Building School 2.0

How to Create the Schools We Need

Chris Lehmann, Zac Chase

• Editore: Jossey-Bass
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118236543
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Education Technology

Ninety-five propositions for creating more relevant, more caring schools

There is a growing desire to reexamine education and learning. Educators use the phrase "school 2.0" to think about what schools will look like in the future. Moving beyond a basic examination of using technology for classroom instruction, Building School 2.0: How to Create the Schools We Need is a larger discussion of how education, learning, and our physical school spaces can—and should—change because of the changing nature of our lives brought on by these technologies.

Well known for their work in creating Science Leadership Academy (SLA), a technology-rich, collaborative, learner-centricschool in Philadelphia, founding principal Chris Lehmann and former SLA teacher Zac Chase are uniquely qualified to write about changing how we educate. The best strategies, they contend, enable networked learning that allows research, creativity, communication, and collaboration to help prepare students to be functional citizens within a modern society. Their model includes discussions of the following key concepts:

• Technology must be ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible
• Classrooms must be learner-centric and use backwards design principles
• Good technology can be better than new technology
• Teachers must serve as mentors and bring real-world experiences to students

Each section of Building School 2.0 presents a thesis designed to help educators and administrators to examine specific practices in their schools, and to then take their conclusions from theory to practice. Collectively, the theses represent a new vision of school, built off of the best of what has come before us, but with an eye toward a future we cannot fully imagine.

1
School Should Mirror the World as We Believe It Could Be

This book is borne of a spirit of hope that we can build healthier, more relevant, more caring schools that, in turn and in time, will help to build a healthier world.

According to Wolfram Alpha, there are fifty-nine million K–12 students in the United States.¹ That's fifty-nine million families' dreams, fifty-nine million young people whose lives are still loaded with potential, fifty-nine million young people whose stories have yet to be written, fifty-nine million students who deserve to be encouraged to believe, “You can,” before having someone tell them, “You can't.” For that matter, the over three million teachers² all over this country also deserve someone to tell them “You can,” before having someone tell them, “You can't.”

And yet, so much of what happens in school happens because we believe that we must prepare children for the world as it used to exist. Never mind that we have no idea what the world will look like for kids in kindergarten right now—and we might not even know what it will look like for the kids in ninth grade—we continue to replicate the factory-age structures and compliance-based codes of conduct that have governed school for decades because it “feels like school” to parents and politicians and school administrators all over the world.

Worse, in the twenty-first century the massive technological changes that have vastly changed our society have had little effect on our schools; in too many places, the technology is merely being used as the next, best filmstrip, or worse, a better way to quiz and test our students, rather than as a way to open up our classroom windows and doors so that students can learn what they need to, create what they want, and expand the reach of their ideas to almost limitless bounds.

In 1518, Martin Luther nailed ninety-five theses to the door of the church. He envisioned a world where the church did not act as a go-between—and in his mind, a barrier—between God and man. We need to understand now that school does not need to be a go-between—and, too often, it is a barrier—between students and learning. We can remake school so that students can feel more directly empowered to learn deeply alongside teachers who share a vision of the sense of joy that learning can unlock.

For our ninety-five theses, we ask you to suspend your disbelief that schools can be better than they are now. In fact, we ask you to suspend your disbelief that the world can be a better place. Each thesis in the text could lead to more questions, deeper discussion, more research, and, we hope, positive action. It is our hope that, individually, each thesis could help students and parents and educators to examine specific practices in their schools as they exist, and taken collectively, they can help communities create a new vision of school, built on the best of what has come before us, steeped in the traditions of progressive educators of the past hundred years, but with an eye toward a future we cannot fully imagine.

