Resilience

Every spring, science teacher, Andy Lammers, requires his students to design, build, and launch rockets powered by water pressure that must deploy a parachute to land an egg so gently that the egg does not crack.  The project is one of several dozen project-based learning opportunities that our students encounter in middle school.  A couple of weeks ago, I asked one of our eighth graders how his water-bottle-rocket launch went.  His casual, matter-of-fact reply, “not very good, but it was only our first launch,” may seem less than momentous, but, truly, those words are a distillation of a mindset and attitude that we we are purposefully instilling in our students.  Teaching our students to be resilient,  to overcome setbacks and know that some level of success will ultimately be achieved, is one of our most important tasks.

It is self-evident that for students to overcome obstacles, they must encounter obstacles at school -- and the obstacles that they encounter must be real, valid, and purposeful.  Also, the obstacles must be stiff enough to create cognitive dissonance, but they also must be ones that can be scrambled over, pushed aside, or blown up.  In many schools, some students experience academic obstacles every day that are too huge to even attempt to conquer, and then some students rarely experience even the smallest setbacks.  Differentiating to provide learning opportunities that challenge each student at a level where success can be achieved through perseverance is not too difficult, but it takes a recognition that developing resilience can be a more important goal than learning subject content.  If teachers plan lessons believing that the foremost goal is for students to learn resilience and the secondary goal is to learn subject matter, then the methods employed will be different.  Project-based learning, Paideia seminars, and writing workshops are examples of methodology that offer opportunity for all students to be challenged, while still learning content and skills.

Students must also be given the opportunity to improve or change in order to develop resilience.  To accomplish this, there must be chances for the student and others (peers, faculty, friends, family) to observe trials and attempts, and there must be the opportunity for do-overs.  To be most effective, there should be no stigma against failing other than the recognition that the student needs to improve and the recognition of ways that the student can improve.  When true formative assessment becomes institutionalized, it changes the entire dynamic of a school community.  Schools become focused on learning, not “playing school” to achieve grades and other clumsy attempts to quantify learning.

I have referred to the words written on the whiteboard in my office several times in my writings:  reflection is the key to change.  While reflection is somewhat inherent in all formative assessment, it needs to be given a bigger role.  Students need to be required to analyze and make judgements about their attempts and struggles either in writing, discussions, videos, drawings, or charts.  They should do this both individually and with others, formally and informally.  They should observe what others have done so they can apply learned techniques to their attempts, but they should also be encouraged to try new, inventive ways to solve problems and express themselves.  This freedom to be creative and innovative can be institutionalized when divergent thinking is recognized and rewarded.

“Not very good, but it was only our first launch.”  What if we could teach every child in this country to have the attitude inherent in this statement -- to know that immediate setbacks will be overcome, to find problems and look for solutions, to aim for long term success, and to know that it will take work and struggle to achieve something worthwhile?  

Seeing the Unseen

photo by Elizabeth Douglas

This winter as we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way to school, my boys and I would sometimes attempt to spot wildlife.  Winter isn’t a very good time to see animals in the mountains of Western North Carolina, but we persisted and were occasionally rewarded with a glimpse of the odd squirrel or crow.  I wonder what we would have seen had we parked the car and walked that five mile stretch on the Mountains to Sea Trail that parallels the Parkway?  Or, what would we have seen if we just wandered through the woods, off the road and off the trail, through the leafless blackberry brambles and among the dark green rhododendron, peering around the gray trunks splotched with white?  Would we have seen more wildlife?  Would we have seen something unexpected that might have created some new synapses in our brains that would cause us to view the world in a slightly different manner?

Students need to get off the road and off the trail.  Most schools are all too predictable.  Our daily schedules with learning boxed up nicely into particular disciplines make it all too easy for students to pass through their education without really looking beyond three feet on either side of the road.  

We know that today’s students face an unpredictable future where they will bounce from job to job, perhaps holding as many as ten or fifteen different jobs during a lifetime.  Futurists claim that by 2025 over half the jobs that our current students will compete for don’t even exist today.  In order to thrive in this world, our students need to have an adventurous spirit; their thinking needs to be nimble and adaptable to new and changing conditions; their minds need to be trained in a way that frees them to take mental risks.   

We are creating a school that supports this type of learning and thinking.  The faculty in the Middle School at Carolina Day School is constantly working to provide experiences for our students to develop a mindset that forces them to see things that others don’t, not necessarily because they have better vision, but because our students relish the opportunity to walk off the trail and know how to seek and value the unseen.

Learn to Program - Starting with Scratch and Minecraft

Last week, my sixth-grade son and his classmates were asked by their science teacher to design a program in Scratch (a beginning programming language developed by MIT) that depicted the water cycle. When he was in the fourth grade, I introduced my son to Scratch, and he has played around with it occasionally over the past two years. He and his classmates had fun with the project, and even those who were totally unfamiliar with it learned some basics of programming.

Yesterday, my son downloaded a new "protocol" into Minecraft. Like many boys his age, Minecraft has become the first thing that he turns to on the weekends.  Along with playing on Minecraft with other folks, my son is in the process of creating his own city that is really pretty complex.  While he was engaged in his city planning, I asked him if he had been able to transfer any skills from his extensive Minecraft experience to Scratch.   Here is his off-the-top-of-his-head response, without looking up from his laptop:

• 3-D modeling
• coordinate grids 
• I can go in and change the code a little to make it do what I want. 

