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Why Teacher Evaluations Often Go Awry

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, Connected Educator, Education, Elementary, Leadership, Mentoring, Observation, Parents, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Standardized test, Student teaching, Teacher, Teacher assessment, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on November 13, 2015| 4 Comments »

We often hear that the most influential element in a student’s life is the teacher. As an educator this can be both an honor and a daunting responsibility. It elevates the status of a position, often viewed by some as public service, to that of a valued mentor. This would all be well and good if education could truly be defined as it was for centuries in the past. Students were empty vessels to be filled with the knowledge of their teachers. If this were in any way true today, and a teacher was able to pour all of the knowledge contained in his or her head into the empty vessels seated in rows before him or her, the teacher would still not be imparting enough information for an adequate education in today’s world. Our world, as well as information itself, changes and evolves at too fast a pace. Teaching and learning are evolving and many of the old concepts no longer apply.

Unfortunately however, many politicians and some educators buy into this traditional model of what an educator should be, and base teacher evaluations on it. In many states a teacher’s evaluation will be predominantly based on how well his or her students perform on a standardized test. That test performance has de facto become the goal of education.

What makes all of this so complicated is that kids are not widgets. They are complicated. It may be true that a teacher may at times be the most influential factor in the classroom for some kids, but not for all kids, and not every time. Kids do not leave everything at the door of the classroom so they can have their vessels filled. All of their problems travel with them. The difference between kid problems and adult problems is that, hopefully, adults have learned coping mechanisms, but kids have not.

Teachers do not just address that part of a kid that is in school to learn. The whole child with all of his or her problems must be addressed. Learning, no matter who is the teacher takes a back seat to safety, hunger, health, and emotional stability. When it comes to kids we need to first address Maslow’s Hierarchy before we can get to Bloom’s Taxonomy. This is never a consideration in a teacher’s evaluation.

Kids today are entering schools after traveling through neighborhoods that might be considered war zones in some countries. Kids are coming from homes where education is not a priority at all. English in many homes is a second language at best. Kids are coming to school not from homes, but cars or shelters. Beyond the complications of urban poverty, we have large regions of the country experiencing rural poverty with different problems for kids, but the same results. Their problems and needs take precedence over learning in school.

How can we possibly assess and evaluate a teacher’s performance without assessing and evaluating each of his or her students? The tests that students are forced to take may be standardized, but the students themselves are not. Each student is different with problems that affect their ability to learn each and every day with varying intensity. That is what complicates learning and teaching. How can there be simple solutions with so many complicated variables?

To complicate things further for teachers, they must also deal with the red tape of shortsighted policies. Policies often put in place to address issues that have little to do with educating a child. Teaching involves dealing with the whole child and all of the complications that come with it; yet, we are told that a standardized test for all is the answer. It is the golden measure. It will tell us how much each student has learned and how effective each teacher was in teaching without regard for any other factors beyond the grade on the test.

With standardized testing and all of the curriculum materials and extras that go along with that making a BILLION dollars a year for a few companies, I fear it will be with us longer, but we have already lived with it for longer than we should have. We cannot however allow politicians to use these tests to decimate the teaching profession and public education beyond repair. Yes, we need to evaluate a teacher’s performance, but it must be done fairly and in consideration of what the job really requires. It can’t be done in a way that simply ignores what it is that teachers are being required to do every day they report to work. Teaching and learning have nothing to do with empty vessels. Politics and politicians however might better fit that description. Maybe before we can better educate our kids, we need to first better educate our politicians.

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Pornography and Relevance in Education

Posted in #CEM, Blog, Connected Educator, Education, Internet, Leadership, Literacy, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Truth, unconference on October 18, 2015| 1 Comment »

When asked to define what Pornography in the public domain was, United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that”.

The point was that the term was too subjective with too many variables to specifically define it, but its existence should be obvious to the average thinking person. Of course there will always be those whose views are more conservative or more liberal on any interpretation, but the general consensus usually prevails.

I have written as many authors and bloggers have about what is relevant in education, yet the term “relevance” is too subjective with too many variables to specifically define it, but its existence should be obvious to the average thinking person. Of course there will always be those whose views are more conservative or more liberal on any interpretation, but the general consensus usually prevails. I know it when I see it.

As things change the relevant person keeps up with that change as it affects the world in which we all live. At one time change was slow so relevance was easy. Slow change allowed slow acceptance. Change requires people to stop believing in what was a truth and accept something else in face of change. That is not easy, but given time, people eventually come around to accepting change and being relevant, at least until the next big change comes along. With each big change the process repeats. Relevance is not a passive exercise. It requires steps and commitments for it to happen.

The 19^th Century in education was fairly consistent because change was slow in happening. Textbooks could be used for years with little change in content. Education controlled the information used to educate people, so everyone followed the system’s rules to gain access to an education. Relevance was not an issue since the system itself could determine what was relevant.

The 20^th Century started the same way, but about halfway through it more advanced technologies began to affect the rate at which change happened. Relevance began to outpace the system. The space race blew up the pace of change. People needed to keep up with the changes in information and content in order to remain relevant. Education needed to make more and more adjustments to keep up with this rapid pace of change. Television, videotape, audio recording, offset printing all began to influence changes. Personal computers and the establishment of the Internet came in the latter half of the century spurring on faster-paced change that was to never slow down. The institutions of learning no longer controlled access to information, and that alone began to question the relevance of these institutions, as well as the teachers within the system.

After we survived Y2K information became more and more digital. Industries that could not maintain relevance disappeared. The world became digital with almost unlimited access to information and content. People no longer needed permission to publish content. Curation and creation of content is different from the 20^th Century. Access to information, which is content, is the staple for learning and it can now be done without permission from learning institutions.

Educators need to realize that these changes have taken place in many cases in spite of them and their efforts. There will be no slowing down for people to catch up. In a world that is so affected by technological change educators need to be digitally literate in order to maintain relevance in this world. Flexibility and adaptability become important skills for the modern teacher. This is the world that kids are growing up in. Change is inevitable and the teacher is no longer the sole keeper of information. Kids can access information at any time and anywhere. Permission to do so is a personal password away. As educators, what and how we learned may not be what and how we should teach.

In order to maintain relevance, one needs to be aware of what is going on in the world around him or her. Collaboration with other educators can be a key component to succeeding at maintaining relevance. Joining collaborative education communities can inform and support any educator willing to share openly with others. These connected colleagues can lead and participate in education discussions that will never take place in staff rooms, or department or faculty meetings.

Pedagogy and methodology to meet 21^st Century needs are regularly discussed. Ideas are proposed, discussed, vetted, modified and improved through many of these connections. Blog posts have all but replaced the journals and newsletters of the 20^th Century. Teachers may personally and directly discuss, and collaborate with the thought leaders, authors and policy-makers in education to affect change.

We have come a long way from the 1800’s and looking back we can see the flaws in the teaching methodology of that time. We can also agree on how that would not be relevant for today’s learner. We would also agree that the same would hold true for the first have of the 20^th Century. Where people start getting off the train is when we hit the latter half of the 20^th Century. We are all products of that latter 20^th Century mindset. If we are not careful, our students and we will be victims of that mindset, because it is no longer relevant for our learners. We need to make those uncomfortable steps forward, so we will not be left behind. In this fast-paced-rate-of-change era in which we live, even those who are just standing still are ultimately falling behind. An irrelevant educator may not be obvious to everyone, but he or she only needs to be obvious to his or her students to be ineffective. If we are to better educate our kids, we must first better educate their educators.

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Whom Should I Follow on Twitter?

Posted in Administrator, Blog, Connected Educator, EdChat, Education, Leadership, Mentoring, online learning, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Twitter on September 30, 2015| 19 Comments »

The title of this post immediately kills any chance of a large-numbered readership when it posts on ASCDEdge. For some reason any post with Twitter in the title does not do well with a general population of educators. Social media as a source of professional development has yet to catch on in large numbers among educators. There is however a growing number of educators using Twitter who look for strategies to better serve them in social media for collaborative learning. Whom should I follow on Twitter and how do I find them are key questions that need to be addressed.

First, we must understand that the worst advocates for collaborating with Twitter are more often educators who are collaborating through Twitter. They tend to overwhelm the non-users or new users with elaborate stories of the astonishing wonders of Twitter, as well as all of their astounding Twitter connections. They create an image in a newcomer’s mind that intimidates and scares them from engaging. Additionally, advocates often use jargon and acronyms of experienced Twitter users that do not communicate well with the novice while further mystifying the process. I will attempt to keep it simple.

The Follow Concept

To understand how Twitter works one needs to understand that the only information one gets is from the people who one follows. That is why when we first signed up on Twitter, there were no tweets in our timeline. We were not yet following anyone. The first reaction of an educator is to ask where are all these sources people are talking about?

Of course the first thing a newbie starts to do is follow the famous people, mostly entertainers and athletes. The timeline then begins to show their Tweets, mostly Public Relations, or fan related tweets. But where are the education Tweets that will get me collaborating, you might now ask. They don’t exist if you are not following educators, even more precisely, if you are not following the right educators. Following ten actors, ten singers, two politicians, and the art teacher down the hall will not generate many education sources, unless the Art teacher down the hall is also an adjunct education professor.

The Timeline

The key to getting many helpful education tweets containing sources that a teacher may use in the classroom is to follow many, many classroom teachers. Of course to pinpoint your specific education interests you will need to pinpoint those whom you follow as well. A third grade teacher may want to follow many other third grade teachers. A math teacher would concentrate on following other math teachers. As you build your Personal Learning Network (PLN) of collegial sources, you will find people outside your specific realm of interest that will also add value to your learning. As all of these “follows” Tweet their information out, your timeline begins to be populated with tweets giving education information and sources. Of course if you are also following your fantasy football team, you will have a great many football tweets as well. You may want to consider creating a separate account for your athletic gaming interests.

The Profile

All Twitter accounts have profiles. You should fill yours out so that people know you are an educator, as well as specifics that are unique to you in education. This is how many people judge whether or not to follow you, basing that decision on your profile. You may do the same thing. Go to a person’s profile to make sure they are an educator that would add value to your PLN. Of course you may unfollow anyone at anytime if they do not prove to be of value to you personally. They are not notified that you unfollowed them.

I often follow educators who engage me on Twitter but that is not a rule; it’s a personal choice. There are well-known Tweeting educators who follow less than 20 people. I follow over 3,000. NO, I do not read every tweet. It is a personal choice for my Personal Learning Network. You decide what you need.

Chats

There are hundreds of education chats taking place every day on Twitter. It is very easy to access and participate in these chats. It is a great place to identify educators that will enhance you PLN. Educators involved in these chats engage in education discussions that often expose their individual education philosophy and education experience. Follow those people from the chat that you believe may offer you value to your network.

Blogs

Blogs are a great place to find people to follow. The blogger lays it all out for everyone to see. You can quickly identify where any blogger stands on education. Most bloggers make it easy for you to follow on their site. Look for a “Follow Me” icon and click on it. Many bloggers are authors as well and they often attract other authors who guest post. Authors post their Twitter handle in their bios for people to follow.

Follow Lists

If you access a person’s profile, you can go down a little further and access their ‘Lists”. Many Tweeters create lists that they develop for groups of educators. They will use these lists to follow group members on a separate column on TweetDeck or Hootsuite. You may follow these educators as well by clicking the follow button next to each person on that list. It is not stealing. Additionally, you can follow anyone that person is following as well just by accessing his or her follow list.

A great way I have found is to start a newcomer out with a list of over a hundred educators to follow. These are people who I have followed for years. The timeline of that newcomer now immediately fills up with information and education sources. The entire collaborative element rapidly becomes crystal clear. This is my list: https://twitter.com/tomwhitby/lists/my-twitter-stalwarts/members

#Follow Friday or #FF

Friday for educators is known as Follow Friday. If no one explains what it is to you, you may go months seeing the #FF hashtag and never understanding what it represents. I didn’t get it for months. Friday is the day that Tweeters make recommendations of great people to follow. A tweet will go out with a twitter handle and why you should follow this person and then at the end the #FF hashtag. A shortcut method, less personal or informative would be to list a number of Twitter handles and the #FF hashtag. I personally like to give reasons to follow folks.

Conclusion

There it is, a strategy for following all laid out in simple terms. A big problem with collaborative learning through social media however is that it is not a passive activity. There is no way of getting around the work one needs to do in order to get positive results. Having a plan or a strategy does make things easier. Focusing on following educators, who themselves are focused, makes for best results. Don’t just follow those whom you agree with, but follow those who challenge you as well. The most important thing to remember in Twitter: Big numbers of followers may impress some people, but whom you follow is far more important than who follows you.

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The Age-Old Faculty Meeting Facelift

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Education, Leadership, Literacy, online learning, PD, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on September 21, 2015| 5 Comments »

Over the many years that #Edchat has been engaging educators, one topic that always generates a huge amount of interest, based on comments, is the faculty meeting. Teachers are required to attend the faculty meetings that administrators are required to hold and very few are happy with the results. The only upside is that with each meeting a check may be placed in the box for attending.

Technology may be a way to update the tired model of the faculty meeting. Email for the faculty may be a great way to distribute the mundane stuff that takes up so much time at these meetings. Of course a really progressive administrator might have a weekly Blog that could address a great many topics that bog down the faculty meetings. Once the day-to-day school housekeeping topics are removed from the meeting there will be more time for more substantive topics that affect learning in education. Using a Google Document to circulate amongst the faculty for suggested topics of discussion for the upcoming meetings might be a great direction in order to address real faculty needs and concerns.

Once topics are decided upon a flipped meeting should serve the faculty well. Material like blog posts or videos could be assembled and distributed using tools for collaboration prior to the meeting. This will prepare the faculty for what will happen rather than dropping it on them in the meeting. Assessment tools could be used for formative assessment during the meeting to gauge understanding of the topic by the faculty. Any teams or committees formed from this meeting can be connected through collaborative tools and shared documents to create a professional Learning community. Administrators in those groups will immediately be aware of any problems that might arise as the groups strive to complete their goals. There will be no need to wait for another faculty meeting to get results

Technology offers many tools to change the face of the faculty meeting. It can make it a means of change for the school culture. It can permit and support teachers with bold and innovative ideas to lead their colleagues into change, or just expand and improve what change is already occurring.

Time in education is a precious commodity to teachers. To waste a monthly get-together of the entire staff is an outrage when there are so many real needs that should be addressed or things to learn. Just because we have always run faculty meetings a certain way, that is not a justification for continuing what is so obviously a bad, or at least an unproductive practice. Administrators need to stop observing and commenting on how technology is being used by others in their school and begin employing it themselves to improve their schools. In so doing they would be modeling for all the thoughtful, meaningful, and responsible way to use technology in education without fear.

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Twitter Chats for Learning, Easy vs. Hard

Posted in Connected Educator, EdChat, Education, Internet, Leadership, Mentoring, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Twitter on September 16, 2015| 3 Comments »

One Education Twitter chat that precedes all others is #Edchat. It was founded July 30, 2009 and has run continuously ever since. For those who are not Twitter chat savvy, a Twitter chat originally was a discussion that uses a specific hashtag to conduct a real-time chat on a specific subject. Of course education chats are education-specific. Typically, they run about an hour in length and are running on set periodic schedules.

Here is a site that updates chat schedules:

https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-calendar

My original intent in creating #Edchat was to involve people in an in-depth, organic conversation on a single given topic. It was not easy to run and it might have been even more difficult to participate. We had never done a chat before. It is my opinion that participation requires involvement and not just observation. Those involved in the chat are creators, while those just lurking and observing are merely consumers.

Participation in a chat is not always easy. It requires an understanding of the chat in order to affect a working strategy to participate. It is fairly impossible to follow and interact with every participant. My strategy is to engage a small group of participants by tweeting my own opinions and questions on the prevailing topic. People who respond are drawn into my circle of influence. On other occasions I work off of questions and opinions of others to invite myself into their circles.

I have been asked on several occasions to guest host a chat. I am usually invited to chat about collaborative learning, or connected PD. On more than one occasion the owners of the chats presented me with a number of questions they wanted to post over the course of the chat. They wanted them numbered: Q-1, Q-2, and Q-3 etc.… They wanted the participants to answer the numbered questions with numbered answers: A-1, A-2, A-3 etc.… I would not participate in those chats. I understand that it made things easier for some but that was painting by the numbers as far as I was concerned. What was the participants’ investment in that type of chat? They needed only to follow the numbered Q’s and answer with numbered A’s. Where was the thought? Where was the pushback? Where was the following of a progression of thought? Most importantly where was the learning? These chats had evolved into following a recipe. Q-1, A-1 move on to Q-2 and repeat.

Chats are difficult for a reason. People do not know what they will face as they enter the chat beyond the Topic. The discussion is determined by the participants. Where the chat goes should be totally directed by where the participants want to take it. Moderators are there to help and participate, but they should be taking their direction from the chat, not trying to direct it with pre-determined questions. This makes it more difficult to run, but it emphasizes a trust in the audience/participants to come through with concerns, solutions, or other more in-depth questions. We are adults and deserve the respect from chat owners to conduct ourselves as learners eager to find answers to questions within specified topics that we need to know. We need organic discussions and not scripted ones.

I understand why some chats have gone to the multiple question format, answering up to 10 questions during a 1-hour chat, but we have to ask what is being sacrificed in the name of simplicity? We have educators supporting rigor in education while they are trying to simplify their own learning. Although my personal preference is for the unscripted chat, there is no right way or wrong way of doing this. For some the only way they might be involved in any chat might be through the scripted chat. For many others the organic conversation that springs from the unscripted chat is the way they learn best. We are fortunate that any chats are now available to us as connected educators using social media for continuing professional development. Chats give transparency to education. We talk about our individual experiences on topics common to all. Chats are also a sounding board. Even more, they are a treasure trove for collegial sources, people who can help each other professionally. Participate in chats for all these reasons and to maintain relevance in a rapidly changing world.

#Edchat takes place every Tuesday at Noon and 7 PM Eastern Time zone. There are different Topics for each chat. Archives are found at http://edchat.pbworks.com/w/page/219908/FrontPage.

#Edchat Radio Show on The BAM Radio Network is a weekly analysis of the week’s chat with myself and Nancy Blair hosting with a different guest each week http://www.bamradionetwork.com/edchat-radio/.

#Edchat Moderators include: @tomwhitby, @blairteach, @ShiftParadigm, @wmchamberlain, @lookforsun, @web20classroom and archivist, @jswiatek

If we are to better educate our kids, we need to first better educate their educators.

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How Do We Stop Illiterate Educators?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Common Core, Curriculum, Education, Elementary, Leadership, Literacy, PD, Pre-Service teachers, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Student teaching, Teacher, Teacher assessment, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on September 1, 2015| 19 Comments »

We are now better than fifteen years into the 21^st Century and educators are still discussing what role technology plays in education. The fact of the matter is no matter what educators, who are mostly products of a 20^th Century education, think, our students today will need to be digitally literate in their world in order to survive and thrive. Digital Literacy is a 21^st Century skill, but therein lies the rub. Most of our educators have been educated with a twentieth Century mindset using 20^th Century methodology and pedagogy at best. I dare say there might be some 19^th Century holdovers as well.

