This morning, someone on Twitter reminded me of a blog post I wrote a long time ago, “How Long Does it Have to be?” about how students focused on the length of their research papers because they aren’t really engaged in their topics.

As I was thinking about that, Christian Long twittered out the link to a fabulous post by Chris Lehmann about the connection between caring and inquiry.

And somehow those two thoughts combined together for a realization of my own.

Not only do students often not care too much about the topic they are writing about, sometimes we don’t really care what they are saying either. That may sound like heresy, but once you’ve read 40 papers on gun control, the topic begins to pale unless someone has something new to say.   Like our students, we are dutifully participating in the process because research has to be “taught” and the papers have to be done.

I know, I was a teacher.  And I know sometimes my students “learned to care” about the topic they were researching.   But what got missed, what I missed, was the opportunity to learn all my students did know.   We had a prime opportunity to learn from one another as part of the inquiry/research process, but did we?

Which leads me to Chris’s post about his leadership conversation at Educon:

We were talking about modeling these values as leaders and the idea that teachers need to model inquiry for students as well and Ben Wilkoff asked a great question. He said (and I’m paraphrasing,) “I’m concerned that I don’t know how elementary teachers model their own inquiry in their classroom? After all, there are very few times when they really don’t know the answer.”

And I answered, “There’s one question that we always don’t know the answer to — ‘What do you think?’”

And it hit me yet again that too often our research “assignments” are not really asking students what they think.  And that’s why their papers end up being not very interesting (either to themselves or to us).

But Chris challenges us to do something differently, because, as he says:

Caring about our students is about listening to them. About learning about them — from them. It is, as I’ve written before, about understanding that if we hope to be a transformative figure in their lives, we must be willing to be transformed ourselves.

And that starts with a question — “What do you think?” and then listening, fully and deeply, to their answer. That is the ethic of care made manifest in the inquiry process.

What if our research assignments really asked students to tell us what they really think about topics they really care about?

When we do, students “manifest the care’ that Chris mentions.  They approach the assignment with a real sense of inquiry–curious about their own ideas and curious to learn more about a subject from others.    And when students manifest that care, and when they are researching and writing about something meaningful to them, then we become more than dutiful readers or teachers grading assignments, we become learners who care.   We learn about what our students are interested in.  We want to listen because what they are writing about is theirs, and unique.

We are able to listen to them more fully and deeply.

And when we ask them to write about what really matters, then they have not missed the opportunity to know themselves better.  And we as educators have not missed the amazing opportunity that lies in knowing each of them.

P.s:  Listen to the power of another educator who learned from really listening to his student–another great post that was twittered by Jason Kern this morning.

We know what works for inservice–prolonged coverage of a subject, a mission that people buy into,  small groups, choice, and self-directed learning.  We also know that sometimes a district needs to convey information/techniques/methods to their staff. 

So, how to reconcile those things and still have an effective, productive use of time, so that everyone isn’t just going through the motions and just hoping for a nice lunch?

One word–Inspiration.  Wouldn’t it be nice if on inservice days, that’s what we were fed with our donuts?

Real inspiration–inspiration that makes you go, I can’t wait to get back to my classroom and do this–I can’t wait to see my students–I love what I do.

How do we invite teachers into inservice in a way that lets them know–this is different–we are breaking the mold and what we want to end up with is that you feel inspired?  And is that possible on days when the inservice really is just needed to convey information?

It takes planning to break the mold; a sense of enthusiasm and mission; commitment on both the part of the presenters and buy-in on the part of attendees(buy-in which has to be earned).

It takes true love of your subject to lead/plan such an inservice.  It takes teachers who aren’t tired, sometimes.  It takes giving people a break to learn what they need to know.  It takes interaction and feedback.   It takes care.

But what if–what we wanted to accomplish most of all–was to move our mission forward with inspiration? 

First this has to start with a clear sense of mission.  Over and over I go back to my experience at Science Leadership Academy–a school where you walk in the door and you know the founding principles around which the school is organized.

Everything happens more or less around those vision questions.  And when SLA  held the first Educon conference, it was organized around core questions as well: 

1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members.

2) Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen

3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.

4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate

5) Learning can — and must — be networked.

What if our inservice year was oriented around core questions–questions our own schools devised?  How would that serve the purpose of inspiration?   How would that move our mission forward more effectively?  How would that improve teacher buy in?

If we make our mission the North Star of our schools–then it will guide everything we do–including our inservice and training.   It will bring that coherence of purpose that inspires, pushes us to try harder, and engages our highest imagination as educators. 

