Saturday, December 25, 2010
Professional Development
Particularly with a large and talented faculty like the one at ISB, it would seem to be a more effective model to allow teams to truly select goals, develop expertise through shared research, and then work to improve practice. As mentioned in my first post, context is everything and the ineffective model described by Powell robs professional development of context.
A recent consultant had to be reminded many times that the grade 6 team is not new to using computers extensively in the classroom. She is/was a tremendously talented educator with tons of expertise but, robbed of the context in which we work, she was not as effective as she could have been in meeting the needs of the people she was supposed to be helping. It is important to note that she was invited without input from the teachers she was to work with and a fairly significant effort had to be made to have her visit in any way tailored to the needs/requests of the faculty.
In the interest of being productive, I will stop ranting. This has been the model I have seen in just about every school in which I have worked. I also know that ISB has been making an effort to get away from this model, as evidenced by the recent PD day in which many teachers led workshops and, perhaps more importantly, conversations about teaching. When there is time, teachers seem to come together around issues they find in teaching; we are lucky to have so many teachers who love what they do and care about doing it better.
All complaining aside, I know that I tend to work in isolation in some ways. I get immersed in the tasks I have to do and rarely leave my classroom. This leaves few opportunities for the casual and organic conversations that are often the springboard for much more in depth conversation. I have been lucky in teaming with great people in the IS grouping of my Humanities classes, but I also know that both of my partners were, like me, always rushing to finish class related tasks. Within my team, I am active in working to make our curriculum and practice relevant and vibrant, but this tends to happen within meetings.
I am particularly interested in the model of cognitive coaching. In the Powell course here at ISB, we engaged in short practice coaching conversations and I found the model to be very effective. I saw, both as coach and coached, how the focus on one student had me examining my practice in the classroom. I visualized my actual movements in the classroom and re-enacted key moments with individual students and with the class as a whole. I was actively reflecting on better meeting the needs of individuals and the group.
This seems like a powerful way to achieve what we are seeking with looking for learning while also developing the kinds of relationships between colleagues that will create a learning community. I have been lucky to have a wife with whom I have this type of conversation frequently and several colleagues with whom it seems like a natural next step.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Best Practice?
"Research and experience demonstrate that solutions are not necessarily interchangeable." Oh how true that rings. When we talk of best practice it sometimes makes me cringe. Every generation of teachers has heard about 'best' practice in some form or another. Every generation of teacher has seen 'best' practice change over time. Every generation of teacher has seen 'best' practices that do not suit the needs of the learners in their classrooms or the personalities of the educators.
Assuming that solutions/practices are interchangeable is simply another tweaking of the original factory/industrial revolution philosophical underpinnings of our educational system. Our students are not part of a closed system in which we can apply universal methods of 'production'. They are human beings.
Thankfully we have legions of researchers publishing their findings about effective teaching strategies and, increasingly, the actual function of the brain during learning activities. It is, however, up to us to apply the 'best' approaches to our classrooms. We are the field testers who must find what works best within the context of our classrooms, our student bodies, our institutions and our own personalities.
[As an example, I think of the KIPP schools in the United States. I would not think the regimentation of KIPP would be suitable to our community. Nor would I be presumptuous enough to say that the KIPP approach is 'wrong'. Further, I am self-aware enough to know that KIPP's approach would likely not suit my teaching style. I would not be an ideal teacher for a KIPP school because of how I teach and because of what KIPP wants/needs.]
This is where the true value of a reflective teacher and a reflective learning community come into play. A truly reflective community values the discussion of philosophy and practice. The community actually values QUESTIONING AND DIFFERENCE. The community actually values GOING SLOW because it recognizes that we must take think through our decisions and see how they apply within the context of our individual students, classroom and institutions.
We must also face the fact that there are powerful forces that work against this recognition of the overwhelming power of context. Corporations sell 'best' practices through kits/programs/texts/consultants. There is a lot of money to be made in identifying a 'best' practice.
Further, it is easier to choose a 'best' practice. It makes the job of planning, implementing and even talking about your program easier because it is clear cut.
Context matters.
Photo credit: Mike Defiant
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Today a compliment
Friday, March 26, 2010
Coetail Final Project: 27 March 2010
- meet with individual groups for extended amounts of time;
- participate when I thought it was advantageous;
- participate with them without being a drop-in;
- draw out bigger ideas from students who had the germ of an interesting topic;
- just simply listen for a while without any interruption;
- get a transcript of all the virtual discussions;
- review those for topics for whole class discussion at a later time;
- and get a better sense of the body of group's discussion.
Coetail Final Project: 23 March 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Coetail Final Project: 12 March 2010
During today's conference, however, I hit upon a new use. I have a particularly outstanding student from Korea whose mother doesn't not speak English fluently. She relies on her daughter to translate much of what I say. From past experience, I know that this exemplary student is also exceedingly modest. In the first semester conferences, it was obvious that she did not fully translate the praise I heaped upon her. She blushed and giggled but her mother did not react in the way I would have expected given how highly I regarded her daughter's academic prowess. Clearly, something was being (deliberately) lost in translation.
