Education Rethink

Classroom Leadership: From Compliant Kids to Ethical Thinkers

2012-06-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

A student walks in late to my class for the fourth day in a row. I pull him aside and explain authoritatively that I will not tolerate his misbehavior.

“This is unacceptable. Your education is important. You need to be here on time. I don’t waste class time and so I expect you to honor our norms.”

He stands there silently, looking away. I move into his vision and add, “Does that make sense.”

He nods his head.

“You’re a good kid,” I say. “You’re a deep thinker and you’re creative and you’re compassionate. I see that in you. I just need you showing up on time. Do you understand?”

He looks at me stone-faced and says, “I understand.”

I leave the conversation feeling good about this interaction. I didn’t shame him. I didn’t yell at him. I didn’t write him up and send him to the office with a fat stack of referrals. Compared to an earlier time in my career, this is a success.

Except it doesn’t change the next day. He walks in again fifteen minutes late. I let it slide. I’m busy and I’m tired and honestly I don’t want to engage in the conflict. So, it slips away that day. And the next. And the day after that. And the next week.

Two weeks later, I pull him aside and point to the attendance sheet.

“You can’t be doing this. What kind of bad habits will this form throughout your educational career?” I use the term “career,” despite the deeper reality that learning doesn’t have an on-the-clock and off-the-clock button.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“I can’t have you showing up late like this. It really is a bad habit. They won’t put up with this in high school.”

“I know,” he says.

“I need you to promise me that you’ll show up on time tomorrow,” I tell him.

“I can’t do that,” he says.

“Fine,” I say, trying my best to keep my composure. It feels like a very deliberate attack on my authority. “But there’s going to be consequences.”

“Okay,” he says.

As I turn to leave, he adds, “I was thinking maybe I could stay after each day and earn those fifteen minutes. What do you think of that?”

“Or you could show up on time,” I tell him.

The day progresses and he shows up on time to everything else. He asks and answers questions. On most levels, he’s thriving. Except, there are times when I sense a vague distance between us. There’s an unspoken tension.

I leave that day realizing that my approach has been all-wrong. I’ve focused on the behavior while ignoring my student. I’ve asked him to make commitments that he outright refuses to make. I’ve threatened him with a punishment. I’ve lectured him on his responsibilities. However, in this obsession with the external behavior, I never bothered to ask for the whole story.

So, the next day when he arrives late, I pull him aside. He looks scared this time.

I ask, “Hey, you’re not in trouble. I said that I was going to give you a consequence, but that was a threat. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“No, it’s not okay. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“Yeah,” he says.

I look him in the eye and add, “I haven’t even bothered to listen to the story. I trust you. I trust who you are and I’m convinced that this wouldn’t be a pattern if it there wasn’t a logical reason.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he says.

Space.

It’s awkward. I want to jump in and fill it up with more reassurances. However, this action of vulnerability is a first step toward repairing trust. I know it sounds weak. I know it feels like I’m giving him all the power. However, there’s a paradox at work here: a leader is only powerful through humility. By voluntarily serving, the leader empowers those he or she serves and the result is a trusting submission from the student.

After school, he stops by my class to explain the story. “So, my sister is being bullied really badly. This started a month ago or so and I promised her that I would stay with her until her classes start.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“She asked me not to tell. She’s worried they’ll retaliate,” he explains.

“Don’t you trust the school to keep her safe?” I ask.

“Not as much as I trust myself,” he says.

So, with this, I am able to engage in a conversation about responsibility and trust. The student agrees to report the bullying and together they solve the problem.

What’s the Goal?
When I share this story in the staff lounge, the two other teachers disagree with my approach.

“You totally let him off the hook,” a teacher says.

“Yeah, that’s not how the real world works,” the other says.

“But in the real world, I want him showing up to think because he wants to be there. I want him
valuing family and job and education.”

“If he pulls that crap in the workforce, he’ll be fired. Nobody cares in the real world.”

“I disagree. I think people do care. And I think that ultimately, our job is to prepare students to think ethically. I want them to be empowered to do the right thing, not because they might get in trouble, but because it’s the right thing to do.”

A teacher shakes his head. “How many people would speed if we didn’t have cops?”

“How many speed anyway?”

“But that’s not the point. People don’t speed, because they want to avoid punishment.”

“I don’t speed, because it’s dangerous,” I say.

They laugh. “Sure you do.”

“So, you just enforce the rules regardless?” I ask.

“Yeah,” they say simultaneously.

“And what if the rule is bad?”

“Very few rules aren’t bad,” a teacher explains.

“Do you always follow the rules?” I ask. “I mean, do you do everything right on your lesson plan format?”

“No,” he admits. “But it’s a joke. Why are they making everyone do the exact same thing?”

I’m struck by this mindset that students should be compliant rather than critical thinkers. For all the talk of higher-order thinking, schools rarely ask students to think about the ethics of their behavior. For all the talk of "self-directed learning," schools rarely ask students to participate in self-directed discipline. For all the talk of “citizenship,” there is rarely a call to fight injustice, to think well about moral philosophy and to go beyond simply “being nice.”

When I look at the teacher cheating scandals, the bailouts of unethical banks, the steroid use in professional sports and the lack of ethics in politics, it seems that simply avoiding “getting caught” and staying within compliance are a real danger. When I think of the “I was just following the rules” argument of Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa, I sense the dark side of compliance.

Classroom leaders understand the goal of discipline is to redirect a child to think better about how to live. If we truly believe in self-directed learning, we need to embrace self-directed discipline. Students need to learn to manage, analyze and reflect upon their behaviors and how they connect to their own personal, ethical framework.

Rules are not a set of arbitrary ideas that one enforces, but a set of guidelines that a community hashes out through democratic debate. They are deeply rooted in an ethical framework.

What This Means
The experience mentioned before reinforces some fundamental truths about what it means to lead a student rather than simply manage a class:

Listening is as important as speaking. Compliance is almost always about following rules rather than engaging in a dialogue, while empowering students begins with listening. You never know the whole story. Never. The best you can do as a teacher is to draw out the story through a conversation.
Change happens relationally and it requires trust. Humility is the catalyst for this type of change. On the other hand, compliance breaks down trust and causes students to hide.
The goal of classroom leadership should be empowering students to be responsible decision-makers. Or, to put it more simply, I want students to make wise decisions. It’s important to talk students through their decision-making process and their own sense of ethical development.
Humility and vulnerability are not signs of weakness, but signs of a mature teacher that students can approach with confidence.
Quit bribing kids for good behavior. Ethical people do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. I wouldn't stop by a stranded motorist and say, "I'm sorry, but I'll need a set of stickers before I help you out."

Photo Credit: by Jabiz Raisdana - one of my favorite photographers and bloggers

Classroom Leadership: From a Formula to a Philosophy

2012-06-01T11:39:00.001-07:00

Note: Feel free to leave comments on the Google Document

I'm running on a treadmill, trying to push myself to complete a seventh mile when I catch a glimpse at a Shamwow commercial. I can't hear the content, but the man seems passionate. If I didn't know any better, he seems to really believe that the universe would run a smoothly if we'd all just pony up and buy a couple more Shamwows. Greasy stain? Shamwow. Huge spill? Shamwow. Lingering existential disappointment? Shamow.

When I first began as a teacher, I wanted Shamwow. Students were talking out of turn. Group work became social time. I spent too long lecturing the whole class on their behavior. I grew angry about things like names on papers proper formatting.

I searched for the magic formula. One book told me to use better posture and to breathe well and to locate my pencil sharpener in a place where kids wouldn’t talk. Another behavior guru gave instructions on being assertive. Still another suggested a system of bribes; shifting from social-driven citizenship to a “token economy,” where kids would open doors and pass out papers in order to obtain shiny pencils and erasures that smell like cake.

A few techniques worked, but I continued to screw up. I had been looking for a program or a system to fix the deeper relational issues that dogged my failures as a classroom leader.

It was a sham. Wow.

The truth is that I wanted to learn how to manage a class, but I needed a lesson on leadership. I had a bad relationship with my students. I yelled at them for small things when I felt tired. I let big things go, because I was afraid of conflict. I moved between buddy-teacher and drill sergeant. I kept trying to refine a system and find a formula instead of learning to lead. I wanted a quick fix rather than a long, humbling journey.

The Formulas Failed
There are no five easy steps, no magical formulas, no phrases, no cards, no pyramids or grids or anything will make leadership easy. At its core, teaching is a relational ordeal. And the hard reality is that relationships are messy. Humans are not algorithms. What motivates one person in one moment might not work with another person in another moment.

Formulas offer a streamlined, efficient set of procedures. The problem is that students are rarely streamlined and efficient in behavior. There are layers of nuance. One kid might ask earnestly, "Why do we have to do this?" and another kid might ask the same question with a tone of accusation. Sometimes, the issue is one of curiosity, other times a challenge of authority and still other times a sign of a broken relationship between the teacher and student.

What works in one context may not work in another context. Formulas fail to deal with the differences in a classroom culture and with the relationships between each person in the room. A classroom leader, by contrast, is able to address issues more specifically because he or she knows students on a personal level.

Still, there is a more subtle danger in the formulaic approach. Formulas fail to address the deeper reasons regarding why students misbehave. Ultimately, the idea is that a process can fix issues that are occurring in the classroom. However, processes can't fix anger, broken relationships, boredom and a bad culture. These are the issues that require a philosophy rather than a formula.

A Philosophy
The term “philosophy” might conjure up images of old men wearing togas arguing about the nature of truth. However, philosophy is simply the driving ideas, big questions and the paradigms that drive our actions. Teaching is philosophical, but in a practical way. We all have a sense of purpose, a set of beliefs, values and a view of the world that shape how we lead. Too often, teachers replace this philosophy with a formula and then wonder why changes doesn’t occur.

Classroom leaders understand that the larger questions relating to purpose must drive the approach in any given moment. While a formulaic manager expects the process or program to fix behavior, the classroom leader understands that it is a relationship of trust and that leadership is more about values and paradigms than simply fixating on behaviors.

The following is a table contrasting a philosophical approach and a formulaic approach:

Philosophical Approach	Formulaic Approach
Universal ideas that are customized to context	Universal practices applied in lock-step to all situations
Deals with the “why” before addressing the “how”	Ignores the “why” in a pragmatic search for the “how”
Embraces nuance and paradox	Doesn’t tolerate nuance, because it makes the formula unclear and unmanageable
Holistic	Particular
A journey that takes years to master	A quick-fix solution

Philosophical Inconsistencies
Often, my greatest failures as a leader involved times when I failed to connect what I believed philosophically about leading students to the practices I used as a teacher. The following are some examples of my own inconsistencies that I’ve seen in myself during my darkest moments as a teacher:

I say that I believe in developing critical thinkers, but I fail to ask students for their feedback on my own leadership, the instruction I’m giving and their experiences as students
I say that I believe in differentiation, but I expect all students to behave the exact same way at all times.
I say that I belive all students are worthy of dignity and respect and yet I secretly hold onto a “good kid” and “bad kid” list.
I say that I believe in student autonomy, but I micromanage in moments of fear. In my fear and insecurity, I nag students rather trust them to do the right thing.

What This Means
Classroom leadership isn’t about a process or program, but rather, a paradigm and principles. It is nuanced and mired in mystery. However, it is still practical. So, here are some thoughts about what this philosophy means:

Think of a time when you felt managed in a program rather than led in a community. What were the forces that kept the formula going? How did you respond to it? How did others respond to it? What would this situation have looked like if it were led philosophically rather than formulaically.
Think about your journey as a classroom leader in terms of a story. What are the conflicts? Who is the protagonist? How has your character developed? Who is the antagonist? What themes emerge?
Although the discipline matrix might be important, the school-wide discipline program will never fix your own leadership issues.

Photo Credit: by {El Gris} on Flickr Creative Commons

Summer Series: Classroom Leadership

2012-05-31T16:55:00.001-07:00

Over the last few years, I've created a summer series for blogging. These have included a book series, the TV and Teaching series, a series on paradigm shifts and most recently, A Sustainable Start. My goal has been to create something that is practical, personal and philosophical in nature.

Starting tomorrow, I'll begin posting on the topic of classroom leadership. I believe strongly in the idea of classroom leadership as a more effective alternative to classroom management. I do not claim to be an expert on the subject. I am still learning what it means to lead my students. However, I believe I have some wisdom that I can share. My hope is that I do so with humility and honesty.

I will be posting both to this blog and to a Google Document throughout this month. Then, sometime in July, I will release it as a book.

Patience

2012-05-30T05:46:00.004-07:00

When I wrote my first two novels, I was a tourist, finding only what was different or bizarre or fantastical about the environment. I wrote the setting emphasizing only the parts that I found interesting rather than finding the interesting in the midst of the banal. I didn't know how to sit in the setting. I didn't know how to dwell in it and envision it until it became real to me. So, as a result, when I look back at what I wrote, the setting doesn't have that balance of power and intimacy that comes from living within a place.

I treated my characters in the same way. Donning my high socks and fanny pack, I interviewed them quickly, wrote out their dialogue and studied them from a distance. Again, I could see only how they were different from one another and in the process, I often wrote caricatures rather than characters. Don't get me wrong. They weren't entirely flat and I had moments when I got it right. However, I wrote from a distance.

I was impatient. I was excited about the story and the progress and the sense of what was happening. I told myself that I could rush through the first draft and spend time in the revisions. I was wrong.

So, I've been working on two new novels. One is a story that I told to the boys. I'm writing that slowly, trying to get the feel of what it was like to hear the story in the dark right before bed. I'm still working on the voice, the feel, the ethos. I'm still working on what it means to know the characters deeply. It's taking awhile to get the feel for the setting and the characters.

I'm also working on a novel that I'm co-writing with my wife. We've been researching the setting, taking notes and asking questions. We've been doing personality profiles on the characters and rethinking how they would respond in the plot. It is beginning to feel so real to me that I want to go to the setting and I want to meet the characters in person.

