Think Like a Teacher

For most of my 27 years in the classroom, I taught gifted students. I was the “gifted program specialist” whom these children trusted to provide their weekly respite from ordinary school. It was a privilege to learn from them and later to see what became of them. They did not all become doctors or lawyers or college professors. Few became rich. Some have suffered and wandered and have not yet found a happy medium between functioning around other people and the intellectual play they so enjoy. There are few I do not remember in detail from my time knowing them as elementary and middle school students. Among the hundreds (maybe a couple thousand?), there were perhaps a score who brought me up short with their vision. I looked forward to the days when they would bound (or shuffle) through the door of my borrowed, “itinerant” classroom space.

As Steve Jobs passed away this week, I wondered where his teachers are. Surely there are some still alive who watched this adopted son of a working class couple through elementary and middle school. I wonder: how did he articulate his vision as a young man? I am guessing he had some tough times on the playground and in the cafeteria. I am guessing he irritated more than one  straight-arrow teacher who found his opinions inappropriate coming from a young mouth. I wonder whether he was the one who read and absorbed quietly, then tinkered in the garage, or whether he blurted out unthinkable mental connections to peers (and adults) who did not understand. Surely, Steve Jobs was what I call “severely and profoundly gifted.”

As a teacher, I love to mentally rewind adults into what I hypothesize they might have been like as a child.  I never really research or verify my musings. I do enjoy thinking about little people I have known and unrelated adults, playing a mental matching game with no correct answers. I just enjoy flipping over the two cards: one child, one adult, and questioning in my mind whether this could be the precursor to that.

I have no matching child card for Steve Jobs, though I think I have some partial matches in my Former Student deck. But somewhere there is an aged teacher or two who knew this man as a boy. I envy them.

In “reading” through a fitful string of blog posts sparked by a tweet, I ran across this post about the changes to our reading habits due to technology. It actually struck such a chord of guilt — as I was about to skim and run — that I stopped to read the entire post. I am living what Patrick Kingsley describes:

our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.

We know our students are even more likely to skim and run, since their standards for full web site attention are more demandingly fickle and their reading skills more spotty. As Jakob Nielsen points out:

Teens’ poor performance [at web site “success“]  is caused by three factors: insufficient reading skills, less sophisticated research strategies, and a dramatically lower patience level.

So what does all this rather intriguing research tell me, aside from the fact that I am a true edtech readerwritergeek?  It makes me wonder:

How can we create incentives for Slow Reading?

An iPad zone with comfortable chairs might be the 21st century equivalent of the bean bags in the 1980s middle school media center where I once worked: comfy, inviting, and reading ready. But the physical space and gadgets do not make Slow Readers. The desire to stick with one article, post, or thread of thought long enough to see it through to a conclusion is what we are all missing.

What could make a teen stick with a thread of thought throughout an entire article and related discussions? It is much easier to toss the links into a class wiki or Diigo group after skimming two sentences, perhaps with a pithy comment.  Done. Next assignment, please.

I would like to try confronting some students with Nielsen’s analysis of teen site navigation. I would like to ask them whether his findings of 2005 are still true or more exaggerated today. I would like to share Kingsley’s post with the same group and ask them what they think. Of course, they’d have to READ both to be able to respond, and the only initial incentive might be a grade.  I really wonder what would happen if we confronted teens with these two posts to form framing questions for an entire semester in almost any course: social studies, English, even science:

What are your incentives for Slow Reading in today’s world? Where/how can it happen? Does it matter any more?

We might be surprised to hear what our kids have to say about all this.  Instead of telling them why they must Slow Read (for a test), ask them why they might want to. They might even create Slow Reading places and incentives of their own. How would that be for 21st century learning?

Teachers everywhere are decorating bulletin boards. That cheesy scalloped edging unrolls again, fencing in neatly printed names pinned into bus lists and birthdays. Posters with wise sayings come out of the closets, their corners perforated into patterns of tiny holes from staples and pushpins of years gone by. Shar Peis with mournful eyes tell us they hate Mondays, and maps depict pastel lands where foreign tongues are spoken. Back to School is here.

