I have been reading documents of the past in preparing lectures for an online education class. I came across James B. Conant's 1960 checklist for what to look for in a comprehensive high school. Conant was a former Harvard president who studied the topic of comprehensive high school through a Carnegie grant. This checklist was provided in his 1960 book, The American High School. Since I attend K-12 in the 1950s through the 1960s, it is interesting to apply this checklist to my own education. 

 

1960 Checklist to Assist in Evaluating a Comprehensive High School

 

A. Adequacy of general education for all judged by:

1. Offerings in English and American literature and composition.

2. Social studies, including American history.

3. Ability grouping in required courses.

B. Adequacy of nonacademic elective program as judged by:

4. The vocational programs for boys and commercial programs for girls.

5. Opportunities for supervised work experience.

6. Special provisions for very slow readers.

C. Special arrangements for the academically talented students:

7. Special provisions for challenging the highly gifted.

8. Special instructions for developing reading skills.

9. Summer sessions from which able students may profit.

10. Individual programs (absence of tracks or rigid programs).

11. School day organized into seven or more instructional periods.

D. Other features:

12. Adequacy of the guidance service.

13. Student morale.

14. Well-organized homerooms.

15. The success of the school in promoting an understanding between students with widely different academic abilities and vocational goals (effective social interaction among students).

The American High School Today - By James B. Conant

Reading my way through James B. Conant's report, "The American High School Today." The printing was done in 1960, so it has been around a spell. It also cost me a penny. The shipping cost more, of course.

In the book Conant makes several suggestions as to how to assure students succeed and the pillars of a comprehensive high school are in place. I began high school in the late 60s, and it is interesting to note that many of the recommendations were guiding my public school education.

Now as a teacher, and long before online learning, I have been curious as to whether or not the delivery method I am using to teach, online, of course, is helping or hindering high school learners. It is a mixed, I think, as most certainly online learning gives students in rural school setting more choices. It is, though, a different culture and seems to be in conflict with other guiding elements of the comprehensive high school objectives, such as the development of good citizenship. This can be done through online courses, of course, but the student's immediate community is not necessarily the one to which the online learner is connected to when it comes to civic engagement. Of course, this also opens up possibilities to connect to communities throughout the world, one of the goals of the 21st Century Learning Skills.

Some things remain the same. I recently heard from a student involved in sports who wrote to say he was not able to complete his assignment because of his after school activities. Conant called for "protecting" the student's study time. Although extracurricular activities are of value. They can not come at the expense of academic development. Some things never change.

It's a work in progress ...

I have my website up now at thehollandreport.com.

It is a work in progress, but I am finally making connections. By making connections, I mean that I have all of these various places where I make what I will call stand-alone connections. This blogspot is one. Linked-In is another. There there is Facebook, and I also work with students through an LMS and more. The connections are so immediate as I keep moving back and forth and messages do not seem unified. Now I am looking to make those messages more unified, when necessary.

I finally just paid someone else to build the website and I will work with it from here. Time is a precious commodity, and I also find that I have finally found my limits. I do like a do-it-yourself approach, by that meant I had no website for a long time. It is sort of this way with many things. This morning I brought in a computer expert to connect a printer to a computer via wifi, as I did not know the exact button to push. Yesterday I hired a plumber to fix a pipe problem. As I say, I have finally learned the practical approach of hiring someone else to do things. I like a challenge but it sometimes means I am without one thing or another when something does not work or falls apart.

Anyway, with that said, it is interesting to see that the website already is generating traffic from far away places. It will get better, once I learn how to better use the site.

The Power of a Shopping List

When in the grocery store, I have come to rely upon the power of the shopping list. The list keeps me focused on buying nutritional choices and away from impulse shopping.

Some time ago I noticed that people with shopping lists tend to fill their shopping carts with fruits, vegetables, and other foods that are good for you. With my list in hand, I find I also filling my shopping cart with a focus on nutrition. Lately, while hanging around the vegetable stand, I heard a woman tell her friend she never brings a list to grocery store,that she never knows what she will buy. That says it all, I think. She is whimsy shopping, I call it. I noticed her cart a few minutes later full of donuts and sweets. If there ever was a commercial for having a shopping list strategy, she would be the star.

The shopping list also pushes me swiftly by those little kiosks that the friendliest people staff at the ends of the shopping aisles. They smile and offer their tasty treat samples, enticing customers to buy. Now I merely fly past with my cart, saying, "If it is not on my list, it does not go into the cart." They have big smiles when they greet people. I have bigger smiles when I move on to my next item on the list.

Preparing the shopping list is also encouraging me to sort through the many cookbooks I have been given over the years. My aunt was a great cook and wrote a cookbook, which I rely upon. My mother was not to be outdone as a cook, and she was a collector of cookbooks. I have also inherited these, and it a tall stack. With my great stack of cookbooks I now plan my meals better, noting on my shopping list what I will need at the grocery store as I plan meals. I imagine those who create shopping lists also share in this activity. I can imagine us all sitting at a kitchen table, planning the week's meals, and then going to the grocery stores, lists in hand.

I do add a pack of cookies now and then on my list, as a little sweetness is a good thing, but I do not fill up on donuts now. I also tend to make my own desserts.

I recently read of a man who built a house without a kitchen, as he had no use for such a room. That seems the craziest extension of a society that is moving away from being self-efficient in food preparation. I will venture that this man has never used a shopping list and probably never even goes to the grocery store, eating out at restaurants. He probably has never been given a cookbook as a present either.

Re-designing an online course

I have been hard at work re-designing an online educational foundations course. It is an interesting process to rewrite a course after five years with the same approach. The re-design became more of an immediate need as in late December the Obama Administration signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act, updating the No Child Left Behind Act. Suddenly, all textbooks dealing with the NCLB were suddenly out of date.

The re-design had been in the works, but it is a huge undertaking. At the same time, after five additional years of experiencing teaching the course, as instructor I find myself making new connections across concepts. It is a fascinating process, really. A teacher really learns the content when responsible for teaching it to others.

With online learners at the community college level, I am focusing upon also developing critical thinking skills. I find online learning instruction a challenge for many reasons. First, one has to find ways to encourage students to read the lectures and textbook, which, honestly, is no different from live classrooms. As a live classroom instructor for almost 30 years I have often seen the textbook, still wrapped in its cellophane cover, tossed into the trash can, never having been open. I usually claim these for future students, just in case someone really needs a textbook. My answer to working the content is, of course, to include quizzes that cover the content, but I also have students summarize content, provide answers to worksheet items, and reflect upon material in journal responses. That seems to be a useful strategy. It is a good approach, I think, as it moves students through Bloom's taxonomy upward through the glossary of content, into discussions with each other to clarify concepts, and then into one-to-one responses that focus on their reflecting about the concepts.

Online learners need to acquire self-assessment tools to help them with the ah-ha of learning. That is, they have to help themselves to find ways that identify for themselves that they have really learned the material.