NCLB Supplants Our Greatest Teaching Task since 9/11
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| Title: | NCLB Supplants Our Greatest Teaching Task since 9/11 |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Berman, Sheldon H. |
| Source: | Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review. Oct 2004 70(2):8-14. |
| Availability: | Prakken Publications, 832 Phoenix Dr., P.O. Box 8623, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. Tel: 734-975-2800; Fax: 734-975-2787; Web site: http://www.eddigest.com/. |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 7 |
| Publication Date: | 2004 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Opinion Papers |
| Education Level: | Grade 9 High Schools |
| Descriptors: | Federal Legislation, Educational Policy, Citizen Participation, Curriculum Development, Grade 9, Civics, Service Learning, Citizenship Education, School Restructuring, High Schools, Democracy |
| Laws, Policies and Program Identifiers: | No Child Left Behind Act 2001 |
| ISSN: | 0013-127X |
| Abstract: | In this article, the author discusses the pedagogical negligence on civic education after 9/11 due to the No Child Left Behind Policy resulting in several counterproductive restructuring of curricula, which include the creation of a core ninth-grade course in civics, integrated service learning across the curriculum, and the restructuring of schools into smaller clusters. He stresses the importance of reclaiming the civic mission of the high school in the preservation of democracy and points out students' need to play active roles in serving the community and engaging in democratic deliberation. Here, he calls on co-educators of their responsibility to think carefully about the courses being taught, the methods being used, and the way they structure their school's governance to prepare the students well for civic responsibility. |
| Abstractor: | ERIC |
| Entry Date: | 2006 |
| Access URL: | https://www.eddigest.com/index.php |
| Accession Number: | EJ741051 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwFMV8a7mfdZ2v_RvD3K60x2AAAA4TCB3gYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHQMIHNAgEAMIHHBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDFHiCzDawDk9WMdE4wIBEICBmbCsDOjYad-XeQHnlem-vr1XCm0evd2kR4PM6dhG5Oqj1eijyMZeThh8ReGapt0UoP6wxv_b_e520takmHI3vYkoN7eopvuc3aP1uNPygpaqcadnyBQyzra6xX0U4CITBi0f_pZkAoi0ap_2RXal0DGpFn782gTAq1IaCf39R3NSuMFf4oVH52A-7FvbY2kKXh8lkNEVzj3aMQ== Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0014599924;edd01oct.04;2004Oct13.09:46;v2.1</anid> <title id="AN0014599924-1">NCLB Supplants Our Greatest Teaching Task Since 9/11 </title> <p>THE national education agenda focus on standards, testing, and accountability puts schools at risk of forgetting that preserving and promoting a democratic society was the founding precept of our public education system. To continue to preserve democracy, this mission must remain central.</p> <p>The larger school size and subject-based structure of middle-level and high schools make this task much more challenging. Complicating this further, the typical student council involves very few students and often fails to teach civic skills to the broader student body. Its focus is primarily social, its members often the most active and popular students, the ones who may least need the experience of democratic engagement.</p> <p>Even the high school social studies curriculum tends to neglect civics by making it a senior elective. It is no wonder that voter participation among 18-to 24-year-olds is the lowest of any age group.</p> <p>In most ways, Hudson (Massachusetts) High School is a typical U.S. high school. Students come from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Hudson is an industry-based community, and one-third of its population is of Portuguese decent. Each year we enroll students who do not speak English. As at most high schools, academic pressures to further strengthen our academic curriculum and increase state test scores, SAT scores, and AP test scores are significant.</p> <p>To enhance academic performance, we've placed a major emphasis on academic rigor in our courses; extended the school day;, shifted to a semester-based block schedule; expanded the number of AP and other advanced courses; and created new learning opportunities through the Virtual High School, school-to-career programs, and co-curricular academic programs. As a result, we have seen a steady improvement in student performance.</p> <p>We have also restructured Hudson's curriculum, teaching practices, and organizational structure to better enable students to become effective citizens. Our goal is not only to graduate students with solid academic skills but also to help them develop an ethic of service and civic responsibility and an ability for the thoughtful questioning and investigation necessary for informed civic participation.</p> <p>We believe that to accomplish this, students must gain a deep understanding of civic concepts and directly experience civic engagement. They must experience themselves as part of a democratic community that values their voice.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-2">Messy Stuff</hd> <p>As a result, we have created a core ninth-grade course in civics; integrated service learning across the curriculum; restructured the school into smaller clusters; provided time in the weekly schedule to engage all students in school governance; and created a community council that represents students, faculty, and administrators.</p> <p>We can't realistically expect students to develop a sense of civic responsibility if they don't understand the core institutions that preserve democracy or the fact that democracy is a messy, challenging system of debate, negotiation, and compromise in which addressing almost any issue takes time, persistence, and commitment. Therefore, we began by helping students develop this knowledge base.</p> <p>We reorganized our ninth-grade into two four-person teams with a core curriculum centered on a combined English and social studies course focusing on civic judgment and engagement. English and social studies teachers collaborate on a year-long course that explores what an individual's responsibility is for creating a just society. The course begins with studying civic institutions through text material and fiction, and then examines what motivates participation and commitment.