Friday, November 10, 2006

Idea from Reedsburg High School

I was visiting the bathroom here at Reedsburg High School. They have a great idea. On the backs of the doors on the stalls, they have weekly news. It includes the lunch menu for the week, important events and birthdays. I like this idea. Perhaps its something the kids could keep track of. They call it TOILET TALK, but I think I would find a different name for it.

Session 2 Willard Daggett Reedsburg

Dr. Willard Daggett
Session 2- scary stuff

Biotechnologies
-more important in the future than information technologies
-Bionanotech chip written in Popular Science magazine: width of 1/1000 of the human hair, tracks the myopic beginning of a cell within 6 inches of it, attaches itself to it and destroys the cell- cancer fighting
-Lipotore prevents plaque from building up in your arteries, the new drug disolves the plaque in your arteries and will essentially eliminate heart attacks
-increasing the longevity of life
-this is both biology and chemistry- how do we deal with this in our traditional high school setting? We can’t since we separate courses
-We are preparing kids for a world we’ve barely begun to imagine
-Bio/Nano/Info techs change in the future. (reminds me of Visions book)

Globalization
-China and India making the news the past 6 months
-9/11 is not as profound as 11/9
-change needs to be evolutionary not revolutionary
-World is Flat (get 2.0 version) includes a section on education
-2 years ago 38% of goods sold in walmart were made in China, in 1995 their motto was ‘buy american’, now they are up to 71%
-1997 India democratic government
-India/China/Russia 60% of the old population that are now direct economic competitors to us and they play by different rules. 3.6 billion people.
-We need to modify how we teach in order to stay in the game
-Information Technology (work to worker)
-Microsoft is the 125th company of the Fortune 500 to move their R and D in the past 24 months. Losing a quarter of our nation’s corporate headquarters and huge tax base. Huge financial hit. They pay more in taxes than any other sector. This trend will continue to go.
-Jack Walch’s Lessons Learned (welch?)
-No nation since the Romans have remained the economic power for more than 100 years
-China has purchased the bancruptcy rights to the four airlines (US) that are bancrupt United, Northwest, Delta and the other one. If they come out of bancruptcy, China will own them
-Equity- China has equity compared to India, In the US Dagget’s daughter and son would not have been permitted to live. No commitment to equity overall. Eastern Europe even less so- ethnic cleansing still
-Most countries no longer consider America a long term economic threat.
-Equity and ethics are in conflict. Other countries are picking and choosing who they educate
-60% of the worlds concrete, glass and steel is consumed daily in China
- 9 cities in the US over 1 million population, 100 in China, 36 in Eastern Europe
-Message- we need to not be ethnocentric. We need to pay a lot of attention to the rest of the world.
-India will surpass China in population in the 2020’s and be the largest country in the world.
-Our problem is the skill gap and that the world is changing 4-5 times faster than inside the schools
-We need MORE PASSION FOR CHANGE than resistance to change and most American communities have resistance to change.
Demographics
-We are getting older. 1900- 14 year old then work til age 47 (average age of death), 2000 18 years for fulltime work til 62 and live to 77 (biotech and medical breakthroughs have increased the longevity), 2100 ? study suggests 107 for longevity
-John Nesbit- (megatrend), Mind Set new great book need to get it.
-Get a transcript of Alan Greenspan of his last presentation to congress
-retirement system based upon that there will be more young people than old people. This is no longer true. 1 person enters the workforce for 2-3 that retire.
-live more years in retirement than they did in work
-fewer students means fewer teachers which leaves less to pay in to the retirement system

Values and Beliefs
-We have become accustomed to our affluency
-Our poverty line is affluency in most nations in the world
-Gen X 1961-1981 most educated in the history of the nation and world
-1982 on: Milennials, enaged in everything, most protected group of young people we have ever seen. Have extraordinarily unrealistic expectations of the future. They can’t imagine having less and take it as their right. Don’t consider what the kids in China nad India are willing to do to have what they have

Change Process
-Model Schools Conference- 25 highest performing elem, ms, and hs (75 schools) to come together and tell their story. What they are doing and how they are doing it
-Don’t confuse teachers working with students learning
-Schools do a great job of using data at the classroom to make decisions. Most classrooms are data rich and analysis poor
-probably have to dump a third of what you are now teaching in order to be great
-Begin with the end in mind (Covey- 7 habits)
-watched commercial about man who cleaned off the wrong car after a snowstorm. Need to work smarter. We are workign hard, but we need to make sure we are working on the right things.