Digital literacy is recognized by the developers of common core to be important enough to be included as a component of the curriculum. This will however vary and be dependent on what each individual teacher knows, or does not know in regard to his or her own digital literacy. In other words teachers without digital literacy in a 21^st Century education setting are illiterate educators for the purpose of this discussion. We can certainly wait for attrition to clean out the system, but that might take years at the expense of our kids. It also does not address a further infiltration of even more from entering the system.

These educators are not bad people. Many may be willing to change and learn to be digitally literate if it is prioritized and supported by administrators. The problem there is that digitally illiterate administrators fail to recognize the need, or understand how to support the new skills required using a new 21^st Century mindset. That is not to say all administrators fall into this category, but certainly too many for any needed change to happen in a timely fashion do.

There certainly is enough blame to go around for what places the education system in this predicament and much of that lies in education programs from our institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, too often student tech skills and digital literacy are assumed and not formally taught in schools of higher education. If students are getting by with email and desktop publishing it is assumed that they are “digital natives”, a term that has cut short education for digital skills in America.

The biggest problem we have with any digital education is the rapidity at which things change.This will only get worse as technology evolves. People learn something; they buy into it; they get comfortable with it; and then it evolves to something else. That comfort level is hard to shake, so change is slow, if it takes place at all. The system also generally fails to recognize the need to prioritize and support change in a way to keep all staff relevant. It is also failing to prioritize digital literacy for incoming teachers.

If we were to prioritize Digital Literacy as a job requirement it might speed up needed changes. Once colleges realized that placing their students in teaching positions required a knowledge of digital literacy they would need to revamp their curricula accordingly. An influx of digitally educated teachers would go a long way in changing the culture of elementary and secondary schools in regard to their acceptance and priorities concerning new tools for learning and the integration of technology and education.

We have always required new teachers to have specific skills in order to secure a job teaching. We also required that they demonstrate those skills before a job could be offered. I can’t think of one hiring committee, of the hundreds I participated in, that did not require a writing sample. How many teaching candidates are offered jobs without someone seeing them teach a class with a sample lesson? It would not be a stretch to require candidates to exhibit their technology skills for consideration.

Prioritizing digital skills will also signal a need for existing staff to get comfortable with change rather than retaining the status quo. It will shake up comfort zones to enable forward movement. It will also force administrators to get some game of their own. They will need digital awareness in order to objectively observe teachers using technology for learning.

Digitally illiterate educators will soon be irrelevant educators and that hurts all educators. As a community we need to support change and digital literacy or we may become as relevant as a typewriter, or film photography. If we are to better educate our kids, we must first better educate their educators.

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Poor teachers: Who is to blame?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Edcamp, EdChat, Education, Leadership, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, unconference on August 13, 2015| 13 Comments »

I posed an #Edchat Topic recently based on a number of studies I have been reading about that are claiming millions of dollars are being spent, or wasted, on professional development, while very few teachers are benefitting from it. Again the age-old story of doing things the same old way but expecting different results defeats us as a profession. The method of doing professional development for educators has largely not changed over the decades. It may be time to re-examine a few things.

Pedagogy vs. Andragogy

I have addressed this in several earlier posts, but it needs to be re-stated until people finally begin to understand that there are differences in how adults effectively learn, andragogy, compared to the motivations in learning by children, which is pedagogy. Pedagogy is what most educators are familiar with because it was taught to them to enable them to teach kids. It is how kids learn best. The natural thing for an educator to do when he or she is teaching a professional development course however is to go with what he or she knows. The result is that professional development is taught to adults as if they were children learners. How effective is that result going to be?

Collaboration vs. Lecture

Key factors in adult learning, or the intrinsic motivations for adults to learn are ownership of the learning to meet personal needs and being able to use tomorrow what’s learned today. As a whole adults are better with collaborative learning since it gives them control to direct the learning to what they need to know. It also exposes them to things they may not be aware of through the experiences of others. Conversation is often the best way for them to learn. As an adult, think about your own experiences with how you have most recently learned things successfully. Do not use your childhood experiences of learning.

Conferences vs. Unconferences

Most professional development today is often based on Power Point Presentations. These are nothing more than elaborate lectures. It is a lecture enhanced with visual aids, bells and whistles. If done properly, and not a victim of a death by power point delivery (having every word on every slide read to the audience by the presenter) these presentations are sometimes interesting. The question is, how much was retained by the audience? How many will take action on that lecture the next day in class with their students?

These presentation sessions are the mainstay of most education conferences that are counted on for professional development in the United States. All of these sessions are scheduled in elaborate form so that this menu of sessions can be presented to the attendees in a printed form. The only choice for events are those on the menu which for the most part were arranged through RFP’s almost a year prior to the conference. This holds true in local, state, regional and national conferences of most education organizations.

