Think Like a Teacher

OK, so my ego bounced this week at being named a “DABA” (Deserves A Bigger Audience) blogger. As I thought about it, my mind rolled over to all the kids I taught and the ways they reacted to unexpected feedback. They were changed people. And so I muse:

Doesn’t everybody deserve a bigger audience?

I started rewinding the reactions I saw when students absorbed just one little bit of extra recognition– even just from a quiet teacher comment. But when they approached projects with a broader audience, they REALLY became porous sponges to the flowing reactions, in turn creating better products than I ever imagined. There were kids who sweated for weeks, perfecting scripts for student-made TV shows worthy of a “Televiddy Award,” our middle school’s equivalent to the Emmys. There were kids who spent hours creating bald eagle, turkey, and vulture costumes and the accompanying “National Bird Pageant” script for a Bicentennial Minute that actually DID win a local Emmy once televised. Simply seeing it aired on TV was what they cared about. There were little second graders who, when they found out their inventions would be judged by an actual patent attorney and several high school “judges,” suddenly cared about whether their gadget truly worked (not required, but it sure mattered to them).

Is it any wonder that their achievement soared? Is it surprising that I find myself carefully revising my words in this post-DABA post?

We read the research about authentic learning, but how often do we remember that every kid is a DABA in some way. And most of us still perk up and suck in feedback from respected sources as adults. We just forget to give it as often as we should.

Whom will you dub a DABA today?

Where I am today, the wind is howling in a classic nor’easter, with snow swirling into near white-outs. As always happens to me when the natural world is doing something noteworthy, I find myself drawing analogies connected to what I witness in nature. Today’s musing: Is education the response to intellectual “whiteout,” a way to prevent students from  blowing and drifting?

A recent New York Times article underscored the pragmatic trends in education during tough economic times. Specifically they cite the priority of technological, scientific, and employment needs that have pushed aside the liberal arts into pockets within “elitist” colleges. The Times further points out that the proponents of the humanities have not successfully marketed their field as essential to the future of the U.S. and the world.

Marketing the humanities?  Hmmm.

To prevent minds for blowing and drifting, do we steer students to science and technology where their efforts can be measured and their products fill practical needs in society? If we do so to the exclusion of the study of history, literature, writing, the arts, and even philosophy, will the winds abate and the snows settle into sparkling mounds of freshness?

You can tell by my questioning where I stand. I am an unabashed proponent of the liberal arts.  Without the ability to bounce new ideas off each other, to question, muse, and say the unexpected using an unexpected turn of phrase, we cannot stop the blowing and drifting of young minds and press ahead to a sparkling world. Indeed, we NEED some blowing and drifting of thought or we risk hardened, stale, brown-grey piles of crusty snow formed by plowing those once-sparkly flakes too quickly into the places where they are “supposed” to go.  I have no problem with the value of pragmatism. I believe it is in the process of questioning and making connections and oxymorons out of the scientific and measurable that we turn blowing and drifting into the striking patterns we see on the hillsides of thought. This is blowing and drifting allowed to follow and create new patterns. And I would maintain that without the liberal arts, without people seeing analogies and wondering aloud, the scientists would be stuck in crusty snow mounds that age and melt from the underside into cinder-filled storm sewers long after the rest of the winter has thawed.

I hope we can allow education to appreciate some blowing and drifting, veering entirely neither to white-out nor plow-hedges. We need everyone’s ideas — stirred by a little blowing and drifting.

Apologies for no new posts recently. Family-member health and wellness trumped everything for a bit, but things are back on track for now…and so I have time to post.

I did something new and risky last week and the week before. I ran the first few sessions of TeachersFirst’s OK2Ask: free, online, self-directed professional development sessions for teachers. I learned at least as much as the attendees did. And I am left with more questions.

