Tonight was our local Daddy-Daughter Dance. Since my daughter was freshly five this has been an annual tradition, one that I dread even while I know how important it is to her now and how much more important it will be to me later.
I think a lot about the difference in schooling and learning: schooling being the traditional structures and formats we’ve come to expect as “proper” indoctrination of our children; learning being the actual transformation of all that formality, curriculum, and good-intentioned rationality by students. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved learning, but when I try to think back, I was never a big fan of schooling. It seems ironic that after finishing high-school early, earnestly attempting escape from there, then dropping out of my first attempt at college, I spent the past 15 years of my life back in colleges, and now teaching in elementary schools . Indeed I learned, but I can honestly say I didn’t always enjoy the fact that it came via schooling.
Last week a like-minded friend shared the following video with me, excerpted from a speech by Sir Ken Robinson, regarding our historic journey to schooling and the consequential disconnect from learning it often brings. In my friend’s wise words, “…11 minutes to watch, hours to discuss…”.
Surely I’ll talk about this difference often, but what do you think of this video?
As we rethink how schools could run more effectively for student achievement, perhaps the schedule is more than a first-level reform where we just change the familiar structure. This week we had two consecutive snow days and when I traveled my building talking to other teachers on Friday afternoon, there was a noticeable energy that is just NOT there on most Fridays! The kids were even more engaged than on many Fridays when their exhaustion feeds disengagement. I realize they probably spent two days playing hard in the snow as many of the teachers I talked with spent a handful of hours regrouping their plans and direction…time we won’t have to spend this coming weekend. It got me thinking that if we actually went to a four-day school week where one day is for teacher collaboration/planning and four days are for intensive student-contact time, could we improve the lives and effectiveness of both? Would this work even better to the kids’ academic advantage if we balanced the weeks across the year?
If this is working, I finally figured out how to create an online space for my writing and observations where readers can interact in real time…an actual blog. This began as an email within my school district, editorializing about the positive things around me, but it turned into an “electronic snowball” of people sharing themselves and their positive energy.
In the summer of 2010, I was invited to take this work to the blog of a national education think tank, where it focused closer on school leadership and improvement. This was a great experience and may continue, but the real work of teaching is the human connections we make. That is the real work of our life here on the big round ball, so I am pleased to invite you, colleagues, students, parents, teachers, family, and friends, to share these chats with me and one another, when you have a few minutes to stop and reflect and appreciate life from the classroom to the world. Welcome!
