stakes testing (ed deform) led me, circuitously, to an interesting piece of information. In 2016, the American Political Science Review (Cambridge Press) got a new editorial board with no Americans on it.
In 2018, APSR published, what I view as a laudatory paper about TFA, written by two American professors, one of whom is associated with Columbia Teachers College. A few years ago, In These Times published an article about the connections between Pearson and the Dean of Columbia Teachers College.
LikeLike
More than one person smarter than I am has approached a basic question in education. There was Dewey, before him Rousseau (man is born free and is everywhere in chains), and even, to some extent, the reformers in the Lutheran tradition could be classed in this group. This question: How do we encourage creativity in students?, has filled volumes. But here is a short answer. Creativity that is productive begins in children with restrictions. Sound contradictory?
Looking at periods of creativity in history renders us with a patchwork of experiences that make the historian sure that very creative people, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mohondas Gandhi have these unique stories that defy patterns. Some come from cloistered backgrounds, some are allowed an almost total stretch of freedom.
As a teacher I sense two goals with my students that are in some ways tugging at each other is opposite directions. On one hand, there is body of knowledge and skills we identify with an education. No one will accept the authority of an ornithologist who cannot identify species of birds. If you can’t tell a titmouse from a turkey vulture, you cannot claim to be an ornithologist. Knowledge is essential. That said, there is also an equal imperative that needs students to notice things about their knowledge. Little kids can do this. Most little kids will notice, for example, that vinegar mixed with baking soda will explode with bubbles just like a shaken pop drink. More literary children will notice comparisons between characters they have read about in a book or between real and imagined situations.
Dr. Bloom famously tried to classify all the behaviors we see in students so that teachers would be aware of all the things we should be doing. His attempts made me wonder years ago if Da Vinci had made up a list of behavioral objectives before he painted the Mona Lisa. Bloom may have summarized something that is good for us to think about, but he added nothing to the quest for creative minds who want to learn.
What is clear is that the tension between the necessary knowledge and the need for people to take this knowledge and do something creative is an old story. So here are some suggestions:
• Let teachers decide what to do. We are failing today here in our country because so many people who do not teach think teachers are not worth listening to.
• Let teachers talk about what they should do among themselves and society. Some teachers will say we are supposed to be purveyors of knowledge only. Others will argue for skills. Others will want to do wild things that will inspire students. But if every teacher gets some independence, every child will find a path they want to tread.
• Let local communities decide what they need for education to do. A community associated with the science community in Los Alamos, NM will not have the same need as a mountain community in Tennessee or a place in the high plains like Browning, MT
• Make monies available communities so that imagined possibilities can become attempts.
• Create dialogue between teachers and stakeholders that is level, neither group telling the other what to do, but each individual being represented and valued by the process.
Here are some of the things I think a teacher should try to do:
• Teach within the confines of the subject. Students need to know that they are talking about how to factor or about the French Revolution. This is the restriction part I spoke of earlier.
• Teach as many different ways as you can. Reading, writing, dramatic production, art, problem solving, listening, responding to questions, and any other thing you can imagine. Be discriminating and junk methods that do not work for you.
• Let the students know that you value their different approaches to the subject and to life in general.
LikeLike
This is a great post, Roy. I can relate to it on many levels, but will relate just three.
My artistic ventures: although I only drew in childhood (pencil, charcoal) & in college became a painter/ colorist via oils, I fell in love w/watercolor 20 yrs ago. Reason: there is no equivalent to the way strong sunlight = that white thick paper [no paint!], & colored dances across it almost transparently, just as our eye perceives it. BUT: it’s exactly backwards intuitively. You’ve got to paint from light towards dark, which is like standing on yr head & spitting jellybeans—and it’s unforgiving; you can muddy it up easily & there’s little recourse. It’s a very strict medium, but you just keep struggling against those barriers to achieve your vision.
I see something similar in the way my little ones (ages 2.5-6) begin to use Spanish in conversation. Their minds are constantly bouncing off the material to recent experiences & recently-learned info. In our greetings/ “charla” [chat] opening, a 5yo wants to share that she speaks 3 languages—we duly translate the statement into Spanish, all repeat, & it leads to other similar statements (we repeat the phrase w/its variation; they’re starting to get ‘hablo inglés, y hablo__ – hindi the 3rd time)—which prompts a usually-non-participating fact-maven to reel off the number of languages spoken on the Indian continent! He is interested enough in expressing the thought to help us work out the number in Spanish, & repeat the translation. The Spanish is the confining medium, & stands in the way, but the desire to express oneself overrides the frustration & forces practicing the medium to get there.