I don’t think anyone would consider my son a computer geek.  He plays sports after school; he practices piano; he has sleep-overs with friends, he reads the Sunday comics; he occasionally washes his mom's car; he eats constantly; and he programs a little.  In the future, my son may decide to study and learn more sophisticated programming, or he may not. The important thing is that he knows that he can, and coding is not some mysterious operation that only geniuses can accomplish. He can do it; anyone can do it; everyone should.

 

Boys and Reading

I used to listen to NPR on the twenty-minute ride into school every morning.  Now, the minivan speeds along in total silence as my sixth and second-grade sons read in the back seat.  I feel lucky that both my boys love to read, but I think there is more to it than luck.

I know that I do a lot wrong as a father of two boys.  I feel a little guilty about not teaching my oldest son how to throw a perfect spiral and about using a little too much sarcasm at the dinner table, but I do feel pretty good about encouraging them to love reading.  Since they were babies, I have been an active reader to my boys, and now that they are older, we read together almost every night.  It has become our time together to relax in the evening.  For the last year, we have been reading classics almost exclusively.  Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, King Arthur, and Sherlock Holmes have been our evening fare, and we all look forward to this time whether it is fifteen minutes or an hour.  

I have been amazed at how my eight-year-old can pick up the general plot lines of a Sherlock Holmes story.  He has learned to keep his questions to a minimum and attempt to figure out the vocabulary and complex mysteries on his own.  A couple of weeks ago, we had an extended conversation about why Sherlock would want to take a seven-percent solution of cocaine as a remedy to boredom.  Last night, they learned a little about the KKK as we finished “The Five Orange Pips.”

Reading together also gives us a common experience and vocabulary.  As my oldest son gets deeper into the middle school years and seeks more privacy, I know that I will always have something to talk with him about.  When we have difficulty expressing our emotions to each other, we still get to share a part of our lives every night.  I hope that this bond will be something that he can count on when the world goes topsy-turvy.

I know that lots of dads find this same connection with their sons through sports, and I’m certainly not knocking that time together.  I’m sure that I could learn something about parenting from them.  But when the backseat is quiet in the mornings, I continue to smile to myself knowing that my sons are imagining themselves in a world far removed from the traffic of Interstate 40.

Shadow Testing

I spend way too much time thinking about standardized testing.  Part of the reason why is because the state administered End of Grade tests became a large part of my life when I worked at a local public middle school.  During my last few years working in this school, I witnessed curricular decisions, faculty management decisions, programming decisions, professional development decisions, resource decisions, and scheduling decisions that were made only to optimize performance on the End of Grade tests -- principally the math and language arts tests which were the only EOGs given at that time.  To some degree, students ceased to be students and became percentages within categories.  I do not fault the dedicated teachers or administrators who made these decisions; they were simply playing by the rules that had been placed upon them.  However, I chose not to play by those rules any more.

I really want to see value in standardized achievement tests.  I want to look at them as the great equalizer -- objective, egalitarian instruments that don’t care if you are one percenter or on welfare.  I want them to be the provider of opportunity and the leveler of the playing field.  The problem is that in their effort to be objective, the tests must ignore the most valuable parts of being human.  They must measure things that are measurable, when, in fact, this treats our children as one-dimensional shadows and ignores their humanity.

For years I have read articles and had people tell me what standardized tests measure.  I’m not sure whether to believe them or not, but I do know what they don’t measure.  They don’t measure the most important qualities and skills that we should value in our young people. They don’t measure someone’s ability to create -- to make something of value that hasn’t been thought of or done before.  They don’t measure a persons ability to solve a novel problem by working with others.  They don’t measure the ability to form and maintain relationships.   They don’t measure a person’s ability to reflect on and evaluate their own place in the world.  They don’t measure a person’s honesty and integrity.  They don’t measure physical abilities.  They don’t measure how a child interacts with the natural world.  They don’t measure if someone can express emotion and feeling through the visual and performing arts.  They don’t measure a child’s happiness.  Truthfully, they only measure a very small part of a person, yet we have built our country’s education system as a response to these tests.  How can we look at a child in such narrow terms and think we are doing the best for her?

Exploring Artificial Intelligence

These two videos are resources from the fourth week of the MOOC Course, ELearning and Digital Cultures. They portray artificial intelligence in humanistic terms. Other than being entertaining, thinking about the videos has stretched and pushed my vision of what  interactions between humans and machines may look like.

In terms of education, it makes me believe that we need to extend the dialogue that we have with students beyond just the best ways to use technology and explore the moral implications of how we interact with technology.  Starting those discussions today with students is a wise thing, and I believe that students will be very engaged in the conversation.

I really hope that you will take the time to watch these.  They each take around eight minutes, but they are entertaining and provocative.

Who Knows the Question?

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. -- Voltaire

Our society loves clever kids.  We hold spelling and geography bees, lauding those whippersnappers who memorize and spit back the facts.  When a high school student scores a perfect 2400 on the SAT, we marvel at this amazing feat and the college doors that will be blown off the hinges by such prowess.  On a daily basis, teachers call on students with hands held high and give them a big smile or maybe even a Jolly Rancher if they answer correctly.  Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t appreciate these children and young adults who are exceedingly good at memorizing and maybe even applying some knowledge, but I think that we are really looking at the wrong end of the equation.  What we should be focusing on is teaching students how to ask the questions -- good questions.  That is a skill that will transcend knowing the capital of Botswana or even knowing how to spell “daiquiri.”

