Learning is Change

What do we do with those who don’t speak the language?

Whether that is English or the strange version of it that we use in Education that I would term “Eduspeak”, what do we do for those who need direct translation? What do we do about their specific needs, and what can we do when they don’t understand?

One option is that you can push them to the side. You can continue to use your own language, confusing them and not serving their needs. Or, conversely, you can advocate for them and try as much as possible to help them to learn both the content and the language.

Helen Butts, our English Language Acquisition coordinator, does the latter every single day. She advocates for those students whose home language is something other than English (often Spanish) and does so because she believes in the power of matching a student need to the right instruction. She is not ambiguous in supporting these learners. Specifically, she wants there to be materials used in classrooms across Denver Public Schools that are written in Spanish and not as mere support for their English counterparts.

She does not believe that the level of rigor or the level of resources that we give to our Spanish-speaking students should be any less than the ones that we give to our English-speaking students. Her defense of these students is both passionate and extraordinary. Her ability to speak for those who are not in the room makes it much easier to create the kinds of inclusive environments that we all strive for.

As an extension to these environments, though, I believe that we should not only advocate for those who do not speak the same native tongue, but also those who do not speak the same “educational language.” I believe that by only using acronyms we are shutting out a large portion of the population that would support what it is that we do. I believe that by using “Eduspeak,” we are insulating ourselves.

Learning is not something that only happens in schools, and making up language that only works with in a school environment to discuss and promote learning means that it can’t apply or be used by the outside world. The buy-in that we achieve from both parents and from the community can be directly linked to whether or not we are teaching and using their native educational tongue.

We can build capacity by showing that we have value. We can’t show that value many times because of our own self-inflicted language barriers. It leasds us to only reaching those in our community that have the lingo of the Common Core or DLC, ELO, or any of the other semi-meaningless phrases that get thrown around in meetings. We are not being advocates for the community when we make acronyms. We are not being advocates when we are irrelevant outside of the administration building.

It may be more convenient to teach English for those schools with over 90% second-language learners, but if we did it that way, they wouldn’t be second-language learners because they wouldn’t be learning at all. It may be more convenient to use acronyms and our own language to describe what education looks like, but by separating ourselves from the rest of the community we lose our ability to join the larger conversation. Just like Helen Butts in her work with English Language Acquisition, I would like to be an advocate for student and adult learning everywhere that it can exist no matter what language they use at home.

Here is to those who are willing to start without a scope and sequence. Here’s to those who want to figure out how it all works. To those that look at a new way of teaching and want to explore what is possible. To those that aren’t frightened by new words or by changing what it means to be a teacher.

Here’s to those that do not wait for approval, but rather serve as the proof for those who are waiting that risk is justified.

Derrick McNeill is one of those. He is someone who looked at his classroom in a drastically different different light. He saw what personalizing learning for every single student meant even before he could actually accomplish it. He saw what letting students create videos and other learning objects could do for ownership in his classroom before the kids did. He saw just how to transform the science department before knew that it wanted to transform.

It is this foresight that is different in an early adopter. They may not know exactly what the end result will look like, but they can see a vision through the fits and starts of early progress. They are confident they have built a learning process that will produce results, and then they quest after those results without wavering. Early adopters aren’t merely the ones that sit on the bleeding edge of technology, but rather those who can see the transformative power of the technology to do good.

And, good is what I see in the work being done at George Washington High School. Good is what I see in building up a system of support within a single department that allows teachers to take hold of the vision Derrick has set forth and be truly successful. It is important that we recognize that without these groundbreaking teachers and the micro-systems they create there would be no proof points for innovation, and there would be no “scalability.” There would be no sustained innovation, either. I am proud to know that teachers are the ones pushing the boundaries of what is possible and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

So, here’s to the early adopters. And, here’s to those who listen to them and want to see what they see.

One of the questions that I constantly ask myself is, “Where does the learning come from and where does it go?” What I mean by this is that learning experiences have to start from something: a piece of content, a new idea, or from some spark of curiosity within a child or an adult. The point is that it has to come from somewhere. The learning has to go somewhere too. Whether we store it in our brains or record it in a project or assessment, we have to capture that learning in a way that holds it together and allows us to see the demonstration of that learning.

I like to think about this as the input and output of learning or the Learning I/O.

