These things we call relationships, they are funny things when it comes to our professional lives. Regardless of what field you are in, you started in that field somewhere. Depending on where you are now in said field, there are those who you started with in certain positions that either still hold those positions, or have moved on to other responsibilities. It’s just the nature of what we do, whether that be public sector or private sector.
How you handle that relationship matters a whole lot to your success.
That’s precisely the question I want everyone thinking about. We truly focus so much of our energies on getting the format down and getting the “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed, and for many of the students we teach, that is completely necessary; however, as we begin to look at the next phase of what we’d like to do in the district which includes more than just being “proficient” on some state test, can we blend some of the thinking in this post into what we are doing.
And as for making people angry, my advice is that you don’t get the results you really want without making a few people angry along the way. Not that you try to, but when you know that what you are doing will make your students better, you just go with it.
She was asking whether or not it was all right to go forward with some of the ideas in the article, even if it angered some of her colleagues. My response can be boiled down to very few words: “hell yes.”
We don’t propagate change in systems unless we are ready to have battles that we know will end up with feelings being hurt. This is a fact that I am still warming to, as it is very contrary to my personality, and since I am creating change at the curriculum level in a district in which I originally taught. When I think of the alternative, though, I can use that to gather the strength necessary to move forward with the type of thinking that will lead to the schools we need.
Yes, we can create change without alienating everyone on the bus, but there are times when we need to be strong enough in our convictions to say “yes, your voice has been heard and your input factored into the decision, but we need to move forward with this decision.” Or, more simply, this is how we have decided it has to be done. In no circumstances would I advocate a lack of explanation behind the decision, nor sound research supporting that decision. When moving schools forward, we must always ask ourselves, regardless of the position we hold within that school, “does this help/hurt kids.” Once we have that determined, the rest falls into place.
It’s the end of the year, and with that, we are running into the usual pressures associated with a year of impending change. For some reason, June gives educators an amazing amount of stress. I was reviewing some posts from this time last year, and was amazed to find that there were odd similarities between what I was noticing then and what is happening now.
This summer is going to be an incredibly busy one, and an incredibly short one. It has the feeling already of one that will be fleeting. If that is the case, I’d like to begin by setting a few goals for my own growth this summer:
Read. Here is the short list that I’ve put together for the summer:
Re-Organize. A year in which I either ran or helped plan over 10 meetings a month can lead to a lot of paperwork and notes that need both organization and reflection. Pulling all of that back together will take a good few days.
Re-Focus. As I indicated in the paragraphs above, the month of June has been crazy, but wit that crazy has come some good dialogue. I’d like to take part of the summer to craft goals that I have for each of the departments I work with and the elementary schools I am involved in. I’ve had many meetings this month where it was apparent that I am getting very little buy-in from the departments I work with. As with everything in education, the factors that go into producing that are only partially controllable by me, but that which is under my control, I’d like to sharpen and hone. I need to have goals regarding what I’d like to move towards with each of the departments, and then combine those goals with those of the members of the departments I work with. A shared vision; yes, I think that might work.
There is probably more, but it’s getting light out, and the kids are waking, which brings me to another goal for the summer. Leave work at work, and make the most of the daylight hours with my family.
This came across my reading/viewing list a while back, but it means more today after having listened and spoken with Greg Mortenson.
Mortenson, recently nominated by the U.S. Congress to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, was an one of those figures you just jump at the chance to meet and talk to. What strikes you immediately about him is his supreme lack of urgency about his time. Here he was, scheduled to catch a flight to take him to a flight to Afghanistan, yet he sat and gave pictures and autographs, a 30 minute interview with three educational bloggers, and then signed over 50 books for people at the conference. He joked to us that he is notorious for missing flights, and I can see why.
His chronicle of his life since 1992, the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea, continues to change the mindsets of those who read it. It details his experiences after a failed attempt to summit Mt. Godwin-Austin, known more commonly as K2. Upon his descent and exodus from the region, he happened upon a village name Korphe. After resting and taking in the hospitality of the villagers, he discovered the schoolchildren there both lacked a school and a teacher. He described the moment in which an elder of the village had passed away and he was visiting his grave site. That elder had given him one piece of advice before dying: “Listen to the wind.” And so he did.
What he heard were the voices of the children in the village of Korphe, and that changed everything. He promised those villagers and those children that he would return and build them a school.
That same wind carried him back to build that school, and several others since then.
Individuals like Mortenson astound me. Meeting him and finding him so relaxed, calm, and giving was a revelation. I had fully expected him to be full of energy and movement–I would expect that from someone who affects as much change in the world as he has. Yet, he was placid and warm, truly concerned about what his message was.
He spoke of girls. He spoke about why education and empowerment were crucial to creating change in the world of our children. He spoke of the real importance of schools, and not once did he mention any of the words we often use when we talk about how we want school to change here in the United States. His message involved community empowerment and the need to be patient enough to wait for change in education, or anything for that matter, because the affect may not be visible for a generation or two. That is why, he says, education is a hard sell to politicians and community leaders.
If you haven’t heard of his program, the one that ultimately worked to raise the money needed to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it’s called Pennies for Peace. Please visit the site, or if you have already heard of it, donate your little Abraham Lincoln’s to help change the world.
It’s not lost on me that for the longest time I did not think deeply about geo-political issues in the Middle East and the effects of terrorism on the world at large. Now, twice within the last week, two very influential thinkers and doers have pointed at very similar solutions to combating terrorism in the world.
And they both begin and end with two words: Education and Empowerment.
This is taken from an article from BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow where he details the work of grammarian Garth Risk Hallberg. Hallberg took the following sentence, a rather long one, from Barack Obama and diagrammed it.
My view is also that nobody’s above the law, and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.
Some of his conclusions about Obama’s use of the language to cushion his harsh points are interesting and the obvious work of a practiced public speaker.
Digging through Diigo in search of something I can’t even recall now, I found this nugget from Bill Breen at Fast Company: “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Finding this may have been the reason I was digging through all of my back tags and pages in the first place, because when I found the article and re-read it, the six myths called to mind several instances of awkward thinking I see very often. Let’s walk through them:
Myth 1: Creativity Comes From Creative Types
Breen brings up the idea that looking for creativity in corporate departments like accounting might seem oxymoronic at first glance. However, we recognize innovation in any form and in any pursuit if it truly transcends the status quo and creates original thoughts or processes. In the contexts in which I work, the idea of creative thought applied to either discipline or process has unbelievable merit. We look for “withitness” within our teachers; we look for them to be able to resonate with students regardless of teacher age or experience, student age or ability level, and regardless of content. Do they get it? What if we apply that principle to guidance departments? Curriculum writing? Schedule creation? Why push for anything less than creative environments and people in those areas?
Myth 2: Money Is a Creativity Motivator
Breen states that
People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress. So it’s critical for leaders to match people to projects not only on the basis of their experience but also in terms of where their interests lie. People are most creative when they care about their work and they’re stretching their skills
and our work in schools is no different. When we ask teachers to come and work with us, whether it’s for curriculum or for some form of professional development, we offer the option of coming during school and receiving substitute coverage, or coming after school and receiving compensation at a decent rate. Our participation is very closely split down the middle. Other reasons (child care, coaching, etc.) aside, we also find that those that come during the day and receive no compensation produce work that is equally as credible as those that come after school. The difference, and this is a purely personal observation, comes when you do as Breen suggests, and match people that truly care about what they create and feel that they are pushing themselves and their colleagues around them. Last week I worked with two teachers who were so full of ideas and so willing to take risks in regards to their ideas, the amount of work we got down and the quality of that work was astounding. All three of us were truly blown away by the possibility of bringing to life the ideas we came up with. That’s power.
