Classroots.org

[Editor's note: this one goes out to Shelly Blake-Plock of TeachPaperless and is a kind of meta-testament to the power of a widely distributed PLN to effect classroom reform for authentic engagement.]

The classroom is up and running, and we’ve been through three weeks of shake-out. In the interests of sharing and transparent teaching, I want to take a moment and share the systems we’ve developed together as students and teachers.

Our classroom is uncommonly technology-rich this year due to a combination of design and grant spending deadlines. I recognize how fortunate we are, but would like also to suggest that what follows is one blueprint for a “21st Century” classroom – by which I mean a classroom that values problem-solving, social learning and multiple communications technologies that decentralize the position and role of the teacher.

Campfire by eskimoblood

We work in a technology lab that has been repurposed as a classroom. Because the classroom was a technology lab, it is large. Both the layout of the room and its work-station-furnishing discourage the traditional arrangement of desks in a classroom. Therefore, we have adopted the workstations and have created three distinct learning areas, as well as a smaller alcove for individual conferencing. Our learning areas are each specially purposed. By the door we have our campfire, an area for daily floor meetings during which we share out the story of the day’s class and our goals for it on a SmartBoard. This area also has a bull-pen of five drafting tables for students producing original art for class projects – we’re heavy into original IP and legal use of others’ work. Around the campfire, against the walls, nestled in work-stations, we have our watering holes – social learning stations built around media-production computers. Typically, three students work per station; two use 1:1 laptops to collaborate on the research and resource gathering necessary to produce media on the desktop computer, which the third student “drives.”  In the “back” of the room is our cave, an area for individuals to use when they need to meet a deadline without distraction or to regroup emotionally before working with others.

I think there are two design lessons here. First, new schools should be built with classrooms that provide ample, differentiated space, so teachers explore new ways of orienting themselves and their instruction to students. If you want teachers and students to think outside the box, don’t put them in one. Second, in existing classrooms – especially secondary ones – teachers should design multiple spaces with explicit and consistent purposes to provide spatial and kinesthetic reinforcement to transitions from task to task. Imagine a daily routine that tapped into the strengths of centers, stations, and jig-saw activities. The benefits of building such a culture of purpose and use is worth time taken to establish it.

Apart from a printed work plan designed and followed to build students’ accountability and alleviate their anxiety about what comes next (or when class ends), we compose and submit work on the computers – mostly on-line. The work plan acts as checklist and cheat sheet for students’ FAQ about class activities – what are we doing? What comes next? Can I work with a friend? Can I work on the computer? By providing the work plan to individual students and referring them to it, I hope to help them develop better executive function.  Over time, students learn to organize their work around the plan and take responsibility for checking off completed tasks without prompting from an adult.  In addition to monitoring students’ use of the plans during class, I audit a small sample of the work plans semi-nightly and give private, goal-oriented feedback to students about next steps either in organization (like maintaining an accurate work-plan) or work habits (like making better seating choices).  That feedback, like many of our learning activities and projects, is largely delivered online and then referenced in F2F dicussions during class.

Flat Classroom Skype by superkimbo_in_BKK

While I continue to struggle with finding the right mix of linguistic and non-linguistic differentiation, I think we have made the transition from a paper-based classroom to a nearly paperless one in much less time than I would have anticipated. Sometime in August, after following @teachpaperless for a few weeks on Twitter, I decided to take the plunge and began thinking about which tools fit which purposes in class. Instead of designing a traditional curriculum map shuffling around content, I tried to envision a structure for learning, sharing, and producing new work. I knew in August that if things went well in a division pilot, both Google Apps and Office Live domains would be available for my students by the end of the first marking period. In the meantime, I needed to find existing tools that would protect students’ online IDs without unnecessarily limiting their use of the Internet for learning from others.

Here’s where we are:

• I use Google Docs to generate forms and collect work from students via embeds in a class blog hosted by Blogger.
• The class blog also embeds and links to off-site instructional materials.
• I deliver feedback to students on their work via Edmodo, which we also use to share research links and trade files. For example, a student might make a song on one of our media production machines and then send it to me via Edmodo for me to download to iTunes for assessment.
• We also have a class wiki – hosted by Wikispaces – on which groups of students maintain pages for the work of their documentary production companies and on which I post media production tutorials.
• Different pieces of the system are shared out to coaches who work with students on history, production value, usability, and writing rubrics for their documentary work.
• Student use other applications, like iMovie, Final Cut Express, or Garage Band, as their work warrants.

