More empathy, less apathy

"Treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can't until you do understand."- Kim Harrison

I'm going to admit publicly that there was a time I uttered the phrase "It must be nice to be an administrator. No lesson plans, no grading. They are never around. Always in meetings and who knows what they do?" Admit it. You've probably said it too.  I'm not proud of it.  But an interesting thing happened to me in my new role as a full time learning coach. I began to see the many different roles we all play in helping students learn. And I have had colleagues tell me "It must be nice to be a coach. No lesson plans, no grading. We never see you. You are always in meetings. What exactly do you do again?" It doesn't feel so nice.

This post is not about me justifying my job as a coach, nor is it about making others feel bad for me. It's about empathy. It's about trying to see things from a different perspective. It's about teachers being willing to explore more than just their own classroom needs. It's about administrators being willing to put aside their building or district needs to help support the realities of each individual classroom teacher and their students. It's about us checking our ego at the door and doing what is best for all. It's about committing to more communication and collaboration.  It's about each of us seeking to understand the vital and important role we each play in the life of every child who walks through our doors. As Angela Maiers would say it's truly believing that each and every one of us matters.

As teachers, we are quick to shift the burden of blame onto our colleagues, our building principal, district administration, parents and far too often: onto our students. So here is my challenge to you: The next time you find yourself blaming someone (or something)  else: stop, pause, count to ten, and then try and envision the life and experiences of the person you are blaming. Think about what they might be feeling about this situation. Think about what their reality might be like. Try and put yourself in their shoes. Try to see the world through their eyes.  Ask yourself why they make the choices they do. Don't accuse them. Don't judge them. Don't put them into a  little box. Don't label them.  This is tough work. Especially if you don't know them well or have rarely engaged in deep conversation with them.

Now here comes the tougher part: Go sit beside them and genuinely seek to understand them and the decisions they have made.

Ask them for their perspective. Ask them to share their ideas and philosophies. Don't question or challenge them. Seek to understand. Listen. Be present with them. Take the time to establish a relationship built on honest dialogue and respect. It does not mean you must agree with them.  Acknowledge their truths. Don't try to fix them or change them. Accept that their perceptions are their realities.

Far too many believe that what ails public education is out of their control. What we can control is how we relate to one another. If you are a teacher: When was the last time you had an honest and respectful  conversation with a colleague you disagreed with? When was the last time you had an honest and respectful conversation with your building principal about the culture and structures of the building? When was the last time you went and sat in the office of the superintendent and had an honest and respectful conversation about your hopes and dreams for the students in your district?  If you are an administrator: When was the last time you asked your teachers to share their perspectives on the culture of your building? When was the last time you sat down one on one with a teacher and asked them about their vision and dreams?   When was the last time you opened up about your own dreams for your school?

We all have responsibility in seeking out and continuing the conversation.  As teachers, we speak of being frustrated, paralyzed, demoralized, and  apathetic. But we are not in this boat alone. We row alongside students, parents, and administrators who are equally frustrated, paralyzed, demoralized, and apathetic because they feel that their voice is lost and that they too are misunderstood. We will always have differences in opinion and perspective. We will always have different experiences that shape our realities. But we have much more in common than we realize. More importantly, we have the one true thing in common: a love and desire to help others learn and grow.

We can change the culture of our classrooms, buildings, and communities one conversation at a time. We can eliminate a culture of blame.  It begins with empathy. Seek to understand. And fake it until you finally do.

Collaboration is not a time, it's a mindset.

Although it has always been true, the need for collaboration has become an increasingly vital aspect of supporting student learning in schools today. PLC’s (as defined by DuFour and Marzano ) cannot function effectively without a collaborative spirit: collaboratively created goals, collaboratively collected data and analysis, and collaboratively problem-solved. For educators, the term “collaboration” truly means different things and without getting into all those visions, the one aspect that seems to get in the way of “collaboration” is time.  “If we were just given time to collaborate, we would do it more.” is often echoed across the educational landscape.  While no one will argue that time is not a factor, there are ways to utilize technology to create efficiency before and during the collaborative process.  

