Lessons Learned

With summer soon upon us, the students and staff of ACDS will continue their learning by participating in the annual summer reading and writing program. Several students will be sharing their reflections this year via personal blogs. Elizabeth Lockwood, our incredible teacher librarian, put the program together. She is building further community through a blog dedicated to sharing book recommendations.

Whether you already have a summer reading and writing program or not, do look to go through the Reading and Response Journals site to possibly get some new ideas from Elizabeth.

The students in the Alexandria Country Day Middle School met with their parents last week to review their learning from the year. In preparation for the conferences, the 5th Grade students were given the following set of questions centered upon our Portrait of a Graduate dispositions. The students spent time thinking about their learning and responding to the questions. Their teachers, Ms. Cook and Ms. Weaver, arranged sessions for each student to practice with an adult in preparation for meeting with their parents. This was a nice way to build on the scaffolding they already had in place with the questions listed below. The students typed up their responses to the questions and met with their teachers for feedback as they prepared for the conferences.

The 6th, 7th and 8th graders create eFolios through our Haiku LMS. I wrote about our eFolio system back in February where a link is provided to notes and a draft version of the template used within Haiku. Hopefully it can provider ideas for others reviewing their eFolio and student-led conference programs. We will soon be meeting at ACDS to do our own review about of these student reflection and goal setting strategies.

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Independent Learner: Use three pieces of evidence from your work this year to describe how you have grown as an independent learner.

You should think about the following:

• How did you solve problems or figure things out on your own?
• How did you advocate for yourself if you needed something?
• How did you organize yourself?
• How did you motivate yourself?

Your response should include:

At least one full paragraph. You might want to use three (one for each piece of evidence.) Work from more than one class. Work from more than one trimester.

Look to reflect further about of your strengths, weaknesses and growth in this area.

Communicator: Use three pieces of evidence from your work this year to describe how you have grown as a communicator.

You should think about the following:

• How have you communicated your learning this year?
• How do you prefer to communicate your learning?
• How was your message received?

Your response should include:

At least one full paragraph. You might want to use three (one for each piece of evidence.)

• Work from more than one class.
• Work from more than one trimester.
• Work showing more than one type of communication (writing, speaking,  VoiceThread, iMovie, Keynote, ScreenChomp or other tools)

Look to reflect further about of your strengths, weaknesses and growth in this area.

Community Minded: Use three pieces of evidence from your work or activities this year to describe how you have grown as a community minded individual?

You should think about the following:

• What have you learned about your community (school, town, country, world) this year?
• How did you act on this learning?
• How would you like to act on it in the future?

Your response should include:

At least one full paragraph. You might want to use three (one for each piece of evidence.)

• Work from more than one class or activity.
• Work from more than one trimester.
• Look to reflect further about of your strengths, weaknesses and growth in this area.

Balanced: Use three pieces of evidence from your work or activities this year to describe your work/life balance.

You should think about the following:

• How do you balance your time between things you have to do and things you want to do?
• Was there a time this year you felt your balance was not right? How did feel?

• How is your current balance?
• What strategies do you have to be balanced in the future?

Your response should include:

• At least one full paragraph. You might want to use three (one for each piece of evidence.)
• Work from more than one class or activity.
• Work from more than one trimester.

Look to reflect further about of your strengths, weaknesses and growth in this area.

I recently attended the Holton-Arms School blended learning workshop and learning lab. The event was led by Patty Carver, Linda Caleb, and Mary Dobroth. They provided information and practice sessions to give participants experience in how they could use blended learning opportunities in their teaching.

Here are some of my notes from the day:

