How are our schools changing to meet the change in the type of student walking into our buildings?

S. Craig Watkins, University of Texas at Austin professor and author of “The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future” asked the pivotal question during Tuesday’s Keynote at the NSBA’s Technology & Learning Conference, How are our schools changing to meet the change in the type of student walking into our buildings?

The amount of time our school aged children are exposed to media is increasing at a rapid rate, from 7:29 hours a day in 1999 to 10:45 in 2009. As the New York Times article from January 20, 2010 states, “If your kids are awake, they’re probably online”. For example, there is never a time in the day where people are not on Facebook. Someone is always posting to this prominent social networking site (SNS). Currently 73% of all teens belong to a SNS (55% of 12-13 year olds and 82% of 14 to 17 year olds). At the college age, this statistic jumps to 98%, with almost 60% visiting a SNS 3 or more times a day.

Social networking sites are not just about consuming content but are a place for youth to create and produce content. It gives students a voice. As the three year, U.S wide study funded by the MacArthur Foundation, Living and Learning with New Media (2009), states these digital spaces provide our youth with a space of their own, leading to increased competence, one of the four dimensions leading towards authentic student engagement, the goal of Collegiate Renewal within the Saskatoon Public Schools.

Watkins feels that the Digital Divide is no longer the issue we once believed it was. In 2004, 18% of 8 to 18 year olds owned a iPod or MP3 player. In 2009, 76% have one. Cell phone ownership by the same group has risen from 39% in 2004 to 66% in 2009. While laptop ownership has only risen from 12 to 29% during the same time frame, Watkins would still like us to consider that it is no longer a matter of access but more about the quality of the participation. The data leads Watkins and others to consider the Smartphone to be the standard device in the near future. As such, this is also changing the way we use the internet. As Wired Magazine reported in September of 2010, “The Web is Dead. Long Love The Internet” .

We need to be creating conditions where technology is being used to support problem solving, just as our students are solving problems within the games they play online. We need to be creating conditions where collective intelligence is supported. The smartest people know what they don’t know and find ways to fill in the gap with others. We need to be teaching our students transmedia navigation, where they know how to filter all information available to them through technology.

We can no longer abide by the “power down” policies that continue to persist in schools. Our kids are changing. The world around them is changing. Technology is changing their experiences. How are our schools changing to meet the change in the type of student walking into the room?

Chris is to Collegiate Renewal as thinking is to brain- ISTE 2010, Day 3

My first morning session this Wed. is called Beyond Tools: Thoughtful 21st Century School Reform. It is presented by Chris Lehmann. Chris starts by reinforcing that pedagogy drives technology not the other way around.

He says the push for him comes from watching his elder son go from loving learning to hating learning, especially reading, in kindergarten. He also says being trusted with other people's children makes him want to be better everyday. Students are able to do more than ever before, but this creates a madden paradox of education in 2010. Kids are learning all the time digitally, and then the go to the school where the learning stops. This was basically the last thing he said that related to technology.

Next Cris moves to the difference between change and innovation. Change is just differently and innovation is completely new. In most schools, we have school plus computers. Technology needs to be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary and invisible. It can be transformative because we can create, research, collaboration, presentation and network, but these all existed. We may just be doing them better.

In order to tell a better story, we must have vision.  There is a profound difference between "I teach Math" and "I teach kids Math". Students should never be the objects of their own education. Schools need to be inquiry given and student-centered. It must be about their learning not our teaching. That doesn't mean we don't need teachers - we need them more than ever because they need strong mentors. Schools need to be collaborative and students need to engage at the synthesis level. The work needs to mater, so schools are a place of passion. Schools should not be preparation for life, it should be life. One way to do this is change how many classes we have and see them as lenses not silos. That means we have common themes and content is integrated across curriculum. More than anything else our students need to reflect and be metacognitive. They need to know how they learn. 

As I listen to Chris, I hear all the basic tenants of Collegiate Renewal. Our goal "All collegiate students will be engaged in their learning so they will graduate as active participants in lifelong learning and as responsible and caring citizens in the community, nation, and world" has much in common with the vision Chris is articulating. It's like his thinking is a part of the overall structure we have developed to guide everything.

Chris asked us to talk to a partner about our vision, and my partner was Tim from New York. Tim works as a professional developer for 22 schools, and his main vision is student engagement. Tim is hoping to change his professional development practice so that teachers pick one main goal connected to engagement and go after it, rather than attending sit and get sessions and getting a point or credit for them. Sounds like the shift in our professional learning practice over the last 5 years. Tim and I talked about the strengths and pitfalls of our approach.

Once we got back in the big group, Chris talked about some ways you know when you are getting to your vision (here is Chris' vision):

• Your vision exists in the structure of the classrooms, not in the practice of a few teachers
• We use common language intentionally
• We use a common process of planning and assessment
• The thing you use to assess at the end is the measure of the real focus of the class and articulate the most important learning in the class

These would be good ways of framing evidence around Collegiate Renewal. On thing I have noticed, is that some of the things Chris is talking about are givens in my teaching. He talked about releasing their grade 12 students to work on an independent inquiry, for example. I taught that same class last year to grade 11s - it was called Inquiry 20. However, to Chris' point, my teaching opportunities have not been standard, nor is the resulting learning students experience.

The next question Chris asked was "What is one structure you would change and how would you change it?" If I could pick one thing to change would be the rigidity of class structures. Although I have taught integrated classes, classes with community time, etc., I think few teachers have the opportunity to structure the learning so it is about what you learn not the time spent in the seat. One of the teachers stood up and talked about his experience in Maine, which works in that direction.

One of Chris' points in that each of the great changes we make also has problems. His goal is empowerment and his demon in entitlement. He asked us to think about some hard questions:

• What is the worst consequence of your best idea and how will you mitigate it?
• What are the obstacles to the change and how can you overcome them?
• If you make these changes, how will the lives of teachers be different?
• How will the lives of students be different?
• How will you deal with the change?

Chris notes that at his school, students work really hard because of the projects. However, there needs to be balance. When you do real work, you need to do less of it, because it is much more demanding.

Schools must be transformative for students, and for teachers. Being willing to be transformed means that we have so much left to learn. That is the critical element of Collegiate Renewal for me is just that, engagement for both students and teachers through a growth mindset. Want to read more about Chris' ideas? Check out his site or follow him on twitter.

Innovation and the Impossible - ISTE Day 1

"It always seems impossible until it's done..." Nelson Mandela

One of my favorite Mandela quotations is one of the series of banners about excellence throughout the Conference Center for ISTE 2010. The session I am attending now is called Innovative Leadership: 21st Century Innovations that Mater. Its main focus is how leaders set up environments to create the opportunity for innovation. The presenter is Cheryl Lemke, and for those of you who like to see all the information:

• The background
• The backchannel (a way that the audience in a session talks to each other while the session happens)
• On Twitter (#metirigroup)

Cheryl started by talking about how students learn and noted that attending school is a small part of students' learning. Students also use peers and home as they always have. Relatively new are the networked public, work and distributed resources. Cheryl argues that we need to tap into their interests and use them in school in order to have the opportunity to have most powerful impact of students' learning. We'll only get 18.5% of their life time to help them learn so we want to set them up to keep learning in the post powerful way possible.

Cheryl's big focuses for Innovative Leaders:

1. Own the innovation - don't delegate it to the right people, lead it. CEOs in top innovative countries don't delegate creative work, they do it themselves (The Innovator's DNA). Technology, social media, multimedia and eCommunication should inform every decision. They should be a factor via digital content, implementation, student voice, environmental scanning, expectations for teachers etc. The technology facilitator should be at all tables and be an advocate for the ways students learn best.
2. Drive the change through creativity and knowledge - be creative, informed, tolerant and critical of digital technologies and our youth driving changes.  Our customer, our students, are digital natives. There are three basic was of thinking of learning: as acquisition, as participation, or as knowledge creation. As we focus on knowledge creation, we need to design our technology and our assessments to support creation. Knowledge creation doesn't happen in a vacuum - it uses teaming, Internet etc. We pull students out of this when we assess them and it doesn't make sense. Our structures are also set up to support acquisition not creation. Top innovators do some key things. They associate with things outside their sphere of influence and bring two different things together in new ways. The implications for the education is the need for more integration. Innovators ask questions all the time, and they asks the unaskable questions. Observing is another key trait of innovators. They watch the clients and users (students) and have student voice in what they do. We need much more student voice in education. Innovators are also experimenters. They believe failure is an essential part of success. We can do this with teachers around action research. Finally, they are networkers who bring people together and build effective groups. I think the role of Learning Leader is designed with this in mind - obviously a good thing that this is a main focus for us.
3. Shift from Rules to Shared Principles - actively facilitate the development and adoption of guiding principles for 21st Century Learning. This one has big implication for how my division might approach things.
4. Establishment of a Professional Learning System - includes observation, virtual and face to face work. Involves less student contact time, lesson study, and classroom observations. Doing there walk-throughs is very helpful for principals in particular, but for all leaders. We have been shifting our professional learning pretty dramatically in the last few years with these exact ideas in mind. We are still learning how to do this most effectively.
5. Shape culture - the leaders establishes the culture of openness, collegiality, honesty, and adaptability, all focused on standards or goals. Leaders should look for positive deviants, who are those working outside the rules to make something work for students. This is a topic that is really on the radar of the Collegiate Renewal team.
6. Ensure Digital Access and Infrastructure - including networks, devices, data systems, applications (web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), instructional, business and technical support, policy). She noted that the system needs to be open enough to allow blogging, twitter etc. I think our filtering changes, use of online communities and use of web 2.0 tools are starting to make inroads here.
7. Data, Assessment, trends and accountability- it needs to be focused on student engagement, not just metrics on competence. This whole section was closely correlated to our work, complete with diagrams of flow, like the one in the Collegiate Renewal data from this year. I think we need to keep working on a systematic approach to evidence collection, and I know that is a major focus of learning for next year in administrative professional learning.