In our school district we have various district provided tools that should support the collaborative mindset. Being a Google Apps for Education district provides synchronous collaboration primarily through Google Docs as well as Google+, and Google Hangouts. . As part of the Blended Schools consortium, we also have access to a wide range of collaborative tools in Blackboard such as BBim (instant messaging) and BB Collaborate which provides a powerful real time virtual classroom with whiteboards, screen sharing, and break out rooms.  Teachers have access to Skype, unfiltered access to Twitter, and in the coming months, an upgrade to Microsoft’s newest cloud based services: Office 365 for education. Even in a district who does not make these resources readily available, throw in the ability to use wiki’s, youtube and other video sharing sites, and participating in learning communities and you have opportunities for collaboration not only across schools but across continents and oceans as well. We exist in a time where collaboration is  more possible now  than ever before and it can transcend physical location...and time.

In a local school or district, collaboration is often referred to as a “time” when in reality, it needs to be  a mindset. As educators, we shouldn’t wait for “time”  provided for us to collaborate when we have access to so many different tools to begin and support the process. School and district leadership who value collaboration acknowledge the significance and importance of face to face collaboration and schedule it as often as possible.  These opportunities need to be more available than just two or three times a year. And while having dedicated time daily would be ideal, the realities and economics of public education in America just won’t support this on a large scale. The truth is, as educators we need to accept that a collaborative mindset requires us to recognize that frequent face to face collaboration with all members of a PLC is not likely or even realistic.

A wise principal in my district (@debglock) once asked “What can we do on a professional development day (non-instructional day)  that we can’t do any other way? What can we do during a faculty meeting that we can’t do any other way?”  I love these questions because they imply that we need to maximize the usefulness and impact of the precious time we spend face to face.   This question applies to teacher collaboration as well. “What can we do in our face to face collaboration that can’t be done in another way?”  Thinking like this requires commitment, perseverance, transparency, patience,  honesty, trust,  flexibility and a willingness to learn and communicate in different (and sometimes better) ways.  Interestingly, these are the same kinds of skills we wish our students to exemplify.

If we are being honest with one another, we don’t always maximize our face to face time either. We spend it complaining, gossiping, and in task avoidance. We aren’t always willing to listen to one another’s ideas and core beliefs. We aren’t always willing to admit our own failures.  We aren’t always willing to engage in the hard conversations that hold one another accountable to the goal or the process. We aren’t always willing to help our colleagues come to their own new learnings. We often take the conversations that happen behind closed doors and judgmentally share them with other colleagues.  In other words, we aren’t always the best collaborators. We say we want more collaboration, but what would we do with it if we were given the opportunity?

The collaborative mindset is less about the tools we use to accomplish our goals and more about the desire to do whatever it takes to help students learn. The good news is, all of this is in our control. All of us can commit to one another to maximize the face to face time engaging in the deep and meaningful conversations. We can all take on the necessary roles to function as an effective and collaborative PLC. We can be honest and establish and support trusting relationships with one another. We can be transparent about our goals,  process, and results while also maintaining and rewarding the confidence of our colleagues and their opinions.  We can be open to trying new means of communicating, sharing, and working through digital tools that help keep the process and conversation ongoing between face to face meetings. Collaboration is an ongoing  conversation. It is not a time. It is a mindset.

This post is cross posted on the Digital Learning Environment's website blog.

It's not the kids who are failing.

Several years go, after participating in several cohorts of Powerful Learning Practices with Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson and with the support of another fantastic mentor in Robin Ellis, I realized that I had a lot of unlearning to do. One of the most challenging shifts for me to grapple with was to acknowledge that I was entirely too focused on what I was doing as a teacher and not enough on my students learning. What makes this so difficult for us as educators  is that this attitude or mindset often leaves us in an uncomfortable state of tension. That tension exists because of what we think we know to be true about teaching and what the reality of learning is for students. We know that teachers have a tremendous impact on student learning, but it's not necessarily in ways that we traditionally think.

