Building Relationships and Empathy with EdTech

This post was originally posted on the Teaching4Tomorrow Blog. 

One of the most powerful moments in my 22 years of teaching occurred on the last day of the school year. 

During the first week of school, my students in rural Pennsylvania played a game via Skype with a group of students in a rural Kenyan village. During that call, they learned of a bridge in the village so dangerous that many children were not able to go to school because of it. Over the course of the school year, the children in Kenya taught my students how to garden. In exchange, my students designed and fundraised to replace that bridge. 

On the last day of school, I was able to share with my 5th grade students the picture I received of the completed bridge. Every one of the children in his village could now safely receive an education, and every one of my students learned how powerful they could be when they use learning to make the world a better place. Their unlikely friendship with children 7,500 miles away helped change not only how they felt about others who looked different than them, but also how they felt about themselves. Through global connection in our classrooms, we can teach our children how to be compassionate and empathetic. 

The key lies in helping students find a shared humanity with classmates and with others around the globe. We set the foundation for a peaceful future when we help students see each other as humans first, rather than through the lenses of limited identities that include race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and politics. 

Most teachers want to foster empathy and a sense of shared humanity in their classrooms, but don’t know where to start. Luckily, we live in a time when free technologies exist that help us do this. Best of all, they are easy to use in the classroom.

Empatico is a free tool for connecting elementary classrooms around the world.* It takes less than five minutes to register and get started. After choosing one of nine activities that connect to most school curricula, you enter the dates and times that your class is available to connect. The website automatically connects your class with another more than 300 miles away that is available at the same time and looking to do the same activity. My students are currently building relationships with friends 1,000 miles away in Georgia as they work on a joint science project.

When children walk into my classroom and see the webcam and projector set up for a virtual call, they have trouble containing their excitement.

For middle school and high school teachers, as well as elementary teachers looking for multiple connections, the combination of the Skype in the Classroom website and the Skype videoconferencing software can create amazing opportunities for students. On the website, you can find thousands of teachers from around the world willing to connect with your students. 

My classes love playing games like Mystery Skype, which is related to the game 20 questions, with new friends that they are meeting via Skype for the first time. When playing these games, you don’t have to worry about language barriers. If you are using the latest version of Skype on a PC computer, the program has a built-in translator that will allow your students to communicate, even if they speak different languages. 

I have seen many times how these classroom connections can lead to cross-cultural relationships and students finding a shared humanity. In the past few years, my students have broken through the isolation of our rural area to travel to 95 different countries, the International Space Station, and to Antarctica. 

I often get asked how this type of learning fits into the curriculum. We need to shift from the curriculum being the basis of our planning. Start by designing incredible experiences. Create the kind of learning environment that makes kids want to beat down the door of your classroom to be a part of it. 

Then find ways to attach the curriculum you teach to the experience. If we model the same creativity and critical thinking that we are demanding of our students, this should not be hard. 

Once we connect the curriculum to unforgettable experiences, students will retain the lessons we are trying to teach them forever. Start small by giving students opportunities to connect and learn with tools like Empatico. Then move into lessons like Mystery Skype that take a little more planning. When you get comfortable with those lessons, start looking for virtual field trips and other global experiences where your students can learn from scientists, authors, museums, and national parks. 

Before you know it, your students will be world travelers and they won’t have left your classroom. More importantly, they’ll be learning with others who live in different locations, have different backgrounds, and a different view of the world. They’ll be developing the skills to be empathetic and compassionate lifelong learners, and they’ll be gaining practice with the tools they’ll need to make the world a better place.

Michael Soskil is a speaker, teacher, author, and host of the Education for a Better World Podcast. He is the 2017–18 Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year and was named one of the top 10 teachers in the world by the Global Teacher Prize in 2016. The book he co-authored, Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has been called “an authoritative guide to teaching practice over the next three decades” and has been endorsed by world leaders in government, education, and business. To learn more about Michael’s work or to inquire about him speaking at your next teacher workshop or event, please visit his website at MichaelSoskil.com.

*Disclosure: I have received compensation for consulting work with Empatico, which is an initiative of the nonprofit KIND Foundation, but the views in this post are my own based on experience. 

Are Robots Going to Replace Teachers?

As computers get faster and smarter, it stands to reason that robots and artificial intelligence will replace any job that they are able to do more cost effectively.

If a robot can do it just as well for cheaper, it will.

