“The Class” – a film to look for

Teachers often take a jaundiced eye to films that claim to depict the classroom experience. It’s akin to being skeptical about the newspapers because every time they present a story with which you have actual familiarity they rarely seem to get it right.

I saw two excellent films last week. One was Entre les Murs – renamed The Class in English. (The other was Milk, currently playing locally in Rhinebeck and Millerton).

The Class is set  between the walls of one Paris classroom. It details a year in the life of a class and its teacher François Marin played by François Bégaudeau.who wrote the book based on his experience. It’s a kind of updated To Sir with Love but without the heroic treacle and no Sidney Poitier.

There a deal of rather thorny French grammar to be taught but the drama emerges not from the imperfect subjunctive but from the interactions – the evolving story of the lives in that one room. It has some the best qualities of a documentary although the young actors are actually students from a nearby school in the 20th arrondissement. They were recruited by the filmmaker Laurent Cantet to take part in acting workshops and their work led to their roles in the film.

Certain characters begin to stand out as they argue with their teacher, challenge him (and his assumptions) and squabble with each other. There’s Wei who is brilliant in spite of his indifferent French and whose mother may be deported to China as an illegal immigrant. There’s Khoumba – who shows that saving face at all costs  is the most important thing. And Carl from the Caribbean, expelled from another school and who argues football with Souleymane from Mali, the kid who tilts his chair in the back row. There’s Arthur fiercely protective of his Goth identity and Esmerelda who pounces on the teacher’s every misstep and, rather improbably, asserts herself by quoting Plato.

We get to know these kids and their teacher He is no saint (respect for multiculturalism does not extend to Austria it seems) and he is sarcastic and can be quite the hector. Nevertheless we see his good intentions and his struggles and feel for the characters as they tangle together.

We see a little of the family life of the students at conference and crisis time. The school has a regular collective facuty review of student progress monitored by student representatives – a practice that leads in this case to trouble.

The school – as depicted in the film – also appears to have no appreciation of teaching styles and learning differences so far as we can tell. This is M.Marin’s class: he does the talking (or tries to) and the students sit in rows. But then – this is entertainment not  professional development. (That said – many scenes would provide great starting points for discussion.)

We see a little of the faculty room and school politics. We have a glimpse of technology and how it liberates at least one learner And a real moment of recognition – the mention of that most important matter – the faculty coffee machine.

The Cannes Film Festival awarded The Class the Palme d’Or.

Here is the trailer:

The Lower School chooses Joan Miro

If you’re going to MoMA for the Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night – good luck. It’s a wonderful exhibit, of course, and very much worth the visit. But the popularity, my timing, and the rather haphazard MoMA crowd management made it a less than stellar gallery experience when I was there last week.

But while you’re there be sure to head upstairs for the Joan “I want to assassinate painting” Miro Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937 exhibit on the sixth floor.

The first room is dedicated to the Spanish Dancer series and then after that room of beige and brown everyone stops at the brilliant colors of the Dutch Interiors.  And that’s just the beginning. It’s a great exhibit.

The lower school faculty has chosen a Joan Miro for the third  Take One Picture* following Breugel and Vickers.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile – here is a reminder of Miro’s  work.

* The Take One Picture project is originates with the National Gallery in London.

A winter walk

This time along the Appalachian Trail by the side of the Housatonic River,  north out of Kent.

The snow was mostly gone,  although – as is the way with micro-climates – there were patches glazed with ice and slick with melting snow.  But mostly it was soggy and brown with leaves.

The  going was easy in spite of a  sockful of icy water from fording a swollen rill without a split log bridge.

At Stoney Brook  a lunch break was accompanied by a pileated woodpecker – its hammering silenced by the rush of the river and the brook tumbling over boulders.

“Suddenly there’s Poughkeepsie”

Suddenly there’s Poughkeepsie

what a hard time

the Hudson River has had

trying to get to the sea

it seemed easy enough to

rise out of Tear of

the Cloud and tumble

and run in little skips

and jumps   draining

a swamp here and

there   acquiring

streams and other smaller

rivers with similar

longings for the wide

imagined water

suddenly

there’s Poughkeepsie

except for its spelling

an ordinary town but

the great heaving

ocean sixty miles away is

determined to reach

that town every day

and twice a day in fact

drowning the Hudson River

in salt and mud

it is the moon’s tidal

power over all the waters

of this earth at war with

gravity     the Hudson

perseveres    moving down

down    dignified

slower    look it has

become our Lordly Hudson

hardly flowing

and we are

now in a poem by the poet

Paul Goodman  be quiet heart

home home

then the sea

Grace Paley

What’s next?

First  the music and the record stores closed.  And then the  books – Posman’s on Broadway, Ivy’s and too many others across Manhattan.

And then it was the international news and magazine shop – Global Ink – on the corner of 112th street where it was possible to browse obscure journals, pick up yesterday’s Guardian
and newspaper from all over the world.  In a letter posted to the window the owner  Essam Moussa  noted that technology has “reduced the need for hand held publications.”  He opened a shoe store.

And now  Kim’s Video one block up is gone.

