Not So Distant Future

A group at our campus is starting a professional learning community.

I’m cross posting the post below from the blog we have started, which we aren’t quite ready to share “prime time” but are using for our organizing thoughts, because I thought it would have interest outside of our campus.

———— 

In our meeting this week, Jeff brought up the idea of curriculum AS relationship, and the importance of relationship as the foundation for reaching students.

In his book, The Passionate Learner, Robert L. Fried talks about the importance of that relationship and redefining curriculum.

He makes an interesting comment that he observed when struggling with the idea of “curriculum” and observing his students:

“The content of the lessons seems to pass through them, much of the time, like an indigestible substance.”

Throughout the chapter he talks about the collaboration that has to occur between teachers and students. 

“Curriculum for the passionate learner has everything to do with whether or not the relationships are right, whether teachers and learners feel that together they are shaping the learning that goes on.  This cooperation is necessary even when teachers feel pressure from external forces. . . .”

This is something we talked about in our meeting this week–how to make this happen even when feeling pressured by the demands of content driven testing systems and structures in our schools.  

Fried has an inspiring way of looking at it:

“When we view curriculum as a function of relationships, we bring it to our classrooms and lay it out, like a comfortable and useful garment.  We allow ourselves and our students to make it belong to us, to adjust it, to restyle it, to enliven it, to infuse it with meaning.  Such ownership increases the likelihood that young people will approach the knowledge and skills to be learned as active, critical, thoughtful investigators, rather than as passive recepters (or rejecters).”

He goes on to say,

“We are so accustomed to thinking of curriculum as “a body of knowledge” or a “grouping of concepts and theories” or as “the scope and sequence of instructional material,” that it is easy to forget that such definitions, absent an active partnership between teacher and students, are little more than words on a page.”

I like what he has to say because I think it goes even beyond just establishing a good relationship with students–but more something like collaborating with them on how the curriculum unfolds itself–something which makes them more involved and less of passive participants.  I’d be really interested in discussing what that would look like in practice.

This leads me to another question.   I was talking to one of my friends yesterday–a former teacher–and she asked if students were going to be part of our professional learning community itself.  It was a good question and something I hadn’t really considered.   Would that be a possibility?   Is there a way to invite some student participation in?  Would it be helpful to our group’s goals?

How can we enter into a different relationship with students regarding curriculum?  By the way, Fried’s chapter is well worth the read.

In a passionate post about school change, Chris Lehmann pondered a speech he gave in Oregon yesterday:

“I want to tell them that we have to question every single system we have in our schools. I want to tell them that everything should be on the table. All of it.”

A number of us watched his presentation via Ustream yesterday and in the chat room there was quite a bit of discussion about how to focus more on the process of learning and less on the bureacracy and status quo. We talked about how we teach the way we were taught, and wondered what it takes to “put everything on the table.”

I’ve been reading Innovation by Curtis Carlson and William Wilmot, which talks about some of the barriers teams face when trying to innovate. While I don’t believe all business-speak fits schools, some of the points the authors make about implementing change are important.

“When faced with significant change, many team members are gripped with FUD–fear, uncertainty, and doubt. . . .It means that people are frightened. They do not yet see their places in the innovative activity. They can’t visualize its success and they are unable to see how their contributions will be valued. People feel disconnected from their strengths and the new vision.”

In reading the book I’ve been pondering how we often don’t approach change in terms of “teams” in schools. Very often it’s top down, not grass-roots. What an incredible environment an administration has created when teachers feel empowered to bring in grass-roots change and propose ideas. But we often neglect to build supportive teams and communicate with those teams throughout the change process, and to be inclusive of all the stakeholders. Sounds simple, but of course in reality, in a large school, it’s highly difficult.

Carlson and Wilmot point out that for leaders, “It helps to view resistance, such as skepticism and FUD, as gifts. . . . Concerns usually have a kernel of truth that must be understood and addressed.”

The authors feel that champions(like Chris) have to listen carefully to the fears, and hear what is behind them in order to reframe the conversation.

Another significant area that Carlson and Wilmot discuss is not only the need to involve key players as I mentioned earlier, but to recognize that people want to achieve and contribute at what they do, and they want the freedom and empowerment to do it. So creating an atmosphere of good communication, respect for the talent in your building, and empowering individuals and teams to carry things forward is important.