Myth 3: Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
In college and graduate school I lived by the mantra “if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.” While snarky and fun, when I began teaching, it didn’t cut it as a model to share with students of how to prepare and perform at you best. So it was easily scrapped in favor of advance preparation. In schools, we work amid lots of deadlines placed either by ourselves or external pressures. However, having kids of my own, I realized something about being stressed: it’s contagious. When I am under the gun with a project or presentation, I become a bear and my work suffers for it. I feel guilty for not spending time with my family, and that weighs on me; I feel badly that my work is suffering due to lack of focus. It’s a vicious cycle. Solution: advance planning and preparation that allows you to focus on the whole when you need to.
My wife asks me all of the time if I am happy in what I am doing, because it is so much different than teaching, or even being tech coordinator; the successes are not as easily seen by either her or I. There never is a real straight answer given by me because what I do is so difficult to get an immediate read on whether it works or doesn’t. In October, I presented at TechForum in Palisades, NY and had a blast. I got great feedback from those in attendance and truly had fun talking and listening. Something clicked on the way home that day: how much fun I had, how passionately I had expressed myself had to be the way I addressed the departments and staff I work with. I was holding back, and it was showing in the way I was received.
I dig this learning business. There are some great ideas out there about how to get more people to learn in myriad ways using unlimited methods. My goal in coming back from TechForum was to let the ideas just fly, let the people I work with shoot them down. Coming off of EduCon, I realized I hadn’t yet done it in my practice. Being in the presence yet again of such passionate advocates for kids, for their futures, made me promise to myself as I drove up I-95 towards home that this month would be different. And so far, it has. From my last department meeting:
I just did a cursory search on the web and within the edublogs I troll for the above phrase. Kendall Crolius, one of the Friday night panelists at EduCon 2.1 dropped that expression on all of us in the audience in reference to how to innovate. I can’t stand how cool it sounds, so I named this post after it.
Here was the context in which it was uttered: the panel was asked what the purpose of school is, and in their various answers, the responses between them and the interplay with the audience, someone asked if innovation and change were possible within the current model of schooling in America. Crolius responded with a reference to Clayton Christensen’s work via Disrupting Class; Christensen states that the companies that are serious about innovation and change that focus on disruptive innovation especially do so by creating rogue “mini-companies” whose sole responsibility it is to innovate, and in essence “kill the mothership” by changing market dynamics. Think of telecom companies in the early 1990’s. Those companies that were able to devote time, resources and cutting-edge thinking to developing cellular technologies were ready when the use of these devices became as easy or easier than traditional telephony.
We have been squawking about our pockets of innovation within our buildings, or within certain geographic areas around the world as problematic. After hearing this take on it, I think we are underestimating what we have. While threats to the monolithic structure of public education are nowhere on the horizon as we speak, I can see a future where students whose teachers expose them to social networking tools and leverage them in a way that allows them to take charge of their own learning do not stand for rows, chairs, and textbook learning as the sole basis for their learning. They won’t stand for the idea that the person in the room with them holding the teaching certificate is the last word on any topic.
These pockets we talk about, these teachers who are pushing against drill-and-kill test prep and standardized curriculum, are our rogues. Where on this continuum are your pockets that you work with, or where do you think you fit? Listening to the idea as espoused by Crolius on the panel truly made me feel like I lead two lives: I support these pockets with energy and by removing obstacles, yet work very hard to maintain somewhat of a status quo with the majority of the staff I work with. Yes, we are pushing upward and advancing their craft through various professional development and discourse (as indicated by the linear usage lines above) but it’s the innovators that are advancing at the exponential rate. In the end, how I support them and push that curve above the “most demanding use” line will determine how I view my success.
A rare occasion, it is, that I run in the middle of the day, especially during the week. So on Friday at midday, this was my scene, and it felt a little like cheating.
In recent days here in the eastern part of the country, we’ve been plagued by ice storms and sub-freezing temperatures. Snow covered paths, while beautiful, disguise what lies below, and the moment I stepped forward onto the trail, it became an exercise in balance and timing. Light feet, short strides, quick decisions–and no certainty that each step would pay off.
Friday morning, I was privileged to present at the Classroom 2.0 Learning Institute to a group of teachers and administrators about collaboration. Erica Hartman and I talked about the hows and why’s of collaboration in the classroom and in curriculum development. There were strands set up for this conference: basic, intermediate, and advanced, and Erica and I conducted a hands-on workshop in the intermediate strand to a group of about 40 people.
I struggle with preparing for hands-on workshops for many reasons. Firstly because of the varying ability levels of the individuals in the room. Some will not be able to log-in to accounts that they may or may not have, others will be have already heard of everything you are going to share, and still others may even just view this as a time to check in on email or do some online shopping. As is the case in any classroom, meeting the needs of all three and keeping them engaged is the role of the facilitators. Push too hard and we lose the neophytes, remediate too much and the more advanced users tune out, and fail to implicitly show value in what you are talking about and Amazon will receive record hits from whichever ISP you are using.
It Begins with You.
The ice was thick in most spots, and the crunch below my feet that I was expecting didn’t happen as I moved from the trail head down the lonely corridor of the rail trail. The ice had frozen into ridges around bicycle tire grooves and ATV tracks, and finding a safe line to place my feet in became increasingly difficult any time I tried to increase my speed. Running in the center wasn’t working; several missteps and half-slides on the ice pushed me to choose the fringes of the path, where some grass was still emerging through the snow cover. While uneven and full of hard crags, it was a safer choice at the moment, and I could navigate my way towards what the safer section of trail ahead.
The choice Erica and I made was simple: let’s speak with passion about what we do. Let’s mention it all. Let’s talk about why we use collaborative technologies with our students, colleagues, and extended network. Let’s talk about our successes with enthusiasm, and our failures with the lens of reflection. Let these people see that we made the choice to take risks in the classroom even in this high stakes environment. And as we scanned the audience in the beginning of the session as they were filling out their “bell-ringer activity sheets designed to get them to know each other, I could sense all levels of preparedness: some struggling with the authentication of Montclair State’s Netriculate process, others finding our wiki with ease, and others pecking away on their Blackberry’s. We asked them one question on the sheet that we felt truly aimed at where we wanted to go: if time, resources, money, school restrictions, etc. were not a restriction, what is one project you would like to do with your students? We had them share their answers with two people in the room who they didn’t know. From these, which we asked a few to share with the room, it was easy to begin to see where we needed to go with the session: provide multiple access points to projects that they wanted to work on and provide them with the ability to work from the fringes within their school environments. We weren’t getting the sense that these teachers were going to be supported fully in trying to connect their students to the world.
A mile into the run, things began to change for me. I’ve been back to running seriously for a month now, and certain physical elements are returning from a long sabbatical. Ice beneath my feet was still a problem, but my feet weren’t. My drive-train, if you will, was coming from my core, and I achieved the balance that comes with moving quickly and powerfully. Like traveling at higher velocity on a bicycle leads to the ability to hold a cleaner line, my speed and power were adding to my body’s efforts to keep me upright. I was moving in flow.
Teachers often wonder how to begin changing their methods without completely up-heaving the work they’ve done over the course of their careers. It’s a valid concern for several reasons. If it’s been done for a few years, there is good reason you are keeping it: it must be producing some desired result. One of the first things we stressed in our session was the need to question why you were in the room. Don’t use these tools for the sake of using these tools. Look at the outcomes you want from your students and decide if these tools can take them there. If not, find something else from your bag of tricks. Secondly, as Dana pointed out in her week in review, students don’t always take to change the way we think they will, even if it involved technology. Your big change may fail miserably. What then? And lastly, you need to be the driving force behind these changes. We used the famous Gandhi quote:
Be the change you wish to see in others.
