ASCD: From Two Angles

I just stopped into the Convention Center here to pick up my media kit, and I immediately noticed a big shift from last year’s conference in New Orleans: tech.  Flat screens, laptops, live streaming of sessions, and a dedicated Technology Corridor (that’s going to be a separate post).  All things that had they been here last year, I wouldn’t have stuck out so much sitting all by myself in session rooms because the only viable electrical outlets for people with laptops were on the fringes of sessions.

Seriously, there is a decided effort on the part of ASCD to be visible, to pull in “21st Century Skills,” a word that the world has claimed as its buzzword du jour, and if you look through the session descriptions, there is a huge focus on these topics:

• Visual Literacy and infusion of Visual Art into the classroom
• Using assessment wisely to allow students to show they understand
• Web 2.0 and its use in the classroom
• 21st Century Skills and their broad definition

Over the last few days, I’ve spent some time looking at the sessions that immediately call out to me as valuable in what I do on a daily basis.  If you’ve been following some of the thoughts here lately, especially the dialogue between Scott McLeod and on a recent links post, you’ll understand that there has to be a marriage between teaching “soft skills,” and making sure content knowledge is sufficiently understood.  There is a balance we need to strive for in our work over the next few years in curriculum writing.  Scott really hit it here in this reference:

In Built to Last, Collins & Porras describe how visionary organizations do not “oppress themselves with … the ‘Tyranny of the OR’” (i.e., citizenship preparation v. employment preparation) but instead “liberate themselves with the ‘Genius of the AND.’” As they note, yin and yang are “both at the same time, all of the time.” Why is this so hard for educators to do?

I’d like to find some examples here at ASCD that show me this is happening, or at least show ways in which I can move forward to help teachers create learning environments that are innovative for students and teachers alike, yet provide a solid academic foundation for the future.  As I have said before, it never was an Either/Or.

The second major focus I have this weekend is to leave here with more actionable content which I am taking to mean both teaching strategy and assessment strategy.  When I work with teachers, especially in light of all the buzz about the influx of creativity and innovation ideas into the NJCCCS, they often ask me how they are supposed to teach these skills.  The sessions I have chosen center around giving teachers strategies for stretching student minds within their content areas.  In my own personal practice, I always fall back on the Kagan Structures and other forms of cooperative learning (and it just so happens, Kagan is presenting on Sunday).  With that creativity in how we approach teaching, I’d like to explore some innovation in how we assess our students.

Be sure to pick up the twitter feed also, which you can find here and here.

Creativity Myths, The Other Half

Myth 4: Fear Forces Breakthroughs

According to the research that Breen quotes throughout his article, “creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety,” meaning that when you are happy you produce more creative work.  Furthermore, according to the research, you are more likely to come up with a creative idea after a day in which you were happy than not.  Sounds less like rocket science than it does common sense, but again if we play this out across the field of education, workplace happiness and environment can play a huge role in how creative we are in finding solutions to classroom and curricular situations.  How do you feel when you are at work?  Does it bring you joy to be there?  I find that I work best when my environment is calm, but engaging, and there are people that challenge me.

Myth 5: Competition Beats Collaboration

With all of the tools we have available to us that push collaboration, nothing replaces what we can do in the direct company of others.  The myth here is that by pitting teams or individuals against each other, we gain in creativity.  We are in the midst of annual meetings in which we share how we use the district-issued technology in our classrooms.  The intent of the meetings is many-faceted: one one hand we as administrators need to assess the use of the limited technological resources we have in the district; on the other hand, the teachers involved truly get to see a glimpse of what their colleagues are doing.  The meetings usually play out with teachers fretting about what they will share (with a few angry emails sent our way), but then when the meeting begins each teacher goes well beyond the alloted 3-5 minutes, and the audience feeds off of it.  It becomes the type of meeting that we wish we had every month.  My point here in the comparison is that when we share, when we push against each other with confidence, the result is much better.

Myth 6: A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

Leaders of organizations that are undergoing major change, specifically in the number of staff or the size of budgets, need to pay close attention to the mental health of that staff.  The study showed that when employees understand that major changes are coming that may affect them, even measures taken to bolster creativity and productivity fail.  This one goes towards making sure we can check in with our colleagues and keep stakeholders abreast of what the goal is.

Kill the Mothership

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.

SparkNotes and the Desire to Read: Mutually Exclusive?

This post is the transcript of the notes I posted to our English Department Group page.  I thought I’d make them public here as some of our discussion might spark some conversation elsewhere.

This month’s meeting had a dual focus:

• Resource Sharing
• Summer Reading Discussion

We began the meeting by discussing the following passage:

“I am a second year teacher who teaches at a high school where the
SparkNotes epidemic is in full force. In fact, I had students in a
college prep class gloat over the fact that they hadn’t read a single book all year and were passing (barely, mind you).

We all know the list: SparkNotes, Cliff notes, BookRags, Pink Monkey,
etc. etc.; and for some, like myself, it’s difficult to imagine not
reading the book and simply relying on a website as a primary source.
(After all, you don’t get that lovely used book smell. Aahh.) Ugh, but
it’s happening…a lot.

I’ve talked to my collegues about this, and we’ve griped about it
together. I’m very creative with my lesson plans and want to teach
heavier concepts, but it’s extremely difficult when
no one
is reading. One teacher told me she purposely goes on these websites to
create her quizzes based on information not mentioned in the plot
summaries and character analysis. It sounds a bit malicious, but what
else is there to do?

Does anyone have a suggestion how to combat SparkNotes? Or do I throw
in the towel whenever I assign a bit of reading that contains more than
fifty pages?”

The purpose behind this was two-fold.  Obviously the piece generated discussion amongst the group regarding how we work with this, and how to find the holes in the SparkNotes summaries that students read.  Several of you discussed how you read the SparkNotes summaries and use them to create you assessments.  Doing so enables you to focus on details and elements not included in a pat summary.

Questions that came up (both during the meeting and in my head after):

• Do we take the role of “gotcha” with our assessments?  If so, what affect does that have on students desire to read?
• What other sites are out there for them to use? (Schmoop, BookRags)
• If we don’t acknowledge the use of it and use it as a tool for ourselves as well, will it become abused?

The second purpose of reading this passage was to give an example of the type of discussion that is occurring at a social networking site created by English teacher Jim Burke called The English Companion.  The site has over a thousand members from around the world, most of them English teachers.  The amount of sharing of resources and ideas that is occurring there is truly phenomenal.  I find myself reading and commenting often.  Learning as we know it is changing rapidly, and our ability to find sources of dialogue about these changes is crucial to our understanding of it.

The second article we shared was an editorial from the Washington Post by Nancy Schnog titled “We are Teaching Books that Don’t Stack Up.” The article originally ran in August, but I wanted to tie it into our discussion on summer reading.  Schnog argues that as much as our desire as teachers of literature is to engage our students in the thrills we have all found in literature and the requisite critical analysis of it, we might be doing them a disservice.  Jamie pointed out that she remembers being a student and wanting to just read a passage without having to dissect every nuance and literary symbol.  Schnog also spoke about the timing of literature and the genres offered to students at their various age levels.  She spoke about students reading Catcher in the Rye as Juniors rather than as 8th graders because of how they could relate to it on a completely different level.  When we speak about summer reading, we often include similar ideas: is this book going to engage the boys?  is this title going to pull in reluctant readers.

If our goal is to push students to read for enjoyment, are we accomplishing that?  If that isn’t the goal of summer reading, what is?  Andrew brought up a point at the end of the meeting regarding what we can ask students to read and what we can ask them to respond like.  His reading, he stated, has become focused on editorial and opinion pieces over the last year, and looking at the summer reading list, Angela asks her students to keep dialectic journals while reading a self-selected group of editorials from either the New York Times or the Washington Post.  What if we asked our students to do this at every level?  Due to the participatory nature of politics and news at the moment, this might work to engage them in reading for pleasure.

New Voice, For Me at Least

Today I have been searching for subject area teachers who use twitter, especially those who teach in the disciplines I am concerned with.  In doing so, I came across Brad Ovenell-Carter, who teaches in British Columbia.  His remix of Will Farren’s graphics from his “Insulat-Ed” post is fantastic.  Below is a copy of the message I sent to my Connections teachers:

Hope you all are preparing for a great New Year’s Eve Celebration.  I wanted to pass this along to all of you to see what you make of it:

• What is networked learning?
• How can we help our student create their own networks?

Over the last year or so, the network I have set up teaches me more and leads me in more interesting directions than I ever could have found on my own.  It’ not just about resources and websites, but rather ideas and learning when I want, and where I want.  Our students deserve this.  You deserve this.

Image Credit: Brad Ovenell-Carter

Year End, Part II

Yes, there is a Part II this time.  I’ve been thinking about some of the lists flying around, some of the reflections from the past year, and obviously the predictions people are making about the upcoming year.  Working in schools automatically puts me at an odd place when looking at chronology; our year begins in September and ends in June, so this midpoint that occurs in January is almost anti-climactic for us teacher-folk.  For those in the world that exists outside of education, it’s epochal and much is said about the before and after of December 31st.

I read this the other day from Gina Bianchini about how she judged her efforts in creating Ning with Marc Andreessen:

Before Ning started, Marc and I decided that we would judge our success
by the diversity of networks on the platform. Today we have more than
600,000 and counting. It seems as if there is one for every hobby,
school, language or interest you can think of. I’ve seen networks
for everything from raw-food enthusiasts to fans of Britney Spears.

and I thought about judging the value of what I do here.  In a conversation with my brother-in-law the other day, I noted how difficult it is now that I am out of the classroom to get feedback on what I do.  The results of my efforts are not so immediately visible as they were when standing among students.  But what can I take as feedback?  Last year at this time, I wrote about what I had done the year before that I was proud of.  Looking back at this year, it’s so different.  It’s much less tangible.  Looking at this quote from Bianchini, I am thinking that my validation criteria needs to change–I need new indicators.

Perhaps there is a bigger shift to look at, not just for me, but for all of us.  In surveying these end of year brain dumps, I caught Fred Wilson’s over at A VC in his “Bits of Destruction,” post.  This part jumped out at me:

I’m typing this on my blackberry in a hotel lobby in Berlin, I’ll hit
send, and it will be published and read by roughly 5,000 people today.
Compare that to what it takes to get the Tom Friedman column ‘Time To Reboot America‘
which is sitting in front of me in the International Herald Tribune
newspaper printed and delivered to me. Printing and distribution
infrastructure cannot compete with bits on a wire and we are going to
see that infrastructure end up in in bankruptcy a lot in the next 12
months.

then this line from a comment drove it home:

I have long said that the only way an independent bookstore can survive is to not be a bookstore.

What if I framed it out that way when looking at what it is I do?  The only way to make significant differences in student learning at the curriculum planning and implementation level is to not be in curriculum planning and implementation.  It’s more than that.  In my limited experience, what I most represent to people is change, and I’ve discussed the idea that change ruffles the feathers of competence and causes cognitive dissonance.  From the bookstore example, if I show up at an independent bookstore I am most likely not just showing up for the books, but rather the smells, the characters, the possibility of channeling some far off Bohemian writer and probably that crazy weird tea they have brewing somewhere in the cafe section.

I am not about to start trying to win people over by promising this or that, but rather trying to represent real opportunity within the creation of curriculum and the re-examining of classroom practices.  It doesn’t have to come from me.  Small booksellers have to do more than sell books, they have to conjure ideas and feelings.  I don’t have to bring change, but I do have to create opportunities that maximize student learning and engagement, derive from the passions of teachers, and save time.  To echo a quote used today by a respected colleague, Robin Ellis (quoting Laura Sipes):

we are all so busy, so (innovation)technology can’t be added to your life, but must take the place of something you already do.

Ideas and innovation must make what we do easier and more efficient, otherwise they don’t stick.  So when I look back at this time next year, I don’t expect to marvel at the lack of feedback, but instead see a trail of indicators like new course design, more systems to gather student and teacher feedback, flexible and on-demand professional development, and a developing culture of innovation.

Pass the tea and Kafka, please.

Image Credit: “Forced Reflection” from shareski’s photostream

AP Art History: You Choose

Which would you rather teach (think 60-90 students)?  Then tell me why.  Please.

or

Year-end, Part I.

I don’t know why I would conclude a post name with “Part I,” when due to the schedule I am keeping these days, there is no guarantee there will be a “Part II,” but I guess it’s wishful writing.  Unless you are living in solitary confinement or have taken a holiday break job as a fire lookout, you’ve seen the onslaught of year-end posts that have been funneling through your mailbox, reader, or inbox.  For me, it’s a great lesson in how to deal with information overload.  Every one of these year-end recaps always points to some future point where the ills we’ve either created or ignored in the previous year can be righted.  This from Tom Friedman in the 12/23 NYT:

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot.
We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover.
That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S.
history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the
bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make
certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our
kids’ future, is spent wisely.

