On the Essence of Connected Learning

About a year ago, I worked closely with an English teacher at San Diego High School. I was a Special Education Assistant in her class and helped her with her special needs students. I was shocked to learn that there was a particular student, Rhonda Spencer, who would come into our second period class about five minutes late every day. She would walk straight to the back of the classroom, get a laptop out of the laptop cart, take out her earphones, and surf the net the whole period. The teacher expected nothing from her and the students also learned to ignore her. Whenever I asked Rhonda to attempt to do work, she would yell at me and recite all sorts of bad names and bad words my way. I decided to speak to her case manager, who told me that there was an unofficial agreement with the teacher, special ed provider, and student for her to sit in the back of the room and surf the net so long as she was not disrespectful or disruptive to the class. There was nothing I can do, I wish those adults who were in charge of her education could watch this movie. Our Educational System is more focused on our outcomes, what do we want children to learn? And then everything we teach them is centered on that. Children’s interests and strengths are rarely considered. In the little time that I worked with Rhonda, I noticed how beautifully she drew. She also had an amazing imagination. For each episode of “The Walking Dead” that she watched on TV, she would collaborate with one of her classmates and write a mock script predicting what might happen on the next episode. I think Rhonda’s teachers and I could have helped her better if we would have been focused on bringing a community of people who want to learn together and focused on that rather than on content material. The clear message was that she was in the way of others’ learning and therefore had no place in the classroom, it’s embarrassing to know that I worked for educators who do that 