Jay Mathews: Life habits schools can teach

18-2-2010

Jay Mathews: Life habits schools can teach

I learned at an early age from my mother that there was more to school than reading, writing, arithmetic and lunch. She was a teacher. I was an eager student of the academic sort. That didn’t impress her. She told me later it was clear I was ready to read when I was four, but she refused to teach me because I needed more work on my social skills.

She will turn 93 at the end of this month. I am tempted to call and ask her to evaluate how I turned out, but I fear the answer. My life has been a lot of reading and writing, with some arithmetic. Even as a parent I rarely considered how well my children’s schools were teaching life skills that went beyond what is assessed under No Child Left Behind.

The habits of the heart are probably learned almost as much at school as at home. But which ones can we reasonably expect teachers to address? What should we look for to make certain these unmeasurable immeasurable but invaluable traits are being reinforced?

With help from Local Living editor Liz Seymour, whose children are just starting school, I came up with eight essential life skills. I sought expert opinion on their importance and how to teach them. If you have your own suggestions, post a comment here.

Here are mine, in no particular order:

1. Organization

Linda Allen, a star math teacher in Arlington, said helping students absorb a sense of structure is key to her middle school’s success. “A good teacher, regardless of the content area, has today’s main idea and homework in the same area of the room every day. That teacher reminds students every day to copy the information down at the start of the class, and gives them time to do that," she said. She gives parents timely feedback about work completion “so that intervention can happen sooner rather than later.”

A related lesson is deferring gratification. Psychologists Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E.P. Seligman, by seeing what happens when children have the choice of a dollar today or two dollars next week, have concluded that self-discipline and self-denial are keys to success. Katherine Bradley, president of the Washington-based CityBridge Foundation, says it “means sticking with something even if it’s boring, pushing yourself to finish even if it’s a long assignment.”

2. Music

Kenneth J. Bernstein, a much-admired social studies teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George’s County, is also a piano player. “I do not think every child needs to learn to sing or play an instrument,” he said, “but each may need to learn how to listen, because different kinds of music may require different kinds of listening. In a sense, being exposed to several kinds of music is like learning a second language: It begins to empower one to learn further on one’s own, because one has gone beyond the limitations of what one grows up with.”

Allen said students should also learn how to be a good audience. “If a child can hold it together in the company of hundreds of their peers, they can hold it together for any event,” she said.

 

3. Teamwork

Games aren’t the only way to learn how to cooperate with others toward a shared goal, but for many students such contests have lifelong importance. Frazier O’Leary teaches Advanced Placement English, one of the toughest courses at Cardozo High School in the District, but he is also the baseball coach. “Sometimes it is hard for high school students to understand the value of working together until they grow up and realize that teamwork is essential to success,” he said.

4. Exercise

Sarah Melanie Fine, a writer, went for a run every morning when she was teaching in a D.C. school. She needed the exercise to survive tough days. Her students often did not have the same chance. “Particularly in an environment where seat time is the ever-growing end-all, kids desperately need time where they’re using their bodies and learning a different kind of discipline,” she said. Not only does it relieve stress, but it clears the head for dividing fractions, declining nouns and other feats of concentration.

5. Friendship

Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools, which emphasize character, said an essential ingredient of learning to be a friend is what some call social intelligence or emotional intelligence. It includes “not giving in to peer pressure, becoming self-aware and using that self-awareness to self-adjust as necessary,” he said. He acknowledges that many people think this is something parents should teach, but sometimes they don’t, and students’ futures depend on it.

6. Arguing

Bernstein has a favorite trick for teaching this correctly: “I remember once asking students to prepare a debate, three for the affirmative and three for the negative. When they came into class and I checked that they were prepared, I made them argue the other side, not the one they had prepared. With the exception of the class president, who as a politician did not trust me and thus had prepared both sides, they flopped. And in that failure they learned an important lesson: One is far more effective in debate and discourse when one has thought through both sides of an argument.”