Earlier in the article, he alluded to the many ills that plague our great nation, taking a stab at our livelihood in stating that we have “…public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating…”  and as Clay so rightly put it in his comment on this via Twitter:

It’s context, I understand, and Friedman as making a point about the state of innovation in America–all things I agree with him on here.  But I know that standards as we’ve come to expect them from the federal government are not ones I want placed upon me or the students I work for.

I’ve got this statement stuck in my mind this week, and it’s one that has appeared in various forms over the years:

“the most important skill of the future may be the ability to forget what you’ve learned, and learn something new.” —by Patrick Tucker, Senior Editor, THE FUTURIST

The feedback I’ve gotten on this one so far has been slightly comical, but let’s break it down over the next few days.  What does it mean for us if what we know, what we are competent in, no longer makes our livelihoods stable?  In education, we tend to feel immune to the fluctuations of the job market.  But what if we are not?  What if the profound changes that the futurists are predicting, these disruptive innovations, happen sooner rather than later?  This is something I’d like to look into over the course of the next few days, time permitting…

Effective School Leadership in the Digital Age

A few posts back, I stated that I would try to get out the audio that accompanied my slides from the TechForum Northeast Conference on October 24th.  It’s taken me a while, and along the way I lost my notes, but here it is, as best as I could deliver.  I am already rethinking the format of this and the content; it’s like with our students when we ask them to read their writing out loud–it takes on a whole new level of awkwardness.  In the end it’s great for the piece, but it sure feels weird while you are standing there.  I’ll make one glaring admission before you view:  I need to include the student part of this the next time I deliver it.  It was in the planning, and I spoke about it at the conference, but did not get to it here.  What is their role in school leadership today?

more about “Effective School Leadership in the Di…“, posted with vodpod

Reflecting on the Fly

J. Clark Evans posted a piece at her blog, My Continuing Education, today called “Worst Class…Best Class” in which she recounts a recent day where the discussion in her 10th grade British Literature class did not go as she wanted to.  We’ve all been there on that day where you’ve hatched out these ground-breaking discussion questions about the novel you are reading or the era you are studying, and then when you unleash them on your students in the hopes of them coming to a new great American understanding, they look back at you as if you weren’t even there.  What do you do then?  Well, Evans did this:

I literally threw my hands up in the air and ended the lesson. I asked students to reflect on their lack of participation and offer ideas for ways to improve in an email to me.

My best quality as a teacher is my desire and willingness to reflect. I spent the rest of the day reviewing their comments, taking to another grade level teacher, and agonizing over how I could help them to be more successful.

I learned a new word today via the Open Dictionary: Andragogy.  Andragogy means the practice of teaching adults with emphasis on participation of students in the planning and evaluation.  Due to the nature of the Open Dictionary, I can’t be 100% sure it’s an official word, but I like it’s meaning nonetheless.  Evan’s example of andragogy is on that I feel we are lacking more of.  While she is teaching “almost adults,” the point is the same.  Can we teach our students to be part of the planning process?  Look closely at the way in which she implemented it too:

My second class British literature class also has problems with participation during general class discussions. A couple of students will attempt answers only after awkward silences. But the majority of students won’t speak, maybe if called on, but it’s so painful for both them and me that I hate to do that and put someone on the spot.

I started class by asking if they wanted to go with “regularly scheduled programming” or try something radically different. I would give them a task and when they accomplished it they would be dismissed, even if that was in ten minutes. They were a little reluctant but then encouraged each other to give it a try. They encouraged each other to get energized about a challenge in English class.

My favorite part of this was the conclusion she came to from the morning’s failure.  It wasn’t to let the students design the learning completely on their own, but rather to design something teacher-driven, but aimed at the students’ expressed desires from the morning class.  We are really beginning to look at assessment-driven instruction–using what our students know and don’t know to drive what we teach–in our district, and I like this example.  Here is the comment I left for her:

Here’s where you had me, and them, I believe:
“My best quality as a teacher is my desire and willingness to reflect.”

If one thing came through for your students it was that you listened to them. You took a failure, a rather public one, and pivoted in front of them. The student quote at the end of the post demonstrates what several of them were most likely feeling, even if they didn’t intimate it the same way.

