Think Like a Teacher

If there were one thing I would like to model to the teachers I work with and students I teach, it is risk taking. Yes, I know that many teens need no encouragement to take foolish risks. (I raised two kids and taught hundreds, maybe thousands.) Those risks, the physical kind, are not the ones I am advocating. To be real thinkers, we need to be willing to share ideas out loud which might otherwise stagnate in silence inside our skulls — or insolently kick up a lasting intellectual headache.

A day or two ago, I was fortunate enough to hear that one of my presentation proposals was accepted for ISTE 2010 (the conference formerly known as NECC). It should not surprise me that, of my three proposals, this was the one that was the greatest risk: an idea I had never really shared out loud but had held for some time. I don’t know if I have ever even heard or read anyone on the topic. It is just an idea that had been kicking the dirt inside my head for quite a while.

The rush of validation I feel that others thought this idea was “worthy” is a rare occurrence. I can point to times in my life when I have felt the same way, always because I took the risk to step off a creative cliff. I want all teachers to feel that rush, to model it, and to help their students find it.

This may sound as though I am advocating for wholesale disruptive behavior or challenge to authority. Actually, I am simply saying that we, as teachers, need to say those things that we wonder inside. We need to say them to kindergarteners and to high school seniors. Such opportunities should not be reserved for professorial types or op-ed writers. We need to be honest when we question, muse, or mentally hum:

Sometimes I wonder why we teach this…

Was this really the cause of the civil war? The way out of the Depression? The Founding Fathers’ greatest hope?

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. say if he saw me teaching about him this way?

Why is this story the one they chose to put in this anthology?

Why is this work considered a masterpiece? It’s hideous.

I know we cannot confuse students by barraging them with risk-taking ideas when they have no solid ground, but dropping a few into the conversation once in a while is the most honest way we can help them find lifelong curiosity and innovative thinking of their own. Maybe you could raise a flag with a question mark and cliff icon as a signal when you ask them, but you must ask these things aloud.

You never know. You might be asked to speak at a conference among your peers and those you admire. Oh, the presentation topic that was accepted, you ask? “Dimensions of Creativity: A Model to Analyze Student Projects.” Guess I am kind of hooked on this creativity thing.

As a teacher, I am thankful for:

An orphaned pack of construction paper discovered at the back of the cupboard — unfaded!

A parent who asks, “What can I do to help?”

Free online tools without a “what’s popular” button,

Friday nights,

Going home on empty-tote-bag days,

Drive-through anything,

Other parents of my child’s soccer team or Sunday School class who volunteer instead of me,

A box of Kleenex donated anonymously on my desk,

Neon colored paper,

Free anything,

Each successful program, concert, field trip, performance, science fair, etc. that went off without a crisis,

Email when I need to contact someone,

An empty email box when I have no time to read email,

Each time I use laptops with my students and they all connect to the Internet on the first try,

My fellow teacher who shows me how it fix it when something doesn’t work,

The polite student who fixes it for me,

Being able to save interactive whiteboard files so we can continue tomorrow or email it home to a sick student,

Students who stay home when they are sick,

Being able to try a lesson a second time to fix what I messed up the first time,

My fellow teachers who help me laugh at myself after a disastrous lesson,

Finding a web resource before I need it for a unit, not after,

Students who said “Thank you” today,

Students who say “Thank you” years later.

What are you thankful for?

I am far behind at checking out all the good things in my Google Reader. This one is weeks old, but as I read it I hear myself let out a satisfied “Mmmmm” as if I were eating a chocolate truffle:  “Schools Adopt Art as a Building Block of Education.” I especially like picturing a little girl explaining that her class is outside learning about lines from the artworks built into their school: ““We’re looking for a slanted or diagonal line.” Life does not imitate art, nor art imitate life. Art is life.

Wait. Adopt it? Isn’t art a building block of learning already?

I think visually. I make visual analogies in my head for any new concept. I have secretly done this as long as I can remember. I just never told my third grade friends how I “pictured” things. A new idea is visual art to me. So sad that the verbal world of school forgets this. I have a decent mastery of words, but chose to use them — whenever possible — to create pictures to help others see what I “see.”  It frightens me that we must ask for extra funds or special initiatives or “differentiate our curriculum for visual learners” just to keep visual stimuli, the chocolate truffles of the eye, in our learning environments.  We would never think to have schools without words everywhere…and a lot of numbers, too. How, then, is it necessary to “adopt” art into schools?