I chose Montessori PreK for my first child because I observed that he moved from one activity to another at his own speed— was self-initiated, could not be hurried—so needed an at-your-own-pace environment w/o abrupt transitions. It was probably the right choice at age 2.5, but as he grew there he did not flourish—yet learned much on his own at home. A parent friend who had trained at Bank Street School for Children suggested he’d be OK in K: he needed a desk.
She was so right. The range of choices was dizzying for him at Montessori , & there was no “home base”: he had to move from one activity-choice-place to another, & record progress in yet another. He was not great at self-organization at that age, but I’d not valued how he thrived at pre-organized settings (at home he worked/played at the computer, where my husband had set up a home network w/ PreK ed programs).
LikeLike
“there was no “home base”: he had to move from one activity-choice-place to another”
I have never unedrestood the American system where students go from class to class instead of the teachers.
LikeLike
Kids need to move to get the juices flowing, and, in the many schools with no office space for teachers, teachers need a home base rather than hauling everything with them.
LikeLike
Speaking of what’s good for kids: Give kids 15 min breaks between every class to have their juices flowing. During a 5 min break while running from one class to the next, they don’t even have time to go to the bathroom.
LikeLike
No argument there. I still remember having to race as many as four floors in a high school that held 4000 students in 4 minutes when I was in school fifty plus years ago. I think they are still doing it although maybe they get 5 minutes (although I wouldn’t count on it).
LikeLike
Tell me about it: after I took my kids home from school (even high school), they raced each other to the bathroom. In high school they even had to go to a different building from one class to the next. There was no time for anything.
LikeLike
That’s how we choose potential public school teachers–who can hold it the longest.
LikeLike
15 minute break between classes is the norm in Finland.
LikeLike
With presumably 45 min classes. At least this is what they used to have in Hungary even 10 years ago: at most 5 classes a day, 45 minutes long each and 15-minute breaks in between classes during which kids ran out and played in the backyard.
Things now have changed for the much worse every since the Hungarian prime minister has been trying to imitate the US in many things. I guess, Finland is too close to serve as a good example.
LikeLike
“I have never understood the American system where students go from class to class instead of the teachers.”
Never gave that a thought during my 30-years teaching in a California public school district. I like the idea, but the reason that might not work might have to do with scheduling.
It might be easier to schedule students into individual teacher classrooms than schedule the students to stay in one classroom and have six-different teachers come to them.
What do we do with the students who are in different math classes, some in basic math, some in Algebra, some in Calculus, et al.?
The same applies to English, advanced placement, and honors classes, et al.
Then there is the problem of electives, PE, and sports, et al.
Students have too many CHOICES (yes, public schools starting in 7th grade have always offered student choices) and some of their choices are limited based on their skill level.
However, I did have one fifth-grade student who spent half the year with her father in Alaska and the other half with her mother in California (divorced parents). Her last day in my class, she stayed after school to gather up all her stuff and told me that in Alaska from K-12, the students keep the same teacher. The teacher moves with the students starting in kindergarten all the way to 12th grade.
LikeLike
“Students have too many CHOICES”
Exactly.
LikeLike
Creative Ideas
Creative tests are what we need
Creative texts, creative greed
Creative charter, Common Core
Creative Harvard: Chetty lore
Creative lay-offs, teacher firing
Creative chaos, quite inspiring
Creative Betsys and their vouchers
Creative, Arnes, other slouchers
Creative Zucks, creative Gates
Creative bucks, creative fates
That should be enough ideas for a start
LikeLike
“They want to adopt new models and help their public schools turn out a generation of innovators and creators.”
I think you need to ask who is really requesting this “mission” for education and why, and in which aspects of life will innovation and creativity, if cultivated in schools, is likely to be valued after school? Is this quest for innovators and creators separable from some expectation for Japan to be a player in the global competitive marketplace…or not?
Is innovation wanted in cultural norms for family life? in the political system? in military affairs? in the premises of those once required courses in morality? How about innovative modifications of historical sites and shrines? I ask these questions because there is too little critical thinking about innovation. It is assumed to be a virtue, but that is not inevitable. I suspect that the call (if there is one) is for market-worthy creativity and innovation of a particular kind and preferably patentable.
