“School can be like a vacuum cleaner sucking the knowledge out of kids.”

I am working on one of the DEECD principal focus groups for building an instructional model for teachers in Victoria. During the first workshop we listened to this video clip from Richard Elmore talking about some of the challenges.  Richard makes a point that many students loose the knowledge and capacity they once had in 5th grade and that the lack of intellectual challenge is one of the reasons. For me when he talked about the resistance to change in teacher practice being so deep that we need to replace instructional skills and strategies not simply alter them a light blub flicked on. When the teachers discussed the clip I had a feeling there was a sense of needing to do something different in our thinking about curriculum and instruction. We have an inquiry framework for looking at deeper levels of understanding but perhaps the challenge is getting the students to do the work during the lesson rather than us do the talking. It’s not all gloom but its a real challenge.