In early November, High School French Teacher Sarah Moran, Lower School Music Teacher Kim Aberle and I were able to attend the annual ISACS Conference in St. Louis.  (Kim was one of the presenters at the conference, and her presentation was geared towards early childhood and elementary teachers, librarians, and music teachers on how to marry music and childrens' literature.) We also had the chance to visit with former Goshen Campus Head of School John Delautre at his new school, Whitfield Academy.  Whitfield is a beautiful school serving grades 7-12, and we were pleased to find that it was a fellow Progressive School and clearly a kindred spirit to us.  I'm also happy to report that John has settled in well and seems right at home at his new school. 

The conference, as usual, was tremendous.  Each of us saw a number of interesting speakers.  One that I particularly enjoyed was Ian Jukes, author of a number of books, the most recent of which is Literacy Is Not Enough, which discusses how teaching must change to prepare students for 21st century fluencies.  As I often feel when listening to such presentations, I once again felt that he was describing St. Francis and the way we teach.  He says that the new basics that every student needs to know for success are: 1) problem solving; 2) creativity, divergent thinking; 3) analytical thinking, comparing/contrasting, ability to work without supervision; 4) collaboration; 5) communication skills - multimedia formats; 6) ethics, action, and accountability - global issues, environment, etc.

Jukes then discussed how we can deliver the content and teach new basics.  He believes that there are three keys to effective teaching:

1) We must teach with the intersection of interest and relevance, and content must be presented with personal interest for students in order for it to stick.  He believes that teachers should mix up more traditional methods of presenting content with units that feature things kids know and love.   One example included using popular movies or video games to teach relevant themes, such as "Angry Birds" demonstrating math or physics concepts.

2) Our teaching must emphasize higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).  He says that lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) like remembering, understanding and applying are what most educators and schools focus on.  HOTS, on the other hand, include analyzing, evaluating and creating.  For instance, start with the idea of creating a recipe for a healthy snack for kids; analyze why it is healthy; evaluate/make value judgments about information - is apple pie healthy? depends on the ingredients and proportions; create a healthy pie recipe and justify why it is healthy.

3) The best teaching incorporates real-world experiences.  Jukes referenced research by John Hattie as explained in Hattie's three books, the most recent of which is Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn.  While the book is very dense, the main point is that we only retain a small amount of what we hear; we retain more with visual input, and even more when teaching is audiovisual.  However, in all three of these methods, we are receiving information in a passive manner.  Active learning, on the other hand, involves participating in the learning - discussion, hands-on.  Hattie proves that the most productive environments for retaining information are multi-sensory activities that involve the real world; in other words, those that focus on higher-order thinking skills.  An example is the study of earthquakes in a geology class.   Most often, students receive a lecture on earthquakes and perhaps see charts.  A more effective means of making that information stick is to show students the videos of what happened in Japan and how 20,000 people died and 90,000 people were left homeless.

Hattie's research provided the most interesting single fact I learned during this presentation.  He compared retention by students who were taught using traditional teaching methods (lecture/test) versus students who were taught with project/process-based methods.  Students were given a standardized test at the end of the year, and both sets of students scored the same - thus disproving that traditional methods are "better".  However the interesting part is that when the same students were tested one year later, the traditional group retained 15% of what they had learned, whereas the group taught with project/process-based learning retained 70%, a huge difference!  As Jukes said, this is further evidence for the old adage "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." 

Development Dish

December 6th & 7th

7:00 p.m Downtown Campus Fall Drama: Picasso at the Lapin Agile (appropriate for high school-age audiences and up only)

December 16th - 20th

Downtown Campus Exam Week

December 15th

5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Wyverns in New York Party - Von Wine Bar

December 21st - January 6th              

Holiday Break - NO SCHOOL (ALL)

January 6th

Professional Development - NO SCHOOL (ALL)

January 7th                           

Classes resume (ALL)