I do know that there is along tradition of having a national curriculum for students in Japan. I have textbooks in the visual arts dating back to the 1960s, with the most recent version circa 2004. I have a paper (English translation) with a listing of course titles and time allocations for “compulsory education” grades 1-9 required by the Ministry of Education from 1998 to 2002.
I certainly recommend that you for prepare for your work in Japan and Korea with any current documents about required courses, distributions of time for these studies by grade levels, especially for schools that operate under a central administrative authority.
In other words, do not assume that a new model of schooling is needed or that “innovation” is some universally accepted “good.”
Japanese popular culture of a certain kind has migrated to the US and it is a huge money-maker. A Hello Kitty Food truck is visiting a local mall in my hometown this week. My local bookstore has “How To” books for the many kids who are attracted to anime (Japanese animation, visual novels).
I wonder if students in Japan are learning about these Japanese and inventions and discoveries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_inventions_and_discoveries
This is list for ancient and “modern” Korean achievements. I wonder if students in Korea are learning about them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_inventions_and_discoveries
Please contact me if you would like to meet with a university professor art education in Tokyo. He is an expeet on curriculum. I can provide a brief letter of introduction.
LikeLike
Japan wants to spawn innovation and creation?
Sounds like Japan has been taking advice from the Deformers.
Of course, they will soon find out that innovation actually means immolation and creation actually means cremation.
LikeLike
Japan wants to break free of the testing culture.
Good idea.
LikeLike
Laura, well stated. Poet, well stated. Diane, well stated. Yes, yes, and yes.
LikeLike
I think one of my comments disappeared into cyberspace. Shortened version: Laura, Poet, and Diane, yes, yes, and yes.
LikeLike
Laura, this is a wise reply.
Who’s demanding innovation?
Who’s to say Japan isn’t already generating innovation?
Who’s to say it’s not more innovative than the US?
Who’s to say innovation is right goal? What if conservation of knowledge and skill is an important goal of an educational system? What if, in a quest for innovation, Japan loses important things that the current system gives it?
Who’s to say that rote learning is the enemy of creativity? Shakespeare had a very rote education: he had to memorize tons of Latin writings. Recent studies show that it was precisely this memorized knowledge that shapes many of his locutions.
Who’s to say America’s education system really produces a lot of innovation? What if, in a careful analysis, it turns out that the top innovators were the ones who had more or less classical educations at top high schools and prep schools and Catholic schools, and that graduates of a more typical knowledge-lite curriculum underperformed?
Given what I seen American public schools, I think it’s folly to imitate them.
We should probably be learning from Japan (it’s funny to me how incurious most Americans are about their system. We smugly assure ourselves that they’re terrible and we’re great. So dumb.)
LikeLike
“What if, in a quest for innovation, Japan loses important things that the current system gives it?”
Yeah, I think this is a very important point: keeping a balance between respecting and preserving tradition, history, and creating new. I think in the US we love fast progress too much.
LikeLike
This debate is also ongoing in China. In fact, China started to encourage creativity in Shanghai’s schools soon after the teams of educators China sent to the U.S. before NCLB appeared to discover the best methods U.S. schools were using.
Those educators took what they learned back to Shanghai and implemented what they learned in the public schools in that city. I’ve been told that included a sign over every classroom doorway that said something like “there was more than one answer to solve one problem.
“It is easy to think of China in the terms of government, business opportunities and special economic zones.
“However, it is – above all – a country of more than a billion individuals. Among those are millions of children, teens and adults seeking education. This education, however, requires an overhaul to create a better system so that young Chinese grow and mature into productive and innovative adults.” …
To move away with teaching to the test, “the Ministry of Education (in China) wants to shift the focus from memorisation to preparation for real-world situations. For a maths problem under the new system, for example, teachers would relate it to real-world use when they present it and, rather than just providing a formula to be applied, they would go over different methods of solving the problem and take a deeper look into why the problem can be solved that way.”
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/what-chinese-government-doing-improve-education
LikeLike
Our idiot legislators want us to be like China and Singapore.
They want what we have: creativity, critical thinking, diversity, freedom.
LikeLike
It is insane.
