Another “ThinkerToys” exercise, by Michael Michalko. Im not meeting my goal of one per day, but hey one per week is better than none. I have been thinking a lot about education and after watching kids at Gangplank Jr. this weekend it’s on my mind. So when tonight’s Thinkertoy came up I figured that I would tackle the problem of “Over Crowded Classrooms”.
Exercise: Slice and Dice
“When he is united, divide him.” – Sun Tzu
The idea of this exercise is to break the problem into it’s various attributes and then improve the attributes. “Sometimes ideas are just new information grafted onto an attribute and spliced with another thought… A first-class idea person can slice and dice challenges into separate, simple attributes and then combine them into new, more complex structures, just as stars do.”
To slice and dice:
1. State your challenge.
Classrooms are overcrowded.
2. Analyze the challenge and list as many attributes as you can.
A. lots of students
B. crowded room
C. one teacher
D. all kids same age
E. room structured to face teacher
3. Take each attribute, one at a time, and try to think of way s to change or improve it. Ask “How else can this be accomplished?” and “Why does this have to be this way?”
A. turn students into teachers. distribute kids in ways other than age to make class size consistent for all teachers
B. remove clutter and share space where possible
C. have students teach when/where appropriate.. change teaching standards.. allow AA and BA/BS teachers.. use MA/MS in more effective ways
D. group kids by level instead of by age
E. use dynamic ways of setting up room, to allow setup to vary based on activity
4. Strive to make your thinking both fluent and flexible
If you couldn’t tell this weekend I was reminded that at one time we had one room school houses and different ages and skills were mixed and used in various ways. Also, watching kids teach kids through doing showed that perhaps we rely too much on teachers teaching and not enough on students exploring. What are your thoughts? On the exercise? The attributes? The suggested changes?
I agree with you here but may I ask a question?
It eludes me how we’d accurately determine a child’s “level” and thereby ‘sort’ them into groupings… Is that not part of the problem we currently have in schools? And how many levels are there, how far do you break it down? who determines that?
There are honors classes that I was in during school and those that I wasn’t asked to partake in, where I excelled in one area (physics/science) I didn’t in another (english) for instance. Are levels all encompassing or still separated to different degrees.
It all gets convoluted again; just in another way. Like the government, education can’t change quickly – they’re too far into their hole w/o the ability to change course with any haste.
Most of this stuff is already well-known. You should look at the Montessori method. I had my kids in private Montessori schools for awhile, and currently they’re homeschooled using the Montessori approach.
It’s not “purely” what you’re describing, but it does embrace many of the same concepts. For example, several different ages of children are typically included in the same classroom. What you call “level” is represented on a per-task basis using physical shelves, where children master the work on a lower shelf in order to be allowed to use the work on the next shelf above it, and so on. Students are encouraged to share space and collaborate. There is typically no “front” of the classroom, and the teacher interacts more as an interactive guide than a lecturer.
The NCLB folks wouldnt be able to get rich off this… and teachers who are lame, couldnt get rewarded for simply teaching to the test.
In effect, only the best teachers, irrespective of credentials, or experience could thrive in such a scenario. I think it would get shot full of holes… but its likely great from an educational point of view, but not for get rich quick folks.
Making students into teachers is widely done in private and charter schools. It used to happen naturally when big families lived together and older kids taught younger ones. I love the idea of one room schoolhouses.
Derek –
You’ve done some great posts around education- and this is another.
I agree with Brandon – my daughter goes to a private Montessori school for this very reason. Her learning is at her pace and she learns things from other students all the time.
Part of the difficulty in changing ideas around education is how teachers are trained. The Schools of Education at most colleges are bastions of tradition and the “correct method” of teaching.
Teachers who are trained in multiple methods of teaching and are determined to raise achievement levels regardless of technique have astounding results. (Have you been in contact with Teach For America at all?) But many are hampered by the need to fulfill testing requirements. NCLB and AIMS may have been some of the worst things that have have happened to our education system. Especially since they further the traditional style of teaching and rote learning that has been detrimental to poorer communities.