Informal Learning Shouldn't Be Underestimated

I wrote the following words back in January 2009 following the death of my uncle, who was extremely important in my life. I have not added this to my blog until now. I am ready to share some very deep feelings that came out of a lot of emotion. This is not about my uncle's death, but about how we as people, children and adults, learn about ourselves and our life. I think that it is worth considering what I have to share. Thanks for reading this when you have time." Larry

"This morning I woke up at 5:00 a.m. because I had to put on paper my feelings about a very special person. My uncle died this past weekend and I wanted to share with others the important role he played as a teacher in my life. After completing this effort, I thought about what I said about my uncle and how it relates to our work as secondary educators. This is what I wish to share in my blog today.

People are educated in two ways during their life, formally and informally. Formal education relates to learning at school through classroom experiences, reading, and discussing what we learn. Informal learning comes from the daily experiences that we have in our lives that are not attached to classroom lessons with standards and specific learning outcomes in mind.

Most of our learning is actually informal, but that does not mean that some of those informal lessons aren’t learned in school. It also doesn’t mean that informal learning is less important than what we learn in a formal setting. In reality, thinking about what I learned from my uncle was much more important than what I learned in any class. I may not have had academic success without the informal learning that I have gained through out my life.

I often tell people that my academic high school experience at San Fernando High School did not prepare me well for UCLA, but it was a perfect non-academic learning experience for my career as a teacher. Our informal experiences are so important and sometimes we as educators lose track of the relative importance of the experiences gained informally.

When I think back on my school years, I remember almost every teacher. As an educator, I remember every principal or supervisor that I have worked for. I have learned a great deal from each of these people. Most of the time my informal learning has been positive, but sometimes what I learned was negative based on what I experienced and what I observed. I learned valuable lessons from both types of experiences.

As teachers, counselors, or administrators do we really spend enough time thinking and discussing how we impact our students, not in a formal, but in an informal way? We are role models because we stand in front of impressionable young people, this comes with the job. We may think that we have been hired to teach content to our students, but we have really been hired to teach children. Yes, we teach them content, concepts, and skills, but we also teach more in a very informal way.

My uncle taught me the importance of dedication, hard work, fairness, generosity, and how to relate to others. What he taught me was reinforced by my teachers and supervisors over many years. What kind of world would we be leaving our students if we teachers believed that we only taught math, science, English, social studies, the arts, physical education or other electives as defined by the scope and sequence developed by our school district? We teach so much more than that. But we have to be sure that we teach those other qualities thoughtfully and carefully because they are learned by students through their observations of us. They learn from what we say and how we act. Our responsibility is great and extremely important, especially if we are the best or only positive adult role model in our students’ life.

We rarely learn about the informal influences we have on our students’, but make no mistake, we are informal teachers to every student we have, and our teaching needs to provide a positive experience for every child we touch. If we are doing that, then we are doing a Herculean job of educating our students. But if we are not, then we could cause our students pain and suffering through out their life. Each of us has to make conscious choices about how we do our job as a teacher and how we use the power of being a role model for our students."

I would like to hear what this item led you to think about as an educator.

Algebra, an Important Educational Gatekeeper

It was recommended to me that I could use my blog as a way of maintaining the many excellent articles that I read and write to share with people in the field of education. I normally send these items directly to individuals as an attachment to an e-mail. When I have to share it with others, I have to come home and find the items and send it off to the next group. By placing the items into my blog, I can send this blog to anyone at anytime and have them review what I have found or written.

Today, I am going to try this and see what kind of response I get from those I share documents with.

I just read an interesting article on the teaching of algebra in the District Administrator Magazine online. It combines suggestions on how to get improvement in our algebra outcomes for students, and it also gives explanation as to why we need to continue to push algebra as a gatekeeper for student success.

"A New Age for Algebra
A renewed emphasis on this math course can make or break a pupil’s success in school." http://www.districtadministration.com/article/new-age-algebra-1

I have always believed, as a math teacher and administrator, that the trouble with algebra is that we do not do a good job of preparing kids for it in the lower grades. We teach our arithmetic in K-7, often as a set of algorithms, so that if a student knows the algorithm well, they will do well on their arithmetic tests. The problem with teaching arithmetic as a series of algorithms is that we don't include the critical thinking or the language of mathematics that are the real power of mathematics education in our traditional classroom instruction. Therefore, when our students reach the higher level mathematics courses, they have not been given enough problem solving time, critical thinking time, or opportunities for success in mathematics, and they give up on mathematics very easily.

As the article clearly states, we need our kids to be much more competitive with the rest of the world in the content field of mathematics. Mathematics opens up many other fields for success. President Obama made it clear and public that we have to produce many more engineers and scientists to maintain our ability to compete globally with the remainder of the world community. STEM programs in schools need to be established and focused for the success of our kids and for the protection of our nation.

The article also makes clear that although there appears to be programs in place that seem to have success in raising the algebra achievement level of our students, we need to be sure that they are used properly. This requires teachers to be trained in the use of these programs and to have continuing support in order to take full advantage of what research tells us about the success of each program.

As a middle school principal, I brought Connected Math to my school. But I did not just buy a new set of textbooks, I purchased the support for teachers to use it properly. We saw incredible gains in our math scores over the last several years of my principalship. Yes, I liked the way Connected Math created real life application to the math being taught, but I liked better that our teachers were enjoying the use of this new instructional tool, saw value in collaborating with their peers, and developing a sense of how to make every child successful.

Math is a gatekeeper for our kids continuing education, unfortunately, it also a roadblock. When we make any single course so high stakes, that it can keep a child from earning a high school diploma, then we have to find a way to help every child succeed.

I hope that you will look at the article I am referencing and find the time to respond and comment so that many of us can jointly participate in a high level and highly important conversation. Our students and our nation need for these discussions to occur all over the United States. Thanks for reading.