The following post is really a collection of works, four in total, that represent a historical inquiry of the impact of Horace Mann, followed by an observation of three video segments. They are presented below, beginning with the historical reflection, which could stand alone, but was built in tandem with these other pages, so I decided to keep them together for now.
(This assignment won an award for Academic Excellence from WGU.)
Horace Mann
An historical influence that is apparent in each of the classrooms would be the influence of Horace Mann’s “Common School” movement, from which our nation has a tendency to imagine that all students are within the realm of responsibility for the government to educate (point 3, below). Obviously, this movement needed time to grow. Its beginning was during the social crime of slavery, so of course, people of African heritage weren’t included with the initial stages, and many other groups were automatically excluded as well, such as Native folk. However, the paradigm began and has been expanded exponentially through the era of Civil Rights, both for people of diverse heritage and abilities.
Mann’s main principles having to do with public education have been considered revolutionary and controversial, and yet today seem common sense. They are as follows:
“(1) citizens cannot maintain both ignorance and freedom; (2) this education should be paid for, controlled and maintained by the public; (3) this education should be provided in schools that embrace children from varying backgrounds; (4) this education must be nonsectarian; (5) this education must be taught using tenets of a free society; and (6) this education must be provided by well-trained, professional teachers.” 1
While each point could be the subject of a complete text, the scope of this paper includes three classroom settings and will focus on only one of the above six notions (point 3). The example classrooms are from New York, Kansas, and California (NY: https://lrps.wgu.edu/provision/213279870, KS: https://lrps.wgu.edu/provision/213280122, CA: https://lrps.wgu.edu/provision/213279664).
The third notion deserves attention for how much it has been struggled over, considering Civil Rights and equity. The first classroom, from a Queens, NY elementary school in which students were studying the germination of a kidney bean shows a demographic makeup that is visibly diverse. This lack of homogeneity is a healthy aspect of American schools that can not be seen everywhere, as many nations do not include people of other backgrounds into their public schools. The second example from Olathe, KS, where a more prominently Euro-American population was present, still included more than ten percent students of Asian heritage, reflecting a population that would have been impossible before Mann’s reformation. The third example, from Oakland, CA, had both a largely Hispanic student body and over a third categorized as learners of English as an additional language. This more inclusive space of learning would have been impossible without the advocacy of Horace Mann.
Clearly, Mann’s reformation has been a lasting one that can be seen throughout the nation. While, for the sake of brevity, I focused on only one of the six main points he laid out for the future we all share, the rest are clearly still in play. The first is unique to democracies, and underpins the notion of a functioning one, at that. His second tenet influences public financing to this day, though not without some frustrations. The third has been well advanced through the years, reaching from his era of striking division, to ours which still has barriers, but their number is fewer and the mechanisms for change are certainly more accessible. The fourth tenet, representing a separation of church and state, has led to a secular space that can provide a welcoming environment to people of various cultures and beliefs. His fifth may be a touch vague, but would imply choice rather than restriction, allowing for variety in design. Finally, his sixth brings us to studying him today ~ this course, D-166, is the result of his conceptualization of trained teachers for the student body, and it is a pleasure to be a part of his impact in all the ways.
Compare and Contrast
To begin with, the three classes differed in age, resulting in material and presentational differences, appropriate to the age-group. As such, the most simplistic contrast of their level will be used in this segment of our assignment as I address each group as I go about comparing and contrasting two additional aspects of them. They will be referred to as elementary, middle, and high school levels for the first, second, and third videos respectively representing the classes that were titled Claims, Evidence, and Reason; Citizen Science: Creek Water Analysis; and Infographics for Change.
Slightly more nuanced a set of considerations, the instructional topics/content of the lessons showed some similarity between the elementary and the middle school classes, as they were both considering a scientific notion. The elementary class was focused on the germination of a kidney bean and the middle school class was analyzing water from both a creek and later, the homes of the students. In contrast, the high school class was looking at civic engagement through the lens of graphic design.
In order to attend to their considerations, a variety of technology was used, some similar among the classes, some different. Some materials were seen in each of the classrooms: the teacher’s whiteboard for one, the classroom handout, another. However, because of the age-groups and differing activities, the technology branched off into different designs, especially when it came to what the students used during class time. For example, the elementary students used bins of markers for whiteboards before moving on to a poster board for their final presentation. Their science was of a basic sort that required no special devices for analysis. Next to them, the middle school grade students employed the internet through the use of iPads so they could connect with collaborators in Seattle and their science was of a level that it required centrifugal tubes and the ability to inspect their samples using kits that the school provided. For the context of the high school level class, the students were able to use full-sized laptops for the purposes of reaching out to corporate entities with whom they would have to interlock and utilize materials from in the format of templates for their graphic projects. This more-complex tool was appropriate for their age and they seemed at ease with it, though the learning was certainly measurable for the focus of the class at hand.
