Social Studies is My Jam

You know those moments when you or your Facebook friends record the phrases your children utter? People used to record such phrases in baby books (maybe they still do), but I definitely see parents posting exchanges they've had with their children on Facebook where they become more public; we like the posts and chuckle along with our parent friends. Now that my children are in middle and high school, I'm less compelled to share most of our exchanges publicly because I want my sons to own their online presence and create their own digital footprints. That being said, I couldn't resist a particular phrase I overheard my twelve year old proclaim this weekend (I asked his permission to blog about this, by the way).

Friday night while playing Minecraft and simultaneously talking via FaceTime with his friend Isaac emphatically said  "man, social studies is my jam."

Later during the weekend while passing the time between an archery tournament and an indoor soccer game, I asked Isaac to share his ideas about why social studies is so important for us to learn, and he shared the four following reasons we should learn social studies.

We learn from the past--When we study history we learn how and why people lived and we gain a deeper understanding of the world.

We learn about other cultures--When we learn about other cultures we begin to understand other people and reduce our judgement of others.

We learn how and why we participate in our own society and government

"I just like it"--What better reason? I'm a huge proponent in students having choice in their learning and tailoring their experiences to their interests because that's motivation enough to keep learning and exploring the world.

photos from various family trips/historical sites

A few of my favorite online social studies resources

Stanford History Group
At this website, you'll find curriculum, assessment, and project advice and examples for your classroom. One of my favorite aspects of this work is the emphasis on moving beyond multiple-choice standardized tests because studying history is much more than memorization of facts, details, and dates. The resources emphasize literacy in history with students reading, analyzing, and writing about primary and secondary sources. In my work over the past three years, I've had the privilege to work with Daisy Martin, one of the founders of the Stanford History Group. The passion, knowledge, and expertise she presents have made our work exciting, thoughtful, and productive.

The National Museum of American History
By far one of my favorite Smithsonian museums is the Museum of American History. I've visited at least a half-dozen times and each time I see more ideas and think about ways the resources the museum provides can be beneficial to teachers. This was also Isaac's favorite museum when we visited Washington DC as a family a few years ago.

Teaching Tolerance
For several years I've followed the work coming out of the Southern Poverty Law Center, including their online resources for teachers. The resources here don't have to be limited to social studies teachers because all teachers need to think about how we teach tolerance and promote diversity, equity, and justice.

The Library of Congress
I've been using the resources at Loc.gov since my first year of teaching when my teaching mentor, Beverly Reavis Payne, attended a workshop and brought back ideas to share with our whole English department. Over the years, their resources for teachers have continued to evolve, and teachers like Beverly contributed to that evaluation. My favorites have always been the images because there are many thoughtful uses for historical images in any subject/grade area classroom.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Not a year of my 12 years in the classroom passed without me teaching students about the Holocaust. The resources at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum just keep getting better. Often I was amazed when teenagers told me they had never heard of the Holocaust before entering my high school classroom.

Read Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School If You Want to Make Immediate Changes in Your Classroom

Three months ago, I ran across a social media feed where a woman bemoaned the word hack saying it should be used only when talking about a terrible cough or trying to get into a computer system illegally. While those might be more traditional dictionary definitions of the word, the word hack is common in technology and education circles today. The New Yorker dates the playful (white hat) use of the word to 1955 at M.I.T. in this March 2014 article. While I'm not sure how hack permeated the education world, I'm guessing it started in ed tech circles. I found myself using hack once in a conversation with an educator in a rural district and quickly realized she perceived negative connotations, so I tried to explain myself. Too bad I hadn't yet come across the Hack Learning series. The first book I read in the series, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School by Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez, conveys an optimist tone throughout as the authors offer practical can-do now tips to transform teaching and learning.

Barnes and Gonzalez suggest that we don't need to wait for new policy changes, district decisions, or school leaders to change our work as educators. Each of the 10 ideas (hacks) solves problems using ordinary and readily available objects, systems, and people. The authors show others how to creatively address problems by repurposing and reimagining resources. They encourage us to behave like a hacker.

"Embrace the concept of iteration, of continually reviewing and reworking a solution until it becomes the perfect fit for your particular needs."

Each chapter tackles a different problem, offers a solution, provides suggestions for implementation, shares advice for dealing with pushback, and provides examples of the hack in action. 

