There are milestone events that change the fabric of our world. Moments in time that grab our collective essence and refocus us on the great possibilities of who we are and who we can be. Some of these milestones are positive, generations of people can remember where they were on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon or November 11, 1982 when the Space Shuttle Columbia took off for the stars. We remember tragic milestones, the death of Kennedy, the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the fall of the World Trade Center. We also remember when we heard about events that both positively and negatively changed our world, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As outsiders, because we experienced these events as a moment in time, we assume that the greatness that occurred came into being as instantaneously and effortlessly as the moment itself. Unfortunately, life's greatest achievements don't occur because of short bursts of high energy work but rather long journeys of incremental improvement.
On May 25th, 1961, three and a half years after the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, President John F. Kennedy set forth the goal for the United States to put a man on the moon. The speech, given before a joint-session of congress, was intended to provide both broad goals for the country and give details on how to strengthen an economy recovering from recession. Fifty years later, the same needs and goals apply to our society. We imagine, due to the length of history and personal experience, that only a couple of years later, an astronaut landed on the moon. Unfortunately, that's not true. It was eight years and 6 Apollo missions later. It came at great cost, the initial projected costs in 1961 7 billion dollars. The actual cost of the Apollo program in 1973 was 25.4 billion dollars ($170 billion in 2005 dollars). The Manhattan Project, began in 1939 and employed 130,000 people over the course of its journey. Six years later the work produced 2 nuclear bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. The project cost nearly 2 billion dollars ($26 billion in 2013 dollars). Each program that aimed to take great leaps forward was neither inexpensive nor instantaneous.
In our lives, we constantly look for "moonshots" opportunities to make gigantic leaps forward, rushing through the work and the challenge and reaching some great target on the horizon. This happens to us as individuals whether it is hoping to drop great amounts of weight, win the lottery, make dramatic improvements our job, or fantastic gains in an athletic event. It also happens to us as a society with initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, Race for the Top, and the War on Poverty. What we learn from these "moonshot" experiences more often than not is that there is no gigantic leap, improvement is gradual and incremental in nature. Effective change occurs in an evolutionary not revolutionary manner. It is important to dream big but in order to make the dreams become reality, the journey is one of inch by inch improvement.
When we take on our daily journeys and work to improve as people, as parents, as teachers, and as leaders, it is not by making giant leaps forward. Improvement occurs in manageable steps. When the goals are small, attainable, and incremental, we grow. With each step of growth, we move closer and over time those moonshots happen and we didn't even notice. When we see the step in front of us, we can move our feet. One step at a time, moment by moment, we change, we evolve, we become a little more perfect than before. If we show those steps to our children instead of the great leaps, they too will achieve.
The most amazing thing is that we live in one of the most revolutionary time periods. The Internet has taken down many of the barriers between countries and people. Computers more powerful than ones that once took up whole buildings of college campuses can now be found in our pocket. How many of us remember where we were when we first saw the World Wide Web, our first email, our first smartphone. Just like all moonshots, the evolution of these has been evolutionary also. As we think about what we want to be, what we want our children to be, lets remember how far we have come, inch by inch, in the few short years since the iPhone first appeared on the stage on January 29, 2007. It has come far and so have we.
Teachers and administrators join the education profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of children. In college these individuals are surrounded by future business leaders, stock traders, scientists, doctors, and lawyers. They choose a path that does not provide fiscal fortune but rather huge internal gain. Educators opt in because of the aha moment, that child's smile as they get it, the celebration of achievement, the light bulb moment of discovery. Teachers select this career for the personal gain of changing lives. Relationships that start in the moment and often last a life time.
In the first year, they discover what the job really is. It's more than setting up activities, running reading groups, and comforting the crying child. In that initial go around they learn that preparation time isn't the 3-5 hours a week embedded in their schedule but the 3 hours a night in addition prepping materials, grading assessments, emailing parents, it's the Saturday or Sunday afternoon making copies, rewriting materials, stapling projects together. In that first year our teachers discover the challenges of classroom management, the office politics of any working environment, and they discovery the world of educational acronyms. Teachers learn about: IDEA, IEP, 504, PLOP, ISAT, IRT, MDC, NCLB, RTTT, NAEP, PISA, and many other points of jargon. Their world spins and they remark, "I just want to help kids learn."
The McKinsey Study in 2010 noted that 14% of teachers leave the profession after their first year. Nearly half (46%) leave after five years. It notes challenges that face the profession from a macroscopic profession including relative wage level decrease compared to other valued professions, lack of high achieving professionals entering the profession, and lack of governmental prestige placed on those entering the field. Other studies focus, on teacher burnout, testing pressures, and working conditions. In the several years since these studies have come out, as a profession, we have increased rather than decreased these pressures. Since 2010, schools have brought through another round of "more rigorous" standards and testing with CCSS, NGSS, PARCC, and SmarterBalance. We have gone through a period surfing the ripples of the 2008 recession with reductions of wage increases, reductions of staff, balance tightening, and reductions of retirement benefits. We have doubled down on data and assessment by focusing on both growth and achievement. At schools throughout the nation we are staring carefully at the precipice whether we break our profession or find a way to save it.
Leadership matters more than ever; administrative leadership, teacher leadership, and legislative leadership. In this world in which everyone worries about increasing standards and increasing rigor, leadership needs to build bridges between the past and the future. For generations our teachers and students have done great things. When assessment factors in SES (socio-economic status), schools in the United States outperform the best-fit line compared to schools across the world on PISA.* More interesting in looking at PISA was how few developed countries have more families in poverty than the United States. Reading through the Common Core State Standards can at times feel like you are reading the diagnostic manual for your computer's CPU. It is filled with technical words, carefully crafted language that is word-smithed to provide an exacting meaning by the authors but language that leaves parents and practitioners in the dust. Leadership needs to connect the best practices of our past with our growth towards the future. We need to identify those growth steps we have made in our classrooms and clarify the next step as not a moonshot but rather an evolutionary development. The phrase "Race to the Top (RTTT)" implies a need to react quickly. An anticipation that we are not there and if we do not expend great energy in a quick fashion it will pass us by. "Race to the Top" ignores that after any sprint the athlete is exhausted. They move fast, react swiftly, and then stagger afterwards. This is not the vision of teaching we should desire, but rather that of the tortoise beating the hare. The methodical journey down a path that leads to ongoing success.
Teachers join this profession to become difference makers. They seek work environments in which they can improve the lives of children. As leaders, we need to look at each new initiative and identify how much of this is based in the best practices that we do, what in the initiative is absolutely necessary, what components fit within what we believe is morally right and viable for our students, and what time and resources will it take to implement it well. Governmental leaders may be in a race, but if we want teachers and educational professionals to be in it for the long run, we need to take the multitudes of acronyms and right size the pace for our staff, students, and community. Our teachers can only be heroes if we create the space for it.
*Please note, I believe there are enormous challenges with international assessment and PISA, but it was nice to be able to cherry pick a statistic.
The 80's were a wonderful time. We were recovering oil crises of the 70's, elected an actor to be president, and embracing the brat pack. Parenting was easy then too. Each night I would dutifully come home, hang my coat on a hanger, sit down at the table, quietly do my homework, set the table, have a quiet conversation with the family, kiss my mom good night and get ready for the next day. Come on now, my mom probably fell out of her chair reading that wishing that I would have just done one of those things. Parenting in the 80's was hard. Parents no longer could let their children play outside without being afraid that they would be kidnapped. AIDS was new to everyone and there was great fear of how it could be transmitted and who could get it. The great verbal battle between the superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States continued, as the US went everywhere to halt the spread of communism. There were real fears of nuclear war. Households began to have multiple televisions, more cars than drivers, three-way calling and call waiting became things, and those portable music players boom boxes and walkmen showed up everywhere. Parenting wasn't easy then. It wasn't easy in the 60's, the 40's, or the 20's. Think about it, try being a parent in the time of Prohibition. Parenting is hard, that is why so many family comedies resonate with us.
Douglas Adams in his book, A Salmon of Doubt, states three rules of technology:
"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
The more I read that, the more that I find it to be true. There was a time in my life in which I could learn every technology. That time has passed. Even the most tech-saavy of us need at times to seed to the next generation to learn the nuances of these new tools and toys. However, just because I don't know every aspect of the technology, I can learn enough to parent my children with it. Here are some simple guidelines that we use in our household to parent with technology. Interestingly enough, they are very similar to those our parents used before us as they dealt with the issues of their time:
1) There are limits to everything in life. So we set a timer.
