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Celebrating Ten Years

1/15/2019

Brad Rathgeber

Back in 2009, a group of girls’ schools got together to create the first online independent school, the Online School for Girls. The purpose was to connect schools and extend opportunities for students, in a way that was based the values, ethos, challenge, and feel of independent schools — with particular focus on relationships between students and teachers, and students with each other. The goal was to create an online school that wasn’t opposed to the tenets of independent school education, but instead brought those tenets online.

Along the way, the consortium recognized that online education could also be a great extender of opportunities for faculty, and thus the school created online professional development courses. Later on co-ed schools and boys’ schools asked for similar opportunities. Eventually, the name “Online School for Girls” was not sufficiently encompassing of all of the work of the school. To capture the breadth of the work, the consortium renamed the school: One Schoolhouse.

What started as an idea with four schools in 2009 quickly spread to twelve schools by the end of that year. In the first year, 50 students enrolled in semester courses, and just a handful of faculty tried to learn online. Ten years later, the network has impressively expanded. In the last year, 664 schools around the world enrolled students in more than 1800 semesters of classes, and 1000 educators in professional development programs.

The idea has been successful. This year, as a part of our 10th Anniversary celebration, we’d like to share with you the secret to that success. So, over the course of this year, we’ll offer 10 insights from 10 years in online independent education. In the process, we’ll offer examples from each insight, ideas on how these insights might hold value for your school, and a glimpse at what this means for the future of independent schools and their work online. Here’s the insights. Look for an in-depth look into the first insight in February.

Don't Let the Unknown Stop You From Acting
Use Research to Challenge Assumptions
Design Backwards, Then Measure
Every Student Learns Differently
Faculty Can Learn Online, Too
Online Learning Supports Financial Sustainability
Learning Online Solves Unique Challenges
Every Student Can Learn Online
Simple Design and Technology Improves Learning
Choice Increases Student Engagement

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Difficult Questions About Student Stress and Anxiety

1/7/2019

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Peter Gow

The Independent Curriculum Group make no bones about our concern for the well-being and mental health of students, as nearly every day brings us a worrisome story or anecdote about student stress. Much of this appears to be very much a function of anxiety around the complex constellation of academic and social pressures felt by students working to succeed in the educational system we have created. We wonder about it, and what we as educators might do to make schools happier places for children and adults. Perhaps we’re just in alarmist mode, generalizing from specifics, but each time we ask a school person about students in crisis at their school, we get an affirmative response.

So we present to you, readers, some difficult, discomfiting questions. You are invited to take these as either rhetorical or substantive (or both), and to frame your responses—not to us, but to yourselves—but in the context of your learning community accordingly.

Have you or the institution you represent noted and acknowledged an uptick in anxiety and anxiety-related behaviors among students?
Have you or the institution you represent engaged in tactical measures—hiring more counselors, more training of faculty, more…?
Have you or the institution you represent acknowledged likely systemic and situational sources of this uptick in anxiety and anxiety-related behaviors among students?
Have you or the institution you represent considered countermeasures to reduce or ameliorate the systemic conditions that might underlie the uptick in anxiety and anxiety-related behaviors among students?

Following this line of inquiry may invite a kind of “blame game” that can situate responsibility on generalized targets like “the media,” “parents,” “colleges.” If these are apt or common responses (and they may well be), we need to drill down or, paradoxically, to start by ascending to a 30,000-foot level and considering what we do in the broadest sense.

All learning happens in a context, and in the established world of pre-college education we have planted our collective flag atop the mountain of missions and values (think: the accrediting process). We set out with good hearts to create institutions of teaching and learning built around these at least purportedly idiosyncratic, “mission driven” elements:

Cultures of learning comprised schedules, “grading” and assessment systems, administrative hierarchies, reward systems, professional learning expectations, age-cohort- and academic-discipline-related bureaucracies, and co-curricular offerings with their own hierarchies and systems of reward and recognition.
Intentional curricula, ostensibly and hopefully aimed at meeting the requirements of larger systems whose demands are more often perceived through our own institutional and personal lenses than clearly stated “from on high.”
Pedagogies that may be inventively designed or that cautiously default to the hackneyed and cliched, all providing student learning experiences with as broad a range of efficacies as of types.

