SEEC to MLK transition

SEEC and MLK Elementary are both institutions that were positive but with two different ways of teaching. SEEC is certainly all about having the students discover on their own. This is not to say that MLK does not do this but they do it in a much more balanced way. MLK tends to learn much more together as a group or as a community with more of an authoritarian teacher. At SEEC it seemed to be a collection of individuals at stations that could interact with each other at various learning/play stations. MLK gave me the feel that i got from the city schools I was brought up in which held more of a "rise as one" mentality than a place like SEEC seems to. Because of this I am probably a little more biased towards a school like MLK. Unfortunately it seems that this type of learning is getting a bit of a bad wrap and a bit short changed in current education dialogue and practice. It often gets equated or lumped in with what is viewed as negative in this program and much of the dominant contemporary educational thought that I have seen. Since I have started the program at Corcoran there has been clear rallying against such practices as lecturing or telling kids facts and other strategies that are more prevalent in a MLK situation than in a SEEC situation. While at the same time at the Corcoran there has been a thorough promotion of leaving it up to the students to discover and learn on their own. While both are effective modes of learning and teaching one clearly is held as correct and the other as incorrect. An MLK institution often gets stereotyped as the realm of the incorrect style. These schools such as this one that follow more of a "rise as one" mentality are often prone to having an authoritarian teacher that many from the other school of thought do not appreciate and boil down to something much simpler than they really are. I would argue that these two different forms of teaching both get oversimplified and placed in discussions that are framed in a us vs. them format far too often. These two different modes of teaching need to be seen in the various contexts and environments that they reside and then evaluated from there. Applying the same simple prescriptions to both these schools is a constant mistake that we can see in every city and a problem the the whole field of art education seems to be unable to get past. I would also like to note that this mentality that is taken towards these two schools of thought is similar to the view of southeast and pubic schools that I have seen in this city so far (oversimplified for starters). This was my first opportunity to travel to SE and only my second DCPS school to attend. Both of the experiences had very little to do with the oversimplified accounts of both that one hears far too often. After observing both institutions I would say that these two classrooms are just about on par with each other as far as the amount and effectiveness of learning and teaching that goes on. Brian's class was extremely refreshing and gave me a great outlook on teaching and students that I had not seen since I was a student in city schools. His ability to teach and conduct his life as a teacher were also extremely admirable and hopeful. What I saw in his class reminds me of why I would want to send my kids to and teach in a public school. There is more learning going on there on many different levels than I feel I observed at SEEC due to the students that are in the room. SEEC had more of a feel of students getting groomed rather than MLK which gave me a sense of a group working through things together. This is an odd observation since I feel that MLK was more on the side of authoritative directional teaching than SEEC.

Roger