7. Thinking critically

I remember that my favorite teacher when I was in high school, Al Ladendorff, encouraged our American history class to criticize the textbook. I wondered: Was that legal? Much later I realized the contrarian habits he taught were vital. I am a better writer, a better voter and a better parent for learning to examine popular assumptions and judge if they are correct.

8. Presentation

“In learning to make a persuasive argument, one has to learn how to address an audience,” Bernstein said, “be it one person or a large group.” As adults we often learn the hard way how important it is to be prepared, maintain eye contact and dress appropriately for the situation. It is better to learn this in school than while shaking in fear two minutes before our first job interview. (Washington Post)

Los silencios hacen mucho barullo dentro del cerebro

17-2-2010

Los silencios hacen mucho barullo dentro del cerebro

ARGENTINA - Físicamente, el silencio es la ausencia del sonido. Pero para nuestro cerebro la cuestión es más compleja, ya que hay circuitos neuronales específicos para procesar los silencios que funcionan al mismo tiempo que los que llevan la señal auditiva. Este descubrimiento realizado en Estados Unidos podría ayudar a entender con más claridad por qué se producen ciertas alucinaciones auditivas y mejorar los dispositivos técnicos para mejorar la audición.

Las sinapsis son conexiones que las neuronas (células que conforman la mayor parte del sistema nervioso, incluido el cerebro) establecen entre sí para transmitirse el flujo de la información nerviosa. De esta manera se denomina a la forma fisiológica que toman tanto los pensamientos, como las órdenes para moverse; los procesos involuntarios, como la digestión, y los fenómenos de la percepción.

Hace poco tiempo fue identificado lo que los científicos califican como un circuito independiente específicamente dedicado a "apagar" el procesamiento de sonidos en determinados momentos. Y este mecanismo sería fundamental para regular los procesos que llevan a las acciones de escuchar y de entender lo que se dice, aseguran los investigadores.

¿Por qué es tan importante este descubrimiento? Porque, hasta ahora, los científicos consideraban que el procedimiento mediante el cual un sonido captado por el oído y enviado al cerebro para ser procesado era el mismo proceso que hace que la sensación de estar escuchando algo se apague cuando el ruido ya no está. "Es el mismo circuito", aseguraban. Pero no lo es, de acuerdo con estas últimas investigaciones. El descubrimiento, llevado a cabo en la Universidad de Oregon (Estados Unidos) y publicado en la revista científica "Neuron", sostiene la teoría de que los grupos de sinapsis encargados de registrar las imágenes auditivas percibidas y los encargados de borrarlas son diferentes.

"Es un trabajo repartido", asegura Michael Wehr, profesor de Psicología y miembro del Instituto de Neurociencias de la Universidad de Oregoon. Y eso podría servir para generar cambios sustancialmente buenos en los dispositivos relacionados con el mejoramiento de la audición.

Complejidad

En síntesis, la audición y la percepción del sonido son procesos bastante más complejos de lo que solía creerse comúnmente, y algunos de los secretos de esa complejidad estarían empezando a ser desentrañados.

"Parecería como si hubiera muchos canales separados que, entre sí, construyen el camino que lleva la señal auditiva hacia el cerebro, que se especializa en procesarlos", explica Wehr.

Impulsos nerviosos

Como parte del sentido del oído, la corteza auditiva, ubicada en el lóbulo temporal, recibe para procesar los efectos de sonido resultantes de la interacción de dos canales: uno que lleva los impulsos nerviosos con la información sonora específica y otro que da la señal de corte, la información de que ese sonido ya pasó. Es decir, del sonido y de los silencios.

Ratas melómanas

Este nuevo modelo sobre la audición podría ser considerado una auspiciosa puerta capaz de revelar las claves de ciertos fenómenos, como algunas alteraciones o alucinaciones auditivas. Pero, la verdad es que es apresurado decirlo, porque el experimento de los psicólogos y neurobiólogos estadounidenses fue hecho solamente con ratas de laboratorio.

