Author: ianhoke

Language and Identification

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On a recent, totally engrossing Radiolab episode focused on color, Homer’s use of color in “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” illustrated a startling fact: not once in either epic does Homer use the word “blue.” Dawn is rosy-fingered, the sea wine-dark, nothing blue. In fact, they later visit the Himba tribe in Namibia who have no word for blue, who struggle to differentiate a sky blue square from a computer monitor otherwise full of green squares (the official BBC link is here). The Himba people have fully functional color vision, but their brains aren’t seeing blue. Why not?

One hypothesis mentioned in the piece is that a culture must synthesize a color before naming it, and as teachers have been known to say – to name it is to know it. Differentiations of shades, of colors, demand parsing an abstraction. As in deconstructing language or writing, terminology helps apply labels to abstractions, just like blue for the curious deep safety of green-minus-yellow. When students struggle to see what needs improvement in their writing or even in their ideas, language helps. All too often, schools approach writing instruction haphazardly or formulaically, because it is so challenging a task.  I have seen the power of a set of language and common, basic rubrics in action, like those adapted from “The Six Traits.”

Over the past few weeks I have seen students form novel neologisms and contort common words like “flow” into descriptors for what they wish to create in their writing. This is my failure; I should provide a useful rubric for students to practice with, grow comfortable with, and apply to their own writing for personal growth. Once students begin to see distinct zones in their writing for improvement, they can learn independently through playing with their writing. If a student can’t name a fragment or a run-on sentence, she can’t find them, or fix the problem. If a student can label distinct parts of her organizational structure, or identify strategies for improving her sentence fluency, she cannot be stopped from learning and making improvements as she sees fit.

Across the curriculum, if students and teachers share a basic functional vocabulary for writing, we will all see anew, see kernels amidst the chaos, see something hiding right now before our very eyes, obscured by the blindness of our minds. Language can begin to unwind the blindfold. We should let it.

Gamification: Bad Design, Good Design

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I was struck today during a portfolio conference with a student who was laboring under the perception that we were adversaries, that her job was to guess my mindset and reflect it back at me, fool me into believing she had learned something or improved her writing. She declared that she thought I might be refreshed by honesty. After a dozen amazing conversations with kids about their writing, I was rather stunned. Just prior to this conversation, I proctored a final exam. After the exam, a student squealed repeatedly about all of the “C” answers on the multiple choice – he had changed some because it seemed like too many Cs in a row to be correct.

So I believe this about gamification: When grades are on the line, design the game or be at the mercy of an implicit, insidious game.    Inherent in school’s current design is this game; we cheat to win games, to gain advantage. Shortcuts in games may win us some upper hand. When I was an offensive lineman, I was a master of holding, which is a penalty if caught. In fact, any decent O-lineman can tell you how not to be caught, just keep your hands inside and let go if they spin or get separation. Cheating in this case is built into the game play – defensive linemen learn how to get loose, “break the hands” off the jersey. This isn’t necessarily a flaw in the design of the game, though, because a certain type of holding gets penalized 95% of the time (hands outside the body).

In school, shortcuts save time or effort, and cheating more so. However, this isn’t built into the game play of school, because when kids cheat or take shortcuts, they lose. Granted, when we offer nothing of value to students, maybe they don’t lose. They do, however, develop odd superstitions like Skinner’s pigeons and erase a few Cs when all signs point to C. As I reflect on my own gaming of school as a teenager, I suffered from arrogant self-perception (likely do still, after all, I blog). The choices I made that cheated me out of learning or experiences like speaking another language hurt me. I like to believe that by being open and transparent, by giving students control over their learning and the expression of their learning as in this portfolio assessment, they will take some ownership and do something that displays growth. Many do, some don’t, and I’m focused here on the negative.

What is the solution to breaking the implicit games of school? Relationships first, transparency second. Third and fourth, choice and authenticity. If I can design a curriculum that is open, student-centered, and constructivist in nature, most students will come along. Designing a framework in which students can learn language skills by doing isn’t even that hard, but it sure looks different. Good design, thoughtful design, is important, because otherwise we stay victim to the implicit design and fight the same battles, again and again as the gamers lose. At the very least, we could try to design in some more fun.

ZIS COETAIL Course 4 Project – Vertical Collaboration on Media Rubrics…And Beyond!

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Crossposted from ZIS COETAIL cohort blog.