What does this mean for teaching? Will robots replace teachers? Some researchers believe so. They claim that artificial intelligence will have the ability to teach children more effectively than humans within ten years.

I believe this conclusion is based on false assumptions about the purpose of education and what teachers do. Teaching is more than assessing students’ academic needs and providing the correct content. Schools are more than places where children are prepared for the workforce. Our educations systems were created to serve society, not to be places where individuals are molded into compliant automatons.

If we want a future where citizens do exactly as they are told, ignore the suffering of others, operate without moral guidelines, and react to stimuli instead of proactively creating the kind of world they want, then robot teachers will be perfect. After all, these are the qualities of computers.

I believe that we desire more than that out of our education systems.

In the book I recently authored with five other Global Teacher Prize Finalist, Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice, we look at dozens of teachers who are exceptional at preparing their students for a complex, technological future. At the heart of each of their work is the ability to make human connections and to build relationships with students.

Available from Amazon at Teaching4IR.com

This is something that a machine will never be able to do, regardless of how many calculations per second it is able to compute.

Robots will only replace teachers if we allow teaching to become automatable. If we allow our profession to continue the trend toward scripted lessons being read out of teacher manuals, distribution of mind-numbing worksheets, and preparing children for mass-produced high-stakes standardized tests, we will be replaced.

Instead we must ensure that teaching remains a job rooted in humanity, emotionally connecting with both children and content, and love. This will not only prevent machines from taking our jobs, it will also give our students the education they deserve.

As technological innovation advances the possibilities available to us in education and society, we must be very intentional about the learning experiences we provide our children. We must allow them to think critically about their communities – local, national, and global, and encourage them to use new technologies to improve the world around them. Empathy and compassion must be the driving forces behind the way we teach our children to use technology.

This is the way to prepare our students to be leaders in a democratic society. Democracy only works if those who are being governed are empowered. Equity and empowerment go hand in hand, and empathy can be a driving force for closing equity gaps.

As technology continues to advance rapidly, it will have both the power to unite and divide us. The path we choose – unity or division – will largely depend on the choices we make in our classrooms and education systems.

Let us choose to keep education grounded in the best parts of humanity.

So What About the Evolution of Blended Learning

Learning is inherently about experiences. Whether in a formal school setting or in our everyday navigation of the world around us, humans learn through experiences that move us emotionally. As teachers and learners, we know this intrinsically. When we think back to the teachers that had the greatest impact on us during our time in school we often remember those who had the ability to make their lessons meaningful to us on a personal level.

In the last decade, technology has changed much about how learning happens in schools. Unfortunately, too much of that change has been driven by efficiency and productivity concerns. Instead of looking at technological advances as opportunities to provide students with new, exceptional learning experiences and emotionally engaging applications of their knowledge schools have focused upon ways to save time, improve workflow, and analyze data. None of these goals are bad for students, but none are focusing on the preparation of our next generation for the unique challenges they will face in a complex global society. 

Blended Learning was born out of the desire for education to be more efficient at delivering instruction and evaluating students on their acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge and assessment will always be important in the learning process, and in that regard Blended Learning has been successful in meeting those narrow goals. Students are able to move at their own pace, receive feedback on their progress, and review content as many times as they need. Because effective formative assessment and differentiated instruction are proven ways to improve student performance on traditional metrics, the use of Blended Learning has gained attention as a possible way to revolutionize education for the 21st century. 

While improving personalization of students' consumption of information, Blended Learning does not address some of the most important needs our children have in order to be prepared for an increasingly global and complex world. Innovation, creativity, and problem solving are best developed when students have agency in the learning process within a culture that lets them experience the joy of using learning to make the world better. 

Teachers know that "delivering instruction" is but a small part of the vital work they do in helping students develop into lifelong learners. Of course we want our students to be knowledgeable, but we also want them to develop into socially minded citizens who can use that knowledge in ethical, innovative ways to affect positive change on their communities. We want them to learn the importance of empathy. In fact, empathy is the character trait that correlates most strongly with success in life. 

When we look at technology's ability to transform learning, we must start by asking what emotionally engaging experiences can be created for students that would have been impossible previously. We must look at how new technologies afford our students the ability to work with those who are different than themselves, solve problems with experts who are using knowledge in practical ways, and experience the satisfaction of helping others. When we do this in our education systems we will see the true power of technology to transform education and develop our next generation of global problem solvers.