In a new way, you showed what the use of assessment should look like. It wasn’t a book test, an essay, or anything pscyhometric, but you used it to inform your instruction. This is what we need everyone to be doing: look at your practice, look at what the students “tell” you, and make adjustments. The added bonus for us is that you wrote about it here and we can share it with more people.

And I hear you about the grading of papers. Feedback on graded material was always my downfall.

Using assessment doesn’t mean that you give pre-tests or previous examination grades; it can mean that you make an informed decision based on information you gathered through observation, much like Evans did.  This, I feel, is sometimes lost when we talk about using assessment to drive instruction.

My Reflections on Tech Forum Northeast-Bretag’s Push

In several of the informal conversations I had with Ryan and David last Friday, they laid out their plan for a  learning space whereby all of student work from moment they enter the high school will travel with them through the four years of high school.  Let me clarify a little from what I gleaned from them.

A problem, as Ryan pointed out in our panel discussion, occurred at several points in their experience with student blogging:

• What happened if you were blogging in science class, in English class, and in social studies?  Did you as a student have the responsibility for maintaining three distinct blogs?
• What happened when you finished the year with that teacher?  Did your blog die?  Were you able to take it with you and continue to write on your own?

These points came up as we were trying to get at what lies beyond the tools.  Having students keep isolated, individual blogs goes against most of what we strive for: transfer of understanding from seemingly unrelated areas to others.  We want students relating semi-permeable cell membranes to porous and non-defined border policies.  Having isolated learning spaces goes a long way toward furthering that view of education that our learning is isolated into small, un-meshed parts, when in actuality we learn through our connections to already processed material.

What this calls for is a systemic change within a school whereby students are asked to create their own learning space and tie it into the appropriate places within their subject areas.  For example, if a student sat down to write a piece for social studies on their blog, but found connections within the topic to a novel or short story they read in English, they could tag it with both socialstudies and english and the learning space would feed it to both of those courses’ Moodle site.  The teachers could then review the writing and help the student make deeper connections between the two.

Having some platform for blogging that is external, but able to be configured to be private is key here.  Google Apps may work, and I am sure you could configure WPMU to do this as well (both of which are beyond my realm).  This way, the students, as they graduate in four years, are able to take a body of writing over time with them to the college level, thus it becomes their portfolio.

I am truly just beginning to think beyond the glitz and glam of this tool or that one and delve into the deep possibilities we now have.  It’s empowering to know that we are capable of giving students this ability and that it really is very close to happening in certain places.  However, the biggest hurdle is getting more of my staff on board with the architecture of it.  Not every teacher understands blogging, tagging, or even what RSS is, nevertheless the connective and transformative nature of the tools.

That, however, was my second takeaway from last Friday.

Effective School Leadership in the Digital Age on Vimeo

more about “Effective School Leadership in the Di…“, posted with vodpod

In the rush to get caught up with everything that is swirling around me here, I’ve been trying to get both Slideshare and Google Docs to play nice with my slide deck from Friday’s Tech Forum Northeast Presentation I did.  The presentation, called Effective School Leadership in the Digital Age, was a blast, and I hope all who attended enjoyed it.  I ended up just exporting the keynote file to quicktime and then uploading it to Vimeo.  I hope to do some audio work on it shortly, but here is the rough-ready version.

The Thesis is Dead. Long Live the Thesis.

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.

All in all, a great meeting.

Image Credit: “Me & teh thesis” from doryexmachina’s Photostream

9/27 part I.

“If we cannot learn to engage in productive, ideological conflict during meetings, we are through.”  – Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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.

Image credit: “Gloom” from Shirley Buxton’s photostream

Call Me What You Will, I Want them Engaged

My wife dropped the big bomb on my yesterday. We were talking about the cell phone issue that seems to be surrounding the educational world lately–something akin to “I Love You, You’re Beautiful, Now Change,” replayed like “We love them, We all Have Them, Let’s Ban Them.” She asked me how I would use a cell phone in a classroom situation. I ran through my Polleverywhere.com deal and my Flickr email address picture thing, and mentioned how Liz Kolb said this and showed that. And then it came. The words I have been expecting for some time:

“But you are not in the classroom anymore, and you think ‘in theory.’ How do I make that work for 90 kids over the course of 8 periods in a day?”

