SNHU Education Summit

The keynote speaker is from a nonprofit that promotes change in education. For an older man, he seems to be on the cutting edge of the notion that educational methods need to change in order to "fix schools." But I also think the standards have changed since the internet makes finding and accessing information so much easier. "Every job is a learning job." It's a rare job that doesn't evolve over time anymore, that doesn't require constantly updating skills, learning new ones and discarding outdated ones. Why shouldn't the same be said for teachers? It's not a matter of fixing teacher preparation--it's a matter of making more technology available to enhance classroom lessons, using the technology to engage the students in the classroom instead of the old model where they sat passively maybe absorbing knowledge maybe just absorbing enough to pass the exam. We know that doesn't work any longer for the majority of students.
He talks about changing schools from teaching organizations to learning organizations--which all makes perfect sense to me. This doesn't seem so radical to me. But then I've never had a teacher who really made an impression on me, who inspired me to achieve or push myself so maybe that's why I believe the success lies within the student and a good teacher is only one of many catalysts for that success. I have seen teachers who seem to get a vicarious thrill when they fail students, as if it's the students' fault. I want to see students succeed and not get constant messages of how they fall short of expectations.
Learning teams seems like a great way to approach any type of lesson, a way to incorporate many disciplines within one lesson. To have the math teacher and the social studies teacher and the language arts teacher all collaborate on a lesson that involves the Great Depression and the World War--through a mixture of media and techniques and methods--it would be a novel lesson that would sure to be engaging.