Coetail Final Project: 27 March 2010

Thanks to one of my teammates I implemented a new dimension to our book clubs last week. As I have mentioned before, students book club participation was quite good. I was impressed by their preparation and by their level of examination and analysis of their shared texts. However, they are limited by their age/experience and can't always get to some of the key issues in a novel the way they could with some teacher guidance.

During book club meetings, I have always floated and, though mostly listening, offered suggestions to deepen the conversations. This is interesting but limited in that I want to hear more and, in some cases, draw students' ideas out more. As a student I have never liked someone dropping in and adding their two cents to a conversation that has been moving along just fine without them, so I have tried to avoid doing it too much as a teacher. Nevertheless, a teacher can guide a discussion in a way that a group of 12 year olds cannot.

So back to the "new dimension". Following my colleague's example, I set up a chat on todaysmeet for each book club (after previously giving them play tim on the chat site the day before). I had explained the guidelines and why I was using chat with them instead of the usual format, so the day of the discussions we just got started. I was pretty happy with the result.

I was able to:

• 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.

It was a positive experience in many ways, but possibly the most interesting was the follow-up whole class discussion. I was curious about students' reactions to the format. In both classes, about 41 out of 45 students liked using chat. About 36 of 45 said we should use it occasionally (that was my suggestion because I would not use it exclusively in place of face-to-face). [This next one is most interesting to me because to me it shows they understand the different levels of communication offered by face-to-face interactions.] All of them agreed that they had better discussions about the important aspects of the novel face to face.

They cited the things you would expect...spontaneity, flow, limits of typing speed etc. All in all, though, I was pretty happy to have a new tool to use.

Coetail Final Project: 23 March 2010

This, unfortunately, is the first time I have had occasion to write about a real disappointment with technology implementation in the classroom. The grade 6 team decided to do book clubs/literature circles. I created a website with links to synopses of all the different novel choices. After reviewing them independently, students submitted their choices to their respective humanities teachers and we placed them in novel study groups of 2-5 students.

As with most literature circles, students read independently and prepared for their groups' discussions by identifying important issues in the novel, interesting writing, questions about theme or plot etc. The discussions themselves went very well, in large part because of the kinds of discussions they learned HOW to have from our previous whole-class readings. Almost all students were active participants and brought interesting perspectives to their group's novel reading.

So where is the disappointment?

My dream had been to have cross classroom collaboration and it just didn't really materialize. Each book club had a counterpart in one of my teammate's classes, so there was definitely opportunity for discussion, virtual or face-to-face, and on projects. I even had ideas for projects on which we could have collaborated - fiction, research, character analyses - and so did my colleagues. It never panned out, however, because we didn't have (didn't make) enough time for the front-end planning. We ended up with different pacing for the book clubs, so our reading schedules didn't match. We had different reactions to the book clubs themselves, so we ended up going in different directions with the clubs. Meanwhile, I had thought that the powerful opportunity offered by our virtual and literary connection was organic enough that collaboration would materialize.

In the end, the book clubs worked in the most important ways (for the readers), but the added powerful dimension of collaboration will have to wait for next year. The nice thing is that this was our team's first year doing this and we all learned from the experience. All aspects of the implementation, on the technology side, will be better next year. I have a better sense of even the sites/tools I will use and of how I will plan with my team. All was not lost.

Coetail Final Project: 12 March 2010

We just finished up conferences and I found a new way for technology to play a part. I have used digital tools in conferences for several years, mostly in the form of students electronic portfolios. Blogs, videos, audio recordings and wikis have provided a great reference point for students' discussion of their work and progress.

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.

그녀는 놀라운 학생이다.

난 다행 회의 완료됩니다.

I hope that's right. In the conference, several things did not make sense but the gist got through. When my Spanish students use it, it is OBVIOUS.

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.

Coetail Final Project: 10 March 2010

When we (Robin and I) began thinking of a technology oriented project for the course, we began to think outside the curriculum of our respective classrooms. We thought about how we gather news and information, ideas and inspiration for our teaching and personal lives and realized that we have adapted to the incredible abundance in the digital world by using a combination of browsing, repeat exploration and deep research. I, for example, regularly browse the headlines of about a dozen online news and information sources from four countries and in two languages. I regularly undertake more slow-paced exploration of a few stories/events/ideas each week. Finally, I research probably one or two things in depth per week. Some are of personal interest and some of professional interest.

