Thursday, September 8, 2011

Back at school-and wanting to make things work properly

The new year has begun.  I found myself distracted due to electrical problems in my home.  The first electrician didn't fix the problem but told me my house needed to probably be rewired for between 12000 and 15000 dollars and charged me 200 dollars.  The second told me probably just needed old wiring section replaced for 13000 dollars, problem not solved but at least I didn't pay him anything.  Third electrician opened up the control panel, found the old control panel, diagnosed and fixed the problem for $40.  Maybe my house could use rewiring at some point but for over a week I had no electricity in several parts of my house and several small appliances were "fried".  Two certified electricians weren't assessing and diagnosing carefully enough, not looking under the control panel etc.

Sometimes in education this happens as well and of course, this affects children's lives very seriously.  If students aren't learning we need to have the right tools to diagnose why and know what we need to examine.  We need to  listen and observe and experiment carefully to see what can "fix" the "problem" or what the problem actually is. Spending time and money, for instance, administering and scoring standardized tests is a very ineffective use of resources.  This isn't opening the "control panel".  Careful observation by a skilled practitioner of how a student learns does open the control panel.  


P.S. I just found this website (not that this was exactly what the third electrian did) -maybe the first two electricians should have watched this video.

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