Think Like a Teacher

I met a great group of motivated, creative teachers in our OK2Ask ™ Guided Wiki Walk sessions this week. (OK2Ask ™ is a series of free, online professional development “snack sessions” for teachers offered by TeachersFirst. We use an online classroom space from Blackboard/Collaborate, formerly Elluminate.) The teachers were creating their first wikis or improving on ones they had recently begun.  This two meeting offering included time between for the teachers to work on their wikis, then return in 48 hours to learn more, share, and ask a million questions.

One group was so quick to learn and so gregarious, they quickly had their own backchannel running in the chat space, helping answer each other’s questions during demonstrations. They even asked if they could critique each others’ work on the second day. So we diverted widely from our original plans  and let them go. Their enthusiasm was EXCITING. Their critique was insightful and discriminating. They talked about pedagogy and practicality. They fed each other ideas. They did everything we want our students to do. These teachers who had never met– a probably never will — scored an #eduwin. Their students are getting the best of the best.

One of the conversations I especially enjoyed was about using templates in wikispaces to differentiate for different learners.  You can create a “template” wiki page, such as the skeleton for a student project, but you could also create several templates or options for different levels of project challenge. Students click to create a new page, select the template and – ta-da — their wiki project  is started. Right away, the chat buzzed about how to do this without appearing to single out one student over another. Should we perhaps offer all the various templates as options? Or perhaps name them with evens/odds that do not show a clear “level,” so it is easy to simply say, “Sam why don’t you try one of the even numbered templates.” We also talked about using a past student project as a sample or use it to create a template. You can click to create a new template “from” any page that already exists in that wiki, then edit the template as you wish. So if past students have generated unprecedented project options, you can add them to the bank of templates, perhaps stripping out the finished work to reveal the skeleton of a new project format.

As a teacher, I always fear offering a “sample”project. The teacher-pleasers make theirs identical. The perfectionists think they can ONLY do theirs the same way. The minimalists will never go further, and even creative kids often squelch the urge to do something different to conform to the model of school success. The helicopter parents compare their child’s work against the example and tweak it, thinking no one is looking.

Just as our OK2Ask™ session diverted from its original template thanks to participant input, I love the flexibility of any tool that allows projects and products to become springboards to unexpected, broader options. Thanks wikispaces and thanks to the teachers who continue to make OK2Ask™ a load of collaborative fun. #eduwin.

Do more with less. We keep hearing that. In school, as in any other workplace, it means adding more responsibilities to your already full plate.  It also means making supplies go further, doing without tech support (or waiting longer to get it), and having no money available for professional development. Even if you find a regional conference that addresses the very problems we are being asked to solve, you must pay for it yourself.

There is perhaps one silver lining to doing more with less. We get very good using the tools we do have.  And we don’t have to apologize for knowing only a tool or two for making online projects. If the school only pays for one, it is the one we will become expert at. If we as teachers must pay for online tool subscriptions for our own classes, we either stick with the inconveniences of the “freemium”  tools, beg for money from parents or PTO, or shell out the bucks to “do” with one tool.

Doing more with less time matters, too — more precisely, using less time to accomplish the most.  I want my students to move past the tech toybox stage and into the nitty-gritty thinking of creating and evaluating their own information. What if  a class were to simplify to a max of three tools?

As I prepare for an OK2Ask ™ session next month on three Editors’ Choice tools, I wonder which tools I would choose as my triad. I love Bookemon, Glogster, and Voicethread, but Google Earth is completely free. I think I would want a balanced triad: one very visual tool, one that is ideal for verbal/language, and one that offers a broad and perhaps unexpected perspective, such as the “world view” of Google Earth.

What couldn’t we do with these three? Concept maps we could do in a visual tool. Writing and sharing of words in a verbal tool, numbers and quantities we might have to represent in a real or symbolic context: applied in visuals or written in number sentences. We could use a visual tool to represent temporal concepts such as timelines. We could “place” events on the earth and in our hometowns using Google Earth. What other concepts have I missed? I haven’t though about things that require sound, though we could add sounds to our visuals, if we chose the right tool.

Doing more with FEWER may be a good way to create our own classroom taxonomy of priorities and content. Yes, we need to teach kids to choose the right tools, but don’t we also need to teach them to dig deeper and become expert with a tool repertoire? Think of the mental flexibility it will take to use one of the three to show what they know about a sonnet or mitosis or three branches of government. How could you use Google Earth to represented an underlying concept of our constitution? Hint: think analogies.