One site I love is Slate because of its analysis of important issues and quirky topics and the links it provides for further research and investigation. There is a tremendous diversity of thought and topics represented on Slate and following the threads of related stories is often like letting one's imagination wander. It takes you surprising places.

This brings me to our project...

Like the larger world we live in, ISB is full of more ideas and activities than I can absorb at any one time. There are aspects of ISB life that I want to know about in detail and aspects for which a quick update is sufficient. Imagining that this is true for most in the community, Robin and I imagined a Slate-like site for our school. It would provide access to the life of the school and, most importantly, the intellectual life of the school.

We saw this as a key tool for community members to keep abreast of the richness of school life and as a powerful window for those 'outside' it. Much of the thinking from our students and teachers deserves an audience. Whether it is for prospective students and families or people seeking signs of intellectual life on the planet, we imagined a site that would allow people to set foot 'inside' the school.

Sports, pedagogy, literature, dance, theatre...they all have a place at ISB and we want people to be able to find them, explore them and realize how much is going on here. We also want them to feel inspired and believe that there is a place for all of the creative and intellectual energy they have.

Where do we stand now? We are planning to make it happen. I couldn't ask for more.

Obama and the trustees say, "Fire 'em all!"

The Central Falls' school board's recent decision to fire all the teachers at Central Falls High School (in Rhode Island, USA) in order to turn the school around may make quite a few people happy. [Check out the reaction from the folks at Newsbusters.] It smacks of dramatic, even heroic, action to save a community from a chronically underperforming school. If all the efforts, all the training, all the money that pours (so the thinking goes) into this school hasn't fixed things, it must be the teachers.

But there is something wrong, something fundamentally twisted about the approach. Before I get to my outrage, let me back up a few steps.

I am in my 19th year as a teacher. I work in a very successful (overseas) school (by almost all measures), but I have worked in some institutions that failed on every professional level I can imagine. I have seen bad teachers teach, I have gritted my teeth as I sat across from them in faculty meetings and I have sought refuge in my classroom work to avoid the many adults who ran the school.

Now a little about the firings...The federal government in the United States has tied federal funding to four possible options for the lowest performing five percent of schools. As described in the Christian Science Monitor,

[Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan] is forcing states to identify the bottom 5 percent of their schools and take one of four actions with each one: closure; takeover by an independent organization; transformation; or turnaround, which calls for firing all the teachers and rehiring no more than half of them in the fall.

Central Falls obviously chose the latter option. We all know the apparent reason why. The school was by most measures not working. But it is still a twisted approach to fixing schools.

But both the architects and the implementers of this policy forget one thing. I would be willing to bet that in almost every case, those fired teachers put more time and energy into the success of the students at that failing school than anyone else (aside from their families) in their lives. They engaged in a seemingly Sisyphean task working within a system they did not make.

The school, the trustees, the Department of Education and President Obama ignore this completely. They do not try to find a solution to the problem of a bad teacher or some bad teachers. Instead they slap in the face every single member of the faculty. They didn't set the funding rate, they didn't build the building, they didn't build the housing, they didn't create a job policy, they didn't establish policing procedures, they didn't create poverty programs. But almost every one of them came to classrooms that reflected those policies, or lack of them, made over many years by many layers of government. Most of them gave everything they could to help fix a bad situation.

And in return, they got fired. Publicly.

Why? Because it's easier to fire 'em all than it is to make a real change and fix a bad tenure system. Because itLOOKS like someone is doing something to a public that wants better schools. Because they don't know how to fix schools that don't work for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with what happens inside the building.

The kind folks at Newsbusters (who also happen to be quite pleased that Starbucks doesn't mind letting gun owners in some areas openly carry their weapons while they sip a latté) may blame teacher unions for tenure rules, but we know they negotiated for those rules with districts and trustees (i.e. they didn't make them).

Get rid of bad teachers - I don't mind. Fix bad schools - I'll be thrilled. Just remember who has been on the front lines while you have been coming up with your plans. Not just the new plan but every other plan that has or hasn't addressed the problems that all end up inside the walls of a school.