Learning is Change

Technology is not for escape and isolation. It is not for creating walls around yourself in a virtual learning cubicle. It is not for individualizing learning so much that you are the only one taking part in your growth. No, technology is for connection and creation. It is for coming together in a single space and sharing what you know, for manipulating things that can’t be manipulated in the real world and opening up possibilities.

I heard all of these things from a seemingly unlikely place yesterday. Katy Myers, the principal of Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School (currently in Year 0), took time from her rigorous planning to speak with me about the future she sees for technology within a Montessori. While some Montessori purists might shun technology in favor of only physical manipulatives, Katy embraces it as an extension of how her teachers differentiate for students. She knows that hands-on urban farming and collaboration with Google Docs are not mutually exclusive. She believes that student ownership for learning is not just a result of having engaged students with their “heads in the game”, but of meeting their exact learning needs in a way that adaptive content proves most useful. Her heart is in making sure that students can display and celebrate their work whether it is created by traditional or digital means. She is working on Hands, Heads, and Hearts.

We are better off as a district because she is.

Sometimes we get caught up in the seemingly incongruent paths that others take to student learning. Sometimes we place our own preconceived notions of what models work well together on innovative new solutions. In doing this, though, we place the same barriers and isolating factors that technology is blamed for doing. But this time, it is our own lack of imagination that is responsible for these walls. And just like Denver Montessori will not let tech become a divider within their school, we should not let the boxes we place on school models in our own heads keep us from seeing the true promise of convergence.

We should let our Hands do the good work, our Heads lead with logic and strategy, and our hearts inspire us to see beyond the Technology or School model. Hands, Heads, and Hearts.

Responses:

One reader of this story was reminded of the 4H pledge, which I immediately understood:

A Portal. A One Stop Shop. A Digital Door.

These are the things we dream of when we are at our most optimistic. We see a student, teacher, or administrator going to a single online location to get data or to make decisions about schedules. We see them grabbing content from a hundred different locations to differentiate or anticipating problems by looking through the red flags of attendance or discipline. We see dashboards so clearly in our heads sometimes that we wonder why they don’t exist. Surely, someone has created the holy grail of systems integration that would allow all of our learning stakeholders to get what they need when they need it. There must be a way to both pull from this single source of truth and push high fidelity information and content back to it as a function of frictionless-sharing.

But reality hits us with a thud. Our multiple data systems don’t talk to one another easily. The static content repositories or massive question banks stagnate from lack of use . Then we see huge user-centric platforms that appear locked to us. What we have isn’t so much a single digital door created just for us, but rather a chaotic “fun house” with doors that stick or mirrors that reflect back distorted views of student learning. We try to get excited about these doors, but each one was created for someone else, not for us.

We long for better doors and we decry their absence. But, we forget that we built the “fun house” together. We forget that each door was made with love, and with the best of intentions for the teachers and learners that use them. Is it any wonder that our hallways bend and pitch sideways when we shifted priorities? Is it a surprise that the mirrors we made twenty years ago have warped over time? When we dream of a better Digital Door, we are dreaming of the expensive remodel, the one that guts everything and starts over.

But, doing that doesn’t let us keep of the institutional memory we have etched into the doorways. It doesn’t let us learn from who we were when we constructed it in the first place. We know just which floorboards creek. We know how the sunlight comes through the windows, keeping us warm as we keep on looking for what we need.

There is, however, a middle ground. What if we made “portals” that connected the rooms in our “fun house” together without the need for doors at all? What if we could keep the idiosyncratic learning spaces and data systems and simply link them together the way that portals do in the Valve video game, providing seamless shortcuts between them? What if, instead of gutting our institutional memory, what if we built the ways for our memories to join together. In the game, entries and exists can be created and used at any point. We can do the same, but only if we change our conception of a portal from doorway to pathway.

Megan Marquez and her team are responsible for developing the future of Portals in DPS. In meeting with her the other day, I heard her vision as one that fully realizes the portal as a pathway. She wants a portal to allow for actions, for shortcuts through to what comes next. Her team is creating the conduit for each student and teacher destination, removing clicks and complexity in the process.

She wants us to be able to leverage the amazing work that has come before. Even if we spoke about our dreams of The One Stop Shop, we were quick to recognize the amazing work of giving parents a single connection to register their children for school. This isn’t a single location to do everything. This is a pathway to get something very specific and powerful done with the least friction possible. In essence, her team has created a “portal” directly to the student information system so that parents can reach right through and do something that was previously impossible.

Every once in a while I like to stop and marvel at the simplicity just such a “portal” rather than trying to dream of building a better Door.

We are prepared for the future by what currently surrounds us.

If what surrounds us is upheaval and chaos, low expectations and mistrust, then our future will be built upon that. But, if what surrounds us is calm within a storm, unwavering support, and high expectations for what is possible, then the future will follow suit. Yesterday, I saw a school surrounding students with only the latter.

Charmaine Keeton, the principal of Hallett Fundamental Academy, said a good part of her work was to teach children how to become students, and that idea gave me pause. It is the concept that children are not students simply by walking through the doors to the school, but only by engaging in scholarly pursuits and behaviors. This simple shift from students being the default position for children, to a status that is earned is a powerful one.

And as I walked around and spoke with Mrs. Keeton, it was clear that these expectations were for all kids. Their learning was paramount in everything I read, and within every support system in place. This process of earning “studenthood” looked like receiving badges to be worn every Friday or encouraging authentic writing to a professional hero. It was clear that this scholarly rite of passage was a struggle for some children, but it did not seem insurmountable. In fact, it seemed as though the path to becoming a student was traveled each day, echoed in the footprints painted on the floors between and inside of each classroom.

Being a student is not simply about showing up, just as teaching is not about simply having a lesson plan. And by encouraging children to “lean in” to their learning, we are also encouraging teachers to do the same. I love the idea that “studenthood” could be an honor earned through your work, as I would like to always be that kind of student. It is is in making the daily transformation as I walk from my car to my office that I can insure I will learn something. I don’t get extra points for showing up, but only for participating and collaborating. I only become a student, an active learning organism, by acting like one.

It is my sincerest hope that you all become students daily, and that we encourage our children to do the same.