Every time I discuss my model with educators for the first time, whatever their level or role, the response is always the same. They cannot imagine how they could ever find time to do all the things this new model envisions. Of course they are correct, when looking out through the windows of their classrooms and schools.
When we build something, even knowing what we want it to look like when all the work is done, it is not until we step back and observe from across the street that we see the finished product as an integral whole. It is only then we can see what we were actually able to accomplish. Think about how good it feels when you look at something new you have created.
The only the way the model I propose will work is if we change all the rules about how we do what we do, re-order our priorities, and change the way we keep score. Only then will it all begins to make sense. You will be surprised how easy this can be accomplished.
Here is an overview to explain why the outcomes never seem to improve for so many of our students. In my next post, I will try to do a better job of laying out the logic how of the rules and priorities will be re-organized, and how we will keep score differently.
But first, here is a look at why things have not turned out the way we all have hopeed it will.
- Tens of millions of students are not meeting expectations, and not just the poor, minorities, or ESL students. This is indisputable fact. The problem transcends race, ethnicity, language of birth, and relative affluence.
- In tens of thousands of K-5 schools less than 20% of students are achieving proficiency.
- Despite the hype, the NAEP shows charter schools do not perform as well as the public schools they were created to replace.
- This should come as no surprise as they rely on the exact same education process. Just changing the name above the door and hiring different teachers makes no difference if they are expected to do the exact same things that teachers in the public schools do.
- Thousands of teachers are leaving the profession, frustrated that what they are asked to do does not work for their students and who are sick and tired of being blamed.
- Kids struggle because the education process is neither structured nor designed to allow teachers to forge the quality relationships every child needs to feel special and to learn.
- Students do not get the time they need to practice and learn; which forces Teachers to accept less than the best kids can do; record their Cs, Ds, and Fs; and then push them ahead to a new lesson, ready or not.
- Kids are deprived of the opportunity to experience and celebrate success and benefit from the powerful motivation success instills and that also helps pull parents in.
- Kids, also, are deprived of the pre-requisite knowledge on which success on next lessons depends, reducing the probability of future success.
- These flaws, that set students up for failure and teachers up for blame, have practical solutions that are easy to address.
- It requires educators to open their minds to a new model designed to teach the way kids learn rather than expecting students to learn the way we teach.
- Discretion to act is within the purview of school boards and superintendents, already.
- I’ve spent 9 years striving to convince education leaders the existing education process is not immutable and is no different than any other production or service-delivery process.
- Few have been willing to look at a model that changes the way teachers and students do what they do, while teaching to the same academic standards, just not the same calendar.
- The few willing to imagine what it would be like to teach and learn in such a classroom, believe the model will transform education for students and teachers.
- The Hawkins Model© is like any other production or service delivery process designed to better serve customers or constituents and produce outcomes we want.
- I urge you to examine the model with your colleagues and then help bring it to life.
- Our children are dependent on the help of people like you and me.
- The futures of our children depend on a quality education, and the future of our society depends on those same children to lead us through the balance of this 21st Century.
Please read the Synopsis of my book, The Hawkins Model©: Education Reimagined, One Success at a Time, at by clicking on the link at the bottom edge of the black banner at the top of this page or, accept my invitation to preview the manuscript.
Mel Hawkins, MSEd, MPA
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