User:Fasten/school/ideas

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Contents 1 Abstract 2 Overview 3 Assistant teachers 3.1 Frontal instruction 3.2 Group work 3.3 Theory formation 3.4 Qualification 3.4.1 Qualifying project 3.4.2 Theater as qualification 3.4.3 Voluntary work 3.4.4 Reverse test 3.5 Removing pupils from class 3.6 Grading conference 3.7 Dynamic assignment according to understanding 3.8 Psychological effect: guidance to provoke exclusive attention 4 Tutoring 4.1 Categorical imperative and gift economy 4.2 Similarities and dissimilarities 4.3 Rationale 4.3.1 Private coaching lessons 4.3.2 Waldorf education 4.3.3 Threepart German school system 5 Mentoring 5.1 Teaching empathy, altruistic goals and the categorical imperative 5.2 Training for mentorship 5.2.1 Protégés' problems 5.2.2 Mentor-protégé relationship 5.3 Pen pal mentorship 5.4 More ideas on mentoring 6 Year fourteen 6.1 Parents' societies 6.1.1 Pupils' coop 6.2 Foreign language assistants 6.3 Postponing year fourteen 6.3.1 Higher education preparatory year 7 Parent education program 7.1 Continual parent education 8 Flexible tracking 8.1 Reassignment of the least proficient pupils 9 Socialization 10 Designed community 10.1 Student houses 10.2 Mentoring organizations 10.2.1 Adult mentors 10.2.1.1 Young adult mentors 11 Social internship 12 Kindergarten internship 13 Active vs. passive theory of mind 14 Primary education 15 Independent study 15.1 Individual curriculum 15.2 Solitary learning 15.3 Learning group 15.4 Independent study course 15.5 Regular course 15.6 Independent study and learning goals 15.7 Preparation and scheduling 15.8 Maintaining order 15.9 Expected effects 16 Democracy 16.1 Timetable 16.2 Coaching lessons for teachers 16.3 More ideas on school democracy 17 School marks for social behavior 18 Dead end situations or undesirable situations 18.1 Undesirable situations for groups and for individuals 19 Adult education 19.1 Community building 19.2 Pupils preparing courses for adults 19.3 Adults preparing courses for pupils 19.4 Using a sectoral currency 19.5 Replacing a sectoral currency with a gift economy 20 Vocational education 20.1 Team leader qualification 21 Higher education 21.1 Mandatory mentoring for college students 22 School TV 23 School uniforms 24 Problems 24.1 Solitary learning in grade nine 24.2 Chicken egg problem 24.3 Lack of self-motivation in early and in later grades 24.4 Abolishing home work 24.5 Independent learning 24.6 Peer Tutoring 24.7 Assignment of assistant teachers 24.8 P-day is too short 24.9 Dependence on tutors and mentors 24.10 Is a wiki adequate for social learning? 24.11 Can tutors and mentors act sufficiently responsible and adult to meet the expectations? 24.11.1 Can a process designed by pupils keep unqualified tutors and mentors out of office? 24.12 Are school grades too important? 25 Comments 25.1 Integrierte Gesamtschule 25.2 Realschulklasse 25.2.1 Realschule 26 See also

[edit] Abstract

Formal education tends to lack formal structures that promote socialization, social learning and community building. The following text offers some ideas that may describe such formal structures. A central idea, inspired by the Saber sectoral currency, peer tutoring at universities and the Learning by teaching method, is to allow pupils to assume responsible roles as pedagogues and to verify the pupils' success to live up to the demands of their roles as a part of their formal education. The role of a pedagogue is expected to be beneficial for pupils to develop an extensive theory of mind and adequate social goals towards their protégés. With the proliferation of all-day schools, which is a current issue in Germany, guided socialization in schools may become even more important than it has previously been.

Putting about thirty pupils in a class room with a single teacher is considered an excessive amount of poor role models and a single role model that is too different to be easily accessible and doesn't have to be understood because pupils are not expected to immitate relevant parts of the behavior of teachers.

[edit] Overview

Variable entry phases from grade eight to grade eleven can create a continual challenge for pupils to rise to the next level at their own pace. The pupils can receive additional motivation from wanting to follow the role model of their own assistant teachers, tutors and mentors; they can receive motivation from wanting to follow their own peers, who have already made a step to the next level, and they are motivated to adopt an adult attitude because their own pupils are significantly younger at first and are usually not perceived as adequate peers, which aids in making the class teacher the most relevant role model. The status of a pupil as assistant teacher, tutor or mentor can also determine a social rank among pupils and, to a degree, replace less desirable ranking schemes the pupils may adopt consciously or unconsciously; the perceived social rank can further influence the selection of desirable goals within the school community over goals derived from arbitrary role models.

According to a German study ^[wikinews] pupils' enthusiasm for school may decrease towards the eighth grade. A responsible role can aid to complement enjoyment with a purpose, which is a further argument for motivating pupils to become assistant teachers in the eighth grade.

[edit] Assistant teachers

Assistant teachers could be older pupils who are at least three years older than their own pupils. ^[2] The Unterstufe could receive assistant teachers without offering any and the Oberstufe could offer assistant teachers without receiving any. Under the assumption that an average class has about as many pupils as lessons per week every assistant teacher would have to be present in about as many lessons of lesser grades as a single lesson required assistant teachers on average. If a lesson required four assistant teachers every teacher would have about eight pupils to observe and would miss four hours in his or her own class per week, if no free hours could be used for the purpose. Free hours are not uncommon in the sixth form grades and could be planned for.