This week I’ll print out interim reports to send home with students; apart from work plans, those interims will be the first paper products I’ve made for class this year. Going paperless has been easier than I thought it would be, and I feel organized like never before while enjoying access to student work from any web-capable device. I wholeheartedly recommend taking whatever part of the plunge you can in your work. Moving away from paper is a step toward the reinvention of school-work, as is moving away from a traditionally shaped or oriented classroom. Maybe you can sign out a lab for a week or grab a laptop cart every Friday for a month. Maybe a local school technology consortium can loan out computers to one of your class projects. Maybe enough of your students have cell phones to snap pictures on a school field trip so that they can return to class and serve others by stitching together a virtual trip for those less fortunate or further away.  Or maybe your step away from paper can pursue another avenue of authentic engagement apart from classroom technology.  Whichever step you take, as with every step into the future, you have to decide to take it.

My students have adapted to the point where they no longer say the computer doesn’t work when a web page fails to load. Instead they ask an adult to proof-read the student-typed address for them. While this is not the zenith of authentic engagement we’re building towards, requests like that reflect a profound shift in students’ attitudes toward technology. Technology is no longer to be feared or blamed, it’s something to be used for learning and the assessment of students’ work.

I’m eager to see what student produce from their learning this year and hopeful that our community and relationships will develop enough so that each student finishes with an impassioned and amazing project, online or off.

If you’re interested in learning more, please begin with the class blog.  Also feel free to write chad@classroots.org.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about authentic audiences for my students’ work. Most often, a teacher is the immediate audience, though not always an authentic one. Parents, too, are an traditional audience for student work, but their authenticity waxes and wanes with their children’s relationships with them. Because of communications technology and social media, friends – and strangers, too – are becoming a more authentic audience for our students’ work inside and outside school as they text, “friend” one another, and post media. Taking advantage of students’ media savvy and enjoyment of social learning has therefore become one way to foster authentic engagement with content in the classroom.

B&S Fans by acb

But what about teachers? Who is our authentic audience, and does our behavior reflect its primacy in our professional lives? For whom do we perform teaching? Recent #edchat about standardized testing and the nation’s discourse about President Obama’s speech to students have turned on the house lights. From the stage we can look out and see our students, but also their parents and our leaders, law-makers, and tax-payers.

Our act requires many types of improvisation. When we see a great idea, we have to adapt it to our circumstances. When we see a students’ needs, we have to differentiate instruction to meet them. When we hear our parent’s and policy-makers’ and public’s shouts, we have to decide what we stand for and how we stand for it.

In this light, in so many ways, neither Obama’s speech (see: Reagan) nor the talk about it are new. Our students, parents, and leaders call for us to act in conflicting ways all the time. The sound and fury of public discourse is really a repeated call to us in our moments of history to decide for ourselves what we value in our work and to act in accordance with our decisions instead of in compromise away from them. At the very least, our moment asks us to push teaching and learning past the tests and to make them personally meaningful for our students. No generation, president, or political party has gotten this right. We won’t get it right unless we face up to our own responsibility to reform classroom practice.

A dear principal of mine began every year encouraging us to work smarter because he believed we couldn’t work any harder. I hear him every time I read a blog post celebrating a teacher’s sense of accomplishment at getting all the students lined up and silent in the hall.

Rules will not eliminate the achievement gap. Orderly lines of complacent children will not improve graduation rates. Standardized tests will not stand the test of time. Our best measure of success will be our students’ lives, not their scores, and the lives of their children. If we don’t find ways to make learning matter to students now, the next generation will have the same views of school and the same mistrust of teachers.

Democratic nominee Barack Obama by Wa-J

Whether we watch Obama’s speech during school on Tuesday or not, our real task is to make what we do as authentically engaging to students as this debate has been to us. We need to switch places with the students and let them perform work inspired by their talents and passions. We need to broaden students’ sense of audience and introduce them to mentors and coaches who have better ideas than we do about how schoolwork connects to the professional lives students want to lead. We need to teach in a way that seems authentic to students who are no longer the audience, but the performers.

