Start Empathy

A Year at Mission Hill: Assessment

Michelle Hughes — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

The ninth of ten expert takeaway posts from Principal Michelle Hughes on the school documentary series sweeping the web.

Editor's Note: Here is Michelle Hughes with her commentary on Chapter 9 of "A Year at Mission Hill!" Keep up with the highlights of the series in this super cool Prezi! And here's her takeaway post on Chapter 8 as well.

In 1916, a frustrated Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician, philosopher, and one of the founding thinkers of progressive education, delivered an essay called “The Aims of Education.” At some point in this global assessment and visionary statement on education in both Great Britain and the United States, he proclaimed, “...the first requisite for educational reform is the school as a unit, with its approved curriculum based on its own needs and evolved by its own staff. If we fail to secure that we simply fall from one formalism into another, from one dung-hill of inert ideas into another.” A little later he goes on to say, “...no system of external tests which aims primarily at examining individual scholars can result in anything but educational waste.”

I could spend the rest of this essay pondering why we need to learn these lessons over and over again. Instead, I would like to focus on why we so consistently underestimate and undermine the intelligence, insight, and creativity of our classroom practitioners. Because isn’t that really what No Child Left Behind has come down to?

Ten years ago, I was in what would be my final year of a twelve-year career as a public school educator. The child of public school teachers and reformers and a progressive educator in my own right, I had been lucky. I had worked in one of the most progressive school districts in the northern Hudson Valley, worked hard to earn and keep the trust and support of a number of principals, and was fortunate to be a member of a small team of like-minded colleagues. Standardized testing for all those years was considered a routine assessment of our program and only one of the many instruments we used to measure the growth and learning of our students. It was well understood that more could be learned about the children who did very well or very poorly than the wide swath of children who performed at the center of these assessments.

The tide turned in 2001. Suddenly, after years of teachers producing excellent curriculum in our local district, this was not adequate. Suddenly, the message was that we did not have the skills to determine what our students needed to know and then assess that knowledge. Suddenly, the emphasis was on tests. While there had always been a low national grumbling about the “deal” teachers got, “the bankers' hours” we supposedly kept, and our persistent national “lagging behind the others,” these grumblings grew to a roar. It became increasingly difficult for our team to do the kinds of work with students that we had cultivated over the years: team and leadership building, project-based learning, deep reading and discussion, presentations, and Friday afternoon kick-ball games would come to be looked at as frivolities in comparison to the “real work” of textbooks and tests.

As an inclusive team, we worked hard at blurring the differences and creating bonds between our 'typical' students and those with disabilities. This was a system that emphasized these differences. As a team, we asked the students to construct knowledge, take risks with that knowledge, feel free to disagree with the conclusions of others, and support their positions with evidence. This was a system that encouraged lock-step conformity. The discussion in our district was not, “How do we meet these requirements and hold on to what we do so well?” It was, “Dispense with all that we did before; this is a new regime.” I was yet to learn how widespread this second approach would be. For the first time I began to think about leaving my profession. I struggled mightily with a profound moral dilemma:

In staying, I hold onto my identity as a public educator and perhaps soften the blow for my students. In staying, I am compelled to be the face of a system I can’t support.

In leaving, I am jumping ship and deserting my students. In leaving, I am seeking an opportunity to do work with children I can stand behind.

This was year-long and unbearable. In the end it came down to the humiliation of being a professional of twelve years with a master’s degree and teaching awards being handed a “teacher-proof” curriculum. I made the choice to leave at that point, having been given the amazing opportunity to create a middle school at a local progressive independent school. It was wrenching to make this choice, and I had to surmount numerous biases I carried about private education. I had a lot to learn. Moreover, as a nation we have a lot to learn about what teachers are capable of by looking at independent schooling. The teachers working in these environments are a testament against all the national teacher-bashing that says...

...teachers are in it for the money and summers off: Our teachers make far less than public school teachers but choose to do so for the academic freedom and humane working environment. They work in the summers to make ends meet.

