Category: Uncategorized

The ‘Broader Canvas’ of Design

For longer than I’d like to admit, I’ve had Jack Schulze’s talk from the MIT Media Lab open in a browser tab. Today, I finally made the time to sit down and watch it. The wait was worth it.

Schulze is co-founder and principal at BERG and the 90-minute talk gives some of his thinking around where we are not and where we could be headed with the making of things.

For me, the light bulb turned on toward the end of the talk when Schulze said, “There’s something of a mythology in terms of the idea that utility is as valuable as it claims to be.”

While I’m not a designer, this certainly spoke to the tension I feel as an educator who calls for teachers to ask kids to do real, meaningful and authentic things while also insisting on the value of play for the sake of play.

In naming the mythology of utility, Schulze isn’t denying the place of utility. He’s more calling it out as not the only reason to build things, to design things and to make things. I like that. I like what it could say about authentic learning experiences existing in the same spaces as play for play’s sake. If we are going to have kids make things, perhaps they don’t need to show us their learning, but there might be a more human, more cultural reason for the making of things. Maybe the making is reason enough.

Later Schulze points out, “Culture is a broader canvas than the functional utility of delivering functions or responses to problems.” Again, this strikes the sweet spot of educational beliefs. The cycle present in many vintage educational landscapes is train for test to train for next level to train for test to train for next level to…well, you get the picture.

If educational institutions take the “broader canvas” of culture as our guides, then we need not be preparing students solely for what’s next. We can also be preparing students for the present moment and providing them with playgrounds (literal and figurative) for finding out who they want to be as they picture the cultures around them.

Schulze closes with what design and software can be, “Software and design can be there to increase the cultural value, or enjoyment, or delight, or engagement with something above and beyond, say, adding or refining functionality or improving the user experience.”

So can education.

I’m not the Tech Guy

(There’s little to nothing you could trust me to do with what is pictured above.)

Let me explain.

Back in August, I started working for my district in a job with the official title “Instructional Technology Coordinator.”

If you look at each of those words independently or together, you’ll note that they can mean all sorts of nothing and even a few somethings if you squint.

What it means in practice is that I enter a school, a meeting, an email thread and I am “the tech guy.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being the tech guy. I know and work with many of them, and the things they do astound me on a regular basis. This is, perhaps, the biggest reason I should not be considered the tech guy. When I see actual tech guys at work, I am astounded. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d hope for from a peer, “Wow, you’re doing our job? That’s astounding.”

The trouble is, I know how to do some things with computers. Nothing very interesting. I cannot make a prezi. I cannot code outside of some basic HTML. I cannot do many of the things I’m asked to do upon entering a school.

This starts to wear on a person – really gnaws at the self confidence. I walk in to a situation with a picture in my head about what it is I do, and you ask me to fix your projector. Sure, I’ll play around with the buttons until something changes. And, then, if nothing changes, I’ll show you how to fill out a work order. A tech guy this does not make me.

I’m a teacher.

A few weeks ago, I was working with the faculty of one of our elementary schools. I was helping them to think about how they could have students create and thing using the camera on the iPads they’d be getting in their classrooms. At some point, it was revealed that I am referred to in this particular school as “the bow tie guy.”

This, I am fine with. I wear a bow tie daily. It is a distinguishing characteristic for someone who is still new to the district, and I’m happy to have something that helps folks remember who I am. “Please, please, plesae,” I begged, “call me the tech guy.”

I don’t want to be the tech guy because I am a teacher. I happen, also, to be a teacher who knows how to use more than the average amount of technology in the connecting with, challenging and forging of relationships with students. Still, I’m a teacher.

Call me that.

When I send out an email letting your building know I’m going to be around in the library for a few hours, know that I mean to help you think about whatever technology is available to you and how you can leverage it to move closer to the learning of the day. I’m a wiz at lesson plans, I can craft a unit like nobody’s business, and there are few things I love more than helping folks reflect about their learning in real ways.

This is because I am a teacher. I am a teacher who uses technology.

I make this distinction for one other reason. It is that I am not so separate as “instructional technology coordinator” implies. The more jargon that makes up my title, the less it sounds like I know what I’m doing inside a classroom. More destructively, that jargon implies that a classroom teacher cannot unlock and possess the hidden secrets of technology.

That’s pretty much the antithesis of my job and why I applied for it. If anything, my goal is to remove whatever mental block keeps a teacher for fiddling around with a program she’s trying to use in her class without fear that she’ll break something.

Too often, those blocks lead to sending an email or giving up when a few minutes on a search engine or tinkering just a bit more would have revealed the answer. “Instructional technology coordinator,” sounds like someone who can fix a problem, whereas “teacher” sadly has come to mean exactly the opposite where technology is concerned.

So, I’m changing my email signature and introducing myself differently from here on in. I’m a Teacher Technologist the next time someone asks. And, if I’m feeling a little impish, I might introduce myself as a Teacher Futurist. It’s a little step, but I think it is important, and it will help remind me of who I want to be in my work.

Read These Remarks and Then Act

Micah Sifry of Tech President published the text of his remarks at the As Darkness Falls conference. You should, by all means, go and read the full text. If bite-sized morsels are more your thing, I present some highlights below. Micah and I have had occasion to meet a few times, and I admire his work tremendously. He mentions the Sunlight Foundation, and their tools should find their way into any classroom.

On the goals of openness:

Somehow, we have to be for open government and against the deep state at the same time. One might say that this isn’t a contradiction, that actually these are two sides of the same coin. And indeed, I think we are all seeking to expand the power of citizens to watch their government, and shrink the government’s ability to watch us back.

On the importance of networks and horizontal organizing:

Reed’s Law, which says that the power value of a network increase as you add more nodes to it, requires nodes in the network to have full capacity to play all the networking roles, including lateral ones. But at least in the US we have not had nearly enough horizontal organizing, with the result that our well known online political groups actually have much less power than it appears. They have big lists and the ability to make a quick splash in the media, raise money fast, and thus they appear to wield power. But for the most part their members don’t know each other, and thus there is a very thin level of engagement hidden by those huge numbers.

And something that felt good to read:

Changing the world is hard. There are no shortcuts.

Now, go read the full text.

Inquiry Beats Mastery

An education with inquiry as it’s goal beats an education with mastery as it’s goal every time.

I didn’t realize this is how I feel until a friend asked about the role of mastery at SLA.

Here’s why.

Mastery takes as it’s goal a finished target. This might not always be its intent, but it is the implication whenever we say the goal is getting a student to the point where they or we can say they have “mastered” some content or skill. Such a goal does not invite a logical next step.

Contrastingly, inquiry takes as its goal a continuing cycle of attempting to find things out. Questions beget questions, which beget questions.

If we are asking good questions, our students are going to examine the work they are doing and the answers (partial or whole) they find will lead to the generation of ideas that require more questions be answered before an issue be set aside as satisfactorily answered for the moment.

Some questions, lead to mastery mindset rather than a cycle of inquiry.

If the professional learning modules we are building in my district to help teachers consider and plan for teaching and learning in a 1:1 environment, I am attempting to thoughtfully craft essential questions for each one with avoiding a mastery mindset as one of my goals.

In the module investigating Internet wellness and digital citizenship in middle schools, one question reads, “What is a teacher’s role in helping students consider digital wellness?”

Whatever their initial thinking, a teacher grappling with this question will continue to evolve the answer throughout his career.

“How does a teacher block a website?” Doesn’t invite the same questioning. A skill is learned, and the content mastered. What’s more, when the process changes (as these things inevitably do), a mastery mindset invites a presupposition that the learning was taken care of the first go ’round.

Mastery makes sense as a tool for inquiry. In considering the biological answers to the essential question, “Who am I?” An SLA ninth grader will likely need to master some pieces of proper lab technique or working with the scientific method in the service of their questioning.

As questions become more detailed and the topics more complex, even that mastery will need refinement in hopes of more exact questions.

Mastery offers a waypost of certainty in what can start to feel like an endless cycle of inquiry. For students who frustrate easily, this can be a relief, a respite that allows them to say, “I don’t have the answers I seek, and I know this for now.”

Inquiry with moments of mastery is an invitation to greater discovery founded in growing abilities.

Photo via Candace Nast

Can’t Save ‘Em All

I’m writing this on an airplane. I am on the aisle and looking at the laptop screens of the two fellows across the aisle from me.

They are making hideous PowerPoint presentations that include terms like, “innovation,” “forward- thinking,” and “industry-leading.”

I want to lean across the aisle, tap on their shoulders, and suggest they resist the urge to ask each slide to shoulder a graduate thesis worth of text, eliminate each shaded box, and destroy the 8-stage flow charts.

I want this because I am envisioning their audiences, locked into uncomfortable chairs in poorly-ventilated rooms while slides akin to the videos they showed that poor kid in the latter season of Lost flash on the screens before them.

I’m not.

I’m resisting.

You can’t save ’em all.

Image via Stephanie Booth

98/365 Bullying in Colorado: Part 2 of 7

This 7-part series will cover the history of bullying legislation and anti-bullying efforts within the state of Colorado beginning with the first definition of bullying by the Legislature in 2001.

Colorado’s Opening Volley

While it was certainly present within the state prior to legislative mention, bullying was first mentioned in by the Colorado Legislature in 2001 with the passage of Senate Bill 01-080 (SB 01-080). This bill revised state statute 22-32-109.1 (2) by adding a new subparagraph which defined bullying in Colorado as “any written or verbal expression, or physical act or gesture, or a pattern thereof, that is intended to cause distress upon one or more students in the school, on school grounds, in school vehicles, at a designated school bus stop, or at school activities or sanctioned events. The school district’s policy shall include a reasonable balance between the pattern and the severity of such bullying behavior.”  This new subparagraph also instituted a requirement of schools’ Safe School Plans in that they would now need to include “a specific policy concerning bullying prevention and education.”

This initial legislative effort to address bullying can be characterized as a first try ample in good faith but insufficient in action. In its analysis, the USDOE stated, “[L]egislation that defines prohibited bullying behaviors, and specifies graduated and substantial sanctions, will often require extensive implementation procedures, such as reporting requirements, investigation, and procedures for implementing the sanction (e.g. expulsion)” (xvi).

Colorado’s 2001 measure defined the behaviors to be understood as bullying, but left specific sanctions to school or district level decision-makers with the only guidance that there should be a plan and it should include considerations of patterns and severity of bullying behaviors.

As it went into effect August 8, 2001, SB 01-080 made bullying a legally identified offense in Colorado schools and required schools to include plans to keep their students safe by preventing and educating them about bullying.

It did not identify means for or require the reporting of bullying incidents in schools, take steps to provide Colorado youth with an avenue to report bullying, or make any mention of the inclusion of research-based methods of bullying prevention.

Perhaps most disconcerting was the lack of any mention of protected classes within this initial bill, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Romer v. Evans in 1996 (517 U.S. 620) which allowed for the inclusion of protected classes in such legislation. Specifically of interest here were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth.

According to the results of the 2011 School Climate Survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), “56% of students who were harassed or assaulted in school never reported it to school staff, and 62% never told a family member about the incident. Among students who did report incidents to school authorities, only 34% said that reporting resulted in effective intervention by staff” (p. 1).

Such bullying reflects not only a hostile environment for these students, but the unwillingness to report such incidents to their families exemplifies the double isolation of this group of students as well. Doubtless, other instances of feelings of depreciated safety exist among students in other protected classes, but no statewide school-based statistics are available at this time.

In short, SB 01-080 took steps ostensibly intended to reduce bullying and increase student perceptions of their safety within Colorado schools, but did not take advantage of the Legislature’s full power nor did it move to help schools and districts understand specifics of what they could do to protect students.

94/365 We are not Saving Starfish

We need no martyrs here.

It’s easy, in the conversation about education, to point to the martyrs. The system is set up to invite martyrdom.

“Do more with less,” say states, districts, and principals say (outright or otherwise), “Teach these students with books from two decades ago, no classroom supplies and a drive toward academic standards but a neglect of standards of humanity.”

Structurally, teaching looks like it should be a breeding ground for martyrs.

As contracts around the country are calling for extended days without additional pay, value-added models are include values not directly in teachers’ control, and communities are asking schools to do much more than imprinting the three Rs, it is little wonder martyrdom is a main activity of a teacher’s prep period.

The teaching load is getting heavier, class sizes are expanding, and the mission is more complicated.

Teachers have every reason to complain about pay, workload, the demands of the job.

But there’s a difference between complaining and protesting and martyring ourselves. The most important difference? We don’t need another martyr. Teaching doesn’t need another person who steps away from education and says, “I gave everything I had to that school and those kids, and I just can’t do it anymore.”

We’ve had enough of those.

We also don’t need another story of “Nice White Lady” syndrome where the fresh-faced teacher walks into the class of marginalized students. She’s determined to make a difference no matter the odds or cost to her personal life.

Teaching isn’t an all or nothing proposition, and we are building an unsustainable system each time we perpetuate the idea that it is.

You are not saving students. You are not the savior of students. You are not the one they have been waiting for. No prophesy has fortold your coming. You are a person of passion and training who is working to help other people learn. That is good, and it should be enough.

The first step to moving away from a martyr mindset in education – you’re not the only one.

If you weren’t in your classroom, someone else would be. They wouldn’t approach things they same way you do. They wouldn’t have the same inside jokes with students, and they wouldn’t challenge authority with the same vigor, to be sure. Still, someone would be in there, and their time is just as valuable as yours. If you think you are God’s gift to teaching, you haven’t been teaching long enough.

Also, if it costs you everything, it’s costing you too much.

If the second largest drain on your paycheck is supplies for your students, if your personal relationships outside of school are suffering because you can’t talk about anything other than your students, if you have to get a second job to support your teaching, then you’re doing it wrong.

Teachers deserve a fair wage. They should be able to teach and support themselves without fear of worrying whether they’re going to make the rent. To accept anything less as a teacher is to contribute to the deprofessionalization of the practice. Accepting a position teaching for anything less than a living wage hurts us all. It makes teaching seem expendable, it discounts the investments we’ve made in our own learning, and it tells schools we’re willing to settle. We aren’t. If a school or district isn’t willing to pay what you need, go somewhere else (and know that somewhere else might be many miles away).

Third, you’re not saving the children.

You are helping. You are the shoulder on which to cry. You are the one who connects your students with the resources they desperately need. You will not be the one who “saves” them.

To suggest as much ignores the first point above and it robs students of their resiliency and agency. It assumes your world is better or worth more than their own. It assumes a lot, and ignores many important questions. Millions of students who have survived horrible existences have made it through without you. You can help, but they are not waiting for you.

This doesn’t mean you’re not making an impact or providing help when it is needed. It only to say you are not the savior of students, no matter what you were told when you were hired or how much you’re sure your students love you. They might, and you were probably hired because you were highly qualified, but you are not and will never be the savior of your students.

To think otherwise is to pin a deficit on your students and take a load on your shoulders that are both unfair and uncalled for.

Teaching is an amazing profession. It affords adults a window into and a hand in the construction of discovery and learning like few other professions. It is a noble and necessary profession that requires the most caring, prepared, intellectual people it can find. It is not, nor should it ever be, a place for martyrs or those looking to carry a cross.

Anyone who stands in a classroom (of whatever sort) is to be honored by the surrounding community. This person deserves respect, a fair wage, and access to the resources necessary to making our schools temples of discovery and learning. Those temples, though, must not require anyone to bear a cross.

17/365 Back to Dewey 1.5 – ‘The Nature of Freedom’

It may be a loss rather than a gain to escape from the control of another person only to find one’s conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice; that is, at the mercy of impulses into whose formation intelligent judgment has not entered. A person whose conduct is controlled in this way has at most only the illusion of freedom. Actually forces over which he has no command direct him.

– John Dewey

Experience & Education

This post continues a mini-series examining John Dewey’s Experience & Education chapter-by-chapter.

Though one of the shorter of the 8 chapters in this already-short tome, no. 5 packs a punch as I Dewey takes a moment to extoll the virtues of freedom – particularly freedom in schools.

Enforced quiet and acquiescence prevent pupils from disclosing their real natures. They enforce artificial uniformity. They put seeming before being. They place a premium upon preserving the outward appearance of attention, decorum, and obedience. And everyone who is acquainted with schools in which this system prevailed well knows that thoughts, imaginations, desires, and sly activities ran their own unchecked course behind this facade.