I’d love to know which triad other teachers would choose.

Top Ten things to do the day after ISTE:

10. Sleep. At least a little extra.

9. Dig through the bags, pockets, and cases, sorting all the IMPORTANT cards and little notes that people handed to you– that is,  those who still use paper.

8.  Go outside and breathe non-city, non-convention center air (if you have it).

7. Plan the next 10 blog posts about amazing things you learned but had no time to blog about.

6A. Revisit the plans and files for your presentation, making note of all the things you would change if you gave it again.

6B. Revisit the best presentation you went to and make note of all the things you will say when you give the sequel next year.

5. Run a million loads of laundry. (Dirt is a reality, even in edtech world.)

4.  Dig through the iste11 items you threw into Diigo and add other, more meaningful tags so your library isn’t a giant ISTanglE

3. Resist the urge to do nothing but read #iste11 tweets for another day. #istechocolate is not a food group.

2. Decide which great new idea you will try first, write about, ask your tweeps about, or build.

1. Start item 2.

As I head off to EduBloggerCon and ISTE this weekend, I keep thinking about the teachers who won’t be there — who will never have a chance to even imagine anything like it.  I “meet” a few of the more adventurous ones in OK2Ask sessions. I know that many of them relish the weekly Updates and use TeachersFirst regularly. They are the teachers whose schools never provide them time or opportunity to learn about using technology as a tool for learning.  A few of them will step off the cliff and join an OK2Ask session to learn on their own. Tens or hundreds of thousands more remain on desert islands without the nourishment of professional growth.   They never have a chance to propose individual professional development goals; they never have a chance to learn about the power of learning leveraged by even the simplest technologies. They may have a new grant-funded gadget dropped into their classrooms, but no one ever sits down to talk with them about how it might fit into (or CHANGE) the ways their students learn. Even worse, no one even makes sure it works or fixes it when it doesn’t. These are the teachers on desert islands, and there are far more of them than there are of us, the fortunate few who greet each other at ISTE as if the rest of the teaching world should be following our lead.

I know there are plenty of teachers who have closed the door and secretly thank heaven that they don’t “have to” learn about using technology. But there are far more who simply do not have the professional development or support network. We can’t expect teachers to do it all on their own, but what choice do they have? And what are we doing to find them and help them? Yes, legislation for EETT– including professional development — is a great way to manage top-down, but what are we doing bottom-up to visit the desert islands? We expect them to come to our online communities and learn. We expect them to find those communities. We expect them to figure out how to repair things. We expect them to keep trying to swim off the desert island, but we don’t make an effort to find them and provide the encouragement they need to even try.

The state-of-technology-in-our-schools surveys are too generic to reveal the number of teachers on desert islands. These surveys are filled out by administrators eager to make their schools look good.  The way the questions are asked does not reveal the reality of one projector for a school of 30 classrooms (and a missing power cord)  or one very unreliable computer with a shaky Internet connection per classroom. It does not tell the tale of non-existent funding for professional development or tech support. When I talk to these teachers about why they should use tech, they laugh the laugh of a homeless person watching HGTV.

What are those of us lucky enough to attend ISTE doing to get the word — and some personal encouragement– out to the hundreds of thousands of our peers who will never see a conference, never have a tech integration specialist drop by, never know more about technology than what they see in a broadcast news 15-second filler? Yes, desert island teachers have a responsibility to learn and grow, but we have a responsibility to find them and help them. Would you volunteer to join something like “Habitech for Teaching” a la Habitat for Humanity where we go in and build it together with them so they can live in it and pass it on? What could that look like? How could we at least let them hear an actual human voice of support? I am guessing telling them to call in on Skype isn’t gunna happen.

I think I’ll mull this one over as I complete my ISTE conference planner. Surely there is a way all these creative, energized folks at ISTE can share with those on desert islands.

