Author Archives: David Sutton

About David Sutton

I find my passion for K-12 education comes from my intense interest both in the content we teach and learn, and in how we teach and learn. I would call this content and process. Crucial to our success as educators is our ability to deliver engaging material, both in content and in presentation. For example, engaging a child with a creative physical manipulative in mathematics, or utilizing captivating images in teaching the concept of compare and contrast enhances both teacher delivery and also engagement on the part of the learners themselves. We nurture students’ independence, creativity, and self-confidence as we teach. This promotes risk taking, the confidence to be wrong, and the ability to try again. The ideal environment favors structured and supportive, yet challenging and innovative, learning. How can we take these ideas further? What learning do you bring to the topic? Are you passionate about this topic? What are you passionate about? I welcome feedback on my ideas concerning education. I am always eager to investigate new ideas for creative, groundbreaking work in the field of K-12 education. David Sutton B.Comm, B.B.A., M.B.A., Ms Ed, Advanced Certificate in Gifted Education, Ed.M

posted on October 16, 2015

School and Community – An Interactive Learning Experience

Sixth grade students were studying the California Gold Rush of the 1800s. They had to decide whether they were going to be miners or storekeepers. BCILD arranged for local entrepreneurs to come into the classroom to share their experiences in starting businesses. After students had formulated their plans, the group of business professionals (investment bankers, sole proprietors, and venture capitalists) from the community participated in an investor panel, vetting investment proposals. These investors listened to student proposals and questioned them as they would any pitch in a real world business setting.  Students were urged to consider risk factors, financial budgets, earnings to debt ratios, and marketing.

By bringing community members into the classroom, students were empowered as they experienced genuine interactions.  They were invigorated by relevant discussion.  Students approached the material they were learning with a level of sophistication and maturity, uncovering new skills in negotiation, quick thinking, precise listening, careful word choice, teamwork, deliberate questioning, critical thinking, and analysis.  

Students, teachers and professional community members came away from the project impressed by the learning and practice the students experienced.  Their due diligence, coupled with the inspiration of business people in the classroom, expanded the students’ learning, solidifying not only the lessons of the demanding times of the Gold Rush years, but also lessons of business and the entrepreneurial quest. Additionally, students learned how to communicate respectfully, how to collaborate with team members, and how to set forth and defend those proposals with perseverance and quick thinking. These are skills we want today’s students to learn and practice, so that their messages are impactful and clearly articulated.

posted on July 17, 2015

I am very happy to announce the formation of the non-profit Boulder Center for Interactive Learning at Dawson (BCILD).

The work of this Center, based on the campus of Dawson School in Boulder County, Colorado will focus on building a working model of how schools can fully integrate themselves into their local communities, developing thinking and problem solving skills in learners, and developing a curated online teacher resource in collaboration with museums, libraries, educational institutions, and environmental organizations.

Click HERE for BCILD.

posted on March 27, 2015

When rote learning education models closely mirrored early industrial production based economies, outputs in the classroom followed the teacher driven input- predetermined output style. Modern theories of education include a far greater degree of student involvement in their learning. Additionally, in an attempt to mirror rapidly changing political, environmental, and economic factors, problems presented to children often involve a necessity for self-directed inquiry where outcomes are far from preset. In such an environment, it is vital to provide an opportunity for children from an early age to interact with information inputs in the process stage of learning.

As such, developing ways for children to understand what process is includes opportunities to work mindfully in this space. Examples of process learning might include working with mathematical manipulatives, reading a recipe and making a cake, investigating the scientific method in a collaboration on a specific topic with a university professor/researcher while in high school, or identifying and investigating a social need and developing a product to meet that need. Processes already exist in many areas of education, but seldom are they identified as a specific learning goal in and of themselves. Design thinking, critical thinking, art appreciation and discussion, the scientific method, negotiation, and conflict resolution are just some of the topics which may fall under this category. Applying these techniques to multidisciplinary subject areas enhances students’ capacity to solve problems creatively.

Students need to delve into, and work through, process in order to grapple with the complexities and demands of modern society. Process inquiry meets the curiosity of students who are always asking why and how in their daily learning.

posted on March 22, 2015

Modern children so seldom see the process of how something is made. They do not interact with authors as they delve into the writing process, nor do they do not see barns being constructed or crops being grown. They therefore miss out on the often-tedious tasks undertaken from idea to completed product. All interactions, production, thought processes, and output of any nature goes through a system and process. It is important for students to be able to think through what systems and processes are, how they are best defined, and how they might best be illustrated. This assists young learners in being observant of the world around them, questioning of how their environment operates, and being able to illustrate a written observation. The student handout is shown hereunder:

SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES

Systems and processes refer to the way the world around us operates. You may not have considered this before, but there are many such systems and processes all around us every day. Consider how the human brain controls our body motions, and vital functions. This is a system and a process. The system is the human body, and the process is the way the brain does this management. Other systems and processes, many of them man-made, include transportation systems, presidential debates, and how people get educated. A very simply system and process is how to make a cup of coffee. The system is the coffee beans are grown, prepared, and shipped to shops. The process is how you actually make a cup of coffee, or buy it.

Each of these follows a set of guidelines or procedures which usually occur in a sequence if they are to be successful. For example, consider the NYC subway system. It is a very complicated underground train system that allows millions of people to move around New York City quickly and efficiently. The system is the tracks and trains. The process is how people use it, including using a diagrammatic representation allowing people to see how to get from one place to another. You can Google it. Different colored lines represent different subway lines. So, it is a system, and process with a diagram.

