23 April 2009

Innovative Educators: Saving American Schools

Ask a dozen Americans across demographics to comment on public education and there is likely to be general agreement: the system needs help.

Unfortunately, as with most issues, the problem is easier to define than the solution. How does one fix it? And whose responsibility is it? Government has poured astronomical sums into the education system without securing long-term successful change, and those within the community who don't have school-age children sometimes forget that other people's children may someday be making decisions that affect their retirement. Political and social bickering can erect roadblocks to change that seem impossible for traditional schools to overcome—and even if the roadblocks come down, school officials may have no idea where to begin to implement effective change.

Occasionally, however, a group of innovative educators arrives in a community and offers a viable alternative to the status quo. It's fairly obvious when this has happened: ecstatic parents whisk their children out of failing traditionally-modeled schools and stampede to the new alternative.

To the immense relief of many local parents, one such group of innovators landed on Pasadena's doorstep early in 2007. The public school system in this small California city had been plagued for decades with socio-economic divisions and a sub-standard reputation, but when Kate Bean arrived on the scene with her experienced educational design team, a reason to hope was born. Bean's new school, which opened in the fall of 2007, is not only innovative in teaching methods, but also in aspiration: to create an environment where children will grow "intellectually, physically, and socially" with a heavy emphasis on developing a sense of community responsibility, healthy living and leadership skills. As a free charter school within the Pasadena Unified School District, Aveson was envisioned as a K-12 learning community where each age group could contribute in the education of the whole.

It seemed to be perfect timing. Initial enrollment coincided with another significant and positive change: the replacement of the district's school superintendent. According to the Pasadena Weekly, there was every reason to hope that the groundwork was being laid for significant change—even though the replacement, Edwin Diaz, was being asked to "deal with the legacy of one of the worst administrations in local public school history."

Wisely, Diaz seemed to have no intention of operating as a maverick. He approached the challenge with a team spirit: "Any improvement is going to be a community wide effort." Diaz told the L.A. Times. "This is not the type of situation where you can go in in isolation and begin implementing things you think will have an effect on student performance. We have to reach out to stakeholders and get them involved as much as possible."

Many of those stakeholders have been thriving at Aveson for nearly two years now, an important part of the community-wide effort Diaz envisioned: often real change must be preceded by successful individual experiments that can be emulated on a larger scale. In Pasadena, at least, Aveson seems to be one such success.



30 March 2009

Bringing Generations Together: Using Classrooms to Build Communities

The best intergenerational programs attempt to address at least two issues at once. A common set would be, for instance, the isolation of the elderly along with the education of youth. If three or more issues can be addressed by one program it can only be considered a bonus.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee could be said to have reached this level of success with a 2003 study, in which they attempted to demonstrate how older adults could affect the school behavior patterns of young children, as well as their attitudes toward the elderly. In this case, the children were 4th graders.


Using an inner-city school as the laboratory, researchers chose two classes as the control group (who continued classroom instruction in the usual way) while two similar classes participated in an outdoor version of the curriculum alongside volunteer elders from a nearby senior center. The "Intergenerational Outdoor Classroom Project" ran two days a week for four weeks.


The findings? Children who participated in the intergenerational project had significant improvement in attitude scores toward older adults, as well as significant improvement in overall school behavior. The control group did not.


According to the researchers, these findings were not a huge surprise. Speaking to the first finding, they had this to say:


"Children's negative attitudes toward elders have often been associated with a lack of positive contact between these two groups." But the researchers point out that not all interactions between these groups are positive. In fact, recalling past studies they note that when contact occurs between children and the elderly in nursing homes, negative attitudes are not changed. Because the elders in this study were actively engaged in interacting with the students, however, the children saw them as positive role models and could imagine being like them someday.


The second finding had multifaceted benefits. "[Behaviorally] at-risk children pose special challenges to school systems already strained with limited budgets," the researchers pointed out. "Research suggests that children with behavioral problems benefit from higher teacher-student ratios, increased adult role models, and non-traditional teaching methods. Higher adult to children ratios can help prevent behavior problems, like school bullying."


The adults from the senior center ameliorated all of these conditions through their participation. They increased the teacher-student ratios, served as role models, and simply by virtue of their presence defined a non-traditional classroom situation, even without considering the outdoor setting.


Perhaps the adults even gained something from the experience themselves—although the latter aspect was not examined: a circumstance the researchers in retrospect viewed as a weakness of the study. Nevertheless, say the researchers, "anecdotal evidence suggests that the elders found their involvement with the children to be highly rewarding."

And sometimes—in the arena of human relationships at least—anecdotal evidence can be the most satisfying kind.




23 March 2009

The Question of Homework: Does It Foster Love of Learning?

Is homework necessary for young children, or is it burdensome? This debate is not new to America, but in recent years it has gained new momentum. News sources from PBS to The Washington Post have discussed the issue, searching for the balance that would educate children at all socio-economic levels without overloading them. Some innovative schools have begun to work at eliminating the kind of monotonous busy-work that kills a child's incentive to learn and keeps them from their families for extended periods in the evenings.

But could all homework be bad for children? Homework proponents insist that some subjects cannot be mastered without repetitive rote memorization. Even homework critics allow for the fact that well thought-out assignments can certainly contribute to a child's love of learning, especially when it requires the full engagement of an inquiring mind. However, many educators believe that the over-application of monotonous rote learning often has the opposite affect.

In addition, some teachers find that when children are left on their own to complete homework, their misunderstandings about certain tasks can become entrenched. Unfortunately, fewer families than ever are intact, and single parents may find themselves working long hours with less time and energy to spend helping children complete assignments.

Even if they do find time to help children through their homework, that may be the only time parents and children share between the end of the workday and bedtime.

So, homework or no homework? Which is best way for parents to help children learn?

John Holt, educator and author of the two profound classics How Children Fail and How Children Learn, made some perceptive observations as early as the mid-sixties. "It is before they get to school that children are likely to do their best learning," he noted, reasoning that this is because children begin life wanting to learn. Because they have an innate excitement for exploration and discovery, the way they learn before school may be the most effective method by which they will be ever be taught.

"Vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember," Holt points out, adding that "memory works best when unforced." In contrast, we think and learn badly when we're afraid or anxious.

Unfortunately, Holt insisted, most schools are less concerned with excitement, exploration or discovery—which are pleasurable experiences to a child—and more concerned with fragmentary and industrialized forms of learning.

As a result, he says, "[children] are bored because the things they are given and told to do in school are so trivial, so dull, and make such limited and narrow demands on the wide spectrum of their intelligence, capabilities and talents."

This accusation could be made against some kinds of homework as well, which might suggest that parents could be better off spending their meagre time with their children in more productive ways.

In fact, if parents were able to consistently spend leisure time with their children at home, perhaps some of the behavioral problems that interfere with classroom learning would begin to dissipate. As a result, teachers might find themselves with more time to teach, and under less pressure to meet testing standards.

It should not be surprising that engaged parenting is the pivotal factor leading to the creation of any such upward spiral. Homework or no homework, parents will always have an important role to play in nurturing a child's love of learning. In fact, it may be that positive family and community relationships have much more to do with a child's educational success than any other consideration worthy of debate.