I wonder what students would put on a life bulletin board, one that they would actually pause to think about instead of staring out the window at teasing days better suited for swimming pools than desks. Perhaps an infographic of the top ten activities in the day of an American teen. Or the chief environmental damage caused by Americans… or my favorite, the hierarchy of digital distractions:

(I love the informationisbeautiful site!) If we’re going to make bulletin boards invitations to learning something, why not invite kids to contribute some questions? Let’s make information not only beautiful but meaningful. What infographic would best intrigue YOUR students, if you could have one made to order? Maybe you should have students make it on the first day. Give them the raw materials and see what happens.

Have an interactive whiteboard? Build an infographic together there on day 1,  something that shows how life connects to learning in your classroom.  It may be the one thing your students recall about your class ten years from now.

P.S. If you need something to fill some spaces in the meantime, try some quotes from TeachersFirst’s Hang Ups series.

I met a great group of motivated, creative teachers in our OK2Ask ™ Guided Wiki Walk sessions this week. (OK2Ask ™ is a series of free, online professional development “snack sessions” for teachers offered by TeachersFirst. We use an online classroom space from Blackboard/Collaborate, formerly Elluminate.) The teachers were creating their first wikis or improving on ones they had recently begun.  This two meeting offering included time between for the teachers to work on their wikis, then return in 48 hours to learn more, share, and ask a million questions.

One group was so quick to learn and so gregarious, they quickly had their own backchannel running in the chat space, helping answer each other’s questions during demonstrations. They even asked if they could critique each others’ work on the second day. So we diverted widely from our original plans  and let them go. Their enthusiasm was EXCITING. Their critique was insightful and discriminating. They talked about pedagogy and practicality. They fed each other ideas. They did everything we want our students to do. These teachers who had never met– a probably never will — scored an #eduwin. Their students are getting the best of the best.

One of the conversations I especially enjoyed was about using templates in wikispaces to differentiate for different learners.  You can create a “template” wiki page, such as the skeleton for a student project, but you could also create several templates or options for different levels of project challenge. Students click to create a new page, select the template and – ta-da — their wiki project  is started. Right away, the chat buzzed about how to do this without appearing to single out one student over another. Should we perhaps offer all the various templates as options? Or perhaps name them with evens/odds that do not show a clear “level,” so it is easy to simply say, “Sam why don’t you try one of the even numbered templates.” We also talked about using a past student project as a sample or use it to create a template. You can click to create a new template “from” any page that already exists in that wiki, then edit the template as you wish. So if past students have generated unprecedented project options, you can add them to the bank of templates, perhaps stripping out the finished work to reveal the skeleton of a new project format.

As a teacher, I always fear offering a “sample”project. The teacher-pleasers make theirs identical. The perfectionists think they can ONLY do theirs the same way. The minimalists will never go further, and even creative kids often squelch the urge to do something different to conform to the model of school success. The helicopter parents compare their child’s work against the example and tweak it, thinking no one is looking.

Just as our OK2Ask™ session diverted from its original template thanks to participant input, I love the flexibility of any tool that allows projects and products to become springboards to unexpected, broader options. Thanks wikispaces and thanks to the teachers who continue to make OK2Ask™ a load of collaborative fun. #eduwin.

Do more with less. We keep hearing that. In school, as in any other workplace, it means adding more responsibilities to your already full plate.  It also means making supplies go further, doing without tech support (or waiting longer to get it), and having no money available for professional development. Even if you find a regional conference that addresses the very problems we are being asked to solve, you must pay for it yourself.

There is perhaps one silver lining to doing more with less. We get very good using the tools we do have.  And we don’t have to apologize for knowing only a tool or two for making online projects. If the school only pays for one, it is the one we will become expert at. If we as teachers must pay for online tool subscriptions for our own classes, we either stick with the inconveniences of the “freemium”  tools, beg for money from parents or PTO, or shell out the bucks to “do” with one tool.

Doing more with less time matters, too — more precisely, using less time to accomplish the most.  I want my students to move past the tech toybox stage and into the nitty-gritty thinking of creating and evaluating their own information. What if  a class were to simplify to a max of three tools?

As I prepare for an OK2Ask ™ session next month on three Editors’ Choice tools, I wonder which tools I would choose as my triad. I love Bookemon, Glogster, and Voicethread, but Google Earth is completely free. I think I would want a balanced triad: one very visual tool, one that is ideal for verbal/language, and one that offers a broad and perhaps unexpected perspective, such as the “world view” of Google Earth.

