Think Like a Teacher

I admit it. I am an Olympics junkie. As a former “swim mom” and avid lap swimmer, I enjoy seeing even the prelim heats with swimmers whose chance to “medal” is remote. I watch to share in their passion and the incredible accomplishment of simply being there.  I listen to interviews with the medal winners,  hanging on what they say about passion for the sport and about the parents and coaches who helped them get there. I even eat up those “Thanks, Mom” commercials.

As teachers we want our students to have the same passion for academic learning that Olympians have for learning to be the best swimmer or gymnast or runner. One of the parents of  the U.S. gold medal women’s gymnastics team responded beautifully to a question this morning. When asked what advice he would give to parents of  young athletes who show promise, he said something like, “Let them go after their dream if it is their dream and not yours. Make sure they have the tools and opportunities to pursue that dream and just let them go where they dream to go.”

Missy Franklin, this Olympics’ U.S. swim phenom, lives her passion. She has stayed with the same coach since she was very young, eschewing opportunities to move to elite programs with renowned coaches. Why? I assume it is because her coach knows her and knows her passion. She loves to swim. She also loves being a teenager and hanging out with her high school swim team and friends. As a coach, he gives her tools and steps out of her way. Both he and Missy are very lucky people to have each other and especially to have the relationship they do.

Not every student we teach can articulate a passion. It is our job to thrust our heads forward to listen for it, facilitate it, and step out of its way. With our responsibilities to curriculum, we must often seek ways to connect curriculum to our students’ unspoken passions. It is naive to think that everything we must “teach” will miraculously connect with Lego-like snap into our students’ passions. But we need to listen. There may come a moment where we can hear the passion coming through. As coaches, we must then find ways to let them go. They might have fun, and they may even “medal” in learning.

Recent revelations about Penn State and its fabled football program leave me with many questions about roles, adults and children, authority figures, and more. Most of all, as an educator, I think about the decisions that are at the core of education, decisions about how we prioritize our attention every day.

When does correcting culture take precedence?

The culture of our classrooms is more influential than any lesson strategy, study aid, pedagogy plan, or self-adjusting app for ensuring that our students learn what they need to thrive. As in any culture, the subtleties of what is unacceptable, preferred, or revered guide what we do in our classes. Even among teens who claim to “do their own thing,” there is a culture of what is lame and what is cool. As teachers, we develop a sixth sense of culture, a sense that tells us when cultural shifts demand that we temporarily delay content while we readjust the path of culture. On September 11, 2001, many of us stopped what we were doing in the interest of culture as breaking news spread through the school. We dropped the lesson plan, changed the homework assignment to “watch the news and hug your family,” and tried our best to answer all the questions.  In elementary classrooms, classroom culture adjustments are as frequent as bathroom breaks as young students learn how to ignore disruptions, “keep their hands to themselves,” treat others kindly, or simply listen. We teach and tweak classroom culture before we teach anything else.

Developing that sixth sense before culture goes completely awry is one of the intangibles we cannot easily explain to a student teacher — or even to parents. When I mentored beginning teachers,  this was one of the  most challenging and persistent topics of our conversations. But I gave credit to newbie teachers as they voiced  their feelings that something was not right, even if they did not know what to do about it. Their “sixth sense” was emerging.

I have to wonder what happened to Penn State’s sixth sense. How did they miss the alarms that culture was out of whack? I hope our teacher sixth sense is far more attuned. Young lives — and learning — depend on it.

[Full disclosure: I have a graduate degree from one of Penn State’s campuses, but I have never been a PSU football fan. Maybe my sixth sense was working?]

Remember the Klondike bar ads of a few years ago? As back to school time approaches, teachers are very much like the people in those commercials. We will do just about anything to be sure the school year gets off to a smooth start. Around the middle of July, the dreams (or nightmares) begin:

• A first day without any furniture or in a double-booked classroom shared with alternative ed
• A first day without air conditioning — and you forgot deodorant
• A first day when someone took down all your bulletin boards and replaced them with brown kraft paper and old staples
• A first day when every student cries (well, maybe not in high school)
• A first day with high school students cussing and screaming at you
• A first day when the fire alarm rings three minutes after the first bell

What would you do to get the school year off to a smooth start? After a couple of years, we each develop our own rituals. Start going to bed early a week before – check. Exercise like a maniac to relieve stress – check. Make two weeks’ worth of copies so you don’t end up waiting in line at the copier on day 1 – check. Send a letter to your new little ones two weeks before school – check.

But there is a danger in ritual. July is a time to consider new back to school rituals and ceremonial starts. You might even find something new to make the start even smoother. I was helping pull together back to school ideas on TeachersFirst today, so I thought I would share a few:

1. Appeal to the visual. Our kids are bombarded with things to LOOK at in their “real” lives, so your classroom should scream “Look at me!” too. Try Bulletin Board Hangups to grab wandering minds. Find fresh bulletin board ideas using this keyword search. Don’t forget to OPEN the reviews to read the full details and ideas.
2. First impressions last, so make one. No, teachers should not feel obligated to try out for Comedy Central, but why not plan a great first day with one of these first day ideas?
3. Make homework a team sport. Get parents involved in supporting their child’s study skills. There are great tools that kids might even enjoy using (though they will never admit it!).
4. Get everybody organized. Specifically address organizational skills like time management, dividing larger tasks into smaller pieces, making lists, etc. We adults need help with this, so why wouldn’t our students?
5. Share with a teacher friend. Use tools like Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook,  or a good, old-fashioned face to face lunch to share some new ideas. Share with friends you don’t know yet by making and reading comments on TeachersFirst resources– a free feature with free membership. Simple ideas can make or break that first day.

May your July be filled with positive dreams and a few Klondike bars

Happy Independence Day/week to all. I am on hiatus from full blog posts as my own Declaration of Independence. Given the recent storms and resulting havoc for technology based in the Washington D.C. area (i.e. TeachersFirst!), perhaps independence from technology for a few days would be a good idea. Have a picnic or go for a swim. It’s too hot for much else.

I have previously posted perilous predictions comparing how a five year old boy I know sees the world today and what his 2025 mindset will be. I continue with a few more thoughts as I head home from a busy week at ISTE2012.

2012 – Music comes from the big screen, the phone, the iTouch, the computer, and the backseat DVD : 2025 – I have music in my head all the time

2012 – I learn what I like by choosing an app : 2025 – I choose my school cohort — and plan college and job– to fit what I like to learn.

2012 – I Facetime my cousin on the computer, iPhone, or big screen : 2025 – I say my cousin’s name when I think about him, and I hear him answer me.

2012 – I have friends and cousins in different states : 2025 – I friends who speak to me in different languages, and I hear what they mean.

2012 -playlists are what mommy and daddy choose : 2025 – Life is my playlist.

2012 – I love my teacher : 2025 – Teacher? I remember those. I hadn’t heard them called that since middle school.

Want to venture a prediction — so the future can laugh at both of us?

Two convergences are humming inside my head like songs I cannot shake. I attended SocialEdCon Saturday and the ISTE 2012 opening keynote yesterday. At both the talk was about helping kids find their passion. The hum in my head was still strong — asking me to connect to the post I just did about today’s five year old.  He will have the chance to pursue his passion when “left to his own devices.” I’ll just let the personal passion song keep playing in my head as I continue through ISTE.

The second inside song (a clever harmony?) has lyrics about MePortfolios (a distinction form ePortfolios). EPortfolios are for the teacher or principal or department of ed. Meportfolios are for the audience I want to share them with. My five year old will have a MePortfolio, portable, personalized, and completely adaptable to the audience of choice.

That’s it… I am off to another session.

