Whole Child Education

In the blogging era everyone can publish their ideas and opinions and grow quite a following doing so; the democratization of information in practice. This proliferating idea exchange is part and parcel of Thomas Friedman's flat earth analogy. Developing one's voice and being heard is a good thing. But it's not enough. If we carry the flat earth metaphor to its logical conclusion, opinions freely rolling across a flattened sphere clatter, collide, and ultimately roll right off the edge. (I just had a flashback to playing Crossfire circa 1970.) Why settle for a random collision of opinions deciding which ideas carry the day? Not all opinions are equal. They need to be vetted for merit.

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Delve into summer learning with tips and strategies from a few of your favorite ASCD authors. The first session in the ASCD Summer Boot Camp Webinar Series kicks off Thursday, July 18, at 3 p.m. eastern time and presents a strategic approach to direct vocabulary instruction that helps students master key concepts and retain new terms. Other topics include teacher-led walk-throughs, curriculum, and motivation and engagement from a developmental science perspective.

Learn more about each session and register today!

• "Vocabulary's CODE: A Core Six Strategy for Mastering Academic Concepts and Terms" with Harvey Silver on July 18
• "Walk-Throughs for Teachers Observing Peers" with Donald Kachur on July 30
• "Upgrade Your Curriculum" with Mike Fisher and Janet Hale on August 7
• "Children Are Born to Learn: Motivation and Engagement from a Developmental Science Perspective" with Wendy Ostroff on August 13

We baby boomers grew up in an age of finite pie. There was only one pie and it could be divided into only so many slices. Even our pie graphs represent the totality of the resources we have to work with. There's only so much pie to go around. And the implications play out in how we think, act and define success. If you only have one finite pie, what flavor is it? How many people can it serve? How small can you make the slices? What does it mean if you simply don’t have enough?

All of this is a legacy of the Industrial Age, which was based on the availability of natural resources to feed growth. Empires were built by gaining access to raw materials that could fuel their economic engines. You could not sustain industrial success on finite resources, so you kept expanding the size of your pie. Of course, this works well as long as there are new lands to acquire and new resources to consume. But in the physical world, there are always limits. Be it foreign lands or fossil fuels, everything runs out eventually.

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Repeated refrains of the 2013 ASCD Whole Child Virtual Conference, held just two weeks ago, were the importance to form relationships with students, develop a personalized approach to teaching, and enhance learning. These concepts are all around us in education today:

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We're in the midst of an education paradigm shift. Are you on board? How do you know? More importantly, do you know what's driving it? Knowledge? Technology? The institution itself? We may have as many different definitions of the paradigm as we do of the shift.

I would argue the true paradigm shift is the move of focus from an individual to a communal orientation to society; a global view. This is a challenge in a culture where rugged individualism is a virtue. Our lore and legend are full of examples of strong individuals standing staunchly against adversity: Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Superman, Rambo. Then again, our historical heroes are also larger than life: Washington, Lincoln, Patton, MacArthur. They are revered for altering history against all odds. So how did this become our defining ideal, when the earliest settlers focused on the virtue of community? From colonizing in the new world to finding salvation in the afterworld, everything was achieved through communal life. How did we get from The Pilgrim's Progress to Walking Tall? It feels like a shift in paradigm and a paradox; a paradigm-a-dox.

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The hallmark of this brave new Information Age is the interconnectedness of everything: ideas, information, and people. Relationships are key. It's no longer what you know or how much you know, it's who you know and how to connect with them. Interactions are more immediate, fluid, and dynamic.

On an individual basis, it is happening as I write. But what about on an institutional scale? Don't we eventually have to affect change in our public institutions so that they will morph from their successful Industrial Age mind-set to this new way of living and working? This is the biggest challenge of making the shift: finding institutional incentive for becoming more interconnected, agile, and responsive.

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We invite you to participate in ASCD's third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference. Entitled "Moving from Implementation to Sustainability to Culture," sessions will offer educators around the globe leadership discussions and strategies to support their work to implement and sustain a whole child approach to education.

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We invite you to participate in ASCD's third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference. Entitled "Moving from Implementation to Sustainability to Culture," sessions will offer educators around the globe leadership discussions and strategies to support their work to implement and sustain a whole child approach to education.

Read more »

ASCD's third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference is a free, online event that provides a forum and tools for schools and districts working toward sustainability and changing school cultures to serve the whole child. Built on the theme, "Moving from Implementation to Sustainability to Culture," the conference will be held May 6–10, with international pre-conference sessions held on Friday, May 3, for Australasian and European audiences. The conference features presentations from renowned speakers, educators, authors, and education experts who have successfully implemented a whole child approach in schools around the world, including ASCD Vision in Action award-winning schools and Whole Child Network schools.

Below, we hear from Finnish educator, ASCD Board member, and Whole Child Virtual Conference presenter Pasi Sahlberg, whose session, "The Finnish Experience and the Whole Child," will be held Wednesday, May 8, 10:00–11:00 a.m. eastern time.

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As we've said many times across this blog and in our newsletters and podcasts, we believe that a whole child approach to education is the only approach that prepares young people for long-term educational, civic, and work-life success. We believe that most educators know that to be true, but sometimes act in ways quite contrary to their beliefs. We believe a whole child approach is a relatively simple concept that is quite complex to put in place.

For those reasons and more, we invite you to participate in ASCD's third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference. Entitled "Moving from Implementation to Sustainability to Culture," sessions will offer educators around the globe leadership discussions and strategies to support their work to implement and sustain a whole child approach to education.

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