Kane's+reading+notes

Kane's current reading notes and ideas

HoracesCompromise1 – Notes (Sizer, 1984)

Ask student to reflect. “How did you learn that?, is this way of learning unique to you?” pg. 1.

Managing a classroom requires judgement, sense of order and a thorough understanding of the task. Pg. 2

Education is not just about showing up on time but also nutures taste, judgement and the powers of thought. Pg. 3

The one variable differentiating one school from another is the social class of their students. Pg. 6

Schools don’t suit the irrepressible individuality of adolescents and the sharply etched discrimination between rich and poor Pg. 7.

Horace is described taking advantage of informal ‘teachable moments’. For example ‘Betty, which of the words in the first sentence is an adverb?’. Pg. 13.

Horace has high expectations and believes writing is important. Pg. 17.

Horace outlines how spending 5 minutes to correct each of his 120 student’s work each week equates to an additional 10 hours onto his workload. Pg. 18

Summary: The first 11 pages describe how busy, undervalued, underpaid, teachers are. Other school loads and structures were referred to pointing to an obvious disparity in structure and quality of education.

Point 6. Pg. 226. Fostering Learning stage progression not age stage progression. What happens to those students who will never achieve their rite to attend Secondary School?

Point 8. Pg. 227. Yes, Yes, Yes. Is this nurturing a current Primary school model?

....Teaching “Inquiry and Expression” in a powerful way in the form and setting required by his pupils. Pg. 230

Middle of Pg. 231. Adaptive curriculum.

Pg. 232. Valid argument for an academic education versus an education that doesn’t attempt for vigorous imaginative approaches to low achieving students, instead palm them off to hands on trade or hands on learning. Do trade qualifications increase earning capacity great than academic qualifications? If our core value is to provide our students with opportunities to have choice and not live life on hand outs is trade school such a bad thing?

Pg. 233 “Giving up on a child’s mind is simply unacceptable”. Time? Funding? for the more vigorous, imaginative learning opportunities. When he has met...an insight into how and why to develop a year 9 student who cannot read.

Pg. 234. Argument against “electives”

Pg. 237. If parents were made more aware and kept more up to date of what occurs in school’s would they be more supportive?

1. Page 11, infers that change needs to be informed. Why young people are falling behind? How can make the bureaucracies more efficient? “Tougher” courses=”Larger workload”=”Less time to develop student learning”=”more homework”=”more mindless busy work” Longer school day or year? 2. Page 12. Reform scaffolding questions. a) What is it that high school graduates must display to earn our respect and admiration? b) How can school’s function so that all student’s display and achieve these accomplishments? c) What political, community and administrative context is required? d) How can distinctive concerns of students, parents, the state and the community be respectfully accommodated and yet still nuture schools and a schooling system that serve all adolscents. My own questions: Funding? Who, How, When? Are being to macro with our expectations? Should we be focussing on smaller schools and classes to develop a more connected school community? 3. Pg. 13. Are all students informed with the outcomes they are to achieve when learning? Are they informed with the ‘real world’ link to their learning? 4. Pg. 14. Good series of parent perspective questions at the bottom of the page. 5. Pg. 207. My own questions: Should best school’s practice be adjusted according to cohort need’s? Is a one model for the next X amount of time sufficient? I gelled with the aphorism: “less is more” should dominate: curricular decisions are to be directed toward the students attempt to gain mastery rather than by the teachers effort to cover content. Mastery being the key word. My thoughts: If you can master something, you have succeeded. If you have succeeded you have the confidence to learn again and again. You see a purpose to learning. If you see a purpose you feel connected. If you feel connected you feel important. If you feel important you feel valued. If you feel valued you feel your thoughts are worth sharing. If you share your thoughts you learn to collaborate. If you collaborate you learn from other people. If you learn from other people your ideas grow and you succeed. By creating ‘masters’ we are creating life long learning. Learning provides choices. Choices provide happiness. Happiness means less ailments and less stress on our health care system... 6. Pg. 208. The emphasis is on the student being able to demonstrate on being able to the important things. My thoughts: Again the secondary school pre-requisite ‘diploma’ is mentioned. This has been my goal ever since I started teaching. This is what I would like to see. Questions – What happens to those students who never achieve the ‘diploma’? I agree that these students would not be successful in secondary school and have a greater chance of disrupting the learning of others and influencing the well being of other students and staff through unwanted behaviour. How long to keep them attempting to pass? 7. Pg. 223. Learning areas to be covered: Mathematics, Science, the arts, history-philosophy, languages other than English, the skills of expression, the techniques of inquiry, and study habits. My thoughts: Brilliant. I would like to see the Australia curriculum specifically target, the skills of expression, the techniques of inquiry and study habits. The way it currently is, all these essential learning skills are time hungry on a teacher’s load because there is so much to get through!
 * Notes HoracesSchoolRedesigning2 (Sizer, 1992) **

8. Pg. 225. I really like the idea of a “floating” teacher to assist where required.

My thoughts: School’s are given x amount of teachers to teach y amount of subjects/grades. If a school reduced the amount of subjects it could free up a floating teacher or two without increasing staffing costs. How? Could the curriculum still be addressed?

9. Pg. 228. I like the fact that student receives more learning time. I am unsure of how the 7am start would effect the energy levels of staff and students. For staff that currently leave home at 7 to be at work by 8 would now have to leave at 4am to be at work by 5am. This is assuming most teachers prefer an hour to settle in each day prior to classes commencing.

