I joined Betsy Jewell on the latest episode of her podcast, “High School Hamster Wheel,” to talk about my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent. We covered a lot in the episode, which you can listen to here. In particular, I expressed my frustration and continued bafflement that we aren’t having an honest conversation in this country about the limitations of our K—12 school system—namely, how it embeds failure by design.
Michael. I very much enjoyed your conversation with Betsy Jewel on the High School Hamster Wheel (great title) podcast. I am my way with you book. A number of things stuck out. "Need actin, not just talk" amen to that. I particularly think that the focus on individual mastery is where it is at. This requires tools to measure performance over time. Not sure if you are aware of the tools of Ogden Lindsley Precision Teaching to evaluate growth and fluency. Kent Johnson applies it at Morningside where each child charts and monitors his growth, fluency and performance., a sight to see. Also, there is an old book written by Thomas Gilbert - Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. It is widely used in Occupational Psychology but it has direct applications to instructional programming in the schools. It is individual performance based with a focus on creating worthy performances. Measuring and precise individualized instructional practices are essential but also a curriculum that focuses on task analysis - Susan Markle Design for Instructional Designers -1978. These methods have been around but they have not been adopted by the education enterprise except in a few places or those that are geared towards effective education catering to the wealthy in private settings. You might want to look at my Substack a couple of weeks ago Brian-Based Teaching - Education is Learning Science. Politics in education can be very damaging and I can tell you more about that from personal experience, I like the emphasis also on passion but mostly about teaching Civics. We do not do it anymore, at least in Texas and that is a disgrace since civics and civility are essential to our communities. Thank you for your insights and leadership! Francisco Perez
One more thing. We also need to look at the long term about the science and technology of instructional practices for teachers. Colleges of Education and teacher training programs have to change, If not, we get more of the same. They need to become more research involved and look at education as a truly learning science and design and apply instructional practices that are evidence based. Thanks! Francisco.
Michael. I very much enjoyed your conversation with Betsy Jewel on the High School Hamster Wheel (great title) podcast. I am my way with you book. A number of things stuck out. "Need actin, not just talk" amen to that. I particularly think that the focus on individual mastery is where it is at. This requires tools to measure performance over time. Not sure if you are aware of the tools of Ogden Lindsley Precision Teaching to evaluate growth and fluency. Kent Johnson applies it at Morningside where each child charts and monitors his growth, fluency and performance., a sight to see. Also, there is an old book written by Thomas Gilbert - Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. It is widely used in Occupational Psychology but it has direct applications to instructional programming in the schools. It is individual performance based with a focus on creating worthy performances. Measuring and precise individualized instructional practices are essential but also a curriculum that focuses on task analysis - Susan Markle Design for Instructional Designers -1978. These methods have been around but they have not been adopted by the education enterprise except in a few places or those that are geared towards effective education catering to the wealthy in private settings. You might want to look at my Substack a couple of weeks ago Brian-Based Teaching - Education is Learning Science. Politics in education can be very damaging and I can tell you more about that from personal experience, I like the emphasis also on passion but mostly about teaching Civics. We do not do it anymore, at least in Texas and that is a disgrace since civics and civility are essential to our communities. Thank you for your insights and leadership! Francisco Perez
One more thing. We also need to look at the long term about the science and technology of instructional practices for teachers. Colleges of Education and teacher training programs have to change, If not, we get more of the same. They need to become more research involved and look at education as a truly learning science and design and apply instructional practices that are evidence based. Thanks! Francisco.