Sustainable Shift

          I am amazed and a little ashamed that my last blog post was the end of  September 2011, some four months ago!!  Sure I have all the usual excuses….too busy, the holidays, I forgot…but really, I think the reason is that I have not made a “sustainable shift” in the way I do business.  And I think that is the case with many in leadership positions in our schools, the very folks we are counting on to be the change agents we need for success in 21^st century teaching and learning.  It is well known that many of our educational leaders are nearing the end of their careers and that these “baby-boomers” are retiring in droves.  (well, at least that is still true in our profession, even though so many other boomers are working years longer). So I would guess that younger teachers and administrators, more tech-oriented, will be better at some of the tech-savvy things that are just not organically a part of us!! 

            So I started to think of ways I could make a “sustainable shift” and maybe help some other “oldie, but goodies” out there to make it as well.  Here are some ideas to get us started.  I guess this is a belated list of New Year’s resolutions!

•         Subscribe to an RSS feed.  There is way too much reading from journals, blogs, newspapers, research, etc. to keep up with so you need this Web 2.0 tool to help keep up!  If you don’t know how to go about it, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU  for a tutorial!
•          Get a Twitter account and start finding folks of like mind.  I actually have a great Twitter feed I have built which is entirely educational related.  I learn so much there….when I go to it!!  Again, go here for help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xbjIE8cPM
•          For school administrators, send a daily email to your staff with whatever highlights you want to share.  The key is to do it every day!!
•          Use Google docs for sharing curriculum and instruction ideas, lesson plans, school improvement plans, etc.  Google Docs is a great tool and some of your teachers probably already use it.  Ask them!

            I will be thinking of other ways we can make the shift into the 21^st century a sustainable one for those of us who have not been born into it!  Stay tuned, and please, share any ideas you may have with me!

21st Century Skill

Using the Smart Phone responsibly as a tool in school is a 21st century skill we should be teaching our students.  They have them in their pockets anyway, why not capture the power and use it to learn?


Here is link to a great article I read recently on "MindShift" titled "Why Schools Should Stop Banning Cell Phones and Use Them for Learning".

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/08/why-schools-should-stop-banning-cell-phones-and-use-them-for-learning241.html


Think about it!!

The Summer of Our Discontent

            Looming huge for school systems across the nation are unprecedented budget cuts.  Teacher assistants have been slashed, classroom sizes have increased and other key personnel have had to go.  In North Carolina, the legislature wants to cut pre-school and that is just plain stupid!  Ultra-conservatives the likes of Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, think that pre-school is a form of governmental brainwashing and that children should only be educated by their parents in the early years!!  I think anyone in public education knows without a doubt the importance of helping disadvantaged children early.  We will never eradicate the inevitable “gap” between the haves and have nots,  but early childhood programs have long been critical in at least helping to even the playing field.  Hopefully between “The Judge” and our governor, funding will be restored!

            The Teaching Fellows has been eliminated and this is so very shortsighted.  The Teaching Fellows program has provided a high-quality pipeline of teachers for schools in North Carolina for over 25 years!!!  Of course there are other cuts, but these seem to me to be the worst of the worst!

            Then there was the  “Save our Schools” rally in Washington, DC.  It was like the “Woodstock” of public education!!  Diane Ravitch, Jonothan Kozol and Deborah Meier, all of whom I have followed and considered to be among the best thinkers about education of my lifetime, were among the featured speakers.

            The platform of the rally centered on public schools as the cornerstone of our democracy and with the changing demographics of society we must become more inclusive.  It becomes imperative to differentiate education so ALL students can retain their right to free and appropriate education.  Much was discussed about poverty as the root of the achievement gap……period!  I could not agree more!

            At the rally, advocates for doing away with high stakes accountability as we know it, were in full force.

            Of course we need to be held accountable but we really have gone too far.

             Look at the testing scandals that have been uncovered this summer.  These blatant acts of cheating are a result of the culture of fear built by high stakes testing.  And now we have the US Secretary of Education unilaterally overriding the federal legislation No Child Left Behind due to the fact that so many schools are failing under the recently upped requirements?????   “The current law serves as a disincentive to higher standards, rather than as an incentive,” Mr. Duncan said.  Come on Arnie, when you play basketball and keep missing the basket, you don’t move the net!!  You must improve your shot!!!!  (Well, maybe in light of all the cheating problems, this is just as well.) But is it the best thing for our kids?  We are really jerking our teachers, kids and parents around in the midst of such political pandering.

