Travelling Over Rocky Ground
”The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” ~Lao Tzu~
We hosted an un-conference yesterday with a collection of some of our district’s strongest teachers to explore and engage in conversational learning. Sixty or so members of the York Region District’s Literacy@School team gathered for an edcamp-type day and tweeted out using the #litschool hashtag.
We invited our good friend and colleague @shareski to join us for the day and were delighted that Dean took us up on the offer and gave a short talk (an un-keynote if you will) along with @toddedwright. After the day of learning we joined Dean for dinner and a chat with some of our system leaders; a few school principals and some of our district office folks.
For the most part, during the day and over dinner, the conversation flowed nicely, as one would expect with such an engaged and articulate group of educators. Like many of us, Dean is reaching out to examine the challenges and successes that schools and school systems across Canada are experiencing and considering some themes and patterns for continued exploration. Colin Harris (@digitalnative) made sure the un-conference ran smoothly while I was happy to take on the facilitator’s role for the evening dinner chat.
I spent the day and evening listening, I tossed out a guiding question every once in a while, made sure we heard from everyone and took detailed notes. In both contexts, the educators shared their stories: their delights, their challenges, their struggles and their joys. I’ve looked over the notes, mulled them over a bit and have three themes, or think-abouts, to share.
Document- “We’ve been travelling”, to quote my newest, favourite Bruce Springsteen song, “over rocky ground”. One theme that emerged is the need for us to document these travels and journeys. Learning is an incremental and dynamic process and I think it is important for each of us to have a personal record of the struggles and triumphs that occur daily in our classrooms and schools. We know the ‘experts’ in the media and court of public opinion are happy to document our work with the tools they have: test scores, rankings, sound bites and opinion pieces. Our public schools are an important part of our democratic communities; it is important for us to document the journey of our student’s learning and of ours; it is the best evidence we have of the true value of our work.
Share- a delicate challenge for 21st century schools is how we can safely and appropriately share what we have documented. Our schools, in spite of obstacles and external forces, are still responsible for unprecedented levels of literacy amongst our young. But are they reflective of the reality of a connected world where it is expected that information is shared through interactive and dynamic processes? It is important that educators, schools and systems adapt to engage families and communities beyond newsletters and parent nights; to incorporate social media tools into their practice and invite parents to engage in on-going dialogues with their children’s schools through these tools.
Connect- If ”isolation is the enemy of improvement” (Smocker, Jamentz, Elmore), then connection is a critical component for any sustained improvement. There was a time when teachers worked in isolation, as did schools and systems. That time is no longer. When knowledge was scarce and confined to one textbook, or one curriculum, we had neither the need or means to connect. The world we now live demands that educators connect because our students (and the much of the world beyond our schools) already have. Our paradigm no longer applies. We need to reach out and use the variety of tools for connection we have available to create dense, overlapping networks. Within and beyond our classrooms, our schools and our networks; face to face and online-we need to connect.
I suppose it never is supposed to be ‘easy’ and we will continue to struggle with this. I’m encouraged that there are educators willing to challenge and question the status quo and remain committed to continue this journey, rocks and all. As the day unfolded, educators from across the world clicked on the #litschool hashtag and joined our conversation, helping to document the days learning, share the evidence of our work and collaborate to connect and extend the network we were hoping to grow in the first place.
Practice/People
photo credit: Brian Harrison
“Teaching more than virtually any activity (aside from parenting, perhaps) depends on quick instinctive habits and behaviour, and on deeply held ways of seeing and valuing.” ~Deborah Meier~
When you spend a few hours in the classroom of a skilled teacher (as I did today) the gravity of Deb Meier’s quote becomes apparent. A skilled teacher makes is all look so easy that the old cliches about how ‘any one can teach’ become almost believable…almost.
It is important for me to remember that, although it is the teachers who are seen, what must be observed is the practice, not the people. Failing to observe and describe the practice, and ascribing credit to the personality, or aura of the person is a risky and ultimately unproductive endeavour.
Let me give a contextual example. If you walk into any K-12 classroom and ask a student to tell a bit about themselves it is unlikely that they will tell you that they are a ‘student’ or launch into a complicated description about how the task they are engaged in defines who they are or what they value. Kids are able to separate who they are from what they are doing (at least in school). It would be great if teachers adopted the same disposition.
Often, in my supervisory capacity, I work with teachers around changing their practice and often this is taken as a personal or evaluative challenge to who they are (as opposed to what they are doing). This is why I spend a lot of time and effort building trust and using precise, non-judgemental, descriptive language when working with colleagues.