I love to hear adults tell kids, “Now, that’s a really good question.”  Is it a good question because the answer is not obvious?  Or, is it a good question because the answer is complex and may vary with circumstances or conditions?  Or, is it a good question because it demonstrates that the child understands enough about something to ask the right question that will get to the root of the problem.  Or, is it a good question because no one has yet found the answer?

It is not difficult to teach students to ask good questions, but too often we are intent on asking the questions themselves to get “right” answer.  I remember years ago attempting to get my students to write “good questions” after reading chapters in a novel.  Initially, they were terrible at asking meaningful questions simply because they had rarely been asked to do it.  But as the year progressed, they improved dramatically as we continued to discuss the meaning of “good questions,” and as we modeled good questions for each other.  It was freeing for the students not to have to remember inane details in the text to prove that they had read chapters 4 and 5.  Their questions showed that they had read and understood deep and sometimes subtle aspects of the story.

Of course the big problem for many schools and students is that the BIG TEST does not care about questioning.  I would love to see a big stakes assessment give students a picture, story, or scenario and tell students -- “After reading this passage or viewing this picture, ask a question about it and then explain the importance or significance of your question.”  Wow, that sure would be hard for the folks at ETS to score. I guess that's the problem . . . in order for this scenario to play out, we need to acknowledge that there is much more to school than answering someone else's questions.

All Things Piratical

photo by Tanja Mamas

One of the best things about being a faculty member is that I sometimes get to learn from and with our students.  This occurred recently when I was asked to become a member of the pirate chorus in our middle school musical, The Pirates of Penzance, Jr.  As a student, I shunned any opportunities to be on stage.  Like many young people, I was terrified of appearing foolish to my peers.  Over the years, I conquered those fears and often relish the irony of being the assistant principal who does goofy things like disco dancing in the hallways, so I was excited to join the fun.  

I have had a couple of brief cameos in past plays, and I expected my pirate part to be a quick wave and laugh.  However, I attended my first practice a couple of weeks before the performance date and was startled to find that I actually had to sing and act in several numbers.  While I am egocentric enough to be in our middle school play, I’m not quite so needy as to have to recount my struggles learning lines or figuring out drama jargon.  I will simply say that I spent a lot of time working on the play over the past several weeks, and my wife and kids are grateful not to have to listen to “A Rollicking Band Of Pirates We” in the car anymore.

I had always known that working on the play was a special thing for the students involved, but I never really realized how special.  After a couple of weeks of practices, a dress rehearsal, and an actual performance, I felt like I was accepted as just another one of the actors.  The students and I joked together, chatted at times when we should have been listening to direction, sang the silly warm-up riffs, drank imaginary “pirate sherry,”  put on lipstick, and stood side-by-side on the stage.  A student and I got to take a few swings at each other in a fight scene, and he had a blast pretending to pummel me.  (I think he may have taken a little too much joy in this).  

From being a regular cast member, I got to understand the team spirit involved in the production.  I have heard all about egos and prima donnas in acting circles, but there was none of that happening on our set.  The tech crew, actors, directors, costumers, and make-up “moms” all supported the primary mission, and all worked together to put on the best play possible.  What is so amazing to me is that everyone knew their respective parts so well that the play would have been a success without any adults present during the performance.  This is not to discount the wonderful direction of Mandy Bean and Beth Heinberg, the costume work of Susan Mycroft, or the talents of tech master, Mike Congleton, but rather to extol their great leadership by bringing a group of middle school students and a bumbling administrator to a place of independence and competence.

This play is a brilliant microcosm of the skills we value in our middle school.  While there may be some external motivation like applause, the students’ participation as a member of the crew or cast is voluntary.  Most of the students like it because it involves them in something that is much bigger than themselves.  We challenge our students to get involved, to form relationships, to achieve something of value, and to gain confidence and strength of character.  It is difficult for me think of a better venue for them to practice and gain these attributes.

I received a professional and personal gift this year by being allowed to become a student in my own school.  If anything, my involvement with Pirates of Penzance, Jr. raised my respect for what we accomplish on a daily basis within our community.  And, yes, Elizabeth, I will shave off my scrubby beard!

Gain Control

In the second week of the ECCMOOC course, ELearning and Digital Cultures, we have been asked to explore the future of digital technology.  The first two videos on the resources page are ads by large corporations, Corning and Microsoft, that show how they believe their products will integrate into our future lives.




These videos emphasize the need for a different type of education, one that embraces technology and prepares students to use and interact with technology with ease.  We want our students to understand technology well enough so that they can use it to better their lives and the lives of others.

I frequently tell parents and students, technology is a tool, but it is a seductive tool.  We have to recognize when technology is changing the way that we live our lives and interact with others, and make conscious decisions how we use it.  One of the biggest faults for most of us is that we have become users of technology without making conscious decisions on the impact of that use.  While some say that the ability to conduct a search online will be the most useful skill for our current students, I would argue that being able to decide when and how to use technology will be an even more important skill.