In actuality, I loved the question, because it occurred two days ago and I haven’t gotten it off my mind (which tells me it was a keeper, as is she). But man, it stung slightly when it was originally posed. I miss the classroom. I miss kids and their messiness as they figure things out. However, what I am doing now challenges me in ways that I am not ready to give up.

Classroom teachers are asked to do an inordinate amount these days. Between knowledge of IEP’s for students and the push to differentiate instruction AND infuse technology into their practice, there is little time for some administrator type coming in and saying that cell phones are the savior. I get that. I get that there has to be some example, some established practice that shows results.

My response to not only my wife, but to everyone who would have reacted that way, is simple. What are you doing to engage your students? What is making them talk about your class and what happened in your room in third spaces? It happened when I was in school, so as Barry says, it’s not about the technology. But it is about their motivation.

I taught history. Some teach math. Any subject area teacher, aside from anything associated with the present day, struggles with relevance. I spent the majority of my time creating references and comparisons to present day situations so that my students could see the relevance in the events of the past. This is what we do: we find ways to reach our students and motivate them to learn about things that normally would not garner notice.

Recently, Jonathan Glater’s article in the New York Times, “Welcome, Freshman. Have an iPod,” spoke of how universities are beginning to leverage mobile technology to both lure students to their schools, but also to engage learning:

“We think this is the way the future is going to work,” said Kyle
Dickson, co-director of research and the mobile learning initiative at
Abilene Christian University in Texas

I agree, and Liz Kolb’s recent projection of mobile phone capabilities backs that up: smaller, faster, even more ubiquitous. I don’t know about the lot of you, but as for me, I’ll take anything that engages my students in learning. Tech or no tech. This just makes sense to me.

Discussion Protocol

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)

Next: So What?

BLC Preparedness

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.

Digital Literacy/Leadership

In looking back for Jeff’s post above, I came across one of my earlier posts regarding a conversation I had with my Uncle Bill in early Spring regarding the effects of changing systems and the workplace.  He posed a question that is apropo here as well:

“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

Exit Comments from New Teacher Induction

I’ve been going through the comments left by the New Teachers the other day in their exit cards and I thought I would take the time to post them for review here. Regardless if they are read by a large audience or not, they are already proving useful to me. To continue along the “be the change you want to see in others” vein, the information we are getting from these comments is already shaping the format for next month’s meeting. What amazes me is how easy it was to elicit feedback that is useful to my planning. I remember being in the classroom searching for meaningful information to help me plan my lessons, and the last thing I thought of was asking the students what they thought and what they needed. But when I did, the results were exactly what I needed. I hope these are of some value to anyone who has been reading the last few posts.

“What I Learned:”

• To have students come up with their own goals and feedback–triggers brain to work and students assess themselves
• The information of timely feedback was very interesting. It makes sense, but it’s good to see the research to back it up.
• I learned a lot of interesting ways to have students self-evaluate–mostly from talking to colleagues who are doing great things.
• Students can effectively monitor their own progress and this form of feedback is strongly affective
• Feedback should be corrective and provide discussion of why the response was correct or incorrect and what makes a response correct or incorrect.
• There are some very creative and productive ways to modify my objectives and goals
• Feedback should be immediate after a test
• How important it is to have student input
• How to incorporate several structures in a seamless way.
• It is important to set flexible goals; kinesthetic learning is more fun
• Student self-assessment is important and should be included in lesson planning.
• Setting goals and objectives can be negative. Students sometimes miss the big picture.
• There are many ways to set goals with students.
• Feedback should be provided rapidly in various forms
• Learned the RAFT technique
• I learned that other subject areas have students self-assess in a similar manner. This is truly a universal method.
• Goals are more effective when they are student driven.
• I learned that there are many ways to get information across. I like incorporating the different styles of learning–kinesthetic, intrapersonal, verbal, doing group activities.
• I have the students set goals and give feedback, but not consistently. In my class it could work to do it everyday. I could structure my class all around this if I remember.
• Have students involved in setting the learning objectives.
• The real importance of feedback and the timeliness of it.
• Goals should not be too specific; allow students to personalize them.
• To focus on making my goals attainable and not to forget that students should be involved in goal setting.
• Give feedback in a timely manner
• That goal setting in the kindergarten level is not much different than the High School level.
• I learned that it is really important to provide students with goals for each lesson. I sometimes am not consistent when I do this and when I do remember, I know they get more out of the lesson. I also learned that timely feedback is important.
• When given the opportunity, students can assess themselves and provide feedback to themselves directly. This is an example of becoming a mature person who is capable of self-reliance and growth. We should, as teachers, provide this often and encourage it in other situations.
• I learned it was important to be more specific when providing feedback–target particular areas.
• That goals need to be more personal.
• Today I realized how important quick feedback is to students.
• I learned how amazing it is that different grade levels and subject areas can use the same “modified” ideas to attain goals in student achievement.
• The fluidity of groups to increase learning.
• Importance of setting goals. Impact of immediate feedback.
• I learned that it is really important to set specific goals in planning. I also learned that feedback is more influential in learning than I previously thought.
• I found the idea of students creating their own learning objectives interesting. My curiosity is piqued about incorporating this into the novels I teach.
• Corrective feedback has a “shelf-life” and if I wait too long, the lesson is lost.
• Goals need to be more general and not too specific otherwise students get so focused on the specific goal that they miss out on the other learning.
• New ways to include students in their learning and assessment.
• The description of goal-setting is similar to backward design in the sense of general direction and fundamental understandings.

