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The pitch

To help formalize a process for negotiating curriculum I am going to pitch project-based units to students.

Each pitch will have four pieces.

  1. The Vision: The first part of the pitch will be a presentation of my vision for a unit, including its goals and an overview of the steps or activities involved in the unit. Each pitch will try to incorporate some audio-visual elements of the artistic and advertising techniques we’ll study through our art, language arts, and civics curricula.
  2. The Essential Questions: The next piece will be some kind of flowchart or other textual visualization of the big questions that frame and scaffold the unit’s problem and learning.
  3. The Contract: The next piece will be a contract built like a menu that lets students commit to different parts of the project at different levels of independence. For example, a student might indicate that she’s committed to researching independently, but wants help drafting a written response to what she’s learned, or that she’s committed to drafting independently, but wants help finding an outside expert, rather than a teacher, to help her revise her writing.
  4. The Counter-proposal: The last, most amorphous part of the pitch solicits counter-proposals from students: counter-questions, alternative products, and petitions to do the work of the unit elsewhere – perhaps in another class or at home.

I don’t think any of this is new, but I hope it brings together design and differentiation for student-centered work in useful ways.

I don’t have a good handle yet on how to chunk the pieces, but I think the questions and products that students and I come up with will provide plenty of inquiry, process, and revision lessons. Also, this might be way too teacher-centered a way to introduce things, despite the amount of choice offered. We might wind up brainstorming a class pitch for each piece of curriculum we brainstorm, find, or negotiate through inquiry and discussion. I don’t want the pitch to be something that moves us backwards, but I do want to provide some scaffolding around excellent work and the work we’re asked to do that is also somehow relevant to us.

Up first: a unit on citizen-artists, through which I hope students will define excellence in artistry and citizenship, draft expository pieces about citizens and/or artists – familial, local, or otherwise – whom they consider to be excellent, create excellent portraits or political art in response to their learning, and find a community organization willing to host their work.

I’m excited to see how it goes, but also to hear what kids say when I ask what and/or how they’d rather learn to start our third year together.

Posted 23 August 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

Accounting for change

After looking back at previous posts about community engagement, curriculum, teaching, and grading and assessment, I want to publish a short to do list for myself this year as a way of holding myself accountable for continued change in my classroom practice. To complement the list, I’ll maintain a Google Doc score card shared with everybody.

  1. Hold daily class meetings.
  2. Provide daily self-dircted learning time.
  3. Provide daily opportunities for self-assessment..
  4. Provide daily teacher feedback.
  5. Provide weekly or biweekly opportunities for peer feedback.
  6. Provide weekly or biweekly opportunities for mentor feedback.
  7. Negotiate content, process, and products with students.
  8. Negotiate paperless portfolios and records with students.
  9. Use social media to push our work into the world and bring parents into the school.
  10. Undertake community-based project-based learning.

While these are my goals for reforming classroom practice, I’ll also be working in school development part-time to help us all further our relationships and use of inquiry, differentiation, and arts-infused curriculum and project-based learning. I have some other areas of responsibility, as well, such as community engagement, that relate to my teaching goals. I know my work outside the classroom will inform and enrich how I teach and learn and write and imagine.

Kristen Wray’s Our Journey of Learning has reminded me that this will be year three with my 8th graders. I’ve taught them all since they were in the 6th grade, sometimes in language arts class, some times in social studies, and sometimes in more broadly conceived humanities and lower-case project-based learning classes. I’ve been their head teacher; I’m about to begin work in school development for the little start-up they’ve helped shape and are about to leave.

I found my better teaching self last year, but that doesn’t mean I’ve found away to help each and every child feel safe, happy, and engaged at school. I’m kind of amazed and thankful to have the opportunity to try again.

Here are the most important things that looping has taught me:

  • If I haven’t take responsibility for relationships in the classroom, then I haven’t take responsibility for teaching and learning.
  • We are much closer to producing excellent work based on passionate learning than we are to “achieving” excellent test scores based on standardized learning.
  • Trust isn’t a currency, it’s a way of life, and it shouldn’t be spent coercing students.
  • Each day is an opportunity for me to let go of another preconception that’s getting in the way of relationships and learning in my classroom.
  • Teaching and learning are not a battle. I shouldn’t choose my battles with kids; I should choose not to battle. Community-building and negotiation about what we want to do – not what we’ll get – drive learning much more effectively than behavioral management does.

What have you learned from looping?

How will you reform your classroom practice this year?

Help re-imagine what it is that schools do.

Posted 13 August 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As if anything ends

This week I read around the Washington Post’s “Top Secret America” portal. You can read about its methodology and see the project’s credits here.

I started with this article: “National Security Inc.” On page 10, the article describes the work of Ken Pohill, an employee of General Dynamics, a defense contractor serving multiple roles in the United States intelligence community. Ken is watching a “white truck moving across his computer monitor” – and “the truck [is] in Afghanistan.”

To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver’s house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver’s side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of the truck’s movement. Click. A Google Earth map of friendly forces. Click: A chat box with everyone else following the truck, too.

I may be horribly naive, but I was astounded.