One thing the web has done is spread visual ways of seeing new ideas. YouTube, Flash, Flickr, all the Flickr toys, even  comic creators have made the visual a preferred vocabulary for so many. But we seem to forget that when we go to school. Art is a “special,” a frill, a poor, distant cousin who comes to visit during holidays.

Not everyone needs to be able to speak or study art (though I hope they will). Art is not a foreign language with its own grammar. Images and texture and lines should just be there at every turn like the neatly printed signs for “door” and “Mrs. Smithson” in a first grade classroom.

Please, don’t forget to share the art, even if you do not like it or understand it. Your students will.

We have all been there. You are in a session with teaching peers, learning (or teaching or collaborating) about a new way to envision learning and the many tools that can put learning in the hands of the students. Two of the others in the session clearly do not “buy in.” YOU are excited about the possibilities of the topic at hand, but you are aware of the “back-channel” that is going on between your less-positive peers. They are not rude, just disengaged. They are very subtle. You may be the only one in the room (real or virtual) who is even aware of their behavior.

As one who feels strongly that teachers take too much bashing from the media and the general public, I HATE being in this situation. I watch my “peers” embarrassing the teaching profession as a whole, not by being blatantly rude, but by passive-aggressively avoiding really good stuff: the real red meat of learning, right here on a platter in front of them. They are so busy (figuratively) criticizing the outfit the server is wearing that they cannot savor the rich, new flavors on the menu of learning.

I am frustrated twice over: 1)  that their behavior might be cited as representative of All Teachers and 2) that they are missing such great ideas and palpable swell of enthusiasm among all the others in the room. I am incredulous, yet not. And I must decide: do I Retry engaging them in the conversation at hand by whatever means or do I Ignore their behavior and hope it will either go away or fade as they miraculously join in on their own? I am reminded of a similar decision I  faced as a first year teacher with a sixth grader who was partially off-task. The difference is that these are my PEERS. As a leader and peer, the choices are tough. I do not want to violate my peer role or the positive forces in the room by scolding. I really do not want to believe that these two are representative of the profession I respect.

Retry?…Ignore?

I have not answered this question. The one thing I will not do is Abort my efforts to both teach and learn among my teaching peers. So my options are Retry or Ignore. Your thoughts?

Water skiers know that the key to getting up on the water is making sure you do not have slack on the rope that pulls you. At least that’s what seems to work. I am no water skier, but I watch them every day this time of year. Once you allow the rope to slacken, you fall, causing uncomfortable things to happen with your bathing suit, skis, and the hard surface of the water. But some skiers have mastered a graceful way to let go of the rope, gliding gently down into the water in a planned drop-off. They decide to take some time off the rope entirely, perhaps hopping back in the boat, but better prepared to “get up” easily the next time without bruises and sore places from a slack-rope fall.

The problem with technology’s speed is that teachers (and indeed MOST of us), do not have a chance to do a graceful drop-off. We dare not risk slack. If we don’t hang on to that rope and maintain some kind of form, we suffer an unpredictable tumble. And  the technology boat seems to have a bottomless gas tank and possessed driver.

There are times when I am flying behind the technology boat, carefully navigating new wakes (like a new computer 24 hours before a major meeting!) when I just want to let go, ease back down into the waves and float a bit. I believe all of us need permission to let go of the rope. The consequence may be that we do not progress as quickly to working on a single ski or a more advanced challenge, but it is worth it. We need to recognize that none of us is going to ever master all the new waves of technology, and we deserve some grace in our decisions. It is OK to decide not to ski into that wake, turn around that cove, or face that wind. There will be another soon. Even though the technology boat continues on its course, the waves in the water dissipate. So it is OK to ignore some of them. What is important is that my decision is not to risk slack on a rope I have chosen to grasp. My rope-release must be consciously done to avoid a painful smackdown.

Today’s waves I do not choose to navigate on the rope: my Google Reader’s 3000+ items since before NECC (and before computer crash). I think a graceful “Mark all as read” is in order.

