In Order to form a More Valuable School
Purpose and Principles:
Inspire and enthuse students by thorough examinations of ethical values, wisdom and knowledge with instruction in discovery and analysis techniques exposing them to the expanse and diversity of human knowledge.
This is non-compulsory education. Enthusiastic participation and civil behavior are demanded. Superior achievement, ethics and morality are expected. Formal warnings for non-achievement or misbehavior will be issued once. Recurrence will result in removal and permanent ineligibility.
This is not public education; your eligibility and continued participation are a privilege, not a right. Tuition will be refunded on the percentage of the term remaining at removal.
Staffing:
This is a professional teaching opportunity. Chosen teachers will receive a one year contract. Upon completion of a successful one year contract, a successive one year contract maybe offered. No one at this school will have a contract term longer than one year. There are no rights or protections beyond those in the contract. You must have credentials and specialty certificates in advance. There are no unions or associations with official capacity at this school. You are a contracted professional.
Your job is to inspire your students with enthusiasm for learning. You will cover the curriculum with attention compelling techniques using a mix of modern experimental and proven methods; while teaching them to learn, to analyze, and to think independently. You will not tell them what to think. You will ask them what they think and then listen as part of the effort to determine if they are thinking independently. You will not volunteer you opinions and beliefs except when asked or as a useful example.
Use of real life experiences and visits to off sight activities and example events are encouraged. Curriculum relevant displays, demonstrations and visits by citizens, professionals, workers, community leaders and parents, and very sparingly even politicians, are encouraged using the widest variety of techniques from lecture to involvement, immersion, and organized student performances.
Teachers must be currently competent with modern electronic hardware, software, and Internet use for all facets of instruction, presentation, record-keeping, reporting and communication; and use Internet social media and other software to dramatically increasing efficiency of presentation, work assignment, and interaction with students, parents and colleagues. All students will have immediate individual access to fully functional computers with high speed Internet access at their work area and be capable of receiving and submitting assignments electronically.
Homework is entirely voluntary. You are the teacher, if they could be self-taught or their parents could teach them, you would not be necessary. Unassigned extra-curricular discovery is encouraged, and extra credit is acceptable for individually undertaken and submitted work.
Students will be given repeated chances to demonstrate behavior changes that result in achievement. Non achievers will receive addition encouragement. Parents of persistent non-achievers will be request to remove their children. Students will be advanced, retained or expelled solely upon the recommendation of the teacher.
Teach them useful fundamentals. Help them organize and use their memories. Teach them forms of logic and reasoning, organized analytical thought, and problem solving. Show them problem types and solution methods used in the entire variety of forms of intelligence. You are preparing these students for the future, not the past. Focus on likely future methods and needs. Show them how to find, evaluate and use newer informational forms, like electronic data, optical memory media, video and audio presentations.
Keep parents or guardians fully informed. Use modern Internet tools; they are. Do not require or expect much of parents. If they had the time or inclination to teach they wouldn’t pay us. Do not assume that they are anything beyond biological contributors. There maybe one or no parents in their household, if there is a home; there may not even be actual relatives or anyone who actually cares or is even semi conscious where they live, regardless of appearances or apparent means.
If public knowledge of your immoral, unethical, or illegal behavior cheats your students and their parents, or brings discredit to yourself, your colleagues or the school; you will be fired and your contract terminated immediately without recourse.
Facilities may be of any type or place that facilitates learning.
Instruction:
The following curricula should be touched daily, adjusted to be grade appropriate. Some should receive considerable attention at preschool and be increasing indirect or inferred as grade levels increases, but included none the less:
Intensely lead activities intended to socialize and motivate; familiarizing children with the structure and decorum of schooling.
Demonstrate simple behaviors courtesy, respect, consideration, tolerance, participation, sharing, contribution, respect, quiet, activity, and organized play
Expose students to sights, sounds, feelings and activities using language, art, music and games requiring courtesy, patience and respect of and for others. Appropriate level student exposure to planned activities, organized thought, reasoning, cause and effect logic, and early word, sound and symbol recognition lead by an instructor.
Teach them to listen carefully, speak logically, and read comprehensibly.
Teach them simple mathematics, using practical real life examples. Work through the widest possible variety of meaningful problems derived from written statements. Associate theorems and postulates after demonstrating how to use formula to get the answer to grade appropriate, practical, easily imaginable problems.
Teach them to see, feel, hear, and understand the world around them. Introduce honesty, dignity and basic respectfulness. Expose them to increase levels of anxiety, frustration, and disappointment with the purpose of teaching them to cope and tolerate.