The problems

1. Time consuming meetings
2. Little to no opportunity to observe fellow teachers
3. No peace and quiet (especially a problem for introverts)
4. Classroom management
5. Lack of tech support
6. Teacher turnover
7. Flipped learning doesn't always work
8. Students aren't reading enough
9. Learning isn't shared beyond classroom walls
10. Students referred to as data points

Read about creative solutions for all problems represented in the book while you feel a positive culture of ongoing learning coming from the authors. From student run tech-teams to anecdotal data records as a means for knowing your students better to glass classrooms focused on student-centered learning, the authors share practical ways to overcome problems with simple solutions and specific ideas for immediate implementation. No need to wait until next semester or next year. You can implement these hacks now. 

One of my favorite hacks includes the use of student tech gurus to solve the lack of technology support available in schools. 

"Apart from troubleshooting, a team of student tech gurus can also work proactively, training students and staff in basic skills, so the whole school learns together." 

Think about how much your students already know and can do with technology and what they might teach you and your colleagues. From a parent perspective, I also imagine my own son would thrive on a student tech team if offered the opportunity.

Another hack I really like is the Track Record for recording specific objective observations about student behavior. I especially appreciate the focus on recording positive behavior. For example, if a student has problems with being tardy, record how many times she/he is on-time in a week, instead of how many times the student is late. The idea is if the system is put into place with good intentions and is managed well, it's likely to reduce behavior problems. 

Finally, I must mention the Book Nook, and though this idea is not necessarily novel, the idea that the books are gifts, not loaners, is new to me. This minor difference is almost magical, especially for students who don't have many books in their homes. The idea is also simple, easy to implement and focused on building a culture of readers in a school. 

"For every person who sniffs that an idea is "nothing new," there are ten more who have never heard of it. It's the variations, the iterations, that can make an old idea fresh again."

The word hack belongs because the concept is on improving education through a process of multiple iterations and scaling change. I certainly look forward to reading other books in this series. How about you--have you read any of the books in the Hack Learning series? 

My 10 Most Stated Phrases and Questions

Early in the weekend, a science teacher friend of mine, Patrick Goff, shared what he titled his Pearls of Wisdom or things he frequently says, and he encourages others to share their own.  So...here are mine, and I hope you might also share yours. Regardless of your role in education (teacher, parent, administrator, community member, etc) this is an interesting way to capture what you find yourself saying most frequently.

1.  Remember to convey purpose in instruction.
2.  Students are more than a score.
3.  Stop the test prep!
4.  We need more creativity in schools.
5.  Student choice and interest are vital for making learning meaningful.
6.  Do your best.
7.  Do you use Twitter to connect to other people in education?
8.  Have you thought about blogging?
9.  Why is this important?
10. I'm interested in equity and excellence.

What about you--what are your most stated phrases?

Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning Book Review

I don't know about you, but I'm one of those parents who has been reading books for every stage of my children's development. It started with The Birth Book and then The Baby Book both by Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, R.N., and then The Successful Child: What Parents Can Do to Help Kids Turn Out Well by the same authors, and then The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and then Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson.

From the time my children were born, I relied not only on intuition but also on books and blogs written by other parents. When my sons started school, there were no books to help me understand how to parent school aged children in public schools. I was a teacher and so was my husband. Surely, we had this covered. Not so fast. Parenting school aged children and teaching teens are two different things and when your personal views on education conflict with the current status quo, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated with the school system. Thankfully, we can turn to one another for advice and encouragement, and we can share our ideas via blogs and other social media.

Even more incredible, now we have a new book written by parents available to us. Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning by Bonnie Lathram, Carri Schneider, and Tom Vander Ark, provides tips, resources, and encouragement for parents like you and me who want to be involved in our children's learning. The book isn't only for parents--it's for anyone who wants schools to recognize children as unique individuals with individual learning needs.

The authors snagged my attention as early as the preface when they wrote about schools preparing our children for the future in a world of expanding innovations of the Digital Era. The focus on student-centered learning further pulled me in as I continued reading about how I, as a parent, can be informed, inspirational, intentional and involved in advocating for my children. As an educator, I'm an advocate for student choice in learning, and as a parent I want the same for my children.

Personally, I'd also add empowered because that's how I felt when I read this quote about valuing the uniqueness and unique smarts of each and every child.

"We must expect and require our school systems to figure out how to help each child use his/her smarts to live a happy life and achieve at the highest levels possible (p.46)."

The focus on helping our children learn at high levels and be happy runs throughout the text in both informative and inspiring segments. Various frameworks link out to other resources and stories relevant to topics such as social and emotional learning, deeper learning, and growth mindset.

"In front of our children, how we model our own ability to persevere, set goals, work through challenges and continue to try, despite failure or success, proves critical (p.46)."

Key ideas early in the book include inspirational and informative thoughts about smart parents and smart students. You'll find school spotlights from schools in California to schools in Kentucky and parent perspectives along with links to the parent toolkit, which makes up the entirety of part 2 of the book.

