Blogush

A poem by Marianne Williamson (with religious references removed) that I plan on reading to my students next week.

My wife says I am crabby…so I apologize ahead of time…I know that many of you teach at progressive schools, send your kids to progressive schools, or don’t send your kids to school at all…

Yesterday I had a meeting after school.  It was the type of meeting that I suppose is taking place at schools across the country.  We need to improve on three sections of our state testing so we are going to do more test prep on those three sections.  First we have to improve on our writing prompts.  The answer is to not have kids do more authentic writing or have them do more writing that they might enjoy, but to standardize the prompts across the district so that every kid gets accessed on the same prompt.  Then we have to improve self to text connections.  The answer is not to create units that connect to students’ live and reading material that connects with their lives, but to give them standardized reading assignments and force them to make a connection with whatever is read.  Finally we have to improve reading comprehension.  We are not going to help them by letting them read material they might enjoy, or making sure the have the proper background to understand and make connections to what they read, we are simply going to give them standardized sections of text to read and…well, frankly I don’t know what we are going to do. Maybe that was the one in which we were suppose to take sections of the history text and blank out words and have them guess what word we removed.

I got a little upset about how I  and everyone above me just let all this cheap teaching run into our classrooms.  Everyone just says yes to the person above them.  For the most part, I find that teachers don’t have a problem with the test prep, their problem is wanting more time to complete the required extra testing.

After a while of feeling pathetic and powerless, I decided to shift the blame.  I decide to start blaming businesses who sit idle on the sidelines as their future workers are dumbed down.  Why wouldn’t businesses want the very best employees?  Why don’t the CEOs complain lobby Congress about schools schools doing more test prep and killing kids motivation, curiosity, creativity, and communication and collaboration skills.  Why not….

Thoughts then shifted to who benefits from having independent, empowered, critical thinking kids? Or better yet, ask the question that is asked before every action the government takes from deciding to write the Declaration of Independence to Social Security–What current part of the population will make more money?  Schools would have all sorts of people questioning what they do, choosing to not participate in waste of time homework  or test prep lessons that clearly have no link to their future.  Why would schools want to lose control and all sorts of specialists that design all of our wonderful testing programs and staff members hired to convince us that the current path is the right one.   Businesses need a dumbed down population so that they can convince them to buy clothes based on a logo, spend hours watching TV, eat their family dinners at fast food joints, and go to the movies and put down $10 to watch Jackass.

The fact is that school does not totally dumb down everyone.  There are enough kids who graduate and can fill the cogs of the machines at the highest level.  That leaves a whole lot of people left to buy all the stuff we are convinced we need.

I was speaking to a couple of doctors who immigrated from Europe.  They have a very unique take on the whole health care debate going on.  Basically they said that any type of reform will fail.  It is not the system that is put in place that will help people, it will have to be a change in our cultural beliefs.  No matter what system we create, it will be based on our cultural biases and ideals, most of which are at odds with creating a health care system that works. Maybe that is why schools have not changed in 10os of years, because they are the mirror of our culture, our belief systems, reinforcing our cultural memes.  Yes the tools we use have changed, occupations have changed, and our cities have changed, but at the core is still the same cultural values driving those superficial changes.

As I wander through life the last couple of years, I do wonder how possible “school change” really is.  There are scattered people who support a changes, but in a system as big as mine I don’t even know if I can count as many people as fingers on one hand missing three fingers who would support a system wide paradigm change.  What is happening in schools matches our cultural expectations and ideals.  Technology based social networks do connect folks across the world that are interested in changing education, but I think it has given many the false sense of a movement.  There is no movement where I live.  I live in one of the richest states, up the road from one of the worlds greatest universities, and plenty of high tech businesses driving the economy.  There is no movement here for change.

So yea, pretty depressing post right?  But the bright spot is it has me thinking about how to change schools without focusing on the schools.  What part of our culture can be worked on so that school change becomes an automatic?  What would have to change so that people would just simply no longer put up with the current system? Would we be more effective putting our energy somewhere else?