The questions:

How bad is it not to be perfect when sharing in an online venue with total strangers? Does it make TeachersFirst “look bad” if I admit that the tools (in this case Elluminate) are new to me as a presenter? Is this any different from what teachers do every day  when they risk trying a new way of teaching or a new tool to make learning more personal and all-encompassing for the LEARNERS?  Isn’t it good that I model a willingness to make mistakes publicly? Granted, I did practice a lot and play with the tools over and over. But the second session was ALWAYS better than the first. Was it wrong to allow myself to do less than “nail it” the first time?

Geez I hope not.

What I learned:

Teachers are supportive, eager learners and cheerleaders, even to total strangers whom they cannot see. I knew this. I have seen it over and over for years. But to see teachers willing to get excited about small discoveries and to tell total strangers about them via text chat in a virtual “room” is very cool. Most of those involved had never done  a session like this, and they dove right in. And some came back the next week.

Nothing I did was that unusual. People have been trying out online teaching and learning for several years. There is loads of how-to wisdom out there on “best practices” in online learning. I read a lot of it. I play with the tools and imagine scenarios as I swim laps at 6 am (or lie awake at 4 am). The bottom line, IMHO,  is that the learning, online or other, goes best when we do it together. This is just as much fun as the first few classes I taught as a brand new teacher decades ago. Yes, I said FUN. I just hope my fellow learners keep on coming.

OK, I am going to go completely off-topic…but I think I can pull it back in at the end.

Last night I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas for at least the 70th time (once a December since 1965, plus several repeats, VHS tapes,  and a DVD) . I can recite the entire dialog and knew the song, “Christmas Time is Here,” before the rest of the world ever heard it. I was one of those kids who was singing in the intro and during the tree sequence at the end of the show. I even got to shout “Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!” in a San Francisco sound studio late one night, having no idea that the shouts of the six of us,  fellow church junior choir members,  would be used at the moment that makes millions of people smile and an animated Charlie Brown do a double-take at least once each Christmas season on TV.

It is a long story, some of which is documented in the book Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez wrote at the35th anniversary of the making of the show, a few months after Charles Schulz passed away. They messed up recounting the details of where our junior choir came from, but they did include portions of the letter I sent to Mr. Schulz… no matter. I just said all that to “prove” that I am not making this up.

What I noticed last night [here she goes—connecting back to the usual themes of this blog] was the community the Peanuts gang has. The absence of adults (except the wah-wah-wah voice of a school teacher in LATER specials) is a given in Peanuts. These kids do everything together: play baseball, fly kites (or not), learn about life, and even run their own Christmas play. We accept that. In the fantasy world of Charlie Brown and Lucy, kids have wisdom beyond their years and work together to respond to the needs of their own. Last night it was Charlie Brown’s need to see what Christmas is all about. Linus delivers his explanation from Luke’s gospel (no laugh track or audience sound afterward — just peaceful reverberation of silence). The gang follows Charlie Brown and decorates his tree. It is a world where kids fall down and pick each other up as they learn together and individually.

No, that is NOT the point of A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it does make me wonder whether we can duplicate even a portion of what these kids have in our own classroom community by pulling the adults  several steps back and allowing the kids to support each other. The likelihood that this would turn to chaos among real kids is high, yet the “what if” is important. The Peanuts gang has complete ownership. They still dance when they are supposed to be rehearsing their nativity play and argue about eating snowflakes. But when the snowballs hit the fan, they make sure that everyone gets what he/she needs. It might be fun to challenge a class to create the same community. Heaven knows, they have all seen the show! If I were still in my elementary gifted classroom, I might try it one year. All I’d need is a recording of “nah-nah-nah” to play when things got out of hand.

 Today I am listening to Pandora as I work. They have several holiday “stations” (many available over iTunes and on mobile devices, as well).  I love Pandora because I can teach it what I like.  I can also change moods: the Peaceful Holiday station as  I stress about an upcoming board meeting, Rock Holiday to keep me awake on a Friday afternoon, etc.