While I'm a huge fan of student choice in learning and intentional personalized learning, my biggest questions arose in chapter two of the book with all the talk about digital personalized learning. Don't get me wrong here, I believe in student-centered learning focused on interests and needs of students, and I think when intentionally and carefully pursued, our students have the best chance possible to succeed in school when offered choices about how they learn. The authors answered my questions about personalized learning not being a "put a student in front of a computer and walk away" approach when they wrote--

"students become actively involved in designing their own process and take responsibility for how they learn. They also have authentic choices about what they learn (p. 72)."

In fact, as described by the authors, an individualized learning plan provides students more than another task to mark off in the computer lab before they graduate from high school. It's actually a learning plan created by the students together with their parents and teachers and includes a vision statement, goals list, specific projects list, and tasks. Personalized learning is not one size fits all. It's blended and includes providing students a chance to learn at their own pace as they achieve competencies in skills and subjects.

We also learn in Smart Parents that students can learn anytime, anywhere. Using ideas from mobile learning apps, maker clubs, blogging, and mobile maker apps, parents can even take their children on the road without worrying about required "seat time." Imagine the opportunities to travel and vacation at times of the year when it's off season and less expensive and not interrupt learning for our sons and daughters!

If you want to feel empowered as a parent to create a demand for change in our schools or if you are an educator wanting to understand how to encourage parents to be involved in powerful ways, read Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning.

***Note: All opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone but I'm thankful to Getting Smart for providing me with an e-book version of the book to review***

Re-Imagining Public Education: Thoughts on Creative Schools

Nearly three and a half years ago I began this blog with an intense passion about re-imagining public education. During this time, I have continued to learn, encourage, advocate, and speak out about ideas for making school a more enjoyable place for students to learn.

Early posts included Stop Squashing Creativity in Education, written after I saw Sir Ken Robinson speak at NCTE and after I viewed his TED Talk. I offered five ideas for intentional teaching and many of my other posts elaborated on these ideas.

After finishing Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education, Sir Ken Robinson's newest book, I find myself hopeful and eager to continue the conversations about schooling and transforming the system. While many would say the whole system needs an overhaul, I am interested in Robinson's statement that "it's also essential to make changes within the system as it is." An idea like this means we can begin now, wherever we are.

We can begin changing the conversations, practices, and emphasis we place on test-preparation as a primary means of teaching. We can begin (or continue) listening to students and empowering them to own their learning by providing them choices in what and how they learn. We can involve families and communities in making decisions in our schools to ensure the goals in the schools represent the goals of the larger community. We can redesign school schedules to allow teachers time to collaborate, plan, and create learning experiences for students.

Three of my favorite quotes from the book 

"The fundamental work of schools is not to increase test results but to facilitate learning."

"To transform any situation you need three forms of understanding: a critique of the way things are, a vision of how they should be, and a theory of change for how to move from one to the other."

"Making education personal has implications for the curriculum, for teaching, and for assessment. It involves a transformation in the culture of schools. What does that look like in practice?"

I selected these three quotes to share here because they are the three ideas I've been exploring through blogging for the past several years. 

Since I prefer to be solutions oriented, I suggested that we read up, team up, and speak up. In another post, I suggested that we change the conversation and work toward making schools intellectually engaging and curiosity promoting places where students want to be. Most heart-wrenching in my posts about testing was this post written when my youngest son finished his first year of required state testing and asked me if he could chicken out of testing.

My promise is threefold. I will continue offering a critique of the parts of the public education system not working well for all children. I will continue sharing my vision for change, and I will think more throughly about my theory of change. 

     Whether you've read Creative Schools or not, how do you imagine public education changing? What critique do you offer? What is your vision for change? Your theory of change?

____________________________________________________________________________

My friend, Gwyn, also writes and speaks about creativity in schools. After she read my Stop Squashing Creativity post, we exchanged emails and determined that we share many ideas about the education all students deserve, so I asked Gwyn to guest blog. Her two part post continues to be one of the most read posts at Learning to Muse. Read her two part post here and here. 

  

Visiting Piedmont College for Alumni Weekend

Piedmont College

Nestled beautifully in the mountains of Northeast Georgia, Piedmont College offers a top-notch liberal arts education. Read about what it did for me.  On a recent Saturday we returned to our Alma Mater for Alumni Weekend. My husband and sons as well as my parents and in-laws all met in Demorest where we stayed in an amazing house my in-laws found and rented for the weekend.

