How can we best improve schooling?

Oh, hi, my name is Jesse.

And today I'll be doing my final presentation on how

can we best improve schooling for Libya 28 50.

This is take probably 73.

So, if I make a mistake, um, I might roll

with it.

So before we get started, I'm going to talk about

the industrialization and how that resulted in schooling and how

this has carried on tune into our modern era schooling

and the effects it has on students motivation and learning.

So let's dive in.

Right? So, first of all, I'm going to discuss why

do we have public schools?

So, I'm going to look at Osborn's reading and he

points to three ah things that have arose from this

for the idea of the public schooling.

So industrialism, with the rise of industrialism, um the workforce

needed people who could follow instructions and were reliable.

So schools were set up for students to comprehend all

the skills needed to enter the workforce, so they were

ready and active citizens.

Next, he points to nationalism and democracy, to the rise

of public schools, um and the idea of the Canadian

to contacts nationalism, um learning our national languages was an

important thing, um learning our history and as well, creating

more patriotic citizens.

Um as you can see, some of these are already

contentious to the ideas of modern schooling and as well,

um democracy.

So with democracy, they needed to make sure that citizenship

um that students were able to understand how democracy worked

and how they could analyze the policies that govern them.

So does school really embody some of these industrial age

values? Um when I think about it, we still have

bells telling us to go from Point A to Point

B. Um We still have rubrics, showing us what the

standards are and how the standards are so concise and

strict, and there's no wiggle room.

We still have worksheets that our teacher driven and no

room for creativity and we still have this traditional kind

of seating in rows and teaching lecture style with the

teacher in front and the students sitting there.

So the issues that I'm going to talk about our

throughout the presentation are this lack of autonomy and control

for students, um as well as this inauthentic learning and

as well as there's no room for passions and interests

for these students to follow in the school setting.

Mhm. So how can we change our schools to more

actively engage students?

So Conor and Pope kind of talk about this robo

student and we read a, we read earlier how these

robots, students are kind of chasing this grade, um, how

they're willing to give up things and sometimes cheat to

achieve this grade and how this school has caused stress

on there performance and their emotional well being and their

physical well being.

So just looking at this graph, I'm going to quickly

touch on engagement.

So as you can see in grade five, their engagements

at 82%.

Canadians. By the time they hit Gray 10, it is

down to 42%.

And you can see a decrease as uh, students age.

So clearly there's a problem in our school system with

engaging the students.

So what Conor and Pope do is point to some

things that are key, key key for students and teachers

to maintain their engagement and their success in school to

create a better environment.

So firstly, they point that teacher students relationship is the

most important school based factor.

So this is so vital if you can have positive

relationships with your students, if you can engage with them,

they're more willing to talk back, they're more willing to

engage with you if you can establish these positive relationships,

these has shown to have better engagement.

So one thing that can help schooling is improve relationships

with teachers to students as well.

They showed there was higher engagement when in schools involved

hands on learning and project based learning.

So hands on learning, if you can have students work

with tangible objects instead of using pencils and papers, if

you can have them, give them the opportunity to explore

environments, alternative environments other than their desk, maybe going outside

this can help increase student motivation and engagement and as

well, project based learning.

So this idea of following passions if you can have

students and if you can give them the give students

autonomy, they're more willing to jump in there, more willing

to try something.

Um students want the ability to work on their own

to work collaboratively with others.

If we can give them the opportunity, they will thrive

in that environment.

As another thing that was pointed out in the article

was that smaller schools with smaller class sizes, the students

are more likely to experience than not.

So negative experiences of well being.

Although this isn't quite feasible considering that this would cost

on X.

Amount of money for government increase in taxes.

If there's a way that we can lower our class

sizes, that relationship between the student and teacher can increase.

So next, I'm going to talk about how else we

can improve school with the idea of eliminating greats.

So how eliminating raids can improve schooling.

Uh, I look at Anderson's paper.

So the problems with grades, they're simple, so simple and

it has proven they produce stress on students.

Students are stressed out when they know there's a great

attached to it.

Um, they get worried.

Um, this idea of grades can really affect the student

all what's going to happen in the future.

Um, another problem with them is that not all grades

are valid, The validity behind grades are not always there.

Um, they change from governments, they change from school boards,

it's not fair and equitable, equitable to every student if

the grades are not accountable for each school board and

justifiable on an equal balance being as well.

One thing that really stuck out to me and that

I think that could really, really benefit students if there

was wasn't such a great attached to them is that

grades can dis encourage creativity and risk taking.

This idea of risk taking super, super important.

