Global Holiday Song Exchange Skype-a-Thon

The following post is cross posted from the "21st Century Learning at the South Elementary" blog that I also author.  There I post the great learning experiences that we bring to our students.  Unfortunately, with all that is happening lately, I have struggled to keep up with sharing some of those great experiences here.  I am going to try cross-posting some of my favorite activities in both places to see if I can do a better job sharing with you all.

Global Holiday Song Exchange Skype-a-Thon

South Elementary music teacher Jean Shields leads 3rd grade
students in song.

Yesterday the students at the South Elementary got to experience one of the great joys of the holiday season - music from around the world.  Through Skype, our students took part in seven different group calls that allowed them to exchange holiday songs with students from five different continents. The planning of the project over the past 2 weeks was done with the help of a lesson posted on the Skype in the Classroom website.  We asked for classrooms in other locations to contact us if they wished to participate.  Many of our connections were made through that posting.   We wanted to make sure that we had 2 other classrooms connecting with us in each of our time slots.  During our group calls, each class had the opportunity to sing three of their favorite holiday songs for their partner classes.

The first call of the day partnered our 3rd grade students with children in Russia and Poland.  Some of the Russian students dressed up as traditional holiday characters from their country: Papa Frost and his granddaughter who deliver presents to children on New Year's Eve.

Our next session partnered our 3rd graders with students in France and Venezuela.  A French newspaper wrote about the interaction here:  Mende : Jeanne-d’Arc connectée au reste de la planète.  The highlight of this call was when all three schools sang "Jingle Bells" in their own language.  It was a beautiful three-continent, three-language sing along.

 The third group call connected students in Mrs. Spitzer's homeroom with students in Greece and Canada.  Our Greek friends shared a bit about their Christmas traditions and insisted on taking a three-country picture at the end of the call.

Our fourth connection stayed within the United States. Mrs. Gates's second grade class connected with schools in Massachusetts and Delaware.

Session five also stayed within the United States.  Our 4th and 5th grade chorus got the opportunity to share the songs they had been practicing with a Middle School chorus in Virgina and a group of 4th grade students in Utah. There was some fantastic singing going on during this call as you can see in the video below.

 

The sixth session of the day of the day brought countries in North America together.  Second grade students in Mrs. Gates's and Mrs. Seifert's classes and Mrs. Conklin's Kindergartners sang for and with students in Mexico and Canada.  Since the Mexican students spoke Spanish and the students in Canada were French speaking, there was another multi-language caroling activity at the end of the call.

Our last connection of the day was between Mrs. Flynn's second grade students,  first graders in Colorado, and third graders in Hawaii.  The Colorado students played the xylophone along with their songs.  The Hawaiian students sang a unique version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" that substituted in gifts from Hawaii like coconuts, giant squid, and papaya trees.

In addition to our seven connections during the day, classrooms that could not connect live due to time zone restraints or holiday breaks sent us videos of their students singing.  We received videos from Serbia, India, France, and Kenya.  Those videos can be seen on the Distance Teaching Project website and will be played as part of our morning news broadcast during the next few days. This was an amazing experience for everyone who participated.  We've already had multiple requests to plan another Holiday Song Skype-a-Thon for next year.

Connected Classrooms and the New World of Learning

Yesterday I was blessed with the opportunity to share some of the great work our students have been doing with some of the most passionate do-gooders of the world at the 2014 Social Good Summit in New York City.  The summit was sponsored by Mashable and the United Nations Foundation.  My talk with Wendy Norman from Skype about the power of students connecting globally via videoconferencing to change the world was broadcast to over 160 countries and translated into 7 languages.  This was undoubtedly one of my career highlights.

The video is embedded below.  Wendy speaks for about 7 minutes before introducing me and letting me finish the presentation.

