Students’ ability to learn depends not just on the quality of their textbooks and teachers, but also on the comfort and safety they feel at school and the strength of their relationships with adults and peers there.
How Stress Hampers Learning
Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School
Be aware of the insidious and unspoken lessons you learned as a child. To thrive in the world outside the classroom, you’re going to have to unlearn them.
Dangerous things you were taught in school:
1. The people in charge have all the answers.
2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom.
3. The best and brightest follow the rules.
4. What the books say is always true.
5. There is a very clear, single path to success.
6. Behaving yourself is as important as getting good marks.
7. Standardized tests measure your value.
8. Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.
9. The purpose of your education is your future career.
By Jessica Hagy, 5/02/2012 for Forbes.com
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. — George Santayana
(via from-student-to-teacher)
Greening School Facilities
A lot of ideas for greening schools.
Our students learn what they live. If they spend all their school days in sterile classrooms, prison-like buildings and lifeless playgrounds, they will not become creative and critical thinkers, and they will not learn that human beings are a part of the beautiful web of life. Why should schools, by their very design, be allowed to kill the wonderful spirit of our youngest citizens?
Greening school facilities means designing (and then building or renovating/retrofitting and decorating) school environments that help students stay connected with the rest of Nature, while helping them learn, both passively and actively, about energy efficiency and green building design.
Life lessons in open-air classrooms
The aim is to show school-aged children how easy it is to grow and harvest food, as well as teaching them how to recycle waste.
…
The transformation is nothing short of amazing, with the once bare, sandy parcel of land now brimming with 13 herb and vegetable garden beds set up through the centre, an urban orchard comprising several fruit trees dotted around the garden border, a chicken coop, rainwater tank, four aquaponic systems, a compost bin and a worm farm.
Cooking facilities will also be constructed and are expected to become a communal hub for both the school and local community.
…
“We are committed to seeing that become generational so that these children will grow up aware of the need to look after the planet and be sustainable in their practices.”
By VANESSA WILLIAMS, The West Australian
April 13, 2012, 1:17 pm
Playground builder keeping it natural
Adam Bienenstock takes child’s play very seriously.
He thinks younger generations are headed down a dark road of inactivity, obesity and isolation, thanks to too much time in front of TVs, computer screens and video game consoles and not enough time outside exploring nature.
Bienenstock, owner of Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds, has made it his mission to bring the fun of nature to parks, schools and community centres. He thinks of it as building outdoor classrooms, where kids are encouraged to explore and imagine.
“We have to connect kids to nature through play. I feel like something has gone terribly wrong and we have to get our asses in gear and fix it.”
By Meredith MacLeod Fri Mar 23 2012
For TheSpec.com
Five Misunderstandings About Bullying
Interesting read. “Five Misunderstanding about Bullying” from the WSJ.
“As difficult as it is to step back and gain perspective, we must do so in order to actually address the problem… With this in mind, we would like to offer five aspects of bullying that must be broadly understood in order to move from awareness to action.”
by Danah Boyd
Wall Street Journal
What Can I Do to Make My School Safe for LGBT Youth?
PFLAG’S:
Here are 5 ways you can make your school safer for LGBT students no matter what your role:
If you’re a student:
- Doing nothing can be worse than the act itself: Report harassment, bullying, or threats targeted at LGBT students to a trusted teacher or advisor.
- Encourage your teachers to address homophobia and transphobia in the classroom by posting safe-space posters, stopping hate speech, and supporting gay-straight alliances (GSAs).
- Watch what you say: Don’t use words associated with being LGBT as euphemisms for stupid and explain to friends and peers who do why they shouldn’t.
- Ask your school to address LGBT issues by having a Pride Week, bringing a speaker to your school, and talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in class.
- Support your LGBT peers by joining a GSA: the A stands for ally.
If you’re a teacher:
- Stop hate speech in your classroom. Speak out if you hear a student in your class or in the halls using words like “fag”, “dyke”, or “gay” as put-downs or insults.
- Ask your administrator for the opportunity to attend “Respect for All” training for diversity and LGBT issues.
- Participate in educators’ conferences, and speak to current and future teachers about being allies for LGBT staff and students.
- Post safe-space posters, materials, or just talk to your students about why your classroom a safe-space, free of harassment, bias, and violence.
- Support gay-straight alliances, chaperon LGBT positive proms, and help LGBT students and staff advocate for fair school policies.
If you’re an administrator or guidance counselor:
- Reach out to both parents and students to help make them aware that peers may be struggling with sexual orientation or gender identity.
- Meet with teachers and parents to help them learn about the issues that their students, children, or their children’s peers may be facing as a LGBT person.
- Make sure your library, school healthcare workers, and health teachers include accurate information about gender identity, LGBT sexuality, and health.
- Ensure that the NYC DOE’s “Respect for All” program and the Chancellor’s Regulation on Bias-Related Harassment and Bullying are known in your school, and that students, parents, and teachers know how to respond to bias incidents.
- Let students know that your office is open to them, should they need support speaking about bullying, violence, harassment, or conflict at home.
If you’re a parent:
- Understand the issues and terms associated with LGBT issues, and teach your children what you learn.
- Talk to your kids about hate speech, bullying, and acceptance. Let them know that not participating in these activities, and standing up for others, earns your respect.
- Work with your PTA to create allied groups in your community, focused on making your school safer.
- Write to local papers and contact your school administrators to make it known that your family and your community are concerned about safe school issues.
- Let your children know that you accept them, their friends, and their peers, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Make your home a supportive and open space.
(image from University of New Mexico)
(via from-student-to-teacher)
What Parents Can Do When Bullying is Downplayed at School
More and more, as I talk with parents whose children have experienced bullying, they share this common experience of having their concerns downplayed by the very adults who are charged with keeping schoolchildren safe.
Ravitch: The toll of school reform on public education
By Diane Ravitch
There comes a time when you look at the rug on the floor, the one you’ve seen many times, and you see a pattern that you had never noticed before. You may have seen this squiggle or that flower, but you did not see the pattern into which the squiggles and flowers and trails of ivy combined.
In American education, we can now discern the pattern on the rug.
Consider the budget cuts to schools in the past four years. From the budget cuts come layoffs, rising class sizes, less time for the arts and physical education, less time for history, civics, foreign languages, and other non-tested subjects. Add on the mandates of No Child Left Behind, which demands 100 percent proficiency in math and reading and stigmatizes more than half the public schools in the nation as “failing” for not reaching an unattainable goal.
Along comes the Obama administration with the Race to the Top, and the pattern on the rug gets clearer. It tells cash-strapped states that they can compete for federal funding, but only if they open more privately managed schools (where few teachers have any job protections), only if they adopt national standards that have never been field-tested, only if they agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, and only if they are ready to close down low-performing schools, fire the principal and staff, and call it a turnaround.
