Disrupting Class

Adult Book Club HCOS April 2011

Important Points re sharing

Open in prayer

Give each person chance to share their opinion

respectfully.

Share how book impacted you as opposed to whether

you hated or loved the book.

Question 1: Culture

Clayten Christenson shares from an American

experience how the digital world is impacting our

culture in schools, and in other business innovations.

Is he celebrating public schools and/or homeschooling?

How is he trying to change the culture?

Do you think that as a Canadian collective group of

homeschooling teachers we can share in the same

ideals, or are they different according to the

educational culture and climate?

Question 2: Themes!

Christensen shares how motivation in schools is often

intrinsically linked or extrinsically linked? Extrinsically

ties into getting students to do something based on an

external motivator like society’s needs, as opposed to

the students’ own needs?

In our homeschooling environment do you think our

students have more extrinsic or intrinsic motivation?

Why?

How can we influence our students to be more

intrinsically motivated?

Students learn in Different ways?

Should we be standardizing testing, or looking for

different ways of evaluating students’ success?

Does the homeschool environment lend itself to student

centric testing? Are homeschool teachers like brick and

mortar teachers, in that they teach according to their

type of intelligence? Do you know what kind of

intelligence you teach from? What about your parents,

how do we influence them?

How to keep students motivated

and engaged?

How does Clayten suggest technology needs to work for us?

Consumption vs non consumption? Online courses? Individualised?

Is this happening in our school?

Are you happy teaching from a mono-lithic approach (one style fits

all?)

How do you deal with students who do not learn according to this

approach?

How can our school compete

against non-consumption?

Where are most of our students coming from?

What type of learning are they looking for? The

majority…

Do we need exams?

How to create student centric

learning?

What criteria do we need to add to make the homeschool learning environment engaging and interactive?

How do we move from monolithic to student centric? Is this already happening in our school?

What do the stats say about students who teach themselves?

Where does a student feel elements of success in his school day? How can we add to this?

Solutions to the Problems?

What types of solutions does Christensen explore in the

book?

Are they easy to implement?

Do we have charismatic visionary role models? Do they

help us? Why or why not?

Organizational Psychology

How come solutions in one company are harder to

introduce in another?

How is HCOS structurally organized to create teaching

heavyweights or disruptive innovators?

Do we work collaboratively or are we in our own little

world?

Does Christensen back up his

research?

Does he give definitive facts?

Is his theme the right theme?

What does he base his research on?

Is his tone passionate and inflammatory? Objective and

earnest?

Do you think he offers solutions to the problems being

raised in the book?

Does he affirm you as a teacher?

How has this book changed you?

Has it broadened your outlook on a subject?

Has it given you Godly insight?

Could you relate to any part of the book on a personal

basis?

Do you have a new type of thinking related to this

particular climate of learning? Or were you already

doing what he suggested?

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing in our first adult book club

session. I really appreciate all of your input! I look

forward to doing one again next year if this was a

success?