Erica and I moved the group through various examples and moved around the room as much as we could to help give ideas and connect people with projects and others in the room as best we could. What we began noticing was momentum. People were connecting; myths of collaborative projects only happening in 1:1 schools were being exposed and debunked, and teachers in districts that limited access to social media were talking about how they could circumvent their limitations both philosophically and physically.
I love running in winter. The silence of it always brings together the disparate thoughts in my head.
Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many “bad” ones. They weren’t afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.
In short, when pulling together ideas, go for quantity first. Assessing for quality comes much later in the process. There are those in this network of mine whose productivity I marvel at, and whose quantity of great ideas and inspirational thoughts appear ceaseless. In fact, I feel like people like Miguel, Angela, and Kevin should be given a stipend for the resources they’ve given me over the last year or so–so many times people have commented something along the lines of “where do you find all of this stuff?” In actuality, it truly finds me. That is due to two elements: the fact that I have opened my learning up to a network, and the fact that that network is as prolific as it is.
I have been accused, most recently by my wife of coming up with bad ideas when we are looking for a solution. I’ve been known to spew out near gibberish in brainstorming sessions, and I’ve wasted many a meeting figuring out several ways how not to solve a problem. But I’m OK with all of that. I am fine if you think I’m irrelevant at times, or slightly off-center. Because sometimes, in all that randomness, I might just hit the mark.
The same can be said for what we are teaching our students to do now: here is all of the randomness, love the madness and embrace it, but be able to recognize that gem when it comes through.
Our networks are becoming our genius, depending on how well we set them up. Countless ideas, some duplicate, and others unquestionably unique, stream to us through the various channels we select. Edison’s ideas that never left the lab, our bad ideas that turn people’s heads in meetings, lessons that should have taken off but tanked–all of these serve the greater good. We keep moving forward and we keep having that next idea. Culture being what it is, and accountability being as high-stakes as it is, it still leaves us room to allow for failure. Not horrible, career-ending failure, but reflective and constructive failure in a culture that promotes risk-taking. Is your classroom set up to encourage that? Is your school set up to encourage that? Are YOU set up to encourage that?
Yesterday I found the “Quotes” Flickr Group that was put together by Dean Shareski, Scott McLeod, Darren Draper, et al. The power of the image to change and inspire is a tool that I need to use more of in my work with teachers. In looking through the offerings and the work of the 11 members of the group on Flickr, you see the passion with which a great majority of us in education act with on a daily basis. That passion, I must admit, has been missing from what I’ve been doing lately. Not to sound trite, but it’s as if I’d lost my mojo, and with it any of the passion I was attacking my work with.
As usual, my wife sat me down and straightened me out. She told me some very basic things:
“If you can’t find someone to buy into your ideas, look somewhere else. They are good ideas, backed by someone who is passionate about what they do.”
From that conversation, I’ve noticed an uptick in both productivity, and focus. The WTF attitude is starting to return, and ideas are beginning to grow legs. I love that woman.
From shareski's photostream on Flickr
In that light, I found this item from George Siemens to be of significant import in my thinking lately:
The biggest problem we face is not lack of access or technology or filtering, but rather lack of imagination and vision. What can we do with what is available to us? What can our students do? A word I heard at Jim Burke’senglishcompanion Ning site (which if you are interested in helping build community with anyone in your English department, you should visit and invite them to it), is “withitness,” and that what every teacher needs to possess is the drive not to be cool, but to do cool things–things that make your students say something in response. Whether they loved you or hated you, you want them talking about what they did in your room on any given day.
I think we are stuck, at least in my locale, on imagining the same things we’ve always done because we haven’t been brave enough to imagine what it might look like in the future. I, for one, am going to start using my hands and my brain to create this vision.
A few months back, I got an email from the organizers of Tech Forum Northeast asking me if I wanted to participate in a panel discussion at their upcoming conference. The panel, they said, would include Ryan Bretag, David Jakes, and David Warlick. I emailed back a quick “are you sure this is the right email you wanted to send that too?” message, and found out it was me indeed they wanted on that panel.
Whoa. What a great opportunity for some serious thinking and dialogue. And again, whoa. Who am I? So before they could reconsider, I accepted. Our panel called Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype: Focusing on What Really Matters, went on at 9:30 and I wanted to thank Lisa Thumann for recording it.
I wanted to thank Judy Salpeter for inviting me and making the arrangements, and to the other panelists, David, David, and Ryan, for pushing my thinking. It was a blast, and I was thankful that David gave us some of the questions beforehand. The audience asked some great questions and made some salient points, but I think it was Ryan’s point about asking us what we really define an educated person as that will drive my thinking for a while.
What do we expect our students to be when they leave us? What is our goal as educators? I heard Zac Chase in my afternoon session on School Leadership state it in a way that I immediately gravitate towards: ethical, responsible, citizens. The elements that define those three descriptors still need to be determined, but I think it’s an excellent place to start building backwards from.
I have learned a great deal from my monthly meetings with the English department: how to lead, how not to lead, how to completely miss the mark on what teachers need, and how to recover beautifully from missing said mark. However, one of the simplest things, I have found, you can do for teachers to aid them in their professional development, is to listen carefully and then deliver on what you hear.
On Wednesday, all of the above situations played out. We have often discussed having an expert voice come speak to us to help us drill deeper into an element of our craft. A while back, I came across an article by a Duke University professor, Dr. Bradley Hammer (who is how at UNC), that dealt with the shifts that were taking place in student writing in the “academy.” The title of the article spoke volumes: “A New Type of University Writing.” Now, my English department already thinks I have a massive case of technophilia, and inviting this professor who believed that college writing, long believed to be the epitome of thesis driven argumentative writing, was now transforming into another piece of the digital landscape, was a risky move. But, after talking to him on the phone in September, I knew he would make some waves of the good kind. And did he ever.
The teachers were very interested in hearing about trends he saw in student writing, in essence asking for feedback on what he thought of Freshman entering the program. Dr. Hammer didn’t disappoint in his response. Most of his work, he stated, is deconstructing what the students come in with. For example, he stated that 15 years ago, it was common for students to arrive at the college campus with very poor argumentative skills: weak ability to write strong theses, very little support for arguments in their writing. Now, they all arrive knowing how to “do the essay.” Formulaic, straightforward positions, support at all the appropriate turns, and of course, an adherence to the five-paragraph format. His work is to get them away from “doing the essay,” to caring about the essay.
His work is about teaching students to deconstruct their own biases in their writing so that when confronted with a traditional topic (he used abortion in our our conversation as an example) the students would begin to generate questions about the factors that define the topic rather than automatically deciding which side of the argument to sit on. For the students in his writing class, it’s not about whether or not you can convince someone of something, but rather that you get an understanding of yourself through an issue presented to you. His greatest line, by far for me, was this:
High schools train students how to argue–they need to learn how to ask questions and interrogate ideas first.
As soon as he said it, I immediately began running thumbing through my mental Rolodex to try to remember how many times I have heard that in my reading over the last two years. It just rings. Whether it’s been caused by federal mandates or by our poorly thought out responses to them, we’ve underestimated our students ability to be meta-cognitive about the writing process. It’s more about the process rather than the product, when we truly break it down to it’s smaller parts. Is it really imperative that little Suzy write her essay in five standard paragraphs with a neat little thesis hook at the end of her first paragraph? Or would we rather see her wrestle something down to it’s bits in the pre-writing and research stages and produce something in three paragraphs? I’ll take the scrapping any day.
