Let's be clear: I am not a fan of pure number data. In fact, I hate it with a passion I reserve for pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and record producers. A raw number attached to a kid is as good to me as a detached toe without the patient. Without the knowledge on how the toe became detached- When? Where? In what conditions? Whose toe is it?- it doesn't do me much good. Only in a limited number of circumstances will it help me understand a situation where I need to act. What is more maddening, is that this number data could potentially help all educators and learners understand schooling in a much clearer way...
...if only it was compared to the real data that connects to peoples' lives.
Our kids are clearly more than test scores. Yet, the testing fetishists (people who love testing so much they don't think of anything else) seem to believe that scores are all that matters. Test scores have more to do with student demographics than they do teacher quality. So what are educators and learners to do?
Rather than let these massive sets of information go to waist (it is often junk food, is it not?) perhaps we actually need more data. Yes. I said it. MORE DATA. I just think we need to go away from the kind that's been shoved down our throats and start to look for the information that really matters.
We know that the most successful people are not necessarily more talented than others. They are not better. They have more hope. We need to know how hopeful our students are and work to build hope if we are to truly make a difference. For example, use the Hope Scale as a meaningful pre-mid-post assessment to see if your school and teachers are building kids up or keeping them down.
Questions About Our Students must be answered if we wish to hit students where they emotionally live. That is to say, we have to reach their emotional centers if we want to reach their cognitive ones. This means we have to take them from where they are and let them branch out as co-operating individuals working together to make ours a better world. Thus, identity development needs to be nurtured. This means educators, who more often come from the dominating class than from the neighborhoods they teach, must not shy away from issues such as race, gender, or class. By teaching the controversy, we deal with the politics of education head-on. We are told to remain neutral. That's like being neutral on a moving train. You're either on for the duration of the ride or you're jumping off. When we choose to be so-called "neutral," all we are doing is standing in support of whatever the dominating powers want to be supported.
Questions About School and Learning also must be queried and paired with demographic and performance markers and trends. These can help educators assess students' prior emotional engagement (or disengagement) with schooling. If students have been traumatized by their schooling- in other words, their social, emotional, mental, and physical selves have been threatened by life in some way that has not yet been healed- then very little can be done to convince the students of the value of 19th Century American History or Biology. The only way forward is to assess...and then address the emotional (and sometimes physical) traumas experienced by our youth. We educators claim too often that we're not therapists. While this is true, we don't stand a chance of getting to curriculum until we address these unmet needs.
We also need to make our curriculum based in action research. Yes, of course we need to hit the prescribed curriculum (really, what would happen if we didn't and instead based student learning opportunities on student need?). Instead of looking at topographic data in a textbook, have kids learn how to build 3D models online and post them to Google Earth. Instead of learning about microbiology from a Bill Nye video, have the kids go out to the dirt behind the school and get samples there. Instead of diagramming sentences, have kids translate them into academic English and then do a compare-and-contrast of their favorite cumbias or hip hop tracks. Again, then teach them to pair their information with GeoCoding (Google it) and post their information online so they can learn about the diversities in their neighborhoods. Survey to help with GeoCoding where HMS students live.
Ultimately, what this all comes down to is basic creativity. Get rid of your textbook altogether or use it ONLY as a guide. When I was teaching in Japan, my first day I asked what textbooks we used. I was laughed out of the room. When I returned, I asked why they laughed. I was told, "My dear boy! We in the international schools know our subject matter so well as to not even necessitate a textbook."
Perhaps we should strive for such excellence. If not, consider how that's working for us.
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