...teachers must be told what to teach as their training and intellects are not up to the task: Our teachers build, hone, and change curriculum based on research, the needs of the children in front of them, and what we all want our students to know and be able to do when they leave us.

...outside assessment must be used to keep teachers accountable and on track: When a staff have co-created the curriculum at play in the classroom, there is no higher stake in making that curriculum effective. Their professionalism and ethics are on the line. Assessment becomes a highly detailed, individual, and reflective practice as teachers shift what they are doing to respond to the data they are collecting from student work.

...teachers like to work in isolation: Working in a team, teachers are able to learn from and strategize with the professionals around them when a student is struggling or a lesson has failed. Across the board, teaming is found to stem attrition rates. Furthermore, teachers are accountable to their colleagues for the delivery of the agreed upon program and discuss the progress of the students regularly in their team meetings.

These are the lessons that public school administrators, department of education policymakers, unions, and political pundits can learn from the independent schools. Just like any other professional, when given the supports, resources, supervision, and professional community, teachers are highly effective at providing the services for which they are amply trained. Teachers create, deliver, and assess highly sophisticated curriculum when they are in an environment that sees them as intellectually and creatively capable of doing so.

We are entering the long anticipated period of backlash against NCLB, with parents and students opting out of the tests, teachers blogging and protesting the inhumanity of this system, and theorists back-pedaling on assertions made years ago. Perhaps this time we can learn from this misstep and, as A.N. Whitehead would advise us, get to the real work of shaping our educational vision from the best practices of our teachers.

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A Year at Mission Hill - Chapter 9: Seeing the Learning

Start Empathy — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

Ten videos. One year. A public school trying to help children learn and grow. The national conversation we need to be having.

Every other Thursday through June, we will premiere the latest episode of the 10-part documentary series capturing great teaching as it happens at The Mission Hill School in Boston, MA, a leading Changemaker School. Here's Chapter 8.

And on other days throughout the week, we will showcase top quality wrap-around content from StartEmpathy contributors, including expert commentary, radio podcasts, and even animated shorts!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's reaction to Chapter 9 from Principal Michelle Hughes -- and much, much more!

Be sure to stay current with all happenings related to the series at www.ayearatmissionhill.com as well as the #YearatMH Twitter hashtag and Facebook page too. And you can find some highlights, constantly evolving in this super cool Prezi as well!

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The Case Against the Case Against Empathy

michael — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared in the Huff Post WORLD blog here.

"Empathy," writes Paul Bloom in The New Yorker this week, "is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it." We'd be better off were we to supplant our flawed empathetic sensibilities with reason (that most flawless of human capacities).

His central argument is a utilitarian one: empathy is an often irrational emotional response that plays favorites, he says. It is thus a poor mechanism for solving real problems and making tough choices -- whether distributing international aid or making sacrifices today so that we don't warm our planet to oblivion tomorrow. It's empathy, he suggests, that explains why we are captivated by individual stories and numb to statistics -- the reason we were riveted for months by the missing teenager Natalee Holloway, while thousands were being slaughtered each day in Darfur; why, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "everybody in America became godmothers and godfathers" to Jessica McClure, the 18-month-old who famously fell into a well. In short, according to Bloom, it's empathy that is to blame for the capricious nature of our moral concern.

His conclusion? Empathy is a bad moral guide: "A reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than the gut wrench of empathy." Instead he appeals to our reasoning selves, calling for deliberation and calculation -- the mind over the heart - and ends his piece with "[E]mpathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future."

If you accept his characterization of empathy as an exclusively emotional/reactive response to suffering, it's easy to agree. What he's describing, however, sounds a lot more like sympathy than empathy. Mr. Bloom misses a critical point: empathy is as much a cognitive process as it is an emotional and physiological one. Nearly all scholars and researchers agree on this (though they disagree on the exact balance). What does cognitive empathy mean? It's akin to perspective taking -- to imagining why you might have different preferences and make different decisions than I would. This kind of perspective taking requires careful thought, self-awareness, and real listening. It is the opposite of an uninformed gut reaction.