The Unconference or the Edcamp Model is completely different. It does not rely on Power Point Presentation sessions. It relies on conversational, collaborative sessions led by those who are either familiar with a topic, or by those who are interested in learning about the topic. The attendees decide upon the entire Edcamp schedule of sessions on the morning of the conference. It is designed to meet the needs of their interests. They have control of their own learning, which is a key factor of andragogy.

One way for everyone vs. Individualized instruction

Gathering up all of the staff and forcing them all into sessions in order to check off a box stating that PD was delivered is no way to professionally develop a staff with knowledge, tools, or a mindset that is relevant to their needs. We need to take some time to determine a few things. What it is that the school must provide to reach its goal? What it is that the teachers and administrators have that will help get to that goal? What is the gap that each teacher or administrator must fill between what they know and practice and what they need to achieve the school’s goals? It will obviously be a range of things that will need to be individualized. There may be some common threads that may be presented to groups with similar needs, but a baseline for every individual needs to be established. Technology is often the area of most needed concern. It is the area that continually evolves and requires frequent visitations in order for users in this case teachers to maintain their relevance. Assessments are not done once and finished. They need to be done periodically to accommodate the changes that occur.

Here is a needs assessment form that was used in some North Carolina schools as an example:

School Technology Needs Assessment

Conclusion

Professional Development over the last decades has not worked in education. If it were working we would not be spending all of the time and money on trying to reform the system. As a profession we deal in information and content. We are both consumers and creators. We also impart those methods of consuming and creating to kids. Everything that we rely on to consume and create however is changing at a rate never before experienced. This is all a result of living in a technology-driven society.Technology will continue to evolve and change and this will be a constant. Educators will need to be, to use a tech term, upgraded from time to time. Our problem right now is that we have not yet done it properly, so teachers and administrators are all over the map with experience. We need to account for where each is and get each to where they should be and update accordingly from there.

It is a waste and morally irresponsible to throw money at professional development without considering how it should be done. If it is not working and we know that from our assessment, then we need to change what we are doing. We are educators and we should know how to do this. One poor teacher makes all teachers look bad. Many poor teachers make things far worse. Perhaps the reality is that we have fewer poor teachers, but a number who simply need upgrading. To better educate our kids, we first need to better educate their educators.

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Choice Stifles Learning for Educators

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, conference, Connected Educator, Education, Leadership, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on July 25, 2015| 16 Comments »

What is it about a mandated, contractually obligated, professional development conference that inspires some teachers and completely turns off many others? Why do some teachers glow with excitement at conferences and many others complain as they go through the motions? Is it the conference itself, or the attitude of the educators attending, or a combination of both?

When it comes to professional development for educators, conferences are believed to offer a great deal of choice with usually a seemingly wide array of sessions and workshops for educators to choose from to fill their blank schedules for a full day of learning. That is at least what is in the minds of the conference planners as they spend a huge amount of time planning these events. They seem to concentrate on the how and what of education, but fall short of the why.

The why refers to why we do things in the first place? Without at least discussions on that subject of why we should, or should not do certain things in order to examine their relevance, we might find we are doing things just because that’s the way they have always been done. To simplify an example: that is why we teach keyboarding and not typing. There are no longer any typewriters, but keyboards abound. Of course all of that goes out the window with mobile devices where thumbs and pointer fingers rule the keys. The point is that we examined why we were teaching typing, and found that we needed to teach something else to stay relevant, keyboarding.

We need more sessions in conferences that use panels to examine why we do the things that we do and engage educators in that discussion. We need more individuals leading discussions to explore and to challenge various things that we do in education. These panels and discussions should be sprinkled through conferences and repeated at least once, so that schedule conflicts will be less conflicted.

CHOICE in professional development is one of the biggest deterrents to learning. Yes, I said it. I know we are adults, and we are capable of making choices and we will all fight to the death to maintain that right of choice, but in most cases it doesn’t work. People do not know what they do not know; yet they will still make choices without sufficient information to do so. Why would an Administrator choose to attend a session on Blogging when he/she has no interest? That Admin might get a better understanding of why he/she should be blogging, as well as the need for their staff and students to blog, if they attended such a session. Again, this will be a selection that will probably not be made, because that admin did not have enough information to make an informed choice. The same applies to teachers choosing not to attend certain sessions based, not on their knowledge of a subject, but rather their lack of knowledge. I know we can’t know everything, but we need to recognize and admit to that. Maybe we are not capable of free choice 100% of the time in professional development.

Another question is how many people will choose to attend a session that takes them out of their comfort zone? Admittedly, some do make that hard choice, but the majority of folks in attendance will not make that uncomfortable choice unless they are attending the conference with a friend who drags them into such a session. These conferences need to find a way to allow for some choice while limiting it in other ways. Maybe a “Chinese menu style” conference with two choices from Column A and three from Column B for every attendee might be a solution. Column A would be pedagogy, methodology, and education philosophy sessions with panels and discussions, and Column B would be the how to sessions.

