Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces Dropout Rates

Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces Dropout Rates PDF

Author: Elliot Washor, Charles Mojkowski

Publisher: Urban Fox Studios

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0325050724

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In this provocative book, authors Washor and Mojkowski observe that beneath the worrisome levels of dropouts from our nation’s high school lurks a more insidious problem: student disengagement from school and from deep and productive learning. To keep students in school and engaged as productive learners through to graduation, schools must provide experiences in which all students do some of their learning outside school as a formal part of their programs of study. All students need to leave school—frequently, regularly, and, of course, temporarily—to stay in school and persist in their learning. To accomplish this, schools must combine academic learning with experiential learning, allowing students to bring real-world learning back into the school, where it should be recognized, assessed, and awarded academic credit. Learning outside of school, as a complement to in-school learning, provides opportunities for deep engagement in rigorous learning.

Dirtmeister's Nitty Gritty Planet Earth

Dirtmeister's Nitty Gritty Planet Earth PDF

Author: Steve Tomecek

Publisher: National Geographic Kids

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1426319037

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Come and explore the world under your feet with the Dirtmeister and friends! Part graphic novel, part fun guidebook, this very cool, rocky journey introduces both eager and reluctant readers to the basic geologic processes that shape our Earth. Clear and concise explanations of the various geologic processes reveal the comprehensive science behind each fascinating topic. Fun facts and simple DIY experiments reinforce the concepts while short biographies of important scientists inspire future geo-scientists.

How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning

How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning PDF

Author: David F. Labaree

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780300078671

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David Labaree claims that by thinking of education primarily as the route to individual advancement, we are defining it as a private good - a means of gaining a competitive advantage over other people. He endorses an alternative vision, one that defines education as a public good, providing society with benefits that can be collectively shared - for example, by producing citizens who are politically responsible and workers who are economically productive.

Learning in Public

Learning in Public PDF

Author: Courtney E. Martin

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0316428256

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This "provocative and personally searching"memoir follows one mother's story of enrolling her daughter in a local public school (San Francisco Chronicle), and the surprising, necessary lessons she learned with her neighbors. From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her chest for long walks, she was curious about Emerson Elementary, a public school down the street from her Oakland home. She learned that White families in their gentrifying neighborhood largely avoided the majority-Black, poorly-rated school. As she began asking why, a journey of a thousand moral miles began. Learning in Public is the story, not just Courtney’s journey, but a whole country’s. Many of us are newly awakened to the continuing racial injustice all around us, but unsure of how to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming the country. Courtney discovers that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper. Courtney E. Martin examines her own fears, assumptions, and conversations with other moms and dads as they navigate school choice. A vivid portrait of integration’s virtues and complexities, and yes, the palpable joy of trying to live differently in a country re-making itself. Learning in Public might also set your family’s life on a different course forever.

Building School-Based Teacher Learning Communities

Building School-Based Teacher Learning Communities PDF

Author: Milbrey W. McLaughlin

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0807774995

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Building on extensive evidence that school-based teacher learning communities improve student outcomes, this book lays out an agenda to develop and sustain collaborative professional cultures. McLaughlin and Talbert—foremost scholars of school change and teaching contexts—provide an inside look at the processes, resources, and system strategies that are necessary to build vibrant school-based teacher learning communities. Offering a compelling, straightforward blueprint for action, this book: Takes a comprehensive look at the problem of improving the quality of teaching across the United States, based on evidence and examples from the authors’ nearly two decades of research.Demonstrates how and why school-based teacher learning communities are bottom-line requirements for improved instruction. Outlines the resources and supports needed to build and sustain a long-term school-based teacher professional community. Discusses the nature of high-quality professional development to support learning and changes in teaching.Details the roles and responsibilities of policymakers at all levels of the school system. “This book offers vivid examples of how teacher learning communities are formed and sustained. A must-read for educators at all levels who are serious about enacting change.” —Amy M. Hightower, Assistant Director, American Federation of Teachers

Using Data to Improve Student Learning in School Districts

Using Data to Improve Student Learning in School Districts PDF

Author: Victoria Bernhardt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1317922859

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This book helps you make sense of the data your school district collects, including state student achievement results as well as other qualitative and quantitative data. Easy-to-use templates, tools, and examples are available on the accompanying downloadable resources.

The Rebirth of Education

The Rebirth of Education PDF

Author: Lant Pritchett

Publisher: CGD Books

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1933286776

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Despite great progress around the world in getting more kids into schools, too many leave without even the most basic skills. In India’s rural Andhra Pradesh, for instance, only about one in twenty children in fifth grade can perform basic arithmetic. The problem is that schooling is not the same as learning. In The Rebirth of Education, Lant Pritchett uses two metaphors from nature to explain why. The first draws on Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book about the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, The Starfish and the Spider. Schools systems tend be centralized and suffer from the limitations inherent in top-down designs. The second metaphor is the concept of isomorphic mimicry. Pritchett argues that many developing countries superficially imitate systems that were successful in other nations— much as a nonpoisonous snake mimics the look of a poisonous one. Pritchett argues that the solution is to allow functional systems to evolve locally out of an environment pressured for success. Such an ecosystem needs to be open to variety and experimentation, locally operated, and flexibly financed. The only main cost is ceding control; the reward would be the rebirth of education suited for today’s world.

In Search of Deeper Learning

In Search of Deeper Learning PDF

Author: Jal Mehta

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-04-22

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674988396

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"The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America's most innovative classrooms to show what is working--and what isn't--in our schools. What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms--places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity. This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education--one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.

"I Love Learning; I Hate School"

Author: Susan D. Blum

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-01-13

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1501703404

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Frustrated by her students’ performance, her relationships with them, and her own daughter’s problems in school, Susan D. Blum, a professor of anthropology, set out to understand why her students found their educational experience at a top-tier institution so profoundly difficult and unsatisfying. Through her research and in conversations with her students, she discovered a troubling mismatch between the goals of the university and the needs of students. In "I Love Learning; I Hate School," Blum tells two intertwined but inseparable stories: the results of her research into how students learn contrasted with the way conventional education works, and the personal narrative of how she herself was transformed by this understanding. Blum concludes that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students—people in general—master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge. Students are capable of learning huge amounts, but the ways higher education is structured often leads them to fail to learn. More than that, it leads to ill effects. In this critique of higher education, infused with anthropological insights, Blum explains why so much is going wrong and offers suggestions for how to bring classroom learning more in line with appropriate forms of engagement. She challenges our system of education and argues for a "reintegration of learning with life."

Learning at Not-School

Learning at Not-School PDF

Author: Julian Sefton-Green

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 0262518244

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This book focuses on programs, organizations, and institutions that have developed in parallel to public schooling which offer education in a non-traditional, non-school setting.