Food in Schools

A coworker of mine, Kate Quarfordt, writes a column for the Huffington Post. She just put out a new piece called "The Kids Who Want Kale"  and it's worth a read to see how one urban school, in this case, mine, is confronting issues of food, nutrition, health and the environment.

In this age we have to continually look at our food choices and consider their impact on our minds, bodies, and environment. Research, experience, and plain common sense teach us that when one eats well, it has an enormous impact on performance and well-being. Now that our kids are asking for better food, will the adults, who should know better, help them get it?

Controversy Over the Historian’s View of Collapse

In the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson attempts a maverick posture in his essay “Decline and Fall: When the American Empire Goes, It is Likely to Go Quickly.” In it, he argues that historians take the “fat tail” view of events, confusing sudden events for cyclical ones particularly when discussing the fall of empires. While accusing many members of social science community of committing the “narrative fallacy,” Ferguson’s essay is riddled with fallacies of its own.

As a teacher of global history at the high school level, I have a keen awareness that the problem of history is not that people tend to overestimate the importance of remote causes of events, rather people tend not to understand the complexity and diversity of the causes of events, and in effect, the interconnectedness of the world. I have found it much more common, not to mention dangerous, that people will oversimplify or overlook causal factors that bring about collapse. With such a limited view of the real complexity and interconnectedness of the world, individuals and groups risk failing to take actions that counter the factors that make likely a future collapse.

From a historian as prominent as Niall Ferguson, it’s shocking to find so many logical fallacies and factual misrepresentations as there are in his Foreign Affairs essay. Ferguson lines up cases that supposedly verify the argument that our current financial crisis is a recent one, and tracing its antecedents to the deregulation of the 1980s is inappropriate. Yet he talks about the fall of Rome occurring in “just 5 decades,” and his causes of the collapse of the Ming dynasty range from “political factionalism, fiscal crisis, famine and epidemic disease” that “opened the door to rebellion from within and incursions from without” (28). His own examples in fact validate the opposite conclusion!

In education, we have to understand the course of history, not just because we need to teach it, but because we also shape it and because it shapes us. Given that our country and world do face so many challenges, our intellectual leaders need to be more responsible about their use of voice and their laying of blame. Based on my study of history, I believe that we could experience another historic “collapse” along the lines of Rome or Copan, but if that is to happen the confluence of factors will be diverse and complex. Our teachers and students should not gloss over these factors, as Ferguson has, for the sake of convenience, gimmickry, or false controversy. 

The Geography of Learning: A Hybrid Model?

Ever since March 16th I've been slowed down significantly with an ankle injury that I recently learned was a non-displaced fracture to the tibia. Though I only have taken off 4 days of work due to the injury, I'm still in cast and walking with a cane, and feel my teaching has suffered by a degree. As I've looked for solutions to personal mobility and energy issues (pushing myself around on the wheeled desk chair is one), I've begun contemplating distance learning.

For a range of reasons, students and teachers, enabled by technology, have taken up distance (e-)learning as an alternative or supplement to traditional classroom learning. I myself have done some webinars and online courses, that, everything considered, have provided a moderately decent education. I would never replace in-person education entirely, however, my recent injury leaves me wondering what possibilities for e-learning might fit into the traditional K-12 public education system. Even and especially as a hybrid model, I can imagine a system that reduces cost and increases flexibility by taking a given percentage of traditional classtime (say, one day a week) and delivers this instruction electronically and remotely. Implementing the system would raise many questions and probably a good number of protests, but I can't help but think that inevitably our society will demand it.

Better to be proactive than reactive. Sometimes putting your feet up (to reduce swelling or otherwise) can be a perfect occasion to confront a problem that otherwise seems to rest on too distant a horizon.

You've heard it here: let's see some experimental programs in public, K-12 schools that incorporate remote e-learning into the standard curriculum. What do you think?

Teacher websites

In the digital/information age, it increasingly makes sense that EVERYTHING has its own website. In my estimation, good teaching and learning will make efficacious use of the internet.

I recently launched a website for my own history classes. You can find it at www.ballouhistory.com. Please check it out and examine it's different capabilities and short-comings. What does it do well? What do you think could be improved? How can this website be used a tool for learning with my students in the classroom?

Getting Things Done: Students

I wrote last time about teacher productivity and efficiency, and while that obviously deserves attention, students have a much greater deficit of these skills (big surprise, they’re students) yet what methods do schools put in place to amplify and revamp student working methods?

Surely individual teachers guide students to be more effective thinkers, note-takers, planners, etc. And some schools have advisory programs, “life skills” classes, and yes, a culture itself which breeds productivity and efficacy for students. When these initiatives succeed they ought be lauded, and ideally, replicated. Unfortunately, we have not arrived at a stage—perhaps due to our lack of national standards—where best practices for increasing general student effectiveness are widely known and practiced. Whether through the use of student agendas, advisory meetings, technology solutions or something else, school systems need to get serious about evaluating the effectiveness of student effectiveness training. That’s right, lets state that again to let that phrase soak in: evaluating the effectiveness of student effectiveness training.

Here are a couple ideas I’ve tried in the classroom, but have yet to fully put them to the test for effectiveness (and would obviously need to implement a large scale study to determine statistical validity… nevertheless…)

1. Global History to do checklist: Students are given a template with columns for tasks (assignments, organizational goals, mastery of standards), priority rating (high, medium, low), and time estimates for completion. These lists would need to have prominent usage, and some class time would need to be devoted to coach students through the execution of their action items. It surprised me how few of my students had experience making to do lists, let alone using them. I would posit that this skill ought to be given much great emphasis in middle and high school curriculums.
2. Emailing: We’re in an age when email is ubiquitous and teachers and students need to take advantage of it. Students need to learn how to write a formal email, need to be held accountable to checking their email on a regular (but not obsessive) basis, and need to learn the email organizational skills of the professional (see my last post). My students are required to use email for certain assignments, and with the advantage of time stamps, it really helps in time management training.

Of course there are many other strategies and tools to instruct students in personal task, time, energy, information and relationship management. What do you use?