I recently combed through thousands of pages on TeachersFirst’s servers in preparation for the launch of TeachersFirst 3.0. I whirled as thirteen years of teaching with technology rewound in a few clicks. Yes, we have revised our site several times since 1998, but we have never cleaned out the attic of unused items. As points of perspective, 1998 was the year TeachersFirst launched. It was also the year of Titanic (the movie) and the introduction of Viagra. Today’s younger teachers were still in elementary school. If you were a teacher then, you likely had to walk to the school library or designated classrooms to even find a computer. Fortunate schools had one projection device that sat atop an overhead projector to “show” the computer on a screen. Do you remember?

As I clicked through TeachersFirst’s digital attic, I laughed aloud at a 1998 TeachersFirst tutorial on Netscape, complete with images and explanations of what a “Back” button does.  I unearthed a page that explained “plug ins” (not the kind that deliver air freshener). I blew digital dust off technology tips about “floppies” and  warnings from the days before school web filtering, recalling the humble roots of the iPad and IWB.  A very thorough 2001 TeachersFirst professional module explained a new concept in teaching: the webquest. Of course, there were no user-friendly, web-based tools to create or share a webquest online, so teachers placed the instructions and links in Word documents or learned to write html code and host it on their Tripod or AOL member web page. Only the adventurous teacher-geeks survived that trial by ftp.

Then there were TeachersFirst traffic statistic pages. Like a box of old snapshots,  these pages showed how many teachers accessed how many “page views” on TeachersFirst during September, 2003: a mere 143,000 per month in those days, and zero percent of them were from countries outside the U.S. What about today, you ask? Try millions of pages viewed per month from over 70 countries with users and members visiting TeachersFirst. Everyone is a web adventurer now. Indeed, the web itself ceased being an adventure many years ago.

Where were you thirteen years ago this month? Did you use the Internet? My classroom was the first in my school to hijack one of the extra office phone lines and connect to the Internet via a dial-up modem– I believe in 1995 or so. The cable ran all the way down the hall, strung behind the panels of the dropped ceiling during a weekend visit by my geeky friend, the computer teacher, with his handy roll of telephone wire. If the office picked up Line 4 during our online session, we were unceremoniously thrown off. I would leap to the computer before the kids could hear what the principal was saying to the person on the other end of the call.

So I should not have been surprised to find several generations of digital treasures in TeachersFirst’s attic. But we should all be impressed at how far teachers — and the world– have come in 13 years.  I gleefully tossed many, many old and unused pages to the “permanently delete” list as we decided what was worth revising and keeping. I can only hope that the next few years will see at least as much change in the power of teaching and learning thanks to the web.

In just a few weeks, we will be unveiling TeachersFirst 3.0. I hope you will find it as fresh and exciting as the Internet was back in 1998, but without the challenges!

Jennifer Northrup’s post about a visit to her media center by teachers-to-be (T2B) raises very important questions about today’s teacher ed programs:

…the discussions of the day really made me wonder if pre-service teacher education is neglecting to prepare students for the role of technology in the classroom. Is it fair to say that we have to hope that these students have a cooperating teacher that utilizes technology in the classroom or that they will be forced to learn it on their own in the end?

My short answer: NO. It is not fair to simply hope a cooperating teacher will have time/expertise/motivation/experience with technology to make this a part of student teaching.  I know from sharing TeachersFirst with T2B in OK2ask sessions that the T2B desperately want to know what to do with technology long before student teaching.

In this case, I think of teaching as a bit like cooking.

A true cook (master teacher) has the expertise to work from available ingredients, create a recipe, adjust the recipe to a different number of servings,  combine it into a broader menu of compatible offerings, adapt for possible food allergies, set the table, and time all the food so it arrives at just the right time to be eaten piping hot or refreshingly chilled. The learning meal then takes on a life of its own through conversation and involvement of everyone around the table– and facilitated by the food prep. If he/she is  smart, the master chef will include students in the food prep for a broader, richer menu. An experienced, tech-savvy teacher integrates technology the same way, using what is available at just the right time to bring every student around the learning table together. If a T2B is lucky enough to be souschef with a master, he/she will at least learn the fundamentals of collecting ingredients and managing simple menu planning. He/she will not learn every utensil or technique, but he/she will be able to serve up a shared learning meal.  The students may even try some foods they would have otherwise avoided when not included in the menu prep.