Assistant teachers would potentially be very strongly motivated as the role itself could be seen as a responsibility and privilege and could bring further privileges. The younger pupils would mostly be perceived as too young to be acceptable as peers so the assistant teachers would also be psychologically motivated to act as adults. On the other hand a failure to take the role seriously would lead to loss of privileges, as, for example, the permission to study independently outside class, and a permanent failure to reach and maintain this status could block a pupil from reaching the sixth form grades. This also assumes that a pupil who is unable to act as a teacher for pupils at least three years younger because he or she does not understand the school subject sufficiently has a serious educational problem that needs to be addressed urgently and may be a reason to go back one or two grades or switch to a less challenging class or even school.

The presence of one to four assistant teachers in a lesson would allow the teacher of the lesson to delegate all tasks that do not require a professional pedagogue or an expert on the topic of the lesson. If the assistant teachers received their material one week prior to a lesson a teacher could easily delegate lecturing and guided group work to the assistant teachers. The teacher would then be free to address problems that were beyond the skills of the assistant teachers and also to evaluate the work of the assistant teachers. The work of an assistant teacher could also include verifying home work before, during and after a lesson.

Assistant teachers could also occasionally break rules or make their own rules until a grade parliament came into existance to enact binding rules. Some assistant teachers could, for example, demand to collect home work one day before the official deadline in order to prevent transcriptions, which would not be covered by any official rule and would be rejected but tolerated by some teachers. This state of affairs would be a never-ending source of irritation. Once the grade parliament was formed the pupils might discover that they could abolish home work entirely or demand that example solutions be released. This would very likely lead to an agreement where pupils were in the situation that they were themselves the sovereign who demanded home work because the pupils in favour of home work would probably, after sufficient debate, recognize a responsibility to demand home work from the pupils who would make home work entirely voluntary. Intermediate solutions could include official restrictions on the amount of home work and making some types of home work voluntary for pupils with sufficient school marks in a given subject. Official restrictions could, for example, require teachers to give time constraints, which could be verified by tutors, or allow the class representatives to reject or postpone home work on the basis that other home work already made use of the available time.

A precondition for admission as an assistant teacher could be sufficient marks in pedagogics; sufficient could mean above average (e.g. between 1+ and 2-), possibly extended to reach a quotation of half the pupils. This would connect marks in pedagogics with a privilege and would reward the pupils with the foresight to satisfy the requirements. At the same time the first semester of pedagogics wouldn't present intellectual challenges or dependencies on earlier topics like some other subjects and so no determined pupil would be excluded right from the start from meeting the preconditions for admission.

To be able to qualify already with the beginning of the eighth grade pupils would have to have the subject pedagogics already in the seventh grade. The unusual limitation in school marks could be justified because a pupil who would not qualify would not suffer any immediate disadvantage as, for example, repetition of a grade and the teachers would have a justifiable moral obligation to prevent unqualified pupils from being negative role models to fifth graders. The current state of affairs in Germany seems to be that pedagogics is more usually introduced at grade eleven and is not mandatory, neither for a pupil nor for a school. To maximize the benefit the assistant teachers for pedagogics in grade seven could be themselves from grade thirteen, so that they would have had the chance to gain the most experience in pedagogics the system could offer.

The role of an assistant teacher would be a well-founded opportunity to demand discipline. A pupil who knows that his or her teachers, while meaning well, have a moral obligation to deny him or her the role of an assistant teacher while he or she is not acting the part may be much more motivated not to blunder during those few hours per week.

[edit] Frontal instruction

During traditional class instruction (frontal instruction) assistant teachers could quietly verify homework and especially engage inattentive pupils quietly in discussions about their homework or the topic of the lesson. An assistant teacher could also hold parts of a lecture, while the teacher could temporarily supervise the assistant teacher's assigned group while also evaluating the didactics and presentation style of the assistant teacher.

[edit] Group work

Group work could be guided by assistant teachers, so that every assistant teacher would guide his or her assigned group. Groups could engage in their own muted discussions, contribute to their own lecture notes on their own black boards, provided a sufficient number of black boards were available, or work in pairs or triads under the supervision of one assistant teacher for no more than three to four pairs or two to three triads. In all scenarios the interactivity, as perceived by the individual pupil, would be greatly increased and the teacher would be free to monitor progress and address individual problems. The rationale for increasing interactivity is that pupils in a class are kept in a situation that quite often demands interactivity, which is then insufficiently provided by a single supervisor.

[edit] Theory formation

Assistant teachers could pretend to hold different opinions about contradictory theories and present their contradicting views to the class with the teacher acting as a moderator, if required. The pupils could then be required to reveal the prearranged mistakes in each theory, which might in the end reveal that only one theory was right or that all theories were wrong in some way and that the truth was a combination of the theories which had been left out intentionally. Assistant teachers with some experience in a school theater could aim to present correct views in particulary unbelievable ways occasionally, but then use the same presentation style to discredit actually nonsensical views as well. This would, incidentally, confirm Enja Riegel's interesting hypothesis that "Who plays a lot of theater gets better in mathematics", a hypothesis that may be difficult to support otherwise. Assistant teachers could also reveal flaws in each other's theories with casual remarks, without drawing explicit attention to them.

The assistant teachers could also try to present theories from the view of their inventors or events from the view of well-known historic persons, possibly impersonating a historic figure on occasion. The more work the assistant teachers would have had to prepare a lesson and the more they were attached to their work the more they might be inclined to help the audience to appreciate their work and to make the audience understand that inappropriate interruptions were also impolite towards the assistant teachers.

Assistant teachers who have spend some time to prepare a lesson and done creative group work to arrange inconsistent theories are also more likely to enjoy discussing their work with their audience afterwards, which might further promote socializing and teaching between different grades.

Creative group work with intellectual challenges is also widely considered quite good entertainment.