Another person who has been contemplating a version of this idea within DPS is Gayla Power. She has been thinking about the inputs and outputs of learning, and has worked to create a system to allow both to happen in the same space. In creating that space, she has made it everyone’s right and responsibility to take a look at the inputs: course materials, the ideas, and the structures for learning. She has equally made the outputs a focus, creating a space where our learning goes once it has been learned so that we can demonstrate that it happened.

She has been working on the SchoolNet system since its inception. When I saw it through her eyes, I knew that there was so much there. The questions started coming immediately. When a teacher wants to look for course materials, where does she go? When a student wants to find out how their single grade fits into the continuum of their learning, where do they go? These questions are not easy, but they are important. And it is only through asking them together that we will create a system that does more than just display grades and unit plans.

I love the vision of a single place: for the input and the output, for the conversation and the ideas, for the assessment and the demonstration.

We have both the power and the responsibility to make that space a reality. To make the learning space real without sacrificing the adaptive nature of the technology. We have a responsibility to teachers to give them the tools with which to make their decisions more easily and more effectively.

Where is your learning come from and where does it go? Gayla is one of the people with whom I would like to figure out this question. I hope that you join us in answering it too.

We ask kids to share constantly. From the time they are in Kindergarten we have come to expect it. But, there are so few models showing the same good sharing habits amongst adults. More often than not, we are encouraged not to share in the adult world. We are encouraged to take what is “rightfully ours” and try to gather as much power and resources unto ourselves as possible.

I’m not interested in being selfish or proving to anyone that I am the only person who could ever do my job. Rather, I am looking to share. Specifically I am looking to share with Christine DeLeon.

In working with her directly for a strategic planning day, I realized something: she shares well. And, she does so in a really interesting way. Many people share responsibilities. Others shares stakeholder conversations. Others still share experiences. But the majority of those kinds of sharing are like handshakes. Instead, her model of sharing looks more like a feedback loop.

When Christine gives provides you with an idea, she isn’t interested in that being the end of the conversation. Rather, she’s interested in receiving something even better in return and then offering something up again in a cascade of collaboration. She wants to trying new things and see what happens. The loop she is creating is one of inputs and outputs, never destroying energy but only creating it. She wants to use current experiences to build better ones. In that way, everything she becomes a cycle.

Our shared work is a cycle. Our learning is a cycle. Our process for engaging schools is a cycle. Our reflective practice is a cycle.

The feedback loop is why I want to share with Christine. Her ability to intuitively understand what an iterative cycle in conversation, in workload, or in creating the model for the future of education is makes me want to share all the more. It is the selflessness of a virtuous cycle that allows this to work, the trust that comes from knowing that whatever you put out there isn’t going to be “possessed” by someone else, but rather used to make learning better for kids.

A lot of people look down on brainstorming. They may say ideas you generate in the brainstorm don’t pan out once leave or that you need to take classes in order to do it well. Neither are true. While you may not solve the world’s problems in a one hour session with some of your coworkers, there is very real value in being mentally present and creating something new with other passionate people. Brainstorming is the act of enabling the conversations that come next.

One such conversation was started because of a whiteboard sitting in an office on the 7th floor of 900 grant street. Because of a few dry erase markers, I was brought into a conversation about how an assessment might be used as a catalyst.  Because of the simple whiteboard (nothing inherently smart about it), the thoughts written on it created an environment where an assessment could be the spark of innovation.

And it was Amy Keltner’s voice that conveyed that message. She spoke of a vision for using the spaghetti monster that is the PARCC assessment to shift our approach to learning. Her brainstorming and her voice suggests that she is trying to get the right people in the room to think about how something is far-reaching (but unsexy) as the PARCC assessment becomes a force for change.

It is clear, too, that she likes to create things. Through conversations like these, she sees the ability to define the future of education. And, that is not something small. Those who have the capacity for great collaboration are few and far between. People that have the ability to create vision with others in the space of a whiteboard and then articulate it across a table should be studied and emulated.

In the end, we should not be frightened of our brainstorms. They are not dark clouds that descend upon our work and don’t let us get to the important things on our agenda. In fact, the only thing that brainstorms “rain” is ideas. The best ones create torrential downpours. My hope is that I get to rain often with people that don’t look at assessments as a necessary evil, but instead look at them as an opportunity for creation.