What was great for me, aside from the fact that it was a meeting where I did very little direct talking, was the dialog that sprung up after our call ended. Some of those in the room were in agreement with Hammer; we should be focusing more on the meta-cognitive processes of writing. Others asked if the reasons Hammer and his colleagues are able to do the deconstruction with students and push them in the direction they do is because of the argumentative underpinnings that high school English teachers provided them with? Can they get to B without having gone through A? Others asked if there was a way we could see products of the freshman Hammer worked with; we wanted to see what inquiry-driven writing looked like in the end.
The most challenging element about working with the four departments I do is trying to find something for each of them to sink their teeth into, and this did it for the English teachers. My own personal belief about what compositional writing should like look at any level is very simple: writing should demonstrate your ability to think, and your ability to convey those thoughts succinctly. My answer to the departmental question about whether or not we should be doing the things that Dr. Hammer does in our classrooms is undeniably yes. But, like anything, let’s allow the students to determine the level to which they can successfully do it. Just because they are 16 doesn’t necessary preclude them from inquiry, and the same can be said in reverse for some students. Push where needed, pull back when necessary.
I am banking on one very important thing this year: that the use of publicity will continue to raise the tide of change and lift more boats.
For the last two years, I have managed a district technology blog called Tech Dossier. This year, I have reconstituted it thanks to a few posts by Miguel, but changed it slightly. First, the name: from Tech Dossier, to The Dossier. I truly want to move away from the inclusion of the word technology in any of the titles I use. Through several conversations with people like Barry Bachenheimer and Patrick Chodkiewicz, I’ve come to realize that semantics matter, especially to teachers. It’s not about how to use technology when you teach, but rather it’s about how you can teach, period. Second, to match the semantic shift in the title, the focus of the articles has now broadened to include topics that are not solely technologically based, but rather a highlight of some of the innovative practices our teachers are using. We have teachers in all of our buildings who constantly push their thinking and their students thinking. I’d like to get there and find them; the rest of the district, and the world at large should be seeing what they are doing.
I’ve enlisted several people to write over the two years, and this year we’ve added a second-grade teacher from one of the elementary schools to the list of authors. We’ve got three administrators, two high school teachers, a middle school teacher, a tech coordinator, and now an elementary teacher writing and looking out in their buildings for ingenious ideas. Also, being no stranger to shameless promotion, I send out a bi-weekly email highlighting all of the posts that have appeared. I am trying to get a feed service to send it to our global address book, but somehow I think that may either get flagged as spam, or individual teachers would not recognize it as an important message and just delete it.
The idea of doing some reporting, let’s even call it micro-reporting due to the short nature of the posts, on what is going on instructionally within you building is a gold mine. While our commenting has been limited so far, our stats are through the roof, so I know people are going to the page. At this point that’s all I want: people to know that others are out there looking for them, trying to catch them being competent and taking risks.
Head on over to The Dossier, and check out what our teachers have been up to.
There is one thing that most every person that has ever met me may agree with: I am not much for rocking the boat. My admission of that has never met with much discernment from myself, as I have often taken pride in that ability to remain objective. Yet, in reading this quote, first in Dave Dimmet’s Leadertalk post, and then again in Miguel’s weekly recap, a smarter part of me took offense to my usual behavioral pattern.
What’s wrong with discord? In this position, which I cannot call “new” anymore, I am constantly faced with opportunities for constructive discord, and I have found that over the course of the first 10 months in this position, I have often either pacified, avoided, or circumvented opportunities for disagreement. Why? Let’s see what happens when disagreement happens in front of me. What will it mean if I help people who disagree come to terms with the fact that they disagree? I am going to go with Dave’s advice here and see what happens. I’ll report back on the state of that idea.
“We should see ourselves as all being in research and development.”
That line, or something strikingly close to it came from Ewan McIntosh’s keynote address last Wednesday at BLC. It’s not the first time I had heard a speaker ask that we all focus on our own development, or transforming our classrooms into teacher-researcher laboratories, but it was the first time where I heard it as an administrator. Oddly enough, just the semantic shift in title changes the meaning behind McIntosh’s statement for me. In our notes, a few of us remarked about the statement, and later on in the day I took it upon myself to synthesize some of the bigger ideas we had all been having in our debriefings at dinner. Here is what I came up with for the R and D idea:
Teachers as researchers: one of the things we all see the need for is to create a culture in our buildings where our teachers see themselves, to quote McIntosh, as “in research and development.”
What makes that happen in your school?
one of the things I keep thinking about personally is the use of pilot programs that last only a few months.
Screencasting: ask teachers to incorporate Eric Marcos “kids teaching kids” methods for 3 months and then have the selected teachers share their experience with other teachers in their building.
Promote open collaboration between classrooms within the building and around the nation/world through getting the teachers into other rooms to observe, and through connecting our teachers with others outside the U.S. Have them pitch their idea to the building principals, execute the plan, and have them present their product to the staff.
Showing teacher work and student work off
there is a theme running through a lot of the workshops here that incorporates the idea that we should promote the teachers that “get it.”
Which teachers get it, and I don’t mean technologically only, but which teachers will look at something new and attack it, refine it and make it their own? Find them and ask them to show how they do it. Do this often.
Let students show teachers how things work. Have you heard Alan’s quote: “always bring a student to a technology conference?” Let students show their teachers what they are actually capable of (from Eric Marcos’ presentation, and Ewan’s keynote: “-Give a button to a teacher and they ask what to do with it, give a button to a kid and they play with it and discover“
District-wide PD conference
We have been sitting in workshops for a day now and at some point or another we have all remarked that we have teachers doing this or doing that. Can we pull them together and run our own “in-house” conference?
The willing and able can present what they do to the rest of the staff and we go from there.
School-wide or grade-wide Custom search engines
we can use Google Custom Search to enable teachers to create their own search engines based on the links they already provide to the students for research. They can still limit content to the sites they want, but it is an incredible time saver if all of the staff combines their resources into one search engine.
It gives them exposure to the collaborative nature of the web.
Everyone is in R and D.
I’ll be brutally honest here: I went to BLC not wanting another tool to add to my belt (although I did get a few); I wanted answers to questions from teachers who don’t see value in change. I wanted to be able to return and say, “look, here is my magic bullet, and it’s wireless.” Truthfully, I set myself up for some disappointment, but I did walk away with several fantastic ideas worth taking action on immediately.
Among other things, I realized, thanks to a few pushes, that it’s time to get out there and share what we’re doing here. Not that it’s earth-shattering, but we have inertia, and I think that might be valuable to some people. We have been pushing and pulling on what we know and understand about teaching and learning there, getting a lot of feedback from our staff, and it’s time that we also looked at ourselves as researchers and developers. What better lesson in humility than to fail in public and try again? I think we are ready for what’s next.
Of the many things I pulled out of EduCon this past year, the most useful has been a tool that Chris Lehmann asked a few of us to use as we led reflections sessions at the end of the day. This discussion protocol has come in handy after working with teachers showing them new tools or methodology, especially those that are particularly complex and paradigm-shifting. It’s simple:
What?: What did I see today that caused me to think, wonder, dream, plan, or question?
So What?: What are the consequences, ramifications of what I saw?
Now What?: What are the next steps for me? my school? my district?
When we are confronted with new knowledge or ideas, it’s easy for us to become overwhelmed, either by the potential positive effect of the that change, or the magnitude of changing our own or our district’s practices. This protocol slims it down for you, paring your thoughts into three linear categories that intersect nicely in various places.
