you say you want this minnesota
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Here's my slideshow for "You say you want this, so then why are you doing that?"This is my Minnesota version.TRANSCRIPT
Abigail is given plenty of worksheets to complete in class as well as a substantial amount of homework. She studies to get good grades, and her school is proud of its high standardized test scores. Outstanding students are publicly recognized by the use of honor rolls, awards assemblies, and bumper stickers. Abigail's teacher, a charismatic lecturer, is clearly in control of the class: students raise their hands and wait patiently to be recognized. The teacher prepares detailed lesson plans well ahead of time, uses the latest textbooks, and gives regular quizzes to make sure kids stay on track.
-Alfie Kohn from The Schools Our Children Deserve
What’s wrong with this picture?
There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.
-Alfie Kohn from Punished by Rewards
Rethink School
When do we stop blaming the kids?
Can we admit:
•school can be improved
•to improve school, we need to change school
We tend to parent the way we were parented,and teach the way we were taught.
If you never change your mind, why have one?
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll getwhat you’ve always gotten.
-Anthony Robbins
Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
-Albert Einstein
Can we agree:
•we want children to become lifelong
learners
It ain’t what we don’t know that gets usinto trouble... it’s what we know for surethat just ain’t so.
-Mark Twain
However beautiful the strategy,you should occasionally look at the results.
-Winston Churchill
We need school to look a little less like school
What if kids who hated school became teachers?
homeworkgrading
rewardspunishment
discipline
hand raisingmultiple choice
honours
competition
testing
lecturing
standardization
lesson planning
curriculum
Rethink Discipline
The more you use power to try and controlpeople, the less real influence you’llhave on their lives.
-Thomas Gordon
The hardest kids to like are the oneswho need us the most
What has made you feel so bad inyour life that you feel someone has to share your pain?
-Sean Grainger
Rethink Assessment
Assessment vs Measurement
Measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning.
-Linda McNeil
Grades cause an emotional reaction -either positive or negative.
Feedback causes you to think, which is reflective learning.
-Dylan Wiliam
Reducing children to a test score isthe worst form of identity theft wecould commit in schools.
-Steven Covey
Never grade students while they are still learningsomething and, even more important, do not rewardthem for their performance.
-Alfie Kohn
A mark or a grade is an inadequate reportof an inaccurate judgement by a biasedand variable judge of the extent to whicha student has attained an indefiniteamount of material.
-Paul Dressel
Students should experience successand failure not as reward and punishmentbut as information.
-Jerome Bruner
Every rubric I have ever seen involves the useof a fixed measurement scale.
I once had a student tell me that at her schoolthey do formative assessment on a 4-point
scale...
Gather ------> Share
Collecting information doesn’t require tests, and sharing that information doesn’trequire grades.
-Alfie Kohn
We must constantly remind ourselves thatthe ultimate purpose of evaluation is toenable students to evaluate themselves.
-Art Costa
Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it’s a conversation
There is no substitute for what a teacher sees and hears everyday while working with
students while they are still learning.
Everybody is a genius. But if you judgea fish by its ability to climb a tree, itwill live its whole life believing it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein
The greatest trick standardized testing ever pulled was to convince the world it resembles anything we do in the real world.
Standardized testing is what constitutes an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of assessment.
Standardized testing has almost nothing to do with education and almost everything to do with politics and profiteering.
Standardized testing tells us about learning as much as reality TV tells us about reality.
Standardized testing is as much for the kids as the Running of the Bulls is for the Bulls.
A correct answer on a test does not necessarilysignal understanding, and a wrong answer doesnot necessarily signal an absence of understanding.
-Alfie Kohn
The bane of reducing learning to a symbolis that it inevitably overvalues whatever
can be quantified and undervalueswhat cannot.
Not everything that counts can be countedand not everything that can be countedcounts.
-Albert Einstein
There is a big difference between measuring what we value and valuing what we measure.
Rethink Curriculum
Learning should be done in a contextand for a purpose.
It is simply double-talk to ask children to takecharge of their own learning and at the same timeorder them to “discover” something that can haveno role in helping them understand anything theycare about or are interested in or curious about.
-Seymour Papert
The CommonCoreBore
When children have trouble learning this should be seen not as a problem with the child, but a problem for the curriculum to solve.-Mary Drummond
The passion of learning is not something youhave to inspire kids to have; it’s somethingyou have to keep from extinguishing.
-Deborah Meier
A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to its job.
Why waste time proving over and over how greatyou are, when you could be getting better?
-Carol Dweck
gaofen dineng
gaokao
zhuangyyuan
zero sum
Success should never be artificiallyscarce for an arbitrary few.
Competition is for the strong.Public Education is for everyone.
See the problem?
Peers become obstacles to your own success
We can teach kids about competition withoutimmersing them in it.
Two tales of technology and personalization
Bill GatesRupert MurdochArne DuncanMichelle Rhee
union bustingtest score analyticsmarketization of our children’s minds
Technology becomes a trojan horse carrying an army of economists and shadow industries who have been stalking public education for a very long time.
In this story, the poor get a computer, while the rich get a computer and a teacher.
In this story, technology and personalization isn’t about learning -- it’s about profits.
In this story, technology uses the learner.
Two tales of technology and personalization
Sir Ken RobinsonAlfie KohnLinda Darling-HammondDiane RavitchYong ZhaoWill Richardson
excitement and engagementcreativity, curiosity and citizenshipintrinsic motivation and a love for learning
In this story, even when supplying children with their own computer becomes cheaper than providing them with a teacher, we have the courage to give all kids both.
In this story, personalization isn’t about technology -- it’s about learning.
In this story, the learner uses technology.
QuickTime™ and a decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Which tale is this?
Are the learners using the machineor is the machine using the learners?
If we simply reconcile to the status quo and spendall our time getting our children to accomodatethemselves to it and play the game, then nothingwill change and they will have to do the same withtheir children. As someone once said, realism corrupts; absolute realism corrupts absolutely.
-Alfie Kohn
The most important attitude that can be formedis that of a desire to go on learning.
If we want to make things better for ourchildren, we need to start questioning what
we consider to be the obvious.