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-3">Passivity Happens</hd> <p>Using the "Facing History and Ourselves" curriculum, students study the causes of the Holocaust and similar acts of genocide to examine how genocide can become state policy. The curriculum confronts young people with the human potential for passivity, complicity, and destructiveness and helps them understand the need for vigilance and commitment. It sensitizes them to injustice, inhumanity, suffering, and abuse of power. It is academically challenging and helps complicate students' thinking so they do not accept simple answers to complex problems. It develops perspective-taking and social-reasoning abilities, and students emerge with a greater sense of moral responsibility and a greater commitment to participate in making a difference.</p> <p>One theme of the course is each person's "universe of obligation," the degree to which one feels responsible for others. As part of expanding this universe of obligation, students are required to find a way to help create a more just society through a service-learning project. The course has had a powerful effect on our students as they begin to see that one is either part of the solution or part of the problem.</p> <p>Service learning is a powerful, student-active teaching methodology that brings the curriculum to life through its authentic application to community needs. In essence, it gives students the experience of productive civic engagement and teaches them they can make a difference in the world.</p> <p>Not only have we integrated service learning into our civics curriculum; it also has become integral to many of our courses. Chemistry classes test the water quality along the river that runs behind the school. Environmental science classes study the ecosystem of the river valley and support efforts to preserve the natural environment. Physics classes sponsor a science Olympiad for middle-schoolers to encourage their interest in science.</p> <p>World cultures classes host multicultural-awareness events in the school. Technology classes teach senior citizens to use computers and access the Internet. Drama classes have developed a disability awareness program for our preschool and kindergarten students. Physical education classes have organized a walk for diabetes.</p> <p>In fact, the majority of our teachers have found ways to integrate service learning into their curriculum to enhance student learning. Too often, service learning is the private interest of a teacher or group of teachers who create wonderful student projects that are disjointed from the larger improvement efforts their school or district pursues. Alternatively, a school may require a specific number of hours of service but the service is not directly tied to course work.</p> <p>In both cases, efforts are flagmentary and have only limited impact on students, although they are beneficial in their own right. We have found that service learning can have a broad and powerful influence on student performance and school culture if it is integrated into curriculum and instructional practices on a consistent basis.</p> <p>A systemic approach to service learning means helping students make the connections between subject material and issues in the larger world. It means engaging students in action and reflection on important community, social, political, and environmental issues.</p> <p>But most important, it means providing service-learning experiences marked by continuity, depth, and meaningful participation that are embedded in the curriculum and culture of the school and institutionalized as a core instructional strategy. Service learning is one of the best approaches to teaching participatory citizenship and giving young people the skills to be critical thinkers in a complex social and political environment.</p> <p>Because of the difficulty of creating a sense of community within a large school, we created small communities of 100 to 150 students. Students in grades 8 and 9 participate in grade-level teams; students in grades 10 through 12 participate in thematic clusters that have a generally equal number of tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-graders. Students in grades 10 through 12 are able to take courses from any teacher, unlike students in grades 8 and 9, who take all their core courses from teachers on their team.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-4">Common Bonds</hd> <p>To build community, common bonds must tie the group together. Therefore, we have organized the clusters around broad areas of student interest: communications, media, and the arts; science, health, recreation, and the environment; technology, engineering, and business; and public policy, education, and service. The thematic organization is not meant to restrict students' exploration of other career or interest areas; it is simply a vehicle for enrichment and community building that can enhance students' knowledge of and experience with an area of interest.</p> <p>The clusters are the major governance unit in the school. Each cluster meets one hour each week to discuss school and cluster issues. The clusters also offer opportunities for speakers and presentations on the cluster theme, such as career opportunities or current issues. Students have formed interest groups to pursue particular interest areas related to the theme. Over time, each cluster will organize small group adviser-advisee meetings to provide students with more support.</p> <p>Members of each cluster work together on collaborative service-learning projects related to the cluster theme. For example, the science, health, recreation, and the environment cluster developed and ran the school's recycling program, and the public policy, education, and service cluster ran a number of fundraising events to support the local food pantry.</p> <p>Profits from cluster activities are dedicated to those in need outside the school community, which is a major change from past fundraisers that were created to pay for the needs of Hudson students. Our experience this year indicates a shift in thinking and awareness. These service projects integrate students from different classes and grades and can continue over several years so that students gain an experience of depth and continuity.</p> <p>Because most students remain in the same cluster for three years and take some of their courses from cluster teachers, they develop a greater sense of community simply because they get to know a group of teachers and students well. They address differences of opinion in their cluster meetings and work on projects and issues together. They have closer relationships with faculty members whom they get to know not only through classes but also through service-learning projects, presentations, and cluster discussions.