I'm slowly moving my way down the Chautauqua education week video list and just finished with the Panel of Urban Educators (http://fora.tv/2010/08/06/Panel_of_Urban_Educators) The first two speakers spoke about how the International Baccalaureate program has revolutionized their schools (both placed in high violence crime areas. Both speakers emphasized the importance of having a strong curriculum and teaching every kid.
The International Baccalaureate program is a Swiss program that is used by schools around the world. The program website is here: http://www.ibo.org/
The third speaker was a superintendant who highlighted the importance of onsite learning - their leadership program for principals includes a lot of classroom observation and group reflection.
The questions at the end of the program were also really interesting. There was some discussion about expecting our teachers to work overtime without pay. One of the speakers answered the question by bringing in Korea. She said that she's heard a lot of talk about how good Korean schools and teachers are and why aren't our schools and teachers as good? Her response to that is in Korea they honor teachers - doctors, teachers, lawyers, she said, in that order. In the US many people think it's "cute" or "nice" that someone is a teacher, they aren't honored as a teacher. This is exactly what I heard from a Chinese teacher I met at my M.A.T. orientation - she was a high school teacher in China before moving to Minnesota to teach kindergarten in a Chinese immersion school. She told me multiple times throughout the morning that in China teachers were honored. On Friday night I was eating dinner with a Chinese couple who told the group that in China the public school education is the same if not better than the private school education. Both of them had experienced both public and private schools. The speaker concluded her answer by stating that we do need to expect more out of our teachers, but we also need to honor them more.
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