There's More Than One Way to Calculate the Tip

2012-05-29T08:50:00.001-07:00

Last night, Christy and I went out for our anniversary. We ordered half-off appetizers and drinks, because it was Happy Hour. In order to find the tip, we needed to look at the price the order should have been and tip based upon that.

I doubled the whole bill and then subtracted the one full-priced meal that we split. Christy took all the half-priced meals, doubled the price, rounded up and added them together. When we found the tip, I moved the decimal over one place (from the adjusted total) and doubled that to reach the twenty-percent. Christy divided the new total by five instead.

Neither of us used paper and pencil. Neither of us required the other person to follow an exact algorithm. Instead, we used our number sense to manipulate the process so that it fit our own preferences. I hate carrying numbers in my head, but I like messing around with place value. Christy can hold multiple numbers without "losing" them.

When I ask my students to find the tip, I have students who divide it by five, move it over using place value, create an improper fraction, multiply it by one-fifth, multiply it by .2, or take the tax and multiply it by two and a half. Some students estimate earlier and others later. As they discuss questions of preferences, efficiency, and whether or not this approach would work in all situations, they improve in both their computational fluency and in their process thinking.

So, when I read a comment like, "I think it's clear that you don't understand how math works, John," I don't know how to answer it. I don't know if this works for building engineers. I can't prove this will help us winning the pissing contest with Singapore. I do, however, know that it works wonders when trying to find a tip during Happy Hour. And ultimately that's what I want: students who understand that math is contextual.

Photo Credit: wEnDaLicious on Flickr Creative Commons

Memorizing Math Facts

2012-05-28T07:21:00.002-07:00

the misconceptions of PEMDAS is a great example of mindless memorization without a concept of number sense and process thinking

During off-times, at a long stoplight or in grocery store line, when the kids are restless and ready to argue for the sake of argument, I invite them to play the numbers game.

"Can you tell me how to get to twelve?"

My five year old begins, "You could take two fives and add a two."

"Take sixty and divide it into five parts," my nearly-seven year old says.

"You could do two tens and then take away a five and a three," my younger son adds.

Eventually we run out of options and they begin naming numbers. It's a simple game that builds up computational fluency, flexible thinking and number sense. I never say, "Can you tell me the transitive properties of numbers?" However, they are understanding that they can play with numbers.

Sometimes I engage my kids with a real-world context. "I have four dozen donuts and I just have three of them. Will I have enough to feed forty people?" They ask questions like, "Does each person eat one?" or "Is anyone allergic to gluten?" I might say something asking them to organize objects into arrays or I might ask them to double or triple a recipe when we make dinner.

* * *

I didn't learn the rules of baseball by filling out a packet on baseball facts. Nobody held out a flash card where, in isolation, I recited someone else's definition of the Infield Fly Rule. I didn't memorize the rules of balls, strikes, and how to get someone out through a catechism of recitation.

Instead, I played baseball. I learned the basics through conversation and then I asked questions and observed and remembered the vocabulary, structures, processes and concepts of the game by playing it. In the process, I memorized a ton of facts. However, the facts were in a context, deeply rooted in my own experiences being the Strikeout King.

I'm not opposed to memorizing facts. Somewhere along the line, I've memorized the various spells in Harry Potter, the positions on a football field, and the lyrics to my favorite songs. I've memorized lines from conversations, verses from the Bible, and "facts" regarding Social Constructivism, Social Constructionism and Social Connectivism. I never crammed for a test. I never wrote out the facts in isolation under the watchful gaze of a teacher with a timer.

I learned these things through immersion, critical thinking, context and play.

Note: I use the word "facts" here loosely. I don't think baseball, history, poetry, math or science have "facts," per se. They have processes, experiences, concepts, connections, theories and structures.

My Journey in Leadership: The Rookie Stage

2012-05-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

Guest Post by Chad Segersten

As I thought and pondered how to tackle the idea of becoming a leader and how to do it effectively, I realized that I was missing the point of Education Rethink. This site is important to me and therefore it should come from the heart of the educator I was in the classroom to the administrator/leader I am today. I wanted to for lack of a more eloquent way to put it, tell my story.

The Rookie

When I came out of school I was pretty sure I was going to be the best educator the world had ever seen. I was not only going to teach academics I was going to change lives. This was clearly a rookie mistake as I graduated mid-year and got my first job teaching 4th grade at a school made entirely of only third and fourth grade.

Unfortunately the kids did not get the memo of my awesomeness and the “education” program had ill-prepared me to be teaching children of any age. This was a tough blow, as my family is comprised of some successful educators. It was in my blood? Why couldn't I get it right?

I remember one particular conversation I had with my mother, a former Special Ed teacher and Leader, after a rather difficult day. Just short of tears I shared that this most likely would be my first and last teaching experience. Although this was one of the lowest points of my 13-year career I can still remember it as though it was yesterday. I can tell you now it was possibly one of the best things that ever happened to me.

What I learned:

Being the optimist I am, and knowing that I spent my own money to earn my degree. I determined I could not call it a career after a half a school year. I left the district I was in and went back to the district I had done my student teaching in. Something had to change before I began the next year.

First I remembered why I decided to become a teacher, and it was not for the summers off. I loved kids they were funny, not judgmental, willing to believe in the word can. The opposite often of the adults I was surrounded by. I decided I needed to enjoy what I do, there would be none of this “don’t smile until Winter break crap.” I was going to smile and enjoy every minute of my teaching time with students.

So I began at the foundation that would rule who I have become as a leader in every position I have held since from Mentor teacher to Asst. Principal to Director. This foundation started with the culture and community I would build in my classroom. Together with my students much of the first weeks of school were spent engaging in activities to learn about my students, what were their likes, dislikes, fears, where did they believe they did best in school.

During this same time the students began to learn and appreciate each other, and slowly our classroom became a community. I learned that in any level of an organization you must start with the affective side of things, and build community to support future challenges (they will occur) so they may be quickly solved.

photo credit: Pierre-Olivier

Cuts in Education

2012-05-23T14:24:00.002-07:00

10 Strategies for iPods and Language Acquisition

2012-05-23T08:42:00.001-07:00

You can also view the presentation here:

