Think Like a Teacher

Have you ever found pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles that actually fit together, one a blue piece of a geometric design and one a scrap of sky from an entirely different puzzle box, yet surprisingly an appropriate “match”?  Two posts from separate feeds in my Google Reader today interlock for me into a new idea. One was from the New York Times, a post about today’s young parents and the need for them to turn off their cell phones, iPods,  and Blackberries and just talk to the stroller set. Nothing in that post was new to me, but it got me thinking about thinking out loud and its importance for learning. The other post was elementary teacher Brian Crosby’s post about allowing students time to process what they have done and learned, even (especially?) when the learning is project-based. Whether toddlers, elementary kids, or even adults,  we need time to think out loud about what we have done. Those around us understand us better and learn from us when we do. Young ones grasp our language to build their own language of understanding. Peers and elders appreciate what we have done when we can stop and explain it.We find our own meaning better when we do it out loud.

But the world does not like to grant time for thinking aloud. Brian Crosby bemoans the fact that  end-of-day recap time has slipped away in his classroom. Most of us who take the world with us via iPhone or Blackberry use that once-precious think-back time to check email now.

Maybe we need an app for that. I’d like a “thinking aloud allowed” app that lets me record my thoughts aloud at the same time that it blocks email with autoreplies telling others that this is my time for thinking, so go away.  The same app would turn OFF young parents’ iPhones, etc. until they had conversed about red stop signs, sidewalk cracks, and at least twenty-five other topics with their stroller-bound munchkins. How could the app help Brian’s students? Maybe it could ask them to record their reflections, prompting and saving their comments so they could store them up like Bandaid box treasures (do you remember metal Band-Aid boxes and their treasure-holding capacity?).

No one would make money on this app, but they would make learners and thinkers. Thinking aloud allowed. There’s an app for that.

In today’s data-driven life, everyone wants a way to measure (and perhaps pay) a good teacher.  Parents have always wanted a way to “know who the good teachers are.” Administrators want a way to put a quantitative label on what they know (?) is happening in their schools. But the only measure anyone has offered so far is student achievement. In a non-widgetmaking process as slippery as learning, finding a measure of what makes a good teacher is as elusive as a second grader on his way out to recess.

A favorite quote in my family is, “Moms worry deep.”  The core-level angst of a mother is what makes her a good teacher and nurturer of her children. When something is wrong with one of her children, she just knows it. The level of stress this can cause her may not always be healthy,  but that mom-deep worry is essential to her effectiveness.

Some doctors worry deep, too. I once had a pediatrician who called me, the mom, because what he had seen at my child’s morning appointment so gnawed at him that he could not wait for my post-naptime call to find out whether things were better. He had not been able to diagnose the problem and had sent us home. But he knew something was not right so called us back in. He eventually did diagnose the problem, driven by a level of involvement with his patient that went beyond the norm.

I would hypothesize that it is a similar involvement with students that makes a teacher effective — even stellar. I have seen some teachers agonize over  the students who “gnaw” at them.  When these students struggled, the teacher struggled more. When the student did not seem “right,”  the teacher wanted to get to the bottom of it. When the class  bombed a test or sat like cinder blocks during a lesson, the teacher had to figure out why. These teachers have a level of involvement, a “Teacher Involvement Quotient” (TIQ) that makes a difference far broader and more lasting than a single test score. There are even some ways to assess that TIQ. When faced with a scenario, those with the higher TIQ would respond differently:

Think of the last time a student failed a project or test in your class. What did you do?  (score based on the response)

Or, instead of asking, WATCH what he/she does, note it, and measure it. Yes, we need to develop a scale, but would it be any harder than designing high-stakes tests?

There are those who see teaching as a series of steps they follow in a certain room at certain times.

There are those who see teaching as designing well-marked trails for students to follow,  waiting to see who comes out at the other end.

There are those who see teaching as the trail their students forge for themselves while the teacher watches and lures them uphill, worrying deeply for those who trip and fall.

Can’t we assess TIQ? Wouldn’t it be worth a try?  This is the learning I agonize about these days.

In honor of the first week of school, I am rewinding to the days when I worked to meet the needs of individual kids instead of masses of teachers. Scott McLeod posted yesterday about a teacher desperately seeking a reading “program” for what I call a “severely and profoundly gifted” fifth grade boy. It’s good for me to play my old role again, and maybe it will provide some further ideas beyond those already offered in the generous comments from several kind teachers. So pretend I am just another teacher of gifted trying to help out here.

To the teacher of this young man, here are what I consider (based on 27 years teaching kids like this) to be vital aspects of what he needs in his “program” :

Conversation
This boy needs to converse about what he is reading with people he respects. These people may or may not be students. They could easily be students 4-5 years older, if those students have a genuine interest in talking (not so likely among 16 year olds) . They could also be adults. I suggest using one web-based community where he can build trust and also be responsible for his comments and behavior. If he says something silly, he will be labeling himself within the community. I have not looked at them deeply, but I would suggest checking out groups on sites like: http://www.bookglutton.com/ or http://readkiddoread.ning.com/ or  even by searching Google for “online book club gifted.”  I found this post: http://teachers.net/mentors/middle_school/topic13670/8.27.09.11.08.21.html     Maybe even throw a Tweet out there to find other teachers of gifted looking to START a reading discussion group for HIGHLY gifted kiddos. Warning, though: Don’t intermingle with the run-of-the-mill gifteds.  He will simply slide along and get in trouble. Scare him with some intellectual peers. Most likely, adults will work better, as long as someone is watching over his virtual shoulder so he does not fall into dangerous company (see Support).

Accountability
He should be involved in designing the “program” and revising it along the way. Talk at length about what he will do, what it can look like, when he will do what. A student this bright enjoys testing limits and experimenting with human behavior. Some might simply say he is “manipulative.”  He needs to be involved in designing his own program and being accountable to it.  Most likely, he will set the bar low for himself, so that’s where the “support” comes in. Someone needs to call his bluff yet help him get started in whichever community and tasks you decide to use. The accountability should include evaluating whether the program is doing what it should for him and whether he is doing what he should for the agreed-upon program, That conversation needs to happen weekly, F2F. He can tell when you are making things up, so be honest. If you haven’t read the same book, admit it. When you design the program, design in what the logical consequence is if he does not meet his own goals.

Support
Most likely, he has never had such freedom to fail and to work on his own. Ask him what he is afraid he might not get done or might not know how to do. Then do it together the first time - or 1/2 of the first time. He’ll get it quickly and need to be on his own when he can be.  For safety reasons, his online activities should be random-sampled. He may not be able to tell when someone is manipulating him online. Talk openly about what happens there, and expect him to do the same. This is not the time to “respect his privacy” in his online conversations!

Choice
He should have some choices and some things about which he has no choice. As you plan products and reading choices, use some of the terrific booklists available and make sure he finds things he likes AND genres he might never try alone.  Use the “pick two from column B” approach to increase exposure to new things. He may get fixated on one genre or author until he exhausts it if he has the choice to do so. Build in variety of  genre, culture, fiction/non, biography, etc. Look at  some of the classics and more offered by Stanford grad students at  http://www.shmoop.com/literature/

Match
What he reads should challenge him and allow him to experience new depths of understanding, but perhaps not be so socially mature that he cannot handle it yet. That is a tough call at age 11, because his emotional maturity may not be ready for sexuality, etc. that appears in books he is capable of “reading,” i.e decoding.  The “classics” are often  safer because people never said things outright in “those” days. Schmoop options and those on “classic book” lists might be good places to go until you can assess the maturity and how his parents feel about it, too.

Product
The most important part of the agreed-upon program is a product.  I think Id ask him to help you design a reading program for highly gifted students. He is the designer, the guinea pig, and the publisher. If the product is good enough, you may take him to a conference and present it together or use it in future years when you have other students like him. As he reads he can create product samples that are meaningful, not just hoops. He should write and create in response to everything he reads. Use all the terrific web 2.0 tools. See Tikatok, Voicethread, Mapskip, Wordle, Google Maps, and similar tools reviewed here.  As he works his way through different books and discussions, he will create different products that others in the future can see as samples for THEIR reading projects. He can also share his projects with others in his online discussion group for feedback. Maybe have him choose a different tool each week/month. Use the SAME email, password and username on EVERY tool so you can monitor, and have him embed or link all his samples into a wiki page so they are accessible from one place.

