Practical Theory

[MOUSE is an amazing ed-tech non-profit based out of New York City. I've been affiliated with them for just about all of their ten years -- I think I first worked with them about eight months after they were founded. They are on the side of the angels in every way, and we're working to bring MOUSE to Philadelphia. Ted Bongiovanni sent me this job posting, and I'm happily passing it on here. Please direct any questions to MOUSE, and not me, though.]

MOUSE's Website: http://www.mouse.org

Overview

MOUSE, a mission driven non-profit committed to empowering students to
succeed in today's knowledge based economy, is seeking an Education and
Assessment Manager. The ideal candidate is a talented educator who's
capable of designing curriculum, able to make it come alive online, and able
to assess how our programs produce outcomes for participants. Interested
candidates should send an email explaining why they'd be a good fit and
their resume to jobs@mail.mousenetwork.org no later than 2/22/2008

Position Description

The candidate will:

Design curriculum for MOUSE's existing MOUSE Squad and MOUSECORPS programs

Assess the effectiveness of our programs and curriculum; develop and
disseminate reports on program effectiveness and best practices

Lead workshops administrators, teachers and students

Create communities of practice to promote teacher professional development

Make MOUSE curricular offerings come alive online

Help develop partnerships with like-minded organizations that compliment
MOUSE's educational goals

Contribute to MOUSE online publications like the MOUSE Squad Wire

Present MOUSE's work at Educational Technology Conferences, like NECC

Oversee the conceptualization and educational design of the annual MOUSE
Educators Conference

Qualifications

Passionate about creating opportunities for youth and demonstrated track
record with the purposeful use of technology

Masters Degree in Education or related field

4 to 6 years relevant work experience, preferably with youth development
experience

Teaching, Teacher Professional development experience strongly preferred.

Familiarity with research tools and the ability to perform data analysis
desired.

About MOUSE

MOUSE: Empowering Students to Succeed

Since 1997, MOUSE has been creating technology-based opportunities that
motivate underserved students to succeed in today’s information society.

MOUSE leads two key initiatives: MOUSE Squad and MOUSECORPS. Through these
research-based programs, MOUSE makes a measurable difference in the lives of
underserved students and in their communities through:

Leadership programs;

Technology programs;

College-preparatory programs;

Career development programs;

Service learning programs; and

Professional development for educators.

Recognizing that many schools have limited resources, MOUSE efforts are
designed to provide a cost-effective, research-based platform to improve the
learning community and increase opportunity for students, teachers, and the
community at large. Ultimately, MOUSE is committed to helping underserved
students succeed. All of our programs, partnerships, and activities have
been developed to achieve this important goal.

Apply

Send email to jobs@mail.mousesnetwork.org

Compensation

MOUSE provides a competitive salary and benefits package.

It's the Sunday night after EduCon, and I'm exhausted. I'm not sure exhausted sums it up. I'm insanely bone-weary tired. But it's a very good kind of tired. It may take me a day or two to look deeply at any one part of what happened, but I wanted to talk quickly about a few things.

For SLA, this weekend was such a powerful weekend where students and teachers saw themselves in the larger context of school reform. That's such a wonderful gift that all those who came to EduCon or hung out in uStream chat rooms gave our kids. One of my students is already looking for ways to do a student conference where they talk about school reform.

And the other thing that struck me is that this conference was better than we ever could have hoped. The energy and excitement was incredible and inspiring, and perhaps that shouldn't have been surprising. There were 75 members of the wikispace and 476 edits (and that's not counting guests) in January alone. There were twitter posts, comments on blogs and Skype chats and calls with so many people to make this conference be what is was. So many of the people at the conference had a rightful sense of ownership and engagement in the success of this conference. And we're no different than our kids -- when we feel ownership, when we feel engaged, we work harder, do more, achieve greater heights. This conference belonged to all of us -- we all planned it, wanted it, and we all had to show up with our A game to make it happen. And shouldn't that tell us something about our schools?

There's more to write about this, but my eyes are closing, and the morning will be here quicker than I'd like. Thank you to everyone who came, who uStreamed, who helped out this weekend. Thank you to all the facilitators and panelists who put together thoughtful and engaging sessions that dared people us all to think. Thank you to the SLA parents who came out and helped with registration and lunches and dinners -- especially Anne Marie Sweeney who organized the parent participation and did so much incredible work. Thank you to my primary co-organizers, Marcie Hull and Kristin Hokanson. Thank you to David Jakes and Will Richardson who often were on the other end of phone calls and Skype calls as sounding boards. Thank you to SLA teachers Zac Chase and Tim Best who did tons and tons of work. Thank you to Franky St. Pierre who did everything in his power to solve every possible tech problem. Thank you to all the SLA teachers who put up with me throughout this process. Thank you to the SLA students who showed the world the amazing, thoughtful, brilliant, hard-working and kind kids that they are.

The energy of this weekend has to continue. There's so much more for all all to do. And that's my hope for EduCon... that it's a weekend that restores us, energizes us, inspires us and reminds us of what we have to do for our kids as we continue in our journey to create schools that matter for all our kids. Sure, those are lofty goals, but why not?

"Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world, in fact, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead

Thank you to everyone at EduCon for being part of a small group of committed individuals who want to change the world.

Technorati Tags: educon20

Trying Live-Blogging...

I'm in Dennis Richards' Claiming What We Can Imagine session at EduCon 2.0.

It's amazing. How many districts can claim of have such a forward thinking superintendent?

One of the truisms that someone once told me about schools is that you can always tell what is valued in a high school by what is scheduled. If something is part of the schedule, then it has value.

It's not enough to say that we care about kids if we don't create a structure in our schools that reflect that ethic. For us, that is manifest by our advisory program. I've long said that an effective advisory program is the soul of a school.

So what is advisory at SLA?

At its most basic, it is a class that meets twice a week. The class is a four-year loop of around 20 kids and the same teacher for all four years. The curriculum is the community. (or vice versa.) There are topics that get dealt with... 9th grade is a lot about the adjustment to high school, the second half of 11th grade and the first half of 12th grade is all about college... throughout there's a focus on social / emotional growth, school issues, and life issues. But most of all, it's a place for adults and students to be together, talk about issues that matter to them, and have a community that grows and changes and gets deeper over time.

For parents, it means knowing that your child has at least one adult in the building whose job it is to see your child as more than a student in a classroom.. to see them as a whole person.

For students, it means knowing that there's a teacher you can always go to... and it means knowing that there are a group of kids who you will go through school with, experience the conversations and growth together. They may not always be your best friends, but that community will be there, even as friendships and relationships and classes change. It's the chance to learn how to have conversations with adults and kids together that isn't centered around English or Science or Math, but around the issues that the community brings to the table together.... or about the things that don't quite fit into a "traditional" curriculum.

For teachers, it's that reminder -- in the schedule, planned -- that our kids are more than just what we see in our subject areas. It is the scheduled part of the day where the primary objective is nothing less than the ethic of care. When there are twenty kids that you have to see as a whole person, who you know that you have to help navigate high school, that mindset carries over into every class, every interaction.

That's how we've chosen to privilege the ethic of care in our schedule. There are lots of ways to do it. And we didn't invent it. For folks looking for a wonderful resource on how to structure a four year advisory program, I recommend "The Advisory Guide: Designing and Implementing Effective Advisory Programs in Secondary Schools" (Carol Miller Lieber, Rachel A. Poliner). It's a great resource, and it's a great way to start thinking about what advisory can be.

This is one science teacher's attempt to influence the way we talk about the issue of climate change. Pass it on.

I've been doing a little writing for The Faculty Room, a new blog sponsored by Grant Wiggins' Authentic Education. The last question we were asked to respond to was "Are Teachers Born or Made?"

Here's my answer.

[Post that got me thinking: Some New Years Dreaming by Will Richardson

On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher by Clay Burrell.]

In a provocative post, Will questions the role of schools in today's society, and he quotes quotes Clay Burrell who writes:

More and more I wonder: is school a good place for teachers who want to make a difference in the lives of their students, and to the future of the world? Is there a way to leave the daily farce of gradebooks, attendance sheets, tests, corporate and statist curriculum, homework assignments, grade-licking college careerist “students” (and parents), fear of parents and administrators, and fear of inconvenient socio-political truths - and at the same time, to make a far more meaningful impact on the lives of the young?…I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.

And in general, a lot of Clay's writing these days is showing an incredible dissatisfaction with the structure of schools these days. And perhaps it is time for Clay to leave the formal classroom. Certainly, given his comments later on down in Will's post, he sounds like someone whose time in the classroom is done:

As a high school teacher, I’m hard-pressed to see anything schools do that really are good for the majority of students - at least that couldn’t be done outside of schools.

Certainly, if this is what Clay is thinking and feeling, then he's probably right to think that the time has come to leave the classroom. Fortunately, there are a lot of places that Clay can find the kind of learning environments he wants. Informal learning environments have every bit as long a history as formal schools. Places like church groups, the Boys and Girls Clubs and youth programs such as PACTS (run by SLA partner, The Franklin Institute.) Informal educational spaces are incredibly important, and someone with Clay's passion and idealism would probably do an incredible amount of good in a place like that.

