Think Like a Teacher

Some people pack bags or arrange for a kennel. I am fortunate enough to be preparing a presentation. See my musings about this process on the new (today) presentation blog. Please wish me luck!

As teachers, we sometimes forget how large a public window opens into our lives. The Washington Post today tells tales of intrepid teachers in the Washington suburbs who apparently think frosted web-glass obcures all public view of their web presence. Wrong. I wonder, though: Is it wrong to provide a consciously open window, even to keep it crystal-clear on purpose?

Thinking about any web presence requires the same approach as your bathroom blind:

• If I keep it open, who will see?
• If I do reveal something, it implies that I want it to be seen by anyone.
• Is there a good reason to share?
• What others will inadvertently see it?

As a lifelong teacher, however, I ask one more:

• What can I teach this way that I cannot teach any other way?

My first decision would be to post a “See next window” sign on the outside of the bathroom blind, directing people, instead,  to a slightly-less-voyeuresque view of my living room. Now, I ask:

• What can I teach from my web “living room” that I cannot teach any other way?

I can teach that I am an art quilter and a writer, a side of me that splashes into  view immediately on the walls and in this blog window. My visual-spatial students and colleagues ask: how does this connect with what she does all day? Should I connect art  and/or writing into what I do all day?

I can teach that books  and TV can share a space in my life. Can they in YOUR life?

I can teach that family is at the center, and a dog closeby. My students and colleagues ask themselves what forms the center of their world.

I can teach that teaching and work sometimes make me tired (is that me on the couch, asleep?). The voyeurs ask: What is it that drives her to work so hard? What drives me?

I can teach that nothing is finished, even the space for the imaginary fireplace still down the list on our “ten year plan.” They ask: What am I willing to wait for? Are time and imagination as important as the final, tangible item?

I can teach that I don’t mind being honest and human, but that I will always try to present my best. A little dust is OK, though.

I even wash the windows (inside and out) occasionally. My windows are frames for viewing both ways, and I welcome the voyeurs. I have thought about what I will show them. I hope other teachers will do the same.

Why frost the glass when we can shed such light?

I was away at a conference for several days over last weekend and early this week(LONG hours in the exhibit hall). But for the last two days I have been mulling over my plans for a pre-conference workshop for teachers at Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education’s (PAGE) annual conference. Back in the days when I taught gifted (for over a dozen years), our group of teachers often talked about our role as “guide on the side” and on gifted ed’s propensity to try out new ideas before general ed and teacher ed picked them up. We were, many  times, a proving ground, and we pretty much exclusively taught using constructivist, project-based models. I was a “general contractor” on site as my classes built learning. The students did the heavy lifting, crafting everything from the actual foundations to the cabinetry trim of learning. I planned the schedule, made sure the materials were there, and gently but firmly redirected the process when it appeared that the structures might fail.

This week brings me a new chance to promote the model of teachers as general contractors: both at the PAGE workshop and in the announcement of a FREE cooperative pilot project from TeachersFirst and TRIntuition’s workBench: The Building Learners Project. (Actually, the logo image for this project was what got me started on the contractor analogy.) I could not be more pleased to see such opportunities for teachers to act as general contractors for the learning in their classrooms– even some learning of their own. Learning new tech toys/tools is part of being a good contractor, and it’s OK to figure them out along with the craftspeople on the job site. I am looking forward to getting my hands a little dirty, as well.

Am I lucky, or did I earn this? I work from a rural setting, enjoying a bald eagle who lands outside my window, on the tree where my hammock hangs (really!). During the day I “visit” and talk with people all over the world. I pry into their brains through their blogs and watch over their students’ shoulders through their online projects. I wonder sometimes how this happened. Scott McLeod writes of Dr. Richard Florida’s view of the world as “spiky,” not flat. The spikes are the few global, creative centers that suck in great minds of innovation and productivity. If that is the case (and I’ll have to read Florida’s book to decide what I think), I am not sure how I ended up being networked into a spike from my rural location, but I am. I hope I qualify as one of the creative ones, anyway.

Florida reportedly maintains that choosing one’s location is key to success. Scott wonders aloud about the role of rural schools in this scenario.  I guess I may have been lucky, or perhaps somewhat deliberate and definitely timely, in landing where I have. I am living proof that

Anyone, anywhere can be a “resident” of such a creative megalopolis[a spike], though making the initial contact may be the biggest challenge. If the rural schools can share the vision of an extended “reach” of these “centers,” the local economy can still survive. (from my comment to Scott)

I do believe that any school can help students build a vision and a sensitivity to opportunity so he/she may be able to live in a vast “valley” but have connection to and gain benefits from physically-distant “spikes.” I don’t think we need to live in the spikes to be able to draw the economic benefits of them back into our geographic communities.

