Think Like a Teacher

A tweet and blog post by another teacher this busy morning brought me up short. As teachers, we make job changes less often than many, and this time of year brings many reflective moments among those who are making changes. So focused on learning, no teacher can make a change asking, “What have I learned from this place I am leaving?”

Four years ago this week, I made a major change. After 27 years as a teacher, I moved into year-round mode running TeachersFirst (previously my favorite moonlighting job) and out of the immediate cocoon culture of K12Land. It is only right that I stop after 4 years to reflect on what I have learned here in Nonprofitland.And, like the teacher above, I wonder a little about whether I have sold out.

Top five things I have learned after 4 years “on the outside” (sort of):

5. Moving on should not make you feel guilty. Once you get past the guilt for being able to go to the bathroom when you please and no longer helping 150 kids each and every day, you start to notice the reach you do have from your new place. Once you stop labeling your changed constituencies: “at risk population,” “sell out,” etc., you realize that every population needs you. The immediate impact on kids is far less obvious in Nonprofitland, yes, but after a couple of years, you start to see new root systems for growth developing because of the things you have planted. In today’s world, Twitter and rss feeds help us see that extending growth.

4. Teachers trust those who still hear them. Not every teacher has the opportunity or motivation to move out of the classroom to Nonprofitland (or Profitland– yuck!).  Teachers will continue to trust those on the other side of the fence as long as we still listen and feel what classroom life is like. I don’t think I can ever forget being in the classroom. At least I hope not. (My husband says I will talk like an 8th grader for life.)

3.  Kids are the best alternative energy in the world. Outside the classroom, you have to find other sources to generate the electric moments, and they are MUCH harder to find. I find myself talking to the kids at the neighborhood pool or reading and commenting on class blogs, etc. just to connect to that power source. When my energy runs low, it is one of the few places I can recharge.

2. Teachers conduct the energy their students generate. Since I no longer have contact with the kids every day, I rely on contact with their teachers. OK2Ask, in particular, acts as conductive material passing along the electricity. But I can talk to any teacher in person, in email, on Twitter, or through blogs and feel the buzz again. Like my iPhone, I need regular charging.

1. It is much lonelier outside of school. No amount of electronic contact will ever make up for the camaraderie of bitter, stale coffee and peanut M&Ms after school in the faculty room. Don’t say, “Misery loves company,” because that’s not it. Know that you — as a teacher — are living in a place no non-teacher will ever understand. The roots you cultivate daily are hopelessly tangled with many others. Even if you move to a different school/garden, those roots are as persistent as crabgrass, and they love entwining with others. Outside of school is a manicured, landscaped, well-mulched world that is not weed-friendly. When you first find yourself the only crabgrass in a bed of azaleas, you will need to find new ways to feel that you belong. There is nobility in crabgrass.

As a teacher, I am always intrigued by what people notice first. Reading Kevin Jarrett’s and Kim Cofino’s posts (one recent, one not-so) brought up a flood of ideas about the way I do the things I do and how other people sometimes look at me funny when they see things on my computer.

Teachers are professional observers of the way kids do the things they do, but we forget to notice the same about adults. First grade teachers pride themselves on analyzing the way a kid holds that fat pencil and helping him adjust it so the letters look better and the paper doesn’t tear. Swim coaches watch the way one arm enters the water and know that is why the swimmer rolls too far. Learning support teachers know that Doug or Lisa only “sees” words set off by white space or remembers words he/she says aloud but not the ones he/she hears. Geometry teachers look at how a student starts a proof and know where he/she is headed and what he/she sees first in that maze of triangles and line segments. We constantly analyze brain paths.

Why don’t we do the same when we help adults? The UI* “experts” (hired consultants to tell you your web site is badly designed) can tell you where people go first, click first, and get lost. They are the visual merchandisers in the mall of web pages. (Did you know that Americans almost always walk to the left when they enter a store?) Teachers are experts, too, but we forget to watch when we are trying to show another adult how we managed to make that web tool to do that or how to build a template in Google Docs. We need to remember that the way we do the things we do may not be the other guy does it, and he needs to recognize his own way.

A year ago I reverted to an Mac computer after a ten year hiatus.  Two months ago, my colleague made the same switch.  She read manuals. I did not. She learns from print. I do just fine with print, but given the choice, I go for colors and images. I color code emails, folders, fonts…everything. (I would probably color code people in a room if I could figure out how. Unfortunately, I remember new people first by the colors they were wearing — a real liability since they tend to change clothes!) Color and position have greater impact than text on the way I do the things I do. My colleague wants to write thorough, sequenced explanations of any how-to. She, like most teachers, uses words as her primary means of communication. I certainly talk enough, but I figure things out visually. Then I translate them into words orally, and finally into writing. So when it is time to teach OK2Ask sessions to other teachers, my plan is visual at the start. I want to SHOW things with colorful cues. But I know there are adults who don’t notice color. They are looking for magic words like “start” or “go.” That’s the way they do the things they do. Kim’s second graders in her post had no fixed way to do the things they do because they were young and flexible. She helped them notice their ways. We need to help adults notice, especially if they are accustomed to what seems like random clicking  followed by failure.

