Think Like a Teacher

Many well-meaning and caring adults outside of Educationland want to offer the benefits of their worldwide experiences to kids unable to have such firsthand knowledge.  An adult visits an African country and bemoans how little U.S. students know of the world beyond U.S. borders  (or even beyond own town/state). The adult generously offers to share his/her pictures  with a local school or to come into as a guest speaker. He/she may even organize a way of disseminating pictures and telling the stories of the trip online. I wholeheartedly echo the desire to help kids learn beyond borders and the invisible fences of  socio-economic backyards.

I am sure you can hear the “but…” coming.

Why don’t  worldly, caring adults take the one, most important step of involving Educationland insiders who have expertise in teaching and learning to join in their efforts to share and disseminate? I don’t mean that we educators need to pablumize the experience of the person who has been to Uganda or other world location so our kids can learn about.  We don’t need to dumb it down or “can” it a la filmstrip/tape of the 1980s. We do need to assist caring Educationland visitors in communicating their global experience in a context that students can share and take part in, given the students’ location, connectivity, prior knowledge, developmental stage … and, unfortunately,  time/curriculum restraints. Ask one of us to act as a friendly but flexible tour guide to Educationland, a learning sherpa

The Sherpa’s Role

The Educationland sherpa knows the lay of the land in Educationland. She knows where the crevasses of technology limitations will trap a well-meaning visitor: the filtering, the lack of plug ins, the potential attacks of armed AUPs ready to spear a visitor and toss him off a cliff.

The sherpa guides — but does not lead — the trip. The sherpa plans together with the worldly visitor and acts as a translator with the Educationland natives, making advanced connections with student-natives so the visitor encounters students ready and eager to converse. The sherpa is brutally honest about how the Educationland natives will probably act and how to win them over. The sherpa explains why they behave as they do, how much they probably know already and how to ensure a successful encounter.  The sherpa may even ask “what if” questions aloud during the visit. Then the sherpa steps back, letting the visit happen and new bonds form.

If the visit is an open one, such as an online sharing site, a 24/7 public basecamp for learning, the sherpa can help plan that site so it has the tools  students need to survive and thrive as learners. No one should expect a novice world traveler to know how to build a learning camp inside Educationland. The worldly visitor should realize the value of the Educationland sherpas in making the Educationland basecamp– a website or blog or online community — a community that provides the right sustenance for learning. (Here is an example I serendipitously found: a blog created by a teacher-sherpa from her visit to Uganda. Note the language and support that make the experience accessible to the students.)

The sherpa carries the extra weight of logistics, the backpack full of provisions and maps for alternate routes when some Educationland natives refuse to associate with the visitor or cannot understand him/her. The sherpa brings experience.

If you are planning to visit Educationland or even to invite natives from Educationland to join in your global journey, seek out the sherpa who can make the encounter a success for the students.  And sherpas, think carefully about ways you can add to your global backpack and continue to allow the visits to play out successfully once you have provided wise guidance.

A blog post I encountered today inspired this idea for a culminating activity in a world cultures class. (Apologies for the post title’s inappropriate language in a classroom, but it could be worse, I suppose.) This idea could easily be the final assessment for the year. Or it could BE the course:  the one and only ongoing project for a world cultures class, with tastes of math, consumer science, and business/economics tossed in. A dream scenario would be for the best projects to be awarded actual funding for their round the world tickets.  Even if used as a final assessment but not as a replacement for usual classroom activities, it would be much better if students knew about it from the beginning and could collect, muse, investigate, and create throughout the semester or year concurrently with “regular” classroom activities about different cultures.

Here is what it could look like:

RTW Ticket: A study in World Cultures

Subject/Grade: middle school or high school world cultures

Rationale: Students rarely see their study of world cultures as anything except facts about far off, near-imaginary places they will never see or care about. What if they had the opportunity to plan a detailed round-the-world itinerary to hypothetically live and learn in person? The project requirements will build understanding of culture, customs, geography, history, and economics of lands and people around the world as student plan a RTW itinerary to visit and experience world cultures first hand.

