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The Attitudes of Weaving Imagination into an Academic Framework Submitted by ace on 2010-09-06
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Recently I conducted a survey of a representative cross-section of the junior class. The purpose of the survey was to determine how students define success. I disaggregated the responses by gender and academic level and was a little stunned to find that every group defined success primarily as good grades and admission to a respectable college. Some students also mentioned friends, family, being true to oneself, but they are all marching to the same mantra: meet the standards, get the grades, go to college. Because they recognize that we are the gatekeepers, with authority to impose standards and determine grades, they comply with our demands, many of them putting in long hours to do so. Responses to the open-ended questions on the survey often alluded to the stress induced by the relentless pressure to produce work Omega Replica(http://www.genuinekopi.com/omega-c-340.html)  that will earn the necessary good grades. The survey results strongly suggest that many students operate in survival mode with no time or energy to engage creatively with assignments. A student in survival mode looks for the most direct route to the target grade; investing personal passion and imagination in simultaneous assignments from five or six disciplines must seem not only impractical but downright irresponsible.\r\n\r\nI work in a district where curriculum, including standards and rubrics, is developed by teachers and then submitted to the Board of Education for approval. There is broad recognition that we need to maintain a balance between implementation of board-approved curriculum and freedom to experiment with new ideas and new approaches, so teachers will have fresh material to contribute when curriculum comes up for review. We realize that there\'s no such thing as a perfect curriculum, so we focus on continuous improvement. In each cycle of revision, our standards and rubrics more clearly reflect the opportunities and imperatives of the 21st century. Nevertheless, as this process moves along, students are caught in a catch-22: to keep the door to the future open they must meet standards established five or more years in the past, standards that tend to focus on the skills that are important to us rather than the skills that will be important to them.\r\n\r\nThe Connecticut State Department of Education, in its Connecticut Plan for Secondary School Reform, cites Howard Gardner\'s \"five minds of the future,\" which include \"the disciplined mind of the critical thinker, the synthesizing mind of the problem solver, the creative mind of the innovator, the respectful mind of the collaborator, and the ethical mind of the leader\". Connecticut\'s plan gives a central role to Gardner\'s vision of future thinking: \"Those who live in the 21st century will need to practice all of these modes of thinking on a daily basis. School must be the training ground for students to acquire and internalize these \'minds\' for success\". If school is, indeed, to be this training ground, students need relief from the quantity of work they Omega Replica Watches(http://www.genuinekopi.com/omega-c-340.html)  currently produce, so they have the time and the mental and emotional space to think critically, synthesize, innovate, collaborate, and develop the character to ethically lead. To that end, I\'ve been experimenting with assignments that lure students into spending more time and thought than they intended on the work. In return, I\'m giving fewer assignments and changing how the work is assessed.\r\n

Article No is 5527 Category is Food

How The Girls Avoided Reading Elaborated Printed Texts Available in The Museum? Submitted by daisy on 2010-08-18
related website http://www.vvibramfivefingers.com

This exchange shows how the girls avoided reading elaborated printed texts available in the museum, such as those in wall pockets. Furthermore, it points to their viewing rather than print reading preferences in galleries. After the tour, when asked about a printed wall narrative of an African warrior garment (assembled from animal skins and parts, such as talons; dozens of little mirrors;, and small encased religious passages) that had greatly interested the girls, Periwinkle laughed and reported they hadn\'t read about it: \"We just looked at it.\" In the context of reported adolescent literacy crises, where do Periwinkle and Chastain fall? Certainly, as AP students from backgrounds of privilege they are not likely at risk for academic failure as it is typically defined. Decoding print for them was seemingly a game, and looking, as Periwinkle implied, took precedence over reading printed text. The many remarkable museum objects Vibram Fivefingers Shoes(http://www.vibramshoesonsales.com)  that interested the two girls, such as the warrior\'s garment and African masks, did not encourage them to read the printed texts readily available about those and other museum objects. This was also the case with other adolescents in the study.\r\n\r\nTake for instance the following exchange between two other adolescent participants, Bart and Clifford. They, like Periwinkle and Chastain, identified themselves as AP students and white, and they toured the Bedford on their own and at their own pace. In addition, the two boys were both from academic households; each had a parent who was involved in higher education. The following conversation took place as they stood in front of a Bedford exhibition titled \"Art Tools of History,\" which was accompanied by 14 printed text labels and three descriptive text panels:\r\n\r\nBart: [looking into the case] Dude, that\'s some kind of hammer!\r\nClifford: It\'s really cool!\r\nBart: And that thing must be for grinding corn.\r\nClifford: Like a mortar and pestle. Maybe for medicine.\r\nBart:  Dude, that looks like a lamp.\r\nClifford: And that looks like Shiva, the goddess of chaos. That could be her. I\'m interested in Hinduism.\r\nBart: That\'s cool.\r\nClifford: I was just lookin\' at this [pointing into case]. They\'re like nunchucks. My friend Jason likes to play with nunchucks a lot. He\'s into martial arts.\r\n\r\nThroughout their museum experiences, the two boys moved on to other displays without looking at printed wall texts and labels. Nonetheless, this data snippet shows some of the qualities literacy educators, in theory, value. First, the tools apparently engaged Bart and Clifford as suggested by their exclamations. Second, in this short span of time they made text-to-self and text-to-text connections Vibram Five Fingers(http://www.vvibramfivefingers.com)  that encompassed practical tools, religion, and martial arts. Indeed, as a sociocultural act, the youths were decoding museum texts and spaces, and as shown in this segment, not choosing to incorporate the printed texts into their acts of reading. Nonetheless, this did not deter them from making meaning from museum texts, broadly defined to include images and other objects, spaces, and so forth.\r\n

Article No is 4833 Category is Food

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