School Makes Me...

I found this interesting blog entry.  How does school make you feel? Why is it important to understand
School makes  me... 
  
Scott McLeod's blog Dangerously Irrelevant is a profoundly  progressive
read. Scott tweeted me a link to his  post that featured this picture:

Try it. Go to  Google  and type in "school makes me" and see what autocomplete choices come up.
When I did it, I got school makes me:
- feel stupid
- sad
- fat 
So why does this matter?
 
Perhaps you are not aware how Google's autocomplete works. Google  explains:
As you type, autocomplete predicts and displays
queries  to choose from. The search queries that you see as part of autocomplete
are a  reflection of the search activity of all web users and the content of web
pages  indexed by Google.Several hundred million searches are made
with  Google every single day and this is a reflection of the search activity
students  are conducting. Are we paying attention to this? Are we prepared to
take this  seriously?

  I am a staunch supporter of public
  education but I also understand why Sir Ken Robinson asks "Do Schools Kill
  Creativity, John Taylor Gatto writes about Weapons of Mass Instruction and
  Kirsten Olsen writes about people who are Wounded by School.


The way forward is not to build
schools  that are a better version of yesterday. Before school can improve --
school has  to change. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic ain't going to
cut it  anymore.


Here are three quick suggestions for
  how I think school  needs to change:

1. Curriculum is not something created and laminated by distant
     authorities and mailed to the schools. While there can be a skeletal framework
     created by provincial, state or federal departments of education, curriculum  is something that must be negotiated
   between teachers and students at the  school. Here's an example of what  real learning looks like.
   
2. Assessment is not a spreadsheet, it's a conversation. We need
     to stop demanding that students show what they have learned by doing things
   they  hate. Anything worth learning is worth doing  in a context and for a purpose. Students  should experience their successes and
   failures not as reward and punishment but  as information.
   
3. Accountability is really about providing  the public with information regarding their
   schools.
   Unlike standardized  tests which are notorious for their
   inability to provide anything more than a  limited and incomplete snapshot of a
   student on a single day, a collection of  performance assessments assembled in a
   learning portfolio can inform the  teaching and learning process in a timely
   fashion while simultaneously assuring  the public that students are receiving a
   high quality education. Ultimately, the  best evidence parents can receive about
   their children's learning is to see  their children learning.

Here are all of my posts on six
broad  topics that we need to rethink so that we can reframe the realities of
  school.


Abolishing  Grading
  Abolishing  Homework
  Rethinking  Standardization
  Rethinking Lesson  Planning
  Rethinking  Discipline
  Rethink  Accountability


I also suggest you look at some of
the  work being done by the Alberta Teachers' Association and their research
report  titled A  Great School for All: Transforming Education in
Alberta.