Think Like a Teacher

Imagine a flexible triangle, three sides made of grudgingly stretchy material, with pivot points at the vertices, so the triangle can change from right to scalene to equilateral, extending and contracting its sides in the process. For a couple of years, I have stood inside  such a triangle between teachers, web2.0 developers, and policy makers. The sides of the triangle and the degrees of the angles constantly change, the elastic sides never staying the same for long.

The clearest side for me, of course, is that defined by teacherworld: seeking positive learning, managing logistics and hours in the day, attending to parent concerns, etc. I know this world well and can paint it for anyone. I also know that teachers can stretch their side when motivated.

I act as liaison between teacher-world and another side: web2.0 tool developers. I explain the culture of schools to developers, especially the barriers to free and open use of their tools in schools. The toolbuilders are rarely aware of the protective policies and logistical limits a teacher faces in facilitating student-created content online.  The most common response from developers on issues teachers face: “I never thought of that.” They know their own side of the triangle. Fortunately, most developers offer a degree of “stretch” in making the tools more useful or less convoluted for teachers to use. There is no such thing as a totally philanthropic developer, however,  seeking to do good for the benefit of students everywhere. Their elasticity conforms to the practical limits of business.

The third side is the group I broadly name “policy makers.” This includes everyone from the local principal and tech coordinator to Congress. Their priority has little to do with looking for the best new tools for learning. A litigious society and thirsty media assure that technology innovation, for them,  is a dragon to be slain — or at least safely contained.

As I pass along web2.0 tools to the TeachersFirst Edge review team, I wonder, Who do we push hardest> Teachers to learn and try new things? Developers to remove barriers? Or policy makers who do not realize the implications of their fearful approach to technology policies? Should we push at all?

I’d like to think that we are better off pulling at all the angles of the triangle than pushing on its sides: luring teachers to try, luring developers to tweak, and luring policy makers to actually LOOK at what kids do with the tools.

I just found this amazing, inactive blog , and I want to read all day. It’s got such good ideas (with graphical represantations !), ideas that you wish every teacher, student, and creator-of-product could see.

Show your students the graphs about passionate users. Let them talk about them and tell you about their own personal experiences with interactive sites as examples of the concepts they see…(you want higher level thinking?!). THEN assign them to create a presentation on whatever your current curriculum topic is. You’ll (hopefully) never sleep through project presentation day again!

If we could get all who “teach” – whatever the venue- to absorb some of this, too…just imagine a world full of creative people who spark passion, not just adequate yearly progress.

I have a dream, too.

“..not enough time on process, or collective human judgment”

These two ideas ring in my head  from Nancy Flanagan’s pointed (and sad) account of attending the National Academy of Sciences “Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability.” She set me thinking about parallels between elusive definitions of “proficiency” and the struggles my schools had defining “gifted” during my many years teaching gifted students. The challenge was for the team that “identified” gifted kids — under a forced application of special ed laws applied to gifted (good idea to mandate gifted services, though). The irony was that an experienced TOG (teacher of gifted) could “sniff out” these kids by simply spending some time in their presence. But we sought the elusive perfect screening and identification procedure, the numerical formula, constantly swinging between IDing every high achiever and IDing no one, often missing desperate, unabomber-type  geniuses. What were we discounting? Collective human judgment (in this case judgment by those acquainted with the array of ways true giftedness presents itself). Everyone was so afraid to use a human definition that we missed some really needy kids.

…not enough time on process..

Process is what our gifted classroom was all about. Listen and watch it to “sniff out” gifted kids. The gifted kids just “intuit” what they can do and develop their own process. Gifted kids thrive on forward process (intentional hitchhike on the football term). Other students may need more help seeing and feeling process.  It’s like “feeling the water” for very talented swimmers. Some need help to feel it, at first. Some teachers will certainly need to learn the feeling, too. But ultimately, that is where all learners need to be: making forward process. So can we please use our collective human judgment to measure proficiency and just get on with building forward process?

So many impassioned, experienced teachers bring powerful vision to what they do. I am humbled to have spent time with them as colleagues and as members/users of TeachersFirst. No, not every teacher collecting a check is amazing. Some are “adequate.” But we need to notice the Artist’s Eye that many, many fine and experienced teachers bring to their studio: the classroom.

I worry about losing the power of good teachers’ vision.  I speak of the Artist’s Eye teachers use to view what happens when a child learns. There is a keen vision that sees the “ground” behind a student’s thinking as much as the “figure” of his achievement itself, the eye that sees the image of learning as a whole or the landscape of a classroom as a rich interplay of elements. Often we do not appreciate what a fine teacher’s eye actually sees. If we quantify or oversimplify what a teacher sees and notices, we risk losing the subtle differences between measuring or diagramming a student’s learning and actually building on it with nuance and sensitivity. We need the nuances of such vision to enable the “21st century learning” so much discussed today.

 We teach new teachers to measure and diagram, but somewhere after a few years– or many years– some of them develop an Artist’s Eye. No one masters the Artist’s Eye at first crack. It takes years of practice. Look at the “studies” an artist such as Van Gogh or Picasso does in early years and how the works evolve later. Vision takes time.

As we tacitly allow costly, experienced teachers to retire — even a little early — in the interest of saving money, I worry about losing the powerful Artist’s Eye that a creative, experienced teacher brings to every interaction with a student.  We can search for passion and dedication among those to enter the profession, but they will not replace that Artist’s Eye on entry.

So what do I propose? First, stop the premature loss of the masters who have the Artist’s Eye. Give them the “studio space” to continue learning themselves. Then allow the novice artists, those with an immature eye, to steep in the perception of the masters. Make sure that every newbie has a chance to spend time watching how an Artist “sees” and listening to him/her talk about it. Make sure that no newbie is left alone with frustrated, undervalued, sarcastic, uncaring  folks who have lost their Artist’s Eye (or perhaps never had it).

We need to appreciate the Artists we have: teachers who perceive the differences in light between the eyes of two students, who see the differences and use just the right hues in their works to carry others beyond a straightforward image of “content” to a lifelong desire to learn more. True art takes on a life of its own.