Archive for the ‘Book Summaries’ Category

After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform by Andrea Gabor uses examples of successful and failing schools to demonstrate how the principles promoted by W. Edwards Deming can lead to school improvement. She provides extended histories of reforms in New York City, Massachusetts, Texas, and New Orleans to show how democratic grassroots reforms are more likely to work than the top-down approaches used in most states and cities. Everyone with the power to impact school reform needs to read this.

Introduction: The Quiet Revolution

• Andrea starts by reviewing the work of W. Edwards Deming and how he helped Japanese and then American companies modernize and improve. He found the blame to lie with top management and the answers to come from bottom-up reforms as employees closest to problems were in the best position to solve them. Unfortunately, the corporate-reform industry that has gained ever-increasing influence on how American schools educate children has largely ignored the strategies they used to improve production as they tinker with school reform.
• Business reformers came to the education table with belief in market competition and quantitative measures. Expertise from corporate boardrooms is favored over experience gleaned in classrooms. They also distrust of the education culture. It also came with arrogance, suspicion, and even hatred of organized labor. What is needed, however, is democratic collaboration, iterative improvement, and grassroots participation that is protected from bureaucratic meddling. We should value data as we understand its limits.
• Schools have different goals and cultures than businesses. This makes them less suited to being run like businesses. Three decades of top-down, corporate-style education reforms have proven deeply unpopular and have reaped few benefits. The number of bad teachers is also overestimated by reformers, but efforts to punish low performers has lowered morale and increased turnover. Other business practices like incentive pay have also had a negative impact. The only winners have been the testing and technology industries at the expense of a narrowed curriculum. This book will reveal what has worked, which should guide the next reform effort.

1. Big Dreams, Small Schools, How Entrepreneurial Rebels Built a Movement in New York City

• This chapter takes us through some history of New York City Schools from the 1960’s to relatively recently. It tells of how a number of schools gained success by being small and at the same time allowing teachers to pretty much run the schools. In a sense, they used Deming’s grass-roots ideas to interest students in the learning and act as role models. They shunned standardized testing and looked at other performance indicators. A sense of creative non-compliance pervaded these schools as they bent the rules and looked for cracks in the system. Classrooms were more open and curricula less fixed. There was lots of learning by doing, art, music, and field trips.

A new generation of educational leaders arrived who had no experience teaching. Rather than learn Deming’s principles like industry, they instituted top-down reforms. Even though they saw the success of small schools, they missed the rest of the factors that lead to success. This also included those involved with funding like the Gates Foundation. Unfortunately, the De Blasio administration has increased bureaucracy and shunned the flat organization models of successful schools.

Share this:

Code Breaker: Increase Creativity, Remix Assessment, and Develop a Class of Coder Ninjas! by Brian Aspinall shares his experiences and those of some colleagues in the process of teaching coding from kindergarten to high school. It deals with computational thinking which is a fundamental skill at the heart of engineering and mathematics. It includes coding and much more, and can even happen without technology. Make sure your school has a few copies.

Preface

• We live in an era of access as answers to knowledge-based questions can be quickly retrieved. As for coding, we have been teaching that in many forms since the 1960s. Like many, Brian is a self-taught coder. He offers ten reasons for teaching coding. They include building self-confidence, allowing students to create, self-expression, teaching storytelling, opportunities for risk-taking, reinforcing math principles, and teaching problem-solving. It is required for many future jobs, developing teamwork, and helping humanity.

1. The Clarity of Poop

• Brian tells of experiences as a computer club advisor where he saw students do some amazing things. The students tried, observed, tried again, failed, tried again, and at some point succeeded. This is what you don’t get in a lot of classrooms that focus on knowledge acquisition and worksheets.
• Like all chapters, this one has several QR codes that take you to pages of Brian’s blog. Here are the sites you get in this chapter.
• Hubbub! Coding a First Nations’ Game of Chance.
• Coding Probability Simulators with Python #CodeBreaker. Here you get a tutorial in the Python programming language.
• Ten Reasons Kids Should Learn to Code. Post the diagram and have your kids listen to the short [1:48] video.

2. A Wing and a Papert

• Here we get some learning theory. Assimilation happens when you incorporate new things into your current understanding. Accommodation happens when you learn new things and have to change what you currently understand. People learn best when they are involved in making or constructing things in the real world. To do this you need some control over your own learning. Learning should be concrete and computers are a good way to teach this. Computational thinking is a fundamental skill and it is at the heart of engineering and mathematics.
• Coding Rock, Paper, Scissors to Teach Probability
• Indigenous Trail: Trees and Coding a Micro:Bit Compass
• What Is Computational Thinking? Computational Thinking can take on a variety of forms.

Share this:

Hacking Project-Based Learning: 10 Easy Steps to PBL and Inquiry in the Classroom by Ross Cooper and Erin Murphy is a must read for any teacher interested in this mode of teaching. Their ten hacks provide a path for more student-centered learning in any classroom. Be sure to get some copies for teachers you know.

Introduction

• Project-Based Learning (PBL) is messy. The authors have done everything in their power here to de-clutter and tidy up the mess to make it as approachable as possible. PBL may not happen overnight in you classroom or school, but it won’t happen if you don’t get started. Ross and Erin started doing PBL as teachers and now support it as administrators. They will help you set the stage for students to thrive in a culture of inquiry and creativity with these ten hacks. Keys are to make student work public and for them to reflect on their work. The role of feedback is also vital.

Hack 1: Develop a Space That Promotes Risk-Taking

• Schools are designed to fill kid’s heads with information. Student questioning diminishes. The assembly line is populated by robots. We need students who can think and solve problems. They need to be driven by their curiosities. Teachers need to do what they can to bring in materials from garage sales or anywhere. They should post failed ideas. They also need to develop relationships. Make sure that things are designed for student learning rather than teacher convenience. The walls should contain student work. Bring in the real world.

Hack 2: Teach Collaboration Skills

• Starting group work without first teaching collaboration skills is a mistake. Working with others requires dialog and productive struggle. Students should know this. They should understand that collaboration is working with others in order to achieve or do something. A good way to teach collaboration is to search the Internet for collaborative experiences. Look for discussion skills, body language, transitions, and organization strategies. Students can also visit other classrooms and watch collaboration in action.
• A big focus should be on the idea that it’s possible to not like someone else’s idea without disliking the person. After early collaboration activities, students should debrief and discuss what went well and what didn’t.

Share this: