IALA » Personalized Educ

Social and Emotional Learning Impact

Wayne Jennings — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:52:06 +0000

CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning has promoted a thorough study, “The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions,” on the impact on social and emotional learning. Encompassing 213 studies involving 270,000 students, the authors find significant impacts from practices not only on academic learning but also empathy, decision-making skills, conflict resolution skills, health, school behavior, high-risk behavior, work ethic, and ultimate school success.

CASEL promotes the development of five interrelated sets of cognitive, affective, and behavioral competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. The result: A shift from being predominantly controlled by external factors to acting with internalized beliefs and values, caring and concern for others, making good decisions, and taking responsibility for one’s choices and behaviors.

Leaders Affirm the Importance of Choice

Wayne Jennings — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:17:51 +0000

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and the US Department of Education assembled leaders from 20 of the largest school district for a discussion of providing choices. Their report Reforming Districts Through Choice, Autonomy, Equity, and Accountability: An Overview of the Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting strongly affirmed the importance of providing learning alternatives of various kinds including open enrollment, magnet schools and charter schools for all students to better meet the needs and preferences of parents and students. School districts need to take leadership for a seamless combination of choices even if it means relinquishing levels of control.

From IALA’s standpoint, this is an overdue but welcome affirmation of our position that all students should have a choice of distinctively different programs.

How To Videos: Extraordinary Resource

Wayne Jennings — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 02:18:28 +0000

EdVisions Schools have made their Design Essentials videos available to all. These are profoundly helpful in seeing how a variety of educational practices are conducted in project-based learning and non-course based schools or others moving toward student-centered learning. Here are examples from the category Self-Directed, Project-Based Learning:

Self-directed, project-based learning primary focus; driven by constructivist pedagogy (Adults explain; Students explain)
Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) for all students emphasizing student needs and interests (view video)
Personalized work space for each student; Internet access (view video)
Technology infused environment; technology as a tool
Individual/group projects complemented by multiple teaching approaches based on student needs and interests (view video)
Achievement demonstrated publicly; highest work place standards are quality goal (view video)
All students prepared for post-secondary education, workplace and active citizenship (view video)
All students and staff engage in quiet reading every day (view video)

Other major categories with numerous videos include:

Authentic Assessment
Teacher Ownership/Democratic Governance
Small Learning Communities

The Design Elements professional contributions shows student-centered learning in action, the best I have seen! Thanks to the award winning New Country High School and Avalon School students and staff for their exemplary videos.

Provocative Conceptions About Learning

Wayne Jennings — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:00:16 +0000

TED brings the world’s leaders in various field: Sugata Mitra invented the “hole in the wall” project with astonishing learning results, then continued the experiment around the world with the same impact. It can’t help but cause us to question conventional ideas about the ability of children to learn. His 17 minute talk at TED captured in the video Child-Driven Education will entertain, enlighten and cause one to puzzle about unfettered human learning.

Children of the Code tackles issues of learning to read (breaking the code) with a wealth of the world’s expertise and resources. The difficulties are described in an amazing video 7 minute What’s So Difficult? and the attendant results for many children of ”mind shame,” a crippling long term affliction for school achievement.

A third brief video is from the fresh mind of Ken Robinson who draws engagingly as he talks about the need for change.

Gardner, Advocate for Educational Pluralism

Wayne Jennings — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:52:00 +0000

Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard and well known for his books including Multiple Intelligences and Five Minds for the Future, writes of the importance of a variety of educational programs to fit different students. In a recent article, he writes that after studying various approaches such as Reggio Emilia (a program he particularly likes), Montessori, Waldorf, traditional and other types of schools he is more convinced than ever of the importance of “educational pluralism.”

Obvious as it is, schools have insufficiently acted upon the fact that all children do not learn the same. Hence, the need for a variety of educational programs to meet the diverse needs of students. He states, ” The lessons I have learned over the decades are: (1) to be ever open to new and powerful ways of educating and (2) to shun those who block the roads of individualized pedagogy as well as those who seek to impose a uniform way of presenting material.”

