Creative Schools

Review of First 1/3

• The first third of "Creative Schools" was about how today child success in education is based off of the standards movement.

Review of First 1/3

• To improve education Robinson believes we need to go away from the direction of standardized testing and get "back to basics".
• To help make this happen teachers have to have a supportive, informative system, a balanced curriculum, and an improved quality of teaching.

Review of First 1/3

• "The heart of education is the relationship between the student and the teacher. Everything else depends on how productive and successful that relationship is (Robinson, 2016, pg. 71)."

Ch.4: Natural Born Learners

• According to Robinson, personalization means teachers take into account all of the differences in how they teach different students. Allow flexibility with curriculum so all students can learn what they need to learn along with having the opportunity to follow their individual interests (2016, pg.88).

Personalization in Education

• It is essential that we start to bring personalization into every child’s education. Teachers need to recognize that education is diverse and encourage students to pursue their own interests and strengths.
• Every child learns and retains information at a different rate. Adapting the schedule around the students learning rate is essential for student success.

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• The concept of play allows the students to personalize and create their own imagination and curiosity. Robinson believes the standards movement is eliminating the opportunities for play in school, which is one of the greatest tragedies in standardized education.

Ch. 5: The Art of Teaching

• “The real key to transforming education is the quality of teaching (Robinson, 2016, pg.100).”

The Four Roles to be Fulfilled

• Engage: Creating environments where a student wants to learn and can bring the best out in themselves will lead to the children reaching expectations.
• Enable: The ability for a teacher to have a selection of skills and techniques and knowing when and how to use these techniques is what sets one teacher apart from another. A teacher has to have judgment to know what works best in different situations.

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• 3. Expect: What a teacher expects of a student is going to have an effect on the achievements of the student. If a teacher expects a student to succeed the student most likely will.
• 4. Empower: Teachers are instructors, mentors, and guides. They are there to help their students believe in themselves, giving them confidence and sense of direction.

Ch.6: What's Worth Knowing

• Robinson thinks of curriculum in terms of structure, content, mode, and ethos.
• Structure: How the whole curriculum is perceived and all the relationships between the different elements
• Content: The material being learned
• Mode: How students engage with curriculum
• Ethos: general atmosphere

Curriculum as a whole should be diverse, dynamic, and go into depth. I agree with this because this allows for the curriculum to relate to all students. It will give them opportunities to discover themselves and interact with people of all ages and interests.

Ch.7: Testing, Testing

• Robinson states. “ One of the forces that can stifle the diversity, depth, and dynamism of curriculum is the wrong sort of assessment (2016, pg. 157).”

Two Problems of Standardization

• People don’t come in standard versions
• Only some areas of education lend themselves to being standardized

I believe standard testing puts not only a lot of pressure on the students but on the teachers as well. The teachers have to focus on the material of these tests a majority of the time, and students are judged based off of this. It makes it more difficult to engage the student in the class because it doesn’t give them the opportunity to express their talents and interests.