Sunday, September 20, 2009

A Holistic Approach

I am a lover of music - I love listening to music, watching music (both in concert and on DVD), and I love playing and performing music, so I may be a little biased in my support of the article below:

More Music Lessons

I find it interesting that in some educational systems the solution to declining standardized tests results is to cut out the Arts and PE in favor of more instructional time devoted to Math and Literacy. The justification is that more seat time in these areas will lead to better learning outcomes. Is this true?

We often hear people talk about quality vs quantity. Would better quality learning experiences produce better learning outcomes? I think there would be little argument that this is a true statement.

We should be very careful when we automatically assume that more time devoted to something will produce better outcomes, particularly when this increase in time comes at the expense of equally important subject areas like the Arts and PE.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Why is my back aching?

When I greet students in the morning as they arrive to school I am sometimes concerned by the image of small middle schooler struggling under the weight of their backpack, laptop, and periodically a musical instrument. I am very pleased to say that I have seen this image less and less as our students have become more adept at utilizing their locker space, and are becoming more organized with their homework and co-curricular activities.

The following article highlights that this is a global concern, and that it certainly is an issue that educators must consider:

Lockers to be made a must in schools

This is also supported in Cathy Vatterott's book, "Rethinking Homework" when she quotes recent research claiming that a student's backpack should not exceed 10% or 15% (depending on the research) of the child's body weight. (2009, p. 23)

A holistic education does not just focus on academic development, but also social, emotional, spiritual, and physical development. To truly deliver on the promise of a holistic education we need to consider how much we are asking our students to carry from one class to the next, and from school to home and back again each day.

Vatterott, Cathy (2009) Rethinking Homework: Best practices that support diverse needs. ASCD: Virginia

Walking in the Students' Shoes

This morning we had our first 'School Experience Day' where 20 of our MS parents got to walk in the students' shoes for a couple of hours. This was a fun morning that involved listening, writing, reading, speaking, discussing, developing, creating, collaborating, and justifying as the parents were the students for three mini-lessons.

The aim of this morning was to help the parents see first hand how education has changed since they were at school. The major shift being that now education is much more student-centered, as opposed to the traditional teacher-centered classroom.

The parents who attended were great participants, and showed a real willingness to get out of their comfort zone and try new things. The discussions were rich, the knowledge was extensive, and the questions were thoughtful and insightful.

We plan to do another one of these 'School Experience Days' during 2nd quarter, and I hope that all the same parents return and bring a friend with them.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Set Goals and Be Diligent

At Friday's Chapel our Student Life Minister, Ms Jean Choe, spoke about setting goals and working diligently toward the achievement of these goals. A very important message indeed.

One of our challenges is to help our students develop long term, mid term, and short term goals, and then backwards plan how these goals can be achieved. This is the same process that we apply for our development and improvement at GSIS. We have long term goals (our strategic plan), yearly goals (that are linked to our strategic plan), and quarterly goals (that are developed by our Core Team). We then use these goals to help guide and direct our daily actions and plans to ensure that we are working toward achieving the GSIS mission.

As a parent it is important to talk to your child about their goals - what is their long term goal? What are their goals for this year? What is it that they want to achieve this quarter? What are they going to do to achieve these goals? What can you do to support them in this?

We often talk about developing our home-school partnership to support our students, which is a very important part of the educational process. We also need to develop the parent-child and student-teacher relationships to further support our students and ensure that they have the best possible opportunity to reach their full potential.