"Great intentions are what spur people to collective action, and without such intentions, the inspiration that is fuel for real breakthroughs never combusts. People must be inspired, moved, called by mighty intentions to act." ~Umair Haque A phrase I find myself using more and more these days (and probably mispronouncing) is "raison d'être" or reason for being, as in asking school leaders "why does your school exist?" The easy answer is "to educate our children!" For centuries, that was probably good enough. Everyone knew, sorta, what it meant to be "educated." You "learned" a lot of stuff about different subjects. You learned how to read and write and work with numbers to some acceptable degree. You were "prepared" for life, for a job or a college. You looked pretty much like everyone who was "educated" before you, passed the same tests, got over the same bars. But what if being "educated" isn't about that any more? What if being "educated" today means that you can educate … [Read more...]
Word of the Day: Heutagogy
As a journalism major and a long-time English teacher, I have a deep interest in words and the way that they are used. If you've been following along here for a while, you know that I struggle mightily with many of the words and phrases that we bandy about in education because I find many of them to be either a) not very clearly defined, or b) co-opted by other interests right out of the box. The most obvious example is "personalized learning" which purports to mean giving students more choice and autonomy over their learning but in practice means a more individualized path through the curriculum. In fact, the phrase missing from most of the terms we use like "learner-centered" or "student-centered" or "collaborative learning" is "of our curriculum" tacked on to the end. Very rarely do we really mean giving kids more agency not just over how they learn but, importantly, what they learn as well. Another one of those popular phrases is "self-directed." Of course we want our kids to be … [Read more...]
The Zen of School Change
Right now, there are eight Tibetan Monks staying at my house. They’re sleeping on floors, couches, and my kids’ beds. (My kids are now on my bedroom floor.) They’re with us for 10-days as they do healings and meditations and school visits. (They made it down to Science Leadership Academy on Friday, in fact.) Only two speak English. And the best part is that the llama geshe (the monk with what amounts to a PhD.) does his personal meditation through cleaning. Our kitchen is spotless! This is the third time in five years that we’ve hosted monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery in India as they tour the US to raise funds for their work. It’s been a powerful experience that started in the first minute of the first visit. The group had just driven through a horrible snowstorm from Scranton, Pa to our house, a trip that should take a couple of hours turned into five. As I greeted the first monk out of the van in the blowing snow, I said “Long day, huh?” He smiled and quietly replied, … [Read more...]
Schools That Learn
Every now and then when I have some free time between basketball tournaments and conference presentations I actually do some reading using these things called "books." Some of them I actually have to hold in my hand and manually turn paper pages. Shocking, I know. Some have been on my shelf for a long time, like The Skeptical Visionary: A Seymour Sarason Education Reader. If you've been reading my columns here at EML or the posts on my blog, you know that Sarason is a huge influence on my thinking about schools. Some of those books, on the other hand, get one-click delivered, like Schools That Learn by Peter Senge. Suffice to say, those two books have me thinking this week. First, let me say that just the idea of "schools that learn" is compelling to me. It's a question that I've already started asking administrators and teachers at the districts I visit: "Is this a school that learns?" While I'm going just on intuition here, by the looks that I get when I offer up that … [Read more...]
Fixing What We Broke
Is it me, or does it seem like much of what we're doing in education these days is trying to fix what we ourselves break when it comes to kids and learning? I mean, what does it say that our kids come to us as creative, innovative thinkers when they're five or six years old, but most of what we're now rubbing our hands about in education is how to get kids in school to be more creative and innovative? I know that in the most watched TED talk of all time, Sir Ken Robinson asks straight out "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" But if you wondered even for a moment as to the answer, the evidence isn't hard to find that says schools must be doing that. Recently, I landed on The Teacher's Guild site, which looks like a group of educators who are exploring the use of design thinking to improve the school experience. All good. Their first "challenge" for educators from anywhere in the world to solve through design is this: "How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of … [Read more...]