-It is about the pedagogy not the tech.
-There is a real hope that in teaching AP teachers can move away from content delivery and teacher centered to student-centered and discussion-based learning
-Blended learning is another way to help students use the tools they use outside of school in school.
-BL helps with efficient use of time.  Teachers not restricted by short classroom periods as the learning continues outside of the school day.
-Blended learning involves collaboration to learn together outside of school as well as when they are in class. This collaboration is the difference between just posting resources, reading, etc. on one’s LMS for consumption. Real blended learning has students learning from each other outside of the classroom.
-Need to help educate parents about blended and full online learning. Comes down to definition of teaching when folks question paying for tuition that involves less teacher-centered learning situations. Need to educate parents that there are many other ways to teach other than direct instruction. In fact, if we are really about differentiation, we should be using many instructional and assessment strategies whether we are blending or not.
-Good blended learning starts with teachers changing pedagogy and using technology effectively to build learning opportunities outside of the classroom. This can be a huge task that involves change for many teachers. Need to do a lot of planning to make this shift to make sure you have finances and time for teachers to receive the preparation and ongoing support. A few questions to ask:  How do you structure the PD time to not make it an add on? What is learning? How ready are teachers to take some risks?
-If you are moving towards learning goals that are more concept-based, it is not as easy to assess concepts compared to knowledge.
-Going blended means empowering students to have more control over their learning. This can be fine for many students who have the dispositions and skills to handle being more independent. But for many it is a struggle. Need to ask how you will help your students be more independent and self-directed. How will you support the students needing much more oversight as well as those who have specific learning needs? Remember that we need to offer differentiation in our blended learning environment just as we do our regular classroom.
-Total up the number of hours per week that you would normally want the students to spend in face to face time as you plan their time outside of class. Don’t want to make blended learning take more time.
-Real need to think of teachers as designers.
-It is a skill that takes time to learn to facilitate running your discussion boards. Really need to teach students the skills in how to ask each other questions, to make comments in a constructive fashion.
-Look to have students view the projects they create outside of class to then use a discussion board for reflections and discussion. One way to approach is to assign groups of students to watch certain projects to make their comments.

In preparation for the workshop I put together a web page of blended learning resources. I offer examples from ACDS and my collection of WebQuests and Learning Pursuit expeditions to model good and maybe not so good ways that the learning can be extended beyond the class period. Some had strong virtual collaboration opportunities in them.

Image Source: Patty Carver created the infographic at the top of the post which is just a small portion of the original. See the full version here.

We talk a lot about curriculum-based technology integration on the Edtech Co-Op podcast. Note: The podcast is at a new site- http://edtechcoop.posthaven.com. We also have guests on to share instructional and assessment strategies that guide students to make meaning and construct their understanding. Our last two shows zeroed in on constructivism as we spoke with Stephan Anagnost of the International School of Curacao. Stephan describes the hard but fruitful work of designing student-centered learning opportunities. If you haven’t listed to the two podcasts, do take a listen.

Here are a few more resources about constructivist learning opportunities.

My wife runs the Future Problem Solvers (FPS) club at her high school. One of my sons this year started a FPS team at his school. They attended the state competition this weekend. Both came home describing the incredible creativity and problem solving that took place as teams from across the state tackled the presented problem. Look to learn more about FPS and how you might start a chapter at your school. It is can be a helpful model to add to your teaching toolkit.

Speaking of problem solving, John Hunter just publised a book about his World Peace Game. If you haven’t seen his TED Talk, do look to check it out. The World Peace Game is all about students working together to problem solve and build understanding as they go through a series of prompts to find peace in an ongoing simulation game.

Mark Hofer of the College of William & Mary and Kathy Swan of the University of Kentucky continue to provide leadership in the field of student-created documentaries. One can see some of their work at Digital Directors Guild and Digital Docs in a Box. Kathy and Mark are now writing a book on how to support students as they produce documentaries. They reached out to practitioners in the field to give them some tips on what doing documentaries and videos in general look like in the classroom.

I put together some of my experiences which you can find listed below. I also reached out to Sean Moran, the Director of Technology for Washington International School (WIS), to share his insights. Sean’s background is in media creation and he helps manage the WIS Global Issues Film Festival. Thanks to Sean for giving me permission to post his response to Mark and Kathy.

Sean’s Writeup:

As someone trained years ago in production at a time when film was a physical strip of frames on a reel and video was recorded on a cassette magnetically, before YouTube and streaming video and phones that double as cameras, I brought a set of assumptions to the task of teaching children about documentary film making that I quickly learned I needed to abandon.

I assumed the ease of consumption of digital video (films, television, internet memes) prepared students to be smarter viewers by the mere exposure to enormous volumes of content.  I learned that the reality is just the opposite.  The majority of digital video viewed by the average adolescent succeeds in capturing attention in spite of poor production values, a lack of understanding of film grammar, and a complete disregard for story structure.  Because of this, students never learn a vocabulary of composition or structure that can help them create their own documentaries.

