Found this interesting article on this site. I desperately want to visit a school that uses a personalized learning approach. According to this article, it is used in Cumming, GA. Maybe some of us can go there. http://www.bigpicture.org/2011/03/learning-gets-personal/
Reinventing Schools Beyond the talk, however, there is action. The nonprofit Re-Inventing Schools Coalition (RISC) is one group at the forefront of transformation. RISC was born of a mid-1990s initiative that threw out traditional grade bands and instituted personalized learning to turn around the failing Chugach School District in Anchorage, Alaska. The district Web site notes that in five years, composite scores on the California Achievement Tests rose from the 28th to the 72nd percentile, and the percentage of students taking college entrance exams went from 0 in 1996 to 70 in 2001.
School of One uses formative assessment to pinpoint each child’s exact performance level to concoct a daily “playlist” of lessons, activities and instructional strategies to help them learn. “Schedules may include live online, small group, large group, individual tutor, video game instruction or other formats,” Rose says. “Progress is anonymous and students experience success, not the constant failure many of them have in the regular classroom.”
I would love to visit the school in Cumming. The first thing to impress me on the website was the graduation rate of 92%. My class only graduated with around 75%. I have also talked to many friends about the graduation rate in their schools, and I see it as a problem that needs to be addressed across the board. The RISC sounds exciting.
The Forsyth County school does indeed sound pretty top notch. The Learning Marketplace sounds especially cool; I'd be very interested in seeing that up close. The fact that it is consistently accessible, uses different forms of media, and allows the teacher to individualize the lessons seems like it would make a huge difference. From what I can tell, the schools echo many of the same sentiments found in the George Wood book: a) that kids are not uniform, therefore nor should their education be b) students need a role in constructing their own lesson plans and c) students need freedom, because the iron fist they encounter in public school is seemingly counterproductive to the notion that they are going to graduate as adults. I am a huge fan of the idea of incorporating community internships outside of school (or even as part of school)---furthermore, judging from the numbers given in this website, it seems to help matters significantly.
The video on the MET school on Peace Street in Rhode Island really caught my attention and I think it awesome method of incorporating the student’s interest into the curriculum. I like the way the students were broken down into smaller groups and allow the teachers to really get to know the students what each and every student needs and wants to suceed in life. The problem with schools today is that they are extremely large and it really difficult to incorporate each students interest. The idea of not having any content classes is amazing, this is what a lot the vocational programs of some the standard schools are suppose to be like but for some reason they are not. Every student is not made for college but they will need to be able to adapt to life after high school and function in society. So many students graduate from standard high schools and can’t interact socially, can’t make monetary transactions, and have no idea of basic skills of life but yet graduated from high school. Something is extremely wrong with this picture; I think that is why I really love the idea of the MET schools. So many curriculums are stuck on standardized test scores and teaching this subject or that subject and forget that the students in these classrooms are the future and will need to produce in some field or another to make life happen.
To me, the advisors captured my attention the most. I think it is such a great idea to have one leader to accompany a group of 15 students throughout their high school career. When the same group of students are around each other and their teacher for a long period of time, they begin to be able to raise questions and feel more comfortable than if they had been introduced to new classmates and new teachers year after year. I noticed this during my creative writing classes. Most of my creative writing classes throughout my undergrad career had mostly the same group of students in them and we had mostly the same professor. After a while, we became so comfortable with each other that we felt like we almost knew each other inside and out and because of our closeness, we began to challenge each other in ways that were outside what could be called a normal curriculum. I think the kids in the Big Picture Schools are benefitting from that type of close knit community and are probably growing in ways they wouldn't have guessed. Another thing that caught my eye was the comparison chart on the last page of the downloadable brochure on the website. The chart compares Big Picture Schools with regular schools. An interesting thing that on this chart is the comparison saying that regular schools inhibit motivation while Big Picture Schools increase motivation. I believe this because I feel that it is easy for a student to get lost in the anonymity of a large classroom instead of a one to one type of world introduced in the Big Picture Schools.
