Not just talking

As a part of the work of Collegiate Renewal, we have been working to support both Learning Leaders, Learning Coordinators and administrators in leading other teachers towards student engagement. In the last month and a half, I've had the opportunity to work with a number of groups, and I have noticed that small group conversations, chances to ask questions, and work re-focusing on the specific goal of the leadership team make a much bigger difference than big professional development sessions. Last week I participated in conversations clarifying assessment goals and re-focusing on engagement, and I have concluded that these conversations are more than just talking, they are an essential part of a distributive leadership model.

When we are hoping that teachers are reflective practitioners, we are hoping that they are life-long learners and teacher leaders. Life-long learners look at research, question what is, and vision what it might be. They lead by innovating, and that innovation is the result of observing what is happening in their classrooms and considering how to grow it. Everything we are aspiring to in Collegiate Renewal hinges on all our learners being publically engaged in their learning, and teachers are a critical part of all learners, because they need to be seen making changes that help students.

I write this blog because it is one of the ways that I engage with both ideas and other people. Sometimes I feel like I am talking to myself, but even then, I am reminded that journalling my thinking is a critical part of the reflective process. Now this is mostly whining, as I get emails virtually everyday as a result of the blog, and they continue the conversation. This weekend, Scott St. Pierre sent me a number of other blogs related to the Collegiate Renewal conversation over the weekend. Two of my particular favorites reminded me that conversation itself is a complicated process:

• I have been discussing Sir Ken Robinson's conversations since his TED talk came out. I hooked people up to webinars, recommended seeing him live and shared his ideas through PD. However, I think it is challenging for us to really understand the implications of what he is saying in terms of how we need to change schools. I think the Innovative Educator really explains it well in the post We Have Finally Perfected Educating Students for the Past.
• I have also been concerned about the grading conversation we are having around The 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. It gets confused with our conversation around Assessment for Learning, and we see changing grading as a substitute for changing school. The conversation we had about the problems with grading is problematic for the division and parents are concerned, but the reason we had Kohn in to speak is because the focus on grade is a problem. Joe Bower has some interesting ideas on Abolishing Grading that get closer to where we want to go in terms of focusing in feedback and growing learning.

Reading the blogs of others, like talking with small groups of school leaders, reminds me how conversation is organic. Ideas spread and grow among those who are looking to learning, and talking about them is more than one conversation. It is the extended dialogue, across times and beyond a physical location, that really creates the growth all learners need. It is this growth that is our best hope for changing schools - making the simple process of talking to others a firm step in the direction of the 21st century school. We need to remember that the process of talking to others about the changes you are making is a critical part of leading as an educator.

Dropout Talks to Educators: What would we say in response?

I got an interesting video off my RSS feed this morning. It's talking about university, but really about educational institutions in general. In Collegiate Renewal, we often discuss student voice, and the value of the voice of the disengaged. Today, I heard from one of them and I thought I would share it with you:


After I watched this video I asked myself a couple things about this student:

1. What is his identity as a learner?
2. What extended conversation is his rant a part of? (Reading the other videos and comments after his rant on YouTube gave me a partial answer)
3. Why did he annoy me so much, even when I know he has some good points?

I found myself watching some of his other rants and wanting to declare him just a guy who always rants. Discrediting this rant as one in a series helped me to feel better about the fact that he calls all of us teachers largely irrelevant. I even think that there is no value in just teaching and assessing facts, and have made his main point in previous posts on AFL, and engagement. Even when I agree with him, he irritates me.

Part of it is I want people to talk about how to solve the problems, not just try to prove they exist . . . and yes, I know this position is ironic given my lifetime coaching debaters. I also want to celebrate the work we have been doing to change the way education works and focus on opportunity thinking. But I think that isn't all of. I need to do some more thinking about this one and I could use some help.

Do you have any answers to any of my three questions? What else should I be asking?

related note - report on high school dropouts and reasons (March 2010)

It isn't really a technical work-around

Three teachers emailed me today about various work-arounds they have been trying when technology doesn't work. As I was helping them with their technical issues, I was thinking about the practice of working around and what it does. These are all hard-working caring teachers who have just become so frustrated with technical problems and systemic barriers that they have given up. I understand why, I have days where I am with them, but I think you need keep saying when things aren't working for you and your students.

First of all, some common language. I am fine with avoiding conflict over difference of perception or different ways of doing things. Likewise, if it isn't about something important, I say let it go. When I' m talking work-arounds, I mean a situation where there is a problem and the problem is significant. You are working-around because you think you don't have the power, knowledge or skills to fix it. Here is my case for why working around technical or systemic problems in education in a mistake, regardless of the tools you have to fix the issue:

1. When you work around the problem, it is still there. Sometimes you even make it bigger.
My brother-in-law has a pet rat (pause for collective shudder of revulsion) who, like many domesticated rats, has developed cancer. The rat has a large tumour near its leg that it has learned to work around, even though its leg doesn't work the way a leg should. The rat is able to function, but only for now, because the tumour is still there, and it is growing. In education, we frequently have problems that are systemic or technical, and individuals just work around them. However, doing this actually collectively shapes our practice in a cancerous direction.
Let's say our filtering doesn't allow to access YouTube (common in many school divisions, although not ours). People start sharing how to access blocked sites, students teach teachers how to use a proxy server and teachers turn a blind eye, and technicians see the illicit access and do nothing. Because the filtering wasn't updated, it becomes institutional practice to ignore division policy, and a cancerous view of policy in general is spread.

