FOR A REPORT from 2005 about "how to build many small schools in the USA," go HERE (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Educational Foundation)
I've been moved by the fact that we are all here on a Saturday morning, but at the same time, I was sitting over there cutting up little pieces of paper.
Do you know what every one of these pieces represents?
The amount of students who have dropped out of schools (in the USA) since we started talking this morning.
Every 13 seconds (a child drops out of school), there have been 800 students. It freaks me out every time I do this and someone needs to help me pick these pieces up. There are 800 and that pile is only 500. I got tired of cutting paper.
That's what drives me.
If you have ever talked to kids who have dropped out of school, it's sad.
Teacher looked at him the wrong way.
They missed a couple of classes
Teacher said something to him.
We've got to do something about this...
1:00
Our system is broken.
We can't tweak around the edges anymore.
It's done.
I have created various schools in my life.
I had a school when I was 27. I created a school in Long Island that was considered excellent,
I created a school in New Hampshire, I got fired from that school,
That people who fired me were trying to get rid of me. instead, they made me famous.
NBC did a TV movie about me with Michael Tucker
I thought I was done. I came to Brown University to work with Ted Sizer
and I saw that I wasn't a University Type. I was asked by the Commissioner of Education, Would I be interested in building a school in Providence?
2:00
I was 50 at the time and I said boldly, "Only if I can do it exactly how I want."
He said, "Yes," which I didn't expect.
So Eliot Washor and I closed our eyes and we said, "If we didn't know that there was such a thing as school, what would it be?"
If you are teaching your own kid at home, you wouldn't put him in the living room for 45 minutes and then ring a bell and run him into the bathroom and say, "We're doing science now" and then go to another room.
You wouldn't do it that way. It's ridiculous.
So we asked, "What is it?" When they interviewed 100,000 high school students in our country and asked, "Name one word that describes high school," what is it?
Boring.
The sad part is that we know it. And we STILL KEEP DOING IT.
So we said that we're going to make a school that is not boring.
It's going to empower kids
It's going to engage kids.
Our mantra was "What's best for kids, one student at a time."
3:00
We hired teachers, we called them advisors.
We manipulated the budgets and the numbers, the proportions are the same as traditional schools.
We gave a teacher 15 students
We said, "You are following them for four years."
You know what you are starting with? Not the curriculum. We asked, "What are your interests? What are your passions?"
That's where you learn, that's what you care about.
Then we called the parents in.
We are going to do an individual plan for you.
Your passions are animals? Great, we're going to develop that.
We are going to teach you to read and write and think and apply your knowledge, but we are going to do it through something that you really care about.
As ninth graders, as 14 year olds, we put them out in the community two days a week with somebody who has the same passion.
So they are working with a vet
They are working with an architect
They are working in an auto mechanic's shop
They are doing what they love. Then when the students come back to school the next day, we don’t say, “Time to get back to classes.” We don’t do that. We integrate everything into their projects. Their reading, their writing, their science comes out of their auto mechanic, out of being with a nurse or an architect.
Most critics laughed at us: “no classes, no tests.”
The students exhibit their work as 9th graders. They have to stand up for an hour and talk to their peers, parents, other teachers, they have to show their work.
A survey came out that shows that 90% of kids cheat in school. One of my students asked me, “How can you cheat? You’re standing up and talking. You can’t cheat.”
Let me tell you the story about one of my students who wanted to study Vietnam. He found a veteran who was building a memorial. He stared interviewing people, helping with advertising the memorial.
Because we have all day to do our work, he took a class at Providence College in the 11th grade. He got a B+. That summer there was a professor at Brown University who taught a course to teach teachers how to teach the Vietnam War. Our 17-year-old Joe took the course.
I asked Joe, “Why do you have this fascination with Vietnam?” His face got solemn. “From the time I was six years old, I would ask my dad to talk to me about the war. I asked every year around my birthday. My dad would turn around and walk away.” Finally, when Joe turned 18, for his senior project, he took his dad to Vietnam. Joe eventually created a website to help families talk about the war. Finally, his dad opened up, his dad opened a drawer and showed Joe his medals. That was Joe’s passion. Joe went on to become a history major at universitybecause he got to study something deeply.
Then he graduated and he’s teaching at our school now.
We look at our statistics. We have 98% attendance, the city has an average of 76%. We have 97% graduation rate, the city had a 46% rate. Our students went to college and got scholarships.
7:00
We got lucky and when Bill Gates was giving money to education. The guy running his education department fell in love with our kids. Students were talking about something that they love. They weren’t talking about homework.
I luckily got $5 million dollars and was told to go start more schools around the country. And then I got another $25 million and I was told to start another 40 more schools. So we have 60 of these schools around the country. We have groups that follow ups and start schools in the Netherlands and Australia, so it’s going pretty well.
Then I got angry again because I started to see that some of my kids were not staying in college and I looked at the facts.
8:00
Among low income first generation kids who go to college, 89% of those who go to college drop out. Something is wrong. That’s when I decided to start a college. I think they are doing it wrong, They are not engaging the kids. College dropout rate is 50 percent and nobody yells at that. So two years ago I started a college. I am going to do the same thing. I got ten students from my schools around the country, I found a house across the street from our school in Providence. I told them to live there, let’s find your interests, find your passions,...
9:00
One of the students is interested in sustainability in architecture. I find two of the most on-the-edge architects in my city and he’s working with them. He’s making buildings out of shipping containers. He’s 18 year old and he has his own clients. He’s got 10 people working with him. Around this we do the seminars and creative thinking. That’s what we have to do.
I just want to say that I appreciate you being here.
10:00
We cannot afford to tweak around the edges. Let’s do this in a different way. We have to look at all of the things, the time, the content, we have to look at what comes form the child. I will end with a quote that is on my wall: If you are not standing on the edge, you are taking up too much space.
No comments:
Post a Comment