It Takes Some Getting Used To: Rethinking Curriculum for the 21st Century

Finally! We are talking about a how instead of just a why! This chapter offers another set of ideas and principles that I can't take time and space to itemize, but I'm going to list them for the sake of maintaining the complete list. Costa and Kallick, the authors of this chapter, discuss the need for students to practice the skills that will make them successful in life, rather than learn the information they may or may not need later- today's world is about critical thinking and problem solving, i.e. the processes. So this list of 16 Habits of Mind identify the necessary attitudes and dispositions that transcend the learning of children and adults in all aspects of life:
1. Persisting
2. Managing impulsivity
3. Listening with understanding and empathy
4. Thinking flexibly
5. Metacognition
6. Striving for accuracy and precision
7. Questioning and problem posing
8. Applying past knowledge to novel situations
9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
10. Gathering data through all senses
11. Creating, imagining, and innovating
12. Responding with wonderment and awe
13. Taking responsible risks
14. Finding humor
15. Thinking interdependently
16. Remaining open to continuous learning

So...I can't argue with these, and I especially accept them with the staircase model of developing the Habits of Mind, also discussed in this chapter...I'm just not sure how else to respond. Bloom's taxonomy is only 6 levels, Costa's levels of questioning only distinguish 3- maybe I feel somewhat overwhelmed with 16, no matter how much I agree with each of them? Or maybe my unavoidable skepticism with all new "ground-breaking educational structures" won't allow me to buy in to it quite yet, especially knowing that I would probably be on my own with it for awhile (I've written before about the slow rate of progress in education). But, I suppose all of this is to be expected too, which is why the authors include the curriculum mind shifts at the end of the chapter. We probably just aren't ready yet for this new approach to learning because it doesn't jive with the system we have, and we would prefer not to disrupt what we know. But I love these closing lines of this chapter as well as the book (and my GEM responses to the book), "Growth and change are found in disequilibrium, not balance. It takes some getting used to."

A Classroom as Wide as the World

One of my advisors during my semester abroad in Costa Rica said, "If everyone traveled, there would be no poverty in the world." Now, part of me feels like this is an oversimplification, but then a much larger part of me whole-heartedly supports this position- an excellent springboard into a discussion of this chapter. I think I get the characteristic from my mother, a forever-lover of travel and world culture, but I have always felt an urgency to discover anything outside of my own "four walls of reality." Whether that be a different part of my own city, a different state in my own country, or another part of the world, I feel drawn to discover people and places beyond what I already know. Overall, I recognize my personal benefit in my opportunities to make those discoveries; in which case I am so pleased to find the need for global literacy in today's students impressed so strongly by this author.

The need for expanding our "education's borders" should not be merely about catching up with the rest of the world's academic achievement, because I strongly believe one hand washes the other. We (as in the educators of America) cannot act as though education is a race to some finish, competing against the education of other countries; because today's world is becoming more and more about "us" working with "them" rather than the us trying to outdo them like our parents and grandparents (cough, space race, cough). If we actually focus outside of ourselves and examine how we fit into the much bigger, global Us, then our students will naturally grow to think about their global peers as partners with important skills to contribute.

So yes, obviously a teacher can't just snap and automatically make the students aware of and appreciate other parts of the world, but that's why the process takes all of us (America's educators again) working together from the beginning- studying language as early as possible, then world economy, science, culture, technology,personal travel, all while addressing history within a global context, etc. One teacher can't do it all alone, although I am certainly in support of global professional development.....traveling! In all seriousness, nothing can influence a student's empathy for the world better than the example of the teacher, and nothing can harbor more empathy in the teacher than actually experiencing the world herself. That enters into administration support- unless the teacher can manage to go by her own means! :)

Five Socio-Technology Trends that Change Everything in Learning and Teaching

I'm pretty tired of talking about social networking, but it is pretty amazing how social production has become such a prominent aspect of the Internet. I've never thought about how much of the Internet really is created or expanded by "amateurs"- why shouldn't students who do that get credit for what they contribute? They are gathering, analyzing, synthesizing, applying, commenting on, and collaborating with the information- all the same things we strive to teach them in class, just with information the teacher picked out ahead of time. There must be a place for truly relevant and real-world Web production in the modern curriculum. At the very least, I plan to include it in my classroom (so to speak).