Many of the principles Cheryl talked about next are those of Collegiate Renewal. We spent time talking about the value to motivation for staff and students and how to create engagement. One thing she highlighted was the shift to lesson study as a form of professional learning for teachers in schools where students are the most successful. Some interesting achievement statistics related to teaching:

• Teacher effectiveness has the number one effect on student learning, and professional learning must be sustained over time, content based, focused on concrete tasks, in community etc.
• 3 effective teachers in a row = +50 percentile
• Single ineffective teacher is detectable 4 years later
• A minimum of 6 days focused professional learning is necessary to make a substantial change in student performance.

My favorite quotations from the session:

"We defined the school system to make it the way it is, and we are the people with the power to redefine it. It is us."

"Business and industry are asking us turn education on its head. Let's go after that and do it."

"Sometimes behavior comes first and belief comes second. You can create change with resistance if you are doing something people will be able to see the impact of. Progress is the biggest motivator."

"People tell me that older teachers are stuck in time, but they came into teaching because they wanted to move things forward for kids. We need to give them real permission to go after 21st Century Learning."

I enjoyed this session quite a bit and it has lots of implications for the Collegiate Renewal work. Some we are working hard on, like professional learning systems and assessment and accountability. Others need more attention as we move forwards. I am leaving with lots to think about and record a fraction of what Cheryl said. I always enjoy a session like that. I left the session refocused on continuing to push for innovation.

Our Technology Story - Water and Sun

I have been working on a draft version of the story of the work around technology that happened this year in Collegiate Renewal. Yesterday, the SITLs and TLs looked at it and made some revisions as we prepare to add it to the board report. I am also working a wix page (in progress) to go with it an augment the story with background information.

As I sift through evidence, I am always thinking about what it is telling me about what went well and what next steps we need to take. In particular, I am thinking about what we need to do to grow the seeds we planted this year. I had just finished a personal blog post on all the perennials I am excited about in my yard, when the following serendipitous video came up on my blog feed:

As I watched it, I thought that it embodies many of the things I'd like to be able to say next year about Collegiate Renewal and Technology after I have looked at our evidence of growth.

As I sifted through the evidence from this year, I was excited all the possibilities created by the learning our SITLs and TLs did this year, and by the initial work of the technology grants. I continue to see the potential for a rich harvest, but I am also worried.

As I watched this video, I waited and waited, because community net (the way in which Saskatchewan schools get Internet) started throttling our streamed video access last week, causing the video to lag. I wanted to send the video to others and extend the conversation the group had yesterday about how we will grow the learning in Collegiates next year. But I didn't, because of a basic barrier like connectivity.

In order to grow technology use, we need to address pedagogy and understanding to shed light on what we can do. We also need the flow of hardware, software and connectivity to allow that light to turn into fuel in our classrooms. Water and sun are basic necessities for a good story of growing our learning.

I feel like the classic Saskatchewan farmer - even as I am excited about the bumper crop I am shoveling into bins, I am worried about what the weather may bring next year. I don't have control of the weather, so I need to make my best predictions about the things I can control and continue to be hopeful. As I am revising the story and planning for next year, I am excited that I am from Saskatchewan, and have a good cooperative of fellow planning and instructional leaders to work with. It's nice celebrate to have a community harvest.

I don't do Math, but I like problems

When I think about student engagement, I always try to compare where I was most engaged (anything with problems and critical thinking) to where I was least engaged - Math. That's interesting, because I had some engaging teachers who taught me math, and a number of my friends are Math teachers. There must be something there when so many people I like and respect use so much of their time and energy to work on it...

For years, I pegged my low potency in Math to my dyslexia. How can you feel able when 6 and 9 or 3 and 8 look the same and you are always getting basic arithmetic wrong? When you are always making mistakes, I told myself, it is hard to be engaged. Yet as the same time, I actually sought out other things because they weren't easy. I loved English and History, although my writing was full of spelling mistakes that never failed to illicit comments from my teachers about how I did it wrong. I also really liked all the sciences, and liked the applied Math I found in them.

I have been reading Dan Meyer's blog dy/dan since meandthedoor sent it to me. She sent out another link to Dan's TEDx talk and I watched it. I think Dan has it right on the money.  I have been gradually realizing that I didn't hate Math because I made computational errors, I hated it because I didn't see it as problems or creative thinking.  This is a little ironic, as my father (yup, mathematician) and one of my best friends (physicist), are always "going on" about how math is the language of all the interesting questions in the world.

I use my mathematics education all the time - basic arithmetic, but also geometry when I build things and statistics because they interest me. Permutations and combinations were my favorite unit in all of my K-12 math education because they were about prediction and I could see how I was using them to problem solve choices I was making playing cards. I guess every time my math is problem solving I like it, but in my education it rarely was. Even word problems were just identifying the formula and subbing in the variables.

I know the many good math teachers I know are not surprised that students don't feel they can do it and just want a formula. I was always way better at memorizing the formula and doing the evens or odds in the text than I was at understanding the why. But understanding the why is what would have made Math relevant for me, and I would have persevered through lack of potency if I was really thinking critically. I just wasn't doing much thinking most of the time.

