The changing role of the teacher

What good reading! At The Blog of Proximal Development, an Unending Conversation unfolds. How much richer will a youngsters' education be in Konrad Glogowski's classroom. How much time do most classroom teachers take to reflect upon and change their practice? Just think how youngsters react when "My students write to construct knowledge. I refuse to correct attempts to construct understanding and improve cognitive development." No judgment, no red marks, just scaffolding to construct meaning. Pretty powerful--

How successful can an education law be that makes teachers the enemy?

Wow! What a question and what an answer! I thank Chris Lehman for pointing the way to this column. Unfortunately I hadn't read Michael Winerip until this, the last of his columns.

His writing brings to mind that of Kozol in his Shame of the Nation. He has spent lots of time in classrooms with teachers and students. And he suggests that with reauthorization of NCLB, there be provisions to mandate small class size. In addition,

We need a No Family Left Behind Law. This would measure economic growth of families and punish politicians in charge of states with poor economic growth for minority families.

And finally a new slogan from William Butler Yeats: "“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

What do you think of that?!

A Refreshing Model of Excellence, Pedagogy, Sharing, and Learning!

Back in the days of cut and paste and copy machine, I always found myself in the library of my school full of planning for the coming year as others wound down their final days in June. I was gathering resources, planning, and cutting and pasting in hopes of applying what I had learned from the year just finished. I could see my practice change and grow, nothing that compares with Darren's energies and sophistication, and would have loved an opportunity to share and get feedback from other teachers. But those were the days of what some called "I've got a secret" and open collaboration was not viewed in a favorable light, at least in my situation. Had I had such an opportunity, my students' lives would have been the richer and their learning and mine deeper from what I could learn from colleagues.

Now the possibilities do abound when educators blog! The isolation felt by a classroom teacher (I do remember that vividly) can be an artifact of the past! The sharing, that I so yearned for, overflows the blogs of educators. The models of excellence, and life long learning on a path to providing what is best for young people are no longer hidden in one classroom in a school, or reserved for those summer weeklong or daylong institutes.

Darren at A Difference has, IMHO, modeled throughout his blog, his quest for the best pedagogy to help his students learn. That pedagogy is one that truly resonates with me! His youngsters are active learners, in control of their learning with an exemplary expert learner as a guide. For me who feels a true appreciation for his pedagogy, for others who may be open to consider this kind of classroom, and for those who now live in the world of drill and rote for NCLB, his unselfish willingness to share all he has learned and is learning opens endless possibilities. His sharing enriches the lives of all who read his blog. His open reflections upon his practice are a model, if adopted by more educators, could transform teaching and learning for youngsters across the United States, Canada, and beyond.

In his recent post, The Next Movement, he details his journey with his students with remarkable detail. What a treasure! He has offered all the opportunity to replicate or adapt his successes and to reflect and plan "the next movement". My name appears in that posting. I was surprised and honored to read it there. Thanks goes to you, Darren, for the opportunity.

How the times have changed! Sitting at my computer in Ohio, learning from a master math educator in Manitoba! What could be more exciting than that!!

Incredible student comments on scribing and learning

There's something pretty special going on over on the Pre-Cal 40S (Winter '06 blog. The student responses to Darren's questions are insightful, articulate, and so exciting. I didn't want to interrupt the student voices in the comments so emailed Darren with a message for them. Then it occurred to me that perhaps my celebration of their learning should be public too so I'm pasting what I put in the email.

Hi there Pre Cal,

I've read your comments with great excitement! Your insights into what is important to your learning, your ability to describe the criteria for posts eligible for the Hall of Fame, and your enthusiasm for learning are exemplary!!

Abr31, your comment on asking questions and your reasoning " I still ask just to make sure what I'm thinking is right now just good enough." shows how much you know about learning and the critical importance of questioning.

Manny, your comment "That is my first priority because I want everyone in the class to do well, "we're all in it together" (at least that's how I feel anyway). " You are so right, everyone is in it all together when learning. I only wish everyone had your great attitude of wanting success for all!

Jefferson, are you considering teaching because you've got some excellent ideas with: " Create an opening sentence that draws a lot of attention to the reader. Make it really interesting. And then, end it with an but kicking ending, so when the reader finishes, he/she not only be satisfied but looking more forward to learning." And your posts do just that!

