Cathy Larson
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The Future of Education

5/2/2016

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If I were to ask you to list the conditions for powerful learning, I’ll bet you would come away with a list very similar to mine, including: safe environment, personal investment, real world application, fun, relevance to students’ lives, social, interesting questions, positive environment, real audience, passion, autonomy, challenging, not time constrained.

I’ll also bet that in a room of 100 adults, not one of them would say that powerful learning comes with sitting in rows, one-sized curriculum, teacher controlled, standardized tests, emphasis on grades, no choice, lack of relevance, no real world application.

So why do we continue to run our schools the same way they’ve been run for over 100 years? Why do we continue to test, emphasize grades, restrict learning to the textbook, expect all kids to learn at the same rate and ability, and isolate content in 50-minute blocks?

I read an article this week published in the summer of 2014 by the Hawken Review written by the Head of Hawken School, D. Scott Looney. He spoke of the future of education -- the scary, daunting, exciting time in education where “we are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”

We live in an extraordinary time in human history. We are witness to unprecedented economic, environmental, and political instability. At the same time, we are witness to incredible advances in technology, medicine, and communication. This paradox of fear and excitement poses a challenge to us all, young and old. And yet we continue to teach our children in an antiquated system of sameness, as if we need all our children learning ubiquitous content, at the same time, at the same rate, in isolation. Where is the power in this model?

I was thinking this week about the interviews we see on TV every year wherein some host stops random people on the street to ask them questions about some factoid we all “learned” in elementary, middle or high school. We laugh collectively as we watch the interviewee hem and haw before answering incorrectly. Do we laugh because we know, or do we laugh because we, ourselves, would answer incorrectly, as well?

These interviews simply reflect the truth that we forget most of what we “learn” in school. So why do we continue to teach and test content knowledge like this?

Powerful learning, the knowledge we remember, comes from moments in which we were completely immersed and engaged. True learning requires a personal interest in what’s being learned. The process of learning for the sake of a test just isn’t effective or purposeful. In fact, I argue that kids with access to the internet and technology are “learning” more outside of school than they are inside of school.

So what should schools be doing?

We need to be teaching kids how to USE content. Teaching kids how to think, collaborate, wonder. Teaching  kids how to navigate ambiguity, complexity and interconnectedness.

Our kids need to find a passion that pushes them to “learn” what matters to them, so their learning can solve problems and impact the world -- or at least their own small corner of the world.

It’s time to rethink what we do on a school’s campus and why we do it.
​

The future of education? It’s going to require we ignite students’ curiosity and interests -- or we aren’t going to have much of a future at all.
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Writing can be fun.

3/15/2016

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If you're the parent of children who love to write, then consider yourself, and your children, lucky. This love of writing will serve them well throughout K-12, into college and beyond.

I was this kid, and I still am. I love to write. I write all the time for a variety of audiences and purposes. I love the process, the discovery that comes from it, the quiet introspection, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from reading my finished pieces. This doesn’t mean I think writing is easy; I grapple with ideas, phrasing, organization, focus and revision with everything I write, including this weekly column.

And I love working with kids who enjoy writing. These kids embrace the process, get excited to try new strategies, and even write at home on their own for fun: short stories, fan fiction, blogs, poetry.

But if you're the parent of children who avoid writing, complain about any writing task, and struggle to get words on a page, then join the ranks of those of us who feel your pain.

As much as I like the prolific young writers, I also love working with kids who struggle. I believe these kids who struggle do so because they've lost their way. They’re stuck and disgruntled. They've had no freedom in the only environment where writing is expected while growing up -- the classroom. In this environment, they are expected to write what they're told, when they're told, and how they're told. Then when they turn in the piece into which they've poured time and energy and heart, a teacher tells them all the things they've done wrong, bleeding red ink all over their papers. I don’t blame these kids for hating the process. Who would want to continue to write after that?

As parents, we need to be proponents for asking teachers to give choice back to our young writers. We need to fight to have them give back to our kids the freedom to explore ideas and find topics that interest them, in order to help them discover that writing can be fun again. We need to demand that more time be spent developing this lifelong skill.

