Everything I know about engagement I learned in kindergarten

It is easy to see that part of this problem is that the more time in school, the more disconnected it gets from how we learn. This is where Connected Learning really strikes home for me. As Mimi Ito states in a recent Huffington Post piece, “Connected learning is when you’re pursuing knowledge and expertise around something you care deeply about, and you’re supported by friends and institutions who share and recognize this common passion or purpose.” Ryan Bretag,  Metania blog

The drop in student engagement for each year students are in school is our monumental, collective national failure. There are several things that might help to explain why this is happening -- ranging from our overzealous focus on standardized testing and curricula to our lack of experiential and project-based learning pathways for students -- not to mention the lack of pathways for students who will not and do not want to go on to college. Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education.

Do these findings suprise anyone? In my own experience and from listening to my own children, this is an accurate graph. The only change I'd make would be to extend the engagement drop through the first two years of college before the direction moves upward again when general education requirements are met.

As both Bretag and Busteed suggest above, some correlations between engagment, relevance, and project-based learning can be easily and correctly drawn. I've been fussing about the need for concrete ways to improve projects since, oh, about 1999. And it's obvious nobody has been listening and now look what's happened. Maybe another approach?

Perhaps our elementary collegues know something about engagement that secondary teachers don't? With apologies to Robert Fulghum. It's been more than a couple years since I attended kindergarten, but I remember it as three of the best years of my life (old joke). Anyway...

Everything I know about engagement I learned in kindergarten

In kindergarten you get

1. Show and tell. You got to do something or bring something and then tell others about it. Secondary skill attainment measurement needs to be less about testing and more about show and tell performance-based assessment. Oh, and listening to other students is a lot more involving than listening to the old person in the room.
2. Choices. As a little kid you often got to choose - your library book, your reading buddy, your activity, the subject of your drawing. People tend to choose things that interest them and interesting things are engaging. How often do we let older students choose?
3. Play. Elementary teachers can make a game out of almost anything - and make just about every task feel like play. The older we get, the less we get to play and more we have to work. Just why is that? Gamification is a fancy term for putting play back into the curriculum. Look it up.
4. Naps. Most adolescents I know are tired - and not because they've been up all night texting. (Well, maybe that's part of it.) We've long known that teens do better when school starts later in the morning. Tired people have a tough time staying engaged.
5. To go outside. The best learning takes place in the "real world" not in the classroom. Whether it is studying bugs and leaves in first grade, marching with the band in junior high, or doing service learning as seniors, we all are more interested when it is the real world with which we are dealing.
6. Colors. A blank sheet of construction paper and some crayolas have always let young learners be creative. Creativity is inherently engaging. What's the high school classroom's equivilant to scissors and paste? 
7. To do it together. Reading groups. Play groups. Science groups. It's better with other kids. Social learners are engaged learners.
8. Reading for enjoyment. Our elementary teachers and librarians want us to practice reading so much they let us read what we like! Do our secondary teachers want us to write so much, know so much, experiment so much, and solve problems so much that we get to do it for enjoyment?
9. Learning that's important. Nobody needs to convince a little kid that learning to read, to add and subtract, or to know about firemen is important. And that you should pay attention when being taught these things. Calculus, world history, the Romantic poets, the atomic structure of non-metals, not so much. If you can't convince me what you are teaching should be important to me, teach something that is.
10. Care. OK, this should have been the first one. I really believe a lot little kids are engaged because they know someone cares that they are. Yeah, the littlies are cute and cuddly and all that, but the gangly, awkward, homely teens need to know adults care too. When someone else is paying attention to you, you pay more attention yourself.

There you are - 10 simple steps to keep the engagement level from tanking.

7 management techniques for dealing with tech in the classroom

 

Image source: http://www.gapingvoidart.com/dinosaur-p-53.html

I've decided that any attempt to "manage" how teachers use their smartphones, tablets, and laptops during inservices or workshops is futile. It's a waste of my time and it frustrates the teachers in the classes.

And that decision is actually working out quite well.

While these experiences have simply engraved my conviction that control is illusory a little deeper into the belief system area of my brain, they have also given me some ideas how all educators might manage device-infused classrooms as LWDs (Learners With Devices) become the norm rather than the exception in many schools.

Some management techniques to consider:

1. Have clear and simple rules for the use of technology in your classroom. And let students know what they are. Mine are pretty easy: Student-owned technologies such as cell phones and laptops may be used in the classroom when there is not a whole-group activity, when their use does not distract other students, and when the district's Acceptable Use Policy is followed. 
2. Require all devices be visible during class time. Technology that is visible is less likely to be misused. No devices under the desktop, in the pocket, in the book bag, etc..
3. Have planned, sanctioned means of online (back channel) discussion. Learners need a means of communicating laterally - among themselves. This will happen whether officially sanctioned or not. Set up a TodaysMeet, GoSoapBox, Socrative, or Wallwisher site to facilitate online discussions - and as a form of group notetaking.
4. Have approved activities, readings, resources that students can use when otherwise disengaged in or finished with F2F activities. If students finish required work early (or wish to time shift work), there should be a number of choices of other online activities which they won't get in trouble for doing - working on a shared document, reading a supplemental article or book, playing a game that reinforces a curricular objective. Think positive alternatives.
5. Have students work in groups whenever possible. I find students are more focused and on task when working in groups. The team usually does not approve when a member wanders on to Facebook instead of participating in the school work.
6. Walk around the class. 'Nuf said.
7. Accept the fact some learners will just tune out and getting them on task may not be worth disrupting those on task. Not everybody learns from lectures or discussion. Accept that even your most riveting monologue will not be appreciated by 100% of every group. Good classes are about students learning, not about teacher ego. 