I love the idea of incorporating the community into the high school. My boyfriend attends Georgia Tech and he has a co-op, where he works one semester and goes to school the next. I see how much more he is able to learn by gaining in the field experience and from this experience, he has been able to identify what specific type of engineering interests him the most. Knowing that programs like this are available for high school students amazes me because I think that would help so many more kids even outside this program. I know I really would have enjoyed having the option to take classes that involve curriculum where you see the material you learn in class applied to real life situations. Having internships within the community can really help steer some kids in the right paths. I do think that a program like The Big Picture that is only geared toward the “cast outs” or dropouts really leaves a lot of kids out though. More public high schools should adopt some of the ideas like internships into curriculum so that all students have this opportunity. I really like how they have personalized schedules/curriculums, but I agree with Josh when he mentioned how hard it would be to actually apply this in large public schools. But a downsized, similar program is always a possibility for schools. I know from experience in my own family how hard it is for some kids to adapt to college life and see, excuse the pun, the big picture. My sister is not at all interested in core classes, but if someone sat down with her to figure out what her interests were and gave her opportunities to see all her options, then I think she would be more motivated to succeed because the advisors and/or community mentors seem so much more connected to the students. This is an interesting and very promising program that I think many schools and teachers could benefit from.
It was terrifying and heartbreaking for me when I read the caption that "In the U.S., one student drops out of school every 12 seconds." It made me wonder what I can do to help lessen that number and what exactly causes these students to abandon their educational pursuits. In my K-12 education, I was never aware that dropouts were so common. I guess it's an "ignorance is bliss" situation, at least until I actually go into education and realize just how high the dropout rates really are.
I like that it is not based at all on test scores but instead on the comprehensive learning done by the students from their mentor and real world experience. They are in charge of their learning so it will be entirely up to them about the amount they want to learn. This way the student feel empowered and like his or her education is important and they have no one else to blame about the educational experience they have.
I agree with Abby, i really liked how these educators agree that the "final score" is not the "final score." I read an article in their article section from 2010 called "The Final Score is Not the Final Score," which talked about how standardized testing does NOT display a student's full potential. A final score on a test does not show how well the student has performed in school and should not be what classifies them as successful or not. Instead, i LOVED how these educators stated that the "final" score in education occurs whenever the stduent figures out who they are in society through their education. I also love how these educators also focus on creating specific designs for each student including those who have dropped out and want to finish their education. They want to create these programs or lesson plans that adhere specifically to those students needs and goals in education. And with a 92% graduation rate, I'd say this plan is indeed working. I just hope that I am able to be as successful as these educators one day and help take the every 12 second drop out rate down to no drop outs at all.
If I could create my own school I would use the LTI internship approach to encourage crossover between real-world experience and classroom education. I especially like the idea of projects rather than tests to gauge academic and social development, these projects are also helpful in that they give back to the community and the mentor while simultaneously teaching the student. Projects help students hone basic principles they will need later in life: responsibility, research methods, creativity, speaking skills, and individual problem solving. By working with mentors and advisers the students can make informed decisions in a safe environment with positive role models, something every student could use. Senior thesis projects and Capstones would also give students something to take with them when they go to college or interview for jobs: proof of hard work, time-management, determination, and drive. I want to help students gain real-world experience and I want them to become life-long learners. I know from my own experience that students do learn individually and I fully agree with Big Picture in that the mass-produced, standardized curriculum enforced by many schools does not suit all students and fulfill all their needs equally. In fact it sometimes quashes creativity and problem-solving, increases mass-conformity, and creates fearful classroom environments where students do what they are told only because they are worried about the same things Mr. Esquith mentioned in his book Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire. Students should be passionate about learning, they should not be rushed or told to slow down for the sake of their classmates’ intellectual growth, and they should not be discouraged from trying to find innovative new ways of solving problems or expressing themselves because the solutions or the methods they choose do not subscribe to a set “standard”. Big Picture is like many other programs revolutionizing how and what we teach students in that it focuses on the student first rather than the school’s collective performance. Too many schools have been trained to cram students for their state exams, emphasizing the limited amount of time, resources, funding, and student-interest they have to contend with rather than focusing on the students themselves and what they need holistically to become fully-invested, intellectual, economically viable human beings. There is a reason programs like No Child Left Behind failed: they focused on collective test scores rather than individual learners. Besides test scores are moot when students don’t know what talents or interests they have and haven’t been given the tools to successfully navigate academic, social, and work environments. A perfect test score is meaningless if a student doesn’t know how to fill out a résumé or engage in creative thought.
