Author: ciccone.2

Sharing a New Year’s prayer, by Marian Wright Edelman

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, received an honorary doctorate from The Ohio State University on Sunday, December 17, 2017.

Mirian Wright Edelman receives her honorary degree from President Michael Drake.

I consider it one of the highest honors of my career to see this event occur, and I am grateful to our many nominators, listed below, who worked with EHE Distinguished Professor David Bloome to make it all happen.

Ms. Edelman didn’t get the chance to speak at the graduation ceremony. However, she offered a prayer at a luncheon before the ceremony.

Ms. Edelman was kind enough to share it with us. Whatever your religious affiliation may or may not be, I think this prayer speaks to everyone and for all our children.

It’s a nice way to reflect on the holidays and might serve as a guidepost to our hearts in the New Year.

O GOD OF ALL CHILDREN

By Marian Wright Edelman

O God of the children of Syria and Sudan, of Iraq, Iran and Israel, of Nigeria, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and of the West Bank and Gaza,
Of Chicago, Cleveland, Darfur and Detroit and Ferguson
Of Libya, Yemen and Ukraine, England, France and Turkey
Of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of Black and Brown and White and Albino children and those all mixed together,
Of children who are rich and poor and in between,
Of children who speak English and Russian and Hmong and Spanish and Hebrew and Arabic languages and dialects our ears cannot discern,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of the child prodigy and child prostitute, of the child of rapture and the child of rape,
Of run or thrown away children who struggle every day without parent or place or friend or future,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of children who can walk and talk and hear and see and sing and dance and jump and play and of children who wish they could but can’t,
Of children who are loved and unloved, wanted and unwanted,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of beggar, beaten, abused, neglected, homeless, AIDS, drug, violence, war and hunger-ravaged children,
Of children who are emotionally, physically or mentally fragile, and of children who rebel and ridicule, torment and taunt,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of children of destiny and of despair, of war and of peace,
Of disfigured, diseased, and dying children,
Of children without hope and of children with hope to spare and to share,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

Faculty and staff from the College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE), from across The Ohio State University, and from universities and organizations around the United States who nominated Marian Wright Edelman for an honorary degree from Ohio State are:

Jackie Blount, Educational Studies, EHE
Jeffrey Cohen, Anthropology, Ohio State
Colette Dollarhide, Educational Studies, EHE
Kay Halasek, English, Ohio State
Laura Justice, Educational Studies, EHE
Laurie Katz, Teaching and Learning, EHE
Valerie Kinloch, Teaching and Learning, EHE (now at U of Pittsburgh)
Cynthia Lewis, University of Minnesota
Jerome Morris, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Linda James Myers, African and African-American Extension Center
Michelle Chambers Robison, Office of Academic Affairs, EHE
Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, Human Sciences, EHE
Amy Shuman, Folklore, Ohio State
Brandi Slaughter, Raise Your Voice for Kids
Donald Winford, Linguistics, Ohio State
Karen Wohlwend, Indiana University

 

 

A powerfully convincing way to learn about experiential instruction: A review of Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students

 

cover of Ron Berger's book

An Ethic of Excellence

At last! A book on education that resonates with me on every page.

This book is not new, but it is powerfully convincing. And it’s the best way to learn about the kind of high-quality, experiential instruction to which Ron Berger has devoted his life.

In his own words, education is something we “should sweat over and make sure it’s strong and accurate and beautiful and you should be proud of it.”

That sentiment seems to have gotten lost in the high-stakes testing era. I believe we should bring it back.

Berger reminds us that education is a calling, a long-term commitment motivated by the desire to bring out the best in our youth and ourselves.

Berger is also a carpenter, and he brings the spirit of craftsmanship to the classroom. He shares his educational tools, techniques and ideas with the reader, recognizing that every school is different. 

His narrative is richly detailed and meticulous. There is no one answer, and there is no easy answer.

The quality that Berger seeks manifests itself in a work product — something that students produce as an outcome of their own exploration, experience, investigation, interpretation, composition and writing, often using multimedia presentations.

This work is exacting, reflective, multidisciplinary, integrative and above all, experiential.

His narrative is filled with diverse examples, drawn from the K-12 world, but widely applicable to higher education as well. The College of Education and Human Ecology will be drawing upon it in its creation of college signature courses.

Berger emphasizes that culture matters. He says, “When children enter a family culture, a community culture or a school culture that demands and supports excellence, they work to fit into that culture.”

This kind of excellence can’t be scaled up, but the methods and understandings can be. Berger provides a map that we each can use to guide our own journey and efforts toward teaching excellence.

Please read this book. If you have read it already, I urge you to read it again. It’s that good.

 

Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students, 2003, is published by Heinemann.