As school leaders, librarians, technologists and administrators, how do we put our messages out there to the community in a positive, collaborative, invitational and empowering manner? SLA has provided an excellent model of how that sort of leadership not only helps one individual school and one individual body of students, but helps all of us “put everything on the table” and rethink what we do.

In his keynote “Reinventing School for the 21st Century“, podcast from Goodland Kansas in August (which I’m finally listening to this week during my morning commute), Wes Fryer asked the educators present,

“Why are you here? . . . If you’re here to positively transform the lives of children, if you’re here to make a difference every day, if you want when the children walk out of the room at the end of the day or the class period their brains to be different because of what they’ve done then stay. . . . You can change your mind today. You can choose to empower you and transform them to change the world. . . . You are tremendously powerful.”

We have to empower ourselves and others to “put everything on the table” because most of all–our children deserve the best we can do. Not what we used to do, or what we’re able to do, or what was done “to” us, but the very best we can do–the best we can create–the best we can envision.

So what next? Speak? Publish? Form teams on our campuses? Believe that we can create a grass-roots effort? Talk to our students? Form professional learning communities? Network? So many ways we are getting started!

Image credit–http://www.flickr.com/photos/22983550@N02/2349593475/

Sometimes it just takes the seed of an idea to inspire others.

Last night I was checking in on Twitter, feeling a little discouraged, and fellow librarian Jenny Luca just happened to tweet that her students’ live Project Global Cooling concert was just starting their broadcast from Australia. This was a concert they organized for free, donated their time to on a weekend, and broadcast around the world for free via Ustream.

If you’re not familiar, Project Global Cooling was the seed of an idea sown last summer by Clay Burell–an attempt to interest students in hosting world-wide concerts to, as Clay wrote, “implant a consciousness of climate change” around the world.

And now, last night, I was watching the fruits of that seed–students who not only inspired their own school, but inspired artists to appear for free, and even received a letter from a government official in Australia honoring their efforts. And Clay’s site lists other efforts going on around the world in the next week or two.

Sometimes we cast seeds out into the world-wide garden and don’t know what will come of them, or if anything ever does. But seeing the work these students around the world are doing to participate in something larger than themselves makes me believe that it is important for all of us to keep casting those seeds of the idea that we can each of us, no matter our age, make a difference.

Thanks Clay and Jenny for sharing your efforts.

Image Credit goes to Jenny Luca’s school.

When I wrote my previous post, I didn’t know I’d soon have a perfect illustration of what learning looks like for younger students who have a natural joy for learning.

In The Passionate Learner, Robert L. Fried points out that in preschool or kindergarten learners:  “Curiosity is everywhere.  Questions abound.  Pride and delight in learning are everyday occurrences.  The children draw and paint seemingly without inhibition. . . . They wonder constantly about why things are the way they are.”

I had the opportunity to babysit my nephews, one in preschool, the other in elementary school, last night.   Upon arriving, I noticed my older nephew was sitting on the couch with some yarn, quickly weaving it together.  He was delighted to show me a basket that he had braided the yarn for and then woven together.   By the time we finished talking about it, he had woven another long strand together which he was eager to show me.

Meanwhile, my younger nephew pulled us out to the driveway and street, to show us his latest handiwork.   While he was outside, through some inspiration that we will never know(he’s 3), he had used his Easter chalk and written a trail of letters that spilled out of the driveway, and wound across the asphalt for quite a ways.   He proudly showed us and then carefully proceeded to read each of the 100 or so letters that he had drawn on his letter pathway.

Neither of the boys had been given an assignment to do this “work”, though they were using skills they were learning in school.   They had just taken what they were learning, applied their own creativity and passion for it, and created these wonderfully spontaneous works both out of their own desire to do it, and out of a desire to share.   As my younger nephew said, “I did this for all of you.”

This kind of spontaneous pursuit of something is what passionate learning is all about.  This is what it often looks like in younger children.

So I have a question for those of us who have older children or work with older children–do we really stop, take the time to look at each creation they have made, and enjoy their pride in its creation? 

But my other question is, do we leave time in their day for play?  When I am overharried, tired, overworked–do I stop to just wander and smell the roses?  Not often.   The same goes for our students–in this era of accountability, and piles of homework, and increasing pressure on college applications, testing, and the like–do our students even remember/know how to play and to create, just because they “want to?”    Do we ever give them time to do that or encourage their creative pursuits?  

Does the mass of students we face at the secondary level (150 a day or so…) impinge on our ability to do this with them?   How do we find ways to engage with them, celebrate successes with them, and tap into their passions?   It seems more personalized learning is a portion of that, rather than generically sending out the same content to all our learners, as though they are vessels.

