Category: Guest post

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Innovative Teachers Share Their Best Ideas for Technology in the Classroom

Horack and Saban

Last week, I blogged from the 2011 US Innovative Education Forum (IEF) sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning. See my post “Following the Backchannel at Microsoft IEF.” I was inspired by the 100 great projects presented by teachers from across the country. What impressed me most was the great diversity of work. Some projects were very complex in scale, others were elegant in their simplicity – presenting one great idea for the classroom. They also varied in subject matter, grade level and technology. And no, you didn’t have to use a Microsoft product to get in.

I had the chance to interview many of the teachers at IEF. They’ll be sharing project “how-to’s” in future guest posts here at Copy / Paste.

Educator Colin Horack and student Anthony Sablan (left) won first place in the Collaboration category for their creation of Project Unite, developed to combat bullying on campus. Franklin Pierce High School; Tacoma, Washington.

Eleven winning educators from the IEF will represent the U.S. and advance to compete against educators from around the world at the Partners in Learning Global Forum, Nov. 6–11, 2011 in Washington, D.C.

To get a sense of the energy at IEF take a look at this short video. My wife made the video cut (20 seconds in – great red earrings)
 …alas, I did not.

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How Does A School Foster Hope?

One of the best aspects of my work is that I get to meet many talented educators. I’m on the road this week, and I invited two of them to do guest posts. This second post is by James Steckart, Director of Northwest Passage High School. I met Jamie this past summer at the Project Foundry unConference.

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“Hope… which whispered from Pandora’s box after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things.”
~ Ian Cadwell (The Rule of Four)

Portage We can disagree whether hope is the best of all things, but let us suppose for a moment that Cadwell speaks the truth. What does hope give the student, the teacher, the parent, the community? Most parents wake up and hope that the lives of their children are better than theirs, whether they live in poverty or in opulence. The community hopes that its members contribute in some positive way to the better of the whole. Most children when they grow have real meaningful dreams of hope. Finally, most teachers hope that their work contributes to the healthy development of the students in their charge.

This concept of hope is common sense, yet most schools do not understand how they can produce hopeful students. In fact for a majority of students working their way through the a conventional school system, I would argue and data we have would suggest that their overall hope disposition decreases with the more time spent in school. Why would anyone stay in a place where their dreams, questions, and hope are called into question and disparaged?

Let’s look at a school where the concept of hope is front and center. At Northwest Passage High School (NWPHS) the mission of the school is simple: Rekindling our hope, exploring our world, seeking our path, while building our community. Embedding hope into our mission statement, we sought a way to measure this concept to see if we were fulfilling our mission.

NWPHS is a small progressive charter school where half of the day students work with their advisor designing projects that meet state standards, and the other half of the day they are in small seminar classes focused on an interdisciplinary topic involving field research and working with community experts. In addition, the school schedules between 30-45 extended field expeditions to further enhance learning. In a typical year the students travel and conduct research in a variety of urban and wilderness areas throughout the United States and 2-3 select international sites.

Each fall new students to our school complete the Hope Survey for new students, and each spring every student completes the ongoing Hope Survey. The survey measures student engagement, academic press, goal orientation, belongingness, and autonomy and is administered through an internet browser.

This allows us to get a sense of how much and whether hope is being grown. For us the longitudinal data confirmed what we knew in our hearts about our philosophy and methodology of working with high school students. Our ongoing students last year had a high hope score of 50.74 out of 64 possible. What lessons has this given us to share with others?

  • First, hope is built when you give students choice and autonomy. At NWPHS, project based learning gives students real choice while they meet Minnesota graduation standards. We track their learning with a sophisticated project management tool called Project Foundry.  
  • Second, we focus on building positive relationships with youth. We do this through intensive field studies, advisories, and service learning.
  • Third, we have faith that students will learn when you help them develop short and long-range goals through the use of continual learning plans and student run conferences which include the student, their advisor and at least one parent. These conferences last 30-45 minutes, and the student leads the discussion on their progress using their continual learning plan as the guide.
  • A student devoid of hope is a shell of a human being. They walk around listlessly living each day by the seat of their pants. Our job as educators, parents and community members it to instill a respect of these students and provide opportunities for hope to flourish.

Image: James Steckart

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Lesson Study: Teacher-Led PD That Works

One of the best aspects of my work is that I get to meet many talented educators. I'm on the road this week, and I invited two of them to do guest posts. The first comes from Matt Karlsen, Project Director of Teaching American History Grants at ESD 112 in Vancouver, Washington. Matt and I first connected on Twitter then recently met over coffee.  I was impressed with the success his group's Lesson Study approach.

There's a hysterical video called “Collaborative Planning” currently going viral.  It’s a "laugh until you cry" feast, one that lays bare the hypocrisy too often evident in teacher professional development where teachers are forced into “Professional Learning Teams” that are none of the above.

Ls-image1 Thankfully, I’ve been able to work with teachers for the last several years using Lesson Study, a format that is collegial, educative, and transformative.  In our Teaching American History grant funded project, Lesson Study starts with teachers learning new historical content.  They consider state and national thinking and learning targets and examine their students’ work to get a sense of their students’ strengths and struggles.  They form teams to develop a lesson trying to impact student skills and knowledge.  At the same time as helping students answer questions about the historical content, they’re research lessons – helping teachers answer questions they have about teaching and learning.  The group gathers to watch students interact with the lesson, spending the rest of the day discussing observations using this protocol.