Why I'm off the Data Bandwagon

I'm a math guy.  Numbers appeal to me, and I tend to see the world in mathematical terms.

It's a blessing and a curse.  There's lots of problems that I face in my professional and personal lives in which thinking mathematically allows me to see things from a point of view that makes analysis, problem solving, and innovation easier.  I naturally see the connections between the beauty of art, music, architecture, science, literature, and math.

But, very few other people I know yell at their kids when the windshield wipers are on in the car because trying to calculate the number of wipes per minute for no reason while the kids are talking normally can be incredibly distracting.  And, I learned a long time ago that discussing math at a party is more dangerous to one's social standing than discussing religion or politics.  Partygoers rarely care that my favorite number is Phi.  It's as if me going on about it forever makes them think I'm irrational or something.

Image Credit:  Wikipedia

So, you can see why I was naturally attracted to the obsession with data that we've had in education for the past decade and a half.  Playing with numbers was fun.  Plus, there had to be a way to organize and analyze standardized test data into something meaningful that was good for students.

For years I was a data fanboy.   I've left that bandwagon behind, though.

What I've come to realize is that all the analysis, organization, debate, and discussion of data is meaningless if you are looking at the wrong data for what you are trying to accomplish.  Police departments don't check to see how many library books were checked out each month to reduce speeding on Main Street.

Here are a few of the realizations I grew into over time:

• No matter what the standardized test data says, the best remedy for any shortcomings will always be better teaching and/or helping kids with rough home situations get their basic needs met.  Always.  As a teacher, there's a whole lot I can do about making myself a better teacher.  Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, there's often little I can do about the latter.
• Looking at individual student scores on standardized tests is pretty much worthless.  If I'm Johnny's teacher and I don't know his weaknesses long before the state assessments, I'm not doing my job effectively.  Daily, in-lesson informal formative assessments should be giving me that information on a regular basis for every students so that I can meet each one's needs.  If I do know Johnny's weaknesses and strengths before the state tests, the assessment data won't tell me anything I don't already know.
• If teachers in a district/school aren't regularly using the data from daily in-lesson informal formative assessments to make course corrections to their teaching and their students' learning, that's where a district should be focusing its resources - teachers should be discussing best practices, how to replicate amazing lessons, analysis of awful lessons, etc.  And they'll know what lessons are amazing and which ones bomb by whether or not kids learned as evidenced by the daily formative assessments they are giving.  Discussing test data until the cows come home isn't going to help those teachers learn better pedagogy. 
• Standardized test data is useful for seeing curriculum gaps, large trends, and other more global issues in a school or district and it does have a use.  With that being said, focusing on standardized test data usually comes at the expense of focusing on formative assessment and pedagogy.  And the latter are the whole ball game when it comes to student learning.
• Value Added Models used to measure student growth are junk science.  I've never had one person be able to explain to me in any kind of clear terms what the formula is for figuring out such models.  More importantly, anyone who's ever done a science experiment knows that your data isn't valid unless you can isolate a variable.  It is impossible to isolate a variable using these Value Added Models.  You can't isolate a teacher's effectiveness when you can't account for home situation, hunger, hormones, apathy, drug addiction, abuse, etc.  So, basing decisions based on this data is absurd.  Value added models are an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.   
• You value what you measure.  State tests do not and cannot measure the things our students most need to learn in school:  critical thinking, innovation, empathy, adaptability, and learning to love learning.  Focusing on standardized test data moves our values away from that which is most important for our students.

I guess I'm not truly off the data bandwagon.  I'm just off the test data bandwagon.  I still believe that data is incredibly valuable and should guide our decisions.  I just believe that the data we need to be looking at most is in-lesson formative assessment data that allows us to help each student grow in the best possible way.  Using that data to guide our decisions maximizes student learning.  

I know that fact is inconvenient for those still on the big data bandwagon.  You can't put every teacher's formative assessment data in a spreadsheet for all to see and discuss the way you can with state test scores.  And, trusting teachers to do their job seems like an unpopular position in today's educational climate.

Growth is hard, and change is messy.  If we really care about students learning more and being prepared for their futures, we'll start shifting our focus toward the data that really matters. 

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.  

The Irresponsibility of Grading Responsibility

When I first started blogging I promised myself that I would never post anything that would jeopardize my job.  So I'm not.  We won't talk about the specifics of what has me fired up today.