The Semantic Web and media grids ideas still confuse me a tad, but that is understandable given my somewhat archaic approach to the Internet. I will say that what I've gathered about these new technologies gives me the smallest glimmer of hope for navigating the Internet. I have severely limited research skills, and I've become concerned about facilitating research for my students. How can I instill skills that I don't have myself? But, it seems that the Internet "developers" are catching on to my dilemmas with sifting through the vastness of information by identifying each piece of it as it goes onto the Internet. An appropriate ID will make searching for something so much easier and....faster! I may not have to hate research after all! Modern learning is so not a cathedral- we all really are in a lively, interactive bazaar.

New School Versions: Reinventing and Reuniting School Program Structures

I have been wondering about these topics on my own for awhile now, frustrated because I have ideas, but keep coming back to the limits of the traditional school design structure. The topic doesn't really go too far beyond regular rotation or block schedules?; weekly/biweekly schedules? I won't really touch on the typical school year calendar from August to May (because I spent 8 weeks of my summer in class this year, and pretty much despised the entire concept!), but I suppose there are people who want to learn things that would best be taught in the summer...somewhere. The point is, I agree with Jacobs' mantra "form should follow instruction"- we can't keep reorganizing the contents of a package while we keep using the same sized and shaped box.

I think there are just far too few people willing to take those first drastic steps out of the box to make it actually happen, especially in the same place at the same time. But the schools that have those people, and really are kicking education up a notch, have rave results that the rest of the world ignores. Why? Is it funding? Manpower? I can imagine the vast amount of work and funding needed if we were to establish curriculum groupings other than simply age level. Certainly the change could mean bright futures for multiples of students, but at what sacrifice? Can we take the risk when plenty of students are achieving bright futures in the system we have right now anyway? Once we spend this money for an overhaul, what happens if it doesn't meet students' needs like we thought it would? I get it- I think. We're moving in that direction, but at a sickeningly slow pace because there is not enough evidence of success to outweigh the "risks." Eventually, change will have to happen, but people have to stay gutsy enough to keep pushing for it.

Upgrading the Content: Provocation, Invigoration, and Replacement

I can't exactly itemize my comments on each topic of this chapter, or my post will easily be its own chapter. The author herself itemizes the potential upgrades to each of the curriculum areas. I won't respond to each, but I'll start with an agreement to the upgrade in the first place. Let's face it- a lot of the stuff we teach and expect the students to "know" for the state assessments doesn't ever get thought about once the student graduates high school (maybe college). As hard as it is for me to admit, I probably couldn't confidently tell you the contributions of the Italian explorers or the Eastern Indian trade routes- significant points in the 4th grade social studies curriculum. However, I gathered a much more contextual, global understanding of the explorer's influence on world society when, during my study in Costa Rica, I escaped the pro-Anglo slant of my American education. Not to say we should stop teaching those topics, but there are clearly more relevant aspects of the the stories than the isolated lists of what "good the contributed to the founding of our country." Of course, that's just the social studies.

I would be remiss to pass over the discussion of English Language and Literature, but I was also intrigued by Jacobs' inclusion of Health and P.E. in this discussion. I certainly have less-than-positive flashbacks of the 20-year-old substance abuse video tapes in the makeshift classroom on the gymnasium stage; but I just thought that was Health! This empowerment through science approach seems so forward-thinking, yet at the same time like the only sensible way the "teach health" all along!

As for Literature, I can't say much for the novelty of the author's suggestions. At this point, film studies, Google Lit-Trips and poetry slams feel pretty "been there, done that." But, the whole approach to language of any kind as the development of logic through making meaning, makes perfect sense! There's no point to reading if there's no reason for writing, but there's no point to write if we don't benefit from speaking- which is obviously false. It's all about communicating and receiving a message. Aside from that, is there really a point to teaching anything else?