Why teachers need websites: a personal aside

Working on my teacher's survival guide section on teacher websites. From the draft:

A personal aside

Indulge me for a moment by reading a personal tale of parental frustration.

When my son Brady was in the fifth-grade, he came home with a report card that was, shall we say, less than impressive. This bright, hard working boy was getting D's in social studies, science, and health. The first parent-teacher conference of the year was held ten weeks after school began, and it wasn’t until then that I learned of the problems he was having.

At the conference, I asked his teacher a favor. "Please let me know what Brady needs to know in these areas, when the test dates are, and when the projects are due. I will help make sure he knows what he needs to know!"

A bit flustered, the teacher said she would get back to me.

I never saw the list of competencies or test dates, but I also noticed Brady never received less than a B in her class again. While at the time I viewed this as victory for proactive parenting, I have since worried that the skills and knowledge Brady should have gained during that year fell by the wayside.

Brady’s teacher missed a tremendous opportunity by not enlisting my help and the help of the other children’s parents in her class. Over one-fourth of the year was gone before I knew my son was having problems. Even had I known he was struggling, I did not know enough about the curricular content or teacher’s expectations to know how to help.

Parents do want to help. They just need information. And technology can help you provide that information.

This too shall (not) pass

I am spending a week away from the office working on a book I have under contract. It's going to be a "survival guide" guide for classroom teachers using technology in their work.

And guess who will be my guinea pigs for some of the pieces. Yes, you lucky Blue Skunk readers.

This from the introduction. Feel free to comment! - Doug

This too shall pass

As veteran classroom teacher I dreaded my administrator going to a conference. Invariably she would return with a new educational “silver bullet” for improving teaching and learning and expect us teachers to implement it. This usually meant a ton of additional work despite being already very, very busy actually teaching. And unfortunately, these new process, techniques and plans were abandoned when the next “silver bullet” rolled around. Yesterday it was Outcomes Based Education. Today it is probably Essential Learning Outcomes.

A survival strategy than many of adopted was keep doing what we’d always been doing but use the vocabulary of the new thing. We’d keep quiet during staff development sessions and quietly pray, “This too shall pass.” It was difficult not to become cynical about any change effort in school.

The use of information technologies in schools is a different matter. As we look at society in general, technology has had and continues to have a powerful impact on the way things are being done. To think that medical CAT scans, online banking and shopping, or computerized diagnostics of motor vehicles is a “passing fad” is erroneous. And to think that the use of technology in schools is a “passing fad” doesn’t make any sense either.

Classroom teachers have a finite amount of energy and time to devote to change. So why not invest in the kinds of changes that will with us, not until the next “silver bullet” comes along, but for the remainder of our careers? While technology does change – sometimes at a seemingly impossibly fast pace – the basics of its use in education will be with us for many years.

It’s the basic use of technology in the classroom that this book is about. It’s written for teachers who do not consider themselves technology enthusiasts, but still want to harness the power of the tools and strategies that can truly improve their instruction and their student’s learning.

If you are a teacher who wants the benefits of technology use but who also wants to lead a normal life away from a keyboard and monitor, read on.

BFTP: Fathers, children and The Element

A Saturday Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, February 21, 2009 It's probably a little soon to be re-running this one, but Sir Ken was a speaker at our state tech conference earlier this week and his delightful and important keynote made me think of this review. Read the book!

When people close to you discourage you from taking a particular path, they usually believe they are doing it for your own good. – Sir Ken Robinson in The Element

Many educators are already aware of Sir Ken Robinson through his TED talks, especially "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" If you've enjoyed his presentations, his new book The Element is well worth reading. And even if you haven’t heard him speak, read it anyway.

With sly humor and readable prose, Robinson describes through revealing interviews people who have been successful in the arts, sports, education, and business and how they have found in their "Element." This wide variety of fascinating people, many who have overcome great odds, all have found a way to make their livelihood from a passion or enriched their lives through it. Identifying one’s Element may be as easy as asking, “If left to my own devices - I didn’t have to worry about making a living or what others thought of me – what am I most drawn to doing?” (Does napping count?)