As a child of the 80's I can remember my parents and my uncle complaining of how much my cousins and I watched the "idiot box." It wasn't that there was high quality programming on, after all it was an event when we went over and watched the first Wrestlemania at their house. However, we would just as easily watch that as Jeopardy, Anne of Green Gables, and Thundercats. Eventually my Aunt and my parents set time limits for all of us regarding watching television. They were the generation to allow televisions to go into the bedroom and if we messed up, they were the generation to walk in and angrily take that television right out of the bedroom. In fact, focal point of the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on media, children, and screen time is focused on this phenomena of consumption media and has very little to do with children using computers and tablets in school.
As we learned from our parents, we let our children know, that they have a set amount of time that they can use their tablets for entertainment purposes. We set timers. Frequently they comply. At times, we need to use the Find My Phone iPhone App to mark it as a lost phone and set a passcode on it. We have some great videos on the District 58 Parent Tech Support page to how to do this.
2) Device usage comes with supervision.
One of my great memories of the 80's was the movie Footloose. Great music, a young Kevin Bacon doing gymnastics as he rebelled against society. We learned that dancing could be evil. In the movie we see the townspeople have raided the library and are burning those items that are filling their children's heads with corruption. Media of all types have exposed the consumer to new ideas. Some healthy and some questionable. The obligation for both schools and parents has always been to teach our children how to handle ideas and content that we question. This is no different then when the Elvis and the Beatles influenced the world as it is now. The content is easier to access and we continue to need to help our children to learn to make good choices. The only way to do that is for us to be around when they encounter the media. Children should use their devices in a supervised family area. The same as they would with television. There is no need for children to sit in their room and play on their tablet, it is only for adult convenience do families allow it. At times, even with the best filters, children will hit inappropriate content, the same as they would trouncing through the library and flipping channels with the remote control, the trick is teaching children how to handle and move on when they find content that is inappropriate. This is what we need to teach as both adults and teachers.
3) The device is mine, you are simply borrowing it.
Before we drove the car for the first time, mom and dad explained the rules to the game. The Goldbergs did a terrific take on this in their episode, "Call Me When You Get There." If we didn't follow the rules, we were not allowed to drive. Well, sort of, we were not allowed to go drive where we wanted to go. We were still required to go to the store to pick up groceries we needed for dinner or drive to the pool to pick up our brothers from practice. We just weren't allowed to go driving where we wanted to go. The technique is the same today as it was then. Children are allowed to use their devices until its a problem. When it becomes a problem, they lose the privilege to use it for entertainment but still can use it for their classwork. When the work is complete, they put the device away. After a while, children earn back the privilege to use it for entertainment again.
4) Children don't have credit cards.
I remember when I got my first credit card. I was entering college. I had been lectured to several times regarding the dangers of credit cards before I was ever allowed to touch it. Even though credit cards usage is more widespread now, the same rules apply. Children and teens don't belong having credit cards. As such, please do not share your iTunes or Google Play account passwords with them. Make the child come to you to enter the password and approve the purchase. Furthermore, you paid for the app, you can decide if it is on or off the device. In the restrictions section of the device, set the password requirements to immediate when using the store functions. This will require children to have a parent enter the password to download or re-download apps. It seems like a pain, but truly can keep the balance of device control in the hand of the parent. Furthermore, I recommend turning off in-app purchases. Just like coins at the arcade, in-app purchases can create big costs really fast. There are a lot of good free and inexpensive apps, children don't need a daily roll of quarters at this arcade.
Parenting is hard. It always has been and always will be. It is the balance of loving our children and giving them a safe guided path through the world. While the tools and toys have changed, the core challenges have not. By setting similar boundaries that our parents did, we can guide our young padawans to grow up and become successful jedis.
My dad was a pediatric endocrinologist. While we were never sure what the exact definition of endocrinologist meant, a loose translation for us was guy who did an hour of phone calls from his car helping children balance their blood sugars while he took his own children to Hebrew School and swim practice. It was important work, we knew because it was the 80's and he had a car phone because of it. As we met children and adults with diabetes we learned that this invisible to the human eye but medically important condition often meant life or death if it wasn't treated properly and the patient didn't learn to control it. My dad was important, although we never knew it. Only as an adult, as I have met his patients who have grown into adults and as the parents of his patients have approached me to share their stories, have I truly begun to understand the impact my dad made on real people. He changed lives and he saved lives. He made a difference in how young boys, girls, and parents approached life and found comfort in who they were and who they could be.