I still don’t know exactly how I came to be so fortunate. Mostly it was a confluence of circumstance. But whatever the cause of my situation, I think it is a scenario that is more and more possible for rural kids, assuming someone shares the vision.

I love RSS feeds, even though I rant about not having time to read them. Today I ran across Clay Burell’s discussion of schooliness. I smile as I muse.

Is it like girliness? — a term meant to demean , but occasionally value at the same time?

I can sense schooliness, even in myself. Like girliness, I try to avoid it yet do not want to push it away entirely. It has its place. On certain days for certain occasions, in certain moods, girliness is OK. Never my goal, just OK.

Now, schooliness…?

Schooliness actually cares whether the line is quiet in the hallway. Schooliness is made of  the film and chicken wire they put inside the safety glass insert in my classroom door to prevent shattering (of ideas, customs, or quiet). It blocks the view of what is REALLY going on inside (inside heads, especially those who can entertain themselves while “education” goes on around them). Schooliness is the translator we apply to technology tools so they are “safe” and comply with AUPs. Schooliness  is the substitute we LOVED to see as students because she was so much fun to fool. Schooliness  is why they invented NCR paper, then changed it to Acrobat files you have to TYPE into. Schooliness  is what prevented me from turning in what I really thought in most essays…until I trusted the anti-schooliness  of the teacher. Schooliness  is what my liberal arts degree ridiculed. Schooliness  is what Congress would use to define Highly Qualified Teachers. Schooliness  is the make-up that thinking human beings “touch up” as they leave the faculty room. Schooliness  is what makes us wear a watch. Schooliness  is what my brightest gifted students so aptly parodied as I chuckled and pretended not to hear. Schooliness  is “May I have your attention please,” which should warn, “Turn the speaker off NOW!”

I will enjoy thinking about schooliness for days …especially as I look out a non-school window, across my unfiltered computer, watching a lake with no buses or concrete in sight.

There is a definite exhilaration to leaving schooliness  behind.

“However, it is important to realize that we also need to spend time away from the grid in order to remain focused on areas that interest us. By focusing on specific ideas and using other people as sources for our learning, we don’t have to do all the work ourselves.”

So says Kelly Christopherson (KC) in a wonderful post about prioritizing the overwhelming “informational tsunami” for educators on technology, web 2.0, and change. I feel overloaded every day. When events like a family crisis or days at a conference keep me (blessedly) away from my computer–well, except for emergencies– for days at a time, my RSS reader becomes a Horrendous Heap to read, and I often resort to fast-scan-then-give-up-and-mark-all-as-read. But curiosity still nags at me. What treats did I just throw out?

So how do I balance my selfish curiosity (”I just wanna read about it so I know what it is and how it works– in case I am missing something”) with the focus that KC suggests to keep myself sane? With a web site such as TeachersFirst to orchestrate, I am very aware of the wide range of teacher needs we try to meet– for free, without bias, and with respect for our users. We can never be everything to everybody. We are generalists, seeking to deliver from our bakery variety pack a selected, deliciously-frosted cupcake for each teacher-user. We cannot possibly deliver an entire cake to each, but we hope that our cupcake variety is diverse enough for everyone to find just the taste they need now and to return for another cupcake soon. For some teachers, TeachersFirst may entice them to get involved in baking themselves, taking a course or researching “recipes” for techno-treats independently. Others will always opt for our delicious bakery, simply as a trusted time saver.

Personally, I want to know how to bake every type of edtech cake, fill it, frost it, and even list its nutritional content. I know I will never meet that goal. But I will try to take KC’s advice about “taking time away from the grid” (or the bakery). I feel as though he has given me permission to hit the “mark all as read” button when I am feeling overwhelmed.

Perhaps the most important permission I can give myself when confronted with so many edtech treats is permission to follow the bakery scents that intrigue me most and write with passion about those. I may never learn to make every cake, but those I do pursue will taste genuine, indeed. Those who read TeachersFirst and choose us as their favorite bakery will, I hope,  appreciate our authenticity.

When I read a piece of good writing, it sings. The feeling is much like the chill up my spine on hearing a perfect choral performance or that sense that a dive or gymnastics performance just IS a perfect 10 — even before the scores show on screen. You just know. There is a sound a guitar makes–I believe called harmonics– that is beyond the earthly, normal, and delightful plucking or strum. That’s what GOOD writing is. It does not happen often. It stops me and says, “Did you hear that?”

Rewind–replay in slo-mo. Yes, I DID hear that, and it is just as good the second time around.

