alannovember, connections, dinastrasser, education, pjhiggins, teaching, timtyson
In curriculum, education, reflection, school 2.0 on May 31, 2008 at 6:42 am
Although it might go against the very spirit of blogging, I think responding to Dina’s comment on my post about the “Connections” class deserves a little more attention.
This class sounds like a jewel in the making. I’d love to know nitty-gritty (length? scheduling? vertical alignment?) if you’re willing.
I wonder this too: it was recently at a meeting of the minds educational panel (2004 NYS Teacher of the Year, 2008 NYS Teacher of the Year, and a former National Science Teacher of the Year) that I heard this put forth as a pedagogical touchstone: “Who owns the question?”
I thought of this as I read the list of questions your colleagues have drawn up– truly exciting and challenging stuff. Will these ideas exist with the leeway for students to determine their own critical inquiries?
In other words– in your proposed class, who do you think will own the questions? I’d love to know.
Dina’s question has been sitting on me for a few days, possibly weeks, now, and it’s not that I’ve been ignoring it, but rather gathering some resources to include in my response. One of the things I found was a recent post by Dr. Tim Tyson called Value Chain 2.0. Dina had asked who was going to own the questions that these teachers were proposing as essential to the unit of study, the students or the teachers? Tyson’s article asks a much similar question, but he refers it to “who owns the learning in the classroom: the teachers or the students? It also raises questions for me in the area of responsibilities shared by students and teachers. A while back I wrote about being impressed with Alan November’s idea that teachers should “outsource” a lot of what they do to the students. Tyson’s point about who is doing the thinking work in the class goes to that–are you doing all of the thinking, or are the students?
What I am struggling with, and I think it’s a struggle that all teachers and administrators will face in the coming years, is convincing and working with teachers to learn alongside their students, to model their practice for them, to fail in front of them, and to resurrect themselves in front of them. The key point I have been trying to drive home with the teachers I am working with is that this class should be designed around topics that both you and the students want to learn about, and that this class has unbelievable potential for personal learning. That being said, I like the idea that the ownership of both the learning and the questions be distributed evenly between the teachers and students. Student-centered? Teacher-centered? How about learning-centered? or inquiry-centered?
As with anything we do in education, there needs to be some structural framework to all of this, and we are ramming up against that pretty hard as we write the curriculum. Questions of assessment strategies keep arising being that we are stripping out all of the focus on conventions (spelling, grammar, mechanics) and focusing solely on thinking process and ability to express ideas. We are also running into the issue of how to structure this class on a daily basis, how do we set this up technologically (please, any classroom bloggers out there, we need your methods and practices that have been successful!), and what do we do to convince students that writing and thinking are not drudgery?
assessment, presenation, tabletpc, teaching
In 21st Century, curriculum on May 29, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Over the course of Thursday and Friday, I am working with a group of 75 teachers, 9 at a time, to evaluate the first year of our tablet PC pilot program for our high school. We asked them to sign up for some time slots to discuss how the tablet has helped them instructionally this year. On several levels, it’s teaching me quite a few things.
Firstly, the teachers were not eager to come together, especially this close to finals, to discuss how they use the tablet instructionally. That initially gave me pause, but then I thought about it from their perspective: these sessions are evaluative, and regardless of how we try to spin it, they feel like they are being evaluated. Over the course of this year, this group has received over ten hours of professional development directed at using the tablet instructionally and on creating a 24/7 learning environment, and in the session before these, they generated a list of characteristics that they would expect to see from teachers who use the tablet effectively to create “on-demand” learning environments for their students. So, at least they were responsible for planning the evaluation criteria, and that went a long way towards easing their trepidation.
Secondly, I am discovering that if we don’t have these types of share sessions more, we are doing a major disservice to our teachers and ultimately our students. On many different occasions within the sessions today, teachers who had always wanted to try something with their students heard from teachers who had done it. We heard about pitfalls and successes, ideas for next year, and modifications to ideas on the fly. In some cases, presentations turned into group thinkalouds for the presenter. Yes, there were pats on the back, but also some serious questions about practice and application. What I love most about some of the presenters was that they gave us great feedback about the viability of using tablets instead of laptops. We asked for unfiltered feedback, and we got it.