The vampire deformers are going all out to get rid of what was a successful public education system, and Asia, to improve their public schools. are reforming them to be more like America’s public school were before NCLB and the Common Core insanity came along to destroy everything that was good about U.S. public schools.
I don’t want anyone to read into what I just said that America’s public schools didn’t need improvements but starting with NCLB, nothing the top-down leadership out of Washington DC and state capitals have done has improved public education. Instead, they have turned public education upside down and stuffed it face first into a full septic tank.
It’s like the deformer vampires want to swap places with 20th century Asia.
The U.S. will end up with an education system worse than the draconian one Asia has now or had back before the sent teams to study how the US was doing it and they will eventually end up with what the U.S. had before NCLB and start from there and make it better but without NCLB and all the other endless mistakes that have made fortunes for a few of the vampires.
LikeLike
Okay. So I learned about the causes of the Russian Revolution, functions, Spanish, neurotransmittors,… Whoopdi do! So what?! I passed my test; I regurgitated what I learned. Most of the factual stuff has faded into the mists, but the realization that people are shaped by the events and experiences of their lives still applies. So we take what we have learned and say how can I use this information to inform my decision making now? Each of us has retained different subject matter better than other as adult lives have led to specialization. We can use and expand that knowledge and experience to guide our decisions now. The “what ifs” are as important as the “whats” and vice versa.
This paragraph is about as clear as mud. I think what I am trying to say is that creativity comes from being allowed to experiment with what we learn. It is a dance between what is and what might be.
LikeLike
I find that it’s often the least creative people who are the most obsessed about teaching creativity. And they generate lame curricula that allegedly teach creativity but which do no such thing.
I have often been called creative, but I have no idea how to teach creativity. I teach facts. Then kids, spontaneously, do creative things with those facts –like a brilliant fictional journal that cleverly weaves together almost everything we’ve learned about the Renaissance. Facts –a cassowary can disembowel you with its rear talon –are the fertilizer of creativity. By contrast, Common Core and other skill-centric curricula that starve brains of facts are kryptonite to creativity. They stunt brains. Advice to Japan: if you’re teaching facts, you’re probably teaching creativity as well as it can ever be taught. If you’re cramming them too hard, however, and not letting them sink in and get processed by dreaming and daydreaming, you might not be getting maximum benefit from those fertilizing facts. Let the facts breathe a little.
LikeLike
“Let the facts breathe a little.”
Good advice, though I’d let it breathe more than just little.
LikeLike
” If you’re cramming them too hard, however, and not letting them sink in and get processed by dreaming and daydreaming, you might not be getting maximum benefit from those fertilizing facts. Let the facts breathe a little.”
Yes! Lord help us, if someone tries to break down creativity into a bunch of behavior objectives! I do not agree that we shouldn’t teach skills; I do agree that they should not be laid out as some sort of warped behavior objectives. Provide kids with a variety of opportunities to use what they are learning and they will inevitably delight you.
LikeLike
Make teaching interactive. Ask them questions that require some thinking, not just quick answers. Invite kids’ reflections, opinion. Give them time to ask questions—thoughful questions. Give all of them time to make remarks. (Make sure, though, Asian students don’t lose their respect towards teachers and learning. )
For example: instead of declaring in 1 minute
“Flipping a fair coin 100 times, we expect 50 tails and 50 heads. It of course is ok, if we only get 40 heads, but 20 is unlikely.”
ask them
“Imagine you flip this quarter 100 times. How many heads do you expect?”
“Do you expect to get exactly 50 heads?’
“What if I get 45 heads only?”
“What if I get 20 heads only?”
“OK, now go ahead, and flip the quarter I just gave you, and flip it 100 times. Record the number of heads, and tell me at the end what you got.”
Yeah, this may take the whole class time, but it’s worth it.
Always trying to connect math to real life is not math but application of math, a separate subject requiring a lot of maturity and background information. Common Core is trying to over do this “real life application of math”. But the above simple coin flipping experiment is math, and a teacher needs to take time for such experiments.
LikeLike
I tried something once that failed … once. To teach my kids how rumors can change what actually was said or happened, in classes with 34 students in each class, I went to the first student in the first row and whispered a message in a couple of simple sentences in his or her ear and then he or she turned to repeat the message to the next student — always in a whisper.
I have no idea how they did it, but when the message reached the last student in the last row in the corner farthest from the first student, he/she repeated it exactly as I had said it.
