Autodizactic

I was talking to myself as I walked through the halls yesterday morning. It wasn’t the first time and I doubt it to be the last. I happened upon our assistant principal, Dr. Shelley, and said, “Do you know what Jason (our social studies teacher) is talking about in his class today?”
She didn’t and asked what.
He was talking about the flat world…to eighth graders…historically low-achieving eighth graders. It was amazing. Not only that, he opened with a streamed video clip from one of Thomas Friedman’s appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Then, he gave a mini lecture to familiarize his students with the topic. From there, the learning belonged to the students. He asked them questions about the populations of China, India and the US. He asked about graduation rates, industry and the like. He didn’t point them toward the information, he simply supplied them with the question. Our kids still need the guidance.
Tomorrow, he will be presenting a PowerPoint on China and India and how they measure up to the US. I’d showed him Carl Fisch’s now-updated presentation and told him our students had already seen it in my class. His picks up nicely.
To round it out, he has the students identifying the possible impact of developments in China and India and then writing about possible solutions in the US.
A group of students was talking about effects of war and ethnic cleansing in another class with our literacy coach the other day and she asked what they would do if someone came in to their homes and they were forced to leave. Some of the students said they would go to China because they had learned in my class that there were a lot of smart people in China, so it must be safe. Our lit. coach told me of the interesting and engaging conversation that followed.
Now, think about this. I can’t imagine another 8th-grade group that has spent such a chunk of the beginning of their school year talking about, thinking about and soon writing about global economic shift. As they are about to become participants in the global community, it’s probably best that they realize its existance and importance first.
I realize they don’t get the nuances of the process. I realize it’s new and will take much more to develop a reasonable understanding, but what a great foundation for learning. Often, we talk about what our kids are and are not prepared for. Rarely, do we speak TO our kids about what we have a faint idea might lie ahead. I cannot wait to begin blogging with them. I cannot wait for the world to engage them.
More later.

Part of me can’t believing I’m posting this. The rest of me isn’t surprised at all.
My friend Rachel and I went to see the much-anticipated Snakes on a Plane last night. I don’t have a particular affinity toward snakes, planes, Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Marguiles, etc. In talking Rachel into seeing this movie, I finally became exasperated at making my case and just said, “We just have to see this movie.”
If you haven’t or are thinking about it, I will leave that decision up to you. Much in the same way this post is not about the movie, the need to see it last night was not about the movie.
Exiting the theater in extreme states of incredulity, Rachel and I both agreed, SOAP is an incredibly important movie. Incredibly.This movie, on its merits, hadn’t a shot in the world, but then came Web 2.0. The blogosphere erupted, T-shirts were printed, news outlets had no choice but to engage.
I’m not immune to the ironies at work here. A movie that would otherwise have been heavily neglected was brought to the global conscious while policital issues and global crises fail to garner the attention due to them. Still, it is a first major flexing of a muscle that, 5 years ago, was barely forming.
Change consistently happens in unexpected ways. The key to the success here had to be its lack of contrivance. If it had been a promotion originating from big business, I argue Snakes on a Plane would have crashed. Natives no contrivance, it lacks luster. In the same way my educational practices must be authentic, SOAP had to be an authentic phenomenon.
Either way, it is an important movie, perhaps one of the most important we’ve seen in a while, but that importance has nothing to do with the movie. What will be next?
More later.

With two weeks under my belt, the school year is zooming by.
I did an informal survey today, asking my students to tell me what they had learned in the first two weeks of my class. “What have you done that you haven’t done before? Tried that you hadn’t tried before? Learned or thought about that you hadn’t before?”
More than once, a student raised his hand and said something to the effect of, “Last year, we visited the computer lab maybe three times in the entire year.” Three times! I’m finding, not surprisingly, that my kids are not as tech literate as I’d like them to be. In one class, four kids raised their hands when I asked if anyone had ever created a PowerPoint presentation before. They know Myspace and they know the ins and outs of Windows Media Player, but the majority don’t have anything past that. The vision is to move to a community of bloggers the way I read about Konrad Glogowski or Darren Kuropatwa’s classes doing, but it’s going to take time. The legs are still shakey. We’ll get there.
Alan November’s question of “who owns the learning” is in the driver’s seat this year. Today, I did something I wasn’t so sure about. I knew it would be uncomfortable for my students, but I also knew I had to stop spoon feeding them and let them gain confidence. I put up the assignment on the ActivBoard with three bullets:

• Log in to Blackboard.
• Read the announcement.
• Complete and turn in the assignment.