[edit] Qualification

One possible measure for the qualification of an assistant teacher could be his or her ability to focus on the given task as a teacher in an unfocused (peer) group. A common problem for children is that they can become distracted if they are surrounded by other children who are bad role models. An intentional test could be to offer a pupil the chance to hold a lesson without assistant teachers in his or her own class or for another class when that class was not expected to be most attentive. This could, for example, be a sixth or seventh lesson on a day. A teacher could attend the lesson but refrain from intervening unless the candidate had clearly lost control or had allowed him - or herself to be side-tracked.

A possible variant would be to turn qualification into a game and instruct a class to appear unfocused but within predetermined rules. In that case the class would begin to monitor its own behavior in order to abide by the rules, which might also be a training for self-restraint. The goal of the class could be to make the candidate of a competing class fail in order to be the first class to reach a minimum of qualified assistant teachers. As there would be absolutely no point to winning the competition clever pupils probably wouldn't see a reason to strain too much in order to stop a candidate from another class. Assistant teachers could attend the event to monitor adherence to rules but without intervening. The rules of the game could demand adherance to collective limitations, so that pupils would have to pay attention to their own and to the strategies used by others. Certain, limited behaviors could be allowed only after the candidate had failed to call to order pupils of the class in less distractive behaviors. Concerted actions could follow a pre-arranged plan about timing and signals the class could have developed together with the class teacher in advance.

The psychological effect of a teacher teaming up with a class to organize distractions for a pupil in the role of a teacher may be beneficial for the teacher to understand the pupils better, especially the pupils who are better at disturbing a class, and for some of the pupils to accept the teacher as a member of their social group.

[edit] Qualifying project

Candidates could also be required or be allowed to work on a self-motivated project as a part of their qualification. That could, for example, encompass beginning to learn the native language of a country that could be a sensible destination for a voluntary educational year.

[edit] Theater as qualification

Playing theater could also be a voluntary or mandatory part of qualification. Pupils who play in a school theater might be better prepared to talk in front of a larger crowd and keep their intended appearance in mind. It may be logically more challenging to disguise correct theories with apparent factual errors, like exchanging the well-known names with counterintuitive definitions in the correct theory while using the well-known definitions in a faulty theory, but the social component of stage-managing a discussion between assistant teachers may make it worthwhile for assistant teachers and listeners.

[edit] Voluntary work

Another indicator for the qualification of an assistant teacher could be entirely voluntary work. The pupils could, for example, contribute to a wiki-based encyclopedia for their grade. The contributions could be entirely voluntary and the suggested amount of contributions could be one peer week, or "whenever you encounter something that seems worthwhile to document". This could, of course, also include book reports, game reviews and movie reviews. With such a "grade encyclopedia" teachers and mentors could assess the interests, degree of knowledge and ability to read up on a topic of individual pupils and the whole grade. Since the project was entirely voluntary and would not receive grading it would be an unintrusive way to monitor the actual interests of the pupils, free from curricular necessities. The wiki could also be used to compile a literature list of literature the pupils had read and that was therefore ready to be treated in class. The grades of Unterstufe, Mittelstufe and Oberstufe could compete respectively among each other for the "article(s) of the week", similar to Wikipedia's featured articles. A wiki could also be used to allow convenient communication with partner schools in the same district and twin schools in other countries, which might, for example, help to coordinate independent study between different schools. Deciding on the rules for a grade wiki, starting with no rules at all, could be a part of the democratic education of a grade.

See also: School district wiki

[edit] Reverse test

Pupils could also receive an opportunity to test their assistant teachers. This could be a lesson where pupils could judge the proficiency of their assistant teachers under the guidance of the subject teacher with questions arranged by the pupils. One beneficial effect of such a test is that assistant teachers would receive an additional motivation to have firm knowledge in the knowledge areas they were going to teach. Another beneficial effect is that pupils would have a reason to explore upcoming topics in order to be able to test specific knowledge of their assistant teachers.

Assistant teachers who failed the test could be ordered to participate in coaching lessons for teachers and could otherwise loose their assignment. Coaching lessons for assistant teachers could be organized by the grade of the pupils and tutors from grades above the assistant teachers.

[edit] Removing pupils from class

Trouble makers could be removed from a class much more conveniently with the help of assistant teachers because the teacher could just order an assistant teacher to take a pupil either to a private coaching lesson outside the class, to join a sports lesson or to play soccer with other pupils and assistant teachers. Ball games could also be used to train discipline in a group and the categorical imperative, if a sufficient number of assistant teachers were available and trained in how to do that. Removing trouble makers makes the remaining class less hyperactive and raises the respect for the teacher, because he or she can throw people out of class. The teachers I remember were reluctant to do so because there wasn't really any place where they could send a pupil without neglecting their duty of supervision. I would assume this to be a typical problem of the Mittelstufe.

Trouble makers could also be required to reapply to their class, or another class of the same or lower grade, to be admitted again. A class could reject or admit a trouble maker with a democratic vote. Discussions about such a vote could also be very educational. A trouble maker rejected by one or all classes could have some very educational discussions with teachers and parents trying to help him or her to reapply, but who, unfortunately, could not overrule the rejecting classes.

Since assistant teachers would focus on the potential trouble makers in their assigned group anyway the need to remove a pupil from class would probably be significantly reduced but it could still be a sensible move sometimes to remove a pupil from class, even in the interest of the pupil who may be given a private lesson in another room. The primary goal here remains that, counterintuitively, the good pupils are removed from class, not the bad ones.

[edit] Grading conference

Holding grading conferences with the assistant teachers who attended to a group of pupils could help the assistant teachers to see their role as assistant teachers more as an actually fully responsible office with all the duties and obligations of a school teacher. Not the grading conference itself but the work leading up to a grading conference and the continual acceptance of responsibility would constitute the beneficial effect for the assistant teacher.

