Feb 18

Chase the Right Goals

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One of the most basic concepts in curriculum design – and one we use extensively at SLA – is the idea of “backward mapping.” At its most basic, backward mapping means that you must have some idea of where  you want to go before you plan to get there. It is one of those common sense ideas that, when applied to a unit plan, makes things go much more smoothly.

The funny thing is I don’t think we do a great job of backward mapping when it comes to the notion of what we hope kids to get from school itself.

What is the purpose of school? What do we value, and what do we want for our kids?

If one were to look at the metrics that we measure, one would think that we value showing up (attendance,) reading and math (test scores,) doing what you’re told (grades) and finishing up (graduation rates.)  And on some level, that is what is valued in school today. But is that really what we value? And are learning those things really the best purpose of school?

At the parental level, parents want school to help their children to be able to succeed. Many CEOs would like schools – especially the public ones – to produce a steady supply of competent workers. And when we has the larger questions of what society needs from the children in school, the answer is everything from the idealistic – we need to citizens who can better our world – to the cynical – needs students were educated enough to become workers, but not so educated as to upset the status quo.

So school itself isn’t it that easy to backward map. When one unpacks the many pressure points on school, we find that the “end” that we have in mind for our students is not so clear-cut.

So what should we consider to be the goal of the modern school?

First, we must admit that which we do not know. We have to admit that we do not and cannot claim to know what the world our students will inherit will look like. So the notion that we can prepare kids for the 21st century workforce is both an act of hubris and a far too narrow goal. We have to admit that we are handing our children challenges, both environmental and social, that will require them to be far more  resourceful than we have had to be.

And so we must help them to become the citizens our world will need them to be. In many respects, the skills we want our students to be able to develop are no different than the best of what we have always wanted for our students, only now I do not believe we have the luxury of merely hoping for them without naming them.

If we are to embrace the notion that the purpose of school is to help students to become critically aware, fully realized citizens, then let us understand the skills that must then follow, and let us then rethink our schools and our curriculum and our assessments in an attempt to build the systems and structures that will help our students achieve those goals.

Let us help our students develop an agility of mind because we can already see that the world is changing more and more rapidly.

Let us help our students develop their creativity, not just as artists, but as artisans as well, because we want our students to be able to be creators across whatever milieu are necessary.

Let us help our students become more thoughtful – truly full of thoughts, because we want them to be able to understand the complexity of the world around them and take deliberate action, aware of and willing to own the consequences of their actions.

Let us help our students develop wisdom because the world will need them to be far more wise than we have been. Let us help them to see that action without reflection, that invention without forethought has not led us to a sustainable world, and that they will have to be wise beyond their years to solve the problems they face.

Let us help our students develop their passions. Let us help them to see that care begets care, and that by being willing to fully engage in the world instead of ironically holding it at arm’s-length, they will live an enriching life and they will enrich the lives of those who come in contact with them.

And let us help them to be kind. Our students will live in a time where their community will be more broadly defined – more global, more diverse and more inclusive than any other time in human history. If our students learn empathy and kindness, they will have the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from more people than we could have ever dreamed.

The challenge is to backward map the schools that chase those goals. But it is a challenge worth taking.

Feb 17

Invisible

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[I often say, "Technology must be ubiquitous, necessary and invisible." I thought I'd take a little time to explore each item in that triptych. My first two posts were Ubiquitous and Necessary. Here is the third. -- Chris]

Technology must be invisible.

In most schools, whenever the laptop cart is wheeled into a classroom, we say the kids are doing a “technology project.” But to say that is to miss the point. Just because a student uses a laptop or a tablet or some other piece of equipment that is new-ish to do their work does not mean they are doing a technology project.

It means they are doing their work.

We need to understand that until we stop fetishizing technology by making it the focal point of the work every time we pull it out of the closet, we will never move past the notion of “technology integration” to a place of “modern learning.”

The idea that technology must be invisible in school is simply this: Using technology to inquire, to create, to share, to research, to learn is not and should not be notable anymore. It should simply be a matter of course.

Using technology in school is not the point – learning is.

When technology becomes invisible, students take more ownership of their use of technology. When students use a combination of books, internet research and expert interviews to do a deep dive into a topic, technology is not the focus, research and inquiry are.

When a teacher says, “O.k. let’s get into our groups,” and one student opens up a Google Doc and three other students move their chairs, we can see a moment where the technology is not the focus, collaboration is.

When students are doing presentations, and rather than seeing thirty PowerPoint presentations, students use PowerPoint, Presi, videos and old-fashioned poster-board, but no matter what medium the presentation takes, students have a personal sense of aesthestic value and how to use a visual medium to communicate an idea, then technology is not the focus, presentation is.

That is how technology becomes invisible – when it becomes like the very oxygen we breathe. We don’t think about it every minute, but it is always there and always vital.

This doesn’t mean we never talk about technology, by the way. There are still moments when we learn about the technology itself, and that’s a good thing. Whether it is in a computer science class where students are learning to program, or it is in a technology infusion workshop where we help students to learn how to fully integrate the technology into their sense of themselves as a student and citizen, there are moments where we — student and teachers — make the invisible visible. That’s a good thing. Much like we have to be thoughtful about airflow when we build physical structures and machines, we should be thoughtful about technology when we build learning spaces and learning experiences. And both students and teachers should have moments of reflection of how the tools affect the learning. But there’s a big leap between understanding how the tool both is vital to and transformative to the work and making the work always about the tool.

When technology becomes invisible in a school, learning becomes the focus. That should always be our goal, regardless of the tools we use to get there.

Feb 16

Necessary

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WynnAlishaScience[I often say, "Technology must be ubiquitous, necessary and invisible." I thought I'd take a little time to explore each item in that triptych. My first post was Ubiquitous. Here is my second in the series. -- Chris]

Technology must be necessary.

That seems like an easy one. It is hard to think of a part of American life that is not touched by technology today outside of our schools. And yet, most students today do not feel that a laptop or a tablet is absolutely necessary to their success inside of school. This despite over 68% of American households having broadband internet at home. (http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/exploring-digital-nation-computer-and-internet-use-home) But for some reason, we continue to expect kids to dutifully take notes in an analog fashion and cut themselves off from the world outside the walls of the classroom while they aren’t.

It is time to admit that technology must be a necessary component to learning in school. Let’s use something as simple as note taking as an example. Why would we make students handwrite notes in a classroom anymore? Today, when students have the ability to use a tool like Evernote or Google Docs, notes can be compiled, reorganized, and shared. The ability to filter and the ability to search means that students can reference and use their notes more quickly and powerfully than before.  That doesn’t mean that every note has to be taken online, in fact I enjoy using the Evernote moleskin to take notes the old-fashioned way and then digitize them, but the idea that students could  create an electronic repository of their notes, their ideas, their work, should not be revolutionary anymore. It should simply be necessary. It should simply be done.

But that is the low-hanging fruit. Technology is necessary for reasons far greater than a better way to take notes or write a paper. Technology is necessary in our schools because it allows our students to see their work is authentic in the world. No longer is student work simply a one-to-one dialogue between teacher and student. Students can publish their work, students can take part in communities of practice both inside and outside of their immediate school community, And students can see their work is adding to the larger dialogue about topics that are of importance to them. The first time a student at SLA received an email from someone asking a follow-up question about a project, his vision of himself as a scholar completely changed. Every time students see their videos make the rounds on twitter, they understand they have created a vision of the world that is shared. When students use social media to reach out to experts in their fields, students develop their ability to inquire deeply and interact with adults who are further along on that path of inquiry. When students use technology in a science classroom to do powerful experiments or in an engineering class to make their idea become real, students no longer are only learning science, learning engineering, they are becoming scientists and engineers.

Technology becomes necessary when students see it as vital to the way they learn, when they cannot imagine doing the work without it. It is necessary when it allows them to do things, learn things, create things and share things like never before. Technology becomes necessary when it makes the work students do more authentic, more empowering and shared to the world. And, as educators, isn’t that how we want our students to view the artifacts of their learning? Technology is necessary not just because it is vital to the lives our students — and our society — leads outside of school. It is necessary because it can be married to progressive pedagogy and used to help students become fully realized scholars of the world.