Dan talks early on in the video about how textbooks are a big part of the problem. They were for me. Since they gave me only the variables I needed, they were like a badly written mystery. You know, the kind where the only minor characters you meet will be significant later? You don't do any thinking there, you just sub in Mr. Scott in as the murder. If I had been figuring out what I needed to know and excluding irrelevant information, the why would have been automatic, as would my sense of engagement. I have always liked a challenge, but math just seemed to be low level thinking.

As my husband is teaching math to our daughters, I can see that texts are starting to change, but the problems Dan identifies are still firmly in place.  I'd sure welcome some insights from my math loving friends on this one. Is Dan right in your experience? How do you think we should teach math? I have always liked a good problem - and maybe it is worth starting to do the math.

Replacing grading

Joe Bower has an interesting Prezi about how he replaced grading with feedback. I like it because it used the progression of Prezi well and he is clearly thinking deeply about how he structures his class and why.

Joe's blog is about his quest to make his Red Deer, Alberta classroom more engaging for his students. He is also hard at work challenging educational practice, sometime in a constructive way and, sometimes in an aggressive one. However, since Joe is thinking about why his classroom is the way it is, he often holds my interest, and I think he is worth adding to blogs you follow.

On Sunday, Joe diverted from his usual topics to post on a video that irritated him. Having recently posted on a video that irritated me, I thought I should humour him. Despite Joe's focus on removing judgement in his feedback, his blog title of Taylor Mali is a Joke seemed just a tad evaluative to me.In watching the video, I re-focused on what it is in the grading conversation that bothers me so much. It is the control.

Teachers measuring students and declaring them bad or good is really a problem if we want learning to occur. Plus, who wants to learn when someone is watching to catch you making a mistake so they can put a big red X on in and report it to everyone? Mali is all about the control. He talks about enforced silence, students feeling like failures when given an A-.

That's it right there - teaching as tyranny. It actually isn't the marks at all. I didn't mind having to give or receive them, but the part where marks were a weapon in the struggle for dominance is an issue for me.

Having said that, I would not describe myself as a flexible, open, and spontaneous teacher. I'm a structured person and my classroom reflects it. And students didn't just get to hand things in whenever or have no consequences for anything. It's just that really bad choices always have their own consequences in the end, so I know you will face the consequences. My role is to help you learn - measuring your learning is a very small part of what I do.

By the end of last year, I was using an evaluation method that was essentially portfolio based. Students used various assignments as evidence of learning to move up on a mastery rubric. I didn't grade particular work, but I did say what learning I could see in it and I asked my students to do that for each other and themselves. Although we negotiated the marks, it was rarely a struggle and never for control. You have the evidence to show you have acquired the learning or you don't, and most students see that easily.

Every year I ask my students for feedback - I use specific questions designed to assess competence, autonomy, relevance and belonging. I also ask what they would get rid of and why, and what is critical to keep. Other teachers always ask me how I keep control without the marks, and the answer always consistently up in that feedback. Kids always say my class was tough, but they almost always say it is relevant to them. My favorite parts is this: the things they learn about through the assessment are always about how they learn well, not about the hoops they need to jump though for me. That means the control (and the grade) both sit with them. We replace grading with responsibility.

What is a Learning Leader?

As we move into the third year of Collegiate Renewal, people who have been Learning Leaders and administrators are starting to offer a vision of what this form of distributed, teacher leadership looks like. Marshall Whelan cc-d me on his version. He says that as a leader he tried to do these things and was not always successful, but he figures this is what the the job needs:

Whether you are Right Brained or Left Brained or double dominant, learn to enjoy the practice of holding yourself professionally responsible in a widely divergent community of thinking that seeks to converge into the most engaging conversations about learning that you are likely to experience. This could be and must be a mix of the Philosophical and Practical - a steady diet of one and not the other makes for frustration.

Sincerely believe in the power of WE: a We staff, a We school, and WE classrooms.
Be prepared to learn from your fellow Learning Leaders, staff and students. You have something to contribute, but it may be at times no more or less important than that of anyone else. The real power is in Group Thinking.

Believe that Excellence is a process and not a state. We are never finished/fixed products, we will never "arrive", and we can only get better if/when we decide it is for everyone's progress.

Be prepared to see messy change: always ask people to explain their version of change , as they may be on to something that you in your omniscience may just have not realized.

Recognize that we are not just changing practice for the betterment of students, but also for ourselves. Collegiate Renewal is first and foremost about changing/ empowering teachers.

Know that you are not and will never be the ONLY fount of all wisdom and knowledge on the staff.

Listen often, ask questions, do not pontificate (This is a hard one for me, or so my wife and daughter tell me.)

Demonstrate a willingness to be judgmental: about practice, but not about people. (This is the starkest change for those who have never had THOSE conversations about people behind closed doors. And yet, it is reality!)