As I was driving into work this morning, I heard an interview with an MIT professor who is concerned with the effect that technology is having on relationships. She thinks that sending texts and email makes it easy for us to disconnect from important relationships without having to face the consequences of the disconnection.  Concepts like this are what our students need to be discussing and understanding, so that they can actually understand the consequences of their use of technology -- the pluses and minuses -- before they make the choice to use it.

For those seeking some good advice on how to make technology work for us without gaining control over us, I recommend the last few chapters Clay Johnson's book, The Information Diet.  Johnson gives some practical ideas on how we can become "conscious consumers" of media and users of technology.

Dystopian or Utopian: Two Films

Part of the content of this MOOC course is to look at some films and try to decide if and how they represent a utopian or dystopian view.  There are four videos listed as resources.  The first one, Inbox, is about a two young adults trying to find a meaningful relationship.


To me, the use of the bags show that the mystery involved in human relationships can't be replaced by technology.  At about 1:48 into the film, the woman logs into her gmail account and seems to be bored with communicating by technology, almost immediately closing the laptop.  She then begins her bag relationship with the young man which defies the conventions of normal life.  Perhaps the director is telling us the there is something about human relationships that can't be defined, something weird, crazy, and magical.

The other video that I'm putting up was not one of the resources within the course, but it was shared in a tweet by one of the other students in the course.  The message is a lot simpler to decipher, but it is also clever and powerful.

Organization of a MOOC

After agreeing not to cheat in the MOOC course, E-Learning and Digital Cultures, I opened the link to the course content and found a well organized site.

First, there is a welcome to the course that outlines the resources and requirements.  The resources -- film, readings, ways to discuss -- are easy to access.  Also listed are the requirements for the course:

• Contribute to a discussion board for each weekly topic
• Blog responses to the topic, tagging the with #EDCMOOC
• Set up or join a room in Synchture to discuss the films in real time
• Create an image or other visual representation of your response to the topic and post it in social media
• Tweet my thoughts

As writing about the organization of a webpage is about as engaging as watching someone floss their teeth, I have included an image:

Listed on the left-hand side of the page is the course content for the first block of the course which lasts for two weeks.  We are supposed to examine utopias and dystopias, first from past perspectives and the following week from future perspectives.  

Can Coursera Control Cheating?

After signing up for this course several months ago, which took a total of thirty seconds, I pretty much forgot about it.  A few days ago, I had an email in my inbox that the course had begun and I received a link to connect me to the course content.  Before allowing me into the content though, I had to agree to abide the following honor code:

1. I will register for only one account.
2. My answers to homework, quizzes and exams will be my own work (except for assignments that explicitly permit collaboration).
3. I will not make solutions to homework, quizzes or exams available to anyone else. This includes both solutions written by me, as well as any official solutions provided by the course staff.
4. I will not engage in any other activities that will dishonestly improve my results or dishonestly improve/hurt the results of others.

I appreciate Coursera’s attempt to promote honorable standards, but why would it matter if I cheated?  Coursera either believes that the honor code will set a standard of ethics or that it will add validity to the course as a credential. For MOOC's to be valid credentials, organizations like Coursera will have to move past having students agree to follow the honor code to a system that ensures that the student who completes a course is the one who do the work.
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MOOC's: Massive Online Open CHANGE

While I took an online graduate course several years ago and liked several aspects of it, I have become increasingly interested in the trend toward Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC’s).  I recently enrolled in a MOOC that is presented by the University of Edinburgh through Coursera. The course is an introduction to online learning called “E-learning and Digital Cultures.”  What better way to learn about online learning than to participate in a course about online learning.

It is boggling to think of the implications of the growth of MOOC’s.  What will happen to traditional education?  What are the economic and corresponding political ramifications of opening cheap or free education to anyone in the world with access to the Internet?  As I struggle to consider the possibilities, my mind starts to feel like this:

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting about the content of the course “E-learning and Digital Cultures.”  I’ll give you the opportunity to peek into this world without having to feel fully committed to the coursework.  Maybe after reading a few posts you will feel inspired to venture into the world of MOOC’s and explore the future of education. Change is a comin'; get ready.

How Progressive are You?

Because Alfie Kohn has been such a fervent, vocal supporter of progressive education over the years, the mention of his name has a knee-jerk, polarizing effect on some.  That’s too bad.  I found an article he wrote that appeared in the 2008 issue of Independent School (Progressive Education:  Why it’s Hard to Beat, but Also Hard to Find) to be valuable, not because of its assertions but because it offers all educators a chance to examine and evaluate their own practice and beliefs.

Mr. Kohn’s "Twelve Questions" from the above article give us all a chance to see where our practice lies on the continuum between traditional and progressive.  Some may talk the progressive talk but fail to back it up with action.  Others may self-identify as traditionalists, but upon examination find themselves practicing progressive ideas.  The label is unimportant.  What is important is that we continue to ask ourselves the questions in order to clarify our goals, identity, and vision. There may be great reasons for you or your school to answer "no" to some of the questions. We can't all live and practice in an idealistic world, but we can all challenge ourselves to do the best for our students.

As I look back over my shoulder, I see the words, “reflection is the key to change” written on my office whiteboard.  Take a few minutes to reflect on your answers to Mr. Kohn’s questions.  I’ll do the same.

