Tag: learning

92/365 Teachers Should Probably be Readers

The same way that we must want for adults what we want for students, we must do as adults what we would like students to do.

Particularly – reading.

In the schools we need, teachers not only encourage literacy and learning, but they participate in it themselves as well.

Every school has one teacher who can point to the filing cabinet drawer when you walk into her room. “That drawer,” she will tell you, “has eighth grade in it.” Pointing to the other drawers, she will explain that the lesson plans and overheads for other years are all stocked away in the even that she be moved to teach another grade the next year.

Sadly, many schools have many versions of this teacher.

The high-tech version of this teacher can point to the flash drives with text files and powerpoints archived across grade levels.

Teachers must seek and engage in reading for the same reason we want our students to read – to find new ideas, challenge old ideas, and build on what they already know.

Admittedly, given the papers that need grading, the lessons that need planning, and the resources that need creating, picking up a book about teaching is not the sexiest of out-of-school activities. The right books, though, could mean finding new practices that alleviate the load of traditional teaching.

While toolkit books that preach this or that newest “best practice” can be helpful for a quick top-off when teachers are struggling to figure out how to make their next units of study interesting, they aren’t the best reading. These books are the paperback romance novels of the education world. They offer quick escapes from the problems of practice and don’t ask their audiences to think too much about what’s happening or why.

The education books worth the time it takes to read them, engage teachers in thinking about why and how they do what they do in their classrooms or other learning spaces. Like the best literature, they are complex, thought-provoking, and devoid of easy answers. Readers must also do the work. Dewey, Friere, Lawrence-Lightfoot, Holt, Dweck and many more present ideas about education and schools that ask us to evaluate our preconceptions and remain open to the new worlds they would have us create through out practice.

Admittedly, the time crunch mentioned above is a barrier to teacher reading in the same way the hyper-scheduled student struggles to find time to read anything other than the chapters assigned by his teachers.

Schools can help here:

  • Interested faculty can organize a reading group that meets regularly over a common planning period, after school, or during lunch.
  • In spaces where common interest cannot be mustered, teachers can turn to online spaces like goodreads.com for communities of readers, book suggestions, and conversations about what they read.
  • School leaders who understand the value of common language in building culture can ask faculties to study texts they’ve selected as speaking to the mission, values, and goals of a school in order for all concerned to build an understanding of the common vision of the space.
  • Ten minutes of every faculty meeting could be opened up to faculty members sharing pieces of something they’ve read in the interim since the last time everyone got together.

If we want schools to be temples built to the exchange of ideas, we must create the spaces necessary for those exchanges and we must be constantly working to access, synthesize, and consider new ideas. Reading, though not the only way to access these ideas, can be a strong gateway drug for learning.

91/365 What if Teachers Acted Like Students? #YearAtMH

I’ve been asked by Sam Chaltain to contribute to the conversation over at EdWeek around the series A Year at Mission Hill. I’ll be offering a take on each episode and interpreting some of the research that might be relevant and trying to make it practical. This piece was originally posted at EdWeek.

To many progressive educators, answering the opening question to Chapter 3 of A Year at Mission Hill is as easy as turning to the father of progressive education, John Dewey.

To Dewey, the mind is brought to life through experiences, and more specifically, experiences that foster continued curiosity.

“There is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education,” Dewey wrote in his 1938 work Experience & Education, and this has been the guiding principle of progressive education efforts ever since.

Just as important to curating actual experiences for students, teaching and learning must focus on building on the curiosity of students as they move forward.

We see this in the work of Mission Hill teachers as they introduce their students to the natural sciences and the study of the world around them.

Sometimes, it can be as simple as looking, and asking a question.

In his book Making Learning Whole, David Perkins describes a kindergarten teacher who plays the “explanation game” with her students. As they examine an abstract painting, the teacher asks her students, “What do you notice?” and follows those answers with “What makes you say that?”

To many, this approach will bear a remarkable resemblance to the opening steps of the scientific method – and it should. Curating learning experiences that augment students’ curiosities about the world is as simple as asking them to take note of the world around them, explain why they said what they said, and then taking it a step further to develop and work to answer the new questions these observations raise.

In Place-Based Education, David Sobel urges teachers to “make your students’ experiences so good that parents won’t tolerate boring textbooks.”