Um, you're not always going to pass something the first

time you do it.

So the ability to take risks when you do something

important for students growth and this can help improve the

schooling environment as well as um a student's growth mindset

knowing that failure is going to happen and it's inevitable.

So some solutions that were pointed to in the article

was grading in multiple modes.

So using on oral exam and a written exam and

maybe another form of an exam where students can show

their knowledge in different ways, not just one set way.

If you don't do it, then it's gone.

You failed given the multiple chances, multiple modalities to show

their learning as well as equal standards.

So that equal standards comes back to this idea of

creating an and level playing field for all students, no

matter which school board you're in, that they follow the

same equal standards of grading.

Now in Alberta, we do follow um a curriculum in

which there's equal in which the outcomes are all there,

but the way in which they're graded is all different

based on the teacher, based on the school board.

So how can we mitigate that to increase um the

less stress of grading?

So what else can be done?

So I touched on grades which is a super important

topic um but schools need to also offer different approaches

to their students.

Um Not all students are going to be actively engaged

in research shows that the lecture style teaching always isn't

the best way.

So what other kind of approaches can schools take to

increase and better improve our schooling system?

So, place place learning, this was a very interesting talking

and it jumped out to me.

This was Jocelyn and Jillian's approach.

Um Jocelyn was from Newfoundland, and Gillian was from Edmonton

and they kind of used their own way and their

own approach to this place, place learning.

So Jocelyn explored transformative student agency through place conscious pedagogy.

So what she did, she uses the, she used her

own learning her own interests and she engaged that through

the students.

So they had the ability to go out in the

community and see how the issues and the problems in

the classroom could be approachable to the community.

So they're learning transcended the classroom but also entered an

alternative environment.

So kind of creating the connection between the class and

the community was super, super important with that place.

Place learning and this can be so beneficial because not

all schooling needs to take place in a classroom.

Learning takes place every day all over the world.

Now, for Jillian's approach, she talked about the impact of

place a conscious pedagogy and she talked about having those

students create those um that garden and they became the

designers, the builders.

So they took on that kind of student agency in

the work, which is super important.

And that's what place project learning is.

It's this idea of student agency.

So the importance of student agency.

So student agency allows the the student to connect their

work with themselves and what they're doing around it.

So we talked about how their work, they can see

true value, true intrinsic and external value in the work

that they're doing inside the community.

So this can really help motivate student learning and can

improve a schooling system that sometimes restricted to if you

do well on a test, well that's going to dictate

how you do well in the world.

Sometimes if a student can see how they're success transpires

into the community, this can help them.

Finally, we talked about approach and this approach would be

very beneficial for those that K.

To six age.

And this was the Monitor Monitor, sorry, approach.

Excuse my grammar there.

Um now this approach, it took on a way different

style and what it did was it told Children to

teach for themselves, It was exploring and problem solving on

their own.

Um It was less of the teacher is the main

focus, but more of the teacher as facilitator.

Um This is perfect for young students, it allows them

to use tangible objects.

Um They talked about the sandpaper example.

Uh this is a great approach and I think this

could really help improve schooling and the fact that not

all schooling needs to be done from writing on white

board, exploring your environment around you, exploring what it has

in store and how you can um use that environment

to your own learning can really help students learning.

Finally, we talked about Waldorf approach and the Waldorf approach

stood out to me in a way that we can

help and improve schooling.

This kind of made the real connection and that we

talk about this and I talked about it earlier with

relationships, so um the importance and that's something I want

to stress and one of the most important factors to

help improve schooling is relationships.

So the Waldorf approach, it has these students under, I'm

a teachers, the same class for years and years and

they start to develop these positive relationships.

And even if a lot of the time of the

criticism as well, how about if you have a negative

relationship with that student?

Well in time that relationship grows right and it's not

always and maybe it's off to a rough start, but

by the time you start to work out your problems

and your issues, you're going to develop a positive relationship

with these students, you're gonna find things you have in

common, and you're going to help the student grow to

their max potential.

So this coming back to this idea of relationships with

students is something so, so key to improving our schools.

And in one final note, um, both these offer learning

through self discovery.

Um, it gives the students the chance to learn through

discovery, learned through something new, um, as humans were curious,

and if we can spark that curiosity and our students

and allow them to follow their own path and act

as a facilitator more so we can help encourage that

learning in a new light.

And finally, here's my references for the project.

Um, Thank you so much for listening.

I'm happy that on take.

I don't know what it was on 77 that it

finally panned out well, and I hope you enjoy at

a great time in the class and peace out.

Thank you.

How can we best improve schooling?

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