1.  Is our school committed to being educationally progressive, or is it content with an atmosphere that’s progressive only in the political or cultural sense of the word?

2.  Is a progressive vision being pursued unapologetically, or does a fear of alienating potential applicants lead to compromising that mission and trying to be all things to all people?  (“We offer a nurturing environment  . . . of rigorous college preparation.”)

3.  Is the education that the oldest students receive just as progressive as that offered to the youngest, or would a visitor conclude that those in the upper grades seem to attend a different school altogether?

4.  Is the teaching organized around problems, projects, and questions?  Is most of the instruction truly interdisciplinary, or is literature routinely separated from social studies – or even from spelling?  Has acquiring skills (e.g., arithmetic, vocabulary) come to be over-emphasized rather than seen as a means to the end of understanding and communicating ideas?

5.  To what extent are students involved in designing the curriculum?  Is it a learner-centered environment, or are lessons presented to the children as faits accomplis?  How much are students involved in other decisions, such as room decoration, classroom management, assessment, and so on?  Are teachers maintaining control over children, even in subtle ways, so that the classrooms are less democratic than they could be?

6.  Is assessment consistent with a progressive vision, or are students evaluated and rated with elaborate rubrics[16] and grade-substitutes?  Do students end up, as in many traditional schools, spending so much time thinking about how well they’re doing that they’re no longer as engaged with what they’re doing?

7.  Do administrators respect teachers’ professionalism and need for autonomy – or is there a style of top-down control that’s inconsistent with how teachers are urged to treat students?  Conversely, is it possible that teachers’ insistence on being left alone has permitted them to drift from genuinely progressive practice in some areas?

8.  Are educators acting like lifelong learners, always willing to question familiar ways – or do they sometimes fall back on tradition and justify practices on the grounds that something is just “the [name of school] way”?  Are teachers encouraged to visit one another’s classrooms and offered opportunities to talk about pedagogy on a regular basis?

9.  Is cooperation emphasized throughout the school – or are there remnants of an adversarial approach?  Do students typically make decisions by trying to reach consensus or do they simply vote?  Do competitive games still dominate physical education and even show up in classrooms?  Do most learning experiences take place in pairs and small groups, or does the default arrangement consist of having students do things on their own?

10.  Is homework assigned only when it’s absolutely necessary to extend and enrich a lesson, or is it assigned on a regular basis (as in a traditional school)?  If homework is given, are the assignments predicated on – and justified by -- a behaviorist model of “reinforcing” what they were taught – or do they truly deepen students’ understanding of, and engagement with, ideas?  How much of a role do the students play in making decisions about homework?

11.  Does the question “How will this affect children’s interest in learning (and in the topic at hand)?” inform all choices about curriculum, instruction, and scheduling – or has a focus on right answers and “rigor” led some students to become less curious about, and excited by, what they’re doing?

12.  Is the school as progressive and collaborative in nonacademic (social, behavioral) matters as it is in the academic realm, or are there remnants of “consequence”-based control such that the focus is sometimes more on order and compliance than on fostering moral reasoning, social skills, and democratic dispositions?

Attention in Belgravia

I watch almost no TV.  We cut the cable last year and haven’t looked back.  However, I occasionally watch a show on Netflix.  This weekend, I greatly enjoyed A Scandal in Belgravia from the BBC Sherlock series, and I noticed that Sherlock Holmes and I have something in common. (It is not arriving in Buckingham Palace covered only by a bed sheet).  In the series, Sherlock sometimes drifts off into thought and loses all track of time and place.  He may “come to” several hours later and claim that he was just talking to someone a minute ago.  Sometimes when I run, the same thing happens.  After five minutes of running, my mind becomes so engrossed in some topic that when I get back to the house I have little or no recollection of the physical world I just ran through.  I think it is because my brain starts working on something with such incredible focus and attention that I am totally oblivious to the world around me.

I have been paying closer attention to attention after starting Chade-Meng Tan’s book, Search Inside Yourself.  Chade-Meng Tan started his employment at Google as an engineer, but has shifted his focus to helping his colleagues and others gain emotional intelligence through mindfulness.  His current job title with Google is “Jolly Good Fellow.”  Tan writes a lot about attention in the book and how we can all grow our ability to attend.  One type of attention that he describes is where focus is intense on one thing, like a spotlight shining on one object.  I believe that this is the type of focus that Sherlock and I experience when lost in thought.  The other type of attention that he describes is one where the focus is everywhere, a light shining from one place to another, taking in everything.  Perhaps an example of this type of focus is when Sherlock Holmes observes a crime scene.  Tan believes that by practicing, anyone can refine and improve the ability to attend in both ways.  I’m interested to find out as I attempt to practice his techniques. After all, the more I can control my attention, the more I will learn.

