Year: 2010

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Public School Teachers – Problem Or Solution?

 
Susan Szachowicz
Susan Szachowicz

A few years ago, after giving a workshop at a Chicago-area conference, I relaxed over a deep-dish pizza dinner (what else?) with a few of the other presenters. I never forgot the no-nonsense approach of  Susan Szachowicz, principal of Brockton High School. I was pleased to see her school profiled in today’s New York Times – “4,100 Students Prove ‘Small Is Better’ Rule Wrong” 9/27/2010.

While Arne Duncan, Oprah, and NBC’s “Education Nation” are busy blaming public school teachers, it was refreshing to see the NY Times highlight the turn around at Massachusetts’ Brockton High School that flies in the face of current ”educational reform du jour.” 

A decade ago, Brockton High School was a case study in failure. Teachers and administrators often voiced the unofficial school motto in hallway chitchat: students have a right to fail if they want. And many of them did — only a quarter of the students passed statewide exams. One in three dropped out.

Then Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow teachers decided to take action. They persuaded administrators to let them organize a schoolwide campaign that involved reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym.

Note that this reform was led by dedicated public school teachers (including Susan, who later became principal) advocating a return to basics – reading, writing, speaking, reasoning. It wasn’t a top-down mandate, restructuring or charter school take over. It was a (unionized) teacher-led initiative, supported by thoughtful administrators. It took place at one of the largest high school in the country – so much for Bill and Melinda’s “small is beautiful” approach. 

Are public school teachers the problem or are they part of the solution? It depends on whether their unions put job security ahead of student performance. Teachers are responsible for results. But educational leaders, parents and the community are also responsible to support them. Accountability is reciprocal.

Kudos to the entire Brockton High School community. Their collaborative focus on instruction has resulted in dramatic improvements in student performance. It’s a lesson for parents, school leadership teams, teacher unions and education policy makers. Maybe Brockton can star in a sequel to “Waiting for Superman.” 

Image credit: Flickr/Office of Governor Patrick

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Curriculum for Excellence – Educational Policy That Values Students and Trusts Teachers

Curriculum for Excellence
Curriculum for Excellence

American education has been hijacked by policy makers who don’t trust teachers, unions that are over-protective of job security, a private sector eager to privatize, and a standardized testing regime that rewards test prep over genuine learning. In the middle of it all, bored students disconnect from school as they realize that their main function is to be trivialized into a source of data for adults looking for someone to blame.

While America educational leadership offers hollow sound bites about life-long learning, Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellenceoffers us insight into what American kids are missing. This video produced by the Scottish program offer a quick introduction to three project-based approaches. Here’s two quotes from the video that say it all:

~ A student,  ”When you’re just copying a text book … you’re looking at results which people have already achieved and proved their work…  but when you doing it yourself you get an idea of how things work … and what you actually need to make things successful.”

~ A teacher,  ”In this approach … your not teaching the subject in isolation – your teaching in a much more natural way … with greater depth and more enrichment… there’s an accessible point for every child in the class and they can build on that and take it in directions of their own personal interests.” 

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Turn Your Students into Data-Driven Decision Makers

How is your educational technology being used? Teacher in front of the class lecturing on the smartboard? Or are students using ed tech to analyze, evaluate and create in ways that were not previouslypossible. I’ve written about one example, Wordle, a free Web 2.0 tool that enables students to interpret, qualify and visualizes text in new ways.

Another powerful data visualizer is the Motion Chart. It’s a dynamic flash-based chart that explores multiple indicators and visualizes growth over time. Gapminder World has assembled 600 data indicators in international economy, environment, health, technology and much more. They provide tools that students can use to study real-world issues and discover trends, correlations and solutions. Here’s Gapminders’s Hans Rosling showing how teachers and students can use the free Gapminder Desktop to develop there own motion charts using Gapminder data. 

To download a free version of Gapminder Desktop and access more educational resources go to Gapminder for Teachers. If you would like to build motion charts using your own data visit Google Gadget Motion Chart. (It’s the engine behind Gapminder.)  Motion Chart is a free gadget in Google Spreadsheet. In Motion Chart you can convert your data-series into a Gapminder-like graph and put it on your web-page or blog. All you need is a free Google-account. More info on Motion Chart 

New educational technology does not automatically improve the quality of instruction. We have all sat through dull PowerPoint presentations that were as “mind-numbing” as an overhead. Our return on technology investments may not be tracked in test scores that simply measure lower-order recall of information. A better metric would gauge if an educational technology gave students the tools to analyze, evaluate and create as professionals do. All skills demanded by the new Common Core standards.

