This article in the NYTimes really drives home for me the need to let everyone learn how to play and create on their own. The thesis of the article and the book it’s reviewing is basically that the next generation of workers will need to be able to identify needs and figure out how they can fill those needs, and monetize it.
“Today,” [book author Tony Wagner] said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”
Ok, so how do we teach kids to be innovative? Play! Play play play! Creativity! The opportunity for boredom, as one study recently found, and free play. Letting kids be kids! Letting them take stuff apart and put it back together. Letting them get messy and innovative!
So let your kids, and yourself, have some unstructured play time. It’s good for your brain, and will help you keep your job, or find or even make a new one.
Dr. Thom McKenzie explains why it’s so important for children to have quality Physical Education in school and how caring adults can support it. Designed especially for parents, teachers, school board members and administrators.
Playground doesn’t need to be fancy to be effective (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As we head back into the academic school year, a lot of people are focused on education and making sure students get the best possible opportunity to learn and thrive. Here’s one easy way to support that: give them space and time for play!
Numerous academic studies [sources stored in a weird place, will update soon] on school-aged kids have demonstrated that recess time is valuable for learning and aids in the overall learning process. But I think it can be more powerful to hear how valuable it is from someone who actually lives with the results of life with more or less recess; the teachers.
Apart from being a fun activity, it is widely recognised that play is one of the most important ways in which brain development occurs in children.
Sadly, in some schools valuable recess and lunch time has been reduced in favour of more rigorous academic pursuit within the classroom. In other schools, running or ball games have been banned due to a perceived high injury risk factor.
As many families now choose structured and adult-directed play activities after school or on weekends, the school playground becomes one of a few outlets where children can engage in free outdoor play with their peers. More than 28 hours a week, often spent solitarily, are devoted to computers, mobile phones, television and other electronic devices. Considering that as much as 25 per cent of time spent at school is playground time, we need to rethink the benefits of play at school.
Conversely, a lack of play can result in challenging behaviour and negative performances in the classroom, according to an American educational psychologist, Anthony Pellegrini.
Also, playgrounds that lack play stimuli become spaces where children often wander around aimlessly, become frustrated and bully other children. Not many schools can afford expensive playground equipment, but the good news is that this is not needed anyway.
Professor Anita Bundy, from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Sydney University, has launched a large-scale study involving 12 primary schools in NSW, introducing simple, recycled play resources during recess, with outstanding results. This included crates, car tyres, foam pool noodles, plastic barrels, tarpaulins, foam cubes and other open-ended materials that lend themselves to creative, imaginary play.
Not only do children become physically more active, they also hone important social skills, build resilience and are encouraged to think creatively.
The entire Op-Ed is very strongly written and makes a great case for play, and it’s great to hear it from the teacher’s standpoint, so please read it and share. And be sure to support play time in school, whether it’s by voting, volunteering, donating red rubber balls, or whatever you can do.
I read this article in the New York Times a couple of days ago, and it really bothered me:
Since second grade, Nathaly has taken advantage of a voluntary integration program here, leaving her home in one of the city’s poorer sections before 6:30 a.m. and riding a bus over an hour to Newton, a well-to-do suburb with top-quality schools. Some nights, she has so many activities that she does not get home until 10 p.m.; often she’s up past midnight studying.
“Nathaly gets so mad if she doesn’t make the honor roll,” says Stephanie Serrata, a classmate.
Last Wednesday, Nathaly did it again, with 5 A’s and 2 B’s for the first marking period.
At first I couldn’t figure out why; it was a story essentially about all the great programs that our K-12 education system has for getting help and getting ahead in school and prepping to apply for prestigious colleges. Then, when I looked closer at the lead picture of the article it hit me:
Nathaly Lopera in her Passport class, one of several programs she attends to help her get into college. Article by MICHAEL WINERIP, New York Times, Nov 20th, 2011
This 17 year old girl is yawning in her class, and it’s not from boredom or because she stayed up too late the night before chatting with her friends online. It’s because she is working so hard to get into college she isn’t getting enough sleep. Her health is suffering for a future prospect of getting into a “good” secondary education facility.
I find this idea horrible. Yes, it’s great that all these programs exist for kids to get help in applying to college and help in school. I was a tutor in high school, and I took SAT-prep courses which helped me immensely. I applaud this girl’s dedication to her education and her future. I absolutely appreciate the idea of staying up late to study for finals every once in awhile. However, constant sleep deprivation is REALLY dangerous, both in the immediate present (poorer performance, slowed reaction times) and in the future (delayed physical and mental growth). Being sleepy is just as dangerous and being drunk behind the wheel of a car.