Diabetes is one of many conditions we see in increasing prevalence in our society. As we become more aware of our world around us, as we become more focused on the needs of all of our children and adults, we are becoming more able to support children and adults with diabetes, allergies, and autism. Raising children in the modern era means that we always ask if a child has food allergies before they come to the house. I find out the types of snacks they can eat, figure out the labels, and make sure the surfaces are clean. Children that may not have survived 30 years ago due to these allergies are now hanging out, doing things, and successfully living full lives with their Epi-pens in the backpack. We have friends with children who are autistic. Their struggle is not as easy, as no simple medication seems to help these children find balance. The kids are great kids and great friends. They are the ones who add the unique idea, show great talents, and yet struggle with great changes. As adults, they may make our world a better place because they see the world with such a unique lens. A lens that will help us all focus on things the rest of us have missed. While there is a building understanding of the uniqueness of autism and due to many of the obvious behaviors produced by autism, it is a condition while accepted the children are far less integrated into our daily lives and society as we should.
So I saw this tweet yesterday:
I read through the comments, which is always a mistake. I looked at people's perceptions. I read through the denials that ADD & ADHD exist and the immediate links to performance enhancement which I am sure is true for some of these player exemptions. And then I thought of my experiences. My childhood was memorable for all involved. I was clearly an unmedicated ADHD child (except for 12 weeks of junior high school). The stories are legendary from bouncing all through an RV from Chicago to Florida, falling out of chairs, knocking over desks, and still having the right answer. I was an unmedicated teenager who graduated high school and college because I was swimming 12-15,000 yards a day and passing out in class. I was a poor driver who cornered quickly and hit the garage once. I was an unmedicated adult who knew the answers to everyone's questions in every conversation but was moving so quickly that I didn't understand the level of anxiety I caused in others as I did so. I was smart enough to do everything without the awareness of my own impulsivity and behaviors that it impacted me in several jobs by making others nervous and anxious.
I have been medicated for six years now. I started 3 weeks after my oldest child began his medication. I look at my boys and see so much of me in them. The eldest, just like his father, is more than smart enough to be successful at school. He could read and do math with the finest. However, like his dad, when he is not medicated he is in constant super speed. I think back to growing up and wonder how my ADHD adversely hurt me. How many relationships ended because I made an impulsive decision? How many people did I make nervous because I never stayed for the whole conversation or interrupted the speaker mid-sentence? How many times did I interact inappropriately within a situation because I didn't read the situation or couldn't read someone else's body language. For me, like so many others, ADHD is not a childhood disorder, not a behavioral disability, but just as biological and medical as Diabetes, Allergies, and Autism. It is a life disorder and a life challenge and one that I have chosen to bring into balance.
Yes, Mr. Olbermann, ADD & ADHD medications do improve your performance. I've been to soccer practice and seen my child the moment the medication begins working. Instead of him running with his body at a 90 degree angle and the ball six feet in front of him, he runs upright and the ball is next to him. I've been to religious services at Temple and seen the medication work. My child changes from skipping and literally bouncing everywhere to a child who is upright, in position, and singing along in the choir. He looks people in the eyes. He listens to a conversation. He gives the long answer and will wait while his hand is raised. The medication improves his life's performance. And, yes I wonder how much better of a swimmer I would have been had I been medicated through high school and college. How much better a student I would have been? How much better a friend I would have been?
My parents brought over an article from the New England Journal of Medicine a couple of weeks ago. It was about identification and treatment of Adult ADD and ADHD. While these adults may not be as bouncy or dazed off as their seven year-old selves, the conditions are still there. It made me wonder, how many divorces occur because of ADHD? How many poor impulses occur that results in accidents? How many jobs lost from adults trying to find themselves? How many interpersonal relationships struggle because of this? And most importantly, how many teens and adults self-medicate through alcohol and other drugs because we are a society that is at times unwilling to accept that ADD exists and is a medical condition? If it were as easy to accept as Diabetes, Allergies, or Autism, we may find the answers are before us.
