Semester:
Offered:
What if schools were for learning instead of education?
You will be involved in education your whole life. As a taxpayer, voter, or parent, you will be connected with formal schooling. You will almost certainly be in the role of teacher at various points in your life, whether in a classroom, in another professional setting, or guiding someone in something you love to do. Leaders in any field are teachers and coaches--they develop the people around them to bring their full potential to some shared ambition. You will also be in the role of learner throughout your life in a variety of forms and contexts. Precisely because we are all learners and teachers and we’ve all had some direct experience with K-12 schools, everyone has interests and opinions about schools. Yet, U.S. K-12 schools are consistently failing to serve all children well. This course will prepare you to recognize the assumptions, binaries, and controversies that drive much of the sound and substance of U.S. K-12 education, and replace those with a different ABCs: awareness, both-and thinking, and context. Learning can get lost in all the noise of education. What would it look like to make schools less about achievement and attainment and more about learning--and what can be your contribution, no matter your future pathways?