This is a worthy goal, and I’d suggest it can be done one better, by making teachers’ and students’ experiences so good that they won’t tolerate anything less.

We see this as part of the embedded process at Mission Hill when its teachers begin their work for the year off-site and working collaboratively. As they plan to help their students experience the natural sciences, they themselves are surrounded by nature. As they plan ways for their students to work collaboratively and cross-disciplinarily, they themselves are working together and across disciplines.

Perkins writes that this type of engagement of teachers as learners and members of the learning community is key. “Remembering that the instructor is part of the team too,” he explains, “the instructor circulates all the time providing individualized guidance, a far cry from the sage on the stage model.”

All of this – building experiences, inviting curiosity, noticing the world, working beyond boring – help Mission Hill Teacher Jacob Wheeler achieve the goal he has for every one of his students.

“Knowing how to find the information and how to solve the problem is what’s most important for me,” Wheeler says — and Dewey would agree.

One final benefit flows from this approach. The language describing it embodies the work of Carol Dweck and her theories of fixed vs. growth mindsets. By asking students and teachers to notice problems, ask questions, and then take the freedom to work to find those answers, teachers help their students and themselves to develop mindsets of growth as learners.

Constructed in deep and vibrant ways, these experiences can have all members of a learning community asking Dweck’s question: “Why waste time worrying about looking smart or dumb, when you could be becoming smarter?”

Learning Grounds Ep. 15: Darren Hudgins and Bud Hunt Talk Learning Design Challenges

In this episode of Zac talks with Darren Hudgins and Bud Hunt about design challenges for learning with a focus on teacher development. The guys also talk risk aversion in education and where it might start.

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69/365 I am Filled with Hope by the Future of Education

My sister Kirstie is studying to be a health teacher at SIU-E. A few weeks ago, she sent me the text message below. I am already an incredibly proud big brother. My sisters and my brother are the three most amazing people I know. That said, my pride in Kirstie’s words, her learning and her commitment to helping those coming after her has its own space in my heart. In a week where cynicism and coursework have ruled most days, returning to this text has been helpful.

Today I was teaching yoga at Glenwood middle school to a few of the girls pe classes, and I had them do an activity to help with positive thinking and so I told them to write a list of 5 things they like about themselves. A good amount of the girls didn’t have too much trouble, but there were far too many of them that thought it was difficult. The saddest piece of paper I found had only the word “none” written on it. I think that the positive reinforcement needs to start at home, but why can’t our schools help children love themselves too? I believe in what you’re doing Zachary, I hope you do make a difference for every student and help make school a better place for everyone. Middle school is tough, but it shouldn’t be so hard that a 12 year old can’t name one thing they like about him or herself.

I am sad that my little sister has to feel and build her understanding of the places where the world falls down, but I feel much better knowing she’s out there helping to pull it back up.

32/365 Learning Must be Non-Negotiable

There’s a trend I’ve noticed in education. Maybe you’ve noticed it too. Teachers are no longer teaching “students.” They suddenly find themselves teaching “learners.” What’s more, with this shift, many teachers find they aren’t even teachers any more, but have taken on the new title of “educators.”

Many times, it is easier to change what we call something and then point to it as innovation than it is to change what we do. One major issue with calling students “learners” one day and keeping them in the same classrooms with the same people doing the same things they were doing the day before is the ease with which the title change can be conflated with a change in what is actually going on. I could insist that people start calling me a male model tomorrow, but this would do little to attract the attention of agents, magazines, etc., if I didn’t also change how I live my life and what I deem important.

Such is the case with calling all people enrolled in a class “learners.” It’s aspirational, and that’s admirable, but changing what you call a thing means nothing if you don’t also change the way you do that thing. What’s more, changing what you call the thing can often mean a loss in urgency regarding changing how you do the thing.

Learning, on the other hand must be non-negotiable. It’s subtle difference, but a key one.

I don’t care if our students are learners, so long as our students are learning.

The latter is more difficult to put hands on, perhaps this is why we’ve settled for the shift in name and decided to qualify the earning of that name with passing scores on exams of questionable worth regarding how appropriate the name might be.

It seems to me, the better questions come from teachers asking themselves, “Are my students learning?” and following that question with, “How can I tell?”

