Football Better than High School?

I didn't get to see the speaker, Mike Vollmert, but I read this article he provided a link to: Seventeen Reasons Why Football is Better than High School by Herb Childress. It's ingenious! All these reasons can be a way to improve education. I'm going to put them in two blogs since it is long. Here are the first nine with my examples included: 1. Teenagers are considered important contributors rather than passive recipients.Their ideas need to be held as important in school. Multimedia projects should be assigned where the students have choice and can make their own contributions. 2. Teenagers are encouraged to excel.Students need to be encouraged to go beyond, to excel. They should be given creative assignments which motivate them to put their all into it. Gamification might be that avenue. 3. Teenagers are honored.When students excel, they should be in the news. Students can make videos and create blogs about other students. 4. A player can let the team down.In the real world everyone on a team is accountable. Students should work together and there are online collaboration tools to facilitate this. 5. Repetition is honorable.Mastery should be encouraged and acknowledged. If you do something once that doesn't mean you can do it again. Online courses with badges are a good way to get students to replicate. 6. The unexpected happens all the time.The unexpected in the classroom needs to be accepted. Use the unexpected as a jumping off point. With new technologies, the unexpected happens, but they can also be used as tools to adapt. 7. Practices generally run a lot longer than 50 minutes.There are lessons that require more time. Students don't all require the same amount of time to understand. Flip teaching might have some good ideas where students can spend their own time on lessons on computers. 8. The homework is of a different type from what's done at practice.The two shouldn't be boring repetition, but reinforce and enhance each other. Project-based learning incorporating technology is a good way to use class time (OR homework time), not doing worksheets. 9. Emotions and human contact are expected parts of the work.Students as passive recipients does not help them learn. We need to know how they feel. Do online surveys, and then discuss their feelings and thoughts.

Football is successful in this country. This can be a model for success in education or another endeavor.

Stay tuned for the rest!

Sick

There was a week between my two lasts posts. I've been sick. There will be two more to come soon!

Look at what we have become:

The Candle Problem

This is a response to the TED Talk by Daniel Pink:

He talks about what's called the Candle Problem. It was fascinating that incentives don't necessarily boost performance. In most problems encountered in occupations now require creative thinking. You aren't just given information in a book you need to know for your job and when you learn it you are ready to go. In the research Daniel Pink talked about, incentives work great with this kind of work. But, as teachers we need to boost creative problem solving skills. With technology all around us, everything changes and people get bored. Creativity is needed. We need to think of new ways to do things. With a narrow focus and incentives, we will not progress to be the most advanced in the world. As teachers, we need to give students other reasons to think and work on something. Not just grades or prizes. Extrinsic motivators might get participation, but (according to the research) in many cases it will decrease thinking power and performance.

But, how do you get students involved without incentives? Daniel Pink has three answers (but he seemed to be talking about business). He mentioned autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Purpose makes sense. If you have a reason to do something, you are more likely to do it and put your all into it. I’m not sure what he meant by mastery, but it seems like it can be a motivator to do something if you will be better at what you do and eventually be a “master”. Daniel Pink does discuss autonomy and mentions the known evidence of its success in companies such as Google. I agree that teachers need to give autonomy to students. In order for them to be creative, they need to be in control of where they are going. As teachers, I think our job is to guide them along the way to make their paths fulfilling, educational, and fruitful.