KQED News Mind/Shift – Emily Hanford
“Jasmine Bankhead needed to figure out a way to improve teaching at her school. It was 2013. She was the new principal of the O’Keeffe School of Excellence, an elementary school on Chicago’s South Side that had been struggling for years. Finally, the school district had taken dramatic action by firing the principal, the staff and all the teachers. That’s when Bankhead was hired. Her job was to turn a failing school into a successful one, with all the same kids, but an entirely new teaching staff that she got to choose. Bankhead had a very clear idea about what kind of teaching she wanted to see at her school. She calls it “inquiry-based” teaching. It’s an approach, supported by research, that begins by posing questions to students rather than presenting them with facts or knowledge. It’s the opposite of the way she was taught.”(more)