Doug Fisher had a profound affect on my outlook today, and I’ll likely spend the next few days putting together some more of my thoughts that came from his shared session. At this moment, I’ve got this one stuck in my craw:
We need to model expert thinking for our students.
All too often, he states, we see too much “explaining and interrogating,” and not enough of modeling how we think through a text, how we go about finding information when we really need it. My standard line when it comes to this has to do a lot with Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them and our work with the National Writing Project in that if we are teachers of writing, we must be writers ourselves. We need to show that there are processes and skills that even we as educators, who have already done this thing called school, still work hard to figure things out.
He works in a high school with his colleague Nancy Frey, called Health Sciences High & Middle College and the shift to the Gradual Release of Responsibility has helped that school make incredible gains in learning and literacy. What it took was a huge shift from investing in the “magic bullet” programs to an equal or greater investment in teacher ability. For those of us who are in charge of providing professional development or making sure it is available to our teachers, that’s a huge shift. Amy Sandvold asked “why is it that teachers feel that the Professional Development expert have to be 50 miles away from your district in order for teachers to believe what they say?”
I’d like to see what we could do in our schools if we did invest in our own abilities rather than rely on some external force or program.
I have not been a student in the traditional sense for some time. I have not sat in a classroom, at a desk, and listened to a teacher or speaker discuss and run a class centered around a central topic. Everything I have done over the last few years has been focused on my own learning and those elements that I deemed necessary for me to focus on: technology, school change, leadership, curriculum, educational theory, methodology, state mandates, assessment, differentiation, learning styles, visual literacy, Web 2.0, or any other of the most current buzzwords the field of education. In the last seven years, that time that has passed since I have last entered a graduate school classroom where my primary role was that of “student,” a lot has changed in me. Never was this as evident as a lecture series I sat in on Monday and Wednesday of this week.
I was an anthropology major in college, and took enough history to obtain a dual degree (have to check on the status of that one). It’s my bag, and I am lucky to work with a department that is rife with history junkies. So when one of our teachers arranged for Dr. Davis to speak with us about his work in the Middle East, we were all excited to work up some intellectual sweat.
Dr. Davis ran his class like many of our classrooms are run: he used a slidedeck laced with his overarching objectives, followed by rationale, example, and explanation. He also, at any moment, took questions or requests for further clarification from us. No different than many of the history lectures I attended in either high school or college.
What was different was me. In those previous situations, the only source for information I had was Dr. Davis, his syllabus, and the recommended books on that syllabus that I was to have read for that day’s class. In Monday and Wednesday’s class, I had all of you, I had video, I had Flickr images, I had Amazon’s recommendations.
As Dr. Davis spoke about Fareed Zakaria’s work on how to win the war on terror, I popped out and linked my notes to his book on Amazon. The same with obscure texts like those by Olivier Roy. As he talked about and showed us startling images from the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and the treasures that were lost, I realized I wanted those images too, so I pulled them into my notes from Flickr. He discussed the use of Iraqi student blogs with his undergraduates; I conducted a quick scan of my twitter network and of Davis’ own resources and and found several examples.
We all asked questions and contributed to the discussion. I chronicled it in a way that I never would have. My notes look vastly different and more robust than anything I could have done ten, even five years ago. His lecture, his class, took on a whole new life in my notes. I dropped in questions to myself that I’ll look back on and that will help me go in new directions later on.
The best part, for me at least, is that I shared them with everyone in the seminar via Google Docs, and I asked them to drop in their notes and thoughts as well, or to just use mine to springboard even further.
I am now that student–that student that wants more than just what is front of me, and knows how to get it. We had all types of students in this seminar: those that listened, those that talked, those that hand-wrote notes, and me. The best part about it is that it doesn’t matter at all if no one shares their notes with me in the collaborative document. Their interactions in engaging Dr. Davis became part of my thinking and my documentation. They contributed to my learning, and the least I can do is give back to them this document.
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.
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:
This being my first full year in this position, there were some things that I have not yet experienced. For one, the yearly construction of the high school course of studies. Every year there is a race to beat the deadline for any changes we are making to what we offer to our high schoolers. This year my departments are undergoing some significant change, and our course choices are expanding. It was a rush, to be blunt.
We are adding AP Art History, History of Genocide/Holocaust Studies, Contemporary Issues, and Philosophy to the History Department. We have completely overhauled our Visual Art classes to include more full year classes instead of semester courses, and we have added AP Art Studio as an option for our Juniors and Seniors. We also made some changes to the prerequisites for our Music Theory students.
What does this all mean for me? It means that I have no less than 11 new classes to coordinate the creation and curriculum writing for. Truly, this is what I call an opportunity to create something dynamic, lasting, and important for the students in our district. Hence the title of this post. There will be heavy reliance on this network over the course of the next few months. I know you are up for it.
Also, this means that there are fundamental questions that must be answered in December about classes that are (or are not depending on student choice) going to run in September. The biggest of all of those questions is undoubtedly my budget. Traditionally, when a course is created and curriculum is written textbook selection and review is a huge part of that process. This article by Jay Matthews of the Washington Post on 12/15/08 spoke to an idea that has been bandied about the educational intertubes before: do we spend money on textbooks?
From the article:
In the classrooms I visit, it is often a good sign that the textbooks
are stacked on a corner bookshelf or window sill, gathering dust. The
best teachers have an ongoing conversation with their class, calling on
every student, challenging sloth, praising fresh ideas, moving the
group beyond the text, which covers only the state’s or the school’s
curricular requirements.
and
If teachers can write their own textbooks, why not students? It would
make a fine group project, with each kid doing a chapter. Debate the
fine points, put them on the Web and pass them around, irresistible
preparation for the final exam.
I look at the classes above, and aside from the AP classes, is there a need for a textual resource for every student? Financially speaking, for the price of textbooks for one departments’ classes, I can purchase the “Internet accessing device of the moment” as well as subscriptions to any database on earth. What I am going to struggle with is creating classes in that light with stakeholders that will not see the logic in leaving textbooks out of the equation.
Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be lurking on your posts looking for ways to gain access to teachers you know that are creating classes in this manner, that are, as Matthews described his history teacher, Mr. Ladendorff, using “our U.S. history text like a bull’s-eye on a firing range.” This should be good.
I am tossing around the idea of offering up some professional development for my staff, but unlike any I have done before. Personally, I am done with the “training model;” that’s not what these are about. I want conversation and dialogue around an idea. Once the idea is situated in someone’s head, then we can get practical with it, but we have to want the idea first. That’s what I want to do–create an itch. It sounds icky, I know, but it works.
I wanted to try the PollDaddy function in wordpress, and this gives me reason to do that too.
If you care to, in the comments section, I would love some recommendations for content you would include in the sessions as well. I have so much in mind, but due to time constraints, it will be limited. The format for these classes would most likely be two, one-hour sessions a few days apart (still unsure about that too).
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.
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.
“Now that we’re aware ChaCha exists, I can assure you that we will begin
discussion of a formal policy to prohibit cell phone use in classes,”
said Gerard O’Sullivan, vice president for academic affairs at Neumann
College in Delaware County, Pa. He said most professors already
prohibited cell phone use in class.