As educators, we face a generation of students who appear to be disengaged, unmotivated, and unwilling to learn in school.  Yet, this is also a generation with more access to information,  an immense will to connect with one another and the world beyond them, and an intrinsic desire to be creative and innovative.  Our students are learning. It's just that they are doing it outside of school, without us.  Certainly there is argument on both sides of the debate as to whether this type of  less structured,  self driven learning will actually produce a generation of "well-educated" Americans (as if anyone has EVER defined that well).  Want evidence, just google the  MOOC debate occurring in higher ed. 

What has also become glaringly obvious to me is that many schools and classrooms rarely include students in  the decision making process. And I'm not referring to a Student Government or Student Advisory Council which are both fantastic opportunities for students to have a voice. How often do we ask students how they want to learn? How often do we ask students what they would like to create? How often do we involve students in the design process? How often to do we ask them to co-create rubrics or determine what success looks like in THEIR growth and learning?

As a history teacher, I love to tell stories. It's inherent in what I do and it's part of my instructional toolbelt. We know that storytelling is paramount to understanding the past and making connections to modern life, yet if the same person is always telling the story (ie. the teacher) there is little learning that is occurring. Perhaps the kids are being passively entertained. Maybe the kids are being politely compliant.  But if they aren't the ones telling the story, there is a limited chance that they will retain the story, let alone apply it or construct meaning from it. 

In the debate over what it means to be  "career and college ready"  (as defined by CCSS) most educators can agree that one of the goals is to help support successful self-directed learning and learners. Yet somehow we seem to be missing a voice, a story: the students. As educators, we know a thing or two about content and pedagogy. We attempt to marry the art of teaching with the science of teaching. We utilize the brain based research equally with what our own guts tell us. Yet despite all of our training and experience, learning is magic(al) and mysterious.  The only way to change that is to give control of learning over to the stakeholders themselves: the students. 

If we continue to make every decision for our students about what to learn, how to learn it, and when to do it, we can not call them disengaged, or lazy, or incapable of achievement. If we control every part of their school day, their lack of engagement, their lack of effort, their lack of learning is actually a reflection on us. No matter what one-size fits all strategy we employ, no matter what "traditional" teaching methods we cling to, no matter what new innovative technologies we believe will transform our classrooms, if our students do not have control over their own learning journey's, we are failing them. 

Make it work for learning.

When we discuss the purchase of technology,  one of the main debates is typically over whether we will get enough student learning for our financial investment. As we know, a SMART board does not make a smart teacher.  And putting a tablet or laptop in the hand of every child does not guarantee growth either. Realizing that this is an oversimplification of a somewhat complicated scenario, what I hear most often debated is not student readiness, but teacher readiness.The debate becomes a chicken or egg scenario. Do we buy the “stuff”  first and then professionally develop our staff so they can use it with their students or do we try and build capacity, a tipping point, and then buy the “stuff” when people are ready?

We have come to assume  that students will learn how to use the “stuff” pretty quickly. Just last week I supported some teachers who wanted to have their 2nd graders try their hand at blogging about an upcoming trip to the zoo.   I pulled a group of 8 students into the hallway and we sat on the floor exploring Kidblog together.  Before I could even begin to give them explicit directions, many of them had already figured out the wysiwig tools and were changing font colors, font size, and underlining text. This led to a great discussion about how and when to use those tools for effect in blogging.

When I asked the students how many of them had seen Kidblog before, none of their hands raised. When I asked them how many of them had ever seen the bold, or italic, or underline tool before, only 3 of them raised their hand.  I didn’t have to “teach” them how to make text bold, italic, and underline. I did need to help them explore why they might use those tools within their text.  Despite a relatively new environment, the students were willing to play. They weren’t worried about breaking anything, and they weren’t worried about failing miserably. They simply wanted to see what they could do with the tool.