View from bedroom window at house we rented in Demorest

Though we hadn't been back to Piedmont in fourteen years, my husband and I were warmly welcomed back by professors who reminisced with us about the days when we were students. They also dreamed with us about the future of education (higher ed & K-12). Our conversations focused on the importance of education being

• thoughtful
• purposeful
• creative

English Professor Lisa Hodgens thoughtfully nominated me for the 2015 Excellence in Education award which I accepted at a ceremony on Saturday night for my contributions to education on the local, state, and national level. Knowing the nomination came from Lisa made it meaningful, and when asked to give a few words at the ceremony, I became choked up from gratitude for my experiences at Piedmont. Without a doubt, Piedmont provided the understandings I needed to develop a thoughtful, purposeful, and creative approach to teaching and learning.

At the awards ceremony, the Alumni Office (some of the friendliest staff) played a video of snapshots from my time at Piedmont with photographs of some of my favorite people and experiences. My opportunities at Piedmont included traveling each spring to the Southern Literary Festival where we would hear great authors read their works of literature. In 1995 we visited Ole' Miss in Oxford and toured Rowan Oak where we saw William Faulkner's penciled handwriting on the wall.

We also traveled with Dr. Hodgens abroad to England the summer after graduation. There we studied Shakespeare with the Royal Shakespeare Company, attended numerous plays, and explored the historical cities of Oxford and London. Experiences such as these can't be traded for book work, and I'm grateful for the thoughtfully and creatively designed programs Piedmont offered.

Not all of our experiences involved travel; we also engaged in meaningful discussions in our classes. My entire Master's program provided a purposeful look at education, and especially worth noting was a graduate school course titled American High School taught by Dr. Hilton Smith. We read books by John Goodlad and George Wood and discussed numerous critical studies by Ted Sizer and Debra Meier. Our open-ended discussions of these texts encouraged us to develop our own philosophy of education and mine certainly included an emphasis on student choice and interest.

Piedmont College

During Alumni Weekend, we enjoyed touring the campus, seeing all the renovations, attending a reception at President Mellichamp's house, celebrating at the awards banquet and attending a play afterwards in the new Swanson Center Black Box Theatre. Fortunately, we made it back to campus for brunch on Sunday with Hilton Smith and his wife Sara Tucker. Our conversation went straight to catching up on education trends, policies, and practices as we exchanged ideas, perspectives, and stories--the kinds of stories that keep us going in a world of education where we feel like people have sometimes forgotten to be intentional. However, with our dedication to the larger purpose, we carry-on hopeful to make an impact through thoughtful, purposeful, and creative education geared toward providing students choice and interest in their learning. Of course, you might recall my previous blog post where I discussed my correspondence with Hilton and my dream of a starting a Teacher Powered School.

We enjoyed this fantastic play by the Theatre Dept. Alumni Weekend

Dreaming of a Teacher Powered School

Back in 1999 a year after I started teaching in Western North Carolina, I began dreaming of teaching in a school with distributed leadership, a school where all stakeholders have a voice. You see, my father-in-law, a fifth grade teacher in Georgia at the time, and I spent time talking about how we could better meet the needs of our students if only we would be allowed to do so--if only we were permitted to allow students choice in how the school operated. Back then I didn't know Teacher Powered schools could be a real thing. Young and enthusiastic, I placed my focus on learning all I could about being an effective teacher, an effective facilitator of learning. All the while, the running of the school continued to pull at me.

Snowy View from Capital Plaza Tower Frankfort, KY

Flash forward ten years to January 2009 when I began working at the state department of education. One wintry and snowy morning from the KDE Capital Plaza Tower in Frankfort, Kentucky, I called my former professor, Hilton Smith, to tell him I had left the classroom. I was taking a break from teaching with hopes that I could learn more about how education policy happens, how decisions that impact students and teachers are made. Hilton was the one who taught me about student choice in learning and about creating more authentic learning experiences like he and his colleagues used with the Foxfire approach. Not sure what he would think of me working for a government agency, I asked for advice, and he provided it. "Pay attention to how decisions are made at the state level. Pay attention to how policies are made--really made--behind the scenes, not the posturing that we all see in the public arena. Pay attention and learn because what you learn will benefit you when you leave."

The following December, Hilton sent me a letter (a real snail mail letter, not an email) about The Forum for Education and Democracy and the Coalition of Essential Schools (we had read Ted Sizer's work in grad school). In the evenings, I spent time researching and learning more about the founders and leaders recognized by these organizations.  Hilton Smith, Theodore Sizer, Dennis Littky, Elliot Washor, George Wood, Debra Meier, Linda Darling-Hammond, etc.

