A school principal buddy of mine who I'll keep nameless for the time being reached out yesterday looking for a bit of advice.

His
teachers are incredibly excited about the notion of becoming a
professional learning community, but he isn't sure exactly where to
start in order to lay the right foundation for the work that they want
to do together. 

He wrote:

"Not
sure what I am asking here… I guess I just feel that I have teachers
buying in now and I don't want to blow it… but I also don't want to have
the time in which the focus is on conversations rather than actual
doing.  I feel we have great conversations but these conversations don't
always lead to change.

As
we are just starting out in September, we have 3 more staff meetings
and a possible day in the summer to discuss/plan for PLC time next year.
 Should the focus be purpose, process (norms, etc) for this year and
the start of next year?

There
are so many resources at All Things PLC that I am a bit overwhelmed and
not sure where to look.  Beyond the Learning By Doing book, are there
other key resources you would recommend me checking out this year and in
the summer?"

As a guy who is pretty passionate about the power of professional learning communities, I get asked this question a bunch. 
While there are literally TONS of good resources for helping school
leaders to structure professional learning communities, finding
practical starting points can be tough simply because there is SO much
information to sift through.

Here are five resources from my own work that I think school leaders who are starting PLCs from scratch might find useful:

The Power of PLCs
- One challenge that many school leaders face when moving their schools
towards a more collaborative future is convincing teachers that PLCs
can be something more than just another initiative.  Those leaders might
find this post useful.  In it, I give a tangible example of how my own
practice changed as a result of an opportunity to collaborate with my
peers.

Don't Skip Vision and Values Statements
- On a more practical level, it is ESSENTIAL for school leaders to help
their faculties define a set of tangible action steps that will guide
the work of every learning team in their buildings.  In this post, I
explain why vision and values statements matter so much and share the
collective commitments and action steps that my school recently
developed.

What DO We Want Students to Know and Be Able to Do and Practice-Centered Observation Protocol
-  My buddy's primary concern is that the time his teachers spend
collaborating might not lead to any tangible change in practice.  That's
where these two handouts will come in handy.  Both are designed to help
teachers keep the collaborative work that they are doing focused on
student-learning.  They can serve as solid starting points for
meaningful conversations.

Laying the Collaborative Foundation
- In October of 2012, I spent a full day working with the Glenwood
Leadership Academy -- a progressive school in Evansville, Indiana that
was working to cement their collaborative foundation as well.  This link
connects to the workshop materials that I prepared for their school. 
It is designed to introduce teams and teachers to a set of tangible
first steps that schools can and should take in order to ensure that
their PLCs get off to a solid start.

Does any of this look useful to you?

You can find the rest of my PLC content by poking around in the PLC category of my blog or by exploring the handouts from my two PLC books:  Building a PLC at Work and Making Teamwork Meaningful.

Are there any resources that YOU would recommend to school leaders interested in setting up PLCs in their buildings? 

_____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

PLCs: Why This?  Why Now?  Why Bother?

Why This, Why Now, Why Bother - Part Deux

The Stages of PLC Development

As some of you may know,
I started a new classroom blog with my students that is designed to
raise awareness in tweens and teens about the amount of sugar found in
the foods that they are eating.

It's called #SUGARKILLS.  Check it out:

http://sugarkills.us

So
far, the project has been a remarkable success.  We've literally posted
a new bit every school day for the past month -- and my students are
straight jazzed about the notion that THEY have the power to make a
difference in the world.

Need proof? 

Then check out this quote from a recent interview that we completed for Middleweb:

A couple weeks ago, Mrs. Swanson left us a comment
about how her dad has diabetes and our blog is really helping him.  It
makes us feel great to know that we’ve made a difference in someone’s
life.  

What
if Mrs. Swanson’s father made the decision to say “no” to one candy
bar, because of us?  Then he would keep making healthier choices, and
that could eventually save his life!  We would have made a huge
difference.

We’ve also discovered that other teachers are actually sharing our work
with their students, which makes us feel like we really matter to other
people.  How many 12 year old students can say that they are changing
people’s lives around the world?  

The fact that we can is amazing!

So how can YOU get a great student-driven blog up and running in YOUR classroom? 

Here are three of my favorite tips.

Tip 1:  Create ONE Topic-Focused Blog

A
lesson that I learned early in my work with blogs is that they are far
more vibrant -- and attract far more attention -- when they are updated
regularly.  The challenge for student bloggers, then, is generating
enough content to bring readers back for more.

The solution in my
classroom is to always START classroom blogging projects with ONE
classroom blog that EVERY student can make contributions to.  Doing so
takes the pressure of generating content off of individual students
simply because there are dozens of potential writers who are adding
content at any given time.

I also tend to create blogs that are
focused on a specific theme or topic rather than general blogs that
contain content across several domains and/or interest areas.  By
focusing my blogs on a specific theme connected to a cause that my kids
are passionate about, I can tap into the desire of students to "do work
that matters."

Tip 2: Train Student Editors to Lead Your Blogging Project

I'm
going to be honest with you:  Student blogging projects take a TON of
time and energy and effort.  Posts need to be written and revised and
edited.  Images need to be found and cropped and inserted.  Schedules
for creating new content need to be created and maintained and
monitored.

Sounds exhausting, doesn't it?

Here's the good news:  YOU don't need to be the one that does all of the drafting and coaching and revising and posting!

Instead,
work to train a small handful of student editors.  Give them the
username and password to your classroom blog and turn them loose. 
You'll find that they are JUST as capable as you are -- and probably
MORE motivated!

Our #sugarkills team currently has two fully
trained student editors -- Andy and Daniel -- and four other kids who
are "editors in training."  They handle the VAST majority of the nitty
gritty details of generating content for our blog.

Training
student editors makes classroom blogging projects WAY more manageable
for classroom teachers.  More importantly, training student editors
reminds students that THEY can be powerful WITHOUT needing the help of
their teachers.

#beautiful

Tip 3: Recruit Readers and Commenters to Your Blog

For
any blogger, the ultimate reward is crafting a piece that actually gets
READ.  Every page view and comment left on a classroom blog is proof
positive to your students that they DO have an audience and that they
ARE being heard.

Just as importantly to classroom teachers, every
page view and comment is an opportunity for a student blogger to have
their thinking challenged -- and the tension that results whenever
thinking is challenged ALWAYS leads to new learning as students are
forced to refine and revise and polish their positions on the topics
that they care about.

The challenge, however, is that classroom
blogs won't AUTOMATICALLY generate enough attention to receive page
views and comments automatically.  The simple truth is that in a digital
world where there are thousands of new blogs created every hour, "being
heard" isn't nearly as easy as "getting published."

To address
this challenge, I always recruits volunteer readers and commenters when
my students are working on a blogging project.

Most of the time
these volunteers are parents or PTA members who want to help at school
but can't find the time to get away from work during the day.  I ask
them to monitor the blog for a month at a time and to leave two or three
comments a week that are designed to challenge students.

Other
times, I turn to my own professional friends and family members --
pointing them to specific posts that I want to generate traffic for. 
Doing so generates momentum, ensuring that students feel the reward that
comes along with having an audience.

If you are interested in
establishing relationships with other classrooms that are blogging,
spend some time poking around the growing collection of blogs at the Comments4Kids website.  And if you are trying to generate traffic  for individual blog entries, consider sharing a link to the post in Twitter using the #comments4kids hashtag.

Any
of this make sense to you?  More importantly, do YOU have any tips for
teachers interested in starting classroom blogging projects?

_____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Introducing Our Newest Cause: #SUGARKILLS

Technology Gives Kids Power

Are Kids REALLY Motivated by Technology?

Anyone that has spent any length of time following the Radical knows that I can't stand the test-happy culture that we're swimming in.  It's simultaneously stripping the joy out of learning and driving good teachers out of the classroom all in a cheap attempt to declare war on teachers.

What frustrates me the most about today's accountability culture has always been the suggestion that measuring student performance on content-driven multiple choice tests given once per year is the best way to measure the "value that teachers add" to their kids, their schools and their communities. 

That's ALWAYS sat wrong with me -- and it SHOULD sit wrong with YOU too.  

Teachers do SO much more for our kids than deliver content. We coach and we encourage and we inspire.  We're cheerleaders.  Kids take risks while they are in our classes that they may never have even considered had it not been for the fact that they knew we cared.

But in a world where tests are created with the sole intention of ranking and sorting our teachers, those intangibles -- those small acts of kindness and care that are often the things that keep kids moving forward -- are dismissed, pushed aside by politicians who argue that the only value that matters rests in the results that we can measure with multiple choice exams.

My rants against testing have always felt half-baked to me, though, because I could never back up my assertions with a healthy dose of research -- the Turkish Delight of the #edpolicy kingdom.

Until now, that is. 

You see, a new study from Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University FINALLY supports my hunch that our single-minded determination to assess and evaluate the cognitive impacts that teachers have on students is flawed policy at best -- and failing our children at worst. 