My mom knits a lot. A real lot. She knits in meetings. She knits on planes. She knits in conversations. She knits on the train. Her hands are in constant motion as she talks to everyone around. She's brilliant. She's well educated. She was a national level swimmer growing up in the 50's and one of the first woman doctors in her field in our county. She is so much of her parents, proud, smart, feisty, and active. She was an obstetrician & gynecologist at a time when women weren't. While people didn't share their war stories of time with my mother when I was younger, the moment I passed thirty her patients both mothers and children have sought me out to share times of how mom was there for them whenever they needed it. They share their moments, at times in graphic detail, of split-second impulse my mom had that saved their baby or her diligent perseverance as she would stay all through the night to ensure they were supported throughout that delivery or surgery. It makes one proud to have grown up being raised by a difference maker.
So I was going to write about recipe-based teaching, learning, and the Common Core State Standards with a great tweet referencing Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe, but I guess I got distracted....
My oldest son came home last night and promptly stated, "my report card is in my backpack." Dropped his backpack and went to go read a book. I guess there are many responses I could have had. I could have immediately rushed to go read it, checked the markings, and seen all of the A's, B's, and C's. I guess. How would I feel if I did? Would I be more or less proud of my child because of it? Would I know more about my child from it? Would I have any idea of what to do with my child based on what it said? Would the results have been the same if he had a different teacher? What do those results even really mean?
The report card, a checklist of marks that rank our children in various ways to there peers. Given in content areas that date back to before I was born. Sure, schools have tried to evolve it over time. Schools have tried to make it less subjective, using "standards-based" reporting methods. They have tried to make it more fair by using more or less homework, more or less effort grades, more weighting at the end of units to allow time for learning. Yet, it seems that what we are truly doing is trying to take an inadequate communication and reporting system and placing it on high-quality pretty paper with a nice scent.
For a while I joked by saying, "How important is a fourth grade report card? or Who even knows where their report card is?" I did that until one of my best teachers sent me a picture of her third grade report card. Cracked me up. She knew where it was. She and her parents valued it. It made me laugh. It also made me think, we need to do this better.
I look at my fifth grader and see that he is my dad in so many ways. My dad taught himself to read at late 2 early 3. He's the guy who skipped a grade in school, did all of the work, ranked ridiculously high in high school and went to University of Chicago to be an Astrophysics major. He marched to the beat of his own drummer and was driven to do well. What report card could his teachers give him that showed the knowledge he gained in the class? What report card would have informed his parents on what he needed to learn next? He walked into school and if evaluated by knowledge and performance standards compared to his peers, one could mark straight A's the day he entered and been done with it. If we used age-level standards-based reporting, his parents would have looked at the document the day entered the class and wondered why he was there as he could do every one of the skills at mastery level the day he entered the classroom. How could the report card be a meaningful tool?
I look at my fifth grader and he is me in so many ways also. When he does his work at times it is the absolute bare minimum. The writing is fragments, showing that he has the knowledge but would rather go onto something else that is more interesting and challenging than waste time writing more. His worksheets and tests are done quickly, showing the tiny errors that make it a B or B- not because he doesn't know it but more because he didn't bother to learn all the little minutia surrounding a topic or detail and didn't spend the time reading the whole thing because he wanted to back to his book or his game. The stuff he did read on the paper, he remembers for ever.
I look at the backpack containing the report card and realize his teacher agonized over all of the markings on the document. She, like so many others, spends hours making sure the report card is "accurate" and "fair." She wants to show his strengths and growth areas on a document that is quite frankly inadequate. A document that isn't fair to the learner, the instructor, or the parent. I really like his teacher and feel bad for her.
It's time that we rethink our reporting mechanism. Leaving the rankings of the letter grades is a start. They are subjective in every way. They are subjective by the cohort of students, the subjectivity of assignments, the questions on the assignments, extra-credit, and the ridiculous scale of 90-80-70. Letter grades are not comparable teacher to teacher none the less school to school. Moreover, why is remembering 90% of the content important. Will that help you ten years from now? Standards-based learning is a start. It lets us know a little about what the child is working on. However the standards themselves are just steps in a much bigger ladder. We have children each year that walk into classrooms and will never meet the "grade-level" standards and others that walk in and can do everyone of the "grade-level" standards the first day. These tools tell us only a little more than the letter grade ranking system before it. What we really need is a standards-based ladder report card. One that looks at curriculum vertically, perhaps k-16, and marks where a child is at with spaces underneath it for what that child needs to learn next. One that looks in Geometry and identifies the skills a child has and gives the parent an idea of what to work on going forward. We need to leave the age-modeled factory design and instead embrace a meritocracy that identifies how we can grow and improve.
When that report card shows up, I can do something with it. I can guide my child on activities to work on and skills to improve. Until then, I think I'll look at the work he has brought home this week and go do the dishes. Conferences are on Monday and I'll listen to the teacher's perspective. She's fun and she get's it. Those are the valuable things. His mom can read the report card when she gets to it, if she wants to.
The Personal Computer, PC, initially meant that we had moved from the network workstation to an individual unit. A computer that operated on its own. One that could be in the workplace or in the home, but in the end it was a Productivity Computer. As a society through branding and ownership we separated the "PC" and the "Mac" groups. One group in the end was seen as a viable option for the home and the workplace and one was seen as a toy. This marketed personal impacted us for from Windows 3.1 through Windows 7. Microsoft coined the term smartphone and made the early tablet operating systems. These too, whether you had a Windows CE device or a Blackberry were work tools. They may have been personal in the fact that individuals carried them, but they were sparse, clunky, and truly designed with the productivity organization in mind. Lets be honest, the iPhone changed all that. It showed us that a personal device can be both truly personal and productive. It connected us with our work, our documents, our presentations, and our contacts but also allowed us to connect to the world in ways that we could not imagine. With Android following this lead, the two competing operating systems have pushed each other to create tools that are elegant, personal, and powerful. For those of us who imagine ourselves to be in a world of PC vs Mac or Android vs iOS we are stuck in a rut and missing the bigger picture. The world is changing. It is not the world we grew up in and we are not preparing our children for this world.
I entered Hillcrest school as a kindergartener in 1978. Mrs. Roush played the piano. We had art time. We read some. I even believe we might have taken naps. In fourth grade we studied states. In fifth grade we studied the country. In sixth grade we studied the world. There were reading groups. There was math. There was even a TI-99 in the library. In 1985, as a 7th grader at O'Neill Junior High, we first learned world history. I learned about the colonization, the British Empire, the separation of India and Pakistan, World Super Powers. It was the Cold War, US vs the Soviet Union, everything in dichotomous relationships. The teacher talked, we listened (sort of), and we wrote papers. This was my education, an education I was proud of.
This week, I saw this video. One I encourage everyone to watch:
We are no longer preparing our children for a dichotomous world, one that lacks information, or one that depends on utilizing productivity tools. We are preparing our children for an information rich world. One that surrounds us and needs innovative approaches that connect societies, and helps people solve great problems.
We began our 1:1 initiative in January last year as children and teachers spent 3-weeks units together using tablets at both home and school. We called them Learning Labs. The children learned. The teachers learned. We learned. Immediately the experience was transformative. Within days children were making a wide-range of products. We set up concepts to be explored and the children were creating videos, art, and writing stories in ways we could not imagine. As adults, we set up learning situations and content to be studied, and the children created a variety of products. They became the teachers, of the technology, the tools, and eventually the content to each other and to the adults. In 3-week units worlds were transformed in a way that we couldn't go back.
In August we began piloting 1:1 initiatives throughout our district. Over 1400 students in grades k-6, about 35% of our students in those age groups, began working with iPad minis. We have lived through the honeymoon of this is awesome and entered the realm of reality that this is what life looks like in a 1:1 initiative. There is great variance within our pilot classrooms yet common themes emerge. Kids are owning more of the learning. They are becoming partners in the teaching. The iPad mini truly is a personal device. It takes learning and makes it our own. It allows children to become experts in things and carry learning well beyond the classroom. Our teachers that have allowed their classes to use email find that the learning goes on between them and the students and between student groups well after the school day has ended. We have found tablets make a difference, children individualize. They make songs, movies, and artwork. They take pictures of their world and write about it. We have discovered that Explain Everything one of the most important tools in learning as it gives us insight into a child's thinking and allows us to share our work with our school community. We have learned that tablets are cross-curricular devices, being just as vital in Art or Music as they are in Reading and Math.
There is so much that we are learning, but mostly we are learning that tablets enable our children to be personal instructional leaders in the classroom. They create products with such diversity because of the nature of the tool and the capacity of our teachers to be open to such ideas. Students are innovative and creative because while they know they are working on a common learning target they are excited to share the unique ways in which they develop solutions and products. Our 1:1 devices are not the portable productivity pieces of PC era, but truly personal life and learning tools that allow for productivity but also humanity and imagination.
