"Best Practices" --by Nicholas Meier
"Best Practices" --by Nicholas Meier
Here's a great essay on how one size truly does not fit all.
From Nicholas Meier's blog entry:
"Let’s consider an analogy. Let us say I want to find the "best" shoe size, so I can provide all my students with the right shoes. I do a controlled study, and find that when I give size 10 shoes, more students have shoes that fit them than any other size. Now I can mandate that everyone be given size 10 shoes. But men’s and women’s feet are different you complain. Okay, I may need to do some differentiation. Women get a women’s size 8 1/2. How about ethnic groups? Mexican Americans tend to be smaller. Okay, Mexican-Americans men get a size 9....."
We can all see the utter absurdity of this. But this is what we are doing to our school children, especially to the most needy and disadvantaged school children..."
Mandated lessons, pacing guides... Can we go a different way?
"We need to be asking, what is the best way to support classrooms and teachers where each child will be best supported to learn in the most effective way? No two children are the same, and even the same child may need something different from day to day.
The best schools, schools that succeed with large percentages of students are ones where teachers work together collaboratively getting to know the students. In these school they devise curriculum that allows alls students to find ways into it, no matter what their learning differences styles and abilities are. These schools honor these differences, while expecting, cajoling, pushing, all students to do their best."
So nice to hear simple, sensible, hopeful TRUTH.
Here's a great essay on how one size truly does not fit all.
From Nicholas Meier's blog entry:
"Let’s consider an analogy. Let us say I want to find the "best" shoe size, so I can provide all my students with the right shoes. I do a controlled study, and find that when I give size 10 shoes, more students have shoes that fit them than any other size. Now I can mandate that everyone be given size 10 shoes. But men’s and women’s feet are different you complain. Okay, I may need to do some differentiation. Women get a women’s size 8 1/2. How about ethnic groups? Mexican Americans tend to be smaller. Okay, Mexican-Americans men get a size 9....."
We can all see the utter absurdity of this. But this is what we are doing to our school children, especially to the most needy and disadvantaged school children..."
Mandated lessons, pacing guides... Can we go a different way?
"We need to be asking, what is the best way to support classrooms and teachers where each child will be best supported to learn in the most effective way? No two children are the same, and even the same child may need something different from day to day.
The best schools, schools that succeed with large percentages of students are ones where teachers work together collaboratively getting to know the students. In these school they devise curriculum that allows alls students to find ways into it, no matter what their learning differences styles and abilities are. These schools honor these differences, while expecting, cajoling, pushing, all students to do their best."
So nice to hear simple, sensible, hopeful TRUTH.
Tags: best+practices
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