1. Pg. 2 – Faculty members see themselves as generalists rather than specialists. I can see that this is preferred as it allows for teachers to teach across multiple domains. My concern would be that the quality of the coaching may be reduced? 2. Pg. 3 – Politics of subtraction. Which programs are trimmed and removed. Should part of the consultation process include a SWOT analysis? 3. Pg. 112 – This again is another mention of external funding. Corporate funding, Philanthropic funding. The concept is fantastic but if all school’s use this model there will be less and less of ‘external’ funding available. Back to square 1? 4. Pg. 113. Introduce the prerequisite Diploma concept and work your up with change as opposed to starting the Coalition school proposal in a High school year level. 5. Pg. 114.Reflective questions: How do your tests accord with the Curriculum? What is the Curriculum you are according too? Is individualised instruction the same as personalised instruction? Success can’t be fuelled by unexamined good will. 6. Pg. 115. ...he has more time to visit classes and talk to teachers about matters of teaching and learning...  7. Pg 116....the essential school experience reduce behaviour problems and absences. Students must be wanting to turn. Students must feel more connected and achieve success more regularly. My questions: How can we make flexibility and accountability sustainable through and after change? 8. Pg. 117. Essentially proposing mini schools with a school. 4 teachers in charge to choice of subjects, selection of resources, essential questions, concepts and skills, design and review their own performance. Design and coordinate class schedules, integrate knowledge and skill into instruction, design exhibitions that demonstrate mastery. My thoughts: I like this idea as it takes the pressure of the Principal class through distributed leadership and decision making. Students would be more connected through more contact with the same teachers. 9. Pg. 119 Fine education emerges when student, teachers (and the community), sense ownership of their school (Sizer and Houston, 1987). For ownership to be valued decisions on resources, budget, leadership and system ‘checks and balances’. The school needs to own //all// the decisions relating to //all// aspects of the school. My thoughts: Decision still very budget focussed. Would a limited budget force school’s back to the ‘old’ way of running. Are school’s running inefficiently and under duress because of minimal funding? 10. Pg. 121-122 Liberman, (1998), suggests two successful elements that are present in a successful school is when the student is a worker and a teacher is a coach. Liberman suggests that a student is a worker when they can articulate a road map of how to complete the task and the purpose for it. As teachers today we foster the articulation and demonstration of Learning Intentions and Success Criteria. 11. Pg. 123. Students need to see connectedness between interdisciplinary subjects like History and English. Cohort themes would meet this criteria. 12. Pg. 124 Conclusion. Some interesting points on retraining. 1. Pg. 348. There are two types of changes. Type A: designed to alter what people, do, say and think and feel. Not only individually but also in combinations, i.e., student-teacher, teacher-adminstrator, administrator-board and parent-school relationships. Type B: Changes that improve parts of the school system, e.g., the introduction of computers, team teachers and the assessment of teaching competency. Both require changes in attitude and custom. 2. Pg. 349. Sizer speaks about 9 Principals of change that need to implemented for a coalition school to drive change. Without Type A change, nothing will come of Type B changes. 3. //qua is latin for in ‘in the capacity of’.// 4. Pg. 350. How can you get everyone to be able to articulate and demonstrate the same change. Seymour (1996), suggests that every part of a desired changed can be interrupted differently by an individual. My question: How can change be systematic if everyone interrupts the change differently? 5. Pg. 351. Inconsisten views prevented disparate ends coming together. 6. Pg. 352. Change needs leaders skilled up to mediate conversations between multiple parties on a particular topic. This works because it extends to genuine sensitivity to the rights, feelings and aspirations of colleagues. Ignoring concerns of colleagues can lead to limiting success for students. 7. Pg. 353-354. Walsey, Hampel and Clark, 1995, suggest that unless we create a culture that rewards success stories rather than critical feedback or thoughtful self analysis covert behaviour in schools will continue to exist. Covert behaviour such as disagreeing with decisions in private and refusing to carry out any change in their classrooms. My questions: How can we create a culture that rewards success? Performance based pay bonuses? Involving all teachers in the decision making processes? Withholding pay for those teachers who show no evidence of integrating the required changes? 8. Pg. 353. Regular reflection question: Is what we are doing getting us what we want?
 * reststructuringSecondarySchools3 ** (Lieberman, 1998)
 * whatConsitutesAChange4 ** (Swason, 1996)

9. Pg. 355. Change ideas need to be thought of a progressive model. A model that will lead to a new and improved model, not an end of the line model. The computer would not have evolved if were not for the change that took place during developmental process characterised by feedback between developers and user, between what a computer could do and what users wanted it to do, between what a developer considered a satisfactory model and the dissatisfaction of those using the model. It is a self correcting process in which theory, technology, knowledge and practice were a seamless web. It was a process in which failure, whole or in part, was productive of new models. It is a process whose end is not in sight. My questions: A computer was developed from an idea. The idea was then developed according to what the developers thought was needed to make it work. The consumers then provided feedback and the developers take that feedback on board. The computer is a forever evolving process. The school system was developed for a need. The need to educate a society to create wealth which leads to supporting the needs of a society. How are the school system consumers being involved in decision making process for change? Student Representative councils, School councils, teachers to have control over how they teach but not what they teach. How do we know if we are providing our society with what it needs to be sustainable? 10. Pg 356. What will model B look like? How much of model A should we change to make it effective? Is there a formula? 11. Pg. 357. We need to stop believing that change is an ‘engineering process’ where the change will be at point and x and y at these calendar times. It will never be this way. My questions: Given this is the case how can you budget for change? If there is no x and y point at certain calendar times when does the funding stop? 12. Pg. 360. You cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs. To believe that a decision can be made with no ones feathers being ruffled is the same as believing in the tooth fairy. Big questions asked in the text: What purposes are to be served by those changes?