Vocabulary Microblogs: Students can use Posterous or Tumblr to make sense out of their vocabulary words. This allows students to use multimedia representations for the words (video for a total physical response, a picture, an audio pronunciation), labels (according to subjects, types of words, parts of speech) and sharing / commenting. Plus, it's portable, because it's a webtool and an app.
Blogging with Sentence Stems: Students can practice their grammatical structures in meaningful ways through blogging. We use sentence stems that they can copy and paste, both in the post itself and in the comments.
Grammer Slideshows: This is a great chance to practice a particular verb tense sequentially. Students can annotate each page sequentially, so that they see how a verb tense changes through the past, present and teacher. Or they can find various parts of speech in their world.
Math Discourse Podcasts: Teachers help students engage in math discourse by providing sample question stems. Students practice asking follow-up, clarifying and critical thinking questions. Afterward, they rate themselves on both the conversation and on the math problem-solving. This is a great way to compare and contrast strategies or hash out connections between concepts.
Verbs in Context: Students use programs such as Comic Touch Lite to take pictures of their world and then apply the particular verbs within that context.
Critical Thinking Slideshows: Teachers ask students to practice a particular structure in a way that encourages critical thinking, so that students do a topical slideshow while practicing a grammatical skill.
Reading Fluency: Students use the audio recording devices to practice fluency and Google Forms to rate themselves on their own rubric.
Summary Videos: Summary videos are a quick, lower-tech method of summarizing information in a way that practices both writing and speaking. Students create a picture for each main idea and then explain it in the video.
Reflective Blogs: While this sounds simple, I have found that students thrive when they are able to reflect upon a particular skill or concept they have learned through blogging. This becomes a part of their portfolio. We also use blogs for critical thinking questions, for the writer's workshop, for visual prompts and for vocabulary.
Self-Assessment with Forms: Students engage in self-assessment with Google Forms. It's a faster, more permanent method of doing exit slips - and it allows for more customization.

Bonus: Four More that Aren't on the Presentation (because they tend to work better on full-sized computers rather than mobile devices)

Semantic Concept Maps: Students use concept mapping programs to connect words, concepts and systems to one another. This can range from content to academic language. Afterward, they blog about the connections in language. More advanced students can analyze the semantic environment according to types of language (economic, political, informal, etc.)
Annotation on Google Docs: Students often use Google Docs for little more than word processing. However, with shared documents, they can annotate a text, add comments, pose questions, and link to vocabulary words. The text become interactive.
Writers's Workshops: Students Google Docs and Blogger to go through the writing process in a writer's workshop.
Blogging Literature Circles: Students use a shared blog as a quasi-wiki, where they interact with literature. It becomes the hub where they can post podcasts, videos, and written reflections.

What My Grocery Store Needs to Learn About Twitter

2012-05-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

My grocery store has a sign begging me to follow them on Twitter. Here is what I was expecting to see in their Twitter stream:

Hey, I’m selling food right now. You should come buy some. #hungry #food
Did I mention that we have food? Thought you should try it. #food #hungry #eat
Just sitting here full of food. Just got stocked. Damn I'm full. #food
Hey guys, I have a ton of food and an endless supply of Celine Dion music. #adultcontemporary #food #party
Party at my place. Everyone is in line. No one is line dancing. #lamestpartyever #party #food
There's a #grocerchat in twelve minutes.
So apparently all food is ethnic food (even white people food). So do I call it Hispanic, Latino or Latin? #grocerchat
Really? But Latin just sounds like singing monks? Is that really what we should use? #grocerchat
Apparently it's not okay to switch the butcher block signs to Comic Sans. Who knew? #grocerchat
RT @Kroger "Wal-Mart is such a selfish blowhard. I hope he chokes on the vomit from eating up all the little guys."
Sorry for the confusion. Supermarkets are for all people, not exclusively superheroes. #apology #food
I'm sorry for referring to myself as the "anchor store." @kay'sbeautysupplystore - U R muy importante to me, girlfriend!
Sorry for referring to @kay'sbeautysupplies as "girlfriend." #crossedalineonthatone #tryingtosoundhip
@Safeway - You want a link? We got tons of sausage at our site.
@Safeway - Wrong link? :( You want a link to an article? I've got a whole magazine rack. #checkoutthatrack #supermaketinnuendo

Perhaps it's asking too much of Sprouts to act like a person on social media. However, I would assume that if they were on Twitter, they would do something different. Post some recipes. Send some links to foodie blogs.

Participate.

Maybe choose a representative from three or four departments to answer questions regarding food. What if I could tweet out to a veggie expert who can tell me the best season to buy habanero peppers? What if I could look into my Twitter feed and get some tips for grilling large hunks of animal flesh? Instead, I see a stream of advertisements for events and sales.

Ultimately, that's the real issue with social media. Companies want to learn how to use it. However, Twitter is as much a place as it is a tool. We don't learn how to use the park or the library or the town square. We learn to relate and to participate and to interact in those places. If Sprouts wants to engage with the public, it has to move beyond simply creating advertisements and tweeting them out. You can't use Twitter.

Reading Fluency on Mobile Devices

2012-05-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

My co-worker Dr. Sara Crawford introduced this concept to me.

I have had moments in my career when I pointed out that technology should enhance rather than replace relationships. We should avoid using technology that simply makes things easier for teachers. I say this, despite the fact that I embrace word processing, air conditioning and other technology that add convenience to my life.

However, I also see a point in using technology to increase the time that teachers get to spend with students. One of the examples is the daily reading fluency progress monitoring. Currently, teachers will call a student up, sit and wait for the student to arrive and then listen for one minute while the student reads a text.

A time-saving answer to this is fluency on mobile devices. Here, the student is involved in self-assessment and the teacher can spend a half-hour during prep listening to each student read for a minute. This frees up the teacher to be present more often with the students, while still being able to monitor the accuracy of the words per minute.

Here's how it works:

Ahead of Time: Teach the concept of fluency holistically with the APE acronym (Accuracy, Pace, Expression). Students internalize the vocabulary if they use it in context with a Total Physical Response. Next, develop a rubric with the students input and practice using the rubric. Allow students to customize the rubric with their own language.

The Strategy: The following are the steps I use with the students:

Record the fluency passage with the Voice Memo app (I'm using an iPod as my example) for one minute. Have the student count up the words per minute. (Note: voice recognition software is still not good enough to allow the iPod to judge accuracy) An alternate method would be to record the fluency passage with a whole page and ask the student to look at the time.
The student listens to his or her fluency recording and circles any words that he or she struggled to pronounce. This can also be a time when a student highlights difficult grammatical structures.
Have the student fill out a Google Forms with the APE rubric and with any necessary data (the words per minute). This will then become the basis for the spreadsheet that the teacher keeps regarding individual student data. If the teacher has shared the form, the student will also have instant access to his or her data.
The student then e-mails the fluency recording to the teacher.
The teacher listens to the passage while holding the sheet that the student self-corrected. This can then be used in a student-conference comparing what a student feels that he or she is struggling with versus what he or she truly is struggling with.

This type of fluency work encourages students to be self-directed in the gathering of data, the analysis and the assessment. It frees up time for teachers to work with students and it provides a permanent record that students can later use in comparing earlier to later work.

The Summer Slide

2012-05-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

"Hey guys, come out here! Tell me what looks different," I call to my kids. I had no idea ahead of time that there was going to be an eclipse, so instead of feeling disappointed, I feel excited about the Intagram-like filter altering the light that canvases our yard.

"It's darker . . . kind-of. But a different kind of dark," my oldest son says.

I hold my daughter up and let her watch the layered shadow on our slumpblock fence. "Look at the shadows," she says, waving her arms.