Sometimes I wonder if we spend to much time getting kids ready for the future, and never let them experience today. I feel like my focus on creating lifelong learners results in kids who might never stop to experience life, never realize that action in the moment that they are in is just as important as preparing oneself for the future.

I used to lead nature walks in which we would hug trees, find salamanders, lay down and watch the branches above sway in the breeze, and listen to the leaves crunch under our feet.  Today I would feel the pull to bring our cameras into the woods and record everything, document it, blog it, research and write a wiki page, and then record a podcast.  It doesn’t result in being in “the moment” because one’s thoughts are not open to absorbing and experiencing the new things, but how will they use the things they find be used at a later time and date.

I hate that it takes a flop of a lesson in which I was looking for answers about the future, and the kids gave me answers about today, to make me realize that I have to slow done and enter their “moment” to better prepare them for our future.

Steve Moore tweeted something interesting today from a site that gives daily writing prompts that lead to this:

Too often teachers try to teach kids to write creatively or make their writing more interesting but it borders on the impossible. Always, the kids who have lived the least write the least. Kids who think the least write the least. Kids who can’t have a conversation, can’t write anything worth talking about. I never succeeded in making my students better writers until I made had them think deeply in class. I wasn’t able to have them write about things worth reading until we started to do activities worth doing. And they didn’t start to write in a way that was interesting, until we started to have interesting dialogs in class. Their language wasn’t “learned,” it was experienced. They first have to ponder, think, laugh, cry, and live…then write.   Language grows out of life.

The very first thing the kids hear come out of my mouth each year is a little song that I wrote to welcome them to class.  I finally remembered to record it, but I forgot to get the good mic out.  A little rough but I hope you enjoy it.

First Day Song

Today one of the questions posed to my class was “What does the perfect class look like to you?”  They were not nervous at all about having to speak out loud on the second day of school (right kids?).  Not nervous at all about having their voices recorded(right kids?).  When I played the recording back everyone loved to hear their voices (right kids?).  And there was no pressure in Water group to hurry up and finish before the fire drill (right kids?).  The recordings from both classes are below:

Air–What does the perfect class look like to you?

Water–What does the perfect class look like to you?

On the first day of school I read to the kids Gerald the Giraffe.  An audio recording is below:

Gerald the Giraffe

At the end of the book we talk about finding that cricket in all of us,  listening to  it, and letting it drive the creative spirit in each of them–even in school.  At the end of class I give the students a “Million Word Assignment” that is due the next day.  This year I got a little surprise.  I didn’t receive an assignment on paper or through email, but a video instead.  The video is below–I recommend watching it on youtube and clicking on “more info” and following along with the script he provided.

I asked the student if I could share the video, and as I left I asked a simple question…”Why did you do it as a video?”  He answered, “Because I just wanted to be creative.”

How many other kids “just want to be creative?”  Have you given your kids permission to “just be creative?”

Sir Ken Robinson is wrong…kind of…

I like to play games by boiling things done to their essence.  For example if we are talking about the Bill of Rights in Class I like to ask the kids you had to keep only one, which one would it be.  With my curriculum I like to try to think about what is the one thing that is most important.  Lately I have been thinking about distilling teaching down to a single word.  What is the most important thing a teacher can do in a classroom.

Now I teach 8th grade.  And by the time they get to me they have had at least 9 years of institutionalized education.  There is some research that is starting to show that “who” you are at the end of 8th grade is “who” you will be as an adult.  So what is the most important thing I can do with my kids?

I used to side with Sir Ken.  I thought one of the most important things I could do was to get the kids to be creative.  To rekindle those creative juices that reside in each of them.  This summer I really questioned whether or not that was possible.  Can I really teach kids to be more “creative?”  No I can’t.  I can make them “look” more creative, but not be more creative. The facts are that many kids are much more creative than I am.  Even if they are not “being” creative they still are more creative than me.  Someone can be a much better piano player than me even if they stopped playing nine years ago.