            But ahhhhh……fall is coming!  Cooler temperatures and thinking may prevail!  School will begin anew and the summer of our discontent will be over. And then you begin to discover that “….the more things change, the more they stay the same”.   Sad, but true!

The Definition of 21st Century Literacies

     This graphic was created with a Web 2.0 tool I am learning at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation this week.  The tool is called "Tagul" for my teacher friends....it is really neat and much more useful than "Wordle" so I hope you will try it!

     More important than the tool is the review of the fact that the skill set needed to be successful in this century is changing.  The text was taken from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) who have published the definition of the "new literacy".  Included in that definition is the following:

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

“…..forest for the trees.”

My grandparents and parents used the old adage “….can’t see the forest for the trees…”  quite regularly.  As someone who has recently retired from education, I am coming to realize that when you are in the public education system, you definitely cannot “…see the forest for the trees”!  So often “the system”, behemoth that it is, prevents that from happening.  For example, I know how much sense it makes in our 21^st century world to eliminate textbooks, a huge expense  for irrelevant material.  But how many times did I go through the adoption process and allocate precious resources toward textbooks?  Many, many times without thought to what we could have been doing with all those dollars to upgrade the technology our kids need to thrive in the global society. 

            Did you know that South Korean officials recently announced that students would not use textbooks after 2014?  Resources will be allocated to electronic tablets and e-learning systems.  They are seeing through “the trees” and realizing that this will contribute toward narrowing the achievement gap between the rich and poor and make learning more fun and effective.  It will take that leap of thinking on the part of “the system” to make it happen!!  It needs to happen in our country soon!  We just need to cut through the bureaucracy of textbook purchasing and see the bigger picture of the 21^st century!!

Attention Getter!

When I see a headline “Education? It’s no longer the answer”, it certainly gets my attention quickly!! That is the title given by the Charlotte Observer of March 9, 2011, to a rerun of a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times that ran on March 6, 2011 entitled “Degrees and Dollars”. Wonder why the Observer didn’t use the real title? Anyway, the gist of this op-ed piece is centered on Krugman’s contention that putting more kids through college is not the answer to restoring middle class America. He talks about the fact that a lot of “white-collar” work which is done by the well educated is on the way to computerization, i.e. legal analysis, medical diagnosis, etc. (think of “Watson”!) The menial, labor-intensive jobs such as custodial work and truck driving will require less-educated workers even in the face of technology.

When I was working on high school reform, we always said that college-prep was the default curriculum for all students. We were not naïve enough to think that all would go to college but raising he bar for all was supposed to help you no matter what path you chose. I still do not think that is a bad thing. We don’t know where technology will take us in the future so everyone needs to possess higher-order thinking skills to deal with the proliferation of knowledge.

I agree with Krugman when he states that we need to fix the inequalities that kids face from the start….where that loathed gap begins….as it is a waste of human potential. Yes!!! But to relegate people toward a lesser standard of education is not the answer. We need improved early programs accompanied by rigorous, relevant and personalized instruction for all to be successful in the 21st century.

On the other hand, maybe what we need to consider is what was discussed in the Pathways to Prosperity Project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education of February 2011. They discuss various European models and one I particularly like is from Finland and Denmark where they keep all students in a common, untracked comprehensive school up through grade 9 or 10, at which point students and their families, not the school, decide which kind of upper secondary education they will pursue. Some of those programs could include Project Lead The Way, a rigorous engineering curriculum, career academies or “schools within schools” or be modeled after SERB’s High Schools That Work. The main objective is to provide a smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood well supported by a sound, basic education for all in the earlier grades.  Give up tracking?  That's another topic for another time!!

Lot’s to think about…but surely education IS the answer!!!! 

Little and Personal

I like what Marc Prensky says in this short video clip of him talking with Stephen Heppell.  I have long thought we need to embrace what the kids already have!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cy1X-_CbFM&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy this clip and think about what it means for our classrooms.  Prensky is always ahead of the curve.....we need to listen!!

Hamlet's Blackberry: Reflections

(How can I become a successful blogger if I don't post, I am asking myself this morning as I notice my last post was January 10!!)

I seem to have a lot on my mind about education, even though I am now "retired" from the rat race of public education administration. Somehow, looking back and having the time to reflect and read some things I WANT to read, has been especially fulfilling, much to my surprise!

So, I just finished reading Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers. That title caught my eye but I wasn't sure what to expect. Powers talks a lot about other periods in history when new "technologies" caused a lot of commotion such as the evolution of paper, the printing press, etc. With each innovation came lots of stress caused by the inevitable changes taking place.  Surely the evolution of the book was to be the fall of civilization, at least in some eyes.  


So it goes with technology innovation today.  A lot of folks, including lots of educators, do not embrace 21st century tools for teaching in the digital age.  Do we even want to admit we are in the digital age??  Power's reflections back on previous times actually helped me feel a little more patient with the human tendency to buck innovation.  And certainly it makes me realize the absolute need for adequate professional development before launching innovation.  The role of teaching is changing but students really need more than ever, the wisdom of adults, as they always have, to help them find their way in a rapidly changing world.


Powers spends a lot of time in the book challenging all of us to figure out ways we can actually disengage from the screen and make time for self as well as personal and meaningful human interactions.  That is surely always valuable for our sanity.  With the stress that comes from being connected 24/7 with the world at our fingertips, time for reflection is essential.  Our kids are going to need us to help them with that balance as well!!

Healing

"If we want to heal this nation immediately, we should pay attention to our children.  We should hard-wire their brains for kindness, love, compassion, joy, and equanimity."
- Deepak Chopra
This is a very powerful and  very important statement in light of the week-end tragedy in Arizona.  Never has our role as parents, grandparents, mentors and educators been more important in the future of our country.  Where were the parents of this young man??  How did he slip through the cracks??  What about his mental health issues??  So many unanswered questions!!

That Used to Be Us!

As an administrator and innovator, I get frustrated with some teachers' lack of desire and motivation to embrace technology as a tool for instruction.  However, this recent article in the Washington Examiner, is troubling at best!!
http://ow.ly/3zWAE

We hear over and over and over that our education system is behind the likes of China, India and Japan.  Our students are falling farther and farther behind and even the president recently said, in reference to high achievement of students in other countries, "...that used to be us...".  We continue to lament the fact that today's classrooms are designed and still function to prepare students for a world that no longer exists.  But yet our teachers, the very ones who can make a difference and turn our system around, are complaining about technology as a burden and something that makes their jobs harder!!  What a disgrace that we don't do a better job preparing our teachers and bringing them into the 21st century!  No one likes change and I understand that.  However, change and embracing technology as the way of the 21st century as a necessity instead of an "add-on"  is no longer a choice.  We can sit back and say ..."that used to be us..." or move forward, using technology to help us....OR find another profession!!!

Top Five Wishes for Education in 2011

As the year ends and we move into the second decade of the 21st century, here are some of my wishes for education in the New Year:

1.  The end of black/white boards!!  Smart Boards in every classroom!
2.   No more desks in 21st century classrooms.  Desks are rigid and confining...not what education is    about today!
3.  Access to 1:1 computing for all students....the power to consume, create, collaborate and share can only help student learning soar!
4. Fewer books and paper.....digital content is here folks!!
5. The prohibition of cell phones and other devices in the classroom....let's embrace what the students hold dear!

More to come........the biggie is how to pay for some of the above in these dire times.  Stay tuned and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Can You Sandbag a Tsunami?

           In this case, the tsunami is technology in our lives, especially in the lives of our students.  It is as huge and daunting as a tsunami, and we cannot fight it with continued attempts to ban it or see it as something “added on” to our already full plates as educators.  There needs to be a balance struck.  There’s a word-balance!  It always makes its way into educational discussions.  “Balanced literacy”-where we sort of arrived in terms of literacy instruction after years of reliance on either whole-language or phonics, for example.  It is not a new concept in dally life as many seek a sense of balance in a hectic world.  The Greeks first spoke of balance or moderation in their lives centuries ago.