This time, I decided, I would not be similarly foiled. I typed several select phrases in google translator and watched as her mother grinned in delight. The student, not surprisingly, blushed and laughed but looked thrilled to have her mother 'hear' what I really had to say. In the end we finished the conference in a very good mood.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Coetail Final Project: 11 March 2010
Digital Native: Part 2
Anyone from the Coetail class will know that I have a strong reaction against the term digital native AND the notion that our students somehow have an innate understanding of the digital world and digital tools. To summarize, I believe that most of our students entering our classrooms have an understanding of a narrow section of the digital world and only a surface level understanding of digital tools. This is one reason that I believe I/we should incorporate them into my/our teaching. The immense potential will go untapped unless we use them/teach them/explore them.
[This is changing/improving all the time as more and more teachers integrate technology in meaningful ways.]
Anyway, grade 6 students recently wrote memoirs relating to their trip to Kanchanaburi. To give the memoir more depth and especially to help students begin to realize the potential of online publishing, I asked that they include photos and links to related topics (much like a slate.com article providing background).
I had taught students how to insert links and photos many times between August and February. For most it was a simple, easy process. One student, however, had not added either element 2 weeks after the deadline. I showed her at school privately, but still after two weeks both elements were missing. Finally, one day I saw that she was online (through her gmail status) and started a google chat.
One thing that this student was quite adept at was chat (and chat spelling, but that is another story). She was very excited to chat (even about her project) and I began to talk her through the process of adding the photos and links. In order to guide her and to imagine the windows and prompts, I asked if she was using Mac or PC. To my great amusement, she replied, “i dont no.”
After I stopped laughing, I asked if there was a big Apple somewhere on the computer. “Oh,” she said, “it says samsung.” After all her time using computers at school, elementary and middle school, PC lab and Mac lab, this little concept had escaped her. That was in addition to a basic element of blogging that had been covered many times before this year and probably last as well.
Thankfully, I was able to talk/chat her through the process and it worked. Problem solved and, with luck, lesson permanently learned.
This was the first time I had given a student online tech support (though I had done it with my family). It was a great reminder for me that my students are really learning about technology’s application and potential at school. This is so important for me because I really strongly believe that they will only begin to explore what they can do if they see it in action somewhere. For most of them, school will be/needs to be that place.
The most basic example of all is facebook. Only because of Green Panthers, CarrotMob and a teacher (Kerry) did students see that there was a power to facebook. This is why I want computers in my students’ hands.
If digital native is anything like being a native of a country and not knowing who your Prime Minister is, maybe I could come to love the term.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Coetail Final Project: 10 March 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Obama and the trustees say, "Fire 'em all!"
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I could use a set of those
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Tech and Talk in the Classroom
Holidays are always fabulous. This holiday, however, offered a unique professional opportunity. We saw about 65 former students, all of whom have started university or are finishing high school. This provided us with a chance to do some informal yet invaluable field research on education and on technology in education.
Before detailing our findings, it’s important to describe the ‘subject group’. They actually form two groups. The first is made up of my grade four/five students from an urban charter school in Los Angeles. This school is a successful public school in a neighbourhood and district of many unsuccessful schools. Students at the school do not have to pass any kind of entrance exam but do have to maintain a decent academic and attendance record to stay in the school. Some of these students were part of an accelerated program so that they enrolled in university as second year students. These students are all in university now, most of them in large public universities in California.
The other group of students is from the small private school in Pasadena where we were first middle school teachers and later heads of the middle and high schools. This school is small in both total numbers and in class sizes and would be characterized by most people as a liberal institution. Its methods aren’t radical, but the politics and attitudes of most students and families would be considered liberal. There is no entrance exam at the school and, compared to most private schools in the area, it takes a very wide range of students of different abilities. The students we reunited with from this school are either finishing high school or have started university. They attend a wide range of schools including community colleges, public universities and small liberal arts schools.
Both groups of students would likely be considered quite technologically literate. In most cases, much of what they do using computers grew out of their own interests and mastery occurred through practice on their own. Some of the teachers they had through high school embraced digital tools in education and some had little interest in them.
In discussing what school is like for them now, we asked our students many questions about technology use in the classroom. We were very surprised by the strength of their reactions against digital tools being used in the classroom. In almost every case, students lamented situations in which they could not engage in discussion (as is the case for those at University of California schools where introductory classes are large). In the case of those students in small schools with small classes, students heaped scorn upon the idea that they should be using computers in class. They were overwhelming in their desire to talk.
They saw talk as an essential underpinning of their understanding and as an essential way of working with their peers. They embraced classes in which teachers lead good discussions and complained about those in which their means of expression of ideas was primarily electronic.
We described images of university classrooms that we had discussed in our courses in which students were all sitting with their laptops open. Virtually unanimously, their reactions were negative and included the following points:
· They know they would not pay attention in such a situation.
· They want to talk and discuss.
· They want to hear what their professors/teachers have to say.
· Multi-tasking meant incomplete attention to each task.
Though I have to confess that I am happy to hear their responses since they reflect some of my own beliefs, I also have to admit that I was quite surprised at the forcefulness of their reactions. Some students were actually quite passionate about the need to talk as a group in class. Others found some of the uses of digital tools to be needless intermediate steps that postponed important discussion.
I know that for me, this reinvigorates my commitment to discussion and talk in the classroom.