Blog about how implementation of the following 5 policies (listed below) could affect change in education and in public schools.
Include both the moral/ethical imperative stated in John Dewey's quote made one hundred years ago: "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, we must want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy" - John Dewey The quote made over a hundred years ago by John Dewey states, "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, we must want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy", continues to be relevant today. Unfortunately, the equality is still not there. As an educator and as a parent, I want equality for all of my students, including both of my children. I work in a Title 1 elementary school. Both of my children have attended and still attend public schools. We have had some great teachers, and some not-so-great teachers. The mindset of some of our professionals needs to improve if we want to make the first change in our educational system. There are so many other things to follow but I believe it starts in the classroom. 1. Meaningful learning goals: I agree completely with Linda Darling Hammond's statement, "Standards became political documents, rather than curricular guideposts, proliferating objectives that create a mile-wide-and-inch-deep curriculum and tests that too often offer a superficial, anemic view of learning" (pg. 281). We have pages and pages of standards, not just for K-12 but for each individual grade levels. I believe, we need to hone in on the truly important standards, therefore lessening the load and deepening the meaning for content learning. I have had several conversations with my 3rd grade colleagues about the academic load this year. This year, doing online/distant learning has spotlighted a few things for me. First and foremost, we need to minimize the redundancy and dig deeper into the depth of the content. Instead of worrying about our pacing of 10 language arts readers and only skimming the content, we need to start by cutting back to 8 language arts readers and spending more time digging into the content. "Teach less, learn more" is the paradoxical encouragement used in Singapore. It "is intended to replace the goal of covering a large quantity of material in the curriculum with a goal of enhancing teaching quality within a curriculum that allows more depth of study and allows more 'white space' for teacher and student initiative (Darling-Hammond, pg. 186). 2. Intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems: It is my opinion that curriculum and assessments are pushed on the classroom teacher by the state. Students are taking some sort of assessment, 2 sometimes 3, times a month. Some of the assessments are to prepare for the CAASP at the close of each school year, some are used to progress monitor, and others are used because the school district uses it to gather data as a "district-wide" assessment. The problem is not all teachers are using the data the same way, if at all. Let's look at the most recent district-wide assessment called the STAR test. My students take the STAR test online (digitally) and they receive a score. They do this assessment 3 times a year. Some students fly through it without even reading it. Most teachers do their best to encourage students to take their time, remind them of good test-taking strategies and use the data to drive their future instruction. However, that is not always the case. In addition, not all pieces to the puzzle are in place. For example, our site has two intervention teachers, one for K-2 and one for 3-5. Sadly, the intervention teachers are only teaching ELD this year because of our current COVID schedule and intervention has fallen to the wayside, once again. This isn't the first time our intervention program has had interferences. I have taken it upon myself to ask for help to administer an additional assessment (CBM) in order to gather further information so I know how to best support my low level reading students. Once I have more information, I will discuss the results with our Intervention teacher, and/or create a time in my schedule to work with this group of students who need extra help. Finally, the problem with this district-wide assessment program is not all teachers are being taught how to read the data and how to figure out what their next steps are. If I had to ask, I can only imagine how many more, like me, are out there. 3. Equitable and adequate resources: Thankfully I feel that our district is equitable for all our students. Recently, the district had to make quick adjustments to our annual goals by providing all students with an electronic device this year. In addition, they have provided hot spots for families that do not have internet in their homes. Also, whether students are in the classroom or learning online, all students have access to resources; whether that be online resources, school books and supplies, and now devices, too. I believe Napa Valley Unified School District has done a great job providing "a level playing field for all students" (Darling-Hammond, pg. 280). 4. Strong professional standards and supports: In South Korea, "teachers are required to take 90 hours of professional development courses every 3 years. Also, after 3 years of teaching, teachers are eligible to enroll in a 5-week (180 hour) professional development program approved by the government to obtain an advanced certificate, which provides an increase in salary and eligibility for promotion to vice principal and principal" (Darling-Hammond, pg. 180). I wish we were required and paid to take 90 hours of professional development within 3 years, like South Korea. I think this would help keep teachers up to date and provide incentives for bettering their teaching practices. I also feel that situations such as I described within element 2, where I have had to search for my own answers on several different occasions, would no longer be an issue. With this being said, I do want to applaud our district for providing online resources to help teachers, such as screen-castify lessons and two online professional development days. I can say that this has been a positive from our online learning and ZOOM situations. Finally, I am very thankful for Napa Learns and Touro University for partnering up and paying for half of my university fees so I can attend classes for my Master's degree. I will be honest and say that the decreased tuition helped make my decision to further my education. 5. Schools organized for student and teacher learning: As I mentioned above, teachers need more time for collaboration. We currently have one hour a week to collaborate and most of that hour is dictated as to what we need to discuss. The hour flies by and we really haven't collaborated about anything relevant to our daily teaching. Linda Darling-Hammond says, "schools in most other high-achieving countries ensure that teachers have time for collaboration, collective planning, lesson study, peer coaching, developing curriculum and assessments, and joint examinations of student work" (pg. 324). In addition, she reports that teachers should have "at least 10 hours a week for joint planning and collaborative learning (which is two to three times what most U.S. teachers now have available, but only half of the time set aside for most teachers abroad)" (pg. 326). This is just one small thing that could help restructure student and teacher learning. Linda Darling-Hammond has excellent ideas for restructuring the framework of education in the United States. I believe the challenge is in the politics of it all. As for now, I can only control myself, and I am proud to be advancing my education and designing positive lessons for student growth and exploration.
1 Comment
Betsy Whitt
3/8/2021 09:49:58 pm
KImbrlee seriously, you should run for school board. As I read your blog I was encouraged and cheered by your realistic survey of our education shortcomings in NVUSD and also our strengths. I completely agree with the ideas you shared in the meaningful learning goals section. In science especially, the content is always changing and updating as new discoveries are made, so students have to get to the deeper learning of how to ask questions, how to problem solve, how to collaborate like scientists and this can only happen if we spend the time "teach less, do more."
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