How do we teach this at school? How do we help students translate their affinity for technology and proficiency with certain tools into the skills needs to synthesize those tools – or to create new ones – for gathering, analyzing, and producing content? For self-expression? How do we provide rich problem sets for student work? How do we help them prepare for the development, implementation, and use of tool sets that provide for synchronous human and mechanized observation, collection, correlation, and evaluation?

And how do we do this in the humanities? In schools and classes as we know them? As we imagine them?

This project – this repository of journalistic and democratic investigation – has convinced me like never before that we need to provide digital equity.

Students deserve to know what’s possible for them; they also deserve to know what their government, its competitors, and private industry can do in terms of observing their habits and controlling the information that reaches them.

Part of preserving our checks and balances is knowing what needs to be checked and balanced.

I see this one kid working a computer with a USB keyboard tethered to it. He has a browser open to the information he has to learn. He has composing software open in another window. He has his notes with my feedback on them in front of him on a piece of paper. He’s using everything he sees to write some fairly chilling music about Kristallnacht.

I see another kid working on a game about smashing through the Berlin Wall. He has his programming and drawing windows open. He has image searches running on Berlin, East German soldiers, and 3D models of sledgehammers. He has another window open showing him feedback from his classmates on earlier drafts of the game, posted on a private network.

I see a third kid skipping between tabs to watch video, read news reports, look up players’ stats, and blog on the sport he loves.

I remember these kids and I think: Is it enough? What am I teaching them? Am I teaching them how to think? To produce? To consume? To create or to re-arrange? Am I teaching them for today’s world or their own?

I remember these kids and I ask myself: How can we help our peers get access to the technology we are so fortunate to have? How can we approximate a set-up like Ken’s for students and their learning? For their passions?

I know General Dynamics values Ken Pohill for his ability to analyze and synthesize what he sees, but what he sees, while orchestrated by humans, is entirely mediated by technology. I also know that Ken works with other people onsite, but I imagine that they talk a lot about what they see on their screens. Somewhere else other people are talking about how to orchestrate it even better with new technology.

How do we help kids see the world as it happens? How do we help them see the code behind our world? The people behind the code? How do we help kids see themselves using these tools for the kind of greater good that obviates defense?

How do we use authentic, germane, realtime data and commentary about learning to analyze our teaching?

Look at Ken. Now back at standardized tests. Now back at Ken.

Why are we teaching as if anything ends?

Posted 22 July 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , ,

SPACE PANDA 2010

As I work on this year’s curriculum map, I’m trying to set up a learning space bounded by the minimum number of teacher-imposed, useful constraints necessary to promote student-directed democracy, community, and learning.

My map this year will look more course-specific than last year’s meta-map, which I think is still a useful model for project-based work. Here’s an early draft of this year’s map:

An early draft of Chad's 2010 curriculum map

I’m mapping more granularly – at least in terms of structures and opportunities, if not content – in response to what worked this year in stations, pacing, and independent work. I’m also mapping to ensure that student learning moves flexibly and organically back and forth, inside and outside the classroom, physically and virtually, in service to students’ passions and in service to others.

Here are three constraints I’m using:

  1. In terms of content, I plan to “cover” the state language arts and civics & economics curricula through direct instruction and blended learning modules that I create and then replace with subsequent student work. I will negotiate with students the particular standards each wants to master in a unit so long as she produces excellent work that demonstrates her learning. I would rather students leave the class as experts on what interests them about citizenship than as students with a superficial knowledge of sentence structure and/or our government’s org chart. Therefore, to help students master their chosen content more strategically, here’s the first useful constraint I want to use: “spaced learning.”

  2. In terms of self-directed learning, I plan to protect at least 20% of class time for students’ self-directed learning. I love this line from the RSA animation of Dan Pink’s Drive talk: “you probably want to do something interesting…let me get out of your way!” Pink talks about the Australian software firm Atlassian and it’s quarterly employee autonomy days. Employees get to work on what they want for a day so long as they share out their work at the end in a celebration. The company benefits from its employees’ creativity in tackling nagging software bugs and proposing new products. I’ve seen this work in the classroom. I’ve seen a kid make a Scratch game about a jet-pack-wearing space panda that shoots palm trees from its butt to fight aliens turn the same skills he used in learning that game into a series of animations explaining the Cold War, ICBMs, and MAD. I never would have seen those content-specific short films without giving over class time to SPACE PANDA 2010. Other kids made similar transfers; this was not an isolated case. Kids will bring the skills they learn through self-directed learning to the content we are tasked to cover. Bet on it. Call it what you will: Google Time, Atlassian Days, self-directed learning. It’ my second useful constraint.

  3. Because we know that timely feedback helps classroom relationships, increases student achievement, and helps curtail downtime, I will attempt to be in all places at all times via Edmodo. I’d like increase my capacity to give feedback during class time as I move between stations or groups. My kids have experience with Edmodo on their computers and iPods. If I’m working with a group and can’t make it across the room to answer a question that’s been shouted out, perhaps I can find the time to post a quick reply to a quick question or give an ETA and suggest a independent next step without engaging in disruptive cross-room conversation. Regardless, the big idea here is not to manage my classroom’s noise level, but to reward students’ investment in their work by improving the timeliness of my feedback and by providing students with a back-channel for helping one another and for giving feedback on the class. I also want to establish a daily community meeting time to make sure we work together on improving class for everyone based on our feedback about it. So my third useful constraint is better coaching and better communication make for better learning.

I will also remove arbitrary restraints on student democracy, community, and learning by abandoning traditional grading, trivial standards, and sending “problem” children out of my room to be “solved” by someone outside our own relationships.

What am I missing? What doesn’t best serve students and their learning? What boundaries on the map should I redraw?

Posted 02 July 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“What drives curriculum?”

Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) wrote here about #ISTE10’s “Dissecting the 21st Century Teacher” panel. I commented on a few of the lines that caught my attention regarding curriculum and a teacher’s role in maintaining and delivering content. I’m torn there. There’s so much discoverable content maintained out there that it’s useful for a teacher to organize some of it somehow for class, but I think kids should to that, too. I think it should be a DIY process so we avoid delivering content organized for profit by companies packaging blended learning.

An audience member said “curriculum needs to drive technology.” I asked what should drive curriculum. Dan Fink responded in good humor.

Dan’s response evoked some energy for me, so I want to paste my reply to him here; I think it’s a statement worth taking accountability for, and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m willing to let it sit on Mary Beth’s blog, but not my own.

I hear you, and I’m grinning, but I’m not convinced we can’t get away with greater flexibility and student choice. I think we self-limit here.

There are compromises we can make in how we choose to use class time. Google time is a possibility (say 20%). Negotiating state curriculum with students is a possibility (you give me three standards, and we’ll get you a blog and a trip/Skype call to the aquarium for or action research). Subverting the state curriculum is a possibility (A People’s Textbook of Algebra, anyone?). Ignoring the state curriculum is a possibility (gulp).

I feel keenly the conflict between my vocation as an educator to help others learn and my occupation as a public school teacher to cover state curriculum in such a manner that students recall it for an end of course test. I have positive evaluations, but my test scores have dropped since I stopped obsessively teaching to the state test. People walk through my classroom a few times a year and offer me a few complimentary generalities about what they see. Then, at the end of the year, people talk to me about all kinds of numbers in great specificity. I am confused in so many ways by this, but remain convinced that leaving public education to escape this confusion is self-serving. I recognize why I get talked to about numbers and I acknowledge the effective job people do in working with them – I value their efforts on our kids’ behalf and their work with me to push my teaching. I am lucky to be so supported in my work by my division.

My point: if we’re willing to dwell in ambiguity and take year-end commentary on our tests scores as feedback from adults with different priorities rather than as judgment from our betters – our approvers, our gatekeepers, even our mentors – then during the year we have a lot of wiggle room in covering “the” curriculum.

I worry that the easy answer is an easy target for our complaints and thus helps us be complacent in sitting in judgment without acting in accordance with what we know about learning, child development, and human motivation.

Yours,
C

I would add that there are fantastic administrators out there ready to partner with teachers and students in negotiating curriculum and establishing more targeted power standards embedded in powerful project- and service-based learning. I won’t name anyone in particular as I don’t want to suggest that this post speaks for him or her, but such administrators know who they are, and so do their teachers.

Posted 30 June 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Letting Go of Teaching

I do seem to remember a process where you people ask me questions and I give you answers, and then I ask you questions and you give me answers, and that’s the way we find out things. I think I read that in a manual somewhere.

-Dr. Heywood Floyd, 2010: The Year We Make Contact

The best thing I ever did for my teaching was to stop teaching.

Before I get into that, here’s a quick to-do list for next year.

  1. Organize better for self-directed learning. I shifted my work with students into a more democratic, self-directed space midway through the year in an attempt to improve our relationships, to meet students’ learning needs, and to let students’ natural curiosity and creativity take over our time together. However, I wasn’t prepared to capture as much of the work as I should have. I’ll play around with a bunch of models and combinations this summer and be ready for students to pick ways to archive and reflect on their work this fall.

  2. Learn more outside the school. We worked with several partners this year – with local instructional coaches (like @bethcosta6 and @tborash) and community partners, as well as with PLN tweeps like @crudbasher, @engltchrleo, and @kperry. However, we did so somewhat haphazardly thanks to snow-days and other hiccups in pacing. I’d like to work with my school to set aside specific time each week for each students to do, learn, and/or make something outside of school. I have in mind “electives” with a blacksmith, a master carpenter, a green roof nursery, a nursing home, and a musician. That covers maybe 3/5 of us according to numbers and interests. I need to do more legwork in soliciting ideas from students and lining up expert tutors this summer.

  3. Bring in the parents. I know a few parents are happy that I’ve developed better relationships with their children. I know a few parents are happy that I’ve implemented self-directed learning. I know a few parents are always going to ask about grades. I know a few parents wonder what the hell I’m doing. I need to set up parent education nights – several of them, repeating and then spiraling – to try and share the big picture of teaching and learning to which I ascribe. I need to explain how a nascent democratic, self-directed classroom looks in a public school and how it promotes and tracks deep and authentic student learning. I need to explain how our class might be different from others, but also how every class here is alike in its determination to serve our students and rehabilitate their notions of learning and what school can be.

Back to teaching better by not teaching.

Here’s an embarrassing story. I’m so glad that this kid stuck with me. Note my sterling use of Choice Theory in August. Crikey.

