Re-Thinking High School: Moving from 'Best Practice' to 'Next Practice" Online Symposium
Building on the province-wide dialogue stimulated by educators across the province, the Re-Thinking High School Online Symposium held on January 18, 2012 highlighted the work of schools across Alberta which are demonstrating 'next practice' thinking; schools who have implemented strategies, approaches and conversations aimed at transforming the high-school experience for their students and teachers. This symposium was a great success-with more than 150 educators from across the province joining in the conversation.
The ten presentations, developed and lead by passionate and innovative educators from across the province, have now been archived and conversation guides have been created so that educators across the province can use these presentations to spark further conversation and dialogue.
These archived
presentations are:
Re-Thinking High School: Setting the Context
The Use of Formative Assessment
Engaging Students Through Guided Inquiry
Making it Work: Successful Transitions for First Nations, Métis and
Inuit Students
Credit Recovery as a Strategy to Honour Individual Pacing
Developing and Engaged Learning Community Through Collaborative
Teaching Approaches
A Focus on Adolescent Literacy
Developing Student Voice with the TELL them FROM me survey
Using Teacher Advisory to Develop Meaningful Learning
Relationships
Bringing Relevance to Learning Through Interdisciplinary
Approaches
Using Mentorships to Enhance the High School Student Experience
We hope you will share with us the way(s) you plan to use this professional learning resource in your local context.
I am all about re-thinking High School if you are ready to be re-thinking everything! Let's think a little bit outside of that box and lets go to an even bigger box: English or English spelling, actually. International assessements put Canadians near the top and that's great, but what is sometimes left out of the discussion is that little countries like Finland and Estonia do very well too. In fact, Finnish students do better and consistently so for the last 3 assessments in a decade. Many people in the field are aware of this and have looked at how can the Finns finish near the top all the time. While the Finnish success is remarkable in so many ways, one element that is often left out of the discussion (to explain why they do so well) is the FACT that Finnish is one of those rare languages that is highly phonetic (English is on the opposite scale in that regard). "How does that help," you ask? While some English-speaking countries do well on international assessments (PISA for one), Finnish students do remarkably well time after time. What is not well known though, is that Finland has 2 different linguistic population and the Swedish-speaking Finns (SSF) don't do nearly as well, even though they receive the same kind of education as their Finnish-speaking counterparts FSF). What is even more troubling (for the Swedish-speaking kids) is that they are largely regarded from belonging to a more affluent and educated group in Finland. In other words, they should do better, if anything. (It is well-known that higher socio-economics groups have advantages from better nutrition, educated parents,... to better tutoring, if any). These SSF do as well on tests as Canadians or New Zealanders (who do get the benefit of starting school 1.5 earlier or 1 year earlier than their Finnish counterparts and who the former get a lot more time and effort spent on learning English intricacies), but they don't do as well as their FSF. HOWEVER, some might point out that Finnish kids do well in Math assessements too! True! But, again, what is conveniently left out of the discussion is that most Math questions on those assessments require excellent reading skills as they are mostly word problems. So, why is it that everything and everyone must improve, but not English! Is your TV the same as it was 30 years ago? Is your car? English spelling hasn't been touch for 400 years! And, sadly, it shows! Don't believe me? Would you believe the most famous linguist in the world, Noam Chomsky? How about G. B. Shaw? M. Twain? Carnegie? Roosevelt? Websters? Can they --and many current PhDs in linguistics-- be all wrong? For a more complete and thorough explanation and discussion, please follow the link: http://reforming-english.blogspot.com/