Feb 15

Ubiquitous

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[It's not a bad idea to force yourself to unpack what you mean from time to time. I often say, "Technology must be ubiquitous, necessary and invisible." I thought I'd take a little time to explore each item in that triptych. -- Chris]

Technology must be ubiquitous.

Gregg Betheil of the New York City Department of Education talks about how we don’t send kids to the “pencil lab,” but that is how we treat technology. It sits in a special room or in a special cart, and we wheel it out when we have a specific task we want the kids to do with it.

That’s not good enough anymore.

SalinnaIt must be everywhere. 1:1 can no longer be optional. Today’s world is both analog and digital and in many moments it is both of those things at the same time. It cannot be seen as a luxury to provide students with  the digital tools of the modern world. And it is not okay to consider giving children a laptop as something that will preclude other profound instruments of learning. As Gary Stager said at the first EduCon, “We are the richest nation in the world we can provide our children with computer and a cello.”

And once we have provided students with the devices, we must make sure they don’t stay in the backpack. Ubiquitous technology means that they are pulled out in the hallways, they are used in lunchrooms, and they are used in classrooms. When technology is only something that is used when the teacher says so, it remains special, different and therefore not intrinsic to the learning that our kids do.

But when it is ubiquitous, it becomes a part of who we are and how we learn. That is the pathway to helping students understand the world in which they live. When it is ubiquitous, students learn how to put it away when they want to or they need to. When it is ubiquitous, it is no longer special. That is the moment when we stop worrying about integrating technology and start concerning ourselves with learning.

 

 

Feb 14

Humanity, Community and Technology in School

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Technology is not a neutral tool.  It is rewriting the way we think about everything in our society from communication to security to commerce to privacy to, of course, learning. The potential for that to be a force for good is near limitless, but we should be thoughtfully skeptical when we think about the uses of educational technology especially when it comes to the larger issue of school reform and the continued rise of edu-business.

In the spring of 2012, at the opening keynote of Education Innovation Summit,  Michael Moe told a room full of education entrepreneurs that over 90%  of the many billions of dollars spent on education in the United States was spent on personnel, and the only way to further monetize the education sector, as he called it, was to reduce personnel costs. To the few teachers in the room his point was clear–if you want to use technology to make money and education you have to find a way to reduce the number of teachers. And there are many powerful people who seem to agree with Mr. Moe’s statements.

So let us be clear – technology should not be used to supplant teachers. When we use the tools we love as an excuse to reduce the number of caring adults who interact with children, we run the risk of doing irreparable harm. In fact we almost guarantee it.

School is about much more than Newton’s Laws of Motion or the difference between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution – though both those things are important. When done well, schools help children learn how to live lives of meaning. When done right, schools help children become profoundly and active citizens. When done with care, schools help children learn how to care for one another. Technology alone cannot do those things. The purpose of school is not to train children but to teach them, and that requires the human element. If anything, we need more adults in schools not fewer.

Technology is and must be a transformative element in our schools. Fundamentally, it changes the equation of why we come to school. Whereas before we came to school because the teacher was there, now we come to school because we are all there together. Technology can allow us to embrace a more finely honed sense of community in our schools.

The mistake is thinking that we no longer need this thing called school because we have all of these new technologies.  And the greater mistake is thinking that all we need to do is develop the right app or the right product and we can buy and sell our way to a technological future of learning that no longer needs the people.  The logical end of that path is a level of solipsism that our society cannot and should not abide.

It is not that technology should supplant school, rather it should transform it. The promise of educational technology is that we can reinvent and re-imagine schools as the center of a community of learning. It is true that we no longer have to define school as four walls and floor, but let us not use that to throw away all that we have learned over the past hundred years of public school experiment. Let us instead mind the rich vein of educational history to find those moments of empowerment, those moments of connection, those moments of authenticity, those moments of care. Let us realize that those moments – more often than not – came at the intersection of a caring teacher and the students who trusted her. And then let us ask ourselves how can the technology enhance, magnify, multiply and transform those moments so that more children can feel that their learning matters and that there school matters every day.