I will say this, though.  Including homework completion or being prepared for class when factoring grades is bad for students.  It's irresponsible.  It's not good educational practice.  When a student shows up for class without a pencil, give them a pencil, not a zero.

I can hear some teachers out there now.  They're saying, "But, kids need to be responsible to be successful."

And they're right.  But I've never heard of a student who was having trouble completing their homework or being prepared for class that learned responsibility because they got a bunch of zeros in a gradebook.  And I've never read any research that states it works, either.

If you want to teach responsibility, then teach responsibility.  Explicitly.  Teach lessons.  Create a course.  Make it a priority.

If grading is about sharing what students know, then these things have no place in a gradebook.  If grading is about showing the potential our students have for future success, then we should all have a column in our gradebooks for empathy, passion, innovation, and "questions authority".

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?

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.

Friday's Five - Myths in Education

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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.

We live in an age where information is free and easily accessible.  There are many benefits to 24-hour cable news, high speed internet, and social networking.  Many of my previous posts have focused on ways that we can prepare our students for the information age.  Being able to identify bias and misinformation is of paramount importance when being constantly bombarded with new facts, ideas, opinions, and theories.

In this post I'd like to examine a few beliefs about students, education, and schools that are both widely believed and untrue.  These myths about education are holding us back in developing the 21st century education system that our students deserve.  They have permeated our culture to the point that educators often base decisions on these bits of misinformation.  Many people call for "educational reform," but until we are willing to focus on the learning process of each student, "reform" will continue to mean change that benefits a few people in position of power.

Myth #1 - Failure is a bad word.

Our fear of failure has crippled us.  Failure is an opportunity to learn.  One quality shared by all successful people is the ability to learn from mistakes.  Walt Disney was in financial ruin and had lost his most well known character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to a competitor before creating Mickey Mouse.  Abraham Lincoln lost a senate election before becoming the greatest of American presidents.  We could spend all day making a list of people who failed and then became great success stories.  We focus so heavily on the "right answer" in class and not on the critical thinking that goes into decision making that we rob children of the opportunity to grow from their mistakes.  We focus on correctness and not on learning.  As a result, the one thing our children learn best is that failure is not something to learn from, but something of which to be ashamed.  Imagine a world in which people, companies, and governments did not learn from mistakes, but rather repeated them over and over again.  That world will soon be a reality unless we start teaching our children to think differently.

Myth #2 - All students need to learn the same information.

Do you think that Steve Jobs, Maya Angelou, Yo-yo Ma, Warren Buffett, and Lady Gaga needed to learn the same content in school to become successful?  Do we really believe as a society and an educational system that the ability to find the right answer to math calculations and getting the main idea from short passages are what paved the way to success for those who achieve it?  Successful people have a few things in common, none of which is reading and math ability.  They are innovative in their fields.  They are passionate.  They understand others and how to communicate with people.  They learn from failure.  These are the things that should be focus upon in schools.  The information that students learn should be determined by their strengths and passions.  I'm sure that Lady Gaga didn't need a high school computer programming course or Algebra II, but that Steve Jobs would have found both interesting and useful.  We need to allow our students to identify that which will allow them to be successful, and then provide the opportunity to pursue those passions.  Standardization kills greatness and promotes mediocrity.

Myth #3 - The teacher is the most important factor in student achievement.

I'll be the first to say that teachers should never use parents or a student's home life as an excuse for a student not learning.  Actually, I did.  Doing so allows us to stop examining what it is that we can improve upon in our own practice.  With that being said, however, a plethora of studies show that socio-economic situations are a vastly higher factor in student success than the teacher in the classroom.  Several recent studies have shown that student achievement in US schools with low poverty is higher than schools in countries that have similar low poverty levels.  Those same studies show that our high poverty schools perform as well as those in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Until we begin to address the inequities in how we fund schools and the issue of poverty we will never be able to claim that we are doing a good job of educating our future generations.

Myth #4 - Good grades are an indicator of future success.

This myth happens to be based on past fact.  A few decades ago it was true that if a student worked hard, attended school, and got good grades that they would be able to find a good job.  It simply isn't true any more.  Due to the speed at which knowledge is growing, we are preparing our students for jobs that don't even exist yet.  Employers aren't looking for workers who are good at reading, 'righting, and 'rithmatic anymore.  They want employees who can think on the fly, bring new ideas to the table, and adapt to rapidly changing economic environments.  Those are things that are all but ignored right now in schools, and certainly don't show up in a student's grades. 

Myth #5 - Teachers will improve if we provide financial incentives.

I think that everyone agrees that it would be fantastic to have a great teacher in front of every student.  The question becomes "How do we develop those great teachers?"  Merit pay seems to be the current focus.  The problem is that most teachers don't know how to get better.  Most teachers were educated in a system that was well designed for the factory model of the Industrial Revolution.  The college courses they took were rooted in the same model.  For the past decade we have not only followed the same model, but have taken it a step further by focusing increasingly on narrow standardized tests that are the ultimate example of a desire to place the importance on knowing information rather finding and using it.  In order for us to improve the quality of our teachers, we need to provide them the opportunity to learn how to prepare students for the 21st century.  They need professional development.  They need to be encouraged to network with other teachers, discuss great pedagogy, and share successes.  They also need to be allowed to take risks in their lessons, have lessons fail, and learn from their mistakes.  Merit pay allows for none of those things.  It simply provides more money for teachers in better socio-economic areas and punishes teachers working with our most needy students. 

Now, it's your turn.  What are your thoughts on the above myths?  Do you disagree?  What other popular beliefs about education are holding us back from giving our students opportunities to learn?  What suggestions do you have to overcome such misperceptions?  Please share with us in the comment section and pass the post along to others, both inside and outside education, via Twitter, Google+, Plurk, or Facebook so that we can hear as many points of view as possible. 

All Students Deserve the Opportunity to Love Learning

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Flickr/Gunnsi

This morning I was part of a few Gifted IEP meetings.  For those unfamiliar with the process, every year students who qualify for either special education services or gifted services have their Individualized Education Program (IEP) reviewed by a group which includes several people, including the parents and a regular education teacher (me).

While they varied slightly from each other, each student's Gifted IEP included an emphasis on "higher-level thinking," and a focus on learning topics in which they had great interest.  These students will get an education where they get to explore what they love and learn how to think.

Each set of parents that I spoke to mentioned similar stories of how their children loved school.  Their children couldn't wait to start learning again at the end of the summer. They see their time working with the gifted teacher as the highlight of their week.

I kept coming back to the same thought.  Why aren't we doing this for all children?

Don't all children deserve the opportunity to love learning?

Perhaps if we allowed children to pursue their passions and learn about what they love, a lot more of them would feel the same way about school.  Instead of force feeding the entire class some lousy textbook passage about the apple harvest (or any of the many other topics most kids find mind-numbingly boring) and beating them over the head with questions that are designed just like those on the state test, we could allow them to pick a topic they care about and let them research it.  Let them create a pamphlet for others who care about the same subject, design an awareness campaign for a charity whose mission they believe in, or share their research in any of a plethora of other ways that allow them to innovate.  Either way they learn to read non-fiction, find the main idea, generalize, and all the other skills that are in each state's standards.  Only one way allows them to enjoy the learning process, though.

Only allowing students the opportunity to learn about subjects they love will foster the life-long learning, mentioned in so many school mission statements and instilled in students by so few schools.

Perhaps if we focused on teaching all students higher-level thinking skills instead of that which is required to pass state tests we wouldn't be talking about why the United States trails so many other counties in science and math, why so many students are unprepared for college when they graduate high school, and why students see no relevance in what they learn in school.  Teaching students to think is really the most important thing we can teach them.  The attitude that only gifted students are capable of higher order thinking is both factually wrong and detrimental to the rest of our students.  The difficulty of a task and the level of thinking required are separate entities.  All students, including those in special education, kindergarten, Advanced Placement Calculus, and gifted classes should be required to use such skills on a daily basis.  Not having that expectation is akin to preparing our students to be automatons who cannot think for themselves.

Gifted students need to be allowed the opportunity to maximize their talents.  They should be allowed to follow their passions in school.  They should learn how to reason, debate, think critically, and use their unique abilities to develop innovative ways to change the world.  We should create an environment where they are able to use their God given ability to soar as high as they can.

All other students deserve the same thing, too.

Friday's Five - Easy to Use Web 2.0 Tools to Start the 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.


One of the difficult things for me at the beginning of the school year is getting my fifth graders comfortable using technology and what they learn in class to create meaningful content for our class wiki.  For most of them, computers have been nothing more than a way to chat with their friends, practice skills, or play games.  Being creative and innovative is foreign to them.