It's the waning hours of a weekend of learning. We read books, discussed time travel paradoxes and character development in Back the the Future, painted pictures and watched the ever-evolving story of the Transforming Goat Man (my middle son felt that if there's a Bat Man and Spider Man, the world needs a Goat Man as well). We played mental math games. We devised an experiment. We talked about our world.

We learned.

The Issue

It's middle-May, time for the annual "Summer Learning Slide" articles in parenting magazines and local newspapers. Each article quotes the same statistics and in most cases they offer the same advice: make your kids read, use flash cards - in other words, do school on your own for a summer.

My first thought is that in many cases, the summer learning slide isn't quite the catastrophe it's made out to be. From what I've seen, students aren't necessarily slow to think at the beginning of the year. Instead, they're slow to work. Slow to write and to answer questions and to remember things that were just taught.

However, if students have forgotten a critical skill or an important concept, chances are it wasn't taught the right way. If a skill was taught in isolation, as something that does not connect to life, is it any wonder that a child won't use that particular skill throughout the summer? If a student learned a concept in preparation for a test, is it any wonder that child discarded the information when the test was over?

If teachers are teaching in a way that allows for critical thinking, personal connections and a deep understanding of context, students won't easily forget what they've learned. If, however, it is simply material to be covered, it isn't a shock when they consume it and move on. A packet is disposable and so are the isolated skills that children practice.

Too often, schools waste resources on summer school and summer tutoring; essentially asking students who struggled with school to experience additional schooling until it clicks.

An Authentic Alternative

The summer should be an opportunity to practice the skills learned over the course of a year in a way that is meaningful, challenging and fun. It should be a time to expand one's worldview and dig deeper into the subjects that interest a child. It should be a time of detox from the standardized structure of school and instead embrace the autonomy of summer.

When I look back on my summers as a child, we watched some movies and played some video games and I would think about things like conflict and character development, because a teacher had taught me that the Elements of Literature applied to all stories. I would read for hours and design baseball stadiums and paint animals. We would go to the lake and I would explore nature. But mostly, we played. For hours. We played baseball and basketball and imaginative adventures.

I realize that some children do not have the luxury we had of parents who constantly supported learning at home. However, that's why it is critical that schools encourage home learning throughout the year. The following are some ideas:

Form partnerships with libraries, museums and national parks during the school year rather than simply sending a flier home the last day of school.
Replace homework with home learning. Encourage parents to engage with students in their own context.
Provide opportunities for parents to learn about home learning. Teach them mental math games. Help them learn about how to engage children in literature. Educate them on the standards so that they think critically of the movies they watch. Get parents thinking about how they can help their children observe the world scientifically.
Stop bribing kids for learning. Get rid of pizza coupons when a child reads a book and instead celebrate the joy of literature.
Model student choice and autonomy in the classroom so kids aren't too dependent on adults when they move into the summer. Make the world-to-student connections necessary for a child to be a self-directed learner.
Re-allocate money that's currently spent on summer school toward meaningful learning camps. My friend Javi ran an amazing Camp Innovation Tech last year, where students volunteered to attend a project-based school with robotics, social justice, community service, and art.

Note to Self: Don't Blame the Group

2012-05-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Last night, I noticed a stream of complaints from former students (now seniors) who were potentially losing their graduation ceremony. Apparently there was a near-riot at the high school and police were called onto the scene. Judging from the stories and the pictures, the vandalism was pretty severe. Chaos erupted and reached a critical mass.

At first, I remained silent. It isn't my district and it isn't my school. However, as I thought of the hard-working students (some of whom are the first in their class to graduate) and the fear they experienced, I went public with my frustration. Too often, teachers stay silent about injustice toward students, and in the process, their apathy reinforces the injustice.

I wrote two posts on Facebook:

For what it's worth, I took a more nuanced approach in the follow-up comments,"Let me clarify this much: I don't know the whole story. I don't know anything about your administrators and the post was not in any way an attack on any one person. I do know this much, though: I have taught some amazing students who I guarantee haven't done anything wrong and they are scared of losing something they've spent twelve years to earn. I was that 'good kid' back in the day who would turn against a leader who felt that it was okay to punish the group for the misdeeds of some.

This morning, I thought about my own classroom. I thought about the plank that I needed to pull out before pointing to the sawdust (even the heaping mound of sawdust) in another's eye. I've had moments when I lost the crowd and a few students led the group in the wrong direction. In terror, I lashed out at the group. I took away "privileges." I held the whole class for five minutes of silence.

So, the following is a note to myself:

Dear John,

As you move toward being in the classroom full-time, be mindful that it will not be as utopian as you imagine it. Kids will talk out of turn. Lessons will tank. You'll feel raw and insecure and if there's a large enough group of students who seize this opportunity for chaos, you'll get suckered into a power struggle. You'll lash out in the name of "punishing" and if you're not careful, you'll lose the relationship.

If you can, at all costs, don't punish the whole class. If 29 out of 32 do something wrong, deal with the 29 individually. If half the class screws up, deal with that half. If you can't figure out who was doing something wrong, chances are you aren't creating a transparent environment and leading your class well.

Bottom line: you don't want to lose trust by punishing one person for the misbehavior of another. It's wrong. Period. True, they "belong" to the class community, but it was never the students' choice. True, they could have "done more" to stop their peers, but that's making a bold assumption about who can and cannot lead their peers. Simply doing the right thing in the face of a crowd doing something wrong is an act of courage. Standing up for what is right is rare and ought to be acknowledged in those rare cases that it occurs.

Regardless, it is unjust to punish an individual for the crimes of another. Remember that you don't teach a class. You teach individuals. People. Children.

Sincerely,

John

Paperless Math Resources

2012-05-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

The following are some of the resources that I've developed for Paperless Math. Look for more resources throughout the summer:

Ten Paperless Math Assessment Strategies

Math Discourse Questions

Math Discourse Podcast

Math Assessment Grid (on a Google Document)

Fifteen Paperless Math Strategies

Super Mario Gets His Value Added Score

2012-05-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Mario dreaded his meeting with Super Visor. As the head of the Heroic Deeds Department, Mr. Visor took intense pleasure at quantifying their value and sending the results to the newspaper.

"Mr. Mario, we need to talk about your data," Super Visor began, "We have your value added score and you actually managed to score a negative number."

"What does that mean?" Mario asked.

"You aren't an asset. You're a liability. You subtracted value."

Mario jumped up and pointed across the desk, "You're kidding me! I saved the princess. I conquered eight worlds. I have multiple lives . . ."

Super Visor held his hand up. "Please, sir, I'm just offering you some data-driven feedback. Yes you saved a princess one time, but we averaged your performance over every life and it turns out that you only passed three of the eight worlds."

"I mastered every world. I mean, every single world. Show me anyone . . . Luigi, those short mushroom head guys. Did any of them do the same thing?" Mario asked.

"We're a data-driven organization," Super Visor pointed out.

"But I saved the princess," Mario said.

"And that tugs at my heartstrings. It really does. You saved one person. But if you'll look here at this graph, we have the number of lives saved. Compared to all the other supers, you trail by a long shot. Superman averages about one person every forty minutes. Batman saves at least three people per day. It took you a lifetime, no multiple lifetimes, just to save one helpless princess. How can you possibly justify this data?"