What sells this passage for me, which ultimately sums up the chapter perfectly, is Dewey’s own wink to the idea that, “We’ve all been there, right?” While the vast majority of his arguments and reasoning have been rooted in the language of philosophy up to this point, in Ch. 5, Dewey pulls back the curtain a bit to acknowledge that, in progressive education, he’s also describing the types of schools he would have liked to attend.

Freedom in learning, Dewey is writing, allows for action in learning. This, stands in stark opposition to the passivity he identifies in traditional school experiences.

And just as I was starting to wonder about this constant action and the criticism I could see it inviting, Dewey paused for a moment to speak to the importance of pausing. Learning, (true, active learning) my should be followed by moments of stillness and reflection so that students can take the information and knowledge they’ve gathered in their actions and organize it in a way that makes their experiences meaningful and opens questions for further experiences.

Freedom, yes. Freedom without organization and reflection, no.

15/365 Back to Dewey 1.3 – ‘Criteria of Experience’

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

– John Dewey

Experience & Education

This post continues a mini-series examining John Dewey’s Experience & Educationchapter-by-chapter.

If Chapter 2 saw as its purpose the definition of the need for a theory of experience, in Chapter 3, Dewey sets about defining what need happen in education experiences. Before he can do that, though, he sets the “autocratic and harsh” practices of traditional schools in relief against the democratic goals of progressive education.

For me, the poster-worthy section of the chapter comes as Dewey asks whether we would prefer democracy to something else:

Can we find any reason that does not ultimately come down to the belief that democratic social arrangements promote a better quality of human experience, one which is more widely accessible and enjoyed, than do non-democratic and anti-democratic forms of social life? Does not the principle of regard for individual freedom and for decency and kindliness of human relations come back in the end to the conviction that these things are tributary to a higher quality of experience on the part of a greater number than are methods of repression and coercion or force? Is it not the reason for our preference that we believe that mutual consultation and convictions reached through persuasion, make possible a better quality of experience than can otherwise be provided on any wide scale?

Were it not so lengthy, I’d say I’d found the premise of my next tattoo. Schools, Dewey is arguing, should be the training grounds of citizenship and act as the vanguard of humanity and freedom. These are better goals than adequate yearly progress.

If these are our goals, Dewey moves on to explain the types of experiences necessary to help students reach those goals. They must be continuous and promote growth in general.

Those experiences Dewey is attempting to define? They must arouse curiosity, strengthen initiative, and set up desires and purposes sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future, continuity works in a very different way. To judge this, we need only ask toward and into what an experience moves an individual. Simple questions, again, with no easy answers.

Here too, Dewey argues the importance of the adult in helping to shape the experience. There’s no point to having maturity, he writes, if we are not to use that maturity of experience to help craft the conditions whereby students might better learn. It is not enough to say, “Go, have experiences.” Adults are beholden to draw on their knowledge and their own experiences to help turn students toward experiences that might fulfill our democratic goals.

All of this must ask the question, “Have I created something that increases the innate curiosity of my students?” rather than depletes it as is often the case of traditional schooling? This, in the end, is Dewey’s primary criterion for experience. The only way to accomplish this is to understand the student in the moment and work to craft experiences that build on a continuity of understanding toward the goal of increasing that student’s drive to ask and seek more.

Traditional education, Dewey writes, asks students to adapt to school, but fails to adapt to the students.

This is more to do with listening, it seems to me, than speaking. If we wish for our students to ask questions of the world, we must ask questions of our students. Often, when we speak of modeling, we have no trouble modeling how we get to the answer of a problem or how we build the finished product.

What we’re not great at, where teachers are found lacking, is the modeling of how we got to the questions and how we came to shape those questions in useful ways. If we want our students to be the builders of great ideas, they must be the askers of great questions. Too often, classroom questions fail to move past the meager, “What are we supposed to be doing?”

Dewey’s idea of “collateral learning” is diminished as a possibility when this is the case.

A letter from a student teacher to a student teacher

As a final activity, I asked the four student teachers I had the pleasure of supervising write letters to next semester’s group. The instructions were something like, “Write what you wish someone had said to you at the beginning of this experience.” Below is the letter from Jessica Post to those who follow. Jessica is an amazingly creative teacher who is dedicated to improving her practice and connecting to kids. Here’s what she had to say:

Dear Future Student Teachers,
I was very apprehensive before student teaching and was not sure I was
entirely ready for such an intense experience. All I heard from people about this
necessary step in the process was how much work it is and several unfortunate
stories. The thought of planning and teaching four classes was incredibly daunting
and my confidence was shaky. Time flew and before I knew it I was preparing to say
goodbye to the students whom I had grown to know and love. I feel guilty
sometimes when I think about how my 130 students probably taught me more than
I could ever hope to teach them. They continued to show up everyday and stayed
with me when lessons fell flat. They tolerated my cheesy jokes and random
tangents about my pets. They saw me as a teacher before I ever saw it in myself.

Sure, there were days I was tired and dreaded teaching and I imagine, some days,
the students felt the same. But I made it and more importantly I enjoyed it.
Currently, I feel invigorated and excited to have a classroom to call my own. Job
searching and planning for the future is now more daunting than student teaching
could have ever been.

Student teaching gives you the unique opportunity to talk through lessons,
try things you learned in class, and observe the inner workings of a school while
having a plethora of support. I had a wonderful and educational experience and I
sincerely hope that you have similar journeys. I have learned more about myself,
both as a person and as a teacher, during student teaching than I could have learned
in any class. Looking back on the past four months I can pinpoint some key things
that I believed helped me have a positive experience. I share these, in hopes that
they may be of service to you as well.

The most important thing is to accept and remember that everyone’s
experience is different and you should not feel pressured to do things a certain way
or at a certain pace. I observed and co-taught with my CT longer than some of my
colleagues. I had a very gradual transition into solo teaching while other members
of my group jumped in right away. At times I felt slightly inadequate for my sluggish
transition. Did my CT not think I was capable? Am I not qualified to do this? I
pushed my self-doubt aside and accepted the fact that this is what I am comfortable
with and how I learn best. Looking back I am glad I did it this way.

Secondly, make sure to continue doing things you enjoy and ask questions. I
was very busy but I made it a point to hangout with my friends and continue to be
active. This provided some much needed stress relief and made me a more amicable
teacher. Zac and your CT are here to help you and they are really good at answering
questions-especially Zac, he is awesome and you are lucky to have him as a
supervisor. Listen to their suggestions but always be yourself. If something doesn’t
feel right, even if it was their suggestion, don’t do it because if you’re not invested in
it or believe in it, neither will your students.

Accept that some lessons are going to be awesome and others will fall flat.
Always be reflective and critical and write down suggestions as if you were going
to teach that lesson again. I kept sticky notes and stuck them to my lesson plans
to remember what worked, what didn’t, how I would change it, and if the students
liked it. I also went through my CT’s file folders (with his permission of course) and “borrowed” lots of project ideas, rubrics, and assessments. This will undoubtedly be of service to me when I land a job of my own.

For some weird reason I cannot explain, my friends do not find my stories
about the student building forts in the corner of my classroom or my really engaging
lesson that mimics Tosh.O’s web redemptions amusing. Therefore, I befriended
the other members of my cohort and we met every weekend for breakfast. The
first hour we were at the restaurant consisted of eating and sharing stories from
the week. I found these friends are much more responsive to my stories. Then we
would lesson plan, bounce ideas off each other, complain about the TPA, or grade
papers for 2 or 3 more hours. I suggest finding a restaurant is not incredibly busy
and does not mind if you camp out for several hours (I was a server for a long time
so I am very sympathetic to the server’s plight and customer dining etiquette).
Always let them know you intend to stay for a long time and tip your servers well.
Serving PSA aside, this was very beneficial and it provided some much needed help
and support. I strongly suggest this.

Nearing the end of my experience I visited other teachers I have come to
know and respect throughout the school. I observed them and took pictures and
notes of things I liked in their classrooms. In particular I focused on daily routines,
resources, and classroom management. These observations were much more
fruitful than the ones done in practicum because I have experience and specific
things I am looking for. It was also fun to see students with other teachers. Some of
them act completely different than they did in my class. This was very helpful and
allowed me to see other teachers in action (something we won’t get to do as much
when we have our own classrooms).

Try not to get overwhelmed and remember that you are in control of what
you get out of this program. I sincerely wish you the best and I am very excited for
you. I hope you have a wonderful time student teaching and learn a lot from the
experience.