Improving Education as a class project

[sushisuzuki]

Hello,

We are a group of product design students at Stanford University and we've been given the task of improving k12 educatoin. Since none of us a re teachers, and we're so far removed from k12, we were going around doing interviews and observations trying to identify problems and needs.

What is the biggest need in k12 education right now?
Granted alot of schools are underfunded but what are some little things that could greatly improve the conditions in schools?
What is the biggest difficulty of being a teacher? What would make your life easier?

Sorry for bombarding you with questions and hopefully you can help us. Any feedback would be great.

If there are things u don't want to post here, please feel free to e-mail me at sushis (at) stanford.edu

Thanks!

Sushi

[Unregistered]

Just take a look at the other messages and threads on this board, that should give you enough material for many, many pages!

[ceflynn]

The number one thing that is holding back public education is responsibility. In our system all of the responsibility falls on schools and teachers. No one learns anything until they are responsible for it. If you can find a way to motivate students and for them to take the responsibility for their own education every school would be successful regardless of funding and location.

[Unregistered]

If you can find a way to motivate students and for them to take the responsibility for their own education every school would be successful regardless of funding and location.

These are minors we are talking about. The very fact that we have to force them to go to school indicates that asking them to take responsibility for their own education is impractical.

The responsibility rests with us teachers because we were hired to teach them.