Let’s rule out something before it is examined. Sounds highly anti-academic to me.
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 used this site when I taught English in Ramsey to provide students with sound basis for arguments in class. At the very least it can provide you with a host of topics for students to write about and discuss.
A bit of stress, a bit of ambiguity, and a bit of confusion are healthy contributors to learning. As long as we have a feedback loop where learners can contribute and faculty can respond and adapt, we have the basics in place.
Connections are the starting point of all learning. It’s so obvious…and therefore so often overlooked. We really need to think about types of connections learners have with each other and content…and ways that we can extend the learning experience by critically analyzing and forming those initial connections.
This is an article I have been waiting for. Interesting to start to see the future of news. Yet, I still wonder how many people are getting their news from sources other than print or TV.
I’ll admit that my inner geek drives the direction of my reading lately; I tend to read Techmeme as often as I read Edutopia. However, one of my all time favorite reading topics has always been the direction and drama associated with mainstream media and its delivery to consumers. Odd, I know. Most people would say they love to read trashy novels, or scan baseball scores (which I often do), but not this guy. Give me an opinion piece about the future of participatory media, the changing of the guard in the newsroom, or something like this one from the New York Times:
For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year
is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in
advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of
some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.
and I am like the proverbial pig in…well, understood.
I don’t know if this story piques my interest for the usual reasons, but I know that it makes me begin thinking about the world that I am helping teachers prepare students for. It’s topics conjure up all kinds of reminiscences from last summer when we were all struggling to shrug off Andrew Keen’s attacks on connective writing and citizen publishing, and it calls to light the profound changes in literacy many of us have been discussing for several years.
Connection to Teaching and Learning
Often, I’ll find myself looking out at the vast expanse of my RSS reader and see similar topics being bandied about, and articles debated back and forth between individuals much smarter than me, and I’ll wonder where my connection back to the classroom teacher is–where is the correlation between George Siemens and the work he does, and the elementary teacher I work with who wants to differentiate instruction? Many times I find myself at a crossroads wondering how to find common ground for the theoretical applications I see, and the practical situations that teachers live through.
This article in the Times, amazingly, though obscurely, shows me a connection. When we look at the trends, just in the last two years (ad revenue dropped 8% last year, and is already down 12% from that number), that tells me that the sellers/advertisers are following their buyers/consumers eyes. With that, come so many negative consequences:
assimilation of major newspapers or ownership groups perhaps taking away a decidedly local flavor
massive job losses in the printing industry
ink-stained elbows on Sunday mornings
The last bullet above, while in jest, does reflect some sentiment that, if you dig on Nicholas Carr, you might agree with. We aren’t interacting with print media as often as we used to, and what effect will this have on our ability to read deeply? Moreover, the real impetus behind my writing this tonight was to truly ask myself what are we preparing our students to consume? Is literacy solely the manipulation of a texted page, or does it involve, as the article hinted at, the ability to decipher and decode the “vastly more choices” that online advertising offers to sellers?
So, I look at the classrooms I’ve been in this year and wonder, are we doing all that we can to prepare our students for a world with decidedly less printed paper than our own?
Positive Consequences:
Here’s another discerning thought that rises from this: how can we pull positives out of this development? As with any technology, it’s social ramifications are natural offspring. In this case, I see a lot of good coming out of the move to online news consumption:
greater opportunity for dialogue between writer/publisher and reader through comments and forums
Erica had just reminded me of Pink’s book yesterday as she wrote about being able to finish it on her way out to San Jose for the Google Teacher Academy. What this exemplifies is the shift away from one mode of production, to another that will involve some creative thought processes and a distinct need to train people in how to produce this new product. It’s examples like this one that really make me analyze what we are asking our students to do in our classrooms; are we preparing them for the classified ads of the future?
Having one of those lack of focus days where I cannot even begin to plan what I need to do with myself. This video doesn’t help matters as its got me thinking about bigger questions. I am trying to form a response to Ryan Bretag’s meme, and I think this will have something to do with it. I need to take some notes while watching it, however. Enjoy.
Chris Jordan talks about how to he uses data and represents it visually. These images made the rounds last year, but his talk really shows how well they transfer the information he is trying to get out to people.
hen the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
This shows me that new skills are necessary, or in the least, old ones need to be reconstituted. What jobs or tasks become prioritized? Can we not turn off all of our notifiers and our distractors while we indeed focus on what needs to be done? These are skills, not just simple behaviors. – post by pjhiggins
I have been searching for this one for a while. Great video to show regarding any social issue that involves standing up for those not able to stand on their own.
Tom’s got some great stuff on Using Google Apps in schools. Could be of use to teachers as we begin heavy phases of construction next year that limit their access to tech.
Wild site that can be used to initiate some great writing. Think consistient and moving images and video from the Getty image collection, coupled with mood matching music. There is potential here.
I like this video for a bunch of reasons. Much like the commoncraft series, it shows technology not for bells and whistles, but for practicality and usefulness.
“Why would give students access to something that makes the classroom obsolete? What about interpersonal skills and accountability? Who would come to class if you could just get it all online?”
These are paraphrased examples of responses I got from a group of teachers a few weeks back in response to showing them Moodle. Granted, this was a group of highly engaging, talented teachers who give everything they have to their careers.
In light of that fact, I am trying to use these questions as a building point for future discussions I might have as we begin to create new curriculum using Moodle and other digital methods. One, of many, things our staff fears is the lack of accountability that they believe is a by-product of online learning and online life in general. Carolyn Foote writes today about what I interpret as “what happens after you bring the horse to water” phenomenon:
In The Big Picture, Littkey points out that
learning is very personal. He also posits that the “real
learning happens after” the encounter. “It’s
what you do with it, how you integrate it, how you talk to your family,
friends, and classmates about it” that constitutes the learning
process.
Once again, I’m led to wonder if we give students enough time
for that “learning after” process. I believe that we
learn as things go on the “back burner” and we process them
in the background, but in the rush for “new” lessons each
day, do we allow enough room for reflection?
In a brief response on her post, I likened it to an experience I had while teaching a workshop to middle school teachers on using wikis as collaborative environments:
A teacher in one of my workshops last year described her “learning
later” as the “drive-home effect,” as she would always have great
discussions in her head about her graduate school classes. What was
lacking, she claimed, was the ability to take those thoughts and act
upon them in some kind of environment that would further them. For us,
that environment is now this; for our students, what do we provide?
What experiences do we offer for them to take advantage of that
“drive-home effect?”
I think what I am running into with this group of teachers is that they are seeing the two things, online environments or LMS’s and accountability, as diametrically opposed elements. I am not worried, however. What would worry me is if these people weren’t talented, intelligent and dedicated and were posing these questions. Instead, I am trying to meet with them before we break to get inside their heads and find out what they might think of something like what Carolyn wrote, or what accountability needs to look like in an online environment, or what they want students who leave their classes to be able to do well.