Do not seek this job if you are thinking that this is about ladder climbing to the higher echelons of power: others will reject your motives as base. Instead, roll up your sleeves and get at it! There is beauty and worth in this noble cause in and of itself.

Be critically minded: about reading and points-of-view: Always ask "Does this make sense?" "Who could use this?" "Who needs this?" "How much of a change is this from OUR collective philosophy or practice?" "Is this something I can be the first to try?" Don't be a bandwagon leader. Remember: you not only sipped the Kool Aid; you mixed it! So drink deeply!

Lead by example....Be consistent in all your practices and schedules. Inconsistency is perceived at best as lack of organization; at worst, it is seen as lack of conviction.

Be a detective when it comes to trying to understand people's reasons BEHIND the reasons they give. Everyone is an individual and comes with a learned set of experiences and ideas and situations. Yours are not theirs.

Always be willing to look forward in both vision (where are we going?) and immediate steps in the process ( where are we headed tomorrow/ next week/month? and HOW do we get there?)

Never be afraid to look back and check if you have gone off course or gotten sidetracked. While you look back, always check for stragglers to come along beside. Be positive and be willing to compromise, but exact commitments to proceed in the process. As we say: "Permission to try, and permission to fail and try again. BUT NO Permission to NOT try."

Always look for others who can be of like mind and can take your place in offering suggestions to any and all, especially the stragglers. Someday, you will need to be replaced.

Try as much as possible to create a like minded progressive staff that can begin the process of Mindset change through seeing as many people as possible at the front giving exemplars.

Celebrate often the small victories and little changes in practice.

Never be afraid to ask "Howzitgoin'?" the worst that can happen is they'll tell you the truth! BUT before you ask, remember that the answer to the question: "when I ask you 'How is your AFL journey going?', is that pressure or support?", the answer is YES.

Look for the weary staff as a whole; know and sense when to take your foot off the gas pedal. Remember that taking one's foot off the gas pedal doesn't mean you have hit the brakes or stopped moving forward.

Be wary of the nay sayers that they do not spread poison. Enlist their participation wherever possible (make them sip the Kool Aid too). You just might be surprised at their growth!

Enjoy reading and thinking .......a LOT!!!

Seek ways for people to spend time in collaboration: it is better if they learn HOW and WHY themselves than by being told by you.

Small groups are easier to work with. They are the best blend of all that is good about individuals and all that is Good about large group thinking without the Bad.

Remember to seek feedback....carefully. You have the right to find out what you need to know and the responsibility to let others tell you what they want you to know.

Be reasonable and realize that while you may not have a life, others want one. Don't be a Collegiate Renewal Nazi.

Recognize that you will get to work with some incredible people in the Learning Leader community: some days will be terrific and some days won't. But there will always be progress made if you learn something new every day.

Collegiate Renewal is NOT a contest between schools.

Always ask superiors to explain their rationale for why they believe or do what they do. They usually have a good reason for what they want!

Strive to explain the message of Collegiate Renewal as often as possible to those who know less about it. But do it in a manner that dignifies them, and try it in plain layman's lingo.

Hopefully, you'll do yourself out of a job as We all become independent and co-operative thinkers.

Lastly, BE POSITIVE and realize that this initiative of change will take years to effect. In fact, it will and should never be over, as this is the true culture of learning civilization we are attempting to inculcate. In retrospect: I do not like the term Kool Aid: this is really a vintner's dream. We are not trying to grow the definitive grape or the best year. We are seeking to become the best vintners who grow the best varieties of grapes for any and every climate and region, adapting on a continual basis.

Marshall retires this year and he says the white hairs in his beard are stress highlights. He also says that the work of Collegiate Renewal has been the richest work of his career. I think it is the richest because of what Marshall brings to the work. He is a linchpin as Godin describes them, and his growth mindset is in all his suggestions. Adaptation, learning by looking at what is working and what isn't, and being the change you want in world are all a part of what Marshall recommends. Marshall's ideas are similar to my own, if more eloquently expressed, and I know some people find them daunting. They ask how anyone can be all that and be a full time teacher. I think maybe we miss the point. We want you strive to be these things - it isn't a destination, it is a way of thinking.

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)

Audio comments avec Rolf's wry humour

I got to attend the second half of Rolf Polan's session on audio comments. Rolf is a Secondary Instructional Technology Leader and an on-line teacher. When I arrived, he was showing a video and explaining the freeware and Mac tools he uses. Here is a still of the video - you'll have to ask Rolf for the full meal deal. You can also watch excerpts on Scott's post.

Rolf talked about how he use Adobe PDF to use leave verbal comments on student work. I can see how being able make more comments in the same amount of time could really help us growing student ability.


3 of his tips that really interested me:

• He saves a general comment that he inserts in all of the students' work for one assignment
• Students just double click on the PDF file to hear the comments
• Giving audio comments allows you to comment much more extensively, like having a conversation in a classroom, which makes giving specific, descriptive feedback easier. It also makes it easier for students to understand what you've written on the document because you are expanding it.

Rolf's presentation, specifically the humour in his video where well worth the time in the session. One of my favorite shots was Rolf marking massive piles of disorganized assignments, followed by a pan to a massive attached table with late assignments.