Organize and exercise memory. Examine life lessons, values, morality and ethics. Explore human history, human events, and human organizations and enterprises. Money and managing it, credit and property, earning, saving and investing, economics, contracting and finance; and health, medicine, sanitation, and nutrition. Thorough instruction with numbers and arithmetic, and frequent practice, understanding fractions, other number systems.
Lead them in the discovery of imagination. Teach them forethought. Construct exercises that help them imagine a new and different future. Present problems and sub-optimum outcomes and examine causes and affects, and explore what choices would have produced less than optimum outcomes. Humans don’t create events and things they don’t first imagine.
Use gender appropriate games to encourage physical activity. Testing coping skills, socialization, and the strategy of games sedentary and physical to test forethought, concentration, conceptualization, and cooperation. Expose winners to the joy of success and losers to the disappointment of failure. Use the opportunity for real life object lessons.
Language, writing and speaking, reading, vocabulary and grammar, modern uses of speech and text, modern research, reporting, recording, storing, finding and retrieving written or spoken language, exposure to the sounds and origins of other languages.
Teach national history, US constitutional government, law, culture, society, human rights, business and markets forms, philanthropy and non-profit enterprises, forms of commerce, survey of world religions, nations and governments and geography
Survey of all the sciences, scientific logic, methods, language, history, scientific data, and theory, proof and revisions; exploration of higher mathematics. Teach deductive reasoning.
Explore modern and ancient devices and processes. Explain how they work and how they are used constructively. Explore the evolution of antiquities, and how common everyday things were made then and today; like a sharp knife, cheese, beer, bricks, soap; where foods comes from, how they are processed and preserved; how cell phones, memory chips, the Internet, etc. work. Have them choose from a list and find the answer by computer research, presenting their findings in a submitted paper and aloud to the class.
Explore world history and myths, US history and myths, current events US and world, survey politics, survey world religions, world governments, world cultures, US law, crime and punishment. Everyday will include a grade appropriate presentation and discussion of meaningful current events, not necessarily media news, but recent past or impending community, school, social or cultural events.
Teach them to double check all facts and calculations. Use multiple sources. Verify information from a trusted source with data from another creditable source. Especially verify official government sources and prominent commercial sources.
Testing:
Testing should do more than provide indications of achievement, capabilities, or practice recall under stress. Practicing performance on demand, tolerating frustration, overcoming anxiety, refocusing instruction, experiencing achievement and failure, and cultivating determination should all be part of testing, as well as meeting statutory requirements.
Discussion
I hired and managed hundreds of employees during my 45 year career in science and technology management. Many of the people I did not select had one or more of the following deficiencies:
1. They did not write their knowledge, skill, experience and achievement concisely, relating them to meaningful work accomplishment objectives.
2. They did not read or listen carefully.
3. They did not speak logically and grammatically, or answer questions simply and concisely.
4. They did not have a well developed sense of perspective, time, breath, or depth of interest in the past, in current events, in the future, or in non-work activities or hobbies needed to be a well adjusted human.
5. They lacked ethics, morality, or values common to most of this planet’s major cultures, or any apparent knowledge of American values or other world cultures.
6. They lacked humility, toleration, consideration, cooperation, true compassion or empathy, real understanding of the human predicament, or any interest in the plight of others or a willingness to truly help anyone else participate.
7. They lacked enthusiasm, courage, conviction, determination, true grit, and were too quickly willing to say “I know” when they did not. They were truly mystified by cause and effect and often puzzled by repeatedly bad results from repeatedly poor choices.
I often hired those with letters of reprimand or disciplinary events (plus good knowledge and experience) that were based upon inequitable treatment or disputes about values they felt had been violated; because they at least had values they had thought about and truly believed something specifically improper had taken place. Many of them could easily explain their reasoning and became good leaders, with exemplary records and willing followers who knew they would be treated equitably. A few were just cleaver malcontents who did not understand people or work place requirements and frustrations. It was after all “work.” If it was all “fun” they would have been paying me instead of getting paid.
Summary
If you are not teaching children to be friendly, thoughtful, considerate, interesting, constructive, participating, full functioning human beings with a zest to understand the people and things of this world, then what are you doing and why? You should perhaps ask yourself, “What is the purpose of school and am I truly a teacher?”
Purpose and Principles:
Inspire and enthuse students by thorough examinations of ethical values, wisdom and knowledge with instruction in discovery and analysis techniques exposing them to the expanse and diversity of human knowledge.