Math - Draw More Chickens, Write Fewer Numbers

Today I had the pleasure of being asked to work with 4th and 5th grade special education students.  Their teacher had explained to me that they were having trouble understanding multiplication.  Even though my new position is technically supposed to be helping teachers incorporate 21st Century Skills into lessons, I will never be able to pass up an opportunity to teach math.  I love it too much.

I started by asking them what multiplication was.

*Crickets*

I said, "OK.  When I say 'multiplication', what comes to mind.  There's no wrong answers.  Throw some words out."

One student said, "Times tables?"  Another said, "Skip counting."  After a pause another offered, "That line with two dots around it."

I'm guessing she meant the division symbol.

Here's the thing - I don't think the answers in most 4th and 5th grade regular education classes would be much different.  Kids think that math is about tricks we do with numbers, and that the key to being good at math is learning those tricks.  Special ed students, and lots of other kids think that because they are bad at memorizing rules, they'll never be good at math.  That's wrong.

Next, I told those kids that multiplication, and math, was not about numbers.  They looked at me like I had three heads.  At least I had their attention.  I reiterated, "You've been lied to your entire life.  Math is not about numbers.  And I'm going to prove it to you."

They were hooked.  Probably because they didn't believe me and they couldn't wait to see the head teacher crash and burn in a fiery mess.  Figuratively, of course.  Well, maybe literally for some of them.

So I told them, "Draw a picture of three chickens on your white boards.  I'm going to draw chickens, too.  Please don't laugh at my chickens.  I'm a mathematician, not an art teacher."

I'm a Mathematician, Not an Art Teacher

They were nice.  They didn't laugh at my chickens.

I said, "OK, each chicken just laid 3 eggs.  Go ahead and draw 3 eggs under each chicken.  You see, multiplication isn't '3x3'.  That's just the numbers and symbols we use to describe multiplication.  Multiplication is all about groups.  '3x3' just means that we have three groups of three."

The light bulbs started to go on.  They stopped looking at me like I was crazy, even if they didn't totally understand yet.

We modeled groups of airplanes with passengers.  Cookies with chocolate chips.  Flying saucers with aliens.  My flying saucers rocked.  Much better than my poor attempt at chickens.  Each time we talked about how there were repeated groups of the same number.  I only showed the multiplication problem in number/symbol form after we had figured out the answer to "How many do we have in all the groups."

I was pretty sure they understood, but I wanted to make sure.  So I told them, "Now, I'm going to give you a multiplication problem.  I don't care what you draw, but I want to see you express the problem as groups."  I gave them 7x4.

Some drew cookies, others drew flying saucers.  One kid drew seven tornadoes with four cars being mangled in each cyclone.  A bit graphic, but mathematically sound. All of them were able to model the problem without help.

For years I've talked about teaching math differently.  I've talked about the need to solve real problems, that there needed to be relevance behind everything that we teach - even basic facts.  I've talked about helping kids to understand before asking them to memorize.  Some were receptive.  Most thought I was crazy.  Many told me that I'd think differently if I didn't only teach the high math group.

They were wrong.  There's no reason that we shouldn't expect almost all students to have understanding of math the way we expect almost all students to learn to read.  We just have to stop expecting kids that have trouble memorizing to have no problems memorizing stuff that has no relevance to them.  In 40 minutes these special education kids went from thinking that multiplication was "the line with two dots around it" to being able to model multiplication problems.

Math isn't about numbers any more than writing is about the alphabet.  Numbers and symbols are just our way of expressing the quantities in the world around us just as the letters we use to write are the symbols we use to express our thoughts.  When we take away that context of that world around us, we take away students' understanding.

We'd never tell a student that they should do 40 letter manipulation problems for homework to get better at writing.  Or at least we shouldn't. (I'm not a big fan of spelling workbooks.)  That's not going to turn them into a writer.  Heck, it's probably going to turn them into a kid who hates writing.

Math is no different.  It shouldn't be about following rules to manipulate numbers.  It should be more about drawing chickens.

Blogging with Elementary Students: How Do I Get Started?

Elementary Bloggers

Often when I talk to other elementary teachers about the blogging I've done with my students and the incredible benefits that they have gotten out of the experience, I hear the comment, "I'd love to do that with my students, but I don't know how or where to begin."  With that in mind, I'd like to share how I introduce my students to blogging.

The first thing that you'll need to do as a teacher is to choose a blog platform.  There's lots of them out there, and they all have their plusses and minuses.  Personally, I've found Kidblog to be the easiest, safest, and best all-around blog platform for what I've been trying to do, so that's what I'm going to focus on here. 

Next, you'll have to set up accounts.  If you are using Kidblog, this screencast should help you out:



Once your accounts are set up, the next step is getting your students started.  I recommend letting students choose a topic that they want to learn more about rather than choosing a topic for them.  This allows them to take ownership of their blog right away. 

For older elementary students, I try to stress that their topic should not be something on which they are already an expert, but something they want to learn about.  This will allow us to discuss criteria for finding good sources of information, bias, and the importance of citing their sources.  If they are already an expert (or think they are), they will tend to write from memory rather than doing research.

Whether Wikipedia is a valid source is always a hot topic among teachers.  I like to discuss how wikis work with my students so that they understand that information on Wikipedia is a collaboration of information from people all over the world.  For that reason, I don't discourage students from using Wikipedia as a tool to get an overview of a topic and to find valid sources for their topic by using the references at the bottom of articles.  For example, I would not want them citing the Wikipedia article on Wallenpaupack Area School District, but would encourage them to use the references to get to the Pennsylvania Department of Education's graduation statistics page. 

For citations, I like to use BibMe.  I know there are multiple other citation tools on the web, but my students have found this one to be the easiest.  For most websites, you can simply copy and paste the URL into the site and it will give you the citation in the format of your choosing.  For our first blog posts, I require citations from at least two sources.

Finally, before letting kids start their posts, it's important to discuss the audience and purpose for which they are writing.  Most students who have no blogging experience have only written for their previous teachers.  Publishing information on the internet is not the same as turning in an assignment.  Help them understand that they will be publishing information that others will be able to use to learn about their topic.  Discuss how important accuracy, good grammar, and spelling are in order for the readers to believe in the credibility of the author.  Talk about keeping bias out of their informational writing. 

For younger students, allowing them to share what they already know is a great way to introduce them to blogging.  This can be done as young as kindergarten. (Here's a great example of a kindergarten class blog.)  Having a digital camera and adding pictures of student illustrations to their text can make this even more powerful.  Starting with a sentence or two and an illustration is great.  You want this to be a positive experience, and you want them to experience success.  Talk about the importance of good spelling and grammar, but don't harp on it so much that students focus on that over content.  As they write more and as they get more feedback in the form of comments, those things will improve.

One of the most important and powerful things you can do after students write their first posts is to publish them as far and wide as possible.  We know that students need meaningful feedback in order to learn, and blog comments can be powerful, meaningful feedback  Encourage parents, other classes to which you are connected, and anyone else you can reach to comment on your students' work.  Teach students how to leave meaningful comments and let them comment on each other's work. ("I didn't know there were elephants in India.  Thanks for sharing that information."  rather than "Great Job, Suzie!!!!!!!!!!!!!")

Knowing that their writing is being read and appreciated by others will make the efforts they have put into their first post seem totally worthwhile.  .  And it will probably leave them asking you, "When can I write my next post?"

Preparing our Students for the (1950's) Workforce

This morning, while getting ready for school, I was getting my daily dose of news by flipping through different stations on TV.  One station shared a Forbes report of the top 10 skills you will need to find employment in 2013.  They were:

1. Critical Thinking
2. Complex Problem Solving
3. Judgment and Decision Making
4. Active Listening
5. Computers and Electronics
6. Mathematics
7. Operations and Systems Analysis
8. Monitoring
9. Programming
10. Sales and Marketing

Watching this list unfold on the screen a belief that I've had for a while was reinforced.  Out of those 10 skills that are being sought in the workplace, we focus on exactly one of them in our schools.  And the way we go about focusing on mathematics is so damaging that the majority of our students graduate without a real knowledge of what mathematics actually is, let alone the ability to apply it to real situations.

We talk about graduating students who are college and career ready, yet we focus almost all of our time, energy, and resources on things for which neither colleges nor employers are looking.

Not only are we not preparing our students for the workplace of their futures, well beyond 2013 and the list above.  We're still preparing them for the factory jobs of the 1950s in which compliance, basic reading and writing skills and the ability to calculate were all you needed to be successful. 

The more we focus on standardized tests as the driving force in education, the more we make it impossible for our students to develop the skills they most desperately need.  You cannot measure critical thinking, active listening, complex problem solving, or any of the above skills on a multiple choice test.  As much as the corporate reform movement of the past 15 years has complained that schools are not properly preparing students for the workforce, nothing has forced schools to shift focus away from those skills our students most need more than the corporate reform movement. 

Our students need to be able to critically think, problem solve, evaluate difficult situations, and actively listen, yet we continue to put the greatest importance on multiple choice tests, ensuring that none of those things can be a focus in schools.  Our students need to learn to use computers, electronics, and to program, yet we put policies in place to prevent them from even taking the electronics they already own - the very electronics they will need to utilize in the workforce - out of their pockets. 

Basically, we have turned schools into places where we prepare students for the realities of our past.  While some overcome this insanity to become successful, pointing to them as a reason to continue with this broken system is like pointing to the 90 year old smoker as a reason to give our children cigarettes. 

It is time to confront the realities of the 21st Century.  We don't know what jobs will be available to our students in the future.  Many of them don't exist yet.  We do know that skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making are becoming more important.  That should drive what we do in schools.

Ten years ago, the world was very different than it is right now.  The phone in your pocket didn't exist.  No smartphone did.  There was no such thing as an iPad or a digital tablet.  Now, those items are ubiquitous. 

My fifth grade students are 10 and 11 years old.  What will the world look like when they are looking for jobs?

I don't know, but I do know it won't look like the 1950's. 

So stop trying to force me to prepare them for that.

Twitter May Not Be for All Teachers, But PLN is Vital

This morning, Royan Lee asked in a blog post, "Is Tweeting for Everyone?"  Having taught several PD sessions during the past few weeks on using Twitter to build a Professional Learning Network, I found this question to be interesting.  Here's my response (left as a comment on the post):

I don’t think that one needs to have a presence on Twitter to be an effective educator. But communicating with technology is a vital skill that we need to model for our students. If we are not collaborating and communicating with 21st Century tools, is it reasonable for us to think we are preparing our students for their futures? Twitter is simply one of many tools that can be used to tap into the collective wisdom of millions of educators around the world. The blogosphere is another avenue. Some like Plurk, others have found their PLN in more specialized places for music teachers, librarians, etc. There’s no right or wrong way to network. The days of being able to teach effectively by closing your classroom door and doing what’s always been done are over. The world is changing more quickly than it ever has before, information is exploding at exponential rates, and that information is more accessible than ever before. Good teaching looks different than it did 50 years ago, or even 5 years ago. It will look different 5 years down the road. Good teachers need a way to keep up with that. 

I'm Not an EdTech Guy

I'm often referred to as a "tech guy" or an "ed-tech guy" in my building.  I use a lot of technology in my class.  My 5h grade students maintain a class wiki, blog regularly, use web 2.0 tools on a daily basis, create podcasts and videos, network with each other on Edmodo, and spend plenty of class time working on-line.

Image:  twobee/www.freedigitalphotos.net

But I am not an ed-tech guy.

I don't spend much time planning on how to integrate technology into my classroom any more.  There was a time when I did.  I was an ed-tech guy then.  I'd take my kids to the computer lab and teach them how to use web 2.0 tools for the sake of using 21st century technology.