A Way to Talk About It
When he is not in “regular” reading class one of two things will happen (or both) : he will either brag about it until his peers hate him or he won’t know how to explain what he is doing, and they will think he is goofing off. Either way, his peer relationships, likely already poor, will suffer more.  Help him develop a way to explain what he is doing for reading to his peers, other teachers, and other adults so it is factual and neither bragging nor condescending in tone.Throughout his life he will have to find ways to explain himself to those who don’t get it. This is a life skill he needs for survival and happiness.

I have written far too much. I hope–if you read this– that you will comment back to me or have the young man read it and do so himself.  You are in for an interesting year.

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 Earth Day I am struck by two very different  instances of the power among youthful survivors. While adults all over the globe bemoan the frightening state of our planet (our schools, our nation, our economy…), I watched a team of elementary kids in Portland Oregon who clearly know the power  to survive and thrive. Their webcast from their school garden, both the more formal presentations and the informal Q/A at the end, bears witness to their ASSUMPTION that they will make positive changes in the world around them. They are experts at composting, water conservation, organic vegetables, and native plants of their area. More importantly, they are experts at being in charge of something. They know they –and their garden– will survive because they feel empowered and knowledgeable. They are not afraid to ask questions when they don’t know something because they trust the adults around them to help them look for themselves, not tell them what to see.

At the same time, a tiny newborn at the opposite end of the country continues to defy the odds, surprising the doctors as she wards off infection, remains stallwart through major heart surgery at birth, and lies completely unable to talk to us except with the very wise eyes of a three-week-old. Her parents’ blog tells her story and shares photos of those eyes. She knows that she will survive, and SHE is in charge, in spite of all the brilliant medical assistance the adults give her.

Somewhere around puberty we learn doubt. As survivors come of age, our power lessens. We hear more and more of others’ power and increasingly subvert ourselves to others’ judgments. This Earth Day– and in our schools — let the message be about the young survivors. Their hands cradle any new growth they can nurture. They are simply excited to have the chance to share the experience with us, through those very wise eyes.

I talked this morning with a representative from a university where I earned a graduate degree, and he asked me to describe my dream scenario for an event I would like to see happen on their campus, something that would follow my passion. Always willing to brainstorm and dream on a moment’s notice, I spun a scenario on the spot, and I continue to allow the idea to incubate. So here is how it looks so far (incubation time: 2 hours, ten minutes). Feel free to add to the dream. Of course, this might someday become a reality, so please don’t rip off my ideas without at least talking to me first. Think of this as Creative Commons with attribution and limited distribution for ideas (I know…you can’t copyright an idea, anyway…).

When/where: one week, summer — sometime (indefinite year), on the university campus but simultaneously via virtual experience from anywhere on the web

Who: a combination of classroom teachers (K-12), teachers-to-be, articulate high school and middle school kids, maybe some kids involved in on-campus summer programs for K-12 kids, people from TeachersFirst, people (ANY level) who infuse technology well in their teaching and learning, anyone who wants to join in online

What: A replicable “Infusion Project.” Modeled loosely after the National Writer’s Project, teachers come to learn together. The special feature of this project: they collaborate and learn alongside kids who could be their students, other teachers, and quasi-experts: people who are excited, experienced, articulate, and supportive about effective use of technology as a tool for learning. In a non-threatening environment, teachers can learn about tools and learning from students who are comfortable with the tools and eager to use them. The experienced “experts” can share and support other teachers who are just feeling out new ways to teach (and learn). In small groups of mixed expertise, the project can use good theory and practical knowledge and experience to let new ideas explode into the curriculum of local teachers and those at a distance. Groups would include: a K-12 student (or two), a teacher who wants to learn, an “expert” (teacher who has had some success), a teacher-to-be,  and one or more other teachers who join in virtually. That’s as far as I have gotten, but I am thinking about how we could structure the tasks and exchanges so the whole  experienced in each group is greater than the parts and how the same experience could be replicated all over the world.