This is non-compulsory education. Enthusiastic participation and civil behavior are demanded. Superior achievement, ethics and morality are expected. Formal warnings for non-achievement or misbehavior will be issued once. Recurrence will result in removal and permanent ineligibility.
This is not public education; your eligibility and continued participation are a privilege, not a right. Tuition will be refunded on the percentage of the term remaining at removal.
Staffing:
This is a professional teaching opportunity. Chosen teachers will receive a one year contract. Upon completion of a successful one year contract, a successive one year contract maybe offered. No one at this school will have a contract term longer than one year. There are no rights or protections beyond those in the contract. You must have credentials and specialty certificates in advance. There are no unions or associations with official capacity at this school. You are a contracted professional.
Your job is to inspire your students with enthusiasm for learning. You will cover the curriculum with attention compelling techniques using a mix of modern experimental and proven methods; while teaching them to learn, to analyze, and to think independently. You will not tell them what to think. You will ask them what they think and then listen as part of the effort to determine if they are thinking independently. You will not volunteer you opinions and beliefs except when asked or as a useful example.
Use of real life experiences and visits to off sight activities and example events are encouraged. Curriculum relevant displays, demonstrations and visits by citizens, professionals, workers, community leaders and parents, and very sparingly even politicians, are encouraged using the widest variety of techniques from lecture to involvement, immersion, and organized student performances.
Teachers must be currently competent with modern electronic hardware, software, and Internet use for all facets of instruction, presentation, record-keeping, reporting and communication; and use Internet social media and other software to dramatically increasing efficiency of presentation, work assignment, and interaction with students, parents and colleagues. All students will have immediate individual access to fully functional computers with high speed Internet access at their work area and be capable of receiving and submitting assignments electronically.
Homework is entirely voluntary. You are the teacher, if they could be self-taught or their parents could teach them, you would not be necessary. Unassigned extra-curricular discovery is encouraged, and extra credit is acceptable for individually undertaken and submitted work.
Students will be given repeated chances to demonstrate behavior changes that result in achievement. Non achievers will receive addition encouragement. Parents of persistent non-achievers will be request to remove their children. Students will be advanced, retained or expelled solely upon the recommendation of the teacher.
Teach them useful fundamentals. Help them organize and use their memories. Teach them forms of logic and reasoning, organized analytical thought, and problem solving. Show them problem types and solution methods used in the entire variety of forms of intelligence. You are preparing these students for the future, not the past. Focus on likely future methods and needs. Show them how to find, evaluate and use newer informational forms, like electronic data, optical memory media, video and audio presentations.
Keep parents or guardians fully informed. Use modern Internet tools; they are. Do not require or expect much of parents. If they had the time or inclination to teach they wouldn’t pay us. Do not assume that they are anything beyond biological contributors. There maybe one or no parents in their household, if there is a home; there may not even be actual relatives or anyone who actually cares or is even semi conscious where they live, regardless of appearances or apparent means.
If public knowledge of your immoral, unethical, or illegal behavior cheats your students and their parents, or brings discredit to yourself, your colleagues or the school; you will be fired and your contract terminated immediately without recourse.
Facilities may be of any type or place that facilitates learning.
Instruction:
The following curricula should be touched daily, adjusted to be grade appropriate. Some should receive considerable attention at preschool and be increasing indirect or inferred as grade levels increases, but included none the less:
Intensely lead activities intended to socialize and motivate; familiarizing children with the structure and decorum of schooling.
Demonstrate simple behaviors courtesy, respect, consideration, tolerance, participation, sharing, contribution, respect, quiet, activity, and organized play
Expose students to sights, sounds, feelings and activities using language, art, music and games requiring courtesy, patience and respect of and for others. Appropriate level student exposure to planned activities, organized thought, reasoning, cause and effect logic, and early word, sound and symbol recognition lead by an instructor.
Teach them to listen carefully, speak logically, and read comprehensibly.
Teach them simple mathematics, using practical real life examples. Work through the widest possible variety of meaningful problems derived from written statements. Associate theorems and postulates after demonstrating how to use formula to get the answer to grade appropriate, practical, easily imaginable problems.
Teach them to see, feel, hear, and understand the world around them. Introduce honesty, dignity and basic respectfulness. Expose them to increase levels of anxiety, frustration, and disappointment with the purpose of teaching them to cope and tolerate.