Estos animales fueron sometidos a una serie de trenes de pulsos o señales auditivas muy rápidas y variadas, mientras que con un sistema de electrodos conectados en sus cerebros los científicos observaron la forma en que esos impulsos eléctricos eran procesados por los circuitos neuronales. Así vieron claramente que algunas sinapsis respondían a las señales sonoras, mientras que otras respondían emitiendo fuertes señales de información ante la desaparición de tales señales sonoras.

Además, notaron que no existía superposición alguna entre los dos conjuntos de neuronas activados al inicio y al final de los sonidos. Es decir, que el final de un sonido no afectaba la respuesta neuronal ante otro nuevo, lo que refuerza aún más la idea de la existencia de canales distintos de procesamiento del inicio y del final de las señales sonoras.

La fuerte sospecha que tienen los científicos es que este mecanismo de percepción de los silencios puede ser fundamental para el procesamiento del lenguaje sonoro.

Contra el déficit de aprendizaje

El descubrimiento de los científicos de Oregon permitiría diseñar tratamientos destinados a chicos con déficits en el lenguaje y en el aprendizaje. Por ejemplo, los niños con dislexia tienen problemas para definir los límites de los sonidos en el discurso, por lo que tratar las áreas identificadas podría ayudar a potenciar sus capacidades. (La Gaceta)

La educación, asignatura pendiente de Europa la próxima década

16-2-2010

La educación, asignatura pendiente de Europa la próxima década

Los ministros de Educación de la UE pidieron ayer a la Comisión Europea que en la nueva Estrategia «Europa 2020», que diseñará las prioridades en materia económica en los próximos años, se tenga en cuenta la educación, y no como un gasto más sino como una inversión imprescindible.

La nueva comisaria de Educación, Androulla Vassiliou, recordó que, según las últimas previsiones de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE), en el año 2020 el 85% de los puestos de trabajo requerirán en Europa titulados medios o superiores. Esto significa, según la comisaria, que de aquí a ese año Europa tiene que dar formación de ese grado a nada menos que 19 millones más de personas, todo un reto para el sistema educativo.

El ministro de Educación y Presidente semestral del Consejo, Ángel Gabilondo, se mostró rotundo al asegurar que si no se invierte en educación «saldrá caro económicamente», en alusión a la pérdida de competitividad que supondrá para Europa en su conjunto respecto a otros países con los que competimos, Estados Unidos entre ellos.

En un alarde de aplicación del principio de realidad, y vista la crisis económica y los recortes de gasto público que ha traído consigo, Gabilondo no descartó la entrada de capital privado en la universidad. (ABC)

What is the real secret of a good school?

16-2-2010

What is the real secret of a good school?

How do you turn a sink school into one of the country's best state academies? We meet the head who made it happen

Catherine Myers is very proud of her chairs. Myers is proud of everything and everyone in her amazingly successful state school but the new chairs, they sort of sum it up. They are from Sweden (where Myers has drawn so much inspiration for her vision), double-padded for comfort (the last detail in encouraging children to enjoy lessons) and designed with a funky slot to hook them on the desks after each class (high expectations of respect).

What makes a school good? We all know it when we see it but teachers and politicians have found it confoundingly hard to reproduce. It starts with a good head teacher — but what is it that he or she does? And it demands excellent facilities — but what should they be? And the ethos, that’s important — but a dizzying array of fashions, from strict to creative, have come and gone.

In a debate last night at the British Library, Dr Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, called for an end to “formulaic and mechanised” education at “large and anonymised” schools. Myers would beg to differ: her buzzword is “personalised” learning, even on such a busy city campus. Be you male, female, arty, practical or academic, she believes that technology enables teachers to fashion a learning plan for each individual.

