Online learning

I am taking advantage of this stay at home time to enroll in a couple of online MOOCs.  EdX and Coursera are two that I have used before.  My favorite course was in 2013 through EdX Harvard.  It was Sandell's course on Justice.  I enjoyed the video lectures, additional readings and asynchronous discussions. 

Today I began an EdX course titled "Chasing Your Dream. How to End Procrastination and Get the Job You Love."  Sounds pertinent to my current situation. 

Another course I found is on Coursera, "Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Developing Relationships."

I haven't started them yet and it's a lot like judging a book by its cover, but I'm eager to find out more.  A lot has been written lately about this kind of education.  But no matter how I feel about technology and distance learning, what I like about this learning situation is that it is completely my choice.  And I have the choice not to finish them if they don't meet my needs. 

I don't believe there is anything inherently wrong about learning through lecturing or reading or watching videos.  More important than the actual activity is the choice, agency, and relevancy of it.  The learner needs to decide what needs to be learned and how to learn it in order to apply it to their own situation.

In my case, I am battling with procrastination and I would like to find a job that I love.  In order to do that, I might learn something from this course.  The assessment will be the degree to which I am able to put it into practice.  No need for a grade, not even pass/fail.

My goal for the Building Relationships course is to deepen my understanding of this topic so that I can incorporate it into my teaching practice.  I would also like to make a more concrete connection between meaningful learning and relationships .

Some schools are approaching online learning in this way.  Teachers are supporting students in exploring topics they are interested in.  Teachers are also helping students navigate the social and emotional aspects of the recent pandemic.  Parents are learning how to spend more time with their children and developing stronger relationships.

Some schools are trying to replicate all of the things they do at school - online.  Lots of standards, lots of worksheets, lots of quizzes, lots of busy work, and none of it by choice.  I don't think the online nature of this is the troubling aspect.  The most troubling aspect is that it is going on in schools to begin with.

I do believe that some are discovering the joy of learning outside of school using the online experience to enhance this process.  But if schooling is happening just like it did in school - only at home - then the online experience is likely horrible.

Good intentions

When I began this gap year I had high hopes of maintaining a daily blog of progressive learning.  I attended two national education conferences and have read many books related to learning.  I have also expanded my Twitter network and read many, many posts related to progressive education.  I have been absorbing and thinking and grappling and researching.  But I have not created the amount of content I had thought I would.  I hesitate to interject in conversations or repeat ideas of others.  I have retweeted a few things, but on whole I am not part of the conversation. 

I wonder why?

I have strong opinions about schools and learning, but they are not popular opinions.  My idea of "school" is more like a community center.  Democratic schools like Sudbury and Summerhill seem idyllic to me.  If I had children of my own, I would be "unschooling" them.  Children need other people of all ages to answer their questions and provide resources for their own exploration.  They don't need a prescribed curriculum, constant assessment, and rankings that traditional schools focus on.

I believe as a society we could create more citizens who are happy, self-confident, self-aware, empathetic, wise, emotionally intelligent, and well-adjusted than our current PreK-12 system produces. 

But what do I do with that?  There are plenty of other advocates online.  Plenty of other people have written books about it.  Who am I?

I do have 30 years of experience in schools as a teacher and administrator.  I have worked in six different school. Public and independent. Overseas and in the U.S.. Large and small. Grades K-12.  I have implemented all sorts of "progressive" practices in the classroom.  Perhaps I can start by summarizing my own experience to help explain how I got here. The next step might be to describe the kind of school I would like to work at.

Learning Walks

Learning walks have become popular over the years.  Many protocols exist to help administrative teams gather observations of learning around the school.  Fieldwork Education's Looking for Learning is one of those (affectionately known to some as "Lurking for Learning").  The idea is for administrators to conduct classroom walk throughs, make observations, gather data, then provide timely, relevant feedback to teachers.

I've recently taken a more literal interpretation of learning walks.  I go on a walk and I wonder about the things I see, hear, smell, feel and taste.  While I do that I imagine what a 5 year old, 12 year old or 17 year old might wonder about.  Then I imagine how I, as a learning mentor, might help that child pursue those wonderings.  What resources might I provide for additional information?  What experiences might I create to help them build their understanding?  What kinds of projects and outcomes might I help the students to accomplish as they apply their knowledge?  Which dispositions and skills might I need to be explicit with them?

