Kristin Goethals-EDL 710

We have a new generation of people with new ideas and who are going to need to have the skills necessary to lead our school systems and all of our organizational systems. The leaders of our schools are responsible for carrying out the visions of our school districts and helping staff and students rise to their ability. Through relationship building and a focus on the goal this initiative was able to get students into school and keep them in school in the poorest parts of Africa. The implications of this are profound when looking at the levels of poverty that are occurring right now in parts of America that at times seem impossible for educators to address. This seems to happen more and more as we focus on high stakes testing and achievement scores instead of looking at the basic needs of the whole child and focusing in on what we know we can change.  This ted talk focuses on how leadership is the key to change in the systems. They have formed the African Leadership Academy that focuses on training leaders who can go out and help their community by educating others. The message that I get from this video is we can see people struggling across the world in refugee camps facing poverty that it almost impossible to imagine and yet there are young leaders who are banding together to give back by educating others within the camps. The potential to fight the cycle of poverty exists by starting small. 

Trend 9 (beginning on page 199 of the Gary Marx unabridged text)-Let's try to do the right thing. Scientific discoveries and societal realities will force widespread ethical choices. 

What to watch- 0:00-9:11 and 13:17-16:00 

It is important that you view this video to better understand the nuances of doing the right thing and to better understand the reasons for bad judgment that often accompany leadership as discussed in the Trend 9 section of our text. "...Sandel begins his lecture with a scenario regarding ethical decision-making. Throughout his lecture he presents four scenarios where you asked to consider saving 5 people versus 1 person. Through voting, you discover that for two of four scenarios, students voted to take action necessary to save the 5 people at risk for death. In the remaining two of four, students voted to save the 1 person, instead of saving the 5 people at risk. Ultimately you discover that when making ethical decisions we use two types of reasoning, Consequential and Categorical. Our reasoning decision would produce two different outcomes." 

"What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities."

Sixteen Trends, Their Profound Impact on Our Future: Implications for Students, Education, Communities, and the Whole of Society by Gary Marx.  

Trend #6: Standards and high-stakes tests will fuel a demand for personalization in an education system increasingly committed to lifelong human development.

According to Marx, a demand for personalization seems to be growing.  Students and parents are feeling the effects of the narrowing of education to fit the needed learning of what is being tested.  Students’ individual intelligences, needs, and dreams are being pushed aside to make sure they meet certain standards set for them.  

In this video clip, Ken Robinson argues that “reform” isn’t what is needed to fix a broken education system, it’s a “revolution” in education that is needed. He has the audience ponder the fact that our education system has become linear and we have set a path for all students with the end factor all at the same outcome.   He states that it needs to be transformed into something else.  Something that is personalized for each student.  It needs to be based on students’ dreams and choices they make based on their interests and desired outcomes.  

At marker 14:45 he interestingly discusses the shift in our industrial type education system to a needed organic, agricultural one.  A system where, just as a farmer, we cultivate and nourish the ground, environment and feed and water the plants to provide an environment where each plant can “flourish” and develop into a healthy, mature plant.  We need to make learning more personalized for each individual student and that with that engaged learning will emerge.

 

Understanding will grow that sustained poverty is expensive, debilitating, and unsettling 

The entire clip is less than 14 minutes so I encourage you to watch the entire video. It is powerful.

According to Marx some people are born into poverty while others are limited by discrimination or lack of educational opportunity (282). We bear witness to achievement gaps in standardized test scores, dropout rates, college entrance and completion and more. 

In order to understand the achievement gap, why it exists and why we should be concerned with it Marx suggests we should understand the history of poverty, how it came to be and examine segregation. This includes the Brown vs. Board of Education case, the War on poverty, and other separate but equal historical events.

 In the video, teacher Kandice Sumner grew up with parents who worked in public service careers, her father a minister, her a mother a educator details “A survivor’s Remorse.” Why should a good education be exclusive to rich kids? This has a real impact on the potential of students, but not just students of color and not just students from limited income neighborhoods. This video is a direct correlation from Trend 14. It is the perfect back drop for Marx's narrative. Kandice Sumner sees the disparity every day in her classroom in Boston. In this inspiring talk, she asks us to face facts -- and change them. 
If you start at marker 8:29 she tells about a moment when her professional life shifted and the students in her classroom begin to realize the VALUE on their lives from perfect strangers. She then places a CHARGE on the audience to volunteer, cooperate, donate just some of her challenges for each educator, as Marx suggested, When a student is lost because of poverty, WE ALL LOSE! If we choose not to learn from history then we may be forced to relive it (291)

Felitti, V. J.,  Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D. Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., …Marks, J. S.,  (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 14 (4), 245–258.