According to what I’d been told by other teachers and read, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.
LikeLike
Well, Lloyd, luckily for me, math is much more predictable. But I think it’s useful for kids to realize that teachers don’t know it all, and not everything they plan works out.
LikeLike
When I was teaching, I told my students if they caught me making a mistake, they would earn extra credit for it but only if I was wrong. That meant I could be challenged all the time. The student would make their case and we’d discuss it as a class and I’d ask the students to vote after the discussion to see who was right or wrong.
Most of the challenges had to do with mechanics and grammar. Sometimes I deliberately made a mistake when I was writing something on the board, but I never revealed I did it on purpose sometimes when the challenger raised their hand and pointed it out. The challenger didn’t know I did it on purpose either.
The idea was to get the students to pay more attention to whatever I wrote on the board or said. I think it worked most of the time. They loved catching me making a mistake. I loved it too.
LikeLike
It usually works. Didn’t you ever play telephone as a kid? The message that started at the beginning almost never was the one that came out at the end. You had a class of good listeners (with no hearing problems!). I used to dictate sentences to my high school classes for them to write verbatim. I was teaching special ed, minority students, but it was a lesson to me in how I had to repeat what I said in a couple of different ways, and if I needed them to remember it, to write it down, so they could see it, too. When you think about it, in casual conversation, we don’t often need to speak in full sentences. We telescope everything.
LikeLike
I think grammar, standardized spelling and mechanics were invented around the time of Shakespeare. Before that, from what I’ve read, writing was a wild-wild Trumplandia where anything goes and before the standardization of langauge, it was easier to claim whatever you think I wrote, I didn’t mean it.
LikeLike
My comment appeared too far down the responses. It was intended as a response to your whispering a sentence and having the kids whisper it one by one to each other until the last student repeats what they heard. I have got to learn to add a clear references!
LikeLike
cx: to add a clear reference!
LikeLike
I don’t know, Máté, I would have said that flipping a coin was a real life application, but I do get your point about CC.
LikeLike
Where, in real life, do you flip a coin 100 times? Flipping coin is an essential, very simple experiment which can even be done just in thought—a thought experiment, that serves as a model and motivation for all probability. Most facts in math, especially in geometry can be illustrated similarly via simple physical experiments which then stick in kids’ minds forever. Except they are not done in school since they take time, and teachers are required to cram in lots’a other math facts into a class.
So called real life applications of math are extremely complicated, and in schools they dumb them down to artificial word problems 70% of kids cannot deal with because they are given 3 minutes to solve them. A real real-life problem would require a class time to solve.
Just ask around: kids are most afraid of story problems. Even at the university, the most frequently asked question I am asked “How many word problems will be on the final and how much are they worth?”
I am not exactly against solving some real life math problems, but I am certainly against trying to teach kids to solve them quickly on a math test.
LikeLike
I used to hate word problems! Tossing a coin just seems like fun. I think we are defining real life a little differently and your definition is the more accurate. In science and math, real life to me was when we did something in the real world with it, whether it was dissecting a frog or flipping a coin. Neither of those experiments are things I have ever done in “real life,” but the doing of them in school made the concepts real to me.
LikeLike
“doing of them in school made the concepts real to me.”
That’s exactly the point. On the other hand, CC and now Japan and Singapore and China want to do real real-life stuff, which usually involves something the kids know nothing about and couldn’t care less about at their age, like investing or filling up a conical tank with two kinds of industrail fluids which are poured in with different speeds. They will end up making kids’ lives miserable—as did we.
I think we can safely say, kids likely enjoy and relate well to experiments and pick their noses when they see applications.
LikeLike
I probably should have said concrete or tangible, but with the example you just gave, real life applies, too. Pouring industrial liquids , blah,blah,blah, is not real life to kids although you might be able to catch some kids in automotive shop with some tweaking of tha example. Same with measuring the height of a flagpole from its shadow at a more basic level. What kid cares?! Tossing coins is fun. Make the examples “real life” for kids not the adults.
LikeLike
I teach small children. Because I am a visiting “special” to PreK [Spanish], my lessons are abbreviated. I find it very important to engage them personally at the start of class—just telling their names at first, gradually expanding to how they feel today (& soon ‘why?’), & eventually teaching them how to tell something they did (or ate, or enjoyed). All this pays off when we get to the read-aloud story, which I punctuate with open-ended questions. It is amazing to hear their unique observations as they bounce their viewpoints/ experience/ interests off the events of the story– & very important to validate their ideas by expressing interest, asking a follow-up question, asking what others think.
LikeLike
Sounds like perfect teaching, bethree5.
LikeLike
Thank you, Mate—but I am very very lucky. First of all to have had a hard-working husband all these yrs, which allowed me to build up this little PT biz around raising the kids. But also because of the incredible freedom I have—as a for-lang teacher in a country where for-lang falls under the radar of stds/ assessments [that counts even in PreK, because it all trickles down], so I could develop my own program drawing from the best resources here & abroad. And also as a teacher in the PreK world which is private. It’s affected by pubsch policies & trends—w/o the ‘90’s interest in early-for-lang-learning, there’d be no place for me— but at the same time, parent druthers drive the interest, so even when pubschs started paring for-lang back to midsch, parents head for preK’s that offer extras they want regardless. The only real impact I’ve felt politically was when France/ French-lang suddenly became unpopular during Iraq war, so I had to brush up my Spanish to continue!
LikeLike
“The only real impact I’ve felt politically was when France/ French-lang suddenly became unpopular during Iraq war, so I had to brush up my Spanish to continue!”
Yeah, no more French fries for true patriots.
LikeLike
Depends on who is defining what a true patriot is?
The “Always Trump” American mob will probably define a patriot as someone who is loyal to President Trump.
The other 53-percent of voting Americans who are “Never Trump” citizens [this group even includes some Republicans —10 percent of registered Republicans — like George Conway) will probably define patriotism by the Oath of Office that doesn’t mention the president. Who belongs to the Never Trump voters? 10-percent of Republicans (3.26 million), 67-percent of independents (21.1 million), and 91-percent of Democrats (40.3 million). The polls base their reports from a partial-puddle of 108.35 million people (the ocean of voters) who are registered voters in those three groups. As of May, the Never Trumpists are ahead of the Always Trump mob by more than 21-million registered voters. This gap is way bigger than I thought it was.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/registering-by-party-where-the-democrats-and-republicans-are-ahead/
The Oath of Office was originally written by the Founding Fathers back in the late 18th century. The Oath, as stated in Article II, Section I, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, is as follows: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The first president to take that Oath was George Washington. Donald Trump pretended to take that Oath but it is obvious he lied.
Donald Trump has clearly defined treason as anyone that is not totally loyal to him, to Trump and his “basket of deplorables”, the Oath of Office is also an example of treason since it does not support blind loyalty to President Donald Trump, god’s chosen to hand the world over to the Always Trumpists and send the rest of us the Trump’s definition of hell as defined by any of his tweets.
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch, I wrote to Peg Tyre; you asked that we also send our reply to you .
Education is not the learning of facts,
but the training of the mind to think.”
Albert Einstein
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Margaret Mead
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
Dear Peg Tyre,
Dr. Ravitch posted a request from you about creativity ideas. I am happy to share with you what I have learned through the years of teaching primary grades and in particular reading as it pertains to creativity. Plus the creative ideas my children and grandchildren have come home with on all levels. Ideas are endless but I will share just one aspect after a little ground work.
First of all we need to realize that everything students study needs be related to the students in some way. Prior knowledge is crucial in learning new concepts. The most important component in reading comprehension is background knowledge.
Being able to regurgitate information will be of no use to the students if he/she can’t relate to the information in some way. Furthermore, some people/children have phenomenal memories but others do not. Just like actors on stage need props/cues to help them remember their lines so do children need cues to retrieve information.
When teaching reading, we need to develop and encourage children to use the conceptual tools of questioning , predicting, visualizing/imagining, and make connections while reading. The more children can related to the topic the more they can predict and in turn can comprehend/construct meaning. Graphic organizers are used to help children visualize their thinking. We must bridge a student’s prior knowledge to the new text.
Regardless of the genre the Venn Diagram can be used on every level. Take for example the story of the Little Red Hen. The following diagrams can help children visualize. The children’s responses will knock your socks off.
An example of a Venn Diagram used after reading Little Red Hen.