Now, I just share the tools that are needed for my students to learn and share their learning with others.  The technology isn't the focus any more.  It's just the way things are done in the 21st century.  We don't spend time planning how electricity can be incorporated into our lessons.  It's just there if we need it.  Technology needs to be the same way.

Last week one of my students came to me and proudly showed off two new origami animals he invented.  I was really impressed and told him that he should draw step-by-step directions to share.  I told him he could probably sell such a book if he created a few more animals.  His creations were really good.  He told me that he would rather make a video because he'd be much better at explaining things verbally.

That's when I showed him how to use the digital camera we have to shoot video, upload to MyBrainShark, and embed the video in his blog.

During the same day, I had a few students who were researching important events in the history of manned flight.  They were drawing a timeline by hand in one of the student's notebooks with the events on it.  They asked me to borrow one of our digital cameras in order to take a picture of it to post on the wiki when they finished.  That's when I took them over to a free computer and introduced them to TimeToast and XTimeline.

When we get right down to it, learning hasn't changed in the 21st Century.  Collaboration, investigation, trial and error, getting feedback from others, and all of the other great ways that we learn are still great ways to learn- just like they were when Plato was learning from Socrates.

How we are able to do those things has changed, and that's where we need to adapt as teachers in order to prepare our students for the world in which they are going to be living.  But our attention still needs to be on the learning and not on the technology.

So, please stop calling me an ed-tech guy.  That's not my focus.

I'm a learning guy who helps my students navigate the world in which they are living.

Should We Still Teach Cursive Writing?

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook a few days ago:

In the comments, I was one of the few who didn't agree that the lack of instruction in cursive was a huge problem.  Now that we are 12 years into the 21st Century, it's about time we start focusing on the skills our students will need in this century.  We need to be teaching kids to collaborate, create and innovate, communicate effectively, and think critically.  Not doing so makes school irrelevant to them.  What makes us think that someone would be engaged in a learning process that is irrelevant to them?

Cursive writing does not aid in collaboration in any way.  It doesn't help students become more innovative.  Cursive writers do not think more critically than those who print.  Today's communication is not done in cursive.  

We should be teaching students to communicate in the way they will need to in their world.  How much of your communication with your colleagues is done in cursive?  How much is done electronically?  

If we continue to teach our students things because "that's what we learned in school," we will continue to produce a generation of graduates without the skills they need to be successful.  It's time to prepare students for their futures and not our past.  

Friday's Five - Our Students Need to Believe They Matter

It's human nature to want to matter.  We all have that desire.  It motivates much of what we do.  For some, it motivates them to seek financial success.  For others, it motivates them to do charity work.  For me, it was a driving factor in why I became a teacher.

Our students have this need as well.  Unfortunately, many of our traditional practices in education make students feel that they have no worth.  It's a primary reason why our students are lacking motivation.  Why work hard if you and what you produce don't matter?

Flickr/just_makayla

I've heard many educational experts tell me that the way to solve this problem is to tell students why what they are doing in school will relate to their life when they get out of school.  Our students don't care about this.  The long technical reason is that their frontal lobes aren't completely formed, and such rational, unemotional thought is not possible for them.  The short reason is that asking a kid to trust you and be motivated by something that may or may not benefit them 5, 10, 15, or 20 years down the road is absurd.  Our kids need to feel important now.  If we want them to learn, we'd better start meeting this need.  Here are five ways to allow kids to feel that they matter.

