Wednesday, July 28, 2010

She's Back...

I've been enjoying watching the conversations grow on this blog! You all have some great ideas, and I'm glad to see you are applying them to your personal goals and your work at school. (See especially Marcos's blog about homework and independence at Chinquapin.) You are already showing your leadership by participating in this blog and taking the risk of sharing your ideas here.

Now I would like to see the "lurkers" who have not yet participated chime in. We are getting closer to the start of school (August 16th!), and the rest of you most certainly should have started your reading of Drive by now.  If you are not sure where you might jump in, I suggest that you pull a passage (a sentence or two) that speaks to you and just respond to that.  (Don't forget to cite the page number.)  You don't have to have read and digested the entire book to be able to dive into the conversation.

How about it?  Which passage got you thinking?  Was it about autonomy, like Tito's blog below?  Or was it about mastery?  What about the significance of having a sense of purpose in what you do?

As you blog about your thoughts and reflections, don't forget to include "labels" (also called tags).  Include a label of your first name and at least one for the main idea of your blog.  As you can see from the "tag cloud" on the right, your name or topic gets bigger the more you use a particular tag.  And, frankly, my name is way too big here!  I want to see more from you than from me.

Finally, I want to thank the teachers -- Jeremy D., Amanda, and Amulya -- who have taken the time to participate in the conversation.  This all makes me very excited about the coming year and our work together.

(And a few members of the Class of 2011 are still missing.  Where are they?  Please encourage them to get on board!  I would like to see a post from everyone in the next week.)

2 comments:

  1. Susan I'm not sure how to post but I'll leave my thoughts here as a comment.


    ROWE In School
    In Daniel .H. Pink Drive, chapter four he speaks about a certain company that uses a strategy called ROWE, (result-only work enviorment) which means working without a schedule. In reading about ROWE I believe that using this strategy works more than putting a person under deadlines.When Gunther the owner of a company, implamented ROWE in his workplace the productivity increased.I believe that our school should immplament ROWE on our students when it comes to certain classes such as math or english. In chinquapin certain teachers give lessons at the beggining of class and then allow the students to do work. I think that the students that feel comfortable enough with the lesson that has been taught should be able to leave the classroom as long as they turn in there assigments on time. I believe that if students were able to leave early from class it would give them the freedom to work as they please, in a place where they feel more comfortable, and and where they would be more willing to finish there work. This would also show the student responsibility wich would make them more willing to do what is expected of them. Using ROWE also shows that the teacher has trust in the student and will make the student feel as if he/she was being treated as an adult instead of a little kid that has to be reminded of his/her work

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  2. Michelle,

    Thanks for responding! You make some interesting points here. I'm not sure that deadlines are eliminated in ROWE, but the workers are given autonomy in how they meet them -- they can work at home or at work or at a local coffee shop. Their "hours" at work are no longer 9 to 5, or whatever. What would change if students were given that kind of autonomy? How would this change the nature of school? Would teachers have to adjust? Would the students learn more and learn better?

    As for posting on this blog, if you are signed in, you can click on "new post" at the top right of this page. Or see my instructions posted earlier (click on "instructions" in the tag cloud at the top right). (And proofread, please? I know you are in summer mode!)

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