High-leverage Practices
This discussion will focus on prominent elements per class from the “High-leverage Practices” as defined by TeachingWorks.org to discuss how the teachers differently employed these ideas.
Within the first video, from the elementary school class that was studying seed germination, some High-level Practices that stood out included how the teacher (1) led a group discussion, (9) set up and managed small group work, (14) designed single lessons and sequences of lessons, (15) checked for student understanding, (17) interpreted student work, and (18) provided feedback to students. Many of these practices generally overlap in how they manifest. For example: she set students into small groups and led a group discussion with them from that arrangement (1, 9); she checked for student understanding through interpreting their work (15, 17) and used that information to inform her adjustment of focus towards a following class – when the confusion about discussing the isolated germination stage vs. the life-cycle was recognized (14, 18).
Certainly, the points are evident independently though. Her group discussion was facilitated by her intricately prepared board work that allowed the students to have stepping-off material that could be seen throughout the work-day. The small group work was attended to by arranging desks into blocks of four and putting one bin of markers for them to share, and as well, designating each table-group as a team of sorts for their path of discovery. She was able to go around the room checking their work and interpreting it for how it was created in a visual and communicative way. This allowed her to provide feedback after noticing trends in their work.
The second video was punctuated by the teacher’s analysis of her own instruction for the purpose of improving it through her lengthy narration (19). The first two minutes (~30% of the video) is spent introducing the project, which contrasted distinctly from the first film that was largely showing how the class went. This analysis is a strength because it shows how well thought out she had set learning goals and designed the lesson within a sequence of others (13, 14). Otherwise, she also stood out for her establishment and maintenance of community expectations, and communication with families through her necessary interlocution with people outside the school in order to go on a school trip, which would require both external permitting from families and reservation of space with the local area as well as coordination with transportation for their purposes (7, 11).
Notably, her (8) implementation of organizational routines is on display with how she emphasizes the importance of “doing the science in the field” with how she describes needing to isolate useful samples while at the creek so that they aren’t overwhelmed by samples in the lab when they get back to the classroom. This lesson is a valuable one that could easily be overlooked by a learner without the experience to limit their exposure to materials so they can get a more useful data-set. She describes a focus on (13, 14) goals and sequencing when she talks about getting buy-in from her students around the study through following up the analysis of the creek water with analysis of the water from each student’s home. This created a real-world awareness of the value of the science and reinstilled the importance to the students that clean water shows up in many places.
This teacher’s narration explained her thinking regarding what was obviously a well-thought out class that exposed her students to an element of life that was otherwise invisible due to its microscopic nature, but permeates all of our every-day lives.
The third video, coming from the high school class studying infographics, had a teacher who rather well exemplified a certain few of the named practices brought to us by the people at TeachingWorks.org. As I watched the video, I noticed her (4) paying special attention to the patterns of student thinking, (9) setting up small groups for students to work from, (15) consistently checking in with students for their comprehension, and (16) selecting and designing assessments precisely for the learning material and the students she was teaching.
As she introduced the rubric that would define the capstone project’s goals, she invited students to grade her example that was riddled with points that could have been done differently for a better score, but served the purpose of allowing students an opportunity to discuss how to do things different as she included many common errors such as font and color choices that can be overlooked if not attended to (4, 16). As she elicited feedback from the students in this way, it was clear from the video that the students were already comfortable working with each other with how they shared their personal computer screens with each other as they progressed through the workshop (4). Her continued inquiry around the example, followed by her use of the planning sheet that was required before a computer was granted, allowed her to check in on student understanding in a direct way (4, 15). As she set up the end of her day, she brought the students together again to speak to each other about what they learned in order to have them voice their learned knowledge and check in with each other about what they had accomplished (9).
Overall, her lesson was a fine example of repeated inquiry, leading the pace of the lesson and can act as a model for similar classes that I might create in the future.
Generally, the list of High-level Practices that we are discussing is a great collection of ideas to keep in mind, and while they might not always all be present in each class, such as community or parent interaction, especially, they are great guidelines to keep in mind as best-practices so that a teacher is reflective towards the student needs and is also spacing out their own goals in a manageable way.
Teacher comments:
Your abundant responses to each aspect have clearly demonstrated your grasp of each aspect, such as comparing three points from each video which addresses the differences in level and instructional topics and the similar use of a whiteboard and handouts as technology. You have insightfully identified a high-leverage practice applied by each teacher and give examples like attending to patterns of student thinking in the high school lesson as the teacher allows students the opportunity to grade her example and discuss how to do things differently in their project. Very well done!