Educational Leadership articles from May 1995

Educational Leadership archives from May 1995

Children need communities - communities need children.
May 1, 1995... Time was, not so long ago, when young people learned about work by working, and about the community by direct participation within it. The Industrial Age, by mechanizing production and reorganizing the workplace into large factory units,...

A refuge for real-world learning.
May 1, 1995... I'm flipping through the cable stations and as usual with 120 channels to choose from, there is nothing worth watching. So I find myself watching C-SPAN.... Congressman Jim Moran was talking, and all of a sudden he is talking about deer hunts...

From desert to garden: reconnecting disconnected youth.
May 1, 1995... Imagine the Sonoran desert of the Southwest. Dry, brown, crusted earth. A scattering of low scrub. The prickly thoms of an ocotillo cactus. The majestic silhouette of saguaro. In this desolate place, a transformation takes place. The earth is...

The community as classroom. (includes related article)
May 1, 1995... Lisa, a freshman at Flambeau High School, rarely came to school. But when she did, there was usually trouble - fistfights, swearing at teachers and other students, storming out of class. And there was trouble when she didn't come to school as...

Applied learning for middle schoolers.
May 1, 1995... When visitors to the Bluebonnet Applied Learning Academy in Fort Worth, Texas, spend a day with our students and teachers, they invariably ask, "How have you managed to develop such a spirit of community among your students and faculty?" Our...

A lending library where kids feel at home. (Sam K. Hailey Elementary School's Hailey Book Share lending library)
May 1, 1995... Reading is a top priority at Sam K. Hailey Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas. For the last four years, members of the school Reading Committee - teachers from every grade level and subject area, along with paraprofessionals,...

In search of ordinary heroes. (includes related article)
May 1, 1995... As a child I read The Diary of Anne Frank, as well as many other works dealing with the Holocaust. Although there was much in these works to sadden and depress me, I was buoyed in reading that in the midst of these heinous acts, there were...

Curriculums with Real-World Connections. (Texas Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's Real World Connections K-12 curriculum guides)
May 1, 1995... Students who ask, "When are we gonna need this?" may not simply be complaining; they may actually be looking for the utility of the topic at hand. In fact, by presenting information in a meaningful context, a teacher greatly increases the...

Students and radio: getting the good word out.
May 1, 1995... When Carl Goldman, manager of KBET, Santa Clarita Valley's local radio station, called to suggest that our 4th through 6th grade students do book reports on the air, I jumped at the chance. Goldman and a local bookstore, An Affair with Books,...

How health career academies provide work-based learning.
May 1, 1995... Properly structured jobs, whether paid or unpaid, can provide high school students with the opportunity to apply and extend what they have learned. Health-related model of education. In American high schools, the benefits of learning by doing...

The Certificate of Initial Mastery. (high school proficiency certification)(includes related article)
May 1, 1995... At Shorecrest High School in Shoreline, Washington, just outside Seattle, seniors are thinking about their future. Of course, high school students everywhere look ahead in the last half of their senior year, as they prepare to go to college,...

On preparing students for the world of work: a conversation with Willard Daggett. (director for the International Center for Leadership in Education)(Interview)
May 1, 1995... The employment prospects for students appear pretty bleak. We hear about high school graduates getting stuck in dead-end jobs, or college graduates who can't find work in their field. Do you think that the school curriculum bears some of the...

Middle schoolers experience the world of work.
May 1, 1995... Although many educators insist that career education is a K-12 curriculum, introducing students to the world of work is often still a high school thing. At Cottrell Middle School in Oregon, however, we believe that work experience is an...

The building of an airplane (with a little help from friends).
May 1, 1995... The students in my K-1 multiage class at Skyline Elementary School in Ferndale, Washington, never doubted they could build the airplane. They knew all they needed was a little help from the community. My students are accustomed to engaging...

How little tykes become big tycoons.
May 1, 1995... By running their own greeting card business, children are learning principles of economics, valuable social skills, and the importance of community. Card, Card, Card Connection has low, low, low prices.... Come and buy your cards today!...

Fourth graders call on Bell Atlantic.
May 1, 1995... Dozens of Bell Atlantic employees reached out and touched someone last spring - specifically, 28 students in 4th grade. They improved community connections in the process. Dear Mrs. Hunt. I had a wonderful time being with you. I just...

The Italian restaurant project: lessons of restructuring.
May 1, 1995... Project learning, with the community and school staff participating, led Room G children to transform the school lunchroom and their own behavior as well. In December of 1992, several fellow teachers and I wrote a concept paper for a...

Group grades miss the mark.
May 1, 1995... In my travels in the United States and Canada to conduct cooperative learning workshops, I have encountered almost everywhere some teachers who use some form of group grades. These teachers have their students work in teams on a project,...

Portraits of educators: reflections on 18 high achievers.
May 1, 1995... The author of Educational Leadership's Portrait series reflects on the role of perseverance, vision, and tenacity-characteristics that extraordinary achievers have in common. Over the past five years, I have interviewed a host of exceptional...

Student-centered inquiry.
May 1, 1995... A national consensus is evolving around what constitutes effective science education. It is reflected in an array of publications, including Science for All Americans (1989), Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy, (1993), and National Science...

Changing school culture. (conflict resolution through peer mediation)
May 1, 1995... The field of conflict resolution in education is well into its second decade. It is rooted in the view that we are all responsible for creating a peaceful school community, a place in which the emotional, spiritual, and physical safety of all...

Transactional strategies. (reading instruction approach)
May 1, 1995... Conventional reading instruction can be thought of as falling along a continuum. At one extreme, teachers emphasize skills in discrete decoding, word attack, and comprehension. At the other end, teachers prefer students to construct meaning...

Three days in the principal's office! (I learned my lesson).
May 1, 1995... Picture this: Three girls (around 13 years old) walking around the playground of a middle school. They are carrying a stick from which dangles a dusty condom. They are giggling, trying to get others to look. The condom keeps falling off the...

Assessing civic discourse.
May 1, 1995... The trend to complement paper-and-pencil assessments with performance assessments continues at full speed in social studies. Paper-and-pencil tests remain valuable, of course: even advocates of newer approaches recognize that these have their...

Children's Emergent Literacy.(Brief Article)
May 1, 1995... This publication, which grew out of an emergent literacy conference held in May 1991, begins with a poignant foreword by James Moffett. The book's underlying concept is that children should not be categorized as haves and have-nots in regard to...

The Learning Revolution.(Brief Article)
May 1, 1995... The "learning revolution" in this title is concerned with discovering effective ways to use the human brain. The authors, for example, purport to teach people foreign languages in 4 to 8 weeks and turn weak readers into effective ones in 10...

Responsive Assessment: A New Way of Thinking About Learning.(Brief Article)
May 1, 1995... Far too often, assessment has not been directly responsive to the needs of the learner. Children take tests, and the evaluator tabulates and reviews the results. The learner discovers only that he or she did or did not perform as anticipated....

Non-Fiction for the Classroom.
May 1, 1995... This collection of essays by distinguished author and teacher Milton Meltzer goes directly to the "why" of social studies and, more specifically, the reasons to study history. More important, Meltzer challenges and stimulates new and...

Education on the Internet.(Brief Article)
May 1, 1995... Some bolt on with aerobic-quality speed; some come hindered by years of technophobia; some come only when pushed - but they come. Many stretch their online hands around the world to create an electronic community, the impact of which we are...