A compelling case can be made that we need more empathy -- not less -- in everything from our personal relationships to our politics. We live in an age of unprecedented global connectivity and rapid change, and empathy can help us navigate that world smartly and morally as we collide with others. In addition to getting along better, empathy will help us to negotiate more effectively, resolve conflicts more quickly, and work more collaboratively with our colleagues.

In our efforts to solve difficult social problems in particular, we rely too heavily on reason and numbers and econometrics, and not often enough on empathy. And again, by empathy, I don't just mean our emotions, and I certainly don't mean feeling sorry -- that's sympathy. I mean the ability to truly understand the perspective of others, and to use that understanding to guide our actions. This, I hope, is the empathy President Obama refers to in his letter to Karina Encarnacion.

Indeed, a great deal of our international development efforts, as well as the now-trendy philanthrocapitalism, have failed precisely because we looked at numbers and didn't listen to people. Because we designed great mobile apps without bothering to see if women in India would actually use them. Because we don't often enough approach problems with humility and we seldom solve them by unlocking agency in others.

Empathy, when properly defined and conceived of, is vital and should not be so quickly dismissed. Far from an inhibitor to reason, it is a powerful complement to reason. With it, we are less selfish and more selfless, and we can begin to see the world through each other's eyes. It is a gift that humans are uniquely capable of.

But to truly empathize is not easy. In this sense Bloom is right: we're more likely to do so with those who look and think like we do. So rather than dismiss empathy, why not commit ourselves to practicing it more deliberately and more often, and expanding our spheres of empathy to those who are not just different but who challenge some of our very own moral foundations?

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Six Schools, Four Themes

mnoack — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:28:06 +0000

How our Changemaker School candidates are altering education for the better...

Students learning how to run a town. Morning meetings with song and dance. A baby in the classroom...

These are more than typical schools.

Over the past few weeks, many schools have participated in panels as part of the process to become official Ashoka Changemaker Schools. Last week we were inspired by the innovative practices at six additional schools, each with insights similar to those seen in our Bay Area Changemaker Schools Panel as well as our New York City Changemaker Schools Panel.

We found some common themes throughout these schools. Here are the highlights:

Empathetic Communication

Opal Charter School in Portland, Oregon, is a place of color, creativity, and community. Based on the Reggio Emilia Approach, Opal School allows students to steer their own education. Teachers act as co-learners with students who explore topics of interest to them. The classroom is transformed into an active learning environment where parents, students, and teachers collaborate each day.

Central to this learning is a heavy emphasis on finding and stretching each student’s artistic capacities. Chartered by Portland’s Children Museum, children express their emotions through art. Their belief is that art is a method of understanding and appreciating multiple perspectives.

Focusing on conversation, San Diego Cooperative Charter School in California adopted a curriculum geared towards teaching the entire school how to handle emotions with effective communication skills. Students and staff use the same kinds of words when expressing their feelings, working together, and resolving social disagreements. The goal is to create consistency in conversation so that empathy can be magnified.

Principal Wendy Ranck-Buhr has seen fewer student conflicts since this transition. She has observed students more eager to learn. She has experienced increased teacher collaboration. And she has received very positive responses from parents.

Backbone Support

Of course, changes in education do not occur by simply making goals and drafting plans. Implementation and carry-through require the backbone support of staff, family, community, and students.

Administration at East Dallas Community Schools in Texas has learned how to crack the enigma of increasing parent involvement, particularly in a low-income community. The result? Many parents donate hours of service to the schools—they paint, they garden, they tutor.

The schools also provide monthly group meetings and visits from trained parent-educators who teach parents how to effectively engage in their children’s education experiences.

Meanwhile at Lusher Charter School in New Orleans, Louisiana, a number of parents spend the first part of the school day in school with their children. Morning meetings at Lusher are beyond ritual announcements; each morning the school gathers for singing and dancing as well. A school focused on the arts, a small group of students then gives a theatre or dance performance as a means of sharing what they have been working on.

Educators at the school say this daily activity builds school unity and community while encouraging parent involvement. It is what creates happy students from classroom to classroom.

