Your Child’s Dream Best School Day – What Does It Look Like? What Should It Be?

There is much rumination in the edblogosphere about what education and schools should look like in this way or that. Kids should be blogging, using web 2.0 applications (Wikis, podcasts, Flickr, the flavor-of-the-week app), in conjuction with project-based, problem-based learning. The reality in the elementary classroom however is not a blank slate that you can manipulate any way you want.

But let’s say it was a blank slate – and not only is it a blank slate, but YOUR child is in this class. What would you want your child to be doing in this classroom? They can’t just sit and blog all day. This is an elementary school classroom – what things would you want to hear your child saying they were doing in that classroom? Remember, there are usually mandatory minutes that must be spent on reading, language and math (and yes the other subjects too, but take my word, somehow the minutes of science, social studies, art, PE, etc. are not watched over in quite the same way).

So, what’s your child’s (or grandcild’s) ultimate learning day look like? I’d love to hear your ideas. If you are reading this you probably have some opinions, probably strong opinions about this, but have you ever thought about or planned a whole “typical” day? Here’s your challenge. Take your thoughts and biases and ideas and opinions and learning and experience and conversations and put them all together. Make it a comment here, or make it a post on your blog.

Don’t make this a minute by minute, long, drawn out thing (unless you want to), just a rough outline of what a great learning day would include.

I think this would help many people get a handle on what is being advocated on ed blogs, and give us all a chance to put our plan where our advocacy is. Any takers?
Learning is messy!

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3 thoughts on “Your Child’s Dream Best School Day – What Does It Look Like? What Should It Be?

  1. Hi,

    I wrote this when grandson #2 was born last fall…. Neat question!

    http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2005/9/23/all-10-fingers-all-10-toes.html

    Doug

    Miles Benjamin Roberts was born yesterday, September 22 at about 2:00PM.

    Miles will start school in 2010 or 2011. Here’s what I hope he finds:

    1. A place that cares as much about his happiness as his education.
    2. A place that cares more about his love of learning than his test scores.
    3. A place where he feels safe and welcome and can’t wait to get to every morning.
    4. A place that honors creativity more than memorization.
    5. A place that has a library full of stories and a librarian who makes them come alive.
    6. A place where technology hasn’t taken the place of playing with blocks, finger-painting, naps, graham crackers, or a teacher’s soft encouragement.
    7. A place where he learns to work and play with kids who make not have been given the blessings of a middle-class lifestyle or a fully-functioning body or brain.
    8. A place that teaches kindness along with math, tolerance along with history, and conservation along with science.
    9. A place where teachers are excited about teaching and passionate about encouraging the passions in their students.
    10. A place where he is never compared to his older brother, Paul.