In a Hansel and Gretel-type fashion, I had pebbles of instructions throughout the assignment for guidance, but I told them at the beginning that I would not be answering any questions, that they already knew how to do everything they needed to complete the assignment. It was uncomfortable. One student raised her hand and told me she couldn’t get to the website. “Try typing in the address again,” I said. “I’ve typed it three times already, I’m just not going to do it,” was her reply as she sat back in her seat with her arms crossed. “Ok,” I said, “That’s your choice, but I’m sure the site’s working and I know you don’t want to fall behind. You can do this.” I walked away, but continued to monitor. Sure enough, within minutes, she had found her typing error, fixed it and logged in. It was a step toward self-reliance.
In another class, students would try to get me to answer questions and I would almost answer, but I was cut off by a slew of students who said, “Can I help him, Mr. Chase?” They would get up, walk over and show the students how to complete the assignment. One girl announced, “All right, I’m not getting up after this, so who needs help now?” How many times have I thought that as a teacher. I was monitoring screens with my new Vision access to make sure things were on track. They were.
It felt fantastic. I was so proud. They were building a community.
One other things of note today. I’m not certain of the etiquette on this one. Checking my Bloglines account this morning in a faculty training on how to use the district’s online print shop order form (not so helpful for the paperless classroom), I saw my name in David Warlick’s blog 2 Cents Worth. I literally let out a little scream.
Now, I’ve been published online, in newspapers, magazines, etc., but none of it compared to the excitement of this. Why? A number of reasons. For one, it wasn’t passive. I had written something that made someone else think. For another thing, it meant more people were going to be reading what I wrote. I called my mom. By the end of the day, I had messages from around the globe. I stopped and realized. This is why our students should be blogging, this feeling of connectedness, of authenticity. I shared the whole thing with my classes, explaining how the network operated, how David likely found my blog and so on. All but three of my students had never heard of a blog before, so I took it slowly. It was the first glimmer of realizing the potential in a first-hand manner. Awesome. I feel I’m such the nerd for saying so, but it truly was.
More later.

Nine days, that’s it! I’ve only been in the classroom nine days and I feel like I’m doing good. My kids are using Blackboard, they’ve posted to an online discussion board, they’ve uploaded files, they’re getting closer to where they need to be.
Tonight, Wendy, our Tech Coach, and I worked with my student laptops to install Vision. This means that my room of 20 laptops is much more manageable. I can keep tabs on what they’re looking at, chat with them, demo what I want them to do, the works. It’s one of the pieces I’ve felt was missing.
For the first time, today, I was able to work Wikipedia in to my lesson today. I posted a piece of the entry on Myspace.com on the discussion board. It was all about restrictions being put on the site in schools. My kids were all over the place with what they thought. Not everyone was a fan, all of them understood the dangers. What surprised me last week was the number of kids who said their parents also had Myspace pages. The kids knew it and they knew their parents were watching. Maybe things aren’t as bleak as the frightened masses would like to think.
In the coming weeks, I see great opportunities. I showed my kids the PowerPoint presentation from Karl Fisch’s blog today. Some good conversation came from it. Not only that, Wendy said the kids were asking her about the presentation after they left my class. Something stuck.
I’ve been looking at Thinkfree.com tonight. What an excellent partner for our program that puts computers in homes of students who don’t have them! No longer do parents have to worry that they can’t get the right software. Kids can save their work online and then pull it down. Start a file at school, edit it at home, share it with classmates. It’s a network in a grand sense.
My problem is that I’m so anxious to use these things. I need to pause. I need to slow down.
One of my frustrations when listening to the podcasts and presentations of folks like David Warlick and Will Richardson is that I want examples, I want lessons and projects, I want to see what’s going on with the people who have been there.
Perhaps I should sleep. Take pause. I feel like I can’t afford to pause.
More later.

Reading Doug Johnson’s latest post tonight, I was reminded of the term “change agent.” It’s what teachers must be. It’s our job. How ironic that the change agents of society are so resistent to change. Today, though, I saw things move in the right direction.
We’ve been trying to implement various technologies at Phoenix this year. Some are big ones, initiatives like blogging and podcasts and wikis. Some, like one I experienced today, are small but important. Rather than have each 8th-grade teacher keep his or her own separate parent contact log, we’ve designed an Excel file that lives on the server which is access-restricted. All 8th-grade teachers can open and modify the file that has columns for Date, Last Name, First Name, Calling Teacher and Notes. Not only does it put a record of all teacher-parent contacts in one convenient location, it is sortable and each-to-use. It’s something that’s been possible for years, literally. While I realize it’s simple, I cannot overstate it’s importance. It’s something that I can show to teachers and say, “Look, this is a way you can look to technology to improve how we do things.” Once they are sold on the little things, we’re more open to putting more deep-seeded traditions on the table. Small steps.
The thing is, at the end of the day, our assistant principal called me in to her office about finding the right tech tool to provide basic bulletins on specific student behavior monitoring. This is a conversation she would not have had last year. Even she realized and appreciated that fact.
Some fantastic news, news I’ll say “I told you so” on. Today, Phoenix started a waiting list. A WAITING LIST! The school that was searching for students just last year and worrying about it’s numbers in a much different way, has people waiting to get in. What an amazing team I get to be a part of that has created an environment for students in which such contagious change is possible. Seeing them in action today reminded me of what consumate professionals they are. Hearing their dedication to solving the little problems that arose during Day 1 reminded me of what adept problem solvers they are. Such a healthy place to work.
As more and more outlets enter the DOPA debate, I’ve been asking myself what I can do. I’ve decided to pitch a column to the paper presenting a NeXt Gen educator’s take on the whole thing. With the fair and impartial piece on our dedication to tech integration, it seems a logical follow-up.
With all the changes in humanity, it amazes me the extent to which we are still afraid of what we do not understand.
More later.

Up and getting ready, but I’ve got to post this article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on the NeXt Generation Teacher program. It’s a nice, brief description. Let’s hope Liz follows it throughout the year to keep us on our toes.
More later.

The first day of school is technically here and there’s so much to do. So much. I need to be trying to sleep. Much like the night before a marathon, I have trouble sleeping the night before school starts.
Open house was a success this year. We had more parents come through than I’ve seen in 3 years of teaching. It was odd that I always forget how animated I get when I’m in a classroom. There’s an electricity attached to it. At some point, parents were clapping and muttering “Uh-huh, that’s right.” One mother stopped me and asked if I could give my speech at another district school.
It wasn’t until I got started with the first group that I realized what I was going to say. That’s the improvisor in me. It turns out I was driven by the question Alan November asked us when he came to speak to the NeXt Gen teachers and again when I was up at the BLC06 conference, “Who owns the learning?” Well, it turns out I’m determined to have the students own the learning this year and I told them and their parents that. In fact, I flat out refused to own the learning anymore.
Now, I qualified it by confessing that I would kill myself to make sure they had everything they needed to succeed, but admitted that actually succeeding would be on them. A friend of mine stopped by Phoenix to pick me up Friday night (we’ll not talk about how late I was in my room). Enamored by all of the technology with which we are equipped, she noted, “I guess you really do need to be following the technology, huh?” It triggered something, we shouldn’t be following the technology. Playing catch up will leave us winded and grasping. We have to be on the edge. We have to be pulling technology, thinking of what we need it to do next and then finding ways for our students to demand more rather than patiently waiting to find out what we’re supposed to be excited about next.
Web 2.0 came without a clarion call. We must set our own alarms for what comes next. Speaking of which, I should set mine so that I’m well-rested for what comes next.
More later.

Brain so full! Ideas everywhere!
The first day back was a full one. I gave Steve a hard time at the end of the day for saying we should include more during our initial planning meeting for today. Thank goodness we didn’t.

Having never had any experience with MCREL, I found Wendy’s information interesting. What struck me the most when she was talking about cooperative learning was the practices MCREL encourages are also the practices encouraged by Kagan. I saw quite a bit of overlap. In fact, Kagan makes a point of describing the difference between Kagan Cooperative Learning and generic Cooperative Learning. One example would be the formation of heterogenous groups. Kagan has it down to nearly precise science. It will be interesting to monitor further similarities as Wendy continues to help us understand MCREL.

Sue’s presentation was full of useful information as well. I was particularly interested to hear the statistical data she brought to our attention on the role socio-economic status has on reading development. That knowledge will be helpful in continuing to develop an understanding of where our students are coming from.

As always, her strategies for vocabulary education were invaluable. I wish we had more time! I’m glad she’ll have an opportunity to educate the entire staff on reading across the content areas this year.

I’m pleased with how the Lesson Tuning Protocol was received. Though the time crunch threw quite a wrench in the works, it was evident that some good work was going on. The key will be to schedule the protocol at fixed times throughout the year. Such good discussion. From the beginning of my career, I’ve missed the structured collegial interaction provided by interactions like these. Sue just made the comment that she recognized the tool as being helpful both pre and post. She said it took going through the process to see its value. That’s exactly what I was saying to people as I was finishing up the plan last night.

I have a good feeling about the coming year. So much to be done. Such talented people to do it.
More later.

The Lesson Tuning Protocol was designed by The Institute for Research and Reform in Education as a tool to help teachers work in a collaborative, structured environment to improve lesson plan design and implementation.
The LTP benefits teachers and students by:

• providing a structure for collegial interaction
• creating a space where educators feel safe to discuss and share pedagogies
• allowing teachers the benefit of peer input on given lessons
• introducing a mechanism for building Professional Learning Communities

Expected Outcomes:

• Model use of LTP in larger Professional Learning Communities.
• Integrate cooporative learning / MCREL strategies and content area vocabulary tools to work within your content area to develop a lesson plan you will be able to use this year in your classroom.
• Work within small PLCs to carry out the LTP with a randomly selected lesson plan.
• Post a comment to this blog entry with your thoughts/questions about the LTP.

To learn more about IRRE and LTP:

• Click Here (Word Document)
• or Here (PDF)
• or even Here

I know I sound like a broken record on this whole Hargreaves issue, but I’m sure I’ll find something newer and shinier soon. Until then, a report out by Education Next has a ranking not of state performance but on state standards and how they measure up nationally.
Interesting stuff.
Proficiency is a tricky word.
Florida pulled a C, nothing like striving to be average.
What this could point to is the idea that the FCAT is overly lenient in its assessment when compared to a national assessment. If this is the case, then the students who are ranked “proficient” according to state standards are below par nationally. What are we setting our students up for?
On the plus side, the bar’s not quite low enough to trip over. On the minus side, it’s a pretty challenging limbo. Over the next few years, it will be interesting to see if the legislature takes the time to put it at high jump level.