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Interview with Tim Urban Education Institute Knowles

Tim Knowles is the Lewis-Sebring Director of the Institute for Urban Education University of Chicago. The CIS is an educational program that combines innovative charter schools, teacher training and research in your search to provide reliable, excellent education for children in urban America.

How did you become involved with the UEI?
I came to ISU as a professional. I served as a teacher in Botswana and Boston, leading the school in New York and a district chief in Boston. Along the way, I helped start several benefits are not focused on teaching and leadership in urban schools including Boston professor of residence, the Leadership Institute of Boston and Teach for America.

I came to the University of Chicago, and I was doing something unusual. Schools are functioning. I wanted to train aspiring teachers new and veterans and leaders, to Chicago. And I was doing research and development (R & D) in a unique way – in close collaboration with Public Schools Chicago and school professionals – research and design new tools and practices for policy development and resolving the problems of practice.

I loved how research, human capital development and school design was embedded in the actual work. Looking around the country, I realized how rare it was for a research institution that is betting so firmly in the world of practice. And I thought the absence of a school education at the University of Chicago created an interesting opportunity to re-imagine what the role of higher education could be.

Can you describe one of the flagship programs of the CIS and the success we have achieved with it?
An interesting example of our work R & D is something called 6to16. 6to16 emerged from the urgent need to find new ways to increase the number of urban students who are accepted and succeed in the university. With support from the Gates Foundation, 6to16 supports students from 6th grade until his graduation from college – grade 16. It provides teachers, counselors, nonprofit and others with online and classroom-based curriculum to help build the skills and knowledge needed to survive and succeed in school. And provides students, teachers and others with a web-based social network that allows guardians, families, counselors and peers to guide students as that build skills and complete benchmarks tied to college success. Think MySpace or Facebook with a purpose – in this case the goal is college preparation and success.

6to16 was inspired by professionals demanding new tools and support to help generate the first university to first pass the reach children and succeed in college. It was shaped the work of the Consortium on Chicago School Research and the research on "resistance" – Which states, inter alia, that when the odds are against children, and looks into the life of those who do have capital reserves to exploit. Could be a teacher, a minister, a guardian or relative. But there are people in your life that keep them on track and focused and help them avoid or deal with things that could take them off course.

Based on their research and experience with the CIS, what would you say are the keys to the academic success of urban students and students in general?
Difficult question. Those of us do the work know there are no silver bullets – and we must be careful of those who advocate discrete strategies to improve schools we work in

That said, a couple of big things are very important. Obviously, the material quality people. We can not do this work on a scale not effective teachers and school leaders. And we need radically new systems to support, develop and reward those types of people depend on good schools.

Second is time. Children do not need more time doing what has not worked, but they need more time doing things that work. Put bluntly, if we are serious about children to much higher levels, children need to go aa school more. To do ambitious intellectual work at all times. They need access to things outside the core academic – arts, sports, music and digital media. The thinking that we can prepare children for college, just so that enforce the rules standardized math and literacy assessments is terribly shortsighted.

Thirdly – and this one is more complicated – we need to disrupt some of the standards of schooling in America. Teaching remains a particular profession – one where a teacher is often same responsibilities on the first day at work as they do on the last day of the year 35. Opportunities to learn with teachers and experts are not normally part of the daily diet of school. Teachers rarely have the experience of other professions provide – regular, focused support from experts in their field, long time to learn and practice new methods, opportunities consistent with good evidence of grain used to inform their work. In other words, ironically, schools are not in general, sites for adults and children learn.

So what to do, I think you start by creating a new hope in our profession – the expectation that costs no money, but upends the way you work. We practice our "public". We created an expectation in the school that teachers observe and critique each other's work to deconstruct the lessons and tests to understand how children accomplish things in particular – for the classroom and school are the subject of ongoing investigation, public. In the best schools I know this happens. It is not punitive. It is deeply collaborative. It is an intellectual challenge. It is a much deeper accountability for results obtained from a single point in time standardized test score.

But is Clearly we must go further. We must create schools devoted to teacher training candidates and leaders – move to prepare the next generation of educators of the university classroom, in the place where children learn. We must create schools devoted to R & D – the creation of tools and curricula and interventions – In collaboration with higher education, nonprofit and commercial enterprises – in which professionals help to shape and mold the next generation of tools and curricula that are used. And all the way, we must open our doors. So the magic of the teacher in Room 101, or the remarkable success of the school on the block, does not stay there, locked behind a closed door. However, it appears, given the opportunity to observe, deconstructed, and coded in ways the rest of we can use.

How you can help every teacher the keys to success for students?
Some things are relatively simple – and are occurring in classrooms around the country: teachers can use formative assessment and student work for make decisions and adjust instruction, teachers may require rigor, and their colleagues, teachers can teach in ways that are rigorous and relevant seize assets families, cultures and resources of the community of children they serve – to get students to think and act critically in their world and the largest.

Other things are harder, but not least, teachers can take the lead in their schools – and demand for these papers, if not there then make an investigation of teaching practice and testing tools for the job, whatever their role may be, teachers can organize – identify two or three of the best ideas they have, and push to manifest, and teachers should insist that instructional leaders who know not only what is good, but is devoted to the work of training, support and teacher development to improve the quality of school instruction wide.

The unexpected challenges faced in implementing the technique-based research on the campus of the University of Chicago Charter School?

One of the key challenges that we face no surprise to teachers. It is time. Teachers make some of the most complicated, important in the world. And they have little time to reflect about their own work – not to mention building tools, curricula, teacher training candidates, and testing of new methods or models of what the future of education should be.

But to do this work without the teachers and school leaders are actively involved in the play is crazy. So we find time and create mechanisms for practitioners to participate in R & D systematically.

Another challenge facing us is imagination. Not that does not exist – on the contrary there is much of it in all sorts of corners of this country. Rather we have not brought to bear. I'm not convinced we need models of schooling to tinker around the edges of our current design. We have to think like NASA, at its best. Developing the missions that break down barriers. Create designs that provide us to go places even traveled – teaching and learning models that create fundamentally different kinds of opportunities for children to learn. Belie the models of how the school is organized.

At UEI, we teachers, leaders, faculty developers, designers and researchers who have the imagination and experience to do this work. But the country needs more than a few places R & D company of this type. We need a national strategy to make this work. Imagine, whether integrated R & D work to develop new people in our schools – not only would the people, tools, designs and practices stronger and more Highlights – We want to improve education quality and make schools more interesting places to be on the road.

About the Author

TeachHUB.com is a complete online resource center specific to K-12 education. Thousands of education tools, classroom strategies and teacher recommendations have been organized in one central location for ultimate convenience. For more helpful teacher tips and free articles, visit http://www.TeachHUB.com.

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