Obviously, schools must have some organization, but should they mirror
traditional organizations. I'm not so sure, and some educators also
believe this. I would like to recommend a book to you by a friend of mine
who is addressing the issue of "schools as learning communities." A part
from my friendship with George, what he has done at his school, and is
described in his book is amazing. I hope you will read it, and share it
with your school board, your principal and talk about it with your
children. I think that it is that important. (Rick, can you link this
book to Amazon for the list's benefit?)
George Wood is a high school principal in a rural school outside of
Athens, Ohio. He is on the faculty of Ohio U and was asked to become the
principal of his local high school in 1992. He has written a book, "A
Time To Learn: The Story of One High School's Remarkable Transformation
and the People Who Made It Happen/ (also subtitled: Creating Community in
America's High Schools)" (Dutton, 1998,ISBN 0525-93955-5), that tells his
experience. It is about creating "learning communities" within high
schools. He's advocating a total restructuring of the "system" of public
high school education. He has done this in his school, and the book is
part of the story. The next one, I'm told, is about the specifics of what
they have done at the school and in their school district to enable their
school to become a "learning community." And at another time, I'll share
with you some of that story.
[Host's Note: Certainly! In association with Amazon.com, this book link:
Wood, George, _A Time to Learn: Creating Community in America's High
Schools
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525939555/learningorg
...Rick]
Here's a few snippets from the book.
"I've also become ever more convinced that the most important mission
before our public schools is not, as we so often hear, getting kids jobs.
Much more important is the task of helping young people develop the habits
of heart and mind that will make them good citizens. When I think about
what we choose to teach, what I hope the young people with whom we work
will learn, it usually all boils down to one thing -- what type of
neighbors they will be."
"The real crisis in the American high school is our inability to connect
all our students to learning communities that can assist them in being
more democratically engaged, more able to meet the demands of our changing
workplaces, and simply more well rounded in what they gain from life. Over
the last eighty years we have engineered, through a series of quick fixes,
a high school structure that often simply 'spends' our kid's time rather
than 'using' it, and that is the crisis of the high school. It is wasting
of the five thousand hours that every American teenager spends in high
school that should concern us. The issue is not test scores or dress
codes, the issue is connection. Connection is what this book is about."
"The daily reality of how school worked (or didn't work) was what caused
our teachers, students, and community to begin asking ourselves some
serious questions about our school. Did we really believe that a teacher
could actually teach more than 145 children a day, prepare effective
lessons for six or seven different classes, and provide adequate feedback
on literally scores of student papers? Did we really think young people
used their minds well when confronted by six to eight different subject
areas daily? Did learning really take place in forty-two-minute chunks,
with two-minute breaks to use the toilet and a thirty-seven minute lunch
break to meet friends and catch up on the gossip of the day? Did every
subject we taught really need the same 120 hours of instruction yearly?
Most important,did organizing a school around clocks, bells, credit
hours,and grades rally prepare young people to become citizens, employees
and neighbors?
Questions like these caused my colleagues and me to begin rethinking
many of our automatic assumptions about how our high school operated.
Along with teachers, administrators, parents, and students at scores of
high schools across the country we founds ourselves face to face with one
central question: Is our high organized so that our students can do their
best possible work? Quality student work is what must be at the center of
how we organize our schools; after all, the work our students do is the
only reason we have schools. But so much of the way we set up high school
seems to work against young people using their minds well in order to do
quality work. So much of what we do is built around the 'institution' of
high school. What we wanted instead, we knew, was to create a 'community'
of learners."
If your school is a learning community, would you share with the list the
types of activities and/or organizational structures which supports that
experience? Is this what we are looking for when we talk of schools
becoming learning organizations?
Thanks.
Ed Brenegar
Leadership Resources
828/693-0720
edb3@msn.com
--Ed Brenegar <edb3@msn.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>