MAAP Con 2012 - The Keynotes

By Michael Diedrich, Policy Associate, February 21, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Last week's Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference featured three keynote speakers: the thought-provoking Marion Brady, rabble-rousing Kirsten Olson, and gleefully iconoclastic Don Glines. While most of the conference's presentations came from people in the classroom, the keynotes gave a chance to zoom out and ask the big picture questions about what really drives learning and what that means for schools.

Brady – an education scholar and commentator – challenged the audience to rethink how we categorize learning in schools. He argued that much of what we debate now aims to wring the last bits of productivity from language arts, math, science, social studies, world language, physical education, and the arts as separate disciplines. Rather than pursue that course, he suggested a new aim: Teaching students how to make sense of experience. Brady believes that by reframing learning around investigations that develop a mental organization system built around who, what, where, when, and why, we can better prepare students for dealing with new situations and experiences.

Olson zoomed out even further. A researcher and consultant, her focus has been more about figuring out why students disengage from school and the connection between school experiences and learning. She found that many people who have succeeded at learning did so primarily outside of (or in spite of) their schooling. Her primary concerns were about how our prescriptive approach that assumes one “right” way of teaching and learning actually damages many students' relationship with learning.

Glines, the former head of the Wilson Campus School in Mankato, would probably have been up for leading a march from the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester all the way up to the capitol building in Saint Paul. In by far the most charged keynote, he exhorted the group to challenge pretty much everything about the current policy structure for schools. He believes that categorizing the kinds of programs represented at the MAAP conference as “alternative programs” pushes them aside and attaches stigma for being different from more conventional approaches to school. He'd much rather fling open the doors to a wide variety of programs within traditional public school districts.

The bottom line here is that there are people putting out serious thoughts that challenge much of the current mindset dominating education discussions these days. They are deeply committed to genuine learning and truly believe that what we're doing isn't working for most of our students.

Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education