Jan
23
Service Learning and Shallow Standards
January 23, 2006 | |
On Wednesday, MCDS welcomed Cathryn Berger Kaye to the school for an all-day visit. Kaye is a nationally known Service Learning consultant who works with schools to generate meaningful conversations about ways to connect students to community service projects. Throughout the day, individual teachers and teams had the opportunity to meet and brainstorm with Cathy about their specific grade levels and content areas, and several of my colleagues left with specific action plans and project ideas. She spent the afternoon presenting to the full faculty and later that evening she gave a talk to our Parent Body about ways to promote service learning within families.
I used my commute to listen to the EdTechTalk#25 podcast with guests David Warlick and Terry Freedman. While much of the conversation was similar to the recent MacWorld presentation I had just heard David give, there were some great impromptu moments during the conversation. At one point, Terry spoke about an initiative in the U.K. where, he fears, great resources are being put into designing state-of-the-art classrooms for yesterday’s students. There was also great discussion about the current obsession with standards and with students learning discreet skills and bodies of information right at the very time where learning how to learn and what is important factual information is more important than having amassed a set of knowledge predetermined by educators and politicians.
The phrase “shallow standards” came up during the podcast. It really struck a chord with me and reminded me of our wonderful visit to Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA last Spring, where we were able to observe their wonderful concept of “Central Subjects” for each grade level. By focusing on one, unifying, cross-curricular subject for an entire grade level, teachers had the freedom to go deeper with their essential questions, to take their time, to understand each unique group of learners and teacher they had each year. What a wonderful model they provide, free from the shackles of standards, coverage of a huge amount of content and from the old “but I’ve always done it that way.”
Comments
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Barbara,
I’ve been feeling a little awkward about that term, Shallow Standards. It’s one I’ve used before, but always accompanied by more context than I was able to share during that interview podcast. Yesterday, I wrote a long article about the term and what I mean by it in yesterday’s 2¢ Worth.
• Shallow Standards / Deep Learning
I’ve been enjoying your blog!
– dave –
Dave, Thanks for the follow up…I love your visual models of current/future standards and am working as hard as I can to be a part of the movement toward the newer model!
Thanks for visiting Independent Thinking and letting me chime into this amazing conversation,
Barbara