What change means

Ira SocolSpeEdChange

Fundamental Structure◦ Age-based grades◦ Large group instruction◦ Standardized technology◦ Standardized environments◦ Standardized curriculum◦ Standardized assessments◦ Industrial design

The fundamental structure is designed to filter out students (design goal, 75%-80%)

The fundamental structure creates disability(if you fall behind, you are literally “retarded”)

The fundamental structure preserves white privilege (“white” being used in a postcolonial definition here)

The fundamental structure is designed to teach compliance above all

The fundamental structure was created to meet capitalist needs during the Second Industrial Revolution. It is a system designed to separate clerks from manual laborers

If this is no longer the goal, the fundamental system needs to fundamentally change

See Designed to Fail at SpeEdChangehttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/09/designed-to-fail-education-in-america.html

Everything in the design of our current education system was a deliberate decision

Nothing was “inevitable” or “natural” –Not the school building, the school day, the idea of being “on time,” the ideas of age-separation or subject separations, the idea of Special Education, the idea of testing

These all were designed for purposes we may now disagree with

If NAEP tests have any validity (maybe, maybe not, but…), and our schools are failing just 65% of students, the schools are dramatically exceeding their designed success rate

Is “Proficient” our “goal”?

Is “Proficient” our “goal”?

Every time that you make a “single decision” – “we’ll read a printed book” “we’ll write on paper” “we’ll all have iPads” “we’ll all come to school at this time” “we’ll all sit down” – you are disabling up to 80% of your students

Get “we’ll all” out of your vocabulary, it is “anti-human” at a most basic level

Multi-Agehttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/03/one-third-bored-one-third-behind.html

Freeing the Dayhttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html

Toolbelt Theoryhttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/toolbelt-theory-test-and-rti.html

Freeing the Curriculumhttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-school-that-works.html

Student-based Choicehttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-2-environment-and-choice.html

Environment is Essentialhttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/12/learning-space.html http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/11/third-technology.html

Don't believe the myths. Age-based grades were neither inevitable nor scientifically discovered. Before the mid-19th Century most schools were a mix of all ages gathered in one room. Students began when they began - both at age and at time of day (when chores were completed) - and they moved at their own rate, mentored by more advanced students. I'm not claiming these were perfect places - they were not in any way - but they did not expect every 5-year-old to be doing the same thing, or every 12-year-old. They did not measure via "standards" or "bell curves." They did not judge attendance or presume that everyone was “following the teacher with their eyes.”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/11/changing-structure-blogging-for-real.html

The Prussian Model was brought to English-speaking nations (and others) not for educational purposes but for industrial capacity. As the German Empire needed compliant worker-soldiers (raised step-by-step and separated into cannon-fodder, non-coms, and officers), so the United States and the British Empire needed compliant worker-citizens (separated into manual laborers, clerks, managers). Real education, in all three environments, was the work of private tutors and elaborate schools for the children of the wealthy.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/11/changing-structure-blogging-for-real.html

Let me describe the school they created. Most students were rarely there. If you were studying science you were probably at the City's greenhouses or the local hospital or at the heritage farm we created in a City Park. If you were studying journalism you were creating the school's weekly newspaper or maybe, spending nights chasing news with a local radio station's overnight news guy. If you were studying urban design you might be in the planning department at City Hall. Psychology? How about interviewing Grand Central's homeless population after midnight. Great literature? Sitting around a teacher's living room one night a week sharing tea and ideas. There were, of course, classes - but they were different kinds of classes.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html

There was no required schedule, no required classes, no sense that you were in one "grade" or another. There were no grades, and there were no "failures." The grading system was "pass/no-record." You either got credit or the "course" or project did no exist anymore. At the end of each course or project the student wrote an evaluation of their own work, then a teacher wrote their comments.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html

That point is that humans are tool users, that everything we do in learning is really "tool-based" to some extent, but that - at the core - we humans pick tools based on the task at hand. We do this to avoid that old problem... "if all you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail." Just as, if all content is delivered via printed book or "teacher lecture" much of it will "look" like the droning adults in Charlie Brown cartoons.

So I re-wrote "SETT" as "TEST" - Task-Environment-Skills-Tools - and I described a process I called,”Task-based, Student-centered, Assistive Technology Decision Making system.”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/toolbelt-theory-test-and-rti.html

Because, when I wake up these mornings, if the first question is "does my leg hurt really badly?" I'm a "cripple." But if the first question is, "how is the snow going to get off the driveway?" I'm a full human, fully engaged in the world.

Which is where R-T-I comes in. In your classroom the first question should not be, "who is reading at what level?" or "who is holding a pen 'correctly'?" but "How do we make these stories, this knowledge, this information available effectively?" and "How do we let all students communicate efficiently and effectively?"

Because if you ask the former questions you are categorizing, disabling, and seeking "cures." But if you ask the latter you are including, engaging, and helping students to find their way.


"How is the snow going to get off the driveway?" Well, the possibilities range from a shovel to a yooper scooper to a snow blower to a plow to having someone do it for me. But understand, those are the tools - the last step. In between the Task and those tools I need to know the Environment - how heavy is the snow? how much is there? how cold is it? what's the wind? is it still snowing? is my driveway a hill? and I need to know my Skills at this moment - not my "average" skills, not my skills when I was evaluated 3 years ago, not even my skills yesterday, but my skills right now... is my leg in huge pain? did I sleep last night? how many pain killers have I taken? etc. etc. Only then can I get to Tool choice. And I can only make Tool choices if (a) I know about the tools, and (b) I have access to the tools. As we all know, in most schools I might get through this entire decision-making process only to discover that the school has blown all their money on one humongous snow blower that I can't quite hold on to - or - all they've got is one bent 1972 snow shovel.


