"Montessori kids are good at doing things"

video

Here's a preview of a 30 minute video profile of Montessori education, the Post Oak School and to make it all personal, me. The program is airing tomorrow evening at 10:30 pm locally on the Houston PBS channel.

It's an out of body experience watching myself on tape.

And I'm fascinated because I've been reading for the past 10 years about how to communicate clearly about our work. To avoid being pedantic. Academic.

Will an interested parent read about education beyond the 3-second mark? Beyond the 30-second mark? Beyond the 3-minute mark?

That's why I've read Made to Stick, and Don't Be Such a Scientist, and Seth Godin's blog, and Selling the Invisible, and Blink, and Visual Explanations...

Blog of the Day

A grandfather's observations of a Montessori classroom.

You can't do that on an ipad

Virginia:

You asked me what Dr. Montessori would say about the ipad.

Look at the pictures of POS middle school students IN ACTION. You can’t do that on an I-pad.


How about a 2 ½ yr old? Have you seen this video? It is quite amazing to see a toddler navigate this sophisticated electronic tool so easily.

And yet…

It is two dimensional rather than three dimensional, virtual rather than actual, visual rather than tactile – it is experience once removed, a representation of reality rather than reality itself.

That said, e-readers such as Kindle and now I-pad (which is a cross between a kindle and an iphone), challenge the supremacy of the printed book. In fact, I believe they will finally put the printed book on the shelf (This is a photograph of “The World Book Encyclopedia” – one of my creations: remember "books on tape"? This is “tape on books”).

We are moving the Post Oak School library into the atrium of the school (the room where we held the AMI open board meeting several years ago) because we need space for a new upper elementary classroom and it is going where the library is currently located. My question now is whether we will ever again need a large, wonderful room to house books. How soon will we convert to a nice room with comfortable chairs and tables and a kindle for every kinder? Cushing Academy in Boston has already done that.

The ipad extends the medium into photos and videos and links…and also has the capacity for notation, highlighting, and generally making the book your own. You’ll be able to carry around a full library in your hand. No more spinal injuries from text-book-laden back packs.

There is a place for the ipad in the Montessori world unless we want to crawl into a cave.

But we must also crawl into caves…exploring the real world, counting bats, harvesting guano, searching for Cro Magnon paintings of bison and mastodons, confronting our demons, adventuring…whatever real people do in real caves…even though we’ll be able to read about it on the ipad and link to the video and even play the video game “Spelunker!” – all on our ipad.

John

How NOT to talk to your kids

"You're so smart!"

vs.

"You worked really hard on that!"

Check it out.

to help students succeed?

Teachers show a lighter side to help students succeed on state tests:

Indiana educators are holding pep rallies, rolling out the red carpet, performing dance routines and rewriting popular-song lyrics to help students relax and encourage them to do well on standardized tests being given this week. "You show us every single day what a great job you do and how smart you are, but we only get one chance to show the state of Indiana how smart you are," one teacher told her students at a pep rally. The Indianapolis Star (3/4)

What's wrong with this picture?

Actually, what's right with this picture?

Here's the only thing I can think of that is right: the teachers truly desire to help their students succeed.

Dressing up in funny clothes, singing and dancing for their students? In order to relax them so that they will perform well on a high-stakes standardized test?

What am I missing here?

Telling them they are smart?
"You show us every single day what a great job you do and how smart you are, but we only get one chance to show the state of Indiana how smart you are," Goss said.

Let's see, the purpose of education is to show the state of Indiana how smart we are.

And I guess they don't know the work of Carol Dweck.
Praising a child for being smart
actually inhibits performance...

Acknowledging hard work
encourages the mindset that leads to success.

They call this hula dancing and testing for smartness
education reform.

(Tune in for a report on Diane Ravitch repudiating her support of this flavor of education reform.)

Snack time, again?

Children's eating habits are changing. Check out this story on National Public Radio.