Essential Question: What Are the Views of Education in My Family?

Essential Question:What are the views of education in my family?

Assessment: Students discuss with a family elder what they perceive to be the views of the family on education and write a reflection about the experience.

Common Core W10: Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Procedures:

1. Every family has different dynamics. It is important to respect those and perhaps not all students can do this assignment the way it was written. For some-they might need to work with a teacher or counselor on this or a family elder that is not in the immediate family but if possible, it is best achieved with a direct family member.
2. Explain to students that this assignment will be completed outside of class and that only you, the teacher, will read their personal reflection.
3. Start by discussing the following list created by Dennis Littky and Samantha Grabelle cut and pasted from the following website:

When I watch kids walk into the building on their first day of school, I think about what I want them to be like when they walk out on their last day. I also think about what I want them to be like on the day I bump into them in the supermarket 10 or 20 years later. Over the course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have decided that I want them to

• be lifelong learners
• be passionate
• be ready to take risks
• be able to problem-solve and think critically
• be able to look at things differently
• be able to work independently and with others
• be creative
• care and want to give back to their community
• persevere
• have integrity and self-respect
• have moral courage
• be able to use the world around them well
• speak well, write well, read well, and work well with numbers
• truly enjoy their life and their work.

1. Ask students if they would add or delete anything from this list. Discuss.
2. Brainstorm ideas about education as in “What is education?” and “Why is education important?” and finally, “Where do we get our education?” (The reason for some of these questions is to get students to understand that their important education does not only happen in the classroom).
3. How are these questions about education related to the modified brainstorm list in #4.
4. Using this discussion, have students write questions to ask a family elder. Have them differentiate from high priority questions to low priority questions in case they do not have enough time to ask them.
5. Give students a few days to complete this assignment so they can schedule time with their family elder.
6. Upon completion of the question, have students journal about their experiences and their thoughts about the educational views of their family.

*In a different lesson, students and teachers will discuss how to negotiate these expectations if they differ greatly from each other.