And that is the promise of these tools we love so much. Anything short of a vision of educational technology use that allows students and teachers to inquire more deeply, research more broadly, connect more intensely, share more widely and create more powerfully, sells short the power of these tools — and more importantly, sells short the promise of learning and of school for our students.

And that we cannot and should not abide.

Feb 10

Embrace Your Best Teacher Self

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"Me" Muppet!

If only he could answer emails…

I started teaching when I was twenty-five years old. I taught in a school where teachers made the decision about whether to use their first name or their last name. Some of the teachers I learned from pushed me to go by “Chris,” not “Mr. Lehmann.” But I was young enough to worry about the lack of distance between me and the eighteen year-olds I was teaching that I wanted the daily reminder that I was the teacher in the room.

The “Mr. Lehmann” was and is often shortened to “Lehmann” or even “Lehms” or for some kids “Coach” but that person became who I am – or at least who I aspire to be. And the important thing is that is who the kids need me to be.

If students are willing to see us as the kind of teachers that students believe in, that students want to be around, want to learn from, then don’t we have an obligation to strive to be that person? If the students believe that “Mr. Lehmann” is far smarter, far more patient, far more humble, far more thoughtful than I really am, maybe I can get closer to being that person because of their vision.

So perhaps our teacher-selves should be the best versions of who we are. On some level, our teacher-selves should be the ideal that we strive for every day, even when we know that most days, we will fall far short of that ideal. And that ideal of the teacher-self is the thing that should keep us growing and learning as teachers, because knowing that most days, we fall short of the best version of ourselves is the thing that should keep us profoundly humble. But we should always remember that tomorrow is another day, another chance to be the person that the students need us to be.

There’s no question that, as teachers, knowing who are students are, knowing what they need, is an inquiry project that will keep us learning every day of our teaching lives, but the ancillary benefit is that knowing who we need to be in the classroom will keep us growing every day too.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” If we pretend to be more thoughtful, more wise, more passionate and more kind than we actually are, and the kids help us to become those things, isn’t that a good thing?

Seventeen years ago, I started pretending to be “Mr. Lehmann.” Every day, I give what I have that day to live up to his ever-changing ideal.

Feb 04

This I Believe

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I wrote this a long time ago. It bears repeating (and revising.) Seemed like the time for a revisiting of it.

What are your ten most core beliefs? What would happen if we all started posting them?

1. I believe that, in the end, if we were serious about reforming education in this country, we would start with three simple (but expensive) premises:

1. No classes over 20 in K-8. No classes over 25 in 9-12.
2. No schools over 600.
3. Pay teachers a living wage.

2. I believe that we have the ability to make this happen in this country, but not the political will. And I believe that is a national failure for which we all are responsible.

3. I believe that basing how much money is spent on a child’s education through parental income / property tax is profoundly anti-democratic and undermines us as a nation.

4. I believe that progressive education works for any number of reasons, but primarily because it dares all stakeholders to care about the work that they do every day. Teachers, students and administrators all can take ownership in the work they do. And I believe that when they do, really powerful stuff happens.

5. I believe that the average urban teaching contract makes this kind of teaching far harder than it has to be. And I believe that class size and teaching load are the two biggest impediments — even bigger than salaries.

6. I believe that, in spite of that, we must find a way to build more progressive institutions in our cities. And I believe we can. But I also believe that we will need reforms beyond the school-based level if we want the movement to be sustainable in the long-term.

7. I believe that we live in a time where we can help our students learn more, create more and share more than ever before. I believe our students can see the “why” we learn and apply their answers to the world at large.

8. I believe that for us to be able to change our students’ lives, we have to allow them to change our lives as well.

9. I believe that the first and most powerful rule in teaching is: Care. Care. Care. Care. Care. And when you don’t know what else to do, care more.

10. I believe in my students. I believe in their ability. I believe in their creativity. I believe in their intelligence. I believe in their dedication to the things they believe in. I believe in their energy. I believe in their innocence, even when they try to act more worldly than they are. I believe in their insight. I believe in their ability to overcome obstacles in their lives that would make many of us want to give up. I believe in my students.

What do you believe?

#thisIbelieve

Feb 01

Schools Are Full of People

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Almost every educator – myself included – has dealt with some kind of student behavior with a variation of the line, “Well, s/he is a kid.” It makes sense, but what is interesting is that most of — if not all of — student behavior is a version of the same behavior in adults. And when we recognize that kids really do the same kind of things we do, it forces us to examine our own behavior in a new context, and it should lead us to create more humane schools.

First, we have to own that our own behavior is still on that continuum. When I was in the classroom, it used to drive me crazy that a few of my colleagues had absolutely Draconian lateness policies for kids but never handed their grades in on time. That made no sense to me. I was — and still am sometimes — terrible about deadlines. And I was not always as fast as I would have liked to be about handing back work. (Any former student of mine just choked reading that understatement.) So it seemed hypocritical that I’d be really strict about late work with kids, because I was so bad at it. Eventually, I hit upon a policy that made sense to me — if you handed in work before I handed back work, I couldn’t mark it late in good conscience, and if I really wanted to do something about students meeting deadlines, then I had to model it.

But the other thing that did for me — and what I try to remember every day — was that it forced me to accept my own humanity and therefore accept the humanity of my students as well. I tell SLA kids who are struggling with the imperfect nature of their parents, their friends, their teachers or themselves about one of the reasons forgiveness is so important, simply, “I forgive other people their flaws in the vain hope that they will forgive me mine.” I try remind frustrated teachers of the same thing as well.

But it’s more than just looking for forgiveness. We have to understand that we are trying to help the kids grow into the best versions of themselves. They won’t be perfect. They shouldn’t even try to be. We aren’t. At best, we can hope that our students will be better, kinder, wiser adults than we are, but they’ll never be perfect. And we’ll only frustrate them and ourselves if that’s the standard we hold them to.

And I worry that saying, “Well, they are kids…” is a way to excuse their imperfection as just a function of their youth, not a function of their humanity. It serves to turn them into the other, rather than give us a moment to look at their behavior as part of the growth process we all are on. Kids miss deadlines because they are human. Kids skip class sometimes because they are human. It doesn’t excuse the behavior, nor does it mean that the behavior doesn’t have ramifications, but it allows us to see our students as closer to who we are. It reminds us that we should treat our students with kindness and care even when they make mistakes, because we hope that is what people will do when we make mistakes. And it makes it easier for students and teachers to see themselves as on the same journey of gaining wisdom.

Schools are filled with people, with all their flaws, all their beauty and all their imperfections. And more often than we usually admit, those flaws, that beauty and those imperfections are shared pretty closely between students and teachers.

That should be a good thing.

Schools are full of people. And we are so lucky they are.

 

Jan 31

EduCon 2.5: Creating the Conditions for Structured Inquiry

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Some thoughts from others about the session I ran on Sunday morning – Beyond Googling: Structuring Inquiry

Inquiry Breaks Down Rigidity – by Kristen Swanson

Why Inquiry Learning is Worth the Trouble by Ian Quillen of KQED

So my Sunday morning session at EduCon was entitled Beyond Googling: Building the Conditions for Structured Inquiry. The slide-deck is at the bottom of post. It was an evolution of a workshop I’ve done before, but my whole goal was to really think about the session on both the real and the meta-session level. (Yeah, I just made up a word.)

The goal was to create an environment where some real tough questions around what this word “inquiry” really can mean in the classroom, followed by more problem-solving around how to do that well. In a workshop like this, there isn’t much research going on (although, given that almost any group of teachers at EduCon will have at least one internet enabled decide, if not five to ten of them – so that’s a challenge for next time, I suppose.)

I enjoyed doing the session, especially as session participants really engaged deeply in the questions we were asking. One thing that came out organically from many folks was something I was hoping would — inquiry isn’t just question and answer, it is very much a process…. and that the word can represent the idea of a deep dive into learning through questioning and seeking.