I also assumed that the ubiquity of inexpensive, high quality cameras and editing software would predispose students to crafting technically competent products.  Again, I was disappointed.  I found students are so surrounded by technology that they’ve become adept at discovering shortcuts in coping with that technology.  They often never learn why they are doing the things that they are doing — they just know that it works.  This kind of cursory knowledge works against the complete kind of understanding that it takes to shoot and edit an effective documentary piece.

So, I was left with little foundation and lots of bad habits that I felt I needed to break.  I concentrated on the following concepts:

1. It’s all about the story.  Without story, a documentary is just a collection of facts.  And, while that somehow worked for Al Gore in making An Inconvenient Truth, it’s not the best strategy for the rest of us to use in conceptualizing a film.  To this end, the script is key.  Starting with a well researched premise and continuing through diligently transcribed interviews, making sure the building blocks of the script are solid will position any student filmmaker in creating a documentary that resonates with its audience.  This is incredibly detailed work and requires patience — all way before most of the art of the documentary actually happens.

2. Be prepared.  It’s not just for the Boy Scouts.  My college television production professor used to say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  Whether Ben Franklin or Winston Churchill gets the first credit on this aphorism, it’s good advice for the student digital filmmaker.  Location documents, equipment lists, scripts, storyboards, shot sheets — these are the things that separate real documentaries from funny cat videos.  The shooting of b-roll and the editing of the film should almost be mechanical tasks in realizing the vision of the film.  So often with students, the planning happens after they’ve checked out the equipment and are about to shoot.  Aside from being inefficient, it also never leads to good decision-making.

3. Understand basic film vocabulary.  Just a simple explanation of the types of shots (long shot, medium shot, close up), basic editing principals (edit on an angle, an action, or cut to a different size), and camera and lighting techniques (avoiding zooms, maintaining headroom and eye line, three point lighting) will help pull everything together.  A student can have detailed documentation for locations and shots and interview questions, but, unless that student understands the aesthetic tradition in a really basic way, the final film will look like a home video.

4. Learn from the pros.  Deconstructing good documentary films is the best way to model good technique.  From analyzing specific shots and editing choices, to looking at narrative arc and depictions of specific characters, pulling apart good films is essential before allowing students to pick up cameras.

5. It’s about the process.  At the end of the day, student films can be wildly successful projects without looking particularly polished.  Student internalization of the lessons of the production process (planning, teamwork, the manipulation of the film’s message to communicate an idea to an audience) is the ultimate goal.  Generally, good product follows good process, but ‘good product’ is a squishier concept and, especially in the hands of a novice filmmaker, can be more elusive.

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David’s Writeup:

-Have a clear listing of technical and content criteria in the form of a rubric. It really helps to start teaching good design skills early in the elementary school curriculum. Give students the opportunity to analyze good and poorly designed presentations as a way to build their foundation knowledge. As the students progress through the elementary school moving from basic presentation tools like PowerPoint to screencasting to video, they need to develop their critical eye to the point that they can help develop rubrics for video projects. We know that multimedia production leads to huge buy in and ownership from students. Look to go the next step to let them use their developing expertise to devise how to evaluate their work. One could say this is one way to help “TPACK” our young videographers.
-Make sure the students always have the project rubric in hand as they prepare and shoot their video. The rubric should contain the normal listing of criteria but also could contain questions to get the students to think about their audience, their intent, how are they introducing and building characters as well as technical criteria. These questions should all be fully answered in the script writing phase of the process but it doesn’t hurt to keep reminding the students as they look to shoot the video that connects to their storyboard.
-It is valuable to immerse the students in documentaries to view on their own with questions to help them develop their documentary analysis skills. Class time can be better utilized for discussions as opposed to watching videos unless of course the videos cannot be shared via the Web. Using a blended approach via a threaded discussion through one’s learning management system is one way to have the students discuss documentaries. The virtual sharing of ideas can carry over to the classroom where the teacher can further use questions to help the students better understand the structure, strengths and weaknesses of the videos they watched.
-It is helpful to build the students’ technical vocabulary regarding the nuts and bolts of videography as well as terms specific for documentaries. We give students a way to talk about their writing by using the 6+1 traits. We need to try and do the same for videography and documentary production.
-Look to put students in the position to analyze their work as they proceed through the video recording phase of the production process. We often start the documentary production process by having teams pitch ideas for their video. Look to continue this process to have teams watch their multiple takes using their vocabulary to analyze their work. This formative self-assessment helps the students internalize their work with a critical eye. One can go a step further to have teams pitch (i.e., show) a few takes of a scene to the class as a whole where they first offer their constructive criticisms but then ask for responses from the other teams. This could be done in blended fashion as well. The ultimate goal is to choose the best take for each scene. Students are often more open to feedback from their peers than from their teacher. The bottom line is that the less experienced students need technical and content feedback as they shoot their scenes. It is difficult to wait until the editing stage if the video content needs to be re-shot. This again is where a clear listing of criteria in the form of a rubric really puts the students into self reflection mode. For example, one can simply point to say the lighting or sound section of the rubric to ask the students how they would score themselves. The same goes for the content as in connecting the video to the storyline, character development, etc. which should be easily connected by comparing the storyboard and script to the video scene.
-It is helpful to use a collaborative app/website like Mindmeister to create the team’s storyboard. Everyone has access to it as they move through the shooting phase of the production process. Changes can be made, notes for specific takes and scenes recorded after shooting, etc. The storyboard can be shared with the teacher who can then give ongoing formative feedback.
-Logistics and adult supervision come into play especially with elementary and middle school students. Look to work with the students to write up a code of conduct for when they are out in the school shooting their scenes. It is helpful to work with administration to get their take on how much freedom students can have in shooting in the cafeteria, classrooms, etc. when an adult might not always be present. Clearly the older the students, the more one wants to give them the opportunity to be responsible and self-sufficient. Finding spaces to record videos in one’s school is not an easy task. Even if a space is open, students and adults walking through the area can be a problem. Background noise especially in hallways is another obstacle that they student videographers must problem solve around.