I worry about web2.0 desensitizing us so we no longer can hear writing that sings. Even worse, I worry about the sound simply being drowned out. It is marvelous that everyone has the opportunity to create that perfect piece, and ironically sad that no one will likely even know it is there. The ease of tools makes one wonder about craft. Web2.0 may be the equivalent of the introduction of the power tools into sculpture. With artistic creation so simple and so much faster, are we losing anything?

I am an art quilter. I celebrate the heritage of hundreds of years of women’s quilts as the underpinnings  (sorry—pun) of my work, but I also deny them in pushing the medium, cutting through it, redefining its edges into non-edges and its techniques away from a rigid 10-stitch-per-inch standard.

I don’t think writing should be subject to such a standard, either, but I will be truly sad if we can no longer hear it when it sings. Is there a way to tag a blog post that sings?

A quick observation: Twitter is a corruptive influence for those of us who multi-task. I was curious, so I am learning-by-doing with this tool. And I keep getting distracted by the twits (tweets?..not sure) that pop up. It’s worse than my RSS feeds. Right now I feel like an idiot consumer who gets hooked by the clever twits (tweets)  people fling at me. Of course, I chose to “follow” them. I’ll just have to learn better self-discipline in preventing myself from poking into the links they post.

For those who do not know it, Twitter is a quick tool to share  what you “are doing now”  in 140 characters or less via the web or text msg. While this sounds like a 13 year old’s dream –like going to the bathroom together with friends– it also is a way to share fleeting or momentous thoughts. The really clever folks include links that lure you from your work.

What am I doing  RIGHT now? Writing an email, editing a web review, teaching a new reviewer, answering another email, writing a blog post, and reading twits…

My Twitter persona: @cshively, for those who care. Torment me.

I feel inadequate. If blogging is about the dialog, I am shouting in a cell in solitary confinement. I just finished answering the questions on the Education Blogosphere Survey 2008 and I am clearly a failure. Before I moved my blog, I think my Technorati ranking had inched above “1,” but now it is back to the lowest of the low. I guess I’ll have to work harder to gain an audience enough to “talk with.” I am the loner at the side of the cafeteria, I guess.

But I will be interested in seeing the results of the survey.

I love this idea.
You’ve got to be kidding.
But, what about…

I just spent over an hour looking at RSS feeds from blogs I enjoy reading, and I’m fired up. My “personal learning network” includes blogs from teachers, a powerful new blog from the people we “teach” (HA!- they teach us), blogs from people who would probably consider everything I do or write to be trivial, blogs that intrigue me, blogs of well-organized people who write with the authority of an op-ed columnist, and blogs intended as outgoing information-providers not much interested in response. My Google Reader also has feeds from REALLY techie places whose content I add to my “I really should/want to learn about this” list  and feeds from traditional pubs that rework the same content multiple times each week into at least five versions to make their feeds look more prolific. But you don’t care who is on my reader, anyway.

But what a great way to start a birthday: finding things I am excited about, feel strongly about, must argue with, or am simply fascinated by: things I want to do, think about, learn, comment on, and more. This is my “bucket list” of things I want to do–not before I die, but before the bucket overflows. If I keep drawing things from the bucket, I can keep adding.  My bucket is latex and expands like a swim cap under a faucet (try that experiment sometime, if your children are not swimmers— you can make it large enough to HOLD a swimmer). The first addition this year is the idea of a Birthday Bucket.

The Birthday Bucket idea is a hitch-hike on the “Annual Report” contest (deadline tomorrow…I probably won’t make it this year). What better idea on your birthday than to reflect and build a visual representation-in-four of the past year’s accomplishments/events/questions/thoughts/travels, etc. ?

Of course, Think-Like-a-Teacher me says this is something we could ask students to share in lieu of unhealthy birthday treats on their own birthdays. Imagine a fresh 8-year old’s visual version of being 7-going-on-8. We say kids are not reflective at this age, but wouldn’t that be a terrific skill to start building at a young age? Imagine how it would blossom when adolescence injects new questioning…and how great the retrospective of Birthday Buckets would be when trying to decide about life after high school or (in a dream world) what to STUDY in high school. Here are the instructions:

Birthday Bucket
Create a way to SHOW (not tell) what you are learning, wondering, fired up about, simply MUST say something about, have accomplished, or just think is special about you right now and over the past year. Put the items in some sort of “Birthday Bucket” of at least four elements that others can ask about, explore, see, feel, hear, or even taste. The bucket must be preserved in some way so you can look at it in months/years to come. Use any tools you enjoy and at least one tool you have never tried before. 

Stir. Share freely. Welcome comments.

This blog entry is my Birthday Bucket for this year: