To Share with Faculty...

Woke up this morning to the following idea as a presentation to our faculty:

What is the goal of Education?

            To assist the student in learning the Core Concept Standards, which in turn will assist them towards the next stage of their lives - becoming successful citizens of our world.

Then what does it mean to fail?

            A student fails to learn the required Core Concept Standards in your class.

Why does a student fail?

1)   The student did not learn the basic concepts earlier in his/her education that are needed to understand the concept standards you are teaching.

2)   They want to fail (attention seeking behavior).

3)   They are not engaged in the classroom and therefore tune out.

Why would a student want to fail?

           

I struggle with the thought that any student really wants to fail, but it they choose to fail it is usually due to issues in the students personal life (psycho-social, social-emotional).

How do we stop a student from choosing to fail?

           

            By building a relationship with the student, we can gain insight into their personal life issues and then assist them through what they are dealing with.  By building this relationship, we can then discover the students’ interests and develop a meaningful classroom experience specific to them.

Whose job is it to do this?

            All of ours; the days of being a content-only teacher are over.  Education is a service industry and we must provide the best-personalized service possible or parents will make the choice to educate their children elsewhere.

            “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world; It will be better than any single university” – Bill Gates, August 6^th, 2010

According to Gates, our textbooks are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia. And yet they’re beating us in many ways with education. The problem is that these things are built by committee, and more things are simply added on top of what’s already in there.

Gates said that technology is the only way to bring education back under control and expand it.

Reflective questions: 

What do these statements mean for the future of high school education? educators? you right now?