The tool is only one reason why we are being successful. The other important reason we are transforming as a learning institution is our teachers and principals. Our school district is a learning community. Staff are sharing, in every way possible. They understand that the technology is a tool, often a scary one at that, but it opens doors. Our pilot teachers are sharing with grade level partners, allowing each other to do things differently, but dialoguing about the successes and challenges they are facing. Our instructional coaches are meeting with individual teachers and groups, helping identify what the learning targets are and what activities/tools might help the students demonstrate mastery of those targets. Our teachers are creating free professional development opportunities to support each other and to connect with colleagues around them through activities such as Playdatedg58, ipadtacula, and the Student Involved in Technology conference. Then there is the twitter hashtag #dg58learns. 140 character snipits that are staff driven sharing. Resources, pictures, questions, and successes.
We just started our journey. We look how far we have come and we look forward to the road ahead. We have had great leaders that have put us on this path, but it is our path now. Any of us can do this. Any of us can start this in our districts. It starts with a dialogue, a hashtag, and a vision. We are preparing children for a different world. In order to do that, we too need to see our world in different ways.
There is a book, a long book, that sits on a shelf in a room. This book has been read by seven people in the last fourteen years. For the author, it was an interesting adventure to write. The seven readers, well they read it because it was required. Since then, the book has remained on a shelf, a nice particle board laminated shelf with other books. The book is my dissertation. With its completion and defense in from to the committee, I was granted three little letters to write on resumes that opened doors for the rest of my career. I am grateful for the professors who channeled me into the experience and through the experience. I am grateful to the committee of seven who read it. I am grateful for the doors those three little letters opened because it gave me opportunities to help students and adults learn throughout Illinois.
The funny thing is, the three little letters aren't the things that make one a good leader or an effective leader. They opened doors, the process of earning them gave me experiences and introduced me to fascinating people, but in the end doesn't make the difference between when a student learns or not, when a teacher is successful or not, when a teacher's assistant feels empowered or not. I learned a great lesson two months after I earned my degree. While co-teaching 4th grade Sunday School with my bride, she looked at me and said, "We both have the same number of graduate hours, one of us has two masters' degrees and one of us a doctorate. There is no way we are calling you doctor in our classroom." Wisest decision we ever made.
That's the thing, it isn't about the title, the degree, or the organizational position that derives authority and respect. Each organization needs people to be responsible for different tasks. These tasks are independently important, require different skill sets, and come with different sets of problems and drama. Organizations are most effective when authority and respect are cultivated through mutual admiration, belief, and support. When these things are in place that is when schools, districts, and businesses thrive.
As a principal, staff frequently looked at me to ask the question about whether or not we were going to have indoor recess. When asked, I would frequently respond, "I don't know, we need to ask a member of the associates' team. They are the leaders outside and they will need to determine if it is safe or not to go out." While, I was responsible for all of the children and staff, it was the associates that were in the trenches daily at recess. They new the students, the fields, the blacktop, and if they looked at the weather, they would be able to make the most accurate decision. My role was to establish the parameters with the team for successful indoor and outdoor recesses but then to step back and trust those closest to the decision with the most knowledge to make the right call.
Another time, as a teacher was working to help a child learn to complete any of his tasks in school, the team looked to me as principal to do something. We talked. We brainstormed. We played through the options. We reflected and decided that yes I could take away his recess, give him detentions, or make him sit in my office until his work was done. We could use the power of the office to scare him or his parents. That might work for a day or a week. In the end, the position itself would mean nothing and the child would revert to not giving effort or completing tasks. We decided to talk with the child instead. A teacher, a social worker, and myself went to the parents home in the trailer park, rang the doorbell, and asked to talk. Forty minutes later we understood our child and family better. The child new we were invested in him and his family. And more work started to get done. Not all of it, but it was progress.
If we want to make a difference in our schools, it does come from top-down. Not because the top knows more, or the top has all the answers, but it is the top that needs to learn that all members of our organization are equally valuable, equally important to our success, and deserve equal respect. It is the top that needs to cultivate understanding throughout the organization that each member is important and when we talk together it is most often in a non-judgmental manner, except when required by the law, through which two humans are working together to support each other in being successful. The person is not telling you to do something because of their role, but rather having a conversation to cultivate support in a process that will help each of us perform our roles better and make everyone more successful.
When we no longer require respect because of position or title but rather cultivate shared responsibility and trust, then we can all be successful as students, teachers, support staff, and leaders.