How: I need to think more about this part… money, stakeholders, politics, all that fun stuff.

Why: Here is a start on a bulleted stream-of consciousness (is that an oxymoron or what?) of reasons so far…

• Kids are comfortable with the tools but can benefit from hearing how teachers make decisions about teaching….and they can contribute their “side” of these decisions.
• Putting different points of view on ways to learn together can force all to talk about the “why” as well as the “how”
• Teachers uncomfortable with “looking stupid” might be willing to learn from students who are not in their own classes
• Including people from other locations allows the spread of ideas and injectsideas outside the local experience
• Creating a model that blends F2F and virtual collaboration will let teachers experience it wihtout being forced to plan it themselves

and more…

But I need to get back to today’s Tasks. I will let this one incubate a bit more (total incubation time now a little over three hours). Feel free to add to the dream.

Reading has definitely changed. Trent Batson and Nicholas Carr both know it, and so do all of us who pass through places like Think Like a Teacher.  Batson’s response and the original Carr piece, ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ have me ready to click “write a post” before I finish bouncing between them. As soon as one piece has my attention (I found it on a trusted RSS feed),  I mentally highlight favorite quotes a la English major  and look for juicy bits to read and re-read. Carr is right that I am “power browsing,” but Batson is also right that the “loss” of books is actually a gain for critical thinking. I would go even further and say that reading has become an invitation to DO something.

When I taught elementary gifted kids, there were two distinct groups that emerged during independent project season each year: the Tell-alls  and the Sponges. The Tell-alls wanted to tell everyone everything they read and could not enjoy learning without the telling. During quiet research time in class, they called out, narrating each new discovery as they read or browsed the web. It wasn’t new knowledge until they shared it. The Sponges worked alone, never speaking a word, often so absorbed that they lost all their notes and personal belongings as if transported to an entirely separate location, living among the subjects of their research. When called back to our world and asked to prepare their choice of presentation to “show what you know,” the Sponges were at a loss and uttered malformed bits and pieces until I squeezed the sponge of their awkwardness with many prompts. The Sponges saw no need to DO anything with what they learned. The pleasure was purely personal.

I see the new way we read– thanks to technology — as a cure to both. The Tell-alls are web 1.0. They get their pleasure from the suck-in-and-spit-out of info, but the rest of us gain little from their pleasure. The Sponges are stand-alone processors without a network. Only with the evolution of multiple-tabs (I still have Carr and Batson open right now), feeds, blogs, and doo-dads can I have the very real pleasure of reading until I feel I must DO something. I once had a prof who always asked, “Now what will you DO with it?” as he handed back a good paper. The web (and email and RSS feeds and Facebook and cell phones…) ask that every time we READ.

Now what will you DO with this?

Last week, the folks in the international space station had to duck and cover as space junk came dangerously close to their orbiting haven. It seems that debris from various objects humans once shot into orbit continues to plague any active space mission. This danger clouds each advancing endeavor while, as NPR puts it, “experts continue to debate what can be done about all the trash that’s orbiting our planet.”

I sit at a traffic light, listening to this story, wondering…

…as experts continue to debate what can be done about all the (trash?) that has been shot into the orbit of education?

Is outdated school curriculum the space junk of  learning? Sometimes we see kids excited about what they are learning as they orbit the earth at 20,000 miles per intellectual hour. They experiment, discover, communicate and enjoy learning. Add the power of sharing this experience with others at a distance, and the process becomes even richer. But the shards of old, broken curriculum are a  constant threat. Just as young writers create their own interactive online books or narrate and annotate the uploaded images they have created, an alert sounds:

Warning: Incoming Space Junk. Change course to avoid collision! The curriculum says you need to be able to diagram a sentence and identify parts of speech. Course correction requires that you immediately stop and demonstrate these skills in regulation format to avoid catastrophe. Fire one number two pencil –oops, retrorocket — with bearing 1A 2E 3C in precisely 60 seconds.

Can you think of an instance where space junk nearly took out a viable learning mission? Have you ever taken refuge in an escape module as the debris whizzed by? What can be done about all the trash that’s orbiting?