To Reduce Plagiarism, Increase Joy, and Create Conditions for Learning that Sticks: Ask Students to Transform Content
Schools suited for the 21st century do not ask students to regurgitate content, but, instead, to transform it. What exactly does this mean? It means that students combine what they learn with their perspective, or their personality, or their aesthetics, or their creativity, or all of these, to produce something that has not existed before. …
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Three: Ending Well
(If you haven’t read part one, on establishing purpose, or part two, on facilitating well, I’d recommend starting there.) Parker does a particularly fine job of demystifying the part of a gathering that most seems like a combination of art, magic, and luck: the ending. The Sense of an Ending Before offering suggestions on how …
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Two: Teaching With Generous Authority
(If you haven’t read part one, about establishing purpose, consider starting there.) After providing solid advice on how to approach a gathering’s “why,” Parker offers guidance on designing the core of the experience and facilitating it effectively. The core of that advice: “Don’t be chill!” A ubiquitous strain of twenty-first-century culture is infecting our gatherings: …
Why Teachers Should Consider Their Classes “Gatherings”
Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, a book that, as the subtitle suggests, takes up the subject of how we meet and why it matters, provides key insights into at least three crucial aspects of excellent teaching: establishing purpose, cultivating generous authority, and ending well. Parker’s book’s written for a general reader; anyone who has …
Priorities for Flexible Learning
With students geographically dispersed, school schedules disrupted, and standardized tests delayed or cancelled, teachers have opportunities to explore creative paths for designing meaningful student learning experiences. With limited emotional and material resources, what ought they prioritize during this time?* Here are three teaching and learning priorities to consider: Building community Integrating student interests into the …
Everybody’s Designing
The ability of instructional leaders to identify high quality teaching, hold it up as exemplary, and support all teachers in making incremental progress toward being exemplary remains crucial under the social-distancing regime, but it’s more difficult than ever because everybody’s designing. State boards and their bureaucratic hordes convene in dimly-lit video conferences to conjure the …
With Universal Basic Income, what might be possible for public schools?
This week, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey pledged $1 billion for the purpose of addressing immediate coronavirus needs and then, longer term, supporting initiatives related to girls’ health and education and universal basic income (UBI). He’s tracking the donations on this public Google spreadsheet, which, at the time of this writing, 67 people are …
Teaching Students with Disabilities as Transformative Learning
When the virus first broke, some schools initially deposited the whole idea of online instruction in the too-hard pile, hesitating to offer classes for any students rather than attempting to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations to serve all students, especially those with disabilities. Clearly, if educators fail to attempt in good faith and to …