A few weeks ago, I listened in on a webinar entitled “Lessons from Abroad: International Standards and Assessments” presented by Stanford professor and renowned education researcher Linda Darling-Hammond (I also attended the Kerner Forum at Stanford a year ago where she was the keynote speaker). It’s been a busy few months since I came out of my sabbatical, and I’ve focused a lot on work and the efficacy of what we do, so I was interested to hear more about international education standards.
Overall the presentation was quite eye-opening, especially in regards to America’s archaic and sometimes obsessive focus on results, to the detriment of actual student learning. She points out that while most US standardized tests (think SAT, ACT, CAHSEE, ABCDEFG…) are designed to assess whether students learned what they were taught in school and focus on recall and recognition of facts, there are a set of international tests designed to assess if students can “apply what they’ve learned to new problems and situations, focusing on inquiry and explanations of ideas.”
How novel.
She goes on to mention how schooling evolved through the ages from “The School of the Church” in the middle ages to the Industrial Age’s emphasis on educating for discipline. It made sense back then because workers in factories and other industrialized functions required routine manual and cognitive behavior to be successful. But the demand for skills changed, especially over the last 20 years with rapid growth in technology, social and cultural contexts.
The education challenges today and in the future are to prepare motivated and self-reliant young people to analytically think and interact via multiple mediums.
Welcome to the Knowledge-based Society, kid.
So what can be done to take our slow and bureaucratic education system to the next level – to prepare our youth to be competitive for the knowledge-based society?
1)Improve the use of technology in schools – Remember your school’s computer lab? Get rid of it! I envision a future where students don’t have to go to a lab to access computers, where the technology is built into every classroom and seamlessly integrated into the learning experience. Imagine if teachers used technology to have real-time student assessments so that they can adjust their teaching techniques and styles as quickly as their students can text their classmate across the room.
2)Institute summers of service – Americans need to stop wasting summers! I don’t necessarily think we should have year-round schools, but I imagine a future where instead of wasting away at home playing video games, students are engaged in summer learning activities, like community service or entrepreneurial endeavors. Check out this cool start-up social venture that shows amazing promise for this initiative: Summer Advantage.
3)Invest in recruiting, retaining, and developing teachers – By strengthening the professionalism of the teaching force, teachers will not only get the training that they need to continuously grow, but teachers will also want to stay in their profession. There are interesting models out there that are experimenting with performance-based pay for teachers, most notably in Washington, DC and Singapore, and while I don’t know if that specific change will create the desired results, I do know that teacher compensation needs to rise to that of comparable civil servants.
4)Institute leadership training for principals and school leaders – Outstanding principals drive schools, teachers and students to achieve better results. School leadership is an important and sometimes misunderstood piece of the education puzzle. At a meeting with a principal at one of our partner schools recently, she constantly joked around about how tough her job was and how her marriage was at stake because of all of her responsibilities. Yet the culture and tone that the principal sets impacts the quality of instruction, the development of staff, and orderly administrative tasks. Because it can be lonely at the top, principals should routinely collaborate with colleagues and receive leadership training from seasoned coaches.
5)Implement assessments to inform investments & improvement rather than to deny diplomas and sanction schools – This last one is a Linda Darling-Hammond staple, as I have heard her say it at several events. Because of No Child Left Behind, American assessments are obsessed with results. “Assessment systems should support the learning of everyone in the system, from students and teachers to school organizations and state agencies.” School systems need to take back the power of assessments so that they can be used positively.
Anyway, there’s my end-of-the-year rant on the education system. Click here to read more about the Darling-Hammond’s webinar.
Which of the five improvements above do you think will be the most important for the next generation of education? Or do you have an idea for an improvement I didn’t mention?
It’s not too often that I hear good news coming from the Philippines. But recently I was inspired by a story about a Filipino man who was awarded CNN’s Hero of the Year. Efren Peñaflorida grew up in poverty-stricken Cavite City near Manila. His experience growing up surrounded by gangs and violence inspired him to divert kids from similar situations. Eventually he and his friends started Dynamic Teen Company to reach out to slum kids by conducting classes on the streets using specially designed street pushcarts. His pushcarts, rather than holding food and other goods, held a chalkboard, books and other classroom supplies.
In this time of thanks giving, I’m reminded how fortunate Americans are. The state of our education system, albeit not perfect, is at least a democratic attempt at making sure all children are getting the education that they deserve.
Efren Peñaflorida reminds us, “We should all start the change from within. All of us, we should open our minds and hearts to accommodate to the needs of the less fortunate and release the hero within. We are all capable of contributing to our community and to our country.”
Tomorrow, February 11, at 3 pm I’ll be heading to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to “appear for an interview on [my] Application for Naturalization” (aka take my test for American citizenship).
I can’t exactly put to words how I feel about this impending moment. Imagine patiently (and sometimes impatiently) waiting, wishing, wanting, praying for something to happen for 19 years.
Nineteen years I’ve waited for this moment.
