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__The Element__ by Ken Robinson

Like Amy, I read __The Element__. I was impressed by the good fortune of so many people who found the opportunity to secure their dream job in exactly the element that fulfilled them the most. He does state that doing so requires a certain amount of luck or opportunity, which even the most persistent searchers may never encounter.

I was reassured by one of the last chapters, "love or money," where the author dealt with the fact that not everyone will find a dream job in their element. In fact, for some people, being paid to do what they love most would actually kill their enjoyment of it, since there would be deadlines to meet and constraints put on the "production” of their work. He said that finding the element and being able to exercise it on a regular basis is what really counts, whether for love or money. I wished that he’d said that earlier in the book, as I'd begun to feel like a lost cause for not having found what so many examples in his book had found.

I agree that he was very hard on schools, but I agree with him. The intense focus on testing and the move toward schools as a business venture is a bad road to be traveling down, and I’m not sure what it will take to turn the tide. Especially with impending cuts to the arts, I think that we will be giving less encouragement to students who are artistically inclined. We will run the risk of encouraging only those students whose “element” is mathematical or literary, to really find what motivates them the most. As Ken Robinson says, the reason to find one’s element is not only for self-fulfillment, but for being able to serve the greater community with our very best abilities. Everyone will lose something if we do not value and develop the creative side of our students.

Chapters for my book:

Chapter 1: Diversity: How do we affirm cultural diversity in our classrooms?


 * What purpose should multicultural education serve?
 * Are there apps or technology that might be useful?
 * Can we use students/parents/community members as resource people?
 * Which cultures should be explored: ancient/present?

Chapters: Nieto, 1: Teaching as Evolution, Sleeter, 1: Standards, Multicultural Education, and Central Curriculum Questions

Chapter 2: What is the best way to use technology in the classroom?


 * How do we train staff before they will lead students?
 * Do we train for current use, or for flexibility/literacy for future technological expertise?
 * Is learning really better electronically? What about manipulatives/kinesthetic learners?
 * (I didn’t find text chapters on this; maybe outside speakers would be most up to date)

Chapter 3: How can Inclusion be made better for all students?


 * How do we better orient the non IEP students to appreciate and understand those with IEP’s?
 * How can families, community members be a resource in this orientation?
 * What video clips are available, or other technology that will help integrate students?

Chapter 4: So many techniques and trends change through the years: What is unchanging about student learning?


 * Rapport/Relationship with students, with teacher
 * Trust in the classroom
 * Other factors?

Chapter 5: Collaboration: Good for teachers, good for students


 * How do we ensure that the time is well spent, for students and teachers? (Not a gripe session or fooling around)
 * How to convince parents/administration of its value

Interviews My mother began school in 1930. It wasn’t exactly the Depression environment where she was, because her family lived in Mexico at the time. She attended the Little American School in Guanajuato for first and second grade; there was no kindergarten. About five families, with ten students, formed the school; most were foreigners living in Mexico, who wanted an American education for their children, but some were nationals. There was a real mix of what was spoken in the homes; English, German, French, and Spanish. The classes were all in English, but Spanish was used by all at recess. The teacher, Miss Winnie, was trained in Colorado, and the curriculum was exactly comparable to what was used in Colorado at the time. The school was for first through sixth grade, but Miss Winnie offered seventh and then eighth grade privately for my mom’s sister after school, as additional tutoring. Options for high school were few. There was an American high school in Mexico City, or students could be sent to boarding school in the U.S. My grandparents sent their son and daughter to one year of boarding school, but when the next sibling was ready for high school, they made the decision that my grandmother would move back to Colorado Springs, and have the family in schools there, while their father would stay working in Mexico. Summer vacations would be spent at least partly in Mexico. I asked my mom about the change from a small, close-knit, multicultural, multi-grade group to a setting of just about the opposite in every way. She noticed, all right. She now had different teachers for every subject; “specials” such as art and music and P.E. She was especially inspired by the music teacher who was an accomplished pianist. Her fourth grade teacher read aloud from the Dr. Dolittle books, one of the first Newbery winners, and my mother retold and reenacted each day’s episode for her mother when she got home. It really helped foster her interest in storytelling. I think that because of her optimistic outlook on life, she enjoyed all the good that came with the change, and dealt constructively with any disadvantages that came with it. Was it “better?” Well, it was completely different. She thinks that the teachers in those small, one-room settings used tremendous creativity to so much for their students. Their school had a great sense of community. Whatever the value anyone assigns to those two experiences, the important thing is that she was lucky to experience both. Coincidentally, my mother experienced a similar situation as a beginning teacher. Her first three years were at a high school with only seven teachers, total. There, graduating classes were about thirty-five in size. Again, the strong sense of community was evident. School spirit was very strong among students who had been together since kindergarten. They still have reunions, and invite her as well. The contrast is that after eight years of raising children, she taught in a much larger, Union high school that had consolidated the small feeder schools. An excellent school, it still did not match the other for close-knit relationships. Just last month she received a surprise visit from a woman who had been her student sixty years ago in the small high school!

