Lessons Learned

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 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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Mark Hofer, Steve Whitaker and Michael Kelly will join us on tonight’s SOS Podcast where we will be discussing this question of teacher preparation. It should be an excellent discussion as all three taught pre-service teachers at the University of Virginia. Mark now teaches at the College of William and Mary.

To answer this question I think of what we do with our colleagues in our schools to help them shift their teaching practices to more Classroom 2.0 practices. We have covered many topics in the podcast that support shifting individuals and schools but two in particular jump out at me when working with new teachers.

Risk Taking- I wrote about this in my previous post. We ended up needing to postpone that podcast discussion with John Mikton. It is now scheduled for April 30th. When working with university students, I am thinking one can start with the practices they already use in their lives for communication and learning. In most cases this will involve tapping into their everyday life experience of using cell phones, social networking tools, information literacy, etc. while guiding them to see that that already have learning networks in their lives.

Professional Learning Networks- So much to being a shifted teacher is about being a lifelong learner connected to one’s physical and digital learning networks. We again draw on the pre-service teachers’ natural proclivity to use technology to help them set up their RSS reader and to start connecting to the blogs, wikis, etc. that support shifted practices and new learning while offering examples of risk taking activities by educators from around the world.

John Mikton will join Jeff and myself to talk about this question on the Shifting Our Schools podcast taking place tonight. To start answering this question, I think the obvious starting point is with our teachers individually to ask them what needs to happen to help them try new ideas in their teaching and learning. I don’t see large workshops or sending folks to conferences as the starting point to help build a culture of risk taking. Large scale PD efforts can provide models of shifted practices and get folks excited to try new things but it still comes back to each teacher in his/her classroom. I think it says so much to talk to teachers a few weeks after returning from a conference to see how things are going in trying some of the practices they saw at the conference. Many times they haven’t acted on their excitement due to barriers in their schools.

We know the list of barriers that often affect teachers in many ways not just in not taking risks (i.e., not enough time, too much to cover in the curriculum, assigned tasks that don’t support student learning, parent expectations, etc.). Experience tells me that by talking with individual teachers, finding practices they are confident in using in their classrooms and then asking what they see as interesting in other classrooms or in their professional reading, we as learning specialists (instructional technologists, librarians, learning support, GATE facilitators, curriculum coordinators, etc.) can then help them take small first steps to try new things starting within their area of comfort.

One theme that runs through many of our podcasts about shifting practices and schools is leadership. While learning specialists can make a huge difference in supporting teachers and learning in the classroom, it is our administrators who can really help push the shift by modeling risk taking setting a tone for the school that trying new ideas is expected. By communicating to the larger community through a variety of communication avenues (e.g., blogs, email, Twitter, various presentations tools in parent meetings, etc.), the administrator takes risks with new technology while inviting parents to understand and expect risk taking as part of the school culture. Celebration of teachers and students taking risks should be central to the shift in culture. While much of the focus will be on successful risk taking, we cannot forget to highlight the times when the results didn’t quite work out and learning took place.

If we work with individuals while having the community as a whole assess the nature of our current school culture, we can gather the information needed to create an action plan to build a climate that supports risk taking. While this process might take some time, if we start right away having our learning specialists work with teachers to share their opinions about barriers and needed actions for support while having our administrators lead by example, we can start helping educators take more risks in their teaching.

I know I ramble but time is short and we have the podcast tonight. Here are some thoughts about the process of getting administrators onboard as we shift our schools…

Jeff has been running workshops on reviewing one’s school mission and I have been writing about how to integrate one’s mission and school-wide learning outcomes into everything you do in your school. So the first step is to work with one’s learning community to hire Jeff to come in and shake things up clearing off the table of outdated mission outcomes and opening up the discussion to what the community including students, parents and faculty believe in and value. Start with the basic questions of “what is learning and understanding?” and “What do our students need to learn?” and “How can we prepare them to be citizens skilled to handle a very changing world?”. I also like the idea of writing mission outcomes in the form of actions/skills/habits that are enduring and applicable to various situations. To say we want students to be “lifelong learners”, how about instead talking about the habits/skills of being critical thinkers and problem solvers that gives students the tools to be lifelong learners.  Hopefully one’s school will see the value of the the learning 2.0 constructs that folks are writing about and discussing in the edublogosphere to make them central to their vision statements.

