At the recent Save Our Schools rally, Matt Damon spoke eloquently about the value of teaching, real teaching, and its supremacy over standardized testing. There is no pat answer to the problems our public schools face every day, but one thing is clear—tying funding and evaluation to standardized testing is NOT improving learning. Period. It creates a culture of fear and anxiety rather than a culture of learning and innovation. It sacrifices valuable teaching days to the administration of a battery of tests that have only a meager connection to the learning that is and should be happening in the classroom and beyond. Learning is not memorization or mastering the tricks to the test. It is application, contextual understanding, inspiration, creation. That is what real-world learning asks of us.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Welcome to Our New QEP Cohort 2011
We have an energetic new cohort of QEP faculty and the 2011-12 academic year promises to embrace the Writing Realized phenomenon with gusto. As I walked around the room, I could almost hear the wheels turning with new ideas inspired by small technological revelations. At the heart of it all is writing to learn. Just a few crumbs of advice:
Be patient — with yourself and with your students as you explore the many new avenues to learning.
Be Adventurous — explore what's out there, ask any question, try something new, take a risk.
Be Inspired — by your students, by your colleagues, by your own passions, by the little things.
Be patient — with yourself and with your students as you explore the many new avenues to learning.
Be Adventurous — explore what's out there, ask any question, try something new, take a risk.
Be Inspired — by your students, by your colleagues, by your own passions, by the little things.
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