First one through the
wall always gets bloodied, always!
There is an analogy between baseball
and education in our public schools.
Here it is:
“I know you’ve taken it in the
teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall — it always gets bloody.
Always. It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their
minds, it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their
livelihoods. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s
threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether
it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people
who are holding the reins — have their hands on the switch — they go
batty … crazy.” — Boston Red Sox
owner John Henry in Moneyball.
Education in
our public schools, now in the 21st century, needs to transcend into
a new paradigm preparing students for challenges associated with new realities
of a dynamically changing world. I cannot stress enough that given how
educators approach pedagogically the creation of learning environments for our
kids, will eventually determine the economic, political and social viability of
our world into this century.
The story of
Billy Bean and his commitment to a new way of producing a viable baseball team
has parallel analogies to teachers’ commitment to producing a viable educational
experience for students in their classes. The inequity in our nations’
education system which now resembles an apartheid system of education, can be
seriously upended through the creation of learning environments that produce, inquisitive
and evidence-based inquiry experiences for our children.
Education in
our public school is not about processing students through the education system
to get them to graduate, it is about the learning process taking place for each
student EVERYDAY. Working within
conceptual silos and parceling knowledge out in bits and elemental pieces is
not addressing the needs of students in this century. Cross disciplinary and
engaging real-world activities worth learning are central to the development of
students’ cognitive abilities.
As an
educator in science with over 20 plus years teaching, physics, chemistry and
physical science I am not only an advocate for these new models of learning,
but I bring to fruition, in my classrooms, learning experiences that are based
upon students becoming deeply involved with project-based learning.
One of my
projects called, The Earth Stewardship
Project, provides students with opportunities to develop needed skills and
abilities that successfully address challenges they face in school and in
life. I believe that an education system
tailored toward the development of cognitive
abilities would help students make sound judge, predict outcomes and engage
in thoughtful experimentation. Increased
cognitive abilities allow students to design rational explanations of causation
from observing occurrences and students work effectively in teams share their experiences,
knowledge and understanding, while expressing their beliefs to an audience.
Without opportunities
to develop as a whole person and as a cognitive learner through project-based
models for learning, the learning experience gets erased in short term memory
and productive gains toward showing performance are lost.
Masters of
the current conceptual silos
(chemistry, physics and biology) continue to advocate for adherence to
conventional approaches of learning, which include elemental and piece meal aspects
of knowledge and understanding. Students assemble and build upon logical arguments
that lead to comprehension, but the idea of usefulness
and application to the bigger scheme of things always seem to fall
short in these science disciplines.
A baseball
metaphor illustration would show a person learning the rules and skills of the
game of baseball, but never allowed to fully participate in a real game or even
a scrimmage! Without such an opportunity
to play, then how does a person come to fully understand his or her level of competency?
These learning experience for students become an uninspiring exercise as
students are denied opportunity to perform.
My avocation
for these changes in education to help our students meet 21st
century challenges is often met with skepticism, consternation and disinterest.
Efforts by progressive thinking educators to break the current learning mold
and strike out in a manner of delivering learning experiences (project-based
models of learning) that more clearly address 21st century skills and abilities continues
to becoming a focal point of contention in education today.
