I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.
- How to foster a sense of community when kids are at so many places academically?
- How do 1:1 laptops help build and/or hurt community at HIS?
- Define communities first… school, parents, digital, etc.
- How do we build community?
- Morning Gatherings, Advisory…enough structure for community?
- How can we be more involved in Hsinchu and great world community? Connection to goals for citizenship.
- Role of competition
- How do we incorporate progressive educational ideas into conservative and traditional communities?
- How to further foster the connections between old students and younger as well as elementary students?
I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.
- One room school house
- Where are we in our interdisciplinary efforts?
- Learning how to collaborate, learning to work and play together. Teach cooperative learning skills as part of 21st century skill set.
- How do we build a truly democratic school?
- What role does the Student Representative Council play in our community decision-making?
- How effective is group work in our classrooms? Which kinds of group projects more effective?
- Which Web 2.0 tools meet our collaboration needs?
- While we have the structure and culture for collaboration, how well are we doing?, How can we measure our efforts?
- How to expand the collaboration to our immediate and world community?
- Role of administration in all aspects of collaboration?
- Our culture supports mixing of seniors with younger students.
- Continue to develop older students as peer leaders with attentive listening and group facilitation skills
- What structures do we have and need to support collaboration in our community? How to build further partnerships?
- How to engage parents in the culture of our school?
I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.
- How do you build IM when students are not passionate about the subject?
- What does it really feel like to KNOW something?
- How do we build connections to expand lateral thinking?
- How do we enrich students’ lives to give them more interests to get excited about? (Field trips real & virtual, telecollaboration, reading content in classes, current events, blogging)
- Where are most of our students on the “dependent” to “independent” learning continuum?
- How to move them along the continuum?
- How many students are motivated by learning knowledge as opposed to ideas/skills?
- How to develop risk taking?
- Is project-based instruction the only (main) way to develop IM?
- How to develop the skills to be learners today and in future?
- How do 1:1 computers help or hinder IM?
I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. We took time to list our questions and action ideas for each of these values. Our next step is to spend time each month to focus on one value at a time.
My plan is to post our staff’s PD work on each of the values in a series of posts. As we drill down on each value, I will further post our community’s discussion and plans to measure our efforts.
To start the posts off, I will list our responses to the value of Collaboration and what comes to mind for our HIS educators.
- One room school house
- Where are we in our interdisciplinary efforts?
- Learning how to collaborate, learning to work and play together
- How do we build a truly democratic school?
- What role does the SRC play in our community decision-making?
- How effective is group work in our classrooms? Which kinds of group projects more effective?
- Which Web 2.0 tools meet the specific and different collaboration needs?
- While we have the structure and culture for collaboration, how well are we doing?, how can we measure our efforts?
- How to expand the collaboration to our immediate and world community?
- Role of administration in all aspects of collaboration?
- Our culture supports mixing of seniors with younger students
- What structures do we have and need to support collaboration in our community?
We just started our two weeks of time set aside to build our learning community at Hsinchu International School (HIS). On Monday morning each staff member shared photographs that represented their lives outside of school. The new educators really connected with the returning teachers as they talked about photos of family, travel, hobbies and interests. We also enjoyed learning new things about returning members of our community. It was nice not feeling rushed and having to go and DO SOMETHING.
Our seniors came in for the afternoon to meet the new staff and to answer questions. It was something to hear them talk about our student learning outcomes, student Choice period, internships, community service, our tight school community, deeper learning, expeditions, etc. They really understand what our school is about.
Tuesday morning we enjoyed a discussion about change and the transition that follows it. Rick Pierce of Rising Sun Consultants lead the discussion from Pennsylvania via Skype video. A big take away for me was that our school leaders took the time to validate the changes our new and returning staff are going (and will go) through. Rick reminds us that it is the transition after the change that we really need to be aware of and be ready to discuss within our community. He summed it up in saying:
“Research and experience has taught me that the first steps in dealing with transition is to bring it out in the open, acknowledge its impact and work deliberately at addressing any barriers which hinder your smooth journey through the change/transition process. The two most important ingredients in dealing with change and transition are information and involvement.”
Our principal, Brent Loken, had everyone do a little homework reading Alfie Cohen’s article entitled Progressive Education: Why It’s Hard to Beat, But also Hard to Find. We listed on flip charts the 8 values Alfie writes about as being essential to be a progressive school. Everyone was asked to take time to respond to specifically to each value by writing on each flip chart a reflection, a question or an example of the value from their experience. We then broke into pairs with a returning and new teacher choosing one value to discuss. They then shared ideas and worked to rank how HIS is doing on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most progressive.
Each team then presented to the whole group their reflections and where they ranked our school. We will now look to set aside time each month to revisit one value at a time, review the gaps and look at potential action steps to take in getting us closer to 10 for each value. Our new educators really brought many new ideas and perspectives to the discussion. I am looking forward to digging down deeper with everyone as we further discuss these values and our efforts to support them at Hsinchu International School.