I truly believe that this push to get kids into a “good” school, focusing on the future, is a really bad idea.
There was the uproar earlier this year about the self-described “Tiger Mom” and her pride in how hard she pushed her kids. Again, while I appreciate how much she is dedicated to her daughters’ success, there have been numerous studies that show kids do just as well without the focused drilling by their parents. An extra push every now and then, and support driving them to piano lessons or football games? Absolutely! But a parent does not need to be a drill sergeant, nor does the kid need to be literally killing themselves to get into a decent college. A documentary came out in April discussing the phenomenon, called The Race To Nowhere, which does a really nice job of capturing how a lot of this college-prep focus is about as useful as a chicken running around with their head cut off.
I understand this kind of drive starts as early as preschool in many communities, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy into it! Yes, of course I want my future children to get a good college education. Yes, I want them to receive quality primary education. But focusing so much on the future is absolutely detrimental to the health of the child and to the parent.
I would love to hear back from people who have either dropped out of this school rat race to focus more on developing and spending time with their child now, or from people who feel this kind of dedication is essential and worth the health risks.
Working on a project together with a group can create a sense of "tribe." Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr
Having a community or “tribe” is one of the essential things all humans need in order to be happy, healthy, and really survive. In the predominantly urban, mobile environment most of us live in now, it can be hard to develop and maintain a tribe.
The UW Professional & Continuing Education Program recently published a blog post addressing the idea of tribe, and how we create that in modern, usually urban settings through education. One of the most common ways we create tribe is through what we spend time learning; taking Yoga, getting certified in Fiber Arts, sharing this knowledge, love, and in a way a rite of passage with others definitely creates a sense of community and tribe.
History defines tribes as groups united by shared ideas, values and goals. Godin and others put a 21st century spin on the term to empower ordinary people to lead big changes, including the pursuit of a new career.
For Tammie Schacher, the big change was to transition out of the architecture profession and into the nonprofit sector, where her goal was to align her values and passions with a new career. To get started, Schacher enrolled in the UW Certificate in Nonprofit Management where she joined a cohort of fellow students who would go through the program together.
“At the beginning the instructor told us that these groups become very tight knit and that we’d start relying on each other,” she says. “We didn’t necessarily believe that, but by the second quarter we realized we had not only started to rely on each other but that we’d become a family.”
The blog post goes on to discuss how to get the most out of putting yourself in this new, tribal situation:
Both Matthews and Schacher believe that getting the most out of being part of a tribe that starts in a continuing education classroom is fairly simple. First, say both, be open. “Have a little courage and put yourself out there,” says Matthews. “The structure of a classroom is a great place to try something out.”
There are lots of opportunities to create a tribe based on shared knowledge, and to create new ones based on group learning. We can also create tribes online through forums and blogs, as well as allegiances to sports teams or other athletics. Anything from military service to attending a concert can create a sense of tribe.
What are some of the surprising places you have found and/or created a tribe of like-minded people?
A couple of years ago I taught a course on digital storytelling to a group of middle schoolers. In preparation for the course, I remember arguing why this method of teaching was important in that it allowed students who were visual learners to be able to learn how to tell a story in a visual way, and auditory learners could listen to the story archs out loud. Now, some research is finding that people AREN’T in fact visual or auditory learners.
Several psychologists say education could use some “evidence-based” teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use “evidence-based medicine.”
Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we’re on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it’s a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it’s presented.
For example, if a teacher believes a student to be a visual learner, he or she might introduce the concept of addition using pictures or groups of objects, assuming that child will learn better with the pictures than by simply “listening” to a lesson about addition.
In fact, an entire industry has sprouted based on learning styles. There are workshops for teachers, products targeted at different learning styles and some schools that even evaluate students based on this theory.
I disagree with the idea that people’s brains are all uniform and work the same; we have all had the experience of having to explain the same thing in three different ways so three different people get the concept. And the researchers acknowledge we all have strengths and weaknesses. But I appreciate the idea of using evidence-based learning and variety, since they both make learning fun and easier to retain the information. If I ever get to teach that course again, I may instead argue that digital storytelling is beneficial for it’s hands-on, evidence and experiential based learning methods.
