Sometimes you read an article, and then at the end there's something that makes you go, "huh?" like the sound of the needle skipping off the record (you know those old disc things we used to put music on).So I was reading this article in the NY Times, called "U.S. Is Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status." It's a short read, check it out.
It's kind of nice, more stuff about how we blather on about how important teachers are and then pay them nothing. No news there.
The "Huh?" moment came at the very end, when some expert type used the term, "higher student outcomes."
I have to admit this made me get a rash. What the heck is a "student outcome?" Do they get a star on their belly like a Sneetch?
Good grief. We have really lost it when our discussions of a topic go off that far into the weeds of corporate doublespeak.
And then there was this other article, entitled "Let Kids Rule the School." This one was about taking a small group of students and engaging them in something called an "Independent Project," where they created their own curriculum under the watchful eye of their teachers.
This one pointed out how much happier and more engaged students are when they have ownership of what they are doing. Um, no news there either, I'm afraid.
I had a lot of questions come up, though - like, is it practical to do this on a wider scale? They only did this with 8 students in one high school. Do you have to make sure the students can handle it? What do you do if they are not getting their work done? Do you dump them back into memorize-and-test land?
Anyway, both nice articles, I guess, neither says anything new. Maybe to make real change we have to say the same things over and over for decades to rev up the engine. I don't know.
In the meantime, I'm going to go focus on my "higher breakfast outcome" or something.