Another element to all this is that this summer I’d like to take a long look at the types of assignments our teachers are asking students to do via their blogs and wikis. From some feedback I’ve received in the last week or so, it seems as if there is a lot of “schooliness” in the pedagogy behind how we’ve implemented the use of social media in our classrooms. Truth be told, I would take a considerable amount of blame there; it was upon my suggestion that a good portion of these teachers began using these tools; I can’t help but feel responsible for not providing better pedagogical support for them.
Thanks to Jenny Luca for pointing me in this direction. She’s someone I’ve read about, but never actually gone to read for myself. I am glad I did.
Below is a link to a quick screencast I did describing the benefits and showing how easy to use SearchMe is. If you are a fan of visual search, which I am, this search engine does a great job of giving you results in real time and in formats that appeal to visual learners.
For me, I just love the fact that I can get a visual preview of the site before I get there. It allows for an initial filter–a quality scan, if you will–before I decide to follow the link. If you’ve got 2-3 minutes, go take a look.
We believe curriculum becomes rigorous when students are pushed not only to know information but also to apply and demonstrate their understanding of that information. We believe that requiring students to reflect on and analyze their thinking and learning might be the most challenging task you can require of a teenager.
guiding exercises in text translation: pulling up a MySpace page or a lingo-drenched school paper and asking students to translate the writing into standard English. Or they ask students to translate passages from classic literature into texting speak to demonstrate their comprehension of the writing and to create a form of multilingual focus, similar to how learning a foreign language tends to enhance a student’s understanding of his or her native tongue.
Pseudoscience is defined as a body of knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific or made to appear scientific, but does not adhere to the scientific method,[2][3][4] lacks supporting evidence or plausibility,[5] or otherwise lacks scientific status.[6] The term comes from the Greek root pseudo- (false or pretending) and “science” (from Latinscientia, meaning “knowledge”). An early recorded use was in 1843 by French physiologist François Magendie,[1] who is considered a pioneer in experimental physiology.
The biggest first weeks of the year so far have been Mariah Carey’s E=MC2, with close to 475,000 sold, followed by the Jack Johnson album I’m too indifferent about to look up the title for with 380,000. You’d have to think Usher will top Johnson for certain, and likely Carey as well, but when Confessions opened with nearly 1.1 million in 2004, that topping the half million mark first week is a question says something about the last four years for the industry.
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’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.
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?
Thanks to Scott McLeod for posting this on his blog recently. This highlights something we often neglect to mention when talking about the 21st Century learner: their age. Too frequently, we focus on students being those that are youthful in age, but forsake those youthful in mind. This video clearly points out that ceasing to learn and adapt as you age is not an option for every generation under 60.
We work with teachers to help provide our students with the optimum environments for learning. What are we doing to help our teachers optimize their learning?
Being the first giant conference I have ever been to, and being the first non-tech-centered one as well, ASCD was fascinating on a few levels. The oddest thing about it was the fact that I chose not be connected via internet (god bless the iPhone and Twitter) for most of the conference. It might be a silent protest, but paying for wireless internet in hotels doesn’t sit well with me, especially when I am fronting the money. We listen often to people talk about the ubiquity of free Internet we will see in the future, but I feel it’s a long way off. More and more businesses are choosing to put proprietary restraints on the use of their wireless networks. Let’s use the Google model here: give it away and we will stay and use your product. Or at least we will give the perception to passersby that we are enjoying your business. I’ll end that rant there.
Bigger issues seem to dominate my thinking lately, issues such as school change and culture change within our society. My reading and writing tends to focus on the areas of motivating people to want something better, and giving them the means to create it for themselves. I am not going to be dishonest, I have goals and ideas that I would like to see put in place not only in schools, but in the larger picture as well (stay tuned for the world domination post to come shortly); however, I am wise enough, I think, to know that what I want matters little if the people I work with don’t see the value in it.
On the way down here, I sat next to a gentleman named Simon Sinek, of Sinek Partners. A while back, in my days as an expatriate in Greece, I worked for man who taught me that airline flights were the best places to go to school. “Interesting people fly and travel,” he said. Talk to the people around you on the plane.” So I took Fouad’s advice and struck up a conversation with this gentleman to my left. It turns out that Simon had an idea that he was trying to spread that involved asking corporations, individuals, government, or whoever would listen to articulate to themselves and others why they do the things they do. Without knowledge of and presentation of the “why” no one will be able to understand you, or better still, buy into what you are doing.
Often, he said, we confuse the “what” with the “why.” In business, people rarely buy the “what,” but more likely buy the “why.” I use Apple computers, and if you asked me why, I would probably rattle off that their design is intuitive, they are less buggy, I like the interface, etc. But what I would leave out would be the essential part of why I use them: I subconsciously buy into Steve Jobs ideal of irreverence and individuality. We might say the “what’s,” but only because we can’t articulate the “why.” I’ll admit it, I bought into “Think Different,” and why wouldn’t I? It’s a fantastic ideal.
Translating all of that into my practice, we ask our schools to change, and we say we need to change so that we “promote lifelong learning,” “create students capable of excelling in the 21st Century,” or any one of the mission statement buzzwords we might put there. But do we articulate why we do the things we do? What if I told my teachers that I wanted to inspire them to be innovative? Leave the kids out of it for a moment, and focus on the teachers. Inspire and innovate. I don’t have to tell them what that looks like, I have to model it in my own practice. Innovation comes from the fringes. Ric Murry and I had a banter back and forth about this via twitter the other day, but I think we can understand that teaching is not a “fringe,” but the model still works; it’s just semantics. Our teachers should be the ones leading the change and innovating. My role in all of this is to help provide the “why”. Steve Jobs didn’t make the iPod, he made the idea of an iPod possible. Teachers should be sharing their “innovations” with one another regularly, and I should be connecting them to one another to help spread that innovation.
Comparing what I do to what Steve Jobs does makes me feel way too self-important, but I think it’s an easy way to see the relationship between what we sometimes lack in schools and where we need to go.We don’t need mission statements, but rather leaders that inspire through action and empathy. Ginsberg’s session on Friday gave me a great insight into how to create a community of teachers that cares not only about one another, but about the level of teaching in the building: observations should be done with a group of teachers, as well as an administrator. Group observations and group debriefings, all with a common language and goals will become commonplace.
My thinking is shifting once again, and this time it’s shifting toward inclusion. Get on board, and grab an oar.
Part of what we do as teachers and learners is report back on what we find out in our personal inquiries. As teachers it was done on a daily basis with our students. We helped them disseminate the information that they need to be successful. As administrators, the number of presentations often lessens, but the audience usually increases; at any one time there could be up to 100 people in the room we are presenting in.
What strategies were successful for us when we stood in front of students and helped them make sense of information? What can we take from our time in the classroom and make it work for us as presenters?
Saturday at ASCD, I changed my schedule around so that I could attend a workshop by Deborah Estes, a presenter, former teacher and administrator from Texas. The title is what originally caught my eye: “Brain-Friendly Presentation Skills.”
I present frequently to my departments, and I’ve struggled recently with creating engaging content. Not that what I am saying is earth-shattering stuff, but I know that there are moments in my presentations that I need to invite the audience to digest what I am saying and give me feedback. Sitting in Estes’ presentation, I learned that I have not been nearly observant enough of my audience; your audience and being able to read them and redirect them through the use of movement, storytelling, and, of all things, touch, determines the success or failure of your message. Information without reflection and discussion does nothing for learners. Give them the chance to hash out what you are saying and clarify it for one another and you stand a much better chance of making a difference in their learning.