Shea and I worked on revising media rubrics for our Course 4 project. In my two years at ZIS, we haven’t done much cross-divisional work between English curriculum areas (CA), probably because we are busy, busy, busy people. As such, this has been a very illuminating peek inside the villa, checking out how the English CA is using rubrics to assess and instruct student writing and media creation.

My original media rubrics assessed the media product. For performance assessments, the performance itself often makes up the assessable product, so this made sense. These rubrics were based on the Upper School English CA’s Writing Rubric, which they developed themselves before my arrival. However, later media rubrics focused more on the genre of writing or media that students were asked to create. Interestingly, feedback on the earlier rubrics from students was that they weren’t terribly helpful for reflection or identifying areas for improvement. Because we were learning media creation from consuming and analyzing media models, such as Radiolab for podcasts, I asked students to write our News Writing rubric based on the models they listened to and read, but in a different form than earlier. My Masters action research was on student created rubrics from models and I am a big fan because students determine, and therefore internalize, the expectations for outcomes.

I chose to use a blank 6 Traits rubric because I have used the 6 Traits for years and find the breakdown apt for decoding and planning good writing. Students filled in the blanks based on what they saw as good, bad or mediocre. When we reached the conventions band, we realized together than, as some groups were writing and others were podcasting, we needed dual conventions bands for each media type. This really proved powerful. Recently, I have begun working on a video rubric, as the kids are doing investigative reporting and creating a video report. Through revising my existing rubrics to jive with Shea’s, I had an epiphany that drew also on the earlier experience of student created rubrics: Media is determined by conventions. I never needed that podcast rubric, but rather needed kids to know the conventions of the form. In addition to adherence to conventions, content, style, creativity, and format determine quality. Rubrics should reflect degrees of quality.

As I began to work with Shea, sharing feedback and making revisions, what became obvious is that our 5 column rubrics clashed with the middle school’s four column rubrics. A four column rubric is best because it eliminates the lure of the middle ground and forces a decision on the part of the assessor. I often borrow bits from grade bands as I assess a piece, which is as much a part of how I write rubrics as how I see student work. However,the new four column rubrics wound up stronger, I believe, than their predecessors. You may also note the blank band for video conventions. My students are viewing more media examples this weekend in order to fill in the blanks on Monday. Next, they will create a rubric for investigation and we will simply copy and paste the genre conventions below, merging the elements of quality into one rubric.

As I review these rubrics today, I see room for further improvement: “Sentence Fluency” could be better described (students wrote that, though, so it is meaningful to them). Also, what Sentence Fluency means for video may be so abstract as to demand a new band title. We’ll see. However, this process has led me to understand instruction and assessment of media creation in a new, more purposeful way. We can’t divorce content from form, period, and so our assessment tools should reflect that.

Further, by collaborating with Shea, I have seen in her revision an excellent clarification of media conventions wedded to content – media literacy demands are now embedded directly into her “Sell It” rubric. Also, I really appreciated her addition of an “Overall/Voice” band, which ties together the norms of an advertisement with the voice behind it. I’m not sure how to incorporate this into my current rubrics, but I will be considering a way to do so because it succinctly and explicitly illustrates the purpose for and function of the project’s outcome. Cool!

Working with Shea was great because it made creating better rubrics easier. Working together made my process much quicker and my final products stronger, less cluttered, and based on increased expectations for success. I look forward to more vertical teaming with Shea and my middle school colleagues in the future, not only because it is an enjoyable learning experience, but because it improves my teaching practice and, by extension, student learning.

On High Stakes Testing

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I just read a fascinating blog post from Will Richardson entitled “The Parent Factor.” In it, Richardson discusses his experience with the superintendent of a New York school district’s meeting with 15 parents about changing their curriculum “from a traditional classroom to a more student centered, authentic, inquiry based classroom” and the possible impact on test scores. Richardson notes that high stakes tests are frustrating both parents and children, but that “test scores are seen as a hugely important factor in maintaining property values and in tracking student achievement.” I highly suggest giving his entire piece a read.