Why does it work?

  1. It’s inquiry driven.  Genuine questions guide teachers and students, and the quality of the questions is continually refined to better the learning.  It fosters curiosity.
  2. Teachers are in control.  They decide the lesson targets, the questions they want students to consider and the “problems of practice” they want to investigate.  
  3. Students are the focus.  Ultimately, everything depends on what real students do with the lesson.  Kid-watching eyes are developed as observations become the talking points.
  4. It’s flexible and adaptable.  Regardless of who, what, where, or for how long you’ve been teaching, the process works.

Want to learn more?  

  • Catherine Lewis from Mills College has played a large role in adapting Lesson Study from Japan to the US. The Lesson Study Group at Mills College Resource Page offers links to many informative articles, videos, and books.
  • Oakland Unified School District’s Teaching American History Grants have paved the way for considering Lesson Study in History.  The two videos posted on their site are inspirational starting points for understanding the process.
  • Feel free to contact me (Matt)  to talk about Lesson Study!  It was through open collaboration with others – including Catherine Lewis, Stan Pesick in Oakland, Roni Jones in Placer County, and our TAH partners – that I’ve been able to move down this path.  Let’s extend the Lesson Study professional learning community!
  • Two useful documents for download: 2010-11 LS Review Sheet  and  LS Observation & Debriefing Protocol -Fall 2010

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Interested in more teacher-friendly PD? Read my posts: 

Teacher-Led Professional Development: Eleven Reasons Why You Should be Using Classroom Walk Throughs 

A Guide to Designing Effective Professional Development: Essential Questions for the Successful Staff Developer 

The Reflective Teacher: The Taxonomy of Reflection

 

 

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Reluctant Reader as Author

Literacy specialist, Pat Martin,  authored this guest blog on one of publishing projects.
Pat Martin last guest blogged about the Parents’ Literacy Publishing Project

Img_0182_2Cuyler, a winsome first grader, has published his first book.  The experience encouraged him to exclaim, “I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.”

Mid-way through his second year of formal schooling, Cuyler should be reading about level 9/10 (guided reading text level as described by Pinnell and Fountas).  He’s not.  However, after reading a text created by MaryAnn McAlpin, a retired Reading Recovery teacher, for her grandson, Cuyler was motivated to create his own text using that model.

“I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.” ~ Cuyler, a 1st grader

Writing his personal text benefits Cuyler in so many ways.  His extensive daily vocabulary is supported by actual printed text.  His interests, vehicles of every description and outdoor life, become the basis of his text which further stimulates his daily effort to acquire reading skill.  As such noted advocates for boy literacy as Ralph Fletcher and Michael Gurian note, primary texts and writing prompts seldom deal with the world that interests boys.  There is scant opportunity to connect with the texts, to bring personal experience into the reading/writing or to interact with the text content.

Img_0193_2 Capturing Cuyler’s explanations and descriptions as a book’s text mimics interactive writing or the daily journal writing in the reading Recovery lesson.  And what child wouldn’t read and reread a book of their pictures and writing?  What better way to achieve fluency?  Certainly a more exciting, engaging and authentic method than grappling through Cuyler’s four inch thick stack of Dolch sight words – a practice he he finds less than engaging. Cuyler now sees himself as a literate individual.  He is excited about the growing up as a reader and writer rather than defeated by the challenges that text holds. 

By providing text that supports him as a reader and validates him as a writer, Cuyler is on the path of literacy.  And he is an excited traveler who wants to know “how many days until we go back to that learning lab so I can publish books.”Img_0192_2

For sometime now I’ve been an advocate of new print on demand technologies to give students a chance to publish their learning for an authentic audience and purpose. I’ve partnered with Pat Martin, a literacy specialist and Suzanne Suor, an educational technology consultant, to open a Educational Publishing Learning Lab in Rochester NY. We offer a variety of training packages to assist teachers and districts in taking advantage of the new opportunities in digital publishing. The lab is located at ColorCentric digital publishers, so participants can not only learn how to publish, but tour the facility to see books being made. For more information on how you and your students can publish your own books visit our website Read > Think > Write > Publish

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Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia

Memoir Project
Memoir Project

Alicia Van Borssum is a very talented ESL teacher who has contributed to our student publishing efforts with The Memoir Project – Memoirs and artwork by three young ESL students from the Ukraine. More on the book at Read > Think > Write > Publish

Alicia is now working to raise funds to bring books and staff development to Ethiopia this summer. I’ve reprinted an article below. For more information about projects for literacy in Ethiopia, go online at www.ethiopiareads.org.  For information about Alicia Van Borssum’s effort to bring books to Ethiopia, e-mail her at aliciavb@frontiernet.net. Donations can be made out to Ethiopian Books for Children and mailed to Van Borssum at 15 Fairwood Drive, Hilton, NY 14468. The organization is nonprofit and tax-deductible.

Greece Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia
Jim Memmott
Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle

(January 27, 2007) — If all goes well, Alicia Van Borssum of Hilton NY will be in Ethiopia this summer showing teachers and librarians there about using wordless picture books for language learning and literacy.

Continue reading “Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia”