What Is School For? #SAVMP

Week 14 – What is school for? #SAVMP

Week 14’s assignment for SAVMP was -- blog about some of the things that you do with your staff to help understand where they are at, and how to move them forward.

Seth Godin’s “Stop Stealing Dreams” Ted Talk is one that I hear people refer to quite frequently. I actually added it to my Favorites on my YouTube Channel, and it is #36 in my Favorites playlist. This week’s SAVMP posting suggested showing it to our faculty and having serious conversations about …What is school for?

Godin makes some provocative statements in his Talk. For example, he says things like: “…this factory we call school…textbooks make students hate school, and…..there is zero value in memorizing anything.”

The last part of the video is where Seth shares his 8 answers to the question, “What is school for?”

1. Homework during the day, lectures at night.
“Flipping the classroom” (Khan Academy) where students watch lectures at night and come to school to work out problems during the day with their teachers {coaches}.
2. Open book, open note all the time.
“There is zero value memorizing anything ever again. Anything that is worth memorizing is worth looking up.”
3. Access any course, anywhere, anytime in the world when you want to take it.
4. Precise focused education instead of mass batched stuff.
Seth really elaborates on this answer by adding:

• No more multiple choice exams: According to Seth Godin these were made because they are easier to score, and he explains how the Number Two pencil became such a prominent part of education.
• Measure experience, instead of test scores: “Experience is what we really care about.”
• Cooperation instead of isolation: Seth Godin remarks that when we finish school we go out in the world to collaborate with others so we should value collaboration and NOT isolation.

5. Teachers will transform into coach(es).
6. Lifelong learning with work happening earlier in life.
7. Death of the “famous college”. 
8. Teach students to create something interesting and ask if you need help.

He further elaborates about how our industrial model is broken by sharing some MYTHS:

1. Great performance in school leads to happiness and success. If that’s not true, we should stop telling ourselves it is.
2. Great parents have kids who produce great performance in school. If that’s not true we should stop telling ourselves it is.

Mr. Godin states…”We don’t teach students to connect the dots, but rather to collect dots and memorize facts." He also declares that passion and insight are reality, while grades are an illusion. He returns to the question “what is school for?” and if we don’t know, then we should have a conversation about it.

This provocative video reminded me of some videos I have shared with the faculty along the same lines:

For this #SAVMP BLOG assignment, I would also like to share an upcoming video I will be sharing with our faculty to help understand where they are at with student assessment and how we will move forward:

 Godby High School Tracking Student Data: Marzano The Art & Science of Teaching

Also, special thanks to the following BLOG for an awesome summary of Seth's Super 8 -- 

http://academiclifeinem.com/seth-godins-ted-talk-on-stop-stealing-dreams/

Viral Learning is Contagious!

Week 13 – Individual Learning and Mass Sharing #SAVMP

The week 13 SAVMP posted asked these questions of the BLOGers:

How do you share the work that you do during individual staff PD to ensure that great learning goes viral? I would love to see some other examples of how people are sharing.

I don’t know why, but I have ALWAYS been a sharing person (sharer).  Often times, it does not benefit me whatsoever, as folks will take my ideas and implement them, and then THEY get the credit. But, hey, wasn’t it Reagan who said, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

There are two ways I am “sharing” the professional development we have at Cherry Street Elementary. One way is my Twitter feed. During our two days of pre-service training this year, I ran a live feed during the two days of training and posted all the videos we used as well as images of our teachers as they provided the professional development for our campus. I know that the Principals in my PLN often share videos and training topics, and they give me brilliant ideas. I hope that my sharing does the same! Here are some examples from back in August.

And, even more fun, I have started sharing videos of EVERYTHING! I created a YouTube Channel about a year ago, and I have been having the most fun populating it with faculty videos and videos I have made for school-based professional development goals. Here are just a couple:

The sky is the limit when it comes to sharing. I don’t know who the approximately 4,000 people are who have viewed my BLOG, but I hope in some way that they have had at least one “take away” from the experience. This is connected learning at its best. Viral learning is contagious! LOL. 

Involving Parents with a New Vision for Schools #SAVMP

Week 12- Involving Parents with a New Vision for Schools #SAVMP

There are so many amazing new tools for schools to use to increase parent communication and involvement.

For instance, at our school we use our “old school” school website, but we also use the more exciting and versatile Face Book, Twitter, and Iris Alerts (which are Robo calls).  More recently, we have added a new app that our district provides called the MySchool app where we also push out information to our parents. Essentially, we want to reach our parents in every way possible because the more communicating that we do the better chance we have for increased parent involvement.

Since I became Principal last year, each of our teachers has created their own classroom website. I am so proud of every single one of them. In addition, we have a few teachers who have gone above and beyond. One gleaming example is our rock star teacher who – last year -- created her own classroom blog.  She entered many of her classroom lessons on the blog,  and she included the steps that she took with the students in the form of pictures and posted them so that the parents could understand how to work the homework assignments with their students. Many times, the kids would login and give input on the lessons and their work. It's really an exceptional way to communicate with our families. We have another grade level at our school that uses the Remind 101 app to send out text messages to their parents each week keeping them stay  informed of everything from assignments to events. Our teachers are adopting as many ways to inform their families as are available. Also, our teachers that use Class Dojo can have a parent logging in at any time of the day to see behavioral data on their students as they progress through the school day. This is exciting stuff!