The 90 minutes went by really quickly, so much so that we were way over time before we all realized it was time to go. That’s what inquiry is supposed to do – it’s supposed to get people talking, researching, questioning and learning so much that time really does just fly by. So the session ended up being a pretty good model for what I hope folks can then do in their own classrooms, I think.

But what did I learn by facilitating the session?

It was a chance for me to keep exploring the idea that inquiry really requires people — students and teachers — to live in the uncomfortable places, and that’s hard. Inquiry requires that we all develop a nimbleness of mind so that we do not give in to the orthodoxy of our own ideas. That’s important for students and teachers (and principals) so that we can start to really hone our skill of deep thinking.

It was a chance for me to hear folks bring up empathy over and over again, as inquiry means deep listening and deep understanding of others – other texts, other people, other ideas. Inquiry should help all of us develop our ability to question to learn, not just argue to win.

It was a chance for me to think about — and talk about — how inquiry cannot just live in the classroom or as a stand-alone pedagogy of the stated curriculum. Inquiry allows students to access the hidden curriculum, as they will question grading structures. They will question discipline policies. They will question how teachers and students interact. And while, on one level, kids have been doing that for years, if students are taught the true spirit of inquiry, this will be far more than the traditional “Why do we have to do [x] this way?” Kids can question, problem solve, and most importantly, they can understand the complexity of school and of learning in ways that help them grow up well.

Perhaps my take-away, more than anything else, is how the longer we go on this journey at SLA, the more of a seeker I have become. Doing this workshop was a chance for me to step back and really look at how I have come to believe deeply that the inquiry process doesn’t just teach us a way to teach and learn, it gives us a powerful lens through which we can live our lives.

Jan 23

EduCon 2.5 Eve

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The badges are made, the presenter bags are packed up, Ryan and Tsion have sent the email with all the student jobs, the parents met tonight to go over all the different roles they play. Tomorrow, all the Advisories will straighten up the rooms one more time, and then this Friday, Saturday and Sunday approximately 600 educators will come to our little corner of the world for the sixth iteration of EduCon. It never fails to amaze me that we pull it off every year.

And today at our faculty meeting, we took a few minutes after going over all the last details to step back and think about what this conference means to us as a community. EduCon is not just about SLA, not by a long shot. The community of educators who come together every year to discuss the intersection of progressive education and modern tools is made up of incredible teachers who amaze me with their insights and ideas. And EduCon is as much about every attendee and facilitator as it is about SLA. But for those of us who make SLA our educational home, EduCon is truly a twin moment of both humility and pride.

We are – I am – amazed at how our little corner of the educational world has been able to serve as host for a conversation about the ideas we most hold dear. For our students, they get to understand the power of their own ideas and hard work and voice as they see themselves as vital participants in an international conversation about how we can make schools better for students and adults worldwide. For our parents, it is an opportunity for them to see their children in a powerful light, and it is an opportunity for them to give back to the school that educates their children. For our teachers, it is a moment to step outside the day-to-day where we struggle and sweat and work toward the impossibly unachievable ideal of our best ideas and realize that other educators can see that we get closer to that ideal that we often give ourselves credit for.

And, of course, it is for us an incredible learning weekend where we can tease out ideas with like-minded educators and push our own thinking. EduCon is, for me, the most profound three days of learning every year because it is the time where so many of the people I learn from virtually all year long show up to our school with an open heart and an open mind, ready to teach and learn.

So for those folks en route – welcome and thank you for coming to Philly. Our apologies in advance about the weather. For folks who can’t make the trip, feel free to join in virtually – we’re streaming the entire conference again this year. And thank you to Ms. Rami, Ms. Laufenberg, Ms. Hull, Mr. Herman, Ms. Pahomov, Ms. Dunda, Mr. Best, Tsion, Ryan, Nikki, Jeff, Dr. Heller and all the other EduCon planners. Thank you to all the SLA teachers and parents and students who make EduCon happen. Thank you to all the facilitators who take so much time to craft thoughtful, meaningful, progressive sessions. Thank you to everyone who comes into EduCon ready to learn. This conference is about the conversations – and that means it is about everyone who shows up and co-creates its meaning.

Welcome to SLA. Welcome to EduCon 2.5.