For thirteen years we have hosted Rosh HaShanah dinner. It feels like a lifetime ago the family gathered for the first time at our house on Summerlin. Rosh HaShanah had been Grandma Bernice's and Granddad Milton's holiday. As we married and found a home they slowly passed the gathering l'dor vador (hebrew: from generation to generation) to us. We "shared" the holiday. For thirteen years, like any tradition things from the outside seemed generally the same. In the first year we decided our main dish would be cranberry chicken. For the twelve subsequent years we have had cranberry chicken. I'm not even sure how many members of the family like cranberry chicken but annually we have cranberry chicken. We serve matzo ball soup. I am pretty confident that the family has been having matzo ball soup at Rosh HaShanah dinner since at least my wife was a child and possibly since my mother-in-law was a child. I'll have to remember to ask tonight. We will conclude with a variety of desserts including a Portillo's Chocolate Cake just like the one my Aunt Marsha brought thirteen years ago.
It would seem that this was the same meal done in the same way with essentially the same people present would be the same. Just like teaching how to calculate the specific heat (Q {Heat of Fusion} = M {Mass}* Cp {Specific Heat} * Delta T {Change in Temperature}), a lesson I taught 20 times as a teacher. The reality is that neither the lesson nor the meal has ever been the same. Whether it is hour by hour in class our year after year at the Rosh HaShanah table, numerous factors cause what should be a regular straight forward process to be different. At our first Rosh HaShanah meal there was Aunt Bea and Grandma Naomi who had reportedly bickered in the back of the car all the way from Arlington Heights to Aurora both of whom are no longer with us. Cousin David was the youngest child. Friends joined us who have grown apart as they have raised families of their own. The bickering in the back of the car will be our children as we return from the store. We will be thinking of Aunt Marsha as she relaxes with Uncle Steve and their dog Sooki by the pool in Arizona. The meal has grown to include brisket and assorted side dishes. Some traditional some that will wander in. My memory doesn't go back far enough to know if our friends Beth and Steve were at the first Rosh HaShanah. They lived across street at the time and have attended many but not all of the meals. As their family has grown, so too has grown our table.
When teaching specific heat the lesson at first was formulaic. We discussed the concept. We checked out the graphs. We played with our thermometers, Bunsen burners, and labs. We calculated. Overtime the learning experience changed. The children each added their though process and struggles. They helped each other providing explanations. They modified the lab experience to fit the questions they had. At one point I remember the students painting on the wall of my classroom at Lee M. Thurston High School the formula using an anvil for mass and eyes looking at the inside of the toilet to "see pee" as a cue for the calculation. Twenty times I taught specific heat. Each one different. Each child walking a way with a different level of competency and mastery. The more I worked to keep it the same the more different it was. Just like Rosh HaShanah, our learning experiences are always the same and always different. L'Dor Vador... From generation to generation.
A reporter called me the other day to ask about our 1:1 learning program. She was good at her job, or at least she new she had called the right person, because she definitely had me talking. She was exploring why so many districts were going one to one. In her world this just happened out of nowhere. As she had me in the conversation, she began to make connections between my perspective and other dialogues she already had. The reporter commented that their doesn't seem to be one boiler plate plan that districts are following. All of the sudden the cat was out of the bag for all to see. In an era of standardization through Common Core State Standards (pardon me, the New Illinois Learning Standards), PARCC Assessments, DLM's, and soon to come Value Added Measurement Evaluations, districts were not following the same plan for implementation for 1:1 and it was strikingly odd to both of us.
The answer, was simple of course, as districts we have different students, different teachers, different school structures, and sometimes even different beliefs and values. Sure each of us believes (or should believe) that all children can grow. How we get there, well that's wide open for interpretation. The State and Federal governments have pushed out initiative after initiative the past few years. There have been mandates from the top that have happened so quickly that in the classroom one doesn't know if we are going right or left. In fact, many of us have decided to follow our second grade students and just say "left" then follow whatever direction the herd goes. I can envision my teachers eyes when I tell them in two weeks that Illinois is no longer following the Common Core State Standards but the New Illinois Learning Standards. I can see the frustration on their faces as I try to explain the substantial differences (nothing) and that they will be assessed in the same way with PARCC, which will be our 4th different state assessment in 4 years. You see, somewhere in all of this change, teachers decided that it was a whole lot of craziness and that they were going to focus on the only thing that mattered which was children learning and growing. In doing so, whether it is 1:1, classroom learning opportunities, our understanding children's needs teachers, principals, and some district leaders have decided to go to their core beliefs and values and focus solely on helping children learn and grow.
Things are changing. For the past two months, like many district instructional leaders and technology directors in the Apple ecosystem I have been swallowed up by Apple's latest disruptive forces: student Apple Id's and Mobile Device Management. We've been quiet about it because our Chromebook colleagues are laughing hysterically in the corner as we have worked with countless families, students, and teachers to arduously deploy devices when those in the Google ecosystem simply blinked and the devices were employed. While it's a blog for a different time on the idea that the type of device matters, those of us in tablet ecosystems truly believe there are significant learning differences, none the less as leaders we have been trapped behind closed doors for two months trying to roll out the tools of learning. It is as Douglas Adams described:
"Yes, I passed your message on to Mr. Zarniwoop, be I'm afraid he's too cool to see you right now. He's on an intergalactic cruise..." "Yes, he's in his office, but he's on an intergalactic cruise. Thank you so much for calling." - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
While we are off on our intergalactic cruises, things were happening in the classrooms. Teachers were teaching. Kids were learning. Devices were rolling in and decisions were being made. It is here, like so often is the case, that teachers were identifying what it was that students needed and beginning to work collaboratively to make that happen. Friday, I got off the intergalactic cruise and left the office. I went out into the classroom world, met with some principals, and noticed that the summation of two years of work was simply happening. The world had changed and I had missed it.