As I enjoy the privilege of music in my workday life (unlike during 27 years of music-less classrooms), I can’t help wondering why we can’t let the music in for kids, too. Classrooms have no music, except when we ship kids down the hall for their weekly fix. Of course, different music has different effects on each student, so figuring out which music, if any, actually helps a student focus, think, and create will be a challenge. Individualizing music is no different from individualizing any other learning.

I feel another analogy coming on.

Pandora has this remarkable way of taking self-reported “like it” and “hate it” signals and integrating them with a detailed analysis of musical  features: lyrics, rhythms, styles, instrumentation, even voice quality. The more the listener reports “like it” or “hate it,” the better Pandora is at sending out just the “right stuff.” So why don’t we involve kids in reporting “works for me” and “doesn’t work for me” as soon as they are developmentally ready to reflect on which approach helps them learn, including music?

With younger ones, we could simply expose them to different approaches (and music) so they know what they are. These might include seeing the images of new concepts, listening to podcasts about them, MAKING podcasts about them, reading quietly, reading aloud, building something, etc. We just need to be sure we offer the “stations” of music (learning) with as much variety as Pandora’s music offerings. The learning offerings should include actual music as they learn, too. The science teacher in upper elementary or middle school could even assign them to conduct experiments on the impact of different “stations” on their test performance or other evidence of mastery.

By the time kids are in late middle school and entering HS, they should have a pretty good idea of what helps them learn. Asking them to be involved in defining it— and then in facilitating it– will make them better lifelong learners than any approach we superimpose on them.

So back to the music. With Pandora and other music so readily available in streaming forms and on mobile devices, etc., why aren’t we letting the music in?  Yes, there are times when headphones will prevent kids from hearing necessary information. But the impact of individualized “Thinking Pandora” stations delivered via kids’ iPhones as they work independently could let far more than just the music in.

– written with accompaniment from Pandora’s Peaceful Holiday and Folk Holiday stations

This is an open letter blog entry to a valued colleague because she is someone who aways responds,”Why not?” when I hatch some hare-brained scheme…and she adds her own hare-brain!

Donna,

Six years ago we were in the midst of doing something no one else had done (as far as we knew and still know now). We were about to take six very bright kids to Alaska in winter and have them teach their peers via the web using what they had taught themselves through the web and real-life contacts in Alaska. Sounds old hat now. Except  that in 2002-03, there were no wikis. There were no photo and video sharing sites. We did it all by figuring out solutions using available tools and begging for freebies. If we’d had wikis and Youtube…..my goodness!

Roll the clock six years. Read what the MacArthur Foundation says this week about time spent online and how kids learn today — really about how all of us should consider re-visioning what education is, based on how kids are learning. My electronic “quote wall” pulled from the summary:

change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?

“interest-driven” networks

Self-Directed, Peer-Based Learning

“geek out”

specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults

gaining reputation among expert peers

erases the traditional markers of status and authority

outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.

skills that youth value are highly variable depending on what kinds of social groups they associate with. This diversity in forms of literacy means that it is problematic to develop a standardized set of benchmarks to measure levels of new media and technical literacy.

New role for education? ….What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks?

So, Donna, if kids really learn by poking around online themselves — and we know they do– and have entirely separate networks of experts (and ways to define “expert”) on topics we, as the “adults,” do not even know about…why not invite a dozen or so of them to redesign their education and see how well they could meet two masters: the legal one that says they have to meet certain “standards” and the personal master within themselves. I would hypothesize that given the right environment, the right tools, some no-B.S. adult  mentors, and the motivation that they might actually be able to affect change, you  and I could guide a group of HS kids to redesign learning into something meaningful to them. Here is the beginning of a framework of sorts:

To start, give the kids the standards, explaining that this is the part over which we have no control-yet. Tell them to find the “expert network” to learn about it themselves (and prove it). 