What couldn’t we do with these three? Concept maps we could do in a visual tool. Writing and sharing of words in a verbal tool, numbers and quantities we might have to represent in a real or symbolic context: applied in visuals or written in number sentences. We could use a visual tool to represent temporal concepts such as timelines. We could “place” events on the earth and in our hometowns using Google Earth. What other concepts have I missed? I haven’t though about things that require sound, though we could add sounds to our visuals, if we chose the right tool.

Doing more with FEWER may be a good way to create our own classroom taxonomy of priorities and content. Yes, we need to teach kids to choose the right tools, but don’t we also need to teach them to dig deeper and become expert with a tool repertoire? Think of the mental flexibility it will take to use one of the three to show what they know about a sonnet or mitosis or three branches of government. How could you use Google Earth to represented an underlying concept of our constitution? Hint: think analogies.

I’d love to know which triad other teachers would choose.

Creating is very personal — close to the soul and perilously self-revealing. Those who are moderately successful at creating, people like published writers, performance musicians, and visual artists who are not starving, are generally articulate when asked how they go about their work. I have found some marvelous videos and interviews where people talk about how they go about painting or writing. Artist Kimberly Brooks spells out 8 stages to her painting process, concluding with:

(8) Resolution. Very elusive. The composer Aaron Copland said he didn’t finish compositions so much as abandon them. When it’s finally over, it feels like a whole relationship has ended. And then the anticipated rush of doing it all over begins again. [I love the concept of “abandoning” works at the end. Though cruel, it also implies that the work has a separate life of its own by this time.]

My bookshelves and Diigo account house an ever-growing collection of writers’ and artists’ discussions on how they create. I even have a few scientific analyses from adventurous experimenters explaining how innovations occurred in their lab.  What I notice is that those who are willing to bare their process are already successful and therefore can talk about creating from behind a safe curtain  labeled “success.”

If I were to ask, say — a teacher– how he/she creates things, I  wouldn’t expect to hear as much. Most adults will pooh-pooh the idea that they are ever creative, much less open up about how it happens (if it happens). Having lived for decades in a culture where someone else defines creative success, usually by some sort of juried process, we adults assume the jury knows what they are talking about. So we only talk about our own creativity after receiving the jury’s blessing.

Enter the world of YouTube, web 2.0 tools, and public commenting. Enter a generation (or two or three) willing to spill their guts and show their mental underwear on Facebook. Will this generation be more willing to talk about their own creative process after the “success” of publishing/performing/exhibiting wherever and whenever they want?  Do they even view their electronically facilitated play as creative process? Are they/we driven to carry creative work through the stages that Kimberly Brooks and others describe? Or is a dropping left on the surface of the web just that:  an abandoned, stillborn product? Are those who create with the toys of the web driven to return again and again, refining, remixing, even storehousing their discarded scraps for use another time? Can these tools be as powerful as any paint, word, or engineering lab? I think so.  But I believe we need the creators to be aware of and talk about their process to reach a higher level, a sort of creative self-actualization (ugh, another old theory, you say…)

I would love to work with some teachers and their students to find out more about creative process among today’s middle and high school kids. But first we need the teachers to recognize creative process in themselves. As I said in a recent post,

Teaching is a blessedly creative process, if we allow it to be. We sculpt a product — a plan for learning. We try it, revise it, tear it apart, remix its pieces, and try it again.

Talk about it. I dare you to ask your colleagues in the faculty room about their latest creative accomplishment.

I have been thinking a lot lately about why teachers become teachers. I know the media and the teacher-bashers have it all wrong. It’s not all about wanting summers off or a cushy job. Three posts/articles got my attention this week on the related topics of teacher respect and recruitment. An April Fool’s “memo” from a school administrator mentioned Finland’s teacher education programs that skim la creme de la creme to enter teacher preparation after two years of college performance. This would imply that Finns choose teaching because it is a place to work among very smart, well-prepared people. A New York Times Op Ed described a writer’s personal experience with teachers, describing an experience and appreciation similar to my own. Perhaps that writer’s teachers chose teaching because they could encourage and challenge students beyond where they went themselves. A series of suggestions from “debaters” also in the Times tout different strategies for raising the status of teachers. These various suggestions imply that money, autonomy, professional growth, supply and demand, and various other factors drive the choices of 18 to 22 year olds to consider teaching.

