These are interesting times, with an abundance of blog topics from which to choose. Our association is voting today on a pay freeze proposed by the school board. Our last teacher day is tomorrow. The AICs each presented six training sessions during the last three in-service days. And tomorrow I will interview to continue doing my job integrating technology next year, under a slightly different job title and description.
Still, I can't help looking back at what was an incredible year. In any other year, in any other budget, the three K-12 Acadmic Integration Coaches would be closing our office doors for the summer and making plans to continue our work over the summer and into next year. Instead, the great run the three of us had will come to an end, at least in it's current form, tomorrow when we close our buildings for the summer and head out into uncertainty.
We worked with over 75% of our district's 1000+ teachers this year, through 72 training sessions we began last July and continued through today, as well as nearly 500 instances of on-the-job tech coaching in response to individual classroom needs. When our teachers take their exit surveys on their self-reported levels of technology use and integration, I am confident the results will show we made some great strides. Student tech use is up, and students are doing much more higher-level thinking, project-based learning, and collaboration using web 2.0 tools than they were a year ago. The three of us worked tirelessly this year so that, at the very least, we could end the year with the confidence that no one could have done a better job in our situation. I look at our teacher feedback - the highest-rated and most consistently well-attended of any flex sessions offered in our district, the most flex sessions of any content area, and the over 100 positive responses we received within 24 hours when we asked our colleagues to come to our aid in this difficult budget and demonstrate the need for continuing our efforts next year. While the position will be there - with a different name and reduced to two people - it WILL be there, thanks to the efforts of our technology administrators and our cabinet's willingness to listen to them when they said that tech coaches are not an added luxury, but a necessity in this day and age.
The personnel will change. Jason has moved to another career, and Wendy's status as a long-term sub when our budget allows for no new hires and no filling of vacancies means neither will share the office with me. Our collaboration for this one brief school year was something I will treasure, and use as a model for working as part of a team in the future. Jason's spark of creativity and big picture ideas concerning what education needs to be, and Wendy's uncanny ability to take a tech concept and teach it to the least tech-savvy among us, will be greatly missed. They join a long line of excellent educators who have left our district in recent years. I will use everything I learned from these two coaches if I am fortunate enough to continue in my position next year, working with a new teammate.
The website we built this year, NPTechTools.wikispaces.com, will continue to serve as a launching point for teachers who wish to integrate technology into their lesson plans, and I hope it will continue to grow as teachers learn and share new methods. Our weekly Tech Tips podcasts will stand for teachers to use whenever they find themselves ready to take on a new task or project. And we will continue to work with colleagues from around the state and country in professional learning networks we've built using Twitter, Skype, and list-serves.
It was never about the technology. Our mission was always about LEARNING, powered by technology, and we worked together to take the resources at our disposal and make them "100% better."
I will miss these two great colleagues, but whether I am in the classroom or continuing on the path to help every teacher and every student develop the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century, I'll do everything I can to power education through technology, and I plan to continue to write about my adventures right here, every Tuesday. There is a lot of reason to take great pride in our district, its schools, and its incredible teachers. I know we will work through this adversity and return to being the world class institution we once were. Keep the faith, keep working, and don't give up! Thanks for reading along with me this year. See you next Tuesday!
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Scott Swindells
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Education Problem
We hear so much about about our "failing schools" and the "education problem in America" that it seems to have become generally accepted as fact. When we are so bombarded by those phrases, it is difficult to imagine that they are anything but true, or to believe anything other than that our schools are failing.
But our schools - the buildings, the faculty, staff, administration, curricula - don't seem to have these problems at night. The problems in our education system seem to be between 6 or 7 in the morning, and seem to end with the last bell of the day.
Many of our students, who sit in the same desks, eat the same school lunches, learn from the same teachers and textbooks, and have the same opportunities during the school day, are succeeding. While we can't argue that our country has slipped from the top in many industries, in innovation, in business, and in many other measurable areas, to call this an "education problem" is just lazy.
It is lazy because identifying schools as the root of the problem gives people the sense that it is something that can be fixed, and opens the door to ideas like throwing money at standardized testing, or requiring teachers to employ a variety of cookie-cutter methods to teaching that are somehow believed to work for all students. It fosters the belief that no one will get left behind if we teach everyone the same information the exact same way, and it feeds the myth that something is being done wrong at schools during the hours between bus rides, and that something can be done during those hours to make our students become more productive, creative, innovative and successful members of society upon graduation.
States are pressured by federal budget restrictions, and must pass on their own restrictions to their public school districts. In turn, school districts pile more and more jobs and tasks, with fewer and fewer resources, to teachers, who leave the profession earlier and earlier, citing frustration at not being able to actually reach their students because of all the restrictions put upon them in terms of how and what they can teach... and how little instructional time is left after all the standardized testing, paced curricular requirements, and other restrictions have been levied.