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Virtual learning is a topic we recently spoke to on the Edtech Co-Op podcast. The discussion reminded me of a talk many years ago with our high school instructional technologist back at Hong Kong International School (HKIS). We discussed the computer programming course he taught. The context was a meeting of the instructional technologists from each of our four divisions about online learning as we had run a virtual school for a month in 2003 when SARS struck Hong Kong.

We were thinking about the power of the HKIS brand in Asia and our leadership in the region for technology integration. The idea was to start offering some fully online courses not just for HKIS students but also for interested students from around the region. While this idea was not implemented, it did bring us back to the computer science course and how it would be a good class to teach virtually. International schools were using the Virtual High School, now called The VHS Collaborative, to provide courses that they didn’t have the teachers and/or number of students to efficiently run. It also would not be that difficult to run a computer programming course in house through our MyDragonnet learning management system.

Back to the present day, in recent chats with directors of technology from two leading independent schools in Washington DC, we discussed where their respective schools are in offering online courses. There are many reasons for providing students access to virtual courses but the question came up as to how to offer them. Does one do them in house or through a provider like The VHS Collaborative, K12 or the Online School for Girls? Several questions arose about how the courses would connect to the mission of the schools, who would teach the courses, would virtual courses take the place of regular classes in the students’ schedule, etc. It was interesting for me as an instructional technologist to hear of the needs of the students and teachers to get me thinking about how to design the process of deciding how to offer virtual learning opportunities.

Connecting back to my experiences at HKIS, it became clear to me that one option for these schools would be to offer their technology and Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) courses online as opposed to teaching them during the regular school day. The instructional technologists at each school have the skill set and content knowledge (i.e., TPACK) to design and deliver courses in either hybrid or in a fully online fashion. The schools could pilot this effort to not only meet the learning needs of the students but to model for interested teachers how they might also might provide virtual courses. It could be an easy first step towards providing virtual learning for each of their communities.

Another thought is to build on the badge movement for virtual learning offerings. The instructional technologist, librarian and other interested teachers could build out a series of mini courses focused on specific skills. Examples could be in learning how to use various apps on the iPad for student workflow and productivity,  learning how to use apps for editing images and video, providing a mini course in good design in presentations, etc. Students could earn badges to represent their certification in reaching the standards set for each mini course. Instead of taking up time in their daily course schedule, the students could work at their own pace through the schools’ learning management system and other online collaborative tools.

This line of thinking connects to what we are doing at Alexandria Country Day school where by the Fifth Grade, we are providing “just in time” instruction with follow up online tutorials for students to further explore how to use various apps and Web 2.0 tools. One of our science teachers, Sara Stein, looks to her students as learning partners when new apps need are introduced to the class. The students use their ICL skills to find tutorials to self teach to then provide guidance for other students during class meeting times.