Right from the start, Estes subtly began to coerce me into her presentation. I was early by about 20 minutes, but she was much earlier than me. She greeted me with a handshake and used my name (name-tag) when she did.
Points #1 and #2: Be early and set up at least 30 minutes before your scheduled start to greet your audience by name and appropriate touch (handshake) as they enter.
As she began to speak to the room of 150+ people, like most presenters, she gave her background and brief bio. Hers was not done as a description of credentials or current occupation, but rather the story of how she became a teacher, coach, administrator, and speaker. It was done structurally, meaning she related herself to all levels of educators: high school teachers, middle school teachers, and elementary teachers. Each part of her opening story, which took about 5 minutes, had relevance to someone in the room because in our lives we, too, held or currently hold one of the positions she did. More than that, her stories were relative to experiences we have all had.
Point #3: Use the power of storytelling to share information. We remember best when we give our information context.
One of the most powerful things she did was move us. Not the kind where we were emotionally moved, but rather we physically moved around the room. In the 90+ minutes we were there, we moved over 15 times. We conversed, we shared information and discussed the topics in the handout on our own terms, but in ways that she dictated.
Point #4: Move people. Look at your audience and find clues that they are disengaging. When you see the nods or the glazed eyes, change their state.
Some examples of what we did:
Moved to another seat
Turned and talked
Four corners of the room (body voting)
Invented names
Hand voting (raise your hand and think of a number, use your fingers to represent the number, then find someone else in the room who has that number. When you do, discuss the topic with them).
People bingo
Touch blue (simply walk around the room and touch something blue)
Take your neighbor for a walk around the room while discussing the topic at hand.
Another thing I often struggled with is the format of how I present. Should I do straight lecture and give a handout with all of the cute slides on the handout? What other options are out there? Estes presented us with at least 10 examples of how to change up the format of your lecture.
Point #5: Transfer of information does not have to be in the format that we all learned it: the straight lecture. What if your audience knows a great deal about the topic you are covering? Why spend time on the details if they already have them? Give them the opportunity to list everything they know about the topic. Have them present it to the crowd. Based on what they know, amend your presentation on the fly and allow your group to go deeper into the topic.
After leaving the room, I realized that not only had I met over 20 people during the course of her presentation due to the movement and socialization, but I reflected on the attitudes of the staff that I work with as they receive information during faculty or department meetings. Wow. I see the source of their boredom and frustration. They are disconnected from the information because they never have time to reflect on it. The subtleties of presenting were on display for me today, and I thank Deborah Estes for sharing them with me.
New Orleans is a quiet city, if taken in at the right moments. We woke early today to get out before the city woke up and began its consistent cycle of reveling. A run through the streets of the quarter, over cobblestones and remnants of the previous night, set the tone for our day.
We were scheduled to attend a pre-conference workshop given by Margery Ginsberg from the University of Washington-Seattle. When we sat down a few weeks back to select this one, Dan, Kathy and I saw it as an opportunity to learns some strategies for moving the district forward. What we have been learning over the course of the last few weeks via feedback from meetings and conversations with the faculty is that they need to buy in to what is going on; they need to feel part of the change that is occurring.
Ginsberg’s workshop, titled, Motivation and School Change, came for us at a crucial time. Tremendous change is afoot in our buildings with construction and the impact it has on curriculum. We need to be able to provide framework for our staff to feel validated and know that they are essential to improving how we educate our students. What we learned today gave us a few great strategies and a key to developing the framework for building trust, establishing a common language for our buildings (so they can begin to see themselves as learning communities), and giving teachers voice.
Some of the things we discussed regarding motivation:
• Motivation based on improving test scores is a short term gain (Sinek would say that you are motivating based on a “what”: an outcome rather than an idea)
• Intrinsic motivation should be to love learning (this is a “why”) An effect of this type of motivation might be improved test scores.
• Motivation focused on classroom learning—also focused on those who do that.
Lesson Study:
• Finding teachers willing to make their own teaching public.
• Talking in explicit terms about instructional practice
• “Catch them in the act of being competent.”
• Video is huge.
• Asking teachers to share lessons and/or teaching practices.
• What does learning look like when all of our curriculum has relevance to student’s lives.
• How do you combat entitlement among staff—those that feel they are entitled to their position and there is no need to move forward.
What are some moments where you felt like you were: Creative, Capable, and Joyful?
• Birth of Parker and realization that I am now capable of doing this, being a parent.
What do people, especially teachers need in order to feel motivated?
• Positive Feedback- Give teachers feedback that is substantive and positive while still providing food for thought. Nothing punitive here.
• Successful Outcomes- teachers, anyone for that matter, needs to know that what they are a part of is destined for success.
• Validation- how do you provide them with the tools and support they need to feel like what they are doing is the right thing?
Strategies used during the workshop:
• Human Highlighters: people designated as speakers in a large group. Use them for giving voice and summarizing what they group might be feeling. Select several
• Carousel: each group works on a question, writes the answers down on their paper then passes the paper to another group. On the one you receive, they are to underline the things that they agree with, plus add to the list with their new ideas.
• Wows and Wonders- when giving feedback to teachers, use a system of Wows to describe positive contributions and attributes of the lesson and teacher. When attempting to give some constructive feedback, phrase it in the form of a “I wonder if..” or a “how could you…”
o “I wonder if you had the chance to think about…”
o “I wonder what would have happened if you did this…”
Central Characteristics of Schools that change well:
• Shared Language of instruction and change.
• Adult Collaboration
o Make time for it
o Expect it and encourage it.
• Creative Data
• System-wide Advocacy
o All shareholders feel like they can voice their concerns and be heard equally
o Students, parents, teachers, administrators
• “signature” or “identity
o Figure out the “why” before you figure out the how.
o Who are we?
4 Norms for Groups to build trust
• Honor the absence of others
o No talking behind each other’s backs.
• State challenges in problem-solving terms. Speak as if things can be solved.
o Maintain a problem solving disposition
• No blame, because it is too easy.
• Respectful listening, which can be defined by the group.
• Teach each other in the moment.
I think it was at EduCon, but it could have been from somewhere before that, or even in a twitter discussion, but Joyce Valenza was given credit for coining the phrase “I want to be a widget in your learning space.”
That got me thinking, and since I have been playing around with using iGoogle or Pageflakes as the hub of a class I am creating, I told myself to try to find out if that is possible: a teacher with a presence in their students learning space. This is the closest I have come. I built it using something called Sprout, which was fairly easy to navigate. Go check it out and see what you think of its potential.
I know I took the quote literally, but the ideas coming out of this are pretty intense:
marketing classes designing page-specific ads
running for student council? Why not insert widgets into your friends pages on Facebook or Myspace?
use the RSS feed aspect of the widget to have pertinent class information displayed immediately on your widgets (edits follow the widgets wherever they are placed).
“In order to think outside the box, you need to know what is in the box.”