The Times set out to plot how Myers transformed a sink school in the most deprived borough in England into a gleaming £32 million campus that has one of the poorest intakes and best outcomes in the country. It is a story of a woman who looked at the privilege that the independent sector offered and decided that she wanted better than that for her children in Tower Hamlets, East London. She travelled to a dozen countries and built a institution whose architecture was inspired by Reims Cathedral and whose vocational work echoes that of the Volvo high schools in Sweden. It is a story of a woman unafraid to think big and different — for example, to separate girls and boys for both learning and play. And it is a story about chairs.

As Myers, who can spot a contraband hat on a 13-year-old boy as easily as his slipped grade, says in her soft Scottish brogue, “it is all about the details”.

Myers’s grandmotherly appearance and personal modesty are deceptive. Warning: do not get in the way of what this woman wants. She was born into a working-class family in Glasgow, and doing well at school was her way out. She knew that was what she wanted to give others: after a degree in physics and a break to have her three children, she determined to run her own school that could transform the lives of the poorest.

In 1992, she found it. Bishop Challoner had been founded in the 19th century by the Sisters of Mercy nuns to save East End girls from prostitution and drink. But by the time Myers found it, the girls’ state secondary was hardly doing that. She tested the 11-year-olds and found that the highest reading age was that of an average nine-year-old. Less than a fifth of them were leaving with five GCSEs at grades A-C.

To those educationists who disapprove of testing, let Myers be a lesson to you, and to me, as I sit down in her new office (passing five girls waiting nervously outside the door). She gives all new pupils a cognitive ability test (CAT) and retests them every year. The CAT is also used to help in choosing subjects and careers. Each student is given an ambitious performance target.

Although this approach is now catching on, 18 years ago Myers was the pioneer. She can produce for me spreadsheets of each child’s progress; if pupils fall behind, she and the teachers ask them why.

“We ask children, how do you like to learn? Aside from the core subjects, there is no reason why they can’t like to learn and learn what they like.”

It also meant that Myers could test her initiatives. Did her “book box”, which got every child to review a book each week, work? Yes, she had the evidence that literacy levels were rising.

“We worked our socks off,” says Myers, who puts in a regular 16-hour day. Sure enough, now nearly 90 per cent of girls obtain five GCSEs at grades A-C, and Bishop Challoner is in the top 2 per cent of state secondaries even though more than half the pupils receive free school meals, 27 per cent have special needs, and they speak a total of 73 mother tongues.

In 2001 the local boys’ Catholic secondary failed its inspections so abysmally that it was closed down. Its head teachers were leaving every six months. Myers pushed to take it over — but on her terms. In what was then an unprecedented move, she brokered a deal with the Government to become head of Britain’s first federated school.

“It took lateral thinking. But we were doing well for the girls and I wanted to do the same for the boys, but without compromising what the girls were achieving.”

Myers is executive head of the girls’ school, the boys’ school, the sixth-form college and the community programmes, with 1,700 pupils and 354 staff. In effect, she formed a system that the Government now uses to save failing schools.

“It is like running a medium-sized public limited company,” she says, adding unnecessarily that it is “run tightly” because when we set off on a tour the corridors are eerily quiet. When she walks into a room, a deeper hush falls.

One cheeky boy dares to ask “Anything I can do for you, Miss?” and is answered with whispered menace, “Yes, see me in my office in half an hour.” He looks scared. With Myers about there is no need for the bouncers you find in some inner-city schools. Yet she gets angry about the type of elitist grammar school head who nurtures his bright pupils and punishes the rest: “I know there’s a Victorian ideal that is popular with many but it’s not what happens here.”

Myers has spent holidays doggedly visiting schools all over the world. She was shopping for buildings, equipment and ideas, because by then she had even bigger plans. America’s poorest schools were “an eye-opener”: she visited one next to a prison that seemed to have no aspirations higher than its neighbour. She didn’t like the way that some business-sponsored schools in France had teachers dipping in and out, but the buildings were lovely.

Sweden and Denmark served as her closest educational model. “We liked what we saw in their applied and vocational learning,” she says. “I started that here. Everybody is qualified for something.”