School don’t squash kids creative abilities, it crushes their motivation.  Without motivation you do not have creativity.  The most important thing we can do with kids is to motivate them to find that curiosity, imagination, sense of exploration, and creativity that they had when they were little.  I should state that in my Schooltopia world motivating kids would not be the most important thing to do, but with the current students and the current system it is.

Do you motivate kids?  How do you do it?  When you present a new unit do you mention that it has to get done for a grade?  If someone is not behaving appropriately do you motivate them to improve…or threaten them with coercive actions.  If they are not paying attention, or are bored do you have little tricks to get them to do what you want them to? Out students inner sparks have been extinguished by years of coercive motivation.  That inner spark is necessary for creativity.  Many slog through school dragging from class to class.  Tough question for you…are students happy to come to your class each day?  What are you doing about it?  Kids that you have motivated to come to your class in a psychologically sound frame of mind will be more creative.

This is regardless of the skill level of the class.    If you foster an atmosphere of passion and interdependence creativity blossoms.  Creativity is not connected to test scores or AP classes.  Quite frankly most of the highest scoring kids I have met have been the least creative…and the least motivated…and the hardest to motivate.

I sit in many meetings each year as we try to figure out strategies, accommodations, and modifications to help kids.  Most of the time we are just trying to come up with something that will get the kid to do the work and get a better grade–almost everything that we come up with is a way to coerce the kid into learning something when we want them to, and doing what we want them to do when we want them to do it.  We believe that the more work we do, the more teaching we do, the more methods we employ, and the more brain research we weave into our lessons the better off the kids will be.  Because, after all, without us they wouldn’t be able to learn right?  We force them to follow our system, rules, and teach them what we think is important.  Keep in mind that this occurs from they time they are born, until the time…well…when does it end.  We get upset that kids in the system are not motivated, don’t do work, and aren’t creative.  Why would they be?  How could they be? Now getting kids to do work does not equal motivation.  Someone just tweeted an article entitled  “10 things to do to increase participation in your class.”  Motivated kids don’t need to get tricked and coerced into participating.  One of the 10 ways is “Teach Students How to Collaborate Before Expecting Success.” I am watching my 6 year old daughter collaborate with her friends to play a very intricate role playing game.  My older daughter enters and seamlessly fits right in and collaborates with them to continue the activity.  I think we have to remember that much of what we think we need to teach kids isn’t because they never knew how and it’s a new skill, we have to teach it because they have not been allowed to continue using many of the skills that they were born with.  We have schooled out of kids most of the traits that we want then to have, and then try to coercively school them back in.  We make learning an unnatural activity.

Watch little kids play.  Give a little kid an object and let them do whatever they want to with it.  I can guarantee you that by the time they are done it will be in pieces.  They are born tinkerers.  They learn by experimenting, taking things apart, and if it does not work try it again. Schooling teaches them to make no mistakes, keep things neat, and if you do something and it doesn’t work you fail and move on.  We have replaced tinkering as a way to learn with following directions and repeating what they are told.  We give them knowledge and skills.  Learning now equals getting knowledge and skills from others.  “What did you learn in school?”  Essentially means what did you get from your teacher.  Kids have learned to walk into school to and consume.  Kids who grow up tinkering produce.  It is no wonder we have a wonderful nation of consumers, kids and adults who expect that school is a ticket to eventually consume all sorts of fancy goods.  Educators push school and college onto kids why?  So that they will produce great things for the world?  or so that they can get a good job and live happily, which equals owning certain consumer goods. Tough question…do the kids in your class consume or produce?  Do they produce anything that is not for you?  That is not intended for the garbage can?

When my class walks into our room for the first time Tuesday they will have spent nine years being told that they need to do what I tell them, they believe I know best.  They will have spent nine years being told how to behave, and believe that I will tell them how to behave.  They will have spent nine years being given the answers, and believe that I will have all of the answers they need for the next year.  They will have spent nine years learning that school is a place where you are told what to learn, how to learn it, and when to do it, and when they have to prove to someone that they have “learned” something they answer rote questions on a piece of paper that 24 hours later will be placed into a garbage can. They believe that it will continue I my class…it doesn’t.

My job is to motivate them to once again believe that they are powerful.  Henry Ford was once asked how he got such great production and creativity out of his staff.  He replied, “I don’t do much, I just go around lighting fires underneath other people.”  That is my quest this year, to motivate my kids this year so that each leave me with a fire burning underneath them.  Almost all the kids realize, and many complain in the beginning, that I don’t do much teaching, but somehow they end up learning.  It is possible to be a teacher and not “teach.”  It is possible to have a student learn without being “taught.”

Sir Ken you are right that schools do not support creativity, but it is because they crush kid’s motivation first.  Intrinsic motivation is the heart of creativity.  It’s hard being a teacher, it is hard to stay motivated, it is hard to motivate. The title of teacher that I am labeled with is very ambiguous.  It’s a  title that tells me more about what I don’t have to do rather than what I have to do.  This year I am going to include restoring my student’s motivation as one of the things I have to do.

PS–by now many of you will have seen that Mr. Pink’s TED talk on motivation.  I can assure you that he did not motivate me to write this.  I do think it is great that it took me so long to finish this post so that I can end with his talk.

Way back in May, Todd Williamson tagged me with the meme “Five Things You Would Do If You Were Not Afraid.”  That’s a darn hard meme to answer.  Admitting fear is like admitting weakness, admitting you have flaws.  Ick….

Well I finally got around to finishing it.  This post doesn’t have five things, just one…the “one” took a long, long time.

ONE THING I WOULD DO IF I WEREN’T AFRAID

I have always questioned whether or not what I do in a classroom is worthy of being shared with others.  I never feel competent as a teacher, and don’t have much confidence in sharing details on what I do with my kids with folks face-to-face.  I tend to see everything I do in the classroom as flawed in someway and not good enough.  Writing about what I do on this blog is becoming easier, but face-to-face in a workshop/conference setting….yikes…especially in light of all the special shiny projects that are usually shared in conference sessions as the epitome of what every teacher should be doing.

I do think that I have some good great ideas to share, and I think so do all the other classroom teachers out there who tend to believe that it is only the folks speaking with the loudest voices that are the ones  worthy of being heard.  As I have gone to conferences over the last few years I have become increasingly aware of the fact that many of the best presenters are sitting in the audience listening, instead of speaking.  How many times have you heard that it was not the sessions that proved to be most valuable, but the hallway time between sessions or the “happy hour” afterwords.  I don’t want to take anything away from the organizers and presenter at the conferences I have atended, they were wonderful, just not what I was looking for.  What am I looking for?  I have moved past the point of needing sessions on “stuff.”  Websites, tools, methods, etc.  I can get those from the internet.  Many times I have arrived at sessions and have been dismayed to realize that I was only going to get what I have already seen on the internet…right down to the powerpoint.

Last year I started thinking about what could I present at a conference?  What kind of conference would I want to present at?  This year I thought a little more about what it would take to be able to pull off an informal conference with more of a focus on classroom teachers and classroom teachers as presenters.   A conference that focuses on the processes in classrooms and not the end products.  A conference in which anyone with a great idea would feel comfortable volunteering to present.  A conference that has a primary purpose of not teaching, sharing or giving, but reflection, motivation, and inspiration.

If I was not afraid, I would find some like minded folks and organize a conference…one with name that could be improved, but one that had a really cool acronym and theme music

PLEASE keep in mind that the following are just some rough thoughts–I know there are holes–please don’t poke more;) I also know that it sounds a lot like other conferences, but hey, I am still working on it!

The Innovation and Collaboration in Education (ICE) Conference:

When Henry Ford first started the Ford Motor Company he was known for not selling cars, but ideas.

Ford didn’t say, “do it like this”, he said, “I wonder how it could be done better”.

The ICE conference is about tinkering with the big ideas in education so participants leave with a deeper understanding of learning processes, not just end products.

ICE does not serve as a showroom for finished projects and grand collaborations, but as a place for dialogue about ideas and the processes behind them which can be applied universally to all projects, grade levels, and subjects.

Presenters will primarily be classroom teachers who are familiar with running a program that lasts a full school year, or how the topic they are presenting fits into a day-to-day, full year schedule. Other presenters such as tech specialists, school consultants, and administrators will present topics that they have implemented in year round programs and will share their ideas in a way that a classroom teacher can find useful in their room everyday.  Sessions will be in a variety of formats.  Some sessions will mimic the “hallway” discussions that occur in between sessions at other conferences, some will allow participates to help brainstorm an amazing new idea or work on an awesome collaborative project, and other sessions will allow for a more in-depth examination of an idea.  The ICE Conference sessions will allow educators to collaborate on how to best bring innovative ideas to a classroom and sustained them for an entire school year. There will be seven types of sessions during ICE:

1. Formal sessions in which presenters will not just share a tool, or a special project, but focus in on a skill or part of their teaching and the units and tools that were used to sustain growth in that skill throughout the course of a year.  Any type of project that is presented will be the type that is sustainable for an entire year.  Ex., so not sessions on creative writing activities, but how to develop creative writers throughout the year.
2. Poster sessions in which presenters will show how they incorporate things such as poetry, art, dialogue, digital story telling, etc into units throughout the year–not just a single project.
3. Brainstorm sessions allow a person to bring an idea or project that they would like to create, improve, or need collaboration on, and participants would collaboratively work on it.
4. Nuts and Bolts Session—ok, so maybe there is room for one time slot on just “tools.”  Nuts and bolts is a round robin time slot that allows people to present and take questions on a favorite tools(from podcasting to puppets) that they use in their class.  People are free to travel from station to station.
5. Un-conference style sessions on day 2 based on ideas and needs from day 1
6. Classroom Wisdom– Every great teacher does things that does not get written into a lesson plans.  Things that are at the core of a successful class but are difficult to place into an official presentation. These topics are probably best not meant to be discussed in a formal atmosphere but in a dialogue with a small group.  Topics can be as diverse as how to grade with out giving tests, how to involve all students in discussion, how to set-up a failure free classroom, how to spark creativity, classroom management without coercion, creating a risk free class, creating an atmosphere of trust in the classroom, and getting kids to “break out of their box.”
7. Small group break-out discussions—conference participants often come with very specific questions not covered by sessions and don’t know who to ask or how to find someone to help them. Other participants also come with areas of expertise that they might not be ready to present in a more formal manner or might be more of a niche expertise. In the morning of Day 2 participants will be able to post questions and/or areas of expertise on a board.  Later in the morning participants will be able to pair up or get into small break-out groups to answer posted questions or ask a person with an expertise questions.

DAY 1

9-9:30                Keynote

9:45-10:30       Formal Presentation

10:30-11:15     Formal Presentation

11:30-12:00    Special Super Secret Session Run By Conference Organizers

12-1:00             Lunch

1:15-2:00         Formal Presentation

2:15-3:00         Formal Presentation

3:15-4:00         Poster Session

4:15-5:00         Classroom Wisdom

7-10                   Mandatory Happy hour

SUNDAY

8:30-9              Post a questions/areas of expertise for PM informal break-outs.  Based on Day 1 and Happy
Hour discussions, create ideas for PM unconference sessions

9-9:45               Formal Presentation/In-depth session (runs during both AM slots)

10-10:45          Formal Presentation

11-11:45           Small Group Break out discussions

11:45-12:45     Lunch

1:00-1:45         Un-conference based on AM Q’s

2:00-2:45         Formal Presentation

3:00-3:45         Brain Storm Sessions—Participants bring a project they need help with or pitch an idea for a project they need collaboration on

4:00-5:00        The ICEys–the best thing participants/students did during the year (Everyone who was not a presenter shares!)