“What I would change:”

• I think the structure of the lessons have improved already since September.
• Wow, I liked actually trying the strategies rather than talking about them. I wonder if we could have some concrete examples of how teachers use goals and feedback.
• Wow! I liked the flexibility of today’s lesson.
• I liked the session–It would be helpful to debrief the reading so we understand your perspective on the readings.
• The “Wow,” exercise was easy to do, but the “wonder,” part was hard to do about the same statement.
• Walk and talk was difficult because you had to write, too!
• I wonder if you could have let us in on your lesson plan. I had no idea what we were learning about until it was all over.
• I wonder if my students feel the same way about doing group work?
• Thought it was very well done. More geared toward the elementary level?
• At first it was difficult to understand your goal for the lesson.
• At this point–no questions. I really enjoyed going through each of the structures.
• The activities were useful, but I think there were a bit too many. I wonder how this would have worked if we cut one or two out?
• Very organized; I enjoyed it very much.
• How can you get the students to strive for their goals and feedback when it is lacking choices and options. Loved being able to talk with other teachers–more personal info and helpful to grow.
• So far this has been one of my favorite professional developments. I liked actively testing out the different strategies and giving and getting feedback to different groups. The activities made the learning more fun. Thanks!
• We touched on it, but perhaps one or two more lessons and even some demos of differentiated instruction
• I wonder if we could have new teacher meetings everyday. I learned a lot about goals and differentiated instruction.
• I enjoyed moving around. I wonder if we could have established an overall goal at the beginning of the session.
• I enjoyed today’s time. Although at times the activity seemed confusing or the guidelines for completing the activity seemed vague it all came together nice and clear in the end.
• Spend more time outside.
• Provide every teacher with a MacBook!
• Practicing group activities was beneficial.
• More time to develop lessons and activities using some of the concepts presented.
• I feel a lot of the topics discussed would be more beneficial with some veteran teachers instead of all 1st year teachers–they know what works better.
• I thought the first chart we had to fill out was confusing.
• It’s good to talk to peers in different grade levels and subject areas to learn new ideas.
• The first part of the meeting was confusing, but then it was really clear and helpful.
• I enjoyed moving and talking/collaborating with other teachers. More of the same would be fantastic.
• I did not feel that the instructional goals section had much value. The readings were widely interpreted and more guidance was needed.
• Liked the way the lesson was guided and not completely structured. This allowed for more creativity and interaction between colleagues.
• Make sure reading was done ahead of time and then we could recap.
• I really liked this meeting because I am a big fan of cooperative learning. I learned a lot of different structures today that I will definitely implement in my classroom.
• Enjoyed the co-op groups and actually met new people!
• Being active is important to me. I learn so much more when i play a role in the lesson.
• I liked the different activities we did today. It was interesting to meet with other teachers at different levels and subjects.
• There were too many activities today. Hard to take it all in.

Image Credit: “Teacher,” by Paradox Blue

Using Cooperative Learning Structures to Teach Teachers

from animoto.com posted with vodpod

Each month, we meet with our first year teachers in the district to help them adjust to the expectations and the rigors of being in the classroom everyday. I have spoken about this before, but the program uses Marzano, et al’s, book Classroom Instruction That Works as a framework for teaching strategies that are research-based and effective. More than anything we do instructionally, the workshops always help the teachers come together to discuss success and failure in their classrooms; it provides them with a support structure in which they can reflect on their practice and share their uncertainties about what they are doing.