My final critique on these conferences is one I have made in the past. Most of the sessions in these conferences are conducted by teachers who are presenting to attendees on how they teach in class with specific tools. This is usually an explanation with a PowerPoint presentation. It is a reasonable assumption that they run these sessions based on their experience as a teacher teaching children. Their methodology becomes flawed because adults do not benefit from pedagogy. Adults learn differently. Andragogy is adult learning. Conversation and collaboration work best for adults, not sit and get while sitting in rows. This is why the sessions that usually get the highest ratings from participants are the sessions that addressed the participants as adults to meet their needs.

None of this is new. I have addressed these issues many times since I began as an education blogger. I think the term “yelling into the wind’ comes to mind whenever I cover this topic. If we prioritize professional development as a continuing need in education, eventually someone might listen to these suggestions. When that happens in whatever decade it does, please remember you heard it here first.

I must add to this that the people who plan these conferences are hard-working, dedicated individuals who do their best to provide the conferences with which they have been entrusted with the best presentations available. They do the best they can based on what they have experienced from other conferences.

Maybe we need apply that “why” question here. Why are we doing this conference? If it is to get educators to learn more about their profession and teach more efficiently and effectively with purpose and understanding, then maybe we need to change things up. Let’s teach teachers in ways that they learn best. If we are still teaching for the typewriter in this age of computers, we have it all wrong. We need to re-examine, re-evaluate, and re-vamp what we do with education conferences and professional development. To better educate our kids, we need to first better educate their educators.

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Is Isolation in Education A Choice?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, conference, Connected Educator, Education, ISTE, Leadership, Literacy, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Skills, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on July 14, 2015| 6 Comments »

Two of the most common excuses for not doing something new in education are time and money. They are probably the same excuses for not making change in any profession. People seem to understand and accept these excuses because they themselves use them whenever needed. These excuses are used so often for so many things, that they have come to mean, “I really don’t care to change the status quo, and it is too much trouble for me to do so”.

Many educators through the centuries have observed and commented that the teaching profession is an isolated profession. Many educators, then and now, feel alone in their efforts to educate kids. They often reflect on their efforts, accomplishments, and failures, without the ability to share with a variety of others within their circles in order to improve. Educators were limited to their buildings for collaboration, which occasionally might widen out to include other educators in their district, but that was often less likely to occur. Of course collaboration on a greater scale would take both time and money, and that has rarely been a priority in most schools.

Collaborative learning has always been with us from the beginning of learning, however, it required that the learners occupied the same space at the same time. In a modern world, where people tend to spread out and separate, the boundaries of collaboration, time and space, began to impede professional collaborative learning for educators. It required effort, time and money to get people together for substantive collaboration. Professional organizations stepped up to fill the collaborative void with annual conferences, but these conferences cost money and took away precious time to attend. Budgets were created to support administrators’ attendance, but teachers were more problematic becoming less of a priority to attend. Conferences, dependent on vendor support, soon recognized the benefit of administrator attendance, since administrators were the movers and shakers of the purse strings of schools. The result of all this supported a proportionally greater number of administrators over teachers’ attendance at collaborative conferences. The collaboration among teachers was limited.

It has often been said that if you fill a room with very smart people, the smartest mind is the room itself. We all benefit through collaboration. We each help define, refine, challenge, and support ideas collectively until we settle on a final idea. We all contribute to that process to some degree.

Collaboration is also a preferred method of learning for adults. We are studying adult learning more and finding a difference between adult learning, Andragogy, and child learning, Pedagogy. Since educators are child experts, many wrongly assume that all individuals learn according to pedagogy. Adults however are motivated differently with different needs. Collaboration and problem solving suit adult learning best. This misconception forcing pedagogy on adult learning has had a profound effect on how we handle PD as discussed in a previous post, The Importance of Andragogy in Education. I found one of the best explanations of adult learning in this article: “Adult Learning Theory and Principles” from The Clinical Educator’s Resource Kit.

The real game-changer for collaborative learning is technology. With the introduction of social media applications, we have the ability to connect with anyone at anytime. The cost is minimal and the time is adjustable. Time and money excuses no longer serve the status quo when it comes to collaboration. What that means in terms of education is that educators are only isolated by choice. As I have said in the past, any educator has the right to choose to live in a cave, but they don’t have the right to drag students in there with them.

Connecting for collegial sourcing is becoming a standard for educators. Educators in greater numbers are connecting to build Personal Learning Networks through technology. What was once a method of the tech-savvy educators is now becoming a staple of the profession. Of course when the objections of resistance are answered, objectors will come up with new objections to stave off their involvement. Many teachers now say, I am doing well enough with my kids, I don’t need to make connections.” Those teachers will need to live with that decision, for they may never get beyond “well enough” with their students. Imagine telling parents that you will teach their kids well enough?