We can fight, limit, complain about, ignore, and deny but we cannot prevent learners having and wanting to use their technologies during class. The sooner we learn to take advantage of these powerful tools, the happier everyone will be - student and teacher.

BFTP: So just what SHOULD librarians be teaching?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post January 12, 2008. The teaching emphasis of the school librarian is still being debated in many schools; the importance of the librarian as a teacher should not be...

"As I have argued in Reading Is Our Business (2006), for too long library media specialists have abdicated our rightful position as critical partners in the development of reading comprehension. As a result, funds are being diverted from school libraries to purchase classroom libraries, library media specialists are being replaced by instructional assistants and when certified librarians are employed, they are not viewed as instructional leaders or as full partners in the learning process." Sharon Grimes

"... our CORE, unique curriculum contribution is information literacy - defined as information problem-solving and involving the learning of information skills and understandings. It's the INFORMATION side that is uniquely ours. Among all educators, we are the ones uniquely responsible for ensuring that INFORMATION skills are learned by students." Mike Eisenberg (see response)

"What might be some of the functions of the Virtual Librarian? Network administrator certainly. Staff trainer in using e-mail, remote file storage, and Internet search engines. An electronic information evaluator and selector. A teacher who can develop information evaluation skills in her staff and students. Certainly webmaster for the library, if not the school. When information is transmitted to a class instead of the class being transmitted to the media center, where should the Virtual Librarian be working with students? Simply, everywhere – both physically and as a “cybrarian.”" - Doug Johnson 

Information literacy. Reading. Technology. Where should our primary teaching responsibilites lie if we are to both serve our students and make ourselves vital to our schools' programs? In the quotes above, two well-respected library gurus and one flake each offer different perspectives on the question.

Given the new student standards from AASL and ISTE, this might be good time to reflect on what our own programs look like  - and perhaps what they ought to look like.

I don't believe Ms Grimes, Dr. Eisenberg or I would suggest a library instructional program that is entirely IL, entirely reading or  entirely tech focused. All programs will contain some element of each skill set. But probably not in equal measures:

How and why might these proportions change?

Reading focus 

 

The diagram above shows what the skill emphasis looks like in many schools, especially at the elementary level, with reading being given a greater emphasis. With greater concern over basic reading abilities as measured by test scores, more library programs are adopting this model. The reading bubble will be larger in schools with a large percentage of students who are not testing at grade level.

My hope is that library media programs have intrinsic reading motivation and free volunteer reading as their core contributions to a school's reading program - not just more bodies doing basal readers, worksheets and the reading method du jour. By providing and promoting high interest materials at a variety of reading levels that meet a variety of developmental needs, we will create kids who not only can read by want to read.

Oh, I've alway argued that reading fiction that meets a student's development needs (aka Huck's "Books for Ages and Stages" work) is a form of information literacy. Kids get questions about themselves and their world answered vicariously through the actions of fictional characters.

Technology focus 

An increasing number of schools seem to be emphasising technology as a focus of the librarian's instructional (and managerial) responsibility. I see this happening especially in schools where there is no separate "technology integration specialist" available to students and teachers. This is also more prevelant at the secondary level.

The key to this being a successful model is that the library media specialist is able to actually teach the educational application of technology tools, not just the applications themselves (nor only be used as a technician). As suggested by the new ISTE Standard, two-thirds of which address information literacy or problem-solving, the technology and information literacy bubbles are increasingly overlapping - good educational technology use means using technology to solve problems, answer question and communicate the findings.

But it is the application of technology like the application of reading skills, that should be a primary element of the library media specialist's teaching responsibilities. 

Information literacy focus 

Personally I'd like this to be our model - that our programs acknowledge our roles as reading and tech teachers, but we empahsis the application of these skills in an IL model that helps solve real problems and answer genuine questions. Reading and technology, while important, are subsumed by our curriculum that actually ask for kids to put the those skills to use.

Where do ethics, highter-order thinking skills, group problem-solving, and all those "dispositions" like fit into this model? My sense is that the larger the information literacy bubble, the more opportunity library media specialists and teacher will have to address these areas both formally and informally within the context of the IL projects. Asking kids to do just do  traditional "research" does not give them practice using these "21st century" skills.

So which model best fits your school? In an e-mail discussing this question, Eiseberg writes: "it shouldn't be the librarian who makes these types of choices.  There should be a building team - principal, key teachers, teacher-librarian - who determines each year the priorities of the library & info program ..." I would add to this even a formal library advisory committee can provide input into the goals and activities of your program.

The best library program is the one that best supports the needs and goals of its school. It doesn't get much simpler than that. 

So, OK, I sound a lot more confident of these ideas than I really am. What does your library curriculum model look like? Who determines it? Will it change because of the new standards?