How did 9/11 affect you?

 

The 9/11 Memorial South Pool in New York City.

The 9/11 Memorial South Pool in New York City.

As 9/11 arrives again this year, I am reminded that our confused, chaotic, untrusting, contemporary world began that day in 2001.

No matter our age, the world changed at that point in time.

Is it too trite to suggest that we all lost our innocence that day?

The depth of the impact hit me forcefully when I visited the memorial in New York City.

That deep, dark hole made Dante’s nine circles of hell a reality for me.

As we try to sort out current events, it may serve us well to remember the before and after of that tragic day.

How did that day impact you? What do you remember? If you were very young on that fateful day, how did you learn about it? What did you learn?

I invite you to share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

I issue this invitation because in sharing our humanity, bonds are built between us. I believe such bonds allow us to stand stronger.

Use the questions below to jumpstart your thoughts. Or share your own comment about or reaction to 9/11 and its effect on you and yours.

After 9/11, I felt ____________________ because ___________________.

After 9/11, I took this action to help victims: _________________________.

 

 

Photo credit: By Dave Z – 9/11 Memorial, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39762356z

An educator’s perspective of Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman

 

This is not a book for the faint of heart.Book cover of Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations is long and packed full of ideas that take a while to digest.

I read a chapter at a time, sometimes only half a chapter. Many summaries and reviews of it appear on the web, including one by Bill Gates.

My point in this review is to look at it from an educator’s perspective.

Briefly, Friedman makes the case that changing technologies, the changing geoclimate and changing markets in a globalized world will all converge to make more progress in the next 100 years than in the last 20,000 years.

Or not. He notes that we live in a world where one angry person can literally destroy all.

At the same time, it takes all people cooperating to make the world more friendly. The outcome depends on our ability to build community. That’s hard work. 

Our guns and our borders may be necessary to defend our nation-states, but they are insufficient to protect us from the inside out. Only our values, our reaching out and our unity can accomplish that.

One job qualification will be the most important for the future.

Chapter 8, “Turning IA into AI” had the greatest impact on me. Imagine a cartoon in which the top of a person’s head has been opened and a pitcher full of ideas poured in — that’s how I felt.

The chapter described “STEMpathy,” the combination of STEM content and the human skills of empathy and cooperation, as the single most important job qualification for the future.

Friedman’s assertion persuaded me that we all already use artificial intelligence in the form of our (bionic) attachments, including phones, pacemakers, C-PAP machines, smart watches and the like.

He asserted that we must close the divide between people with and without degrees.

The author also described numerous public-private education partnerships (pre-Purdue/Kaplan) that are changing the way Americans learn.

The ideas are exciting and provocative, but Friedman is not an educator.

Friedman missed the pitch in several respects. He thought that education has no role in motivation, neglected pedagogy and cognitive development altogether, didn’t discuss the use of technologies in the K-12 domain and was ignorant of any theory that might drive our planning or interventions.

He was also, in my opinion, correct in many respects. I do believe that apprenticeships and mentorship are important. I agree that MOOCs were more of a novelty introducing a platform, but not transformational.

I further believe that effective engagement is essential, and a major and yet unmet challenge is to harmonize concepts taken from the business world with concepts in education.

In addition, educators must step up to the plate along with city and other civic-minded leaders to teach ethics. As we leave algorithms or data analytics to make more choices for us, we must remember they will not make decisions based on ethical considerations.

Algorithms are by definition designed to divide, segment and target specific groups; they are not targeted to the larger, common or long-term good.

Simultaneously, new technologies are advancing at a pace so fast, they are implemented before we understand them fully. Artificial intelligence potentially threatens, therefore, our privacy, and potentially our jobs though that need not be the ultimate outcome.

In the end, the most important question is how to empower learners to learn.

Technology is a sideshow, not the main show. It can help us get to where we want to go, but it is not the destination.

Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you want to go, any road will take you there.”  Let us not get lost.

Our aim is to flatten barriers and boxes such that we cultivate creativity, critical thinking, deep understanding and engagement, not leaving the heart behind, but rather enlarging it. The new technologies should be our treasured assistants in this enterprise.

 

Words of wisdom to Early College Metro High School graduates, spring 2017

Auditorium filled with students in white and black robes throwing their mortar boards into the air

Students graduate from Columbus’ Metro Early College High School.

On June 3, I delivered the following address to graduates of Columbus’ Metro Early College High School, which concentrates on STEM subjects. As a member of the Metro Governing Board, I am so proud of these students. The class of 2017 is Metro’s eighth graduating class, joining Metro’s 467 alumni. Every one of this year’s graduates has been accepted into college. Here is the message I shared with them.  