Robinson describes The Element as the “meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.” He sets the stage by arguing that there are nearly as many “intelligences” as there are individuals and that standardized tests, and thus success in school, only measure a narrow range of them. He believes we should not asking if people are intelligent, but how they are intelligent. The Element flourishes when one finds his “tribe” of others with similar passions “who tend to drive each other to explore the real extent of their talents.” One often needs to overcome the obstacles of both a personal, social and cultural nature. People who find their Element are often considered lucky, but tend to make their own luck through attitude. Mentors and teachers are important to most of the interviewees. – people who see “something in us we don’t see in ourselves."

Happily one does not need to be young to find one’s passion and one does not need to pursue it full time. (I think this is why we see many happy retired teachers who have not retired at all, but have pursued other interesting careers.) In fact, Robinson concludes that for writers maturity can be an advantage given that our “insights and sensitivities deepen with age.” Take that, you young techno-Turks.

Robinson criticizes our factory model of education, writing:

But too many graduate or leave early, unsure of their real talents and not knowing what direction to take next. Too many feel that what they are good at isn’t valued by schools.

and cites the U.S.’s growing drop out rate as proof. He argues that schools do not need to be reformed – but transformed – by personalizing education so that it will build achievement on the individual talents of each child.

The part of Robinson's book that struck a real chord with me talked about how parents can either help or block their children finding their Element. Permit me a personal reflection...

As a teacher, I quickly realized that children who developed a passion for something early in life seemed the happiest. Whether it was an interest in horses or music or science fiction or sports or cartooning or whatever, somehow these lucky kids sort of knew who they were and spent less time thrashing about looking for identity. This is why I found the role of librarian so appealing. No matter what the interest, I could help students engage in it more deeply. If I could match the research project with a personal interest, the work was always better. It’s also why I liked directing plays and coaching speech students far better than classroom teaching - many coaches of any activity feel the same way.

For those of you who are parents, you know that one of the most difficult things to accept is that what makes your children happy may not be the same thing that makes you happy. While my daughter always seemed to be on the familiar academic track that was my own route to career and fulfillment, I did worry about my son.

Brady was not a reader. Did not find school of interest. Had an obsession with video gaming and movie making instead of reading and writing which his old man thought of more value and worth. So my suggestion that he look at a career in speech therapy went pretty much unheeded and he went to technical college to learn the art of film making. He is now working in Wellington, New Zealand, just to be close to Peter Jackson's WETA studios. Perhaps he will be an orc in the Hobbit movie being made. Or the next Peter Jackson.

I worry. I suppose that is a dad's job. There seem to be a lot of starving artists in the world. But I helped Brady acquire both his video making equipment while in high school and his schooling in how to use it. My pragmatic rationale was that if he gets tired of being hungry, he can always go back to college to become a speech therapist. And should he become a rich and famous film director, a high quality nursing home might be in my future.

As I think back, I am sure I caused my own father a good deal of anxiety as well. He was a farmer and crop duster who had an oldest son who lacked any mechanical ability or interest in farming. (Actually I was just disinterested in the physical labor part of it.) I still wonder if he felt the same concern when I went off to college driving a $50 1954 Rambler station wagon with no brakes and a new wife that I felt as I watched my son head to NZ with a couple buddies and a suitcase full of video games. What goes around, comes around.

In a response to my last post in which I mentioned I was reading The Element, Charlie Roy reported that his school will be putting it on his faculty's summer reading list. Good idea. Every teacher (and parent) should be aware of and open to how she can develop the true passions in her students and even serve as mentors. There could worse legacies than knowing one has helped another human being find his Element .

Oh, have I found my Element? I am writing this just for the just plain fun of it.