Teacher Training

What I Would Do with an iPad in My Classroom

An interesting email landed in my inbox this week from a good friend who has really been trying to integrate technology into her language arts class. For confidentiality sake, we'll call her Mary.

Turns out that Mary's principal recently decided to buy iPads for all of the language arts teachers in her school.  Mary--like many teachers--was excited to have an iPad coming her way, but she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to do with it. 

Her question was a simple one:

"So Bill: If you had ONE iPad in your classroom, what would YOU do with it?"

To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was anger at Mary's principal.  After all---in an all-too-familiar pattern---she'd plunked down thousands of dollars of an already limited technology budget on devices without any careful planning. 

Think about it:  Shouldn't the teachers have had plans for the iPads they were getting BEFORE the checks were written and the cash was spent? 

Technology planning doesn't have to be a difficult process, y'all.  But it shouldn't be an optional process either---or an afterthought.  That's irresponsible leadership on a good day.

But Mary's good people----and she really does want to find a way to take advantage of the iPad she was getting even if the choice to buy an iPad for every language teacher wasn't carefully made to begin with.  I had to help her do a bit o' brainstorming.

Here's what I suggested.

_____________________________________________________

Hey Mary,

Glad to hear that you're working to find a way to take advantage of the iPad that you have in your classroom.  If I were you, I'd think first about the kinds of instructional practices that matter the most and THEN look for a practice that one iPad can support.

The first thing that came to my mind was formative assessment because as a language arts teacher, I'm constantly making observations of my students on the fly. 

I might learn a little bit about their ability to summarize while sitting in on a literature circle.  I might ask a few targeted questions that force students to think about the main idea of a selection and get oral responses from a handful of kids in each class.

The hitch is that I have no easy way to document what I'm learning about my students in these informal observations.  Sure, I always internalize what I'm seeing.  Every observation shapes my perception of my students.

But operating on perceptions just isn't very effective or efficient. 

Because it is so portable and easy to use, an iPad----paired with a simple form developed in Google Docs---could help a teacher to begin systematically collecting and organizing those formative observations of student mastery.

Check out this sample form to see what I'm thinking:

http://bit.ly/formativeobservations

Wouldn't it be cool to carry your iPad around with you while student groups are working?  Then, every time that you interact with kids and learn a little something about their mastery of essential skills in class, you could quickly document what you've seen using this form.

The best part is that Google Docs takes the information entered in the form and automatically dumps it into an Excel spreadsheet that you can then manipulate any way that you want. 

Over time, you'll start to see patterns in the essential skills that individual kids have mastered---and you'll have documentation that you can use to support those gut hunches that play such an important role in the judgments that we make about kids.

More importantly, you'll also be able to start tracking patterns in the essential skills that your entire team of students has mastered.  Google Docs even has several simple reporting features that will automatically tabulate results in your entire spreadsheet.

And how cool is it that you will be able to incorporate your own observations into your assessment practices! 

As a language arts teacher, I always trusted my observations more than the multiple choice benchmark tests my district requires me to give----but without a formalized way to record what I was seeing and learning about my kids, it was difficult to justify my "grades" for my students. 

Two important suggestions:

First, keep your form as simple as possible. Notice how mine has just a few basic questions---and that the majority of the questions are multiple choice. 

That means I'll be able to enter observations quickly and easily---which will be essential if I want to convince myself to keep using my iPad for formative assessments.  More importantly, that will be essential if I ever want to convince my peers to use THEIR iPads in the same way. 

Finally, notice that my form doesn't require a ton of typing.  While there are definitely times where I will want to add notes to my observations, it takes some time to grow comfortable typing on an iPad.  Too much typing early in the process might leave you discouraged.

Second, get started sooner rather than later.  Grab your iPad every time that your kids are working.  Make it a point to sit down with two or three kids per class period. 

Ask them questions to measure their mastery of an essential skill.  Enter your observations in your Google Form.

Then, act on the information that you are collecting!

Remember---it's not the iPad that is important in this whole process.  There's nothing magical about tools even when they are made by Apple.  Instead, it's the behavior that the iPad supports.

If you're not using the formative assessment data that you are collecting with your iPad to inform your instruction, then the iPad will remain a waste of cash.

Let me know if you have any other questions.  I'd be happy to help you get this up and running---and I'm excited to see how your work changes the assessment practices of the teachers on your learning team.

Rock on,

Bill

 

________________________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Why are we STILL Wasting Money on Whiteboards?

There's Nothing Magical about Tools

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Make like an Obstetrician and Deliver

 

Make Like an Obstetrician and Deliver

I’ve spent the better part of the past two days working through Atul Gawande’s Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.  In the process I’ve discovered that as a teacher, I share an unexpected kinship with obstetricians. 

You see—just like teachers—obstetricians have traditionally been underappreciated by other professionals in the same field.  As Gawande explains:

“Doctors in other fields have always looked down their masked noses on their obstetrical colleagues. 

They didn’t think they were very smart—obstetricians long had trouble attracting the top medical students to their specialty—and there seemed little science or sophistication to what they did.”

(Kindle Location 2317-21)

But just like teachers—especially those working on collaborative teams—obstetricians have committed themselves to collective inquiry around—and systematic implementation of—best practices.

“In obstetrics…if a new strategy seemed worth trying, doctors did not wait for research trials to tell them if it was all right,” Gawande writes, “They just went ahead and tried it, then looked to see if results improved”  (Kindle location 2327-2301).

This commitment to collective inquiry in obstetrics largely began with one woman—Virginia Apgar. 

Apgar—a brilliant doctor convinced to move into anesthesiology early in her career because women had little hope of being accepted in the surgery wards of the 1950s—loved working in delivery rooms.  The energy of birth and the joy of new life was inspiring to her.

She was troubled, though, by the seemingly callous treatment that many babies received at birth.  Any imperfection—struggles with breathing, poor coloring, being small—could result in a rushed judgment that a child was too sick to live and a new life would be left to quietly die.

What bothered Apgar the most was that these life and death decisions were being made based on nothing more than a doctor’s general impressions about the likelihood that a child would survive given its condition after birth. 

For Apgar, making choices about a child’s future based on nothing more than impressions seemed morally wrong.

So in 1953, she developed and published the Apgar Score—an indicator of newborn health that is still used worldwide today.

Designed as a repeatable procedure that could be conducted by nurses and doctors alike, Apgar’s test requires medical professionals to make simple observations of a baby’s color, crying, breathing, heart rate, and limb movements at one and five minutes after birth. 

Those simple observations in and of themselves were an improvement over current practices which resulted in doctors giving up on seemingly unhealthy babies quickly. 

More importantly, those simple observations resulted in new stories of survival.  Babies that medical professionals would have once given up on were surviving, showing dramatic improvements in the first minutes of life. 

Those simple observations also touched on the competitive streak in most doctors, who began to try to find new ways to intervene on behalf of babies with lower Apgar scores.

Doctors learned that warming and oxygen were simple strategies for improving an infant’s condition in the early minutes of life. They also learned that epidural anesthesia—instead of the general anesthesia that had been the norm in deliveries—led to higher Apgar scores.

Knowledge about successful strategies for saving infants who once would have been lost spread rapidly through the obstetrics community, resulting in rapid advances in neonatal care. 

Statistically, the rates of infant mortality prove that Apgar’s efforts made a dramatic impact:  In the 1950s, one in thirty babies died at birth.  Today, one in five hundred babies dies at birth. 

What lessons can collaborative teams learn from obstetrics? 

Here are four:

Our choices about children need to be based on something more than the general impressions of classroom teachers.

If you have read the Radical for any length of time, you know just how much I hate our efforts to quantify everything there is to know about the kids in our classrooms—and just how passionate I am about the knowledge and skills of classroom teachers.

But many well-intentioned teachers can fall into the trap of believing that their general impressions about the students in their classrooms are the only evidence that they need in order to make responsible choices.

“Johnny has no chance,” we sometimes think about struggling students.  “I’ve seen a million kids just like him.”

That reliance on impressions only—the same professional hubris demonstrated by the obstetricians in the early 1950s—can result in children who fail simply because we stop fighting on their behalf. 

When we pair quantifiable evidence with our impressions—something that collaborative teams do every time that they give common assessments—we are far likelier to find ways to save more of our students.

Our efforts to quantify what we know about our kids don’t need to be overly complex or sophisticated. 

The good news in Apgar’s story is that collecting “quantifiable evidence” doesn’t have to be a complex process that requires intensive data analysis skills.

Heck, Apgar’s rubric for the health of a child measured five basic indicators on a 2 point scale.  “Baby’s crying.  Check.  Baby’s limbs are moving.  Check.  Baby’s color is pink. Check.”

The key to the success of the Apgar test doesn’t rest in the complexity of the indicators.  Instead, it rests in the approachability of the indicators.

ANYONE can apply the Apgar test.  It’s not time consuming.  It’s not complicated—and as a result, it’s not avoided or overlooked.

For learning teams, that means our initial efforts to quantify what we know about our kids do not NEED to be sophisticated, validated, or approved by research gurus.

Instead, our initial efforts to quantify what we know about our kids just need to (1). encourage careful observation and (2). be simple enough that every teacher can implement them without excuses and/or extensive additional training.

As best practices are identified, they must be replicated.

Perhaps the most important lesson that can be learned from obstetricians is that as new lessons are learned about successful practices, they are implemented with fidelity across the profession.

It is no accident that giving birth in Chicago looks a lot like giving birth in Chattanooga. 

While obstetricians are constantly improving their practices based on evidence, they are also committed to learning from their peers and establishing standards of care based on practices that are proven.

For learning teams, this lesson is equally important. 

While standardization of practice should never be the primary goal of any learning community—rigidly scripting curricula strips innovation and experimentation out of our profession—we should be ready to replicate the practices that we know are working with our students.

When we ignore evidence of successful practices in favor of personal preferences, we are failing as professionals.

The most successful practices are practices that can be implemented by every practitioner. 

Equally interesting is that obstetricians are committed to identifying and adopting practices that can be reliably implemented by all practitioners—instead of practices that can be implemented only by a small handful of obstetrics superstars. 

Take forceps deliveries for example:  While research shows that forceps deliveries are far less invasive for both mothers and newborns, they have been largely abandoned in challenging pregnancies for Cesarean sections (Gawande, 2007).

The reasons obstetricians have abandoned forceps are relatively simple:  Forceps may be safer and less invasive in the hands of a highly accomplished practitioner, but in the hands of a novice, they can be deadly (Gawande, 2007).

Deliveries by Cesarean section, on the other hand, are far simpler to master.  What’s more, the actions taken by obstetricians during a Cesarean section can be observed and coached by mentors standing alongside the birthing table (Gawande, 2007).