Change is a loaded word. It strikes fear into the hearts of even the most secure of professionals. In looking at the idea of change, I see it as coming from one of two directions: either top-down, where those in charge of your program, your superintendent, building administrator, or your supervisor bring it about, or bottom-up, also termed “organic, or “grass-roots,” where change comes from the classrooms and spreads throughout a school building or district based on the practices of teachers and the work of students.
What I am seeing
When I started the process if looking at pedagogy rather than looking at tools as ways to help engage students, the world of technology became small. Granted, I really began this process in earnest about 5 months ago, so the sample size here is small, but nonetheless, what I see is what Chris Lehmann so aptly termed in his session at EduCon: “It’s not the product, it’s the process.” Learning experience matters infinitely more than the end result. Focusing on that process rather than the final paper or diorama or wiki is a difficult thing to do when the tools that take us there are so unbelievably slick.
Our situation in regards to change
Our process of change that is occurring has been and continues to be top-down, where we as administrators and tech coordinators are introducing teachers to tools and pedagogies that are transformative and engaging, but we are relying on their trust and their willingness to open themselves to developing expertise. How well will this continue to work? It remains to be seen whether or not it is a model for systemic change with our staff. We are working within 5 buildings, each with varying levels of both adoption and readiness. When that is the case, your strategy involves as much trust-building as it does introduction to new ideas. We have worked hard on that, but there are elements that are lacking in our design:
overarching curricular goals that are written directly into our curriculum plans at the start. Technology and the pedagogy to use it transformatively is often left out of that process.
teacher’s as vocal advocates for change a building-level plan for helping teachers teach with these adapted methodologies (notice I said adapted methodologies because we are not re-inventing the wheel here; the methods we advocate are still the same we have been touting for years: differentiating, cooperative learning, co-teaching, questioning skills, etc. Only now we are truly elevating their effectiveness through the use of social, collaborative and expressive technologies.)
An environment that allows teachers to be free from the fear of failure and it’s supposed administrative repercussions. If we expect our students to learn, unlearn, and re-learn, then we must give our teachers the freedom to create, experiment and play with content and its delivery to students.
I sat in Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez’s session about creating lasting change within a school district using the Future Search Process, and I remember thinking about all the ideas that were flying about the room in terms of gathering the necessary parties needed for creating change. The one that keeps sticking with me is the reference they made to something called “The Burning Platform,” whereby an individual is placed in a situation (a burning oil platform) where they must choose either certain death (staying on the platform) or the likelihood of death (jumping into the water). The analogy to education is that there is a situation whereby the outcome of staying still is obvious: student apathy and loss of engagement, but the outcome of changing and moving is less obvious but possibly a salvation.
I am looking at a situation where I don’t know if teachers understand that the platform is burning. They don’t know whether to jump, stay still, or get marshmallows. I want to create a community that is not afraid of change, that feels like they have a stake in the change process, and is willing to help create that change even if makes their role in the classroom change to one that is better capable of creating methods to solve rather than providing answers.
I had a great Christmas. I realized a few things, saw my son explode with joy over the least likely gift, spent some quiet time with my wife, and had one of the most meaningful and perfectly timed conversations with my uncle.
Everyone should have an Uncle Bill like mine. He was an executive for various corporations for over 30 years, specializing in systems, which, during his time, meant that he was in charge of initiating change in process design for production and data analysis. He was the guy who brought computers to your parent’s or grandparent’s office and redesigned their jobs.
On Christmas day, after everyone had left the house, we sat down while my daughter snored on my chest, and we talked about change, and why it doesn’t make great bedfellows with workplace harmony. Just some light holiday banter, right?
That conversation, coupled withwhatI’vebeenreadinglately have pointed me towards some new ideas, ideas that I am going to use the next few days of quiet time to figure out.
Last week, Barry Bachenheimer, a fellow New Jerseyan, came to some realizations after thinking about professional development in his district. His aptly titled post, “Everything You Know is Wrong,” expressed a desire that we are going about helping our students and teachers in the wrong way if we offer them traditional methods to learn and grow. If you have given a workshop lately, what was expected of you by your audience? What did you deliver? For me, I have tried to move away from “sit and get,” and more towards “here is what you can do, here is the way to get started.” Lowered attendance and more requests for “specific activities we can take with us” have given me pause about the state of where we are professionally.
Barry advocates an idea, and I will gladly catch that grenade and chuck it farther:
For many teachers who are late adapters of technology and whom it is a struggle to get them to use digital tools to foster these ideas, we shouldn’t bother. I would argue it might be more important for them to effectively develop critical thinking, cooperative learning, and analysis skills for their students with paper and chalk rather than do it marginally with a SMART Board and a laptop.
Uncle Bill and I spoke about where your change comes from, who you target and who you tacitly neglect in the interest of the greater good. In an era where we are so focused on time, do we have it to spend on those that are not willing to accept change? I am more inclined to agree with Clay Burell, in his comment on Barry’s post:
When I look back, I don’t see much to be proud of in education over the last decades. But maybe that’s just my own student experience speaking.
My problem is, I don’t see change happening quickly either. I don’t like the view behind or ahead.
Where was the engagement in my education? Identifying with Clay’s student experience, the engagement came when I was with a teacher who cared about their craft to push boundaries and ask me to think originally, as scary as that was at the time. Do educators who don’t push themselves to grow professionally, at least a little, have that ability to reach students?
While we sat and talked about resistance to change and how my role will be defined, Uncle Bill gave me this advice: “Your job is to make it better for those who are yet to be in your charge, not to make it acceptable for those currently in your charge.”
As believers in educational change, who are we working for? The students and teachers of today, or the students and teachers of tomorrow?
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.
Friday, at TechForum New York, the keynote speaker was Alan November, of November Learning. Alan is someone whom I have read much about via other’s experiences in meeting him, attending BLC, or hearing him recently in Shanghai, but never really did any focused research on myself. Who was this guy, and why did he always leave behind a wake?
His bio in the conference program started off with a great piece of information: his first professional gig was that of an oceanography teacher at an alternative high school in Boston Harbor. Where can’t you go after that?
Needless to say, I was impressed, and tried to take notes on his presentation, but when your network shows up, it is difficult to stay focused on much other than your twitterstream. Also, however, I find it hard to take notes any more unless the speaker is talking about something other than tools. Thankfully, Alan seemed to care less about the tools, even at one point, throwing a jab to the aggressive vendor crowd assembled.
What he did give me was this:
Turn your fears into goals.
That sounds simple enough, but let’s put it into practice for a minute. Here are a list of fears/obstacles that I often hear when working with staff:
I am not technologically savvy.
There is no time to implement this into my curriculum. I am held to state standards on tests like Regents/GEPA/HSPA; I need to focus on that.
The students will not take this seriously.
They (the students) just copy and paste everything anyway.
I can’t add one more thing to my list of responsibilities.
And as Alan was speaking, he impressed me less with his rehearsed ideas, but more with his spontaneous addressing of crowd concerns, taking direct questions from several people who iterated some of the same fears/obstacles above. Looking at that list, I can do that. Here is my revised version:
I will become comfortable teaching in a manner that appeals to the learning needs of my students.
