Monday, June 25, 2012

From Teaching to Learning « Cooperative Catalyst

From Teaching to Learning « Cooperative Catalyst:


From Teaching to Learning

Cross posted at What Ed Said
We’re working on shifting the focus from teaching to learning at my school. We try to ensure decisions are based on our learning principles, be they about teaching, classrooms, programs or personnel.
Shifting the focus from teaching to learning…
We used to spend a whole day planning how we would teach a unit of inquiry.
Now we  discuss the big ideas, establish the conceptual lens, clarify the enduring understandings… and then wait and see how the learning unfolds.
We used to think we had to plan a whole range of activities and work our way through them.
Now we create a bank of possible provocations on which to draw to stimulate student thinking as their skills and understandings develop.
We used to think the whole class had to do the same thing at the same time in the same place.
Now we think groups of learners might spread out through the learning spaces doing different things, learning in


Occupy Education: Student Protests Of 2012 (Guest Post by Stephanie Rivera)

“When students awaken, the national conversation will change.”- Diane Ravitch, “When Students Awaken
After a week of googling, and searching around Facebook, I think I’ve finally got most them. I have found that over 150 student protests have been held in the United States thus far in 2012. For some reason, I thought this would take me only a couple hours. I thought student protests for education were only taking place in New York and Pennsylvania (since that’s where I usually hear most of them are occurring), but man, was I wrong. I was pleasantly surprised to find these protests are happening in almost every state. All except for Alabama, Arkansas Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. If you know otherwise, please let me know, and I’ll add them on.
But why do this? As many of those who have been following me for a while, I am huge advocate for the voices of