The Public School Insights Blog
Rounding out Public School Insights' three-week celebration of Earth Day is our interview with Milken Award-winning educator Tamala Newsome, principal of the revolutionary Rosa Parks Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. The Rosa Parks School has garnered national attention for its eco-friendly building, its thoughtful incorporation of environmental science into the curriculum, and its integral place in the low-income Portland community it serves. ...
We've received and published four new public school and district success stories in the past two weeks. Be sure to take a look at these excellent descriptions of what's working in American public schools and schools districts:
- Southside Elementary School, Alabama: Empowering Educators to Improve Outcomes, April 30
- Georgia Matthews Elementary School, Kansas: A Focus on Literacy Spells Success, April 24
- Penn Alexander School, Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, The Philadelphia Schools and UPenn Team Up for Success, April 22
- Miami-Dade Schools, Florida: Getting Into "The Zone": Transforming Low-Performing Miami-Dade Schools, April 18
The National School Boards Association's Council of Urban Schools of Education (CUBE) has teamed up with
the National PTA on a new survey examining parents' perceptions of urban school climate: What We Think. The survey's results are generally encouraging: Parents believe their children's schools are safe; They report that they are actively involved in their children's schools; They trust and feel respected by teachers and administrators; and they believe their children capable of high academic achievement. ...
On this 25th anniversary of Nation at Risk, a chorus of education commentators has lamented that
serious problems persist even after a quarter century of education reform. Rather than allow such gloomy assessments to stifle faith in reform, we should consider this oddly reassuring point: We've sooner pantomimed than truly enacted the most promising reforms. Many of our best systemic reform ideas have yet to be thoroughly tested on a large scale. ...
Just last week, the Forum for Education and Democracy issued an important report on the federal role in K-12 education: Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education. With its obvious nod to Nation at Risk, the publication joins a long line of reports that raise the alarm over American students' declining standing in international assessments. Unlike many of those reports, however, Democracy at Risk strongly criticizes recent reform efforts' almost exclusive focus on "mandates and sanctions." ...
As a third-year Interactive Media teacher at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, DC, I've learned an essential lesson: Students will do boring old math, and will even learn math on their own, if they do it for a purpose they find meaningful--such as creating a computer game, computer graphics or computer animation.
First, about our program: McKinley Technology High school is a public magnet school that aims to provide the best technology education to high school students in Washington DC. We have a Career and Technical Education program that allows students to take technical courses in addition to their core course work. One area where students can take extra course work is in Interactive Media, where students gain a mix of experience in 3-dimensional modeling, 3-d animation, and programming, using professional software. ...
In a few days, a new and expanded edition of Richard Louv’s best-selling book, Last Child in the Woods, will hit bookstores around the country. Louv’s book has fueled an international movement to combat what he calls “nature deficit disorder,” children’s growing alienation from the natural world. (Louv’s term for the disorder is quickly catching on, turning up in major newspapers, on television, and even in a February cartoon by Bloom County creator Berke Breathed.)
A quotation from our recent telephone interview with Louv elegantly captures the thrust of his argument: “[T]he message we’re sending kids is that nature is in the past and probably doesn’t count anymore, the future’s in electronics, the boogeyman lives in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.” ...
In observance of Earth Day 2008, veteran science teacher Kenny Luna cooked up a clever way to
get young students thinking about the impact they have on the environment every day. In a few short months, he has managed to get thousands of school children in schools across the country to take on the "Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008."
In his own words:
When more than 23,000 school kids at 30 schools in 13 U.S. States and the Island of Curacao participated in The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008, they took a step towards reducing both deforestation and global warming by going without photocopies in classes for a day.
But they also had fun while "diagnosing" which contagious disease they believe has been causing school photocopy machines everywhere to chew up trees and spit them out at such an amazing rate. They dressed copiers up with the disease of their choice to create awareness of the problem among students, teachers, parents and staff throughout the day. ...
Stephanie Hirsh and Joellen Killion of the National Staff Development Council have written a must-read Education Week Commentary calling for far greater national commitment to professional learning. Already in their first paragraph, they drive home a point Public School Insights has been harping on lately: namely, that recent education reform efforts have squandered much of their promise by focusing more on incentives (or disincentives) than on continuous support for excellent instruction. Hirsh and Killion write: ...
Gary Swick has become something of a legend--not only at the Illinois high school where he teaches
science, but also among environmental educators nationwide. A winner of the prestigious Milken Educator Award, Swick regularly gets his students into the field, where they actually help protect the environment while they learn science. In one case, his students' careful observation of conditions at a nearby river prompted a City Council to adopt a construction site erosion control ordinance.
In our interview, Swick listed many benefits of environmental education. Among them: Students become better stewards of the world they inhabit; Reluctant or struggling students become much more engaged in science when they can do authentic work in the field.
Perhaps most important, Swick has turned his high school students into evangelists for the environment. They put on "energy fairs" to carry their message of energy conservation and green living to elementary school children and others across their state. He and his students travel to these fairs in a school bus (they call it a "cool bus") they have reengineered to run on biofuels--which can include grease and other waste from the school kitchen. ...
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Click here to browse dozens of Public School Insights interviews with extraordinary education advocates, including:
- 2013 Digital Principal Ryan Imbriale
- Best Selling Author Dan Ariely
- Family Engagement Expert Dr. Maria C. Paredes
The views expressed in this website's interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Learning First Alliance or its members.
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