Listen to Me

I spend ten or fifteen minutes nearly every day looking through my Twitter feed for interesting ideas.  As I wade through Diane Ravitch’s daily diatribe or scan Eric Sheninger’s hourly updates (honestly, when does the man work?), I sometimes come across an idea that is immediately accessible, implementable, and worthwhile.  This was the case with a video that explains how to use podcasts for feedback in writing that I was referred to by a tweet.
After I sent the link out to my colleagues, I started thinking about how I could use it to give meaningful feedback. I thought about all the times in my day when I'd like to offer positive feedback, but to give it on the spot would be impractical or impossible. I regularly observe situations like students listening intently to a partner’s idea on why they should use bigger wheels on an NXT robot, inviting a classmate to join a lunch table, or putting an arm around a buddy after the last shot did not go down.  Even if I could offer positive verbal feedback at these times, the feedback itself might detract from the action.  But, what if I could give a fifteen to thirty second affirmation of these acts at a later time?  Something like:


It takes almost no time for me to take out my phone, make a quick recording, and then email it. Of course, this type of audio feedback won't replace the hand-written notes, emails, or verbal affirmations that I give daily, but it does offer me another tool that I plan to implement.

Learning Math

I would bet that my middle school (junior high) math classes were quite similar to the way you were taught math.  I watched the teacher work problems on the board and then I was given problems to practice.  I frequently rushed through my homework in an attempt to get it done as fast as possible so I could head to the tennis courts or shoot baskets in the driveway.  After a couple of weeks, I was given a “unit test” which was supposed to assess whether or not I had learned the material.  Having some natural ability in math, I usually scored well on the tests.   

However, school is not where I really learned math.  I learned math on my summer car vacations adding up miles on creased, fold-up maps; and by figuring the amount of gasoline our lumbering Buick Estate Wagon gobbled up on trips to the Texas coast.  I got pretty good at predicting arrival times based on our average speed and distance left to travel.  I learned to compute with fractions by helping my dad and older brother refurbish a hulking wooden sailboat and build a two-story fort that protected our back yard from neighborhood rapscallions.  I learned probability by playing cards and dice games, which eventually led to me reading Scarnes New Complete Guide to Gambling when I was twelve-years-old.  It is a pretty heavy read for a seventh grader, but I made some pocket money in my teens because I knew the odds in blackjack.


So, where are our kids really learning math today?  At Carolina Day School, they are learning math in school.  Surprise.  They are learning math because they are using math.  

In eighth-grade, students play with motion by building and zooming balloon-jet cars across the floor.  They plot rates of change on graphs and understand that slope is more than just a line on a page in a book.  In seventh grade, students measure and cut popsicle sticks to form specific geometric shapes.  They create these from scale drawings, and, in addition to getting practice with angles, they learn that precision is sometimes critical.  Our sixth graders design and run their own experiments and determine what types of graphs and charts best display the generated data.  Analysis and use of data is crucial to our students’ understanding the world around them.

Learning has little use unless you can do something with the knowledge.  Doing something implies action, and CDS students do much more than sit in class absorbing facts and algorithms. They build, observe, compute, design, record, analyze, and judge -- and in doing these things, they actually learn math.

Making Yodas

I have a few notes written on the whiteboard in my office.  One contains Dave Perkins’ list of “lifeworthy skills:"  insight, action, ethics, and “comeupance.”  Another is a list of Daniel Pink’s drivers of motivation:  autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  At the upper right hand corner is something that I wrote this summer:  reflection is the key to change.

The work of reflection -- examination, thinking, and evaluation -- is what leads to learning.  Unfortunately, because many of us are poor reflectors, we continue to make the same mistakes throughout our lives leading to a Groundhog Day type of existence.  Many of us are not life-long learners because we never learned how to be reflective.

The key to reflection is that it involves the self, not an outside source.  While external motivation may be needed to poke and prod folks into reflection, it is the actual work of the  individual that makes it so valuable.  The fact is, we really don’t learn very well from instruction or watching others.  If we did, 7th graders would have the wisdom of Yoda and war would be a faint memory.

If we are trying to prepare our students to be adaptive, functional adults, we must teach them to be reflective.  It can be practiced and learned so that it becomes an active part of life, prompting introspection and growth.  Schools should institutionalize systems that require students to reflect on what they learn and how they learn.  There are many ways to do this:  self assessment on assignments, student-designed rubrics, reporting systems that require students to comment on their own progress,  portfolios (electronic or paper) that ask students to catalog and reflect on their work, and student blogs.  

As long as teachers and tests remain the primary judges of students, students will continue to look outside of themselves for guidance.  They need to learn to look inside to find their own way.

Who Will Win?

You may not be a Risk player, but my two sons and I love playing the game.  We’ve had this game up on the dining room table for two weeks now, playing a few moves whenever all three of us have enough time to sit down together.  The boy’s mother, my wife, was in the game for a while, but she lost all her armies last week following a failed offensive thrust.  Truthfully, she really wanted to lose so she could go back to watching Pride and Prejudice for the 35th time.  It’s probably good to have at least one member of our household who is not vying for world domination.

When I walked past the board this morning, it struck me that if I asked my son’s playmates who is going to win the game that most would quickly jump to the same conclusion.  The problem is that they don’t have enough information to make a reasonable guess.  Would it change their opinion if they knew that the next player would receive a bonus of 35 armies as he turns in his cards?  Would it change their opinion if they knew that a couple of days ago my sons made a pact to team up to bring down Papa for the first time?   Would it change their opinion to know that we had modified the rules to suit our family game?  Would it change their opinion if they knew that my goal in playing the game was to have fun, not win in the traditional sense?

As an educator, I could want nothing more for my students than for them to look at this board and know that they need more information -- then form and ask the right questions.  What if school was a place where students could practice solving problems rather than a place where someone told them all the answers?  Would there be less risk for its future if our next generation had the inclination to try to understand a situation before coming to a conclusion?  