In Sweden she found none of the British snobbery between the academic elite and people who prefer hands-on work. She visited Volvo high schools, part-owned by the car company, which educate children who want to be theoretical engineers and to go to university and beyond, alongside the technicians essential to car production.

By the time the land from the former boys’ school was sold off, she had both the funds and the Scandinavian-style plans for her new school. When it opened last month, after four years of construction and a decade of hard campaigning, she received an award from the Pope. Myers was also voted head teacher of the year last year, for achieving excellence for some of the most deprived children in Western Europe.

The newly minted music department is a case in point. We find a music teacher, Dr Chris Maxim, there, practising with children on the traditional organ.

“It is very easy not to have aspiration for children from an area like this,” says Myers. “Part of our vision is that kids in the East End get what kids in independent schools get. Better, in some ways — what we have here is as good as a university music department.”

There are eight beautiful practice rooms and each child receives one-to-one instrumental tuition, free. There are 12 upright pianos “but I didn’t want them just to have scrappy old uprights,” says Dr Maxim. “We have a very fine East German grand piano, so they can experience that.”

They also have a recording studio, to help pupils to gain vocational qualifications in the music industry.

Last summer the teachers took a class to Pizza Express to celebrate their GCSEs and some boys walked over to the piano and began playing jazz. “It was a fantastic moment,” says Phil Leyland, head of the boys’ school. “These boys hadn’t had that in their lives. It doesn’t matter where you came from or if you want to go back, we’d given them that informed decision.”

While teachers flit between the boys’ and girls’ wings, the pupils are rigorously separated. At break time the screaming gaggles are walled apart; the girls lunch in fifth period, the boys in sixth.

Although most studies suggest that boys do better in mixed-sex environments, the boys’ department is outperforming that of the girls. It’s an extension of personalised learning, says Myers, teaching in ways that boys like.

As we walk around, more of her innovations are revealed. Students open doors for us as we pass. The school has housekeepers instead of cleaners (“if a girl is being sick in the toilets, they’ll know about it”). There are colour-coded shirts for each year group; small classes for the lower sets.

As a Roman Catholic organisation, the school receives about 10 per cent of capital costs from the Church. Tower Hamlets is the most Muslim borough in Britain, a third of its population consisting of Bangladeshi Muslims. But as the school is oversubscribed and Catholics are given priority, “it means that we have very few Asian kids”.

The effect is a bit jarring: when I arrive the police are stopping and searching all-Asian groups of boys from rival secondary schools. Bishop Challoner’s pupils are increasingly white Eastern European — the latest immigrants to the area. I ask Myers if she would let a girl wear a headscarf. She purses her lips. “I don’t think so.”

She retires this summer, her life’s work done, her legacy in thousands of young lives. The staff are worried. What makes a good school? Perhaps it is just a good head, after all. One teacher whispers to me as I leave: “It’s all her, you know. Her vision. I don’t know anyone else who could have achieved all this. Down to the last tile.”

Anyone can nominate an outstanding head teacher, staff team, teacher, teaching assistant or governor for a Teaching Award. There are 11 other award categories, and the deadline for nominations for the 2010 awards is March 1. Visit teachingawards.com

Catherine Myers’s formula for educating teenagers successfully:

1. Educate girls and boys separately. It’s not just girls that do better in single-sex schools. “That’s an assumption that is generally made, but if boys have teaching geared towards them, they will achieve.”

2. Let them do it their own way, as long as they do it. Encourage pupils to analyse and develop their own style of learning (eg, last-minute, in groups). “Children should learn what they like and like what they learn,” says Myers.

3. Don’t see vocational subjects as second best — they are not. Think beyond the British school tradition, to the more vocational Scandinavian model. “As a mother I know that if you spend half your life making them do what they don’t want to do, you only make your life difficult. Everyone should leave school qualified for something.”

4. Set targets. Try not to compare your child to others — but set individual targets that will stretch his or her particular abilities. Respond quickly and collaboratively if the targets are not being met.

5. Get respect by giving it. “You have to like children and believe that they can achieve”. (Times)