Think Like a Teacher

As I write this, I am listening to wind chimes — the long, tubular, metal kind that resonate with deep tones. The late December wind gusts occasionally escalate the usual mellow tones into a dissonant frenzy. I have become accustomed to hearing them, an indicator of the invisible, weather-changing winds coming across the lake. These same winds provide a climate early-warning system on the lake side of the house quite opposite the protected, oblivious side. The wind chimes help us avoid the complete shock of stepping out unprepared into the changing micro-climate. Fortunately, we can hear the chimes’ reminders inside the house and select our outerwear accordingly.

Late December also brings the annual rite of reflecting back on a year gone by. The winds of 2008 resonate with edgy, dissonant tones of wind chimes as a front comes through. Every newscast this week has commented on the changes: political, economic, military, societal, world…. the media wind chimes are truly in a frenzied state. But the optimist in me cannot help but hear the underlying mellow tones, tones that find occasional harmonious combinations or a counterpoint of difference that somehow fits together.

My hope is that the winds of upheaval which produce so much dissonance will also escort in a refreshing front of rethinking, a permission to look anew at everything, including the way we operate the processes we call Teaching and Learning. As someone who has been fortunate enough to have had almost entirely positive experiences with Teaching and Learning in my life, I want so much for others to feel the same winds. Even more, I wish them wind chimes of their own: an awareness that the winds ARE ushering in change. And change is not bad; you just need to put on the appropriate outerwear.

Happy New Year.

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.

Doug Johnson had a great post last week on Seven stupid mistakes teachers make with technology . (OK, I am behind on reading my RSS feeds, but I have excuses). I might have been gentler in calling them “misguided or erroneous actions and assumptions,” because I feel great empathy for teachers. Look at the title of this blog, for heaven’s sake! Been there, done that…though I never taught lecture-style. My additions:

1. 1. Not seeking help with technology. We condemn our students who do not ask for help before the test or clarification of comments we write on their papers, but teachers don’t often speak up and participate in pointing out what they do not understand and making the effort to change that. When a student ignores the repeated comments about misplaced modifiers on his English papers, the English teacher expects him/her to ask what that is and how to fix it (if he/she does not know). Why don’t teachers inquire aloud, “What is that and how do I do it?”
2. Corollary to #1: Giving up instead of risking mistakes (another thing we condemn in our students). If the first person a teacher asks for help speaks in techno-ese and says “It’s easy…watch this “ (zip-zop-zip-zop with the mouse — too quickly for a teacher to grasp),  this provides an easy excuse to say, ” I can’t. I don’t get it. I don’t want to look stupid in front of the kids.”
3. Asking the wrong people for help. They do a wonderful job of keeping things working, but if they have never been teachers (or taught at a similar level), the tech folks may not be the best ones to ask. If they go zip-zop-zip-zop with the mouse and don’t listen to your questions and have YOU touch the mouse — not them — find someone else. If they don’t ask you questions or recognize your fears, find someone else.  If they don’t suggest simple, meaningful options to master first (see Greg Carroll’s comment on Doug’s post), find someone else.
4. Thinking there is a formula or pattern to follow for student-centered, inquiry-driven, technology-infused lessons. As with so many issues in the 21st century, the real answers are more often variations on “It depends” than something formulaic and patterned. Tolerance for ambiguity and flexibility have never been strengths of many who gravitate toward becoming teachers. These skills can be learned, however, and technology happens to be a great way to master them: no product is EVER “done,” since revision is so easy and collaboration so inviting. Teacher ed programs can be guilty of this mistake in teaching new teachers lesson planning.
5. Thinking there is a linear sequence of skills needed to learn about technology’s role in learning. Many commercial “professional development” package providers have created technology skills assessments and tutorials, but most of these oversimplify (see tolerance for ambiguity above). You won’t reach the end, and you’ll never be “done.” Using technology is like reading: first you decode and pronounce, but somewhere in there reading becomes a much more complex process, connecting known to unknown, thinking, reflecting, imagining…. Infusing technology is as complex and unending.

 I guess Doug accomplished what he set out to do. I could go on and on writing about this. Through the blessings of technology, these thoughts will never be “done.” If you’re a teacher who has never commented on a blog post, come on—try it! Avoid #2 above!

 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?

How often do you, as an educator, have the chance to provide a vision for a new technology before it is even available?  Or contribute ideas for anything coming “down the pike”?

How often do industry innovators put learning first in their vision for a new technology?

Here is your chance.

The parent company of TeachersFirst , The Source for Learning, has just teamed with the National Educational Broadband Services Association (NEBSA) to create a competition that puts first things first: educator before techie, learning before “glitz.” The whole idea is to ask the innovative minds out there who constantly think up new ways to engage, inspire, motivate, lure, cajole, launch, fascinate, steer, elevate, redirect, hatch, etc. how they envision a technology that isn’t even readily available yet. This is a dreamers chance to learn and a learners chance to dream.

We pulled this competition together very quickly and, unfortunately, the entries are due rather quickly. I hope people will spread the word quickly, since the actual entry is NOT that complicated (500 words– a middle teacher says that much just getting the notebooks out or computers fired up!). What really excites me, though, is the very idea of asking the educators instead of telling them. A sharp teacher might even ask the KIDS for their ideas to make up the entry!

So if you read this blog..tell a friend. Twit it, blog it, email it, listserv it …even post it in the teachers room. This is YOUR chance. Dream big.

