building a high school learning community
Dear GCE Friends:
I’m thrilled to share that GCE has several open positions for the 2012-13 school-year, and they’re available because we’re growing! Please follow the link – http://www.globalcitizenshipexperience.com/gce/you/ – to explore the positions.
More may be coming soon. Many thanks,
eric
Today in our Org Systems and Models course, students closed by beginning to address this question. Please see their answers (comments) and the screen-shot that shows our lesson for the day.
Once again we grapple with assessment weighting; invariably this happens at the end and beginning of each term. Once again we try to balance process and product. Once again we have come to a conclusion that is, at best temporary. For winter term 2012, we will proceed with the following assessment plan. It is not perfect, and we already have ideas about how to improve it, but this is what we’re doing. Please share your thoughts if you have them. We’d be grateful for the feedback. Thanks.
eric
Preparation: 15%
Process: 55%
Product: 30%
Dear GCE Family and Friends:
We begin our journey into 2012 with a clear mission and vision. We are fortunate to have shown positive results from the first few years in our laboratory — GCE Chicago High School. The data suggests that we are in fact creating a new model for learning, that the Global Citizenship Experience has tremendous potential to contribute uniquely to the educational revolution underfoot. Our students feel excited to learn — they even want to come to school! — and they produce an array of incredibly cool work that can be viewed on GCE Voices (our blog). Parents shower our staff with gratitude and compliments; we know better than to expect such interactions but it certainly feels validating.
Our approach reflects both the trends of the moment and it balances proven pedagogies of the past. We embody something of a KhanDeweyan spirit, sticking to principles of progressive education that fuel interpersonal connection and experiential learning while adopting current technologies that “disrupt” our largely broken educational system.
That’s a complicated way of writing what we really do: integrate myriad perspectives in order to create global, purpose-driven curriculum that is delivered through blended learning. Whenever possible, and it often is, we individualize instruction to optimize each student’s interests and potential. Punctuated by GCE’s City2Classroom partnerships, our classroom extends into boardrooms, factories, restaurants, museums, and the streets that connect us. In 2012, GCE students may find their classmates sitting next to them, in a classroom across the country, or in a café around the world.
Now, is an extraordinary time to work in the field of education. Technologies expand our pathways of interconnection and the resources that inspire our community. Possibilities emerge daily for how we can improve learning and teaching. And, most importantly, there is a genuine urgency to offer a better alternative for large-scale curriculum, instruction, administrative processes, and network development. Youth need to feel that learning matters; specifically, that what they learn in school is of value. And we adults — whether we work in corporations, ngos, government agencies, or entrepreneurial ventures — we have the chance to create a bridge to the next generation that offers youth a future in which they matter. In so doing, we ensure our own sustainability. Failure to do so will result in a tidal wave of ignorant and disenfranchised masses; this we’re already doing at an alarming rate (hence the urgency).
GCE’s priorities for the next twelve months are clear, but not simple:
Thank you for making 2011 a year of learning and growth. We ask nothing more of 2012. Best wishes to our friends, supporters, and those we have not yet had the privilege of getting to know.
With gratitude,
Eric
GCE is our laboratory for learning. Everything we do is up for discussion and review. We reflect, collaborate, and balance the load. We act upon ideas, test out new technologies, continuously refine curriculum and instruction, and we do it without too much drama.
A major part of what fuels our laboratory is our partnership program. Our City2Classroom model has resulted in more than 100 corporate, non-profit, and government partnerships in one year.
Over the next few months, we will be sharing much more about what goes on in our lab: with students, guest experts, volunteers, staff, and partners.
Tonight, I would like to share one glimpse of how GCE, our laboratory for learning, functions. Below is an email to a partner organization that I would like to share with each of you.
(video by Carlos Leite)
GCE Training Day 1 from GCE on Vimeo.
Evening Dale,
As GCE’s Founder and Director, I am constantly looking for new ways to apply our Model for Learning. Today, I am thrilled to announce a new program with a distinctly dynamic, long-lasting, and inspiring approach.
The purpose of GCE’s Urban Exchange Program is to build global awareness, connection, and opportunities for action for high school students from Chicago and sister cities. Participants learn why and how these iconic cities have become what they are and students develop proposals for how cities must evolve in order to thrive in the future. Chicago students, educators, and funders partner with their counterparts from a few U.S. cities that meet our selection criteria. In each case, our partner cities are vibrant, culturally rich, and they are committed to rethinking, repurposing, and reshaping the urban experience.
GCE’s year-long Urban Exchange program offers an immersion into the cross-sections of America as a foundation for understanding global exchange. Students explore each other’s communities in person and online. The greatest difference between GCE’s Urban Exchange program and almost all other exchange programs is that our kids learn with kids from sister cities all year. We start in person; finish in person; in between we see each other in person. And all year long we are connected through GCE’s blended learning platform.
Program Curriculum/Areas of Focus:
Calendar:
Much more information available upon request. If you would like to learn more about GCE’s Urban Exchange or propose an exchange for your community, please let us know.
Many thanks.
So much gratitude, but unlike food, I always have room for more.
Please follow this LINK to see my holiday thank you e-blast.
Today I read a blog post that suggests, “In America education should produce citizens, not workers” by Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog.
I shared a comment on their blog which seems appropriate for our community as well…
Thank you for your blog post today. I run a school called the Global Citizenship Experience (www.gcechicago.com) and am constantly awed by the masses who still think that the end goal is a degree or a job, or in the case of your argument, STEM professions in particular. I would challenge Rick Scott to consider companies like IDEO and Gravity Tank and 3M. These innovative and successful companies do not excel merely because of their engineering training, but because they consider the human being who interacts with the product or service. In our high school design we are constantly struggling to balance skills and application. We hold ourselves accountable by asking a very simple question: why (what’s the purpose)? Invariably, the answer comes back to something that makes the world better, for an individual and for the community.
eric
GCE students and staff attended TEDxMidwest Youth Conference last Saturday, October 15th. Today, our students will have time to reflect on the experience and to create proposals. Comments and suggestions will be added over the next few days. All proposals for new independent studies, clubs, and school improvement plans will be submitted within 10 days. We encourage you to review them and add your own comments.
Thank you, TEDx, Chicago Ideas Week, and our students and staff.
eric
Dear Students:
Please respond to the following reflective prompts in a comment to this blog and please submit proposals directly to my email (eric@gcechicago.com).
Thank you.
Reflection (10 mins)
1) My favorite presentation was______________ because_______________________________(purpose and essence).
2) I learned that _____________________ because___________________________________(purpose and essence).
3) A useful resource for ____________________(name of course) course would be___________________ (idea) because ____________________________________(purpose and essence).
Student proposal templates are in dropbox or students can download the student idea proposal template or the student independent study proposal template. Please submit individual and/or group ideas for independent studies, clubs, and school improvement in general.
Thank you,
eric
In droves, people are paying homage to Steve Jobs and writing moving eulogies. They praise his technological innovations and honor his gifts that have transformed our lives. I would like to focus on a different gift of his.
In 2005, Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford. His simple and brief speech focused on a few things: connecting the dots, failure and love, and living the life you WANT. He espouses the “courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become…” He closes with a reference to the final print periodical, Whole Earth Catalogue (created by Stuart Brand), that implores us to, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
For what it’s worth, I would like to thank Steve Jobs for all of his gifts — we are a school that uses blended learning and one-to-one computers — but I would like to give a special thanks for his message in which we firmly believe.