What struck me the most reading this was how truly crazy the entire situation behind this meeting is. The tests don’t actually track student achievement in a meaningful way. The superintendent knows that, Richardson knows that, and the parents suspect that, but the stakes are so high for communities, from housing values to teacher employment to maintaining school funding, that they are forced to maneuver in convoluted ways to avoid the brutal punishment of NCLB censure: In Need of Improvement, Restructuring, and so on. A metaphor flashed repeatedly before me: It’s like a village knows more or less how to meet all of its own needs, but there is a moody and capricious dragon in their midst that must be consistently appeased through repetitive, time-consuming, mind-numbing ritual. Time is taken away from sowing fields, from teaching children, from playing games, from commerce, from conversation. Appeasement, managing the basics always to avoid the dragon’s scorch, overrides all other concerns.

I strive to make my views of high-stakes testing clear. My views of these tests became clear the day I saw a Navajo student in Tohatchi, New Mexico, try to answer this question on a state test:

Where are you most likely to see a motorboat?

  1. In the sky
  2. On a lake
  3. On the highway
  4. In a volcano (or something silly)
  5. Again, a silly option

Now most students will recognize what answer the question wants, but this question is not the right answer in Tohatchi. A child in Tohatchi is far, far more likely to see a motorboat go by on the highway en route from Denver to Lake Powell than anywhere else. This test question could never judge achievement; it judges cultural capital. How can the good people of Tohatchi appease this dragon in an ethical manner? Why would they want to, if the fate of their schools and their children did not hang in the balance? My heart goes out to educators working to shape authentic, student centered curriculum as the dragon lurks. At long last, when will we free our children from this abject nonsense and work to solve the actual problems at hand, rather than paper over them with bubble sheets?

On Peripheral Technology in the Classroom

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Crossposted from ZIS COETAIL cohort blog

Today in Digital Journalism: “Can I use my iPhone to record video?”

“Which iPhone?”

“The 4s.”

This student has an iPad to use, but the camera isn’t HD, as it is on the iPhone 4s. So why not? I can’t think of a reason. For teenagers, their phones are not peripheral; they are central, hubs around which they organize family, social, and academic lives. When I see a student texting in the hallway, I assume they have a purpose for doing so. I don’t see nefarious purpose built into a peripheral device any more than I see it built into a 1 to 1 laptop. As such, I manage peripherals by trusting students to use them appropriately and having conversations around inappropriate use when it occurs, which is rare and minor, like a vibration during a quiet moment or the odd ring).

Student devices can be powerful tools – mine is, too. I allow them to be used and haven’t had a problem yet. Students have, however, made creative, unique media to share with their peers because they had HD video cameras in their pockets. I struggle to see the downside, frankly.

On Modeling & Teacher Assessment

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I often monitor the daily Twitter #Edchat conversation for nuggets of goodness, but have never jumped in until this week. Yesterday, a conversation was flowing around the concept of teacher portfolios for teacher assessment. I have some experience with this, as my first year at Tohatchi High School featured a mentoring program and a portfolio to judge my highly qualified-ness. While I worked to complete this portfolio in earnest, many of my peers openly joked about it as a hoop to be jumped through, ticked off the boxes, and scored exactly the same as me: Passed.

When a principal is asked to assess 35 or more professional portfolios, I question the depth of assessment that will result. On a more basic level, I question the need for standardized assessment of teachers as much as I question the need for standardized assessment of children. Most likely, teacher portfolios will take time and attention away from planning, delivering (or organizing), and assessing student learning. Granted, this is a skeptical view of the portfolio in operation because the term assessment in the United States is forever wedded, at least on the macro level, to the term high stakes. If teacher assessment is used to determine levels of compensation, terms of employment, or competency for publication (as in New York), teachers will rationally place their energy in satisfying those demands, which would be in creating beautiful portfolios rather than reflecting actual practices – dog-and-pony-show production. As long as education “reform” in the US is centered on the fetishization of data, these processes will fail, portfolios more than most because portfolio data is qualitative, not quantitative, and so not easily aggregated and communicated for (spurious) purposes.

An argument that was presented in the Twitter conversation was that teacher portfolios would serve as models for student portfolios, and that teachers would be role models by producing their portfolios, learning how best to instruct portfolio creation through action. Modeling is clearly an essential practice for teaching skills. If students are building art, writing, physical education,  or media portfolios, for example, their respective teachers should model the creation of quality products and the organization of these products into portfolios. If teachers cannot produce such quality content, they should reach out to those who can. But modeling the authentic creation of a body of work – videos of discus throws showing improvement over time, for another example – is much different than teachers using portfolios of their teaching practices as exemplars for students. I regularly notice unwarranted enthusiasm for treating students like wee teachers, engaging them in information about instructional practices and training them to deliver content, especially among progressive educational circles (whatever that means). I wonder if anyone is asking students about their genuine level of interest in these materials and skills, or if they’d rather have an opportunity to develop a portfolio of apps or websites they designed themselves? A model portfolio of a teacher-as-learner would be of limited value to a student seeking to create a portfolio of herself as a learner, because the material and skills involved are bound to differ wildly.

