Senge - Orientation

One of the most important messages coming from Senge, Orientation, Sections 1 – 5, is the connection between the classroom, the school and the community. The school where I am principal is located in a small community, population approximately 10,000 people. It has been a part of this community for 56 years. A small community has its advantages. We have a local newspaper that keeps the community informe3d of all of the school’s accomplishments. The teachers at the school call upon local community members to come into the classroom to teach various lessons; for example, the curator at the town museum is also an archeologist and comes into the 6th grade to teach a lesson on archeology, the 2nd grade has a week in which local businessmen people come into the classroom to speak about their jobs, a retired gentleman comes into various classrooms to teach cultural dancing, the local police force provides their drug enforcement officer to speak to the junior high on drug awareness, 3rd grade visits a local winery, as well as, an olive oil company to learn about Sonoma County’s agricultural products, etc. The community is always invited to any activity that takes place at the school. This helps to keep the community connected to the school in a very important way.

Another important message from this reading was the school as a place for organizational learning. The five key disciplines play an important part of this. These help to deal with the many and various pressures of education today. I think that one of the biggest concerns today is keeping the school in line with the shifts in society and family that affect children. At St. John School, in the past 10 years, it has been increasingly important to deal with the split family. Many children are shifted from mom’s to dad’s home every other week. This becomes very confusing for children as well as, for the teacher. As a faculty we have had to discuss this and come up with ways to help mom and dad keep some method of similarity in working with their children. We continue to need to work with divorced families. At the same time, we had to look long and hard at the type of child in our classrooms today. We all know, the nineteenth century industrial world school model just does not work today. As a faculty, one of the most important shifts to the technological world that we made this year was the purchase of Smartboards for all classrooms at the school. These boards have made quite an impact in the teaching and delivery of lessons. They are a colorful tool. Researchers indicate that students respond to displays where color is employed. The Smartboard can accommodate different styles of learning. Tactile learners can benefit from touching and marking at the board, audio learners can have the class discussion recorded for playing back at a later time, and visual learners can see what is taking place as it develops at the board. Smartboards were originally used in the business world for group meetings. They have made quite an impact at the school where I work.

Chapter 5 - Choosing A Set Of Outcomes

Choosing a Set of Outcomes - Chapter 5

As stated in Chapter 5, “Learning means responding effectively to the situation. It implies growth and leads to more learning.” About five years ago, at the school where I am employed, as a faculty, we came up with a principle for all grades, “What Can I Do With What I Know.” These words were made into large banners to be placed in all grades. After reading Ozar’s, Chapter 5, it made me go back to the time when we worked on curriculum outcomes for the school. We wanted this phrase to encompass all outcomes. If one is truly learning, then one should be able to apply this learned knowledge to many areas in life, to the real world. To create an outcomes-centered curriculum must include outcomes that connect to both the value-integration plane and the discipline-specific plane. These disciplines will continue to be useful and needed well past formal schooling years, for the rest of one’s life. This is what has helped to make Catholic education so unique. Not only is the academic curriculum of high standards but also that part of the curriculum that works on developing the whole child.

John Dewey, in which much of the idea behind the reading in Chapter 5 was compared to, was a very important contributor to the concept of the student centered approach to education. He was a believer in teaching students how to be problem solvers by teaching them how to think and to allow students to participate in decisions that affect their learning. He believed in having students learn by doing. It is interesting to note that he published many of his ideas on education about one hundred years ago, but they are still very valuable today. When working with choosing a set of outcomes, I felt that the Jesuit’s five characteristics for a graduate in acquiring “life-performance roles” were accurate: “a graduate that is a open to growth, is intellectually competent, religious, loving, and committed to being just.” To begin with a set of outcomes that provide a statement of what is to be learned with assessment methods and curriculum context to follow provides the foundation for a strong curriculum where real learning will be the end result.