If I could start a school from scratch, I would:
1. Have furniture and finishings that are colourful, comfortable, and welcoming … less institutional. I understand about the cleanliness piece (I got rid of couches and pillows long ago, due to germs, lice, etc.), but it doesn’t have to be so cold, uncomfortable, and lacking good design. 2. Ask community members, parents, and local experts to come in more often to teach us about interesting topics like building, baking, and animal care. The “teacher” is not the only teacher. 3. Organize libraries differently. Make it more like a bookstore where you can browse, sit in comfy chairs, showcase different topics and text sets. 4. Have a low photocopy and print copy limit for everyone. The paper waste in schools in atrocious. I’m even more committed to this than ever since one of my Gr. 5 students did an inquiry about paper. His question was, “How much paper do we get from a tree?” The answer will shock you! Here it is: It takes 12 trees to make one ton of 100 percent non-recycled newsprint. It would take a little more than half a tree to make a carton (10 reams) of 100 percent, non-recycled 20-lb. copier paper. One tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper, or 8,333.3 sheets. One ream (500 sheets) uses 6 percent of a tree. Now think about how many of those boxes of paper your school goes through in a month, multiply that by ten, then multiply that by the number of schools in your district. You get the idea. Not good. ☹ Which leads to #5 … http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/morning_roundup/2014/05/pulp-fiction-how-many-trees-does-it-take-to-make.html 5. Design more digital lessons, activities, and communications. Offer after school workshops for all staff until everyone’s trained. No more excuses; it’s not the 1980’s. 6. Have more communal meals as a class and a school. Make a big pot of soup, sit together in groups with an adult at each table, use proper dishes and cutlery, everyone helps to prepare or clean up. (Not talking about community potlucks here or hot lunch days.) Many families rarely have a meal together any more. A communal meal is a great way to build a sense of belonging and discuss important topics together. Talk, share, enjoy each other’s company, create a sense of belonging. 8. Read more, read lots. (Yes, I’m a reading teacher, as you can tell from a lot of the points.) In Richard Allington’s seminal article The Six T’s of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction, he states that elementary classroom teachers teach lots of reading skills but don’t spend as much time with the actual reading of text. [Elementary classroom] teachers routinely had children actually reading and writing for as much a half of the school day – often around a 50/50 ratio of reading and writing to stuff (stuff is all the others things teachers have children do instead of reading and writing). In typical classrooms, it is not unusual to find that kids read and write for as little as ten percent of the day (30 minutes of reading and writing activity in a 300 minute, or five hour, school day). In many classrooms, a 90 minute "reading block" produces only 10–15 minutes of actual reading, or less than 20 percent of the allocated reading time is spent reading. Worse, in many classrooms, 20 minutes of actual reading across the school day is a common event, which includes reading in science, social studies, math, and other subjects. Thus, less than ten percent of the day is actually spent reading and 90 percent or more of the time is spent doing stuff. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/six-ts-effective-elementary-literacy-instruction 9. Eliminate silent reading, SSR, DEAR, read-to-self, or whatever you call it … unless if the student wants to. Most kids, especially those who struggle with reading or don’t like it, either stare at the pictures, fiddle with something in their desk, or daydream during this time. I’ve seen it over and over for years. It’s painful. Some kids are both ADD and LD, and now they’re being forced to sit still, be quiet, and “read” for sometimes up to 30 minutes. Whatever shred of interest they had in reading before is mostly certainly now killed. I prefer calling it active reading. All students and teachers are actively involved in reading in some way – read to self, partner reading, reading conferences, taking notes/ highlighting/ studying, listening, making connections, whatever works for them. P.S. You don’t all need to be in the classroom. 10. Hold pro-d days and EdCamps that feel like camp! Remember how fun it was to go to day camp at the YMCA or head off to the lake and cabins in the woods for a week? Adults like to play too. We should make professional learning just as fun as camp. Maybe it would be a little (a lot?) easier to get teachers inspired to attend workshops. 11. Okay, this is really dreaming, but wouldn’t it be fun to have a giant IKEA-like ball room, a firehouse pole, or a slide inside the school?! (Forget the safety and cleanliness issues for just a moment.) Bring the playground indoors and on that note, bring more teaching and learning outdoors. 12. More teaming and meeting of the minds. Scaffold instruction not only in your own classroom but also throughout the school. This shouldn’t just be an ideal; it should be imperative. It should be the norm. Our response should be, “Well, of course! That only makes sense!” Are we making a concerted effort to ensure that the students are learning and progressing? Here's another way of looking at it by Sir Ken Robinson, who gave a TED Talk about how teaching can be like dieting: [An old friend of mine used to] talk about the difference between the task and achievement senses of verbs. You can be engaged in the activity of something, but not really be achieving it, like dieting. It's a very good example. There he is. He's dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. Teaching is a word like that. You can say, "There's Deborah, she's in room 34, she's teaching." But if nobody's learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching but not actually fulfilling it. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley/transcript?language=en These are just some of my ideas. I know they’re not all realistic but like I always say, “Dreams are free!”
2 Comments
Vicki Den Ouden
3/8/2017 12:27:08 pm
LOL Thanks, Carriann! Just some wild and crazy dreaming. See you at the #IMMOOC Twitter chat tonight? You can follow me at @vicki_den
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AuthorVicki Den Ouden is a Learning Disabilities & Reading Intervention specialist in Kelowna, BC, Canada. She love books, photography, and technology. ArchivesCategories |