After being here for the last few days, there has been a mix of things I know about already, things I needed to see to believe, and a budding sense of practicality that was wholly necessary for me to see–it’s the reason I wanted to come in here in the first place. Several of my conversations lately have centered on the very fact that I am ready to move away from the theoretical and land firmly in the practical and the applicable. Sitting and listening to Darren yesterday explain in a calm, measured, and often hilarious way, how he began his journey with his students, gave me some real perspective in regards to how a classroom can be structured not around, but infused with, the tools we have all come to use in our professional practice. I can take that back.
For now, as I sit here with about 40 minutes to go before heading to see Darren and Clarence present together, I focus on the first question:
What?: What did I see today that caused me to think, wonder, dream, plan, or question?
One of the first things I pulled from Ewan’s keynote was that we should view all of our teachers as researchers. I see the need to create a culture in our schools that pushes thinking and learning at all levels: teacher, student, administrator, etc. As Ewan stated, “Everyone should be in R and D.” I began to think what that would look like in the buildings I work in, and luckily, the principals or assistant principals are here with me to bounce those ideas off of. What we’ve decided is that it has to begin with our own practice. Run our faculty meetings as we want them to run their classrooms: worksessions and discussions rather than announcements. If we want to spread information, send an email or post to the wiki, but if it’s about pedagogy and teaching and student issues, make it face-to-face, and make it worthwhile.
There is a theme running through a lot of the workshops here that incorporates the idea that we should promote the teachers that “get it.” Which teachers get it, and I don’t mean technologically only, but which teachers will look at something new and attack it, refine it and make it their own? Find them and ask them to show how they do it. Let students show teachers how things work. Have you heard Alan’s quote: “always bring a student to a technology conference.” Let students show their teachers what they are actually capable of (from Eric Marcos‘ presentation today)
I imagine there is a post or several brewing from all of this, but here some quotes I pulled from our admin team’s notes (via Google Docs) today:
Some great quotes from our notes from the conference:
” what simple tools can make learning become remarkable -” “you only need a handful of staff on board to move things forward”
“do teachers enjoy learning?”
“schools don’t encourage divergent thinking. Social networks – no deadlines, no stress, to a big crowd.”
“We need to teach kids to escape. Kids aren’t afraid to experiment with technology – they understand that they can’t “break” it.”
“To be successful in school, you have to be convergent. To be successful in the world you have to be DIVERGENT.”
“If we want our students to learn it deeply, they need to be able to teach it.”
“Unscripted – talk, write, have the students do critical thinking on the spot, showcasing the student, choosing the right vocabulary words, authentic assessment, gives the student an active role in their OWN learning.”
“what do we push to next?- creating the need for more people to embrace this and try the things that are out there and more importantly keep technology as the vehicle to get to the places we want students to go-technology should never replace best practices and good teaching”
“We should teach children to drill through content to find audience and purpose.”
“Filtering: we are not protecting our students in the way we think. We may actually be handicapping them.”
“Good idea for creating our own faculty search engines. We do this now but its done by teachers linking sites from their own websites.”
In a few hours, myself and a team of administrators from my district will be boarding a plane for Boston to attend the Building Learning Communities conference. If you are a somewhat regular reader of this blog, you may already know how often I reference Alan November’s ideas and what an influence he’s been on my practice. When I pitched the idea for us to attend, way back in April, I didn’t anticipate all of the us going, but I am glad we are; it will be nice to see the reactions of my colleagues to some of the ideas that will be circulating.
The last few days have been interesting for me here. On Saturday, I had the great opportunity to talk about new teacher induction programs with Steve Kimmi (the conversation was recorded and can be found on Steve’s blog or on the EdTechTalk site). When Steve emailed me and gave me the list of topics that we might get to, it was a big one, and my preparations for the conversations led me to do some deeper thinking than I had done in a while–nothing like a deadline to get you motivated. Steve’s idea was this:
We will be discussing how to prepare new teacher’s for today’s classroom and 21st century skills. There are a lot of resources that attempt to define 21st century skills, so I will list the one’s that I am privy to. However, this will also be discussed.
21st Century Skills:
Digital Literacy
Global Awareness
Collaboration/Communication
Problem Solving/Inventive Thinking
So I knew I needed to formulate some ideas about them, and it coincided nicely with the direction I was heading in as we approached BLC.
New Teachers and 21st Century Skills
When I saw this heading, I thought immediately back to some of Jeff Utecht’s posts about interview questions for hiring of new staff. What should our incoming teachers be versed in technologically v. what can we expect to teach them in the induction programs and in working with them over time? This dichotomy gets at a few things I feel are important. When new teachers arrive at our offices and classrooms, we expect them to have licensure and credentials as certified by the state and have passed through a teacher training program at a university. I know nothing of what teacher training programs look like these days, only what the products of those programs, the new teachers we hire directly out of college, show us when they arrive for interviews or as new hires. As Jeff stated in his post from last spring, we need to be a bit more stringent in what we are asking of our new teachers. This is much easier said than done when we consider the amounts of schools out there that will open in September without a full staff due to the inability to find qualified applicants; however, for my own personal experience, I don’t think it’s enough to expect that a teacher have a basic understanding of the trends in education, rather, I feel they should be on the cutting edge having come from a teacher training program. They should understand the power of networked learning, of the use of mobile technologies, and the utmost importance of critical thinking skills and collaboration among both their students and their colleagues.
“If you believe in changing education, who are you working for now, the students and teachers of today or the students and teachers of tomorrow?”
In the conversation with Steve on Saturday, I mentioned a story I heard via a comment on the “Uncle Bill” post in which she relayed a story that Alan November told audience at the Learning 2.0 Conference last year in Shanghai. In it, Alan spoke of how Plato struggled with ideas espoused by the current educational system in his day and railed against those in control of it in order to have it changed. In the end, his conclusion on how to change it was simple: wait for all of those in control to die.
That’s not exactly an option we have; I think of all of the students that would exposed to new pedagogies, all of the teachers that would not come to know the power of a network that can be tapped into constantly and one that can be added to at the same rate. Steve said it best in the discussion when he referenced the fact that we cannot give up on trying to help teachers develop lessons steeped in 21st Century literacy because what if students have a teacher that uses new methods successfully and exposes them to the use of new tools and transforms the way they learn, only to have a teacher the following year who does none of that. Does that put the child at a disadvantage? I don’t have that answer–reason being is that I don’t exactly know what the variables are yet. What does good teaching with new tools and new pedagogy look like? Are we at the point yet where one way trumps the other. I have visions of Dan Meyer floating in my head here: are we trying to re-invent something that is already invented?
What this calls for, this change we keep referring too, is a change in the vision of our educational leaders. I am excited to meet up with David Truss this week and get into his head about leadership, and with Dennis Richards to look at what type of vision for schools of today we can forge.
More to come as the week progresses.
Image Credit: “lead type” on jm3’s flickr photostream
I am really digging the work that Scott McLeod is doing via his blog. Over the last few months he has recognized great commentors, blogs that deserve a bigger audience, and sponsored a button making contentst for NECC. But what really grabs me is his call to leaders in our field to “get it,” and do so quickly. This button sums it up for me. How are you making something happen?
I am not a principal. I don’t run a school. I don’t monitor if you sign in or not. I develop curriculum and help teachers hone their methodology. It’s what I love to do. But I also found out over the last three days, I lead people too.
For the last few weeks, there has been a growing disconnect between the staff I work with and myself. I am new; my position was just created as of December 1st, but I have worked with this staff in other capacities for almost 5 years. Something was afoot, something palpable, an undercurrent of discontent that showed itself in subtle ways.
Then the fences went up.
We are beginning a three-year construction process (if we are lucky and the construction management Gods smile upon us), and the initial steps to begin destruction of buildings not in the redesign were taken last week. While the exuberance of teaching in a state-of-the-art building appeals to all of the staff, the reality of the three or so years leading up to it hadn’t shown its forlorn self until those fences appeared.
