What we don't know CAN hurt us...

During a visit to one of our social studies classes the week before Easter break, I was impressed with the student perspectives on the topic of the day - globalization. Today's young people have a greater grasp of this concept than many adults. As technology has led to greater connectivity between peoples of the world, Earth has become a smaller, and to use the term of author Thomas Friedman, a "flatter" place. At a recent conference I attended, a presenter made the statement that in the world of technology, adults are immigrants, and young people are natives. By their very immersion in the technologies of our time, our students have innate understandings and intuitions about the use of those technologies that are elusive to even the most tech savvy adults. It is essential that schools recognize the differences in the way students learn today, and the way they learned years ago, and adjust instructional delivery to take advantage of the technologies that exist.

In his address to school administrators at a recent conference the executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Gerald Tirozzi, said the following, "We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yest exist and teaching them to use technologies that haven't been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet. We are living in exponential times. With changes whirling all around us, the American school has remained remarkable stagnant." While our content has evolved with the times, and we are constantly updating curriculum and standards, we have not yet entirely adapted our instructional delivery models to mesh with the digitally oriented generation we service. If you don't know what blogs, wikis and message boards are, ask your kids - they will know...

In addition to modifying instructional methodology to better address our students' learning styles, it is also critical that we look closely at the methods of assessment used to measure student learning. At the high school level, teachers are increasingly using a wide variety of assessment including online projects, portfolios, and tools that measure layers of learning. Again from Gerald Tirozzi's recent address, "...we must awaken policymakers to the reality that one test, administered once each year, based on minimal proficiencies, which stymies enlightened and creative teaching....is not the wave of the future...".

As we enter the meat of an election year, I urge you to carefully evaluate political candidates based on their education platforms, and their positions on No Child Left Behind's testing requirements. There are some interesting ideas out there. To move our educational system and our country forward, it is imperative that we not fall in the trap of doing what we have always done. The "natives" of our digital world no longer relate to long hours in lecture halls, taking copious notes. Today's world changes quickly, requires creative solutions to problems, and requires that we prepare our students with the tools to problem solve in a rapidly changing environment. In this new millennium the capacity to adapt to change and utilize it will become significantly more important.  What we don't know can hurt us, and what we don't know how to use may hurt us even more...

The Principals Page

Special thanks to the PrincipalsPage.com, which made this blog its "blog of the week" for the week of March 10th, and which has "favorited" us now. I've added a link to the page for anyone itnerested in seeing perspectives of other principals across the nation, or for anyone interested in viewing different perspectives on education in the U.S.

Technological Literacy

Karl Fisch is an educator with a well known blog The Fischbowl . His post regarding educational literacy of teachers won the Edublog award for most influential post of the year. It is a controversial but provocative post on the responsibility of teachers to maintain technological literacy in our digital age. View the post at http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html.

Millenials and Technology

Grosse Pointe North and the Norsemoms are hosting "Millenials and Technology" in room B312 at North High School on February 5th at 7:00 p.m. If you are interested in information regarding our millenial generation, please join us at North on the 5th.

For additional background, see the 60 Minutes excerpt on teh Millenial mGeneration which is posted on this blog.

Technology and today's students...

As we explore ways to make high school more relevant for our "millenial" generation, it has become increasingly apparent that the way today's young people function is at odds with traditional educational methods. Visit this link to see a nine minute clip which explores a New Jersey high school's implementation of technology as well as a glimpse into teacher successes and failures with it, and student approaches to learning and interacting. It gives great insight into the challenges facing today's educators.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/main.html?pkg=2606&seg=2&mod=0

AP / IB or something in between - more than you ever wanted to know...

In the last two years there has been much discussion in Grosse Pointe regarding the International Baccalaureate program, and its viability as a curriculum in Grosse Pointe. This blog included a survey over the past week that clearly shows respondents have a serious interest in IB. We have done significant research at the high school level on IB and its merits over the past year, and have come to some conclusions regarding the program and a possible recommendation to our school board. Much of the discussion at the board level has had to do with whether we could run Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses at the same time. After review, the high school administrations do not see that as a wise alternative. We have concluded however, that there are many elements of IB that are better than AP in preparing students for today's world.

At the crux of this discussion needs to be the understanding that IB is a curriculum that is connected across disciplines, while AP is a standard applied primarily to individual courses. Many of our students enroll in one or two AP courses that operate very much independently of one another. In the IB diploma program, students take college level courses across disciplines. In addition, there is an interconnecting element - a course called "Theory of Knowledge" - which ties all courses together. The IB diploma program also requires a kind of service learning component, a culminating extended essay project, and external review of both formative and summative assessments. While students can take IB courses independently, IB requires schools to offer the diploma program if they offer IB. They discourage the kind of menu of offerings taken independently that is a staple of AP programs. Simply, in many ways the strength of IB is in the completeness of the program.

In our analysis of AP and IB, we came to some conclusions. The things that separated IB from AP were also things that are consistent with model schools across the country. We concluded that those things were: external review, cross-curricular connections, an emphasis on application of concepts, culminating projects, and service learning opportunities that connected students to the larger community. Those things coupled with the global relevance of the IB curriculum make it a truly exceptional high school program.

Despite our conclusions that IB is a great program, we are also cognizant of the fact that Grosse Pointe has outstanding AP programs, and that AP is a rigorous, relevant curriculum. Our AP offerings are among the most comprehensive anywhere, the results are phenomenal, and our students earn college credit through these courses. Teachers have invested their professional expertise and time into creating excellent, rigorous AP courses, and the district has invested heavily in the professional development to support these courses. Our investigation into districts that combine AP and IB courses revealed that in most cases it is a kind of "name-branding", and the courses are really IB courses from which some students take the AP exam. There are some divergent philosophies inherent in the assessments of these two curricula.

The high school administrations have concluded that there is another, viable option: take the elements of IB that we like and that distinguish IB from AP, and apply them to our AP program. For example: Offer the AP International Diploma which requires students take courses and exams from several different academic areas, connect those courses with a unifying course similar to Theory of Knowledge, require a culminating project, partner with universities and area businesses for external review purposes, and offer a diploma that reflects a unified program. The benefit of this kind of plan is that we can capitalize on the strengths and investment in our existing program, and strengthen it with the elements that make IB such a distinguished curriculum.

While we ultimately believe that much about an IB diploma program is better than our current AP delivery system, the implementation of an international AP program is the kind of alternative that may give us the best of both IB and AP curricula. We'll continue to discuss the options and the benefits of each possibility with our teachers and with other school districts. We're interested in your thoughts regarding a possible AP International program as an alternative for our students. Please feel free to respond to this post with comments or ideas.

New Blog - Welcome

Welcome to my new blog, which I hope will develop into a vehicle for sharing ideas, providing information and updates, and receiving feedback from students, staff and community. I welcome your thoughts, concerns and questions regarding North High School, and any other topics mentioned on this page. I will post periodically, and check messages regularly. Please let me know how you feel about this format as a method for disseminating information!

Tim Bearden
Principal
Grosse Pointe North High School