Every spring the sight of fields of daffodils warms my heart as the blanket of snow recedes back into winter. Those daffodils, remind me of my CushKins. I can get daffodils to bloom on my kitchen counter months ahead of time by "forcing" them. I can put them in a bowl with a little bit of gravel beneath it...hardly any soil it all really. I can begin watering them and put them in a warm house and then something magical happens. They bloom! Before their natural time...they bloom. Even though winter is cold and snowy outside. Even though they have no rich soil. They bloom! It's very exciting. What happens next however is not so thrilling. They wither. They die. With an awful lot of effort I may be able to get them to bloom again someday but most likely the bulbs are now spent. So… I don't force bulbs. Instead, I like to plant them outside. If I wait, not only do they bloom the first year, but they naturalize. Each year they bloom again, and in time I have a field of hearty, happy flowers.
Like the daffodils, I can get the CushKins to produce results ahead of their natural time. I can create conditions which yield thrilling looking results. I can prop them up so they pass AIMSweb benchmarking tasks. I could teach strategies so that they do better on our reading benchmark...but to what end? I've seen teachers so focused on test results that they narrow their focus to such an extreme focus that their students become like those forced daffodils. Real learning is put on hold and it can take years to recover from the forced blooming. Many educators feel so pressured to get results on a certain timeline that they put the rich, messy, and sometimes unpredictable work of real learning on hold. I challenge educators to focus on real and experiential learning for a purpose. I challenge parents to trust their child's own timeline of development. I challenge administrators to look past metrics and into the eyes of learners in their schools. We all have a part to play to help our learners thrive for a lifetime.
Like the daffodils, I can get the CushKins to produce results ahead of their natural time. I can create conditions which yield thrilling looking results. I can prop them up so they pass AIMSweb benchmarking tasks. I could teach strategies so that they do better on our reading benchmark...but to what end? I've seen teachers so focused on test results that they narrow their focus to such an extreme focus that their students become like those forced daffodils. Real learning is put on hold and it can take years to recover from the forced blooming. Many educators feel so pressured to get results on a certain timeline that they put the rich, messy, and sometimes unpredictable work of real learning on hold. I challenge educators to focus on real and experiential learning for a purpose. I challenge parents to trust their child's own timeline of development. I challenge administrators to look past metrics and into the eyes of learners in their schools. We all have a part to play to help our learners thrive for a lifetime.