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My Dream School (Again)

A few posts ago, I described my dream school in which students are not judged harshly on their grades but their effort. A letter won't define their grade, the amount of work they put into it will. The school would be project based and would rely on outside resources so that students can understand from a young age how to look for good resources on their own. Essentially, I want my students thinking critically so that they don't believe everything they see. I want them to search for facts before believing something. I also want my school to be a self-improving school so the teachers would try to get their students to ask themselves why they believe what they believe. The perfect example of this is looking through advertisements, and looking at your own bias. Do you prefer one product to the other even though those products are the same? How is the viewer supposed to be influenced by the advertisement? Another way to self-improve is to read "controversial" texts in which students get to read representations of other religions, sexual orientation, or experiences. This can help students understand how "walking in someone else's shoes" or looking at life from someone else's perspective can change their world-view.

I want to teach this because those are the most important things I have learned so far, and I learned them when I started college. However, not all high school students want to go to college, so it's important to teach criticism of texts or advertisements, how to find good resources to back up your arguments, and self-improvement while students are in high school. This way, kids who do decide to attend college won't feel like they are learning something completely new, and kids who choose not to attend college will have learned how to keep themselves well informed.

A high school like this could be good for students because they will learn how to keep themselves informed by doing research, and critical while keeping in mind that they hold a personal bias. Realizing this about yourself is the first step in being an informed researcher.

Comments

  1. ReadingLikeAWriterMay 3, 2018 at 8:24 AM

    This post is so influential! It is easy to see that you truly do care about your students, and you want the best for them. We need more teachers like you! I love how you have a set role that you want to take on as a teacher. You want to set students up to ind themselves, and to take a stance on any issue that they may encounter. We are similar in that sense. Good post! (-:

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