That’s important for collaborative teams that are committed to improvement to understand.  Our goal shouldn’t be to collectively identify practices that are beyond the ability of most of our peers.

Instead, our goal should be to find ways incrementally improve practices that are within reach of every teacher.  Large scale improvements across entire teams are otherwise impossible.

Any of this make sense?  How successful have your schools been at devising systems for collecting evidence on student success and then at developing instructional practices that work?

Which of these core actions is your learning team struggling with?  How are you going to change the work that you are doing together to overcome those hurdles?

____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Evolutionary Lessons for PLC Principals

What Can PLC Principals Learn from Amazonian Explorers?

Rethinking Teacher Professional Development

(This bit is cross posted over at Simple K12)

If you were to ask any of the thousands of teachers who attended one of the 26 edcamps that have been held in the past two years to describe the most important characteristics of effective professional development for educators, you might be surprised by one of their first answers:

A blank bulletin board and a bunch of empty classrooms.

You see, edcamps—free learning conferences organized by educators and for educators—all begin with participants joining together in a central meeting place deciding on topics worth studying and creating an ad hoc schedule of sessions for the day.

Anyone can volunteer to lead a conversation on a topic that they are interested in at an edcamp.  Passionate about the role that social media can play in teaching and learning?

Add it to an open slot on the scheduling board.

Motivated to learn more about teaching science to middle grades students?

Add it to an open slot on the scheduling board.

Deeply interested in finding ways to integrate arts into classrooms across the curricula?

Add it to an open slot on the scheduling board.

“It surprises me every time,” says Dan Callahan—one of the founders of the edcamp movement and a digital friend of mine. “You walk in and that schedule board is empty and by the end of an hour it is full of more stuff than you can get to.”

From there, participants design their own learning plan for the day. 

They pick sessions that pique their interests or meet their professional needs—and more importantly, they join together with other educators who share the same interests or who are tackling the same professional needs.

By the end of the day, participants walk away energized—and empowered by a collection of new ideas and individuals to learn from.

That’s crazy-talk, isn’t it?

Teachers—who have a bad reputation for groaning every time that they’re asked to be learners in the traditional PD sessions planned and delivered by districts—are willingly joining together to  spend their weekends engaged in powerful conversations about teaching and learning?

This dichotomy between the reaction teachers have towards traditional professional development and the experiences they have at edcamps shouldn’t be surprising at all argues West Clermont Schools district superintendent M.E. Steele-Pierce in this piece for the Washington Post.

She writes:

“Unconferences matter because they harness the power of authentic learning.

Here’s what I know:

• The learning revolution is about moving from expert-driven learning to self-authorized learning.

• The expert voices are already among us.

• Differentiation is as important for adults as it is for students.

• Powerful, adult learning occurs when it is personal, social and voluntary.”

Makes a heck of a lot of sense, doesn’t it?  Essentially, edcamp proponents like Steele-Pierce understand that teachers aren’t resistant to learning. 

Instead, they are resistant to the forced marches through topics unconnected to their personal interests or needs that pass for professional development in most schools and districts.

So how can you make sure that the adult learning in your school and/or district becomes more personal, social and voluntary?

Consider these five suggestions:

Begin releasing control over professional development choices.

Let me make something perfectly clear:  I understand just how scary it must be for school leaders—who are held directly accountable for the performance of teachers—to release control over professional development choices.

Heck—if I was going to be held directly accountable for the performance of dozens of adults with a wide range of abilities, I’d probably micromanage every professional development choice, too.

I also understand that the edcamp approach to PD is messy. 

It IS hard to believe that meaningful learning can start and end with a blank bulletin board—especially when you are charged with driving growth and change across entire schools and/or districts.

Tight-fisted approaches to adult learning inevitably backfire, though, because teachers—like any student—need to be invested and engaged before they can truly learn.

Integrating elements of the edcamp approach into your professional development plans sends powerful messages to your classroom teachers. 

When you find ways to release control over some of the professional development choices in your schools and/or districts, you are saying, “We believe in what you know and can do when you study practice together.”

You’re also saying, “We trust that you know your personal needs and that—when given the time and space—you’ll work to improve.”

And those are exactly the type of messages that professional learners thrive on.

Use clear vision statements to guide the professional development choices of educators.

I’ve spent the better part of the past week in an intellectual cage match with a buddy of mine about the important role that vision statements—clear, precise descriptions of an ideal future state for classrooms, schools and districts—can play in school improvement.

While many educators underestimate the importance of vision statements, they can be invaluable for school leaders interested in releasing control over professional development choices, especially when they are precise and specific—like these that guide the work of the social studies department at Adlai Stevenson High School.

You see, once teachers and learning teams have a clear set of vision statements to guide their work, you can ask—even require—that their professional development choices be connected to individual statements.

That provides teachers with the freedom to pursue studies customized to their own needs and school leaders with a measure of confidence that time spent in edcamp style sessions will still move schools forward in a a somewhat systematic fashion.

 

Don’t limit authentic, teacher-driven learning experiences to unconferences.

One of my only worries about the edcamp movement is that it will get swallowed by the educational hierarchy.

Convinced that some level of choice in professional development programming makes sense, well-intentioned school leaders will create once-a-year district level edcamps where teachers spend eight hours sowing their “design-my-own-learning” oats.