This supports my belief that my job is to help each student build out his/her ICL tool belt by the end of the Fourth Grade. While their ICL skills are far from complete, the students have the foundation skills and know how to find tutorials and experts among their co-learners to self teach. This connects to the construction of one’s personal learning system that empowers and skills students to use ICL to become more effective learners.

This description and approach to learning about social studies originates from the ESPRAT+G Web site that my wife and I created to help guide our students in their study of culture and societies. We came across the ESPRAT+G construct during our time teaching in Saudi Arabia back in the 90′s. Don Zimbrick, a social studies teacher, introduced it and guided us both as young social teachers to think about teaching our students to think not only as historians but also as economists, sociologists, etc. The ESPRAT+G analysis approach helped scaffold the learning for our students teaching them to not only categorize their learning but to also make connections.

Don was all about making connections. Helping his students see the influence of how each ESPRAT+G category influenced one another really made history come alive for all of our students. We grew as social studies teachers learning that the content was secondary to the connections students were making not only within ESPRAT+G but also to their lives, to other historical events and to the present day.

While providing categories for the study of social studies is not new, it is helpful to give students terms like we do in Language Arts with 6+1 Traits for Writing to guide them in how they think and speak when analyzing culture, societies and historical events. The teachers at my school use the History Alive textbook series which also provides similar categories in how the content is organized and taught.

ESPRAT+G can also be helpful in Language Arts as my wife Margaret reports in her work with LA teachers at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology where she is the Library Media Specialist. Margaret reports that the ESPRAT+G analytical tool can be the connector which brings social studies and LA teachers together in collaboration. The English teachers often want to build a historical context for studying novels especially looking at social, political and economic conditions. Guiding the students to analyze the society and time period the novel is set in allows for more depth of understanding as the students make connections to what was happening in time and place.

Margaret uses our ESPRAT+G site with all of its questions to support the students in their LA classes dig deeper to better understand the messages from the novels they are reading. It is important to remember that even at a school like “TJ”, the students have not had full coursework in economics, sociology, political science, or art history let alone history classes to know which questions to ask.

After teaching the inquiry lessons using ESPRAT+G, Margaret then shifts to librarian mode to help guide the students to know how and where to search to find answers to their questions. She also leads students to resources on literary criticism to help them understand the elements driving a particular literary movement.

Margaret reports that the three way collaboration between herself, the social studies teachers and the English teachers is really paying off. Students are being tasked with choosing one category of ESPRAT+G to connect to an aspect of the novel. While they look through one lens in their research, the students are discovering how interrelated the ESPRAT+G disciplines are.

Third Graders at my school are also making connections using ESPRAT+G via the RegionsQuest WebQuest. Learning to categorize and make connections definitely can start at a young age.

I am going to ramble a bit here but the thoughts are all connected to one another just as we work to help students connect their ideas and reflections.

eFolios:

We piloted eFolios last year in the Fifth Grade. One goal was to help our students reflect about their learning while setting goals for future growth. Teaching students how to reflect and make connections in their learning is not an easy task. Yet, it should be central to every school’s culture and mission.

To also guide the students to find evidence to support their reflections is an additional skill that takes time for students to grasp. We supported the reflection process by having the students respond to guiding questions around our Portrait of A Graduate (POG) attributes (Independent Learner, Communicator, Community Minded and Balanced) while providing evidence of their work towards reaching the POG attributes. The students met with their parents at the end of the year as part of our student-led conference system using their eFolios to communicate their growth. This year the eFolios are being rolled out to the rest of the Middle School students.

We use the eFolio module of our learning management system (Haiku) where we insert a template with directions and questions to guide the students as they reflect and record their ideas into the template. Here is a link to a draft of our eFolio template. It provides one approach to have students review their learning from a course perspective and one with the Portrait of a Graduate approach. As noted, we ended up having the students use the Portrait of a Graduate focus. Hopefully the template can provide practical ideas for other schools either using eFolios or looking to do so.

Our grade level advisers are now working together to review the guiding questions in the template for each of the four POG dispositions. The questions are being refined and differentiated for each grade level and potentially within each grade level. As we know, a Fifth Grader’s ability to grasp complexity and work with open-ended questions can be quite different than that of an Eighth Grader.

A further connection is to think about having teachers and administrators develop eFolios as part of their professional growth experience. eFolios can also be used in partnership with teacher coaches and administrators to be used in teacher appraisal systems. This leads to the next topic of how students and teachers document the evidence/artifacts to be used in their eFolios.