Cost for 2 day conference for 50 people with one night accommodations $250

If it was a one day conference:

A One Day Conference

8:30-9               Welcome

9-9:30               Keynote

9:45-10:15       Formal Presentation

10:15-11:30     Formal Presentation

11:45-12:15     Poster Sessions

11:45-12:45     Lunch

1:15-2:00         Nuts and bolts

2:15-3:00        Classroom Wisdom

3-3:45                Brain Storm Sessions—Classroom procedures

4:30-5:00        ICEys–the best thing you do during the year

For the record, it was a post from Bill Genereux that made me start thinking about this topic, and then a  tweet and skype conversation with Karen Janowski that really go me thinking about this again and motivated me to finish.  Make sure you click on their names and check out their blogs–two people who have really inspired me over the last couple years.

This post is really dedicated to everyone who is a lurker in the edtech world.  You know who you are.  You are reading lots of blogs but never leave a comment.  You joined twitter but really only post links or re-tweet.

I am driving up to Boston next week to attend Edubloggercon.  If you take a look at the attending page and you are a edtech groupie you will recognize many of the faces.  There are some pretty seriously smart people that are attending.  Two years ago I did not attend Educon in Philadelphia because I looked at the attending page and was way to intimidated by the faces.  There were so many people who had contributed so much and I had well…contributed nothing.  It took me over two years of blogging and twittering before I felt ready to go to a national conference and not be intimidated…let me re-word that…it took me two years of quietly blogging and following other people twittering before I finally attended my first national conference.  I was scared stiff but I made it through and went on several months later to attend another conference and survived it.  It was around this time last year that I really started to have some confidence and get involved in twitter conversations and comment on people’s blogs.  I didn’t become any smarter, just more confident.  In some ways I feel like I lost two years of learning by whimping out of conversations and conferences.

So if you are new to the edtech world and are looking to start contributing, I invite you to pick a post on this blog, any post and leave a comment(or anyones blog).  No one will know you are making your one of your first comments, it will show up just like all the others.  Feel free to follow me on twitter @paulbogush and comment on anything I say.  Again, no one will know you are just testing the waters. Point is, you have to jump in, or at least dip your toes. I know it’s kind of intimidating, I can remember very clearly NEVER wanting to comment on anyone’s blog or make a comment to someone through twitter, and I only practiced safe blogging and twittering.  Writing posts and tweets that were simple and safe and wouldn’t expose myself to someone disagreeing.  That whole afraid of failure and looking silly thing…

(I know someone won’t like this but it’s what I did last year that really helped me) One thing I did last year that helped me alot was purgingn my twitter list and blogroll of all the big shots.  I deleted almost everyone from my twitter list that was on the “A” list and filled it with a lot more people just like me, and slowly built up with others that were just as impressive as all the big famous edtechheads but took an interest in helping me.  It simply made me much more comfortable.  I think the world of blogs and twitter is powerful stuff and everyone should take the leap.  I also know that almost everyone who visits blogs doesn’t get involved in the conversation, and most of the people that I have followed over the last several months stay awfully quiet when they are on and just lurk.  So to all the lurkers I want to leave you with the words Linda Nitsche wrote to me today–” We all have amazing things to share and ideas to move change forward. Never question your power!“  Please take a leap of faith today and join one conversation, make one comment, write one tweet or plurk one response to someone.  Never question your power to make a contribution.

So if you promise to make comment or tweet, i will promise to not sit in silence at the conference Tuesday and walk out at the end of the day feeling like I missed out on another opportunity to make a contribution.  Seriously, If I can do it, so can you.  Deal?