Your task: 10 systems and processes. Write what they are (system), how they work (process), and try to draw a diagram of them. Please investigate 3 by yourself in class, 2 with a partner in class, 3 by yourself for homework, and 2 with an adult at home.

posted on October 22, 2014

I was very interested to read the attached Mindshift article about how we view student academic struggle in schools. Eastern cultures appear to see struggle as an integral part of the learning process, whereas the article states that western cultures see struggle as a weakness, or something needing immediate correction. It would be interesting to have a discussion linking these perspectives with Angela Duckworth’s idea on developing grit.

Mindshift article HERE

posted on October 9, 2014

There is a tendency among younger children to compartmentalize what they have learned in each discipline, and not to stretch one piece of learning into another discipline. A very interesting and engaging project is to ask the children to become travel agents, and plan a vacation trip of their own. In this way, students learn to navigate the quite complicated world of airline and hotel websites, choose destinations based on political safety, convert currencies, look at maps, research cities/destinations on the web, plan a budget, and learn something about a country or region. Asking children to do all this in a single project engages them fully in the learning process, and brings mathematics into geography, technology into budgeting and so on. Later, children can use these research skills in many ways on other projects. The joy of early learning is to master adaptable skills which are useful throughout life, but particularly as they progress through their formal learning environment.

TRAVEL PROJECT # 1

You are to become a travel agent. Book your ideal holiday vacation to a destination of your choice. You must give an itemized budget for your trip. Total available dollars: $8000.00

You may consider yourself a single adult for the purposes of this exercise.

You need to:

(1) Decide which time of year you will be traveling
(2) Find an airline. Ascertain rates for travel.
(3) Find a hotel. Get rates for thirteen or fourteen nights.
(4) Find what you will be doing and eating. Include in budget.

You need to write an essay on your project. Be sure to include:

History and geography of the place you are visiting
Write a detailed budget
Find an example of the following:
An artist
A politician
A mathematician or scientist

Describe something about their life or work. What contribution did they make to society? How does their work impact you?

Travel Project # 2

Travel to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World using the least amount of money, and in the shortest amount of time.

You must spend one night in each place.

posted on October 2, 2014

How much more engaging would our teaching of young people be if we paid careful attention to how we as humans process sensory inputs, delivered an understanding to our students of how our brains work, and had a healthy grasp of the connection between the brain, emotions, and feelings?

I was fascinated to read about the work of Antonio Damasio in the MIT Technology Review magazine (June 17, 2104) recently. We all realize the vital importance of grit, tenacity and dogged determination in learning. However, being able to connect our understanding of the fundamentals of brain mechanics and human perception with the curriculum is very compelling.

Click HERE for MIT Technology Review:

Click HERE for TED talk

Click HERE for AMAZON

posted on September 19, 2014

Gone are the days in efficient and forward thinking independent schools when the marketing and development functions sat separately from the school mission, vision, and strategic goal setting process. In many markets, the cost of an independent school education needs to be offset by a clear definition of value to the child receiving the education, and the parents paying the bill. Forward-thinking institutions are in the far reaching process of evaluating everything from their curriculum offerings, teaching methodologies, teacher evaluation procedures, to cost efficiencies in their expenditures. Institutions from both for-profit and non-profit sectors are looking for metrics and data to tie outlay to results. Independent schools offer a wide array of opportunities and benefits to their students, both past and present. It is incumbent on the school’s marketing department to clearly define and articulate these tangibles and intangibles to both the current, and future, school community.

Schools should include all constituencies in this healthy review process. What are our competencies? How are we preparing our students for the future? How to do stand out from the competition both private and public? How are we planning for the future? What should we be doing that we are not currently doing? What are other schools doing? Can we do what we are doing better? Marketing schools where all constituencies are fully aware of, and involved in, the goals and undertakings of the school is very productive and useful.

posted on May 2, 2014

CONCEPT: To find new and creative ways to teach and learn mathematics.

PURPOSE:  The concept here is to engage students in an interested and engaging way to learn mathematics. Smells are assigned numbers. Problems are formulated substituting smells for numbers. Students smell the problems, and solve them numerically.

MATERIALS:

Extracts: Depending on the complexity of the problems undertaken, purchase up to ten different extracts from the supermarket.  These will represent 0-9. It is advisable to start more modestly, and purchase six extracts giving 1-6. In this way, students become familiar with the actual smells (orange, banana, vanilla etc.)

Paper: One large blank sheet per group. Several smaller problem solving sheets of blank or graph paper per group.

Clip boards: One per group

Markers: Expo marker for writing on the board. Regular marker for setting up the problem on the large white paper.

Two-sided tape

Paper napkins

Pencils

PROCEDURE:

In this lesson, we are doing two digit by two-digit multiplication. Teach the students a traditional example. 34 X 21. Solve it with them.

Explain to the students that today they will be smelling various smells, and that these smells will be associated with a number which you will write on the board.

In a first attempt, write the numbers 1-6 on the board. Next to each number, assign a smell to a number. 1 – banana, 2- coconut.

Ask the students to come and smell the smells in their groups.

On the large piece of paper, outline where the scented napkins will go, make an “X” indicating multiplication in the appropriate place, and draw a line indicating a multiplication problem.

Ask the groups to formulate and solve their own problems.

The teacher circulates around the room to the different groups, puts the selected scents on the paper napkins and affixes the napkins to the large white paper with the double-sided tape.

The students go around the room with their clipboards and paper and they smell each problem. They solve them numerically.

The teacher asks groups to provide the solution to other groups’ work. Then the teacher asks each group if that was indeed their work.

As a follow up activity, the teacher may ask students to create their own problems using smells.

NOTE: to ask students to provide an answer in smell format, fully ten smells need to be provided.