If that happens—and I’m way convinced that it could—the edcamp movement would be a failure simply because authentic, teacher-driven learning experiences should be a part of the everyday work of every district.

For school leaders, that means finding ways to encourage ongoing, teacher-directed, collaborative learning at the building level.

And nothing encourages ongoing, teacher-directed collaborative learning at the building level better than professional learning communities.

Need proof?

Then look at how PLCs have changed my practice.

 

Remember that teachers will need help in learning how to learn with each other.

As confident as I am that teachers should be given more control over their own learning, I’m also realistic enough to know that there are a lot of specific skills that we will need to master in order to direct this growth in a productive and meaningful way.

We need to know more about instructional reflection skills like prioritizing our choices based on an understanding of student needs and making the results of our learning transparent to our peers.

We also need to know more about team-based collaboration skills like conducting effective conversations and coming to consensus around important issues worth studying.

We need to learn how to manipulate data to identify important trends in learning results, how to identify the relationship between instructional practices and student learning outcomes, and how to embrace team-based conflict as a tool for collective growth.

By systematically building our skills in these areas, school leaders increase the likelihood that teacher-driven professional development opportunities will be meaningful and efficient—and will yield tangible results for schools and for students.

 

Find ways to reward the learning that teachers do away from schools.

I’m going to tell you a frustratingly uncomfortable truth:  I learn FAR more away from school than I do in school.

By regularly interacting with other eduthinkers in my Twitterstream, my Google Reader, and my own blog, I am almost always learning something that is directly connected to the work that I am doing in my own classroom and/or school. 

Just this morning, I spent about 2 hours studying iPad Apps that might be useful for my students, the characteristics of effective professional development, and the way that conversations about assessment in classrooms need to shift.

ALL of that learning is  directly connected to the work that I’m doing with students and teachers in my school, but I won’t earn ANY professional development credit for it. 

That’s just nuts.

The solution is relatively simple:  School leaders must advocate for—or create on their own—policies that allow teachers to earn licensure credit for the learning that they are doing on their own.

What could it look like in action? 

Here’s a tracking document that I created for my next book that could serve as a starting point for conversations on how to reward teachers for being independent learners.

 

Does any of this make sense?  Basically, what I’m arguing is that teacher choice in professional development programming is essential if schools are ever going to really see significant changes in teaching and learning.

More importantly, I’m arguing that introducing teacher choice into professional development programming doesn’t have to be a risky proposition for school leaders. 

By relying on clear vision statements, helping teachers to learn more about the skills connected to collaborative learning, and designing policies that reward teachers for anytime-anywhere learning, school leaders can begin to release control over professional development programs AND ensure that school improvement efforts are systematic all at the same time.

The Teacher Professional Development Fail

(Note: This entry is cross-posted over at Simple K12.)

One of the most bizarre moments of my professional career happened one year when I realized at the last minute that I didn’t have enough technology professional development credits—a required strand here in North Carolina—to renew my teaching license. 

Ironic, huh?  After all, I’ve been a leader in technology integration for the better part of a decade. 

Anyone looking through my Digitally Speaking PD wiki or my technology book could quickly see that understanding the role that digital tools can play in teaching and learning is a professional strength of mine.

Wanting to keep my job, though, I started scouring the technology courses being offered by both my county and the state.  The only courses being offered before my certification expired were:

Getting to Know Your Computer: A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Your New Machine.

Getting to Know the Internet:  A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding the Power of the World Wide Web.

Both courses were 8 hours long, both were being offered by a local computer store on two consecutive Saturdays, and both were WAY below my level of ability.

So I called the licensure representatives at the county office, figuring that they’d help me to find a professional development opportunity that was more appropriate for my abilities. 

The conversation went something like this:

Me:  So I need a few technology professional development credits, but there aren’t any courses that will help me to grow as a learner.

PD Lady: I see two courses, Mr. Ferriter.  One titled Getting to Know Your Computer.  The other titled Getting to Know the Internet.

Me: Right.  But those courses are for beginners.  I’m not a beginner. Could I maybe do an independent study on integrating video into classroom instruction?

PD Lady:  No Mr. Ferriter.  You have to take an approved course.

Me: Even if I don’t learn anything?

PD Lady:  Yes, Mr. Ferriter.

There are a TON of lessons to be learned about professional development in that one short exchange.

We’ve made the process for helping teachers learn more important than the people doing the learning.

As crazy as it sounds, learning isn’t the priority for most teacher professional development programs.  Instead, meeting the requirements for certification spelled out in policy is the priority. 

That rigid commitment to requirements meant that I learned nothing in the courses that I was forced to take and was certified anyway. 

Stew in that for a minute, would ya? 

If you care about seeing students succeed, think about the implication of a nation of educators who are taking courses to meet requirements INSTEAD of taking courses to improve what they know and can do. 

And if you care about saving cash—an important consideration in today’s tight budget times—think about the the implications of investing in teacher professional development programs that have little real impact on teaching and learning in our classrooms. 

#wastingtime

#wastingmoney

We’re also sending horrible messages to teachers about the importance of differentiating learning for individuals. 

If our school systems are going to successfully close achievement gaps and increase levels of performance for every child, we simply must begin to customize individualized learning experiences at the student level.   

What’s cool is that momentum really is building behind the idea that differentiation matters. 