Kids would pick three 10-week experience and one shorter experience for each year, and that is what they would do all day. Teams of teachers would join together to offer these options. It could range from building a Habitat for Humanity house to making videos to putting on The Oresteia. Or you could be restoring a 1959 Studebaker, watching vampire movies, or studying the planets. In everyone you can easily include language, history, math, sciences, foreign languages, physical exercise, music, art. If you can't, you need to re-think your career path… In each case students should stay in project teams, and teachers should come to them, or teachers (preferably) should lead the students beyond the school's walls, both virtually and in reality.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-school-that-works.html

But none of this could be "industrially designed." In every team you'd have 11-year-olds and 14-year-olds. In every team you'd have mature kids and immature kids. In every team you'd have varying capabilities. And in every team you'd have kids with various prior experiences. If you were building that Habitat house, some kids might need measuring, others would need algebra. Some might need the local history of the neighborhood others might need a complex investigation of human housing options. Some might need to write letters to the future homeowners, others to email the materials suppliers.

Team-based, project-based learning allows this - a classroom full of desks with a common curriculum does not.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-school-that-works.html

If parents are in charge of choice, system will also treat children based on parent wealth, resources, capabilities (social reproduction)

This is the flaw in the “Charter” idea Choice must be based in professionally-

informed, student-centered, student-empowered decision-making

And must be located in accessible neighborhood schools

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-2-environment-and-choice.html

"Again—no provision has been made for the pupils standing at higher desks a part of the time, because it is believed they may sit without injury for about half an hour at a time, and then, instead of standing, they ought to walk into the garden, or exercise in the play-ground a few moments, either with or without attendants or monitors. Sitting too long, at all events, is extremely pernicious...

William Alcott 1832 http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/12/learning-space.html

"If a portion of the play-ground is furnished with a roof, the pupils may sometimes be detached by classes, or otherwise, either with or without monitors, to study a short time in the open air, especially in the pleasant season. This is usually as agreeable to them, as it is favorable to health. A few plain seats should be placed there. A flower garden, trees, and shrubs, would furnish many important lessons of instruction. Indeed, I cannot help regarding all these things as indispensable, and as consistent with the strictest economy of space, material, and furniture, as a judicious arrangement of the school-room itself...


"Sensible objects, and every species of visible apparatus, including, of course, maps, charts, and a globe, are also regarded as indispensably necessary in illustrating the sciences. They not only save books, time, and money, as has been abundantly proved by infant schools, but ideas are in this way more firmly fixed, and longer retained. In the use of books, each child must have his own; but in the use of sensible objects and apparatus, one thing, in the hands of the instructer, will answer the purposes of a large school, and frequently outlast half a dozen books."


“I saw a remarkable pile of third graders in the coat closet area of Michael Thornton's classroom, six kids who heaped themselves on the floor like young puppies, four with laptops, two doing drawings, all touching, wriggling, talking, and working - investigating different subjects, different topics, but collaborating academically, spiritually, physically. A six-by-eight foot environment of learning safety discovered and built by eight-year-olds. In that room - not a great room, not a big room - other kids clustered as 'table groups' or lay alone on the rug or sat in twos and threes on the floor leaning against the wall. One girl built a kind of high nest near the window. Kids used paper and MacBooks, iPods and whiteboards. Even books. They asked each other first, rarely coming to 'the teacher.’”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/11/third-technology.html

A school without the information and communication technology of the day is a frozen museum, not a place of learning

The technology of today implies choice, if you have “one for everybody” you are repeating the worst of the Gutenberg era

The book was/is a “technology” – it enables some, disables others. As do all technologies

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/technology-and-equity.html

I may not be disabled when I watch a movie. Nor when I watch television, listen to the radio, listen to a friend or a teacher, listen to music, look at art. In fact, I think my capabilities are at least "average" or better when I meet these tasks. I become disabled when people choose, instead, to present information in alphabetical code. Those former information transfer systems I can navigate with ease. The alphabetical code leaves me tripping over myself. There is nothing "wrong" with me, nor is there anything wrong with the alphabetical code - the problem occurs in the transaction space - where print and I meet.

Similarly, I am fairly short. This is not a problem in most things, but at the grocery store, top shelf items are out of my reach. Thus, my height becomes a disability. At Aldi (no shelving units) this is not a problem. At typical Walmarts (very high top shelves) it is a big problem. Now, how do I deal with this?

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/02/transactional-disability-and-classroom.html

One way is for me to climb the shelves to get what I want. I actually have done this many times. It gets you yelled at, as many of the ways kids cope in school gets them “yelled at” or much worse. (One group of university researchers suggested about 10-years-ago that Nicotine and THC were one excellent way to reduce the tensions related to ADHD (here’s one article) which may explain much of the ‘self-medication’ you see in secondary schools.) Another way is to wait and ask for help, but I think this diminishes me as a “whole human,” and over time saps my initiative and any sense of independence. But what if there were step ladders in each aisle, something library stacks often have? That tiny shift in the “transaction space” might eliminate “my height disability.”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/02/transactional-disability-and-classroom.html

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/ https://sites.google.com/site/iradavidsocol/ Twitter - irasocol

Documents

What change means