As educators, we have a lot to learn from these second graders. We are sometimes given many “gifts” in the form of new hardware, software, curriculum materials, and even professional learning opportunities. And yet, for some of us, instead of opening those gifts up and playing with them, pushing them to their limits, and seeing what we can do with them, we often let them sit in a box (literally and/or metaphorically) until someone gives us the proper training on how it works. I’m not sure where we as adults lost our sense of play and our fearlessness.  I’m not sure when we became so complacent and unwilling to take learning into our own hands either.

We also need to recognize that the technologies our students might innately come to understand are not necessarily going to be used academically or appropriately out of the box either. We must also remember that not  all kids have the same experiences or access at home as they do at school.  In the end, our responsibility becomes less about learning how to make it work and more about how to make it work for learning.  

Choose Passion

When I read this excellent post by Angela Maiers (@angelamaeirs) about the passion gap recently, it helped me to reflect on how fortunate I have been to have some amazing mentors and teachers who have “metaphorically hugged me” by supporting and challenging me in support of my passions. (see @robinellis, @snbeach to name a few) I’ ve also had incredibly supportive colleagues and administrators as well. Sadly, I’ ve come to realize that my experiences are not typical in most schools or classrooms.

For many educators, William Butler Yeats’ classic quote “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” resonates with them. Yet how often do we, as teachers, use the proverbial pail to douse and extinguish that fire inside of our students instead?  How often do we pour cold water on our colleagues ideas instead of fanning the flames? How often do administrators forcefully snuff out the innovative fires burning inside their teachers? How often do school boards or other state and federal bodies completely extinguish the fires inside the bellies of administrators who see the potential inside their schools and classrooms?

Based on that last paragraph, it would be safe to assume that “passion killing” starts at the top and  rolls down hill. In the accountability-based, standardized test driven world of education, what one does based on their passion is rarely appreciated or valued because it often can not be quantified or evaluated. Yet, those of us at the bottom of the educational  food chain, who often complain about a lack of professional autonomy and choice, professional development that doesn’t match our unique learning needs and styles, and little personalized feedback and support from our overworked principals turn around and return the favor within our classrooms.  We punish students by giving them little of their own autonomy or choice. We do not support their learning in personalized ways. And as overworked teachers we rarely give them the timely and necessary feedback needed to help them grow.

Many of us don’t want to admit this, but every one of us has a choice. Choosing to be passionate and providing that space for our students to be passionate learners is not easy in the current educational climate. It requires imagination and curiosity. It requires commitment and dedication. It requires data and evidence. It requires self awareness through reflection and adaptability to make necessary changes. It requires effort  and perseverance. It requires trust and faith. And most importantly, it requires courage. (See habitudes).

In all the rhetoric surrounding education reform these days, the words of Sir Ken Robinson always ring out to me:

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”

― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

As educators, we must love our students and one another enough to embrace this vision and work tirelessly to make it a reality for every child. We must create classroom and district  cultures and climates that embrace inquiry and authentic opportunities of learning. We must be reflective enough to see the many ways we destroy our students and colleagues passions and then have the courage to change those practices.  We must shine a light on and reject the systemic processes  that do the same and work vigorously, professionally, and passionately to change them. And we must do this together. Living in a world with a passion gap is not acceptable for us or for our kids. We all have a choice. Choose passion.

How transparent is your classroom?

If you asked teachers about the transparency of their classroom, it would most likely be low on their list of priorities.  And that’s a shame. In the high-stakes accountability driven world educators currently operate in, the tendency has been to hunker down, close the door, and hope that no one notices you long enough to make you endure yet another series of frustrating changes.  At the same time, what if instead of crawling back into the caves, we took another approach?  What if instead of hiding, we did the opposite? What if chose to shine a light on  the learning that is occurring in our schools and classrooms?

The philosophical shift to building a more transparent classroom is not an easy one. It takes courage and resolve and a belief that by sharing everything (warts and all), the classroom will become an optimal learning environment for both a teacher and their students.  There is a vulnerability that comes with transparency as well as humble acknowledgment  that we may not have control of or even understand the magic of learning in our classrooms. Let’s take a look at some ways we can begin to move towards more open and transparent classroom environments.

