Author: Mr. Chase

When there’s nothing left to say, start doing

Hands Shaping Clay

Today, I’m spending the day with educators in Cedar Rapids, IA – as you do. The morning will be dedicated to facilitating a workshop for superintendents from around the region. During the intro call with the folks who asked me to come out, I got a list of others who have come out in the months before me to offer and plan a similar workshop. Some of the names I knew, some I’m eager to read about. All of them made me wonder what I have to offer this room after the collective wisdom they’ve garnered from previous speakers.

I hammered away for a while before I realized all I need is a question.

What are you going to do now?

Think back to the keynotes and workshops you’ve been a part of – from the front or the back. Chances are they focused on vomiting new ideas, fancy new toys – the shiny, the new. It’s all well and good because these kinds of things are generally one-off experiences. The good folks of Cedar Rapids have contracted me to work with them for a day, not a year.

So, I’m going light on the new and the shiny. Instead, I’m asking a few simple questions:

  1. What have others said before me that stuck with you?
  2. What would it look like if you took the best pieces of each of those messages, envisioned them working together in your district, and worked to engineer a cultural shift in learning and teaching?
  3. What questions does this bring up for you?
  4. What are you going to do about it?

Throughout, I’ve thrown in several pieces of “Might it look like this…What about this?” to stoke the fires of their thinking and their curiosity.

In the end, though, once they’ve got a good vision, I’ll be asking them to build something. It might be a presentation for their teachers. It could be a workshop similar to ours. It could be a yearlong project to re-define learning in their schools.

Either way, I’m building our time together around the idea we’ve got all the information we need. Now, we must take the space and time to do something with it.

Take 5 Minutes for Civil Rights Today

You may have seen the following in your social media feeds:

ACTION ALERT: Through the Federal Register, the U.S. Dept. of Education is receiving comments on why it’s important to preserve and expand the Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection. The Obama Administration published this request for comments on December 30, 2016 and it is essential that we flood Secretary DeVos with comments that explain why this data collection is essential for enforcing civil rights statutes and helping to protect all students. 
 
Comments are due on Tuesday, February 28. Please click HERE to comment.
 
All you have to say is: “The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) provides much-needed transparency and information on key education and civil rights issues in our nation’s public schools. This data helps the U.S. Department of Education achieve its mission of ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for all students. Secretary DeVos must preserve, expand, and publicly share the results of the CRDC.”
 
Copy and paste on Facebook, but do not share.
This is a real thing.
Here’s some background:
The CRDC collects a variety of information including student enrollment and educational programs and services, most of which is disaggregated by race/ethnicity, sex, limited English proficiency, and disability. The CRDC is a longstanding and important aspect of the ED Office for Civil Rights (OCR) overall strategy for administering and enforcing the civil rights statutes for which it is responsible. Information collected by the CRDC is also used by other ED offices as well as policymakers and researchers outside of ED.
These data range from enrollment numbers to math course offerings to instances of reported bullying. And, for the first time ever, OCR is including school internet access as a  component of healthy civil rights:
2. Access to Internet While many school districts have used the internet to enhance educational opportunities, there have been concerns that schools and school districts do not have equitable access to high-speed internet. This equity concern occurs at both among and within school districts. For the 2017–18 CRDC, OCR is proposing to collect new information regarding internet access:  Amount of school bandwidth in Megabit per second [see Attachment A-2, page 69 (Data Group 1014)] Do many school districts already collect (or could they easily obtain) school bandwidth data that would allow OCR to determine the existence and scope of any such access disparity? Are there other data about connectivity that OCR should consider collecting to gauge access disparity?
The comments you make, published to the Federal Register, require agency staff to respond to the significant issues raised in comments:

How can I use the Federal Register to affect Federal rulemaking?

Federal agencies are required to publish notices of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register to enable citizens to participate in the decision making process of the Government. This notice and comment procedure is simple.