———————————

The full text of the “announcement” I sent in email:

The Source for Learning Teams with NEBSA on Wireless Broadband Education Competition Two nonprofit organizations—both leaders in educational technology—have teamed to sponsor a contest that will explore exciting educational uses for the next revolutionary technology: wireless broadband. The Source for Learning, Inc. (www.sourceforlearning.org) and the National Educational Broadband Service Association (www.nebsa.org) have for years been instrumental in helping educators enhance teaching and learning through technology.  The Wireless Broadband Education Competition will create a showcase for innovative educational uses of one of the newest dimensions of the learning experience: mobility. High-quality wireless connectivity is coming soon, and it will have a major impact on education—“anytime/anywhere” learning. But how will it actually be used? Exciting possibilities are starting to emerge—imagine, for instance: 

•  A class goes to a field behind the school to research native animals and habitats. While there, with no wires needed, they use the web to learn more about what they find, and share the experience via live video feed with other classrooms—from the same school or from many schools, anywhere in the world.
• A few students visit a location—for instance a “wind farm” where clean energy is generated. Other classrooms watch the visit live; they ask questions in real time as the students meet an expert and see the workings of the site. The students upload the GPS coordinates of the site; that data is merged with Google Earth layers showing wind patterns and electric power needs, for a comprehensive understanding of the experience.
• Older, non-wired school buildings add fast Internet access from any room, with no wires and virtually no capital expense.
• Students use digital equipment to measure on-site water quality in real time from multiple locations without leaving their classrooms. 

To stimulate creative thinking about learning supported by this new technology, SFL and NEBSA announce a competition for U.S. educators (Pre-K – 16), asking them to use their imaginations about ways in which wireless broadband could support and enhance teaching and learning. Three Grand Prize winners will receive scholarships to present their proposals at the National EBS Association Annual Convention, which will be held in Boca Raton, Florida from February 23-25, 2009. Each of the winners’ schools will also receive a $200 reimbursement to cover related school substitute costs.  

Visit the competition site for full details: http://wirelessbroadbandeducation.com/. Phase One submissions are due November 1, 2008, via a simple online entry form.

TeachersFirst is fortunate to have a reviewer/contributor who is building a significant learning network among edubloggers, school reformers, and edtech proponents. Louise Maine not only was the focus of articles on wikis in the classroom in the current Edutopia, she will also be presenting for the K-12 Online Conference coming up in October. Louise’s level of involvement as part of a network of enthusiastic educators involved in edtech-as-part-of-ed-reform movement makes me both optimistic and concerned.  I wonder how many teachers even know about the opportunities for virtual conferences, online professional learning networks, and edublogs that spark discussion with thought-provoking reading. Wouldn’t it be great if we could both spread the word and have some means of tracking the spread?

Steve Hargaddon’s efforts at Classroom 2.0 provide one helpful stat: the number of members (11,474 as I write this) . The number of free edu-wikispaces surpassed 100K last week, another meaningful stat. But what do these numbers mean…and do most teachers know that the opportunities are virtually limitless?

I hope that this year’s K-12 Online conference will provide two things: a way to get a picture of the spread of virtual professional development and resultant CHANGE in education and more ideas for reaching the stressed and buried among teachers. While I do believe there is an obligation for teachers to seek new ideas and learn about new trends, I also know that the barriers for many are simply impossible. What will K-12 Onliners do to make the message virtually limitless?  Can we brainstorm efficient, clever ways to reach the teachers who suffer with unreliable infrastructure, resistant administration, untenable working conditions, and immense personal pressures?  Just as we talk about removing barriers for student success, we need to look at the big picture of teachers’ lives and help them access the virtually limitless opportunities being enjoyed by this energized* bunch.

*Louise and I have been emailing about energy and entropy as she plans her K-12 Online presentation. I have thoroughly enjoyed the dialog…and am spreading the energy here in honor of her efforts.

A new school year provokes two conflicting impulses: to survive on the tried-and-true or to seize the chance to change. Teachers everywhere feel the push-me-pull-you of these two forces every fall (at least I know I did for 27 years).  This week I enjoyed reading about the changes one of our TeachersFirst review team members made. It got me thinking about the energy and courage required to change, especially in isolation. I am not sure anyone can go it alone.

A  base-runner deciding whether to go for another looks to a coach before changing his/her path (Little League world series in my mind…).  A widow or widower after the death of a life-long spouse must decide what to do the same way and what to change– and friends support them in the process. Middle schoolers decide where they sit for lunch on the first day of school: last year’s friends or new ones? They are steered by peers.

Where does a teacher get the support to change? For some risk-taker teachers, it happens every year, but they are most likely the minority. Risk-taking personalities don’t usually choose teaching as a career. For many, “change” is thrust upon them by the latest initiative from the top, leading to performance of the same script in a new costume, a teacher exercise in “let’s pretend.”

Teachers are usually left to find their own support if they elect to try changes. They use peers, online communities, resources from web sites, and their own inner strength to guide the decisions and test new ideas. The courage they show is heroic. No wonder so many turn away and choose to remain in safe sameness. One person has only a finite amount of energy, and this heroic effort is exhausting.

Pro-Keds (ROYAL COURT BOMP POP)Originally uploaded by linguistone

If I could wish teachers one thing as this new school year begins, it would be the smell of new sneakers and the jungle gym we had when we were seven: the feeling that we could jump higher and climb anything this first day of school. Being on the playground with so many others  AND my new sneakers made me feel safe enough to risk things I had never tried before.