Even though the test itself is going to be cake, I can’t help but feel this overwhelming sense of anxiousness, nervousness, sleeplessness, giddiness. I think about all of the bumps on the road that my family and I traversed to eventually lead me (to lead us) to this day, this test, this final formality, and my heart feels an overwhelming sense of desire to breathe a deep and ancient sigh of relief. Like I had been holding my breath for nineteen years, waiting for someone to pinch me and tell me that it wasn’t all a dream.
I feel eight years old again. Open, curious, excited, happy. And falling-over dizzy because I can finally see that the world is truly full of endless possibilities. There’s so much possibility and love that I can hardly take it all in.
My heart is full. Has been full for a few weeks or maybe months now (maybe even years?). I’m thankful for my beautiful family who endured the struggle, who never gave up, and who constantly teach me about the true meaning of family–now I can rightfully join you all! I’m thankful to my coaches, mentors, team, you know who you are–constantly pushing and challenging me to shine. I’m thankful for friends new and old, for walking with me and sometimes carrying me when all I wanted to do was slap you away.
When I walk into that sterile government office tomorrow, I’ll be bringing you all with me in my heart, mind, and soul, because you’ve always been with me.
Here’s to releasing, nay, exhaling the last 19 years and starting a brand new chapter–a chapter from an eight year-old boy’s dream, from a mother’s wish, and from a father’s determination.
Bill gives a talk on world health and education at this year’s TED conference! He says, “There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience [of malaria]” after he set the mosquitoes loose on the crowd of some of the world’s most prominent thinkers. Brilliant.
He then goes on to discuss his foundation’s focus on making great teachers: “Even though I was a college dropout, I had great teachers.”
“How do you make education better? Having great teachers was the key… If the entire US had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would be gone in a year. It’s simple, all we need is the top quartile teachers.”
But how do you shift the culture of teaching to focus on improvement and to be data-driven? Well watch his 20-minute TED talk here:
I can hardly contain my excitement for Obama’s unprecedented campaign, historical win, and forward-thinking plans. I celebrated the big inauguration in Chicago, Obama’s “hometown,” after College Summit Rap Director training, which I will get to in a later post. And the city was awash in the the now-iconic “O” logo.
Watch the following videos of the creative process behind the brainstorming and eventual creation of the Obama ‘08 logo from VSA Partners. The design strategy was so artfully done, and the impact is clear–as we all can see from the many “O” marks on paraphernalia ranging from bumper stickers to t-shirts and even tattoos.
I feel like a Bill Gates fanboy. He’s one of the few public figures that I seem to continually bring up in my posts because I think so highly of his move from Microsoft to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation six months ago. When he first made the announcement that he had planned to do that, it was an acknowledgment to the entire world that we are facing extremely grave social problems, and that it was going to take commitment from talented people to solve those problems. And it was like a high five for the nonprofit sector. Thanks Billy.
Recently, Bill released a public letter about the foundation’s efforts to improve education and global health, as well as the impact of the economic downturn on those efforts.
What I liked about the letter was Bill’s candid review of the foundation’s successes and failures, particularly in the education field. He discusses that even though they’ve made over $2 billion in grants to create better high schools over the last nine years, “Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way.” Rather than investing in existing schools to improve their systems, the foundation will focus on creating new schools out of radical charter school models that work, like KIPP, and invest in systems that will foster the creation of better teachers. He said, “If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.”
Amen.
He also praised the Obama administration for committing to education despite the recession and dwindling tax revenues, as we saw with the education portion of the stimulus plan.
I also wanted to point out that the foundation’s website says “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation BETA.”
Seriously? BETA? Come on… What’s up with this beta culture spreading to the nonprofit sector?
Check out the lengthy letter at this link or by clicking the pic above. If you don’t want to read all 20 pages of the letter, I’ve picked out a few choice excerpts from the U.S. Education page after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »
According to this New York Times article, “The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.”
The bill would increase 2009 fiscal year spending on Title I, a program of specialized classroom efforts to help educate poor children, to $20 billion from about $14.5 billion, and raise spending on education for disabled children to $17 billion from $11 billion.
Those increases respond to longtime demands by teachers unions, school boards and others that Washington fully finance the mandates laid out for states and districts in the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, and in the main federal law regulating special education.
“We’ve been arguing that the federal government hasn’t been living up to its commitments, but these increases go a substantial way toward meeting them,” said Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.
The federal stimulus plan’s implications on education are massive and will probably change the course of history for countless young Americans. I’m glad that we, as a nation, are starting to make education a high priority.
Last night, after our SFGMC concert in Santa Cruz, I got home, logged on to Facebook, and saw that a friend from high school posted a video about how Rick Warren supports Prop 8–with the following comment attached: “Another awesome video w/Rick Warren!”
Disgusted, shocked, and fatigued from the concert, I commented “This hate speech makes me sick.” This set off a flurry of comments from three other folks including, “D,” the one who originally posted the video. And after the jump, you’ll find the conversation.