August: Here’s your work. Hey, look, its on a computer. Let’s go. Hey. Come on. Do something. It’s right there. Wiggle the mouse. Come on. Click. CLICK! What? Come on. Get your foot down. Okay, okay. Now get your foot out of the drawer. Please. Out of the drawer. Let’s go. Come on. Can I help you? Can you tell me why you’re choosing not to work right now? You have to work to be here. Come on. You don’t have to go. You just have to choose to work. I’ll help. Hey – FOOT! DRAWER! If you won’t talk to me, go make a plan…

…December: Blah blah blah work blah blah choice blah help blah WHAT? I’m sorry, but you can’t say “this is [frakking bullpoop]” and stay in class. Go make a plan.

February: Okay. So we’re going to try something new. It’s called self-directed learning. You’re going to make a plan to learn about whatever you want. You’re going to make something to show me what you learned. You can make whatever you want. The idea is to read and write about something you love, and to make something with what you read and write. You tell me when to check in with you. I want you to do something you like at school. You do have to direct yourself to learn – it’s not do whatever you want time; it’s self-directed learning time. A blog? Sure. Basketball? Sure. What are you going to do? Write about the games? Okay. Can I leave you comments? Great. FOOT!

March: Can I see what you wrote? Okay. Let’s talk about organization. Like when you switch from one game to another, start a new paragraph so I can see I should think about a new game.

April: Great headline. Can we talk some more? Great. I wrote about elaboration in your comments last night. Elaboration just means details. Like when you predict who will win the playoffs, you give me your idea, but you don’t tell me why. If you tell me why – if you can give me some stats or reasons for your prediction – then you’re adding detail or elaboration. Okay? Okay. Try it.

May: A report? On what? Three-point shooters? Okay. Are you willing to research? Can you come up with questions? Sure I can help. How many questions do you think would give you enough detail to write a paragraph about each player? Three? Okay. Try it.

June: No, seriously. We have to do this before the end of the year. Please put your blog away. Yeah, I know, it’s [frakking bullpoop], but here we are. Save your draft. Let’s go. Thank you. I’ll get you back to it as soon as possible.

Here’s the student’s first post from March, after he got his blog set up:

Minnesota Timberwolves are on there 16 losing streak.

Here’s one of his inquiry posts from May:

Nate Robinson is one of the best dunkers in the NBA. He plays for the celtics now but near the begining of the year he played for the Knicks he is so awesome at dunking it is amazing. Once he dunked over yow ming he is really tall. He entered the dunk contest three times. He won the dunk contest three times. That is really good. He helped his team a lot when he was on the Knicks but when he was on the celtics he’s not that good now. He dose not play that much anymore but he is a good dunker.

Lebron James is one of the best dunkers in the NBA he can jump from really far and can do some awesome tricks in the air. Lebron James helps his team a lot he is like the best player on that team and he is like the best player in the league. Lebron James is a bad sport though and last year this guy named shannon Brown entered the dunk contest that is why he didn’t enter he was going to but then he punked out because he was scared. But he is good at basketball.

Andrey iguodala is a awesome basketball player and a dunker he should join the dunk contest then people will se his skills. He has got some real serious jumps he can dunk over just about anybody thats why i think he is such a good dunker. He helped his team a lot over the years. He plays for the 76ixer’s they are ok but not that good they did not make it to the play-off’s 

Dwight Howard plays for the magic that team is really good they are still in the playoffs. Dwight Howard has only entered the dunk contest once but he won he finished it with this dunk called the superman it was awesome he put on a cape and then got the basketball and started running and then he jumped in the air so high up in the air that he through the basketball strait down in to the hoop it was awesome i did not get to se it but i still herd about it on ESPN he won the whole entire thing with that. He is a big man. I told my brother about that and i said why did he win he did not even dunk it and my brother said the whole reason that he won is because the fact that he was high enough to throw the ball in to the hoop in the air. It was amazing for guy that tall and big to jump that high.

Jr Smith is one of the best dunkers in the NBA he so good at dunking and three point shots. He should enter a dunk contest thats how good he is at dunking he would might even win the whole thing if he try’s his very best in the dunk contest. He plays for the nuggets that team is okay but they are not the best team in the league. He helps his team a lot by how good his dunks are and by how good he is at three point shooting in the game. He will not let the nuggets down in the next playoffs i just know that he wont let them him down.

This is great progress, but, look, I know there’s work to be done. I know several students who accomplished more with me in a shorter amount of time in a traditional classroom. But I also know that there are kids out there like this basketball blogger who don’t have a shot at feeling safe, acknowledged, or valued in the traditional classroom. And I know it’s not the kid’s fault. It was mine. For all the other kids like this one in my first eight and half years of teaching, the fault was mine. I am sorry.

Sometimes you have to stop teaching because no amount of it will fix a broken relationship or make up for one where there isn’t one.

Sometimes you have to let go of yourself to hold a kid up.

Sometime you have to turn your back on what you were taught in order to learn what’s right. You have to turn your back on what you know to do what you believe. You have to turn your back on your past to change a kid’s future. You have to stop investing your salary in test scores and gamble it all away on finding ways to make learning matter. You have to stop measuring yourself by your best students’ scores and start measuring yourself by what you’re keeping all of them from for the love of a stratified society.

You can’t give up kids to the system and still be the one who won’t let them down.