It is, after all, about the practice, not the person. Our challenge is that we have evolved a culture in our schools that places too much emphasis the ‘personality’ of the teacher and not enough on the practice. It is easy to see how this can be, things move so fast in classrooms that there exists a steady blur between the teacher and the teacher’s practice.
Let’s work on changing this, let’s lead in a way that helps our skilled and dedicated teachers know that we want to use processes like Action Research, Lesson Study and Co-teaching to capture the best practices so we can build a body of professional knowledge that all of us can draw upon.
After all, the people are important…and so is the practice. We need both.
Go. Do That…
Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives
“…if you’re afraid of something, of putting yourself out there, of creating a kind of connection or a promise, that’s a clue that you’re on the right track. Go, do that.”
When they find out that I’m a fairly active blogger and tweeter, colleagues and friends often ask me why I engage in these activities. I have a wide range of responses that range from the poetic, to the pithy, to the pointed; depending upon the context and the relationship I have with the person. This isn’t about that~I assume that the fact you are reading a blog post suggests some degree of tolerance for the form and an understanding of why blogging matters in our world and, in particularly, in education.
Nope, this is about an awesome email I received from a teacher at our school:
“…this weekend I thought just a little about blogging with the kids… just a little. And I came to the conclusion that they would have an awesome time publishing an article to the world. Do you have time after the break to come into my class and share with them that awesome map that you showed me of having people in Oceania reading your work? My literacy block if after recess and before lunch.
Just last week this teacher and I had been talking about the role that audience plays for all writers and how important it was to provide as rich and wide an audience for our young writers as we could. I shared the ClustrMap for my blog and how rewarding it is for me to see a graphical representation of the people who have read my posts. Obviously, the map caught my dear colleague’s interest sufficient for the invitation to be issued (and an invitation is all I ever need).
If you are curious about blogging as a medium for learning (for adults and children) and you believe that students and teachers look to the examples their leaders set, then please re-read the above quote from my colleague and understand that one of the key reasons I blog is to set that example and lead from the edge, not the mushy middle. We do need, paraphrasing Seth Godin’s words, to “put ourselves out there.”
So, if you are a school leader who is not blogging because you don’t believe that this tool and form of writing could have a profound impact on the writing capacities of all your students, go ahead, keep on not blogging. But if you think that you are ready to take the leap and start an administrator’s blog to communicate, connect and model 21st century school leadership for staff, students and community then start one~ Go, do that.
Eye Times
Photo Credit- NASA Public Domain
You’re the finest thing that I’ve done
The hurricane I’ll never outrun
I could wait around for the dust to still
But I don’t believe that it ever will
Hurricane : Scott Cutler, Anna Previn, Greta Morgan
When I look at a satellite image of a hurricane from space the intricate detail of the photos always draw me to the centre, the eye of the hurricane. Science tells us why and how the eye becomes what it is, but the almost spiritual calm in the centre of a raging, spiralling rampage of hot air is the most compelling image of all.
I believe that good public schools are like the eye of a hurricane; a place where we can settle our children while the world rages around and around. We are in the midst stormy times~ the shifting global economy, the challenges of adaptation and change and the manner in which governments and stakeholders are responding to these changes~ these are all swirling about and the air is getting hotter.
I hope we all remember that our schools have to be like the eye of the hurricane~ our children need that from us, more than ever.
But…Why?
The lights go out and it’s just the three of us You, me and all the stuff we’re so scared of
~Bruce Springsteen~
We’ve had a busy few weeks at my school as we approach the March break in Ontario. Into year two of a new reporting timeframe, educators are adapting to the reality that with report cards going home in early February, the cycle and flow that we grew accustomed to has been altered (and change is scary).
Principally, the past practice was to use the last few weeks of February to assess, evaluate and report, which meant we could say things like “…this is important stuff, report cards go home soon!” to keep things in order and in response to the question “Why do we have to do this?”
Then we would all take a well-deserved break.
Now February and early March are filled with learning and teaching. With the next report card months away at the end of June, February now is the beginning of a learning cycle, not a culmination. Our thinking has had to shift and this is kind of scary for us. Fortunately, we have really brave and curious teachers at our school and they are eager to adapt and grow. So, I’ve been doing a lot of co-planning, co-teaching and professional inquiry, especially in our grade 7 and 8 classes, where the “why” question is not easily answered.