  1. A proposed rule published in the Federal Register notifies the public of a pending regulation.
  2. Any person or organization may comment on it directly, either in writing, or orally at a hearing. Many agencies also accept comments online or via e-mail. The comment period varies, but it usually is 30, 60, or 90 days. For each notice, the Federal Register gives detailed instructions on how, when, and where a viewpoint may be expressed. In addition, agencies must list the name and telephone number of a person to contact for further information.
  3. When agencies publish final regulations in the Federal Register, they must address the significant issues raised in comments and discuss any changes made in response to them. Agencies also may use the notice and comment process to stay in contact with constituents and to solicit their views on various policy and program issues.

If you are someone like me who cares deeply about civil rights, then please take the five minutes to tell the Department of ED why knowing who is in our schools and how they are treated is still important information for our country.

What are We Hiring For: 3 things to look for in potential faculty members

Interivewees in profile“Hire happy people.”

When asked what he looks for in potential new hires, this was the advice from John Kellam, Head of School for The Oakridge School in Arlington, TX.

Kellam and some other intelligent folks were participating in a panel discussion on hiring in modern schools at last week’s LLI Southwest conference, and his words have had me thinking for the last few days.

As we head into hiring season at schools across the country, what should we be looking for? While I’ve a much longer list in my head detailing what I think every teacher should bring to the classroom, for blogging brevity, let’s keep it to the top three more unusual asks.

  1. Hire learners. It’s one thing to say you are looking to hire great teachers. It’s another bag altogether to say you are building a team of teacher learners. By committing only to ask curious, folks who are driven to find answers alongside the children in their care to join your team, you’re committing to hire not only teachers, but role models of what it looks like to be a scientist in a science class, a writer in an English class, an anthropologist in a social studies class. Yes, capable teaching is necessary. Without the complementary identity of learner though, you’re hiring proficiency without empathy. Things to ask that might get you close to this goal:
    • How do you learn best?
    • What’s something you’re curious about?
    • When is the last time you learned something new?
    • How does who you are as a learner influence your teaching?
  2. Include students. At SLA no interview committee was convened without an equal student voice. Think about it this way, “Why would you exclude from the interview process those people who would be most directly impacted by a person’s hiring?” I can’t quite recall the adults on my interview panel, but I can remember Allison, Jordan, and Sam as clear as day. Not only did they help decide to invite me into the community, but their presence was a strong reason I accepted the invitation. Some prep work if you add students to your hiring process:
    • This is authentic learning, that means dedicating some time ahead of the interview to see what questions the students have and helping them understand key legal requirements of an interview in your district.
    • Avoid cherry picking. Sure, this teacher might have the student council president in her classes, but that’s not the only student who will be impacted by the hiring. Invite a broad swath of students to participate in the process.
  3. Play the whole game. In the same way classroom lessons are most effective when they have students participating in legitimate versions of the work of whatever discipline they’re learning about, our consideration of who we might ask to join our learning communities should ask them to participate fully in the work of the community. Stuart McCathie, Headmaster of Lusanne Collegiate School in Memphis, said on last week’s panel that he asks potential hires to spend the day with the faculty and students. “If they have as much energy at the end of the day as they did in the morning, then they’re a good candidate.” Ways of playing close-to-whole versions of the game:
    • Observe and discuss. Model lessons can give an idea of how candidates might structure learning experiences for students, but they’re not tremendously authentic. No one knows one another and the lessons are usually drop-in. Instead, sit with a candidate and observe the lesson of a teacher who would be a close hire. Afterward, debrief with the candidate and the teacher and listen for questions and comments that signal alignment to your school’s vision and values.
    • Break bread. Whether lunch, coffee, or drinks after school; ask a candidate to join you in an informal setting where food will be eaten. Every new person is a new piece of culture and identity for your school. Understanding how they will fit your puzzle in the classroom and out will help you understand if they are the people you want to learn alongside.

Making the Most of Essential Questions and Exit Tickets

tickets

Most any time I’m visiting a classroom, I’m having a conversation with the students I meet. The first few questions are pretty expected –  “What are you learning about?” and “What are you doing?”

The last two questions I routinely bring to the table working with students are less expected – “Why is that important?” and “What questions do you have?”

I know those last two are less expected because they are met with silence and stares from students – no matter the grade level. For me, it raises the questions of why are students are doing what they are doing and whether they have been asked to consider the deeper implications of a text. Whether it’s a third-grade student reading The Year of Miss Agnes or a ninth-grader wrestling with Regine’s Book, our expectation must be that students can consider key ideas, themes, styles, etc. outside of the pages of what they’re reading.