[edit] Dynamic assignment according to understanding

One way to take flexible assignment to achievement oriented classes yet a step further is to sort pupils within a class according to understanding into groups that may persist for several consecutive lessons. The assistant teachers could verbally test their assigned pupils, form an opinion about their understanding of a current topic and sort them into foster groups and advanced groups. A class could then split into A and F groups (only vaguely related to the school marks A and F). The majority or all of the available assistant teachers could then support the F groups while the teacher or a head tutor could guide the A groups to explore advanced topics. This could also be used to give assistant teachers some authority and, consequently, could encourage the pupils to show a certain respect for the assistant teachers. It obviously cannot be expected that young pupils show sufficient respect out of understanding and appreciation, at least not reliably. This could motivate pupils to prepare topics sufficiently to be allowed to join the advanced groups.

[edit] Psychological effect: guidance to provoke exclusive attention

A possible psychological effect is that a pupil could view the exclusive attention of an assistant teacher (given to an especially bothersome pupil) as a desirable situation, even when sent to the back of the room for separation. This way a pupil would be guided to provoke the exclusive attention of an assistant teacher. A pupil showing this behavior could be discouraged with the warning that his behavior might lead to reassignment to a different class and that he might have to leave the class temporary (with an assistant teacher), which could be an undesirable escalation of the desirable situation.

[edit] Tutoring

A tutor could, unlike an assistant teacher, be a peer tutor. ^[3] Formalized tutorship could require tutors to hold lectures for pupils from their own grade or any grade below their own grade and require a certain amount of work in coaching lessons for a limited group of pupils, so that a tutor could be expected to be an expert on the individual standard of knowledge of his or her assigned pupils in a given subject.

Having been an assistant teacher could be a precondition for tutorship and tutorship could be a precondition for mentorship. Tutorship assignments could be given from the ninth grade on at the earliest and until the final exams. A voluntary educational year could require previous tutorships as a qualification.

A currency like the Saber could also be used for tutors. The currency is a tool to motivate pupils to educate each other. Pupils who have qualified to educate themselves still need teachers or help occasionally. Pupils could buy lessons from pupils of higher grades or from teachers. By buying a lesson with a currency nobody could provide for them pupils would have a constant reminder of the value of their education. A computer based currency would also allow teachers to monitor closely how active a pupil participated in the system. The currency could also encourage fairness by not being transferrable and by being time based. Fairness might need to be enforced in the assignment of very popular teachers and tutors. While the currency could encourage pupils to teach each other the ultimate goal could be to replace it with a gift economy.

[edit] Categorical imperative and gift economy

A gift economy is something the pupils could establish against the pre-arranged currency system, if they would choose to. The problem of motivating their peers to participate could be left entirely to the interested groups, teachers could claim to prefer the currency system, which is indeed easier to monitor and manage.

If you taught for free you could later be eligible to get admission to exams or a necessary additional qualification for free, which would encourage the pupils to follow the reasoning of the categorical imperative.

That would, of course, require that the teachers were able to track the teaching behaviour of individual pupils and groups reliably and make an informed, collective decision about who was eligible and who was not. A group of especially good pupils who established a closed gift economy but refused to teach less good pupils would not be eligible because the teachers could refuse by reason of not wanting to teach or test much less educated persons. A deliberate test would be to, openly or secretly, redirect bad pupils to such groups on an irregular basis and to verify the result. Teachers might want to reproduce close approximations of the responses these test persons received, on occasion. Marks for social behavior could also be used openly to emulate behavior of pupils on some occasions. A teacher could, for example, refuse voluntary cooperation with a pupil who had bad marks in teamwork: "Look, you've got a four in teamwork, why should I discuss your proposal for a qualifying project with you when I don't have to?" The pupil would be encouraged to work on his own social behavior in order to improve the response of the teacher.

A problem with this approach is that it could be mistaken for revenge and it could degenerate into revenge, which are both detrimental situations. To avoid perceived or actual revenge scenarios the teachers could restrict their emulation to positive behavior or lack of positive behavior as unresponsiveness but never emulate negative behavior. Emulation could also be restricted to situations where the pupils were known to have a strong interest in the outcome and therefore could be assumed to analyze the situation and learn from it.

[edit] Similarities and dissimilarities

Tutorship would be similar to tutorship at universities in that a tutor would be a peer tutor but it would be different in aim and purpose in that the tutor would be guided to be a pedagogue and would be part of a smaller and more meaningful community. An important part of tutorship could be that the tutor's work would be evaluated and monitored with respect to pedagogical goals by experienced pedagogues.

Tutorship would be quite different from the monitorial system of the Bell-Lancaster method in that the tutors would be following modern pedagogical goals and education methods and not try to implement an efficient system for rote learning. An important goal would be for the tutor to acquire the necessary social competence to be a good pedagogue him - or herself.

[edit] Rationale

[edit] Private coaching lessons

Entirely voluntary private coaching lessons without a formal approach or encouragement may be a less plausible variant of formalized tutorship because pupils are not in any way encouraged to participate, meaning a pupil deciding to offer private coaching lessons already has the attitude tutorship could help to establish and may not need the accompanying socialization effect. Leaving it to pupils to make that decision entirely out of their own accord probably means that the potentially beneficial effect on the side of the tutor is almost entirely wasted by being channeled towards pupils who do not need it. This is not meant to discredit voluntary coaching lessons but avoiding any mandatory, formal approach to tutorship may be confusing a means of socialization with a means to measure socialization: The pupil who offers coaching lessons has shown measurable social behavior but the pupils who did not participate were not offered a valuable means of socialization. Trivially, the means of socialization should have precedence over the measurement during secondary education.