See, the biggest myth of the Common Core State Standards and PARCC is that children learn at the same rate and same common steps. Even the public relations videos promote children taking equal steps. That has never been the case and will only be the case if we stop certain children from learning. Moreover, teachers, principals, and district leaders will be evaluated by a growth model that requires them to push the children as far as they can go. Guess what, while teachers rightfully question the tools and process of growth model evaluation, they are absolutely willing to own the concept that it's there role to help children grow as much as possible. It's liberating as they are able to put down the grade level instructional binder and start to say what is it that our children need to know next.
What I observed was teachers voraciously looking at the data. Not because we wanted them to, but because they wanted to see if where the children had been assessed digitally matched where they perceived the children to be and matched what they believed the children needed to learn next. No longer factory workers on the line of education, these teachers have been taking baby steps to become the instructional professionals that they signed up to be with the same diagnostic power and credentials of doctors and lawyers. They are working collaboratively to share students and create structures in which each student can grow. There are signs, not everywhere and not every moment, in which it's no longer 4th grade instruction, but students regardless of age at the 210 RIT Band are going to explore an idea.
With this change teachers and principals need tools. They are selecting 1:1 tools that help them best meet the unique needs of their students, their communities, and their instructional talents. Teachers, principals , and district leaders are identifying tools that can provide resources for instruction, engage children in the learning experience, and create products that can powerfully demonstrate learning. It is at this point, a nexus between relatively cheap personal mobile digital tools, growth modeled learning, strong state and federal requirements, and teacher professional decision making, that 1:1 has become a core path to learning success. Like the printing press or the cotton gin, we will look back at mobile learning and this brief period of time during which we debated which tools were best, and recognize this moment as key juncture that revolutionized learning. The change has come. Not simply because there were strong state and federal standards (although they will take credit for it) and not because digital tools became inexpensive enough and mobile enough that we could put them in the hands of children. Rather for the first time at the building, district, and professional levels we no longer see school as a factory producing student widgets but rather truly embraced the idea that all students can and need to grow and embraced teachers carving out the path to get there. The change has come because to teachers and principals have the power, the tools, and the training to truly make the difference. And guess what, they are changing regardless of what we mandate.
Have you ever been in that conversation when your asked a question and you know the answer you are about to give isn't what they are looking for? I frequently feel that way when I'm asked, "What is your math curriculum?" or "What is your reading curriculum?" I respond with our curriculum objectives, sharing that students progress through calculation and computation, geometry, equations and expressions, and statistics. The questioner is of course looking for the response of a publisher or the name of a textbook. Somewhere in the journey, we intermingled and then confused for ourselves, our teachers, and the public the differences between what it is we want and expect our children to know and be able to do, the curriculum and what are some of the tools we use to get there, the resources. This confusion has allowed legislative leaders and publishers to put forth the concept that the only "guaranteed and viable curriculum" is one that's "research-based" and comes from a publisher.
The reality is that curriculum is steps of experiences, knowledge and skills, derived from standards. If the national standards are "research-based" then the curriculum steps to achieve them naturally are guaranteed and viable. Through the very act of achieving these standards we are meeting the "research-base." The reality of most "research-based" publisher curricula is that these are corporations that have commissioned their own research done by their own people. The resources and product studies are not independently peer-reviewed and not independently published. Essentially a corporation commissions its people to write a study and publishes that study. One can assume that they wouldn't publish a study that didn't support their materials.
In truth, as educational leaders the resource market is caveat emptor. Only through deepening our own understanding of learning and curricula can we choose the learning tasks, resources, and assessments necessary to help our students be successful. In order to do this, we must cultivate an understanding of where the journey ends. The newest focus in education is growth. We want children to grow more. We want them to progress at their own individual rate, accelerating the pace of learning by meeting them at their instructional level. We want students to move forward. This is a wonderful concept and in terms of where growth is our curricular goal, it makes sense. Learning faster or at a greater quantity is not always the outcome goal.
There are content areas in which a growth model makes sense. One example is in math, when a child knows place value to the tens, move them on. Let them learn place value to the hundreds, thousands, and thousandths. Don't let your district's or classrooms progression of material hold them back until they no longer are interested in the concept. The same is true in Physical Education, if they get how to do a chest pass, move them on to the bounce pass. Don't wait until the children find the learning experience to be a waste of time. When the child has the knowledge or skill, we move them on.
However, lost in the focus on growth, there are concepts and skills we teach to vaccinate our populace. The concepts are timely and meant to help our children inquire and investigate. Topics in which there is no race to the finish line but meaning itself is created by delving deeper. In Social Studies, we vaccinate our children to develop deep understanding and value within the community. It's not a race to understand my town's history then my state's history. Rather we hope to encourage to inquire deeply, create connections, and meaning. Moving the Constitution to early grades because the children are growing faster doesn't make sense. Rather developing a deep understanding of the Constitution and applying it to current situations such as presidential initiatives, individual rights in Ferguson and our own town, the right to privacy and the internet are terrific conversations in which there is no race to get their first but far more meaning by investigating deeper.
As we look at learning and curriculum as leaders, teachers, and community members, we need to develop a common understanding of the difference between the curriculum and the resources. We need to articulate those concepts in which we are interested in progressive growth and those concepts in which we want deep exploration. Only then will we foster a common set of guidelines that helps our teachers and our families prepare or students to be the leaders and difference makers we hope they will become.