"I see your point, but this isn't Gotham City. The context makes a difference. And so does the technology. Batman has better technology. I get to jump," Mario answered.

"And fly. You essentially have the same power as Superman and yet you are stopped by, what, a slow-moving tortoise and a host of meandering rodents?"

"They weren't just tortoises, they were turtles who could fight. They were, um, they were like ninja turtles!" Mario said.

"Yes, I'm sure they were mutated martial arts turtles. I'm sure they were, ahem, very scary indeed," Super Visor added.

"I accomplished my mission and I did it while managing to earn additional coins. I gave everything I had. I was, by every possible standard, successful."

"That's where your wrong. You made a difference. You saved a life. And that's nice. Really, it is. However, those aren't quantifiable metrics. Your score reflects the data we've analyzed and quite honestly we think you might be better suited as a plumber again."

Free: A Sustainable Start

2012-05-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

With the school year coming to a close and new teachers gearing up for the classroom, I figured it might be a nice time to offer A Sustainable Start as a free PDF download and to offer it for a reduced price on Kindle and in print:

Download: Free: Click Here

Kindle: ~~regularly $10.00~~ Sale $1.00

Print: ~~regularly $16.00~~ Sale $10.00 (with a workbook included)

The Journey
I was a new teacher, worried about the practical matters. How would I align the desks? How should I set up my rules? What procedures did I need? How would I do the bulletin boards? I wanted something practical. So, I sought out books geared toward first year teachers. I highlighted the texts. I wrote in the margins. I made lists. Then I made lists of lists. I felt comfortable going into the first day, because I had been so prepared.

Then I taught for a few weeks and I realized that I wasn’t prepared. I quickly realized that what I wanted to know wasn’t what I needed to know. I needed to learn how to lead rather than manage students. I needed a sense of paradox and nuance. I needed to build a better classroom community.

This book is a result of my journey. It’s the kind of new teacher book that I wish I had read before my first year. It may not be practical for everyone. However, I have a hunch there are others out there who will find themselves in tears during the first year of teaching. After reading so much about the first week of school, they question what it means to last for the next twenty-five years. This book is for the teachers who are saying, “I want to make it, but I’m wondering if I will.”

Description
Instead of providing a list of rules, formulas and steps that new teachers need to follow, the author tells stories, makes observations and provides practical advice. In a style that is both deep and conversational, the author provides insights often neglected in books aimed for new teachers, including the role of shame in teacher ide¬¬ntity, the use of professional learning networks for professional growth, the need for paradox, increasing a sense of awareness, the need for humility in classroom leadership and how to build a better relationship with students. The result is a book that is practical, philosophical and personal. It also includes a New Teacher Toolkit with 45 resources for teachers entering the classroom for the first time.

A Different Kind of New Teacher Book
I know that there are a ton of new teacher books out there, but there are a few things that make this one different (though not necessarily better):

A different focus: Looking back, I thought I needed help with bulletin boards and teaching strategies. What I really needed was a hard look at discipline, shame, my mindset and my sens of awareness in the classroom. I cover a few themes that don't seem to be covered in most new teacher books.
A different philosophy: Many of the new teacher books rely on a behaviorist, corporate management philosophy. This book is for those who yearn for student-centered, authentic learning with a healthy dose of realism mixed in.
A different style: I use a more personal, narrative style of writing than many of the books written for new teachers. I write about my classroom experiences alongside stories from fatherhood and childhood. While I still offer some practical advice, I'm honest about my mistake and what people can learn from them.

Features:
This book is different than other books that I've written in that it's deliberately practical. It is 8"x10" and written in a workbook style. Here are a few features:

Reflective journal for each chapter
Specific, practical advice alongside stories and observations
A New Teacher's Toolkit with forty-five resources that I've created

Keep Your Voice

2012-05-14T06:38:00.001-07:00

For Mother's Day, my daughter made a video (okay, I edited the footage) singing her favorite songs. Without a sense of fear, she bolted out her favorite songs, ranging from hymns to oldies to musicals to a tune from The Little Mermaid.

We almost didn't buy The Little Mermaid. Ariel seemed weak, willing to sacrifice her voice for a man that she barely knew. And love? They hardly communicated. Maybe I was jaded. Maybe I had known to many girls who lost their voices in the name of love.

Christy disagreed. She reminded me that Ariel wanted to go on land before she fell in love and that her voice had been used by society for nothing more than a performance. She reminded me that having a voice wasn't simply about speaking up, but about acting boldly.

Either way, that's the conversation I want to have with my kids as they grow up. It starts with, "What do you think of Ariel giving up her voice?" Over time, though, it shifts to: What does it mean to have a voice? How do people lose their voices? When is it listening and when is it self-censorship? What role does power and authority have in stealing one's voice? What are the political, social, cultural and economic forces that silence a voice? And to what extent is voice individual and to what extent is it collective?

As I move back into the classroom full-time, I want to think well about the concept of voice. I want to discipline in a way that respects a student's voice. I want to craft lessons that allow students to express both their individual and their social voice. I want develop a class community where voices blend interdependently like a jam session. I want to encourage those who self-censor to speak up and those who chatter without intentionality to refine their voices.

In other words, I want to speak carefully and listen well.

Classroom Leadership

2012-05-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

The following are some resources for classroom leadership:

Motives: Rethinking Why Students Misbehave
From Procedures to Rituals
Classroom Leadership vs. Classroom Management
Actually, It Is Personal
Be Bold. Be Humble.
Discipline: Before, During and After
The Acoustic Classroom: A Metaphor for Classroom Leadership
Driving a Car: Why Learning to Lead Is Like Learning to Drive

Sometime in the next few days, I'll be offering a free book on classroom leadership (in a PDF and as a Word Document). You'll also be able to buy it for ninety-nine cents on Kindle.

Misunderstanding Burnout

2012-05-11T06:53:00.003-07:00

I saw an infographic on LifeHacker about burnout. The diagnosis of burnout made sense. However, the solutions were the basic common sense ideas: Sleep enough, eat right, go see nature and take a vacation.

Sometimes common sense is wrong.

The people I knew who burnt out did so because of a bad self-story. They bought into a shame-based achievement mentality and they placed ridiculous pressure on themselves. They were so convinced that students were waiting for a Superman when, in fact, the kids needed a compassionate Clark Kent.

It was a failure of identity brought on by the shame of not living up to perfection.

When they realized that they were about to hit a place of failure, they ran. That's what shame does to a person. In some cases, teachers left their positions after being successful and then worrying that they wouldn't repeat their success. On a few rare occasions, teachers failed and blamed it on the students.

Often this obsession with "results" created a toxic environment that wore them down. The setting defined the story and the protagonist lost all sense of self. They didn't burn out. They just sort-of evaporated.

In each case, teachers didn't have the permission to fail. They didn't have the chance to be open with people about their own fears. Change requires humility. Humility requires vulnerability. And Superman, for all his greatness, doesn't exude vulnerability.

