How do we keep from getting demoralized when we are truly attempting to raise the caliber of an assignment and teachers feel they are too busy or too concerned with an upcoming standardized test or just reluctant about accepting our feedback?

Part of the problem, I think is that we aren’t partners with teachers in these sorts of situations.  Much too often, it feels as though we(both tech and library staff) are add-ons, support staff, rather than collaborators.  We want to be partners, but perhaps we aren’t perceived that way.

How do we change that paradigm?  It is hard hard work, especially on a large staff, with teachers coming and going annually.   Headway can be gained, but then lost when teachers run out of time for planning or a particular year is very busy.  But to me that is a symptom that the paradigm hasn’t really changed–that teachers don’t want to bother you, or don’t perceive your role as one of collaborator.

Is that about you?  Well, sometimes, it is.  Sometimes it can be about your approach, true.  But it’s also about teacher training and teacher paradigms.  Teachers are soooo used to being independent entities(especially at the secondary level).  You close the door and teach your own class–and for many, it is rare to truly collaborate in instruction.  It’s just not the paradigm that the campus functions within, in general.

So is it any surprise that teachers wouldn’t be accustomed to having instructional partners?

Consequently, part of our job becomes p.r.–being invitational, doing workshops, attending committee meetings, going to departments.  And even with doing all that, sometimes the paradigm still doesn’t shift for a majority of teachers.

So it can be very frustrating.

Let’s say we could redo things from scratch.  What would be an ideal way to improve the environment for collaboration for teachers?

–Leadership–how can the principal create an environment where teacher collaboration is the norm, not the exception?  How can department chairs encourage this as well?

–Technology use–What technologies could be used to encourage collaboration?  Always a good question since sometimes teachers are reluctant to try things outside their “route”, so to speak.

–College level teacher training–How could the student teaching experience change so that collaboration is an expected part of the process, and valued?   It still seems the process is to place a student teacher with one cooperating teacher, to work basically only with that person, and little training is given in terms of how the roles of other staff help a teacher.  Why not train student teachers on how to work with librarians, tech staff, counselors?  And share with them in their college programs how those staff members could be helpful?

–Our own approach–Our own approach has to be respectful of classroom priorities, both the theoretical and the practical ones.   We have to find inroads that meet teachers where they live.  We have to continue to share our message and our vision for our school and for our students.

Cathy shares an excellent description of engaged learning:

Students love assignments that call for creativity, collaboration, choice, authenticity, and excitement. They don’t even realize the assignments are standards-based and that they are learning.

How do we share that message with teachers effectively, in a manner that it gets heard?

One of the things that makes this task so difficult is that it is ongoing.  There’s never a point at which you think–oh, the entire campus gets it.  Teachers come and go, pressures change, leadership changes, and so it seems like it is an ongoing, evolving effort that one makes.

At times like this, I think again of Anne Lamott’s wise words–how do we change things?  “Bird by bird.  Bird by bird.”

Ideas?  How do we work towards changing the paradigm?

Photo credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2181766735/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myeye/155660631/

This led me to ask all sorts of questions of myself about what I want in an educational community, what fulfills me (and perhaps fulfills some students?) and which is perhaps another post.  But echoing in my thoughts after Educon were questions Will Richardson asked in his presentation yesterday and ones that were brought up by Andy Carvin and the panel this morning.

Questions like “What should we leave behind” and “What should we keep” as we make changes,  and questions like “How scalable is change?”  In the chat room this morning while listening to the Educon panel, we had a lively debate about this.

Is it different when talking about an existing school versus a brand new school?  I wonder how one creates a new sense of community in an existing school?     How do you invite people into the vision and ward off skepticism and get buy-in and really build a community of common purpose.

I also wonder if you have a vision for a school district, how do you scale that–or if you have something that works at one school, how replicable is it across a district?

So much of education is in the art of it–which really depends on the skill and talent of individual educators, (who are unique individuals and not replaceable) and the skill of leaders in particular.  But the culture of a school, which is so critical to change–how can that be conveyed across a district or across multiple districts?  Is that excitement of an environment that works scalable?  Or is it just kismet, a happy “accident,” a magical blending of time and people and place?

Does the business world have something to help us in terms of these questions?  How does a business like Apple or Toyota or Google sustain their corporate culture throughout their business?   What strategies do they use?    And how do you reach beyond a core group of teachers to create this new climate when perhaps people like the status quo?–status quo being something that seems pretty entrenched in education sometimes.

I left Educon this year(having only participated online in a few sessions) just as engaged and awed by the interactivity and excitement going on in the school for those kids as I did a year ago.   And also  awed by the enthusiasm, vision, and dedication of educators from all over the country(and world) who attended, either in person or remotely.   How do we spread/share this sort of enthusiasm, innovation, and energy with others–the kind of energy that brought the Flat Classroom Project to life?  If only we could harness that energy it could light up so many of our schools, and shine light for so many of our students.

(hint: Maybe Chris Lehmann should start a “leadership” academy at SLA to train/encourage/mentor future leaders?)

Okay, I’ve asked lots of questions, as is my habit in a post….but I really would love to hear your thoughts, musings, writings, and readings that you want to share.

