Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
How many students are being rushed through the curriculum?
How many are doing hours of homework to keep up with the quarter system or blended or online learning?
How many are doing well, out of sheer effort?
How many are going to get ‘A’s because they are compliant and do what the teachers ask?
How many are reading textbooks but haven’t had time to read for pleasure?
How many students are being successful at ‘doing’ school? But not doing big projects, sports, theatre, or lunches with their friends.
Sometimes the ‘successful’ students are not thought about, because others take so much time and energy. But how many students are doing well despite the education they are getting?
These lists are not extensive… but they are the inspiration for a question: What will students remember about school during the 2020-2021 pandemic?
Teachers have it tough right now. Students too. More than ever teachers need to focus on teaching students, not subjects.
Yesterday I saw an article with a title like, ‘Study shows students are months behind in reading skills due to remote learning.’ Squeezing one more book into the year won’t change that. Showing students a passion for reading will.
Focus on students… and they will remember you, and what you taught them, for all the right reasons.
It’s a simple formula: Get to know your students and they remember you. They might remember one awesome lesson you did, but in more examples than not, it’s not only about the things they learned but the relationships you’ve developed.
Many high schools are opening with less face time with students and/or shorter semesters. There will be an appetite for teachers to ‘get to business’ and to ‘cover the curriculum’. But the start of the year is a great time to ‘get to know your students’ and to work with them to ‘uncover the curriculum’.
Spend time connecting with students. Let them spend time exploring and discovering what they must learn. Do this and not only you, but also the things you have taught, will be remembered.
I’m going to do a little mind dump of things on my mind about school, education, life, and learning, in point form – bullet format. Many of these could be entire posts on their own, and I want to share these as placeholders for future development:
Teaching is going to be more challenging in the future, but also more rewarding. Yes, technology will replace some teaching… an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based program can teach students who are learning to use algorithms better than a teacher in front of 30 students, when students could use just-in-time feedback and an adjusted curriculum based on their answers being right or wrong. However we are decades away from AI being able to teach problem solving, or critical thinking, or moderate a philosophical discussion. Teaching these things is exciting and can be very engaging for students, but also challenging to do well… this is the true art of teaching.
I’m tired of seeing ‘Remote Learning didn’t work’ articles. It is not ideal for every student and it magnifies the issue of privilege, and access to required technology. It especially won’t work when educators need to make the switch with no forward planning. That said, it has made us question a few things we needed to question, like traditional assessment practices for example.
Assessment practices needs to change. We can’t rely on information-based content as a means of measuring student success. ie. 1. We still need to know that students can use mathematical algorithms, but we also need to know that they are numerate and understand the concepts behind those algorithms. ie. 2. The so called soft skills that we want to see like critical thinking and collaboration don’t work well being marked in a traditional way. What does a mark of 77% in Creativity mean?
Blended learning is the future of learning in schools, and so two things need to change: 1. Block schedules/timetables where the structure is exclusively around a teacher at the front of a room teaching for a set time. 2. “Teach them while I’ve got them in front of me” mentality, where the face-to-face component of the blending is all about teaching as it used to be… Blended learning should be centred around creating ‘learning experiences’.
Student voice and choice needs to be the forefront of course and lesson design. Cookie-cutter assignments are not enough. That said, there can be considerable teacher influence and high expectations. A teacher-led inquiry with embedded opportunities for students choice can be much better than not giving students creative constraints (that they might flounder without).
We need to leverage blended learning, in order to create collaboration and professional development time inside of a teacher’s workday. The idea of a teacher working in isolation for over 85% of the school day is counter productive to creating a culture of learning at institutions (schools) that should be modelling a learning culture.
A well funded, free, and public education is an essential public service. It also has to foster the values we want to see in our world. Diversity, acceptance (not just tolerance), civics, kindness, and charity need to be celebrated and highlighted. Yes, we need to prepare students to function in society, and even be employable, but the most important thing we do in schools is make all students feel like they belong, and we help them become decent human beings.
We need to help students be tolerant of others with opposing points of view. We have to show them that despite the desire of attention-seeking news media to polarize ideas into different camps, ideas sit on a spectrum, they are not all dichotomous. And we do not have to agree with different ideas to be respectful of the people who hold them… That said, while “we must be tolerant and accepting ofopposingviews“, we must also be, “unaccepting ofhateful and hurtfulacts, and smart enough to understand the difference“.
We need to find a balance between ‘open’ classrooms and ‘private’ learning spaces. Students need a space where they can fumble and be less than perfect, having a private space to work out the rough edges of their work. They also need to be able to share what they want out in the open, and with the world. Everything doesn’t have to be on display, and we need to help students discern what is important to share, and what we keep to ourselves.
Mistakes need to be legitimately celebrated as part of learning. Failure is part of most challenging journeys, and while we talk about the importance of this, we freak out when students fail in a public setting. Mistakes are ok when we can fix them quickly, but we still admonish bigger public mistakes in ways that do not foster learning. This is an issue beyond schools, we seem to live in a world where everyone is judged (harshly) by their worst public mistake, and sincere apologies are not enough. This has two important, negative ramifications: 1. Public mistakes become something we can’t recover or learn from; 2. We can not be truly innovative when we can’t risk looking bad for our efforts. So many schools, school districts, and even companies, brag about being innovative, but when it is ‘innovative as long as it looks good’, well then all the risk is gone and so is the opportunity to do something daring.
Everyone has a right to their opinion, and everyone can share those opinions, but not all opinions are good, and not all opinions deserve an equal footing. Bad ideas can spread very easily these days. People need to be brave enough to speak out against bad ideas… in non-violent ways. We must celebrate the power of dialogue and use our words instead of our fists, if we truly want our society to be better. We have to challenge ourselves to take higher ground and not fight the fight that the spreaders of bad ideas want us to fight. There is a saying, “Never wrestle a pig, you both get dirty but the big likes it.” Bad ideas get unwarranted publicity when the battles get messy… and the weak-minded get fuel to oppose good ideas when those with the good ideas act in bad faith. You do not have to ‘turn the other cheek’ but you do have to act in a way that is decent and good, if you want to fight for things that are decent and good.
It was my 4th or 5th year teaching and I had given out an assignment in Science that I had samples of from the previous year. I showed an example of what an assignment that got an ‘A’ looked like. Then I mentioned that if it was missing a specific component it would have been a ‘B’. A student blurred out a silly example, “What if I did _____, would it be a ‘C’?”
I responded, “No, that would be a C-R-A-P.” As the laughter came from the class I looked over to movement in my door and there was a parent of one of my students. To this day I don’t know if that parent got the joke or was mortified by my response? Still, I think it was funny and the Grade 8 class appreciated the humour.
It’s interesting to think about the way we describe criteria in schools and show good work as examples. This can be helpful, but also detrimental. Sometimes it gives a high bar for what is possible, and can stretch students’ desire to do something special. Sometimes it creates a cookie cutter scenario where every student does the same thing, limiting creativity and expression.
I remember visiting an elementary school and seeing the art displayed outside a couple Grade 2 classes. One had collages with a Santa part way into a chimney. Every house on every piece of work had the same colour and shape, every chimney had a larger top slab to fit Santa in. Every Santa was exactly half-belly into the chimney. Scales were slightly different, and cutting skills were obviously different too, but every piece looked good, and similar to the ones next to it.
Next door, the teacher had all the students make a collage of snowmen and the quality and look of every piece was different. Some had carrot noses, some didn’t have noses, one hade a red Rudolph nose. Some had top hats, some had cone hats, some had no hats. One had a mommy, daddy, and baby snowman, and one had a snowman with four snowball parts instead of three. One really stuck out because it had a black sky behind it.
So if you were a parent, which assignment would you rather your child did?
Sometimes we can set criteria and provide examples that push students to do a good job, to reach for challenging outcomes, and even to be more creative. But sometimes our criteria limits creativity and boxes in our students’ ability to go beyond what the teacher’s shared examples show.
Sometimes we have students that need to see an example and some who are better off without one… in the same class, doing the same assignment.
Specific and detailed criteria with examples can raise the bar and reduce the likelihood of students handing in C-R-A-P, but they can also limit the format, creativity and extension of learning that could be possible if we left things more open, and provided more choice.
“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological” in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.” ~ Neil Postman,Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
A tool is just a tool!I can use a hammer to build a house and I can use the same hammer on a human skull.It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.
That’s how technology isn’t just ecological. Adding a caterpillar to an environment changes the environment, it changes the equilibrium in unforeseen ways, but ways that are inevitable based on all the moving parts seeking to find a new balance. The environment finds a new homeostasis.
Technology has bias. It has uses, and it has unintended uses. A technological advancement doesn’t just have unintended consequences, it also has unintended uses and misuses. When it is misused, the response is often an over-reaction. We’ve seen that in schools with internet filters, cell phones, and social media.
Technology also has bias in what we pay attention to. The idea of a multiple choice test is a technology that made questions about ‘the what’ of specific content more relevant than ‘the how’ and ‘the why’. It also invited teachers to develop questions and answers designed (on purpose and by mistake) to confuse the student… after all, it defeats the purpose of a multiple choice test to have only one answer be relevant, but only one answer is ‘right’.
A laptop in a student’s hands is a powerful tool for learning, and it’s a powerful tool for distraction. It’s a window into the world, it’s also a tool that can isolate students from their peers. It’s a way to transmit information to students, it’s also a way to give them voice and choice in a project.
In each of these cases, technology is disruptive. It alters the environment in unforeseen ways that do not move towards a new equilibrium. Technology doesn’t move the environment towards homeostasis, instead it undermines norms. It invites uses and misuses that are unintended or unwelcome, and that brings new concerns as well as new opportunities.
Technology doesn’t just change our relationship to the tool, it changes the relationship to our environment. It changes everything.
However, we can expect tools to be used in unexpected ways, and we can respond with intention and purpose, which is a lot different that anger and frustration.
We can ask ourselves what the intentions of a tool’s use are, and we can reflect on whether these intentions are being met. Technology will fundamentally change our learning environments, technology will support and/or undermine our intentions. We are better off influencing this bias thoughtfully rather than letting unintended biases undermine us. Hammers can produce some amazing work, or they can cause a lot of damage.
All joking aside, it’s harder to hold a group’s attention for too long in an online setting, compared to having a ‘captive audience’ face to face. It becomes a matter of thinking this through thoughtfully, or literally ‘losing your audience’. Remember Bill Nye The Science Guy? I don’t think he ran any segment of his show for longer than 3 minutes. There were quick lessons interspersed with flashy examples and experiments. Compare that to a 40 minute lecture with a teacher, and compare that to a 40 minute lesson online?
Here are two simple questions to ask:
1. What is being done to engage the learner?
2. What is the learner’s experience?
I’m not saying we need to entertain like Bill Nye, but I am saying that if we don’t think of the end user’s experience, we are going to see our audience’s attention dwindle.
This is a ‘10,000 foot view’ of something I’ve thought about for a while. It should be an essay, not a handful of bullet points, but I’ll put a few ideas down now and come back to this at a later date.
If I were to start a school…
It would be K-12, with under 1,200 kids. Three classes per grade.
Kindergarten to grade 5 would be Reggio based, and resource and support rich. There would be a lot of intervention at these grades to ensure students who struggle are given proven strategies and structures of support.
Grade 6 to 9 would not be IB, but would run with a similar model to Middle IB. There would be significant focus on cross-curricular, big thematic projects, a lot of opportunity to mentor and lead younger students, and a focus on doing projects that matter in the community.
Grades 10-12 would be inquiry and passion based. Some students would reach out into the community to explore trades and careers, others would focus on academics and the pursuit of Arts and/or Sciences. All would have passion projects, time to pursue them, and mentors to inspire them.
Teachers would teach for 60-70% of the day, have 10% prep time, and the rest of the time would be to collaborate, and/or to support students working on projects that go beyond the scope of anything teachers teach in class.
The school would be broken into separate pods, divided by the grade groupings suggested above. Students at those different levels would be separated except for planned events… but these would happen regularly, with many student leadership opportunities.
Teachers would be expected to connect with teachers and/or students in at least one other level.
That’s not earth-shatteringly different than what can exist, but it is cost prohibitive with class sizes and staffing needs. The driving forces are:
1. Students having autonomy, choice, and support to do big projects and follow their passions.
2. Educators having time to collaborate and work with students beyond course content and a fully ‘blocked’ and timetabled schedule.
3. A sense of community support, student leadership, and a focus on meeting the learning needs of students.
If you were to start a school, what would it look like?
A couple days ago our premier made a major announcement about the reopening of the economy in BC. The timing of our March break gave us a huge advantage over other provinces, and the residents of BC have done a very good job of social distancing.
As part of the plan in BC, continuing to practice social distancing is key:
So what does that really look like in schools?
Students used to be put in rows, and worked mostly independently, but that has changed quite a bit in the past few decades. Things like collaboration, group work, and peer support are all part of what a typical class looked like in 2019… What will this look like for the rest of 2020?
How do we integrate the lessons we have learned teaching from a distance, to reduce the physical distance challenges we will now face in classrooms? If we aren’t thinking about this, it will be easier to revert to more individualized learning than it would be to try to foster the same (or similar) collaborative experiences that have made schools more engaging for students in recent years.
How do we provide rich learning experiences in schools, while also adhering to social distancing etiquette and expectations?
I don’t think this is a word, but I’m going to use it anyway: Backchanneller.
There are many educators using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Adobe Connect for the first time. These educators are learning that it is very hard to be presenting with these tools and also pay attention to the chat, and what is happening in the digital room, while also delivering instructions or a lesson. One thing that can make this easier is to have a back channel helper, or a backchanneller.
People who run Twitter Chats understand this. They use a team of people to help welcome people to the chat, retweet, and like good responses, while the main moderator pushes out the questions and engages with individual tweets. A single moderator struggles to do it all.
For video-based classes and lessons the teacher/presenter will often struggle with:
Following the chat
Picking out good questions
Helping to orient latecomers
Finding the person with their mic on, causing a distraction
Keeping the chat on topic, or at least monitor the chat for people causing a distraction.
It’s hard to do these things while also trying to be engaging and/or creating an interactive lesson.
The primary role of the backchanneller is to monitor what’s happening in the chat in the background, and to assist the teacher/presenter. These are the main roles:
Look for good questions
Respond to simple questions
Choosing the right time to interrupt, if the question warrants it… and avoiding questions that would interrupt or derail the lesson, or that can wait for an appropriate pause in the lesson.
There are other things the backchanneller can do, as mentioned above, but the moderation of the chat is key.
It’s hard to run a lesson and watch a chat conversation at the same time. It’s easy to unintentionally let the chat take over the lesson. Having a backchanneller, who can be a student, who understands the responsibility of the role, can help a lesson go considerably better. A backchanneller reduces the cognitive load on the teacher/presenter and lets them focus on the intent of the lesson or presentation.
It’s great when a participant, a student, can take on the role of backchanneller. It’s empowering. Explicitly explaining the importance of this role, and reflecting on the person’s effectiveness can also be a useful thing to do, to help the audience or class understand the value of this useful teaching assistant. And that’s the ultimate role of a backchanneller, an assistant, someone who monitors and manages a conversation stream while the teacher pays attention to the lesson or presentation.