How We’ll Earn Money in a Future Without Jobs

EDI--710  Nate Fowler

Each generation faces a set of unique challenges and problems.  Rising inequality, the impact of a warming climate, increasing human migration, and technological advancement (Trend 4) pose challenges for social, political, and economic systems across the globe.  Technological advancements have raised the quality of human life around the world, but rising anxiety and social alienation grip many of the students in our schools.  Not all the news is grim.  New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that 2018 was the best year ever as a follow up to his 2017 column that argued that year was the best ever. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/2018-progress-poverty-health.html

Trend 15 focuses on the careers of the future, but when Sixteen Trends was published the realities of an automated economy seemed much further off than it does today.  Educators need to prepare students with the skills to solve problems collaboratively, communicate, and treat their fellow humans with kindness and respect.  I share the video below not because I’m completely convinced it is the best way to deal with issues of Trend 14-poverty, Trend 10-personal security, or the ethical questions posed in Trend 9.  I share it because it provides an example of the thinking required for solutions to the challenges posed by current crises like our dysfunctional political system, economic inequality, racial inequities, declines in human wellness and environmental degradation that face students.  It will be up to our students to build a society that protects human value in a world where machines provide not only the physical labor provided by our economy, but more and more of the intellectual and creative labor as well.  How are winners and losers going to be determined in a system where wealth continues to be concentrated?  Inequality.org produced a graph that demonstrates that Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett have more combined wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans.  The wealth gap between white and African and Hispanic Americans continues to widen at alarming rates as well.  There are lots of TED talks on the power of design thinking, but I chose this video because it goes big and proposes change at the systems level.  Maybe a universal basic income is a solution to one of the main problems facing our students.  More importantly, it is an example of the thinking that we teachers need to empower our students with to believe that they can meet the challenges faced by their generation.

Nicole Price

EDI 710

Trend #7

Human ingenuity is defined as using our mind to not only think, but also to act, in order to overcome the difficulties we face in our life by taking advantage of the opportunities that come our way.  In this video, Dr. Geoffrey Canada unleashes his anger regarding the systems of education in today’s society and how closely they resemble the same educational systems that were seen 50 years ago, all with the same results.  In order to change these end results, American education needs to change its system of thinking that these results will improve using the same old processes that have yielded less than desirable outcomes year after year after year. 

While this video in its entirety is only 17 minutes long, Dr. Canada hits the nail on the head in his message around the 13 minute mark.  Shortly after, he is questioned about his own school’s astonishingly high statistics of student success despite the poverty and circumstances that surround them.   He takes a look at the data and then works to figure out why it is like it is.  Marx’ Trend #7 ties directly to this message in that this is that breakthrough thinking that ignites human ingenuity.  Creating knowledge and solutions to problems that seem radical in theory are really just practical thinking objectives.   The next step is to shift practices (which requires a shift in same age old thinking) to make a difference in helping students reach their full potential.  The old business models aren’t working anymore so why keep on keeping on? It is no longer a one size fits all model!  Questioning the status quo is necessary and vital to seeing learning take place across disciplines and for all students.  This becomes the expectation. No excuses!

One of those challenges, as Marx describes, is the demographic disconnect between teachers and students.  A large majority of teachers across the country are white.  In fact, most teachers in urban schools are white and often disconnected from the values, culture, and realities of their student population.  This can have huge effects on what Marx describes as “minority student achievement.”

In the video, Christopher Emdin, a Columbia University professor and author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education discusses the need for educators to reframe their understanding of what urban education can and should be.  Emdin challenges his audience to rethink not only their perceptions about what K-12 education is, but their perceptions about how academics look, speak, and act.  Emdin shows us that while Marx is correct in asserting that each child “will be expected to live, work, and thrive in a highly diverse world;” doing so does not mean that a child must disconnect from their own identity or culture.

Emdin understands and is on the forefront of responding to the educational implications of Trend 2.  In fact, when Marx discusses the need to attract and keep excellent teachers and role models, he is discussing the focus of Emdin’s research and work with Reality Pedagogy.  As a product of New York Public Schools, a self-proclaimed fan of all things Hip Hop, and the O.R. “Original Rachetdemic” Emdin is uniquely suited to help educators understand the changes necessary to  better engage an increasingly diverse student population in urban schools.  Marx tells his readers that “pursuing social cohesion, seeking common denominators, and adjusting our identity” will be a key educational implication of the diversity trend.  Emdin gives school leaders bold ideas about how to be at the forefront of this inevitable change and own the growing diversity of their schools.

I am currently in the process of developing a strategic plan for our district.  Within the plan, we are considering transportation, campus improvements, operational efficiencies, technology, safety/security, community support, social/personal development, and of course, curriculum improvements.  The true purpose of education is to impart knowledge and skills to our students so they can be successful in their future endeavors.  The first priority must be preparing the our youngsters for their career.  

Trend 15, “What am I gonna do?”  This is the question for each student, and what we, as a district, must consider looking forward.

With the economy still roaring along, it seems that everyone can find a job.  In Mr. Bush reminds us that only 40% of the people surveyed in their current job are “happy” at work.   Those that express happiness say Trust, Fairness, and Listening are the reasons they are happy.  They don’t mention their 4 year degree; they don’t have huge college debt; that they are getting paid too little or too much.  They do mention how they are treated.  Given that we can provide and safe environment, and a comprehensive, appropriate curriculum, we must also provide guidance about work ethic.  

In the chapter, the author repeats again and again that we can’t predict what jobs will be available in the near future because of the great changes in the world market.  But, we can prepare our students to be effective adults that can think, be good citizens, and be reliable.  I often talk to my students about the “3 A’s”: Academics, Attitude, Attendance.  These A’s count!  Work hard!  Be a good person!  Be there!  Whether you are an alternative program student or the valedictorian, these ideals will help you succeed.