Ironically, the quote on the sidebar of my blog today is:  “After all is said and done, more is said than done.  Aesop”     So, how do we harness all of this and bring it into some sustainable form?

But this year, a group of us are working on something that feels like it has the potential to provide a sense of continuity–and of a sense that our work is a continuing endeavor instead of something that is just ending so we can “start over” the next year.   And that’s a different feeling, to feel like we’ve somehow started some conversation that is going to keep going.

A group of us have planted the seeds for a professional learning community, and amazingly, the last two weeks of school, we’ve had over 25 teachers volunteer to participate, and they’ve even attended after school meetings talking about educational philosophy (a week before school is out!)

We’re making a commitment as a group to spend a year having conversations about improving our teaching, investigating constructivism and more student-based learning, doing readings, hosting guest speakers, and trying to grow as educators.

Even our planning meetings have evolved into philosophical discussions about teaching that have led us to share articles and books with one another, and we are just barely beginning.  This summer we’re planning monthly coffee get togethers to start our conversation and to get to know one another since our group is pretty diverse curricularly.

So although it is a wistful time saying goodbye to our current students, it also feels like we are beginning something very significant–and a conversation that will continue as we define our learning for ourselves.

It’s also exciting because it’s a grass-roots effort on the part of a group of us, and we’re determined to have a sort of “leaderless” organization (Starfish and Spider like), so that it becomes something self-sustaining at our campus.  (or so we hope).

And a lot of things have led us  to this point, which also feels like more of a sense of continuation, rather than a disconnected set of workshops or events.   So even though we are stumbling, tired, through the last two days of school there is a sense of something brewing on the horizon, and that feels truly exciting.

And another thought–whenever you wish or wonder why your school can’t change, or get frustrated about things….each of you has the power to reach out to other teachers at your school, and ask them to join you in forming a community of explorers.   We each do have the power to begin the conversation.   

I like the idea of using a group blog for students in a class as well.   It’s a way to feature different writers, have a variety of voices, and keep students coming back to read what their peers wrote as well.

Have any of you used group blogs like this, with a class?    I’d be interested in hearing how this worked differently than students having individual blogs.  Pros and cons?

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.

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?

Barbara emphasized the importance of identifying what your ‘five most important things’ about your program are, and then not only telling your principal, but “showing them.’

Ok, this gets to one of those complex trackbacks, but worth it. A recent thread on Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk blog about librarians and technologists working together to implement 21st century information literacy skills (which tracks back to a series of posts by guest bloggers Justin Medved and Dennis Harter on Dangerously Irrelevant) led me to think about Barbara’s “five things” in relation to other aspects of our roles as librarians.

I’m thinking that part of improving our partnerships with teachers or with our technology departments is identifying those “five things” that we want each of those constituents to understand about our programs.  Having a focused message is part of making it “stick.”  

We need to, as Barbara and Marla did in their presentation, join forces to understand one another better.

But, we also need input in order to do that–not just telling our own stories but hearing the stories of others. 

So maybe we should be asking teachers five things they want librarians to understand about their work, or asking technologists five things they want librarians to understand about theirs, or asking students five things they want us to understand about their use of the library.

Finding ways to open dialogues with our customers through surveys, questionaires, and face to face discussions is a way to enhance and grow our partnerships.

Because we are instructional partners, all of us.  Our goal is helping students learn.   When we all understand our piece of the partnership and how we can best contribute, the whole school is stronger because of that.   What can we do to support one another more effectively?    Because ultimately, good partnerships end up helping students learn more meaningfully.   

  So, teachers, students, technology coordinators, principals–what are those five things that are most important to you?

What do we need to know about your jobs, and how can we partner with you better?

And in return, how can you partner with us better as well?

(Much thanks to Barbara Jansen for the idea.)

Image credit: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/101655312

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12368550@N06/2068779988

In his post last week, “Changing Ourselves, Changing Our Culture,” Will Richardson finds irony in the fact that “teachers are connecting more and more outside their spaces but, it appears at least, not so much inside their own districts and communities.”

I’ve found that to be true for myself until recently. I’ve had only a small core of people that I felt I could connect back in with when I returned to my own campus, or attended a local conference.

But recently I’ve found a very strange thing happening. My far-flung world-wide connections are bringing me home.

I’m not very connected in my state, or haven’t felt that way. Prior to blogging, I felt somewhat isolated, though I’ve done many workshops over the years, and connected with many people at conferences. But these connections weren’t really ones I brought back with me long-term. I’ve sometimes felt isolated within my own school district, too -sometimes its hard to find time to continue the conversations or find those interested in the same things I am.    But now because there are some networked places to talk with those I meet face to face, long after a workshop or discussion ends, it has allowed me to continue some of those “connections” much more easily.

So the phenomenon I find happening is that being part of this network is making my local experiences much richer.

For one thing, the knowledge that I’ll get to share what I’m doing at a conference with whoever is in my Twitter network or whoever reads my blog adds depth to my thinking about it. (And keeps me on my toes!)