When I was in the classroom, I lead students by example. My passion was my greatest weapon, and the stories we shared together about the history of the world enveloped us all. As I migrated into staff development I relied on the same practice; it was a passionate relationship with the possibilities that technology and new pedagogy opened for me. It, too, infected those around me. Leading people was so much more about the “hey, look what I am doing. I’ll show you so you can do it too.” And it worked because it was a suggestion to a colleague.
What changed when I entered administration, and I don’t know whether it was a preparatory change I made sub-consciously or a change that was overt, was that method of leading by doing no longer was seen as suggestion, but mandate. Although I still felt like a colleague, acted like a colleague, and contributed to the development of ideas, it was no longer taken as collegial, but rather a directive.
Prior to this past week, I had been contacted by a few of the teachers in the departments that I oversee about the climate of the building in which they work. The general feeling was that the morale was extremely low, that teachers were not happy, that they had no voice and no support on issues that are essential to their ability to do their job. Decisions were made that affected their classrooms and they were being told about it after the fact. The top-down approach they were seeing was not helping them feel as if they had a stake in the future of our school.
My plan originally was to address the individuals who spoke with me and assess the situation in a one-to-one conversation. By the time our department meetings rolled around this week, it became clear that what we had was something close to revolution. Our agenda for this week was to have each department meet for 3 hours a day during the HSPA Testing and work on curricular issues. Each department would have 6 hours over the two days to examine their curriculum, methods and resources. That’s a lot to ask of an unhappy group. We have a professional staff and they worked brilliantly to revise and add resources to their curriculum. It was in these meetings over the course of three days that I learned something valuable about leadership.
The English Department came in on Tuesday and on Thursday faced with re-writing their research process due to the fact that our Media Center will not be a Media Center next year, but most likely become classroom space due to rooms lost to reconstruction. Our goal was to analyze what we wanted our students to do with the resources we did have left. As they progressed through the morning, I noticed that they worked hard, they were knowledgeable about what they taught and they cared deeply about doing it well. Something was missing.
A lot of the conversations in the blogosphere are about making students feel like what they are doing has a point in the real world. Meaning is a bigger issue than information. I agree with that, but I agree with that for teachers as well. On Thursday morning, I had planned to do all of this crazy tech stuff with the teachers: Google Docs, Notestar, Google Earth, etc. ad nauseum. On Wednesday afternoon, after meeting with one of the members of the department, I decided to throw all of that aside.
I gave them a copy of my image for the Passion Quilt Meme, and talked about the things I was passionate about in education. I asked them to list the things that made them become English teachers. What were there passions? And we talked about them, we agreed on things, we stole each other’s ideas, we learned about one another, and we laughed with one another. Then I asked them to take those passions and describe how they would want to pass them along to their students. Who do they want entering the world after they graduate? Our results connected us by way of our common and disparate ideas for our students.
I feel like most of the meaningful moments in my career are accidental; that I have no control over when my greatest lessons are going to be learned. This is what happened to me yesterday. I learned to be a leader, and I learned to do it by listening to people tell me what they want, and then helping them get there. Yesterday told me that leadership is not always about gaining control of situations, but giving it over to the people that need it.
Just as I am entering full-on anxiety mode, along comes Tracy Weeks’s post at LeaderTalk. Tomorrow is my official start date as Director of Curriculum for Humanities. Notice I capitalized that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job title that needed to be capitalized before.
I’ve been thinking about what to expect as I make this transition, and I will admit, there is a lot of apprehension in changing roles; I’ve never known a job that was as diverse and challenging as the one I am leaving. What this next one holds, I don’t fully know, but the glimpses I have seen in the last few days show me that the stakes are higher, the responsibilities greater, and challenges more complex than any I have ever known. I’ve never been one to shy away from things that are difficult, and I have to say I am excited for the challenge.
Things do worry me, though. For example, the idea of change has been on that I’ve bandied about on this blog for a while now. How do you effectively institute it without alienating those that fear it most? And several of us have spoken in the past that people in the field of education have an odd relationship with change. For the most part, we see it as arbitrary, and often hitched to political agenda.
What I learned so well from being immersed in, for lack of a better term, “all things 2.0″ over the last year and a half, is that this change we immersed in did not come as a mandate from some overarching political edict. Rather, just the opposite. It has come from the needs of our students, and the desires of some extremely talented teachers who want to reach them with undeniably meaningful and timely lessons using sound pedagogy combined with new tools.
So I look at tomorrow morning with apprehension, but also renewed excitement, as I will take with me the skill set that I have honed up until this point in my career. Tracy spoke of a few things that I really liked, and plan to carry over in some way to my new role:
Being the Change Tracy talks about using tools with people rather than just showing or telling about the tools. This idea is one I plan to implement as I will be involved in so many projects and groups and committees that keeping track of them will be daunting. Putting my theory into practice by using a wiki for organization, or really trying Google Groups to keep members up to speed will show how willing I am to push the “change” agenda forward, and do so with results in my own practice.
Leading and Learning by Example One of the greatest by-products of my time as technology coordinator was how closely I was able to examine my own learning. The outcome of that introspection has helped me see the kinds of things that Will Richardson has been talking about for quite a while: teachers and administrators need to look at how they learn, just as they need to look at how their students learn. Getting teachers and administrators to come together to discuss how professional development is changing is a goal of mine, one that I have begun on our district blog, Tech Dossier, but would like to see spill over into what Tracy calls “Lunch n’ Learns.” When you get administrators and the teachers that work with them to the same table to discuss how things are changing, or the ideas that they have for working with students, or how to expand the walls of the classroom (or better, knock them down completely), you get honest change, and you get hope.
We’ll see how this goes. I know this is going to be transformative, and that my life will change dramatically as of tomorrow morning, but this is the right move. This is the direction my head has been going for a while anyway. Wish me luck.
Here are some comments from the Admin workshop the other day:
Overall Summary:
1.
Thought is was well done…A LOT of information!!! I learned a great deal about technology and its use that I was not aware of.
2.
Would like to see this take place throughout the year on a regular schedule. Good overview, but more time and depth would be helpful.
3.
opened my eyes to a great deal of what was going on without my knowledge. I am extremely excited about getting involved with many of these tools.
4.
You did a great job of identifying the sites that the administrators need to be familiar with.
5.
I thought the tech session was informative for seeing what is out there and what many of the teachers have the capability to do. I am not even close to being tech oriented so I frequently feel lost in the tech world.
Application:
1.
“Play” with the sites a bit more to get comfortable. Research to see what the teachers are doing and “maybe” I will be able to help them expand their use of this technology in the classroom.
2.
Reach out to tech coordinators for help in educating the teachers on these features.
3.
connect with teachers and become a part of the experiences they are providing their students.
4.
To improve the efficiency of the time I spend on the Internet. I also plan on showing the board members the Did You Know? video
One Change to the workshop:
1.
More individual or small group instruction. I know that the class only had 15 people. It was hard to get the complete grasp of the topic or techniques with “do this, then do this, and then this”. There were four or five topics…maybe concentrate on two this time then maybe another time the other ones. BUT as administrators we are always pressed for time. NO EASY SOLUTION!!
2.
More time.
3.
some of the text on the screen in the front of the room was difficult to read because it was small.
4.
I have no suggestions for change.
5.
I would like a handout so when I have time I could explore. Presently, I often don’t even know where to start!
One Keep:
1.
Topics
2.
Well presented.
3.
Patrick Higgins. Lets pray he never takes a job in South Carolina.
4.
Pointing out the relevance of the knowledge and allow time to practice using the tools.