I love teaching; I am endlessly fascinated by education. I don’t imagine others to share my passion. Some do – fantastic! Others don’t, and when those others are our charges, we should engage them in the creation of work products related to their own passions. Portfolio creation is a great idea, but the reasons behind requiring people to do so and the goals for the process and product should be more universal and flexible, requiring teachers who can model skills other than teaching. Otherwise, those involved may not see far enough past their own noses to truly engage students in authentic, meaningful learning activities.

The NETS and Good Teaching

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Cross-posted from the ZIS “COETAIL” group blog.

When I read this question seeking a gauge of how important the NETS are to good teaching, I experienced a massive wave of cynicism that was broken by returning to the standards. Promoting creativity, designing progressive curriculum and assessment, modeling skills, engaging with ethics, and continually learning are lofty and important goals. Are these essential for good teaching? Yes.

I heard the term “common formative assessment” this weekend from a fine educator in the States, which seems like Orwellian English for standardized test. In too many US schools, students are treated as interchangeable parts, completing identical tasks or tests for data. Data makes great spreadsheets, but I’m not at all sure how that is formative. For the love of all that is sacred, can we not cultivate creative acts? How much more interesting for everybody – pity these poor teachers delivering the assessments, too – if kids spend common time in school or between schools working on a self-directed or cooperative creative, authentic activity. The data could be gathered in a celebration of creativity, an exhibition, and/or a website, if not shared in a more organic, authentic manner. Just NET Standard 1 is a powerful reminder that school can be real, based on actual problem solving driven by students. If all teachers and administrators stopped at #1, school would be a more dynamic place, full of uncommon formative assessments.

NET Standard #2 is fine. It’s probably the least important of the bunch for me. I do this, but most schools don’t rain iPads and software, so I’m going to give everyone else on Earth a pass on this one, in terms of being a good educator.

NETS numero tres is fantastic. What I love about this statement is that it begins with demonstrating fluency and then moves into collaboration, communication, and critical research skills. By demonstrating fluency, I imagine this standard to mean that we don’t write a blog post and then behave like we’ve pulled a rabbit out of a hat, but rather use a blog platform to do what blogs do – communicate information. We make a video to share information that benefits from a visual platform. We snap photos with our cell phone when we need a photo. So we model fluency because we are fluent; the environments that we use this fluency, at whatever level of proficiency we have, to build are what matter most. If I ask students to write a descriptive essay about Genghis Khan or a pterodactyl using the five senses, I wonder if I am fluent in using my senses or in writing (have you tasted a pterodactyl? To be fair, it’s probably a lot like chicken). If I ask students to burp into a Voicethread and call it a project, I wonder if I am fluent in project management or design (the Voicethread bit is easy enough to learn). Anyway, that’s why this standard is essential, because it transcends the digital.

NETS number four, ethics. Essential. We should treat ethics as a vast field for exploration and reflection, not as a whipping post for the unwashed, of course. There are no children who I have met without a finely honed sense of justice, and if you doubt the accuracy of that statement, hand out brownies of different sizes tomorrow in class. However, students are rarely encouraged to explore the foundations of their belief and value structures, much less to use these as a means for engaging with the world beyond their heads. Making real-world issues available for exploration in the classroom lights students on fire and teaches important skills like reading, writing, arguing, and critical analysis. While it’s hard for me not to jump up on the soapbox when class discussions range into ethics, for example, or responsible, active citizenship, I also make a point of exposing my own biases and their ethical foundations, as well as how these ideas create a lens through which I encounter information online or elsewhere. Sometimes I appear as a real person to kids, I think, which is powerful. I also like the focus in this standard on using technology appropriately to reach out to peers and communicate openly. All around, #4 is good stuff for good educators.

And finally, #5. If you ain’t learning, you’re dead. And dead educators are often less effective than live ones, but not always. Zing!

 

Ensuring Learning, Meeting Needs

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Cross-posted from the ZIS “COETAIL” group blog.

When it comes to tagging blog posts, I am a burgeoning maestro. For this post, I have selected “21st Century Skills,” which is a term approaching Pee Wee’s Playhouse-style Secret Word madness with me. So, you see, that’s it! That’s an answer to the question. How do we ensure that students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy? Teach 21st Century Skills, that’s how!

Ok, so that’s clearly not an answer. Here’s how: give the kids something to do and let them work out how to do it. I truly don’t believe that it matters if the solution involves picking a dodgeball side or working to protect the rainforest via a vast global network of like-minded youth, because I believe both are essential skills for this here century of ours, at once here and futuristic. It is not for me to decide what each kid needs, and need is essential to the question at hand. As we have been told by Sir Ken and his contemporaries, many of the jobs of the future don’t yet exist, so we can’t tell what kids need. Of course, the family of the future, the community of the future, and the future of the future do exist now, so we should keep teaching 20th, 19th, and 18th century skills, too. The world of work isn’t the whole world, after all.

Of course, I am more excited about authentic curriculum than I am about dodgeball (mostly). If we know what we would like students to know and to do, then I think we are best suited to help them if we couch their learning in authentic learning opportunities or projects. Of course, these should include the authentic use of technology, not to reach out to pretend audiences or to solve pretend problems, like writing a letter to the editor about dinosaur extinction, but to connect with anyone, anywhere, to talk to strangers, to take the ideas of others, ethically, and use them, advance them, in the pursuit of a solution for something. What won’t help students is using lasers to answer chapter review questions or the gamification of spelling tests. Learning a mix of skills for human interaction in the physical realm and the virtual realm is the best bet for securing a future for ourselves and our students that meets our individual and collective needs in this 21st century.

Reflections on Microsoft “Partners in Learning” European Conference

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I had the good fortune to attend the Microsoft “Partners in Learning” European Conference. I submitted our Digital Journalism course’s podcasting project to a contest for teachers in Switzerland and came in first place, earning me a trip to Lisbon, Portugal, for the week of March 19. I spent the week with some Microsoft employees, including a very skilled, very organized intern (and ZIS alum) who will begin her teaching career in Switzerland next school year, and many excellent educators.

The week included some sightseeing and a few brilliant moments of exploration, which I live for. We ate amazing food. We soaked in as much sunlight as possible. I was part of a Swiss team including an outstanding Spanish teacher from near Lucerne who organizes incredible projects between students in her town and students in Spain, culminating in an exchange of groups for a week in Spain and a week in her town. Incredible! For anyone who thinks gaming is interactive, I challenge them to virtually outdo the interactivity of a trip to live with a family in Spain.

The setup for the conference was another competition. We all set up booths, including, help me, posters. Mine was minimalist, linked to a series of examples via a hashtag and a QR code, which is so obscure, even to geeks, that it makes me positive that these will never catch on in their current form. Many other people incorporated a number of screens and projectors, beautifully produce glossy posters, gifts, candies (I took Swiss chocolates, for they are delicious), brochures, handouts, and even a flip animation book crafted for every project except mine – honest mistake, truly. Not so, me. I had a computer and headphones, though, which were useful.

I presented my project to three judges, interesting educators all, and greatly enjoyed these conversations. At the end of the week, I realized how useful the opportunity to reflect at length about my curriculum proved, and the resulting ideas will change both this curriculum specifically and my teaching in general. My project was entitled “Digital Journalism: Podcasting,” and that was the way I pitched it; curriculum rose up first, and was followed by the forms of assessment. I guess it worked, because our project came in first last place or “Third Runner Up” in the “Collaboration” category. This surprised me.

I was curious to see if the glitzy projects employing wild gaming tactics built on video game hardware would win out. My perception is that some teachers are stretching hard to do chapter or spelling tests with a panoply of gadgets, doing old things in new ways. Uniformly, these projects were not recognized.

A number of teachers created projects in which students created educational materials, not so much in the classic sense of teachers turning students into wee lecturers, but more in lines of creating progressive teachers with some level of cooperation with (usually) younger peers. Uniformly, these projects were rewarded.

As I take anything away from this conference beyond memories of a beautiful, if currently traumatized city, I leave dedicated more than ever to creating authentic opportunities for students to learn essential language skills and to explore texts and media in personally authentic, meaningful ways. I believe we owe it to students to move beyond the strictures of external curriculum and standards in order to teach in ways that we know are the best; Kristen Weatherby of the OECD made this clear when she posited that most teachers they interview know best practices but ignore them due to the contorting effects of standardized testing. I believe we must allow for connected, cooperative learning to take place in non-linear ways, for kids to learn how to “talk to strangers” as Bruce Dixon (quoting Will Richardson) stated, and for kids to take actual risks, venturing into what Liv Arneson called the “Uuhh-ooohhhh” zone in ways that they value, risking what that value, in order to make huge gains later.

For me, this means integrating service learning possibilities into the Digital Journalism curriculum when students are interested, making connections between students worldwide to allow for communities of interest to coalesce, and facilitating students in connecting with the world beyond the classroom. I am planning on creating a choice menu for the Digital Journalism final exam in which they get points in the creation of a reflective media piece on their growth as journalists by contacting and communicating with peers, peer experts, adult experts, networks, and so forth, practicing digital communication skills in the midst of proving their fluency in them. This is in the rough draft stages, but it’s a working concept.

Additionally, I recognize that, by gaining an invitation to the global Microsoft “Partners in Learning” conference in Athens in November, I have an opportunity that many of my colleagues worked hard to achieve. As such, I am hoping to revise my display and communication plan into something clearer and more powerful, giving the work of my students its due and honoring the challenge. As I do so, I want to expose my thinking and my process to students, modeling the writing or creative process as I go.

The Partners in Learning conference was a great chance to meet like-minded, powerful educators who are doing incredible work with youth. While I have serious doubts about the efficacy of competition between educators as a means of stimulating cooperation, I have freely entered this process and intend to honor it with my best work in Athens.

Thoughts on The Future of Schooling

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At Zurich International School, we’ve got a weekend “InnovateZIS” think tank approaching in which the topic is “Schools Out: Learning 2030. Will schools as we know them be needed in 2030?” A series of essential questions have been posited, including:

  • What is the role of creativity in school?
  • What core elements should the curriculum of the future contain?
  • How will Learning 2030 affect social relationships in schools?
  • Should schools prepare students for the world of work?

Two other questions deal with learning spaces, which is an important and fascinating topic that I have been thinking about regularly since a recent visit to Microsoft Switzerland’s headquarters. But beyond physical environments, what is the future of curriculum, creativity, and relationships in school, particularly in terms of what students should know after they leave school?

Thinking about the future of school is tricky. As Dr. Seymour Papert pointed out, “It is impossible to predict what the school of the future will be. History always outsmarts the futurists.” A large disconnect already exists between what the world of today is and how schools operate. Schools are inherently conservative institutions, where change comes slowly. As such, we continue to sort by age ( rather than interest area or fluency level, for example. As such, kids are robbed of a diverse community of learners, one more socially traditional than the hierarchical age model. Learning 2030 should be about social relationships predicated on a shared journey of discovery across age groups, including a student-teacher relationship of cooperative learning. As a teacher, I’d rather be a learner than an authority – a guide with experience in my areas of interest who creates opportunities for students to learn and build meaning individually and socially. As Papert goes on to say, “But it is easy to predict what it will NOT look like. I am sure that the practice of segregating children by age into “grades” will be seen as an old-fashioned, and inhumane, method of the “assembly line” epoch. I am sure that the content of what they learn will have very little in common with the present day curriculum.”

I hope Dr. Papert is right. A responsive curriculum is no curriculum at all. Curriculum tends to focus on facts that need to be learned or a banal, arbitrary “spiral” of skills; learn persuasion in 10th grade English as you read Julius Caesar, learn comparison in 11th grade English as you read Othello. Dr. Papert also described an “intellectual diet” of content for children and a broader curriculum predicated on fluencies in various skills like accessing information with “knowledge technologies.”  Teachers engaged in a mutually engaging, constructivist process of learning with students can craft this diet to help kids explore their passions by doing things. Doing is creating, permanently, temporarily, or ephemerally. The role of creativity in school is central, or should be. Standards and curriculum can’t really address that without being extremely broad.

At the end of the day, I don’t know any happy people who make a living doing something they hate. As such, preparing students for the world of work means helping them build positive working relationships, understand their areas of interest, build fluencies in skills essential for life in the 21st century (most of which were essential in the 19th century), and create habits of mind and habits of work for success, happiness, and ethical engagement in society.