Much work has been done on the transfer of knowledge and skills, and there are certainly some thoughtful, complex projects students can embark upon to show those abilities. For the purposes of this post, though, I want to focus on two activities that can build students’ understandings of their learning and thinking while helping teachers understand areas of growth and need.

Essential Question journals can help students track their thinking about essential questions within lessons or units of study. For each of the curriculum modules within our elementary curriculum resources, for instance, students are asked to consider essential questions as they read, write, and speak their way through complex texts. Journaling around those essential questions can be easy.

  • Make routine time (5-10 min) once or twice each week for students to journal their answers to the essential questions within a unit of study. As they journal, have them consider what they wrote in their previous entries and focus on what they know or understand now that they didn’t before. Ask students to share/compare their journals with their peers and then engage in whole-class conversations about reading and writing.

Standing exit tickets help your students focus on a stationary target for thinking about their learning while giving you some quick formative information on what they think they are learning and wondering.

  • Have students fill out slips of paper with their names on them at the end of each class or lesson. Have them respond to the same prompts each time – “What can you do now that you couldn’t do at the beginning of class?” and “What is one question you have as a result of your learning?” If technology is available, have students respond via a google form. Imagine being able to conference with students with not only numbers and summative assessment results, but a portfolio of their own statements of learning and inquiry as well.

Not matter their age, all learners improve their abilities and skills if they have consistent, dedicated time to reflect on their learning. By including time to journal on essential questions and checking in at the end of a class, we make that time for our learners and provide ourselves with new windows into how we can alter our instructional practice to meet students’ needs.

Previously published on the professional blog.

How Do We Begin to Create a Culture of Reading and Writing?

Boy reading book on the floor of a book store.“Do me a favor,” I say, “and close your eyes. I’m going to ask you to visualize something. If I told you you’re visiting a school with a healthy culture of reading and writing, I want to you visit it in your imagination. Start with the lobby or entryway. Notice everything you see and hear as you walk through.”

The exercise goes on for about thirty seconds. I ask the assembled room of teachers to walk the halls, look in on classrooms, listen in on the conversations in common spaces and between the folks they pass in hallways.

I ask them to pay attention to the adults and to the students equally. “Everyone is responsible for creating and sustaining culture, so make sure to observe and listen in on everyone.”

When each teacher has finished their tour, it’s tie to write. “Take five minutes and put it all out in writing. Capture as much of the detail as possible. If you draw a blank, keep writing, ‘and, and, and, and,’ until your brain fills in the holes. Trust that it will.” And, the room takes five minutes to write.

Next, I ask them to share with someone else in the room, not reading the writing verbatim, but distilling to key ideas. I limit the time to talk because conversations at this point are fully-fed and reproducing like tribbles.

The final step, jumping into a shared and open google doc where they answer one question as many times as they can, “What would it take to create the kind of culture you envisioned in your school?”

Again, the activity is timed. Most of the time, I’m having this conversation as a drop-in to a larger meeting. There are other atomized conversations about literacy on the agenda.

I’ve run this conversation several times in the last few months. As the language arts coordinator, it’s one of my favorites. The creativity and joy it elicits each time can be unfamiliar for your average professional meeting.

All of that said, we need to be having this conversation or some variant thereof as much as possible in schools of every level. From pK to 12, we need a picture of the kind of culture of reading and writing we’re hoping to inspire and establish if we want the people in our care to see themselves as readers and writers who aspire to ask and answer better questions.

Here are a few things I’ve noticed in each iteration of this conversation:

  • No one – no matter their subject area – has ever said, “I don’t know” at any point of the process.
  • No one has argued with the assumption what they’re being asked to envision is not important, worth their time, helpful to students, or a better version of what learning and teaching can be.
  • Once they get started with the writing and the talking and the coming up with ideas of how to make it work, the conversations are difficult to curtail or contain.
  • Almost every single idea these teachers generate for how to shift the culture of their schools is free to implement. When it’s not free, it’s low-cost or an idea any PTO would be thrilled to help realize these ideas.

