An incredible day! I started off with breakfast at Creme' on Harvard Square, then headed out again to find Currier House and our classrooms. This time I was successful and I got checked in with time to spare, which I used to finish up on my pre-reading assignment. Other participants began to trickle in, then by 1:30pm we headed as a group to the EDS for the opening session. Dr. Kay Merseth of the Harvard Graduate School of Education welcomed us, gave some background on the group (participants from Connecticut to California, Minnesota to Texas, as well as Ireland and Australia; all sizes of schools and all administrative positions as well as classroom teachers) and introduced keynote speaker and former Harvard professor Paul Reville, who will take the reins as Secretary of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusets in two days (he's been interim for a couple of months).
He spoke on the politics of reform using Massachusetts as a case study. The statement that I found most profound was his analogy of school being a 100-meter dash: he said our current accountability system puts the finish line the same for all students, yet in reality some (the "low performers") start 50 meters behind the finish line and others (the "gifted" students) start 50-meters ahead. We expect them all to finish together at the same time. He also said that if we applied our current education practice in the medical field it would be like having a hospital where everyone we admitted had different diagnoses, but were given the same treatment. Would we expect our success rate in that setting to be very high?
Then James Nehring (Graduate School of Education at U-Mass) facilitated some small group work in which we began the process of refining the problem statement we had submitted as part of our pre-institute requirements. This was our first opportunity to interact and in our group from Texas (2), Connecticut and Australia we found common themes in spite of the diversity in our school settings -- concerns about improving the rigor of instruction in all classes, increasing the motivation of our students to achieve and preparing all students with 21st century skills to be successful post-secondary and competitive in a global market. My problem focused on increasing rigor with improved instruction and assessing the relevance of activities or "homework". From the work we did today I can already see I have some changes to make - we were encouraged to refine the problem throughout the week and I think most of us have already started!
We ended today's session with a reception and dinner back at Currier, then I came in here to the dorm computer lab to write these reflections on the day. Unbelievably I have already -- in 8 hours -- collaborated with educators from New York, Connecticut, Texas, Massachusetts, Arizona, California and Australia.
Julie Storer
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