"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Welcoming New Contributor, Ken Libby

I am happy to welcome Ken Libby as a new contributor to SM. Ken is a month away from getting his Masters in the Art of Teaching from Lewis and Clark's Graduate School of Education in Portland, Oregon. Hey, West Coast!

Here's Ken:
My entire work history involves children - three years as a part-time nanny, summer camp counselor, work with children and grief, teaching assistant in an expensive private school, and student-teacher in the Portland Public Schools. My diverse work experience has led me to see education as a deeply personal, social, and transformative process when done correctly; it can also be stale, violent, and forceful when behaviorism and testing strip away all that is human from schooling.

The emerging leaders of my generation (I'm 26) have always known economic prosperity - the MTV era of marketing, the internet and tech explosion, and the endless search for more and greater profits. There are alternatives to No Child Left Behind, charter schools, privatization, and high-stakes testing. I hope my generation can learn from the mistakes of our past and ignore the endless reform ideas of the business world and other economic interests in an attempt to address issues of global and national significance - poverty, climate change, and violence.

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