Building on that, the best schools and teachers are the ones that help students ask, “Am I learning?” and following that question with “What am I learning, and how can I use it?” Exceptional schools move out of the way so that students can inform teachers’ professional practice through the identification of what they’re curious about and what they’d like to create.

These questions prove to be difficult because they bring with them the possibility of negative answers. Both teacher and student is liable to answer, “no” at any stage of the game. Such answers are invaluable and frustratingly so. They represent the necessity of re-evaluating what we’ve been doing, asking what isn’t working, and then building something new with the knowledge we might need to go through this whole process time and again as we move toward learning.

Calling a student a “learner,” represents no such problems. It’s hard to imagine a case in which a person would reject the label no matter the presence or absence of proof of its fit. Walk in to any classroom and ask a student, “Are you learning?” and you’re likely to get myriad responses. Ask that same student, “Are you a learner?” and it’s much more likely you’ll be answered in the affirmative.

Still, the schools we need are not schools where students proudly introduce themselves as learners to those passing through, but they are schools where those passing through have no doubt that the work, play, and creation they see are acts of learning.

5/365 I’ve Been Prepping My Class

As a wrote months ago, I’ve been asked to teach a course as part of Antioch University New England’s Next Generation Learning M.Ed. program. More specifically, I have the pleasure of teaching a course called Social Media (I’m not kidding). While I’ve been collecting pieces of planned implementation since I was asked to lead the course, the last few weeks have had me seriously planning for the course’s launch.

I’d forgotten the joy of planning, the thrill of sitting down and saying, “How will I organize this pathway to learning?” and then setting about outlining the thing.

Two days ago, I tweeted out this link to the modified UbD for the course asking for comments on my plans.

Today, I offered up to the social networking populous this link to the course’s syllabus – again, asking for comments.

The plans for things are to take the course beyond Antioch’s LMS and into a more public forum. Namely, we’ll be using Peer 2 Peer University’s platform for the course. This will allow for a greater plurality of voices and situate the course in the type of social environment we’ll be talking about, rather than the (high) walled garden of other course.

My hope is participants will be a mix of those students who are completing the Antioch program for their degree, those who are dropping in to take the course for credit and those P2PU users who want to join in the learning for the learning’s sake. We shall see.

What is for sure is the excitement I’ve felt these past few weeks prepping materials and trying to craft something that goes well above and beyond those online courses I once encountered. I know it’s not going to go perfectly. Everything is about iteration. Still, it will be a new adventure. So, check it out and join in.

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.

Thoughts on “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”

Outside of the general curriculum of my doc program, I’m trying to pick up other texts from time to time. One of those texts has been “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning by Eleanor Duckworth.

Duckworth, a professor at HGSE and student of Jean Piaget, retired from professing at the end of last year. I missed taking her class and continue to kick myself.

Before I get into the book, a moment of the evidence of the kind of character Duckworth possesses. Standing in line last year for the Harvard-wide commencement ceremony, my friend and I were joined by Duckworth dressed in full doctoral regalia. She told us she’d never walked with students before and figured this would be her last chance. She stood in the sun with us as we waited to file in and sat amongst us during the ceremony. To my knowledge, she was the only faculty member to do so and was driven simply by curiosity.

“The Having of Wonderful Ideas” opens the book and presents several key ideas for how people can approach teaching other people. Not the least of these is Duckworth’s statement, “The having of wonderful ideas is what I consider the essence of intellectual development.” I can’t imagine a better stated purpose for teaching and learning.

Below are some key points:

He was at a point where a certain experience fit into certain thoughts and took him a step forward…The point has two aspects: First, the right question at the right time can move children to peaks in their thinking that result in significant steps forward and real intellectual excitement; and, second, although it is almost impossible for an adult to know exactly the right time to ask a specific question of a specific child–especially for a teacher who is concerned with 30 or more children–children can raise the right question for themselves if the setting is right. Once the right question is raised, they are moved to tax themselves to the fullest to find an answer.

It’s a dangerous notion not all teachers are willing to adopt – that children might be able to ask the right questions or that teachers might not know the right questions.