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Classroom Collaboration and Brainstorming with Prezi Meeting

If you're a reader of my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Prezi, the non-linear presentation tool. Prezi has just announced a new feature – Prezi Meeting which allows multiple users to remotely collaborate on the same Prezi screen. Imagine your students mind-mapping in real time on Prezi's "limitless whiteboard." 

Note: Team members will need an email accounts to be invited to participate. Select “Invite to edit” to generate a link that you can send to anyone. When your invited collaborators open the link, you will see their avatars. Text, images, and videos added to the prezi are visible to everyone, giving remote team members the sensation of being in the same creative space together. (When you are invited to co-edit a prezi you will enter the Prezi Meeting in Show mode upon clicking the link. To start co-editing the prezi, switch to Edit mode).

For more detailed instructions on how to use Prezi meeting click here. 

 

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Five Ways to Engage Students and Other Audiences – Tips for Teachers and Presenters

I’ve been invited by West Clermont Local Schools (Cincinnati OH) to do an opening day presentation for secondary teachers. This is not the first time we’ve collaborated. Earlier this year,  I assisted them in this project – “How to Use Web 2.0 to Create On-line Professional Development.” Looks like they have their PD act together!

The topic they assigned me for this week’s presentation is “How to engage students in the 21st century classroom.” This post outlines the message I’ll take to West Clermont. While the primary audience for this post is teachers in the classroom, I think there’s also a useful message for presenters who want to connect with their audience.

1. Remember that engagement is founded on choice: A task becomes engaging when you have an opportunity to make choices about content, process and product. For example here’s a diagram that shows how easy it is to transform a traditional writing assignment into a more engaging one.

See “First Day of School? Here’s How to Get Students Thinking” for a student-centered way to kick off the school year.

2. Alter the traditional information flow: All the one-way broadcast information sources are losing audience – TV, record industry, teachers who lecture. I’ll bring my TurningPoint audience response system to give them space in the information stream. We’ll also capture “backchannel” dialog with a Wiffiti screen. More on using Wiffiti in presentations. [Note: Discussion was so lively – I didn’t get a chance to use Wiffiti. A good problem!]

3. Thinking critically is more engaging than listening: Knowledge is only superficially transmitted by telling someone something. Students (and audiences) are engaged when you create learning environments that require them to apply their own analysis and evaluation to constructing meaning. Make it partial assembly required.

As a teacher, I was always turned off by trainers who weren’t using the strategies they were advocating. My workshops give the teachers a taste of how students will respond to the strategies in an authentic learning experience. As one teacher commented in her evaluation of my workshop, “Peter demonstrated his own method for rigor and relevance while teaching us, so we participated as our students would. The workshop was effective because he made us reflect on our classroom practice and our expectations of students. Then he supplied us with techniques and strategies to improve instruction.”

4. Relinquish responsibility for learning to the student (also this blog’s tagline): Students can develop their own iTunes genre scheme – what make you think they can’t analyze, evaluate and create? Many teachers feel they’re competing (unsuccessfully) with technology for student attention. I see things differently. Students aren’t engaged with technology because it lights up and beeps. They’re engaged with technology because it puts them in charge of information they access, store, analyze and share. It gives them something they rarely get in the classroom – choice. The lesson revision I outline in point 1 is about control (not technology) in the classroom.

5. Always keep in mind that the essence of teaching (or presenting) is creating learning experiences that provoke reflection: Students who are simply asked to follow instruction have nothing to reflect upon. (The same is true for audiences who have been asked to do little more than listen). Students who are offered the opportunity to explore their own approaches and share them with their peers are well on their way to life-long learning. I’ll bet “life-long learning” is in your school district mission statement – or is it vision statement? (I could never remember if I was on a mission or having visions). For more on reflection, see my series detailing my Taxonomy of Reflection.

PS. Here’s my “handout” for the West Clermont workshop. Download Engagement-presentation (3MB pdf). It’s a glimpse into my workshop – but I can’t “hand” you the message. Remember, it’s about the experience (and reflection) not simply the content.