Flickr/DeSales University

With that in mind, today's post is going to focus on five of the easiest tools with which students can learn to be creative.  These are not only great tools to use with students in the classroom, but they are a great way to get students acclimated to using technology without being overwhelmed.  As an added bonus, these are great tools for the teacher who is just starting out using technology in his/her lessons because of their simplicity.  To see some more of my favorite web 2.0 tools, have a look at the Friday's Five post from May 13, 2011.

1. Wordle - There probably isn't an easier web 2.0 tool.  Wordle takes a list of typed words, or any text and turns it into an artistic word cloud.  There are lots of classroom applications for word clouds.  One of my favorites is to have students make a Wordle with their spelling words on Monday.  Words they got wrong on the pretest they have to type more often.  This has the twofold effect of having them practice typing the word more often and making the word appear bigger on their word cloud.  They then print out the word clouds and take them home, using them as place mats and studying at each meal.
2. Bubbl.us - There are lots of tools out there for making visual diagrams, but I've yet to find one that my students learn how to use faster and easier than bubbl.us.  My students have used this tool to show relationships between characters in books they've read, to show different ways that numbers can be represented, to create flowcharts, and for many other purposes.
3. Make Beliefs Comix - When I was looking through my Delicious links for web 2.0 cartoon creators, over ten sites came up.  Out of them, Make Beliefs Comix is by far the easiest to use.  It may not have as many options as the others, but it's still incredibly useful for allowing students to tell stories digitally, or share what they've learned with the world in cartoon form.
4. Timetoast - Timetoast is timeline creator that allows the user to add pictures to the timelines they've created and the ability to embed the timelines in webpages, wikis, and blogs.  This tool is fantastic for allowing students in history classes the opportunity to explore events, find images that go along with the events, and to write summaries of those events for the timelines they create.  
5. Create-a-Graph - This site does exactly what it's name implies.  It easily allows students to create graphs.  In addition to obvious uses in math class, my students have used Create-a-Graph as a tool in preparing projects and reports in Social Studies classes because of the quick, simple way one can turn historical statistics into something visually appealing.

Now it's your turn.  What are some web 2.0 tools and websites that you use in the beginning of the year to get your students used to being innovative with technology?  Have your students used any of the above tools?  What did they use them for?  What plans do you have for them in the future?  Please share your thoughts with us in the comment section.  Also, pass the post along to others using Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and Google+, so that we can hear from them.  I'd love to hear what others are doing in their classrooms. 

Friday's Five - Walt Disney Quotes

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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.

Flickr/Express Monorail

Right now I'm on vacation with my family at the Most Magical Place on Earth, Walt Disney World.  On top of enjoying the wonderful experiences that this place provides for myself, my wife, and our two kids, I have increasingly become fascinated by Walt Disney, the man.  As I've learned more about him and read different biographies and accounts of his life,  I've come to realize that many of his core beliefs match up with some of the topics I've blogged about and believe in strongly, such as the need to teach through storytelling, the need for innovation and creativity, and that people are most productive when they are inspired by what they are doing.

Below are five quotes by Walt Disney that I've found inspirational.  I'm sure there are lots more out there.

1. "Imagination is the mold from which reality is created." - The beginning of Walt's introduction to Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland could be found in a 25 cent pamphlet that was sold during Disneyland's early days.  We need to promote imagination in our students and find ways to keep educational policy and standardized testing from forcing us to "educate" it out of them.  
2. "Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children." - This quote of Walt's can be seen inside the American Pavilion at Epcot on the lower level.  I think most of us who became teachers would agree with him.  It's probably what inspired us to pursue our jobs.
3. "All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them." - I'm not sure the origin of this quote, but I love it.  On one of my bookshelves at home I have a small statue with this quote on it.
4. "Around here, we don't look backwards for very long.  We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - This quote of Walt's can be found at the end of the movie "Meet the Robinsons."  Walt's constant vision to the future and for finding creative solutions to problems is something we can learn a lot from in education.  
5. "That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.  They forget.  They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old.  They patronize.  They treat children as inferiors.  I won't do that." - This quote is from Walt Disney World:  Then, Now, & Forever, a theme park exclusive book that was sold by the Disney Company.  To me, it sounds a lot like great advice for elementary teachers and politicians who make educational policy.  Stop being such adults all the time.  Allow yourself to be fascinated.  Allow yourself to wonder and search for answers along with your students.  Treat your students with respect and let them follow their dreams and curiosities instead of worrying about covering material all the time.

Now it's your turn.  Which one of the above quotes speaks to you?  Do you have another Walt Disney quote, or quote from someone else that you love?  What are your thoughts on Walt's quotes or some of the things he accomplished and/or created during his lifetime?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and pass the post along to your friends and colleagues.  We'd love to hear what they have to say as well.

Friday's Five - What We Should Be Teaching

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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.

Chris Poulin/USFWS

Ask a parent what qualities they want to see in their children when those children become adults.

Ask a teacher what qualities they want to see in their students when they graduate high school.

Ask your neighbor what qualities they want to see in the next generation of young adults that will be living in the neighborhood.

Ask a businessperson who is looking to hire someone to work at their business what qualities they want in their employees.

I can guarantee that none of them will respond that they are hoping young adults will be able to find the main idea of a passage, identify the author's purpose for writing a poem, or be able to calculate the mean of a series of random numbers without context.  With that in mind, today's post will focus on five subjects that are largely ignored in schools today due to the culture of standardized testing and the push for "accountability."  I don't think that one can argue that a focus on the following five areas in schools would not be beneficial to our students, our communities, our country, and the world as a whole.  If our students were "proficient" in these areas, everything else would take care of itself.

1. Innovation - We are robbing students of motivation and an understanding of what they are capable by forcing them to only perform tasks related to multiple choice questions on reading and math (those terms are used loosely) tests.  It used to be that "creating" meant that students would glue cutouts from a magazine in a shoe box.  Now, technology gives students the ability to share what they've learned in many ways instantly.  Their writing can be published instantly on a blog for the world to read.  Their videos can teach children thousands of miles away.  The possibilities are vast and numerous, and we need to take advantage of them.  
2. Empathy - The ability to understand others emotions and be compassionate is something that is rarely focused upon and is of paramount importance for our students.  There are numerous studies that show that empathy and success in business are closely linked.  A Google search for "empathy and success" produces over 770,000 results.  Even more important than business success, however, is the fact that being able to empathize makes one more able to help others.  
3. Service - In my experience, nothing gives a person a feeling of self-worth and a satisfaction of having filled one's purpose more than the act of helping others in need without expecting a reward in return.  We should be giving our students opportunities and encouraging them to find ways to provide service in areas about which they feel strongly.  
4. Critical Thinking - This crucial skill, which is closely related to innovation, is the one that has been most ignored due to our current standardized testing craze.  There is simply no way to truly measure the ability to problem solve and think critically on an easily scored multiple choice assessment.  Teachers don't demand critical thinking because they don't have time; they are forced to teach students to interpret test questions that measure low-level thinking skills instead.  Teaching critical thinking takes time, leads to unpredictable lessons, and puts students in control - all things which are frowned upon in many of our schools.
5. The Love of Learning - We have to stop using our schools as places where we fill students' heads with facts.  Unfortunately, most of what we teach can be Googled in less than 30 seconds on their phone, which too often we won't let them take out of their pocket.  Our students have figured this out and largely find school to be irrelevant.  I wish I could say that they are wrong.  We need to start using schools to show them the power of learning.  If we combine the above four subjects and teach our students to empathize with others, allow them to find ways to help others they can become passionate about, and give them opportunities to develop their creativity and critical thinking skills, what we will start to see is students who take control of their own learning.  They will learn without us asking them too.  How often do we hear complaints that students don't study?  What if they were so engaged and passionate about a topic that they didn't view learning outside of school as studying, but rather as necessary to fulfill a desire deep inside of themselves?  

Is what I describe above possible?  Yes, but not in a culture based on assessment and test scores.  It's being done right now in several amazing schools.  Unfortunately, those schools are the exception.  We need to change the culture of education so that this type of education is what is expected.  What if we defined success by the positive impact we have on others rather than by how many low-level thinking questions one answers on a once-per-year assessment? 

Now it's your turn.  Are there any important skills that you think we are not teaching our students?  What are some ways we could teach these topics in our schools?  Should schools be teaching the above qualities?  Would our society be better served if we left the development of these qualities to parents and continue focusing on reading and math?  Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below, and share the blog with friends and colleagues.  We'd love to hear their opinions as well!