Bobbing here in the water feels great.

I am writing this on a brand new computer just days before I leave for NECC and hours before an important semi-annual board meeting for my non-profit company. There is nothing like having a video card die on a  computer just as you are headed into critical days. Yes, I had thorough back-ups, etc., but the time required to reconfigure everything on a new machine (and new PLATFORM!) does not fit within the 24 hours I had. Thank goodness for a helpful spouse who continued installing things while I ran to an emergency dentist visit (on top of all this!) and a thoughtful boss who said, “Just go buy one NOW” when the display on my old brain machine was shutting off at random times.

Lessons learned: 

Each of us is at risk of the unexpected every day. Nothing will ever prepare you.

When push comes to shove, it’s the people who make the difference, not the machines.

New toys are not nearly as much fun on a deadline.

I hope all at NECC will help me continue to learn about this new machine. It IS the people who make the difference.

This is completely off the topics of education, technology, teaching or anything remotely professional for me. Read on only if you would like a summer refresher.

The rush of air in my wet hair coasting down a hill,

No helmet, just flip flops and a towel.

The Sunday paper outside in a morning breeze just on the border of a sweatshirt

But not quite; the coffee is enough.

Kayak paddle dripping on early-brown knees of June

Downwind is easier.

Computer sits warming itself, lonely.

Chicken grilling and cut grass roll across my nose.

Strawberries from down the road in a basket on the counter.

Early summer Sunday.

I am participating in this “meme” thanks to Louise Maine, a fellow techno-junky teacher and contributor to TeachersFirst. I love the fact that she and I have never even met face to face, though we “talk” often in email, on Twitter, via webcam, in the OK2Ask “classroom,” and occasionally on the phone (how mundane). The very fact that we work together is a case study in professional/personal  learning networks and the power of the web. I will finally meet Louise at EduBloggerCon and NECC later this month.

As someone who went over the wall from full time teaching to twelve month work at a non-profit three years ago, I miss the annual cycle of a school year and the summer change of pace for professional development (see my post on summer growth). But I can give this one a shot.

BTW, here are some definitions of  meme for those who may not know the term. In this case, a meme is simply a way of using people’s blogs to pass along this summer professional development idea and to use the power of “tags” or “categories” to connect what all of us are doing so you can find the ideas easily. Think of it as word-of-mouth-follow-the-leader-copycat-gone-internet-viral thanks to little packets running around telling each other things. I have this vision of kindergarteners on the playground when one of them tells a secret…

Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

1. Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
2. For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/07/09).
3. Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.
4. Title your post Professional Development Meme 2009 and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.
5. Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme09.
6. Tag 5-8 others to participate in the meme.
7. Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
8. Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals

• Sort through all the “check this out” items I have thrown into Delicious, tagging them and USING them rather than having them just sit there
• Stop and spend some time with my feed reader, organizing it and paring it down so it is a welcome friend to visit with each day instead of another item on my to-do list
• Successfully pull off a live video streaming event that any teacher COULD do (OK2Ask LIVE from NECC)- and have teachers join us!

I tag Melissa Rivers and Ollie Dreon (I hope….if I can find his blog URL!) and Jim Gates, all fellow PA folks in “different” teaching positions these days. What do you want to learn this summer?

For those of us who have adventurous mothers, this weekend is an opportunity to give a special kind of present: tech help. Over the past ten years or so, I have spent countless hours on the phone  across the 400 miles between me and my fearless mother, helping her remember how to print multiple 4 by 6 prints onto an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of photo paper, save an email attachment where she can find it, delete incorrect email addresses from her address book, or download the photos from her digital camera. At this point you are probably guessing that my mother is about 60 years old, maybe…right? Nope. Try over 80. (She’d shoot me for saying that, but she probably won’t read this).

Her age does not matter. What matters is that I am her personal tech learning network, and she loves it. My help is needed, appreciated, and custom-made to “fit.” I may have to “give” the same gift a few times until she gets it, but she revels in telling me every time she uses a tech skill. How often do you give a gift where the recipient brags back to you every time she uses it? So here is my list of tech-help MDay gift suggestions for moms at various levels of techspertise. And none of them requires a coupon at Macy’s. I hope you will comment back with ideas of your own.

