curriculum
Narrative Pedagogy
1.I have been researching narrative pedagogy as a means for integrating earth science and literacy education. I am in a doctoral program in environmental studies and am concerned as a parent, teacher of teachers, prior classroom teacher, environmental educator, and gifted and talented coordinator, that many of our children, particularly from grades 4 - 12, are not excited about earth science as a potential career choice. With global environmental and climate change, we have some very intricate problems to solve and new realizations to discover, and we’ll need a future generation of earth scientists and educated citizenry to participate in the solutions.
There is a great deal of research on a global scale about the use of storytelling (or orality) in education to engage the emotions and therefore the intellect. I recommend more professional development on the use of narrative pedagogy in curriculum. My students go into local partner schools and tell and teach storytelling to students at the sixth grade level. The teachers and the students are highly motivated.
All cultures begin with storytelling as their primary educational tool; we need to embrace the skills our ancestors used to encourage thinking and transfer knowledge.
Educational research grants to promote narrative pedagogy and build professional development in such skills, available to institutions of higher education’s teacher training programs and K - 12 school districts would nurture such training.
2. Students who are talented learners have social and emotional challenges and are most often disenfranchised in our schools. Teachers do not have adequate training in the develoopmental and educational needs of the gifted, who could become leaders in solving national and global problems. Often these learners do not make continuous progress in school, because the focus on the school is to raise the scores of those students who are struggling.
In addition, many talented learners become disengaged and drop out of school, particularly if they do not have family support.
A further investment in research and meeting the needs of the gifted learner in our nation’s schools is paramount to our future success as a nation. When we say “no child left behind” we are forgetting these children.
This post was submitted by Meredith Bird Miller.
Career and Technical Education Works Wonders
Strengthen and enhance the funding for career and technical education nationwide. Students learn best through contextual learning. Along the way, the added benefit is learning personal management, problem solving, communication, teamwork, employment foundations and career development skills.
I urge additional funding for Carl Perkins programs nationwide. CTE does work.
Come visit us at the Sabin-Schellenberg Professional Technical Center in Milwaukie, Oregon. Over 3,000 students in the North Clackamas School District take one or more of our classes.
This post was submitted by Deborah Barnes.
Gifted Coordinator
Our schools have operated in panic mode for far too long. We can teach all children, if specific pieces are put into place. The neuroscientists must have a voice in what happens next in education. Experts in education and the science community must conbine the expertise of the two fields so that changes in American education will not follow trends or the latest product. We must know what really happens in the brain to both enrich and impede learning. Teacher must become experts in using neurological components in the classroom to best serve students.
There are too many programs out there that promise miracle cures for education, when the true cure is to create learning environments in which all children may work to their potentials. We have in the past had low expectations of certain populations and have transferred our expectations to the children. This must stop. Jonathan Kozol has been telling us for years that we need to change the learning environment in order to help our diverse populations of student succeed. Why haven’t we listened? We have chosen to apply knee-jerk solutions and apply them to vast groups of children. We have been marketed to death with snakeoil programs. It is now imperative that we begin to listen to those who have carefully researched the problem and remedies. Dr. John Ratey, Dr. Kurt Fischer,Dr. Judy Willis, Dr. Robert Sylwester, Dr. Phillippe Goldin and many other have given essential insights into how students learn and have been virtually ignored.
Our present system would rather listen to a salesperson spew slanted data or ever faulty data so that we can purchase “a cure in a box”. These “boxed” programs are costly and ineffective. They are not based on good scientific research. They are based on short-term gains at the expense of long-termed learning. Students will learn enough to pass “the test” but will not retain the learning once the test is over. Learning is not meaningful. We must make learning enjoyable and meaningful so that all our children have the opportunity to make education a lifelong journey not an endurance test.
This post was submitted by Cathy Reed.
Curricula
Beginning with my first article on the subject in the KAPPAN in 1966, in books published by respected publishers, in myriad articles in professional education journals, and in dozens of my Knight-Ridder/Tribune columns, I have argued that the curriculum adopted in 1892 and now in near-universal use in our schools and colleges was poor when it was put in place and grows more dysfunctional with each passing year. By any objective measure, it is simply unacceptable. Sending the young into an unknown future armed with such a crude intellectual tool is unconscionable.
My statements of problems have been very specific, as have been my suggestions for their solution within present bureaucratic boundaries. No one in the intervening 42 years has challenged my arguments, yet so deeply embedded is current practice, not a single current reform initiative calls present practice into question.
The curriculum is the cutting edge of education. Hype and wishful thinking related to reform efforts notwithstanding, there will be no significant improvement in student performance at the upper elementary, middle school, or high school level as long as our 19th Century curriculum remains in place.
The situation calls for nothing less than a high-profile national dialog or conference. Nothing the new President and Secretary of Education could do would yield greater long-term benefit.
This post was submitted by Marion Brady.
