Style

 When watching Audrey Watters discuss if education is broken beyond repair, I found a lot of what she was saying resonating with me. Particularly, I resonated with Audrey saying that the education system is in crisis, but it is not beyond repair. There is something to be said about being a pessimist but having optimism that things can be better and that is how I approach a lot of the work that I do. I do this partly because I don't want myself or the students I am trying to help be disappointed when things do not go as planned. I would rather be happy and focusing on what went right. 

This is something that can be done with schools as well. As educators, we need to focus on what we do right. Once we have that, we then need to reimagine how we can create a system of education around what works well. Just because the education system is broken, doesn't need to it needs to be completely reimagined and changed. There are so many good parts of our education system currently, but it can be made better. I touched a lot on this in my vision board project for my Justice School. 

When Audrey said "I think that the web is a model for a different way of thinking about knowledge, a different way of thinking about technology." That is what I am trying to get at with my Justice School, that there are several different ways of thinking about things and that should be embraced and celebrated. That schools should teach multiple ways of getting to a solution and embrace when students think outside of the box and come up with ideas that teachers haven't thought of yet. 

To me, that is what is wrong with schools today. They are operating on a banking system, as Paulo Freire wrote in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Schools are treating students as if they are the same person and have the same resources available to them, have the same learning style, have the same drive to learn as one another. And that is not true. If there was one thing that schools could change now, it is that they could change their approach to education and make it so that different ways of thinking is embraced. 

Doing project based classes would be a great approach to allowing for different learning styles. A project can be anything from an essay to a multimedia presentation, etc. This would allow students to chose a way to demonstrate what they have learned in a way that works for them. I know for myself, I am not good at taking tests, but I am an excellent essay writer. There is nothing I love more than doing research and pulling it all together in an argument that I am making in my essay. However, if you had me a multiple choice exam, then I freeze and second guess myself. 

The way that I would want to see education changed has been demonstrated by UC Irvine with workload menus.  This would be a great way in which we can begin to repair the education system by allowing students to have more autonomy of their education and really show what they know in ways that speak to their strengths.