Lessons Learned

Transition and change can be a large part of one’s life as an international educator. Taking the first step to leave one’s home country to live and teach in another country leads to many more steps of transition. International schools vary in how fast paced they are and how much change is going on at any one time. But change is often a common theme with new teachers and administrators coming and going bringing new ideas and energy to their schools.

I bring up this topic of transition and change because my wife and I made the decision that after many years in Asia, we wanted to make our next move to a small school either in north Africa or Europe. Morocco had been on our radar so we made the leap to Casablanca American School this past August.

It has not been an easy transition to a developing nation especially balancing the needs of our two middle school sons with our new jobs, housing, transportation, etc. efforts. I am teaching IB history for the first time which offers a pretty steep learning curve especially coming from a very constructivist, technology integrated curriculum at my last school.

Thankfully we are settled in now and finding ourselves in a very close and supportive teaching community. The wonders of Morocco are now accessible as we get to enjoy incredible travel and cultural opportunities.

I mention these topics because they are what Jeff and I will be talking about in the first three episodes of the Shifting Our Schools podcast as we kick off our third season. We will continue to have guests who bring their expertise to the essential questions that drive our discussions. We also hope to expand the conversation by having listeners call in.

Here is the schedule hopefully starting at 8:00 PM Bangkok time for each episode:

Episode 28: November 18

EQ> From Morocco to Bangkok: How goes it?

Episode 29: December 2

EQ> How can the IB curriculum be shifted?

Episode 30: December 16

EQ> How to recruit to be an international educator?

In a blog post that I wrote about international recruiting, one of the big questions for readers who contacted me was about taking their children overseas not only to new countries but new schools. I plan to share our family experiences in the November 18th show and hope to have listeners call in to share their insights. With IB being so new to me, we definitely will need listeners from IB schools to add to the conversation about their experiences. As it is the start of recruiting season, we hope to provide some insights for those new to international teaching and maybe to veterans who have not recruited in some time.

We have several ideas for our shows in 2010 but welcome listener questions and guest requests. Please let us know what you are thinking.

Look in most social studies textbooks, read analysis of historical events and one usually finds a common categorization of information. The categories often include the economic, social, political, religious, the arts and technological angles of what happened and why. And sometimes one finds a discussion of how geography affected several of these categories. Social studies teachers make these aspects of our study of society a mainstay to our teaching.

If you are not already teaching your students how we break the study of social studies down into these categories, look to use the  ESPRAT+G acronym. Much like using the 6+1 Traits of Writing to give our students a structure and language to talk about their writing, ESPRAT+G can do the same for the understanding of social studies.

I put a Web site together that I share with my students to help them better understand ESPRAT+G. Your students might find it helpful as well.

A portion of “learning” IB history is memorizing people, places, and dates. As I am not in the Core Knowledge camp but do believe in some level of cultural literacy, I do realize my students must have a certain amount of content for their exams. Thus, I am working to be creative in coming up with helpful content attainment practices that are fun for students to do.

Playing the American baseball angle, I have my students creating history trading cards that resemble baseball cards. The person, place, event, date, etc. is listed on one side with the other side filled with pertinent information. Here is an example of a homework assignment, class lesson and follow up homework for the Interwar years.

Before class homework description:

Trading History Cards: You are to research and write down on small index style cards information about the following topics. Some have been covered in your presentations so this will be review. Try to find paper that is a little thicker than regular paper. On one side you write the topic in large letters and on the other side you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who?, When?, Why Important? and Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? Your cards cannot be any larger than 9 cm by 9 cm. Do include a drawing, map, etc. if you can. 

We will have a little competition in class to see whose specific cards you would like to trade for the most. Each student/player will have to ask for and review a trading card from as many classmates as possible on all the topics listed below. When we meet and have our trading session, each student will be allowed to ask for 7 cards in total from other players. You will also write down on your personal scorecard how well you know each topic and who has the best card for each topic. We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game.

In Class:

Trading History Cards: You are to have your cards ready with the listing of the topics on one side and on the other side you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who?, When?, Why Important? and Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? You are to use your Score Card handout to walk around and ask as many players as you can to see some of their trading cards. You must see cards for all the topics listed on your Score Card and you are to not see more than two cards from one player. We will have a little competition to see whose specific cards you would like to trade for the most. Each student/player will be allowed to ask for 7 cards in total from other players. You are to tear off a request strip from the second page of your handout and give it to the person whose card you want. Go to your Score Card to write down the name of the person you requested the card from listing his/her name in the “Golden Glover” column. Even after you hand out all 7 of your requests, continue to list the name of the player who did the best job for each topic.  We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game to see who the top three players were. And at the end of the activity, take a few moments to self assess. Are you “hitting” above .300 signifying that you really know the topic or are you batting below .300 which means you need to do some more work to understand the topic?

Homework: You are to take the topic list from today’s exercise and voice record your explanations for each one. You hopefully have new material in your minds beyond what was there when you made your trading cards. You will come back to these recordings as you prepare for the exams in the spring.

I have written in a few venues about using voice recording software like Audacity or GarageBand to support learning. Working with my 12th grade IB history students, I discovered a new strategy to fit the needs of these students who have to document their learning to study for the external exams and to help them have one more way to construct their understanding.

I am having my students take the topic list, essential questions and unit questions for our study of the Interwar years and have them voice record their current understanding of each. This should especially help those students who struggle getting their ideas down from their minds through their fingers into Word documents. It should also offer another modality to support their efforts to take notes and outline. What I will be interested to survey is when they students review for their external exams to see how helpful it will be for them to listen to their sound files.