Duckworth has some guidance for the creation of “the right time” for the development of these questions:

There are two aspects to providing occasions for wonderful ideas. One is being willing to accept children’s ideas. The other is providing a setting that suggests wonderful ideas to children–different idas to different children–as they are caught up in intellectual problems that are real to them.

and

When children are afforded the occasions to be intellectually creative–by being offered matter to be concerned about intellectually and by having their ideas accepted–then not only do they learn about the world, but as a happy side effect their general intellectual ability is stimulated as well.

and

If a person has some knowledge at his disposal, he can try to make sense of new experiences and new information related to it. He fits it into what he has. By knowledge I do not mean verbal summaries of somebody’s else’s knowledge.

The key sentiment here and throughout the text is listening to children – listening to their thinking, their questions, and the manners by which they work to answer their questions.

Doing this requires a relinquishment of the notion that all children should be doing and learning the same things at the same times based on their born-on date. It’s a tough idea to relinquish and an easy one to cling to when standards, textbooks and curricula are all built to suggest chronology, not development, should decide rule the day-by-day learning.

It’s not impossible to create such spaces in district with more stringent requirements. Subversion of the system need not mean destroying it. Much can be accomplished through co-opting language. If Duckworth is correct, the right questions will arise. If curricula are correct, the standards will be uncovered by the naturally-occurring questions.

Listening (to understand) is necessary.

For more on Duckworth, watch her HGSE commencement speech below or head to Constructing Modern Knowledge 2013 in NH July 9-12.

Learning Grounds Ep. 007: In which Bud Hunt and Zac talk maker spaces, community, and grilled cheese

In this episode, Zac sits down with Bud Hunt for our first-ever pubcast, and the two discuss the need for maker spaces, teacher agency, and the building of the two.

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Three things I wish I’d said to shift thinking about assignment deadlines

I’d asked for push back. Toward the end of my second keynote address in as many days at the Technology Integration & Instruction for the 21st Century Learner (TICL) conference in Storm Lake Iowa. I had the audience stand up, mix about, and share their thinking on what I’d just said.

The morning’s topic was “digital literacy” and I was highlighting projects I’ve designed as a teacher and completed as a student.

“What’s the ugly?” I’d asked, “What did you hear this morning that you don’t agree with.”

One of the participants raised his hand and said his partner understood the importance of choice, but wasn’t jiving with the portion of the writing project I’d described where students were allowed to set their own due dates.

He was a business teacher, you see, and in the business world you aren’t allowed to miss deadlines. Letting students set their own schedules would mean missed deadlines, and that wouldn’t do.

In the moment I agreed with the teacher. He was teaching a business class. If meeting deadlines was a skill firmly planted in his curriculum, then perhaps more freedom wasn’t the answer in that arena.

Since then, I’ve had some opportunity to think more on the matter, and my answer was wrong.

1. Most of the undesirable habits we say won’t fly in the business world probably will. I’ve heard enough stories from friends in the business sector of employees who don’t meet deadlines or need a bit of extra time on a project. Those employees, it turns out, don’t lose their jobs. “You won’t be able to get away with this in the workplace,” is teacher code for, “Because I said so.” While it would be easy to suggest that taking a more hands-off approach could lead to further reinforcement of bad business practice, you need only survey the current global business playing field to realize the strict hierarchical, authoritarian approach hasn’t led us anywhere good.

2. Make deadlines worth meeting. The auditorium wasn’t the place to have this conversation. If I’d been talking with this teacher in a breakout session or one-on-one it would have been an excellent opportunity for the difficult conversation around the goals of deadlines. In adults’ daily lives, if we’re playing the game correctly, we’re faced with requirements of our jobs that ask us to keep up with deadlines. We meet them because they are the terms of staying connected with something we’ve determined is important and valuable in our lives. Assignments and class deadlines often assume students are playing by the same rules and with the same intent. Often they aren’t. Assignment to a class or registration to fulfill a credit requirement isn’t the same as jumping administrative hoops as part of a job you’ve chosen and find intrinsically rewarding.

3. Learning is the goal. If students aren’t learning, the question shouldn’t be “How can I lock this class down so they have no choice but to complete the assignments?” It should be, “What’s going on in my instructional practice that’s turning kids off to learning?” It’s a more sensitive and ego-deflating question, but it runs a far greater risk of improving and increasing learning than racheting up the perceived punishments of coming to class.

Of course, all of this is contingent on whether or not the teacher in the audience was keen on a convervation or had decided this was the reason he was looking for to discount anything else that might shift his thinking.

I tend to assume the best in people, and I’m sorry I missed the chance for the conversation.