The inspiration for the walks is a set of touristy cards we purchased years ago titled City Walks Chicago.  There are 50 cards, each describing a short (1 to 2 miles) walk in a different part of the city.  I've really been enjoying the autumn whether and getting to know our home city. As
Here's one such example based on a walk I took in Lincoln Park of Chicago. (You can see all of my walks here. https://citywalkschicago.blogspot.com/2019/09/20-lincoln-park-south.html

Teachable moments

Back in the day (1990) when I thought I was teaching high school earth science (as opposed to teaching adolescents) I would embrace teachable moments.  Often, these teachable moments came in the form of an earthquake, volcano, or hurricane that occurred somewhere else in the world.  (It seemed the only natural disasters upstate New York ever experienced were blizzards and the occasional glacier.)  I asked students to read the newspaper and share stories of Earth Science related phenomena.   Thankfully they would also share feel good stories about the space program, advances in green technology and success stories related to environmental protection.   So it wasn't all doom and gloom.

We kept a bulletin board on the wall to display the articles and students would summarize, ask questions, speculate and draw conclusions.  I facilitated small group discussions and occasionally asked students to write down their thoughts.   Feedback came from peers and myself verbally.   I didn't rank their performance.  I didn't assign a grade based on a rubric.  I didn't record anything about it.

The annual New York State Regents Examination in Earth Sciences did not assess or measure critical thinking skills.  Or summarizing skills.  Or questioning skills.  Or listening skills.  But I felt that these things were important so I made sure to spend time on them.  If a hurricane occurred while we were in the middle of the rock cycle unit, then I would still spend time in class that day discussing hurricanes.  Later in the year, when we were in the weather unit, I would refer back to that hurricane.  But it never concerned me that we "lost" a day during the rock cycle unit.   In fact, I found that about 3 weeks of test prep in late May/early June was sufficient to achieve the highest results in my district.

Thought experiment: What if the entire schooling experience were built from provocations that came from news or observations?    Instead of organizing the content into different classes, taught in different rooms, by different teachers, at different times students and teachers might be organized differently.  Perhaps the role of a teacher would be more like an advisor. 

Here's one scenario...
A student would choose the provocation.  The teacher would orchestrate activities that would build skills like communication, reading, speaking, summarizing, reflection and critical thinking.  Content would be dictated by the information that is necessary to understand the provocation.  If students needed additional explanations of concepts or required additional facts, then the teacher (or other students, or media specialist, or librarian, or principal, or community member, or parent, or the teacher next door...) might provide that explanation or that fact or the resources to find them.  Students might produce a multimedia product to share their learning.  They might be inspired to organize and complete a service project or task related to the news item they chose.  All along they would receive feedback from all those people listed previously.   No need to assess or rank or grade or describe.

Would students get better at communication, reading, speaking, summarizing, reflection and critical thinking?  Depends on the frequency and quality of the feedback and then how the students apply that feedback.   That part of learning won't change. 

Would students find relevance and motivation and interest and engagement?  Probably. 

Getting From A to B

I am staying in Old Town (Alexandria, Virginia).  The Model Schools Conference is at the Gaylord Convention Center across the Potomac river.  The conference provides a shuttle bus each morning, but I was ready early this morning and decided to take an Uber.  My driver, Lee, was friendly and safe and she got me to the Gaylord.  She did miss an exit along the way which required us to travel an extra mile and do a U-turn to get back on track.  Now, in her defense, she did need to navigate the spaghetti maze of highways and ramps shown in the photo.  She knew immediately when she missed the turn and said, "I'm sorry.  I knew I should have turned there, but I was reading the signs and they didn't match."  Luckily, I have a growth mindset, a polite disposition and I was not in a hurry.  Also, the exact same thing happened to me in an Uber with a different driver three days ago.

