New Knowledge

• School is fundamentally about gaining new knowledge. This is the cornerstone of any educational system. But traditionally we focus on the knowledge as opposed to the tools of discovery.
• My new vision for education would implement far more balanced approaches to showing students new ways and new methodologies for learning and empowering students to discover new knowledge on their own. We know that when students lead with their own curiosities they retain what they learn much better.
• Curiosity led approach to education as opposed to a curriculum based approach to education.
• THE WHY – In all that I’ve learned about increasing learning capacity and retention, motivation is one of the leading factors contributing to the longevity and ‘stickiness’ of knowledge. If students learn in ways that leverage their curiosities and allow students to have agency in their studies than they are more likely to be motivated and to pull something from the things they learn.

There is an educational program called big picture learning that encapsulates knowledge by core competencies instead of subjects allowing a far greater flexibility in what students can learn while retaining the core principles of what core subjects such as math, language arts, history, science, etc seek to instill in young people.

There are 5 core competencies students can design curiosity-based projects around

1. Personal Qualities
2. Communication
3. Empirical Reasoning
4. Quantitative reasoning
5. Social Reasoning

Each of these core competencies is then assessed on a scale from: Emerging → Exploring → Engaged → Empowered (rarely do students get empowered as it involves engagement in community).

Takeaway from Big Picture Learning:

1. Every kid gets personalized attention from adults
2. There are numerous opportunities for students to gain first hand insight into a variety of career paths based on their curiosity.

Summary of Part 1

• Curiosity > Curriculum
• Competency based assessment > specific subject knowledge based assessments

New Experiences

• Schools should make it a cornerstone of their curriculum to offer students new experiences
  • Going to different types of venues around a city – zoos, arts, museums, science centers, shows, etc.
  • Going to different cities, states and countries and comparing and contrasting the way of life so that students gain different perspectives and empathy for different points of view
• THE WHY – More Experiences = Bigger Brains. In 1972 Mark R Rosenzweig did a study on rats in which he placed one group of rats into an enriched environment with toys, puzzles and social interactions and another into a standard less stimulating environment. The study found that over time, the rats in the enriched environment displayed significant changes in their brain structure compared to the rats in the standard environment. The enriched rats had larger and more complex brains, with greater numbers of synapses and dendritic branching in their neurons. This is like a tree with a few roots pulling nutrients from the soil as opposed to a tree with a greater more complex and broader root system that can pull far more nutrients from the soil. The roots being the neurons, the soil being new knowledge.

Summary of Part 2

• Providing students with enriching experiences will lead to larger more complex brains for those students at a time when their neuroplasticity and brains are growing the most.

New Markets

• Let’s be honest a large part of the reason that most parents put their students in school is to prepare them for better careers, better jobs and more economic opportunities.
• Students should be able to access different markets and learn to operate in different learning environments
  • Hackerspace learning
  • Trade work and trade internships
  • Career Fusion Blend that takes student’s interests and blends them into unique jobs
• THE WHY – Markets are changing faster than ever. There are old markets that have more opportunity for young people to have solid access to career paths that could allow them social mobility that have been taken out of traditional education such as the trades and there are markets that young people are on the cutting edge of leveraging technology and social changes that schools have yet to adopt and yet that some groups of young people are already taking advantage of these such as marketing across different platforms, practical applications for artificial intelligence, innovations in environmental practices and arguably a lower barrier to entry for entrepreneurship than ever before. If a part of the purpose of school is to prepare students for the future and success in capital markets than I believe students should have the opportunity to explore different markets early when failure is easier to recover from and the stakes are lower.

Summary of Part 3

• Students should have an education that has a practical application and prepares them for a diversity of job markets as opposed to just success in academia.

Thanks for reading. On this blog we will continue to explore the strategies and tools that help students learn faster, navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood and become lifelong learners.