Posted 14 June 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (5) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do It Ourselves

My wife, Bethany Nowviskie (@nowviskie), has posted on the University of California’s moves to boycott Nature Publishing Group. Essentially, the publishing group takes the work of professors – authors and peer reviewers – and then sells subscriptions back to the professors’ institutions at exorbitant rates that force further cuts in library systems already savaged by budget crises.

Nowviskie compares the situation to Tyler Durden’s soap-making scheme in Fight Club. Durden steals human fat from plastic surgery clinics and renders it into soap that he sells to high end beauty counters.

Nowviskie’s post is sharp and urges librarians and professors to share responsibility and work together to reform the journal subscriptions system.

I’ve been sitting on this post at CoopCatalyst, wondering if it was all just a bit too much. But, inspired by my wife, I posted it. My email sig file will now read, “Chad Sansing, Educational Conspiracy Theorist.”

What we teachers need to see in public education is a nearly identical program of systematic extortion committed by K-12 vendors and their accomplices: us.

We are field-testing test-prep materials for the vendors who are writing the tests. These vendors have a financial interest in researching and developing “more rigorous” standards, materials, and assessments so that an achievement gap always exits. The gap will be measured and confirmed by the tests the vendors sell. The silver bullet for low test scores will be materials aligned to state or common stan standards, sold by the same vendors. Some of these materials will look new and shiny and carry labels like “adaptive” or “blended,” but you will know them by the way they tie students to desks, chairs, screens, and schoolwork as ably as consumable work books do.

We paying to validate the tests that determine how badly we are punished.

We have to subvert school board policies about officially adopted materials whenever we want to use unapproved materials with an entire class.

We are told to teach authentically and asked to assess harmfully. Our school divisions have placed us in a position of moral hazard. No wonder we so often transfer similar mixed messages about learning and behavior to our students and punish them for mounting the kinds of challenges we do not make to our “superiors.”

Our students are a captive audience undergoing curricular experimentation that they have not chosen for themselves. At best they must operate under two sets of expectations – our expectations that they love learning and the system’s expectations that they do what they’re told. At worst, they suffer solely under the latter.

How are we complicit in this? How are our schools complicit? Our divisions? Our leadership? Our unions? Our politicians?

When was the last time we called for a strike – or for a teach-in, or for any kind of division, state, or national action – over pedagogy? Over what’s best for kids?

Are we ready?

It’s past time for a Do It Yourself (DIY) curriculum. It’s past time for teachers to break free of prescribed materials and scripted curricula. It’s past time for teachers to take back control of teaching.

It’s time for the Do It Ourselves (DIO) classroom. It’s time for students and teachers to assemble curricula, materials, and assessments together. It’s time for teachers to trust students with control of their schooling – it’s time for students to trust teachers with stewardship of their learning.

Are we ready?

We have the summer. Will we act without expecting a return on our investment?

We need to break out of the vendor’s shipping container. We shouldn’t be pursuing pass rates or attacking one another. We should be pursuing passions and attacking systematic obstacles to learning. We will never be allowed a flat 100% pass rate. If we ever achieved it, anyway, it would mean that learning’s pulse had flat-lined in our schools.

We need to start new conversations, especially with our students. Let’s go.

Posted 10 June 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Hacking Admissions Standards

[An original contribution to Hacking the Academy.]

The academy should hack itself to transform public education. Here’s how:

1. Stop complaining about public education.

Since Sputnik, American schools have been anxiety-driven to produce “college-ready” students. Standardized testing, A Nation at Risk, the No Child Left Behind act, the Race to the Top Initiative, and the upcoming Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization are all bastard efforts to make sure that America’s high school graduates are “college-ready.”

We have spent decades and an inordinate amount of money on public education – on trying to find the perfect formula of “college-readiness.” Nevertheless, you don’t need to go any further than #edchat to hear college professors bemoaning their fate as babysitters of intellectually unwashed undergrads. And who gets the blame? That’s right: public education.

This is utter nonsense. Public education is obsessively, compulsively trying to make students “college-ready.” Guess where public education looks to determine what “college-ready” means? That’s right: colleges.

So long as university faculty continue to bitch and moan about public education instead of taking on their own institutions’ admissions standards, then university faculty can expect to teach more of the same: students prepared to pass multiple-choice tests and to game the weighted high-school grading-systems that serve as gateways to AP courses and higher education.

Professors, go to your deans and provosts and urge them to align your admissions standards to what you want to see in students. Then stop admitting students who don’t meet them. Stop taking their money and passing the buck.

2. Invest in authentic admissions processes.

So how does this look? I don’t know – it probably varies by department, school, and institution. Regardless of programs’ differences, colleges need authentic demonstrations of applicants’ capabilities. You want creativity? Ask for an art portfolio. You’re sad that the arts are under-valued in our society? Require proof of high quality arts education for college admittance and watch privileged parents vote #artsed money back into schools. You want excellent writing? Damn grades and transcripts – ask for a piece of written work from each credited course a student attempts. You want self-sufficient and financially literate students? Ask for work experience and proof of financial literacy education. You want community-oriented students who will give back to your local community? Require proof of and reflection upon service learning. You want undergraduates who will take risks and contribute to campus intellectual life? Require proof of and reflection upon entrepreneurial learning.

You want public education to make students college-ready? Have an authentic and relevant admissions process. Figure it out.

3. Invest in pedagogy.

Then, once you’ve enrolled students who want to learn with you and with whom you want to learn, provide them with a relevant and authentic education. Look at each kid as a prospective protégé. Train yourself to teach well and structure undergraduate courses to be engaging. The only place less relevant to a teenager than a traditional public school classroom is a freshman lecture hall.

You might be getting crappy work from undergraduates because you’re offering them crappy classes. Do they really need to fulfill all of your prerequisites and requirements to do excellent work in the fields they love? Is it a money thing? A politics thing? I’m being #nonrhetorical here. Help me understand. My college program had no prerequisites or requirements. I still don’t know how to do statistics and probability, but I can set up a democratic classroom in a public school, help my students program in Scratch, and chat in Spanish with immigrant parents and Pulitzer Prize winners. My college didn’t fail me by freeing me. Nor did it fail me by holding me back or making me pay to take classes and do work I loathed.

Kids can teach themselves what they want to know. They can start businesses. They can enroll in community colleges during high school. It’s possible to succeed in an increasing number of fields without a college education. Higher education needs better courses for undergrads and more compelling teaching to remain relevant and useful to kids and their dreams.

Okay, Professors, here’s your nightmare scenario: as “college-readiness” continues to drive American public education into the dirt of low expectations, college itself stops being enough to ensure America’s competitiveness in the global marketplace. Brave reformers pass legislation requiring all public university professors to be “highly qualified teachers” and to be evaluated by their students’ GRE scores. Grad school becomes the new college experience. State colleges have to compete with for-profit schools for federal subsidies. “Profess for America” starts displacing tenured professors left and right with the best and brightest undergrads looking to get their hands dirty before rising above it all.

Are you looking forward to hacking that?

If not, then make the undergraduate experience important to kids, their dreams, and their lives well lived. Quit decrying public education and help us partner with you in that bold and messy endeavor.

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Chad Sansing teaches humanities at the Community Public Charter School, an arts-infused, literacy-focused charter school for non-traditional middle school learners. He blogs on reforming classroom practice at Classroots.org and CoöpCatalyst. He is a National Board Certified Teacher and NETS*T Certified Teacher.

Posted 25 May 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (20) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Tagged: 10 Blogs Not To Miss

Deven Black, who blogs at Education on the Plate and tweets as @spedteacher, very kindly mentioned me in a post on “10 + 1 [blogs] Not To Miss.” Deven noted that while we often disagree (perhaps especially on charters, with which we’ve had vastly different experiences), we share common beliefs about the need to see “failure and learning from it as equal partners with success in innovative teaching.”

Happily, as Deven tagged me, I’ll share out 10 of the blogs I follow. I’ll try to avoid repeats since I frequently look to the other blogs Deven mentions for inspiration.

If you are tagged – and feel inclined to post – please follow these guidelines:

  1. Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you
  2. List 10 blogs you feel others should read.
  3. Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them.

Bruce on Games, by Bruce Everiss

Bruce writes on the video game industry with trenchant posts on educational gaming like the one linked to above; moreover, he just emerged from an intercontinental legal ordeal that read like something out of Charles Stross’s Halting State. Fascinating stuff on games, their production, the way they make money off us, and their multifaceted impact on our lives.

Coöperative Catalyst, a collaborative blog about individual accountability for change and a bridge to the work of Joe Bower, Adam Burk, Casey Caronna, Aaron Eyler, David Loitz, Kirsten Olson, and Paula White

I happily tag along. We push one another to act on our beliefs in implementing democratic education, fostering a saner society, and ending school wounding.

Customized Leadership, by Pam Moran

Pam is my superintendent. As I experience the work in our school division, I appreciate Pam’s forward-looking take on it and public education. She’s exemplary in her use of social media to connect with and celebrate students, teachers, and their shared work in the division.

Dropout Nation, by RiShawn Biddle

We appreciate one another’s work, but question one another’s ideas about assessment and changing schools. It’s the perfect PLN relationship.

edReformer, by Douglas Crets and Tom Vander Ark

I know I’m not supposed to dig only slightly left (right?) of center #edreform from folks who consider education to be a “sector,” but Illich help me, I love these guys, their optimism, and the breadth of their field of vision, if not all of their subjects. I’d like them to expect more from teachers than from the private sector.

Edustrategery, by Chad Ratliff

Chad also works in my division. I get really confused when he’s around and someone calls for him. Apart from that, I appreciate tremendously his faith in students and teachers to make learning count, as well as his tireless work to help them do so.

Fumbling About In The Dark, by Debbie, a.k.a Miss Shuganah

Debbie writes with rare honesty about parenting and dealing with schools. Her writing helps me reflect on what I want for my child, how I want to be treated as a parent, and how I should treat parents and invite them to be a part of our classroom community. I’ll get a lot better at that next year.

Mobile Home on Main Street, by Darah Bonham

Darah directs a regional career and technical education center that offers an incredible array of professional certifications to students. Soon it will be THE hub for student entrepreneurship, as well. Darah is prolific in imagining innovative opportunities for entrepreneurship at school and shares them via his blog.

Northfork Center for Servant Leadership Blog, by Jack King

Jack and I meet weekly to figure out the world’s problems, and I think we’re making headway. Jack has pushed me to say what I believe, to do what I say, and to change what I do when it isn’t helping kids learn. He runs a blog on servant leadership as part of a larger initiative to engage youth with public service. His work helps me reimagine my role as a teacher – to shift my work from classroom management to meeting students’ learning needs and wants.

Think Thank Thunk, by Shawn Cornally

Shawn blogs about teaching calculus, but you don’t have to grok math to learn from the awesome experiential learning opportunities he sets up for his students, or from his work with standards-based grading. Take it from a guy who just chickened out of the Praxis II Middle School Math test.

Tag, Everybody – share away!

Posted 16 May 2010 † Chad § Blog post ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged:

Green Paper: Shoestring Democratic School

I have been thinking a lot about democratic education since starting work on the collaborative blog CoöpCatalyst. If you haven’t yet considered blogging or blogging with an audience of peers dedicated to improving teaching and learning for kids, I urge you to start.

The following represents my best thinking so far about growing democratic education within a public school system, beginning within one classroom. Please comment – this is a green paper, a suggestion, an idea, a vision. It needs work and discussion. I thank you sincerely for your help.

Overview
 
The Shoestring Democratic School (SDS) is a new model for self-directed, project-based learning and student service and entrepreneurship in the public, open-enrollment, chartered middle school. It could start as a pilot program and grow into a charter school or a network of democratic classrooms spread throughout middle schools in a division or region.
 
The SDS is a one-room-school-house-within-a-school. One full time teacher with multiple endorsements will facilitate students’ project-based learning, students’ interaction with virtual mentors in other disciplines, the school’s operations, the school’s community and parent partnerships, and technology or transportation to and from learning opportunities outside school. Virtual mentors will give blended feedback on content area performance in students’ project-based learning (PBL) work.
 
The teacher will work with approximately 30 students from 7th and 8th grades. 

Students will learn to think for themselves and learn to use tools to unearth the knowledge they need from multiple sources. They will develop the ability to make clear logical arguments, and deal with complex ethical, moral issues. Through self-initiated activities,  as they direct their lives, they will take responsibility for outcomes, set priorities, allocate resources, and work with others in a vibrant community.

Trust and respect willl be the keys to the school’s success. Students and teachers will enjoy total intellectual freedom, and unfettered interaction with other students and adults. Through being responsible for themselves and for the school’s operation, they will gain the internal resources needed to lead effective, productive and responsible lives.
 
The school will be  a model of democracy: messy, growing, changing, always questioning the role of the individual in society and the role of education for democracy

Goals
 
The SDS will work to
 

  • Push students successful in a traditional school to seek out opportunities to demonstrate learning in new, unfamiliar contexts closer to those of workplaces, especially in the service and start-up sectors.
  • Innovate and disseminate new models of teaching & learning.
  • Provide school choice to the community.
  • Extend authentic learning outside the classroom.
  • Bring authentic audiences and feedback into the classroom.
  • Disrupt secondary school cultures of compliance and capped curriculum, instruction, and assessment through student activism fostered by honest conversation about schooling during morning meetings and tutorials.
  • Establish a scalable, networked/viral model of democratic education for every division middle school.

 
Operations, Curriculum, & Instruction
 
The SDS will share the following services and resources with its host school: a classroom; furniture; a printer; the clinic; the cafeteria; the library; the gymnasium; counselors; classified staff.
 
Curriculum, instruction, and assessment will come from students’ self-directed projects, as well as from feedback given by educators and expert practitioners. Parents will receive narrative feedback twice quarterly about students’ work, growth, and mastery of standards from their children, the school teacher, and virtual mentors. The school will assess and report students’ mastery of mandated learning standards, but it will not use grades.

Students will have the opportunity to teach and learn from one another organically inside and outside school, as well as by setting up student-run courses and exchanges during morning meetings – daily gatherings dedicated to fostering a school-wide culture of valuing all community members, pursuing excellence, and celebrating and owning our learning.
 
The school will allow students to use personal electronic devices to build a 1:1 classroom. Surplus hardware, scholarships and donations will be sought from the division and community for students in need of 1:1 learning technology.
 
The teacher will carry at least 2 core subject endorsements. She will direct the school and facilitate daily learning. She will help students design projects and align learning outcomes to state standards for PBL body of evidence portfolios. She will also help students create daily and weekly schedules for project-management, service to the larger school community, and physical education.
 
Moreover, the teacher will facilitate student communication with virtual mentors and with volunteer and school-contracted tutors for student-directed language and music learning. Finally, the teacher will be responsible for the fiscal and day-to-day management of the school, with support from the host school and division central office.
 
Virtual mentors will round out the staff.  These mentors would be highly qualified teachers already at work in the division. Ideally, each would receive a leadership stipend of at least $1500 and an division-subscribed SmartPhone to use for communication with SDS students. These mentors will be expected to make weekly F2F or virtual contact with each student to give guidance in discipline area learning and to assess discipline area work embedded in students’ projects.
 
The mentors’ credentials will cover endorsements not carried by the teacher. The mentors will serve as teachers of record for the school in their respective areas.
 
Additionally, the teacher will work with students to manage per-pupil funds for project materials and tutoring in languages and music as required by students’ projects. The teacher will also pursue funding and learning opportunities in financial literacy for students interested in entrepreneurial learning.
 
To customize their learning space, students will use the red paperclip approach to classroom design and ownership. They will solicit and barter goods and services from home and private business for additional classroom furniture, supplies, materials. The class space will reflect their work and communications needs and wants rather than the teacher’s pedagogy.
 
Students will spend part of each week on service projects and/or gardening/farming at the host school and/or nearby elementary schools with elementary school buddies.

Learning outside school, including service learning and physical education activities, will be welcomed for sharing and feedback at school with the entire school community.
 
SDS will reverse middle schools’ loss of parent volunteerism by inviting parents to be tutors and experts in the classroom and to provide micro-field trips for students to local businesses and studios for learning and feedback. Community organizations and local professionals will be invited regularly to contribute to students’ learning at school or on site at their places of operation.

SDS students will share governance of the school with the teacher according to the democratic education model. All community members would work together to establish daily routines, schedules, norms, consequences, and celebrations. Each community member will have an equal vote in setting policies and practices that don’t garner clear consensus.
 
SDS will have opt-in summer “office hours” for students to continue their learning with school resources. Before its inauguration, the school will have summer hours for students to help design the school and start projects on an opt-in basis.
 
To showcase and celebrate students’ work and provide the school with a measure of public accountability, the school will have quarterly, whole-day and early evening Expo Days that students will plan and host for parents, school division personnel, and the media. Students will schedule the dates, create promotional materials, make media contacts, design and print invitations, provide refreshments, and arrange the room for Expo Days.
 
All school community members will work together to provide collaborative professional development to teacher-and-student teams from other schools during the summer. SDS students will prepare round-table and workshop sessions on self-directed learning, project-based learning, service, entrepreneurship, and democratic education for attending teachers and teacher teams. All participants will receive tech for participation and the commitment to implement some level of of PBL, service-learning, student entrepreneurship, and/or democratic education the following year.
 
Student Activism
 
Part of the SDS mission will be to engage students in discussions about how school works and how it can work better for all students. Students will learn how to talk about school and resist pressures to be compliant when compliance doesn’t help them learn. Students will learn to challenge their teachers in constructive ways and to suggest learning and assessment alternatives for themselves and peers that are more authentic than traditional schoolwork.
 
Student Profile

SDS is a public school dedicated to open enrollment and finding best-fit learning opportunities for all students who enroll.

Students likely to experience early success at the SDS might, in some combination:

  • Already be over the game of school.
  • Experience difficulty finding challenging work at school.
  • Experience difficulty learning through traditional instruction, especially in the traditional amounts of time given to it.
  • Experience difficulty demonstrating learning through traditional assessments.
  • Frequently challenge or mistrust the structures of school.
  • Experience social pressure to dumb down his or her work or affect.
  • Pursue a life-long learning passion that doesn’t fit into the traditional school day.
  • Be willing to exchange authentic responsibilities for authentic freedoms in learning.
  • Exhibit an aptitude and appetite for service learning and/or entrepreneurship.
  • Experience anxiety in competitive and/or large-school settings that keeps him or her from fully engaging in or demonstrating learning.

Assessment
 
SDS will use the following pieces of assessment for state accredidation and division-level accountability.
 

  • Fall & Spring norm-referenced, growth-model literacy and math testing.
  • Published projects & critiques.
  • Expo Days.
  • Body of evidence binders written into an alternative accredidation plan to provide students with an opt-in alternative to standardized testing.

 
Budget
 
SDS will require the following resources:
 

  • Shared services as part of existing, recurring operational costs at a host school.
  • 1 FTE for director.
  • X mid-range leadership stipends for X highly qualified teachers serving as virtual mentors.
  • SmartPhones & subscriptions for virtual mentors.
  • Per pupil costs allocated to the school for ordering student supplies as needed by students’ projects.

 
If these resources are not available, the teacher will pursue teacher volunteers and/or federal and private funding to open the school pending approval from the division and board.
 
Additional Revenue

Students will have regular opportunities and encouragement to raise funds for the school, its projects, and organizations that benefit communities such as a local food bank or Kiva. Student work may be sold or licensed, and instructional materials created by school community members for projects or professional development may be recorded and serialized through services like Supercool School to bring modest revenue to the school’s work and a greater sense of ownership over the school to its students.

Scalability
 
During the summer after its first year, the SDS will train virtual mentors in core content areas to establish their own one-room democratic schools the following year. Each teacher in the network will serve the other democratic schools as a content-area virtual mentor, as well, thus brining each core teacher participant’s student-load to approximately 90 kids. At this point, teachers might establish a weekly rotation to substitute for one another in order to confer with virtually mentored students at other school sites.
 
During the school’s second summer and third year the first cohort of teachers will train another network of teachers to open one-room democratic schools for the fourth year of the network. Thus, by the network’s fourth year, depending on the distribution of participating teachers, each middle school in a division or feeder pattern could have its own democratic classroom. 
 
As local and state revenues recover and opportunities for charter funding increase, the model could be scaled more quickly into a larger school with a core faculty and perhaps 100 students housed in space aligned to the needs of project-based democratic education.

Posted 15 May 2010 † Chad § Green paper ‡ Comments (17) ° Tagged: , ,