[Cross-posted at The Principal and Interest]
For my post this month, I am going to piggyback on Chris's post from yesterday...
Just over a week ago I was in Philadelphia for the inaugural Educon 2.0 conference. This conference, organized and hosted by Chris Lehmann,
was one of the most invigorating and thought-provoking conferences I
have ever attended. I could not wait to get back to school on Monday
and start sharing all of the fabulous things I learned. I sat with my
superintendent for over an hour and just raved about the concepts I
learned and the people I met.
To start, the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) is an incredible high school. If I am ever presented with the privilege of starting a new school from the ground up, I would model it based on the way the SLA was created. Forget the fact that this is a high school, and my interests lie at the elementary level. Good teaching is a constant, regardless of the level or age of the students, and deep learning can and should take place at all grade levels, and beyond the walls of the school.
The bottom line for me
is that high quality education is about good teaching more than
anything else. Good teaching in the 21st century is not about
technology. High quality teaching is not just about blogging, creating
wikis, or podcasting. Yes, those are a few of the tools or options
available to teachers, but there are so many more. Real teaching is
about creating opportunities for students to become involved in
critical thinking, questioning, problem solving, inquiring,
researching, and authentic learning. It involves teachers setting up
situations where students become self-directed in their learning; where
students feel safe to take risks, and possibly fail, before some new
knowledge becomes ingrained. Excellent teachers recognize that
different students learn differently, and that one size does not fit
all.
Good teachers teach many options for students
and then let them make choices. The best teachers I have known are the
ones who create lessons which tap into students' interests and
incorporate some level of choice. These are the teachers who make a
real difference in students' lives. These are the teachers whose
students take learning to another level. Their students expand their
learning outside of the classroom because they are motivated by the
hunger for knowledge, and they are fed by their teachers.
When I observed the classrooms at SLA, I saw engaging teachers who incorporated numerous strategies into their lessons. There was hands-on science at a very deep, scientific level. I witnessed a provocative debate about characters in a novel. And the current events discussions that I watched rivaled anything I have seen on CNN. The SLA students I observed and spoke with truly were engaged learners.
Finally, good
teachers are those people who connect numerous subjects in meaningful
ways; not taught separately as if in a vacuum. The idea of
interdisciplinary teaching is not a new one, but it is often difficult
to accomplish due to scheduling constraints and lack of planning time
with colleagues. The best of the best are able to overcome the typical
challenges of the school day to create lessons that have real meaning for students.
Sure, SLA is a 1:1 laptop school, and every student receives a MacBook. However, what really got me excited after Educon was not the technology. It was observing good teaching and talking to good teachers.
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