{"id":726,"date":"2017-10-02T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/?p=726"},"modified":"2018-06-13T08:43:26","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T13:43:26","slug":"school-reimagined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/blog\/2017\/10\/02\/school-reimagined\/","title":{"rendered":"School, Reimagined"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Despite NCLB, ESSA, Common Core, block schedules, and whatever else has come down the pike, education in the U.S. has not changed dramatically in the last 150 years. \u00a0\u00a0Peek into any school in the country and you are likely to see desks in rows, with a single teacher at the front of the room dispensing information.\u00a0 There will be some outliers \u2013 one of my children had a 5th<\/sup> grade classroom with no desks at all and it was awesome<\/em> \u2013 but the greater proportion of classes will follow the same model that has been in use in this country for as long as anyone can remember. \u00a0And it has earned us this ringing indictment:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We move students through the system, they learn some stuff, pass some tests, and graduate with an acceptable repertoire of knowledge and skills. Acceptable.\u00a0 Enough to function, to continue on to college and survive, more or less.\u00a0 Except that lately, more and more voices are telling us that this repertoire of knowledge and skills isn\u2019t quite cutting it. They aren\u2019t quite as adept at problem-solving and collaboration and inquiry as they need to be for the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why don\u2019t we change? Just overhaul the system and do something different<\/em> already?\u00a0 Perhaps because we don\u2019t have a very clear idea of what\u2019s possible. Before we throw out the old template, we need a model for how school could<\/em> look.\u00a0 Enter the Apollo School.<\/em><\/p>\n

In episode 62 of The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast,<\/em> <\/a>Jennifer Gonzalez interviews a team of high school teachers from the Apollo School, who have completely chucked out the old template of \u201cSchool\u201d in favor of something very different:\u00a0 a collaboration between English, Social Studies and Art that rests on student-driven, project-based, inquiry learning, incorporates all three disciplines, and is tied to state and national standards.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fascinating look at what school can be; especially their practice of handing the standards over to the kids<\/em> to determine which ones they will fulfill.\u00a0 They work on \u201csoft skills\u201d like communication and time management, and offer optional mini lessons on topics that kids can decide to attend (or not) depending on how it fits with their project.\u00a0 Or kids can propose mini lessons, or even give mini lessons themselves.\u00a0 And they schedule one-on-one time with their teachers as needed.\u00a0 And just in case you are already dismissing this as something they did with \u201cadvanced\u201d learners and assuming it would never work with \u201cregular\u201d kids, turns out the advanced kids actually struggled with this model more than the regular kids. You\u2019ll have to listen to find out why.<\/p>\n

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast<\/em> <\/a>can be found online at the link above or on your smart phone via iTunes or another podcast app like Stitcher or Podbean.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

photograph compliments of Cult of Pedagogy Podcast<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite NCLB, ESSA, Common Core, block schedules, and whatever else has come down the pike, education in the U.S. has not changed dramatically in the last 150 years. \u00a0\u00a0Peek into any school in the country and you are likely to see desks in rows, with a single teacher at the front of the room dispensing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}