Are We Still Evolving

"The biggest part of our environment is culture."
BBC Horizon, Are we still evolving?
(context = the usual pressures to adapt/evolve for a species are environmental, whereas we create tools etc. to adapt)

cognitive coaching (lower case intentional)

Cognitive Coaching

Okay, I have to say it. Call me a cynic, call me a grumpy old man. Call me whatever you need to, but I still have to say it. You don’t have to convince me that cognitive coaching is worthwhile – I think it has tremendous potential just from my brief encounters with how it works. BUT, and this is the thing I have to say, the “Components of the Cognitive Coaching Model” on pages 6-7 is a little over the top.
To accept it at face value, we would have to accept that the cognitive coach is some kind of enlightened being, a pedagogical arhat whose enlightenment shines like a beacon in the educational wilderness. Given that this was written by someone who is a cognitive coach, I think it fair to say that someone forgot a bit about the “humility and pride of admitting that there is more to learn (p. 7).”
By the way, I am pointedly NOT using uppercase when referring to cognitive coaching. As a practice, cognitive coaching incorporates a set of beliefs in guiding its practice/implementation, but one tremendously powerful aspect of it seems to be its flexibility. Giving it the caps? Well, that (perhaps symbolically) gives it the weight of dogma and dogma has no place in educational practice.

First rant of 2011 is now over and I can proceed.
The distinctions between coaching, consulting, collaborating and evaluating are excellent. The table format on pages 14-15 also provides an easy reference point for side-by-side comparison. Understanding the distinctions between the four ideas would make it easier for me as an educator to feel safe being coached and to develop as a coach myself. Clarity of purpose leads to clarity of thinking.
Most importantly, the cognitive in cognitive coaching provides the time – the pause – to think and examine what we/I do. Somewhat like parents who learn the most about parenting from their own parents, as teachers I believe we are initially shaped most by our own teachers. For example, as a new teacher twenty years ago, I at first fell back on my experience as a student to inform my teaching. It took some reflection and time to examine what I was doing and come to see what I wanted to be as a teacher. I was lucky to have quite a few good teachers, but I wanted to be something different. In other words, I needed to “transform the…mental models, thoughts and perceptions” (p.14) of what a teacher is.
This kind of change is not a matter of learning tricks or curricula. Instead, it is an intellectual refinement, an enhanced clarity of thought about what we do and how we do it that comes best from time to think. Further, I believe strongly that talking with someone trusted provides one of the most effective times to think. Every year at back to school night I tell parents that it is the time to talk with others and to think that is the most important part of the classroom.

Professional Development

It is immensely frustrating to know that actual research has been done relating to the efficacy of the professional development models. If research has shown that “neither importing experts nor sending teachers to conferences has shown itself to be particularly effective in improving instruction,” why then is this the model followed so often?

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.

Today a compliment

It started in the oddest of ways but ended in the best of compliments.

Maryum asked me if I had any friends. I couldn't help but laugh and asked, "Why do you ask? Do I smell? Or is it that I am too boring?"

"It's just that you are so kind and nothing seems to bother you. Who has friends like that?"

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.

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.

Ensuring Students Learn What They Need?

Hmmm, isn't that what we always do? I thought that was my biggest source of anxiety for the last 18 years.

I don't think we can ensure (as in, make certain that (something) shall occur or be the case) that our students ever learn everything we think they need to learn. In regards to technology, that is also the case. We can, however, get as close as we possibly can to that goal with a two-pronged strategy.

With a vision for how technology is best used, we approach a point at which the majority of teachers are ready to buy in. Some teachers will always be hesitant to embrace new methods, be they technological or philosophical (or both), because of the many competing demands on time. When we develop a vision for the ways in which technology should be part of our academic lives, teachers are more more willing to jump in and take the time to integrate and master digital tools.

I emphasize the word ways to differentiate between that and specific tools. I have a(n evolving) vision of the place technology should occupy in my pedagogy. In addition to being a hugely powerful source of information, I see it as a means of expression and collaboration first and foremost and, secondarily, as a an archive/portfolio of student work. I believe the tools allow my students to express ideas in new ways to broader audiences and to collaborate with people beyond the confines of the classroom. They can and should now apply what they learn to more realistic problems and situations. Because I have a vision, I am comfortable bringing different digital tools into my pedagogy.

The second 'prong' to ensuring our students learn what they need re technology and information literacy is to weave technology into the fabric of a school. Across grade levels and across the different curricular areas, technology needs to be diffused throughout an institution rather than compartmentalized.

This is my personal philosophy, and it informs all that I do in my teaching. That said, I know that the the most important thing our students NEED to learn is HOW TO LEARN. Technology and information literacy are only part of learning how to learn. Good teaching leads to learning - content, skills and the habits of mind that create real learners. Computers, hand-helds, whatever device that may come our way are not pre-requisites for learning or success.

A question

So many times people trot out statistics (in the vein of) "x% of what we know now will be obsolete in x years."  What does that mean.  What does it mean that knowledge is obsolete?

Is anything in chemistry obsolete?  Is it merely added to?  Is an assumption/fact that was held as true suddenly obsolete?  Or is there something to be learned from something that was proven false? Even if something is proven false, isn't there something to be learned from both how the new facts came to light and the erroneous process that took us to the wrong conclusion originally?

I can imagine obsolete technologies, programming languages.  But what do those pithy quotes and statistics mean?  What are they based on?