Student Opportunities

When the end of the school day comes, some students at Cunningham Elementary in Austin, Texas, are about to go to work. One is a banker. One owns a café. One is mayor of the town.

This is the school’s MicroSociety program, where students operate their own “towns” and “businesses” with the goal of connecting students to the real world. They even have “town meetings.”

The results are beaming. The number of behavior problems has decreased. Students have become more confident. And individuality has emerged as students lead their own learning.

Similarly, John Stanford International School in Seattle, Washington, provides means for students to become global citizens through curriculum and activities.

This is accomplished in part through their emergent language program, where students learn either Spanish or Japanese. In addition, students recently participated in a fundraiser for Heifer International, which seeks to end hunger and poverty by providing people with farm animals. And every three weeks, a baby visits the third grade classes through their involvement with Roots of Empathy. During these visits, students observe growth and emotional developments in a "baby professor" and thus learn to identify emotions in themselves and others.

The school’s leadership believes this kind of internationally-involved education will prepare students for global involvement later in life with the empathetic skills to succeed.

Replicable

But the overarching element in each of last week’s six school candidates is the desire for each school’s changemaker practices to be replicated elsewhere. Regardless of location. Regardless of available funding. Regardless of a school’s current condition.

All six schools were proud to be recognized in their communities for the quality education and students they produce. This leads to visits from other schools that desire to explore their existing models.

And that is a root element of changemaking—making a wave of difference that catches up others.

Stayed tuned as we finish up the process of deciding upon our newest changemaker schools in the coming weeks!

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Lights, Camera, and....Kids break into the industry with their first film!

Start Empathy — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:03:38 +0000

Filmmakers Jacob, Kacie, Amelia, and Henry talk about the production of their debut film, what it was like to work with a monster, and the challenges of breaking into the film industry.

Here's Chapter 8 in a series of short videos aligned with "A Year at Mission Hill"!

Love "A Year at Mission Hill" as much as we do? Track the series as it evolves in this super cool Prezi!

And here's Chapter 7 in case you missed it.

Stay tuned for more from Visual Influence and Start Empathy's expert contributors each and every week through June!

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A Year at Mission Hill: Enthusiasm - What Matters Greatly in the World of Work

Carrie Lee Ferguson — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:18:35 +0000

The eighth of ten expert takeaway posts from Carrie Lee Ferguson on the school documentary series sweeping the web.

Editor's Note: Here is Carrie Lee Ferguson with her commentary on Chapter 8 of "A Year at Mission Hill." Keep up with the highlights of the series in this super cool Prezi! And here's her takeaway post from Chapter 7 as well.

A nine-year-old holding his head in the corner, stressed. A kindergartner retained because he’s not reading on a “C” level. A four-year-old with one to two hours of homework every night. An entire school creating weeks of pressure for a state test that has the entire self-worth of a nine-year-old boy tied up and bound to it.

These are true stories I’ve heard in the past week, happening now, in the public schools in my district. As if children are not beautiful, joyful, natural and whole human beings, born with a million ways of seeing the world and contributing to its betterment. As if we all learn at the same pace, as if life were a race, as if we are nothing more than what our brains can retain. As if. But that’s what we tell them. That is what we tell them when we stuff them full of curriculum that focuses exclusively on the one human capacity of intellect and when we expect all their greatness to be stuffed into a test.

Each and every one of us is born with gifts to unfold, and we have an inherent urge to act out our unique expression. As children, we are aligned closely with our greatness, and we dream big dreams of what we might one day become. If schools wish to serve children by harnessing and guiding that greatness, then schools ought to re-think high-stakes testing and begin recognizing each student as a developing human being; a human being with the natural impulse and capacity to create, feel, sing, dance, empathize, and imagine new ways of living and being in the world.

This chapter of A Year at Mission Hill, centered on the theme, “The World of Work,” gives us a peek into how schools can do just that, which is to organically meet the student as an individual thinker, feeler, and creator. Watching the eighth graders take up an authentic project, prepare, engage and see their effort culminate in a hardbound book was to witness a key ingredient that drives individual excellence—enthusiasm.

