Adventures in Learning

mintleaftea:

world-shaker:

kimmykaten:

girlwithalessonplan:

creative-education:

adventuresinlearning:

“Instead of trying to bully young people to remain in classrooms isolated from the community and structured to prepare them to become cogs in the existing economic system, we need to recognize that the reason why so many young people drop out from inner-city schools is because they are voting with their feet against an educational system that sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies them like products of a factory because it was created for the age of industrialization. They are crying out for another kind of education that gives them opportunities to exercise their creative energies because it values them as whole human beings. ”- Grace Lee Boggs

Will policy makers ever listen to what educators since Dewey have been saying?

GWALP objects:  They’re not voting with their feet or crying out for another kind of education if they refuse any type of learning at all.

Our school offers half-days to kids who financially or medically need it, community-based programs for kids with cognitive delays, on the job training for kids of all levels that can lead to certification, four different degree programs, college credit, vast electives and a variety of clubs.  We have over 50 educators in our building who care about childrens’ success.

When I look a child in the face and ask the following:  ”What’s your dream job?  What would you like to do in this class?  What’s your goal?”  and the answer I get is “I dunno.  Nothin,’” then that child has failed himself by not being able to work with anyone.

I get really tired of educator reformers who cry out for this free, creative, unrestricted educational process that flies in the face of how our culture actually works.  Yes, we need creativity and art (hello, I’m a theater teacher), but the economic world is not driven by vast, open, creative process that lacks books or exams.  Toyota just added 400 new jobs to my area.  You think they want 400 free spirits who don’t know how to work a line (literally and figuratively)?  There are deadlines, forms, and aptitude exams in the real world.  How else are we to prepare them for these and let them see, in data form, what they’re capable of?

You can’t teach the unwilling.  And it’s not the EDUCATION system entirely that’s making them unwilling.  It’s their support system at home, it’s the poverty, it’s the hunger, it’s the drugs, it’s the health, it’s the debt.  

And another thing:  I’m really tired of seeing education reform propaganda on tumblr that depicts public schools as a factory stripping kids of their souls. 

HOW DARE YOU REFER TO ME AND MY PROFESSION AS BULLIES.

You know nothing about the job, or you wouldn’t dare callously throw that word around.

Students are not failing the system. The system is failing students. Dropping out doesn’t happen until high school, or at the youngest middle school. You act as if children don’t want to learn. Children want to learn. They are curious, insightful, beautiful people but years of an education system that makes them sit still and take tests or doesn’t show them the importance and validity of their own lives and histories strips them of that intellectual curiosity. By the time a student turns 16 if he has had 10 years of the education system failing him, of course he won’t want to sit through even a 4 hour day of someone who doesn’t understand him telling him he should know this, he needs to try. 

If you don’t understand that, you shouldn’t be teaching.

“If you don’t understand that, you shouldn’t be teaching.”

Wow.

You are off base.

You are WAY off base.

Your comments are entirely inappropriate, especially as someone who is not a teacher, speaking to someone who is.

Where are dropout rates the highest? In high poverty areas, just as GWALP alluded to. So things like poverty (which is the strongest indicator of academic success and persistence), poor family structure, drug use, and other environmental factors (which are more prevalent in high poverty areas, and in schools with high dropout rates) are real and legitimate factors. It’s not an accident that those things are directly correlated, and you’re being foolish if you presume the school will be the miracle cure for a student whose friends are joining gangs, whose parents are missing in action, or who goes hungry at night because there isn’t money for food.

So for me to watch you, as someone who is not a teacher and who has never worked in the field of education, hop up on your soapbox and denounce an educator with almost a decade’s worth of experience in the field (and who teaches a subject planted squarely in the middle of the Arts), I have to say I’m offended by your gall.

You’re way off base.

This. Just..all of this. Personally, I feel as though the system doesn’t so much need reformed, but needs to be redone and restructured completely. I feel as though both sides have valid points; there are some students who just don’t want to learn, and there are just as many who want nothing more than to learn and better themselves. I feel the main problem with the system is we’re more concerned with statistics of graduation rates and test scores than we are with whether or not students are fulfilling their full potentials. Even students who are capable of high achievment are being taught no more skills than how to properly fill out bubble tests in order to get numbers for the school. To satisfy these numbers, standards are continually lowered, in order to cater to the lowest common denominator.each student has their own neeeds, most of which aren’t being met. In conclusion: We should use a German education system.