Recently my posts have been quite tame so I thought that this one would be a bit more provocative. I didn't have time to post about Earth Day, other than the video that I shared with students. So this first video is a lovely ode to the Earth that expresses our gratitude for what we have and should be protecting.
Then I read this article about how the billionaires are getting richer and richer during COVID 19. You might say what has that got to do with Earth Day. Well, this is where it starts to become provocative. Is this the way of the world, the rich benefit from others' misfortunes whether it be health or environmental? I have been a Michael Moore fan for years because he doesn't try to be politically correct. One could argue that political correctness is what has got us into such a mess politically around the world. Anyway, that is another story. On Earth Day Michael Moore released a documentary film, Planet Humans, and claimed that we should all watch it. So I did. This is the link to the rich getting richer. Guess what? The richest people in the world are now making money from the "green movement" and driving them in a direction that isn't particularly 'green' but makes money, eg biomass fuel. As always I leave it up to you to decide what you think.
"Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.
Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late."
Finally, as I would have predicted because you can't criticize the rich, that's fake news, or politically incorrect, the "green movement" wants Michael Moores film banned and taken down as this Guardian article points out.
"Planet of the Humans has provoked a furious reaction from scientists and campaigners, however, who have called for it be taken down. Films for Action, an online library of videos, temporarily took down the film after describing it as “full of misinformation”, though they later reinstated it, saying they did not want accusations of censorship to give the film “more power and mystique than it deserves”. A free version on YouTube has been viewed more than 3m times.
A letter written by Josh Fox, who made the documentary Gasland, and signed by various scientists and activists, has urged the removal of “shockingly misleading and absurd” film for making false claims about renewable energy. Planet of the Humans “trades in debunked fossil fuel industry talking points” that question the affordability and reliability of solar and wind energy, the letter states, pointing out that these alternatives are now cheaper to run than fossil fuels such as coal."
I hope that anyone reading this is healthy and sane during this period of uncertainty. Teachers and kids alike are grieving over the loss of freedom, social interactions, and normalcy. Many families, even those never before considered at-risk, are terrified of the potential for financial ruin or catastrophic health risks. Since I’m all about the love and spreading optimism, I humbly share a silver-lining for teachers and the kids that they serve.
The fact that you are being told to “teach online” in some vague version of “look busy” may mean that teachers are finally being trusted. Districts large and small are abandoning grading as they recognize that education (at home) is inequitable. I guess it’s better late than never to discover the obvious.
Parents and superintendents are vanquishing the needless infliction of nonsense known as homework. Standardized testing is being canceled, an actual miracle. Colleges have recognized that enrolling students next Fall is more important than SAT or ACT scores. Each of these emergency measures has been advocated by sentient educators forever.
So, there is reason to celebrate (briefly), but then you must act! Use this time to remake schooling in a way that’s more humane, creative, meaningful, and learner-centered. This is your moment!
In the absence of compelling models of what’s possible, the forces of darkness will fill the void. Each of us needs to create models of possibility.
The fact that kids’ days are now unencumbered by school could mean that they finally have adequate time to work on projects that matter rather than being interrupted every 23 minutes. I recently wrote, What’s Your Hurry?, about teaching computer programming, but it’s applicable to other disciplines.
Project-based learning offers a context for learner-centered pedagogy. I was reminded that the new edition of our book, “Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom,” includes several chapters on effective prompt setting that may be useful in designing projects for kids at home. Invent To Learn also lays out the case for learning-by-doing. Use that information to guide your communication with administrators, parents, and the community.
The following are but a few suggestions for seizing the moment and reinventing education after this crisis is resolved so we may all return to a new, better, normal.
Practice “Less us, more them”
Anytime a teacher feels the impulse to intervene in an educational transaction, it is worth pausing, taking a breath, and asking, “Is there less that I can do and more that the student(s) can do?” The more agency shifted to the student, the more they will learn.
One exercise you can practice teaching online, as well as face-to-face, is talk less. If you typically lecture for 40 minutes, try 20. If you talk for 20 minutes, try 10. If you talk for 10, try 5. In my experience, there is rarely an instance in which a minute or two of instruction is insufficient before asking students to dosomething. While teaching online, try not to present content, but rather stimulate discussion or organize activities to maximize student participation. Piaget reminds us that “knowledge is a consequence of experience.”
