Author and Text Author: Shannon Renkly & Katherine Bertolini Text: “Shifting the Paradigm from Deficit Oriented Schools to Asset Based Models: Why Leaders Need to Promote an Asset Orientation in our Schools REFLECTION I’ve resonated and connected to this reading the most out of all the articles we’ve seen this semester.The overwhelming majority of my work experience has been as a nonprofit community partner or an experiential educator. My role allowed me to meet and connect with hundreds of students, and I enjoyed bringing a different perspective to the classroom. I would affectionately call what I did as ‘guest starring’ in a class when I’d come share a guest lesson, lead a field trip, or engage with students in an after school program. So what does it mean to ‘guest star’ with a class? I would say there are 4 main rules/guidelines: No grading. Showing up and genuinely participating is what counts! No long-term discipline. My job is to come in and share m...
Author and Text Author: Sal Khan Text: The Broken Model ARGUMENT In a world that's constantly changing, why do some systems stay the same? Sal Khan argues that the American education system hasn't kept up and is holding today's learners back. As I read his piece, I kept thinking in evolutionary terms : just as traits persist in species because they were once useful, many educational practices survive not because they work today, but because they once did. QUESTIONING CUSTOMS In the chapter Questioning Customs , Khan urges us to question why so many educational practices have persisted: is it tradition or do they actually work? Like evolutionary traits, these practices survive not because they're still useful, but because they once served a purpose in a different context. Khan observes that the education system is incredibly stubborn, holding onto practices even when they no longer serve students. Like an organism clinging to outdated traits, schools...
Author and Text: Patrick Finn, Literacy with an Attitude Reflection: The story Finn shares in this chapter felt eerily familiar to my own experience as a student. About halfway through my 5th grade year, my family moved from Vancouver, WA (a suburb of Portland, OR) to Edmond, OK (a suburb of Oklahoma City, OK). That move showed me firsthand the truth of Finn's argument that schools are not "great equalizers", but instead providing an education prioritizing obedience. In Vancouver, I was in a full-day gifted cohort -- a model of "powerful literacy" where intellectual agency was the daily norm. Textbooks were an occasional tool we used at school, but most of our time was spent doing examples together, working on small projects, and exploring extensions of the material. At my new school in Oklahoma, that agency was relegated to a "pull-out" program for just one hour a week. For the other 29 hours, I was stuck in a rigid, textbook-driven curriculum th...
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