Help! The stress of being prepared and not ready

I should have know this would happen. Have you ever prepared for something, but when the actual time comes to pass you are not as ready as you had hoped? Maybe you prepared for a test that was much harder than you expected, maybe you prepared for marriage, or children, or a new job and it was much harder than you expected. As I have mention in previous posts the school I teach at, North Valley Academy, is transitioning to a mastery based model of education and guess what, yesterday was registration. Yesterday was the first day that the theory of this model met a little bit of reality. Oh my, it was intense. I hope it was not as intense for parents as it was for me. I have teamed up with a co-worker and we are doing the scheduling for the upper grades. We have worked to build this wonderful schedule, set up electives, and make templates for parents and students to follow. The first parent to sign up was thankfully the most patient parent, because it took us over 20 minutes to sign the students up. It should no way take that long to schedule students.  Oh the stress was so intense (most of the stress was probably just in my own head), but the parent was patient and understanding, but also caught on quickly. I felt that the scheduling table quickly had a line backed up at registration, but we worked and became quicker at the scheduling. Looking back now I wish we had more students come in for registration and I hope that registration today is better attended. The joy, the highlight, that I walked away with when I left the school last night was that parents who did not know how the system was going to work seemed to walk away excited about their student's education for the upcoming year. We are semester based and each semester a student completes six classes plus has a homeroom or advisory. The neat part with this system is that students will focus on two, three, or four classes at a time and work at a faster rate going more in-depth and finish those courses about half-way through the semester. After finishing those courses a student will begin on the next set of assigned courses. This allows students to truly focus on courses and hopefully not be spread too thin in their learning. Students will have the opportunity to master the content and have a true understanding of the course. No matter how much planning you do you cannot prepare for the crazy twists and turns that reality throws your way. I guess I have to work at getting better at just rolling with punches and staying positive. I better it would have been better if I had brought my Mountain Dew to the registration table instead of leaving it in my classroom. Mountain Dew makes everything better! Hoping for more parents and students to come and register today!

A new age of learners

Learning is changing in the United States. There is a reason for this change and it is speed. As we look back we know that we are creating new technology and spreading information faster than ever. We are being fed information faster and faster and the human brain barely has time to accept and process all the information. The learning process has a problem. Years ago, students came to school, did their studies, went home and did chores. There was more physical activity for children that was just natural, not part of going to the gym or playing sports. The reason I bring this up is because I believe it is important to have tasks that are mundane or physical challenging if not as intellectually challenging. I was raised on a family farm and I know that those chores of feeding and caring for animals or changing irrigation pipe are not the most mentally taxing, but they offer an outlet for the brain to process. I remember how important it was for me to go outside and shoot the basketball after studying my spelling words. We are missing the physical activity that allows students to process information. Students today have turned their down time towards online activities such as social media and video games. I can relate to this problem as well, especially during a bad allergy season when it is not enjoyable to go outside because it is hard to breathe or I begin to itch all over. In that time I end up spending my free time online or playing video games. Students today run to social media, reading, posting, and chatting with friends, but never truly taking a break to process information from the day. Students play video games, complete quests, shoot bad guys, and save the world, but yet again have never given their brain a chance to wind down or at least process something in a different manner. As an educational system we need to use this knowledge of speed, technology, and processing information to our advantage. As I said in my last post, the school I teach at is moving to a mastery based model and I can see how it will truly benefit learners in America today. Lets look at Bloom's Taxonomy for a minute.

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The bottom two layers of bloom's taxonomy consist of remembering and understanding. With the speed of technology and information do we really need to focus 80% or even 50% of our time teaching to this level. No, we need to teach students how to successfully find the knowledge and then we need to engaging activities and projects that are forcing students to apply the knowledge, to analyze the information and their understanding of it, to evaluate tasks based on their understanding and remembering of the topic, and lastly we need to be have students creating. When students create they need to do it without having their hand held, without having a person their to help them every step of the way. Teachers are there to be a safety net, to encourage, and direct students, but not to give students a false sense of achievement. Schools, teachers, and parents need to allow students to fail in their creating so they are use their evaluating, analyzing, and applying skills to understand  where they went wrong and how to fix the problem. With this mastery based model, students in our system will not be able to move forward without demonstrating true knowledge. With this model, a test is not the only measure of mastery, but projects and conversations of the material and its inter-workings are important to that demonstration of mastery. Students need to have skills in which they know how to find information, understand the information they find, and then be able to apply it to their situation in the real world. Our goal at North Valley Academy is to create independent thinkers that can reason and grow on their own. Students who can on their own evaluate and make the best of any situation. That is what our goal is for this mastery based system. This new age of learners have a great opportunity to be successfully in this model.

Why Blog

Hello to all the readers out there. I have decided to create this blog to talk about a transition, a transition in education. The school I am currently employed with, North Valley Academy Charter School, is moving to a model of education that has me extremely excited. This school is moving to a mastery based, standards and objective based, student paced, blended learning model of education. I just have to say that anytime change happens people are wary. North Valley Academy did not originally come up with this idea, oh no, this idea has been growing for years, but the school is modeling its design after Innovations Early College High School in Utah. I must say thank you to Ken Grover and his team, they have done an amazing job. The students there are excited about education, passionate about learning, and seem to enjoy their time spent at school. I am blogging this to share this change with others. I want you to think about your own education, whether it was many years ago or you are still currently in school. I know there was a time, we have all had them, in which you were sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture and you witnessed the students who were bored, the students who actually were learning, and the students so far behind they just did not care. This happens more often than not in education. Our government has tried to create laws to fix this. This cannot be fixed, it has to be changed. As our culture is changing so do our teaching styles and learning models need to change. Education has changed terms, has changed ideas, but has never truly changed it base method of instruction. I talk to my grandparents, with my parents, and they all learned the same way I did. I had the same teachers that my parents did as well. Teaching has not adapted to the times, it has placed bandaids on the problems. Education is ready for a change and so is the students who are engaged in the process. This mastery based system makes sense! Do all the details make sense, no not yet! We are working on the details, but the basic idea of this system, I feel, is a model that will truly benefit the learner. In this model students move forward at their own pace based on their understanding of the material. This model does raise many questions which I will address in coming posting. In the real world people do achieve more based on their mastery of the material and the situation, why not apply this idea to student learning. This model of course teaches academic material, but more importantly this model will help to teach life skills, skills that are need in everyday living. I am blogging to document this change in education, for good and for bad, I believe this system will be part of the future.