Second Impressions

In an earlier post, I spoke of trusting your first instinct instead of going with what others were doing around you.  Maybe it is first instinct one must trust versus first impression.

As I stepped late into Chris Whittle's presentation today, my first thought was that I wasn't going to stay for very long. Whittle, the CEO of Edison Schools, was standing behind the podium and speaking in what I perceived as lecture voice. I listened for while and decided to stay - maybe I could figure out my next presentation or make a plan for the evening and the trip home tomorrow. 

The more I listened, however, the more I became intrigued with what he had to say. Whittle's discussion on schools around the world, including a 10-university city that had sprung up virtually overnight (seven years and now 130,000 students enrolled) was engaging. His discussion of the "entrepreneurism and flexibility around the world" made me realize that American education must continue to look for ways to not only engage our students, but provide real-world applications of using 21st century skills if we are to stay at the top in the world. 

Of course, Whittle obliged with four suggestions on how to do that at the K-12 level. As a futuristic thinker, I am trying to figure out implementation, but all four sounded doable to some extent. 

• High schools must have large numbers of students graduating with fluency in another language. (His point on that was well made when he asked how many in the audience had a couple of years of a foreign language in high school. Probably 90% raised their hand, but when the question was one of current fluency, the number dropped to 1%.)
  
• Create an introduction to world course throughout the grades and curriculum that covered geography, history, and coming issues.
  
• Work to see every teacher at every grade level had spent "meaningful" time overseas. This one is extremely intriguing yet also extremely challenging.
  
• Make our districts destinations for exchange students and faculty. (I think this one coupled with #3 has some potential.)
  

Whittle finished by stating that school districts need to start looking for additional funding from philanthropists willing to put money into K-12 education as opposed to all in the university systems. It will be interesting to see if that works for districts and how it can help give our students a true 21st century education.