I know a five year old boy. He will graduate from high school in 2025, assuming we still have high schools. With all the changes occurring in technology,  funding, and public education policy, who dares to predict what this five year old will see during his K-12 years. (Arguably, education’s slow pace of adaptation could mean we will see very little change!) Each year, Beloit College publishes a mindset list for college faculty about the incoming freshman class. What would be on the mindset  list of today’s five year old? — and what dare we predict may be his mindset in 2025? I venture some wild predictions, knowing full well that they are likely to be laughable long before this five year old is even out of elementary school. My musings are formatted:

2012 – mindset of today’s five year old : 2025 (or another year) – related prediction

Here we go:

2012 -all interfaces are touchable or talkable : 2025 – I just think it and it happens or explains why it cannot happen.

2012 -I swipe away what I don’t like : 2025 – I see, hear, or experience only what I DO like.

2012 – Maps talk : 2018 – There is no such thing as “map skills.” Direction and location are experienced, never represented in 2D.

2012 – Words talk when I touch them: 2025 – Text constantly changes/evolves as I “read” and adapts to my thoughts about what it says

2012 – My fingers change how things look : 2025 – My eyes and mind change how things look.

2012 – I “play a level” to move ahead : 2020 – My level is always a perfect challenge match for me, even at school.

2012 – I can repeat a level if I want to find all the magic coins and tricks : 2017 Levels change so when I return, I must learn something new.

2012 – Books and apps talk : 2015 –  I talk back, and it responds.

2012 – Mom and Dad are “connected” to something via gadgets all the time : 2017 – I am connected to ALL devices from my own device ALL the time — even at school.

2012 – I control the backseat movie, the app, the game :  2020 – I control the start and stop of school.

2012 – My preschool classmates “graduate” with me : 2025 – My “class” has constantly changing membership, and I belong to cohorts for dozens of places, times, interests, and ages.

To be continued…

Try this creative mind game:  What if everyone — past and present — had a hard wired Twitter account sharing their thoughts. Who would you “follow”?

My first impulse is to go for Leonardo DaVinci or Vincent Van Gogh or Claude Monet or  Shakespeare or David Macaulay of The Way Things Work fame. I simply want to listen to their thoughts because I so admire them all. But these folks had avenues to express their most distilled thinking. Perhaps there are more productive ways to use Twitter-brain-listening.

How about today’s politicians? Could we make more informed decisions about our votes if  their tweeting thoughts were unedited and unmediated? I find the idea a bit frightening, but maybe I could follow for a day or two to solidify my voting decisions.

I would love to use this imaginary tool to simply learn. I would crash Tweetdeck and never do much of anything else. Of course, I’d be tempted to DM back with my retorts and questions: D wshakespeare R U sure 2b or not 2b is the ?

I think the better curiosity might be to follow the Twitter mindstream emanating from that student with crossed arms, closed eyes, and/or no homework. These students are not really trying to “hide” their thoughts, just veil them behind a socially patterned signal system. Yesterday I discovered a secret “tweet” from a student who posted a finished infographic assignment on a class wiki a few months ago. This student had resisted the whole idea of infographics in my colleague’s class but by the end of the year had decided that making infographics was the coolest way to learn. His teacher and I roared aloud to discover that he had named one of his midyear assignment files “stupidinfographic.jpg”  That was his DM to his teacher. With the magic Twitterminder, we might not have missed it.

I can hear you cringing now, ” I would not want to hear all the thoughts that are flying in my classroom.” I wouldn’t either, but wouldn’t it be  a learning experience to set a Tweetdeck column to our class hashtag and hear the thoughts for just a little while? Talk about formative assessment!

Happy summer to many. Take this creative mindgame to the beach with you.

Listen to kids talk about a tough project after it is over. You will hear complaints about how long it took, how they wish they had started sooner, how they did not really understand “what the teacher wanted,” how they wish they had read the rubric more carefully before they started, how they wish they had done a little bit each day. Resist the urge to say “I told you so,” and you will hear pride seeping through: pride that they eventually figured it out, pride that they know how to approach such a project the next time, pride that they can even offer advice to other students who “get” you as a teacher next year.

This is the time of year to let the kids talk — and for us, as teachers, to listen. My colleague, Louise Maine, took time during the final days of school to have her students talk about the many infographics they made this year in her ninth grade bio classes (the classes who provide fodder for our upcoming ISTE presentation). This Voicethread illustrates one student infographic as the student comments resonate with deep knowledge. They reflect and think about thinking and learning. What more could we ask? [The comments all appear to be from one Voicethread member because they used the teacher’s log in]:

Shelley Wright recently suggested that we should “flip” Bloom’s Taxonomy to make Creating the first level we approach with our students. She explains that in a science class, “It makes their brain[s] try to fill in the gaps, and the more churn a brain experiences, the more likely it’s going to retain information.” Listen to Louise’s kids in the Voiethread, and you will hear them talk about exactly that experience.

I am not sure we need to have a single, flipped graphic analogy to represent Bloom’s as Shelley suggests. I advocate for something more like the layers in an image editing program such as Photoshop or Fireworks. The layers palette allows me to move Creating to the top or to put it behind Analyzing for a while as I edit my learning (or my students edit their own). Bloom’s levels/layers can be rearranged as needed. They can even be “hidden” temporarily in order to focus on one. But none of them ever really goes away. Click and they reappear, ready to drag up to the top or down into the background. As the students in this Voicethread reflect, they discuss nitty gritty vocabulary terms (Understanding). They talk about visual communication and tools (Creating). Another layer– of affective knowledge– is also present: time skills, work habits, etc.

If  we listen, we can hear the layers of learning. What a joy at the end of the school year! #eduwin!

Flashcards and sticky notes, and quizzes, oh my!

We see a lot of web tools at TeachersFirst. If a tool is free and we think it will be useful for students and teachers, we review it. Lately I have seen so many variations on sites to make quizzes, flashcards, and sticky notes, I am beginning to feel guilty even sharing them.  It’s almost as bad as passing out printable worksheets over and over and over.  I don’t want any teacher to think that “integrating technology” means nothing more than using an online quiz or flashcards for assessment or practice. Yes, these tools have a place (everyone needs to start somewhere), but they are no closer to harnessing the true power of technology than tying a horse to pull your car.
When cars first appeared, no one knew the impact they would have. No one thought of drive thrus or suburban sprawl or  minivans and carpools. Automobiles were “horseless carriages” that happened to go farther and faster,  replacing hay with gasoline. When user-creation tools on the web appeared, friendly and entrepreneurial folks found ways for web tools to simulate favorite classroom routines: flashcards, homework, quizzes, etc. Yes, they are more efficient, more easily shared, collaborative, and even “like” able. But they are still horseless carriages.

What gets me excited are the tools and resources that become activities I have never seen — and am itching to try! I want tools that make learning go, “Ooooooo!” As one of my colleagues said about today’s drill and kill environment, “We used to play more.” As we enter summer, I am on a mission to find more easy-to-use tools that go “Ooooooo” and are not simply electronic versions of what I did in school decades ago. I gravitate to the visual tools for creating and sharing, like Jux (once known as Jux.io). These tools take me, the creator,  into an edge-to-edge visual space where I can show what ideas look like, juxtapose things, contrast or relate images, text, and more. A more basic tool that fits the bill is this simple tool from Critical Layouts that creates virtual picture cubes. Imagine the higher level thinking of creating a six image cube and asking what these images have in common, a la Guess the Google. Or challenging students to build their own cube of  six images — including text — as a political ad or a depiction of the factors that lead to the Great Depression or today’s financial crisis. Or have them show what lures them into a their personal learning passion.

My learning passion is thinking of creative ways to use anything that I find and finding things that make me think in creative ways. Join me in making this the summer where learning goes, “Oooooo!”