When reviewing another article in the seemingly endless debate about homework ("Are You Down With or Done With Homework?"), it struck me that educators and parents would be better off using this time-honored educational tradition as a way to zero in on an individual student's approach to learning or their grasp of the work being covered in class.Homework has far more potential as something to start the conversation between a teacher and a student than as the key to promoting greater academic … [Read more...]
Understanding The Impact of Trauma
(One of NISCE’s partner schools, Dearborn Academy, works exclusively with learning disabled students and has been developing a better understanding of the impact of childhood trauma on learning. We invited Linda Johnson, the Clinical Coordinator at Dearborn Academy High School, and Howard Rossman, Director of Dearborn Academy, to share some of what they’ve discovered. Linda is responsible for helping the Dearborn High School, Elementary/Middle School, and STEP become trauma-informed … [Read more...]
Opportunities for Meaningful Education
When I first started working at Dearborn Academy, I had a colleague who'd been around for a number of years. He had a gentle soul and his love and respect for our students was manifest. One day the two of us were playing a pickup game of basketball, a game at which he excelled, against a pair of middle schoolers. I wasn't sure how hard I should be playing against such over-matched opponents, and when I got a chance to do so unobtrusively I asked how hard we should try to win.His response … [Read more...]
On Teaching Woodshop
When I tell people I teach woodshop to special needs students I am fairly certain to receive one of a couple of responses. Particularly when I first started, people would go on about what a noble thing I was doing. I don’t get that as much these days, and I don’t know whether that is a sign of the times or something about the way I now explain my work.People also tend to tell me about their own shop experience and how they still have this or that old shop project hidden away somewhere (that … [Read more...]
Educators Building Interpersonal Bridges
Boston University’s School of Psychiatric Rehabilitation provides a public resource to educators looking to build better relationships with students struggling with disabilities. On their How-to Tips for Educators page, they review interpersonal strategies that we feel can be seen as not only helpful to the student with disabilities but to all students in our nation's schools.The following tips are suggested to help educators:Interpersonal strategiesDevelop a working alliance with … [Read more...]
What’s Your School’s Culture
Central to delivering student-centered education is the continuous feedback loop reflected in the NISCE Instructional model. Thoughtful assessment guides developmentally appropriate differentiated instruction, which promotes student engagement which in turn leads to success as defined for each individual student. Positive and supportive school relationships permeate and sustain each element of the model.In Part 1 of 6, we offer brief tips to help individuals and schools support a true focus on … [Read more...]
Inspiring Reading From Grade School Through Grad School
Research shows that Americans are reading less and that those who are reading are reading less well. This is according to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts which notes that, "Less than one-third of 13-year olds are daily readers, a 14 % decline from 20 years early," and that "Reading scores for 12th-graders fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines in the amount for lower-level readers." How is it that parents, educators, and individuals who are concerned … [Read more...]
What Does The Whole Child Initiative Mean For Student-Centered Education?
A critical element of a student-centered approach is a keen sense of context and boundaries. We observe that there is more to a child than his or her identity as a student. The whole of what is learned is much greater than what is taught, what is tested, what is addressed in curriculum, and what may be in any teacher’s plan book.The Whole Child Initiative The Whole Child Initiative (ASCD) takes this notion seriously and recommends to schools that education should be about nurturing the growth … [Read more...]
The Importance of Relationships Through All Educational Contexts
Relationship is Fundamental The importance of relationship carries on through constructivist, traditional, religious, military, and non-traditional models. It is so fundamental, in fact, that it could be said that the ability to form positive and nurturing relationships with students is the sine qua non of a student-centered approach. The primary importance of relationship is also a well established factor in research on the development of resilience in children.Seeking to identify the factors … [Read more...]
The Importance of Relationships and the Basics of Self-Teaching
Sugata Mitra Teaches About Self-Teaching Consider the connection between relationship and self-teaching.At first glance this will appear to be a contradiction. It would seem that self-teaching is, by definition, outside the realm of relationship. Of the list of educational context categories—military, traditional, Montessori, et cetera it is the least dependent on adult guidance. On further inspection, we discover that the very nature of learning is deeply affected by relationship at the … [Read more...]