I keep reminding them that with six area exams, they will be on information overload trying to put two years of learning into their minds this Spring. The more they can hear their own calm, confident voice recordings before they take their exams, the more I think they will quickly remember and connect to their past learning.

I am realizing that I pretty much took the paperless nature of my previous 1:1 school for granted. A couple recent experiences really drove home another reason why going 1:1 in our schools makes a lot of sense.

Ever try to buy all the papers, pencils, binders, etc. your child needs for school during Ramadan? Ever move your family half way around the world to find box after box of student tests, papers, journals, mind maps, etc. in your shipment when you have no storage space in your new home? International educators can smile at our family’s situation but it gets to the universal point of families buying school supplies wherever they live.

Having spent a good part of Saturday at the very crowded market where families were shopping in mass to get home to break their fasts, we felt a bit of stress working through the various teacher requests for school supplies. Adding in the mass of papers, worksheets, notebooks and binders our sons had from their previous school, I scratched my head realizing just how simple things had been at my 1:1 laptop school in Taiwan.

There was only one item on my school supply list as students prepared for the new school year-  a laptop. At the end of the year, instead of notebooks, papers and binders, our students had Google Docs for their papers, Moodle instead of agendas for their homework assignments, blogs for their reflections and writing, Mindmeister for their research notes and electronic portfolios with projects and reflections about their learning. The students left the school in June with the one learning tool that they they had entered with. Simple.

I just read an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal about education and technology. I often don’t find the mainstream press getting the story straight when they write about efforts to shift our schools to Learning 2.0 techniques and the value of using technology. Take a look at the following paragraph from the article to entice you to read the full article.

Ms. Herdman envisions such a transformation in North Kansas City. “It’s no longer going to be ‘Turn to page 10 and look at this,’ ” she says. “It’s more collaborative work, the learning style is inquiry-based, and the teacher is guiding, facilitating learning rather than lecturing. It’s about teaching the curriculum using technology as your vehicle.” (WSJ July 22, 2009)

Being an educator raising our children overseas in international and American Schools really works for our family. However, one aspect of this lifestyle I struggle with is the bubble that sometimes surrounds us as we go to school each day, attend co-curricular activities and spend much of our time with fellow expatriates.

One of our family goals is to really go deeper to be involved in the culture that is outside this expatriate lifestyle. This sometimes isn’t so easy with language and cultural barriers. Some expatriate families put their children in local schools for a time period and find programs outside the international school activities for their children to participate in.

I bring this topic up after listening to another excellent podcast by Tom Ashbrook with his On Point radio program where he discussed the nature of global students. His guests on the show were Maya and Tom Frost who shared their experiences sending their four daughters overseas from the USA for high school and university studies. Their children attended local high schools becoming fully immersed in the language and culture of their new homes.

Maya recently wrote a “how to” for parents looking to give their children similar experiences in the book entitled The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education. Much of the conversation in the show was about life changing experiences for their children and those of callers to the program. It really struck home for me thinking about my sons and where they might attend university one day.

On a similar note, international educators Brent Loken and Sheryl Gruber recently made the decision to pursue their dream of providing global citizenship and cultural immersion opportunities by creating an educational program called Ethical Expeditions. They will start their expeditions next year taking students to Borneo and Zambia to do community and ecological work.

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Jeff and I concluded our second year of podcasting about shifting schools to the School/Learning 2.0 model. We would like to thank all of our guests who shared their insights and practical ideas to help students, teachers, administrators and parents work together in the shifting process.

You can listen to shows directly from the SOS Podcast page or subscribe through iTunes.

Here are the Essential Questions we discussed this past year:

How to shift when the administrators are not on board?
What prevents administrators from shifting?
What are some shifted practices in our schools?
How to recruit shifted teachers?
Once shifted, where do we go next?
How to make the shift systemic and sustainable in our schools?
Which comes first, shifted practices or 1:1 laptop program?
How to move students from being dependent to independent learners?
How are we preparing pre-service teachers to be shifted educators?
How to measure how shifted your school is?
How to do a school tech makeover on the cheap?
How can we help teachers take more risks in their teaching and learning?

The TPACK approach of connecting technology, pedagogy and content to use the power of their convergence is being covered in the May issue of Learning & Leading with Technology. Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, the authors of the article, also share a wiki site that provides further information on the framework.

Judi Harris and Mark Hofer of the College of William & Mary will soon have articles also published in L & L on the TPACK theme. They recently took the theory and moved into the practical by creating their Learning Activities Type wiki. There you can find examples of regular instructional practices and assessments matched up with various supportive technologies categorized by ones that lead to convergent learning and ones that offer ways for students to show their divergent thinking.

Another resource for learning about TPACK is a podcast by the GenTech boys. Check it out.

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The spread of the H1N1 virus reminded me of our running a virtual school in Hong Kong during the outbreak of SARS in 2003 when all the schools were closed. Our elementary team of teachers came together to create a program focusing on what we called the “3 C’s of Communication, Community and Content (Interactive & Collaborative)”. We quickly realized that continuing the learning became secondary to the creation of a network that provided our students and their families the social and emotional connections that they so needed during their very isolated days.

I wrote an article entitled “Surviving Crisis Mode” in Learning & Leading with Technology that documented our many weeks of virtual school while outlining the follow up efforts to prepare for the future possibility of school closure. It hopefully can provide some insights to readers thinking about creating and implementing a virtual school plan.

One important positive from the experience was that our school leaders, teachers and parents were much more open to the shift in instructional an assessment practices that our small team of early adopters had previously been pushing for.

For other ideas on how to prepare for the possibility of school closure, check out Britt Watwood and Stephanie Sandifer’s recent posts.

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