What Jackson -- who was interested in determining the impact that cognitive and non-cognitive behaviors have on the future success of students -- discovered should force every parent, politician and policymaker who cares about schools to rethink the role that testing is playing in our buildings. 

First, he discovered that non-cognitive skills and abilities like motivation, determination, and self-restraint are a better predictor of future success -- particularly for struggling students -- than the cognitive skills measured by standardized tests.

Perhaps more importantly, he discovered that SOME teachers are good at increasing the cognitive skills of their students and OTHER teachers are good at increasing the non-cognitive skills of their students, but MOST teachers AREN'T good at increasing BOTH cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

This has HUGE implications, doesn't it? 

If Jackson's research and methodology is sound, current educational policies -- which prioritize test scores when measuring a teacher's value -- are incentivizing the WRONG behaviors. 

Our students are the ultimate losers in environments that encourage teachers to push non-cognitive skills and abilities -- skills and abilities that Jackson argues are actually BETTER indicators of future success -- to the sidelines in response to the cognitive-first realities they are working in.

What politicians who are pushing the testing culture in our schools should REALLY worry about, though, is that educational policies designed to reward teachers for producing results on standardized tests are actually wasting taxpayer cash. 

As Jackson explains:

"Teacher effects on test scores and teacher effects on non-cognitive ability are weakly correlated such that many teachers in the top of test score value-added distribution will also be among the bottom of teachers at improving non-cognitive skills.

This means that a large share of teachers thought to be highly effective based on test score performance will be no better than the average teacher at improving college-going or wages."

And:

"Because variability in outcomes associated with individual teachers that
is unexplained by test scores is not just noise, but is systematically
associated with their ability to improve typically unmeasured
non-cognitive skills, classifying teachers based on their test score
value added will likely lead to large shares of excellent teachers being
deemed poor and vice versa."

Just stew in that for a minute, will you?

We are literally spending MILLIONS of dollars  -- not to mention MILLIONS of instructional hours -- every year measuring the wrong skills and rewarding the wrong teachers!  Sure, mastering the content covered in the K12 curricula matters, but according to Jackson, mastering non-cognitive skills -- skills that we currently do nothing to assess -- matters more!

No joke, y'all:  It's time that you start asking your policymakers some difficult questions about their positions on value-added measures of teacher performance.

If Jackson is right, those policies -- which have rapidly become the norm instead of the exception in most states in America -- are wasting our time AND our money.

____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Nate Silver on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

Three Things Parents and Policymakers Need to Know about Merit Pay in Education

What Economists Don't Understand about Educators

A little over a month ago, I wrote a bit on the role that teachers STILL need to play in helping students to take full advantage of the new opportunities that digital tools make possible for today's learners. 

The argument was a simple one:  Just because our students know how to use digital tools without ever opening up an owner's manual doesn't mean they're going to be able to leverage those same tools to do meaningful work without us. 

The piece spotlighted several Tweets from the articulate, intelligent students in Brad Ovenell-Carter's Vancouver-area high school.  Brad had asked them to reflect on a few questions that I'd asked using their classroom hashtag, #tokafe11.  

Tons of people stopped by to leave comments for me on the bit, including a guy who calls himself "Mr. Chips" who took Brad to task for letting his students post on Twitter under their real names. 

Chips wrote:

"Hmmm ... not too smart of your bright-minded friend to post students feeds under their full names. Nothing wrong with the tweets quoted, but students' identities should be protected.

As educators we should be very cautious how we create digital tattoos that my come back to haunt the students."

It's an interesting take, isn't it -- and one that I suspect MOST educators would agree with. 

We've been taught over and over again that ANYONE under the age of 21 ought to hide behind pseudonyms -- both to cover our own butts and to keep kids safe from "the predators who lurk in the digital night."

But Mr. Chips's comments also fly directly in the face of Will Richardson's argument that schools bear the responsibility of making sure that students are "Well-Googled" on graduation day. 

And contrary to Mr. Chips' snark, Brad IS one of the brightest guys that I know -- so I asked him to respond to Mr. Chips, explaining his rationale behind having kids post on Twitter using their real names.

Here's what he wrote.  It's DEFINITELY worth your time.

_____________________________________

Brad Ovenell-Carter on Digital Footprints Versus "The Brand of Me."

Mr. Chips,

I hear your concern and think you're right...partly. There is a time in our students' lives where they do need us to help them protect their identities.

We have a duty of care that insists on that.

But that same duty of care also insists that we need to prepare our older students to work online -- as themselves.