About this same time, teacher-led schools in Minnesota and Colorado opened, so I followed the happenings from afar with secret dreams of helping open a school like this in Kentucky. Released in 2012, the book Trusting Teachers With School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots by Kim Ferris-Berg and Edward Dirkswager provided an analysis of numerous schools around the country operating with some type of teacher autonomy.  My evening research kept me motivated and moving, eager to learn more about the type of school we might be able to open in Kentucky--one focused on providing students choices in their learning.

Ultimately, this is why I'm interested in teacher powered schools. I'm interested in schools where not just teachers have a voice but students also have a voice in their learning. I used to believe the only way to make an impact or be involved required me to teach again. As I reflected in a recent blog post, I no longer believe teaching is the only way I can make an impact. Raising the voice of teachers and students matters and so does thinking differently about how schools operate. It will take people thinking and behaving differently to make these changes. Now I have the great fortune of working for an organization focused on recruiting, coordinating and supporting expertise to inspire and scale innovation and excellence in Kentucky's public schools.

Fortunately, education leaders in Kentucky have also begun investigating alternative school models such as the Big Picture Learning Schools I explored all those years ago when I was working for KDE. Additionally, teachers in Kentucky have begun investigating distributed leadership models and Teacher Powered Schools.

I'm ready. I've been ready. Students deserve it. Let's do it!

Students Plan to Change the World with Real-World Project Based Learning

It started before I even walked in the building.  I began to feel the friendliness and culture difference at Eminence Independent Schools.  As I walked toward the front door of the school, Shannon Treece, high school principal, walked in the same direction fresh from a meeting with the area school councils association.  Though we had never met and her arms were full, she stopped me with a large smile on her face as our paths converged on the sidewalk.  "Are you Renee?  Nice to finally put a Twitter name with a face."  From there I was greeted and provided a printed visitor tag with my name logged into their online system for easy record keeping. While I waited to head to the classroom area, I observed multiple visitors enter the school with smiles on their faces.  The friendliness and welcoming spirit was obvious, and you could tell they really cared that people were visiting their #SchoolOnFire.  (I can tell you I've entered other schools and have not experienced quite that friendly a welcome.)

A simple Twitter exchange turned into an opportunity for me to witness the student-led Project Based Learning happening at Eminence. Principal Treece invited me to see what her students (literally, her students) were doing.  Ms. Treece facilitates the learning of this group of teenagers because they came to her asking for more service learning opportunities.  Initially, she told the students they would schedule more PBL and service learning for the fall because she needed to find someone to facilitate, get schedules rearranged, figure out what they would do, etc.,  but then the students pushed her and she decided--that's what she's there for--to facilitate the learning of students.  So, she squeezed this PBL service learning experience with teenagers into her busy day and now meets with the students regularly.

By reaching out to community members and parents and asking for help (without having all the answers, decisions, and materials ahead of time), Ms. Treece and her students were able to find Dr. and Mr. White from the Shelbyville, Kentucky area who were willing to work with them. In addition to their non-profit organization based here in Kentucky, the couple run an orphanage in Uganda, and they knew they could use some help from dedicated teenagers who were willing to serve and to learn about the culture of the Ugandan people.  A partnership was forged.

The students began meeting regularly in an old KFC building next door to the school.  The school purchased this building because they are always thinking about how to re-purpose space and resources since they are not a resource rich district.  However, they are rich with thoughts, ideas, learning, and excitement. Ms. Treece meets with the students (and Mr. White joins them often) and she says the students and have encountered obstacles already (including self-doubt).  Nevertheless, because Eminence promotes a risk-taking culture, the students are persevering in their endeavors to make their dream a reality. 

Because Principal Treece knows effective PBL is student led, she asked the students to figure out what they would do, and with careful questioning, brainstorming, researching, and collaborating, the students decided they will create a self-sustaining community in Uganda to serve the children in the orphanage. They were clear about this dream becoming action.  They learned about the 72 school-aged children in the Ugandan orphanage and wanted to find a way for those students to live and to learn how to support themselves.

To practice their public speaking skills and to become more articulate with pitching their project, Ms. Treece invited me to listen to students present their work, and what a privilege it was to hear them talk about the project. They talked me through the 5Ws and their mission statement in a pre-planned format complete with effective powerpoint use.  (They obviously know the intention of Powerpoint isn't to read slides to people, so they placed one word per slide in large block letters.  Each word was the signal for the next speaker to talk about the dream, the future, and the plan.)

Purpose

Working together, this group of approximately 15 students created a name and a wrote a mission statement that they shared with me today.  #Unlock is a student led organization which exists to empower, educate, and equip children in an impoverished area by creating a self-sustaining community.

