Think Like a Teacher

(previously, in the town of Forwardthink…)

The elders of the town of Forwardthink have surprised the Innovators once again.  A mere week after they invited Innovators from far and wide to re-display their latest ideas (even those that entered after the first deadline), they have locked the doors of the town hall. The doors have a generic notice explaining that the elders will be back in March to announce the decree of the magical judges about who will enter the finals in the tug-of-war between the Wisdom of Crowds and Outright Competition. The windows are covered, though a definite glow passes ’round the edges of the room-darkening shades. There is life moving about inside the hall of Innovative Ideas. Moving figures and glimmers cast small slivers onto the ground outside as the Innovators wait, separated from their ideas left behind in the display hall. No one can see their precious Innovations any longer. The Wise crowd can no longer comment. Occasionally a tweet flies out via a small trap door high up on the oaken doors, much as the pronouncements of the guard at the Emerald City: come back soon to see what we’re doing behind these Doors of Mystery.

Outside, Innovators huddle and occasionally intermingle as they speculate or flatter each other about the likely results. Some wander off in search of the next town’s competition. Separated from their orphaned Innovations, the Innovators find less to talk about and share. The creative juices chill as each innovator seeks rudimentary shelter and a strategy for waiting and wondering.

Perhaps the Innovators will band together to find other routes and other locations. But for now, Innovation has been stymied. And the question remains:

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins? 

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins?

The elders of the small town of Forwardthink, nestled at the delta of Hereandnow River, declared that they wanted the very best Innovators to move to their town. They had heard that many innovative thinkers and other wise people lived beyond the Hereandnow watershed and could help the town of Forwardthink live up to its name. To find the Innovators and lure them in, they decided to award the Forwardthink Keys of Gold to the best Innovators. So the elders planned a competition and announced it far and wide, sending messengers out by Tweetboats and The RSSFeeder ships:

Innovators welcome. Earn Forwardthink Keys of Gold for the most innovative ideas.

They carefully posted the rules of the Forwardthink competition on the doors to the Town Hall and sent copies along on the Tweetboats and RSSFeeder ships. The deadline came, and the First Fortnight of competition began.

Each innovator displayed the very best of ideas in the Forwardthink Town Hall for all to see. Once the displays are erected, visitors from far and wide traveled to see them. The elders grinned as they watched the visitors mingling among the displays. They encouraged visitors to comment. The rules on the Town Hall doors explained that during the First Fortnight the Wise Crowd would help the Innovators improve their ideas. The elders planned to close the doors after the First Fortnight so the Innovators could clean up the scribed comments and straighten their displays, perhaps even combining with another Innovator’s display.   The doors of the Town Hall remained open 24/7 as visitors appeared and scribed their thoughts on each exhibit.  The Innovators even talked among themselves, commenting on each other’s ideas and pondering ways to learn from them. For they knew that sharing their ideas aloud and listening to others would truly breed the best Innovations — and possibly Keys of Gold!

The elders stood by with arms folded. listening to the Wisdom of the Crowd and talking with the occasional visitors, as well. But none of the Innovators heard the conversations with the elders.

On the evening of the 14th day, as the Innovators prepared to rework their displays, the elders held a special meeting. They quietly took down the rules from the Town Hall doors and used an enchanted spider’s web-eraser to changed one paragraph:

Please plan to learn from the Wisdom of Crowds and rework your display after the First Fortnight. Only those who shared a display in time for the First Fortnight and stood with it throughout the First Fortnight will be allowed to share a display during the Second Fortnight.

became:

Please plan to learn from the Wisdom of Crowds and rework your display after the First Fortnight. All who wish to create a display during the Second Fortnight are welcome to compete for the Keys of Gold, including newcomers from the Wise Crowd.

The Innovators were stunned as they watched new displays appear. The elders clapped their hands to see such innovation and quickly forgot the old rules from the First Fortnight. They forgot the copies that had traveled far and wide via Tweetboats and RSSFeeder ships. In their greed for Innovative ideas, they forgot the Innovators of the First Fortnight, for the ideas were the most important thing.

And how does this fable end? The tale has yet to be told. Perhaps the Wise Crowd will know.

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins?

[To those who are mystified by this post and wonder what it has to do with educational technology, thinking and learning, or teaching, I suggest that you can find hints to this open-ended fable in some of my previous posts. I certainly do not know what the moral of the story will be.]

So Apple has come out with the iPad. Not news. We knew it was coming. Everyone is venturing their predictions about this, the latest in a successful series of innovations from a company we expect to roll out new things at least once a year. Ed tech people tweet about where the iPad might fit into (or “revolutionize”?) education. David Pogue critiques, the ATT network-busters scoff, and we all read every word of it, secretly wishing someone handed us a free iPad to test and review.