Burnout isn't about eating right and exercising well. It's about a loss of passion and purpose. It's about losing one's identity. If we want to fix the issue of burnout, we need a better story; one with a deeper theme than passing the test, a more vulnerable protagonist than Superman, a community of trusted relationships and a setting of authenticity.

10 Things I Learned from Coaching

2012-05-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

Next year, I will be teaching all subjects to a sixth grade ELL class. I'm really excited about it, but I thought I would also reflect on what it has been like to be in a coaching position this year.

So, being a coach isn't exactly what I thought it would be. I didn't get to have the "very important talk" about hydration and sunscreen. I didn't get to blow a whistle and yell at people. Instead, I observed and I asked and I taught. The upside? When teachers succeeded, they didn't dump Gatorade on my head.

Teachers need to know what a coach is and how coaching works. I sort-of expected the teachers I worked with to know about the coaching cycle. I figured that someone had talked to them about it. Turns out that someone was supposed to be me. I think it's critical that teachers know why someone is often in their classrooms.
Coaching works, but it needs to be a part of a larger, balanced professional development model. In other words, collaborating on lessons, learning new strategies in multi-week classes, meeting with a small group, doing a book study, or attending conferences all have a place alongside coaching.
Everyone could use a coach. The term "coach" might be better than other words out there, but it carries a tone of shame. People don't want to here that they are being coached - especially when they are great teachers. Next year, when they assign a coach to my classroom, I'm going to jump at the opportunity to dialogue with someone. It's a good thing.
It is way too easy to be pulled away from coaching, because it is important, but rarely urgent. If districts want the coaching model to work, they have to guard their coaches' time.
Coaching works best in a community. There is a real power in a small group of teachers working together, sharing what they are doing and all the while not being "held accountable" as a group. Ideally, a coach should work individually and within that group, building trust and letting teachers be vulnerable.
Coaching really is about self-reflection. It's hard, as a coach, to recognize that paradigm shifts have to come from the teachers rather than the coach. Here's where the blow-the-whistle part fails completely. I was never entirely comfortable asking: How are you feeling about that? What do you plan to do? How do you plan to get there? What did you see? What might success look like for you? It felt private, intimate almost. However, that's how teachers grow.
Coaches need their own peer group. I loved working with my team this year. Although we didn't talk about the coaching process in a formalized way, we shared ideas and spoke honestly about how things were going. I needed that.
I should have pushed the PLN concept a little more. The truth is that the community I know through blogging, Twitter and Facebook have been a great place for pushing ideas, trying new strategies, being authentic and self-reflection. I always treated it as some hobby I was into on the side. I wish I had pushed this idea with teachers.
Coaching needs to be customized to the context. In the beginning, it was much more about the technology. I was in more of a consulting role. I taught more example lessons.
It's not about motivation so much as self-efficacy. The biggest barriers have to do with self-concept and the question of whether one can meet a particular goal. Here's where realistic goal-setting, modeling and visualization become powerful. And yet, that's where I failed as a coach. I know that goal-setting, measuring success and data collection are all a part of the coaching process. However, because data always felt both too private and too impersonal, I avoided talking about it. I rarely asked teachers about their progress toward goals.

The Five Career Philosophies

2012-05-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

When I teach students about career, college and budgeting, I always include a Career Philosophy. To me, it makes more sense to discuss "why work?" than to simply plan for a specific career; especially given the fact that most people will ditch their initial idea within the first few years of college. Sometimes I wonder if the notion of merit pay, the conflict in worker's rights and the questions regarding the purpose of education are often a clashing view on the purpose of having a career.

Humanitarian Philosophy

Motive: Making a Difference
Core Question: Will I make a difference?
Pros: they have a strong desire to help others, a selfless sense of compassion, a well-developed sense of empathy
Cons: they can work too hard, get too discouraged and sometimes be so compassionate that they fail to speak the hard truth to people
Humanitarian Teacher: This is the teacher who spends long hours on student projects and who knows the class on a deep level. Often, people will assume bad motives, "She's just in it for the ego" or "He just wants to be their friends." Sadly, many Humanitarian Teachers hit a point of burn-out and can fail to take care of themselves.

Recognition Philosophy

Motive: Attaining some type of fame - think outside of just the movie star and athlete. This person wants to be known as an expert at what they do, to be famous within their career's sphere of influence (for example, a scientist who is known for research)
Core Question: Will people notice my contributions?
Pros: feel important, influential and respected
Cons: it can feel empty, you become personally elusive while maintaining the facade of your image
Recognition Teacher: This is the teacher who is often competent at his or her job and who knows how to set boundaries. With the goal of being recognized, this teacher works carefully at PR (not always with a bad motive) toward getting a book published, a story in the newspaper or an idea to become popular.

Vocational Philosophy

Motive: Do something that fits who your identity (a combination of your passions, talent and temperament)
Core Question: Does this job fit who I am?
Pros: you feel like you belong, you often enjoy it without the high expectations of constant enjoyment, you can stay with the career for the long haul
Cons: your job can become your life, given the fact that it's such a part of who you are
Vocational Teacher: Often people will assume this is the humanitarian teacher, because this teacher will work long hours and devote extra time to the students. However, unlike the Humanitarian Teacher, the Vocational Teacher is okay walking away and doesn't feel the intense stress of making a difference. The goal, instead, is to be authentic in identity and actions. Sometimes, though, this teacher can forget that others don't share the similar identity-driven philosophy or the intense sense of "calling."

Hedonist Philosophy

Motive: Enjoy your job
Core Question: Is this career fun? Do I enjoy it?
Pros: you get to do what you love doing on a daily basis
Cons: often doesn't pay enough, the enjoyment can diminish as you face the grueling admin tasks connected to the enjoyable job
The Hedonist Teacher: This is the teacher who has a great rapport with staff and students, who smiles often and seems to have a great time, but can sometimes fail to make the work challenging and can fall behind on admin tasks. This teacher often values play, but sometimes misses what it means to be intentional and to challenge students on a cognitive level.

Economic Philosophy

Motive: Good Pay
Core Question: Does this job pay enough?
Pros: You can enjoy your leisure comfortably and you don't have to let your job become your life, you aren't reluctant to move into new positions that might offer career advancement
Cons: You don't enjoy your job, you can get greedy and you can become resentful, you can find yourself defining success through purely economic metrics
The Economic Teacher: Goes to school on contract hours, takes nothing home and volunteers on certain high-profile committees to move up the corporate ladder. This teacher is often the one reminding fellow teachers that this is still a job and that we actually do deserve things like a living wage and collective bargaining.

Actually, It Is About the Technology

2012-05-06T20:58:00.003-07:00

I have a technophile streak that runs through me. I become giddy when I open up an iPod Touch for the first time. I marvel at how lightweight and instant a Chromebook is. When I was a child, I would dream about a computer that could do games, videos, video-recording, music, audio-recording and connect to other computers. I didn't realize I would have all that and more at the palm of my hand. I am often amazed at how technology can transform a lesson.