To be enthused about our work is the fertile ground upon which our excellence can flower.

Schools shape our relationship with work from a very early age. Give a student hours of homework each night, and he will begin to believe work is a hard and tedious thing. Take a class out into the community, draw upon the student’s ideas, give him the opportunity to see his ideas actualized, and work is seen as joyful, engaging and fulfilling. When students carry these positive attitudes into their lives, they will excel as their natural state of joy is infused into the work they do.

If that is what we want, then the emotional life of the student matters. It matters now. It matters greatly.

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Tomorrow Is the Last Day He is Four

Emily Cherkin — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

Reflections on how a traumatic birth experience made changemaker-parent, Emily Cherkin, the mother she is today.

This morning, it snowed in Seattle. And it reminded me of the night Max was born, almost exactly five years ago, when it was sunny and rainy and windy and then, in the middle of the night, when we were upside down about time and date, we looked out the window and saw snow swirling around. I don't remember much about those early days and hours, but I do remember the snow.

Five years ago, newly pregnant, my husband and I were full of expectation and wonder at how much our lives were about to change. Like many mothers-to-be, I was fixated on the labor and delivery part of this journey. I felt somewhat confident the newborn challenges would be manageable, but I knew the labor and birth were all on me. I diligently took the birth classes, read the books, talked to our midwife and hired a doula.

The one piece of information from our birth class I recalled in the middle of a long and arduous labor was the phrase: "Transition is usually the shortest and most intense phase of labor, lasting about 30 minutes on average." When I arrived at the hospital birthing center, 24 hours into labor with Max and nearly fully dilated, I heard the nurses’ whispers: "Transition; she's in transition." Five hours later, I was still "in transition" and nothing I had learned in class seemed applicable anymore. It would be another seven hours before Max would make his appearance in the world.

During those hours before Max was born, a lot of things happened. It turned out that not only was he a “sunny-side up baby” whose head position was causing me tremendous back labor, but he was also tipping his head back and up—as though arching backwards to see us. Knowing him as I do now, this fit with his determined, strong, curious personality. At the time, however, it put us in a challenging position.

I joked afterwards—rather darkly—that we ended up needing (and using) almost every intervention possible, except a C-section, despite our boldest attempts to avoid interventions. At the climax of the emotionally charged day, the OB who’d been called in to assist told me I had three choices: vacuum, forceps or C-section. I opted for the first and second choices; how could I bear going into surgery NOW, after all we’d been through? From all I’d read and researched, a C-section was still major abdominal surgery, and I felt like we’d worked so hard—we were so close to meeting Max—that we could not “give up” now.

It turned out we almost needed a C-section. The vacuum did not work, despite two attempts, so the doctor turned to the forceps. It was 5:30 p.m. on a Monday. The room filled with people, reminding me of a circus car with clowns climbing out. Except this was not funny. Nurses, another OB, another midwife, two pediatricians, the anesthesiologist and our doula filed somberly into the room. The next 30 minutes were a blur of pain, tears, fear, hope and a deep longing within me for it to just be over.

At 6:01 p.m., nearly 36 hours after active labor started, Max was born. I kept asking, “Is he okay?” and crying, “I’m so sorry, baby” over and over again. Specialists whisked him off to be examined. I later learned they had been fearful that they might have to resuscitate him.

It was incredible how a single day could be both so joyous and terrifying. It would be many more weeks before I healed and many more weeks before poor Max, with his huge cone-shaped head, wounded from the vacuum and bruised from the forceps, would heal too. Our midwife called him a “warrior” who had “been through the war.”

I sometimes feel like I am cheating Max because every year, as his birthday rolls around, I do not always feel joy and excitement. I am excited he is growing older and doing more interesting things and blossoming into this amazing young person, but there is also grief in remembering. Aging is bittersweet; when we are young, we don't realize it is happening. When we are old enough to appreciate it, many years have already passed (didn't someone once say that "youth is wasted on the young?").