Teachers are being encouraged to use data to make instructional choices.  Remediation and enrichment are common expectations in every school.  Digital options for independent exploration are being pursued at all grade levels and in all subject areas.

Yet the vast majority of our teachers continue to sit in one-size-fits-all sessions delivered to entire faculties on isolated work days a few times each year.

Do you see the disconnect? 

Can we really expect teachers who have never experienced differentiation as learners to turn around and embrace differentiation as teachers?

#notlikely

What’s so darn frustrating is that the characteristics of effective professional development aren’t a mystery. 

Paterson (2002) details how successful professional development programs consist of structural elements---a connection to curricula, linkages to state initiatives and certification, integration of information technologies, use of a variety of instructional strategies---and a strong connection to a school’s mission.

Quality professionally development also promotes reflective practices, fosters collaboration (Browne-Ferrigno & Muth, 2004), focuses on an educator’s needs (Marshall, Pritchard, & Gunderson, 2001), is based upon improving student achievement (Haar 2002), and has become embedded and job supported (Lairon & Vidales, 2003).

The only mystery is why so many systems fail to create meaningful learning environments for their teachers. 

_______________________________________

 

Works Cited:

Browne-Ferrigno, T., and Muth, R. (2004). Leadership mentoring in clinical practice: Role socialization, professional development, and capacity building. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(4), 468-494.

Jean M Haar, "A multiple case study: Principals' involvement in professional development" (January 1, 2002). ETD collection for University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Paper AAI3041356. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI3041356

Lairon, Mary and Bernie Vidales. Leaders Learning in Context. Leadership, v. 32, no.5, p. 16-18, 36, May/June 2003.Newcomers. School Administrator, v. 61, no. 6, p.18-21, June 2004.

Marshall, J.C., Pritchard, R.J., & Gunderson, B. (2001, February). Professional development: What works and what doesn’t. Principal Leadership, 1(6), 64-68.

Paterson, Kent, "The Professional Development of Principals: Innovations and Opportunities. Educational Administration Quarterly. April 2002. Volume 38. No. 2 (213-232).

Making Good Technology Choices

One of the questions that I’m asked all the time is, “Bill, how do you decide what technology you’re going to integrate into your classroom?”

My first reaction to this question is always to breathe a sigh of relief simply because far, far too many educators—teachers, principals, school leaders—make haphazard choices about technology integration, wasting our already limited time and money in the process. 

To know that audiences are starting to think more systematically about the tools and the technologies that they embrace is a relief!

Then, I give the same answer that Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach—my digital mentor and TLN colleague—gave me nearly a decade ago: 

Good technology choices start with a firm understanding of the skills that you want your students to master.

Once you understand just what those skills are—and why they’re important to the kids in your classroom—you can start to find digital tools that make the work around those skills more efficient.

The good news is that choosing skills is a heck of a lot easier than choosing tools. 

After all, some of the brightest minds in education reform—Bob Marzano, Rick and Becky DuFour, Rick Stiggins, Larry Ainsworth—have been writing about “essential outcomes,” “I Can Statements,” and “power standards” for years.

Their keys to identifying skills that matter involve asking questions about endurance, leverage and readiness:

Endurance:  Are students expected to retain the skills or knowledge you are considering long after the test is completed?

Leverage:  Is this skill or knowledge you are considering applicable to many academic disciplines?

Readiness for the next level of learning:  Is this skill or knowledge you are considering going to prepare the student for success in the next grade/course?

When I think about the kinds of knowledge and skills that meet the endurance-leverage-readiness test by crossing disciplines, preparing students for success in the next grade and remaining important long after the test, I think of information management, collaborative dialogue, and persuasion.

And now that I’ve narrowed my focus down to three important skills, making instructional technology choices is easy. 

Here are some examples:

Information Management

It would be pretty darn near impossible to argue that learning to manage information—to identify sources worth trusting, to organize collections of shared resources on topics of interest, to create customized streams of content—is an essential skill for everyone in today’s digitally driven world.

Not only will managing information become more important in the future (endurance), it is essential regardless of academic discipline (leverage) and it can help students to learn efficiently throughout their school careers (readiness).

As a result, I try to introduce my students to search tools like the Google Wonder Wheel.  We also discuss the anatomy of hoax websites and we begin to explore the value in social bookmarking and shared annotation of content.

 

Collaborative Dialogue

Anyone who has spent any time reading the Radical knows that I’m completely frustrated by the kill-em-all nature of important conversations in our country.  Competitive dialogue—the kind of “I’m smarter than you” rhetoric we hear from politicians and pundits all the time—leaves us divided.

That’s why I’m a big believer in collaborative dialogue—“Let’s think together”—as an essential skill.  Collaborative thinking is a characteristic of the best innovators (endurance) regardless of discipline (leverage).  It is also a characteristic of the most efficient learners in our schools (readiness).

As a result, I work hard to give my students opportunities to practice collaborative dialogue.  Usually that work happens with an approachable tool called VoiceThread.

 

Persuasion

Persuasion is perhaps the most interesting skill on my essentials list simply because it often runs contrary to my passion for collaborative dialogue.  When you’re persuading, you’re not always working from a collaborative mindset.

But understanding persuasion is incredibly important to being a literate citizen in the 21st Century (endurance) simply because EVERYONE with an opinion is using the Web to shape public thinking around the issues that they care about.

If our students don’t understand the tricks of the persuasion trade, they’re going to spend their entire adult lives being bamboozled. 