1. Set up an account for her on Facebook so she can be friends with grandkids.
2. Use a free trial of GoToMyPC to fix all the things she cannot fix herself and customize her Favorites. Maybe even give her desktop shortcuts to great online games and word puzzles to keep her mind sharp.
3. Email her links to the same games, in case she forgets they are in Favorites.
4. Set up folders in her email, including a HELP folder where she can file away all your “How to” emails. Be sure you put “How To: [insert topic here]” as the subject line for subsequent tech help emails, so she can find them easily!
5. Have her try right-clicking on everything while you watch or talk on the phone. Explain what those options mean–and have her try some.
6. Make her a template for a photo greeting with her choice of layout and fonts ready to go. All she has to do is add the message and print.
7. Offer to digitize her Christmas card list. Then do it before December.
8. Set up an account on Voicethread and show her how to upload and record narration for family photos. You will LOVE watching them.
9. Pay for her virus protection subscription and set it so it is foolproof!
10.  Send her a list of travel links to go on virtual vacations. Talk her through organizing them in a single folder of Favorites.
11. Show her how to RIGHT-click nasty pop-ups to close them from the taskbar (in case they have nastiness linked from the little X).
12. Set up groups in her email and show her how to compose mail to one of them.
13. Show her how to find magazine images on the web from the decade of her childhood…then listen to her stories about them.
14. Help her organize the images from her digital camera. Tell her it’s OK to delete the blurry ones of her feet. Then set her screensaver to cycle through them at times when she is bored. (Warning: she may call you and start narrating the pictures as they go by).
15. Teach her how to copy and paste by keystroke. Copy is easy. Paste: think VELCRO to “stick it there.”
16. Show her how to use quotation marks to search old friends’ names on Google. Show her how to screen the results before clicking.
17. Set up Google Reader with feeds for her  from pubs and blogs you know she’d enjoy (there are tons of recipe blogs). Show her how to check out the Reader’s suggestions for more—and how to delete feeds she no longer wants.
18. Send her a new feed idea each week for a couple of months so she remembers how to add a feed.
19. Set up that digital picture frame you gave her so it actually works with current pictures of the grandkids.
20. Set up a wish list for her on Amazon and make sure she knows how to add to it and edit it. Now you have gift  ideas for the next occasion!

PS. When “showing” her, you are not allowed to touch the mouse. Put your hands behind your back and TALK.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Parents enjoy seeing their kids grow up and then reacquainting with them as adults. What about teachers? After 27 years of teaching, I can honestly say that I still enjoy reading what former students are doing and what became of them as adults. I don’t know if this is true for all teachers, but it is an important part of me and how I view my worth on this earth.

I suspect that my interest is in proportion to the number of years I shared learning with a student. In my case, I had students for multiple years as their teacher of gifted or as a middle school media center teacher during that magical(?!) span through puberty and growing taller than my five foot three. In other words, I witnessed them as they grew up — for more than the usual nine or ten months. In some cases, I witnessed and participated for as many as seven years from grades 2-8. As many continued in high school, I had continued contact as a technology person team-teaching with their teachers.

As a child of two teachers in boarding schools, I grew up believing that students become lifelong members of a teacher’s extended family. I am sure that this assumption cements my feeling of connection to former students. My network of “siblings” came back to our house at the oddest times, and my parents welcomed them just as they did me when I arrived unannounced from college with a carload of hungry friends and laundry.

Enter Facebook into the world of former teachers, and an interesting phenomenon occurs. If  I see former students among friends of friends, do I “friend” them? Is this unprofessional on my part, an invasion of their world by someone from childhood, or a sign of respect for them as an intriguing adult? As I click “add as friend,” I worry that they will think it odd to hear from this lady who made them build inventions or peristently asked them, “what to YOU think?” I am a blur from life before high school, a name that sounds familiar, gummy with old sticker-adhesive on a “log book” they threw away years ago. I am cursed and blessed by an exceedingly good memory for their projects, panics, and even parents. Now I simply would like to meet them again as adults. Should I risk the click to “add as friend”?

I am probably taking this decision far too seriously. Facebook sticks people together with as much adhesive as old stickers. Not a big deal. Except to the former teacher who saw them grow up.