Found this interesting article on this site. I desperately want to visit a school that uses a personalized learning approach. According to this article, it is used in Cumming, GA. Maybe some of us can go there.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bigpicture.org/2011/03/learning-gets-personal/
Reinventing Schools
Beyond the talk, however, there is action. The nonprofit Re-Inventing Schools Coalition (RISC) is one group at the forefront of transformation. RISC was born of a mid-1990s initiative that threw out traditional grade bands and instituted personalized learning to turn around the failing Chugach School District in Anchorage, Alaska. The district Web site notes that in five years, composite scores on the California Achievement Tests rose from the 28th to the 72nd percentile, and the percentage of students taking college entrance exams went from 0 in 1996 to 70 in 2001.
School of One uses formative assessment to pinpoint each child’s exact performance level to concoct a daily “playlist” of lessons, activities and instructional strategies to help them learn. “Schedules may include live online, small group, large group, individual tutor, video game instruction or other formats,” Rose says. “Progress is anonymous and students experience success, not the constant failure many of them have in the regular classroom.”
I would love to visit the school in Cumming. The first thing to impress me on the website was the graduation rate of 92%. My class only graduated with around 75%. I have also talked to many friends about the graduation rate in their schools, and I see it as a problem that needs to be addressed across the board. The RISC sounds exciting.
ReplyDeleteThe Forsyth County school does indeed sound pretty top notch. The Learning Marketplace sounds especially cool; I'd be very interested in seeing that up close. The fact that it is consistently accessible, uses different forms of media, and allows the teacher to individualize the lessons seems like it would make a huge difference. From what I can tell, the schools echo many of the same sentiments found in the George Wood book: a) that kids are not uniform, therefore nor should their education be b) students need a role in constructing their own lesson plans and c) students need freedom, because the iron fist they encounter in public school is seemingly counterproductive to the notion that they are going to graduate as adults. I am a huge fan of the idea of incorporating community internships outside of school (or even as part of school)---furthermore, judging from the numbers given in this website, it seems to help matters significantly.
ReplyDeleteThe video on the MET school on Peace Street in Rhode Island really caught my attention and I think it awesome method of incorporating the student’s interest into the curriculum. I like the way the students were broken down into smaller groups and allow the teachers to really get to know the students what each and every student needs and wants to suceed in life. The problem with schools today is that they are extremely large and it really difficult to incorporate each students interest. The idea of not having any content classes is amazing, this is what a lot the vocational programs of some the standard schools are suppose to be like but for some reason they are not. Every student is not made for college but they will need to be able to adapt to life after high school and function in society. So many students graduate from standard high schools and can’t interact socially, can’t make monetary transactions, and have no idea of basic skills of life but yet graduated from high school. Something is extremely wrong with this picture; I think that is why I really love the idea of the MET schools. So many curriculums are stuck on standardized test scores and teaching this subject or that subject and forget that the students in these classrooms are the future and will need to produce in some field or another to make life happen.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the advisors captured my attention the most. I think it is such a great idea to have one leader to accompany a group of 15 students throughout their high school career. When the same group of students are around each other and their teacher for a long period of time, they begin to be able to raise questions and feel more comfortable than if they had been introduced to new classmates and new teachers year after year. I noticed this during my creative writing classes. Most of my creative writing classes throughout my undergrad career had mostly the same group of students in them and we had mostly the same professor. After a while, we became so comfortable with each other that we felt like we almost knew each other inside and out and because of our closeness, we began to challenge each other in ways that were outside what could be called a normal curriculum. I think the kids in the Big Picture Schools are benefitting from that type of close knit community and are probably growing in ways they wouldn't have guessed.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that caught my eye was the comparison chart on the last page of the downloadable brochure on the website. The chart compares Big Picture Schools with regular schools. An interesting thing that on this chart is the comparison saying that regular schools inhibit motivation while Big Picture Schools increase motivation. I believe this because I feel that it is easy for a student to get lost in the anonymity of a large classroom instead of a one to one type of world introduced in the Big Picture Schools.
I love the idea of incorporating the community into the high school. My boyfriend attends Georgia Tech and he has a co-op, where he works one semester and goes to school the next. I see how much more he is able to learn by gaining in the field experience and from this experience, he has been able to identify what specific type of engineering interests him the most. Knowing that programs like this are available for high school students amazes me because I think that would help so many more kids even outside this program. I know I really would have enjoyed having the option to take classes that involve curriculum where you see the material you learn in class applied to real life situations. Having internships within the community can really help steer some kids in the right paths. I do think that a program like The Big Picture that is only geared toward the “cast outs” or dropouts really leaves a lot of kids out though. More public high schools should adopt some of the ideas like internships into curriculum so that all students have this opportunity. I really like how they have personalized schedules/curriculums, but I agree with Josh when he mentioned how hard it would be to actually apply this in large public schools. But a downsized, similar program is always a possibility for schools. I know from experience in my own family how hard it is for some kids to adapt to college life and see, excuse the pun, the big picture. My sister is not at all interested in core classes, but if someone sat down with her to figure out what her interests were and gave her opportunities to see all her options, then I think she would be more motivated to succeed because the advisors and/or community mentors seem so much more connected to the students. This is an interesting and very promising program that I think many schools and teachers could benefit from.
ReplyDeleteIt was terrifying and heartbreaking for me when I read the caption that "In the U.S., one student drops out of school every 12 seconds." It made me wonder what I can do to help lessen that number and what exactly causes these students to abandon their educational pursuits. In my K-12 education, I was never aware that dropouts were so common. I guess it's an "ignorance is bliss" situation, at least until I actually go into education and realize just how high the dropout rates really are.
ReplyDeleteI like that it is not based at all on test scores but instead on the comprehensive learning done by the students from their mentor and real world experience. They are in charge of their learning so it will be entirely up to them about the amount they want to learn. This way the student feel empowered and like his or her education is important and they have no one else to blame about the educational experience they have.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Abby, i really liked how these educators agree that the "final score" is not the "final score." I read an article in their article section from 2010 called "The Final Score is Not the Final Score," which talked about how standardized testing does NOT display a student's full potential. A final score on a test does not show how well the student has performed in school and should not be what classifies them as successful or not. Instead, i LOVED how these educators stated that the "final" score in education occurs whenever the stduent figures out who they are in society through their education. I also love how these educators also focus on creating specific designs for each student including those who have dropped out and want to finish their education. They want to create these programs or lesson plans that adhere specifically to those students needs and goals in education. And with a 92% graduation rate, I'd say this plan is indeed working. I just hope that I am able to be as successful as these educators one day and help take the every 12 second drop out rate down to no drop outs at all.
ReplyDeleteIf I could create my own school I would use the LTI internship approach to encourage crossover between real-world experience and classroom education. I especially like the idea of projects rather than tests to gauge academic and social development, these projects are also helpful in that they give back to the community and the mentor while simultaneously teaching the student. Projects help students hone basic principles they will need later in life: responsibility, research methods, creativity, speaking skills, and individual problem solving. By working with mentors and advisers the students can make informed decisions in a safe environment with positive role models, something every student could use. Senior thesis projects and Capstones would also give students something to take with them when they go to college or interview for jobs: proof of hard work, time-management, determination, and drive.
ReplyDeleteI want to help students gain real-world experience and I want them to become life-long learners. I know from my own experience that students do learn individually and I fully agree with Big Picture in that the mass-produced, standardized curriculum enforced by many schools does not suit all students and fulfill all their needs equally. In fact it sometimes quashes creativity and problem-solving, increases mass-conformity, and creates fearful classroom environments where students do what they are told only because they are worried about the same things Mr. Esquith mentioned in his book Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire. Students should be passionate about learning, they should not be rushed or told to slow down for the sake of their classmates’ intellectual growth, and they should not be discouraged from trying to find innovative new ways of solving problems or expressing themselves because the solutions or the methods they choose do not subscribe to a set “standard”.
Big Picture is like many other programs revolutionizing how and what we teach students in that it focuses on the student first rather than the school’s collective performance. Too many schools have been trained to cram students for their state exams, emphasizing the limited amount of time, resources, funding, and student-interest they have to contend with rather than focusing on the students themselves and what they need holistically to become fully-invested, intellectual, economically viable human beings. There is a reason programs like No Child Left Behind failed: they focused on collective test scores rather than individual learners. Besides test scores are moot when students don’t know what talents or interests they have and haven’t been given the tools to successfully navigate academic, social, and work environments. A perfect test score is meaningless if a student doesn’t know how to fill out a résumé or engage in creative thought.