Posted via email from waynebj’s posterous

Multiple Assessments: Hope Survey

Wayne Jennings — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:41:07 +0000

What effect is the current standards movement and teaching to the test having on our students? What do you know about how students at your school view the school environment? Now your school can find out by seeing the school from the eyes of your students based on their responses on the Hope Survey. This diagnostic tools assesses the school environment and culture based on the developmental needs of adolescents including: autonomy, belongingness, goal orientation and academic press. These four variables also lead to data around student engagement and overall hope (psychological well being). Schools can then use this longitudinal data to test out appropriate interventions on a whole school level and/or individual student basis. The instrument has been in use for nearly a decade and has national norms for comparison.

One of the developers Dr. Mark Van Ryzin has not only proved that taking a more “whole child” approach with students is good for them psychologically but also showed a correlation to raised achievement in students. In short, giving students hope can literally last a life time. For more information on the Hope Survey, check out the new website at: http://hopesurvey.org or contact Aaron Grimm: aaron@edvisionsschools.org or 507 248-3738 x7.

Blueprint School

Wayne Jennings — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:00:53 +0000

I’ve waited for years for this marvelous book, Lives of Passion, School of Hope: How One Public School Ignites a Lifelong Love of Learning. It tells a story of a K-12 progressive school (Jefferson County Open School, Colorado) that combined the best features from research and practice such as: strong advisory system, personal learning plan, learner centered environment, world as classroom, service learning, travel study and competency based graduation. I began such a school in 1971 but it did not have sustained progressive leadership after my first seven years as principal. Nor has it documented its successes, both immediate and long term in the graduates’ lives. This book does all that with statistics and a rich assortment of anecdotes. If ever we needed a blueprint about schooling, one could hardly do better than this book. Every student is expected to become an effective communicator, a complex thinker, a responsible citizen, an ethical person, and a quality worker. How’s that for a set of outcomes? This is one of the most important books I have read and I highly recommend it. The author, Rick Posner worked in the school and has produced a most readable and essential book for educators and the public.

High School Graduation in Four Years – Why Not Two Years or Even Six?

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:57:15 +0000

High Schoolers have many more options today then they did even a decade ago. There are Alternative, Charter, Private and On-Line options, and now there are options in many states to graduate early or if necessaryto stay one, two or even three additional years. Recently both the New York Times and U.S. Today had articles reflecting these new options.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-25-senioryear25foronline_st_N.htm

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/a-diploma-in-10th-grade/

Cell Phones in the Classroom?

admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:57:54 +0000

In a recent article in Principal Leadership, October 2009, the principal of a large high school discussed the use of cell phones at school. She was using cell phones to text with her students as another way to increase communication. She stated that texting helped student report things like fights and other personal issues that students didn’t necessarily want to talk about in person. Recently there have been other publications including Curtis J. Bonk’s The World is Open, and an article from the New York Times “Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong In Classroom.” B0th Bonk’s book and the article suggest that cellphones are no longer simply instruments for talking or even texting, they are similar in speed and power to many classroom computers. Plus many schools have extremely limited computer to student ratios. The book and the article argue that it is time for administrators and teachers to join the 21st century and welcome cellphones, especially the new generation smartphones, into the classroom and let students use them for the learning tools that they have the potential to be.

I would like to know what others have to say about the use of personal technologies such as smartphones in the classroom.

New Center for Research on Digital Media and Learning

Wayne Jennings — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:44:06 +0000

There’s little doubt that the Internet will transform schooling (read choices) and how students learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. A newly-created Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California-Irvine will explore the impact of digital media on learning and its potential for transforming education. The Center is funded by a $2.97 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The foundation has invested substantially ($50 million since 2006) researching digital learning and gaming with positive results and continues with a variety of media projects including astonishing findings of the positive impact on youth in the three year research report, Living and Learning with New Media.

A Most Remarkable Book

Wayne Jennings — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:10:17 +0000

IALA promotes educational choices and there would not be the compelling call for change in district schools if they engaged students more. Here are my comments about an amazing book by an extraordinary teacher in a most democratic program.

