{"id":819,"date":"2009-10-04T23:20:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T04:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/?p=819"},"modified":"2009-10-04T23:20:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T04:20:45","slug":"ron-clark-academy-scalable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2009\/10\/04\/ron-clark-academy-scalable\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron Clark Academy, scalable?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott McLeod over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org\/\">Dangerously Irrelevant<\/a> posted a video of a CNN story about the Ron Clark Academy and asked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org\/2009\/10\/is-the-ron-clark-academy-a-scalable-model-of-school-excellence.html\">whether something like this was scalable<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Watch the video as you ponder this question.<br \/>\n<center><script src=\"http:\/\/i.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/.element\/js\/2.0\/video\/evp\/module.js?loc=dom&#038;vid=\/video\/bestoftv\/2009\/10\/03\/nr.holmes.new.way.to.learn.cnn\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/video\">CNN Video<\/a><\/noscript><\/center><\/p>\n<p>This is a question often asked of me, when I am conducting creativity workshops or talking about passionate teaching. In fact I was asked this just a couple of days ago when I was at the Dexter Schools talking about 21st Century Learning and Creativity. This issues comes up most when I am in India where the magnitude of the problems is just so large that scalability is always an issue. <\/p>\n<p>My response to this typically has been quite straightforward. I say that I can&#8217;t think that big. I have a congenital defect that renders me incapable of thinking of projects on a large scale. I cannot comprehend states and nations. I can barely comprehend a district. What I am most comfortable with is one classroom. What this does is color my way of thinking about innovation, pushing me towards the position that change can be effected one classroom at a time. When I teach my summer courses as a part of the MAET program, I usually have 25 students, a number I can comprehend. My goal is to touch these 25, to connect with them, and to raise within them a passion for using technology to teach subject matter. If I manage to touch even a fifth of them and they go back to their classes inspired to do something new and better, hey I have succeeded. <\/p>\n<p>This is not to say that policies don&#8217;t matter that social change can&#8217;t happen. Just that I am personally incapable of thinking in grand generalities. I have a feeling that my skepticism regarding large scale efforts comes from my deep suspicion that visions and plans mutate in often detrimental ways when they move out of the local. So I stay in the local, and frankly that is good enough for me. <\/p>\n<p>Now Scott may think that this is a cop-out and not necessarily a response to his question, but sadly that is the best I can give. The Ron Clark Academy works well where it does. Just training a bunch of teachers in the techniques used there and asking them to implement it in their classrooms will not necessarily translate into better student achievement. For instance, I am not sure that the Ron Clark approach would work in India, a country with very different cultural and historical expectations of what teaching and learning could\/should be. So I choose to withhold judgment and work harder with the people I know I can influence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant posted a video of a CNN story about the Ron Clark Academy and asked whether something like this was scalable? Watch the video as you ponder this question. Embedded video from CNN Video This is a question often asked of me, when I am conducting creativity workshops or talking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,33,14,28,94,27,49],"tags":[251,250,254,253,252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}