Criteria
-Core academic learning
-Stretch learning is more important(rigorous and relavant learning beyond the core requirements)
-Student engagement (motivated and engaged or do they come to school to watch their teachers work)
-Personal skill development

Guiding princiles
-Guiding principles-responsibility, respect, compassion, adaptability, honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, contemplation, initiative, perserverence, optimism, courage
-Whats more important to you about others- this list or their good state test scores? New neighbors- this list or report card? Why do people lose jobs- lack of academic skills or this list?
-The guiding proincipals were taught at home, grandma and grandpas taught it,
-well beyond the scope of the school
-Ed Sullivan show, shows on TV had these guiding principles: now TV predicts misguided principles
-This list is from the New York state 1950 scope and sequence for humanities education which was from the 12 most common words in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, The Bible, Koran, Boy Scout Creed, Girl Scout Creed
-Teachers are responsible for teaching these things
-Family is critical here. There is not any dialogue with families to makethis happen
-NEED TO INCLUDE PARENTS IN THIS PROCESS

Dr. Willard Daggett Conference- Reedsburg- Opening Session

Focus on Literacy- November 10, 2006
Dr. Willard Daggett

Opening Session
-Media and politics-beating up on public education
-No nation that would enable all students to be capable of they are being. His daughter has severe CD, has a son that was hit by a drunk driver when he was 11 spent 9 months in a coma and two years on life support. This is the only country that would have allowed him to go to college, have a great life, get married have kids

BOOK Jim Colins- Good to Great
-When you are good why would you change, Why would you take a risk in order to become great
-Good is the enemy of great. None of the greatest schools were found to be in Wisconsin, none of the greatest schools are in suburbia
-Do you want to be great or is good good enough?

American schools are not failing.
-We graduated a greater percentage of 18 year olds than any year in our nation’s history. -More and more minority, more and more disabilities. More diversity=more challenges yet we still have graduation rates going up.
-More requirements than we ever had, lower drop out rates is not a system that is failing.
-Why call for school reform? because the world outside school is changing a lot faster than the school systems. We have an inability to keep up with the rate of change. There is a lack of upward progression.
-Our schools look more like the past than unlike the past. Schools can’t change until there is more passion for change than resistance to change or you’ll never change your schools.

Rigor and Relavance
-Blooms Taxonomy need to operate at the 4th and 5th level (real world predicatble and unpredicatble applications)
-Pressure to raise standards in schools comes from business
-state test questions can only test 1st and 2nd level
-if you don’t use it you lose it. We have not set up situations for real world applications in the important parts of the disciplines
-technology made current English, old English
-literacy isn’t getting less, its getting more

Technology Innovations
-Nano Technology- building from the atom up (reverses the traditional processes) Because we hit a wall in physics using the traditional methods
-SPOT (Smart Personal object technology) Jan 6, 2006, computer in a watch that ises integrated projection and projection keyboard, can put them in pens and more
-New policy? All kids take the test naked. “At least the boys will show up”
-IBM website- language translation chips with nano technology (goggles) Pick up a manuscript in Spanish and you see it in English

What is literacy?
-We need to be proactive and not reactive
-Essential skills and grade equivalent, kids have different size feet and grow at different rates. Don’t have 4th grade shoes, but have 4th grade books. This is a disconnect.
-Norm referenced rigor is not doing our kids justice. Criterion referenced (yard stick)
-? In WI is 4.2 to 5.2 the same amount of improvement in reading as 9.2 to 10.2? Is a grade a grade in the state of Wisconsin. It is norm referenced, not criterion referenced
-This is a uniquely North American concept that there is more growth between 4-5 than 9-10. In older grades we compartmentalize. Teachers need to be taking 20-30% of time in content areas to teach reading. We don’t teach reading by giving reading assignments, They don’t have the skills to teach reading in the content area in a meaningful way.
-What is your definition of excellence? High school text lexile is lower than college, personal reading, military, SAT, etc.
-problems will continue to get worse because technology is driving the reading level higher and higher
-16 career cluster with 3 levels each (entry,intermediate,advanced), research found that the entry level worker needs a higher reading level than the higher two levels, they have to read manuals,16- human services lowest reading level 15-retail services 14-education, 1-scientific and engineering. Education is least impacted by technology which is why the reading is much more difficult. White collar workers read a lot more stuff, but the blue collar work reads very sophisticated even though it is not as much stuff
-Research: Donald Roberts, Jordan Grafman, Hal Pashler, Cheryl Grady
-Kids are wired differently. MULTITASKING Toggling, prefrontal cortex, pew research
-(some of this reminds me of IanJukes)
-Powerpoint is available as long as links to the whitepapers for the research
-today’s youth: digital learners
-need to have a different learning system- have to change HOW you teach
-Arizona Unoin High School had an amazing jumpin AIMS reading. Analyze how they doubled their reading scores. They fundamentally changed how they taught to those kids. They use scholastic Read 180 almost likea computer game and had thempick theirown topics and became very interactive. Very powerfulreading interactive program allows them to read about what they liked.
-don’t work harder, work differently (smarter)
-Achieve 3000 literacy program. Use technology to teach in ways we have never taught before not to change wha twe teach.. Teacher as manager of the instructional process instead of sage on the stage.
-highest performing schools are the lowest perfroming from a decade ago