Amber Teamann, @8Amber8, a mentor in the SAVMP group, reported in her recent post about some evidence pertaining to parent involvement. We basically knew this information be true:

A New Wave of Evidence, a report from Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (2002) found that regardless of family income or background, students with involved parents are more likely to:

*Earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs
*Be promoted, pass their classes, and earn credits
*Have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school
*Graduate and go on to postsecondary education (Henderson & Mapp, 2002)

The information says, and I believe, it is critical that we communicate to parents. Even more importantly, we also have a duty to inform our parents just how different education is within each of our classrooms in the year 2013. For example, at Cherry Street Elementary and across our district, each core classroom is equipped with the 21st century classroom technology. This means that teachers have Smart boards, they have document cameras, and they have more. They have multiple methods for embedding baseline technology, but many teachers are using things like Google Docs and Google Drive or even email accounts with their students to make the learning relevant and engaging. There is a plethora of technology out there, and we need to share with our parents the different type of learning that is happening within the classroom walls for their students. This isn't your grandma’s classroom anymore. Just the sheer power of analytics yielded by technology has increased the ability of all teachers to hone and sharpen their instructional practices.

And, yes, a high poverty school may be a bit disadvantaged in getting the message out exclusively through the use of technology. The savvy teachers will combine traditional practices like the paper classroom newsletter that is sent home WITH the modern methods of leveraging social media.

In the same SAVMP post, Amber Teamann also quoted that she often hears nay-sayers respond:

“all of our parents don’t have computers”.

Amber’s response is:

In 2011, 75.6 percent of homes reported having a computer, with 71.7 percent accessed the internet. Statistics still vary across ethnicity, but the bottom line is that we are still making strides.  

Certainly, it has been my experience, we have seen our students who come from high poverty homes walking around with smart phones. Let’s not be naive and think that we're not reaching a majority of our parents with these outlets. We need to give it a concerted effort to reach our families in as many ways as possible.

Parent involvement efforts will not be in vain. If we try five different methods to reach them and one of them succeeds, then we are successful!

Balancing Administrative Reality with Being Connected #SAVMP

#SAVMP

Balancing Administrative Reality

with Being Connected

I recently finished watching the Google Hangout hosted by Amber Teaman a.k.a @8amber8 on “Balancing the Administrative Reality with Being Connected.” The hangout was extremely informative because I got to see all the different personalities that I often follow on Twitter, but I also got to think about their responses to several good questions.  I was happy that many of the responses were similar to my own responses. I shared the same answers that they did on several questions, and that helped me feel like I am being successful in my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

The first thing that was humorous to me was... YES, some people consider being connected as not necessarily working. Justin Tarte @justintarte shared a story about getting called into the superintendent's office for tweeting while at work, but he was ultimately able to explain to his superintendent and eventually win him over to understand that leveraging social media is a highly effective way to increase your instructional leadership capacity. I have always been very wary of tweeting or blogging during work hours, and so I try to reserve my PLN work for evening hours. With this practice,   I don't ever run aground, and I keep perceptions from ever being misguided. I am very careful in this respect.

Next I was able to find solace in Tom Whitford's a.k.a. @twhitford answers. His view is that it is okay to send out personal tweets included in your PLN tweets because we are all real people. I appreciated that response because I have often tried to keep my personal and professional voices separate. I have three different twitter accounts, and it was refreshing to realize it is okay to use my educational account to throw out some personal tweets every once in a while to all my peeps so they will know I am more than my leadership “self”.

Next I got a fantastic resource from Amber Teaman called #kinderchat. That, by the way, is really what all this connectedness is about.  There is not a day that goes by that I don't identify and learn something from my PLN and then I turn around and share that information with the people in my own PLN or even better... I share it with my faculty or our school or our community.

Just this past week, I used the resources I found in #kinderchat in my newsletter that goes out to the faculty which I send out every Monday. I focused on the #kinderchat information that analyzed increasing rigor in the early grades. I received new knowledge from digging deep into the resources provided on that Twitter feed.  It is a great resource that allowed me to develop a context or knowledge base for something I've never done. I have not taught kindergarten and so having the new #kinderchat tool gives me a certain level of knowledge that empowers me to be a better leader for my early grades teachers.

One of the best parts of the conversation centered on the question… how can leaders find the time and find the energy necessary to be connected? I appreciated their answers. First of all, each of them seem like they are very high-energy. I am definitely a high-energy person. I am drawn to other energetic folks.  They shared that being connected is motivating and inspiring to them and it is what they live for! I agree because I know I love to learn. I constantly pursue new learning and strive to process new information to aid me in growth and improvement.  That feeling of growth is, in itself, inspiring to me and gives me the energy to spend those extra few minutes every night being connected and being the connected learner engaging in  DIY (DO IT YOURSELF) and creating my own pathway for improvement.

The last question that spoke to me was about... the need to be connected and still be productive at work. Wow. That is a tough one. I marvel at some of the people that I follow in my PLN like George Couros or Justin Tarte or Amber Teaman. I am alarmed at the level of presence they have and how little presence I have in comparison. Sometimes it is discouraging, but I know that I have just started this journey, and I will be able to grow my connectivity as the years go by. Also, I know that I will NEVER be the “Rock star” that some of those folks are. I will just be me, and I will be amazing being me! So, I will put in my 100% during the work day, and then I will come home and give my other 10% to my PLN. Then I have to kick in my mom and wife 100%.  Until they approve human cloning, I will just be very busy and very happy giving it all I’ve got!

Here is the Hangout in case you want to watch the professionals:

Google Hangout - Balancing Administrative Reality with Being Connected