But above and beyond that, no matter your religious background, your stance on gay marriage, or your stance on the definition of marriage, we cannot continue living in a society where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people–real people–are living in fear for their lives because messages of intolerance, which are masked by religion, continue being passed around. These messages get misconstrued and promote hate.
So I get it. Protect the word “marriage.” Let’s say you can have it. Now what? What are we doing as a state, as a society, as humans, as a nation to make sure that we are all being protected? That we all get the same rights, feel the same value, and get the same chance at love, family, and peace that is afforded to heterosexual people.
Well, I’ll tell you what’s been done: a whole lotta yelling, blaming, finger-pointing, and arguing. But at the end of the day, it’s people making one-on-one connections with each other that will be the difference. As Karla reminded me tonight (as she usually does when she brings me back to the ground), that was the failure of the No on 8 campaign. We invested a lot of our money on flashy ad campaigns, while the Yes on 8 folks took it to the streets, for real (as evidenced by my 30-minute argument on the streets of Hacienda Heights with a family of Yes on 8ers).
Let’s take it to the streets then.Like how SFGMC went to Modesto and is going to the Central Valley and Sacramento to promote peace and tolerance. You don’t have to be gay or agree with gay marriage to promote peace and tolerance.
I’ll end my diatribe with a snippet of how I ended my conversation with “D”:
“We are now on the brink of a huge social change movement, the likes of which our generation has never seen. Whether or not you agree with gay marriage, are your everyday actions furthering a nation and society that you aspire to have? Or are you just sticking with the way it’s been (and the “definition”) because that’s what you know and have known?
This is a challenge, not just for you, but for our entire generation.”
Dear Friends,
I invite you to join me next Monday, Dec 1, as my chorus takes center-stage at Davies Symphony Hall in celebration of our thirtieth anniversary and to mark World AIDS Day.
San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the first of its kind, is setting a high-water mark for the gay choral movement, with award-winning Broadway composer, Steve Schalchlin’s new work: New World Waking! Songs on the road to peace. In addition to New World Waking, our second half will feature a tribute to those lost to the AIDS pandemic and will conclude with an upbeat selection of holiday music.
Here are sneak previews of the concert:
My Rising Up: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxklCqwxKAA
I cannot tell you how much heart and soul that we have poured into this event, and you really have to be there to experience the emotions from the sounds, music and words. When I first heard and sang some of the songs we will be performing, I literally cried, not out of sadness, but out of sheer joy and touching emotion. The works are beautiful, fun, emotive, and life-changing.
I honestly, hope you can join me on Dec 1 for this unique event. With all of the hatred in our world these days, especially against homosexuals as we saw with the passage of Prop 8, this concert is a spiritual reminder for our community that we can and will rise up. I guarantee you will be moved.
With love and light,
Rey
How to buy tickets
Tickets for the 30th Anniversary Concert start at $20 and are available from the community box office at the LGBT Community Center (1800 Market), by phone at (415) 865-2787, or online at www.sfgmc.org. A portion of all proceeds will assist HIV/AIDS charities Under One Roof, Meals of Marin, and the Positive ResourceCenter.
What if I can’t make it to this concert? Let’s be real. What else are you doing on a random Monday night? Look at your schedule again… OK so you really can’t make it? Well luckily, we will still have our traditional holiday concerts on Dec 24. This concert will be shorter, and we will play only selections from New World Waking! and lots of holiday music.
We’ve also got three away shows that you can probably go to: Dec 6 in Modesto, Dec 13 in Santa Rosa, and Dec 20 in Santa Cruz. All of the away shows benefit local AIDS organizations.
Didn’t you audition for a solo?
I did, and try-outs were a really good experience. I was chosen to be the understudy for a phenomenal song called “Gabi’s Song (Will it Always be like this)” and might get the opportunity to sing it at one of the away shows. Obviously, I’ll keep you abreast in the event that I do get to sing it at some point.
About New World Waking
In thirteen emotional, genre-transcending songs, New World Waking! explores violence in our community and in the world and celebrates the individuals who stand up to it and change the world in the process. New World Waking! Two songs tell the true stories of ordinary mothers who fought against the homophobia their gay sons faced and both women will be in attendance on December 1st. McGuire explains: “The chorus was so moved by the stories that they clubbed together and have donated their own money and air miles to make this happen. This spiritual connection to the incredible music and the stories is something we invite you to share with us. New World Waking! tells us that, in the face of hatred and adversity, one person truly can make a difference.”
She goes on to mention how schooling evolved through the ages from “The School of the Church” in the middle ages to the Industrial Age’s emphasis on educating for discipline. It made sense back then because workers in factories and other industrialized functions required routine manual and cognitive behavior to be successful. But the demand for skills changed, especially over the last 20 years with rapid growth in technology, social and cultural contexts.
Tomorrow, February 11, at 3 pm I’ll be heading to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to “appear for an interview on [my] Application for Naturalization” (aka take my test for American citizenship).
Last night, after our 
Dear Friends,