And in both the long and the short run, it’ll be better, more filling,  and more refreshing than donuts.

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindyfunk/2399675950/

Dial up a few friends on Skype randomly(who you met via Twitter). Hope someone is nice enough to turn on their webcam to demonstrate (thanks Karl) and off we go.

Now we have a teacher in Texas who might have made a contact with an ASL teacher in Colorado, and all it took was a little “six degrees of separation”. When anyone wonders about the power of Twitter or Skype for educators, case closed.

Though this experience I had today has become somewhat commonplace for some of us who use Skype or Twitter, it still never ceases to thrill me to actually talk “live” to people that I have met over the network or to see a teacher’s face when they use the tools for the first time.

And it does demonstrate how easy a global connection is–it doesn’t always require a program, a huge effort, or a large expenditure of funds. It just requires the way the network allows us to “know someone” who “knows someone” who “knows someone.” And it requires the friendliness of educators always willing to give someone a leg up, show them the ropes and be invitational.

That’s the best thing about being involved in a network, when it comes right down to it. Broadening a circle of both friends and colleagues–learning from people every day who are willing to share and learn with you–and reinvigorating what you do every day.

So thanks Karl, (and Dean) and Barbara(and my old friend Bob who I met in another network long ago and far away) for showing once again how easy it is to connect.

A teacher and I  were talking yesterday about Facebook and work he is doing with a science organization for college students and  professors.  The organization had a blog which was completely unutilized.  So he decided to set up a Facebook page instead.  After one day, the page already had 40 followers.

It led me to really do some “wondering” about how to better meet both our students and our teachers where they live.  Blogs are not where either of them “live” online per se.

I love blogs, love reading them for the inspiration they provide, and love writing on my own. And I’m not suggesting that blogs don’t have tremendous value, because I believe they do.

But after quite a bit of time struggling with encouraging teachers to engage with blogging at my own campus, I’m just wondering what means of communication might work at a more innate level for our staff. Because I really think there would be value for them in connecting with the ideas that I find so inspiring in the blogosphere.

So I was wondering aloud at dinner last night–would video(videoblogging) be another avenue to connect with classroom teachers?   Or would something like Facebook be a way to connect with them better than Ning, since a lot of them are already on Facebook?  (After all, I can create a Facebook page for our library, which I did today,  and share blog links and links for tools there.)

I guess my point is, instead of trying to encourage teachers to come where “I am” or where the blogosphere is, how can I bring it to them where they “live”?

The idea is to clear your head of other thoughts which interfere with your creativity.  She includes a number of other tasks in the book as well, and one that seems most applicable to educators is the “artist date.”  The idea is to take yourself on a date somewhere to do something artful–you have to go alone, and you can’t break your date with yourself–it is something you schedule.  You can go to a museum, take photographs, browse for art supplies, write in the park, but the idea is to do something relating to art.

It strikes me that this is such an excellent activity for both teachers and their students.  In this age of AP testing, standardized testing, college prep, etc., both students and teachers are under much pressure and a barrage of reading/homework/grading, etc.   As many of our staff and my colleagues online have commented, how do we get students to be creative or innovative when they are exhausted and overloaded?

I would posit that the same goes for us as educators.

I suggest that an artist’s date is an excellent assignment for both students and for ourselves–to carve out time for exploration and nothing else, to make it a way to treat yourself, indulge yourself in seeing the world in a different way.

When we model for students that spending time nurturing themselves isn’t frivolous or unnecessary, but that it is a key to supporting themselves intellectually and creatively, then we have done them a great favor.

Blogging, too, I believe, is enhanced by spending that time seeing in a new way.  It has made such a difference to me as a photographer, for example, knowing I have an audience at flickr or that I’ll post a photograph on my blog.  I think for our students, writing online for an audience also enhances their “vision” so to speak.

So I challenge you to try taking an artist’s date for yourself for the next couple of weeks.  See how it feels, what it leads you to, and what it feels like to dedicate that time to yourself.

“They say knowledge is power.  We say the use of knowledge is power.”
Elliot Washor  in The Big Picture by Dennis Littkey

As a group of us have been meeting at our campus to form a professional learning community, we’ve been talking quite a bit about the notion of students as a pail having information “poured” into them, versus the notion of students actively constructing knowledge.

I think to librarians, this idea comes fairly naturally.   We know that we can’t “know” everything, but that the source of our power comes in knowing how to help students find information themselves, by ferreting out the knowledge they already have within them.   Finding the information sometimes becomes more of a collaboration, and that is ultimately the goal, for students to know how to drawn on the knowledge they have to make new connections and find more information.

It’s fascinating the different expectations with which students(and teachers) approach asking questions or receiving help.  Some students expect to be a partner in finding things, and will ask a question and then work with you to figure it out.  Other students are much more passive, and ask a question, but then follow you, while chatting with other students along the way, and not really paying much attention.   Some students will take charge once they get to a set of sites or to the bookshelves–once they’ve been pointed in the right direction they are ready to take charge and winnow through what is there and select what works for them.  Each encounter is different and part of the skill set a librarian has to have is being able to facilitate with many different kinds of learners.

In The Big Picture, Littkey points out that learning is very personal.  He also posits that the “real learning happens after” the encounter.  “It’s what you do with it, how you integrate it, how you talk to your family, friends, and classmates about it” that constitutes the learning process.

Once again, I’m led to wonder if we give students enough time for that “learning after” process.  I believe that we learn as things go on the “back burner” and we process them in the background, but in the rush for “new” lessons each day, do we allow enough room for reflection?

Similarly, in library-research related encounters, are students expected to complete something at the end of the period or the next day–or are they given a few days to let the concepts go on their “back burner” while they process it, talk about it, and share it-even if they are doing something else within the classroom?

Littkey asks some very pertinent questions at the end of the first chapter:

“How do you learn best?  How would you go about teaching your ‘own capacity to learn?’

What do you look like and feel like when you are really learning?”

It’s pertinent to understand that for ourselves so that we can apply it better in our own work with students.  If we really “get” that using the knowledge is where the key is, rather than having the knowledge, then how would we approach our teaching differently?

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’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.

Today, by sharing his students at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, Karl Fisch gave us just that opportunity–to peer into a classroom and see networked, scaffolded, engaged students at their best.  

For weeks, students in several English classes at Arapahoe have been reading Daniel Pink’s book, Whole New Mind, and have been discussing it via live-blogging sessions, using an inner/outer circle discussion method.   (The inner circle discusses, the outer circle blogs their reflections on the discussion).  In the culminating event today, the students got to videoconference via Skype with the author, Daniel Pink, directly.

I was able to participate in one of the live blog discussions a few weeks ago, and it was fascinating to see as some of the students created meaning for themselves as we talked on the blog about the book.   They helped one another find understanding, work out details they didn’t understand, and it deepened my own understanding of the chapter as well.

Today those of us watching the videoconference via Ustream  with the students could see the fruition of this method in the classroom.  The students interviewing Daniel Pink were ninth graders, yet were having a detailed and in depth discussion with him about the book.   You could see that after having discussed it so much in the live blogging and in their classrooms, that they felt ownership of it.  And it was also clear that they have been in an inquiry-based, student-centered classroom because they felt really empowered to ask questions and even to challenge some of the things that Daniel Pink said.

Meanwhile, as viewers, we were able to participate with students in the room who were liveblogging the event, via CoverItLive, and have discussions with them about their reactions to the conversation in the room.   Again, students were asking questions, making comments, probing, and clearly were entirely engaged in what was going on.  The chat was flying by almost faster than we could read.

At own my campus, a group of us were gathered around one “unfiltered” computer in the library(since Ustream is blocked on our campus) and watching the video conference mesmerized.  (I wish I had thought to take a picture of that!) And every teacher who walked into the library came over and watched for awhile, then asked, When can I do that?   A student aide sat and watched with us and responded to the discussion here and there as well, and watched the entire time.

Karl Fisch, Anne Smith, Maura Moritz and the other teachers involved didn’t just create a unique and powerful learning experience for their students.  They allowed educators all over the world to ask their colleagues, “When can we do that?”   They set an example for administrators, IT departments, teachers, librarians, and students all over the world.

Since the event ended, I’ve seen countless comments on twitter or via emails on our own campus from teachers eager to try something similar, eager to engage their students this way, and countless comments about people who shared what Arapahoe did with their own principals, administrators and teachers.

When we share what we are doing beyond the walls of our classrooms, we are inspiring countless others to rethink their practices or to take a leap of faith.   When Karl Fisch posted their plans today, he wasn’t entirely sure all the technology pieces would cooperate, and his focus was first on his own campus.  But his generosity in sharing has created opportunities for teachers many times over.

That’s what happens when your classroom is heard ’round the world.  

People listen, learn and grow.

Thanks, Karl and all the teachers at Arapahoe for including us.

(and thanks to Daniel Pink, as well!)

image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74196805@N00/754581749

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/