5.
Step by step instruction.
Looking at this, I see several choices I made that I might not make again. For example, I opted to go paperless, instead relying on online tutorials and screencasts to show them how to work through any confusion they had. Note to all of you out there who are presenting to a crowd that is not so tech-oriented: silence your inner tree-hugger and make the copies. Even if it is just a list of the sites you visited and a short description, it will go a long way towards retention.
The next thing that jumps out at me is the fact that I think I did a good job of making them want more, which is always the sign of a successful lesson. Although these types of sessions are overwhelming at times, I leveraged that against the fact that the students and the teachers they work with are using these tools, and it makes sound managerial sense to understand them.
This is a great group of administrators who are looking to begin really addressing how schools are changing to meet the needs of very different learners. I look forward to the next time we sit down to do this.
Wednesday, I had the opportunity to present some ideas on school change, leadership, social networking, and ongoing district projects to our whole team of administrators from the K-12 buildings. I had been waiting for this.
The wiki (private for now) I created for it doesn’t really do it justice because of the discussion that took place in the breaks, or the people who stopped me afterward and pushed the topics further, or asked for more time on these the projects we saw. I didn’t hit the nail squarely, as I explained to my wife, as I feel that I didn’t really address the need for them to be reading administrator blogs or teacher blogs, nor did I show them how their teachers can fully utilize some of the new tools we have added to district machines, but, hey, I only had 2.5 hours.
Here was the agenda:
Overview and Purpose
What skills are our students going to need to compete in a changing workplace environment?
Does our pedagogy prepare them for that workplace?
When you meet with teachers, what can you offer by means of improvement of instruction or preparation through technology?
What meaningful experiences are teachers in your building, your district and beyond engaged in with their students?
What are some tools I can use to become more productive and save time while performing tasks that are essential to my job?
I really adhered to Scott’s post from while ago and tried to focus on issues that they currently deal with, and how to make them more productive. One of the issue that stood out from my contact with teachers over the past year was lack of specific direction coming from post-observation meetings. When told to incorporate technology, what did that mean? When told to differentiate instruction, how did they do that? During my presentation, I tried to give examples of specific methods they could incorporate into their written evaluations.
There has been a recent spate of posts about meetings like this (see Bach, Chris, and Barbara), where the presenters were asked to accomplish a lot in a small amount of time. Reflecting on it, I truly love the moment where you know you’ve prepared, and you are so ready that you are inviting dissension that leads to discussion.
Back in the late spring, when I submitted my summer slate of professional development classes I added one that wasn’t available to teachers, only administrators. Lacking a better name, I called it Administrator 2.0. This was the first time I had done this, and as it turns out, our assistant superintendent has made it mandatory for all of the administrators in our district. This I am thrilled about.
Reading collaborative blogs like LeaderTalk really pushed this idea along, as I realized that the movement to change the definition of literacy and transform our pedagogy was also being joined by educational leaders at the administrator level. For any movement to gain credence, even with teachers, a dynamic, present, and informed leader must aide in that journey.
Here is the blurb I created for the class back in June:
What makes administrators effective technology leaders? Do we need to be immersed in technology in order to promote its pedagogical resources within our buildings? While we all might consider ourselves to be at least proficient in various applications of technology, the pace with which it advances is unprecedented, meaning that our knowledge base must increase as well. Also, emerging social applications like MySpace and Facebook for middle and high school students, and Club Penguin for elementary school children have left a lot of us in the dark as to what our students are doing online and why they feel the need to connect in such a way.
Since then, I have added some aspects of personal productivity, like using RSS and aggregation, using blogs as a means to communicate to staff and connect to the scores of professional development available in the blogosphere. In reflecting on what I want them to leave with, I remembered Scott McLeod’s advice for working with school administrators in workshops like this:
Change their mindset.
Have a keen understanding of their work.
Ensure that training is authentic.
Make it easy for them to learn.
Make their lives easier.
Tap into what they already know.
Address their concerns about the rate of change.
Comply with what we know about effective professional development.
Respect their time.
focus on leadership, not tools.
remind them of the importance and power of modeling.
I love number 9, because it identifies the pressure I feel in this situation; it’s the end of the summer, school is beginning in a week, and here they are, “stuck” in a mandatory workshop. I need to give them much more than a make and take, I need to identify what their roles are and create the content with that in mind. This has to be relevant to them.
Has anyone ever run something like this before? Or better yet, has any administrator gone through something like this? I would love feedback as I prepare.
Also, I would love to skype (provided it behaves) a few administrators and teachers in to the session for a brief chat to address questions and discuss what you are doing in your schools to address change. Also, what really would impact this group would be a focus on student outcomes.
It never fails to amaze me that just when my thinking is diverging slightly, albeit not all that much due to the fact that it is centered around education, I find others out there who are thinking, and better yet, creating along the same lines.
I offered to teach a class this summer within our district, something I called Administrator 2.0, and as I began to pull resources together and thought about the message that I wanted to send, the rash of posts (Steve, Chris, Ben, and Scott), including my own, brought to my attention that we are an overwhelming bunch to those who are not in the echo chamber. Our enthusiasm, while contagious amongst ourselves, is just the thing that can turn off someone with any amount of trepidation when it comes to change. Who among our stakeholders has more angst about launching students into online collaborative environments than those people who are ultimately responsible for the students in our buildings: the administrators.
So I thought some more about it, and bang! There is Scott McLeod’s post in my Reader this morning: “Professional Development for the Leaders.” I was a little creeped out, honestly, because this happens all of the time. Not just with Scott, but because I think we are all moving in directions and ricocheting off one another. Inevitably, we are going to cross the same points at similar times, and for that I am grateful.
Now, as I look at the list of suggestions that Scott put together, the process of creating this presentation is much less daunting. Of the 11 suggestions he makes, here are my favorites:
Change their mindset: For me this is about asking them to suspend disbelief for just a few moments, until I can sink a hook using some form of media that has turned our heads. I am not looking at tools here–no bells and whistles–just something that will force them to see their schools and school culture through the lens of the 21st Century.
Ensure that training is authentic: We have all sat through training, especially technology training where the last thing the presenter wants you to do is to touch the machines and play. Aside from a brief hook in the beginning, I want them involved in the applications, creating, reading, trying to break whatever it is we are doing.
Make their lives easier: Exposing them to RSS and setting them up with an aggregator is a sure winner. From here, they will be more likely to buy into what you are selling. RSS is truly the killer app for most people new to web 2.0, and educators should be no different. Create a reading list for your next faculty meeting? No problem–use your shared articles from Google Reader.
Respect their time: In my case, this will not be a voluntary workshop, so they will be looking at me under the lens of scrutiny from the start. I need to quickly do three things: show them that there is a shift occurring, show them how to make sense of the shift, and give them some confidence that they are capable of existing in this new environment.
focus on leadership, not tools: Most of them have probably seen the tools in some form or another, or at least will not be too surprised at what they can do; however, I would like to get them thinking about how these things affect the way they lead. What will they expect from their staffs?
remind them of the importance and power of modeling: Scott mentions the phrase: “Do as I say, but not as I do,” and there may not be a more damaging phrase in all of education. Administrators, as teachers and students alike, must be able to throw away old fears of ignorance and jump into what is happening in their schools. The best way to influence school culture in a positive way is to be positive as a leader, and make sure that everyone sees that energy.
From those of you out there who are either administrators or are in a situation where you work for an administrator who has embraced these new paradigms and the School 2.0 philosophy, what are the aspects you would like to pass along to those just coming into the fold?