One problem with teacher ed is that the time limitations and inequities among the kitchen (student teaching) experiences and facilities make consistency very unlikely. We cannot assume that the cooperating teacher or student teaching school will even have essential technology ingredients or expertise. Some will have state of the art appliances and 1:1 computing, while others will have the edtech equivalent of one microwave oven to feed a class of 30… with past-date groceries. To  make it worse, the T2B may arrive having experienced teacher ed faculty who themselves use edtech solely as a drive-through meal: something you grab and go — without looking at the nutritional value!

To steer today’s T2B beyond the drive-through toward solid nutrition in their use of edtech as part of total menu planning, we need to deliberately take them out to “eat” in a variety of schools. We cannot assume that today’s T2B have ever even tasted this food before. Let them taste-test the marvelous things you can do by starting with a simple menu item, let’s say telling a simple digital story. After tasting it, let them try cooking up one of their own–even if it’s a little too crispy around the edges. Then ask them to envision a full menu where it might fit. Show them sample menus.  They may be tempted to simply re-create the comfort food lessons they had over and over as a child. Give them some nutritionally sound starting points they may never have savored.

There is a place where creativity and professional risk meet, and technology has brought that place to our fingertips.

Why is it that “professionals” or adults in general balk at admitting their own creative play? Why do “responsible adults”  think that creativity belongs only to  the very young or the juried, respectable, credentialed, or reviewed?  Yes, there is a place for “Artsworld” and New York Times Arts section, but none of us should be afraid to admit that we play with creative toys and concoct things that may or may not qualify for juried shows or concerts. We share and laugh at the anonymous anomalies of the amateurish and absurd on YouTube — often the products of an exhibitionist style of creative play — but few of us allow our own creative play to show,  for fear it will undermine our professional image or bore our constituents.

There is a place where arts and the personal meet, and technology has brought that place to our fingertips.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pinnacle of “Artworld,” is embracing creative accessibility with its Connections project. Met staffers select “Connections” from the Met collection and share their own interactions and narrations about the works in videos on wildly varied themes, even “Date Night.” More importantly, the Met invites anyone to create their own Connections project. Art becomes personal, and producing a Connection to share it is both creative and public. Even from the high plateau of the Met as an institution of the Arts (capital A),  this project invites creative thinking and “play” from people outside the Artworld. I wonder whether a professional from education or any other field outside the Arts would risk it. Probably not, unless it somehow fits their credentials.

There is a place where personal creativity and learning meet, and technology has brought that place to our fingertips.

David Warlick, quinteesential education consultant and speaker, admits he has spent hours on airplanes making music with a creative iPad app, but he apologizes for talking about it on his blog. Teachers balk at admitting their own creative attempts, too. When was the last time you allowed a student or fellow teacher to see what you tried to make as part of creative “play” with Prezi or Photoshop or GlogsterEDU? More importantly, how can we ask children and the young adults of the next generation to respect their own creative endeavors when we don’t even take our own creative play seriously enough to let anyone see it? Let’s move beyond YouTube-silly to admitting we actually try making something creative. No one said it had to be “good.” Let them see you play.

There is a place where creativity meets importance, and technology has brought that place to our fingertips.

During my stay in China, I received notification that my two proposals for the ISTE conference in June, 2011 had BOTH been accepted. I am flabbergasted, excited, and a bit daunted by the challenge of putting together two very different presentations to be given within the same morning. What an opportunity!

One is on the cyclical nature of creativity and how that can be respected and fostered in an education world of linear, point-A-to-point-B accountability. The second is on taking the control of IWBs (interactive whiteboards) out of the hands of teachers and making them student centered for learning. While I will be sure that both presentations have practical, learning-friendly strategies that teachers can envision and implement, they begin from very different directions. One springs from a deep philosophical discussion about the nature of creativity (born of my interests in the humanities and listening/reading/teaching about creative process). The other bounces defiantly out of the back alleys of argument that began with Bill Ferriter’s blog post almost a year ago, “Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards” and the unfortunate practice of distributing technology hardware as a teacher-centered panacea for student achievement.

So I have a lot of work to do between now and the spring to piece and quilt two separate presentations.  In the meantime, I will enjoy “collecting things” for both. Sometimes the pre-presentation, messy time is the highlight of my own creative process as ideas, images, and examples collect like scraps for a quilter. The virtual floor of my office (a.k.a. my MacBook) is going to be deep in material.

I have only a few minutes left on my 24 hours of paid Internet, so I am writing quickly. I will add pictures if I have time.