Last month we spent some time with cooperative learning structures and how to use them to help students take responsibility for their own learning through collaboration. The feedback we got from that meeting was really positive, so this month we decided to use the structures as a means to teach the next theme in the book: Goal-Setting and Feedback.

One of the most significant parts of my own learning this year has been to make every attempt I can to be a practitioner of what I teach. You have read it here before: “Be the change you want to see in others.” So when we were planning this month, Dan and I created the sessions entirely around learning structures and reaching as many intelligences as we could. Here is a list of what we did and the accompanying structures:

• Clock Buddies: as soon as they walked in we handed them appointment clocks on paper and asked them to make appointments at 12 (with someone not in your building), 3 (with someone in your building), 6 (someone in your subject area), and 9 (random). We used these throughout the session to organize ourselves.
  • this got them moving and engaging and really set the tone for their activity level for the day.
• RAFT: Sternberg created this concept based on his three intelligences. What we did is ask the teachers to write an entry on their blog using the idea of choosing a Role (object in their classroom, a student in their classroom, an observing administrator), an Audience (a parent, an administrator, a reluctant c colleague, etc.) a Format (classified ad, instruction manual, letter to the editor, observation narrative, etc.) and write about a Topic (why should we use cooperative learning structures in the classroom?).
  • immediately it got them thinking differently because we asked them to reflect via a different modality then they were used to. A little cognitive dissonance is a good thing!
• Walk and Talk: They read a section of the book on their own, then we used our 12 o’clock buddies and asked each group to do some guided reflection using a graphic organizer. However, we asked them to do it while on a Walk and Talk. Since yesterday was a gorgeous day here in New Jersey, we allowed them to walk anywhere on the school grounds, inside or out, and asked them to discuss the reading and fill in the graphic organizer as they strolled.
• “Wows and Wonders:” More reading was done independently and then we used our 3 o’clock buddies and paired the groups up to form larger groups. Since we were talking about goal setting, we asked each teacher to write a brief statement about how they use goal setting in their classroom. We then used a Round Robin format where they passed their statement to the left. Each person was responsible for writing a “Wow,” on the page and then passed it along to the next person in the circle until eventually they all received their own page back. We did the same again, only this time we asked each person to write a “Wonder,” statement on each other’s page.
  • This allowed everyone to get positive feedback, but also framed the constructive feedback in the form of a suggestive question, which works a lot better than a “you should have done this” statement.
• Four Corners: After reading the feedback section in the book, we asked the teachers to pick one of the four research points made in the reading as the one that they would like to have a discussion about. Each corner of the room represented a different point. They moved to that corner and were asked to use a graphic organize to lead their discussion about that point.
• Numbered Heads: as they discussed, we walked around and gave numbers to each group member. When it came time to wrap up, we picked numbers randomly and asked that that person tell us what their group discussed about a certain point within their topic.
  • this gave everyone time to add additional information to their organizer and hear points that pushed their own thinking.
• Parking Lot: also as they were discussing feedback, Dan and I circled the room and distributed a blue and a yellow post-it not to everyone. We asked that on the yellow they tell us something about their own learning from the day’s session–what did you learn today? On the blue, we asked that they help us with our learning–what could we have done differently today? As they left the room for the day, they put the yellows on one wall and the blues on another.

We are in the process of sorting our notes out and going over the feedback (it was just yesterday), but I could already see that the teachers were engaged with one another at a level that we’d seen glimpses of before but couldn’t sustain. Also, on a selfish note, I did so much less talking, used so much less tech, and spent so much more time listening than I had in any of the the previous meetings.

If we are truly about changing the way our schools work, about reforming our practices to meet the needs of students, modeling said practices and methods should be the first order of business. Think of your next factulty meeting. How much will you move about the room to discuss an issue or concern or theory (trips to the food area don’t count)? Will the dialog be one-way, two-way, or circular and constant?

I realize that all meetings and sessions vary, and that decisions about presentation and lesson design are germane to the material itself, but when we can we should use what we know to produce lessons, meetings, professional development courses that we would want to sit through. Ask yourself, would you want to be in your class?