Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution! | Video on TED.com

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution! | Video on TED.com

To infinity and beyond: The struggle to save arithmetic - physics-math - 16 August 2010 - New Scientist

To infinity and beyond: The struggle to save arithmetic - physics-math - 16 August 2010 - New Scientist

To be read later.

Triumph on Racial Gap Withers in New York Schools - NYTimes.com

Triumph on Racial Gap Withers in New York Schools - NYTimes.com Confirms what Diane Ravitch was talking about.

What makes a great teacher? | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

What makes a great teacher? | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

For children born into poverty, brain development may be hindered | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

For children born into poverty, brain development may be hindered | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com

While I am not a proponent of having all students go to college, I think that higher education or should I say better k12 will make so much sense. It bothers me greatly how we just ignore education at all levels, the personal, the public, the state, and federal levels. We want cheap everything, but pay for it with lackluster education and declining cohorts of graduates, because we stick to old methods of schooling that privilege the few and cost the many, ignore innovation, reward competition, penalize hard working teachers and school trying to make a difference. Every state in the last few years has cut funding to education severely. Many schools have few computers, but yet the work world even if you do not go for an advanced degree requires some level of computer/information technology experience or learning.

NCLB

D.C. and Md. named 'Race to the Top' finalists; rest of Obama's education agenda stagnates

This is a Washington Post article on how the Obama administration is handling rewriting one of the worst educational programs invented, No Child Left Behind. As the article states at this time 1/3 of all schools in the US are failing. This is based on the measurement of state mandated standardized testing, penalties on schools that fail to meet the set standards, and restructuring or closing of numerous schools that continue to fail as needed funding is cut and cut. A closer look at the types of schools that continue to fail under NCLB are urban, rural poor and minority schools across the nation. According to Diane Ravitch's book The Death and Life of the great American School System

NY Times article on bullying

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23engel.html

Cornel West at West Virginia University

Helping other parents

The other day I was sitting in my therapist's office and she asked me for information on a few programs I know about for teens. She has another client who is a single mother of a mixed race teen. This mother is having very similar problems to the ones I have experienced with my son who is about to graduate from high school. Most of my son's school experience has been difficult to say the least. As a young child when we moved back to the US from Saudi Arabia I put my son in a local public school. The teacher he had refused to help us adjust to the school and continually argued that he was too young. True he was about 8 months younger than most of the kids in the class, but he was academically ahead of most kids, perhaps not quite socially ready for the 3rd grade, but he is a very social being.
This academic year was one of the most difficult. I had discovered that my son had, what I consider to this day mild, learning disablities and different ways of thinking and understanding the world we live in. He is a very social human being, and talkative, which in the mainstream schools is a significant detriment. As a result he was penalized by this difference, but his teacher refused us help, and kept maintaining that he was simply too young to be in the third grade. As luck would have it, I removed him from school before the end of the academic year to spend time with his dying grandmother. That fall we returned to the school and re-enrolled him in the 3rd grade. Again we were very fortunate to have a much more understanding teacher, by November I got a phone call from his teacher. The man was nervous and very apologetic, but told me he thought T. had a learning disability and what Attention deficit, both of which I had argued with his previous 3rd grade teacher Mrs. K. Instead of being upset or defensive I surprised the teacher Mr H, by asking when we could get him tested and what kind of help we could get for him. For about two years he got extra help, but he is a smart child and soon reached the Title 9 goals set for him, which meant that he could no longer get any school based help.
As a single parent, never married, I had chosen to pursue a graduate degree, as the best way to be a "stay at home mom," but I could not afford to pay for outside of schools services like tutoring. I did my best, being well educated myself. I speak, read or write six languages, have enough math to pursue a minor in Math, a degree in Economics, Russian Area Studies, Russian and History. I have taught here in the US, in Iceland, and in Saudi Arabia. I thought that I could work on my son's learning gaps myself. I read books on ADD, on schooling and parenting. I sat with him in the evening to help with homework, and watched him struggle to complete tasks that he clearly understood, but could not keep his concentration. I would make him take breaks ever 15 to 30 minutes in hopes that it would help him finish. He would often refuse, having internalized the school's requirements to sit still and do his work, that is of course what a good student does.
In the afternoons when he got off the school bus, my beautiful child with a sparkle in his eyes

Playing the blame game.

As a doctoral student in Education Policy, with a focus on disparity and equity I think it is time to stop the blame game entirely. The more we try to point fingers at one group or another the less learning is going to get done.
It is very concerning that only 50% of student in cities across the country fail to complete high school. Schools are supposed to be the places in our communities where our children are cared for while we work. We all hope that something good happens during the hours our students are in school. Yet we constantly continue to lengthen the school day, decrease physical activity, be surprised when children act out in class after having 20 minutes for lunch and physical activity, drug the ones we don't think fit in and if all else fails we just kick them out.
We expect teachers to get respect from students and don't often think of this as a reciprocal act where our children, ALL of them deserve respect.
We keep trying to put band-aids on the system increase accountability, increasing the teachers' work loads, decreasing educational funding, playing a numbers game that can't really measure learning, and at the same time. Take away students' human rights, privacy, we treat them as criminals, act as if they haven't any brains, but instead of leading the way we demand respect and give little.
Very few of us sit still and are rarely expected in our work a day world to maintain focus for hours on end, yet we demand this daily of our students.
The system is broken, the only way to fix it is to rebuild with the help of everyone, teachers, parents, communities and children and stop trying to find a single culprit. School is the place where we seek to prepare the future, teach them the important basics including stewardship and leadership of our country. Yet again and again we fail to model these skills and blame everybody but ourselves. I applaud students who take on the difficult task of working in schools that trained and licensed teachers eschew.

Education Week: Study Finds Wide Achievement Gaps for Top Students

Education Week: Study Finds Wide Achievement Gaps for Top Students

Education Week: Culture-Based Education

Education Week: Culture-Based Education

Education Week: All-Boys Charter Sending Whole Class to College

Education Week: All-Boys Charter Sending Whole Class to College

Education Week: It's Time to Reform Federal Education Policy

Education Week: It's Time to Reform Federal Education Policy

Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Prospectus

Problem statement:

Our students spend 10 years or more in classrooms during the most formative parts of their lives. The time students and teachers spend together affects student maturation, intellectual development, social skills, and academic achievement. Students' identity development in a school context is less well understood. Since students spend the largest portion of their waking lives in schools it is important to understand how they see themselves as budding adults in that context. An individual's identity is constructed from many pieces of the person's life, from gender, sexual preference, race, family structure, and the neighborhood the student lives it, to a family's religious practices, and the culture of the schools that he or she attends. Today's students' ethnic and racial identity are not as clear cut as we think. Over the past 30 years the number of interracial people (individuals who claim more than one ethnic or racial category) in the US has risen significantly. President Obama's recent election makes this gap, in knowledge about a growing proportion of this society that claims multiple categories of race and ethnicity, a glaring one and a field which urgently needs to be explored.

My research will examine how these biracial/multiracial/multiethnic young men and women construct identity in school settings. Research on minority achievement focuses on how they are perceived by schools, teachers, school counselors, administrators and the school researchers, but understanding students perceptions and perspective of self-identifying is still a developing field of inquiry. This project seeks to give these students voice and gain a greater understanding of how they see themselves and how they understand how others perceive them. It also examines the implications of identity for school achievement, post high school aspirations, and social environment at school.

Related research:

80 years of research on biracial identity has shown that individuals with mixed identity are a marginalized individuals, who spend a lifetime struggling to merge their different at times 'warring' parts (Park 1928; Erikson, 1963). More recent research has found that racial identity construction is not static, especially for people who have multiple ethnicities or who belong to different racial groups (Daniel, 2003; Root; 1996; Rockquemore, 1999). Anecdotal evidence from research, shows that biracial students do not always hold the same concepts of identity that US society or US schools holds of them, yet they are affected by the same stereotyping as their minority counterparts and are understood primarily through minority research on academic successes and failures (Root 1992; Wardle, 2000). Bicultural and biracial identity research has pointed out that these students appear to have much more fluid identities. Living in and navigating disparate cultures may allow them insight in to cultures than people who feel more comfortable in one culture (Berry, 1976; Rockquemore, 1999). Some researchers would argue that to distinguish black/white biracial students as a separate cultural group from the black minority is an attempt to attain a status that is higher than the status of African Americans (Spencer, 2006, Chiong, 1998). While much research has been done on minorities in urban school settings there is prescious little research on biracial and multiracial students in secondary school environments, and their academic achievement (Ayers et al., 2008; Kinshloe et al., 2007; Tatum 1997). Popular culture, social environment, and school structures affect a person's identity. A students' social and cultural identity choices shape her conception of educational accesses and success. (Tatum, 1997; Fordham, 1996; Ogbu, 1987). This research aims to fill the gap that exists regarding how the fastest growing group of US students, develop identity and function in school environments.