1) Document everything.  Evidence of learning comes in many shapes and sizes these days.  Technology affords us the ability to document all of it. Use your cell phone to take photos, video and audio recordings. Instead of focusing on grading student work, provide feedback to them while “collecting” it.  Focus less on recording numbers in a gradebook and instead focus more on what these artifacts mean for your learners.  In itself, documenting everything does not make you transparent, but it is a necessary practical first step. Record your mini-lessons and small group conversations so that absent students can view them later on. Remember, students who need extra support also have this resource to go back to and view at their own pace. They have the advantage of pausing, rewinding, and re-watching the lesson.  Even more important than teachers documenting evidence, we must provide students the opportunity to document their own learning journeys.  Let them give one another feedback through digital collaboration tools or peer evaluated rubrics. Let them pull out their cell phones and support them in creating their own understandings through media and evidence collection. Again, documenting everything does not make your students learning more transparent, but it does begin to create larger conversations about quality, revision, and publishable products.

2) Create a digital learning community. Many teachers have moved towards Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard, My Big Campus, Schoology, and Edmodo (for example).  These environments allow for continued collaboration and communication and provides opportunities for students and teachers to continue to interact after the school day ends. Most LMS’ are “gated” communities which allow for students to have a safe place to share their work without making it available on the web immediately. Think of these as playgrounds or sandboxes for kids to work and play. They should be places where kids can take academic risks and make mistakes. While many teachers and students prefer to have these communities be open to students and teachers only, some of them provide opportunities for parents or community members to participate as well.

3) Digital Portfolios of Learning.  Student portfolio’s are not a new idea but have often been locked away in a classroom closet or drawer only to be pulled out at parent-teacher conference time. We need to be helping students create digital portfolios that are dynamic, visible, and showcase both evidence of the learning journey as well as published final products. Through the use of google sites or wikispaces (though there are many others), students can create spaces that provide opportunities for feedback from peers, teachers and/or experts. What is key is that no matter what tool you use, the students should determine the visibility of their work, while you encourage openness.

To do this though, we need to practice what we preach. Imagine that teachers modeled this by making their lesson plans, brainstorms, assessments, and rubrics available for colleagues. What if teachers recorded their most effective strategies and best practices as exemplars for peers to view?  What if teachers posted videotaped  parts of lessons to receive constructive feedback from their colleagues? How could digital teacher portfolios of learning help us to continuously improve?

4) Blog. Teachers and students alike should consider blogging because it helps make our thinking and learning visible. We need to be more reflective as professionals and we need to model and encourage reflection for our students.  The best teacher blogs are ones that share insight into the classroom experience, sharing the ups and downs, the successes and failures.  Consider that by having a blog, other teachers just like you might have the courage to try something or learn from you.  Blogging is one of the most transparent and scary things we can do as educators. It is also one of the ways we can regularly communicate with and invite parents into our classrooms and the insights we bring to our profession. For students, it provides them a voice and an opportunity to very publicly wrestle with questions and concepts for an audience far greater than their teacher and classmates.

5) Use Social Media.  It is becoming more common for districts and schools to use social media to communicate with parents and the community . Teachers should consider the use of social media not just because it can be effective communication tool with students and parents, but also because it provides us an opportunity to model how to use these tools for learning. Twitter and Facebook (for example)  provide platforms to share resources and information as well as celebrating the fun and learning occurring inside of our classrooms.  

In the end, transparency in teaching is mostly about sharing. Sharing learning spaces with kids, sharing ideas with colleagues, and sharing success with parents.  As educators we must challenge ourselves to be more open to sharing and transparent in our thinking so that all stakeholders can continue to learn and grow.

(This blog is cross posted at the Digital Learning Blog as well)

How do we maximize student effort the first time around?