Who:  high school students partnering with businesses and faith-based organizations
What: creating a self-sustaining community in Uganda for students who are former street children from the slums
Where: Eminence, Kentucky and Uganda, Africa
How: by learning about the culture and people and by researching and designing the community
When: ongoing project starting now & lasting several years
Why: "because doing something to impact the world is more important than sitting in classes for 6 hours a day to make a project you will throw away."

Toward the end of their presentation, I began asking them questions about the project. One student stated it well for the group "we want to help the world for real--by solving real problems."  Another chimed in "any kid can do this--kids want to change the world and they can with teachers, students, and community working with one another."

Their work has only just begun.  This summer the students will present at a few conferences to raise awareness for their project and to seek sponsorships, and in the fall they will continue their research and design and will begin participating in Google Hangouts with the Ugandan students.  In preparation for meeting the Ugandan students virtually, the Eminence students are reading and discussing two texts, Kisses for Katie and The Queen of Katwe:  A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster.  The students take their work seriously and say "with this--you have to care--we're talking about people's lives."

My Teacher Preparation Program Didn't Teach Me Everything

"Are you sure you want to teach there--you should know they haven't had a teacher in months, only subs, and they've been turning over desks and not doing anything all semester."  Such was the comment uttered to me when I accepted my first high school teaching position.  "Absolutely" was my response.  I felt confident and prepared but also aware that I still had a lot to learn.

Teacher preparation has been on my mind for a few months.  Perhaps because a report this summer indicated many programs "have become an industry of mediocrity, churning out first-year teachers with classroom management skills and content knowledge inadequate to thrive in classrooms with ever-increasing ethnic and socioeconomic student diversity."  Perhaps because I taught a pre-service eight week course at the local university and will teach another course in the spring.  Perhaps because my state was one of seven selected for a new pilot program to transform teacher education.

 The teacher preparation program I completed 15 years ago did prepare me to enter the classroom, but it didn't teach me everything, nor could it have.  The most important thing I learned was the value of reflective and thoughtful practice.  Sure I learned theory (mostly constructivism) and pedagogy, but I also learned that I wouldn't know everything.  By situating myself as a life-long learner and accepting my responsibility to have a student centered classroom, I was well on my way to preparing my students to be thinkers and responsible community members who would be ready for life in the present as well as life beyond high school (the term college and career readiness had not yet been coined, even though the ideas behind CCR have been around for decades).

Pre-service teachers have an obligation, too.  It's not just the university or college that's responsible for their preparation.  You get as much out of a program as you're willing to put in, and if you are willing to be persistent, flexible, reflective, and student centered, you are more likely to possess the dispositions necessary in the teaching profession. 

Now don't get me wrong, possessing the dispositions to be an effective teacher is not all that's needed. In addition to teacher dispositions, I also needed to know how to listen to my students, how to have a classroom wherein my students helped create the classroom rules and helped to determine what we would learn, and how to adjust learning based on the individual needs of my students.

No, it (teaching) was never easy but I didn't expect it to be easy.  I expected, however, to be treated as a professional who was willing to learn and grow.   Sadly, that wasn't so much the case when I was in the high school classroom, and often still isn't the case for many teachers in America. 

What about you--did your teacher preparation prepare you to enter the profession? If you are a classroom teacher or were a classroom teacher--are you treated as a professional?

Urging Global Comments to Promote Creativity in Education!

Today’s post will be the first of two parts and is a guest post by a friend who lives many states away from me in the United States.  I am in Kentucky; Gwyn lives in North Dakota.  We are modeling the promotion of creativity through collaboration, and we urge you to join us by commenting on this blog. 

Part 1 of 2:  Guest post by Gwyn Ridenhour

Recently, Renee posted five simple suggestions to encourage more creativity in the schools. She asked me to choose one and respond to it, but honestly I couldn’t. They are all too intertwined and important to simply discuss one.

As a home educator of two remarkable children, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to pursue these suggestions in the freedom of my own home. However, the longer I do this, the more I wish for the same opportunity for teachers and students in the public schools. We are simply not preparing our children for our rapidly changing future. They lack critical thinking and problem solving skills, largely because we are too scripted in the classroom. It’s beyond time to give teachers more autonomy in the classroom and encourage methods that center on creativity and the individual child.

Here’s what Renee says (with my comments following each item):
 Let students study and explore topics that interest them.  

Letting students choose their own topics does several marvelous things at once.