Today we visited an elementary school ( they call it “primary” school) for grades 1-6, located in a village in the countryside of Hu County.  Most of the village is farmers (more on that later!). The school has 173 students and 16 teachers. They invited us into a grade 3 English class where students were learning numbers in English.The class had about 30 students (I think), and they were very excited to see us, even though our group of 35 or so filled the aisles of their small classroom. You will see how funny we looked taking so many pictures while they worked when I post a picture. They kept their eyes on their papers and worked diligently in spite of such an interruption! We sang “If You’re Happy and You Know it” for them when their teacher asked if we would like to teach them a song. They surprised us m singing the same some back in Chinese! Apparently it is a universal song for kids.

We saw their school library, built by People to People, the organization that is running our trip. It is very simple with very few books, but it has a nice clean floor and walls. The other classrooms are kept clean, but they have bare concrete floors that are VERY cold. They seem to wash the floors with water which does not dry easily, and they were very damp and cold on the feet. Both teachers and students keep their coats on all the time. The outside was about 38 degrees F, and inside was not a lot warmer! Each classroom opens to the outdoors and has open windows letting in the cold air. They have small coal burning heaters in the rooms to get a little heat, but it is a little heat!

Things we learned:

Elementary teachers teach no more than three 45 minute classes a day. Those who worked at those school did not live in the village of 750 people, but lived in the neighboring town and ride bikes to work - a distance I would guess is about 5 miles. They must get quite cold on the ride! The school day goes from 8:30 to 11:30, breaks for lunch until 2, then runs 2 to 5 pm. The students walk back home in their village for lunch. The school has two computers: one in the teacher office and one in a classroom they share for watching videos and computer programs on two large TV screens. Both are connected to the Internet. The teacher very proudly showed us a PowerPoint they had made to teach area, perimeter, and volume in grade 6. I think the numbering they used for math was the same as U.S.,  but I will have to look at my pictures in more detail to answer the question left on my earlier blog post.

Chinese teachers teach one, two, or occasionally 3 subjects in the rural schools. In the city schools they teach only one, even in elementary.  They are certified to teach a specific subject, but there is a shortage of teachers in the villages, so some teacher teach something they may not be certified to teach.

The teachers told us they are allowed to try new ways of teaching, and they like to find new ideas. They were thrilled with the gift of some books that our delegation brought, including alphabet letters and easy English picture books. I told them about TeachersFirst, especially the English teacher, since she can read it. The curriculum is set at the county level. Students go to elementary for grades 1-6 (there is no Kdg). They go to a neighboring town for grades 7-9, then only some go on to high school– about 60% of those who go to this elementary. Education beyond grade 9 is not mandatory.

The children were very happy and played outside at recess like any American children. We also saw some of them in the village later while they were home at lunch break. Our village visit is another story I will tell later.

Yesterday at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum I experienced the awe that most Chinese students have for Americans and the profound respect they show to teachers. I met a 6th grade Chinese boy who was there with his large group of schoolmates on a field trip from a school in a small city or town (not a farming village) somewhere an hour or two away. As we spoke, I was suddenly surrounded by at least 60 kids, all pressing close to say hi and to speak some English with me. When I said I was American, they were excited. When I said I was a teacher, they gasped and stepped back about a foot, being very cautious. I kept on talking and smiling with them, and they slowly closed in again. Their teacher videotaped our conversation (I guess to use in English class?). I gave them my email address and tried to act out the idea of sending me an email. I think they understood, but I am not sure. They gave the address to their teacher, anyway!

Because of that experience, I was not surprised to see the children today act very disciplined at school. They always stand up to respond to the teacher. The children in English class recited their numbers for us. We could hear other classes reciting together loudly many times during or visit.

Students have jobs at school, just as they do in the U.S. I saw some emptying the wastebaskets at recess.

I have much more to share, but want to try to add a picture or two before my time runs out. Tomorrow we travel to Shanghai, a very modern Chinese city.

Disclaimer: The information expressed here is based on professional visits to one public secondary school (grades 7-12) and the Center for Educational Technology (a national center) at Beijing Normal University. It is supplemented by a asking questions of our very knowledgeable guide (about age 30) who grew up in southwest China, the son of a HS math teacher. This information may not represent all realities in China. Information based strictly on one person’s experience is so indicated. 