Of course we know the biggest obstacle to change is leaving that place we all love to reside in, the “comfort zone”. Educators do not have that as an option as professionals. As professionals, we deal in content and fact. Technology is changing both at a rate never before experienced. If we do not keep up with these changes we become irrelevant. What can an irrelevant educator accomplish? Most importantly, an educator’s comfort zone must never take precedence over a student’s education.

The latest and greatest excuse is that face-to-face connections are the best. Connecting down the hallway is better than connecting around the world. I do not entirely disagree with that. If the connection with a person down the hall works then use it. My question is why would anyone interested in learning limit his or her collaboration to only his or her own building? As good as any building’s staff may be, why would one not want to expand collaboration and share with the world. Remember that collaboration works two ways. It is not always what you can get. It is also about what you can give. I believe as educators we all have a moral imperative to share.
Technology provides the means to collaborate on a scale never before available. It requires some effort on the part of educators to happen. It requires a mindset that our 20^th Century education has never prepared us for. Connectedness becomes a way of life for an educator, but this does not happen overnight. We need to take it one step at a time, as we need it. We can now take control of our own learning. None of this will happen however, unless that first step is taken. If you don’t know or can’t decide on a first step, talk it over with someone. It’s collaborative learning. By choosing not to engage in order to be connected, educators today make a conscious choice to be isolated. Yes, Isolation is a choice. It is not the choice of a Life Long Learner. If we are to better educate our kids, we need to first better educate their educators.

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The Myth of Innovation in Education

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Common Core, Connected Educator, Education, Leadership, PD, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Standardized test, Teacher, Teacher assessment, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on June 24, 2015| 15 Comments »

When it comes to the use of technology for learning within our education systems there seems to be two different pictures of our current status. As a connected educator interacting online with many other tech-savvy educators, I see an image of a slow, but steady evolvement of technology-driven innovation in education.

As a person who travels the country engaging educators in conversation, face-to-face conversation, wherever, and whenever the opportunity arises, I get a very different picture. I see a status quo supporting a 20^th century model of education with little professional development that is directed by districts to update their teachers. Too often I am getting stories of administrators discouraging change and teachers not willing to evolve beyond where they are. I am not sure how to get an actual picture of what education really looks like today when considering the branding, public relations, and political posturing that is a constant in the system. I do believe we have a distorted view of what education in the 21^st century actually looks like.

Of course anyone reading this post will match it up against his or her personal experience to judge its accuracy, but I am not sure that is the total perspective needed to make that judgment. Few schools will stand up to say they support the status quo in education. They will point to whatever thread of innovation that exists in their school and portray it as the rule rather than the exception.

Of course the political climate in this country does not support innovation in education since standardization and high stakes testing determine status and funding for schools. Teachers needing to rely or survive on their students’ test results are hesitant to go beyond that which is required in order to retain their own livelihood. States attempting or succeeding in doing away with tenure leave innovative teachers dependent on the whim of politicians, vocal parents, or popular sentiment without regard for due process in matters of retaining a teaching position. That is hardly a catalyst for innovative change.

Most new ideas have more enemies than friends. Education needs new ideas and people who can stand up and lead those ideas over rather perilous roads to completion. For this to succeed we need to make sure educators are being exposed to the latest and best ideas for learning through professional development. Once they have the knowledge, teachers need to be supported in collaboration with others to refine, plan, and implement ideas. Once in place, time and support must be given in order to develop, assess, refine, and improve the idea. All of this takes time and time translates to money.

Money for education is rarely seen as anything but a problem. We fund education through taxation and that is a burden and also a rallying cry for politicians. If education were as much a priority as defense is, there would be no burden. Since education funding is political however, it will always be political and subject to the ebb and flow of popular trends, economic downturns, and popular myths. None of this supports innovation.

Innovation is change and most people are not comfortable with change. It requires risk. The bigger the risk, the less likely the change will occur. Couple this with the fact that most people want the best and most up to date education system in the world. We are left with some, if not most, administrators, the folks in charge, painting a rosy picture of innovation and modernization with whatever programs, small portions of programs, or even lessons their schools have to offer, giving the impression that it is system-wide.

Yes, there are some wonderful schools doing wonderful things with progressive education leadership and teachers who are supported with PD and time to do wonderful things. There are also schools that focus on the tests and maintaining what they believe the status quo provides stability and predictability to cope with required standardization and high stakes testing. Control and compliance for teachers, as well as students, are the proven commodities in these environments.

The question is where are we now, and when will we get to where we need to be? I tend to think we are not yet supportive enough of innovation. Support requires action, not just spouting off words. We need brave leadership to stand up to status-quo supporters. No, not everything from the past is bad. We need to determine what has value and what needs to be changed in a computer-driven society that looks very different from what it was in the 20th Century. Change is disruptive and a conservative institution like education does not tolerate disruption very well. We all need to look at education as a needed investment for our kids and for our country. An educated citizenry is our best defense for dealing with things we have not yet imagined. If we are to better educate our kids, we need first to better educate their educators.