•  It validates  (“you mean you care about what I want to learn??”).
• It empowers, allowing students to become more invested their own success. Suddenly students are learning because it’s something they identified as a goal; they’re no longer just studying for a grade.
• It prepares students for their own futures. If a child passionate about art studies math, science, history, and literature through an art lens, he will learn the core subjects and enrich his knowledge of art all at the same time. The result? And educated child who is an expert in his field.
• It motivates students. Take the art student again. Let’s say that this student has a history of hating math. If you can help him see math as relevant to his passion, then the game changes. Intermingle art and geometry. Introduce him to the myriad patterns waiting to be discovered in numbers and shapes. Let him put doodles on his algebra work.  Suddenly, math becomes a bit more interesting.  If you haven’t discovered Vi Hart yet, be sure to check out her videos (and let students check them out too). She’s a model of combining the arts with math.

Let students use their own technology devices to enhance their learning

I can’t speak to the IPad, IPhones, and so forth, because we don’t own these types of devices. However, we do embrace technology in our home to help the kids pursue their interests. In fact, without technology, the success they’ve had in their areas of interest largely wouldn’t have been possible.

My daughter is an 8 year old author and illustrator of two self-published books. She has sold about 150 copies, enough to buy her own laptop and plenty of book stock to sell at future events. She uses Wordpress to support her author website, lulu.com for the self-publishing services, and National Novel Writing Month (another website) to help keep her on track in her writing goals. This fall, we used our household camera and Windows Movie Maker to allow her to create short films explaining the writing process. This has opened up a wealth of public speaking opportunities, including one video-conference (more technology) with a school across the state. And oh yeah, she’s writing her newest book on the laptop she bought herself.

My 11 year old son is a musician and composer. He uses software called Finale to compose, and Wordpress to support his music-based website. Last year, we matched the money he had earned from gigging to allow him to purchase studio recording equipment. He’ll use this to record his original pieces for many years to come. He uses texting as well, mainly to coordinate band practice and science club meetings.

Final note:  Check back tomorrow for post 2 of 2.  Check out Gwyn's blog and the work of her two fabulous kids.  And, please, comment on both of our blogs so we can increase the collaboration and dialogue about creativity and improvements for education.  

Student Choice and Interest

Let’s learn from these projects—non-examples of student choice and interest in the classroom.  At the end of the post, you will be encouraged to deconstruct these class projects and offer suggestions for revamping to promote authentic student interest and choice.

Hatchet Projects—choose one!

Make a poster that lists all the items Brian had with him when the plane crashed.  Circle the item that was most important for Brian.  Then neatly write one complete paragraph explaining why you circled that item.  Color your poster with colors that represent symbols in the book. 

Or

Make a powerpoint that has 5 slides displaying each of the items Brian had with him when the plane crashed.  Highlight in yellow the item that was most important to Brian.  Then write one complete paragraph explaining why you highlighted that item.  Use clip art to represent symbols in the book.

Why are these class projects non-examples of student choice and interest in the classroom?  What does creativity in the classroom look like? 

Creativity in the classroom doesn’t mean schoolwork needs to be colored with a crayon or drawn on construction paper.  When we are creative we move beyond traditional ideas and approaches, and we discover alternative ways of thinking and doing. 

We need to teach students to use knowledge to solve complex real-world problems and to create projects, designs, and other works for use in real-world situations based on their own interests.  We need to allow students to be adaptable and flexible in their learning.  Having the right answer isn’t as important as thinking about the process used to reach the answer.

Practical ideas for teachers with many students

• Keep a journal electronically or in a notebook where you record any ideas you have.  Model your own journal writing and write with students.  Have students keep an idea book or electronic journal, too.
• Challenge students to think for themselves.  Compliance is not a friend of creativity.
• Ask more open ended questions.  Use wrong answers as learning experiences, and encourage students to be curious and ask questions.
• Make sure students are creating and building on original thoughts and ideas.

It’s possible to teach any class (even an art class) without any creativity, if students don’t do any creating.

• Even if teaching a prescribed and required scripted program, you could be creative with your approach to teaching it, and you could allow your students to imagine and create.
• Respect originality and uniqueness in student work and thinking.  Don’t expect every student paper or project to be on the same topic or written with the same ideas in the same format.

Practical ideas for administrators responsible for many teachers and students

•  Model creativity and thinking for teachers and students when solving problems in the school.
• Allow teachers to approach curriculum in meaningful ways to engage students in the creative process.
• Model the importance of asking thoughtful questions which may have more than one right answer.  Learn from wrong answers.
• Encourage and allow for teacher autonomy.

Parents

The best ideas for parents encouraging creativity come from my friend, Gwyn, who blogs about creativity and about how she allows her children to follow their own interests and passions.  Even if you are not a homeschooling family, there is much to be learned from Gwyn.  Remember being creative is about original thoughts and new approaches—that’s what you will see from Gwyn, and I’m sure she would rather we all find our own original thoughts than copy hers.  Check out her blog for some creative inspiration for your home and family.