There is so much creative energy to tap into here for educators, and it would add so much to our work with students to tap into it.   Technology is one pathway to that–because many tools allow for student creativity and diversity, but of course there are many non-technology related pathways to that too.

In The Passionate Learner, Fried writes about entryways into more passionate learning with students–(ways like having a day where students share “what I learn outside of school,” for example).  But he emphasizes that most importantly classrooms where students learn best seem built not around curriculum, but about a trusting and positive relationship with the teacher, a teacher who doesn’t view the students as buckets to be filled generically, but as students who are personal to them.   I know so many excellent teachers who feel this way about their students, and yet struggle with the balance between curriculum, AP courses, and the students as people.   Fried believes this balance is very important.   The value of students seeing us as individuals is also important to that balance–to see that we learn and play as well.

Fried encourages us to view curriculum as a function of relationships:

“When we view curriculum as a function of relationships, we bring it to our classrooms and lay it out, like a comfortable and useful garment.  We allow ourselves and our students to make it belong to us, to adjust it, to restyle it, to enliven it, to infuse it with meaning.  Such ownership increases the likelihood that young people will approach the knowledge and skills to be learned as active, critical, thoughtful investigators, rather than as passive receptors (or rejecters).”

When we invite our students in to our curriculum, how does that change things?   Are any of you doing that in your classrooms and what does that look like?    And how do we also invite our students’ passions in to our own classroom?

Because ultimately, don’t we want our students to rush home and begin weaving their own threads of meaning?

In their book Innovation, Curtis Carlson and William Wilmot talk about the difficulty many organizations have with adapting to change.

They point out, “A fundamental reason for this failure…to keep up is that they are, by definition, built to fight the last war. . . . They have well-defined organizations and processes designed to achieve those earlier objectives, but these very organizations and processes now resist the changes needed to exploit the new opportunities.” (p. 36)

One of the important components for innovation that they define is the importance of collaborative teams working together on key problems.   Collaboration is a skill we spend a lot of time talking about in education.   We work on identifying collaborative opportunities both offline and online, learn how to design more collaborative lessons and develop rubrics to evaluate collaborative efforts of our students.

And more and more, we talk about the importance of professional learning communities in our schools and the powerful learning that can take place when teachers work together.

Yet, as Carlson and Wilmot illustrate in their book, are our “systems” aligned with the goal of teacher collaboration?

They share an anecdote about an attempt by a university dean to create a center for joint research.  The center ultimately fails, because the professionals can’t seem to work together on a common problem.  The authors point out:

“. . .The university was not aligned with his goal.  The reward systems in his university, such as getting tenure and salary increases, recognized individual contributions, not team performance.”

As we ask teachers to work towards learning in professional communities, are we doing anything as a system to recognize or reward teachers for “team” work?   Is there any compensation, professional evaluation or reward system related at all to group efforts?  Certainly, the intrinsic rewards of learning are important, but what are ways we can support that sort of team effort systematically? 

If we are expecting to change the way teachers work together, then how do we align our systems to support our goals for professional development?

“You gotta serve somebody….”  Bob Dylan

Who do we actually serve in our schools and who should we be serving?   What changes in our thinking when we apply the notion of customer service to the school environment?

In their book Innovation:  Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want, Curtis Carlson and Wililam Wilmot raise three central questions about customer service that guides their innovation model: 

• “Who is your customer?
•  What is the customer value you provide and how do you measure it?
• What innovation best practices do you use to rapidly, efficiently, and systematically create new customer value?”

Taking these questions separately–

“Who is our customer?”

Obviously, it should be students and secondly their parents and families.   But are the decisions we make in line with the view that students are our customers?  Are we providing the kind of service that we would expect if we were customers to either our students or parents?   And does this analogy completely play out?   (Obviously customers aren’t required to be somewhere, nor required to shop en masse, nor to follow pre-defined rules for shopping, etc.?)    But how does our thinking change if we think of our students as customers?  What are the obstacles getting in the way of this kind of thinking?

“What is the customer value you provide and how do you measure it?”

Big question.  In recent years, we’ve viewed this from a very cut/dried perspective in terms of measurement.   But don’t we need to define what value we are trying to provide before we just start measuring it?  Is all of the value something that can be measured in one objective test?  Are we measuring ourselves as schools?  If we set up a  mission statement that we want to achieve a goal, do we come back at the end of the year and really look at whether we did some things towards that goal, or is it just a glossy statement?  