I will use resources contributed by teachers who are using technology to help students reach state standards on tests.
I will create lessons that matter to my students, ones in which they will work on without realizing it as work.
My assessments and assignments will be authentic, so that students cannot merely take the work of others and pass it off as their own.
I will focus on adding one new method to my teaching repertoire this year.
As I ready myself for a switch in job titles (more on that as the time nears), these type of semantic shifts are things I want to embrace. I have long thought that leadership determines institutional attitude more than any other component. My experience in the schools I have worked in bears this belief out. If I am to be someone who expects change, pushes innovative measures through, and enlists the creative forces of my staff, then I have to able to transform negativity into a goal-setting mentality like Alan prescribed. This is the first in a series of posts I am generating from his session, and from the subsequent round tables and discussions from Friday.
Diane Cordell and I have been conducting some impromptu research via our own interest in the role of schools in the lives of children and the communities in which they exist. The original post was spurred on by Barry Bachenheimer’s question to me:
Is the purpose of school to get students ready for the world of work? I argue, no. I think the purpose of school is the encourage students to do, read, see, and learn things that they wouldn’t do if left to their own adolescent devices. For example, if left to me, I never would have read half the “classic” novels I read in high school, watched classic films, read the NY Times, or gone to certain museums. Now as an adult, I am glad that I was pushed to do those things. It has made me a more rounded person.
but it came to be much more because Diane and I pushed it out to our students (well, I borrowed some). Diane’s student’s responses can be found here and are well worth a look. They drive at the need for school to be a safe place that has clear expectations.
Our students were a little more specific, and that may have a lot to do with how I framed the question. But needless to say, here is how the students I asked the question of responded on the class wiki:
In my honest opinion, I believe that schools are doing the best they can right now, they are teaching life skills and how to react with people, while giving them an education. I think that I learn best in a clean environment.
I think that school should provide a base education for students to give them as many opportunities in the future as possible. The standard for base education should be high though, don’t get me wrong. Schools should prepare us for life by supplying us with knowledge, obviously, and other skills needed to survive in the world, like social skills, common sense, knowing right from wrong, and other things. It isn’t the school’s problem if the students don’t use the skills taught to them once out of school, but the schools need to provide these things so that the students have the greatest possibility of success. The school enviroment should be clean, friendly, and practical. The environment isn’t all that important because all students learn differently in different atmospheres.
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I also believe that schools are doing as best as they can, but I live in a middle-upperclass town so I do not know if the same can be said for towns and cities with a lower school budget. Although, I feel that schools should be clean and well-equiped with modern technology.
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In general, schools should be geared to meet the needs of the majority of students. For our school, that probably means preparation for college or other higher learning. I myself am fortunate enough to have a voice inside my head (not literally) who helps to ensure that I take the proper steps in order to reach my college education, but many I people I know lack such a “voice”. Because of this, I feel, rather strongly, that high schools need to be more goal-oriented toward the futures of their respective students, and they should be better acquainted with the college admissions process.
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You asked, and I will answer. I’m going to say the honest truth. I have become jaded for school. I do not believe it will influence ANYTHING in my future career course, unless there’s a Video game Design and Development class in this school. What I want is a teacher who can connect to the student, who can teach with all the modern technology (props to Davis and Scott on the wikis), and a teacher who can be forgiving in a time of a mistake. Life is not meant to be a non-stop 79mph crash course through a never ending flow of work. Teachers seem to forget that as students, we have opinions on our work. As a Game Designer, how will I ever need to use Proofs of Geometry? That makes the class boring, and therefore listening and learning become RIDICULOUSLY more difficult. In my life, weekends = essays, projects, outlines, etc. When I come to school, I want a teacher who realizes that we have lives outside of school that need tending to. I am of the belief that all things in moderation leads to a successful life.
Also, this may just be me talking, but I prefer a more Socratic method of teaching. As in, talking and discussing, and where everyone’s opinion is key to the lesson. We still use the archaic, slow, mind-tramping process of learning through reading the text. I feel true knowledge can not be plainly read, it must be taken in of one’s own accord, processed, understood, and released to others. If we read what we are forced to, we simply scan the information and speak or write it when someone puts a quarter in the slot, and just like machines, we don’t benefit.
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I think that schools should both prepare students for the workforce later on in life and give them a standard education. However, if you want to be a fashion designer, I don’t think that whether or not you took physics should matter. There should be certain requirements, but they should be catered to certain career paths. This is because so many people, when they are done with high school, are not prepared for the workforce, not even the work they are passionate about. School and its work takes up so much time, that many people can’t uphold or maintain jobs, thus acquiring a poor work ethic. If you constantly have to quit jobs left and right, it will not only make you look less dependable in a job interview, but then for the rest of your life, when the going gets tough either in work, or outside of it, you will always find some reason to quit or to stop showing up. Schools should try to incorporate classes that prepare students for the workforce and that can help them develop a good work ethic.
I think we should be allowed to use cell phones and IPODS in school. If it is going to be shoved in our faces left and right, how could you ignore it? By integrating websites such as this one into our education, we are not only saving trees, but benefiting from one anothers ideas. This website allows kids who are shy or quiet or even mute to share their opinions. But that’s just my opinion…
Regardless of teen angst or the current reconstruction project going on at our high school, these comments speak to the idea of relevance, and that more than anything else we need to be teaching content that matters, that moves, that equips our students for a lifetime of change, and fluid, seemingly disparate careers that blend into one another. Our students are really ready for us to change. Image credit: “Student Protestors” Dave Bullock / eecue
Yesterday, we met with our new staff for the second time this year, but really it was the first time to get a hold of them after their first impressions of the classroom have sunken in. And rather than focus solely on what they were experiencing and how they are dealing with it, which is of dire importance, we pushed their buttons a little.
Let me explain: our first year induction program for new teachers was recently revamped to be more of a reflective practice that centers on Dr. Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock’s book Classroom Instruction that Works. This year we also added the reflective feature of asking them to blog about their practices and its relation to Marzano, et. al’s book, on a blog through 21classes. What this enables them to do is to reflect on their own practice, comment on others, but also archives these reflections for them throughout their first year here.
These are all common practices for those who have been blogging for a while; however, to teachers fresh out of college, or new to our district from another district, it set a fairly high bar in terms of the instructional style that we expect of our staff.
Does this reflect how our veteran staff uses technology or their familiarity with social technology? Not exactly. But this is a great start. The conversations that I was privy to during the day all centered on the focus we are putting on not just technology, but also using it in a way that matters, that is consistent with our curricular goals, and that is nearly transparent.
As the day moved from discussion of their program to the nuts and bolts of class website creation and online gradebook setup, several of them pulled me aside and asked if I could help them set up their blog, their podcast (which is the format that they were asked to submit their reflection in for month two), or asked me if I know about wikis. They were excited though, and I made a great effort to allay any uneasiness that showed up. I used Toeffler’s quote about illiteracy in the 21st Century to end the session and let them know that change will define their teaching career, and embracing it would surely lead to greater success and lifelong learning.
On a side note that is somewhat related, if my schedule is any indication of the direction we are moving in, than this year is going to one of great change and innovation.