How are teachers evaluated in an online model? Virtual schools present different challenges to administrators as they do not exist within the Hunter-esque model of evaluation. Barbara referred to this when she posted on her blog about the unique problems associated with School 2.0 and evaluations in the traditional sense.
How are teachers hired?
teachers must first take an online survey before they are asked to come in for an interview or a phone call.
minimum score required
Instructional Leaders are like “principals” of the the virtual school.
The interview process is unique
face-to-face and phone all at once
integral because of the nature of the teaching–a lot of the teaching is done by phone.
There has to be some thought put into how different the hiring process will be than the traditional interview and screening process. In addition to the teaching craft, the interpersonal skills are essential to the success of the online teacher.
Mentoring program
reduced class load for the mentoring teacher
follow-up calls and once a week to the new teacher
The drop aspect of this is an often-discussed
Drop
Florida has a policy of open enrollment where students can drop or add the class at any point during its progression. This means that the learning and teaching is completely asynchronous on two levels:
learners are not always accessing the information at the same time, even if they are at the same point in the class time line.
learners in the class may be at several different points in the time line. (imagine an American History class where one group of students is working through the Depression while another group may still be working through Lincoln’s presidency. The teacher is responsible for teaching, re-teaching, re-teaching, until the class has finished).
In addition to the open enrollment, teachers can also drop a student after a series of missteps or lack of performance. WHAT! Imagine that in a regular classroom!
The appearance of an online teacher, to their families, is very different.
because the teacher works from home, families tend to view the teacher as a non-teacher. After all, they don’t look like they are working because they are sitting in front of the computer or talking on the phone.
Here is the beginning of the difference for teaching and evaluating, perhaps. When becoming an online teacher, the applicant needs to be made aware of exactly how different the profession is in this new model.
In addition, the strategies teachers use to admonish or to motivate, can be extremely creative
contests
How do we know that the students are the ones doing the work?
Mirrors traditional classrooms in that the teacher will get to know the student’s writing and style
Phone conversations also let the teacher know more about the students.
Database of student work to compare to. As more assignments get put in, the database grows.
Teachers can view how long a student has spent on an assignment through the LMS.
Oral assessments
“how did you come to that conclusion?”
Requiring a student to take a face-to-face exam
Students are also allowed to resubmit assignments at any point throughout the course.
Pacing
three paces allowed by FLVS
traditional pace- similar to what a traditional school would offer for a full-year class (about 8mos.)
extended pace
accelerated pace
flexibility within each of these paces.
Students and parents also complete an evaluation when the student is 65% completed with the course. This feedback is used to reshape how the teachers are selected, how the classes are structured, and the type of professional development the teacher needs to focus on.
How do administrators know that the teachers are doing their job?
Each teacher has credit goal that they are expected to meet.
it becomes evident when a teacher has a weak point in their pedagogy
There is data that may reflect
Each teacher is required to complete so many students throughout the course of a year.
performance-based
The Instructional Leaders look at the teachers each week
data from calls
student ebb and flow from the class
weekly student progress- pace and academic average.
This might not reflect everyone’s model, but since FLVS is performance-based, what happens when a teacher is floundering?
when the IL picks up trends within the teacher’s performance over time, then they intervene much as they would in a normal school.
providing strategies and support.
Content-buddies (at FLVS): new teachers are placed with a content-buddy as well as a mentor to help troubleshoot areas of curriculum.
Team teaching: working with a group of teachers on a class so that they can all interact with the group of students.
Three evaluations per teacher
beginning of the year
credit goal- there is a standard that all teachers are expected to meet with how many student credit-hours are completed by their classes.
leadership goal- how a teacher communicates within the course and how they work within the team
business goal
professional development goal
Teamwork and getting teacher stakeholder buy-in is essential, and in thinking of how to set this up in my district, the decision to include some and not others will make or break whether or not the Sparta Virtual School becomes a reality. This, like many other areas of School 2.0, requires a certain ability within the stakeholders to be able to suspend disbelief and be comfortable with not knowing how it is going to look upon completion.
This is such a different model of learning, and so much of it lives in opposition to traditional teaching (hours of operation especially) that not to spend time on the training of staff would be disastrous to the success of the virtual school.
Here are my notes from the Virtual Leadership Conference, Day 1. I am just going to let these fly out there, and it may be in several parts, but I am not usually one who writes in this format (notes, that is).
Goals of the group:
* How to build an online school * How to grow a school wisely * How does teaching look in this environment * How are students successful in this environment * How does staffing look in regards to the union issue? * LMS’s. * How do we monitor students and teachers * Assessment of students? How is authentic? * Pacing of students as they move through a course * Funding of your own students/funding of students from outside of the district?
There is a lot of demand and a lot of need out there
* state requirements * credit recovery * Kids don’t have issue with the online learning, we do.
How do you grow your online school and maintain quality
* million dollar question * constant battle to maintain that balance
Florida Virtual School is funded based on student success
* at their own request * measures in place to maintain academic integrity
What is student success in an online school? Is there a way to track student performance over time?
* SAT, ACT prep courses and affect on scores * Do online schools show success in this area? * Is the very nature of an online learning environment contrary to standardized testing? o should these students be measured in another way?
Blogger is giving me issues. Here are some more ideas:
Class discussions via YackPack.
* Whatever LMS we choose, it should have the ability to me module or node-based, so we can add things like YackPack or Skype directly into them. * elluminate is another that FLVS uses.
College Reach-out Program
* priority funding with FLVS and priority access to students in this group who are at-risk or designated for this program. * This type of program provides students who might have slipped through the cracks or missed out on a traditional school “track” on getting themselves in position to reach the college level. * Underserved students are viewed as not a good fit for online learning o not true– a populare misconception o FLVS has data to show that students in minority populations do very well on standardized tests after having been associated with FLVS. o Stereotype eraser, and students who might otherwise shy away from academic success, or are shunned due to social stereotypes (behavior problems, bad decisions, social stigmas) do very well in an online class. * The idea that students are “embarrassed” to be smart in some schools due to social pressures, can be “invisibly smart” in an online class while still maintaining their social status (the sagging pants phenomena) * Migrant students benefit from FLVS through Dan Bolton–Angels Helping Hands who provides inexpensive laptop computers to them so they can participate in online learning.
The prevailing opinion is that online learning is for the bright kids. It also attracts students who are looking for a free ride.
* 29-day grace period for students to drop the class. This usually weeds out those looking for a free-ride. * This system also represents under-achieving students.
Initially, the focus of online learning was on the higher-achieving students, but the trend is to move away from this and to “serve the underserved.”
Internet connection speed also plays a part in the creation of course content
* providing equal access for all members of the class to materials is essential to the students feeling of success and belonging in the environment. * This could be meted out in the beginning of the class or at initial enrollment through a survey that informs the school how each student connects to the internet. * Funding options for students with limited access to technology need to be explored.
Student support
* mentoring programs that involve community support or corporate support. o many companies require that employees mentor students * The need for students to rise to meet a level of success mandated by an online school, rather than being held back by it is crucial, and providing support measures, either through mentoring or through built-in measures.
Publicity and Marketing also play a huge role in the success of your online program if you plan to open it to those outside of your district. Even within district, buy-in from counselors who trust the program and push it in their meetings with students will make or break the school.
As for how to “teach” so far the best quote is “You will not work less, you will just work differently.”
In addition, a rather depressing statistic for me, the Northeast is the least progressive in the area of online school proliferation when compared to the rest of the nation.
* is this union related? * If so, this will require a lot of relationship-building with unions and with other stakeholders. * The idea that this will change the working environment is unquestioned, but will it impact negatively? o what will the hours of a virtual teacher look like? o how will that be worked out in a teacher contract?
Breen states that
“We should see ourselves as all being in research and development.”