Research has proven that reading is the interaction of the reader with visual/perceptual (text, pictures, and graphics) and non visual/conceptual which includes background knowledge along with knowledge of the language structure: semantic, syntactic, and graphophonics systems. The reader uses these two sources of information to construct meaning. It is a selective process bringing together experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. It is a strategic process- strategies used before, during, and after reading to achieve goals.
More examples are on my reading web site on the Higher Order Thinking skills.
Einstein said that great scientists were also artists.
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
Frank Smith, a psycholinguist, maintained that one must bring meaning to print before one can acquire meaning from it. As we become fluent readers we learn to rely more on what we already know, on what is behind the eyeballs and less on the print on the page in front of us.
Piaget
Piaget rejected the idea that learning was the passive assimilation of given knowledge. Instead, he proposed that learning is a dynamic process comprising successive stages of adaption to reality during which learners actively construct knowledge by creating and testing their own theories of the world.
Piaget espoused active discovery learning environments in our schools. Intelligence grows through the twin processes of assimilation and accommodation; therefore, experiences should be planned to allow opportunities for assimilation and accommodation. Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment, to question, and to search out answers for themselves – activity is essential. However, this does not mean that children should be allowed to do whatever they want. So what is the role of the teacher? Teachers should be able to assess the child’s present cognitive level; their strengths and weaknesses. Instruction should be individualized as much as possible and children should have opportunities to communicate with one another, to argue and debate issues. He saw teachers as facilitators of knowledge – they are there to guide and stimulate the students. Allow children to make mistakes and learn from them. Learning is much more meaningful if the child is allowed to experiment on his own rather than listening to the teacher lecture. The teacher should present students with materials and situations and occasions that allow them to discover new learning. In his book To Understand Is to Invent Piaget said the basic principle of active methods can be expressed as follows: “to understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such conditions must be complied with if in the future individuals are to be formed who are capable of production and creativity and not simply repetition” (p.20). In active learning, the teacher must have confidence in the child’s ability to learn on his own. Piaget- Intellectual Development
“Most kids don’t really understand. Children need to be able to apply what they have learned appropriately to a new situation. They need to be able to make use of the knowledge they have acquired.
Understanding is not knowing a little bit about many different things. There is a problem with knowing facts but not understanding the framework and the discipline needed to discover or to apply them. You can’t memorize facts to any purpose.”
Howard Gardner TC Today, Spring1999
Engage the students – even the very young in higher order thinking skills.
Parents and teachers know that the joy of learning comes from imagining, creating, playing, thinking, experimenting, problem solving and being ready to learn. The joy of learning comes when a child has an “aha moment” when he or she finally gets it. Parents know that play contributes to learning; that children need the physical activity at recess and in gym class just as much as they need “rigor” sitting at a desk; that art and music help children learn much more than learning to practice for a test and bubble in an answer sheet.”
Leo Buscaglia: I started my Love Class as a result of the suicide of one of my most talented students. She showed no sign of her despair. Then one day she took her life. I had to ask, ‘What’s the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?’ So I started my Love Class. I taught it free of salary and tuition just so students could have a forum to consider the truly essential things. I really didn’t ‘teach’ the class. I facilitated it — helping the students to discover their own magic.
Frank Smith a psychologist, maintained that “one must bring meaning to print before one can acquire meaning from it. As we become fluent readers we learn to rely more on what we already know, on what is behind the eyeballs and less on the print on the page in front of us. ”
Here is how I implemented their philosphy:
After a story is read dramatize /role play the story. The more the children get involved the more they will understand, relate to the story, and remember the story. Suggestions for dramatizing is also on my web site: Fluency/Dramatizing /Readers’ Theater.
Older children can have on the spot role play. Students volunteer what characters they want to role play that were referred to and discussed in their history lesson. In science they an role play harmful bacteria or good bacteria. If it various types of clouds, that too can be acted out with a little creativity. Etc.
Responding to a story read or that the students have read can take the form of writing or illustrating or both. That, too, is discussed on my web site: Guided Reading Strategies.
Movement Activities for the Classroom has numerous ideas and suggestions for creativity: Literacy Activities/ Centers/ Literature Circles.
Reading literature every day to students is food to support creativity- a must. Admonition to parents:
“You do not have to read every night – just on the nights you eat.”
Dr.Carmelita Williams former president of the NRA
I hope my response is something you are looking for Peg.
Sincerely,
Mary DeFalco
PS My illustrations didn’t show up.
LikeLike