T3DDie, you are teaching and I think you have really nailed a key element for a true hall of fame scribe when you say: " Well described but short enough explanations so that it is like you're teaching the whole lesson over again so that people that don't get it would have a chance to understand when you read the scribe. "

And Emile, you understand how you have taken learning to a new level when you say: " But when you are scribe you should understand and know how to explain the lesson in a way everybody will understand."

This Winston Churchill quote really speaks to all this class has done this year:

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

Your climb has been glorious and I hope that you have found it such!

I look forward to reading the comments that I know will follow with anticipation!

Congratulations on such excellence!

Celebrating excellence and the opportunity to collaborate!

Something's happening at Kennesaw State University in their Blog2Learn project! Some 20 teachers have entered the blogosphere until the excellent guidance of Will Richardson and Anne Davis.

Today was Anne's day. You can view her wiki which she used as a guide for participants here. Her session was exemplary with a real sense of passion for good learning for youngsters. A real teacher's day IMHO!!

I was so very honored when she asked if I might skype in to share my thoughts on commenting. It was indeed a pleasure to do so and I can't thank her enough. She seems to feel that I do ok with commenting. I enjoy making connections with students and work to create meaningful ones in the comments I compose. I'm glad they are seen as valuable! It's great fun and hard work too.

Our collaboration and sharing send me into those "real life highs" that touch our inner beings. Thanks, Anne!

Hope, Beyond Hope, Work

I've always been the one in the family who talks of hope and has hope--- hope that a student will succeed, hope that our American system of public education can transform and change, hope that our ever increasingly violent world can find a way to peace, hope that we can return to a kinder, gentler America.

Today Barbara Ganley's post truly resonated with me; especially the following:

"I have felt myself losing hope these past months that we can effect essential change in education. I have wanted to burrow down into my own practice with blogs and shut out the cacophony. I have faltered even in my own blogging practice during the past month for fear of having nothing positive to say.

And then, a couple of days ago, the latest issue of the provocative American environmental magazine, Orion, helped me see a way out of this mess. Writing about the state of the environment and environmentalism, Derrick Jensen writes in the lead article, "“Beyond Hope" :

"Frankly, I don't have much hope. But I think that a’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth. To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother…All these false hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities… When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to hope at all. We simply do the work."

He'’s right, of course. I have to stop hoping that anything can change; instead I must go about getting the work done. Inside. Where it counts."

And I realized that although I have never stopped hoping, that's what I have always tried to do--get the work done. I am thinking that she has articulated something that lives deep inside me, that I never could have put in words. And now that I have read and reread her words, I think that recognizing "beyond hope" will cause me to work even more passionately----

Assessing AS Learning

Students, as active, engaged, and critical assessors, can make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and master the skills involved. This is the regulatory process in metacognition. It occurs when students personally monitor what they are learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand. Assessment as Learning is the ultimate goal, where students are their own best assessors.
from Earl, Lorna (2003) Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin Press. Viewed at http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au

It seems to me that this model is of great value! I thank Darren for introducing me to it here. I have spent some many years sharing with teachers the concept of assessment of learning and the need for a greater move to assessment for learning but assessment as learning is a new term for me. I think that intuitively I was trying to wrap my practice around it but never seemed to quite catch it. Oh that I had been able to lay out the strategies and categorize assessment as learning years ago. My students and I would have been better learners for it.

I am thinking that this is what Anne refers to when she talks of students reflecting. She has looked at reflecting many times this spring; it's so clear to she and I how important that is; I wonder why those 'in charge" keep missing it. It was something that was never as successful as I hoped in the Teaching Professions program. And now that I've had time to reflect, I'm sure it was because I wasn't asking the right questions and/or scaffolding the experience properly.

I was really excited to see Darren"s scaffolding for his students. IMHO, he has really provided an exceptional structure for his students:

The kids think the "Significant Contribution" is the hard work. This week I've explained to them that the purpose of the "Significant Contribution" is there for a variety of reasons, but mainly to enable them to make their "Constructive Modifications" which is the real hard work. ...

The actual content generated this way may be small, in comparison to a "Significant Contribution," but it requires deep metacognition and critical analysis -- an awful lot of thinking and (hopefully) an awful lot of learning.

I am sure there will be an awful lot of learning going on if his students can move far enough from what I call "get the answer for the teacher mode". I'd be really interested if students are more interested in the significant contribution, not yet really understanding the power of the constructive contribution. I think I'd have difficulty moving students to that level; although now that I've studied his model, I know I'd be more successful. And I have no doubts that Darren has all the skills needed to encourage students in this "risk taking". And I think this is how students view the opportunity at this point since they so rarely experience this kind of learning.

In an earlier post, Darren mentioned his hope students would see the power of collaborative learning. I think the technology of the wiki is perfect for that and should really move the students in that direction.

The editing of others work, in the search to make a Constructive Contribution, will require them to look at several different problems in this way. If nothing else, I hope they walk away from this experience with an appreciation of the powerful learning experiences inherent in collaboration.

Clarence adopted the model and found:

These categories of possible contribution seemed to be something that the kids could understand. It gave them a structure of how knowledge building happens, either in strides, or in the drips and drabs of improving what we already know.

This is really powerful pedagogy!!! I am so excited to learn of assessment AS learning AND to be on the sidelines watching something really special happen as kids take control of their own learning.

National Board Certification

I've been reading the Edweek blog Certifiable since its inception with great interest. I was looking forward to seeing if the journey of a colleague might be similar in any way to mine. The blog description reads as follows:

Emmet Rosenfeld is an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. He has 13 years of experience as a teacher and writer. In this blog, he is chronicling his experiences as he works toward certification from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.

For the first weeks, there were numerous comments on his posts and reflections. Recently there have been few.

I remember my certification process as the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. I recall saying at different points that this is really about what they want and not how I teach. And I think in many ways it was. BUT, I learned an incredible amount about my practice during the process, perhaps because I saw that as one of my goals. I had a sense of my practice but hoped I could feel more validated. My reading of the standards really excited me. I saw myself; I saw areas in which I felt there was lots of room for improvement. Had I had those standards when I began my career I would have been a much better teacher much sooner and for much longer! From the portfolio entries, I looked for the first time systematically, analytically, and reflectively at my practice. I watched myself with young people on the videos. And I worked to improve the area of assessment; one for which I knew there was great room for improvement. I was extremely proud of my demonstration lesson, although never convinced that I would pass. My extraordinary mentor was a wonderful coach and I truly enjoyed the collaboration that NBPTS encourages among it candidates.

The assessment center exercises were challenging. I'm not a "high stakes testing" person. And I left feeling that what they would read didn't really let them know what I knew, that 3 hours of testing couldn't represent what I had learned over the course of many years of teaching.

The day the scores were posted late in November brought great joy to me. I had accomplished board certification, had scored well above the minimum required. I had completed a strenuous, rigorous process successfully. Tears of joy overflowed.

Since my retirement in July of 2004, I have ementored 3 teachers as they worked to achieve certification. Each of them has viewed the process as demanding, overwhelming, yet important to their practice.

I guess I am wondering if I really don't understand Emmet's humor and seeming sarcasm in his blog, or why then he is attempting what many teachers see as a special process to validate their accomplished teaching, since he views it with seeming disdain. And if it is his perspective on this process that has left him without commenters? I am finding his journey doesn't resemble mine at all-- and I am finding I'm losing interest except in how his readers respond to his writing.

I am glad that standards have been identified to help teachers improve their practice. I'm happy that a respected national certification is available to so many accomplished teachers! And I'm proud to be able to use the acronym NBCT.

From the silence--

Many, many years ago a young girl with a traditional Protestant background (many hours of sermons, ministerial prayers and Sunday school experience under her belt) went away to a small Quaker College. Within the first month, there appeared on the dorm bulletin board an invitation to attend Quaker meetings on Sunday. As transportation to a church of her custom was unavailable, she crossed the threshold of the "Meeting House" one Sunday morning in search of --she wasn't sure. This environment featured no altar, no decoration, no lectern. Its stark, warm beauty--– simple wood benches arranged in a square (participants faced each other) and bare walls with large open windows--– signaled something different. She sat down in the quiet with others gathered there. The silence was deafening. After what seemed an eternity, one man rose to speak. The silence following seemed thunderous again. Some time later another rose and shared a personal experience. Again, silence. An hour and one half later, a gentleman arose and said Amen. The people in that meeting silently departed. The young girl, bewildered by the lack of sermon and direction usually provided in her tradition religious setting, left in a most unsettled state. And on the following Sunday was strangely drawn back to that Meeting House. With each comment shared, she began, without “seemingly” acknowledging the speaker, to construct a framework of knowledge and belief upon the scaffolding provided by others. With each successive Sunday, the deafening sound of silence gradually became sweet notes of quiet to her ears. One Sunday she rose to speak and upon her sitting and the silence, knew that she had experienced one small piece of true self-knowledge and revelation in that sharing and ensuing silence.