From Theory to Practice

• To prime your thinking as you move through the text, pause and take a moment to describe what you think school should be doing, what its role is in a modern world, and what success looks like. Let this thinking be a signpost as you explore this book.
• Start a conversation. As important as it is to think deeply about your own vision of what school can and should be, this book is designed as a conversation starter as well. As a thesis strikes you as relevant to your own place of learning and teaching, consider how you might use it to begin a larger conversation. Could you get time in a faculty meeting or a Parent-Teacher Association meeting, use it to inspire discussion as you have coffee with a colleague, or track key quotations and share them with a Listserv? Be on the lookout and be mindful. The more stories we share, the deeper our thinking will become.

2
We Must End Educational Colonialism

Science Leadership Academy (SLA) was started by a group of educators with the idea that it would be the kind of school we would want our own children (real or theoretical) to attend. Our belief in an inquiry-driven, project-based, technology-rich approach to learning was not just for “other people's children,” but for our own as well.

It is important to say this because there are a lot of powerful people right now who are advocating for a pedagogy in our publicly funded schools that they don't find good enough for their own children.³ Some of these powerful people are even running networks of schools that have a pedagogical approach that is directly counter to the educational approach of the institutions they pay for their own children to attend. Moreover, these same powerful people tend to get upset when asked about the disconnect, saying that that question is off limits.

We don't think it is.

We should ask why people of power advocate for one thing for their own children and something else for other people's children, especially when those other children come from a lower rung on the socioeconomic scale or when those children come from traditionally disenfranchised segments of our society. It is, in fact, a very dangerous thing not to question.

Because we've done this before in America and around the world. Whether it was the United States government forcing Native Americans into boarding schools, which decimated families and societies in the name of assimilation, or any of the many global examples of destruction as explorers claimed “new worlds,” history is rife with examples of disenfranchisement through systematic cultural colonization—each ending tragically.

For us, when you ensure that your own child has an arts-enriched, small-classroom-sized, deeply humanistic education and you advocate that those families who have fewer economic resources than you have should have to sit straight in their chairs and do what they are told while doubling and tripling up on rote memorization and test prep, you are guilty of educational colonialism.

And it's time we start calling that what it is.

The ideas in this book represent our best thoughts on education for all children, not just some children. If we are to truly engage in modern pedagogical education reform, it must be a movement of the cities and the suburbs, of public and private and charter schools, and for children of all colors and classes. To do anything else is to ignore the elephant in the room—that we are rapidly moving further and further into a bifurcated system in this country where the education rich children get is vastly different from the education poor children get.

We—all of us—must be committed to ensuring that the income of a child's parents or the color of a child's skin does not prevent the child from engaging in a profoundly humanistic, deeply empowering modern education. And if we allow those in power to advocate for a brand of education for other people's children that they would never allow for their own children, we will only perpetuate the worst abuses of our history.

From Theory to Practice

• Start the conversation. The best way to allow educational colonialism to persist is to remain silent about its presence. The best way to fight it is to start conversations across classrooms, schools, and districts that share our practices, our learnings, and our resources. Seek out colleagues in online and physical spaces that may feel foreign to you, and begin a conversation about what learning and teaching can look like.
• Make the conversation come from a place of questioning. If the conversations in which we engage around education are nothing more than us making declarative statements about the way things should be and what others need, we're not setting ourselves up to learn. By asking people who hold different perspectives to share their understandings of needs and their ideas for what will best serve to meet those needs, you're opening up to new understandings.

3
Citizenship Is More Important Than the Workforce

There's a movement afoot that says school should prepare kids for the twenty-first century workforce. And on its surface, that seems like a good goal. Who could argue with that? Kids are going to need jobs when they graduate, especially in a time when economic stability seems precarious at best.