1. Problem Based Learning (PBL)  If you want kids to feel that that matter, have them do something that matters.  There are a multitude of problems that need to be solved in our communities. Challenge your students to solve them.  How can we help the local food pantry raise money?  How can we effectively publicize the upcoming blood drive in our school?  What data can we collect and use to prove that there needs to be a stoplight at the intersection near the school? 
2. Publish their work. It is insulting to a student to work hard on a project, paper, or other in-depth assignment with the end result being that a teacher looks at it, judges it, and hands it back with a number or letter on top of it.  Use a class blog, wikispace, or other avenue to publish their work.  Let them share with friends and family around the globe.  Let their research be used by others.  Give them an audience other than the teacher.  Better yet, let them publish their writing in a book using a site like lulu.com and use the proceeds to solve a community problem like the ones described above.
3. Stop expecting students to be motivated by grades.  Grades are a way to rank, sort, judge, and punish students.  They are not an effective way to motivate students.  A plethora of studies show that external motivation is not lasting and will not serve our students in life.  We need to give them the experiences of learning for the pleasure of learning, feeling the joy of helping others, and being valued for reasons other than being the best hoop jumper in the class. An emphasis on grades undermines our ability as teachers to give our students those experiences and does nothing to lead our students to believe they matter. 
4. Allow students opportunities to consult, collaborate with, and learn from community members.  If you want students to believe that their math lesson is important to their life, bring in a member of the community who uses that math in their job every day to share his/her experiences with your students.  Then allow the students the opportunity to be an accountant, small business owner, mechanic, home builder, etc.  The same opportunities can be worked into classes in almost every subject area.  In addition to the valuable career awareness that comes from these types of interactions, there is the chance for students to do work that is necessary in the community.
5. Allow students to use tools current to the generation in which they are living.  Forcing students to read outdated textbooks to get information, having them spend hours answering questions that have easily "googled" answers, and not allowing them to use 21st century tools to demonstrate their learning not only makes school seem woefully irrelevant, but sends the message to our students that we don't respect them.  If we did respect them we'd allow them to share their learning using tools and in ways that are familiar to them, regardless of our traditions and comfort with those tools and methods.  This is especially true when those tools and methods are much more aligned with the expectations of the workplace they will graduate into than what we have traditionally done in schools.  A zoologist would think nothing of pulling out their phone to find out the best diet for a pica, but our students learning about mammals must wait until their weekly computer lab time slot - even though they have a very capable phone in their backpack.  An advertising executive would think nothing of sending a text of a picture to a colleague to ask for an opinion on a piece of concept art, but many of our students would get an in-school suspension for sending a similar text to a peer.  I could list examples like this all day long.  I know someone will argue, "Many students who can text their friends won't learn anything because they'll be distracted."  I'll argue, "All of our students who believe school is irrelevant and that we don't think they matter won't learn anything."  Maybe we should teach them to use technology in appropriate ways instead of banning it. 

What are your thoughts?  Do you have other ways to make students believe they matter?  Share your ideas with us in the comment section below, and share this post with others in your network so that we can hear their ideas as well.

Friday's Five - Pre-service Teacher Education

Flickr/RLFilipkowski

So many of our teachers graduate from college and enter our schools woefully unprepared for the challenges and demands that come with the job.  I'm sure this is one of the reasons that 46% of teachers who enter the profession leave within 5 years. During this Tuesday's edchat on Twitter there was a discussion of how we could reform pre-service teacher education.   For the past few days I've been thinking quite a bit about my own undergraduate education, the discussions I've had with student-teachers with whom I've worked, and ways we could better prepare teachers before they are assigned their own classrooms.  Here are five ideas.

1. Show pre-service teachers the benefits of professional networking.  Most schools have some sort of mentoring system for new teachers.  It's fantastic to have someone to go for when you need support and answers to questions that arise.  Unless you have a lousy mentor.  Wouldn't it be better to give our new teachers a network of thousands of educators who are happy to share, encourage, support, and collaborate?  How to build and collaborate within a Professional Learning Network (PLN) should be explicitly taught and modeled early on and encouraged throughout the teacher training process so that its utilization is second nature when new teachers are hired.
2. Elementary education majors need more training in the understanding of math.  We do a great job of teaching kids ways to "do" math in elementary school, but we don't always do a great job of teaching kids to understand math.  Unfortunately, a lot of elementary teachers aren't comfortable with math.  It's not uncommon to hear the words "I could never pass the 5th (or 8th) grade math test" uttered in an elementary faculty room.  There is something very wrong with that.  Nobody would approve of a teacher who couldn't read on a 5th grade level teaching reading to our young students.  Conceptual understanding of math can't be taught at the elementary level unless teachers have a conceptual understanding of math. 
3. Technology needs modeled and used within the learning process.  If we expect new teachers to teach 21st century skills using 21st century tools we need to create learning environments within their pre-service programs that allow them to experience what learning this way looks and feels like.  Nobody learns how to teach from a textbook.  Replace them with Livebinders, wikis, and other collaborative on-line tools.  College classes should have backchannel discussions going on, which are saved for later reference.  Students from different areas of the country (and world) should be collaborating on projects using technology.  If our pre-service programs were technology rich and brought into the 21st century it would be much easier for our new teachers to build learning environments that promote 21st century skills.
4. Students should learn how to collect and use the data that matters to improve student learning.  This doesn't mean standardized testing data.  Standardized test scores come to us months after students take the tests and give little insight as to how to individualize instruction.  We need to train our new teachers in formative assessment techniques.  They need to know how to diagnose student learning within lessons and then use that data to guide their teaching.  Continually using formative assessment to identify what students have mastered a concept and using that information to find ways to help those who haven't has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to promote student achievement.  Teachers need to have this ability when they enter a classroom. 
5. Replace student teaching with a medical style paid multi-year internship.  The current student teaching model allows for two 6 week placements and less than much less than 10 weeks of actual teaching.  It is impossible to learn enough in that time to be prepared for a profession.  New teachers should spend a minimum of two years practicing and learning to teach under the supervision of a master teacher.  They should get constant feedback and support.  These years of learning would benefit our new teachers as well as our students.

Do you think that your pre-service program prepared you for teaching?  If so, what components of that program were most effective?  If not, what would you change about it?  What strengths and weaknesses do you see in teachers entering the profession today?  Please share with us in the comment section below and pass the post along to others on Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, and Google+ so that we can hear many different opinions.  For an archive of past topics, check out the Friday's Five Page.

The Supercommittee: 21st Century Ineptitude Exemplified

Yesterday, the "Supercomittee" in the United States Congress, charged with decreasing the country's deficit and debt made this announcement:

After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.

At a time when those in education and business are striving to promote the 21st century skills of critical thinking, collaboration, effective communication, and innovation, has there ever been a group lacking in those skills more than the politicians we have elected to run our country?  They can't communicate or collaborate with each other.  They haven't been innovative or come up with any new ideas in the past decade.  It's painfully obvious that critical thinking and the ability to problem solve are non-existent.

J. Scott Applewhite - AP

Is it any wonder that the education laws and policies set forth by these people drive the 21st century skills out of our students?   Should we be shocked that our schools are forced to teach to a test that destroys critical thinking and innovation?  Are we really surprised that the preparation schools must do for that test makes teaching collaboration and effective communication of little importance?

What I'm baffled by is the fact that citizens of this country continue to allow those who are clearly unable to handle the complexities of the 21st century to continue to dictate how our children should be educated.  It's bad enough that they've made a mess of things for themselves.  They need to stop trying to mess it up for my children and students as well.

Open Letter to Legislators

The following is a letter that I recently sent to a state legislator.  I believe the sentiments are applicable to many locations and not just Pennsylvania, so I am publishing it as an open letter here.  Individual names have been eliminated from this version.

Dear Legislator,

Thank you for your e-mail keeping me updated on the status of the current legislation and your views.  I appreciate that you are looking at the legislation from many different points of view and that you have seen some of the ways vouchers will hurt the students in our district.

I would like to share the point of view of a classroom teacher with you, however.  I enjoy debating politics as much as anyone else, but I assure you the following sentiments are based on what I have come to understand as a teacher who is committed to inspiring my students to develop the attributes they will need to succeed in life.  These comments are not motivated by a desire to protect teaching jobs, or any other union agenda.  They are simply what I believe is best for students.