Will, in his post, talked a lot about his vision for a school for his kids:

[It] started me thinking, about a different model, one that is built on really small groups of students that meet in physical space studying and learning about the topics they are passionate about and who are also connected to other small groups of students with like minded passions from anywhere in the world via the Live Web, where long term collaborations and research and learning can happen over extended periods, all of it real work for real audiences, published and reviewed by engaged readers participants acting as mentors from global audiences. The adults in the room are co-learners with the students but also educators who can model and navigate the skills and competencies, the “network literacies” (sorry, Tom) that the kids in the room need to have to leverage the connections they help facilitate. And there might be some high-level, virtual administration in there somewhere, to make sure the connections and logistices are working. And there might be parents learning alongside their students, and others who are involved at different levels of the process. Regardless, it’s a place where learning is at the heart of everything. Not grades. Not tests. Not college acceptances.

Interestingly, this sounds a lot like the free school movement as typified by the British Summerhill School and still found in America at places like the Brooklyn Free School. This is part of why I think it's incredibly important for all of us who are arguing for reform and thinking about 21st Century schools to really immerse ourselves in the history of school and school reform, because change is happening right now, and we need to understand what has come before us and what still exists around us if we are to be advocates for innovation, we owe it to our kids to be scholars as well as activists.

But all of this also got me thinking about what we should and shouldn't expect our schools -- especially our public schools -- to be. (And I know that Clay isn't a public school teacher, but that's my lens....) There are some things that we have to deal with, and they can be difficult, especially if we hold onto an idealistic vision of what we want our schools to be for every child.

1) School is compulsory.

Something I realized early in my teaching career is that my very best teaching happened at 6:30 in the morning on the basketball court and Ultimate field. I realized that if I could get kids where they wanted to be, then we really could do something amazing together. I knew that the greatest impact I had on kids was with the kids on my teams. So much of my time in my "regular" classes was spent trying to recreate the feeling of 6:30 am.

But there's nothing wrong with accepting that school is compulsory, I think. We have decided as a society that this is something we value and need. And I agree with that, but it also means that there will be plenty of times that your classroom won't be the first place many of your kids want to be. I used to say to my classes in September of every year, "Just so you know, on a beautiful fall day, I'd rather be outside too, but since we have to be here, let's pledge to really make the most of every moment we have together." It was honest and upfront, and it did away with the false notion that my classroom was always going to be fun or the place we always wanted to be. Instead, what I always hoped for was that our time together would have meaning.

And I'm o.k. -- in fact I'm more than o.k. -- with compulsory education. I'm even o.k. with making kids take several years of science and math and history and English. I don't think most fourteen year old kids know what they most want, and I think that, at its best, a "comprehensive" (ha!) education does two really important things:

1) It exposes kids to a wide variety of subjects in the hopes that kids can find things for further study later on down the line that they may not have otherwise been exposed to.

2) (And this is the more important of the two) It gives kids different lenses on the world. I used to say that we read novels because every book we read teaches us to see the world through a different set of eyes. As an administrator, I've realized that every class -- not just English -- should do that.

Our kids today need to be able to see the world through a historical lens, a scientific lens, a mathematical lens. They need to mix and match those lenses which is why interdisciplinary study is so important, and they need to be able to apply those lenses which is why project-based learning where kids can apply skills and knowledge is so very important.

2) Our schools serve as a sorting mechanism for college and life after high school.

I hate this part too, but this one falls for me under the whole "We cannot be revolutionaries at our kids' expense" credo. Grades, as much as they are a construct, matter. This goes back to the whole "Two Schools" idea that I wrote about a while back... as much as we want our schools to merely be cathedrals of learning, that's not all they are. They also are mechanisms for entry into the world after adolescence. This can be painful and dangerous, and it's part of our job as educators to deal with this reality as openly, transparently and kindly as possible, but they are there, and if we are to work within this system, we have to deal with it.

3) Our schools will always be flawed because we are flawed.

This one may be the hardest part. Schools are made of people, and you put a group of people together and sooner or later, we're going to have to realize that we don't all pull in the same direction all the time, we don't always live up to our best ideals, and we say and do things -- kids and adults -- that we regret later. There will always be some teachers who are better than others. Kids will always have some moments in schools they don't like more than others -- just like adults have in their lives. Learning that sometimes it's about punching the clock and doing the work we don't want to do isn't a bad thing to learn. I love teaching, I love being a principal, I love being a father, but it doesn't mean I love every aspect of these things. Learning how to do things we don't love doing is a great lesson to learn in life.

4) Our public school system is -- at its best -- designed to do the most good for the most number of kids.

