The webinar is presented by Greg Bamford and Tara Jahn. I just downloaded Jeff’s posting on the Shifting Our Schools podcast of episode 124 entitled “Design for Resilience Framework for the Future of Schools.” Here is a blog post that goes with the webinar. The post offers helpful and clear points to consider as school leaders prepare for the coming school year.
Lessons Learned
Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness
Category: SOS
Before the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast with Mark Hofer and Jeff Utecht, I did the Shifting Our Schools podcast with Jeff. We planned and lined up our guests in late 2007 to record our first show in 2008. We covered many topics with the common theme of managing the shift in schools to what we called School 2.0. The show ended in 2009.
The new 2.0 version of the SOS podcast has Jeff as the host, with Kim Cofino, Chrissy Hellyer, and me as co-hosts, who will join Jeff from time to time. The show’s theme will be the same, but a wider variety of topics will be covered. I look forward to discussions around character, life skills, and personal growth guidance programs.
As a counselor and wellness coach, I return to international education in July at the Saigon South International School. I plan to record shows of practical case studies of lessons leading students to deeper learning and insights as I help to further develop their PEARL wellness program (personal, emotional, and relational learning).
So look to subscribe to the Shifting Our Schools podcast!
I want to share a few items that folks might find interesting as I catch up with my blogging. As we are about to travel for the next two weeks in Morocco, I will be posting about living and traveling in this fascinating country.
SOS Podcast: Jeff and I enjoyed a wonderful conversation with Justin Medved in episode 29 of the SOS podcast. Our essential question was, “How can the IB curriculum be shifted?”. We also discussed the ins and outs of international school recruiting in episode 30. If you are interested in becoming an international educator, do check out the show notes for the two articles I list in the Links of the Week.
IB History: I continue to work to find ways to shift my IB history class more towards inquiry and constructivist learning. I tried a semi-WebQuest for the unit on Germany and pulled back a bit on the latest unit on WWII. The semi-WebQuest had some components of a normal WQ, but I did not have the students take on roles, and they had a choice for their assessment. They could take the standard IB essay test or do a more WQ-style application project. As so few students took on the application project, I made the unit on WWII more of a standard research project. I use the term “Learning Pursuit” when I have the students do WebQuest-style online research but are not required to do all the aspects of a WQ, especially when creatively using their new understanding in a real-world application.
Here are links to these two units:
Germany Learning Pursuit
World War II Learning Pursuit
ICE Model of Instruction: Our school director, Mark Lee, gave an excellent presentation last week on the ICE instructional model. One of the ways I like to use inquiry to make connections to extend student learning is through mind maps. My favorite collaborative tool is MindMeister. While now, one is limited to only three maps for a free account, my students can export their work and stay below the limit. Here is an excellent example by Hala, one of my IB students, on the Weimar Republic, where she created a mind map to research to make connections in her learning to extend the learning into new understanding. Hala’s map is so vast you will need to zoom out to see all of it and then scroll to see all the sections.
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 transition steps. International schools vary in how fast-paced they are and how much change is happening at any 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 decided that after many years in Asia, we wanted to move to a small school in North Africa or Europe. Morocco had been on our radar, so we left for Casablanca American School this past August.
It has been a challenging 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 steep learning curve, especially coming from a very constructivist, technology-integrated curriculum at my last school.
Thankfully, we are settled in and finding ourselves in a very close and supportive teaching community.
The wonders of Morocco are now accessible as we enjoy incredible travel and cultural opportunities.
I mention these topics because they are what Jeff and I will discuss 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 want 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 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 to 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 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 veterans who have not been recruited in some time.
We have several ideas for our shows in 2010, and we welcome listener questions and guest requests. Please let us know what you are thinking.
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?
John Mikton will join Jeff and me to talk about this question on the Shifting Our Schools podcast taking place tonight. To answer this question, the starting point is to work with teachers individually to ask them what needs to happen to help them try new ideas in their teaching and learning. Large workshops or sending folks to conferences are not 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 their classroom trying new ideas in their teaching. It is helpful 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. They often need to act on their excitement of learning new approaches due to barriers in their schools.
We know the list of barriers often affecting 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 engaging in other classrooms or their professional reading, we, as learning specialists/coaches (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, our administrators can help push the shift by modeling risk-taking by setting a tone for the school that trying new ideas is expected. By communicating to the larger community through various communication avenues (e.g., blogs, email, Twitter, various presentation 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 must highlight when the results didn’t quite work out and learning took place. 🙂
Let’s work with individuals while having the community assess the nature of our current school culture. In that case, 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 immediately by having our learning specialists/coaches 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 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 integrating 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 the table of outdated mission outcomes and opening up the discussion about what the community, including students, parents, and faculty, believes in and values. Start with the fundamental 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 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 give students the tools to be lifelong learners? Hopefully, one’s school will see the value of 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 to develop a curriculum, instruction, and assessments that will get one’s students to learn 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.