Playing with Flashcards as a kid could give you a step up in your future. Cover of Numbers (Step Ahead)
I’m crunching numbers this morning, and after reading this I wish I’d paid more attention to Math in first grade; at least I got to study addition twice thanks to moving to a new school half way through the school year!
A long-term psychology study indicates that beginning first graders that understand numbers, the quantities those numbers represent, and low-level arithmetic will have better success in learning mathematics through the end of fifth grade, and other studies suggest throughout the rest of their lives.
“Math is critical for success in many fields, and the United States is not doing a great job of teaching math,” said David Geary, Curator’s Professor of Psychological Sciences. “Once students fall behind, it’s almost impossible to get them back on track. We wanted to identify the beginning of school knowledge needed to learn math over the next five years. We found that understanding numbers and quantity is a necessary foundation for success as the student progresses to more complex math topics. In order to improve basic instruction, we have to know what to instruct.
I also remember loving Math until about middle school when I had the Algebra teacher from hell! What are your Math memories? Are they good, traumatic, mediocre? Share in the comments.
I saw technology in the classroom change even during my twenty-plus years as a student, from slide projectors to overhead projectors with the write-on plastic to laptops with a projector plugged into a USB port. My elementary class was probably one of the last for which it was still okay to turn in a hand-written paper; I think by 6th grade it was expected you had to type it out, either at home or on one of the school’s four-colored Apple computers. As school evolves, so does technology. While some are skeptical of change, others embrace it:
Los Angeles history teacher Enrique Legaspi… went to a workshop that discussed ways to use Twitter in teaching and now his students—even the shy ones—at Hollenbeck Middle School in East L.A. are speaking up more.
In the video [below], you can watch Legaspi teach a World War I lesson, and hear him explain how Twitter has revolutionized discussions, helped him know more about his shy students, and modify his instruction to meet their needs.
I’m still ambivalent towards using technology for technology’s sake, especially when it comes to school and learning. However, I also understand how hard it can be to engage kids in learning, and I’m open to using different tools, even if it’s Twitter. I’m curious what other experience teachers and educators have had with using technology.
*Edit:* This experiment is also interesting in light of recent surveys that say Gen Y students don’t actually use Twitter all that much: http://t.co/eEOohph via @jeffbullas.
A poster from WWII showing this is not an original idea for urban dwellers. Image via Wikipedia
I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend and didn’t make a pig of themselves (sorry, I couldn’t resist the bad joke). But speaking of food and pigs, this story popped up in my alerts today and it was just too good not to share.
He was born on the first day of school and moved in about two months ago, said school director Sandra Girdner.
Now he spends his days meandering around the school’s garden and being doted upon by students and teachers. But his real purpose — and favorite part of his day, kids said — is eating two buckets of lunch scraps each day, effectively eliminating the school’s food waste.
Abbey Peterson, 13, pitched the idea. Her family gives food scraps to their potbellied pigs, and she thought it would be a good way to take care of the lunch waste from the school’s 77 students, aged kindergarten to eighth grade.
She and Sam Ekstrom, 13, recruited donated materials from Grange Co-Op; Peterson’s dad built the pen; the Henley High School shop class built a shelter; and the charter school’s 4-H club painted it white with green trim.
Ekstrom and Edgar Ortega, 12, took the waste-reducing initiative a step further by building a compost pile next to Theodore’s pen.
Americans throw away soooo much food, and while composting is definitely a great option, that might not always work, plus there are other options, like livestock who have lived off of our table scraps for 100’s (some probably closer to of 10,000) of years. Schools have shied away from bringing in live animals (I’m still peeved at the school that wouldn’t let a couple of its students ride horses to school instead of drive!), so I’m thrilled to see one school take advantage of its resources by allowing the pig to help cut down food waste, AND teach kids about food, animals, farming, and all other kids of great lessons they wouldn’t get out of a science textbook!
What a great way to support kids’ love of science and exploration! I also like how the proposals are via YouTube videos. This is more than just the typical science fair fare (so to speak), it contains some pretty hard-hitting science stuff.
The Judging Panel has identified the 60 semi-finalist entries, and now it’s up to YOU to decide which project will take home the People’s Choice Award. You can vote once in each of the three age-group categories until 20 May at 11:59 PM EST. The People’s Choice winner will be announced on 23 May, along with 5 finalists in each age category.Click on a project title below to learn more and vote for your favorites.
Mental Flowers 