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-5">Small AND Big</hd> <p>The cluster concept enables us to organize into smaller groups while retaining the benefits of a larger school. As a result, students have a more personal, connected, and meaningful school experience.</p> <p>The research done on student involvement in decision making, and in particular in small "just communities" within high schools, shows that this involvement is highly effective in fostering moral growth. In the just communities of about 100 students which researchers studied, students experienced direct democracy through weekly town meetings where each person, including adults, had one vote.</p> <p>In these meetings, students made meaningful decisions about the management, care, and direction of the school and experienced conflict with other students and teachers who had different perspectives on these issues. The experience with real-life moral dilemmas promoted moral development and moral action because the issues were meaningful to students and discrepancies between public judgment and action were apparent and had consequences for the group.</p> <p>In addition, collective decision making and shared responsibility built a sense of community in which members had a personal sense of responsibility to the community. We anticipate that over time the cluster governance meetings will replicate the researchers' "just community" approach.</p> <p>So that the whole school could come together to make decisions, students and teachers developed a constitution and convened a community council of representative teachers, students, administrators, and other staff and community members that meets on a monthly basis. The council hears recommendations from the clusters, sends them out to the other clusters for review and discussion, and then votes on these recommendations.</p> <p>We are at the very beginning stages of our effort to include all students in school decision making. The cluster structure was launched in September 2003, and the first community council meeting was held in February 2004. Before the 2003-04 school year, we held schoolwide, small-group discussions of issues as a pilot of this concept.</p> <p>The issues students think are important have been largely local. Students have recommended changes in our food-service program, the parking policy, the attendance policy, the dress code, and the strategies we use to integrate students from other countries into Hudson.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-6">Veto Not Final</hd> <p>Once voted on by the community council, recommendations are sent to the principal, who can accept or veto them. If vetoed, the community council can send the issue to a "board of conciliation," which consists of the superintendent, a school-board member, and an individual selected by the council who has expertise or a significant interest in the proposal.</p> <p>Our first year of experience with the cluster organization and new governance structure has been a learning experience. Each cluster has put in place its own model of governance. We have trained discussion facilitators who have helped move discussion forward. However, participatory governance is still new to many students.</p> <p>Some have been frustrated by the slow pace of change. In contrast to the voluntary participation in those researchers' communities, engaging a whole school in these processes means involving students who would otherwise be disengaged and disinterested. However, our structure has created a new and expanded group of student leaders.</p> <p>We adjusted our structure for the 2004-2005 school year. The cluster meetings for grades 8 and 9 will take on a more instructional focus: teachers interspersing governance meetings with civics lessons on the school constitution and how school decisions are made and leadership development activities. The goal will be to prepare students to take on more active and informed roles as they move into the clusters in grades 10-12.</p> <p>In addition, we realized that students need to be accountable and acknowledged for the time they spend in cluster activities. We are recommending increasing the credit requirements for graduation by four credits and offering one credit a year for cluster and governance activities. This would be the equivalent of one full high-school course. Cluster participation will be graded on a simple rubric with grades of fail, pass, and pass with leadership.</p> <p>Student involvement in school decision-making is a significant departure from the norm. In a society where less than 30% of eligible voters vote in town elections and a candidate's entire platform is reduced to a 30-second advertisement, a program like ours that requires long-term commitment, reflection, and negotiation faces many challenges.</p> <p>The potential is significant, however, and we have seen some early positive results. More students have been involved in leadership and decision-making roles than in previous years, and the clusters have begun to organize constructive activities that enrich the instructional program. Students have generated numerous productive interest groups as well as numerous service projects that have helped others in the community.</p> <hd id="AN0014599924-7">Citizens at 18</hd> <p>Reclaiming the civic mission of the high school is important to our nation and the preservation of democracy. Providing students with high quality subject-specific knowledge is not sufficient. Students need an early and thorough understanding of how our democracy works. They need to play active roles in serving the community and engaging in democratic deliberation. And they need to develop a sense of social responsibility so that they are well prepared to take on the role of citizen when they turn 18.</p> <p>As educators, it is our responsibility to think carefully about the courses we teach, the methods we use, and the way we structure our schools' governance so we prepare students well for this important responsibility.</p> <aug> <p>By Sheldon H. Berman, From Principal Leadership</p> <p></p> <p>Sheldon H. Berman (shelley@concord.org) is Superintendent of Hudson Public Schools, Hudson, Massachusetts. A founder and president of Educators for Social Responsibility, he is the author of Children's Social Consciousness (SUNY Press, 1997) and Promising Practices in Teaching Social Responsibility (SUNY Press, 1993). Condensed from Principal Leadership, 5 (September 2004), 16-20. Published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, from which related educational materials are available by contacting NASSP, 1904 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191.</p> </aug> |
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