My emotions have been all over the map these past few days. My recent trip to California with just Max was important and wonderful. I am glad we made the time to do that together. But coming home was harder because all the stress of Life was still here, waiting for me. This week we hit the ground running—work and school and laundry and classes and planning his preschool birthday celebration. There was also his friends/family birthday party to plan and my thinking that hosting it at my house would somehow make it simpler (good grief, what WAS I thinking?). And now here we are, on the precipice of his last day as a four-year-old. I know that tomorrow night when I kiss him goodnight he will still be the same Max he was today and the same Max that will wake up Sunday morning.

But while his birthday is a celebratory day for Max and one that ultimately should bring us joy, it is also marks an anniversary for me of one of the hardest and most difficult days of my life. It's complicated when the day that is supposed to be one of the highlights of my life is also one of my greatest hurts. I tell my students and my children frequently that you can feel two emotions at the same moment. And for me, Max's birthday is the holding of two emotions, if not more. The further out I get from his actual birth, paradoxically, the more I seem to recall. It has taken many months and several of his birthdays for me to realize that what happened the day he was born was not my "fault.” It has taken me that long to find ways to have empathy for myself and our shared experience. But it hasn't been easy.

Yesterday in the car, Sylvie and I were listening to the kids' radio station, and a song came on (by the Okie Dokie Brothers) called "Along for the Ride." The song, about life and traveling down a river, gets to one lyric that says how I will go along for the ride if, "child, you'll be my guide." It made me start crying right there in the car. It made me think about how much I have learned about myself and life from being a parent to Max, and while yes, I have learned a lot about parenting too, I do not think this evolution of self would have ever occurred for me had I not had the birth experience I did with Max and had I never been Mom to Max. It made me realize how much Max is truly my guide, even though I am his parent. I cannot navigate these waters without understanding him, and every day he shows me how to do that better.

And every day that we (pardon the cliche) continue down this road, we also get further from the starting point. Mostly that's okay, because it means leaving behind something painful and scary and sad, but also it is painful and scary and sad to leave it because it means Max is further from being that tiny baby who fell asleep on my chest, who cried for us so often in the night (Why shouldn't he, given the birth experience he had? Why shouldn't he have that need?), who fell in love with trains before he was even two-years-old. I keep thinking I will remember all this, and some of it I may, but much of it slips away as I make space in my mind for new memories.

This is the crux of parenting—not the diaper changing and the spitting up and the messes and the tantrums—but the shifting of older memories and experiences to make room for the new, and us trying to hold on to them just a little longer, to glean a little more of the sweetness of our babies, before they slip away and turn five.

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Educating Changemakers in New York City

lwhite — Mon, 13 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

Four schools participate in the NYC Changemaker Schools Selection Panel.

Last Thursday, educators from across the New York City metropolitan area gathered to share the great work they are doing to cultivate their students as changemakers. The second selection panel in two weeks, the gathering shared several similarities with the previous week’s Bay Area Changemaker Schools Panel: culture and equity emerged again as important topics as well as the importance of giving students voice and the powerful influence of positive role models. However, this group of Changemaker School candidates brought some interesting new innovations to the table.

For example, the Brooklyn New School/ P.S. 146 is a living model of creating a small-school culture with a larger number of children than what’s typical of progressive small schools. This culture plays out in several interesting practices; students begin their study of the past by examining the trash bins of classrooms around the school because “we know people from what they leave behind.” Their students have also taken it upon themselves to use compostable lunch trays, inspiring other schools in Brooklyn to follow their lead.

Meanwhile, Cypress Hills Community School/P.S. 89 brought a fascinating perspective on parent involvement to the discussions. A very innovative school that has both a principal and a parent co-director, Cypress Hills Community School was founded by parents who were dissatisfied with the public education options in their community and has maintained this commitment to parent leadership and changemaking ever since.

Granville T. Woods Elementary/P.S. 335 also had many interesting practices to share. A Peace First School, P. S. 335 has recently transitioned from being a rather violent community to having some of the lowest measures of in-school fighting and violence in their district. According to Principal Laverne Nimmons, this all began with telling the students, staff, and parents of the community how wonderful they really are and following up with that belief in them through words and action.

