Ohio's Senate Bill 5 - Don't Get Me Started

I object to the notion that public workers are the problem.  As was printed online last year during the levy campaign, I make about $42000 a year.  I show up, work my tail off, and then go home for a few more hours to work a bit more.  I spend my summers, unpaid, developing myself as a professional and planning for the year ahead.  My students perform well, parents and administrators have few qualms about my work, and I am proud to be a public servant.  In talking with the community, they point again and again to the fine work that we are all doing in their employ.  Lakewood is proud of us and we are proud to work in Lakewood.  We do so much that goes beyond our contract, and you don't hear much complaining from the ranks about our pay and work hours.  

In turn, Kalish and other elected representatives repay us by singling us out as a significant obstacle on the way to balancing the books.  Never mind the global economic collapse brought about by the kind of rampant corruption and shenanigans propagated by the likes of our governor's former employer, Lehman Brothers and other similar "investment" firms.  And even if it wasn't the banker's fault, though this seems to be the case, and it was the fault of regulators, insurance companies, and shoddy deal-making, I still find it absurd that these same people would turn and point the finger at public workers as the source of our budget woes.  I don't even need a union to be pissed off at stances such as the one that confronts us today in the form of Senate Bill 5.  But it is the labor union, fought for so fervently in the buried history of our country, that has provided the only check to the kind of corporate/government power grabs that will inevitably follow any passage of this bill.  To take away the rights of workers to strike, the only non-violent form of protest that laborers have the opportunity to wield in redress of their grievances, takes away a vital check in the machinery of greed.  

I'm not upset about my salary, work hours, or the ridiculous state testing and subsequently ridiculous mandates of an outmoded education system tied to standardized testing and that measures nothing of any value (ok, I am upset about that one;-).   It's that I need the labor union, faults and all, to protect what I think is a pretty nobel attempt to do something good for the children of this country.  Every one of us just wants to help kids.  And to be called to the floor as some kind of public whipping boy is unconscionable.

Input - Links and a few quick thoughts

The past week has had me pretty much fully dealing with some serious non-school issues, so today's installment will be more of an info dump than a series of musings.  I'm also holding off on any discussion of Ohio Senate Bill 5 until I have something original to add to the conversation, which I don't yet.  In the meantime, here's where my head has been:

I Resign From Teaching - Josh Stumpenhorst writes an amazing post that is very close to what I see happening in my classroom these days.  I can't say enough about the shift in dynamics that has happened in my classroom.  Maybe it's time for a good comfy chair?

Poe in the Pit - I found this one at the "Free Technology for Teachers" blog.  Poe in the Pit is an online interactive version of Poe's, "The Pit and The Pendulum".  It uses embedded links and QR Codes to tell a multi-layered version of the classic.  I brought this to a few students, and we had a great conversation as they taught me about QR Codes, got me set up with a QR reader on my phone, and then talked about the merit of such a presentation of a literary classic.  This one will be coming soon to a classroom near me, I'm sure of it.

Sam Rahder's "Update from Madison" - Students can have a voice, create important content, and be participants in authentic learning experiences.  There are tons of this kind of thing online.   

Shelley Blake-Plock runs into a very similar situation to one that I encountered in class recently.  Read his "According to the Style Manual" post.

I'm going to start interviewing teachers.  Here's where I got the inspiration.  I hope to post a few of them here, as well as some kind of final product in due time.

Chris Lehmann is a pretty engaging guy and he's doing some great work with kids.  Here's his Tedtalk in Philly.

Lastly, "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace, is one of the best statements on the importance of thinking that I've ever read.  He cuts through to the heart of the whole reason education is important.  Give it a read.  I liked the formatting best on my Kindle App, and as it is printed in paperback, but here's a link to the complete text of the piece online.

Three Weeks into a 1:1 - Blogs, Motivation, and Being Swamped

The students and I are settling into everyone having a laptop and things are progressing at a remarkable rate, almost too remarkable at this point.  Here's what I'm learning from my students and our experiences together:

-->  Kicking it Old School - The conversations that were generated when the class started to view each other's blogs were informative in the sense that we wound up talking about classic skills and concepts that have always been a part of good writing.  I had the kids gather around the whiteboard as I displayed student work on the big screen.  It was funny to watch the kids squirm as their work was displayed live in class, despite the fact that we all already knew that our work was public.  Something about having a live audience discuss your work in class created a really charged environment for our talk.  One student author immediately noticed a spelling error when we went to his page.  He turned to a friend and said "I need to fix that " before I even started talking about the need for proofreading.  I overheard this and asked him why he felt he needed to edit the piece.  His response was, "People can see it.  I don't want people thinking I can't spell".  Bingo!  Now we're talking about audience.  Another student said that it was fine to misspell words on a piece in which the author is just "goofing around" or doing a more "pointless" post.  Pow!  Now we're talking about purpose.  Another student said that the background chosen for the blog (Hello Kitty wallpaper) let people know that the tone of their blog was more fun than serious.  Yep!  Now we're talking about tone.  Audience, purpose and tone.  Three important literary considerations all generated, and authentically considered, before I had even started to critique the student work officially.  The shift to this kind of writing is pulling these concepts out of kids, rather than me spending 40 minutes a day trying to pour it into them.

--> Autonomy - Students are doing blog posts that I'm not assigning.  Really, some of the best posts I read weren't done on my bequest.   The kids are just eating up the ability to create products of their thought for an audience.  It didn't take but a few days before I started noticing posts about ska music, family tea ceremonies, women's rights, and even an analysis of the Super Bowl to start appearing.  The writing on these posts is on par with the assignments I'm giving them, but they are choosing the content on their own.  And all of this knowing full well that these posts will probably not count towards their grade.


-->  I'm swamped - I've gotta do something about the amount of feedback that this whole thing requires.  Last week I gave out four different blog post assignment.  If I comment on every student's post in the gradebook, as I'm trying to do, that means entering about 360 different feedback statements.  I'm a dad, with an amazing wife that I like to hang out with, and friends, and a good book that I'm reading, and I just... can't... keep... up with all of the feedback.  The students are being super patient with me as I wade through the huge digital stack of work that I need to get done, but I can only provide meaningful feedback if it's timely.  Right now it isn't.  I'd love any suggestions on how to save me from doing this basically 24/7.  (Hence the lack of posts recently.)

--> Meta-cognition and Learning Out Loud - The best new strategy I've found is to be very honest about my own learning as we move through this process.  I'm finding that the students and I are really benefiting from a constant discussion about process and skill acquisition.  I'm very up-front with the students about the fact that I'm learning how to best teach them these days, and in turn, they are very patient as they encounter various, and numerous, obstacles in their attempts to access and create the information that they need.  Aside from the obvious benefits to modeling learning, the actual human relationships in the room seem to have grown to a place of mutual respect and understanding based on a recognition that what we are doing is worthwhile to everyone involved.  I can't say how proud I am of my students these days. 

Dan Pink - RSA Animates

And then I think about the way that we use carrots and sticks in school.  Another great argument that has me thinking.

Clay Shirky Lays it Plain

Input - Books

I've been meaning to put together a list of the great books I've read on my path to changing my views on learning in the modern classroom.  Here's a partial list with links to amazon.com, and a few thoughts on each book:

Teach Like A Champion, Doug Lemov - This book has little to do with technology and everything to do with great teaching methods.  I participated in a book study on this one with several of my colleagues.  I'd especially recommend this to anyone who feels that their classroom dynamic needs a boost.

Teaching as Leadership, Steven Farr - More great methods and tools focused on effective instruction in the classroom. 

Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen - Disrupting Class is the book that won me over and has served as a vital guide to the many ups and downs that go along with disrupting the way we've always done things.

Switch, Chip and Dan Heath - My friend Ken recommended this one to me and it has really informed my current efforts to move people towards a better understanding of what we're trying to do in our classrooms.  Change is hard, and this book makes it easier to recognize why.

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky
Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky - Both of these books lay clear the titanic shifts in communication and the effects of the shift.  Shirky is clear, direct, and provocative.  Two of my recent favorites.

Work Hard, Be Nice, Jay Mathews - The story of how KIPP started is intersting to me in that it shows the power of conviction and faith in an idea.

Brain Rules, John Medina - The science of the brain has taken a huge leap.  Medina lays out a few solid ideas that I am working with in the classroom.

Getting The Word Out

After attending our first local community "coffee talk" on what we're doing in regards to learning in our district, I had plenty to think about.  The initial meeting had four of us, and the talk was great.  On my end, I am starting to think that a public conversation about learning has tons of potential as a way to show people what is actually happening in the classroom.  Much of the work that I do in my teaching occurs on a closed network, inaccessible by the general public.  As I engage in conversation with the community, I need to spend a lot of time listening and the rest just showing what's going on in our classrooms.  There are many teachers in our district that are doing great work in anonymity, and the best service we can give to the parents and members of our community, is to show and explain not only the what of our classroom, but the why.

I just read a great post that shows teachers having a debate about how better to engage the local community in discussions about learning.  Will Richardson's "Weblogg-ed"site is a great learning source for me, and his post entitled, "The 10,000 Parent Challenge: An Update ", especially the "Ideas" section of the teacher debate, really shows the varying viewpoints of educators on the subject of public discussion surrounding new issues in education.

eTech Ohio Education Technology Conference Reflections - Part 1, Phill Nosworthy

Phill Nosworthy's two presentations at the eTech Ohio Education Technology Conference had me locked in this morning.  I had originally only planned on attending his first session, but by the time the first session was ended I had already texted my entire grant team to join me in attending Phill's second session on educational leadership.  Phil Nosworthy is the leader of an organization called, "Beyond Chalk" and he also works with Peter Sheahan at Change/Labs. Here's his Tedtalk at the TEDxYouth@CityofLight event:

Here are a few things I took away from my time with Phill today:

-->  We all don't have to become experts at using technology in the classroom for things to change.  We just need to learn one or two new tech skills and use them effectively.

Sometimes the concept of having a tech "guru" at our school is a hindrance and source of intimidation in our efforts to effect change.  We tend to look at the teachers that seem to have a grip on the use of technology in the classroom as some kind of a special case or outlier with a weird knack for working gadgets.  But really, these people are just people with an interest that they decided to pursue and cultivate.  If we were to ask any random person one thing that they are good at, we'd find that we are surrounded by experts everywhere we go.  Some might be photographers, or day traders, great gardeners or superb scrap bookers. Most of these experts would love to share their love of whatever it is they love, and I'm sure that they wouldn't want me to avoid their areas of expertise because I don't have the skills that they already have.  An expert scrap booker would probably enjoy suggesting a few easy steps that would get me feeling confident with my own scrap booking abilities.  An avid gardener might really like helping me plant a few flowers to get my garden started.  In the same way, those of us in the ed tech world should do everything we can to share what we are learning by helping people learn one or two new skills in the classroom that they can employ effectively.  I know that I'd enjoy helping people become more confident and competent in their desire to work with students in this new way.  

--> Don't always rely on the young teachers to drive the change.

I've been fortunate enough to have many examples of more experienced teachers taking the lead in education innovation, and as I get more experience under my belt myself, I am also hoping to be the same kind of role model to our fresher faces.  Phill Nosworthy made the point that our GEC ("global economic crisis" - I had never heard it put this way before), has really put a damper on hiring and maintaining novice teachers.  We know that in Cleveland, a whole slew of young teachers were laid-off last year.  New York City laid-off scores of new teachers this past year.  We can't wait for the whipper-snappers to change the world, we're going to have to start doing it ourselves.

--> A great quote about leadership

“If you think you're leading and no one is following you, then you're only taking a walk.” - Afghan Proverb.  I heard that one a few times this week.  Phill Nosworthy used it in connection with the important difference between having a position of leadership and a position of influence.  He suggested that we might want to work with those teachers in our building that have an obvious influence on the culture of the school, rather than only seek out people in positions of leadership.  

--> The four traps of technology in education

   1.  Failing to use the rule of relevance.

       - He warns that our decision making should always be informed by a firm conception of what is both relevant and engaging to our students.  I like the emphasis on relevance, as I want to be sure that I'm thinking about all of the things that my students need to learn and know to be as great as they can be in life.  