If you click over to Gwyn’s blog, I hope you will return here to engage in deconstruction of the Hatchet projects.  How could they be revamped?  Please post your suggestions in the comments section below.

Stop Squashing Creativity in Education

More and more when I travel, I hear teachers share stories of scripted curriculum programs they are expected to follow in their schools.  Often schools and districts are so concerned with high-stakes standardized tests, they seek uniform means for providing instruction to students.  Many schools and districts do this because they don’t trust teachers to be professionals.  Other schools do this because they think it’s a quick fix answer to their low test scores.  Does a standardized approach to education provide students what they need to be successful in the 21^st century and beyond?  Is a standardized approach to instruction what we really want?  No!  We don’t.  Evidence of this not being what we want was unmistakable at the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts (KCTE/LA) annual conference, which concluded only hours ago.  This year’s conference theme was Literacy Matters:  The Common Core and Beyond. 

Professional conferences like this provide occasion for educators to refuel and network so they can return to schools energized and ready to provide students creative and critical opportunities to learn, and so they can be more connected to other educators.  Personally, I am on a creative high after hearing Sara Kajder discuss digital literacies and after hearing Kentucky’s poet laureate, Maureen Morehead, read her poetry.   Not only did I hear these well-established authors, I also heard Kentucky teachers talk about best practices in their classrooms.  The showcased sessions were not teachers sharing the page number they were covering in a scripted program.  Exciting session titles included “What’s the Big Idea?  The Real Purpose of Literature in Society and the Classroom,” and “The Power of Narrative in Writing and Teaching.”

I had the joy of reconnecting with a teacher I first met a couple of years ago; this teacher shares the passion I have for promoting creativity in education.   This all has me thinking about what we can do to stop squashing creativity in education.  With creative and thoughtful planning of time and resources, there’s no reason why schools couldn’t and shouldn’t do these five things. 

1. Let students study and explore topics that interest them
2. Let students use their own technology devices to enhance their learning
3. Let students make mistakes
4. Allow more time for the arts, physical education, and recess
5. Allow more time for creating,  performing, dreaming, and thinking

In future posts, I will explore these ideas more fully and offer suggestions for how schools can pragmatically approach ways to stop squashing creativity.  If you have your own ideas, please share them here so we can all learn from one another.

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3 Meaningful Homework Practices

3 nights ago I noticed 3 friends from 3 different states posted status updates on facebook within 30 minutes of one another.   All three updates were about children completing meaningless homework activities (e.g. grammar worksheets, skill and drill test prep, word searches).

I shudder to think of times when I asked students to read a novel at home without providing a purpose for reading.  “Tonight read chapters 4-5 of Moby Dick and be prepared for a quiz.”   While I usually provided context and asked students to access prior knowledge during class, my homework practices left much to be desired early in my teaching career.  I sometimes asked students to complete a study guide with their reading; I tried to ask both comprehension and higher level thinking questions.  I even worked with students on practicing the characteristics of a good reader according to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature.  I placed emphasis on the teaching and learning that happened within the classroom more than on what students did for homework.

Notice that word.  Did. I was focused on the activities students completed for homework.  If my students did all the reading at home, we could get through a novel at a faster pace.  We could have discussions and engage in literature circles when they came to class.  If they did a research project, we could accomplish more text analysis of informational reading in class.  If they read everything I assigned, we could get through more of the curriculum.  Homework, I thought, was essential to maintaining my reputation as a teacher who had high expectations for all students.

Fast forward a few years.  My sons started elementary school, and I began to question the homework being sent home.  Being a reflective person, I realized I couldn’t question what my own children were being asked to do for homework if I didn’t question my own practices as a teacher.   My homework practices needed revamping.  Here are 3 meaningful homework practices I implemented during the last three years I was in the classroom.

1.  Let students read books that interest them.  (Moby Dick, really?  What was I thinking?  Justbecause I loved it, didn't mean my students enjoyed it)

2.  Differentiate homework according to student needs and interests.  (Why not a literacy letter or reading journal focused on the specific literacy skills and strategies practiced in class and aligned with individual student goals instead of a study guide? Why not reading Wired articles for a student like my son who loves computers and technology or an article about Abraham Lincoln for a child like my younger son who loves history?) I administered student interest surveys, read narratives and journal entries to learn more about what each student might enjoy, and I tried to offer choice so students didn't all have to do the same thing.

3.  Provide feedback on homework rather than a grade.  (How better to improve student learning?)

I’ll end tonight’s post with a line from a poem by one of my oldest son’s favorite poets, Jack Prelutsky.

Homework!  Oh,  homework!

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