Try putting on your skeptic’s (or hardcore realist’s) glasses and taking a look at the full context of learning at your school. It might be well to reserve some time for deep reflection as you ponder these related and very germane issues:

What is the “null curriculum” in your institution? That is, what is not taught or emphasized, leaving learners to infer that these things are unimportant or even, in some way, taboo or off limits? How might this message, however unintentionally implied, create a kind of cognitive or emotional dissonance in students’ minds and hearts?
What about the “hidden curriculum,” the ways in which certain structures, policies, sequences, or reward systems send messages about what is important that may be at odds with “official” or proclaimed values and beliefs? Is the very culture or organization of your institution in some way contributing to student apathy, cynicism, or angst?
Consider, for a moment, your school’s “best and brightest,” the students for whom stellar academic careers and accomplishments are forecast; they who will be, say, future National Merit Scholars or hyper-selective college or next-school admits. In the culture of your institution, how are the accomplishments of these students highlighted or rewarded?, In what ways (if any, to be sure) are the expectations placed on these students unlike those placed upon the generality of students. And in what ways (if any) might resources of certain kinds be directed toward these students in ways not entirely consonant with those “official” or proclaimed values and beliefs? Might this actually create undue or iniquitous pressure or stress that is less about a “student-centered” experience than about the needs or even that exaltation of the institution itself?
Does your school note or acknowledge an “achievement gap” or, equally unsettling, a comfort gap? Are members of certain groups less successful in your school, or do they feel less welcome and included in the culture and the programs? Do individuals in these groups, then—and we would include students, families, and faculty and staff here—experience your school (in any or all of its parts) differently, and perhaps as more stressful, than other members of your community?

There are of course a host of corollary and shadow (as in, “Why not?”) questions accompanying each of those asked here, but we’ll stop for now.
If you are inclined to explore these questions more deeply, we would point you to these terrific and relevant resources:

Challenge Success, an outgrowth of the work of Denise Pope and others. “We partner with schools, families, and communities to embrace a broad definition of success and to implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning.”
The films of Vicki Abeles, especially Race to Nowhere and Beyond Measure
At What Cost? Defending Adolescent Development in Fiercely Competitive Schools by David L. Gleason, PsyD
Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour, PhD
The film Most Likely to Succeed and the book What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America by Ted Dintersmith
Making Caring Common, part of the same Harvard Graduate School of Education project that produced the “Turning the Tide” report. “Collaborating with partners and engaging in national media work to amplify our messages and elevate the importance of developing children’s care for others and the common good in our public dialogue.”

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Flashback from 1999: Teachers' Technology Fears and Hopes

1/2/2019

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Peter Gow

This material comes from an early 1999 poll of teachers in New England. It's Interesting to muse on what has come true and what hasn't (yet?).

Where were you in 1999, and what were your hopes and fears for education technology?

Were you right or wrong?

Fears Relating to the Future of Technology in Education:

Fears relating to teacher life

real change won’t come soon enough
learning to use takes so much time
I won’ t ever figure it out
if I don’t get it I won’t be able to teach it effectively
technology will suck up all our money and give too little in return
so much new stuff and new applications we’ll be overwhelmed
we’ll always be catching up and never learn to use it wisely

Fears relating to students and student learning

kids will become indiscriminate in use of references
too easy to be dishonest
it won’t help and it’s bad
poor quality of sources
that the Internet will continue to be perceived as a valuable and unique teaching resource (it’s not!)

Fears relating to curriculum and assessment

all homework will become simplified and flat linguistically
teachers and students will not be creative, self-motivated, curious, imaginative
diminished importance of books
less time for teacher collaboration and conversation

Fears relating to learning in general

people will become less creative with their hands, bodies, “natural things”; learning will become only cerebral
learning will slow due to added preparation time for teaching
kids will concentrate on the tools per se and not on using them effectively

General concerns

regulations
cost of access
government censorship and control of access

Hopes relating to the future of technology in education:

Hopes relating to teacher life

it’ll be wireless and easy to use
mastery will come sooner than we think
I can get a handle on it all
we will become familiar with technologies that can benefit us in and out of school
access to university and government libraries
anyone can submit legible or well-organized written work
access to the growing knowledge base will increase
more information will be accessible

Hopes relating to student learning

knowledge is power
it’ll make work easier
people will be empowered and independent
promotes editing and rewriting process
increasing clarity of science concepts with graphics capability
raise quality of teaching by making more mindful and knowledgeable teachers
raise quality of learning by really allowing kids to reach beyond “the text/the classroom etc.”
students will be more actively engaged in their own learning
learning can become more spontaneous

Hopes relating to curriculum and assessment

expand student and teacher knowledge and stimulate interest
it’ll make curriculum more exciting
help us teach students more efficiently
school will be more interesting and real
it’ll make language labs unnecessary

General reasons for optimism

democratization of access to information
freedom of speech
we’ll become wiser
low-cost access for all

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Celebrating Ten Years

Difficult Questions About Student Stress and Anxiety

Flashback from 1999: Teachers' Technology Fears and Hopes

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