If Holden Caulfield Were In My Classroom: Inspiring Love, Creativity and Intelligence in Middle School Students by Bernie Schein is one of the most astonishing books on teaching that I have seen in my 50 years of reading education books. This remarkable teacher of middle school students brought out the real feelings and emotions of students to create authentic people and in the process a classroom of vitality and greater learning. This book takes you inside the lives of adolescents, their fears, hopes, jealousies, dreams and inner selves. He also uses class meeting, trials and the core curriculum as a progressive educator. Every teacher at every level would gain from this engaging, readable book.

Online Learning: Growth and Evaluation

Wayne Jennings — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:46:51 +0000

In a certain to be much talked about book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn describe how a majority of students will use online learning within a decade. They suggest we must disrupt, that is change, thinking about individualizing learning and schooling. This provocative book follows in the path of earlier “disruptive” and innovative thinking about society and business.

We’ve addressed online learning as the fastest growing section for education change in past entries. You can access this topic by searching our previous entries.

The U.S. Dept. of Education produced Evaluating Online Learning: Challenges and Strategies for Success to address the challenge of meeting diverse needs of online learners and how to assess their learning. This 80 page guide (free online) delves into the technical aspects of data gathering and organizing information for arriving at both formative and summative conclusions about program effectiveness using real school examples.

Singapore: Teach Less, Learn More!

Wayne Jennings — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:40:53 +0000

The Singapore Ministry of Education says, “Teach Less, Learn More is about teaching better, to engage our learners and prepare them for life, rather than teaching more for tests and examinations.” Their website contains such refreshing gems as:
-TLLM aims to touch the hearts and engage the minds of our learners, to prepare them for life.
-It is about shifting the focus from

A Second Side to the Story

Wayne Jennings — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:06:48 +0000

Many students identified as at-risk become dropouts from school. Most of the discussion about dropouts focuses on characteristics of the students with little examination of the policies and practices of schools that contribute to student failure. Those policies and practices represent the second side of the story about why so many students dropout or give up. Revision of school policies can contribute greatly to student success.

The Iowa Dept. of Education and the Iowa Association of Alternative Education created the Inventory of Policies & Practices Related to Student Failure and Dropping Out defining over 50 policies and practices that contribute to student failure. This powerful tool helps in the review of school policies and in creating new policies to increase student success. This carefully developed inventory is free and can be modified to fit local needs. Also included is a student questionnaire for their views.

Dr. Ray Morley on a recent webcast (see below) reported on this excellent tool on crucial factors impacting student dropouts and what unfortunately may result in “push outs.”

Schools Need Autonomy

Wayne Jennings — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:53:25 +0000

One long awaited reform is greater autonomy for schools within a district. Principals and teachers say they would accept accountability if they had the authority to change their program. When decisions about a school’s program, staffing and budget are made elsewhere, the principal and teachers can argue that those decisions did not meet their needs and hence accountability rests with the district.

A celebrated pending case is the Bruce Randolph School in Denver. A new principal worked collaboratively with staff to increase student learning and made progress. Now the staff wants to make more changes but continuously runs into cumbersome district and union procedures. They petitioned the district for greater leeway in decisions. The district school board unanimously agreed. Despite an urgent appeal to the teacher union, it has yet to agree to changes. Now Colorado legislators may take those decisions out of the hands of districts and unions by granting schools site authority over decisions through “innovation zones.”

This cry for greater freedom by school staffs to make decisions has a long history. For a time, site based management was the reform movement. But that turned out to be hollow as districts agreed to the words but not the intent and schools still had to play, “Captain, May I.”

Some districts have forged ahead with school site management. The most famous is Edmonton, Canada where all 190 schools control their budget, staffing and program. Boston has its Pilot schools, New York and Chicago are experimenting with giving successful schools autonomy. Sadly, however, there is little progress to report on this decades-old promising reform. Tradition and top-down management have fierce holds on education with few signs of changing those controls. That becomes the main drive for teachers and principals starting charter schools in states with charter school laws granting school autonomy.