What do you notice first in the produce section of the grocery store? Colorful fruit? Signs with prices? The words “Bonus Buy”?  When you open your email, what do you notice first? Names? Dates/Times (numbers)? Red alerts or boldface? Are you an icon person or a label person? Are you a menu person or a drag-it person? If your computer (or Google Docs) folders were color coded, would you remember better where you put things? When you explain where to click do you say “click Save” or “click on the blue button in the top right to save”? How do you do the things you do? How does the way you do the things you do affect the way you help the adults you help?  

[This post is captioned for GLL (Geek Language Learners) *UI= Geek speak for “user interface” or how-people-click-and-do-things.]

Apologies for no new posts recently. Family-member health and wellness trumped everything for a bit, but things are back on track for now…and so I have time to post.

I did something new and risky last week and the week before. I ran the first few sessions of TeachersFirst’s OK2Ask: free, online, self-directed professional development sessions for teachers. I learned at least as much as the attendees did. And I am left with more questions.

The questions:

How bad is it not to be perfect when sharing in an online venue with total strangers? Does it make TeachersFirst “look bad” if I admit that the tools (in this case Elluminate) are new to me as a presenter? Is this any different from what teachers do every day  when they risk trying a new way of teaching or a new tool to make learning more personal and all-encompassing for the LEARNERS?  Isn’t it good that I model a willingness to make mistakes publicly? Granted, I did practice a lot and play with the tools over and over. But the second session was ALWAYS better than the first. Was it wrong to allow myself to do less than “nail it” the first time?

Geez I hope not.

What I learned:

Teachers are supportive, eager learners and cheerleaders, even to total strangers whom they cannot see. I knew this. I have seen it over and over for years. But to see teachers willing to get excited about small discoveries and to tell total strangers about them via text chat in a virtual “room” is very cool. Most of those involved had never done  a session like this, and they dove right in. And some came back the next week.

Nothing I did was that unusual. People have been trying out online teaching and learning for several years. There is loads of how-to wisdom out there on “best practices” in online learning. I read a lot of it. I play with the tools and imagine scenarios as I swim laps at 6 am (or lie awake at 4 am). The bottom line, IMHO,  is that the learning, online or other, goes best when we do it together. This is just as much fun as the first few classes I taught as a brand new teacher decades ago. Yes, I said FUN. I just hope my fellow learners keep on coming.

The greatest luxury I have in this job since leaving the classroom is permission to play. After 27 years of completely scheduled or overscheduled time, I can dedicate a morning to comparing tools in search of the ideal one for a given technology task. I can play at will and seek answers: on my own, from help screens, among online forums, or from my PLN (personal learning network). What a luxury to have “permission” to learn from play.

This week I spent several hours comparing different ways to deliver the upcoming OK2Ask sessions on TeachersFirst. I started with a desire to model entirely free tools that any teacher could use without TOO much trouble. I played with all sorts of freebies, all with jibberish names that are de rigeur these days. I embedded myself, recorded myself, shared myself, chatted with myself (on several computers at once, rolling my chair back and forth), gave myself tours, denied myself privileges, gave myself control (and took it away), took polls of myself, clicked myself, made innumerable profiles of myself, moderated myself, muted myself, dragged and dropped myself, tagged myself, explained myself, reverted myself, and even broadcast myself looking stupid as I played on Mogulus.com. (I guess that was “channeling” myself.) It was pretty funny when– for a bit — I could not figure out how to STOP channeling myself.

But I learned. And I found what I sought. In the process, I refined my search, defined my criteria, and even articulated them several times to  complete strangers. I was so glad to have permission to play and learn. And teacher-guilt made me feel bad that others are not allowed to do the same.

Our kids play this way all the time. They play with any available tool and toy. They may not be systematic, but they are comfortable. They know how to play. [At this point the early childhood people I work with would be yelling ,”Of COURSE they do. Play IS learning!]

As the OK2Ask sessions approach, I wonder if we should have named them “OK2Play” instead. I also wonder if teachers have forgotten how to play because they are simply never been given the time to do so.  I have a fundamental belief that teachers try to do the best they can for and with their students. They have been schooled in the Best Practices, research-based methods, etc. But I hope the denial of play time has not removed it from their repertoire.

I don’t really believe they have forgotten how because I have run innumerable inservice sessions where teachers have been as excited (and disruptive) as little kids as they have played with a newly-introduced technology.  I have always given them permission to play. This may not appear to be the most cost-effective, responsible, mature adult thing to do while being paid taxpayer dollars, but I would assert that these same teachers, give a meaningful mission such as I had in selecting a tool for Ok2Ask, would make permission to play into permission to learn. All it took was a focused goal.

I will find out in a couple of weeks whether my recent play time went between the goalposts or veered wildly out of bounds. Either way, I will learn from the experience.