The Future

During our SKYPE conversation this week, Ed mentioned this Newsweek article on creativity.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

After everything that we have read in our text books and articles, as well as the different websites and school models we have looked at, I see one overwhelming piece of middle level education missing. What is the objective? Everyone seems to have a different priority and a different way to "best" serve the needs of our kids. We need to all be on the same page. This Newsweek article discusses the lack of creativity our students currently possess. I think we all see this daily. With creativity comes determination, independence, and confidence. Are these skills more important to teach our students then the academic content? If we teach creatively and integratively it doesn't need to be a choice. There are middle schools in Maine and across the country that are doing great things, we need to share that! I think in order for real change to be made we need to educate the educators. All teachers, administrators, law makers, and anyone else in charge of the wellfare of our adolescents need to be educated in adolscent development. From week 1 of this course we discussed the lack of prepartion. Now we need to act on it. We need to share the information and resources we have used with our schools and with teacher prepartion programs at universities and our lawmakers. We need to have a clear goal of preparing our students to be positive contributing members of society. That comes through gaining skills, not through scoring well on a test. The skills will help you on the test, but the academic content doesn't help you out much with your indivdiual confidence, creativity, indepedence, etc.