Link to the Book: The Fog of Education: How the K-12 Education System Fails Children and Their Families and How the Children Can Save Us!
The Cavalry is not Coming Children.
You will need to take action in order to ensure that your education system truly meets your educational needs. This page is dedicated to providing you with the tools and resources to achieve your goals.
First and foremost, you need to organize school and district-level Student Action Teams (SAT) that have real power to change the status quo of mediocrity and advance true excellence in teaching and learning.
Student Action Plan
Your plan for student action will be an important planning tool that you can use to plan to address situations that students identify. Ideas can be derived from the Student Communication Board that will be included next. You can add comments to these templates if you have suggestions for improvement.
Use this sample as a template to build your own Student Action Team Plan and Monitoring Tool. Send your plans to Bill Conrad at billconrad318@gmail.com. I would love to see and comment on them! You can also find more resources and tools at our web site http://sip-bigpicture.com.
Student Action Plan Tool
Situation or Problem:
Our local school board is easily bamboozled by our administrators into thinking that our school system is doing just fine. We students know that things are not fine. We know that our school boards are corrupt and do not hold students’ best interests in mind. We would like to use guerilla theater to engage them in the problems that we face every day, including poor academic preparation, sexism within the classroom, and overt racism by teachers and administrators. It is time to take our local school board out of its comfort zone and into our real world.
GOAL:
Develop and perform a series of five theater vignettes to our local school board that illustrate significant issues that we face within our school.
Strategies:
- Plan and implement five two- to three-minute guerilla theater pieces.
Follow up with local school board members and administrators to address the issues raised in the guerilla theater events.Action Plan for
Strategy 1:
- Plan and implement five two- to three-minute guerilla theater pieces.
Student Communication Board
You will need to work hard to keep the administration accountable to the needs of the students and not to a loyalty system that gives them power despite doing nothing to improve teaching and learning. A good place to start is to form your Student Action Team (SAT) to begin a dialog with the administration. You can broach the idea of developing and using the Student Communication Board to collect those issues that students are facing on a daily basis. As you work together to address some of the small issues that arise through student input, you will begin to develop trust with the administration. You can then work to take on some of the bigger, more difficult issues that arise around teaching and learning.
Student Data Dash Board
You might also consider developing a Student Data Dashboard to visualize some data of student academic achievement, discipline, absences and so on, as catalysts for issues and celebrations that you would like to highlight in your school.
This is a tool that students can use to record numbers for both academic and non-academic questions on a daily and cumulative basis for the current year, as well as the previous year for comparison. These data can be shared publicly and used in weekly SAAC/Administration meetings.
Let’s Have Some Fun
If transforming our education system cannot be fun, what’s the point?
It is always a great idea to bring fun into your Student Action Team planning meetings. For example, you might initiate a meeting with an activity that I call Sculpting Your Vision. Each team member can create an aluminum foil sculpture showing the vision of your wish for your future or the future for your school.
Sculpt Your Own Vision Activity
Build Your Own Strategic Plan
Schools and school districts waste tons of time building huge strategic plans that are long on fluff and short on substance. Most make good door stops. Most of all they are not designed to serve you well. Why not work with your Student Action Team to build your own 4-page strategic plans for your school or district that focus on your needs? A student team at a school district in Washington State became frustrated with the slow pace and fog of education of the strategic planning team and took it upon themselves to build their own strategic plan that was adopted by the larger team and eventually by the school board.
Why not consider some of the ideas below to build your student-driven strategic plan
- Clarity of learning objectives
- Quality of instruction
- Student engagement
- Relevance to real life
- Inclusive teaching
- Preparation for college and career
- Provision for student feedback and student voice in the classroom and school
This is a one- or two-page big picture of a school improvement plan. It links one student goal at a time with aligned professional practices for teachers, principals and administrators. It also aligns key educational strategies, professional development and collaboration, and metrics for success.
Student Poster Display
Celebrate the success of Student Action Plans through a Poster Display. The poster will describe the goals, plan, results, and how to improve the project moving forward.
Poetry Slams
Imagine organizing a poetry slam and getting fantastic submissions like the one that we saw earlier in this book, “Education Shmedumacation” by Huong Le and Lilly Panick. Identify an issue, like racism in your school, and challenge students to write some haiku, limericks, sonnets, song lyrics, rap poems, and so on. Set a date for your poetry slam. Reserve the auditorium or create a Zoom space and have at it!
Guerilla Theater
Why not consider shaking up a moribund local school board meeting with some brief and exciting pieces of guerilla theater? Remember that most of the time for local school board meetings is devoted to an agenda set by the Board members, who of course have their own priorities. However, they do provide some time for the community to bring forth comments. Pick a taboo topic like sexual harassment in school and work as teams to design some knock-out theater skits.
Radio Shows
It might be a good idea to explore creating a radio show or podcast within your community. Most community radio stations would relish the opportunity to engage students, and give you and your peers an opportunity to share their issues, solutions, and celebrations. Many community radio stations also have an online presence where you can simulcast your radio shows. Your shows could include interviews, debates, poetry, and music. You can find a nice model in Youth Radio in Oakland, CA. So put on the headsets and get broadcasting!
Social Media
TikTok showed us the way. Use social media to dispel fog that is enveloping our country now under the failed leadership at every level of our schools and governments. You and your team can plan social media movements to disrupt the unjust, patronizing and racist policies that come out of your school district. Why not set up an alternative Facebook page or web site that provides the unvarnished student views of what is going on within your school and school district?
Student-led Project
Consider engaging in a project that culminates in a student convention where project posters could be displayed. Your poster can highlight aspects of the project such as:
- Title
- Names of author(s) and affiliated organization(s)
- Abstract (brief summary of objectives, methods, results, and conclusions)
- Background Information that includes a description of the issue
- Project Objectives
- Materials and Methods
- Results (tables, graphs, charts)
- Conclusions
- Discussion of possible future directions or why project is complete