This New School Year, What Do You Believe About Learning?
I want to circle back to a post I wrote in this space a couple of months ago regarding the "Pedagogic Creed" of John Dewey and the model that he presents for clearly articulating your beliefs about learning. I've begun asking the leaders at the schools I'm visiting if they've ever written down what they believe about how students learn, and you won't be shocked to learn that to date, none have. Granted, it's a small sampling size of about a dozen, but I know that for many of these folks it's the first time that anyone has asked them the question. To be honest, I find it really troubling. As much as we like to talk about the "modern" aspects of learning here, the focus of all of our work is just plain learning. How does it happen? How can it happen more effectively in schools? And what role do people play in that interaction now that we are surrounded by so many technologies and people and resources? If these are not the questions we are asking on a daily basis in schools, why not? … [Read more...]
Discovering Learning or Delivering an Education
I’ve been thinking a lot about learning over the last couple of years, more so than at any other point in my life. While I spent 22 years teaching and administrating in a public school, I can’t say that I spent a lot of time thinking about learning during my career, specifically how kids learn. And I don’t remember “learning about learning” in my teacher preparation programs either. It’s taken a decade of being out of schools to finally focus on what is the most important part of schools. The irony is not missed, believe me. One of the questions I’ve started asking teachers and leaders in my travels is how often they have conversations about learning and how kids learn. It’s not surprising that only a handful report that such conversations are a regular (or even a sporadic) occurrence. Most of the conversations teachers have when they get together either formally or informally are about their practice or about helping students achieve at higher levels or even just pass a class. … [Read more...]
The “One Really Competitive Skill”
If you had asked me just a few years ago who Seymour Papert was, I would have stared blankly and had no answer. Not surprisingly, today when I ask others in my workshops if they know of Papert, most do not. Because of my own lack of exposure to Papert’s ideas, I’m not surprised. Yet, Papert is someone who should be a fundamental part of any educator’s understanding of learning and the ways in which technology can fundamentally change the way we think about schools and education. Thankfully, my friend Gary Stager, one of Papert’s most articulate and knowledgeable disciples, kept pushing me toward books like Mindstorms and The Connected Family and to all sorts of Papert’s essays and speeches (many of which I’ve tried to organize and link to in this document.) It’s no understatement when I say that my exposure to Papert’s ideas over the last three years or so has had a powerful impact on how I see the world, schools, and my work. That goes for my colleague here at EML Bruce Dixon as … [Read more...]
1 to 1 Is Not The Answer
If you want to keep abreast of what is happening with technology in education across developing countries, Mike Trucano from the World Bank writes an interesting blog which focuses on the policy aspects across many regions. The Bank’s reach means he is across a lot more than most, and while his focus is around national policy, he often highlights experiences that might be of interest to school and systemic leaders. Given his brief he is naturally across many of the 1 to 1 initiatives from across the globe, his post at the end of last year was a summary of much of the outcome of the Global Symposium on ICT use in education in Korea which focused on "Transforming Education with 1:1 Computing: Learning from Practical Experiences in Providing Students with Their Own Individual Computing Devices" Much of what was discussed there would be top of mind for many educational leaders. For those Districts, Provinces or schools that are still considering such an initiative, his Trends and … [Read more...]
Barriers to Social Learning
We may talk about the importance of learning, but for the most part we do not practice it. Let’s start with schools. Schools tend to focus on weaknesses instead of strengths. They also focus too much on content dissemination. Our institutions have failed to foster the love of learning, and do not motivate students to learn for themselves – in many cases it’s the opposite. One problem is the continuing focus on subject-based curriculum. It separates education from reality. We do not live our lives in subject areas, and no workplace is subject-based, but almost all of our curricula are stuffed into category silos. No one can master any content field any more. Now we see students having better access to information as well as connections to more people than some of their teachers. Students may be chatting online with their friends in Asia, while the teacher is covering Asian social studies in class. The student just checks with the online friend and gets the information in context. … [Read more...]