I would like to believe that I could readily and easily accept the concepts and practices in this book. However, I know that I like to have control over the learning that takes place in my classroom and Im not sure that the public would quickly accept these ideas either. It makes sense that we are more motivated to do the things we choose to do than by others directing what we should do. Even with a large amount of open-mindedness and a willingnes to give the quality school idea a chance, we are a society that wants quick fixes and fast results. It would take a great deal of time and energy to convert to this idea and by then we have given up and are looking at something new.

While reading this book, I decided to work on the concept of quality with my students. We looked the word up in the dictionary and we talked about the meaning. I wanted to bring attention to the word quality and so it was our Dicitonary Word for the week. I applied it often to their work as a whole class, group work, and individual work. I asked them to judge the quality of their work. I was able to meet with each student on at least one assignment that week. They were uncomfortable with self evaluation and wanted me to help them with the answer. It placed more responsibility on them which should be the ultimate goal of teaching students to be independent learners.

As for giving students more choice in their learning, without a total change of thought concerning standardized tests, we, as teachers, are forced to teach to the test. I have attended whole day workshops devoted soley to improving test scores on the Standards Tests! It isnt wrong to teach strategies, but it doesnt feel right to give up weeks worth of learning time. In my opinion, we must not have very much confidence in our students to think for themselves, if we are so busy t

-- Anonymous, January 02, 1999

Answers

Cindy, I think that it's great that you've tried some of this in your classroom already. Glasser's ideas of quality work and self evaluation was also an interesting one for me. My group was having a hard time coming up with a research topic for our thesis, but after reading Quality Schools we've decided to look more into the correlation of self evaluation and student achievement and attitude. I like that the students do have more ownership in their learning and the products that they produce. I've taught from kindergarten up to 6th grade and I think that this idea can be used in some form at all of the grade levels.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 1999