We should be asking good teachers the question: Why did you choose teaching?  To reach a consensus of what a good teacher is for this exercise,  I would propose using teacher-leaders respected by a broad spectrum of their peers and/or credited by former students as having had profound impact — in both public and private teaching settings. I have some ideas of what they might say, though we know the responses would vary each decade since the 1960s and 1970s, when opportunities for women changed dramatically. Some responses I suspect we would hear:

• I did well in school, so I like being around schools.
• My teachers were nice to me, and I liked the idea of paying it forward.
• I liked the idea of doing something a little different every day.
• I grew up in a family of teachers.
• A teacher changed my life.
• I thought that was what a smart girl was supposed to do.
• Teaching was the only thing I knew you could do if you loved (fill in the subject here).
• I was more comfortable around kids than adults.
• I love learning new things.
• Teachers get to be creative.
• I couldn’t afford to be a writer/artist, so I decided to teach.
• I always wanted to be a coach, and you have to teach to coach.
• I love to read.
• It feels good to teach people things.
• I like words and can explain anything.
• I like the way a kid looks at me when he “gets it.”
• Teachers get to laugh and make kids laugh.
• add your teacher story starter here

What is probably not on the list:

• I like measuring learning by tests.
• I like using cold, hard data to describe my work.
• I like following someone else’s script.
• I like going to meetings.
• I like having people write letters to the editor about how lazy I am.
• I like being lazy.
• I like being in the middle of domestic disputes.
• I like the thrill of violence.
• add your own unlikely response here

If you are a good teacher or know one, please ask him/her this question and share the responses — and NOT responses — here. You can put “anonymous” as your name. Or just pass the question along on Twitter or Facebook or any other way, tagging it #whyteach. Maybe someone will notice that it’s not all about summer vacations.

Jennifer Northrup’s post about a visit to her media center by teachers-to-be (T2B) raises very important questions about today’s teacher ed programs:

…the discussions of the day really made me wonder if pre-service teacher education is neglecting to prepare students for the role of technology in the classroom. Is it fair to say that we have to hope that these students have a cooperating teacher that utilizes technology in the classroom or that they will be forced to learn it on their own in the end?

My short answer: NO. It is not fair to simply hope a cooperating teacher will have time/expertise/motivation/experience with technology to make this a part of student teaching.  I know from sharing TeachersFirst with T2B in OK2ask sessions that the T2B desperately want to know what to do with technology long before student teaching.

In this case, I think of teaching as a bit like cooking.

A true cook (master teacher) has the expertise to work from available ingredients, create a recipe, adjust the recipe to a different number of servings,  combine it into a broader menu of compatible offerings, adapt for possible food allergies, set the table, and time all the food so it arrives at just the right time to be eaten piping hot or refreshingly chilled. The learning meal then takes on a life of its own through conversation and involvement of everyone around the table– and facilitated by the food prep. If he/she is  smart, the master chef will include students in the food prep for a broader, richer menu. An experienced, tech-savvy teacher integrates technology the same way, using what is available at just the right time to bring every student around the learning table together. If a T2B is lucky enough to be souschef with a master, he/she will at least learn the fundamentals of collecting ingredients and managing simple menu planning. He/she will not learn every utensil or technique, but he/she will be able to serve up a shared learning meal.  The students may even try some foods they would have otherwise avoided when not included in the menu prep.

One problem with teacher ed is that the time limitations and inequities among the kitchen (student teaching) experiences and facilities make consistency very unlikely. We cannot assume that the cooperating teacher or student teaching school will even have essential technology ingredients or expertise. Some will have state of the art appliances and 1:1 computing, while others will have the edtech equivalent of one microwave oven to feed a class of 30… with past-date groceries. To  make it worse, the T2B may arrive having experienced teacher ed faculty who themselves use edtech solely as a drive-through meal: something you grab and go — without looking at the nutritional value!