Digital Portfolios

British School 18th century, A Man with a Portfolio, Taking Snuff.

Portfolios have long been associated with visual art.  The primary reason is that this type of art is made to be seen and no written description will serve the observer better than a glimpse at the real thing.  All educators face the problem of the visual art teacher in that much of what we should be teaching is not easily described or measured.  We teach students to think, create, solve problems, value others’ perspectives, persevere, be compassionate, lead, innovate, and question; yet, we don’t have a particularly good way to assess these attributes.  A portfolio provides a way for students to demonstrate their ability and competence in these areas.

According to Merriam Webster, the word portfolio dates back to the early 18th century and is derived from the Italian “portare” (to carry) and “foglio” (leaf,sheet).  The root of the word tells us that the portfolio must have served two primary purposes:  to archive and to share.  Teachers have long used portfolios for the purpose of archiving student work.  Alphabetized folders in hanging files are common place in classrooms around the world.  However, in the past decade digital portfolios are becoming more commonplace as they have many advantages over paper/folder portfolios.  Digital portfolios are dead simple to share with others and also offer a way for students to add personal reflections and for others to offer comments and support.

A portfolio gives students the ability to archive their work for future use or reflection.  It can be a powerful documentation of growth.  The archive can also be used as a credential for future schools and jobs.  It is a more authentic description of a student’s work than a report card or a standardized test, and the best universities and employers are beginning to recognize it as such.

Sharing is all about audience.  As an archive of academic work and reflection on that work, a student’s portfolio’s initial audience will be the school community:  classmates, faculty, and parents.  However, a wider audience for a portfolio can create greater authenticity, as the student demonstrates the relevance of his work to the world, not just at school.  Students must also consider future audiences in the creation of a portfolio, in particular, future schools and employers.  

Want to develop your own system of digital portfolios?  Find a platform and test it, give students some control to personalize their portfolio, provide students regular time in school to archive and reflect, require students to share it, and don’t grade it.

What is Lifeworthy?

Several months ago, when I was exploring graduate programs, I came across the following short interview of David Perkins who recently retired from the teaching faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education after forty years.  He still works with Harvard on research.  It intrigued and shocked me to hear a powerful policy voice say that “90% of what we typically teach in school is a waste of time.”  The short clip gives a general overview of Perkin’s ideas about what should be learned, but it left me wanting a more elaborate and specific explanation.   A short time after watching this interview, I saw that David Perkins would be one of the plenary speakers at the Future of Learning Institute at Harvard.  Last week, I got to hear David Perkins explain his ideas over what should be learned in an hour and a half talk. 

I find the following summary of some of Perkins’s ideas a poor substitute for listening to his plenary session at the FOL Institute.  Harvard did make a recording of the talk, and I hope they will release it to the general public at some time.  

Perkins started with the idea that we are educating today’s youth for an unknown world.  Previous generations could count on their children’s world looking fairly similar to their own.  However, with the rapid changes in technology and globalization, we can no longer say this is true.  Students need to concentrate on learning “lifeworthy” content and skills -- tools and knowledge that will be useful in an unknown world.

Lifeworthy skills and content, according to Perkins, lead learners to insight, action, and ethics.  He also believes that schools should focus on “comeupance,” that is things that come up regularly in a person’s life.  He gave a few specific curricular examples. First, students should learn basics of statistics and probability instead of the quadratic formula.  In evidence of this, he asked the 200-plus member audience to raise their hands if anyone had used quadratic equations some time in the last ten years.  Only a ten or fifteen people responded.  He then refined the search by asking how many use quadratic equations in a way outside of teaching it to others.  Only three people were left with their hands up, with the conclusion that “the main purpose of teaching quadratic equations seems to be to enable the next generation of teachers to teach the quadratic equation.”  Perkins would describe the teaching of quadratic equations to be “niche learning” that may be important to a deep understanding of the field of mathematics but is not a lifeworthy topic.  Another example that he gave of niche learning that is taught in almost all biology classes is mitosis.  Instead of spending time teaching mitosis, he argues that schools should focus on topics like communicable diseases and how they spread in a global world.  The last of his example was the the teaching of the French Revolution.  If we are teaching the French Revolution as a stand alone piece of knowledge, then it does not meet the criteria of being lifeworthy.  But, we can investigate topics like social injustice through the lens of the French Revolution to make them relevant.

Perkins certainly does not want to abandon the traditional disciplines that are currently taught in most schools.  He begs us to examine what we teach and only teach what will provide insight, lead to action, or help develop ethics. We must incorporate the "lifeworthy" and dismiss the "lifewimpy."

The Knife

On our recent trip to Boston, my seven-year-old son, Charlie, was finally allowed to purchase a pocket knife.  One of the requirements of ownership was for him to get training from me once we returned home.  
We arrived back in Asheville at 6:00 on Saturday evening after a full day in the minivan, and among Charlie’s first words were, “Can I get my pocketknife training now?”

