What have you done, as a classroom teacher, a student, a parent, administrator, to make your school more equitable, less hierarchical, more welcoming to everyone, and more like a place where real thinking happens?
1. Invite 5 students to a faculty meeting
2. Eliminate staff and student bathrooms
3. Ask students to facilitate important school wide meetings
4. Start each day with a morning meeting and check in, and listen to each other. (How are you? How are you feeling today?)
5. Ask students to develop rubrics for judging "excellent" work
6. End courses/units with a culminating projects designed by students, about something that really matters to them
7. Have students read each other's papers and comment on them, directly to each other
8. Get students to determine the homework policy (even in the early grades)
9. Charge students with deciding what goes up on the walls at school
10. Pass a "talking stick" during intense discussions so that everyone gets a chance to speak
11. Eat lunch with kids (or teachers) you rarely talk to
12. Ask students to attend parent/teacher conferences
13. Ask students to evaluate themselves prior to parent/teacher conferences
14. Ask students to run parent/teacher conferences
15. Have everyone practice "yes/and" more than "no/but" (because success is available to everyone!)
YES! And what can you add?
We want to go for 50 (or hundreds) more suggestions, and then use them to talk about our mission. Please let us know how you are making your school more democratic, or ways you wish your school were more democratic?
This is also cross posted at the IDEA (Institute for Democratic Education In America) website. H/T to Cooperative Catalyst:
It was an amazing meeting. Ten activists, educators, school founders, and school re-starters recently gathered for an IDEA Board Retreat in San Francisco. Fired up by Pedro Noguera's keynote speech to the Coalition of Essential Schools the day before, we framed up IDEA's commitments and strategy: how we move this baby out so we're actually doing something, making sure we're talking about what matters, and ensuring we're providing tools for change. Because we aim to be the organization in this country connecting people who are transforming and revolutionizing education, we had a lot to talk about.
Want to get in?
by Kirsten Olson
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Kirsten Olson is author of Wounded By School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to the Old School Culture, "a book that looked at the learning stories of hundreds of "ordinary" students to understand their experiences of being in school"
Olson is an educational activist, writer, teacher, and Chief Listening Officer at Old Sow Consulting in Brookline, Massachusetts. She received a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and was an English major at Vassar College.(Editor's Note: A huge thumbs up for Wounded by School - one of the most important books and must-read for parents, teachers, administrators - how school, in its present form, affects our students. An eye-opener.
One of my top ten most underlined. - C.J. Westerberg)
Related posts The Daily Riff:
What Would Ted Sizer Say About Technology?
What Adults Can Learn from Kids: Don't Underestimate our Ability - Video
President Obama - Isn't it Time to Listen to Students?
Pedro Noguera: "Demanding Education That Matters" (1/3) from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.
Pedro Noguera: "Demanding Education That Matters" (2/3) from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.
Pedro Noguera: "Demanding Education That Matters" (3/3) from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.
Great idea, Kirsten!
21. LISTEN to kids--give them a chance in every lesson to share how they think/feel/question.
22. Let kids sit where they want to, beside whom they want to. I tell them to make wise choices or WE'll have to re-negotiate the choice. (Again, they would give input and have decision-making ability to choose differently or decide to change the behavior that's causing us to have this conversation.)
23. Shake the seating up regularly, encouraging the kids to sit by someone they've never sat by before to get to know more people. (Again, they get to choose.)
24. Let kids go when they need to go. Don't make them ask to go to the bathroom.
25. Teach kids how to have a conversation without raising hands--turn-taking with respect and considerate behavior is a crucial social skill.
21. help push toward: curriculum compacting, enrichment clusters, and total talent portfolios http://tinyurl.com/24btz8f (as written up here http://tinyurl.com/2a53awp)
21.Establish a class agreement for optimal learning, rather than teacher setting rules.
22. Have students lead conferences where they share their learning with their parents.
23. Create a culture where thinking is modeled and valued.
24. Step back and encourage students to take control of their own learning.
25. Allow choice for assessment tasks, so that learning can be demonstrated in a a variety of ways
Okay, we're really up to 31 since three came in all at once- can we get 19 more before the New Year??
Love this! Let's keep them coming so we can get t0 50!
32. Analyze a "decision" a class has collectively made that has not worked out well, discuss the decision-making process, and what might be done to achieve a better result. What didn't work? What can we learn from this? What should we be thinking about for next time?
16. Ensure all K-12 students have an understanding of Civics and what democratic values represent
17. Engage all students to contribute ideas of what would make their school more democratic - where more real thinking can happen
18. Get students out of the classroom to interact with the real world to make those learning connections
19. Realize that students need real exercise every day in order to learn
20. Switch the conversation from grades to metacognition - how do YOU learn best?