Gary Weisserman

Ten Bold Predictions About American Education:

1. 11th and 12th grade are phased out, or replaced entirely, for many students.
2. Community colleges increasingly award bachelor's degrees, and increasingly align with public schools.
3. State universities are functionally, though not officially, privatized, even as the value of a school's brand increases.
4. Standardization of instruction first increases as a result of legislation, then quickly loses traction, to be replaced by boutique, branded programs, as government levers become decreasingly effective.
5. Instructional assessment becomes more discrete, more focused on skills and competencies, and increasingly personalized.
6. The revolution is not webcast.  It's actually viewed in mixed-mode.
7. Successful schools will become increasingly nomadic, decentralized, and internationally focused.
8. "Creative production," "phase change theory," "design-based education," and "neurosculpting" become the key buzzwords.
9. Geometry (and what it represents) becomes marginalized as an academic topic, even as design (and what it represents) becomes an, or the, area of focus.
10. The increasingly large gap in the speed of innovation within educational institutions will further accelerate gaps in educational and economic attainment.

... and two not very bold predictions:

1. Tinkering at the margins of a failed model will continue to produce little in the way of results.
2. Conflicting trends--including some identified on this list--will become more likely as a result of intensification of competing values.

Thought this might come in handy for some--a list of "Big Hairy Questions" that form the units of study in next year's Capstone Senior Seminar:

• Conducting an independent research project

• What will prove to be the most valuable resource of the 21st century?

• What does it mean to “know” something, and how do we know what we know?  (And how does my brain work, anyway?)

• Sharing what we know: presentation skills and research

• What does it mean to be “healthy?”

• Where do I belong?

• How do I measure something?

• The Two Cultures: How do we bridge the gap between arts and sciences?

• Understanding community: What unites us, and what divides us?

• What is power, and who has it?

• What effect does technology have on identity?

• Futurism: what does the future hold for us?

A reminder from C.P. Snow: "A good many times I have been presented at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: ‘Have you ever read a work of Shakespeare’s?’ ... I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, ‘Can you read?’ — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had."

And oh, yeah.  By "entropy" we don't mean disorder.  In fact in some respect it's the opposite, relating to approaching uniformity and equilibrium.  Just saying.

I don't know much, but I do know this: if I were looking for a teaching job in technology, I'd be all over these.  Two positions, one middle school, one high school, at a great school in a warm climate, with highly competitive compensation available.  And no, you do not have to be Jewish to teach here--it's not even a consideration, and in fact a large percentage of our general education faculty aren't.

If you're interested, or know someone who might be, holler!  Info after the jump.

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These are a terrific faux-chametz fix.  Made them for the boys this morning, and topped them with honey:

• 1/3 cup potato starch
• 4 large eggs
• 1/3 milk
• Vanilla to taste
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup sour crea

Whisk together potato starch, eggs, milk, and two tablespoons of the sugar (to taste).

Butter and heat a 10 inch sautee pan on medium.  Lower heat to medium low.  Pour 1/4 cup batter into pan, swirling to cover.  When crepe begins to bubble and brown around the edges, flip.  When other side looks finished, remove from heat and place on paper towel to cool.  Repeat.

Blend remaining ingredients until almost smooth.  Fill each crepe with a heaping tablespoon or so of filling, then fold over both side and roll until closed.

Top with honey if desired.

This is kind of neat: we took our vision for ELA at Hillel, aligned it with the Core Curriculum content standards, and then made a "student skill" matrix that allows us not only to track student mastery, but to correlate it to external data sources to allow us to validate our own assessments:

(download)

Click here to download:

competency_video_-_Computer.m4v (29.71 MB)

If you're wondering, here's the vision.  The last one, especially, is exciting, not to mention heretical in some places (I'm looking at you, stuffier-than-most-post-secondary-institutions!):

Successful graduates of the English Language Arts program at Hillel will:

• Master "portable" skills in reading, writing and speaking for the purpose of communicating effectively.
• Compete and succeed at their next level of learning (and beyond).
• Experience writing and publishing for a meaningful audience outside the classroom.
• Approach literature--in all its forms--critically, analytically, and pragmatically.
• Recognize the value of literature--in all its forms--across cultures, historical periods, and contexts.
• Independently access, analyze, evaluate, and reflect on texts across all domains in order to make informed choices.
• Employ the tools, skills and languages of academic culture to responsibly engage in, appreciate and understand popular culture.

Great time last night at Hillel's annual Poker Tournament.  Had lots of fun, got a big novelty check and was able to help our scholarship fund.  Terrific job by the Poker committee--it was a wonderful event!

(download)

Click here to download:

photos-from-poker-tourney-JohnBvgomhgnBlirqrzs.zip (3.23 MB)

Feeling very Soccer Dad-ish right now--here's a couple of photos at his first practice!

(download)

Click here to download:

drew-at-his-first-soccer-practice-ktCHbfEpfCcdJfbdcolg.zip (1.55 MB)

Working with some of our outstanding science faculty, we've come up with the following draft of our vision for science and scientific literacy at Hillel.  I share it here for comment and feedback:

Successful graduates of the Science program at Hillel will:

• Master “portable” scientific skills, abilities, and understandings, especially but not limited to the scientific method;
• Be able to recognize valid scientific research and distinguish it from less reliable sources of information;
• Formulate a meaningful, testable question; design and conduct an original experiment; collect and analyze data; and contextually report the results and suggest further investigations;
• Be able to read a legitimate scientific article, understand its implications and relative value, and communicate it to others;
• Demonstrate curiosity in at least one area of scientific research, and the intellectual rigor and motivation to pursue research in that area and report it in written form;
• Reliably interpret representations of data such as charts and graphs;
• Reliably and accurately engage in the measurement of scientific phenomenon, and produce representations of such data (including but not limited to charts and graphs);
• Participate in important deliberations about policy issues informed or affected by science;
• Compete and succeed at their next level of learning (and beyond);
• Employ real scientific tools, technologies, and sources of information in appropriate ways;
• Employ the tools, skills and languages of scientific academic culture to responsibly engage in, appreciate and understand the world around them;
• View science as a consistent framework for advancing inquiry, with its own set of internal rules which are different from other human endeavors, including religion, philosophy and political thought; and understand the strengths and limitations of science in comparison to these other intellectual frameworks;
• Demonstrate, at an absolute minimum, appropriate contemporary basal knowledge and understanding of life sciences, earth sciences, and physical sciences.