The public school system -- something I still believe must be the necessary backbone of a healthy democracy -- is designed to maximize learning for the most number of kids. The outlier kids (Albert Einstein, as mentioned in Clay's comments, for example) will always struggle in a system that has to attempt to educate just about everyone.

If I had to say one thing to Will and Clay, it would be this: We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we can only see the problems in our schools without seeing the incredible good teachers do every day, we've lost sight of what happens every day. Public schooling is probably a terrible way to educate a society -- unless you compare it to just every other option. (Thank you, Mr. Churchill.) Even at its best, it's a flawed system. It just beats the alternative.

None of this is to say that we should be satisfied with where we are in public education today. NCLB is a monstrosity that is a wrecking ball for our public system. We have too many big schools that are totally impersonal. We have too many places where student voices aren't valued... and too many places where teachers' voices aren't valued. And we have too many places where learning is measured by a score on a test, rather than by the authentic work of the kids in the school. I recently read "Stupidity and Tears: Teaching and Learning in Troubled Times" (Herbert R. Kohl) and it is a must read for everyone who is frustrated in public education today, because Kohl gives us language for our anger. But in the end, Kohl is still working within the system to create change, and that is where I think we need to focus our energies as well.

We have a lot of work in front of us, of that there can be no question. But if we do not temper our idealism with a healthy dose of pragmatism, we will allow the problems to overwhelm us, and we will lose the ability to see the good that we do every day -- and the good we can do if we are willing to continue to try to reform the system in which we work.

So part of the rationale behind EduCon 2.0 was to try to create a space for people to come together and talk and think and write. And now it's less than three full weeks away, and the to-do list is starting to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff. (Get programs printed, buy 30 pounds of coffee, get student docents / filmers in place, create list of Best of Philly Cheesesteaks, etc...)

But I'm also trying to make sure that I still think about why we're putting this conference on, and how we are going to accomplish some of our original goals. What I'm really thinking about tonight is the idea of reflection. Have we created the proper space for reflection? Here are some things I think we've done to make the weekend different.

1) 90 minute sessions, not 60 minutes. The goal is to use the extra time to let people talk to each other, to engender more constructivist sessions that allow people to apply what they are seeing to their own situations, to create a back-channel conversation, or even to let people blog as part of the session.

2) 30 minutes between sessions so people can find each other, talk, think, breathe, without feeling like they have to rush from one thing to another. (And hey, the whole conference takes place in a pretty small school, so there isn't the issue of having to run from one end of the convention center to the other...)

3) Providing a low-cost lunch option in our cafe so that people can eat together and talk.

4) Three sessions a day. Longer sessions, fewer sessions so that we can try to avoid information overload... or at least minimize it.

5) An hour built in at the end of the day for reflection... and this is where I really want input. It's easy for me to imagine that, after a long day, everyone would just take off and get ready for the evening festivities. I may just want to do that myself. But I'd like to figure out a way to structure that time without, well, imposing structure. I've thought about posting possible reflection questions in the conference program and asking people to use that hour to write a reflective post... I've thought about providing a notebook for people to write in, in case they don't have laptops, and I've thought about creating "Reflection Rooms" where people could just go and write.

What would you do? What spaces should we create to best engender some reflective time at the conference? Thoughts?

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted lately, it's because most of my blogging time has been taken up with EduCon 2.0 planning. The conference is really shaping up to be a pretty amazing experience. We've got around 50 sessions for the weekend, and it now looks like we will be kicking off Friday night with a reception and IMAX film at The Franklin Institute, SLA's partner museum.

This feels a little like the planning year of SLA, when we had all these amazing ideas and we really couldn't wait to see what they looked like in practice. With every ticket sale from someone whose more than a few miles away, I'm really excited and humbled by the prospect of what we're about to pull off.

I've tried to figure out why there is as much excitement over EduCon, because really, when we came up with this, I was ready to assume we'd get 30-40 folks tops, not the 150 to 200 we're now expecting. I think what this does speak to is this idea that we can do this ourselves. I think there's a lot of excitement around the idea that we can talk about how our schools can and need to change... that we don't need it to be sponsored, with an exhibit floor and with sessions that sell stuff. This is about educators coming together to talk to educators. That's exciting.

I think those of us in the world of education spend a lot of time being told what our schools should be by a lot of people who don't spend a great deal of time in schools. Maybe the excitement behind EduCon can be traced to the idea that this really is about a conversation, rather than a lecture... a chance to put our heads together collectively and agree to try to make our schools better tomorrow than they were yesterday, and a chance to celebrate the best of what we're doing today too.

No matter what, I can't wait.

(And if you haven't checked out the latest update on the conference web site -- go to http://educon20.wikispaces.com -- it's going to be an amazing weekend.)