Thursday, July 31, 2008

Journal 3 Summer Leadership Institute


"Restructuring for caring and effective education: The possible futures of education”

Richard A. Villa (President, Bayridge Consortium Inc., San Diego)

This was a very interesting speech for future educators. The speaker Richard A. Villa was full of energy and excitement. He kept his audience engaged and interested on what he had to say. The main thesis of his speech was where is the future of education going? He made sure that the point that he wanted to make across to us was that we must strive for both equality and excellence or "equalence". By combining generosity, belonging, mastery and independence you create the circle of courage. By continuing this legacy of the circle of courage we can achieve "equalence" He then asked for volunteers to take part in a game of musical chairs. He made the point that in a regular game of musical chairs someone is always left out. He had other different games to include everyone and no one was left out. He concluded that by not letting anybody get left out everyone was happy but it would get boring after a while.

How does the musical chair relate to education? Students who have a learning disability are left out of the mainstream class. But if they were all inclusive it can build equalence.

So whose school is it anyways? I believe that we all get so caught up on what requirements we need to fulfill our goals but what we seem to forget is the children are the ones who are in school, so it is important to also listen to what are kids are telling us.

No comments: