resumefischler

"The Next Step: The Child as the Classroom"

ABSTRACT
It's wonderful news that no school in Florida received a failing grade in the recent FCAT test results.

However, the school's grade is an average of the students who took the test. This means at least 10 to 20 percent of the students within the school are failing to achieve the mastery of the material assigned to them.

The current system perpetuates the notion that the class is the unit. The group's average means that at least 20 percent of the class is left behind because time is fixed for these students.

I propose that we make time a variable so the students can achieve the mastery that is necessary. How can we give them the opportunity to be successful?

We need a seemless educational system, where "the child is the class." If the child is not rooted in time, then the individual has the time he/she needs to achieve. This can only be done if an infrastructure is in place that frees the classroom teacher from being the sole provider of information.

FOR MORE ON THIS TOPIC, send a message to [email protected] and ask for the article to be sent to you. (It's too big and in the wrong format to post on this page).

There is a great article ("Two Schools: Two approaches to personalized learning" by John Jenkins and James Keefe, Phi Delta Kappan, Feb 2002) that you should visit. See the web site for Phi Delta Kappan
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/ktoclist.htm

Two Schools: Two Approaches to Personalized Learning
SUMMARY from Phi Delta Kappan
The authors believe that the kind of vital personalization exemplified at Haney and Parker -- not state testing or rigid standardization -- must become the cornerstone of school renewal if educators and the communities they serve hope to change, in any significant way, the basic grammar of schooling.

Click HERE to see the full article