We’re getting used to all these changes. Today’s NYTimes Week in Review has a story about the end of Polaroid – gone the way of the Viewmaster – and another about changes in the book industry.  They’ll soon be closing the one-room schoolhouse if we’re not careful.

All this change, disruption and disintermediation. What’s next?

In his element – Ken Robinson is back

Kennneth Robinson – Sir Ken – made quite the international splash when his TEDTalk on  How schools kill creativity went viral in educational circles.

He was  the keynote speaker at the NAIS national conference in March and he filled Radio City Music Hall to overflowing.

Here he is again in a podcast about his new book to be published in January: The Element – How finding your passion changes everything.

Robinson takes the reader on a journey of what can happen in our lives when passion and talent meet. He draws on the personal stories of people from  many fields, including Sir Paul McCartney, Arianna Huffington, Matt Groening, Meg Ryan and physicist Richard Feynman.

From the transcript:

Sir Ken Robinson:  … education has to do several things. One is, to enable people to lead a life that has meaning and purpose and has some economic independence and to contribute to economic development. The other is to help to build communities, and to help to promote cultural understanding. I think that’s all fairly clear for education.

The problem is that we have in most of our countries, a very narrow form of education, and it’s getting narrower. That’s my big concern, that education is meant among other things to develop people’s natural abilities, and I believe it really doesn’t do that. In many cases, it divorces people from their natural talents.

In addition to his book Sir Ken also has a new website - one that I found quite confusing and annoying to navigate.  Here’s hoping it’s a work in progress.

The ersatz language of school reform

The Exam Room, Cyril Powers

An article by Alfie Kohn in The Nation is a timely reminder of how language is so easily co-opted to mean quite the reverse of the usual understanding.  The polluters bring us “Clear Skies” and the armaments industry brings us the B36 bomber – “The Peacemaker”.  And now those  touted as school “reformers” are heralded for ushering in a new educational era of the status quo.

What could be wrong with school reform?  After all – isn’t there much to lament about the current fashion for standardized thinking and the obsession with what can be measured and teaching to the test?  Why yes,  of course. But the educators who challenge such thinking are preempted and sidelined by the “reformers” who want to refine and promote it a new solution.

Real change in schools would mean questioning ” …  the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline and competition. That would require real reform, which of course is off the table.”

In George Orwell’s  1984, the Ministry of Peace was charged with maintaining a state of war. And now we will have “reformers” who bring us a more sophisticated version of the same old stale recipes and status quo.

Here is how Kohn decodes the Orwellian  “reform” agenda as including:

* a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;

* the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching standards and curriculum mandates;

* a disproportionate emphasis on rote learning—memorizing facts and practicing skills—particularly for poor kids;

* a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;

21st century skills – New urgency or just another passing fad?

Lots of talk in recent years of the new essential  skills to survive in the 21st century economy. Tony Wagner’s book The Global Achievement Gap- why even our best schools don’t teach the survival skills our children need and what we can do about it has  received lots of attention. See this summary to review a list of the usual suspects.

Here’s an additional point of view from Andrew J. Rotherham: 21st-Century Skills Are Not a New Education Trend but Could Be a Fad Rotherham punctures some of the hype and froth  in the debate including the false dichotomy  between the teaching of traditional content and the teaching of new skills.

After all – how new are these skills?  Some of them – grounded in specific technology – are new applications of course, but critical thinking?  Communication? Literacies?  Global awareness?

Rotherham’s point about Plato and the skills for the 3rd century BCE is well taken.

The ability to solve problems and work well with others are hardly revolutionary new skills either. Human progress has depended on them.

Seems to me that the changes we experience in the world right now – globalization and the changing job market and the like – are merely bringing these skills into a sharper focus. High earning jobs have always needed these skills. They were crucial in the last century too.  Perhaps what is new is the realization that while these are not new skills they must be the skills of a much broader section of the population.

All children need content in depth and experience in tackling the material in the ways that will enable them to develop these skills in meaningful ways.

Same as it ever was.  The urgency is about effective teaching and equitable access to a good education.

Wagner’s book is an important contribution to the educational debate.  All children deserve a quality education where these skills are taught and developed in the context of a content-rich and interconnected curriculum.

You can’t think thinking. You can’t problem solve problem solving. There has to be meaningful content and the skills taught need context.

Information matters. How  we think about and create and communicate information matters too. Good schools have always known this. Maybe the change we need is to be more deliberate about teaching. To open up the dialogue around content-rich curriculum to balance that content with our metacognitive intentions. And include students in the debate – let them in on the thinking.

Respect for children -  their minds,  their capabilites and their futures – in the end, that is what it is all about.

A wonderful life

Here’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Creativity, fulfillment and flow:

Connecting learning to the real world

Connecting learning to the real world – that’s the tag line of The Futures Channel – a great educational resource.  On this page they provide a wonderful set of answers to that age old classroom math question: “What do I need to learn this algebra and geometry and math stuff for?”

Nineteen short movies show all kinds of people using math  to solve problems in their daily work lives.  They include a bicycle designer, movie wrangler, guitar maker, NASA administrator, food service director at Yankee Stadium and my favorite – the wildlife biologist whose job is raising and releasing blackfooted ferrets back into the wild after virtual extinction.

Lots of other engaging resources too.