This is the new world.  Anyone can be a part-time taxi driver.  This new world requires a comfort with mistakes.  It requires the ability to respond to mistakes with civility.  It requires the ability to respond to feedback and know how to fix mistakes, problem solve and think critically. It requires people to interact, apologize, empathize and treat others with kindness.  It requires social and emotional intelligence, a growth mindset and resilience.   More people are doing more things that are new to them.

You could argue that those skills have always been important long before they were packaged as 21st Century Skills.  But the industrial age of the 19th and 20th centuries diminished the frequency of their use.  People were often trained to do low-level manual tasks early in their careers and then continue doing those for a lifetime.  If they encountered any problem solving or critical thinking it was early in the process and once they figured it out they seldom encountered different circumstances in which to apply those skills.  Teaching others and learning from others was relegated to schools, not the "real" world.  On the social/emotional front it was always important to be polite and perhaps even cooperative, but true collaboration didn't occur all that much.  You learned how to treat other people from your parents, siblings, church, scouts, and sports teams.  Not math class.

So what?  Now what?  What are we going to do about the gap between the new world and schools?  How are we preparing students for this new world?  What assurances will we have that they have the skills they need?  And, by the way, they are here now.  The children are not our future.  The children are here now.  Living lives.  Wanting to be part of society.  Wanting to contribute.  Let's not make them wait.

How are schools acting for impact?  That is the question posed at this year's Model School's Conference.  They have provided many examples, many strategies and much inspiration.  The answer to that question is now up to each of us. 

Time to get specific about relationships

The openomg keynote speaker, Weston Kieschnick, spoke about the importance of teacher-student relationships.  Strategies and tools are well known and documented and can be provided to any teacher.  But, he pointed out, we are often vague when we speak about the character traits master teachers possess that enables them to connect deeply with kids.  He connected 12 specific items from John Hattie's work and presented this slide.  Each item is shown with its effect size and he backed each up with a vignette that illustrated how a teacher has used this to build a relationship.  Very specific.

Wes is a motivational and moving speaker.   I enjoyed his anecdotes and much of what he said resonated with me.  He also used the word rigor.  "Rigor. Relevance, Relationships."  Not sure how I feel about using that word in reference to learning.  Perhaps it has lost some of its dictionary meaning?   Is it possible that the word rigor can refer to "challenging, joyful learning" instead of drudgery and misery that the original word conveyed?

A Culture Focused on Learning

I attended the pre-conference session titled "Leading a Culture Focused on Learning".  It was facilitated by Bill Daggett, the founder and chairman of the International Center for Educational Leadership (ICLE - the host of this conference).  Anthony Colannino, a recently named Senior Fellow at ICLE co-facilitated.

Much was packed into this four hour session.  They walked us through the reasons why we must examine, question and ultimately change the way schooling has been done for 150 years.  They found that schools who are succeeding in innovation are those that are future focused, student centered and growth oriented.  They organized these in three handy contrasts.

1. Future focused vs forward focused.  
1. Envisioning the needs of the future, regardless of what has been done in the past.
2. Forward focused schools extrapolate from the now. They continue to add to existing programs and practices rather than invent new ways of doing things.
2. Student centered vs content centered.
1. Identifying the needs of students.  SEL, interdisciplinary, relevant, personalized, quadrants B & D.
2. Content focused schools operate in what he calls quadrants A & C.  (knowledge based)
3. Growth oriented vs proficiency oriented.  
1. Based on Carol Dweck's work with Growth Mindset
2. Proficiency based models force all students to learn the same things at the same time.

The SEL and interdisciplinary aspects of contemporary learning resonates with me, as does the understanding of the origin of the 19th century schooling model and its shortcomings in addressing today's learning needs.

I did notice how often the terms "rigor" and "rigorous" were used.  Indeed, it is one of the conferences tag lines and in the title of one of Bill's books.  (Relevance and Rigor)  I have always taken exception to that term being used to describe learning, which I believe should be joyous, relevant, engaging, thought provoking, challenging and at times, difficult.  But the dictionary definition of rigor is too strong and is often used in contexts of undesirable and traumatic experiences.  On the other hand, I do understand its connotation in education, even if it is distasteful to me.