One question I asked was if used students use audio comments to provide feedback for each other. Rolf's students are at a distance, finding ways for students to interact and help each other learn is more challenging than it is in a traditional classroom. Like all the presentations I happened to go to, Rolf used the tools so he could provide feedback, but did not use it with students. As we work more on engaging students and practicing the principles of assessment for learning, this will be something we all need to work on.

AFL - not Assessing Facts Lots

What are we going to ask on our tests when students are
walking in with Google in their pockets?

David Warlick

I was working on a presentation connecting technology and Assessment for Learning after reading a blog post by Konrad Glogowski. His blog, blog of proximal development

often has interesting ideas on it, and he is wrestling with some of the big questions of Collegiate Renewal. Most recently, the connection between what technology does the classrooms and the role of assessment for learning have been merging in his thinking. I lifted this quotation from his blog:

As Michael Wesch recently argued,

All of this vexes traditional criteria for assessment and grades. This is the next frontier as we try to transform our learning environments. When I speak frankly with professors all over the world, I find that, like me, they often find themselves jury-rigging old assessment tools to serve the new needs brought into focus by a world of infinite information. Content is no longer king, but many of our tools have been habitually used to measure content recall. For example, I have often found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions in a way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a new subjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are not satisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students to waste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead of exercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevant questions (Wesch, 2009).

Wesch, M. (2009, January 7). From knowledgeable to knowledge-able: Learning in new media environments. Academic Commons.

Warlick's point regarding those mini computers we call cell phones is a valid one and Welch's point about how we assess connects in a critical way. For many teachers, testing is still an act of checking to see which invertebrates traits a student can correctly identify. I know I've given more than one exam where students had to define poetic devices.

The question of what is robust and compelling for student to learn shaped not only by what students will give their heads and hearts to (as my boss always says), but also by what things they need, given that the facts are already there.

There is an ongoing debate in educational technology circles about how much knowledge you need to be able to engage in media and information literacy. I actually happen to think you need quite a bit. But "testing" is one of the worst ways to see what students can do with information they know, and testing low-level factual recall is more than a little pointless.

When learning is shaped around real questions and assessed through an interactive process that is collaborative and designed to promote growth, then we actually have alignment between our technical reality, our teaching philosophy, and how we assess.

Now all we need is a mark book that can keep up new types of evidence and use specific descriptive feedback instead of numbers. . .

Teacher as learner

We always say that if we want deeply engaged learners, we need deeply engaged teachers. Growth mindset, commitment to renewal, a focus on each learner - these are all things that we value. I recently came across a power point by Wes Fryer on Slideshare that articulates many of the things I aspire to be and hope that my children have.

Things I Want To Model As Your Teacher

View more documents from Wesley Fryer.

The problem is, Wes picks so many things. I'd have a hard time picking ones I don't think are important, and I know that teachers are busy people and we are always adding to the list of things we want them to be and do. And they can't do them because we compel them too, it has to be because they really want to or it is not enough. Teachers have to really want it.

What can I do to create the conditions where teachers want to engage in the way Wes suggests? What barriers do we need to address?

Learning in CLASSrooms or Communities

I watched an interesting video tonight - it connects to all the pondering I have been doing about how we rethink school to engage our students. Take a look and let me know what you think. What makes the best connection between Collegiate Renewal and technology?

Choice as pain killer

Patterson (et al) argue that there is a critical difference between punishment and sacrifice. They both have pain, but you have no choice with punishment and choice with sacrifice. That's the nugget, Patterson argues, that leads to personal engagement.

I first encountered Paterson reading an article in December's issue of Teacher Librarian. The whole issue is about teaching and learning with technology. My favorite article is by Vicki Davis, whose blog I have followed for a while. Davis ask, "How do we unleash the intrinsic desire of teachers to help students learn and help teachers make the sacrifices it will take to get there? "(p. 9). Yup, sacrifices. She argues we want to teachers to act as teacherpreneurs: "someone who organizes a classroom venture for learning and assumes the risk for it" (p. 8). Sounds a lot like Collegiate Renewal.

When discussing Collegiate Renewal, we also talk about how engaged learners need engaged teachers. We know what we are asking is actually a really big shift. Sometimes I think we forget about how painful it is.

I think we always need to come back to that intrinsic desire to help kids learn. That's why we are teachers - we make the decision to do things with that desire in mind. Ask two teachers with opposite practices why they do things, and they will both tell you they do it for the learning.

So if choice is the pain killer we need, we have a problem. It is antithetical to "prescribe" choice. And yet, choice in a vacuum is often uninformed or outright wrong.

I have been willing to do a lot of gruelling, devastating and tedious things when I see results for my students. I'm even more willing to do these things when other teachers encourage me to do so. I got my copy of this article from a teacher librarian friend of mine, on the recommendation of another TL. I've shared it with 5 other educators. I went out today to interview a teacher and he talked about why Collegiate Renewal was the only way to go, and then he talked about how hard it is. The choices he is making in his classroom sacrifice his time and energy, but in talking to him, I was reminded that I was prepared to engage, even knowing the pain.