The same week, 721 collaborative groups of creative folks  share their latest innovations for digital media and learning. With far less fanfare than Apple — but equal passion and hope– they toss carefully crafted 300 word catalysts for change into a web-based competition for thousands of dollars and a chance to alter the face of learning. [Full disclosure: I am one of them.]

The same week, hundreds of thousands of teachers wrap up their mid-year grades, probably entering them into an online or electronic grade book program designed ten years ago.  They dig out the materials for next week and check the plans to see what they want to change this time around. They add a new web site, change the requirements, or find an alternate way to have students explore the topic that comes up next in the curriculum.

The cycles of change and sameness rarely allow any of us much time to pause and reflect.  On a Friday afternoon I can become skeptical that those who always plan for change will be the instigators while others who rarely plan for it will only stumble into it. But then I recall last night.

Approximately twenty teachers from Toronto to Florida to Michigan joined in the second session of an OK2Ask offering, excited to create and use wikis in their classrooms. Are wikis new? Maybe not new the way iPads are or DML entries could be, but these teachers welcome fresh ideas: new ways to  draw students into their own learning, and new ways to invigorate their own professional lives. Their pace may not be the same as Apple’s, organizing strategic “rollouts” months in advance. The changes they propose are not newsworthy. But neither will be the accomplishments of an individual third grader or a high school health class.

We need to keep some perspective on  the relative value of change. Maybe everyone needs a little Friday afternoon skeptical pause to trace the ripples emanating out from the innovations we observe in progress. I am not willing to discount the small ponds. Fluid mechanics sometimes have a funny way of making ripples go a long way with less splash.

Hindsight knocks us over each New Year’s Eve. Television, radio, RSS feeds, and tweets bombard us with “top ten most important” lists to summarize the closing year or decade. And older we get, the more tempting it is to build retrospective castles of glistening memories, assuming that an Antiques Roadshow of the Mind will somehow locate unexpected value amid our mental junk. Yes, time generates perspective, but it is rarely unique or profound. Our New Year’s reflection is no more powerful than what occurs on a daily or monthly basis in classrooms of sixth graders. For us, the realizations may be new and the insights fascinating, but to others they are old hat.

What moves a glimmer of reflective thought from ho-hum to the Roadshow of the Mind Highlights Edition is one of three things: timing, audience, or true uniqueness. The same three make the difference between ho-hum classroom learning and moments that can change a kid’s life of learning. So humor me by considering my comparison of Roadshow reflections with what learning can be.

Timing

Sometimes we just happen to think the right thing at the right time when the supply is low, the commodity desirable, or the interest “in vogue.” Any New Year’s reflection or decade summary that includes a perspective about globalization, green technologies, or diversity will sell well today. The “auction value” of these thoughts and concepts is very high right now. For a student who masters new classroom concepts and relates it to any of these (or other) timely topics, the learning is more important. It may even help him/her seek a new path in life. Timing can take a personal reflection beyond a simple New Years or classroom experience to a new plain.

Audience

The appraisers will tell you that if no one comes to the auction, even your greatest mental treasure will not have any value.  If you share your thoughts on the closing decade with no one but your best friend, these thoughts have little worth beyond the mundane. You may find yourself yelling at the television when some highly-paid commentator says the same thing, but YOUR auction did not even draw any bids for those treasured thoughts.  If a sixth grader tells the teacher what he learned by making a cool multimedia comparison of the 1960s and the 1920s, it is just another gen without bidders. (My New Year’s reflection in this post is another reflection with limited audience and bidders.)

True (or likely) Uniqueness

You and I and our sixth grader buddies have little control over whether our thoughts are unique. To us, they are. My reflections here comparing New Year’s retrospectives to classroom experiences or Roadshows of the Mind seem unique to me, but more than likely, they are just a remix or coincidental restatement of what others are tweeting otr telling their best friend as I type. We’d all like to think we are unique, but uniqueness depends on circumstances well beyond our view. The Internet allows us to throw things out there to the wise crowd to assess uniqueness by user-generated “research.” Positive comments, such as a Roadshow appraiser stating he has never heard anything like it in this color or size, can add value to my reflections by increasing their likely uniqueness. But “true” uniqueness cannot be proven. Only a wide net of appraisers can generate some sort of standard of uniqueness. Wonderfully this decade, that network now includes more “us” than it ever has. Here you and I and our sixth graders work together.

So, as you add to “top ten most important ideas” list of the closing decade, don’t forget to add the sixth graders who include timely topics within their new realizations, share their ideas with audiences beyond their teacher, and even take the time to rate the uniqueness of blog posts like mine and yours  along with their own.

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.