Organize and exercise memory. Examine life lessons, values, morality and ethics. Explore human history, human events, and human organizations and enterprises. Money and managing it, credit and property, earning, saving and investing, economics, contracting and finance; and health, medicine, sanitation, and nutrition. Thorough instruction with numbers and arithmetic, and frequent practice, understanding fractions, other number systems.
Lead them in the discovery of imagination. Teach them forethought. Construct exercises that help them imagine a new and different future. Present problems and sub-optimum outcomes and examine causes and affects, and explore what choices would have produced less than optimum outcomes. Humans don’t create events and things they don’t first imagine.
Use gender appropriate games to encourage physical activity. Testing coping skills, socialization, and the strategy of games sedentary and physical to test forethought, concentration, conceptualization, and cooperation. Expose winners to the joy of success and losers to the disappointment of failure. Use the opportunity for real life object lessons.
Language, writing and speaking, reading, vocabulary and grammar, modern uses of speech and text, modern research, reporting, recording, storing, finding and retrieving written or spoken language, exposure to the sounds and origins of other languages.
Teach national history, US constitutional government, law, culture, society, human rights, business and markets forms, philanthropy and non-profit enterprises, forms of commerce, survey of world religions, nations and governments and geography
Survey of all the sciences, scientific logic, methods, language, history, scientific data, and theory, proof and revisions; exploration of higher mathematics. Teach deductive reasoning.
Explore modern and ancient devices and processes. Explain how they work and how they are used constructively. Explore the evolution of antiquities, and how common everyday things were made then and today; like a sharp knife, cheese, beer, bricks, soap; where foods comes from, how they are processed and preserved; how cell phones, memory chips, the Internet, etc. work. Have them choose from a list and find the answer by computer research, presenting their findings in a submitted paper and aloud to the class.
Explore world history and myths, US history and myths, current events US and world, survey politics, survey world religions, world governments, world cultures, US law, crime and punishment. Everyday will include a grade appropriate presentation and discussion of meaningful current events, not necessarily media news, but recent past or impending community, school, social or cultural events.
Teach them to double check all facts and calculations. Use multiple sources. Verify information from a trusted source with data from another creditable source. Especially verify official government sources and prominent commercial sources.
Testing:
Testing should do more than provide indications of achievement, capabilities, or practice recall under stress. Practicing performance on demand, tolerating frustration, overcoming anxiety, refocusing instruction, experiencing achievement and failure, and cultivating determination should all be part of testing, as well as meeting statutory requirements.
Discussion
I hired and managed hundreds of employees during my 45 year career in science and technology management. Many of the people I did not select had one or more of the following deficiencies:
1. They did not write their knowledge, skill, experience and achievement concisely, relating them to meaningful work accomplishment objectives.
2. They did not read or listen carefully.
3. They did not speak logically and grammatically, or answer questions simply and concisely.
4. They did not have a well developed sense of perspective, time, breath, or depth of interest in the past, in current events, in the future, or in non-work activities or hobbies needed to be a well adjusted human.
5. They lacked ethics, morality, or values common to most of this planet’s major cultures, or any apparent knowledge of American values or other world cultures.
6. They lacked humility, toleration, consideration, cooperation, true compassion or empathy, real understanding of the human predicament, or any interest in the plight of others or a willingness to truly help anyone else participate.
7. They lacked enthusiasm, courage, conviction, determination, true grit, and were too quickly willing to say “I know” when they did not. They were truly mystified by cause and effect and often puzzled by repeatedly bad results from repeatedly poor choices.
I often hired those with letters of reprimand or disciplinary events (plus good knowledge and experience) that were based upon inequitable treatment or disputes about values they felt had been violated; because they at least had values they had thought about and truly believed something specifically improper had taken place. Many of them could easily explain their reasoning and became good leaders, with exemplary records and willing followers who knew they would be treated equitably. A few were just cleaver malcontents who did not understand people or work place requirements and frustrations. It was after all “work.” If it was all “fun” they would have been paying me instead of getting paid.
Summary
If you are not teaching children to be friendly, thoughtful, considerate, interesting, constructive, participating, full functioning human beings with a zest to understand the people and things of this world, then what are you doing and why? You should perhaps ask yourself, “What is the purpose of school and am I truly a teacher?”
Not a bad design for building children and their lives.
ReplyDeleteToo bad our institutions of higher learning or years in the class room often drown out our professional educators idealism, compassion and focus on the inspiration of a child not only understanding but knowingly using knowledge for better.
Luckily we have choices in educational opportunities and hopefully the courage to exercise those choices. In addition we have the opportunity in our republic to stand up and engage the process to better our society in areas of interest.