More About Deeper Learning.And why this has become my work.
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Building an Education That Matters.In my second year teaching, my students started writing full-length plays tackling issues like poverty, peace and war, food justice, mental health, home, modern day “pirates”, and the relationship between free-will and identity. These plays required research, collaboration, and hundreds of drafts. Leaders emerged. Students transformed into authors and directors with deadlines and a guaranteed audience. Their writing would go from the page to the stage. They casted actors and actresses.
More leaders emerged. Costume and set designers built the stage. A tech crew would make sure all props, lights, sounds, and transitions were solid. Film directors recorded the process of creation and the show. Authors kept reworking their script alongside actors, directors, and relevant community members. (For example, when my students wrote a play exploring mental health, they worked closely with therapists and pertinent non-profits.) Everything and everybody was alive and connected. Every part of the process required more and more leadership to emerge. Students were passionate and motivated: growing in skills, content, and as people. Writing, Art, and Theatre students and teachers collaborated together to make a product that was meaningful and relevant to the kids and community. Students learned life lessons as they persevered through the challenges of revisions, breakdowns, and letdowns. They learned life lessons as they co-created, built community, and became part of a mission bigger than themselves. From the first brainstorming session to the final standing ovation, my students would own and build everything needed for the exhibition of their work to an audience of students, parents, educators, and community members. They built literature that came alive on stage; they built relationships and a wider community; they built passion grounded in content and skills that tied them together. They helped build an education that mattered to them… |
A Crisis in Public Education.If we measured student success by how many standardized tests a kid takes per year, America would surpass every other school system in the world. One of the crises we face in education is our testing culture. The Washington Post reports, “The average student in America's big-city public schools takes some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade — an average of about eight a year.” It is my belief that a money-making, test-taking culture too often holds our kids captive to tests designed against them: tests that make them fit into multiple choice bubbles; that don’t measure their ability to collaborate, synthesize, and create; tests that show them what they don’t know without honoring who they are and what they do know. This test-taking culture creates apathy. Apathy caused by learned helplessness. Apathy caused because school is not relevant and meaningful to our kids (and teachers) when school becomes all about the “score” and the “school report card”. Students and teachers need to be seen as a larger community of writers, critical thinkers, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, collaborators, and leaders. Students need to know there’s more to life than multiple choice, and real education is about relationships and meaningful growth. It’s about connecting who we are to the work and transforming ourselves and our community. It’s about risk and putting ourselves out there for a cause bigger than us. This is why teachers come into the field, and this is what students need. Deeper Learning Exhibitions (DLEs) are a vehicle for it… |
Deeper Learning: Education Beyond The Classroom
As their teacher, my job was to push them, do the work alongside them, knock down barriers in front of them, connect them to the wider community, and empower them to pave the way. I didn’t label this kind of work at the time, I just tried to live the mission I crafted to guide the educational journey for my students: to use the intersection of the arts as a vehicle for personal and social transformation.
However, a label for this work is Deeper Learning. This is a new way to think about school where it’s grounded in passion projects, public/private partnerships with the wider community (business, non-profit, collegiate, and whatever else opens up that’s relevant), and interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, it needs to happen beyond just a few classrooms; it needs to happen school-wide, district-wide, state-wide, nation-wide. This has become my work.
However, a label for this work is Deeper Learning. This is a new way to think about school where it’s grounded in passion projects, public/private partnerships with the wider community (business, non-profit, collegiate, and whatever else opens up that’s relevant), and interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, it needs to happen beyond just a few classrooms; it needs to happen school-wide, district-wide, state-wide, nation-wide. This has become my work.