Regardless of where I venture in my tidy little PLE, I am confronted with the same question in various forms: What is the duty of a school in the life and development of a person? Bach has asked this of me on several occasions in the last few months:
Is the purpose of school to get students ready for the world of work? I argue, no. I think the purpose of school is the encourage students to do, read, see, and learn things that they wouldn’t do if left to their own adolescent devices. For example, if left to me, I never would have read half the “classic” novels I read in high school, watched classic films, read the NY Times, or gone to certain museums. Now as an adult, I am glad that I was pushed to do those things. It has made me a more rounded person.
We read constantly about preparing our students for the 21st Century Workforce, the new economy, and for a future that has been described as one where we can’t possibly have answers for questions we do not know the existence of yet. But in looking more closely at Bach’s comment, I remember the wonder of walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an 11-year old, never having been anywhere remotely resembling it before, besieged by it’s majesty and mystery from various parts of the world. Was that feeling a preparation for the work I am doing now?
School as we know it has always had underpinnings of competition: students are given grades based on performance on uniform assessments–a system ripe for separating the wheat from the chaff. In our social groups and networks we are thinking differently, however, and as we begin to redesign how we want our schools to function and who they will produce, does that element remain or is it yet another piece of the 20th Century? Are we truly “competing” against a nationalistic entity anymore? Is it the role of schools to produce the future workforce to compete with a nation or nations?
Wanting to be true to this question, I’ve sat on it for a few days and asked around for some input, and the best insight, naturally, came from my wife, a 4th grade teacher. I asked her what she thought the role of schools in society and the development of a child should be. Her response, paraphrased slightly, changed my mindset immediately:
Our role is really an academic one, but also has huge socialization responsibilities. By the end of my time with them, I want them to have learned and enjoyed the process immensely, but I also think they need to feel safe and secure while they are here.
As she said this, the factory model of our schools past (wishful) began to become less hidden: our role is not to fill with content, or as Dewey said, back in 1907:
Just as the biologist can take a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made “ for listening” — for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of listening means, comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption; that there are certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared by the school superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as much as possible in the least possible time.
but rather to do what David Warlick spoke about the other day: teach them how to teach themselves. From that basic premise, we equip them with the ability to do the nearly impossible, and do it on their own terms. In School and Society,Chapter 2: The School and the Life of the Child, Dewey tells the story of trying to equip schools with desks that allowed students to be artistic, hygienic, and kinesthetic, only to find only desks suited for “listening.” Have we moved away from those desks in meaningful, if not radical ways? If that answer is no, our role has to change, now.
John Dewey. “The School and the Life of the Child,” Chapter 2 in The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (1907): 47-73.
We are taking steps. Slow, measured, and tender steps towards changing the philosophy in our school. The diagram above (thanks to Scott and his whole Change Week agenda) typifies the stages that organizations go through as they accept innovation and change.
Last week we opened our tablet program to our high school staff. As of this posting, over 30 teachers have responded to the initial invitation to the roll out. That is roughly 30% of our high school teaching staff that has accepted the offer to use tablet PCs in their classroom. Looking at Lucas’ chart above, that tells me that we are moving in a great direction right off the bat. However, that number needs some clarification: as I analyze the list, a small group of the teachers are regulars in my professional development classes, while others I have not really worked with all that much. That is not to say that those I have not worked with are not ready to begin using the tools that I teach in my classes–we all have met those teachers (and we actually love them) who are effective with little input from tech coordinators because they are learners themselves and figure out what they needed to do. Most tech coordinators, myself included, probably fell into that category when and if we taught in the classroom. So as for our early adopters, that number falls down into the single digits. As a first step, I am excited with the turnout.
I had a great meeting today with a member of our Phys. Ed/Health Department who has been one of the early adopters in our school. We talked for over an hour about how we can change the overall attitude students have for health class. She is familiar with the tools that I hawk, for lack of a better word, but she hit it squarely when she used the word “ownership.” She was referring to how to hook the students into a learning process by asking them to give it value and meaning. There are myriad ways to do that through our pedagogy, and we discussed the possibilities that did not include technology: guest speakers, community service projects that require the students to affect local change, etc. We laid out an ambitious project that we are hoping will accomplish the goals we have in mind for her health classes.
When I left the conversation and went on with the rest of my day, I kept coming back to the ideas we spoke about and I was recharged, ready for summer, and ready to push that bell curve further to the right. It was great to have a conversation that was charged with the willingness to try, to change and possibly fail. What I took from the exchange was more than anything a glimmer of hope that people do not want the status quo.
Scott McLeod’s spate of posts which he put under the umbrella term of “Change Week,” really kicked over a hornet’s nest in my shrubbery, so to speak. If any of you are like me, the really huge problems in life, I tend to avoid, and the really big ideas I usually tend to share them with more connected people. Recently, however, I feel that this is changing within me, and I want to reel in these bigger fish while I am at the helm. This is in no way a power trip, but I feel that I am able to work toward greater goals at this point in my life.
The schools I work in, up until about three years ago, fit the description of School 1.0 perfectly. With some diligent work and some innovative teachers, that all began to change, and more and more resources are becoming available for teachers to change the way they approach their teaching. In beginning to use some of the recommended tools that Scott talked about in his posts, I realize that we are in the middle of a philosophical shift, and need to be guided through to the end. That is where I come in. I am an agent of change. Sounds all cloak-and-dagger, and I dig it.
Looking at the big picture is daunting: we have major reconstruction going on, and we have a lot of trust to gain back after a year of spotty network coverage and unreliable, often aging machines. To allow this to remain a setback, and not spring over it would be simple; I have a core group of teachers that religiously take the classes I offer and implement some great strategies in the classroom. However, I have to look at this differently–according the improved, big-game hunter version of myself, this is something I must see through.
That’s not to say that the obstacles of mistrust and physical space will be overcome next year, or even the year after. They may not be. That core group of teachers, my agent provocateurs, if you will, will go a long way towards tipping the scales in favor of philosophical change.
One thing did strike me as notable in one of Scott’s posts. Scott, pulling from their 2005 Phi Delta Kappan article, Can Schools Improve?, Christensen, Aaron, & Clark speak about changing current public education systems, quotes:
Our current system is . . . incapable of changing itself. Most people know – even if they are loath to admit it – that it’s easier to start from scratch than to try to salvage what’s already there. We may wish otherwise, but we ought not to be wishful thinkers. Systemic, transformational change in public education can only happen if we are willing to start from scratch.
At this point, I am going to refuse to buy into this one. That may be my naivete, and although it is waning, my youthful optimism still weighs in fairly heavily that effective and inspirational leadership coupled with sound pedagogy and goal-setting can bring about a shift in how schools and all members of the school community view themselves.