Additionally, Riverdale Country School told the other schools and panelists about their cutting-edge work in design-thinking and character education, which was featured in Paul Tough’s best-selling book, How Children Succeed.

It was exciting to have so many teacher-changemakers come together to share the great work they’re doing in their classrooms every day. We are even more excited to see what happens when these educators are united with social entrepreneurs and other changemakers from across the community. Stay tuned!

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A Year at Mission Hill: The World of Work

Michelle Hughes — Fri, 10 May 2013 04:06:00 +0000

The eighth of ten expert takeaway posts from Principal Michelle Hughes on the school documentary series sweeping the web.

Editor's Note: Here is Michelle Hughes with her commentary on Chapter 8 of "A Year at Mission Hill"! Keep up with the highlights of the series in this super cool Prezi! And here's her takeaway post on Chapter 7 as well.

What is the purpose of education?

Our nation’s inability to answer this question with certainty grounded in a cultural ethos has led to cyclical upheavals in our national pedagogy. Looking back over my twenty five years in this business, I think the entire debate can be percolated down to two essential and conflictual aims that have fought for supremacy from the birth of our compulsory system of education:

The purpose of education is to prepare future workers.
The purpose of education is to cultivate an educated and enlightened citizenry.

Recently, some 21st Century Education theorists have attempted to mesh these two camps, seeing the division as artificial. While these "21sters" are proponents of the notion that the primary purpose of education is to prepare our students for the work of the future, they have come to the reasonable conclusion that the nature of 21st century work demands that our children be able to think about and do the types of things for which progressive education has always prepared them. Thus they have seized upon essential features of progressive education such as cooperative learning, inquiry-based learning, presentation and exhibition, and arts integration, renaming them The 4C’s: collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. In progressive education, teachers are researchers; in the 21st century lexicon, they compose professional learning communities (PLC’s).

Aside from an astonishing lack of originality, is this a satisfactory compromise of these two aims?

Left to their own devices, young children are already artists, scientists, innovators, and collaborators--and cooperative learning, creativity, higher level thinking, and inquiry are the natural methods they use in these exciting endeavors. 21sters seek to optimize our children’s natural imperatives to learn and infuse them with (the highly questionable) RIGOR, in the misguided effort to create classrooms that are pointed towards some point in the future world of work. It should be noted that rigor has stridency, austerity, and hardness as synonyms, and its effect is to dampen the very things our children will need most to be successful: their essential intrinsic motivation to explore and learn.

In The World of Work, Mission Hill teachers go deeper instead, infusing the world of work into the very age appropriate environment of the classroom, which says that everything is connected. The work we do--whether writing, baking, or protecting animals--engages our abilities to collaborate, estimate, measure, plan, explicate and communicate. In The World of Work, we see adults meeting children where they are and engaging them in their important work through modeling and mentorship.

The truth is that the progressive classroom does more to prepare children for their futures than the traditional classroom before the idea of adult work is ever mentioned: Just as adults are, the child in the progressive classroom is faced with numerous important choices about their work. With whom will they work? What will be the project or book or research topic? How will they plan and organize themselves to be successful in its completion? How will they self-advocate for an idea or need they have? What method will they use to solve this math, interpersonal, or societal problem? Just as adults are, the child in the progressive classroom is held responsible for the choices she makes; when the less productive or wrong path is taken, she is asked to consider how she will correct the situation. The child is considered to be in possession of sound reasoning and is expected to employ it, raising the expectation the child has for herself.

These are the skills needed to live and work in a democracy, and as John Dewey reminds us: The primary purpose of education is to nurture participation in democracy.

Here's her takeaway post on Chapter 9.

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A Year at Mission Hill - Chapter 8: The World of Work

Start Empathy — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:02:55 +0000

Ten videos. One year. A public school trying to help children learn and grow. The national conversation we need to be having.

And on other days throughout the week, we will showcase top quality wrap-around content from StartEmpathy contributors, including expert commentary, radio podcasts, and even animated shorts!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's reaction to Chapter 8 from Principal Michelle Hughes -- and much, much more!

Here's Chapter 9.

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