“No, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.  We’ve got to unpack, do laundry, and get some rest.”  Moaning and disgruntled looks followed.
First thing on Sunday morning, “Can you train me now?”
“No, you’ll have to wait until we get back from church.”  More moaning and disgruntlement, but Charlie knew not to be too vocal proclaiming injustice because I still held all the cards.
Finally, the moment had arrived, and I had an internally motivated learner on my hands.  We sat on the back porch and I asked him to think about the difference between a tool and a toy.  He immediately answered that the knife was dangerous and toys weren’t dangerous.  So we talked about under what circumstances a knife could be dangerous.  I also talked about places where knives were not allowed and why they weren’t allowed.
Next we went through the process of actually using the knife.  How to open it safely, how and what to cut, and how to close it safely.  
The last thing I talked to him about was under what conditions he could show it to his friends and let them handle it.  (Owning a pocket knife has got to raise you a few levels in seven-year-old coolness factor.)  Then we were done, or so Charlie thought.
He was just about to run out the door to run down to Graham and Reed’s house when I told him that he would have to wait until later in the day to show them.
“WHAT?”
“Well, I want to see if you can actually remember all the stuff we went over.”
You can imagine the look I got.  Yes, I should have told him going into the lesson that there would be a quiz, but I didn’t think of it until I started imagining Charlie waving his knife around replicating some crazed street fighter because the learning did not stick.
So, after a few agonizing hours, I sat Charlie back down and asked him to tell me what he remembered about our talk.  He immediately said, “Knives are dangerous.”  
“Okay, what else do you remember.”
Charlie thought for a while.  “I don’t know.  I don’t remember what you said; I only remember what I said.”
I had just spent four days at the Future of Learning Institute at Harvard that was partly focused on trying to shift people’s thinking from a belief that learning is achieved through transference to a view that learning occurs through process.  Charlie’s response was the explanation point to this theme.

Charette - Learning Through Process

                                     -  video created by Julie Daughtry

As a part of the Future of Learning (FOL) Institute at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, a small number of the 200-plus institute participants volunteered and were selected to participate in a charette.  When asked to volunteer for this experience, we were told little about the process other than the fact that it would involve designing an artifact to represent the learner of the future.

While others may define a charette to fit their own needs, our experience in charette could be defined as a small group working together over multiple, intense sessions to design and construct a product through collaboration.  The process was valued equally, or perhaps more, than the product.

The success of the charette was achieved by the intentional and thoughtful planning of our facilitators, Justin Reich and Arzu Mistry, along with several FOL Fellows.  The sessions were an outstanding example of excellent teaching and reinforced my belief that great teaching occurs as a result of great planning.  While what happens in a classroom has been referred to as art, that art only occurs when the teacher is constantly engaged in the creation of the experience.

This charette experience focused on the process of creation.  Daily elements of scaffolding were put into place before we began our design work.  The intention of the scaffolding was to prepare us for the process that we would undertake during that specific class period.  The best example of this scaffolding was prior to the session when we were asked to develop our design elements.  We were asked to create something in five minutes given a concept and a medium.  We all randomly chose slips of paper from two piles; my medium was a sculpture and my concept was “tension between old and new.”  I had five minutes to think of an idea and make something.  The limited time forced me just to do something without thinking.  Most of the time this is the exact opposite of what teachers try to get students to do, but in this case the purpose was for us to generate ideas.  It was freeing not to have to think about whether the idea was good or bad and just do something with it.

The other effect of this small exercise was that it lowered tension and stress for me.  Justin told us that we didn’t have time for good ideas, we just needed to jump in and do it.  This removed the expectation of judgement by others.  We were all in the same boat, individuals creating something under impossible constraints with little or no expectations.  Many of the products of this brief exercise were creative because the exercise forced us to get out of our normal analytical minds and access the creative parts of our mind.  One of my partners stated that before the charette she thought she was not an artist and after it she thought that she was an artist.  I had the same feeling as I accessed and employed my “creative mind.”

There were many other short scaffolding sessions before and during our work.  All of them were purposeful, and, for me, effective.

The other element that focused us on the process was forced reflection.  At different points of our work session, we were asked to reflect on how we felt or what we were doing in front of a camera.  This was done in two different ways, one was in the “confessional booth” where we responded in front of a camera to a written question without anyone else present.  The other method occurred when we were filmed responding to oral questions in the middle of our design work.  Perhaps Arzu and Justin were really interested in documenting the process, but the effect for me was that it forced me to look inside myself frequently throughout the process.  The filming was essential to this process as it made my reply spontaneous.  I didn’t have time to craft a response.  While I don’t remember specific revelations in design that occurred as a result of this process, I do remember feeling less stress and more focused afterwards.  I was never asked to look at my recorded reflections, and I don’t know if anyone ever looked at them.  This made and makes no difference to me as the value gained was in the moment.

The final essential element in process was getting outside input into our design.  There were a couple of formal review periods where people outside of the charette were invited to question us about our process and design.  There were also informal reviews done by Justin, Arzu, and the Fellows.  The reviews were always done by questioning:  Have you thought about this?  Why did you do it that way? What are you trying to express?  What about the use of color?  Why did you choose wood as a medium? Getting input was crucial to the process.  Nearly every time someone interacted with us it changed our design to some degree.  At the very least it forced us to think in deeper and broader ways about the design.


While I have believed in Constructivist learning for years, participating in this charette gave me a personal understanding of the process that I previously lacked. To be a student in a classroom where process was central to learning deepened my appreciation for this model and will give me a framework to build upon.