But as I’ve come home to two local conferences this winter, I’ve also found them so much richer because:

a. I’m meeting people at the conferences that I actually only knew online, even though they were nearby….I’ve found like minds in my area to talk with. And getting to spend time really talking about ideas at the conference and then getting to carry that conversation on AFTERWARDS is hugely powerful.

2. I’m also bringing back ideas from the “larger” network into my own local communities that haven’t been so tapped into the network– either on my own campus or within my peer group of librarians. All of which adds depth and enthusiasm for me as well. And now we have places to easily extend our conversations beyond a meeting or conference also–on Ning or blogs or Twitter, or email and F2F, so that those local connections also can continue far beyond the “drive-by” workshop time.

And I suspect that this sense of  discovery and of extending the conversation is what is so empowering about networks for our students — they use their own networks to bring friendship, inspiration, and energy back to their own daily lives.

I agree with Will that we need more formal ways of bringing these local connections alive in a long term, supportive environment. There is too much left to chance and teachers are our most valuable resource in terms of changing the classroom.

But today I am just delighted by the sheer serendipity of connections, and that building a network far afield has started bringing me back home–home, but with more than I had before.

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjaergaard_92/1778562401/

What is the value of being networked?

Yesterday during my Hill Country Librarian Presentation on “How to be a Networked Librarian,” I threw that question out to my twitter network.

The responses from my network were so varied and tremendous, that I wanted to share them as a resource when we talk about the power of being part of a learning network. Thanks tweets!

John Maklary’s comment that he is no longer an island is such a significant one. We are no longer islands, nor do we need to be. We can not only draw from the wisdom of so many other educators, we can share with others the strides we are making, lessons we are learning, and our own strengths and passions.

One of the things we talked about in the workshop was the importance of contributing to the network instead of just “borrowing.” I do think librarians are attuned to that–because we are used to the idea of sharing everything we find out and to connecting people with ideas.

Our difficulty tends to be that in our own buildings, we don’t have people who do that for us as often. We’re the “connectors” more often than the recipients, just due to the nature of our roles. So a network can be a significant way to get new ideas, to get re-inspired, to learn about new books or new resources, and to just find support for what we do.

As Andrea Hernandez(edtechworkshop) points out, a network can inform, improve, and enhance everything we do.

We do not have to be stranded on our islands anymore. As Cathy Nelson(cathyjo) points out, our “Verizon-like” networks can travel with us wherever we go.

Ways to get in the boat and get off that island? Here are a couple of blog posts with ideas:

– How to start building a network

– A Path to Becoming a Literate educator

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23209605@N00/2126012577

I

So in an effort to bring services TO the students, I’m experimenting with various methods of outreach.

We’re deep into a major project on Vietnam, and students are involved in creating a digital biography of a soldier from the Vietnam wall, so I went to visit a couple of classrooms that were using mobile labs, so that I could offer tech support, answer copyright questions, etc. 

It was fascinating being in the classroom with the teacher as opposed to being in our computer lab.  As I walked around the room, students were asking lots of questions(more than they normally ask when I do a walk through in the lab).  And it was fascinating because I could see how the teachers partner on this assignment and share materials and students openly back and forth between their rooms.

I also was learning a lot about how students are doing their “work” differently.  A couple of students were looking at the html code of a website on Vietnam and discussing the code.  I asked the teacher about it, and she told me they were building a website about their soldier instead of a video presentation.   We talked about code copyright, a discussion I had seen going on online a few days ago.

The other teacher told me that her students were using their phones to take photos of the title page of the books they were citing, so that they didn’t have to write down the title and author for their bibliography work later.  I thought that was pretty clever, and one I hadn’t thought of.

As I was rereading part of Wikinomics last night, preparing for our panel on wikis at TCEA 2008, (Using Wikis to Connect, Collaborate and Connect) I was struck by this quote:

“The future, therefore, lies in collaboration across borders, cultures, companies, and disciplines.  Countries … that turn inward will not succeed in the new era.”
I think this applies to schools as well.  If we turn inward, or ignore the tools students are using, or aren’t willing to be open to learning about them, we won’t succeed in the “new” era of collaboration and ubiquitous technology use.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, because at the beginning of our session, we’re going to talk about the power of the wikis, and I’m going to use Wikipedia as a leaping off point, and share ideas Will Richardson showed us about the discussion tab on Wikipedia.   But I’m aware the conversation may start to derail into a debate over the merits of Wikipedia, even though I’m using it as a metaphor for the power of wikis for collaborative knowledge building.

My take on Wikipedia, and most other tools–is that we need to teach students more informed uses of these tools and to be information literate, but we also need to learn from our students.  It’s likely they know more about using Wikipedia than we do, for example.   (In fact, one of the interesting things about our session tomorrow is that the teachers involved are fledgling users of wikis, are interested in the pedagogy, and we wanted to demonstrate how we are all learning about these tools together.)

The real power of tools like wikis lie in this democratization of contributions.  And for us to believe in that, we have to trust our “customers” as Tantek Celik, of Technorati,  points out in Wikinomics.  We have to believe in our students, believe that they have something to contribute.  Yes, they may sometimes need guidance, support, training, scaffolding, but, they do have things to contribute and their voices matter.