Duration: full semester or full year

Objectives: (tailor these to meet your curriculum standards, but be sure to include demonstrated  understanding of at least ten different cultures: their economy, geography, etc.)

Project requirements: (adapt for the level of complexity expected in your classes)

1. Start from the inspiration blog post to learn the basics of planning a RTW ticket itinerary.
2. The itinerary should be presented using any web-based tool(s) or media platform(s) and submitted as a single URL.
3. RTW ticket itinerary must meet the specifications of your chosen airline and be accomplished within a budget of $5000 for air travel during a 365 day period. Travel may start and end at any location worldwide.
4. Itinerary must include rationale for each stop, including links and your own written explanation for this location choice.
5. At least ten different cultures must be included.
6. Experiences with all types of climates must be included.
7. Visits/experiences with at least 10 landforms or geographic features not found in the U.S. must be included.
8. At least 50% of the locations included may NOT be capital cities.
9. At least one third of the locations must not use English as a primary or readily-available language.
10. At least four different types of governments must be visited —  accompanied by explanations of how they differ from the others and how they are similar.
11. At least half the locations must include specific, detailed suggestions for local activities representative the chief economic and natural resources of that culture. You must explain HOW it is representative and how it differs from other cultures.
12. At least half the locations must include specific, detailed suggestions for local activities representative of the rich cultural heritage of that location. You must explain HOW it is representative and how it differs from other cultures.
13. At least three developing nations must be included, along with explanations of how they are developing and changing.
14. At least three countries not “U.S. friendly” must be included. along with explanations of their views of the U.S. and suggestions for activities Americans might do to build better understanding with those they meet.
15. Full credits for all sources must be included in the final product.
16. A completed self-assessment rubric must be embedded or linked in the final product.
17. A RTW ticket budget, documented using resources of the inspiration blog post and subsequent research, must be included in the final product.

Project timeline: (add more detail and intermediate benchmarks for younger students or those who need more direction)

Preliminary tool choices and “wireframe” (empty product pages/spaces/script headings/etc.) for the project due _____.

Tentative location choices (up to 25 possible) and requirement check/match list due _______.

Final location choices, location order, and requirement check/match list due ________.

Full location information for three locations completed by ________.

I could go on and on. The whole point: how well would an American adult do at planning such a RTW experience?  Where would YOU go? How much could YOU learn from doing this project? I know I would work hard to accomplish these requirements.

Darren Draper wrote a thoughtful post about the elements of effective edtech teacher professional development. As someone who has been there as both participant and leader in hundreds of profdev sessions, I find his list verifiable, both through my anecdotal experience and my reading. Every researcher has slightly different names for the elements, but they really describe the same must-haves that Darren summarizes.

Effective technology-related professional development:

• Is generally longer in duration (contact hours plus follow-up, not just drive-by)
• Provides access to new technologies for teaching and learning
• Actively engages teachers in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual contexts
• Promotes peer collaboration and community building
• Has a clearly articulated and a common vision for student achievement
• Helps in establishing a culture of technology integration
• Provides for the modeling of technology use
• Creates teacher leaders
• Culminates with the establishment of a teacher-led community of practice
• Is initiated by teacher-led groups with “strong ties” to design their own professional development and create their own PLCs

Looking back into the research Darren includes before this final list, I zero in on two elements he mentions before the final list. (One made the final list, while the other did not.) Both are deeply related to an individual teacher’s intrinsic motivation to try something new. I have seen each of these play out with huge impact, enough to elevate them high on my “list” :

the critical importance of prior “strong ties” among teachers that propelled their activism (cited by Draper from  Jones-Chris-2006 via Larry Cuban)

a mentor can negotiate the interplay of multiple barriers (time, beliefs, access, professional development, culture) on teachers who are learning to integrate technology (cited by Draper from Kopcha 2010)

There is no question that profdev for a group of teachers held together by “strong ties” and a mission, e.g. a successful elementary grade level team, an Art department team grateful to finally have Art-specific inservice, or a middle school teaching team accustomed to collaborating, is exciting for the facilitator and the participants. The group already has established patterns of working together and established respect for each other. They know who will care about what, so they can delegate tasks and share laughs as they learn together. They also feel comfortable saying what they think out loud and questioning suggestions made by an outsider that might not fit their context. “Strong ties” also make teachers more likely to prevent each other from slipping into negativism if they believe the profdev offering has potential for their “mission.” When one slips, the others pull him/her along. They are social learners of the highest order. Profdev planners assume that the strong ties exist due to circumstance, however, will see their efforts backfire. Just because a dozen teachers work in the same department, that does not give them a “strong ties.” So we need to ask questions and seek out the “strong ties” before we plan profdev. In some school culture, there is little beyond individual survival, and no strong ties exist except the negative ones.  And strong ties to negativity will propel negative “activism” every time.

The second descriptor conjures an image of Fred Astaire carefully tap-dancing through a room filled with barriers, hopping atop chairs and tables and off walls as he “recognizes” them, yet using each as a launch point for marvelous leaps and stylish moves. That’s what we profdev folks do when we listen to (and ASK about) what teachers perceive as barriers and then address them creatively.  As the dance floor group watches — and even positions new barriers in Fred’s way to test his steps– Fred lightly leaps to a new clear space, spinning a member of the group to join him. The group members grab others, in turn,  into the dance.  Fred must quickly relinquish the spotlight so all dance. He teaches the steps; they mimic, then spin off on their own as the music rises.  I dream of being an edtech Fred Astaire. I have had brief moments when I have heard the music rise, and it is exhilarating.

Darren gives us a good list. Each point deserves serious reflection and comparison to our own practice in profdev. For now, I will dream of Fred Astaire for the weekend, perhaps an edtech profdev dance marathon?

The convergence of two articles about developmental stages inspires me to an interesting mashup. A few weeks ago, I read the New York Time Magazine article on twenty-somethings. The article proposes that perhaps there is an new life stage for those ages 18 to 30 who “take longer to reach adulthood”:

The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

The implications of such a stage for the development, recruitment, and mentoring of new teachers is frightening, indeed. If the younger role models in our classrooms are not “grown ups,”  are we perpetuating Peter Pan instead of learning? But this article, while fascinating, is only half the mash.

Today I read about the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)’s  release of a study  concluding that “too few [teachers] enter the profession with an understanding of the developmental sciences, which research says have a critical impact on students’ ability to learn.” I draw from a press release; the full study is available for a fee. Excerpts from the study’s recommendations include (with my emphasis):

• Revamp educator preparation programs to improve teachers’ knowledge of child and adolescent development.
• Include child and adolescent developmental strategies in standards and evaluation systems…development science should be incorporated into accreditation and new academic content standards and into assessment practices….measures of teacher effectiveness should include measures of an educator’s knowledge and application of child and adolescent development strategies.
• Acknowledge the need to address developmental issues in turning around low performing schools.

Two articles, two concerns about recognizing developmental stages. Some interesting questions arise: if new teachers, presumably — though not always — young, are not “ready to launch” in their twenties, should we be incorporating consciousness of  THAT into teacher ed programs, too? And what about policies on high stakes tests, etc. ? Finally someone verifies what first grade teachers have been screaming about: current testing is not developmentally the best way to assess student growth. And what if the first grade teacher is a twenty-something? Is he/she ready to be assessing or assessed?

I really don’t know what should be done with this confluence, this developmental mash. Yes, it is only through coincidence that I pull them together.  But isn’t it interesting that people are looking at what constitutes adulthood, what prepares a teacher, and how we should be trying to understand the younger ones, both teacher and student, along the way? Sometimes odd juxtapositions can inspire some intriguing questions.