We're back in the new year and have a new show called CAREing Schools in which we discuss the article Louisville's CARE for Kids Starts with the Heart.
Be prepared to read the article first, because Danny refuses to describe it in any detail until near the end of the podcast. Also, Patrick is GRUMPY (and, yes, in ALL CAPS), and Simon is still Canadian.
LATE EDIT: Just wanted to include a link to Mining Gems as it is where Mark (of Mark's Minute) puts his thoughts.
I just listened to this podcast while driving, so I may not have been giving it my full attention.
ReplyDeleteWRT starting with a summary... a lot of discussion of whether one should or shouldn't have to provide a summary of the topic at the beginning of the podcast. Maybe as a compromise, the host for the week could provide a written summary or abstract on this blog with only a few words to discuss the salient points in the podcast. But since I couldn't read the blog while driving, a verbal summary would have worked better for me today. But if you are having a vote, I vote for having a summary at the start.
WRT the discussion topic... it took awhile, but as it turned out everyone was in violent agreement that 1) teaching children "community" in schools is beneficial, 2) it is a bigger effort than the schools can do alone (i.e., parents have the primary responsibility and they need to be involved somehow too), 3) there was some incredulity (I had to look up the meaning to be sure I got it right) that it isn't done as a standard practice by teachers.
My observation... Though it is true, as one panelist mentioned, that the academic atmosphere for teacher education deemphasizes or may even denigrate this as an teacher skill, my experience (outside of education) is that you get the behavior that your reward. Applying this to teachers, if a school administration rewards teachers for having well run classrooms and developing children who can work well together as well as achieve academic results, you'll see teachers finding all kinds of methods to get these behaviors from their students. So beyond just lip service or some words in a school system's mission statement, giving tangible rewards to teachers who can show results in producing CAREing students (yes, like all acronyms, this one is forced a bit) should help in making it happen.
This is an interesting point. I'm currently re-reading Freakanomic (which if you haven't read, I would highly recommend it), and it is basically concerned with the motivations behind our actions. The question that is important to answer, I guess, is "How do we set up the system so that teachers, administrators, and students are incentivized to produce/be CAREing?"
ReplyDeleteThe core of CARE is that the context of the learning environment should be a priority, if not the priority. I am not sure that we need to incentivize, rather we establish this as normal. The concept that individuals are noble beings and deserve a learning environment that is founded on virtues and virtuous behavior should be at the forefront of educational reform. Schools are not the savior of society, but a part of society. Do we wish to offer a learning environment that is less than worthy of our noble station?
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