Edu Change & Student Advocacy

     Part of the challenge in educational reform is that not everyone defines learning or education the same way. Sure, we all refer to things such as literacy, college and career ready, 21st century skills, etc.      However, what is the core purpose of one’s education? Beyond specifics related to employment skills, literacy skills and standards mastery, I offer up this idea: Education is meant to transform one’s life. In other words, education has to dramatically, or even radically, transform the person into a new, improved person that is more emotionally, socially, and intellectually ready for any challenge the world has to offer.      Should we as educators not be fascinated with the idea of transformation? Think about it. When you reflect on your own education, what key experiences or learning opportunities can you identify that essentially changed you as a person? I would venture to say that if you made a list, it would look si...

     The term DIY – Do It Yourself – has been around for over a century. Originally, it referred to those that would rely on themselves for everything from home repairs to various fix-it projects.      In more contemporary times, it was the anthem for the punk rock and alternative music movements that discovered that bands did not have to depend on large, corporate record companies, booking agencies or management entities to start their careers. Instead, these bands could record and release their own music, book their own shows and take their music directly to the people without the corporate middleman.      Education is no stranger to the DIY movement either. Indeed, much of the spirit of charter schools was the idea that a group of like-minded educators, parents or community members could start their own schools based on the needs of their students.      So, what is the DIY movement mean now to the profession of education ...

      As a student, did you ever have a teacher that could talk the talk, but did not walk the walk?       Well, I’ll never forget having on obese PE teacher in middle school. I am not here to discredit someone for being obese. Indeed, as an adult, I too have become overweight. The difference is that I’m not a PE teacher or someone who preaches health and fitness for a living. He would tell us to run when he could not run himself. I saw this as hypocritical and disingenuous.      How many of you had an English teacher who couldn’t spell or made lots of grammatical errors? Again, I think it’s ok to make spelling or grammatical errors, unless you’re the person who teaches and preaches this for a living.      Once I became a teacher, I worked hard not to repeat these examples. So, as a Journalism and Media teacher, I continued to write, publish and produce my own freelance work. Not only did that keep me fresh ...

 .    My educational pedagogy has always been based on the constant attempt to look at every educational experience through a student’s perspective. It could stem from my early background as journalism/media professional or from my lifetime interest in advocacy.      Naturally, I think far too often educators have not looked at things in terms of student impact or perspective when implementing lessons, activities, programs or even pedagogy.      And now, at a time when the world of work and education are changing so dramatically, I am forced once again to ask what are we doing in our educational system designs that are considering student perspective, student interest, student voice, student choice, student impact and more?      Essentially, are things as crucial as educational technology, web access, use of social media, real college and career opportunities, mentoring, job shadowing, individual students interests thing...

     As a student, and certainly as an educator, I have continually strived to be a lifelong learner. One of the few advantages of getting older is the realization that one can and should continue to learn.      And as an educator who has focused more in the recent years in the inherent value of learning and what influences it, I have done lots of analysis on the concepts of change, reflection and risk-taking. For the sake of this writing, let’s take the concept of risk and its ultimate impact and influence on one’s actual learning.       This has become more important lately as we move more towards Ed tech integration, project-based approaches and more real world challenges. Solving real world problems and applying our learning to project-based challenges will always require a certain level of risk. We risk our untested ideas, our creativity, challenges from working in various teams and groups, evaluation and assessment and mor...

     One of the more common goals/challenges that emerges regularly in education is the subject of relevance. Relevance is the idea of connecting learning to things that matter. And we know what matters to all of us are things that we can see, connect and apply. It’s what’s real right?      With that in mind, how do we work to create learning experiences that are ‘real’ for all students? Well, this is challenging in that we have created entire systems of learning that are really built on artificial foundations vs. real ones.      As an example, our entire idea of the classroom is predicated on something that is really not real world or real – at least certainly not any longer. The set-up of the classroom - with students at desks or seats and a teacher at the front dispensing knowledge and instruction - comes from a time when information was in the hands of a few experts, while workers or employees worked in factories or facto...

     It seems that our nation, and possibly the world, are in the throws of a debate of what education should look like and ultimately what learning really is. Granted, change is always difficult. And although it seems education or learning should always be about change, growth and adaptation, we can also safely say that it’s also about tradition, compliance, control and power.      In addition to the standard debates about educational reforms, there are two other forces contributing to the newer level of debate. First, technology has become so dominant and influential in all aspects of the world economically, socially and politically, that education can no longer ignore technology or attempt to work outside of it. Two, the impact of the changing global economy are finally becoming a reality. The nature of jobs and employment is dramatically being altered so fast that all educational entities are being forced to reckon with what it all means. ...