Being a part of a school district who made the commitment to be fully K-12 standards based five years ago has (to put it mildly) brought many ups and downs.  Implementation of any one radical educational shift and philosophy can bring heartache and struggle, let alone attacking multiple sacred cows at the same time.  Removing zeros from our repertoire, separating academic achievement from behavior, and eliminating extra credit just to name a few.  Although some of those shifts were easier than others, there are a few places where we are still trying to take the ideal (and ultimately best for our learners)  and make it real inside our classrooms.  We know that providing students multiple opportunities to show evidence of their growth or learning is right and best for kids, but what does that look like with jam packed classrooms and jam packed curriculum's?  And what do we do when students who know they will have opportunities to revise or remediate take advantage of that by not doing their best work the first time around? 

We have been very fortunate to have some experts help define our core philosophies and support us in our learning journey over the past few years: notably Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli) and most recently Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam).  On Tuesday,  Dr. Wiliam answered questions and engaged in conversations with teachers and administrators at all levels  around some of the issues mentioned above, but the conversation weaved its way into many concerns and questions above and beyond assessment practices.  I have done my best to summarize and categorize  Dr. Wiliam's perspectives and the learning that occurred from this unique experience.  (My apologies to Dr. Wiliam if I didn't quite get it all right.) Below are my takeaways. 

1) A student's willingness to complete work to the best of their ability (or at all) is a reflection of the culture a classroom teacher creates for that individual student. As teachers we have a moral obligation to know each of our students as people and more specifically as learners. When students are not learning, we need to question and challenge ourselves to not only diagnose what is getting in the way, but do something about it. Many of us believe that daily conferencing with a child is important (and could help us determine what is getting in the way for that child) but the structure of our classroom may not allow for that to happen. If our structures (re: too much teacher directed lecture) get in the way, we must change them. We need to be open to asking ourselves if we are getting in the way of our students learning and then be courageous enough to get out of the way.

2) A teacher does not have the ability to motivate a child to learn intrinsically. This will be a hard pill to swallow, but ultimately the best we can do is create a climate or culture that supports each students ability to learn. How do we do this? Dr. Wiliam gives us a clue when he tells us that this happens through "engagement and responsiveness". We need to provide actionable feedback that encourages effort and growth. As teachers, we must also question whether our use of extrinsic rewards (ie. grades, bribes, competition) are detrimental to our students ability to tap into their intrinsic desires to learn. 

3) Students will complete tasks on time and to the best of their ability when they have skin in the game. How often do you provide students choices in your classroom? How much of what happens in your classroom is done without asking for student input? Do you allow your students to show what they know and can do in ways that make sense to them? How often do students have input in the creation of an assessment? What about the rubric or evaluative process? Do you encourage students to ask deep meaningful questions surrounding your curriculum and then support them in grappling and ultimately answering them? How much control are you willing to give to students in support of their learning?

4) Creating a culture that encourages and supports risk taking and failure is a place where learning happens. A classroom where students are encouraged to take risks and are supported when they fail (instead of sorted by grades and/or made to feel as if they aren't smart enough) will help students to want to try their best the first time because the goal becomes solving the problem and/or about improvement. As teachers, our job is to help students challenge themselves as well as pushing them to places they themselves did not think was possible. As Dr. Wiliam reminds us, "The difference between a good violinist and a great violinist is that while good violinists practice what they can do, great violinists practice what they can't do." Are we creating meaningful opportunities for our students to try and do what they can't yet do?

5)"We are preparing our students for a future we can't even imagine" (D. Wiliam) The goal of many "traditionalists" is to return us back to a place where memorization and lecture were king and that the only way our students can be prepared for the real world is to force them to learn information by cramming it down their throats, practicing things over and over through drill and kill, thus destroying any chances of a student being prepared for a world in which innovation and creativity are becoming even more essential for success. To those who seek to punish students into understanding the harsh realities of a world where deadlines are real and no one ever gets second chances, here is my challenge to you: Don't just settle at having real world consequences, make your classroom a place that reflects the kind of work done in the real world. Provide opportunities for your students to collaborate and design, create and problem solve, explore and troubleshoot, play and fail, innovate and celebrate. Have them do it for an audience that represents real- world conditions with real-world experts. Have them do it transparently so others can evaluate their work and provide feedback.

Remember: just because we can't quite envision the future for our students doesn't mean we should hold them back from creating and defining it for themselves.