The articles about education in other countries have been very eye-opening for me. The system in Finland sounds particularly excellent. At the high school level, we do not have parent teacher conferences, unless one is called for a student who's in trouble. I love the idea of it being required for every parent to meet with his/her child's teacher once a semester to discuss gains and areas of improvements. This increased communication between parents and teachers must be incredibly beneficial to the students.
I was also very taken with how their assessments differ from ours. I like that the emphasis is on synthesis, not regurgitating facts on a bubble sheet (wretched bubble sheets!). I would love to see more open-ended assessments make their way into our classrooms.
In Curriculum 21, Jacobs talks about the global community and how our students need to have the skills and knowledge to connect with people around the world. For my students, I feel this is quite a challenge because their world view is very limited. Cultural literacy is something I try to work on with them, but most students do not watch the news or read the newspaper. This makes it difficult to prepare them for the nuances of the global community; political allies, religious conflicts, etc. are something they are not very familiar with. In fact, most of my 9th graders cannot recite basics about American history, let alone the structures of other countries (Didn't Martin Luther King, Jr. end slavery? True question from a college prep class last week!).
In addition, most of my students only take 1 year of a foreign language, if at all. Foreign language is no longer a credit requirement at my school, so it tends to fall by the wayside. With all of these elements combined, I have to get pretty creative in tying my lessons into a global community. My skills are not anywhere near perfected with this. : )
Rural Maine is a challenge for global perspectives. I live in rural Maine, and the community is insular as a community, and within their family clans. Children typically do not see beyond the borders. In addition, the education administrators are bogged down by financial strain that lay like an albatross over Maine. In order for these countries abroad to do local assessments by teachers is a huge investment. Its impressive that these countries took the initiative to invest in their teachers and the outcome has paid off.
ReplyDeleteAt the high school where I teach we have parent-teacher conferences once, in November after the first quarter report cards have gone home. And we even hold them from 1-3 pm and 5-7 pm so that parents have an option to come during the day or in the evening. But, I often find that the parents who attend are not the ones I need to talk to the most. Although it would be a lot of work, in my ideal world every child's parents would attend. As a teacher (and as a parent) I think it is very important to put a name with the face of the person who is your child's teacher. I also wish we had parent/teacher conferences twice a year. I think the one in November is good because a quarter has gone by and so there is information to talk about with a parent. But things change and I don't think it would be a bad thing to have parent/teacher conferences again somewhere in the middle of third quarter. But with the way things are now, if parents aren't attending the first one, they probably won't attend the second one either :(
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think parent-teacher conferences of the future will look like (Skype like?) and why do we only have parents meet teachers once each year?
ReplyDeleteAnd where are the students in all of this? What aren't we talking about Student-Led Conferences where the students do the brunt of the work. Why should we have all the fun?