Peter Pappas »
21 February 2012 »
In Commentary, Leadership, Reflection, Students »
A recent rebroadcast of an interview with William Deresiewicz on WBUR's Here & Now led me to his essay Solitude and Leadership in American Scholar. The essay is from a lecture he delivered to West Point's plebe class October 2009.
Deresiewicz addresses the roots of our crisis of leadership in America,
... I know what it’s like for you guys now. It’s an endless series of hoops that you have to jump through, starting from way back, maybe as early as junior high school. Classes, standardized tests, extracurriculars in school, extracurriculars outside of school. Test prep courses, admissions coaches, private tutors. … So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. …They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.”
... We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders.
What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.
For his full essay and his thoughts on education, Twitter, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness click here.
As I've written, I'm outraged by the fact that a generation of teachers and students have become slaves to corporatized testing. While our school district mission statements all claim to "foster life-long learners," in reality, teachers are forced to spend increasing class time prepping kids for predictable tests. We're giving a generation of kids practice for predictable, routine procedures - and that happens across the "bell curve" from AP test prep to meeting minimal proficiency on NCLB-mandated tests.
If students are going to be productive in a dynamic society and workplace they will need to be agile, fluid learners. Future leaders that are encouraged to explore their own approaches and reflect on their progress. Students who can work collaboratively with their peers to plan, implement and evaluate projects of their own design. For more of my thoughts on standardized testing, teaching and learning, see my test prep tag.
Image credit: flickr/jahansell
Tags: American Scholar, Creativity, Critical thinking, Essential questions, Heart of Darkness, Higher-order thinking, Innovation, Joseph Conrad, Motivation, Relevance, Solitude, Test prep, Twitter, William Deresiewicz
A how to for growing an audience for your thinking and my response to the question “If you could use only one method to market yourself online, what would do?”
It begins with freely sharing quality content. I use the Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 license. Use it, share it, remix it. Just tell people where you got it, and don’t try and sell it. Remember, as the price of commodity drops, consumption increases. I include tips for using URL shorteners, hashtags and blog comments to drive traffic back to your site.
Tags: Backchannel, Bit.ly, Blogging, Creative Commons, LinkedIn, PISA, Twitter
The Portland City Club is continuing its educational series “Schools Making A Difference: Portraits of Excellence, Engagement and Equity” – films, panel discussions and participant dialogues
Though economic realities pose significant challenges for our education system, when schools and communities work together with a clear vision and heroic effort, they can achieve stunning results. Exemplary schools provide high expectations and opportunities for all students to succeed. They also provide real world learning experiences that prepare students for college, careers and citizenship in the 21st century. They do this through an engaging curriculum that recognizes the diverse talents and needs of their student populations. Join fellow citizens, educators, and students for any of four evenings of films, panels, and participant dialogues that offer portraits of such schools in our region and around the world.
The series began with Bib Gliner’s “Lessons from the Real World” – a fascinating look at K-12 schools that weave community and societal problem solving through their curriculum.
Tags: Bob Gliner, Lessons From the Real World, OPB, PBL, PDX, Portland City Club, Reform, Robert Compton, Social change, The Finland Phenomenon, Two Million Minutes
The 3rd edcampPDX is being held Feb 4, 2012 at Catlin Gabel School in Portland Oregon. This Storify serves as a permanent archive of the event’s social media backchannel. I’m following the hashtag #edcampPDX.
An edcamp is a unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants. It’s free, democratic, participant-driven professional development. Great teachers, interesting conversations and an excellent chance to network.
Tags: Backchannel, edcamp, edcampPDX, PDX, Storify, Twitter, Unconference
One of this year’s resolutions was to begin offering webinars. (not that I don’t enjoy airports) I recently completed my first pilot (description below) and I’m looking for three school sites who would like to try a free pilot webinar and offer me some feedback.
I think professional development should model what we want to see in the classroom. So I’d like to start with an 45-minute experiential webinar called: “Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) – What’s that look like in the classroom?” We’ll watch a few short video clips, do a few activities to model instruction at different levels of Blooms and then reflect on the experience.
Find out more and submit a request for free webinar. I will select from requests that demonstrate you’ll be easy to work with!
Tags: ARS, Bloom, Critical thinking, Defining, Essential questions, Higher-order thinking, Innovation, Learning Catalytics, Live Meeting, Motivation, Rigor
This Wordle Word Cloud features the 100 most frequently used words from the full text of U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address. Look carefully and you’ll see “education.”
If you want to analyze word use in all the State of the Union addresses, there’s a great tool at “State of the Union.” Image below is from JFK’s 1961 SOTU.
Tags: Obama, State of the Union, Wordle
The “flipped” classroom – This is the idea that teachers shoot videos of their lessons, then make them available online for students to view at home. Class time is then devoted to problem solving – with the teacher acting as a guide to teams of students. It’s a great approach that flips the delivery of the lesson to homework – it’s like a TiVo time shift that can reshape your classroom.
… [we saw] flipping the class as a great opportunity to engage our students in taking more responsibility for their learning. Why not let your students curate the video lessons from existing content on the web?
Here’s an infographic explanation of the flipped classroom. What it is and how it works.
Tags: Engagement, Flipped classroom, Infographic, Innovation, Motivation, PBL
This week Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Is there a lesson for educators about what happens when you lose touch with your customer?
At the core of Kodak’s eventual demise was the failure of the leadership to remain connected to their customers. They convinced themselves that the public would continue to want to buy film, load it into the camera, take a picture, drop the film off at the processor, and return later to pick up their photos. Easy to believe when you’re making money at every stage of that process.
Has our educational leadership lost touch with their customers – the students? Given the growing array of cheap digital tools available to our students, will they passively wait to be told what, how, when and with whom to learn? Is the information flow of the traditional classroom (lecture, note-taking, test) as outmoded as taking your film to the drugstore for processing?
Tags: Creativity, Digital camera, George Eastman, Information landscape, Innovation, Kodachrome, Kodak, Photography, Rochester
Calling all educators from the Pacific NW. Join us in Portland on February 4, for the third edcampPDX – free, democratic, participant-driven professional development. It’s an unconference built on collaboration and dialogue, not keynotes. As one participant from a past edcamp tweeted “#EdcampPDX what an incredible day! I’m ready for September.”
Tags: Backchannel, Catlin Gabel School, edcamp, edcampPDX, PDX, Storify, Unconference
Recent Comments