Any legislation using standardized test data in a punitive way will have a negative effect on students.  This includes legislation that allows students to use vouchers to transfer from "failing schools."  Even though there are no such schools in our district does not mean that students here will be immune from the detriments of such a law.  Administrators, teachers, and students will still face pressure to "pass" tests that do not focus on 21st century skills our students need.  Those skills will continue to be ignored, and our students will continue to graduate unprepared for the world into which we are sending them.

In the past decade we've seen a great change in the world.  As the internet has evolved, computers have become ubiquitous, and portable devices have become more prevalent, information has become easy to obtain instantaneously.  Preparing students for this world in the same way we prepared them before it is negligent and harmful.

I have also seen a change in my students.  They are increasingly unable to think critically.  They are less creative.  They are less comfortable working with others to complete tasks.  I believe the majority of teachers would agree with these observations.

For those of us working directly with students, it's easy to see the correlation between the above statements and the increased focus on standardized test scores.  I am not writing this because I am forced to teach to the test.  I am not.  I choose not to.  I choose to teach my students to learn 21st century skills like collaboration, innovation, critical thinking, and digital communication.  Most teachers are not as fortunate as I am.  They either lack the support of administration or lack the confidence to take a leap of faith.  In either case, good teaching is prevented by fear of a test that provides data which cannot be used to guide the teaching of students until months after the test is taken.

I am a huge proponent of data-driven assessment.  The assessments and data must be much more immediate than that which we get from standardized tests to have any impact on student learning.  Data must be collected within lessons and days.  There is much research to support this.

Just because data is easy to collect and organize does not make it the best data to use.  Standardized tests were put in to place to benefit many people.  Students were not among them.  Anyone who believes otherwise has either not spent enough time working with students or has a political agenda.  It is time we focused on what's best for students in education.  Any reform that doesn't is destined for failure.

Thank you for your attention and for your consideration of the above ideas.

Best Regards,
Michael A. Soskil
5th Grade Teacher

Why We Struggle to Change

Photo - snbeach: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/

Education has struggled to join the 21st Century.  While businesses are utilizing new technology, videoconferencing, and innovative practices to boost their profits, few educators are comfortable doing the same things.  Part of the problem is the culture of standardized testing we are immersed in.  I've written enough about that. 

Another problem is that few teachers are innovative by nature.  Most teachers chose this profession because they care about kids and because they liked school.  In general, teachers were the kids in class who did what the teacher told them to do and then beamed when they received praise for doing it.  We weren't challenging the system.  We weren't innovating.  Those things were frowned upon in school.  We were trained to learn facts in quiet, neat rows and then spit them back when asked.

Now we are the ones in front of the classrooms and we want our kids to be compliant in the same way.  Some are, but most know that the world has changed.  They realized way before we did that compliance and facts are obsolete. The 21st century belongs to those who can innovate.  It belongs to those who can think of solutions that others cannot.  Companies don't need book smart employees; nuggets of information can be obtained instantly on one's phone now.

So, we struggle to change education in a way that focuses on 21st century skills that many teachers don't possess and find threatening.  It's impossible to teach what you don't understand. 

Our teachers aren't at fault.  They played the game very well, but the rules were changed.  Now it's time to adjust to those changes, and for those in power to pave the way for this adjustment by providing professional development and policies that allow teachers to take risks.

We need to start recruiting innovators into the profession.  That will take time and resources.  We need our educators in the profession right now to embrace change instead of fighting against it.  We need them to both realize the new reality and take the difficult steps of changing their entire way of thinking about school. 

It won't be easy.  We are 12 years into the 21st Century.  How long are we going to make our students wait to begin building the skill set they will need in their futures so that we can feel comfortable?

21st Century Learning: We Need to Change How We Teach

I developed this presentation for a graduate class I'm going to be teaching in a few weeks, and I thought it was worth sharing.