I also have a Luddite streak in me. I don't own a cell phone. I don't let the alarm clock define when I wake up. I like French Press coffee. I refer to online identity as the "vapor existence" and I grow skeptical at the overstated claims of the lastest iGadget. When I am at a technology conference, I find myself feeling like a skeptic in a Cathedral of Innovation. You know Tumblr for centuries back when it was called a commonplace book.

Call it Rage Against the Machine.

Oftentimes, to check my technophile tendencies, I say things like, "It's about the learning and not about the technology." When I'm around a large group of people gushing about the latest, coolest apps, I often say, "It's really not about apps. It's about thinking better about how kids learn."

And yet . . .

On some level, it really is about the technology. Blogging is powerful, because students have a magnified audience where they can engage in both a synchronous and asynchronous dialogue. Students can engage in the folksonomy of tagging, embed multimedia and constantly revise a post until they have reached a place of mastery. It's a tool that is available anywhere they have internet on devices ranging from desktops to netbooks to tablets to laptops to iPods and cell phones.

I love blogs. True, I love what people can do with blogs. However, it isn't all that different from saying "I love having coffee with a friend" rather than "I love the conversations I have a friend while I happen to be hanging out at the coffee shop."

The platform matters. There are amazing people I know because of blogging and Twitter. There are opportunities I now have that would not have existed without this medium. There is nothing wrong with saying, "This platform really can do some amazing things and I'm fortunate to have access to it."

Too often, I fail to recognize the power of the technology. I don't push students to use blogging to its fullest potential. I don't use Google Docs for much more than a simple word processor. I don't ask students to develop a deeper conceptual understanding of numbers when they use a spreadsheet.

On the flip side, I also fail to think critically about the medium itself. If I'm not careful, "it's not about the technology" becomes an excuse to avoid asking hard questions about the medium itself. We have the whole world in our hands. Is that a good thing? Space and time are evaporating. What is the cost involved?

To a large extent, it is about the technology. Our tools are transforming geography, identity, social systems and communication. Is it such a bad thing that we take the time to ponder what that actually means for our students?

Supermoon

2012-05-06T07:33:00.003-07:00

The suburban streetlights aren't strong enough to flood the sky. The stars might disappear, but the moon is still too close. Brenna points it out, right above the hilly horizon. "The moon is big," she says. Micah, who is still to wiggly to get into the car agrees.

"You're right. It is big," I tell them.

And then I stare.

It's just an optical illusion.

Stars fall from the sky, disappearing not through light pollution, but from cosmic burnout. Their journey is done.

Those aren't shooting stars. They're just meteorites. However, when they hit the atmosphere, they give the illusion . . .

Illusion.

When I get home, I look for pictures of tonight's moon. It really did look closer. It really did feel brighter. I go online in search of clarity. Facebook tells me it's a Supermoon. Sounds like a progressive rock band. Is it merely a coincidence that the term was coined in 1979? According to Wikipedia, it turns out the scientific community prefers the term, "perigee-syzygy"

Some of my favorite dead scientists used the first-person in their hypotheses. They broke the rules, recklessly chasing after an understanding of the natural world. They were lunatics who probably would have preferred a Supermoon to a perigee-syzvgy.

Note: if you want to know why kids grow up hating science, it's because you've made it proper and safe and everything else that it's not. It became a lesson on functional text and vocabulary words.

Other online sources say that the moon does not actually look any brighter and that it looks only slightly larger to the naked eye. Another source says that it's fourteen percent bigger and thirty percent brighter. (Sounds like a commercial for Tide) The further I immerse myself in print-rich sources, the less fantastic the sky appears in my dimly light mind, with its floodlights of enlightened sources.

Illusion.

The real illusion is that I will learn anything about the moon by sifting through text and picking out facts and analyzing bias. The moon is now shrunk to a snobby word and a laundry detergent statistic.

So, I step outside again and stare at the moon.

Supermoon. Superstition. Supernatural.

"Stars" are falling again. Not many, but a few. Their cosmic dust will grace our land again; a shard of the first-ever story reminding us just how massive space and time truly are. I don't pretend to understand the mystery, but somewhere within it is truth and reality and beauty.

I'd rather be a lunatic than a defender of precise language.

Photo Credit: sbisson on Flickr Creative Commons

Digital Citizenship: From Nice to Ethical

2012-05-02T09:05:00.001-07:00

Too often, the message to kids is simply, "Be nice when you're online and stay away from perverts." While I agree that cyber-bullying and sexual predators are both important things to avoid, it seems as though the school system is being myopic in defining citizenship.

After all, if we take the word "digital" out of it, teachers wouldn't tell students, "Be a great citizen. To do so, you need to be nice and stay away from perverts." Instead, we talk about character, democracy, civic engagement and critical thinking. What if we took the same approach to digital interaction? What if we transitioned from "be nice" to "be ethical?"

The following are the five areas

Identity: Often, teachers talk to students about "digital footprint" and the focus is almost entirely on avoiding liability and asking students to show their best work. Students hear stories about employers who raided Facebook accounts for ethical flaws (and teachers often do this without asking teachers to examine the power of corporations on one's private life). What if we taught them to be authentic? What if we asked them to engage in meaningful digital story-telling? And what if, more importantly, we asked students to think ethically about the role of technology in redefining what it means to be human.
Collaboration: I want students to know how to co-create and communicate online. I want them to know how to speak boldly, but respectfully. Nice people keep the status quo. Ethical people engage in conflict in order to solve problems. I want them to show empathy as they engage in meaningful discourse - not for the skills of a New Economy, but for the success of democracy.
Critical Thinking: Critical thinkers aren't necessarily "nice." They are folks who can find the bias in sources, see multiple viewpoints, understand nuance, think in paradox and solve problems. If democracy is going to succeed, it requires critical thinkers. I also want them to think critically about the medium itself. True, they have the world at the palm of their hands, but I also want them to feel the grass beneath their feet.
Creativity: I understand the need for digital citizenship to address issues of copyright. However, I want students to contribute to the creative commons and to curate resources that they find. I want them to learn to be innovative problem-solvers who can choose tech tools effectively. In the process of problem-solving, students need to pick the tools effectively.
Engagement: When I look at the Arab Spring, I am reminded that they used social media for social change. I want students to be pocket journalists, contributing to an informed citizenry. I want them to explore issues, engage with the community, and express their social voice.

DAILY RETHINK

How would you define digital citizenship? (answer on Google Plus or Twitter)

The Creative Paradox

2012-04-29T21:32:00.001-07:00

A few days ago, I gave my daughter a box. She didn't think outside the box. She turned the box into a car and then a turtle shell and then a home for her doll. I didn't have tell her that she had to be creative. She has the creative impulse because she is human.

All she needed was permission.

If I want my students to be creative, I won't tell them to be creative. I won't explain to them that they can be part of the great Creative Class. I'll give them freedom. I'll make learning meaningful. The tools will not “require creativity.” Creative thinkers will find the tools and use them in innovative ways.