[edit] Waldorf education

Waldorf Education seems, implicitly, to make the statement: "We believe in being nice, offering all pupils equally good chances and supporting the weaker pupils. If that's a priority for you you are welcome. We also believe in Anthroposophy, so if you cannot recognize that for what it is and the first goal doesn't have precedence for you then please go somewhere else." That seems to be, while it may be collectively intelligent for the participants, also a weak form of elitism: Assume you have a city with four schools, one is a Waldorf school and the others are standard schools. If the city has, perchance, about 25% of citizens with a preference for Waldorf education you get three schools that are drained of people with a specific, possibly beneficial, attitude. This is an overstatement but it describes an effect that follows a conservation law: Trivially you cannot collect people with a certain attitude in one place without draining people with this attitude in other places. As a consequence a Waldorf school might recognize a special obligation to offer tutors and mentors to other schools that might require them or to promote the formation of school district networks that allow the exchange of tutors and mentors. I'm not aware that this is the case but please correct me if I'm wrong.

A typical overstatement of the effect could be: If there is any conceivable conservation law at all, you might want to imagine its worst case effects and find the adequate countermeasures. In this case that would mean "Imagine that for every Waldorf school an anti-Waldorf school comes into existance".

[edit] Threepart German school system

The threepart German school system may carry a related problem: The right of better pupils to progress faster and to separate themselves from less good pupils in doing so can hardly be disputed; that can, however, be seen as to entail the obligation to counter the negative effects this has on the pupils who have been deprived of more intelligent peers. Consequently the implementation of the German school system could be seen as to require a tutoring and mentoring system as an implicit moral obligation.

A difficulty is that the whole problem class can hardly be seen as an obligation of the individual but must rather be seen as an obligation of the community. It could be seen as related to the problem class of avoiding distributed DOS attacks: The actions of individuals may be without major fault, seen individually, but the compound effect can still violate basic rights in spirit, if not in letter.

[edit] Mentoring

Pupils who are going to act as mentors to others could be required to acquire one or several extracurricular qualifications, e.g. participation in a parent education program, youth work, work as an activity leader, organization of holiday camps (Jugendleitercard) or similar qualifications. Additionally several previous tutorships and sufficient marks in pedagogy could be required. Last but not least the teachers (or school conference) could have a veto to reject pupils they did not consider qualified and to request additional qualifications, even if that might force a pupil to remain in school for an additional year. Mentors could be asked to write a job application and apply at the school and to the parents of their potential protégés. The extracurricular qualifications could be a test of self-motivation if the admission for mentoring required them but they were entirely voluntary until then. The completion of four (overlapping) mentorships during the sixth form grades (when students are about sixteen to nineteen years of age ^[4]) would be a further test of self-motivation.

With four mentorships with an average duration of one and a half years the pupils of lower grades could receive permanent coverage from their first semesters at a Gymnasium or for about half the time if two of four mentorships were given to pupils of school types lacking sixth form grades, ^[5] which could be left to the mentors or a school parliament to decide. Mentorships could be recommended to begin with the start of a semester and last for three semesters when begun in the grades eleven or twelve and last for two semesters only when begun with the first semester of grade thirteen. A mentor could begin a new mentorship every semester in the grades eleven and twelve and wouldn't have to use the short mentorship lasting only for grade thirteen; which could be used to compensate when one of the other mentorships was not approved.

The success of a mentorship would only be known reliably after three semesters, which would provide an additional motivation for the mentors not to take their office too lightly as more than one failed mentorship could endanger their admission to the final exams. A grade or school parliament could decide to encourage or enforce peer review of mentorships at the end of every semester or to form teams of mentors to encourage peer review within a team.

The purpose of mentorship could be regular meetings between mentor and protégé to verify progress and learning motivation and to give advice on school matters, extracurricular activities, recreational activities and general advice. The emphasis could be on understanding the pupil and his or her problems in school and in life, understanding his or her recreational activities and on furthering motivation in school, if necessary, but not on giving private lessons. The latter could be the task of a tutor, although a mentor could help out and give some private lessons where necessary. Mentorship could also involve irregular meetings with a protégé's parents and giving advice to teachers, when insights into a pupil's personal learning habits were required. A mentor could also be required to write a journal and/or report about his or her mentorship, at least where it concerns school matters.

The positive effects would be that the younger pupil would have a positive role model and, at the same time, a teenager who takes some responsibility for their personal education and motivation; as another teenager a mentor would have a different access to the protégé that may be unavailable to many adults. The mentor would be motivated to act responsibly and adopt positive social behaviour towards his or her protégé, which is a goal that is frequently missing from formal education today. The teacher would have another person that is sufficiently involved to be a personal expert on a specific pupil when questions about a pupil arise but is at the same time sufficiently detached to offer an objective opinion.

One possible goal of a mentor could be to help his or her protégé to understand his or her own higher level wishes, to understand his or her own motivations behind these wishes and to verify success in acting according to higher level wishes instead of action determining wishes, as defined by Harry Frankfurt. ^[6] In order not to let this degenerate quickly into the stereotypical phrase "you learn for life, not for school" or something similar it seems advisable to focus on anything else but school marks. It may be better to ask questions like: "What are your goals in school or in life?", "What do you want to learn?", "What do you need to learn to be able to do what you would like to do?", "What skills or insights do you lack?". A mentor should be able to provide guidance from his or her own very recent experiences and from recently learned knowledge in pedagogics.

Another goal a mentor might want to keep an eye on is that a pupil does everything he or she does with moderation. Telling a young pupil to do everything with moderation is often of little consequence, telling an older pupil to educate a younger pupil how to do that may be beneficial for both of them, even more so when the older pupil knows adults are monitoring his or her success and may expect reports.

Planning and organizing holiday activities for their protégés and peers of their protégés could be among the obligations of mentors. For that purpose mentors would have to form teams, distinct from the peer review teams and depending on the interests of their protégés, which would have to coordinate activities between schools of the same school district or even distant schools, if travelling to another school district was a possibility.

Enja Riegel suggests internships in kindergarten for pupils of grade seven in her book "Schule kann gelingen!", which may also be a good introduction for pupils towards becoming pedagogues and mentors. Pupils of grade eight may be preferable and the beginning of the Mittelstufe could at the same time be the earliest chance to become an assistant teacher, possibly with an internship in kindergarten as a precondition.

[edit] Teaching empathy, altruistic goals and the categorical imperative

The teaching of ethics is not where formal education is particularly lacking, at least where a subject ethics exists; formal education is weak in motivating pupils to understand empathy, altruistic goals and the categorical imperative from first-hand experience. Requiring pupils to take a long-term interest in the education of other pupils is probably a useful step to allow pupils to make the necessary experiences first-hand to understand the position of their teachers and to care for the development of younger pupils. Replacing a sectoral currency with a gift economy and school democracy that makes actually significant decisions can help pupils to understand collective intelligence and the categorical imperative from first-hand experience.

In a further step mentors could try to teach empathy, altruistic goals and the categorical imperative in an unintrusive way as part of their mentoring duties and responsibilities which could be part of a sensible role model for younger pupils who had not yet become assistant teachers and socially prepare them for their task as assistant teachers, tutors and mentors.

[edit] Training for mentorship

Mentors might require diplomatic skills when navigating between the interests of parents and the interests of pubescent teenagers. Experienced mentors could train beginners by stage-managing scenarios where the trainees would have to react to pre-arranged problems. To add realism and earnestness a course for mentors could include evening lessons with actual parents, who might also currently be looking for mentors for their own children. Participants in such a course could also receive joint grading from experienced mentors, qualified parents and teachers attending the course.

A scenario could consist of consecutive dialogs with different parents and different protégés and require mentors to maintain an attitude of friendship towards their protégés while informing and helping parents and teachers as far as adequate without violating the interests of their protégés. With three or four alternating mentorships in one scenario this could become a test for social intelligence, perceptiveness and memory of the trainees. The pre-arranged problems could simulate conflicts of interest between parents, teachers, tutors and protégés or typical and untypical problems of adolescents. The interesting issues could be hidden as subtle signs ^[7] among more urgent problems, like a teenager considering to take drugs or to run away. While a trainee was in a different dialog the actors of the previous dialog could decide on the reactions of their figures upon the actions of the trainee, possibly choosing from a multiple choice list of possible developments for each figure. To keep the trainees busy a course could also employ trainees as actors.

[edit] Protégés' problems

Protégés' problems are anti-patterns or misconduct a mentor may have to recognize and may have to find a way to circumvent. Taking an interest in the problems and potential problems of other teenagers may also help a mentor to recognize similar problems in his or her own social environment and to develop the self-motivation and skills to solve them.

[edit] Mentor-protégé relationship

In the ideal case the mentor-protégé relationship could appear like a friendship between an older pupil and a younger pupil where the older pupil takes some, mostly voluntary, responsibility for the well-being and upbringing of the younger pupil. This could easily be misunderstood as an employment where the older pupil becomes an entertainer for the younger pupil. To avoid this misconception it may be a good idea for the mentor to take an active role in offering leisure time activities depending on the interests of the younger pupil but not to cater too much to his or her detailed wishes.

As an example, a group of pupils on a school might like techno music and their mentors could decide to organize a techno party in the school to offer a leisure time activity that accommodated the pupils' interests. The mentors could then further decide to choose techno music they were willing to listen to themselves and to invite other pupils to the party in order to reduce potential segregation. The protégés would then be in a situation where they would have received significant support in organizing their desired leisure time activity but would still have to oppose their mentors or to negotiate to get some of their own preferred music played. The mentors would have investigated an area of interest they possibly didn't share before and would have joined in a leisure time activity of their protégés, which would be likely to increase the community spirit between mentors and protégés.

[edit] Pen pal mentorship

A possible, voluntary addition to mentoring could be a pen pal mentorship with a child in a developing country as the protégé. This could be accompanied by sponsoring the education of the protégé for several years and it could be precursory to a voluntary educational year in the same country. Christian communities could also treat this as a form of godparenthood, just to give it a well-known and established context.

See also: E-mentoring (Wikipedia)

[edit] More ideas on mentoring

See: User:Fasten/school/ideas/mentoring

[edit] Year fourteen

A voluntary educational year, similar to a voluntary social year, could be a nonobligatory fourteenth year of education and could be planned for during the sixth form grades or earlier. The idea would be to allow graduates who have been assistant teachers, tutors and mentors to visit countries of their choice that lack qualified teachers and apply their pedagogic skills in a local school as teachers, assistant teachers or tutors.

Preparing for a voluntary educational year could be a long-term project that could already be a qualifying project for an assistant teacher.

A voluntary educational year would, incidentally, be a variant of Zivildienst in a rural community ^[8], which is possible in Germany. Regions in developing countries in need of teachers would probably tend to be rural communities and they would probably need teachers more than agricultural workers. According to the GRUMP mapping project the population of urban areas appears to be about to exceed the population of rural areas. The quickly growing urban areas in developing countries may, of course, also be in need of teachers.

To give a project like that continuity and planning reliability a school might want to have a large but manageable number of twin schools as preferred destinations, which would also allow to arrange for sufficient accommodations at the twin schools. According to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007 Summary "good housing for teachers with running water and electricity is probably the most cost-effective way to attract and retain teachers in rural schools".