            And so it goes with technology.  There is no way even the greatest, most vigilant parents are going to take it away from the kids, much less us as educators.  Maybe another 21^st century skill needs to be taught amongst all the other skills we teach and that will be how to balance ourselves.  Research is proving that heavy usage of technology impacts behavior and the brain.  Our brains need downtime to synthesize and make connections…to really learn.  The adolescent brain is still in a critical stage of development and the overuse of technology is not necessarily a positive thing.

            So let’s help our kids think this one through.  Use the research to show kids what is happening and embrace technology as a wonderful, productive tool to be used for learning and entertainment, but in balance in our lives. There is no sandbagging a tsunami!!!

Gender and Education

This past Tuesday night, we had a lively discussion in the graduate class I am teaching about gender issues in the curriculum.  Our reading assignment had centered around girls and the bias against females, especially in the "hidden curriculum".  The next morning I picked up the Charlotte Observer and on the editorial page was a column about the effects of underachieving boys!  We really did not address that last night but it is a very big concern and ties in well to all that we have been talking about in reforming curriculum and making teaching and learning more relevant and engaging for everyone.  Boys are more likely than girls to have poor grades, be learning disabled, be held back a grade, be suspended or expelled, have a negative attitude toward school and ultimately dropout at higher numbers.  We also know that over the past few years, that women outnumber men 4 to 3 in college.  The current generation is the first in which women are more educated than their male counterparts.  This leads to a myriad of other problems that affect our economy and society as a whole.  Again, what are we doing with curriculum and instruction to ensure that EVERYONE gets a  rigorous, relevant engaging education enabling them to excel and be successful in life?

Globalization and Education

Again I am reading Tom Friedman...you know, "The World is Flat" author, NY Times columnist and forward thinker.  In his editorial November 2nd he tells how India is coming up with load of technological innovations most of which are able to be accessed on the cheapest of cell phones.  For instance, apparently a couple of brothers wrote a software program which turned into a virtual bank which can be accessed by the poor migrant workers who are absent from their families and need to send money back home.  And Nepal now has made 3G network service available on the top of Mt. Everest!!  Friedman thinks we need to get "hyped" about all this....that "they" (India, China, et al) have low-cost technological solutions to about every problem...that the cheapest cell phone becomes a "digital bank".
The link to education for us??  Well, we don't even allow students to have cell phones in schools much less use them as learning, productive, innovative tools!!!   I know, I know, I was  principal for a long time and we must have rules and procedures....I get that.  BUT, we need to figure out how to use the technology and have procedures in place to protect students and maintain order in the schools.  There is a way, we just are not accustomed to thinking outside the box and collaborating (maybe even with the students, God forbid), to come up with solutions to make us competitive and keep up in this era of globalization.

About the children

My view of my retirement is that it is a new chapter of my career which I am looking forward to with great excitement.  Whatever the reason for leaving a job, it always causes one to start to reflect and look back on what has been.  As I was packing my things, I carefully took down a small "Scherenschnitte" which is a German scissor-cut much like a silhouette, of some children prancing along in a line.  I was reminded that it was given to me by my colleagues when I left the school where I taught before I went on to be a principal.  I remember them telling me not to forget that it is always "about the children".  Looking back I think that was some great advice and I would like to think that I have always remembered that it IS about the children.  So simple, yet so profoundly important!!

Musings

Why is education "dangerously irrelevant"????  This is worrisome to someone who spent 38 years serving in public education.  There is such an urgency to change and such a resistance to it on our part.  Tom Friedman had a great column in NY Times yesterday.  He speaks of the revolution that has occurred in the rest or the world who want so desperately what we have while "...the U.S. seems sadly unprepared to take advantage of the revolution it has spawned. The country’s worn-out infrastructure, failing education system and lack of political consensus have prevented it from riding a new wave to prosperity.”   Ouch.   (October 31, 2010, New York Times).
This is a new blog for me and I hope to provoke some conversation and thinking about how we can help advance 21st century teaching, learning and thinking.  The video below gives us something to think about:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U