by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 22, 2016 | Uncategorized
Whenever I see stories in the media, of people coming down on public education, it’s crushing. My heart is filled with stories of real kids with real lives that I taught many years ago. I think about poverty and what life outside of our school was like for my students. I was fresh out of college and ill-equipped to understand fully what the situation was. But, I learned fast. I knew I had 3 packs of copy paper and curriculum materials that were “on their way” from central office for almost the entire school year. I learned quickly to make do with what I had. Not because I was innovative, but because I had absolutely no other choice. I knew some of my students didn’t have parents. Some were in foster group homes. Some had one meal a day, and it was the one the school served them. There was a fourth grader who brought razor blades into my classroom, a tool he was using to survive on his walk through the neighborhood. There was the boy who looked squarely at me when I was a young pregnant teacher and told me, “I hope your baby dies.” There was the student whose dad was arrested and he came to school anyway, in the same clothes, for the next several days. There was a boy who would run away from school, too many times to count. There were kids who moved, week to week, never attending the same school long enough to connect with a teacher or even other kids. These are just a few things. A tip of the iceberg. Things that left scars on my heart and determination in me to make learning better, because the world needs to be better. Because every kid deserves better. These are just a few of the stories, all true, and many others that are too personal to share.
So when someone attacks public schools, I don’t get it. There are people working, every day, doing things that most wouldn’t imagine. People who spend countless extra hours working with less each year, to make the experience as great as they can for the kids in their classrooms. Not because the kids are their students, but because their hearts are is in it and the kids are part of their hearts.
And to go through that, working so hard, and have the public make comments insinuating that you don’t care, or that you aren’t trying hard enough? Every teacher has THAT day where they ask themselves if they can keep going. The real magic is that they continue because HOPE for a child is in their heart.
So please think before you criticize. The federal government has tied the hands of administrators and teachers, forcing mandates for test scores and creating a focus on the wrong things. No Child Left Behind and all that would follow were a debacle and schools are still reeling from effects. A focus on assembly line factory style learning, while teachers struggle to maintain their creativity and their souls that led them to the classroom in the first place. Hope has been being sold to textbook companies and testing organizations at a high price.
Every single year, teaching is getting harder and harder with more hoops to jump through. Great teachers are being forced out of the classroom. Problems are mounting. Poverty continues and the stories I told above are not unique, they are just a tiny heartbreaking sample of reality. Yet, there is hope. And people, all around our country TEACH ON because that hope is there. Before you criticize, ask yourself if it’s fair for YOU to steal someone else’s hope, and most of all, who are you taking it away from?
by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 20, 2016 | Thoughts on Learning
I’ve played Pokemon Go. I’ve shared a few laughs with my family over it. I even took my daughter to the park to play it in a ginormous “Pokeraid”. But the claim that it’s the “Future of Learning”? I just don’t see it.
Interactive tech has already been here. Google street view and GPS navigation. Field trips with AR embedded tours in museums. Creating virtual worlds in Minecraft. Interactive whiteboards and watches that track your location. Scanning the environment to bring something to life, hiding a code to link to a video. There are so many great pieces of technology out there, just waiting for the perfect chance to embed them into a lesson. Tools.
Maybe I’m just skeptical. Maybe I’ve seen one, two, or twenty bandwagons take off in education and misdirect the focus of well meaning educators who get sucked in. Maybe I’ve been one of the ones sucked in. Okay, I’ve been sucked in too many times.
But this? I’m SO glad people are having fun and getting out to enjoy the game. I had some fun with it, and even got slightly competitive when my husband caught a rare Pokemon and I didn’t have one. But to say it’s the future of learning? I’m way too skeptical to say that an app like this is going to come in and change the game. I believe changing the game is up to us taking a hard look at the fundamentals of what we do. Our teaching, guiding, lesson planning. We can acknowledge that our kids need opportunity to move, to design, to create, and to change the world. I won’t buy the idea that catching a Pokemon “in your own environment” is going to lead to design, big thinking, and changing the world. Trust me, if there was, I’d have already installed on it on every single device in my classroom and launched a campaign of “Pokemon for All.” Unfortunately there is no shortcut, no app, for that.
So, it’s NOT the future of learning… that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. I’ll keep playing PokemonGo AND also try to make learning right for kids. I can’t give up knowing education doesn’t have a quick fix and I certainly can’t let my husband catch more Pokemon than me.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 14, 2016 | Uncategorized
After a great couple of weeks immersed in different learning experiences and conversations, I’m taking a step back. I’m left with thoughts and remnants of moments rolling around in my head. People who are asking for help. They’re leading a charge at their schools for a makerspace, and some of them got that role without asking. It’s clear, schools are clambering to get a space in their school where creativity is the focus.
A space where kids can go do stuff.
A space where they put a 3d printer.
A space that looks fun and different.
A space where this “thing” called making can happen.
But how is this space going to change learning across curriculums? A colorful room stocked with stuff is just that… stuff. We’d never expect a smoother ride from a car that was freshly painted. Internally, inside that car, we’d need to open it up and make improvements.
Are we willing to open up what we’re doing in our schools? Are we willing to push back against the test score monster that pushes down on us with stifling pressure to earn points? Are we willing to make creating, designing, and making possible throughout our schools? We have to be. The alternative? I’m not willing to accept a future like that. We can’t be.
Our kids, every last kid in our country, deserves the very best. A colorful room that looks like a children’s museum and more importantly, a curriculum that IS the real world and gets them fired up for learning. And more importantly, fired up for life.