1.  For about 30 years, China has had a one child policy (couples permitted to have only one baby). That policy has loosened, but most children still have 6 adults (two parents, four grandparents doting on them and watching their every move. This, combined with a powerful respect for teachers and drive for education make classroom behavior remarkably focused.

2. School is free (and compulsory) from age 7 (1st grade)  through 9th grade. Then parents must pay. The cost of senior high school in the one we visited is about $350 per term ($700/year). But average income is FAR below what people make in the U.S. Our guide said a city professional might earn $1200/month. (This statistic should be researched further for accuracy.)

3. There is a HUGE divide between rural (”village” or “less developed areas”) and urban/town schools. Keeping in mind that municipalities called “villages” can be as large as several hundred thousand people or more, I am not sure where the line is drawn between “rural” schools and those in “developed areas.” We will see a village school on Tuesday.

4. School day/year: HS students are in school 8-5 daily. Regular classes end at 4 with after school courses until 5. The school year is comprised of two terms: Sept 1- late January, then one month off. The second term ends in time for a two month summer break.

5. Class sizes in the high school are typically at least 40 students, and many 50+. The computer class we visited had 54 but room for up to 60. The video we saw of an elementary class in a pilot edtech school had 48 in a 2nd grade class. When asked how teachers handle students who may struggle or those who are advanced, both teachers and the teacher ed professor readily acknowledged that they “cannot do this with 40-50 in their class” and must “handle it after school.” The professor said that “this is an area where we can learn from you” [the U.S.]. There is little problem with classroom behavior, however, because the the great respect afforded to teachers and high value placed on education by the entire society. I will tell you my experience with this in a post about meeting students at the Terra Cotta Warrior museum!

6. When we asked a veteran teacher how teaching has changed in her 30+ years, she explained: Students and their parents are interested in other things, more than just getting a grade. They say, “I am learning to be good, not only to be knowledgeable; to be kind, generous, to help others.”  The teacher also smiled as she explained that teaching for her was first just a job. Then she grew to enjoy it. Now it is “an addiction.” Some things about teachers are universal!

7. Teachers we spoke to looked immediately to their principal for the answer when asked whether they are interested in trying something new, such as collaborating with classes/schools outside their own. They do not seem to have the autonomy to make such decisions and may even be afraid to. This observation is based solely on a few teachers and their responses to questions from our group.

8. High school teachers teach 3 classes per day. They spend the rest of the day “preparing in their office.” Teachers wear very casual clothes, often including outerwear for cool temps, such as a warm up jacket and sneakers. Even the HS principal was in casual pants and a sweater/sweatshirt.  Even the chair of the university edtech center wore jeans for his meeting with our professional delegation, which surprised me.

9. The Educational Technology Center at Beijing Normal University (an “ivy league” level school) has a strong graduate research program conducting pilots in 260 schools across China to determine which exactly which uses and strategies for technology are the most effective in promoting learning. Most of their work involves the teacher using the technology. They openly acknowledged to us that they are behind the U.S. in student use of technology at school.

10. In city schools, computer labs for computer skill classes (not classes using the lab for another subject, such as science or social studies) are typical in high schools. See the picture from the Jr/Sr high school we visited in Beijing. These labs are rarely used by other classes. Students do not typically use computers during the school day except in computer class. They do use computers during afternoon time after official classes end and before they depart at about 5 pm. They might use a computer for a club, for research, or extracurricular projects. In cities, most students have computers with Internet access at home and do use them. Students may use computer skills learned in their computer class to complete multimedia assignments using video or images, etc. The one example of a project type we heard mentioned was PowerPoint. It is typical for there to be one computer per classroom which the teacher alone uses,  possibly with a projector. The English language teacher who spoke with us said she occasionally shares pictures of things from the Internet on the projector as part of her instruction. Apparently web 2.0 tools are not in use at all for school. Microsoft products are by far more prevalent than Mac.

Bonus: I did ask our guide about curriculum and how much Chinese students earn of U.S. history, such as the Revolutionary or Civil Wars. He said they do study world history, including the U.S., but that it is “not very detailed.”

I will be sure to share more after we visit a village school. We have heard over and over and over how different the situation is “in the countryside” or “in the villages” or “for the farmers.” Now we hope to see it. After driving past such villages today, we know the divide is broader than any we can find in the U.S.