What is the alternative? Calling our national slide from prominence a "parenting problem" would be political suicide for elected officials at any level, because then the problem is not one that can be "fixed" by throwing money at new educational practices, or by withholding funds from schools deemed to be failing. Who wants to identify a problem that has no easy solution? So out of laziness, or unwillingness to creatively address a problem, the very problems we face are fed and persist.
Many students take advantage of the opportunities they are given from public education. Many do not. With all the support systems in place for students, and all the information and resources available to anyone with an Internet connection, how can this be seen as anything other than a choice?
Some students will continue to choose a path of success, and others will choose the path of least resistance. All will continue to be welcomed through the doors of public schools, which will continue to be labeled as "failing" and as "problems."
As teachers, we must work through these obstacles, as well as the obstacles created by misguided attempts to remedy these problems. If no one is willing to address the problems that begin at home, such as unwillingness to take responsibility, fear of hard work, a sense of entitlement, and a lack of understanding that success is an option our students can choose, then the task of finding solutions to these problems will fall on the shoulders of educators.
Free us to work on these problems. Untie our hands. The pendulum must swing away from prescribed curricula, pacing, or increased standardized testing, and head in a direction that allows individual students to take ownership of their education, master the skills and standards that they need to succeed through a variety of means that allow them to learn as individuals, and be guided to those methods by teachers who are willing to work with them as individuals.
But our schools - the buildings, the faculty, staff, administration, curricula - don't seem to have these problems at night. The problems in our education system seem to be between 6 or 7 in the morning, and seem to end with the last bell of the day.
Many of our students, who sit in the same desks, eat the same school lunches, learn from the same teachers and textbooks, and have the same opportunities during the school day, are succeeding. While we can't argue that our country has slipped from the top in many industries, in innovation, in business, and in many other measurable areas, to call this an "education problem" is just lazy.
It is lazy because identifying schools as the root of the problem gives people the sense that it is something that can be fixed, and opens the door to ideas like throwing money at standardized testing, or requiring teachers to employ a variety of cookie-cutter methods to teaching that are somehow believed to work for all students. It fosters the belief that no one will get left behind if we teach everyone the same information the exact same way, and it feeds the myth that something is being done wrong at schools during the hours between bus rides, and that something can be done during those hours to make our students become more productive, creative, innovative and successful members of society upon graduation.
States are pressured by federal budget restrictions, and must pass on their own restrictions to their public school districts. In turn, school districts pile more and more jobs and tasks, with fewer and fewer resources, to teachers, who leave the profession earlier and earlier, citing frustration at not being able to actually reach their students because of all the restrictions put upon them in terms of how and what they can teach... and how little instructional time is left after all the standardized testing, paced curricular requirements, and other restrictions have been levied.
What is the alternative? Calling our national slide from prominence a "parenting problem" would be political suicide for elected officials at any level, because then the problem is not one that can be "fixed" by throwing money at new educational practices, or by withholding funds from schools deemed to be failing. Who wants to identify a problem that has no easy solution? So out of laziness, or unwillingness to creatively address a problem, the very problems we face are fed and persist.
Many students take advantage of the opportunities they are given from public education. Many do not. With all the support systems in place for students, and all the information and resources available to anyone with an Internet connection, how can this be seen as anything other than a choice?
Some students will continue to choose a path of success, and others will choose the path of least resistance. All will continue to be welcomed through the doors of public schools, which will continue to be labeled as "failing" and as "problems."
As teachers, we must work through these obstacles, as well as the obstacles created by misguided attempts to remedy these problems. If no one is willing to address the problems that begin at home, such as unwillingness to take responsibility, fear of hard work, a sense of entitlement, and a lack of understanding that success is an option our students can choose, then the task of finding solutions to these problems will fall on the shoulders of educators.
Free us to work on these problems. Untie our hands. The pendulum must swing away from prescribed curricula, pacing, or increased standardized testing, and head in a direction that allows individual students to take ownership of their education, master the skills and standards that they need to succeed through a variety of means that allow them to learn as individuals, and be guided to those methods by teachers who are willing to work with them as individuals.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Trusting Teachers and Students to Learn More Independently
In about two weeks, teachers will be dressed casually, wearing shorts and t-shirts, dreaming of summer, and in many cases, just going through the motions of the final in-service days of the year.
We Academic Integration Coaches will be spending the last days in our current position swamped in presentations, facilitating morning and afternoon sessions at different buildings around our district on a variety of topics.
Some of the sessions we will facilitate are designed by administrators, some are of our own design.