Perhaps the thing that has most stood out, and we are only halfway through the presentations, is one given by a high school English teacher in which she elaborated on all of the things she did this year, including blogging and digital storytelling, that did not work for her or her students. She finished her presentation with a demonstration of how Google Groups fit her needs exactly and how her students became so much more prolific in discussing novels when they were responding to each other on the group page. For me, she exemplifies the type of teacher and students we need to see more of: those that try and fail, try again and fail again, and continue to try until they find the solution that works for their problem. I made a point of telling her as she left how amazed I was at her willingness to take risks and that she should be proud of giving that model to her students.
Image Credit: “G. Traditional Assessment” from teachandlearn’s photostream
connections, curriculum, learning, rebirth, writing
In education, reflection, school 2.0 on May 16, 2008 at 2:03 pm
OK, this is difficult to do. It’s like re-introducing yourself to someone you’ve already met several times, or speaking to a family member whose birthday/engagement/anniversary you’ve forgotten. But, in a fashion that characterizes much of my life lately, I am just going to start and rip the band-aid off rather than toying with it.
I am writing again.
Between several of the projects that are all coming due now, some graduate classes I have undertaken, and the mud puddle plodding I do with my kids, it’s been difficult to find not only the time, but also the mental acuity to dedicate to writing. And as I think back over the course of the last few years, there have been only two or three of these type hiatuses (shouldn’t that be hiati?) since I began taking my professional development into my own hands. I was due for a sabbatical from writing.
But, so much has occurred in my own little section of the world and I am feeling the need to reconnect to my network. The writing class that I hatched in my mind is now a reality. We are creating a class that is mandatory, taken by all students from 6th through 8th grade, that is solely focused on writing to learn and the practicing of critical thinking through the use of writing. My scope is limited, but I don’t see too many schools having the faith in their staff to do this, and trust me, when you see the topics that the teachers want to explore it truly brings the need for trust to the forefront:
- From “Food Wars:”
- What is the impact of food availability, production and consumption on an individual, a locality, and a society?
- Why are there chemicals and packaging in my food? What are the effects of these on my body and the environment?
- How are foods marketed?
- From “Mental Fitness”
- What is mental fitness?
- How do I learn?
- Am I mentally fit?
- From “America and Beyond”
- Is increased life expectancy a blessing or a curse?
- What are your thoughts on physician-assisted suicide?
- How has technology affected your generation compared to previous generations?
All questions that I have broached or attempted to broach with students in various ways throughout the last few years, except that was in the confines of a social studies classroom with a predetermined curriculum that I had to follow. This class is devoted to using these questions as framework to help our students critically write and read. I can’t tell you how jealous I am that our students have this opportunity. I thought I’d never say this, but I want to be in middle school again.
A while back, I quoted Wes Fryer’s post about the needs for our curriculum to reflect the following three things rather than what we deem important for success on high-stakes testing:
- Remix: Students need to regularly remix their learning to own the ideas.
- Deregulation:
Learners need to be freed to take the TIME required for in-depth rather
than shallow studies in problem-based, project-based constructionist
and constructivist learning activities.
- Differentiation:
Learning opportunities, challenges, and assessments must be
differentiated to meet the needs as well as interests of a diverse
array of learners.
I am feeling like the work I have talked about doing over the last few years is very close to showing some life. This class is a stab at what our students might benefit most from. As you can probably tell, a majority of my energy has been spent trying to convince and cajole the stakeholders into making this class become a reality. To their credit, the teachers involved have taken a huge leap of faith and risked splintering their department, as we are using English/Language Arts teachers to teach this class. They have created the ideas for the units and are truly beginning to grasp how this class can be successful.
It’s going to be a long summer…
Image Credit: “Rebirth,” from *Solar ikon*’s photostream