The purpose of school shouldn’t be to teach kids how to live inside or outside the lines of a police state. If a school’s grounds and halls need to be patrolled for safety’s sake, then by all means patrol them, but in any school classrooms should be oases. Learning should be a refuge. It should take work to learn, but the work should be joyous and different from the fear-coerced compromises too many students have to make to survive physically, mentally, and emotionally. Teachers: we can’t meet every kid’s every need, but I remain convinced we can do more individually to change the way we teach to address students’ needs for safety, belonging, liberty power, and, yes, fun in the classroom. If we believe in the American Dream, if we believe in rugged individualism, and if we believe in a future where government is smaller because it is truthfully needed less, then it’s time to stop looking for students and parents and tax-payers and policy-makers to change the world. It’s time to change our classrooms, aquí mero, and to prove right the trust we want to teach and learn joyfully with our students in the brief time we have with them. Do right by today’s students, and their parents and children will thank you for it. Decide, teach authentically, and don’t be afraid.

[Editor's note: Guest blogger Damani Harrison, gifted musician and mentor, joins Classroots.org for a series of posts sharing his take on authentic engagement in teaching and learning.  Damani works for the Music Resource Center, "a state-of-the-art facility where teens can learn the latest technology in the music industry and study and participate in every phase of music production," in Charlottesville, Virginia.]

Coffee Talk

Caffe Latte by Accidental Hedonist

My name is Damani Harrison. I am the outreach coordinator, youth mentor, and studio educator for The Music Resource Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The Music Resource Center is a non-profit after school youth risk prevention and music education program for 7th-12th graders. Through a series of posts at Classroots.org, I would like to present what I have learned as a teacher and as a student of life. I am writing this blog for three reasons: 1) Chad Sansing asked me to. 2) I hope to inspire discussion and dialogue. 3) I want to illustrate the process of non-traditional learning which has shaped my teaching for a new generation.

My journey into teaching began when I was 21. At the time I was working at a coffee shop. A young highschooled girl who frequented my store had taken a liking to me. Her affinity was completely innocent. She would come into the shop and chat with me while I made lattes. We talked about many things – music, philosophy, books, current events. She seemed stimulated by our conversations, conversations she wasn’t having at home or with her peers.

Her father also came in the coffee shop from time to time. He was a stern, physically imposing fellow with a low voice and intimitdating look in his eye. To my surprise, one day while waiting for me to make him an espresso, he asked me to tutor his daughter because she was failing school. He offered to pay me. He spoke directly and succinctly saying something to the effect of: “My daughter seems to like you and respect you. She might listen to you and do better in school. Will you tutor her twice a week?” I immediately accepted. I was afraid to say no to this guy. He didn’t seem like the type of guy people say no to. I thought he might shoot me if I did.

I tutored his daughter for a year. I would help her with geometry, government, and English, and she would spend free moments in between our lessons trying to convince me to become a vegetarian. We finally came to an agreement. If she passed highschool with a B average I would stop eating meat for a year. She passed her senior year with an A average. I stopped eating meat for four years. What I learned being a vegetarian for that promised year completely altered the way I view my diet to this day. She changed my life. In my first real experience being a bonafide teacher I ended up being the student. This was the first of many lessons I would take with me throughout my teaching years.

We, as teachers, are also students. We are students of what we teach and who we teach. The more we learn about whatever subject we teach the better we are equiped to teach it. In the same fashion, the more we learn about and from our students, the more we can serve them better as educators. In the case of the young lady from the coffee shop, it was just as important for her to share a piece of what she was learning in life with me as it was she receive any information I had to offer her. We were not equals – I was the teacher, she was the student – but, there existed a mutual respect between us. By respecting her opinions and ideas, I opened the door for her to be receptive to what I had to offer.

I found in the 11 years following my encounter with that young lady a pattern emerged. Young people want to feel respected. They want to feel they have something to offer. They want to know you, as a teacher, are willing to open up to what they have to say. More importantly, these young people do have something to offer. The world is changing at a more rapid pace than it ever has before. The information and ideas that youth culture are exposed to have created a barrier between our generations even greater than the one that exists between us and our parents. We must learn from our students. It is imperitive for our survival and effectiveness. We must understand how they learn, where they learn it from, what they are learning, and how it is changing the very foundation of the role of the student – and the teacher.

I am no longer a vegetarian. However, I am very aware of, and control, the amount of meat I consume. Because of it I feel healthier, more energized, more even tempered, and holistically more in tune with my body. I thank my student for it. I thank my students for continuing to help me grow. I only hope that as a teacher I can affect their lives as positively as they have continued, and will continue, to affect mine.