The main focus is on Stage 1 of McTigue and Wiggin’s UbD process for all the curriculum units. It all comes down to the enduring understanding we are teaching. Administrators must collaborate in the curriculum review process. The conversations and unpacking of the standards into the EUs are where we bring the administrators on board to constructivist, inquiry, student-centered learning. We have to be ready to have critical conversations asking administrators how we can 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 ever-changing world. If our administrators are charged with delivering the educational experience to reach the mission and habits for learning, get them to explain how we can do it in classrooms where the curriculum being taught needs to support the school’s 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 on board as we develop ways to use information literacy and technology to assess and teach the students.
How does all of this happen without the administrator being on board? It doesn’t. The hope is that by going through this process, the reluctant or simply not getting the picture administrator buys into the process to support the mission created by the community. We also must take items off our administrators’ plates to allow them to be the instructional leaders in our schools. Less is more, primarily when empowering administrators to focus on decisions supporting learning.
Everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. We work with early adopter teachers, students, interested parents, and administrators to build a learning community open to new ideas and practices. We don’t start with overwhelmed teachers or those uncomfortable with change. We return to collaborate with them individually, honoring their contributions while working to adapt their practices when possible.
Working organically, we nurture our risk takers and spread their ideas by publically celebrating best practice instructional strategies and assessments. As is written all over the edublogosphere, we must do everything possible to bring the administrators on board to provide the leadership and modeling of the instructional strategies that lead to the skill and concept-based learning our students need.
The meeting rooms to start the conversations where our curriculum reviews take place are pivotal to starting the shifting process. This is followed up by team and department meetings where lessons are finalized for the classroom.
Two key leaders are your instructional technologist and library media specialist. They can be a big part of being in many places to make the shift happen.
Image Source
Image Source: Adopted from Johneric Advento’s revised version of Margaret Carpenter’s original diagram
Our Shifting Our Schools podcast, Jeff’s and my blogs, and countless other podcasts and blogs share ways to help educators shift from traditional style, teacher-directed classrooms to what we call the Learning or School 2.0 model. This “shift” with all its edublogger advocates is about the change process, which we know is difficult to manage and is not happening very quickly.
While I enjoy discussing the big picture and ideas, my practice as an instructional technologist focuses on the practical, in-the-classroom instruction and assessment strategies that help transform classrooms into 21st-century learning communities.
My belief in bringing about this transformation is that schools must develop a curriculum and collaborative systematic model that becomes the mechanism for shifting our classrooms and our schools to the School 2.0 model. Sadly, curriculum development carries an uncomfortable connotation for many educators. The curriculum should be the driving force that guides so much of what we do to affect our students’ learning. If handled well, curriculum development, as a part of an engaged and thriving learning community, can be an exciting process that shifts and transforms our schools. This is obvious information, but sadly, we often put little thought into how we develop or follow through with our curriculum.
We often discussed this on our SOS podcast, with one show centered on the work of the International School Bangkok’s technology resource coordinators and literacy specialists. The ISB team constructed a curriculum development model, and recently, Kim Cofino created a collaboration flow chart that nicely presents a model for other schools to review and possibly adopt and individualize to meet their needs.
Back to the practical, Kim will present at the Learning 2.008 conference next week about the importance of curriculum and collaboration in bringing about the shift in our schools. After watching Kim’s slide show for her presentation, I remembered a workshop I started to assemble for another conference. It dealt with how a school learning community begins designing its curriculum and collaboration system. As I cannot attend the Learning 2.008 conference, it makes sense to get the components for my workshop out there as a practical way to help support Kim’s and others’ efforts. Each school is different, and whether one looks at the ISB model or the one we created at HKIS, developing the model needs to start by engaging all the stakeholders in the discussion.
My next posts will share the questions that teachers and administrators can use to start their discussion as they develop a systematic way to review curriculum that integrates the instructional strategies, content, assessments, and 21st-century learning skills that will shift their schools to the Learning 2.0 model.
Three administrators will join us for our June 12th Shifting Our Schools podcast. We will be seeking to understand why, from a leadership position, it seems so difficult to shift our schools. Rick Pierce, Educational consultant, Andy Torris from Shanghai American School, and Struan Robinson from International School Bangkok will be our guests.
As I am not an administrator, I am not in a position to comment on this topic from an admin point of view. While Jeff and I have commented numerous times on what is needed to help schools shift, our number one conclusion is that administrators must lead the effort.
I look forward to hearing what Andy and Struan say and how Rick might respond. Rick has been working with the leaders of my school, Hsinchu International School, over the past year and a half. Rick’s background as a professor at Penn State University and as an administrator at the Milton Hershey School puts him in a position of understanding how to bring about change and the transition process that follows it.
Rick points out that schools often put their energy into developing new programs leading to change, but they need to think more about and plan for the long transition that follows the initial change. The first season of our SOS podcast ends with this critical discussion. It should be a very good one.
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