Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

I'm bluer than I am usually as I write this post. Last night, I saw Beyond Measure, a challenging call for change. The film highlights the amazing stuff done at High Tech High in San Diego. It included the ubiquitous Sir Ken Robinson making his usual sardonic witticisms about the troubling practices in current education methods. And follows a school district in rural Kentucky trying to transition from a traditional approach to a project-based, Contructivist approach.

The movie left me frustrated. I don't know where or how to start. I'm only an ed-tech coordinator. I can't make change happen if people feel they have nothing left to learn. Traditional education works for some people. It usually worked for the teachers who fill the buildings. I worry that there will always be outliers like High Tech High. But mostly, I fear the education establishment will long continue to sort kids by age, send them to a different class every 40 minutes with a totally new group of people, and only test kids for recall and comprehension.