  2. Using technology as a public relations strategy instead of for learning.

  3.  Thinking the cheap option is the cheap option.

     - This trap is probably the most easy to fall into considering our global and local financial situation.  Nosworthy warned that we often settle for a desire to get "more" instead of "best".  He feels that schools should buy the best tool to put in the hands of students, even if it means getting fewer of them.  I know that this is something that we thought about during our purchasing process for the grant.  We'll have to watch how we did on this one as we get deeper into using the new tools.  

 4. Thinking this will all blow over.

     - The hula hoop? Fad.  Yo-yo's?  Fad.  The internet? Not at all.  It's now at the point of being essential.

The sessions with Phill Nosworthy were a definite highlight of my time at the conference.  I was glad to be there with several other members of our grant team, including our building principal and district IT co-ordinator.  We walked away with plenty to think about , discuss and reflect upon, which is a great way to end our time at eTech.  

More on eTech to follow...

Another response to another question posted on the Lakewood Observer Observation Deck Forum

Question from a community member on our local online education forum:


Are there any means by which the school is going to measure the success of this 1:1 effort? And by that I mean to determine whether the initiative is actually more beneficial to students than the more traditional method of teaching. New tools are always fun in and of themselves.


My answer:


As part of the grant requirements we have hired an outside evaluator from the University of Akron who will be evaluating our implementation of the grant and the effect on student achievement. We are also going to be looking at our student's success on the Ohio Graduation Tests and assessing student growth over the course of the year. 

As for the comparison between the "traditional" approach and the move to a more "modern" approach, I am not sure that this comparison can be made without a consideration of the context of each approach. The "traditional" model, in which case I imagine you mean without computers, was created in a world without computers, and therefore was relevant to that world. However, I can't see a way in which learning without computers is relevant to the world that we live in now. Of course, this is not to say that the content that we have always taught is suddenly irrelevant. Shakespeare still matters, American history still matters, Algebra is still important, and the scientific process is probably more relevant than ever. But when we consider the methods by which most of the modern world accesses these materials, we invariably have to confront the fact that most information is digital these days. I didn't head to the library to hit the card catalogue to find research on 1:1 initiative efficacy, I went to Google. Our university classes, over half of which have an online component, require students to participate in forum discussions, collaborate with other students online, and consider texts in digital form. This isn't an issue of an old method versus the new method. It's more an issue of preparing our students for a world that has undeniably shifted to an increased use of digital technology. 

This, of course, brings some to think that we are loosing the beauty of such things as the hand-written letter, the face-to-face conversation, and the visceral experience of being awake and alive. I don't think we are loosing those things to the degree that some might fear, and I would never advocate for an education system that goes robotic and automated. Nothing can replace live human interaction and the incalculable value of lived experience, nothing can replace the need for teachers to work with and challenge our children, and nothing can replace the amazing level of nuance and sophistication that comes from having meaningful conversations with one another across a table or desk. 

Quote:

New tools are always fun in and of themselves.

I agree, and yes, we are having fun. However, this has little to do with pizzaz or novelty. The sober fact of the matter is that these new tools are the same tools that our students will need to compete at school and at work for the rest of their lives. Electricity, the automobile, airplanes, and even supermarkets were all once fun and exciting novelties indicative of "the modern world". Now we view these tools as integral parts of life as we know it. Can we do without them? Sure. Can we do without them and still participate in the mainstream world? Not really. (I,for one, can't hunt for my dinner OR start a serviceable fire. -10 on manliness for me, I'm sure  )

Like I said earlier, I'm still learning all of this stuff and definitely share some of the same fears and apprehensions as everyone else. Increasingly though, I'm not sure that i have much of a choice. The world has changed, and our education system has to match the new challenges that are now before us. 

I appreciate your input on this. I brought this to the deck because I want to learn from your questions, hear your ideas, and work together to make my classroom worthy of this great community that I am proud to serve. I'm also a parent with kids in the district, so I have a vested interest in this conversation from that point-of-view as well. 

I will try my best to keep everyone aware of both our successes and failures as we move forward into this relatively uncharted territory. The key is going to be learning from our failures while we work to repeat our successes.