The kids proceed to: (with the side-by-side participation of “teachers,” as needed and specified by law)

• Find the source/community of experts 
• Verify the knowledge level of the source Who else links to him/her? How can you tell he/she is good? Do you find this source referenced over and over again? Can you find out anything about him/her?  Would you trust him to fix/use your computer? etc.
• Engage and question
• Participate and interact with their own questions and exploration
• Show learning—turn in the URL from the online community where their learning “shows”—along with a list of the questions they still want to know. 
• Show where this fits into the “standards”- the kids do the alignment
• Maybe keep a personal RSS Reader organized by academic topics? 

They end up as content experts in their own right, with a vast network of places to return and learn more…including through their peers who are also engaged at various stages in the same process. Most importantly, the kids are involved in actually defining and evaluating this very cyclical process: Does it work? What should we change? What is B.S.? What is cool?

So, Donna, looking back on 2002-03, isn’t this what the better participants in CV/AK did? As they found connections to prescribed curriculum, they went off into their own expert networks to learn what “fit” for them—and what they thought would fit for their peers.

We won’t talk about the “management issues” of watching over 150 kids instead of 12…that’s another day on Think Like A Teacher. That’s an outdated concept, too…

Not bad for something hatched on a Friday. After all, CV/AK came out of a breakfast at (now defunct) George’s.

Why not?

Today a man I respect and enjoy is retiring from his role as a teacher and a teacher-of-teachers. He isn’t really retiring; he’s just going from full time work to part time work and selecting the projects he WANTS to work on. Jim Gates describes himself as a very “lucky man.”  This news made me stop to think about the last two and half years since I left teaching (and teaching teachers) in a school district and moved to my current job at TeachersFirst. There are so many things that I did not expect to find in moving out of “school world” and into “school fringe/non-profitland.” Below are my top ten unexpected differences between my life as a teacher and my new professional life. Since Jim has been working in an intermediate unit (something like a BOCES or school service agency), and not as close to actual classrooms, he may not be as struck by these…especially since he will not be a full time employee elsewhere. But I suspect he will find some of them to be true, as well.

The Top Ten Realizations for a Teacher looking back:

10. No one likes hearing a teacher’s stories of an amazing unit or an incredible kid. When they say, “you had to be there,” they mean it.  You’ll have to talk to another (or former) teacher to find a sympathetic ear and share that laugh.

9. It is nice to have the excuse of standing up all day so you can wear comfortable shoes and ignore fashion. Dressy shoes hurt. (Telecommuting from a home office helps!)

8. If you liked teaching, you will always like talking to teachers. If you don’t see them, you will answer their webmaster emails just to hear their delight at having someone listen.

7. People start more slowly in offices. They are not on hall-duty with 900 middle schoolers shoving past them three minutes after they hang up their coat (at 7:15 a.m.).

6. Having routines and schedules for every day can be a very difficult pattern to break. After schedules and patterns for 27 years, deciding what to do first, second, third, can be both delightful and exhausting.

5. Corollary to #6: Creating routines, patterns, and “plans” for the day generates rigidity that others do not understand or appreciate. Give it up.

4. The work year in the “real world” has no start and end. All the things I did before ended in June (even if they were not “done”), and new things started in August. It is much harder to work without an automatic refresh-and-renew cycle.

3. (Corollary to #4) January does not automatically begin discussion of “next year,” allowing you to skip changing anything between February and May.

2. People (i.e. outside school)  in the world do work ten hour + days. Sorry guys, but teachers are not the only workaholics.