The same is true in our classrooms or libraries?  If we have some goals for our own learning spaces, did students help define what is of value to them?   How do we assess how we are doing?   Do we lay out some specific goal posts for ourselves in addressing the value we are planning to provide?   And once we do that, how are we measuring it?  

Our campus Vision committee this year has formed an assessment committee to work on defining our mission more clearly and then also outlining ways that we can assess our growth as a school–not just with standardized tests, but in taking a look at many different areas of our campus that fit into the mission.   This is a grass roots effort, and we are learning as we go, but it’s giving us the chance to really talk about how we could measure our success in different areas, and address weak areas as well.

“What innovation best practices do you use to rapidly, efficiently, and systematically create new customer value?”

Do schools think of themselves  as creating “new customer value”? ( I do think librarians tend to think this way, as we are used to being in the business of promoting student literacy, and have the flexibility to introduce new customer services fairly easily. ) But in general, how flexible are our school systems in introducing new customer value?   Do we even consider that as part of our mission?  

I think within specific classrooms, teachers do grow and consider this part of their work–introducing new concepts, methods, and tools as ways of creating value for their students.  And I think inside individual classrooms, if a school environment is not too controlling or limiting, teachers have tremendous flexibility in always growing their teaching and exploring new methodology and philosophies.   But are they getting the institutional support they may need to do that?  And is the school as a whole utilizing the best innovation practices?

Carlson and Wilmot suggest some innovation strategies that can be helpful, like the importance of “innovation champions.”   When I think of school districts or individual schools that are making exciting changes, it seems that in their system somewhere, there are innovation champions supporting that.

They have other excellent recommendations that I’ll share in a later post that I think have many applications for our schools.

So, who are we serving?

How do we support innovation in our schools?

In 1963, Fred MacMurray, in the film Son of Flubber tells us in a dramatic courtroom speech what we should do.  

He tells us that we are living in a time of fear….fear of smog, fear of bombs, fear of bugs, fear of falling hair.   

When asked by the prosecutor if he would continue to encourage his students to experiment, he tells the courtroom that his students may not be studious, but that they were unafraid.  And that because they were unfraid to make mistakes, he tells the courtroom, they may someday save the world.   The professor’s unwavering faith in teaching his students’ to learn through exploration and experimenting is undeterred.

How do we handle the Professor Brainards in our schools?   Do we squelch or encourage them?   Do we question their way of viewing the world?  Do we only believe things when we see them with our own eyes?   Do we support, tenaciously, the power of experimentation for our students?  Do we believe that by sowing the seeds of innovation, that the fruits  of our efforts will later crop up?  

In 1963, Professor Brainard understood.   Do we, 48 years later?

Sometimes in education, if you are innovating it feels like you are fighting an uphill battle.

You understand why libraries are important, or why websites should be unfiltered, but those with the power to make those decisions may not agree.

How do we develop elevator messages or ideas that stick, as Chip Heath and Dan Heath write about in their book Made to Stick?

I’ve been rereading a section of the book where the Heaths talk about  common sense as the ”enemy of sticky messages.” 

“When messages sound like common sense, they float gently in one ear and out the other. . . . If I already intuitively ‘get’ what you’re trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it?. . . . It’s your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.”

Chip and Dan Heath suggest a variety of strategies for breaking down the “guessing mechanisms” of your audience–by using the element of surprise, by identifying what the unexpected implications of your message are, by using simple metaphors and analogies, and more.

For example, Diane Cordell’s post about her school’s internet filtering made the irony evident(at least to those of us using Twitter.)  

Libraries struggle with this a great deal.  People somehow assume schools should have a library but often don’t know exactly why, as Barbara Jansen and Marla McGhee shared in their session at TCEA.   But there are some expected notions about libraries and some shared concepts of what a library is, so sometimes it is hard to convey to those outside the library what the significance of what libraries do for students actually IS.   People think they already know (i.e. we check out books to kids, support reading, etc.).

Similarly, on the issue of filtering, there is a general agreement that filtering is poor, but that we have to protect students somehow.   So how do we take that ‘argument’ and stand it on its head?   

How do we find the ”core truths” as the Heaths write about and convey them in an uncommon way so they can be “seen”anew?  Ideas, thoughts?

“It’s too easy to criticize hope.   And in the end, cynicism is a lousy strategy.”   Seth Godin.

Best blog post I’ve read in awhile.   While it was most likely referring to recent politics, Godin’s words could be applied equally to technology decisions in schools.

Many of us who work with students on web 2.0 tools have a sense of hope and optimism about our students and about the future.  We trust in our own ability to use these tools effectively and wisely and in the power of using them with students.    We don’t trust blindly but we do believe that we are professionals and we believe that students have much to contribute.   We believe that students can make good choices when given a scaffold to do so (and on their own accord as well.)

It’s easy enough to shut those tools down, to disable them for all students or teachers because of what “might happen,” and to build our policies on cynicism.

But what would it look like if we built our policies on hope?  

   No one who watched the ads on the Superbowl doubts the impact of a well-designed visual.  

But in schools, we often neglect that power.   It is  harder to make a striking visual, because it takes more time to make a well-designed handout—or a powerpoint that is thought-provoking—or a digital video that has impact—or even a well designed sign for the hallways.

And it takes longer for our students to be ‘producers’ of content rather than ‘recipients’ of content, as Marco Torres puts it.  It also requires that we trust their voices. 

But the results of their efforts can be very powerful and very empowering for them as learners.  Seeing the films that Marco Torres’ students are producing during his presentation at TCEA brings home the power of the visual to tell a story, to empower student voices, and to convey a message.

When we teach students about using visuals well, we are teaching them about evaluation– about making choices, judging information, and editing their own ideas;  we are teaching them about design and its power;  we are teaching them about the power of a well-crafted messages;  and we are giving them a voice and a way to tell a story.  And as Torres’ pointed out, when we teach them to design music for their videos, we can teach them fractions, math, rhythm, and style.

I believe our students already get lots of practice at doing worksheets, completing problems, writing analytical papers, and the like.

But do they often, at the high school level, get to practice gathering information into a story that can be shared?  Do they get the opportunity within the school community to learn  how to convey their ideas visually to others, whether in a well-delivered, well-designed slideshow, or a powerful digital film?

I can’t count how many times in the last week at TCEA that I have heard people say that it’s so hard to change because teachers and campuses are so focused on test scores, that they cannot make inroads in terms of teaching things differently.  

But I think every end has different means.  Sometimes we act as though there is one path to get there, and that path is drill and practice, or that path is only the path we have defined, as though there aren’t a myriad of ways to teach and learn something.   Are we sometimes using the “test” as a way to avoid changing our practices?  Or to avoid the problematic issues of allowing for student voice in our classrooms?

I believe students can become literate in a field in many ways, and that the more deeply involved with the content they are emotionally, the more it will resonate with them long after the class, and their deeper understanding will clearly show on any “measure” of their knowledge or abilities.

For example, Torres’ students who were studying health care, and made a film interviewing a family whose son had a brain tumor, probably know and understand that issues much more deeply than a student who reads an article about it.

His students who created a video on the power of voting, probably have much more of a sense of the power of the vote.    His students who interviewed Hispanic World War II veterans or Vietnam veterans for their films probably have a much more real understanding of what those experiences were like, rather than a student who reads a textbook about it.

Hall Davidson demonstrated in his TEC-Sig talk that we are all able to comprehend information visually very quickly, and in fact, even in a matter of seconds, since we are so attuned as a culture to visual media.

So, I think we have to let go of the fear of “the test scores” and believe.  Believe in our students’ abilities, believe in our own abilities as educators, and believe in our own judgment as to how to reach the literacies our students need. 

Part of that is believing in knowledge as something live and evolving.  We teach students knowledge sometimes as though it is set in stone, and we do the same thing with standardized tests and our curriculums—as though the knowledge they have defined is some fixed thing that will never change in our students’ lifetimes.

This student’s video, (”2+2=5“) points out the significance of questioning the status quo very effectively, in fact.

Are we teaching students just for tomorrow ’s test, or are we teaching them for their lifetime?

We also have to have trust in our students.  That is a prerequisite to having students edit a wiki together or create a film.  Not blind trust–but trust built out of our classroom relationships with them.   Healthy relationships aren’t built on the fear of what someone “might say” or “might do.”  And our students do have much to say–how can we tap into that more significantly?

Marco Torres believes that the most significant thing we can do for a student is connect with their curiosity so they will ‘want to come back tomorrow, and next week, and the week after that.’

When we empower student voices, tap into their own communities, and believe they have something significant to say, it can make a tremendous difference for all of us.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviddave/399728857/