SUSAN D. BLUM
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Nobel Prize winner bad at school, but lucky...

10/5/2017

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Living and Learning with Risk: Against Rubrics and Grades. How "Ungrading" Allowed My Students to Try Some New Things

12/20/2016

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I gave my students freedom to write (present) what they learned however they wanted. They were terrified; how could they get an A without a rubric??--and then they reveled in it. We took risks together, and learned together.



Image source:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JPdrxKFB2Mk/maxresdefault.jpg

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Will Play for Praise

11/21/2016

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Parents of college students: When you see your kids at Thanksgiving, don’t ask them how they are doing (in terms of grades). Ask them what they’ve learned. Ask what they have enjoyed. Ask what is magical, transformative, even useful.
 
And students: Don’t play for praise. Don’t learn for me.
 
Sink in, really be there, and forget about your teachers. Forget about me.
 
Play, learn, climb the log for yourself.
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Confusing Goals and Processes – A Summer Reflection on Lawns and Education

5/19/2016

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t’s spring in the Midwest, and I’ve been walking in my neighborhood. Mid-May is the season of flowering trees, the return of loud yard equipment, and the end of the school year, either post-graduation for college or just short of the end for K-12 schools. And, as always, I find parallels between how our society regards nature and how we regard children.
 
In both, I see strange mistakes made in the last century. They have to do with confusions between ends and means, and with disregard of obvious ill effects, and with non-attainment of goals except by violence.
 
I want to compare lawns and a fixation on degrees and credentials.
 
Here’s some advice:
 
If the goal in a residential yard is a perfect green mat with no flaws, then put down a carpet instead of a lawn. You can skip the pesticides, herbicides, runoff, bee-destruction, water waste, labor, and noise pollution.

 If the goal for schooling is a credential and a degree, then offer the degree for a fixed amount of money. You can skip the cramming, textbooks, cheating, anxiety, and labor.
  
If the goal is college admission for the poor, then offer a lottery. You can skip the application process, the unfortunate high student-advisor ratio, the sense of low self-esteem, the suspicion about affirmative action.
 
If the goal is college admission for the affluent, then offer a lottery. You can skip the college admission counselors, the test prep, the summer service abroad, the Adderall, the ghost writers, the false self pretending to like resume-padding activities, the adult puppeteers in science fairs beginning in elementary school, the system-gaming with early action, the applications to twenty colleges. 
 
If the goal is good jobs for all….then make that happen. School won’t—hasn’t—done that.
  
We are pretty confused as a society between ends and processes.  
 
We have images of peaceful landscapes where harmony soothes the spirit.
 
We have images of restful suburban lawns emulating British aristocratic manors and estates.

 We have images of docile, productive, knowledgeable children—a sort-of noble goal. We have aspirations of educated, reflective citizens.

​We have a need for effective workers.
 
We like the idea of both equality and equity, equal opportunity and equal outcomes.
 
 We have ideals of equality, merit, and humaneness.
 
But we aren’t getting what we want. We are often getting ersatz versions of what we want (with exceptions), along with a lot of serious side-effects.
 
In lawns and education, a rethinking is in order.
 
Personally, I’d willingly take a few weeds, or a lot of weeds--bees love dandelions in the early spring, when there are few other sources of energy—over the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico.
 
I’d take a few students daydreaming and being inefficient over drugged, depressed, competitive zombies.
 
You?

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Are Teaching and Learning Among the Things We Do For Love?

2/8/2016

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Professor Marjorie Faulstich Orellana of UCLA suggested that there is a “‘Love’ Revolution” underway in education as reaction against the punitive and judgment-drenched testing, measuring, accountability tide. One of the mysterious, frustrating things about teaching in college is that we rarely admit that we do it out of love.


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White + word Gap = wrong

6/23/2015

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With Netta Avineri and Eric J. Johnson, I've addressed a report in the Washington Post on the many contextual factors affecting children in poverty. The well-intentioned plans to teach poor families of color “better” or “the right” ways to be parents ignores recent work that now points to a culturally sustaining education that builds on the knowledge of students of color rather than erasing it. 

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The Kids are more than all right

10/10/2014

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Both are seventeen. They are too young to vote in places like the US. But we need more of them!


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School Is War, Prison, Factory, Machine, Business, Game, Life….And Other Metaphors: recommending Permaculture

8/6/2014

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If metaphors organize our thinking and if there is no genuinely neutral way of speaking about anything, then it is worth looking into the dominant metaphors used.

School is a domain that has been referred to in ways that help and in ways that harm. I would like to propose an old-made-new-again metaphor, The Garden, that might help, but this time with a century of ecological knowledge included. I suggest education as permaculture.


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"The Language Gap": Liberal Guilt Creates Another Not-So-Magic Bullet

5/6/2014

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Why are people poor? Why do children of the poor not thrive?

The latest explanation for why children coming from disadvantaged households do not rise in this land of equal opportunity, why they do not do well in school, is that they are exposed to “thirty million fewer words” by the time they enter school.

If only it were so simple.


Read it on Huffington Post, or click "Read More"


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The United States of (Non-)Reading: The End of Civilization or A New Era?

10/8/2013

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Just the other day one of my undergraduate assistants reported a friend's boast that he had not read anything for school since fifth grade. A student at an excellent university, successful, "clever," "smart," he can write papers, take exams, participate in class or online discussions. Why would he have to read?   

Students sometimes don't buy the class books. Professors are shocked.

Several years ago a student told me that she regarded all assigned reading as "recommended," even if the professors labeled it "required." Were professors so dumb that they didn't know that?

Read here or on Huffington Post:

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