1. Nothing replaces experiencing kids’ reactions. Nothing.

As someone who works on a web site for teachers, I often stop to wonder about the disconnect between the way most adults think of education and the vision of 21st century learning that is growing as an invasive species amid the education establishment. For over three years I have been aware of the changes being promoted and adopted in forward-thinking schools and universities as they rethink what it means to be a 21st century learner/citizen.  But so many are completely unaware of this surge. Today I received an email with links to two videos — videos very much in the same vein as Karl Fisch’s watershed moment in 2006. Those who see these pause. Those who send them to me pause.  I watch and think, “This is what I have been trying to tell you about.” So I wrote back:

This is the core of what the edubloggers and online conference folks I “lurk” around have been saying for the past three years. The really frightening thing is how many teachers (the VAST majority) are completely oblivious to it.  They are so busy they don’t even notice (and is that their “fault”?).  TeachersFirst has taken the “infiltrate as a trusted source and instigate change” approach to opening some of their eyes. As we review many wonderful but “old school” drill-and-practice (20th century) web sites, we throw in 21st century approaches to going further, suggesting ways to ask students to take the initiative and design a review/practice activity of their own, look for local examples and document them, etc. The “in the classroom” portion of reviews has moved to “in the 21st century.”I am sure that in many cases the teachers see the suggestions and say, “I don’t have time for that” or “I don’t know how to do that” or –worse– “those tools are blocked in my school.” The teachers who take on the challenge are widening the gap between new and old, engaged and canned, active and passive, meaningful and “tested.” It makes me worry a lot about gaps that legislators and those over 40 are completely unaware of… that will make this economic crisis look puny in 30 years as the adult products of the testing era wander around, unable to discriminate between web-myth and reality because no one spent any time helping them evaluate and sift all that they have encountered (and created) on their own time while supposedly “learning” in school.

The most encouraging thing is that the grassroots teachers, students,  and profs who are making these videos (starting with Karl Fish of “Did You Know” fame) are getting better and better organized via the web. Those who want to know more have LOADS of company. The rest close their classroom doors and pull out the worksheets.

My editorial for today. Think I’ll paste this into my blog.

So here it is. Which side of the gap are you on? Can you be an invasive species?

I admit it. I am completely attached to my computer. For some people, it’s their Blackberry. For some it’s their cell. For me, it’s my laptop. My life is on that machine. I do not even know my daughter’s address. It lives on my laptop. (She does move a lot). My calendar, favorite quotes, sticky notes with ideas for my next blog post, links to every place I love to go, rotating family pix…everything is there. Yeah, I know a lot of people keep it all in some online venue, but that doesn’t work for me.  Nothing is as completely customizable as the laptop of my life. It WORKS for me as a vital organ, maintaining body and soul.

But this week, my laptop was amputated.  Somewhere in the process of poking through tons of links and RSS feeds in an idea-gathering session, I (oops- I mean my laptop) picked up a virus.

Now, I am a careful person. I close suspicious windows from the task bar so as not to “touch” them.  I religiously run back-ups and virus scans. But this Halloween season, the guy with the sickle got me. He amputated my laptop. I hope to have it back in a few days and am already trying to compile a list of the things I will have to reinstall IF the wonderful fix-it man is unable to save it all. In the process, I ask myself, “If you had to amputate one gadget from your life, what would you amputate?” Or, flipping it around, “Loss of what one gadget would make you feel permanently disabled?”

Cell phone? Car? DVR? Microwave? Digcam? (No fair nominating your alarm clock).

The corollary is that my Internet connection is nearly as vital. But even when Comcast dumps me for no apparent reason, my laptop is still there with me, allowing me to collect ideas in a sort of IV pouch until I can infuse them back into full circulation on the web. But without the laptop, the ideas drain onto the floor, causing massive blood loss from the site of the amputation.

So think of me and send me your technology tourniquets to stop the bleeding as I try to “live” on a borrowed laptop for a few days. And help me hope that I will not be forced into a complete transplant and risk rejecting the laptop if it is reimplanted without its familiar contents.

PS Don’t worry, I won’t email you. I don’t know your email address.

I was playing with this tool, Placespotting, and had to make one to include in my blog, since I refer to the lake so often. The embed code does not seem to work in this version of Word Press, so here is a link. I will include a link to the TF review as soon as it is online. Enjoy!