Remember, less is more
My colleague Brian Harvey once said, “The key to school reform is throw out half the curriculum — any half.” This is wise advice during sudden shift to online teaching and the chaos caused by the interruption of the school year.
Focus on the big ideas. Make connections between topics and employ multiple skills simultaneously. Abandon the compulsion to “deliver” a morbidly obese curriculum. Simplify. Edit. Curate.
Launch students into open-ended learning adventures
Since the bowdlerized and abridged basals are locked in school, encourage kids to luxuriate with real books! Imagine if kids had the freedom to select texts that interest them and to read them from cover-to-cover without a comprehension quiz or vocabulary lesson interrupting every paragraph! Suggest that kids post reviews on Amazon.com for an authentic audience rather than making a mobile or writing a five-paragraph essay. Use Amazon.com or Goodreads to find other books you might enjoy.
Been meaning to learn Final Cut X, Lightroom, a new programming language, or any other piece of sophisticated software? Employ groups of kids to tackle the software alone or together and employ their knowledge once school returns. Let them share what they know and lead.
Contribute to something larger than yourself
This is the time for teachers to support kids in creating big creative projects. Write a newspaper, novel, poetry anthology, play, cookbook, or joke book. Make a movie and then make it better. Create a virtual museum. Share your work, engage in peer editing, and share to a potentially infinite audience.
Use this time to rev-up or revive sound pedagogical practices like genre study, author study, process writing, interdisciplinary projects and the other educative good stuff too often sacrificed due to a lack of sufficient time. You now have the time to teach well.
Take note of current events
Daily life offers a world of inspiration and learning invitations. Why not engage kids in developmentally appropriate current events or take advantage of opportunities like JSTOR being open to the public during the COVID-19 crisis? Here’s a possible student prompt.
“Go to JSTOR, figure out how it works, find an interesting article, and share what you learned with the class.”
Let Grow
Change the world by challenging students to learn something on their own by embracing the simple, yet profound, Let Grow school project. A simple assignment asks kids to do something on their own with their parent’s permission and share their experiences with their peers.
Stand on the shoulders of giants
Every problem in education has been solved and every imaginable idea has been implemented somewhere. Teachers should use this time to read books about education written by experts and learn the lessons of the masters.
Apprentice with the world’s greatest living mathematician
In A Personal Road to Reinventing Mathematics Education, I wrote about how I have been fortunate enough to know and spend time with some of the world’s most prominent mathematicians and that while not a single one of them ever made me feel stupid, plenty of math teachers did. Stephen Wolfram is arguably the world’s leading mathematician/scientist/computer scientist. Over the past few years, he has become interested in teachers, kids, and math education. Dr. Wolfram spoke at Constructing Modern Knowledge, runs an annual summer camp for high school mathematicians, and has made many of his company’s remarkable computational tools available for learners.
Acknowledging that many students are home do to the pandemic this week, Wolfram led a free online Ask Me Anything session about an array of math and science topics, ostensibly for kids, as well as a “follow-along” computation workshop. You, your children, or your students have unprecedented access to all sorts of expertise, just a click away! This is like Albert Einstein making house calls!
A bit of exploration will undoubtedly uncover experts in other disciplines sharing their knowledge and talents online as well.
Abandon hysterical internet policies
The immediate need for laptops, Internet access, student email, plus the expedient use of available technologies like YouTube, FaceTime, Skype, Twitter, Instagram, and Zoom has instantly dispelled the hysterical and paranoid centralized approach to the Internet schools have labored under for the past twenty-five years. The Internet has never been dependent on the policies of your school or your paraprofessional IT staff to succeed. Perhaps we will learn what digital citizenship actually looks like after teachers and children are treated like modern citizens.
Heed Seymour Papert’s advice
When I worked with Seymour Papert, he created a document titled, “Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab.” This one sheet of paper challenges educators to create productive contexts for learning in the 21st Century. Can you aspire to make these recommendations a reality in your classroom(s)?
Do twenty things to do with a computer
In 1971, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon published, Twenty Things to Do with a Computer. How does your school measure up a half-century later?
Program your own Gameboy
Yes, you read that correctly. Here is everything you need to know to write your own computer games, build an arcade, or program a handheld gaming device!
Teach reading and programming simultaneously
Upper elementary and middle school students could learn to program in Scratch and develop their reading fluency at the same time. Learn how in A Modest Proposal.
Share my sense of optimism
Shortly before the COVID-19 crisis, I published, Time for Optimism, in which I shared reasons why progressive education is on the march and how we might teach accordingly. We can do this!
Happy Easter. Rabbits do get a mention in this video that I want to share with you. It is about our hearts and our emotions. I have been very impressed by the way our professional community has come together and supported each other through these days of social distancing and quarantining. I believe this is all part of the interwoven tapestry of our culture of care. We have through mindfulness, positive education, focusing on positive emotions created a culture that connects, cares and is resilient. These days have shown that we care for each other and for each of our students. It is why our approach to educating students, and this emergency situation, is and will be even more the right way of educating children in the 2020s. Why I am sharing this talk is because I have always believed that if we are going to be successful and believe in something it has to come from the heart. However, I used the word 'heart' figuratively as I only saw it as an organ that kept us alive. This talk goes much deeper and gives us greater insight into the connection between our emotions, our hearts, and our health. Reflecting on this talk made me realize how important our mission of empowering students with skills like mindfulness and positive emotions is for them to take control of their lives.
"A record of our emotional life is written on our hearts," says cardiologist and author Sandeep Jauhar. In a stunning talk, he explores the mysterious ways our emotions impact the health of our hearts -- causing them to change shape in response to grief or fear, to literally break in response to emotional heartbreak -- and calls for a shift in how we care for our most vital organ.
For this week's Food for Thought, I thought a bit of provocation and alternative thinking maybe a good way of occupying ourselves whilst in our world of 'stay at home' social distancing. I am sharing two alternative ways of looking at two very different topics, School, and Covid19. Both of which start by questioning popular thought about school and COVID 19.
Starting with, School. "Frustrated with the traditional school system, a family in Los Angeles pulls their two children out of one of the highest-rated schools in the area and takes their education into their own hands. In the quest to better their children’s lives, they must overcome long-standing assumptions about education and face the social ramifications of their bold decision. " Many of the issues talked about in this film are ones that we are trying to address within the parameters of traditional school. I think you will find it interesting as it raises many questions that were highlighted in the 1960s and '70s by authors like John Holt and yet are still with us today.
"Class Dismissed shows parents a glimpse into the future of education. Everyone concerned with education would benefit from watching this film." - John Taylor Gatto, Former New York State Teacher of the Year and author
Linked very nicely to the questions the family raise at the core of the film, is an article by Hannah S. Sheehy, an IB Diploma student from Sevenoaks School in Kent, UK, who was about to take her IB Diploma examinations, which as we know have been canceled. She returned to Singapore, completed 14 days quarantine and thought about her education. In an article published in The Straits Times, she reflects upon what she would have done differently if she had known that there would be no examinations. Very interestingly this is how she concludes her article. I say interestingly because Sevenoaks is regarded as one of the top IB Diploma schools worldwide with an average diploma score of over 40 points. So it is most likely she would have been defined by her results as highly intelligent and a successful student:
"But I digress, I still seem to be asking myself if my education was wasted? But I do not think so as, in my opinion, doing well in examinations does not equate to education.
Exams are a measure not of a student's intelligence or even dedication, but of a student's performance on one day.
If there were no exams, besides everything aforementioned, I would have focused on learning not for a slip of paper with a number on it. I would have learned about the love of learning and spent more time with my friends. I would have fallen in love with subjects and topics, and most of all I hope I would have learned from people and not from textbooks."
Secondly, COVID 19: A leading Stanford professor raising questions about the interpretation of the impact of COVID 19 globally. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questioned the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article,Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” In the video interview with Peter Robinson, Dr. Bhattacharya explains his questioning of the logic and data that has informed government strategies around the world. I believe that many of us have raised the same questions in our heads as Dr. Bhattacharya talks about in this interview.
There is no doubt that the world is and will be different as a consequence of COVID 19. We might see the further diminishing of the influence of neoliberalism and in its place a return to strong central government, supported by increased acceptance of AI as our protector against such events as pandemics. Or perhaps not. We will see. However, one thing that will remain important is the need to question conventional wisdom and develop alternate and original thinking and problem-solving if we are to find solutions to the challenges that lie ahead in the 2020s.