But focusing on workforce development sells our students short. It assumes that the most we can hope for our students is a life of work when there is so much more to learn. The purpose of public education is not the creation of the twenty-first-century workforce, but rather, the cocreation—in conjunction with our students—of twenty-first century citizens. “Worker” is, without question, a subset of “citizen”; and if we aim for “citizen,” we'll get the workforce we need, but aiming only for creating workers won't get our society the ci...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• About the Authors
• About Science Leadership Academy
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 School Should Mirror the World as We Believe It Could Be
• 2 We Must End Educational Colonialism
• 3 Citizenship Is More Important Than the Workforce
• 4 Build Modern Schools
• 5 Be One School
• 6 Vision Must Live in Practice
• 7 We Must Blend Theory and Practice
• 8 Everything Matters
• 9 “What's Good?” Is Better Than “What's New?”
• 10 Reflection Means Better, Not More
• 11 Consider the Worst Consequence of Your Best Idea
• 12 Disrupt Disruption
• 13 Humility Matters
• 14 Build Consensus
• 15 Teach Kids Before Subjects
• 16 What We Should Ask of Teachers
• 17 Schools Are Where We Come Together
• 18 What We Want for Students, We Must Want for Teachers
• 19 Embrace Your Best Teacher-Self
• 20 We Must Be Our Whole Selves
• 21 Technology Should Transform School, Not Supplant It
• 22 Build Your Own Faculty Lounge
• 23 Don't Admire the Problem
• 24 Not “Yeah, but—”; Instead, “Yes, and…”
• 25 Ignore the Seat Back
• 26 Find Meaning Every Day
• 27 Take What You Do Seriously, but Don't Take Yourself Seriously
• 28 Don't Fall for Authoritarian Language
• 29 Don't Be Authoritarian—Have Authority
• 30 Be Silly
• 31 Be in the Room
• 32 Don't Get Ego-Invested
• 33 Plant Perennials
• 34 Cocreate Community
• 35 Say More, Talk Less
• 36 Be Deliberately Anti-Racist
• 37 Practice Inclusive Language
• 38 Honor Multiple Needs
• 39 Listen to Understand
• 40 Learning Must Be Nonnegotiable
• 41 Ask Why the Kids Are in the Room
• 42 Why Do We Need to Know This?
• 43 Deconstruct Passion
• 44 Inquiring Minds Really Do Want to Know
• 45 Ask What They Are Curious About
• 46 Understand What Project-Based Learning Really Means
• 47 We Need to Change the Way We Teach Math
• 48 Instill a Love of Learning
• 49 Stop Deficit-Model Thinking
• 50 Start Surplus-Model Thinking
• 51 Assign Meaningful Projects
• 52 School Must Be Real Life
• 53 Engage the Entrepreneurial Spirit
• 54 Classes Should Be Lenses, Not Silos
• 55 Create Complexity, Not Complications
• 56 Find Something Interesting and Ask Questions
• 57 Story Matters
• 58 Success Is the Best Weapon
• 59 Preschool Is a Great Model
• 60 Every Kid Needs a Mentor
• 61 Inquiry Is Care
• 62 Schools Are Full of People
• 63 Care For and About
• 64 Assume Positive Intent
• 65 Have an Excess of Good Will
• 66 No Child Should Be On Silent
• 67 Audience Must Be Curated
• 68 Make Better Use of the Built-In Audience
• 69 Parent Conferences Should Be Student Conferences
• 70 Communication Is Key
• 71 There Are No Sick or Snow Days
• 72 Get Rid of the Pencil Lab
• 73 Technology Must Be Ubiquitous
• 74 Technology Must Be Necessary
• 75 Technology Must Be Invisible
• 76 Class Blogs Should Be Open Spaces
• 77 Make Personalization Authentic
• 78 Ask Better Questions
• 79 Cocurate Your School
• 80 Organize
• 81 Teach Thoughtfulness
• 82 Teach Wisdom
• 83 Teach Passion
• 84 Teach Kindness
• 85 Make Advisory Work
• 86 Teachers Should Be Readers and Learners
• 87 Change at School Zone Pace
• 88 Create Space for Collaboration
• 89 Work Together to Make Us All Better
• 90 Get Together
• 91 We Must Practice a New Kind of Research
• 92 Experts Are Necessary
• 93 Success Must Be Defined by All
• 94 We Don't Need Martyrs
• 95 Teachers Are Lucky
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• End User License Agreement