And perhaps more importantly, if they don’t understand the tricks of the persuasion trade, they’ll never be able to organize significant action around the ideas that THEY care about.

That makes persuasion an important skill in many domains (leverage and readiness), doesn’t it? 

As social studies classes explore the global implications of poverty, science classes study the potential solutions to our world-wide energy crisis and health classes study the role that governments should play in regulating healthy living habits, students will form content-specific positions that they’ll want to advocate for. 

As a result, I try to engage my kids in projects that require them to be persuasive.  Specifically, we use the Kiva microlending website as a starting point for persuasive conversations and experiences. 

We also use Animoto to create persuasive videos and talk about the role that images play in today’s persuasion landscape. 

 

What’s interesting is that just about every time that I finish explaining the thinking about  my technology choices, someone gets flustered. 

“You’re not using wikis?” they’ll argue.  “How can that be?  And for any teacher to ignore Skype as a tool in the classroom is simply ridiculous!  It’s fantastic.”

My reply—delivered as gently as possible—is always the same: 
“Wikis and Skype aren’t skills.  Instead, they’re tools that can be used to make working with individual skills easier.” 

And I have used wikis with students—as a part of a persuasive effort to shape thinking in North Carolina around alternative energy sources.  Skype becomes a tool for exploring positions and ideas that are outside of our own, supporting the collaborative dialogue and persuasive efforts that I believe in.

Does any of this make sense? 

I guess what I’m trying to argue is that we need to start looking at the characteristics of good teaching before we ever start to think about good tools.

Technology cannot help children learn when it is divorced from the knowledge, skills and expert choices of their teachers.

_________________________________________

Related Articles:

The Gadget Happy Classroom Fail

Teachers, Chainsaws and the Dreaded IWB

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Clarifying Essential Objectives

Redefining Teacher Education

I had to laugh this week after stumbling across this New York Times article detailing the overwhelmingly negative—and borderline indignant—reaction of university leaders to an attempt by US News and National Council on Teacher Quality to develop an accountability model for our nation’s colleges of education. 

“We have serious skepticism that their methodology will produce enough evidence to support the inferences they will make,” said Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Welcome to the club, Sharon. 

Teachers have been questioning the methodology of current accountability efforts—and the inferences being drawn from those questionable methods—for the better part of a decade now.  Your complaints are nothing new.

The thing is that despite being protective of my profession—teaching really does require unique knowledge and skill that few people outside of education actually understand—I’m ready for people to start questioning teacher preparation programs delivered by colleges of education.

Here’s why:  I didn’t learn a darn thing in five years of higher education—including the graduate work that earns me a 10% annual salary stipend here in NC—that actually prepared me to be a classroom teacher.

My degrees were essentially an exercise in professional hoop-jumping—an expensive prerequisite for employment that did little to help me once I was actually employed.

Let that settle in for a moment. 

Simmer in it.

Knowing what I know now—after 17 years as a real-live classroom teacher—how would I change the programs that are preparing tomorrow’s educators?

Easy:  Start by requiring longer apprenticeships for pre-service educators

Do you know how much actual full-time teaching I did before becoming certified as a teacher? 

About 8 weeks.

Sure—I went on a school visit here or there.  I also spent another 6-8 weeks observing my cooperating teachers in the senior year of my education program.

But I only had about 8 weeks of full-time experience with students before I was licensed for life.  The rest of my 5 YEARS of college preparation was spent strapped into seats in lecture halls listening to professors drone on about collaborative learning for hours on end. 

What’s really crazy is this shocking truth documented by my Teaching 2030 colleagues: Only 39 states even require student teaching—ranging from a low of 8 weeks in Wyoming to a high of 20 weeks in Maryland—before they’re willing to certify that someone is ready to work with our kids. 

That’s nuts—and it results in a slew of under-prepared teachers rolling into classrooms every fall who are barely qualified on a good day. 

Some will persist. 

Others will adapt. 

Many will fail. 

Most will quit. 

Longer apprenticeships translates into more time working in real classrooms with real students—and more time working in real classrooms with real students is the only education that can truly prepare anyone for our profession. 

Will longer apprenticeships alone save our schools—and more importantly, result in increased levels of student achievement?

Nope.  Who are we kidding?  10 years from now, schools have little chance of looking like they do today.

(Read: exactly how they looked 100 years ago) 

Instead, “school” will be a blended experience.  Students will come to a building for shared experiences with peers and teachers, but they’ll spend even more time learning in networked digital spaces and at their own paces. 

Longer apprenticeships will, however, at least give new practitioners a fighting chance to understand what those changes look like in action. 

They’ll see experienced educators wrestling with new models for teaching and learning.  They’ll figure out how policies translate into practice—and learn first-hand how to innovate within a system that doesn’t generally like innovation.

And most importantly, longer apprenticeships will give new practitioners meaningful experiences with students—something that traditional programs rarely provide. 

Why do Teachers Resist Professional Development?

One of my best professional friends is Matt Townsley, a math teacher turned district level leader in Iowa that challenges my thinking time and again. 

Recently, Matt wrote this post sharing his perspectives on driving change efforts from beyond the classroom.  At times, he sounds really frustrated with trying to elicit support and buy-in from the teachers in his district—and that caught me off-guard. 

The good news is that understanding why teachers resist change efforts isn’t an impossible task.  In fact, most resistance can be tracked back to four basic questions that school leaders often fail to answer when choosing new programs for their schools.