To steer today’s T2B beyond the drive-through toward solid nutrition in their use of edtech as part of total menu planning, we need to deliberately take them out to “eat” in a variety of schools. We cannot assume that today’s T2B have ever even tasted this food before. Let them taste-test the marvelous things you can do by starting with a simple menu item, let’s say telling a simple digital story. After tasting it, let them try cooking up one of their own–even if it’s a little too crispy around the edges. Then ask them to envision a full menu where it might fit. Show them sample menus.  They may be tempted to simply re-create the comfort food lessons they had over and over as a child. Give them some nutritionally sound starting points they may never have savored.

I recently read a strategic analysis  of the teaching profession (see page 8 re classroom teachers) that described a “divide” between younger teachers entering the profession and old-time union-placard-wielding teachers. Historically, teachers have certainly been as guilty of them vs. us as fifth graders picking teams on the playground. On a bad day, a  teacher might have a parents them, a policy makers them, and/or a media them. But I really do not believe that there is a “divide” between younger and older teachers enough to be a them vs. us. What I do see is a growing isolation built out of self-preservation. As good old Maslow said, we have a hierarchy of needs, and personal security/safety come far before respecting others. Today’s fiscally risky climate builds fear in any teacher’s heart. And some teachers, fearful that they will fall prey to the budget axe, may speak out loud in broad generalizations about a teacher them. As teachers who know the veracity of good ol’ Maslow, we should have the wisdom to hear insecurity speaking when we hear it. We should also be able to point it out as insecurity when speaking to the media them.

But beyond the PR side of this, I want to dig deeper into this purported “divide.” As a teacher who cut my teaching teeth on purple-ditto-fluid-sniffing eighth graders, I am old enough to be on the old age end of this supposed “divide.” Yet why do I find I enjoy working with young teachers– and they with me? Why am I energized by their enthusiasm and are they eager to ask for my suggestions and experiences with this kind of student or that kind of parent or this difficult curriculum area. They even ask for my ideas for maximizing learning using technology. AGE and/or experience do not create a them. I don’t think of myself as “old,” nor do they treat me that way.When among teaching colleagues, I feel we are ageless. Only the moments when they refer to their high school years remind me that we are a generation apart.  As teachers, we are absolutely together. I do not fear that they talk about me behind my back, as “divided” teachers surely would. We are in this together. For the kids.

As politics and financial crises continue to take their toll and send us back to primal levels on Maslow’s hierarchy,  I hope the community of the teaching profession can avoid being split into them and us by changes to pensions, certifications, salaries, and all the other personally threatening safety/security changes that loom. Our kids cannot afford to go to school in a “divided” world of teaching and learning. Anyone who seeks to promote that divide is doing far more damage than a group of fifth graders choosing sides. We teachers — older, younger, and ageless– need to think about how we work together and take advantage of each other’s wisdom, just as we ask our students to do.

Watch a frozen lake evolve through a late winter thaw. The brittle surface, clouded and frozen, thins irregularly and gradually as it dulls in the sun. Pools of water form on top.  The edges pull away from the shore, setting vast sheets afloat. Progress accelerates. The wind rises, pushing water over one edge of the sheet from here to the far side of the lake, wearing away the windward edge, lapping atop,  and refreezing into briefly sparkling formations. Decorated with the diamond necklace of refrozen splash, the sheet backs away downwind. It retracts from all its other sides, shrinking as it slides backward. Ten yards, thirty yards, fifty, all in an hour. The seagulls ride along. Somewhere before it reaches the rear shoreline, it may disappear entirely as the water devours it. But if the sun gives out too soon or the temperature drops, the sparkling necklace refreezes at ice’s edge,  and the sheet holds its place, immobile and unconvinced that thawing is a  good idea.

Watching students– or my fellow teachers– learn is like watching the thaw. I cannot control the sun or the wind, and I am amazed at how quickly the process passes by. I appreciate that no two thaw cycles occur the same way. I especially love watching that edge where water and ice meet, the places where understanding laps at rigidity and forms beautiful but temporary diamonds. And I never know exactly when the water will flow unimpeded. The wind, the temperature, and even rain can change the scene in just minutes. Or it can stay stuck for days.

I wonder whether ice wants to thaw or whether water relishes washing in the newness of spring until the ice concedes to join it. Either way, I really can do no more than observe the conditions and maybe poke a stick at the ice as it flows past my shoreline. Teaching is not about controlling; it is about appreciating, observing, and noticing how the learning works. And maybe once in awhile taking to the ice of misunderstanding on skates to find its edges.