New Literacies for a Complex World

We live in a time of great uncertainty and change. Economic, political, cultural, technological, and societal disruption are forcing us as educators to reexamine what it means to provide a quality education for our students that prepares them for the world they will face.

And, we are realizing that this reexamination will have to become the norm. Nothing is guaranteed in the future except for continued change.

Too often the discussion of how to shape our education systems revolves around the economic needs of our societies.

“What do our students need to find jobs when they graduate?”

 “How can we prepare students for the 21^st Century workforce?”

“What skills will our students need to be productive members in a time of rapid technological advancement?

This is the wrong focus, and these questions leave out some of the most important aspects of education.

The damage we could inflict upon an entire generation of children by reducing them to cogs in an economic machine designed to maximize profit would be devastating.

Education encompass so much more than “college and career readiness,” a term that is often used in the United States.

We must strive to ensure that our children get an education that allows them to be happy, healthy, and successful in life – with “success” being defined in a broad sense that includes much more than the generation of wealth. Of course, within this greater goal, students will be prepared for their future careers and potential further learning after graduation at an institution of higher learning. But, they will also be prepared for so much more.

In order to prepare our students for such a broad goal in this time of rapid change we will need to move beyond the traditional literacies taught in school. The importance of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and history will not wane in the future, but they will have to be intertwined with new literacies in order for our students to meet the complex demands they will face after graduation.

The questions we must ask ourselves must focus on both the old literacies and the new.

“How can we show our students ways to use the learning in school, their passions, and their talents to solve problems in their local and global communities?” 

“What experiences do we need to give students in school that will prepare them for a world that is complex, globally connected, and pluralistic?” 

“How do we help our students develop the ability to have respectful, nuanced conversations with others who have diverse perspectives?” 

“Can we prepare students for the workforce, while simultaneously preparing them to be civically engaged and reflective members of their community?”

Answering these questions means focusing on additional competencies and literacies that must be developed in our students. Here are a few of those “new literacies.”

Global Literacy – In the first decade of my teaching career it was either impossible or prohibitively expensive to provide my students with any kind of video conferencing or virtual experience outside our school. Now, children are routinely chatting face to face with each other from every part of the globe, a field trip to a museum on another continent is a Skype call away, and finding time disconnected is much more difficult than finding ways to connect. In fact, I’m even writing this blog post on an airplane 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Our classrooms and lessons must reflect this interconnected world. We must be giving students access to a diversity of cultures, learning experiences from the globe, and collaboration with those applying concepts being learning in school in actual ways.

Global Literacy, featuring Michael Soskil from Discovery Education on Vimeo.

Emotional Literacy – Studies have shown that emotional intelligence and empathy correlate highly with success in business. Those who are compassionate are also better able to see their worth and are more able to use new learning and resources to help their communities. We must strive to provide opportunities for our students to feel the joy of helping others while they are in school. If we can find the intersection in our schools of technological relevance and strong relationships built on respect and empathy, our future generation will have the building blocks for a peaceful and prosperous society.

Informational Literacy – As information has become ubiquitous due to technology, the ability for manipulation of the public through information has risen exponentially. Our students must learn to identify bias in the information they consume, judge the reliability of sources, and seek multiple viewpoints in their research. They must learn to break out of ideological bubbles caused by social media and recognize the danger of confirmation bias. Success in the future will be dependent on one’s ability to navigate the complexities of constant and instant information. 

 

The Most Important Things

Today I sat in a very productive meeting with colleagues and administrators trying to prioritize ways to improve what we do as a school district.  We looked at data, had philosophical discussions, and talked about what we can do to meet the needs of all students.

At the end of the day I was getting a few things together and another teacher asked me to speak to a student who had gotten in trouble a few times during the day.  Without going into details, he shared with me some of the issues he's dealing with at home, and explained how those frustrations are boiling over at school.  After listening to him and talking with him for a few minutes, he calmed down and wrote down some of the things he could have done differently.  It was a good conversation, and clearly one that he needed.

I realized that the most important thing I did at school today had nothing to do with data, philosophy, or a general discussion of "students." 

The most important things we do in school happen one student at a time. 

Friday's Five - Catalysts for Innovation

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Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best.  Then I ask you to share your thoughts in the comment section.  For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. 

Flickr: Ewa Rozcosz

In order for our students to become more innovative, it is important that their teachers become more innovative.  We need to model 21st century skills for our students to learn them.  In today's educational climate, teachers face great resistance to this type of change and are encouraged to standardize their practices.  Often they are told to teach canned lessons from a textbook.  Here are five changes that would act as catalysts for innovation.

1. Switch the focus from standardized testing to formative assessment. - Standardized tests are taken once or twice per year and give a broad range of data on student achievement that is returned to teachers months after the student takes the test.  Formative assessment yields specific data on student understanding that is delivered to teachers and students within lessons allowing changes in instruction to happen instantly.  Teachers can then use that data to instantly determine the best way to change teaching in order to reach students that are falling behind.  Formative assessment allows teachers opportunities to do what is best for students in creative ways.  It also is proven to be highly effective in increasing student learning.  Standardized testing leads to standardization, the opposite of innovation.
2. Showcase innovation. - Instead of faculty meetings and in-service days being spent on fire drill procedures, special education law, or months-old assessment data, administrators should identify the most innovative teachers and ask them to share what they are doing with their colleagues.   
3. Replace textbooks with on-line versions created by teachers and students. - I came across an article yesterday about Minnesota teachers who created their own textbook.  In doing so, they saved their district $175,000.  Creating a textbook in itself is incredibly innovative.  Because the textbook is on-line and easily editable, innovative pedagogy, alternative methods, and new ideas can easily be added as teachers and students discover them.
4. Limit filtering - Schools should embrace social networking and the exchange of ideas.  Creativity inspires creativity.  The more amazing ideas one is exposed to, the more likely they are to come up with amazing ideas on their own.  The internet is not something to be feared, but rather something to be harnessed. 
5. Encourage risk taking by allowing teachers more autonomy. - Fear of failure never led to greatness.  We have a culture in education right now that places great emphasis on not being wrong.  There is no emphasis on learning from mistakes or trying new things.  Obviously, innovating is difficult in such a climate.  Give teachers the freedom to try new things and to learn. 

Now it's your turn.  What changes do you think could be made to current educational practices that would encourage more creativity and innovation?  What have you seen work in your school?  What do you see holding teachers back from taking risks and being creative?  Please share your thoughts in the comment section below, and pass the post on to others via Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk so that we can hear their ideas.

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?

The Future Will Force Us to Change

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Dr. Michio Kaku on what scientific advances will change our life in the next 90 years.  The lecture was sponsored by the Lackawanna County Library System and was free to any member of the public with a library card.  Over a thousand people attended.  Every seat in the theater was full, and many people stood without seats to hear what the future has in store for us.

Dr. Kaku began by telling us about scientific advances that are already being explored and that will be part of our lives by the year 2020.  One of his reoccurring themes was the fact that computers and the internet are going to be so inexpensive, ubiquitous, and natural to us in the future that everything, including our clothes, wallpaper, toilets, and toothbrushes will be "smart."

As he discussed the year 2020, Dr. Kaku showed us contact lenses that would be connected to the internet.  Apparently, the military is already working on something similar.  Information would be available to you instantly without anyone knowing that you are even searching or getting it.  One of the humorous moments was when Dr. Kaku mentioned that, "The first people to buy these contact lenses will be college students taking examinations."  As I chuckled, I immediately thought to myself, "I don't think many high school teachers or college professors would think that is so funny."

I've often written about the need for us to change the focus of education from delivering instruction of fact to teaching critical thinking and innovation.  It seems as though the technology of the future is going to force our hand.  Right now, information is becoming more and more pervasive in our culture.  We teach students things that they know they can Google in less than 30 seconds on their cell phone.  Students believe that the education we are providing is irrelevant because of this.

Within the next decade students won't have to pull out their cellphones, and we won't be able to prevent them from wearing contact lenses in the classroom.  They will be connected to to an almost infinitely large network of information.  When that time comes, schools will be forced to make the changes I mentioned above.  The focus of our assessments, and education in general, is going to have to change from low-level thinking recall of information to gathering information and using it to create, innovate, problem solve, and communicate with others.

Why not make those changes now, before technology forces our hand?

Friday's Five - Things I Want to Do Differently This School Year

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Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best.  Then I ask you, my readers, to share your thoughts in the comment section.  For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page.  If you'd like to make suggestions about future topics or discuss topics I bring up on the blog with others, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of the page to join A Teacher's Life for Me on Facebook.  Don't be shy about sharing the blog and Facebook Page with others.  Each post has a "Tweet" button on top and buttons on the bottom that allow you to share in several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.


Change is hard.  It's also necessary.  For a teacher to grow as a professional and keep from being burned out after a few years, each school year it is important to identify areas of one's pedagogy, classroom procedures, and policies that can me improved, and to change them for the better.

We often hear stories about educators who resist change by saying, "I've taught this way for 30 years, and there's no reason to change now."  I want to ask these teachers, "If you were going to the doctor for an important operation, would you feel comfortable with a surgeon who refused to use the latest laser and ultrasound technology and instead wanted to use a scalpel?"  My guess is that everybody would want the doctor who has kept up with research in his/her field and used that information to update his/her practice.  Children have the right to expect us as teachers to do the same.

Flickr/woodleywonderworks

With that in mind and with the start of my school year approaching, here are five things that I want to do a bit differently this year.

1. Give my students more freedom to work where they are comfortable. - Those blue plastic chairs in my room are uncomfortable to sit in for long periods.  I'm going to try allowing my students a bit more freedom this year to work anywhere in the room they are comfortable.  When I do my best work, it's rarely while sitting at a desk.  I type while relaxing on the couch or read while laying on the floor.  I'm going to allow my students to do the same.  As long as they are doing amazing work, I don't care where it is.
2. Snack time is whenever you are hungry. - For years I've had a designated "snack time", usually around 9:30.  I'm not sure why.  What difference does it make when students in my room have their snack?  This year, I'm going to try a policy where kids can eat whatever healthy stuff they've brought whenever they feel like it.  Maybe they'll function better with something in their stomach.  
3. Give students the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. - We do many projects and solve many problems.  I go through a great deal of effort to ensure that the problems students are faced with relate to situations in real life.  This year I want to go a step further and allow students the chance to help others who need it by incorporating service aspects.  What better way is there to learn the value of helping others at the same time as math and reading?
4. Invite other teachers in to my classroom and welcome their feedback. - I've always been happy to allow anyone who wants to come into my classroom the opportunity to do so.  It rarely happens, though.  Teachers are so swamped trying to serve their own students that it's hard to find the time. This year I'd like to actively invite others to come in and give me feedback on my lessons.  I hope that they take me up on the offer, and I hope that I receive an invitation to their classrooms as well.  That's how great conversations about pedagogy get started.  That's how a culture of collaboration develops in a school.  
5. Allow students to pursue their interests. - We have a set of reading standards.  We have a textbook that provides a bunch of short passages that allow us to teach those standards.  Rarely do the passages in the textbook interest more than a handful of students.  So, why do we use that book?  Because it's easy for a teacher to give a quiz and get a grade when all students are being assessed on the same passage.  It's not what's best for the students.  It's what's easiest for the teacher.  This year I'd like to give students the opportunity to read about the things they care about.  I'm sure I can find a way to assess whether they got the main idea, can identify a simile, and all the other standards they need to know even if they don't read what's in the text book.

Now it's your turn.  What are you going to do differently?  What are the obstacles that prevent us from changing our practices each year?  What things do you find it hardest to change each year?  Share with us in the comment section below.  Also, please pass the post along to others by re-tweeting, re-plurking (a new feature added to Plurk this week), sharing on Facebook, or sharing on Google Plus.  We'd love to hear their comments as well.   

I'm the Problem

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We know that our education system is broken, and we all like to point fingers.

The business community blames the politicians for not making teachers accountable enough. Politicians take turns blaming each other. Television gets blamed for corrupting our children. High school teachers point the finger at middle school teachers, who then in turn point the finger at elementary teachers for not preparing students well enough. Teachers claim that parents aren't doing their job. Students are blamed for being lazy.  Everybody points their finger at somebody else.

I'm pointing the finger at me. I'm the problem. The system is broken because of me.

I need to do better.

flickr/wallyg

Because, if everyone takes the attitude that it's the fault of parents, students, politicians, television, society, or anyone else other than themselves, nothing will change. There is only one person who's actions I can change.

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying, "Be the change you want to see in the world." If we all take his advice, stop pointing our fingers at everyone else, and point them at ourselves, we'll be just fine.

Stop complaining about what should be changed, and go be the change you want to see.