We’ve been exploring ways to build inquiry into our learning tasks; just in math for now and, soon in language and the other pursuits. We been thinking about ways to use the question “Why?” and adding the questions “How?” and “When?” and, “Why not?” as the launch pad for our learning.
Much of this was prompted by a spike in student actions that were not okay to us and required some responses (read disciplinary) and some reflection on our part as a team. We realized our older students were trying to tell us (and show us) that they needed something different and personal. We have decided to look upon this as their invitation for us to change; an invitation we decided to accept.
Early results from our students (and teachers) is this is good stuff. We are talking more with each other (and not at each other), we are using more complex and creating contexts for learning about number and taking the time to support our students to work in small teams to solve problems. We are all smiling more, and laughing more.
This is a much nicer way to lead up to a break, I think:)
Driving to Harvard
Photo Courtesy Angie Harrison
One of the nice consequences of the move to my current school has been the drive to work has been extended by a few more minutes. Before we get to agitated about my carbon footprint, my previous commute was through mostly urban and suburban areas with lots of stopping and going in traffic. My new commute has me taking a 30 minute trek on a lovely rural road with exactly 3 stop lights between my home and school with NO traffic (other than the odd farm tractor).
Rather than listen to the biased rants of talk radio hosts, or the overwrought, cliche-ridden ramblings of our local sports radio jocks about the fate of my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs; I’ve decided to make my mom proud and go to Harvard.Not in Cambridge but in the comforts of my shiny compact SUV.
Harvard has collected a great stash of education-related podcasts from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has made them available through iTunes U. They are all about 15 minutes in length and address a wide range of topics, both in the North American and global context. I find listening to a podcast twice during my morning drive is a great way to flow the juices, launch the day and make the drive a reflective experience.
Two things that I’m tossing about right now spring from recent talks I’ve listened to by Richard Elmore and Wynton Marsalis on leadership, creativity and change:
1) Investing in teachers involves more than throwing resources and training in their general direction. Investing in people means I have to give some of myself; my time, my interest, my passion. People are looking for leaders who get that and show it through their actions (not just their action plans)
2) Change is both incremental and dynamic. When we connect creative people around a purpose the change process will take time, but can leap and evolve in almost magical ways~ as long as we understand that it is the trust and the relationships that lead to the growth and not mandates or external pressures.
I’m grateful to our colleagues at Harvard for investing in my learning, and for setting an example of one way that personalized, just in time learning can work. I’m also grateful for my time I have to drive my way to becoming a better person (and leader).
From Pyramids to Balloons…
Information is not knowledge,
Knowledge is not wisdom,
Wisdom is not truth
Frank Zappa
For most of the past few thousand years we have used a pyramid as the metaphor for our knowledge and social systems (including networks). The hierarchical structure is well established in our culture to the point where it is hegemonic. Scholars, thinkers and theorists ranging from T.S. Eliot, Mortimer Adler, Russell Ackoff and, yes, Frank Zappa have all made some reference to what Ackoff called the DIKW Hierarchy or Wisdom Pyramid. Ackoff explored the dynamic relationship between systems and human behavior, pointing out that, “Individual systems are purposive, knowledge and understanding of their aims can only be gained by taking into account the mechanisms of social, cultural, and psychological systems”
Think about most educational systems, schools and classrooms and you can see this hierarchical structure still in place. Students on the bottom, followed by a diminishing quantity of individuals as we climb. Or, inversely, a large number of students chasing the more scarce amount of knowledge that exists in the teacher’s toolbox of texts and tasks. This all makes sense, the structure of pyramids are solid, they are built to last and do.
Two things though: we don’t really build them anymore these days and when we did, it was usually to store a dead regent or ruler.
Then,we had the internet come along and all of sudden (as David Weinberger so skillfully points out in Too Big to Know) the pyramids don’t really fit as a metaphor for systems or knowledge. The connections and dynamic, networked interplay that is the modern web has released knowledge from the constraints of paper and expertise and smashed the hierarchy as knowledge is now contained within the network, not at the top of it. The irony of the role that networked media played as a catalyst to the end of the Mubarak era (in Egypt) is just to tasty to resist.
Like a balloon, the knowledge within the net surges and flows within a structure that is pliable and malleable (and accessible to anyone who wishes to pump some air in to it). And now we wait for the inevitable shift to occur in our systems as we adapt to this reality…or rather than wait, shall we set out to challenge the status quo and push this change along?
Goodreads
ClustrMap