I know it’s a crazy idea, but what if a classroom teacher actually pulled kids out from behind their sterile desks -- and let them write on the playground, sitting on a bench, or lying on the shady cool grass. Would it end in chaos? Pandemonium? Nope. What we’d ultimately end up with is a generation full of kids who've learned to love to write again.

This transition, from hating to loving to write, can’t happen overnight. And it also can’t happen if the only writing that’s ever done is limited to one, 1-hour block every couple weeks. Writing is just like any sport or activity or hobby or dog training -- it takes practice to master.

The problem with writing, however, is that the practice happens alone. Writing isn’t like basketball where you can see the players sweat, get hurt, get back up, and finally collapse from exhaustion at the end of a game. With writing, the agony and struggle is just as real, but it’s much less overt. So when we see thousands of novels at Barnes & Noble or at the library, kids simply believe the authors were all just born with talent -- that they were all each able to just sit down and write their masterpieces in one sitting. No sweat. No struggle. Oh, how I wish our kids could watch me craft this column every week -- to see just how wrong they are.

We need to continually remind our struggling young authors that writers have to practice, too.

The next immediate swing in education and our local school district needs to be to make writing ubiquitous. It needs to be happening in every classroom, every day, across every subject. The writing tasks can be long, short, high-stakes, low-stakes, individual or with a partner. It just needs to be done.

And the more engaging and purposeful the writing, the less resistance we’ll get from kids -- and the more they’ll all learn to love it, too.
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What are the "Habits of Mind"?

1/11/2016

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When we were students in the classroom, the world was a much different place. We were expected to read from a textbook and answer questions. We were expected to learn a math concept during class and do all the odd-numbered problems for homework. We were expected to memorize historical dates and names. We were expected to gather content knowledge and regurgitate that information on some test or quiz for the sake of a grade. Once done, the class moved on, and we were expected to do the same things all over again with new chapters and more content.

Then the world changed on us -- it become more immediate, more global, more intricate, more instantaneous.
With this change in the world should come a change in the expectations of our kids in the classroom. We can’t teach the same way anymore. Our kids need -- more.

One concept you’ll be hearing more about in the coming years is one called “Habits of Mind.” This phrase is being discussed in all our local districts, and I want to take a few minutes to be sure you have a working knowledge of its meaning.

The “Habits of Mind” are directly tied to literacy: reading, writing, speaking and listening. But literacy is not as simple as just this any more, because the demands of being literate in the 21st century are different from what it meant to be literate when we were in school.

Nowadays, students must learn how to engage in their literacy.

Let me put it another way. In the 21st century, literate students will not only be able to read, write, speak and listen, but they will be able to do so as scientists, historians, engineers, artists, writers, philosophers, mathematicians, engineers. Literacy today, in our changed world, means that our kids are literate from the perspective of all content areas.

In a reading class, being literate today means that our kids not only read and comprehend, but that they are also discerning and open-minded, questioning and assessing the claims and reasonings of assumptions and premises.
In a writing class, being literate means that our kids are able to write more than just a five paragraph essay. Literate writers both write -- and read -- with purpose. They look beneath the writing for the writer’s intent, bias and craft. And writers read as writers, not just as readers, developing a style all their own because of it.

In a history class, being literate means our kids aren’t just memorizing who authored a treaty or the capital of a U.S. state, but they are reading primary-source documents, evaluating evidence and asking questions about cause/effect, the past influencing the present, turning points, change and continuity.

In a math class, being literate means our kids can do more than the odd-numbered problems. We want our up-and-coming mathematicians to be pattern sniffers, experimenters, tinkerers, inventors, and visualizers who persevere and reason with precision, driving our next technology innovations.

In a science class, being literate means our kids have opportunities to do more than read about science from a textbook. Our next generation of scientists needs to be hands-on, curious, open to new ideas, intellectually honest, imaginative, creative and skeptical -- all at the same time.

These examples don’t come even close to the full range of “Habits” we want to see from our next generation of literate students, but it is the type of instruction we should be demanding of our schools.

I want my own kids to be able to manipulate their knowledge, respond to varying demands of each discipline, critique, be strategic, value evidence, understand others’ perspectives, demonstrate independence and be empowered to do and be -- more.
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Because these “habits” are habits worth having.
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