After listening to last nights recording of class with Chris Lehman I found not only his discussion to be interesting but reading the back channel discussion was fascinating too. In particular, I was interested to hear and read the comments about standardized testing and how it relates to our provincial Assessment for Learning (AFL) program. I believe that the primary reason that our provincial system moved towards a standardized assessment practice is due to the public demand for an increase in accountability for our government structures due to the corporate practices of companies like Enron. There was a comment in the discussion panel that the STF initially had some reservation but then has done nothing about it since. I strongly disagree with this comment. If it was not for the efforts of our federation, the system that the government put in place would probably resemble the structures that exist in Ontario or British Columbia and it would have happened many years ago when a number of provinces were jumping on board with faulty U.S. data driven models. I am also thankful that I am a member of the federation that is diligent in ensuring that the current government stays true to its assessment FOR learning initiative instead of an assessment OF learning program. The one missing factor that people fail to recognize for the reason we are not like other provinces is because of the time and effort our federation spends on building relationships with our partner organizations. Because of our unique relationships and the trust (a very key concept) that exists between the partner organizations we are privileged to work in a system where the STF input is considered before decisions are made. The STF does not agree with all of the decisions made by government but at least we have a system that allows them to have a respectful conversation in the decision making process.
My final thoughts for this blog are more in terms of questions. The questions stem from Laurie's discussion about her sons. Laurie said something to the effect that she believes that her sons might have a lack of engagement due to a lack of vision and no sense of purpose. Chris showed us that their mission and values statements consist of three questions: How do we learn? What can we create? What does it mean to lead? Earlier in the class we heard that the majority of careers that our students will work at have not been created yet. Therefore, how do we create that vision or that sense of purpose to prepare them for something that most of us probably aren't prepared for either? Just curious to see what you think. I know what I believe but I will leave that for later.
Mathman33
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2 comments:
Hi - just read your tweet so I hopped over to read your post. This is the closest we can get to synchronicity - but I know what it's like to miss a class and just listen to the recording and observe the chat.
I wanted to comment on your last point, about preparing our students for jobs that don't exist yet. I think that within the different aims for education the most important is preparing our students to be life-long learners, really learning how to learn. For not only do the jobs not exist today, we can expect our students to change careers more often. We must also help each student to find his or her passion. That is what will ignite their love of learning. We also chatted a bit last night about specialty programs. In that same vein I think by helping students to find their passion and then matching programs to their passion (such as learning through the arts, sports schools, or career pathway programs) we can improve student engagement with learning.
Your turn - chat away!
Cindy
I agree with Cindy when she says that we need to help students find their passion. This will ultimately lead to their engagement in learning. There was some talk about specialized programming, that is, certain schools offering certain programs. I work in a system school not a community school, meaning that we get students from throughout the city because we are the only completely modified school, and we are a trades school as well. Should there be a Fine Arts school, a Sports school, a Humanities school, etc.? I don't know. I do know that by the time students reach high school they pretty much have an idea of what interests them. Not what career path they want to take but they have an idea of what subjects they prefer and what activities they like to perform. There isn't much for Guidance in the elementary system. Students start choosing their path when they start counting credits. Shouldn't the system be touching base with students at an earlier age? I don't have any answers. As you can see I have a lot of questions.
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