Entrevista My second interview was of my husband, who was schooled in Colombia. He went to several different private schools and one public; he is not sure why his parents changed schools so often. Different schools charge different amounts, and may have different levels of satisfaction after a year’s attendance. He did skip fourth grade, as an entrance exam showed that he already knew the material to be taught that year. Of all the ten children in his family, his mother wished that he’d had the opportunity to go on to higher studies. After 7th grade, he was sent to live with his sister in the capital. It was thought that her husband, being a teacher at a good school, could arrange to get him in, but because of missing paperwork, he was not accepted. His previous school in another state did not send his records, so his studies ended there. This is illegal today, and public schools cannot exclude students for as many reasons as they did then. Even public schools are not really free and accessible to all. There are uniforms to purchase, as well as books and materials, and an enrollment fee that is charged to all. There were two negative memories. When he went to school at age five, which was a year early, there was no one to show him where to go or which line to stand in. He became lost and scared, went home in tears and would not go back until the next year, though his parents knew that he was ready. Another was at the end of his experience, when he and his brother were singled out in front of all the students, for not having uniforms. They were told not to come back without them. This is illegal today, also. I remember the statement, “Students may not remember everything you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.” His experiences convinced him that we would educate our children in the U.S., and we returned from Colombia for that reason.

4/22/2011 On the Tiger Mom: I’m a Westerner. Ingrained in my thinking are the very values that Amy Chua describes: a belief that my children’s psyches are very important, that they need reinforcement, that they will probably choose their own way no matter what I tell them to do, and a desire for family harmony over family performance. However, I do respect many of her beliefs. I remember praise over my awful attempts at clarinet practice, being told it was wonderful when I knew I had neither tried hard nor sounded good; I wasn’t fooled. I remember being alarmed at my daughter’s D’s and not knowing what to do to communicate that I expected better. Just encouraging children, accepting them and giving positive reinforcement just doesn’t always seem to be enough to get them to excel beyond what they thought they could do. I have to know them so well, that I know whether they really have done their best or exerted much effort. I’m not convinced that going ballistic would have any results; certainly, as a teacher, using her techniques in school would get me fired. I do think that her piano methods could be devastating for some children; that some do not develop the dexterity through threats. Even she was amazed when it did finally work, but I’m not convinced that her procedure was the best way to bring about success. I do know that most Westerners can’t begin to use her techniques if they were not raised that way, and be convinced in their heart that it will work. This is certainly an interesting essay on why Chinese families raise children the way that they do, and I appreciate knowing more about the culture. 3/12/2011 On Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model of Human Development A former student of mine has had increasing difficulty functioning in school, and I believe that it is due to a breakdown in relationships within her immediate microsystem. I’ll call her Gina; she came to mind as soon as I considered who to write about. Presently a fourth grader, she was born in America of a foreign-born mother who lived in an urban area. Gina is the middle child of her unmarried parents, who soon split after the youngest was born. Her father went back to the parents’ native country, and the mother struggled to get on her feet, financially. She soon thought it best to send the children back to her mother, overseas, while she tried to start a hair business. I believe that Gina was about three or four.