Dean Shareski posted the other day about Possibility v. Probability, where by he addressed the issue of building an infrastructure within his school where change was seen as urgent and necessary in regards to how we use technology in our teaching. This same idea, in various forms, is one that I find myself answering to both internally and with teachers that I work with. The most frustrating aspect of my job so far has been the feeling that teachers don’t see the value in what I do in regards to their own teaching methods. There are two disconnects I see in the schools today: complaints I hear regarding cell phone usage, the ubiquity of iPods, and the persistent time-wasting of online gaming and social networking through MySpace and Facebook and the lack of change in pedagogical methods to captivate that audience and use those ideas and technologies to draw in the learners, and the sore-thumb syndrome, whereby teachers are using technology for technology’s sake rather than as a tool that will foster growth and understanding. Below, is a great clip from Stephen Downes as he responded to Dean’s post and follow up question of what schools will look like in five years, followed by my own comment:
Well there’s no easy answer to that. Schools change very slowly, so although there will be increased penetration for tech (usually sanitized to separate students from society) things will look much like they will today. There will be increased pressure – especially from the U.S. - for alternatives, but it will be difficult to separate educational ventures from commercial ventures.
Meanwhile, online media will have gradually become more pervasive and more immersive. It will occupy an increasing amount of students’ time. Online will be – indeed, is already – be thought of as ‘normal’ and most students will be in constant communication with their friends (watch out for loners shut out of this network, as they will be more isolated than ever).
Mostly, school will be about socializing and learning pushed to the back burner (at least, for students). There will be an ongoing (and losing) battle by teachers to prevent students from using their technology. The number of schools breaking down and accepting the online world will increase. Adoption will be uneven, with urban schools being at the forefront, rural schools late adopters.
The students’ real learning environment – their online world – will penetrate the school environment one class at a time. Innovative teachers will attempt to actually remove students from the school grounds much more frequently than in the old field-trip days (this allowing for 100 percent use of online techs). The amount of school time actually spent ins school, as an average, will constantly decrease (in five years it should be roughly 80 percent, give or take a lot; in ten years it could be down to 50 percent, give or take a lot).
Depending on where you are, as Stephen said above, the ratio of innovative teachers to traditional teachers will fall in favor of transformation. For districts that lie in the suburbs and are truly committed to having their schools remain centers of community outside of athletics and arts, the shift is essential and the acquisition and support of “shifted” teachers will bely their success at being involved in the real learning process of their students.
This thought process that you had, Dean, is one that I have been struggling with as I attempt to penetrate(I hope that word doesn’t sound to pugnacious) classrooms that don’t necessarily see the need for change. My biggest issue is with the technology not being as transparent as it should yet. I have several teachers dieing to use “technology” in their classroom, and several Professional Improvement Plans submitted by teachers that use that terminology “integrate technology” but what for? It’s apparent that they are taking that step just for the sake of using technology. What about making it transparent, so that it’s just another tool, like heterogeneous grouping, that they they use to accomplish the goal of learning? That is where my biggest disconnect is: the technology sticks out too much.
Just when I thought I had really gotten this parenting thing down in regards to how to talk to my 2-year old, out comes Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s New York Magazine article “How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise” to force me to reevaluate what it will mean to be a good parent. He’s only two, but even still, lavishing him with praise over the coloring job he did, or the fact that he is a “good boy,” will now be yet another thing I will ask myself at the end of the day “was that the right thing to do?”
If you haven’t seen it yet, the article is built primarily around research from a psychologist named Dr. Carol Dweck, who performed a ten-year study in the New York schools based on the way children responded to praise. In short, those students praised for their intelligence, the “smart” kids, performed poorly on a series of tests aimed at evaluating the types of praise given to students. Inversely, “regular” kids were given the same tests and praised for their effort, what Dweck calls “process praise,” and did better on successive tests and in the overall study.
“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
As I read it, I kept thinking back to all the students I have taught over the years and wondered how many of them I called “smart” or praised for being “intelligent.” Did I damage them?
Probably not, but I do like this information for several reasons. The first is that it begins to make sense, especially when I remember it in terms of sports. The best coaches I ever had in the various sports that I played were ones who, through their direction, forced me to work hard, and did not ever reward me for dumb luck or athletic skill. Thinking about this in light of Dweck’s research, they were indeed using “process praise,” rather than praising an innate ability. Furthermore, the anti-self-esteem backlash I have been hearing in faculty rooms since I began teaching now seems to have merit. Teachers that I have been in contact with for the most part have the child’s best interest in mind, and it makes sense that showering a student with praise for mediocre results did not make sense to them. Praise them for accomplishments, but know when to stop. We have become too wrapped up in the fact that our children need to feel good about themselves, maybe we are championing mediocrity, to quote Mr. Incredible.
Bronson’s last few paragraphs speak about how he is coming off of his addiction to praise, not for him, but for his 5-year old son. I can see how we, as parents and teachers, become stuck in the overpraising rut, and it is something that Dweck and others have described as a means of controlling behavior. Children do something we like, for example cleaning up their toys when they finish playing, and we heap praise on them because we want to see that behavior repeated. It’s effective, but what effect does that have on our children? Are we causing them to be praise-addicted? There is some science to that, and Bronson references that in the article, but I don’t know how you would tell parents or teachers to stop doing that. I am going to watch this one for a while. His blog has been fairly active over the last few days regarding that.
Periodic updates to come as my son and I work through this change in philosophy.
As teachers, in order for us to incorporate an activity into our teaching schema, we have to know first that it is going to be seamless, that it is going to engage the learner, and that it is going to be sound pedagogically.
So where does blogging fit?
I came across this the other day as I was reading Will Richardson’s post on using blogging to teach reading and literacy:
“There’s no doubt that my own reading skills and habits have changed drastically since I started consuming so much more online content. And the biggest difference is that I am more of an active reader online than when reading in print. And for me, the biggest reason my reading has changed is because of blogging. I now read with an intent to write, and my writing (or blogging) is an attempt to synthesize and connect ideas, not simply summarize or paraphrase what I’ve been reading (if I even get to that.)”
The question to classroom teachers should not be whether or not they want to blog, but rather one that is inherently more complex. It could be something along the lines of asking them to delve into a blog on their own time. That can be simply by reading a few relevant to their interests. The next step is to ask them to begin commenting. I am of the mindset that very few people are ready to jump in with both feet, but most do not mind dipping a toe if it means they will not get burned.
What they will find, I almost guarantee, is that the cathartic nature of writing comes through. What Richardson states in the quote above is exactly an outpouring of realization. How often do we react spontaneously and rip off a letter to the editor about a newspaper article or magazine piece you have read? I’ll gamble that it is not too often. However, the steps to respond to a written piece are simplified online. To respond to a blog, you just click “comment.” As I read I am writing my responses. As I write, I am looking for support on the various blogs and feeds I connect to. This is synthesis at its finest.
I would love to jump into blogging with my staff; however, I am realistic. It is time intensive, and most people cannot fit that piece of reflection into their day. The results, I am finding, are unabashedly positive for me.
Writing has become for me what it once was in my angst-ridden high school days. It is giving me time to tie things together that I cannot until they are directly in front of me. It’s like when you are explaining a problem to another person who you hope will help you solve it, but as you near the end of your explanation the solution presents itself. The very nature of talking yourself through a concept illuminates the solution. Blogging is just that process. By the time I finish writing, the once disparate and various ideas begin to connect to one another, merge and become new platforms from which to think yet again.