Patterson is right that choice is key, and it is really hard to make a change . Davis quotes Herold et al in the article: "There is no such thing as an 'organizational change...'. When we say an organization has made the transition from 'point A' to 'point B', we really mean individuals within the organization have changed their behaviour, so that collectively the organization now reflects these changes" (p. 70). I guess that means we need to keep talking about what is happening in our classrooms, and about what difference it made for our students. That choice to engage is the only balm.

Of course we believe collaboration is a good idea – right?

For the last two decades, education journals have been publishing studies that extol the virtues of professional collaboration. In fact, creating a collaborative culture has been identified by some educational researchers as the most important factor in successful school renewal.

Research is clear that, for teachers, working collaboratively:

· inspires the desire to renew professional practices,
· increases instructional competence and confidence,
· makes complex professional tasks more manageable,
· promotes coherence and consistency in instructional practices

Together, teachers have more energy, skills, resources and ideas than an individual teacher and their synergy leads to higher quality planning and instruction.

Thus it is not surprising that we are all familiar with Professional Learning Communities, inquiry teams, PGN’s, teacher learning groups and many other structures designed to promote collaboration. Also, countless sub-days are provided and many detailed facilitation plans are developed so that teachers can work together. These are prevalent in our schools because we want to realize the benefits of collaboration in our division.

However effective these structures and expenditures are, I do wonder if collaboration - an idea with such wide acceptance - requires so many extra efforts and supports. If collaborating is such a good idea, it seems to me that planning and teaching together would occur naturally as a part of our day-to-day work. Does it?

Do we plan instruction together on a regular basis? Is team-teaching common in our schools? Do we develop common assessments with colleagues? Do we invite other teachers into our classrooms as an extra set of eyes and ears to provide feedback on something we can’t take note of while we are teaching? Are our actions evidence of our belief in and commitment to collaboration?

If the answer is yes, let’s share examples of teachers collaborating and the benefits of their work together – to reinforce this as a core element of our professional culture. If the answer is no, let’s find out how to grow a collaborative culture in our division.

Based on what I have read and experienced, I know that time and courage are required for meaningful collaboration. Collaborative planning and instruction take more time and deprivatizing our practice is a professional risk that may be uncomfortable.

To realize the benefits of collaboration we can overcome those two factors:
· Do we already have time built into our work lives that we could use for collaboration?
· Do we have trusted colleagues with whom we can establish a more collaborative professional relationship?

To enhance the quality of our instruction and our students’ learning, we can find the time and the courage required to collaborate.

We believe that collaboration is a good idea – right?


More: Read an “old school” DuFour perspective on collaboration.

Mindset green thumb

“How can growth-minded teachers be so selfless, devoting untold hours to the worst students? Are they just saints? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone become a saint? The answer is that they’re not entirely selfless. They love to learn. And teaching is a wonderful way to learn. About people and how they tick. About what you teach. About yourself. And about life.

Fixed-mindset teachers often think of themselves as finished products. Their role is to impart their knowledge. But doesn’t that get boring year after year?”
p. 201, Mindset by Carol Dweck.

Collegiate Renewal asks teachers to be engaged learners in concert with their students, I have been thinking quite a bit about the implications of a fixed or growth mindset lately.

If you've got a fixed mindset and you get a bad grade you think:

• I’m an idiot, failure etc. (the self is caught being bad and publicly exposed).
• I have no life, its unfair, my teacher is mean (students learn that bad things are in the control of others).
• I’m not putting time or effort into that. (if I am not good at something, I should stop doing it).

If you've got a growth mindset and you get a bad grade you think:

• I need to work harder in that class, but I have the rest of the semester (making a mistake is something you can fix, not who you are. The solution lies in changing the circumstances or marshaling resources to get better).
• Next time I will get help from my friends, or ask the teacher for extra help (if I am not good at things, I need to make a specific plan to learn more or do more. I like a challenge).

Clearly, we want our students to have a growth mindset if we want them to keep learning, and we hope assessment for learning will make a difference for them. Dweck argues that teachers play a critical role in nurturing the seedlings that are their students' mindsets.

The roots go even deeper than that. Teachers with fixed mindsets see the potential of a student as fixed; they predict what mark a student will have at the end of the class, and they see believe it is the job of the teacher to evaluate what students can do. Fixed mindset teachers impart what they know and and then test students on what they have learned. They believe assessment for learning and differentiation are a lowering of standards because performance is the most important thing. In a classroom with a fixed mindset teacher, it is important not to make a mistake, because everything is reflected in your grade and you need to get as close to perfect as possible. You should not take the risk of trying something that is hard - you should do what you know how to do.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it actually prevents learning. So a critical question for Collegiate Renewal is: How do we get teachers and their students to embrace a growth mindset?

Assessment for learning (Davies), delaying marking (Kohn), differentiation (Hume) - we've talked about them all. But for some teachers, the mindset the traditional education system remains a critical barrier.