Funding members of the German Red Cross have a free worldwide home transport service in case of significant injuries, which may be a desirable insurance category when travelling to a developing country.

See also: School partnerships, Tropical diseases (Wikipedia category)

[edit] Parents' societies

Twin schools in rural areas or their parents' societies could receive donations in agricultural machinery (e.g. small tractors) they could rent to the parents of children attending the school so as to turn the school into an interesting community to be a member of for poor farmers, who might otherwise be more inclined not to send their children to a secondary school at all.

The schools could also receive support in training the children to use and maintain the agricultural machinery, which would evidently be useful skills in a rural area. This could also be used to encourage the formation of parents' societies and to encourage adult education. Participation in adult education could be a precondition for access to any agricultural machinery owned by a school or its parents' society.

A school or its parents' society could also use agricultural machinery to become, to a degree, self-sustaining or even profitable (as a cooperative) and pay school teachers and materials from the income.

Old combine harvesters are available at about 5.000 € and may also be usable in rice fields. Refurbishing a machine could be a school project for a task group of older pupils, at least in schools equipped with a workshop or with access to a workshop. Asia also has mini combine harvesters specifically for rice fields, which may be more appropriate for a school. Having several smaller machines would increase redundancy (reliability and availability) in an environment where repair could turn out to be a long-term project.

Biodiesel processors are available at around 1.300 €.^[9] (requiring a donation of 1,30 € per pupil in an average school with about thousand pupils) Biodiesel can, for example, be produced from the jatropha plant. ^[10] A parents' society of a school in a developed country could, for example, make moderate investments in plantations for twin schools in developing countries so as to promote the schools' autonomy. A precondition could be an established democratic process and acceptable bylaws of the schools and their parents' societies or a commitment to implement such. An important rule could be that membership in a parents' society is for life and cannot be withdrawn, unless abused or terminated by the member, so as to allow continual access to the machinery and facilities of a school. Solar cells could provide energy for a school building and are also in an affordable price range. In some countries solar power systems are available for rent.^[11] Solar cookers may also be interesting in some regions. Schools or parents' societies with a way to make some profit could also receive microcredits (or larger credits, where appropriate).

Machinery could generally be delivered by pupils prepared to stay for a year as a teacher at a twin school and prepared to educate people in the use of the machinery, the physical and chemical background of the machine's working principle and its dangers and waste products. Without such a teacher some machines might be plain useless or could fall into disuse after a short time, when the most basic maintenances and repairs were impossible. Pupils could train to educate others in the specific knowledge areas at their own schools already.

A model could be a cooperation between both schools' parents' societies where the parents from the developed country financed a guest house for the school in the developing country. The financing parents' society could retain ownership of the building and lease it to the school or the parents' society in the developing country.

See also: The ZDF makes a good case for guest houses with microwave ovens and washing machines ^{[ZDF.reportage]}(media)

[edit] Pupils' coop

Products made in the community of a twin school could be sold at increased fair trade prices by a pupils' coop. ^[12] To avoid organizing transport and import pupils could also buy goods already locally available and resell them at increased prices. The primary focus would be to engage the pupils in meaningful activity and to give them something useful to do which also had educational potential, as the easier method to transfer some funds to twin schools would obviously be donations or credits from one parents' society to the other without the detour through a pupils' coop. Pupils could design their own packaging with fair trade labelling and batch tracking numbers to allow precise verification of all goods resold at an increased price. Pupils could also spend some time and effort in verifying and documenting their own standards and the actual production standards of products bought locally. ^[13] Parents could offer to spend some additional money on products from a pupils' coop to motivate the effort. A school could host a fair trade market on the schoolyard once or twice a month during the summer semesters.

A pupils' coop could also refurbish computers for use in developing countries. ^[14] A good strategy may be to test components and to disassemble systems in developed countries and to deliver components in large quantities of identical components to developing countries. This would allow people to build the knowledge how to build PCs from components and how to repair them and it could allow a large number of small computer shops to come into existance in order to build PCs from used components. Pupils' coops could gather old machines, test machines, categorize components and send them to distributing organizations (this is not quite as interesting as refurbishing the machines but may be better for the recipients). Recipients could either be schools prepared to build their own machines or local computer shops affiliated with a distributing organization. The latter would allow the schools to buy their machines from local computer shops much like schools in developed countries do, but at very low prices.

See also: Reuse computers

[edit] Foreign language assistants

A school could invite and hire trainee teachers ^[15] from developing countries intending to become teachers at twin schools. The teachers could work as Foreign Language Assistants and teach interested pupils the native language of their countries.

At the same time a foreign language assistant could enroll as a pupil and become an assistant teacher, tutor and mentor.

A foreign language assistant could be invited to stay with varying families of pupils and save most of his or her salary to be able to stay with the twin school even when funding there might be insufficient. Payment of the salary for one year could be stretched over a period of several years and further visits as a foreign language assistant could be scheduled afterwards.

Inviting foreign language assistants to stay with families may seem like an inferior solution as, for example, compared to a guest house or similar arrangement; with respect to the mutual socializing and socialization effect it appears to be the far better solution.

A chance for early enrollment into such a program could provide an incentive for students to decide to become teachers.

See also: List of education articles by country (Wikipedia)

[edit] Postponing year fourteen

For college students (especially students studying to become teachers) it may be interesting to postpone a year fourteen until after a few years in college. It could be beneficial anyway to prepare for a year fourteen during several years in school already because that preparation could make a great difference (e.g. in local language skills).