Research objectives:

1. Use ethnographic methods to elicit from students how they understand their developing adult identity, how their perceptions of self differs or reinforces current social expectations and school success.

2. Use the data elicited from students to construct a deeper understanding of how biracial/multiracial students use their varied social and cultural skills to negotiate social and academic relationships in school.

3. Use the data from my research to help teachers, school administrators, counselors and other school related individuals develop a deeper understanding of how students' identity and conception of self help or hinder the student experience within school culture.

4. Explore the impact the social settings in schools has on how the students work and play in schools and how it intersects with students learning and achievement.

5. Help teachers and students develop a more open dialog about identity and help to explore and develop more culturally relevant tools and curricula for an increasing segment of the US population.

Methodology:

My research will take place between April 2010 and December 2010. Through the use of ethnographic data collection methods, interviews, observations and focus groups, the research develops a framework of identity and students' understanding of the juxapostion of self perception and societal perception within the students' school lives (Ogbu, 1981).

A) Sample of population. A purposive sample of 6-8 self identified biracial black/white students in 11-12th grade will be identified for participation in the research through informal interviews and in collaboration with school faculty, staff and administrators.

B) Data collection procedures. Data will be collected through: 1) participant observation in classrooms, hallways, the cafeteria, on school grounds, at school events, and other relevant community settings; 2) informal interviews with students, faculty, staff, and administrators about topics related to the research focus, as well as important events in the life of the school; 3) formal interviews with students, as well as faculty members, parents, and community members;  4) a parental online blogging community. These observations and interviews will focus on understanding students’ notions of what identity: gender, sexual, religious, academic, racial, ethnic means for them and how these relate to their perception of self and their educational opportunities. Specific areas of inquiry include investigating student social groupings, descriptive language students use to "classify" themselves and their social groups, social, educational and cultural factors that students describe as affecting their academic engagement, student interest in and use of popular culture, and perceptions of status, hierarchies and subgroups within the student cultures.

C) Data analysis. Much of the data analysis is conducted during the focused data collection, after the study, observational, interview and video data will be analyzed through a process of analytic induction (Creswell, 2008; Huberman & Miles, 1994; Patton, 2002). Ideally, much of this analysis and interpretation will be done in collaboration with teachers, students, and parents in order to garner more accurate results and analysis. The NVIVO qualitative analysis software will also be used in the analysis process.

Time schedule:

Data will be collected between May 2010 and December 2010. During this time period I will be present in the school 1-3 days per week, working with and observing the students for a period of three months. To begin with I will be conducting informal interviews with the selected students and their parents. Some of these interviews and observations will take place in the schools, at school function as well as in other venues away from school grounds. The formal interviews will be conducted toward the end of my sojourn in the school, once I have had time to establish myself with the group.

Personnel and contact information for investigator and adviser contacts:

Primary investigator:

Brynja E. Gudjonsson, PhD Candidate, gudjo002@umn.edu, Comparative International Development Education, School of Education and Human Development, U of M Twin Cities.

Graduate advisers:

Dr. Gerald Fry, gwf@umn.edu, Comparative International Development Education, School of Education and Human Development, U of M Twin Cities.

Dr. Peter Demerath, pwd@umn.edu, Comparative International Development Education, School of Education and Human Development, U of M Twin Cities.

Facilities:

Since much of the data collection involves informal interviewing and observations, I will not require any designated facilities until the video project begins. I will be providing the students with small inexpensive hand video recorders for the project as well as the editing software for the films, but access to a room for some filming and the editing toward the end of my project would be useful. I hope to allot time for this final student piece during free periods and after school.

Cited references:

Ayers, W., Ladson-Billings, G., Michie, G., & Noguera, P. (Eds.). (2008). City kids, city schools: More reports from the front row.

Berry, J. W. (1976). Human ecology and cognitive style : Comparative studies in cultural and psychological adaptation. Beverly Hills : New York: [Beverly Hills] : Sage Publications ; New York : distributed by Halsted Press.

Chiong, J. A.. (1998). Racial categorization of multiracial children in schools. Westport, Conn. Bergin & Garvey.

Creswell, J. W. (2008). Educational research : Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.

Daniel, G. R. (2002). More than black? : Multiracial identity and the new racial order. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Erikson, Erik H. (1963). Youth: Change and challenge. New York: New York, Basic Books.

Fordham, S. (1996). Blacked out: Dilemmas of race, identity, and success at Capital High. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gudjonsson, B. E. (2008). Field notes on biracial success.

Huberman, A. M., & Miles, M. B. (1994). Data management and analysis methods. In Y. L. E. In N. Denzin (Ed.), Handbook of qualitative research . Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Kincheloe, J. L., & Hayes, K. (Eds.). (2007). Teaching city kids : Understanding and appreciating them. New York: Peter Lang.

Ogbu, J. U. (1981). School ethnography: A multilevel approach. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 12(1, Issues in School Ethnography), 3-29.

Ogbu, J. U. (1987). Variability in minority school performance: A problem in search of an explanation. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 18, 312-34, 368-82.

Park, R. E. (1928). Human Migration and the Marginal Man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881-893.

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing.

Rockquemore, K. (2002). Beyond black : Biracial identity in America. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications.

Root, M. P. P. (Ed.). (1996). The multiracial experience: Racial borders as the new frontier. London [Enk] ; Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage.

Spenser, R. (2006). Challenging multiracial identity. Boulder, CO. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Tatum, B. D. (1997). "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?" and other conversations about race. New York: New York : Basic Books.

Wardle, F. (2006) Meeting the Needs of Multiethnic and Multiracial Children in Schools. Allyn & Bacon

Fault Lines - Cornel West

A discussion of Blackness and humanist view.

Stalling for time

Well I have lost my funding for the moment but am pretty sure I will have something by the end of the semester. I am also being naughty and doing things for people that I could technically farm out to others, but since I am leaving my friends here I just want to do favors for the moment.
Back to what is on my mind. I wish I could find a position or create a position that would work directly with teens like the ones I know. Some how create a resource center that had the following characteristics. Upwards of 4 computer terminals, at least 1 mac, a few video cameras, editing software, desks for studying, a few sofas. I want to create a space where teens can come together and share stories and work on projects that they could not do at school or at home. Teach them skills with computers that they don't get in school.

A post on how videos don't help babys learn

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/09/parents-wake-up-educational-videos-dont-make-babies-smart/

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds | Video on TED.com

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds | Video on TED.com

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor's Office

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor's Office

What fucking day. I

hope it gets better, because this show is not making it any better. Went to Central to talk to Mary Mackbee. She herself is multiracial. She noted that often biracial grow up in an all white community. She talk about they way they sit during lunch time. I am excited about tonight going to listen to Pedro Nogera. I am nervous about it. But happy. I think I am going alone so I'll go at about 5.30. But then I am nervous about a lot of things lately. I have been really negative about myself, I am thinking it might be the tv. A lot of the things I have been watching suddenly seem very stressing. Wire in the blood is really rather disgusting, but I can't stop watching. I am fucking cold I took a walk today would have thought I wouldn't be cold.

Current progress is slow

I am feeling much better in health than the month of January. I am working on trying to get the IRB part out of the way. Then I will have time to work on a few grants, the small one for having someone like george to help me with the data transcription and some analysis. I may use some of the money to help me "entertain" the students, take them out for snacks...The like.
I have written about 40 questions all told, most likely more like 60 or so. I know I will not use them all, and they might even be redundant in some ways. But I think it better to have too much but then I am sure there are plenty that I haven't thought of yet. It is funny when I talk about the paper with random people, everyone is super interested in it, they have something to say about it, have biracial children in their family somewhere...and we still think that this is business as usual. Not that I think that this is a complete problem, but I do think that not paying attention to it is not helping things. At best they just ignore it (the students) at worst they are complete alienated by the system. So what is it like to be in brown skin and be thought of in one specific way by society at large. OR maybe society no longer sees it that way. It would be really nice to have a way to leave race completely out of it. I am really going to try to let it be brought up. But that is hard when I have to explain my research project. Why am I picking you as a student? Well because of your parents claiming different racial categories. Wrong, there comes race. That is what critical theory is about, you can't leave race out of the equation and the point of it and this research is to make it explicit. And thereby question its validity. Ah here is the theory for me. We see race everywhere, continue to be shown it as much as we continue to be shown femininity or masculinity or sexuality.

I am trying to get back on the horse.

I have been sick since the 18th of December. That of course does not mean that I have done nothing. I have been working on the IRB forms and the questions for the research. I made the observation rubric, the video project still needs to be typed. I have to have the paper work in to Minneapolis by Friday for this months approval since it takes 4 to 6 weeks to get approval. Saint Paul wont meet until February. I have to get a CV in great shape for the Stout job app.