Every year, my husband and I do a bunch of things to help our garden grow despite the harsh conditions of our Saskatchewan climate. We start seeds on our indoor grow table, transfer them to the greenhouse slowly, acclimatize them to the sun, and finally plant them in May. We'll have been growing things for 4 months before the 4 month gardening season starts.

I think we need to consider the transformative change of mindset in Collegiate Renewal the same way. Sprouting growth mindsets will be laborious, and even when it succeeds, we are going to take years to understand how to really teach with a growth mindset. We'll need to shelter it from the winds of public criticism and accountability, and slowly expose it to rays of deep engagement and real partnership with our learners.

Lots of times people ask me if all the work I do in my garden is worth the fresh produce I get in the end. I do really like the great taste, lack of pesticides and the enhanced nutrition when you eat seasonable vegetables off the vine. But mostly, I love to garden. And gardening, like teaching, is a wonderful way to learn. About our world and how it works. About what what we eat. About myself. And about life. In the end, I believe that our transformative change of mindset in Collegiate Renewal will bear fruit in the same way.

Professional Doublethink

I really enjoyed School by Design (Wiggins, Grant and McTighe) when I read it this fall, but it challenged my thinking in a number of ways. I was on board with the thinking on curriculum and on the critical role of the teacher. But when the discussion of the professional teacher came up, I struggled a bit more.

I am a member of the Saskatchewan Teacher's Federation. I have always thought of myself as a professional, and as part and parcel of that, thought that it was the teacher's right and obligation to decide how to teach.

Wiggins, Grant and McTighe: Indeed, schooling and reform have been hindered by the view that it is most 'professional' if teachers decide for themselves how to teach (P. 111, Schooling by Design: Mission, Action and Achievement, 2007) .

Me: But that's what professionalism is. All professionals make decisions based on their experiences and knowledge. When I weigh a variety of complex variables to make a good choice for my students, I am being professional.

Wiggins, Grant and McTighe: The result is not merely an inconsistent array of unexamined approaches to instruction (as if medicine were still what any country doctor 200 years ago thought it should be) -

Me: Wait. But the process of learning is, at best, highly contextual. That's why we are professionals. I respect the wisdom of those I teach with, and their collective wisdom helps kids. I know that sometimes we use the instructional strategies that we find most comfortable, or teach what we like best, but in general (pause). Well, I also know there is clear research saying what we should do and why we should do it, like the research on the need to change our assessment strategies, the fact that summarizing is an important think for students to do -"

Wiggins, Grant and McTighe: The result is not merely an inconsistent array of unexamined approaches to instruction (as if medicine were still what any country doctor 200 years ago thought it should be); a more harmful effect is that any critique of teaching inevitably is seen as an attack on teachers (P. 111, Schooling by Design: Mission, Action and Achievement, 2007) .

(pause)

Me: (as implications for school change and view of professionalism collide) Oh, dear.

Affable Lurking

Two years ago my school division embarked on Collegiate Renewal. The goal of the renewal is lofty:

All collegiate students will be engaged in their learning so they will graduate
as active participants in lifelong learning and as responsible and caring citizens
in the community, nation, and world.

My principal put out a call for people to be Learning Leaders in our high school. I had recently finished a masters focused around professional development and technology and wasn't sure it was the gig for me. I think part of me wanted to keep lurking.

On the Internet, lurkers are people who consume what others post but rarely or never enter the conversations themselves. Some 90% of us are lurkers (Nonnecke and Preece, 2003). In the world of teaching, almost every adult lurks. We all went to high school, we all have strong opinions about how school should be taught, but few of us teach. Those who do often lurk in the school system, observing and privately commenting on our students, our peers, those who lead us, and the school system itself. When I decided to become a Learning Leader in 2007, I decided to stop lurking.

Change processes, particularly transformative changes, are a difficult proposition in high schools. Like blogging, leading change in Collegiate Renewal is a far cry from the affable lurking of my teaching career. I find myself talking publicly about changes as I am making them, sharing what I am doing even as some of it goes wrong, an act of inviting the comments of observers. It is a process we are asking our students and teachers to embrace as we all learn about the role assessment for learning plays and it is a place of vulnerability.

For the last two years, I have been muddying the torpid waters of our high schools even more. I am now working on helping lead professional learning around how technology can help us with renewal. There are days I could really use a little camouflage. One of the things that buoys me the most is understanding that I am not alone in the work I do. I have been reading everything I can - research on change literature, assessment for learning, learner engagement, differentiation, and 21st Century literacy. But more than anything, I have been lurking on the blogs of other educators who write about the value of technology in transforming the classroom. The wealth of their ideas and richness of their shared conversation reminds me that lurking, however affable, is the opposite of contributing. Deeply engaged learners are always participants, and I need to be one myself.

Cited in this post:

• Blair Nonnecke and Jenny Preece (2003). "Silent participants: Getting to know lurkers better". in D. Fisher and Christopher Lueg. From Usenet to Co Webs: Interacting with social information spaces. Springer. pp. 110–132. ISBN 1852335327.