Category Archives: curriculum

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On Their Own

I have to admit to feeling somewhat disconnected this fall. After all, I’ve taught for most of the past 30 years, recently at Fredericksburg Academy as the instructional tech coordinator and an English teacher. Fall can be difficult for ex-teachers who love being in the classroom.

Today, a colleague shared with me an email and screenshot of work her kids were doing. She had sent it out to the entire faculty and then realized I might enjoy seeing what the students were up to. She was right. So cool.

Here’s her email:

Here is a little story about young, independent, tech savvy students overcoming their obstacles and taking responsibility. Blair is absent today, but she emailed me this morning to tell me that she had made arrangements with her partner about the paper that they were supposed to write together in class. Now, during class both students are typing on the same Google doc at the same time and chatting with each other in the Google chat feature. I thought that it was cool that I could check in on and literally watch students as they worked in my classroom, but this is even better. The best part: they set this up on their own.

Thanks, @jclarkevans for keeping me in the loop. I especially enjoy this coming from Blair, a student who claimed she just “didn’t love” using the laptops two years ago when I taught her ninth grade! (However, she was the one most intrigued by my talk about digital identity.) We never know where our students will go when we allow them to figure things out on their own. And teachers like Jennifer allow this to happen.

 
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I can’t change the world, but…

I once told Sheryl Nussbaum Beach I didn’t feel moved to change the world.

We were chatting about all things education–and how some folks are comfortable presenting to large crowds (I’m not), and some feel compelled to change the world of schooling (I wasn’t).

At the time, I felt that my personal line in the sand, which I drew in the sandbox of a classroom, was enough. I could individualize instruction, buy netbooks for my kids, create an inviting atmosphere, offer a variety of ways to assess children, and focus on what worked.

I became comfortable in my own small, corner of the world.

And then last spring, I found myself taking over conversations in department meetings, dinner parties, and family gatherings. Whenever the chats turned to school (and specifically social media), I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. My frustration with how we “do” schools bubbled over. During our last week of vacation, my uncle turned to me mid-rant and said, “Ok then, how do we fix it? How do we make schools better?”

I didn’t have all the answers, but I found myself listing everything that matters to me: giving students voice; empowering teachers to work together and reflect upon their practice; offering choice in curriculum and ways to learn; allowing charter schools (with proper direction and guidance) to flourish; changing the way we sort and rank students.

Ok, so I care. Changing the system seems overwhelming at times, but it’s worth it. Our kids deserve more from us.

These are the folks I’m following these days, watching and learning from them:

Coalition of Essential Schools

Big Picture Schools

Ideal Schools

IDEA

Not perfect, perhaps. But at least they are doing the work and not just talking about it. Who else should be highlighted?

 
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The message

Gavel
For years, I’ve been telling my students I don’t grade for effort.

“It doesn’t matter how hard you work,” I’d say, “if the end result isn’t up to speed.”

This I would say this after my long discussions with them about the journey–and the process–and the learning–being what mattered in my class. I mean, I’ve been pushing Alfie for a long time.

Yeah, talk about sending a mixed message to my students.

Today I was reading Seth Godin’s book Linchpins and the proverbial light bulb went off in my head: effort, of course I want effort to matter.

See, this is where I was coming from. I have students who argue that even though they didn’t edit the paper, complete the paper, or finish reading the book, that any effort they put into the assignment should count. And I resented that they wanted credit for not really working, for turning in half an effort, for not really caring about our work. So I would tell them, “effort doesn’t count.”

But I also have fully capable students who “do school” with ease. They write well and produce competent (but not necessarily inspiring) essays; they read well and quickly; and they complete all assignments within an appropriate time frame. These are the students who generally earn good grades–but it’s not because they care about their work (though some do). Often, these are the students who have been taught how to follow the rules and do what they are told, as Godin says. And I was rewarding them for that. Plus, there may have been other unintended consequences.

My epiphany was when I realized that many of these students are no more eager to learn than the other group. The products just come more easily to them.

The students I want to encourage are these: the ones who write papers with original thought, even though they may not be grammatically correct; take longer to finish the book because they’ve put post-it notes and margin notes wherever they stopped to think; ask questions in class that make me ponder another scenario, a new direction, or a fresh approach to what we are doing. The ones who show effort because they are curious.

And, in fact, I do give those kids credit for effort. Rather, I give them credit for wanting to learn, even if they haven’t quite mastered the outcomes yet. I loved when one young man stayed after class to tell me how one of the characters in our book was “a man’s man, isn’t he Mrs. Carter Morgan.” What 13-year old uses that phrase? Or when a young woman told me what she valued most from my class was learning to be patient with her own learning. This from an athlete, an A-typer who has little patience for incompetence in any form. Or the quiet one who came to class grinning, sharing with me her “perfect thesis” she had thought of late the night before, trying to fall asleep.

As I’ve written before, my model of schooling would be a collaborative means of assessing growth that Sylvia Stralberg Bagley from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles  describes here:

…they [students] learn to view assessment as a valuable tool for growth rather than merely an arbitrary judgment handed down by someone in authority. (SS Bagley – The Australian Educational Researcher, 2010 – aare.edu.au)

This recent article comparing the judging method used on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance” to possible ways we can work with our students also resonates with me. The judges do not, the author says, “reduce their verdict to a judgment.”

And with my own long history of teacher baggage, I need to be sure I am clear with the messages I send.

image: flickr/photos/walkn/3314689121/

 
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Tool Geek? No, Learning Geek….

A recent chat with @snbeach, @baldy7, @datruss and Rob from NH on a PLP info session has me thinking. I mentioned that I got “into all this” (never sure how to categorize these huge shifts in thinking and learning anymore) because I loved playing with “tools.”

Tony said that wasn’t the case for him. But I wonder how many are more like me?

I remember the first time I put my hands on a computer. I was taking a re-certification in 1985 to teach high school again after taking off a few years with my children. A local college offered a class in Basic programming, so I signed up without fully understanding what I was getting into.

Actually, I had never touched a computer, and I was an English major (fully avoiding math and science whenever possible).

Three weeks later, I remember the frustration, the uncertainty, and the exhaustion I felt, trying to use the left side of by brain to logically determine what a loop was and how to write a simple piece of code. On my own for the most part, there was no hand-holding in this course.

Uploaded on May 21, 2009 by Temari 09

By the time I finished,  though, I had learned to write a short grading program that worked.

And I felt a sense of accomplishment.

That one step took me to the next: buying my own computer, figuring out how to manage DOS and Windows apps, and  installing peripherals. I was having so much fun figuring it all out and learning something new, totally in the flow.

And then something amazing happened. I was given a Mac to use in my journalism class, the first computer to be used in the county for any instruction. I began to see the power of turning kids loose and taking control of their own learning. One boy learned Illustrator and shared it with the class; another became a graphics design expert and landed an after-school job. Many began finding other strengths in writing, publishing, and advertising.

In a few short years, I was online in a text-based web, texting with someone from Europe, who jumped onto my screen. The possibilities for my classroom were rumbling around in my head. By 2000, I was back in school in a M.Ed program in Instructional Tech. In 2004, I started blogging (first trying to install Manilla on our school server); then I discovered Twitter in 2007, and my world shifted.

Isn’t this what we want for our students today? To want to work through problems, concepts, or issues? To be curious enough to see how things work? To create?

My circuitous path led me to new ways of thinking about how my students learn and what I want schools to “look like” (if, indeed, we need to have schools at all). It all started with an interest in figuring out a tool, but it’s moved to how these tools–or now these online social technologies–change the way we live in this networked world.

What has changed your thinking? How can our interactions with each other and the tools make meaningful change in the life of our students?

Uploaded on January 16, 2008
by seeks2dream

 
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Curiosity killed the …..

What makes a person curious?

I wonder about this constantly. I especially think about this when I’m teaching as it seems curious children are more successful. And if that’s true, what does that mean in the classroom?

This article and the research it pulls from have challenged my thinking (or at least given me pause). From Professor Steven Dutch’s research:

Curiosity and creativity in the fully adult sense are hard work and are acquired tastes, just like running is an acquired taste….

Even the most creative people spend most of their time tinkering. That’s probably a hallmark of real creativity – a restless curiosity. Noncurious people tinker only occasionally and with only short-range goals in mind. (They pay for it. I once visited a man who spent the entire time lamenting how miserable his life had been and how lonely he was. I looked around the house and saw not a single book or any sign of a hobby. No wonder he was miserable, and lonely too. Who would want to spend time with such a person?) The creative person’s constant tinkering first of all yields lots of unexpected insights, and second sharpens the ability to recognize potentially significant new results.

Since I haven’t come up with the definitive answer (and when I do, I’ll bottle and sell it), I’ll share an opposing view from this blog I found recently called Creating Brains. The author writes about creativity and curiosity, often quoting Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of my favorite researchers.

Good stuff.

Original image: ‘curious roy’
flickr.com/photos/51035611977@N01/17200747
by: Stefano Mortellaro
 
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Survival Skill #2

Back to Tony Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap and some thoughts. Networking

The Second Survival Skill: Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by influence.

 So if we need to be able to collaborate across virtual networks, what does that mean to the classroom? Wagner quotes Annmarie Neal from Cisco, saying: "It's  hard for people in the U.S. to work globally because they are so used to being in control. It's hard for many to let go and trust people to do the work, to truly empower people to achieve results, not just to complete tasks…"
When students work individually rather than in teams, they are used to determining the finished product themselves–there is no need to rely on others or use the skill of "leading by influence." This skill is "how citizens make change today in their local communities–by trying to influence diverse groups and then creating alliances of groups who work together toward a common goal."
He says we need young people who can "work effectively with others and understand and respect differences–not just in our own country but around the world."
    However, what keeps holding me back here is, as he says,  the need to shape students into workers…not something independent schools have given much thought to. Our emphasis has been college preparation, establishing courses with intellectual stimulation and rigor–with little concern, frankly, to what kind of "worker" the school is producing.
    Yet, the world has changed. Who could have imagined General Motors near collapse, newspapers across the globe shutting down, major businesses in banking, insurance, and electronics closing their doors.
Peter Gow addresses some of those concerns in a fine post here, where he talks about what makes a great curriculum.

Intellectually challenging and relevant–to the
individual needs as well as the lives of students–seem fundamental to
me as characteristics of excellent curriculum.

Wagner says "the portrait of the New world of Work that is emerging is a complex one." Indeed. And this makes our job as teachers developing curriculum even more challenging.

image uploaded on January 9, 2005
by phrenologist