Once the mission/vision is developed and action plans are created to integrate it into the school’s culture, the next step is develop curriculum, instruction and assessments that will get one’s students to learn the critical thinking, problem solving, cooperative and collaborative learning skills that are hopefully in the mission outcomes that also includes an inquiry driven approach to learning that engages the students in discussions and learning with individuals outside the school walls.

Really focus is on Stage 1 of McTigue and Wiggin’s UbD process for all the curriculum units. It all comes down to what the enduring understandings we are teaching to. Administrators must collaborate in the curriculum review process. The conversations and unpacking of the standards into the EUs is where we bring the administrators on board to constructivist, inquiry, student-centered learning. We have to be ready to have the critical conversations asking administrators how we are to reach our schools’ mission statements dedicated to teaching students critical thinking, problem solving and cooperative learning skills so that they can be global, information savvy citizens ready to adapt to the every changing world. If our administrators are charged to deliver the educational experience to reach the mission and habits for learning, get them to explain how we can do it in classrooms that where the curriculum being taught doesn’t support the schools’ new mission statement. As we move to Stage 2 to develop the assessments and Stage 3 to create the learning activities, the administrator in the curriculum meetings should start coming onboard as we come up with ways to use information literacy and technology to assess and teach the students.

So how does all of this happen without the administrator being on board? It doesn’t. The hope is that by going through this process that the reluctant or simply not getting the picture administrator buys into the process to support the mission that was created by the community. We also must take items off our adminstrators’ plates to allow them to be the instructional leaders in our schools. Less is more especially when it comes to empowering administrators to focus their time on decisions that support learning.

I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.

• How to foster a sense of community when kids are at so many places academically?
• How do 1:1 laptops help build and/or hurt community at HIS?
• Define communities first… school, parents, digital, etc.
• How do we build community?
• Morning Gatherings, Advisory…enough structure for community?
• How can we be more involved in Hsinchu and great world community? Connection to goals for citizenship.
• Role of competition
• How do we incorporate progressive educational ideas into conservative and traditional communities?
• How to further foster the connections between old students and younger as well as elementary students?

I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.

• One room school house
• Where are we in our interdisciplinary efforts?
• Learning how to collaborate, learning to work and play together. Teach cooperative learning skills as part of 21st century skill set.
• How do we build a truly democratic school?
• What role does the Student Representative Council play in our community decision-making?
• How effective is group work in our classrooms? Which kinds of group projects more effective?
• Which Web 2.0 tools meet our collaboration needs?
• While we have the structure and culture for collaboration, how well are we doing?, How can we measure our efforts?
• How to expand the collaboration to our immediate and world community?
• Role of administration in all aspects of collaboration?
• Our culture supports mixing of seniors with younger students.
• Continue to develop older students as peer leaders with attentive listening and group facilitation skills
• What structures do we have and need to support collaboration in our community? How to build further partnerships?
• How to engage parents in the culture of our school?

This is the second post about how to develop a curriculum review system in one’s school. It deals with answering questions about the culture of one’s school and how folks deal with change. Just as the first post on the big picture, these are questions for members of the community to work through before they begin designing their system.

1) How does your school make decisions?

2) Who is involved?

3) How does your school handle change?

4) What are strengths and weaknesses of your school culture?

5) How can you build on the strengths in (re)designing your system for curriculum creation and review?

6) How can you overcome or lessen the weaknesses?

7) How do your administrators and teachers value the curriculum in the grand scheme of things?

Where are you with your teaming and collaboration at grade levels and departments?

9) What is the level of trust in your teams?

10) How ready are they to divide up the units to be developed or reviewed by just a few team members?

11) What other questions (and answers) come to mind?

I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.

• “How well do I understand my students desires/beliefs in terms of social justice and how much am I imposing my own values onto them?”
• Can we set up a student organization that deals with discipline issues?
• Peer Leaders as proactive way to prevent issues
• Current events across the curriculum showing complexities and diversity
• Digital citizenship
• Global citizenship
• Self-Family-Community-World
• Expand definition of community
• How to put students in situations that involve social justice? How to engage their passions?
• Start with broad theme, go local and connect to lived experience