Today, that woman's hair is streaked with gray. She does continue to cherish opportunities for constructing knowledge upon the scaffolding provided by others. And so, after years of reading, print and edublogs, she enters the blogosphere. Treasuring the ideas of other edubloggers, and anticipating the learning that will ensue, she looks to blogging for those sweet notes of quiet and knowledge construction. As this leg of her journey begins, she wonders where the greatest power may be found-- in the development of conversations and community, or in the possibilities to make her thinking clearly visible to her.

Safe blogging resources

Again from Darren.

See the resources.

No one should allow fear to keep them and their students from blogging. The benefits of blogging far outweigh the sometimes perceived dangers.

Darren's Paying It Forward

Darren has a great post on Paying It Forward. It is a powerful voice for blogging in the classroom. I can't imagine anything more exciting than the student ownership of learning that is described here.

eTech 2006 Conference!

The conference was good! In particular, I really enjoyed the opportunities to listen to William Dagget, David Pogue, Alan November, and David Thornburg. I always come away inspired and this year was no different. I attended a few teacher sessions which were also good but hearing the ideas from the folks I mentioned is really important to me. I loved David Thornburg's comment on a pedagogy of joy. He is so right that we have lost this.

Anne's participation in the blogging workshop I conducted was really special. It's so much fun when the technology pretty much works well. Skype did everything it was supposed to. Blogger went quirky on us but I think the participants were really there for Blogmeister. Someday I will learn to do a better job planning so there isn't too much. I'll also make sure to interrupt those engaged to do a reflective wrap up. I feel badly we didn't get to that.

So on to thinking about next year!

Blogging made the front page of the Plain Dealer

An article on blogging made the front page of the Plain Dealer today. Unfortunately, it was more about myspace.com and xanga.com. But it did quote data from a research report. If so many kids are blogging, it seems to me that schools should gravitate to a tool that kids know and help them see the power of blogging in learning too!

The article can be viewed at this link.

Remembering Rosa Parks

This post is late as we have been away in Michigan.

I was touched by the memorials and remembrances for Rosa Parks. She was a gracious, active woman who deserved more in the last years of her life.

An article from CNN highlights her life at this link.

Classroom suggestions for wikipedia

Andy Carvin has posted great suggestions for the use of Wikipedia in the classroom in this blog article. The topics in his suggestions could be easily adapted to each teacher's content in the classroom.

A neat weblog project!

Anne has described a neat weblog project in her blog! I am going to continue to refer to her posts as she generously shares what she has learned about blogging with students!

Technology skills for educators

T.H.E. Journal published an article describing "20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have" . It's a really comprehensive list. I don't know many educators with these skills. As I think about it, my students helped me learn many of the skills. The article is good reading but David Warlick takes it to the next step in his post today. His thoughts, from my perspective are right on target!

Innovate: An exciting resource

I've just been back to Innovate and found two articles that are good reading, one on blogging and the second on online environments. This is a great resource!

Thoughts on the 4th

handflag
Originally uploaded by lanihall.

A recent post by a good friend while on his trip to Alaska included these comments: "As we drive through these rural communities I wonder if folks from Red and Blue states can reach some form of compromise today. Our politicians are shouting at each other across such a wide chasm. Instead of leading, politicians are more concerned about retaining or gaining office by speaking to their own fellowship. I can see that the life experiences encountered in Red States are so different from those of the world of Urban America, that they do not understand problems each uniquely faces. The issues plaguing Red States and plaguing Blue States are so different, that if who ever holds power forces their agenda upon the other, we all lose as the forces of globalization pass us by!"

This July 4th, as we reflect upon and celebrate the freedoms of this great nation, may we also be mindful that the greatness of this nation has been derived from the diversity and the commonalities among its peoples. Differences are many but rational, wise people can work together to help our country move forward in this everchanging world.

As educators, how can we use utilize the potential of cutting edge technology to support meaningful conversations that highlight the commonalities of all our peoples, celebrate the diversity of our nation, and encourage rational compromise and consensus building?

Even more convinced of the potential Blogging holds for k12 classrooms

The recent postings from NECC have only validated my belief that blogging is good for k12 classrooms. I just started reading Anne Davis and certainly am glad that I discovered she is out there.

Her posts in the last days have had so much good information!
She discusses lessons learned which you can review by clicking on this link.

Good reading!