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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: STUDENT VOICE

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: STUDENT VOICE:


STUDENT VOICE

Kenyon students pack the college theater to watch plays written by 4th-graders who sat on stage and saw their play performed by college students .
I made the 7-hour drive back from Kenyon just in time to make it to class yesterday. The contrast between this pastoral Ohio campus and Chicago's urban school battlefield was never more striking. At Kenyon I helped advise students on their final projects. One of them, bound for a great teaching career (I hope) worked with 4th-grade public schools students in nearby Mt. Vernon, who wrote plays that were put on before a packed house at the college.

All power to the imagination and performance-based assessment rather than high-stakes standardized testing.

Back in the city, Chicago high school students are learning to find their voice the hard way. Hundreds of them boycotted the tests yesterday and marched at Board headquarters to protest the mas