Congratulations graduates and greetings to parents, friends, colleagues and board members.  I am honored to be here.

One of my early mentors shared with me that knowledge is always for sale, but wisdom is given for free.

I have three wisdoms to share with you today, three word pairs to reflect on.  I hope their light might help you find your way through the darkness of information overload and indecision.

The first is a dichotomy: Thrive vs. survive.

To thrive is not the same as surviving.  I know.  I’m a survivor. Maybe some of you are now as well.  Surviving is the power to endure.  You see it celebrated a lot these days, with marches and ribbons, even parties sometimes.

Surviving is living close to the wire. Sometimes that is what you have to do. Being on this side of the wire is better than the alternative. But survival ought not be your purpose, your primary aim in life.

Your aim should be to thrive — to live vigorously, to advance, to grow, to be happy, to learn, to love and to accomplish. Survival is none of those things.  Learn to thrive.

The second word pair: Destruction vs. construction

Destruction is easy; construction is hard. You know this. You built robots in teams along with many other class and community projects. It took weeks, but ruination was always lurking near. Ruination could occur with one arm wave; in fact, that might have happened to you. You might have had to start over.  And over.

So you know, destruction is easier than construction. Destruction of buildings and bridges, yes, but also organizations, industry workplaces, schools, governments and even families.

To be the naysayer, the contrarian, the belligerent responder, the temptress and the wrecking ball–these are all destructive pathways, tempting perhaps because they are speedy and easy and require no preparation.

Construction always takes longer, building buildings and building relationships that cross divides and last over time, but there will be little human good in the world without the time spent, the honest effort, the thinking and the doing to make it happen.

Identify destruction.  Choose construction.

A third dichotomy: Certainty and Uncertainty

You are graduating from a STEM school, emphasizing science, technology, engineering and math, in a moment when our larger society is questioning the value of science and scientific research altogether. The public wants sure answers to their questions, and it is dismayed when science changes course.

Is science true? No, not really. Science is and always will be about uncertainty, about the pursuit of alternative explanations, based on evidence, that explain ever more fully what is and what is not. That is not to be confused with alternative facts. Science builds brick by brick on a strong foundation.  Alternative facts have no foundation.

Science is, to say it another way, about failure. It is through failure that we learn. I give you permission to fail; the world may tell us not to fail, but you must take risks, and with risks come the chances for both success and failure.

Can there then be any certainty? Yes, yes. I am certain that science is tentative; that is its nature. And, I tentatively hold close my scientific facts.  Science is always the march toward greater truth; it is not the truth, at least not truth with a capital “T”.

Science demands that we change our minds and our perspectives, our way of seeing and understanding. It demands that we do it over and over and over again.

Don’t fret.  Embrace the uncertainty. Don’t hide the errors, or be afraid to say you’re wrong.

If we have any responsibility as human beings, it is our responsibility to learn from our mistakes and misunderstandings.

Those are the wisdoms I brought with me today.

When faced with destruction, choose construction.

When making goals, choose thriving above surviving.

When certainty tries to dominate, preserve uncertainty.

Now gather your robes.  Go off!  Do well, be well and live well.

Thank you.

 

 

The New Urban Crisis, by Richard Florida

How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening segregation and failing the middle class — and what we can do about it.

 

THe New Urban Crisis book cover

Richard Florida spoke recently at Ohio State.

What he said made my hair stand on end. 

He reported that Columbus is the second most segregated city in the United States.

After that, I had to get his book. I was surprised to find he didn’t mention Columbus once! It’s odd, given that he used to live here.

Nevertheless, this book is worth picking up and reading. The points he makes apply to Columbus as much as they do to Los Angeles, New York or Miami.

He reminds us that not only do most people live in cities, but also cities are the drivers of economic growth. Our economy is as healthy as our city citizens are and vice versa.

 

Building roads and fixing bridges may be needed, but those short-term efforts won’t fix what’s wrong.

It’s true we need a sound infrastructure, but a future sound infrastructure probably won’t look like the one we have now, and it won’t mean much if poverty is endemic.

Poverty is about money. Simply put, Florida says everyone who works should make a living wage. He also highlights the imperative for:

  • More affordable rental housing
  • The need to contain urban sprawl
  • The necessity of denser housing and good schools for everyone
  • The importance of including city mayors in national policymaking

Columbus won a “Smart City” grant. It is leading to many discussions about technology and driverless cars. There is much less talk about the rationale for receiving the grant in the first place.

It was to increase access to health care for our most vulnerable residents, for our babies who are dying at the rate of a developing country, and to ensure that our workers can get to work. We ought to address segregation too.

We need to earn the label, “Smart City,” and we can learn a lot from Richard Florida.