A response to a question posted on the Lakewood Observer Observation Deck Forum

Question from a community member on our local online education forum:

"I'm unclear about the aim of the 1:1 initiative and what it entails other than providing students with netbooks. Can you provide a little more information about that, or maybe provide some links that articulate the 1:1 initiative?"


My answer:


I 'd say that we want to increase both the level of engagement and the level of relevance in our classrooms via our grant team's 1:1 initiative. The netbooks, while fantastic tools, are more a means to an end than an end in themselves. The goal of our work is to prepare our students for the world that surrounds them every time they leave the doors of our school by more closely matching the skills needed in the real world with the skills that we teach in the classroom. To be more clear, I'd like to break this down into how going to a 1 student:1 computer model will increase both relevance and engagement, and then follow that up with a few links to help further inform this discussion.

Relevance

Our students live in a world that is vastly different from the one we encountered in high school. The shift towards digital information, communication, and creative collaboration has had an impact on every level of our daily lives. As our participation in this forum suggests, many ideas have moved from static statements printed on dead trees to dynamic conversations held online. Our audience has widened as the cost of publishing our ideas has dropped to nearly zero. As a Language Arts teacher, I have to reckon with the fact that my students will work in an environment in which everything they say online has the potential to reach literally millions of people. I need to teach students what it means to have such an audience, what responsibilities are entailed in having such an audience, and ways in which they can share their ideas with a high premium on quality writing and clarity of thought. I also need to work with them as they learn to seek out information from others, addressing issues of validity, authorship, ownership, and privacy. The move towards a 1:1 education allows our students to learn on the very same platform that they will use to communicate for the rest of their academic, employment, and personal lives. The same can be said for the other subject areas as well. No history textbook on earth has anything to say about this week's protests in Egypt, but I can go online and find news reports, first person accounts, and a variety of perspectives on this issue within seconds. Our science classrooms can use the internet to communicate and collaborate on a whole host of projects that are underway right now. Our Math curriculum can move from simple computation to actual application using digital models and unlimited access to data sets that matter to our everyday lives. And though our LHS2.0 program does not have a foreign language component, I envision that our students will soon be using these tools to Skype with native speakers of a language and to engage current events in a foreign language via Google Translate. The netbooks give us a window into not only the educational content that is being produced now, but also access to all of the content that has ever been produced in the past. 

Engagement 

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I really believe that students want to be engaged in school. The students want to learn, but they want to learn in a way that is meaningful to them. Every day we ask students to power down at school, to turn off devices that give them access to everything in the world, and to stop using the creative tools that they use at home to create YouTube videos, audio mash-ups, and yes, even lolcats. We have a generation that is more used to a keyboard and mouse than a pen and paper. As I sit here at The Root Cafe, every table that I can see has someone with a laptop at it. I see a guy creating some sort of a microphone prototype using CorelDraw, an artist sketching on a digital tablet, and another woman checking Yahoo news. There are two high school students that appear to be working on a project using Google Docs. Everyone here seems pretty engaged, and none of these people would be allowed to be doing any of this in most of our classrooms. This issue is not unique to Lakewood, it is a global phenomenon that is being encountered at every level of human interaction. Our district, however, is beginning to recognize the power of letting students use the tools that they find the most useful and interesting. The hard part, and I'm speaking from personal experience, is that we have to learn to use this inclination for digital engagement as a way to engage the students in their learning. I have to learn not only how to work all of this stuff myself, but also how to guide students towards learning the valuable skills on which education has always, rightly, focussed.

The work that has come out of this grant isn't about the nouns of our modern world (laptops, iPods/iPads, cell phones, skype, facebook, google, etc.), but the verbs (collaborating, publishing, evaluating resources, analyzing data, etc.). I apologize for not having made that clear in the first place. I was just excited to finally see this equipment in the hands of my students.

This was a bit long for a forum, but English majors tend towards the polemic. 

This 2010 Literature Review from New South Wales, entitled, "Digital Education Revolution - One-to-One Computers in Schools" is a good piece of research on the topic. I would also suggest that the links in the bibliography are another great way to find out more researched-based information about the successes and needed improvements in 1:1 education initiatives. 

https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/detresources/lit_review10_TrMbcLRPRT.pdf