The Plans of Mice and Men

Posted in DemEd in Real LifePhilosophy of EducationSocial JusticeTeaching on Jan 11, 2010 - 08:04 PM

My friend and partner, Khadigah Alasry, in the fight to make education real again, developed a vision for a model of reform last year. We started presenting this model within the U.S. and over the internet. We've been invited to present in Dublin, the Cayman Islands, Hawaii, Dubai, Paris, and other places but due to our lack of funds and now time, we have had to kindly decline.

We developed this model for educational reform while I was out of the classroom for a year and Khadigah had just graduated from undergrad with her newly minted teacher's certificate. For a nine minute synopsis of our model, watch our video:




This video summarizes my vision for my return to the classroom. My past posts speak to my attempt to implement and stay true to this model--and my successive failure to do so on the grand scale we had envisioned.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane:

Early October: Initially, I gave my students all the freedoms given to them at birth--their right to speak freely, their right to go to the bathroom when needed, their need to direct their own learning, etc. I wanted to be their savior from the shackles of an educational climate that belittles them as thinkers and doers. This ended with students throwing water bottles at each other and no one listening when it came time to actually do any work.

November: The rubber band effect took place and I cracked down and started documenting all of the students' behaviors--both positive and negative, but especially the negative. Each behavior was either punished or rewarded in my attempt to condition them to be unconditionable. This ended with students who did not care to begin with caring less and students who did care fearing for their grades and now their token economy points.

Early December: I watched Dan Pink's video on motivation, discovered Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards, and reviewed my initial goals for myself and my students developed in the safety of my grad school apartment far, far away from the reality's of public education. I eliminated my token economy (which I had developed and sworn by for four years), I eliminated grades for all formative assignments, and carefully reinstated the come and go as you please philosophy (allowing students to go to the bathroom and their lockers as needed) with a bit more structure and warnings.

Along the way, I made sure to never compromise my high standards on either the academic rigor or my desire to implement a critical pedagogy (two critical components for our model of urban school reform). How I did this would take a whole blog on its own (note to self: blog about this next). What I am excited about now is the implementation of that most important third component of our model of reform: Community-School Interactions. I knew after my first week that this component would have to take a backseat after taking stock of where the students were academically and how minimally motivated they were to even come to school.

Next week, I will implement a two-week unit wherein students will take the analytical skills that we have struggled to develop together in our classroom and use them to tackle a community problem they find in Detroit. This will not be difficult, seeing that not only has our district been in the news (see link below), but the religion of a majority of our students has as well, since the Nigerian Christmas Day Bomber was Muslim.

Here's just one link to how our district has been in the news: http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/22146212/detail.html/

Word to the wise: Don't be so quick to judge the students. This was picked up by the AP and the story manipulated to feed the "terrorist" media frenzy that is so profitable today (even more reason for a critical pedagogy).

Even though this has been one of the hardest semesters of my career with resistance coming from students, staff, and administrators, there have been the exceptional few who have shared my vision and believe as I believe that if we are not shaking things up and in a state of discomfort, then we are not making change.

Tags for this entry:
education reform, k-12 education, curriculum, freedom, motivation, critical pedagogy, resistance, community-school interactions

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