Educational Heroes For Eagle Rock Faculty & Staff

We recently asked some of our educators and staff members to come up with a list of people in the field of academia that they believe made a difference in their lives or inspired them to do things differently or better.

Here is a list of a few of those educators:

theodore-sizerTheodore R. Sizer: Founder — and later president emeritus — of the Essential school movement, Sizer took on the task of questioning the way students were being taught in the nation’s secondary schools. By the late 1970s, he was involved with hundreds of high schools across the country.

What emerged from all of that research was the book Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School, his 1984 eloquent call to arms for school reform. Sizer also he founded the Coalition of Essential Schools, which is based on the principles he put forth in his book.

Eagle Rock School is an official Coalition School and our Professional Development Center is not only an Affiliate Center, we are also the national coordinator of CES Centers.

john-goodladJohn Goodlad: Written 15 years ago, Goodlad’s In Praise of Education described public education as a fundamental right in this country, calling it essential in the development of intelligent thinking within a democracy.

Other writings contributed by this educational theory-maker include The Moral Dimensions of TeachingPlaces Where Teachers Are TaughtTeachers for Our Nation’s Schools, and Educational Renewal: Better Teachers, Better Schools.

Goodlad was instrumental in promoting educational reform by designing programs and personally diving into research on positive change for schools.

As a point of reference, Eagle Rock was a founding member of his League of Democratic Schools.

Kurt-HahnKurt Hahn: This German educator, who is credited with playing a major leadership role in the effort to launch Outward Bound, founded an alliance of international schools called the United World Colleges. In addition, his thinking about school culture led to the creation of the 10 Expeditionary Learning Design Principles.

John Dewey: A pragmatic man — and an important contributor to functional psychology in this country — Dewey was also active in the realm of educational reform. Rather than sitting straight up at a desk in a classroom, Dewey espoused the concept of allowing children to learn while doing. By moving freely in and out of the classroom, his belief was that math, science and problem solving could be Continue reading…

Heeding Heartivism at the Rock

Heartivism. Were you of a mind to break it down, the term is the combination of three words:

  • Heart
  • Art
  • Activism

And within the Societies and Culture class here at Eagle Rock, our strategy for having students develop as individuals through learning skills for activism is to offer a course that uses historical context as a catalyst for exactly that. Each of these words — heart, art, and activism — is important in developing a new way of thinking about (and teaching) history as students grapple with creative processes and participate in the making of history itself.

The philosophical foundation of the class is rooted in the work of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire, Ph.D., and John Dewey, FAA. From Freire, we apply the notion that our students are not “empty vessels” waiting to be filled with knowledge. Instead, they come into the classroom with opinions, intuitions and values that drive their behavior, choices and thoughts.

Dewey talks about two concepts that are relevant: teaching the “life of downtown” — or in this case, moving from the textbook to what is happening in the news and the world — and the idea of co-constructing knowledge through experience, which is building on prior knowledge to create new forms of knowing.

We aim to apply these pedagogical stances to inform what we actually do in the course, which is to infuse historical examples as a means to talk about student agency (i.e., empowering students through curriculum approaches that engage them, are respectful of and seek their opinions, give them opportunities to feel connected to school life, promote positive and caring relationships between all members of the school community, promote wellbeing and focus on the whole student, relate to real-life experiences, are safe and supportive — Source: Value Centered School… a guide on Student Agency [PDF]).

It’s never about just teaching facts, but creating a Continue reading…