Course: HTH 205 – Equity, Diversity, and Design

In the first half of this paper I will outline my own context, and give a specific history regarding my own interest in blended/online learning environments. This history will serve to outline the online learning projects that I have worked on and the pedagogical construction that was used to guide those endeavors. In the second half of this paper I will outline my own proposal for an equity driven blended learning school (combined online & face-to-face school). I will outline problems within the existing paradigms of blended/online education, specifically in regards to equitable outcomes. I will argue that a blended learning environment can only be successful if its pedagogical construction is centered on student voice, cultural relevancy, personalization, and equitable access to resources. Furthermore, I will argue that current face-to-face educational models fail to be adequately centered within these goals due to outdated design constraints that prevent the inclusion of 21st century cultural needs. Continue…

This is a personal learning plan for Patrick Yurick as a part of his High Tech High Graduate School of Education School Leadership residency requirements. 

What are your hopes and dreams for your learning through this program? How do you hope to grow as an educator and leader?

– Project Based Learning Blended School System Design
Since I began my career in education I’ve been interested in experimenting with ways of integrating technology into the teaching experience that serve to enhance the way students interact with the world around them. I’m motivated to do this because I’m a tech geek but also, more importantly, I’m interested in helping bring down the costs of high quality education (like HTH’s equity-based PBL) so that it can easily, and affordably, reach people who need it the most.

– Leadership Through The Lens Of Art Education
I’ve been an artist my entire life. Art is the most healing and centering part of who I am. I’m specifically interested in integrating art education into my practice so that I can help people practice the use art for healing and self-expression.

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This article was featured in Unboxed as well as Edweek

Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students. Not in two years, not in six months, not next week. Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students today. Right now. This very moment. We need to structure environments where students are deeply engaged in their lives as they are living them.

I know this is true because during the last days of the 2010/11 school year, the worst fear of every teacher was realized for me. My student was murdered. Sean (15), and his younger brother Kyle (13) tragically died in a murder/suicide, killed by their own father. Sean was my favorite that year. In fact, Sean was my favorite student of all time. He was the kid I wished I could have been at fifteen. He swaggered into school with confidence, intelligence, and a never-ending stream of comic book superhero references. Sean and I became close immediately. This closeness in our relationship only increased as we spent many hours together in my after-school Graphic Novel Project, touring statewide on the weekends, selling comics at conventions.

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Here is a story. I am imagining a boy or a young man – maybe a youthful scientist/isaac newton type. You know the kind. A dreamer. Twenty years old or so. He is staring up at the sky and he is wondering about the universe. He is thinking, “Where do we come from?”, “Why am I here?”, etc. And then all of the sudden: BOOM!

He has an idea.

He runs into his house and he writes the idea down frantically. He is completely inspired and he sees connections to things in his life that he never thought were possible. His life’s purpose, now, is to get this idea – the most important idea of his life – out of his head and onto a piece of paper. It is so immense, however, that he is only able to get a sliver of the idea down. It’ll have to do for now though because he needs a record of it. After all, this is the just the beginning. He will be working to realize this idea for the rest of his life.

And ten years pass.

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and without her influence I would not be the artist and educator I am today. When the idea of teaching elementary came I knew just who to call. Several of hours and notes later I had a better idea of what to expect, as well as a reminder of what I already knew. Then I hit the books, specifically the quintessential text for early childhood education: “Creative And Mental Growth” by Viktor Lowenfeld (1964) – which, amazingly, is available free, online, and in  multiple formats care of the Internet Archive.

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After re-reading a bit of Viktor Lowenfeld’s “Creative & Mental Growth” recently I have found myself more interested in elementary education than ever before. The process of nurturing the human mind towards understanding the world at the foundational level of childhood is fascinating.

“No attempt should be made to censor the child’s creative expression, but rather we should try to stimulate the greatest variety of responses.”

Lowenfeld, 1947, p. 124

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“He walks with his students, never pushing and always present. The enormous hulking blob that drips ideas onto the sidewalk as his steps echo through the quaint town called enlightenment. As he drips his ideas, he absorbs new ones. Adding the new to his already growing form is never far from his mind, and he knows that no matter how much he adds – he can always add more.”

I wrote this as the introduction to my philosophy of education  statement for my graduate work at Plymouth State University in the spring of 2008. This vision, this goal, of how I wish to see myself as an educator hasn’t changed all that much in the subsequent years. I still am a lifelong learner with an itch to teach everyone as I meander through life.

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“Just because something is impossible does not mean it is not worth doing.”

 – Derrick Bell (1994)

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