BLOG 701 Education In A Flat World When Thomas Friedman wrote The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, he was explaining how globalization had changed everything. He starts with the fall of the Berlin Wall, then Netscape and computer access to everything from workflow software to open source & outsourcing, supply chains and just how interconnected the world has become. Frieman writes about visiting India and his friend that works for a global company said to him, “Tom the playing field is being leveled.” Friedman translated that to “The world is flat.” The gist of his idea is very encouraging. Friedman excitedly suggests that all the knowledge centers of the world are now connected which could “usher in an amazing era of prosperity, innovation and collaboration, by companies, communities, and individuals”. Unfortunately this prosperity, innovation, and collaboration is slow to reach our educational systems. While open sources like Wikipedia and Youtube mean that knowledge and learning is just a click away, we had a pandemic in March 2020 and there are still districts in California that have not accomplished getting a Chromebook or other device into every students’ hands for online learning. Linda Darling-Hammon submits data and more data to reveal the obvious truth, minority students are not getting a fair and equal education. These students are not being prepared for the type of skills future work will require; skills like designing, evaluation, problem solving, collaborating, communicating, and developing new products and ideas. Darling-Hammon tackles several big problems in Ch 1-3: school funding, equity issues for students living in poor communities, teacher preparation problems combined with outdated/ non rigorous curriculum and assessments problems. First she introduces data to illustrate how far behind the US has slipped when it comes to math and science education. We are not even in the top ten countries. How can we as a nation be innovative and prosper if we don’t have computer engineers and programmers to do the innovating? While other countries are graduating 90% of their high school students, the U.S. graduation rates have stayed the same or actually dropped a bit. (pg16). The number of Americans pursuing advanced university degrees in science and engineering has also declined. High tech companies are desperate for workers and rely on people from other countries coming in on work visas. Another part of the problem is funding. The US has created a system where property taxes are the big chunk of how school budgets are supported. It is simply not enough and it is not fair. Wealthy cities have more property tax dollars to add to their school budgets than poor cities. Where do the neediest students live? In those poor communities. We have an equity issue. Some students are going to school in classes that lack basic supplies including technology, a clean & healthy environment, and a qualified, experienced teacher that is supported by a professional learning community and has access to an updated, rigorous curriculum. I teach at a Title 1 school so many of my students are on free and reduced lunch. Fortunately we do have one to one devices, but I have been teaching science for the last 12 years with a curriculum that was adopted in 2000. Just this year we finally got a new science curriculum. I spent so much lesson planning time over the last decade, creating and researching updated science lessons. Darling-Hammond stresses the importance of highly qualified teachers and the effect it has on learning. In many schools with a lot of poverty, they have teachers that are not actually fully credentialed. They also have not graduated from an actual teaching credential program. Would you go to a doctor that had an emergency degree? Why would we entrust our children’s most precious organ, their brains, to someone that is not trained for the job? In poor, urban schools the students sometimes have a different substitute every week. This is shameful. When I read this part of The Flat World and Education where she stresses the importance of a highly qualified teacher I felt the mantle of responsibility that teachers wear. Sometimes all the new technology and programs, curriculum and schedules can make the role of teacher seem less important. It was good to be reminded of the truth, the teacher makes it happen. Regardless of all the other variables, and there are many, the teacher in the room has the biggest effect size. This is why teacher preparation and ongoing support and training is so crucial. Darling-Hammond pulls back the curtain on the very ugly and shameful connection between poor quality education and the pathway to prison. If a child does not get an education that opens the doors to high paying jobs, what options if life will they have? Not many, and this leads to involvement in crime. Assessment plays a part in all of this. The phrase “testing without investing” is used to explain the idea that we give these high stakes tests which will determine graduation and college entrance for students, but we don’t invest in high quality teachers, rigorous curriculum, or healthy safe environments for all students, especially students of color. It’s a horrible cycle where now they can’t pass the tests, can’t graduate, and all kinds of doors of opportunity start slamming shut. These limited options lead to poverty and crime. The one part of the reading that gave me hope was pg 62-65 because it related to my ARP. She talks about teachers knowing their students well and how in European and Asian countries the teacher often will stay with a cohort of students teaching them for several years with the end result being that they “know their students well enough to teach them effectively”. Besides increasing funding to school and teacher support, one thing I would change in a heartbeat is how we organize middle schools and high schools. We need to make student teacher connection a priority. At my school the two year teaming model helped with this. At our high schools we have a program called AVID which creates cohorts that move together with one teacher for that class for 4 years. Kids have come back to tell me how their AVID class became their school family and they supported and cheered each other on. The goal of AVID is to get kids into college and it is effective. Why not use this model for every student, not just the ones that opt into the AVID program? There is power in this small cohort model and knowing our students well.
1 Comment
Kelly W.
1/27/2021 07:16:59 pm
Hi Betsy,
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AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
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