Please let me know what you think about Tony's article!
A World-Class Fix for Schools
"In a 21st-century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there's an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know—education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it's a prerequisite for success.”
–President Barack Obama
In his quest to improve America’s schools, President Obama has called for innovation and globalization. Successful models for that innovation can be found right in the former backyard of both Obama and new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. On a typical morning at Walter Payton College Prep High School in Chicago, students are greeted warmly by a guest instructor for the day. One day the guest may be from nearly 5,000 miles away in Switzerland, connected through the school’s state-of-the-art videoconference system. Another day there may be a teacher connected to the school from China. In math classes, students work on problems that come from peers as far away as France, India and Japan....
Read the full Article Here: http://www.theroot.com/views/world-class-fix-schools
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Walter Payton enjoys a fabulous reputation in Chicago. It definitely sounds like an ideal learning environment, and I hope to visit it one day. However, it is one school out of hundreds in Chicago and it is not typical because it is a selective enrollment school and it is very well resourced. The percentages of students of color do not reflect the city's makeup.
This article brings up several questions in my mind:
1) How can we get more school leaders in inner city schools to prioritize global initiatives in their schools? How do we build vision? Global projects, technology, etc are often seen as add-ons. I think experiential learning is a victim in this area of NCLB.
2) How do we deal with the digital divide that still exists in urban schools? Schools may be wired now, but equipment is not kept up to date necessarily and there seems to be a lack of professional development and knowledge about best practices with technology in the average urban school.
Generally speaking, I'd like to see more articles such as this focused on your average urban school.
Replies
This article brings up several questions in my mind:
1) How can we get more school leaders in inner city schools to prioritize global initiatives in their schools? How do we build vision? Global projects, technology, etc are often seen as add-ons. I think experiential learning is a victim in this area of NCLB.
2) How do we deal with the digital divide that still exists in urban schools? Schools may be wired now, but equipment is not kept up to date necessarily and there seems to be a lack of professional development and knowledge about best practices with technology in the average urban school.
Generally speaking, I'd like to see more articles such as this focused on your average urban school.