Documenting Information:

I have written several posts about students creating their personal learning systems of Web resources, software and hardware tools. I will remember to include teachers and administrators in future posts as they, too, work to use their personal learning systems to gather and document information, curate it and communicate their learning and their professional growth.

The students at our school are using their iPads to document examples of their learning. The next step beyond using examples of work from Pages documents, links to Prezis, video projects, etc. is to help our students use their technology literacy to choose tools to record their thinking about the work they are producing.

Many of us have moved from using paper and pencil to digital tools to record ideas, reflections, goals, etc. On the iPads, the students might use Evernote, Notability, mind maps, voice recording, the camera for screenshots, still shots and for video. There clearly is a wide variety of apps to assist all of us in recording our thinking.

The tools are easy to put into the hands of our students. The greater challenge is to help the students not only be more reflective about their learning but to go the next step to record their ideas throughout the year. To make this recording habitual is another teaching and learning task that will take some time. But once the students and teachers and administrators get into the practice of documenting their thinking, they will then be ready to bring their learning artifacts and reflections together into their eFolios.

WorkFlow:

Mark mentions from time to time on the Edtech Co-Op podcast how he manages his workflow. This led me to further think about how our Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) curriculum includes targeted lessons to help students not only find information but to also help them manage and eventually communicate their understanding. An example of an ICL lesson is when we teach how to use Noodle Tools for research documentation, synthesizing information and creating a Google Document to communicate one’s findings. Here is a link to a post from our school blog that covers it.

What we need to work on regarding the eFolios is helping students build a system for processing and synthesizing their recorded reflections to then publish their understanding in their eFolio. This is a workflow challenge that will need to be differentiated for groups of students and eventually individualized for each student as he/she builds his/her own workflow system including one’s personal learning system tools to use in this process.

As I like to provide tangible examples of ideas presented here, look to review a WebQuest that we used several years ago at an international school in Taiwan. The Middle School there started in Grade 7. As the culture of the school was very progressive and one where students used a lot of technology, we created the WebQuest as an orientation to the Middle School connecting it to the students’ study of culture in the social studies curriculum. There were no iPads  or similar devices during that time so the WebQuest doesn’t include any information about apps. If I were to write up a similar WebQuest for my current school, it would definitely include information on using iPads/Android tablets and smart phones.

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Steve Anderson at the Digital Learning Environments blog wrote an excellent post sharing the five questions he asks himself each day as a leader in instructional technology. The questions all focused on learning as opposed to being about technology. This learning focused approach to instructional technology is what we speak about on the Edtech Co-Op podcast.

Steve’s post led me to make a connection to a recent conversation with a co-worker. I was sharing a few ideas and some questions about the future of our school. The co-worker responded “You really should look to be an administrator”. I smiled and responded that I didn’t need to be an administrator to ask questions and want to be part of the conversation about the future of one’s school. Our conversation ended but I could have responded that in many of my previous schools it was normal for teachers and even students to have conversations about the future of the school. Asking questions and being engaged as a member of the community was part of the school culture. In addition, as the students moved into the middle and high schools, they were often asked to share their questions about the operation of the school and to give their ideas on what they wanted their school to be.

Circling back to Steve’s post while connecting to my previous schools, I would add that Steve’s questions really apply to all the members of a school and/or district learning community. As we speak about so much on the podcast, collaboration between students, teachers and administrators is central to building a dynamic culture of learning. A community that is moving forward needs members who consistently ask questions and who engage in conversations about the future. I can say that my two sons are working diligently to connect with their teachers and administrators to share their ideas and to make a difference in their school community. Between starting a Future Problem Solvers club, meeting with the principal to create a system for students to give teachers feedback and to build school spirit by running three on three basketball tournaments at lunch, my sons feel that they are helping to provide leadership as to the direction that their school is headed.

While we look to administrators like Steve for vision and guidance to reach goals, the “vision thing” really should be a shared one that is crafted and acted upon by all members of the community. This is an obvious statement but one that doesn’t always happen especially when students and teachers believe that only the administrators are the leaders at one’s school.

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There is a proposal before the Prince George’s County Board of Education here in Northern Virginia to claim copyright of work created by students and teachers. The article was published in this morning’s Washington Post and online there are already 440 comments. I will do my best to seek to understand what the reasoning is behind this proposal.