So, let’s do it. Let us build a context around the atomized skills we’re all-too-clear our students need help building and then make it the norm that every person in our care instinctually knows our schools are places where our implied shared identity is one of curious readers and writers.

Stop Scaring Teachers with Students’ Inconceivable Futures

future

It’s back-to-school season, so there’s a strong chance you’re reading or writing posts from people getting you jazzed about the work ahead in the 2016-17 school year. Maybe you’re attending a back-to-school kickoff or orientation or induction or whatever fills out your buzzword bingo card. If you’re doing any of the above, someone is likely to remind you of the impossible task before today’s educators – Preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist yet.

Well, that’s terrifying. It’s terrifying for students, and it’s terrifying for teachers.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Zac? You know what, don’t even answer, because that job will be done by a robot and whatever job you will be able to get is beyond comprehension.” Maybe that’s a stretch, but you get my point.

Instead, I’ve got two points to fight the IMPOSSIBLE FUTURE blues:

  1. This isn’t our first rodeo. Before the Industrial Revolution, we couldn’t quite conceive of the jobs for which we were preparing students. Before the computer revolution, who knew we’d need to figure out GUI programming? Before globalization and the Space Race and the Internet and so many other societal seismic shifts, those in teaching roles could not fully conceptualize the jobs for which they were preparing students. And while that system had many inefficiencies for preparing the students in our care, it always will. The future moves fast, and it’s a big world. All we can do is our best and keep learning. So, when you hear someone say our job is to prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet, think to yourself, “It always has been.”
  2. The present is full of plenty of jobs that need doing. While I’m not necessarily talking about honest-to-goodness W-9 requiring and W-2 generating jobs, I am talking about the jobs any news program will remind you need attending to. Rather than throwing the dart of preparation at the invisible dartboard of future employment, let’s aim our schools and classrooms at the targets we have in front of us. Climate change is a thing we’re 99.5% is a real thing. What if we turned our science curriculums toward saving the glaciers, the coast lines, and the polar bears? Ask students who haven’t yet learned not to come up with creative solutions to turn their beautiful imaginations toward poverty, systemic racism, strengthening the republic, sustainable energy, and interconnected economic systems. And, then give them the resources, lessons, and teaching they need to start figuring things out rather than telling them, “The adults have this.” Because, we don’t.

While we may not have the codex on the jobs employers will be hiring for as our students leave our care, we have a pretty good line on the problems educated, informed, collaborative, thoughtful citizens will need to solve. And that’s what we’re working to create, right?

My Anger and My Fear

I am angry, and I am scared.

I forgot they were shooting at us. In the year since I was granted the right to marry whomever I want and the words, “It is so ordered” were tattooed on my heart, I let my guard down and forgot they were shooting at us. It had been nice living in a foolish state of ignorance about the fact strangers want me dead.

I am worried for the kids like me. In the towns small and large, there are queer kids who haven’t said anything to anyone about what they know makes them different, because, somehow, other people know and ridicule them for even a perceived difference. In too many schools, like mine, that ridicule and vitriol go unanswered by the very adults whose job it is to care for and protect these students. I worry for the kids like me who were maybe hopeful that life after school would be better, because they have seen the world will let things get much worse.

I am crushed by the almost immediate straight washing of the reporting and response to this massacre at a gay club. While it is no less saddening to see Republican congresspeople sidestepping any acknowledgement that members of the LGBTQ community were killed in Orlando, it’s not surprising. To see headlines remove the word “gay” in news reporting, though, hurt and surprised. It eased the road to, “We are all Orlando,” which hurt my heart in ways I can only imagine are similar to the hurt my friends of color feel every time someone proclaims, #AllLivesMatter.

I am stung by the fact that this overt act of homohatred also illuminated the institutionalized policies of homophobia that prevented so many survivors, friends, and family of those injured in the attack from donating blood. Compounded by the fact these arcane rules were born out of a health crisis representing one of the most horrible failures of a government to protect its citizens.

All of this is to say keep your thoughts and prayers. Send your words and actions.

If, at some point you let a child or adult in your care say something derogatory about an LGBTQ person, you helped pave a path to queer-identifying kids believing they are less-than.

And then, when they saw someone actually shooting at them in a place that has, throughout history been a symbol of safety and togetherness, they put two and two together and realized the danger they felt in your classroom was much bigger in the wider world.

You may say “We are all Orlando,” but that’s not all we are.
We are the ugly tacit approval of everything that led to the killing of 49 members of my community being shot at a gay club in Orlando last weekend.

Don’t think and pray. Do and say.

That is what I’m feeling.

Citizen-Focused Schools

Civics

Someone today acknowledged the fact that an audience of folks had likely heard many keynote presentations over the last decade or so warning, proclaiming, and evangelizing on the need to change schools to better meet the shifting demands of the modern workforce. This was a lead in to the question of what the assembled educators should do about it and what they might ask employers to help them focus the work of school.

For my money, it’s all the wrong question. As much as I want every student I’ve ever known to find gainful, satisfying employment, shooting for a successful workforce aims below the best possibility of what American schools can be.

In an election season jacked up on discourse and discord, we see the highlights of how worker-focused schools are set to fail our country if they do not become citizen-focused schools.

Workers who know how to collaborate, innovate, adapt, and design are still less powerful than citizens who know how to organize, advocate, and investigate.

Rather than asking employers what schools can do to produce students to fit their needs, we should be speaking to politicians, public servants, and civic leaders asking what it takes to get their attention, what effective advocacy looks like, and what problems are on the horizon for communities and cities that our students will need to be ready to tackle.

Chasing jobs that don’t yet exist and may only exist for a moment is a fool’s errand not worthy of our children. Learning how to craft a society that realizes the best ideals of our democracy, our republic, and our grand experiment is not only a worthy goal, but a necessary one as well.

From Theory to Practice:

  • As you wrap up your school year or plan for the start of next year, make citizenship and the kinds of citizens your school community is working to create a central conversation. Keep in mind this is a conversation for all subject areas, not just social studies. Citizen scientists, public health, and a mathematically literate public are just as important as those who volunteer and show up at the polls.
  • Invite civic leaders in to build out the conversation. Ask anyone from the city manager to the mayor to local congressional leaders to come speak across classes on where any given subject area intersects with their work.
  • Think about the civic centers your schools can become. Host candidate forums. Ask leaders to come in and participate in town halls. Keep voter registration forms on the counter of your office and linked on your homepage. Make participatory citizenship part of the DNA of learning and teaching.

1 New Lesson on Caring Teachers

From the minute the bearded man in the black suit and ponytail took the stage, all eyes of the choir were on him. He was the conductor, so that’s to be expected. What’s to be hoped for, but not always expected is the change in students’ eyes and smiles in the brief seconds as he prepared them to begin their two pieces.

Last night, at a school spring music concert here in the Czech Republic, I admit to being unaware of where we were in the program at least 70% of the time. I clapped when we all clapped, I chuckled when we all chuckled. Otherwise, I was going through the motions.

That was what struck me about the change in these young singers when their teacher took the stage. The look they gave him and the overall shift in composure when he was interacting with them signaled that this is a good teacher.

I’ve worked with teachers and students all over the world, and it’s never struck me as clearly as it did last night that the look I saw was universal. More finely put, it was a visual manifestation of a caring relation in action. When thinking about the ethic of care in the past, my focus has been turned to the one caring and the cared for. I’m worried about whether those I care for recognize it as care. I’m not ever concerned with what it looks like on the outside.

I realized last night night, when people are engaged in a caring relation, those on the outside can see it. It draws us in. I don’t play an instrument, and it’s been more than a decade since I tried to sing anything other than along with whatever music is streaming on my computer. Still, I wanted to be in this teacher’s class. I wanted him to teach my one-day children. If I were leading a school, I’d have considered slipping him my card.

Yes he knew his content and how to help students access it. Each piece in the concert evidenced this. But, only when I saw him interact with the students was I able to say, “This is a good teacher.”

Now I’m thinking back to demo lessons and interviews. Was content and technical proficiency really what mattered in selecting new faculty members? Partially, yes. A math teacher who’s no good with numbers and great with kids doesn’t sound like a good hire. A candidate who is proficient and great with kids, though, this strikes me as someone to be considered more closely.

I’ve always thought demo lessons a strange activity. When considering an entire group of students’ learning, watching a stranger teach them for 15 minutes isn’t going to give me much on their overall approach or effectiveness. Those teachers who end that 15 minutes and no longer feel like strangers to that classroom — those are the ones to keep around.

Friends who argue with me time and again when I attack their data-driven instruction as anti-humanist are equally flummoxed by me when I hold to the claim that you “just know” a good teacher when you see them. For our next bout, though, I’ll have a new line of reasoning ready. It turns on the old axiom, “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I know a good teacher because, like the conductor last night, the caring is clear in their teaching.

From Theory to Practice:

  • Whether in formal evaluative observations or when peers sit in on a class, ask for feedback on where visitors saw evidence of the ethic of care in action and how they came to that conclusion.
  • When checking references on a potential new hire, ask “And how did you know they cared for students?” It’s likely to throw the conversation in a different direction. Good, it’s about time.
  • At the end of a project or unit of study, ask students to reflect on where they saw evidence of your caring for them. Be prepared for some tough love from students you have a difficult time reaching and those you think you’ve got a great connection with. Most importantly, be open to that feedback and considering how you might shift your practice in the future.

Nihil Sub Sole Novum

Loom

60: How should we teach remixing, sampling, and forking (coding) to children? #LifeWideLearning16@MrChase

— Ben Wilkoff (@bhwilkoff) February 28, 2016

nihil sub sole novum

One of the best questions we can ask our students is simply, “What makes you think that?” This is akin to the question my grandmother will ask me from time to time. With a sly look in her eye (usually when I’ve accused her of something), she’ll reply, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Pick whichever phrasing you like, but the soul of these questions is all we really need to help students understand the importance of interconnectedness in a remix, reuse culture. It took me a while to get used to thinking about the issue through this lens when I was doing the unforgiving work of teaching my students to cite their sources in more formal writing or as an editor working with novice journalists on their first stories.

Get close to any creative work about which you’re passionate and all the ideas and can begin to feel as though they are yours or that they are so clearly general knowledge that it would be foolish to explain. For this reason, when I finish a piece of writing or some other act of creation, I’ll step away for a bit and return to ask the question of each sentence, “Whatever gave me that idea?”

When the answer isn’t that the idea came from new contribution I brought to the ideas, it’s time for me to shout out my sources.

When Chris and I were finally wrapping up the book, this was certainly the case. We’ve both been writing and speaking about the ideas in each thesis for many years. Knowing we were about to put them out into the world in something as formal as a book, though, meant looking closely at each piece of our rhetorical architecture and asking, “Where do we need to point out the shoulders upon which we stand?”

It’s a bit strange to be typing these words. When it comes to fair use and open content, I’m likely as close to the liberal side of the spectrum as you’re likely to see. If you’ve used the work of another person and made that work more useful or uniquely different from its source, to my mind you now own at least a portion of that original work or idea.

At the same time, I know what it’s like to see something I’ve created travel through the world without ever pointing back to me as its source. It’s not a great feeling. While the Fair Use Doctrine has always felt quite formal and legalistic to me, it becomes much more personal when I see someone else get credit for my work and can only think, “Hey, that’s not fair.”

And this is the best way I can think of helping our students think about remixing, sampling, and coding in whatever the medium. If the answer to “What makes you think that?” lies somewhere in the work of others, it’s likely best to acknowledge that somewhere in your notes.

From Theory to Practice:

  • Have students think about the thing they’ve done of which they were the proudest. It could be a project completed for school, a winning shot in a game, or a supremely executed artistic performance. Then, ask them what it would feel like if all of a sudden, someone else – a stranger – was not only taking all the credit for the accomplishment, but the world was acting as though this was the truth. Rooting the conversation of giving credit where it’s due in a personal experience, can go miles to grounding the conversation.
  • Take students, faculty, administrators through the I used to think…, Now I think… activity to compare what has changed in their thinking as they move through assignments. Good questions here help people to consider how their outlooks have shifted over the course of creation of “new” ideas and artifacts of learning.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.