Week 2 Required Reading
Education can be humorous at times. The idea is very basic actually- to convey knowledge to another individual for them to use and retain. It's not the basic idea that is in question but the method however. Michelangelo states that within every block of marble or stone is a beautiful statue. Imagine if every teacher, parent, and school administrator shared this ideal with education. Maybe then we could get back to the basic idea and see why students may have "road blocks" in their learning. Rather than comparing them to student "a" from district "z". Students like most humans make snap judgments based off of assumptions we've created in our minds from previous experience or what we've been told. I wonder how can we get our students to buy in to their own intelligence without having to test them to death? Just wondering....
2 comments:
I can't agree with you more. I really don't like it when, after all our efforts through the whole school year, our students' performance is just reduced to DATA ( a word I am beginning to dislike). That seems to be all districts and principals worry about where I live. They want us to implement 21st century skills in our content, but they still agree to measure students with 20th century assessments. I am glad I quit working for the district and joined a charter school.
Fari
Like Fari said, "I can't agree with you more." I think what you are getting at is the idea of seeing a student as a unique individual with specific needs rather than a number on a standardized test. I used to be of the mindset that data was great because it provides us a way as educators to track our progress and see our improvement and what is the downside to that? Now I see that such thinking takes away seeing the whole person and reduces individuals to a set of numbers. Numbers that are invented standards that when applied to a child define and confine them to those expectations