[edit] Higher education preparatory year

An additional non-compulsory qualification for higher education, but unlike the Advanced Highers, may be a useful extension. A non-compulsory year could focus on the specific entry qualifications required by a university and could be flexible in adapting to the specific requirements of a chosen university. Neighboring schools could pool resources to offer their students exactly the courses they needed to reach their different entry qualifications. A non-compulsory year could also allow pupils from a Fachabiturklasse to regain their missing qualification of unrestricted admission to college. Such a non-compulsory qualification could be added before, after or instead of a voluntary educational year fourteen. If added before the voluntary educational year fourteen a student might want to begin college immediately afterwards and further postpone the voluntary educational year until after a few years in college, as mentioned above. Such a preparation may be beneficial for many students because, at least in Germany, there can be a significant gap between school education that grants access to higher education and the actual expectations of the universities. One effect would be that schools would receive feedback about the gap between their own accomplishments and the actual demands of higher education at specific universities if they might have to provide the missing education themselves. Today that communication channel seems to be restricted to curricula and the personal information needs of individual teachers. A pupil participating in a higher education preparatory year could be required to participate in the school community as a tutor and mentor, which could also contribute to the motivation of the pupil to maintain his or her own learning motivation through difficult topics. Psychologically this could be a welcome change that also required some discipline and self-motivation and could also provide a sense of achievement. Before deciding for or against a higher education preparatory year a pupil could contact the chosen university and request their official list of preconditions for a faculty or subject. At the beginning of a higher education preparatory year a student could visit the chosen university and collect example exercises, interview college students, attend some lectures and could try to get the literature list for the following year. Universities could also make their lectures for first semester students available online, so that pupils could attend a lecture form a PC in their school and read the lecture notes and the exercises online.

[edit] Parent education program

A situation where parents could both care for other people's children and learn applied pedagogy would be if parents were invited ahead of time to participate in the general education and upbringing of children of an age slightly above the age of their oldest child. ^[16] This could be organized at the school of their own children, a secondary school their children were likely to attend or, of course, any other school.

To further encourage motivation family allowances ^[17] could also be made dependent on participation in such a scheme, where this was adequate and possible. ^[18]

Fifteen schools in Berlin are going to offer voluntary courses based on STEP beginning in 2006 with support from the Regional Institute for School and Media of the federal state Brandenburg. One school has already implemented mandatory STEP courses for parents. ^[19]

A rationale why it seems a good choice for teachers to hold parent education courses is that teachers are pedagogues and already have a significant knowledge in this area, which seems likely to be beneficial for a course. The effects of better parent education are also likely to have an immediate influence on the work of the teachers: Pupils with a better socialization / upbringing are likely to make the work of their teachers easier and more rewarding.

[edit] Continual parent education

A program for continual parent education could be organized as continual adult education in schools.

With a bit of formal organization parents could be invited to attend lessons in pedagogy themselves and participate in organizing activities for pupils. Possible activities include (e.g.) Creativity, Action, Service, organized leisure time activities, holiday camps and mentoring of pupils. This could also include organized contacts between the participants and the parents of the older pupils in order to exchange experiences.

In the manner of an inter-generational contract parents could expect that any contribution on their side would be honored by their successors. A formal framework might, however, help to encourage trust in such a system, especially if it lacked an official responsible body.

Such a program could require separate qualification for Unterstufe, Mittelstufe and Oberstufe in order to restrict participants to contribute only to curricular courses they were qualified for.

Qualified parents could, for example, participate in the training for mentorship of pupils older than their own children, which were likely to be grades providing mentors for their own children, and later participate in the same training for the grades of their own children, too.

[edit] Flexible tracking

The big-fish-little-pond-effect ^[20] describes the effect that pupils in an average learning group may be more motivated than in a superior learning group, where they may appear much less successful. Another effect is, however, that permanently unchallenged pupils may learn that school is easy and boring, which can make it increasingly difficult to teach them self-motivated learning. Therefore finding the right degree of challenge, without overstraining, may require more fine-tuning than schools are usually pepared to handle.

The detrimental effect of severely inhomogeneous learning groups may make a large group of average students appear to be sufficiently good pupils while they may actually be unchallenged. One could argue that the pupils have a right to learn in learning groups that present them with a sufficient challenge so as to make learning interesting, even if that might come with the responsibility to teach less proficient pupils because removal of better pupils could be seen as a detrimental effect in itself, which might have to be countered. Incidentally Waldorf education is in part about avoiding just that detrimental effect.

A flexible assignment to achievement oriented classes would allow the teachers to assign a pupil to the class where he or she was best placed. In schools that have several classes for the same grade this would mean that pupils could be offered (or forced) to change their current class if their performance was better or worse than the intended level for their current class. The Integrierte Gesamtschule implements something similar.

Adapted to the threepart secondary school system in germany (Gymnasium, Realschule, Hauptschule ^[21]) a teacher might also be able to reassign a pupil to a different school type (for the next day already and to a predetermined ^[22] school). The threepart school system is an attempt to avoid inhomogeneous learning groups but it may be too coarse and it may suffer from the parents' pressure to get their children on the type of school they view as the best choice, e.g. a Gymnasium (or a Gesamtschule with equivalent offers). ^[23]

Flexible assignment makes it much easier to reassign pupils who are obviously in the wrong learning group and at the same time allows pupils to understand and take control of their own mobility in the education system. Another advantage is that teachers gain more respect from pupils, if they have the power to reassign somebody to a different class or even school without a long and unlikely process in a school conference.

Pupils are also motivated to organize their own community, including a democratic system and a process of appeals for pupils who feel mistreated by teachers. If pupils react to this challenge this would put a certain control about the assignment to classes in the hands of the pupils and, possibly, allow a class to reassign pupils they perceive as misplaced or to reaccept pupils who have been removed from a class or the school. This way reassignment would also create some more valuable conflict potential for a school system prepared to make use of it