2. Not all people can work around the problem.
Especially where technical problems are concerned, only a select few understand how to solve the problem. If the average person doesn't know the difference between their computer hard drive and their personal network drive, they don't understand how why just saving to "my documents" means they can't find the document when they log in from home or at a different computer. If we try to teach people work-arounds rather than addressing the problem, we turn less comfortable users into non-users, because it just doesn't work - that darn computer lost their files again.

3. Working around prevents reporting and solving.
If you try to work around a problem rather than telling others it is a problem, then it looks like the problem is just yours. If it is a systemic problem and no one reports it, the system has no way of knowing it needs to be addressed. Teachers I work with are always telling me there is no point in reporting something because it often doesn't get fixed. I respond that if people never report it, it is 100% guaranteed not to be fixed.
In some ways it is like civil disobedience - it needs to be publicly said that something is wrong by a lot of people to get a system to change. People who just work-around are saying that they want the system to stay the same.

4. Working around grows a culture of accepting "being broken."
We want our students to work at learning how to solve a math problem until they can do it. The worst math class to teach is one full of students who are convinced they can't do math. Their low potency means that they become nearly impossible to teach because have failed before the learning even begins. We are the same way with computers. When we say "That dumb thing never works" but then do nothing, we are committing not to come to the table to solve it, and we make it okay to not learn, grow and change. That is never okay in a learning environment like a school division, a classroom or a technical department. Accepting it just doesn't work and not finding something that does is making non-functional just fine.

I know that sometimes we really do have no power to change something, and repeatedly pointing it out just irritates others. It gets me in trouble all the time. On the other hand, irritations are itchy, and an organization inevitable scratches them, creating the opportunity for change. If something really isn't working for you and your learners, you need to report it, encourage others to report it and point out when it still isn't solved. If it is technical, call your help desk or help portals and stay on it until in changes. That's what we do with our students, specific descriptive feedback about how close we are to the destination until we actually get there. As Jay would say - it isn't about criticism, it is about getting better. Now that's a growth mindset.

Reflections on the 21st C Learning Day

It is never easy to look to closely in the mirror if your purpose is to see what is wrong. It is much easier if you are looking into to yourself to try to make things better, and it is even more successful if you have some friends along to help you out. Equipped with my growth mindset, I decided to look closely at the professional learning day Lois and I planned.

At the end of the session on Tuesday, Lois and I looked at the feedback we got from teachers attending. At that point, I was feeling frustrated about how parts of the day had gone. By the time teachers go back to the Gathercole at 2:15, they were clearly tired. They had been listening to each other present since 10:30, and most of the presentations were primarily lectures with visual aides. I realized I needed to do a better job of helping teachers feel comfortable leading others in doing or using more models and examples of student work - it wasn't clear that would be welcome. I was also worried about overlap in some session topics. As I looked out, I saw fatigue reflected back. Lois and I wrapped things up and asked them for their feedback, and I expected them to say it was too much. Mostly, they commented on what worked, what they need to keep learning and what structural changes they'd suggest next time we do this.

I asked for no "good job" style feedback, and our participants mostly gave practical suggestions, and explanations of the impact on them. I got a number of next day or later in the evening feedback around structure of the day. Almost all of it was discussion of how valuable it was to hear what peers were doing, but I also got some good ideas for structure:

"One more idea I wanted to add (as I kept thinking on the drive home) - next time, perhaps people could be surveyed ahead of the session to see what topics they would like to see addressed or presented. This could then help to then help to build the day."

Even teachers would did not attend are thinking about ways which we can keep sharing about technology and learning. One our teacher librarians send me a link to TEDx, a series of TED talk style presentations. As I thought about the day, I realized that I was seeing what I see in a classroom, lots of good learning with some things I'd do differently next time.

After the day was over, a group of six of us got together to add a second mirror - you know, like you do when you want to see your hair in the back (Speaking as middle-aged woman, seeing your backside is not always a great experience.). However, our collective reflection really gave me some good insights this time. Here is what I learned over the two days:

1. You can't under-estimate the value of just-in-time technical support. We had Jay there for help, but still had many mini-computers that did not work, issues with the Smartboard and some software issues. One thing that I would say is that teachers with greater fluency were much more able to work around the problems (read some interesting comments re the on-going nature of technical problems in the comments about this post)
2. It is easy to have anxiety about putting your ideas out there. In our group, some of us found it really hard to know our ideas were being 'published' to the world. I think this may be related to another observation I had. Many of the teachers used technology to comment on student work, but a much smaller group encourage student to provide specific, descriptive feedback to others. We teachers struggle with creating and publishing to the world - it's that need for perfection rather than growth. I need to think some more on this one.
3. I always move things along too quickly, and I did this time even with Lois to slow me down. I need to remember to give others time to reflect. My internship report (last thing a pre-service teacher does to be certified) had one suggestion for improvement - wait time. I need to work more on this.
4. Teacher's speaking to each other about what they are trying, not what they have perfected, is a really good way to promote reflective practitioners.
5. We talked to much about the technology and not enough about why we are using it. That happens ever time. Lois and I discussed it and how to avoid it, but it still happened. Dave noticed it within the first 1/2 hour. Hmmmm. . .

I really appreciate all the teachers who stood up to share what they had been trying. We could never have put together a group like this a year ago, and it speaks to how the people in that room continue to be dedicated to a life time of learning. That's one image I am delighted to see reflected back at me and I think it is a critical trait in a great teacher.

Sandra's glog

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This is just a part of Sandra's glog to show her learning. You can see the full glog at the link. Glogs are online posters created using web 2.0 tools like Glogster.

Acrobat Audio Comments with Rolf Polan (excerpts)

Lois Keller's Thoughts on Inquiry Learning Session