Any student with a smartphone has wide open access to the web and in Canada, public libraries must also keep an open connection--they're not allowed to block sites.

It's naive to think that by creating pseudonyms in school I am securing what they do out of school on their own Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, accounts.

My only option as an adult -- indeed my obligation -- is to coach them, not control them.

If we turn our students out at graduation without having spent time guiding them online in real situations, then we have done them a disservice.

The analogy, I suppose, would be to have them read books about driving a car and then to hand them a set of keys when they receive their diplomas. That would be foolish, I'm sure you agree.

But even if they were to try to remain anonymous, they would have no control over what other people post about them.  

The only possible way to manage your reputation online is to build it yourself.

For this reason, I don't like the terms "digital tattoo" or "digital footprint" -- they're too passive and talk about what you leave behind.

Instead, we talk about the "Brand of Me" and coach our kids on proactively managing their online identity and on becoming good digital citizens, for the reasons Will Richardson talks about.

We take this very seriously at Mulgrave. Our seniors can fly as unaccompanied minors to anywhere on the globe at this age; we need to make sure they can do the same, so to speak, safely online.

As Lucy points out above -- with the courage and conviction of using her real name, I'll point out -- the students feel they are getting good guidance and role modelling here.

I've gathered some of the students' Twitter posts in Storify so you can get their views:

http://sfy.co/hFNW

All the best,

Brad

Hmmm ...
not too smart of your bright-minded friend to post students feeds under
their full names. Nothing wrong with the tweets quoted, but students'
identities should be protected. As educators we should be very cautious
how we create digital tattoos that my come back to haunt the students -
See more at:
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2013/01/building-...
Hmmm ...
not too smart of your bright-minded friend to post students feeds under
their full names. Nothing wrong with the tweets quoted, but students'
identities should be protected. As educators we should be very cautious
how we create digital tattoos that my come back to haunt the students -
See more at:
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2013/01/building-...
Hmmm ...
not too smart of your bright-minded friend to post students feeds under
their full names. Nothing wrong with the tweets quoted, but students'
identities should be protected. As educators we should be very cautious
how we create digital tattoos that my come back to haunt the students -
See more at:
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2013/01/building-...

A few years back, I started a new
category of posts here on the Radical called TWIT -- or THIS Is Why I Teach --
designed to serve as a celebration of the simple joys that come along with
being a classroom teacher and a reminder to me that I really DO enjoy what I
do. 

I realized the other day that it's
been a LONG while since I wrote a TWIT post -- and then the email below ended
up in my inbox:

Dear Mr. Ferriter,

In my last semester at UNC Chapel
Hill where I double majored in Psychology and Political Science, I took a class
in cognitive development.

Our professor asked the class if
anyone had a vivid memory of something taught in grade school and I raised my
hand.

I told a story about my 6th grade
language arts teacher who came into class and told one side of the room that
they were his favorite students and the other side that they were bad and lazy.

I told them how the good side was given soda and candy and how the bad side was
assigned pages out of a workbook.

You did this demonstration to teach
us about discrimination and injustice and how despite the arbitrariness of the
division, no one spoke out against it.

My professor and the class were
impressed less with my recollection than with the brilliance of your
pedagogical device.

Earlier this past semester in law
school at Georgetown, I was working on a ten day take-home exam memorandum.

I thought about how easy it would be
for students to collaborate on the assignment, breaking the honor code.

I
thought about how the code was less fair to people like me who would choose to
follow it by forcing us to compete with those who would ignore it and benefit
from collaboration.

Then I remembered how Mr. Ferriter
emphatically taught my 6th grade class that it was better to earn an
"F" than to cheat one's way to an "A".

On many occasions like these, I have
been reminded of your teachings.

I often wondered how it was that
under the guise of language arts you taught us so much about ethics and
morality.

I sit here writing this e-mail ten or so years since being in your class
not just because you were a teacher but because you went above and beyond what
was required of you, and as a result, you made a really important difference.

I believe that aside from
parents, teachers wield the most power in deciding what our society will be
like. Thank you for taking advantage of that authority and being such a
positive influence.

I know I am a better person for
having been in your class.

Sincerely,

Bindhu

How's THAT for a pick-me-up after a long week of teaching, huh?!

More importantly, how's THAT for a reminder that everything we do matters more than we can possibly imagine. 

#simpletruth

________________________

Related Radical Reads:

TWIT: They Don't Judge Me by a Test

TWIT: They Write Once in a While

TWIT: They're Learning from Me