I detailed those questions in a comment that I left on Matt’s blog.  Here’s what I wrote.

Hey Matt,

First, thanks for making your thinking here transparent. That was a pretty risky move and one that I respect. I think that teachers---who are constantly asked to 'put themselves out there' in today's collaborative, PLC world---need to see more administrators who are willing to be intellectually vulnerable in public spaces.

Second, a few thoughts:

What role do you think differentiation can play in professional development opportunities for teachers?

I know that the times that I push back against PD, it's because it really doesn't align with the knowledge and skills that I know that I need in order to improve---which makes it a waste of time.

What role does/should teacher input play in the selection of district wide initiatives?

Here in NC, we do a bi-annual teacher working conditions survey. One of the most interesting patterns every time the survey is conducted is that teachers report receiving tons of PD, but that the PD doesn't align with their area of need.

Specifically, teachers report GETTING tons of PD in their content area, but NEEDING tons of PD in meeting the needs of diverse learners.

How do we make sure that the initiatives chosen by administrators better align with the kinds of things that teachers really need?

How can we create more time for teachers to do meaningful work away from students but on the clock?

Your post is almost fatalistic in that it suggests that the only option for gathering more input from/creating more leadership opportunities for teachers requires teachers to give up more of their planning or personal time.

I think what I'd like to see is a third option---hybrid roles for teacher leaders.

What if a district created full time positions for a collection of teacher leaders who were interested in crafting district direction or policies. Those teachers would work together during traditional vacation times with other district leaders on PD initiatives and long term planning.

Obviously, not every teacher is going to be interested in giving up their summers to work on this kind of stuff---but those who do would have real input over the most important decisions and would become "seeds" in their schools and settings.


Are district level leaders doing enough to keep teachers informed about the "balcony view" that they are seeing?

Anthony Muhammad---who writes Transforming School Culture---describes 4 different reasons that teachers resist change in school. One really resonated with me.

He mentions that teachers resist changes that they don't understand or see a purpose for----and that once a legitimate purpose becomes apparent, they become supporters of the changes they once pushed back against.

That's totally me. I resist. A LOT.

But it's most often because no one can give me a real explanation for some of the programs that we've chosen to adopt. They're all too ready, though, to tell me that "I can't see the bigger picture" or that "this is a systemic thing that we need."

What they assume, though, is that I'm incapable of understanding their "bigger picture," and that drives me nuts.

If I were to make a suggestion to any district leader trying to drive change is communicate your purposes and intentions early and often and over and over again in as many public places---blogs, meetings, Twitterstreams---as possible.

Support your positions with facts, evidence and articles. Respond to pushback from teachers publicly---in discussion forums, in meetings, in the hallways between classes.

Doing so will win you the support of resisters like me who want to see our school improve---who are allies, but who have questions that need to be resolved before they move forward.

I think that's an area of real weakness for district level leaders who are driving change.

Any of this make sense?
Bill

Read This: 'Highly Qualified' Is Highly Misleading

Last week, an "anomaly amendment" was inserted into Congress's Continuing Resolution (a stop-gap that allows the government to continue functioning in the absence of an official budget.) The amendment in question allows teachers who are in an alternative certification program, regardless of the amount of time they've been teaching or whether or not they've obtained licensure in their respective states, to be considered "highly qualified" under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) regulations.

It comes as no surprise that the amendment received a major push from Teach for America, a program whose mission is to place inexperienced teachers, most of whom are fresh out of college, in high needs schools across the country.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

I stumbled across this great bit by Ilana Garon---a Bronx High School teacher and graduate of a New York State alternative certification program---on The Huffington Post the other day. It's an incredibly honest reflection on just how qualified Garon was to teach after graduating from one of the all-too-common summer crush programs that Teach-for-America-types put their uber-candidates through.

Long story short: Garon wasn't qualified at all. And she knew it.

What really frightened me, though, was the paragraph that I spotlighted above. If Garon's got this right---I haven't done the policy poking to figure out for sure if she does, but I'm inclined to believe her---I'm about to get downright pissy with Congress again.

Here's why: I've got FIVE YEARS of college education---a BS and MS in Elementary Education---AND National Board Certification as a Middle Childhood Generalist, and I'm not even highly qualified!

Now to be perfectly honest, half of the reason for my lack of qualification is because I'm being difficult. Here in North Carolina, the only way a teacher with a degree in elementary education can earn highly qualified status is by taking the Praxis test and I've just plain refused to do it.

My stand is a simple one: 6th grade teachers with a degree in middle grades education who earn National Board Certification in North Carolina are automatically highly qualified. 6th grade teachers with a degree in elementary education who earn National Board Certification aren't.

That's ridiculous to me.

To think that two teachers working in the same grade level are held to two completely different sets of standards when determining who is qualified and who isn't drives me politically nuts. It's just more evidence of how ineffective educational policy really is.

And even though I'm legal now---I was recertified based on my National Board Certification as a middle grades teacher---I take this highly qualified stuff pretty darn personally. You would too if you couldn't teach elementary school even though you had 5 years of college education to do the job.

But to think that Congress is now readily offering highly qualified status---something I can't get no matter how many college classes I aced----to teachers who have little more than a few weeks of summer courses might be more than I can bear.

It's lunacy, y'all.

Lunacy.

But who am I, right? I'm not even highly qualified.

A Win for Building a PLC at Work

Most regular Radical readers know that I'm the proud author of two Solution Tree books titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Work and Teaching the iGeneration. 

I'm just a little bit prouder this morning, however, because Building a Professional Learning Community at Work---a practical book designed to support schools in their first year of PLC implementation by sharing stories, approachable research and a heaping cheeseload of handouts---was named the Learning Forward (formerly NSDC) Staff Development Book of the Year.

Not bad for a guy who is just a classroom teacher, huh?

After all, the list of NSDC Book of the Year award winners reads like a whose-who in educational thinking.  Last year's winners were Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan.  Roland Barth is on the list.  These are the kinds of people that I both respect and admire.

And now I share a place alongside of them.  Too cool.

What I'm most proud of, though, is that Parry Graham and I have written a book that practitioners find useful.  Not only did it stand up against the hundreds of nominations that Learning Forward receives for its annual BOY competition, but for the past two days here at the Learning Forward conference in Atlanta, I've had staff developers telling me that our title is one of the first that they pull out of their bag of tricks when working with new learning teams.

In the end, that's all I really care about.  I believe in the power of professional learning communities to change the learning patterns of teachers because I'm a practitoner that has had my own practice changed by collaborating with my peers. 

My only goal for writing was to share what I've learned about successful PLC implementation with others---and it sounds like that's exactly what I've done!

Be sure to stop by the Building a Professional Learning Community at Work product page on the Solution Tree website.  Every handout from the entire text----implementation surveys, team structuring templates, trust development documents---are all available for free download.

Even if you don't pick up a copy for your professional library, there's value to be had by stopping by.

And check out the complete library of PLC posts here on the Radical.  There's some good stuff buried under that tab, too!

New CTQ Report on Teacher Working Conditions

I really don’t do a very good job hiding my scorn for today’s education superheroes, do I?  Look back over my posts in the past few months and it’s obvious that I have little respect for the agendas being pushed by people like Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, and Davis Guggenheim. 

My beef with current conversations around reforming schools is really quite simple:  They’re often centered around the idea that teacher effectiveness can be judged—and schools can be saved—if we would just start holding educators accountable for producing measurable results on end of grade exams.

Not only do these kinds of carrot-and-stick approaches to saving our schools ignore what we know about motivating workers in knowledge-based professions, they overlook an unfortunate truth that Oprahgandists would rather ignore:

Successful schools depend on far more than identifying and then rewarding handfuls of whiz-bang teachers.  They also depend on communities that are willing to provide every teacher with the kinds of critical working conditions essential for being successful. 

The good news is that my colleagues at the Center for Teaching Quality have been documenting the kinds of working conditions that have a positive impact on student achievement for years now. 

In fact, their most recent report—titled Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve—summarizes the thoughts of 14 incredibly accomplished teachers who spent the better part of the past year studying the connections between teacher working conditions and student achievement with leading experts and educational researchers.

The team—comprised completely of full time practitioners—argues, among other things, that:

Teacher Preparation Programs Need to Change:

Ask any practicing teacher and they’ll tell you that their preservice training was basically useless.  Real learning happens only after teachers start spending time in classrooms. 

That’s why my TLN colleagues believe that teacher preparation programs should begin offering residency options where new teachers work alongside experienced veterans in much the same way that preservice physicians work in hospitals alongside practicing doctors.

Teacher Mentoring Programs Just Can’t be Cut:

Ask any district budget managers and they’ll tell you that mentoring is expensive.  Not only is it challenging to pay for release time for mentors to observe new teachers, it is challenging to find the cash to provide meaningful training to potential mentors.

That’s why mentoring programs are often cut when economic times are tough.

Those cuts, my TLN colleagues believe, are irresponsible.  Instead of cutting mentoring programs, districts that are truly committed to reforming education must continue to invest in proven programs for supporting the newest members of our profession.

Teacher Evaluation Systems Need to Change:

A cornerstone of TLN has always been our willingness to accept responsibility for student learning results and a recognition of the fact that some teachers are more effective than others at producing results.

We push back, however, against teacher evaluation systems that are simplistic. 

In Transforming School Conditions, my TLN colleagues argue that responsible evaluation systems should be built on sophisticated teacher observations conducted by principals and peers. 

What’s more, they argue that responsible teacher evaluation systems should include the analysis of student work samples on performance based assessments.

Professional Development Must Be Collaborative:

Are you ready for an admission that should anger you as a taxpayer?  I can’t remember many formal professional development opportunities during the course of my 17 year career that have changed who I am as an educator.

Talk about a colossal waste of cash, huh?

On the other hand, I’ve learned tons and tons every time that I’ve been given structured, on-the-clock opportunities to study my practice with peers. 

How does that translate into more effective reform policies?  As my TLN colleagues argue, the best professional development must be, “job-embedded, problem-based, differentiated, collaborative, onsite, compensated, ongoing and teacher-driven.”

The report goes on to study the connections between student learning conditions—assessing learning in a variety of ways, differentiating learning opportunities for every child, addressing social issues that interfere with learning—and high performing schools.  It also examines the connections between teacher leadership and student learning.

All of it is interesting, research driven, and crafted by practitioners with a real understanding of what change in schools needs to look like in order to succeed.

Here’s to hoping that policymakers and influential thinkers will actually spend a few minutes listening to those of us working in real classrooms with real kids for a change. 

It’s high time that teacher voice informed policy development in our country. 

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