The ones we have designed will show teachers several methods to reduce paper use, increase student engagement, and manage a classroom where students use diverse technological means to master curricular skills. Our sessions will be differentiated, so teachers can choose which programs, applications and websites will be most beneficial to their classrooms, and then work hands-on in the area(s) of their choosing while we offer support.
Other sessions will not be presented in quite the same way. In some cases, we will walk teachers through the steps for using a tech tool without allowing them to apply what they are learning or, in some cases, even touch a computer. Why? I can only assume the threat is that teachers will be distracted, or that checking their email will be more enticing than the subject matter to be covered.
Whether it is a lack of confidence in the value of the content, or lack of trust in teachers to understand the value of the content, it can be a recipe for failure, and teachers often do the same thing in the classroom. One of the biggest myths in education is that students won't learn it if we don't make them shut down everything and listen to us tell it to them. Another is that they won't or can't learn it if we don't teach it to them.
But teachers, much like our students, do not respond to spending sweltering June days listening to someone talk at them without being allowed to freely make the connections and applications to their own prior knowledge, experience, and needs. This is not to say that some wouldn't abuse the privilege of being connected while learning; some people, teachers and students alike (myself included), will not be in the right mindset to learn on any given day. However, we lose so many opportunities to let people learn for themselves by making them learn our way.
In thinking about these different approaches to educating students and teachers, I stumbled upon two links that I feel compelled to share.
The first is research from Melbourne University that shows that workers who surf the Internet for leisure, known as 'Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing,' are more productive than those who don't. People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office - are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't." Read here for a report on something I've long believed, perhaps showing that a little freedom and respect yields better productivity.
The second is a Florida school that has gone against the trend of banning mobile devices, instead integrating cell phones into the entire educational experience, and achieved eye-opening results. While Project Red has already demonstrated a connection between 1:1 computing schools and increased attendance, some people need more proof that the increased student engagement from tech integration can translate to academic success. Consider Florida's Wiregrass High School, where students exchange questions and answers with their teachers, read classroom blogs, collaborate, trade notes, take a snapshot of the blackboard for later studying, and much more, all using the devices that a vast majority of them already owned. Read a blog about their efforts and results here, and decide for yourself if a little trust can go a long way toward our goal of developing lifelong, independent learners.
We Academic Integration Coaches will be spending the last days in our current position swamped in presentations, facilitating morning and afternoon sessions at different buildings around our district on a variety of topics.
Some of the sessions we will facilitate are designed by administrators, some are of our own design.
The ones we have designed will show teachers several methods to reduce paper use, increase student engagement, and manage a classroom where students use diverse technological means to master curricular skills. Our sessions will be differentiated, so teachers can choose which programs, applications and websites will be most beneficial to their classrooms, and then work hands-on in the area(s) of their choosing while we offer support.
Other sessions will not be presented in quite the same way. In some cases, we will walk teachers through the steps for using a tech tool without allowing them to apply what they are learning or, in some cases, even touch a computer. Why? I can only assume the threat is that teachers will be distracted, or that checking their email will be more enticing than the subject matter to be covered.
Whether it is a lack of confidence in the value of the content, or lack of trust in teachers to understand the value of the content, it can be a recipe for failure, and teachers often do the same thing in the classroom. One of the biggest myths in education is that students won't learn it if we don't make them shut down everything and listen to us tell it to them. Another is that they won't or can't learn it if we don't teach it to them.
But teachers, much like our students, do not respond to spending sweltering June days listening to someone talk at them without being allowed to freely make the connections and applications to their own prior knowledge, experience, and needs. This is not to say that some wouldn't abuse the privilege of being connected while learning; some people, teachers and students alike (myself included), will not be in the right mindset to learn on any given day. However, we lose so many opportunities to let people learn for themselves by making them learn our way.
In thinking about these different approaches to educating students and teachers, I stumbled upon two links that I feel compelled to share.
The first is research from Melbourne University that shows that workers who surf the Internet for leisure, known as 'Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing,' are more productive than those who don't. People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office - are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't." Read here for a report on something I've long believed, perhaps showing that a little freedom and respect yields better productivity.
The second is a Florida school that has gone against the trend of banning mobile devices, instead integrating cell phones into the entire educational experience, and achieved eye-opening results. While Project Red has already demonstrated a connection between 1:1 computing schools and increased attendance, some people need more proof that the increased student engagement from tech integration can translate to academic success. Consider Florida's Wiregrass High School, where students exchange questions and answers with their teachers, read classroom blogs, collaborate, trade notes, take a snapshot of the blackboard for later studying, and much more, all using the devices that a vast majority of them already owned. Read a blog about their efforts and results here, and decide for yourself if a little trust can go a long way toward our goal of developing lifelong, independent learners.
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