In the foreign country, the children lived with their grandmother until suddenly their father showed up and took them from her, to live with him. News of this reached their mother, but she was helpless to do anything, since women in that country have no rights. Gina told me stories of living with their father and several older “step sisters.” The older girls did not treat them well. It was a large house, but tension was prevalent. The country was undergoing civil unrest and at one point, armed men broke into the house while the children were home, and shot up the place, but did not shoot any of them. Gina remembers that the step sisters hid in the closet but would not let her or her siblings in, and so those three hid in the bathtub and waited for the violence to end. She would tell me these details during our one-on-one reading or writing lessons. Teachers were already wondering why she couldn’t seem to focus on her alphabet sounds, enjoy reading, or comprehend simple math. With a head full of these memories, I wasn’t very surprised. The mother, with the help of the U.S. embassy, was finally able to get the children back with her. She was now living in a different city with a small hair braiding salon as income. The story appeared as a glowing account in a local newspaper, but I would not call it a completely happy ending. The children had few memories of their mother, and parenting styles, if present, had been disrupted and uprooted several times. She had to work long hours at the shop, and cannot read or help with homework. The children told me that they were with her at the shop until all hours of the night or early morning, as she didn’t want to refuse any job, no matter what time the customer came in.

The children were always tired and always hungry. The older boy was extremely gregarious and became the class clown, craving attention. The younger was moody and controlling, but smart as a whip. Gina just floundered. She could not recall learned skills that she had been successful with, days ago. We went over and over the same skills with little progress. She marched to her own drummer, as far as doing anything that a teacher asked her to do, within the desired time frame. Rules meant nothing to her, and she began to use exaggerated expressions to register confusion, making a dramatic show instead of asking for help and listening to the explanation.

To Gina, school was like a safe storybook, with known characters, and I think it worked as a place of stability for her; just being there was enough. The idea of academic growth or advancement was just not present. I think that the rest of her life was such a whirl of confusion, that she was content to let school be the eye of her hurricane, and was relieved to have absolutely nothing happening there. She has been referred for special ed. now, I think with an Other Health Impairment of ADD. Now that she is successfully acronymed, we move on with altered expectations and program for her. I always wonder if we have done enough for her, and why the other sister did not react the same way to the surroundings. The upheaval of her immediate micosystem has clearly affected her development as a person.

Feb 14 2011 I viewed the movie “Stand and Deliver”, based on the true story of a math teacher who raised the bar at an East L.A. high school to begin an AP Calculus class, with greater numbers of students passing the AP exam every year that he taught it. The biggest obstacle that first year was the disbelief that the students could learn. The first discouragement came from the math department chair, who didn’t want calculus taught because of the damage it would do to the students’ self-image when they failed. Parents weren’t always supportive of the long-range goal of a college education, and even some students struggled with that goal versus other appealing offers, such as a part-time job. The last blow was the AP exam review board who questioned the validity of the scores, since all were so high. The assumption was that they had cheated, and the resulting demoralization threatened the class’s whole sense of community. Fights broke out their future seemed hopeless, and it seemed to prove that if you try very hard, nothing changes. Finally they agreed to take the test a second time, and their consistently high scores proved that they really had mastered AP Calculus. I have not seen the movie “Waiting for Superman,” but the article “The Ultimate $uperpower” gave a chilling description of the style of leadership that such a movement looks to. The film I viewed and the articles on the “Superman” movement were not very similar, yet both have pointed to one element that is necessary for great schools: human beings who gain the trust of students and give them the skills to excel. Those obsessed with schools as a business and financial investment obviously have little interest in the students themselves, much less in the future of the country. Schools should be governed by democracy and community, an idea that is seemingly under threat in Wisconsin also, given the proposed changes announced this week.