Learning is Change

Making the case for going Offline:

These are the two statements that resonate most with me:

“Most of my best ideas do not happen while staring at a screen, small or large, but from doing the opposite: experiencing life around me.”

I find that the big ideas, the ones that really change things happen away from the screen (usually in the shower, actually). But, it is at the screen that I am able to connect disparate pieces and build the thing that needs to be. I understand when people say that they need to get the idea out in a slide deck. If they are doing it right, they just mean that they need to see it to fully understand its implications. I can no longer flesh out an on paper. I can start it there, but the real work is when I come back to a connected place. I agree with you wholeheartedly that it is the time away that lets me value the connections best, but the connections never really leave me. I am considering them always.

“Boredom is there to act as the space between your ears where you can idly just think and reflect.”

I love the ways in which we interpret and use boredom now, if we can just sit with it long enough for it to become useful. But, the phone is so everpresent that it makes boredom into an enemy. If boredom is an enemy, then activity is a virtue. And activity can be anything, from checking notifications to aimlessly wandering through the web. This kind of activity is why it has become so hard to actually recognize true growth.

via Unplug from this. Plug back in to that #28daysofwriting – Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Learning.

There have been a couple of posts recently about how connected learning isn’t having the affect that it should, but I am still convinced that this is the right work and that we are headed in the right direction:

Your point about never hearing questions regarding connected teaching and learning should be a scandal. We should be offended when folks do not see just how much having a network of professionals who support us is vital to our ability to lead. While I too have not experienced this from the “interview” side of things, I have started to see it in other ways.

We have had a Twitter backchannel at our largest district events, where principals and teachers are expected to post something about their school or their personal experiences. We have supported unconferences for our district, in which more teachers and leaders have taken part than ever before. We have started working with many different departments to ensure that digital badges are a part of the professional learning discussion.

It isn’t fast enough, but the way in which change happens in education isn’t necessarily by starting with established processes, like interviews. It will start (or continue) on the fringes. It will happen all around the most promising work, and it will build on top of all of the connected teachers and leaders. Those that create these portfolios are those that will have the transferable skills. As an example of how this type of portfolio does help folks, this is what I made to show the power of my network: http://bit.ly/1vA9TI1 (I’m not sure it got me the Director of Blended Learning job, but it definitely didn’t hurt.)

via Are Digital Portfolios a Disadvantage? | Learning About Learning.

A story of loss and of treasures found within teaching:

I found your thoughts about this colleague to be extremely compelling, but even more so it caused me to ponder your statement, “Kids desire to know and be known.” This is amazingly simply and incredibly true.

Students being known is something that is at the heart of great teaching, and it is something that we can gloss over too much in an effort to make sure they know all of the things we want to teach them. Especially in this era of “personalization”, we are really struggling to understand the “person” within our structures. But it is this aspect of wanting to be known and treated as a person that the true power of connecting with kids lies.

I hope you never stop doing this. Thank you for serving these children, and thank you for this wonderful post.

via TSLG 1440: I Will Ask You About You.

A lovely reflection on what makes a professional learning experience good:

This is such an astute question and your response makes it all the better. I really appreciate your list of what makes professional learning “good”, especially your thoughts on Learner-centered activities. I find that it is only when the learners are the ones engaging one another does a professional learning session venture into the arena of “good.”

But, this is so rare that it almost seems an anomaly for me. Even in the sessions that I facilitate, there is this tendency to look at me as the only “expert in the room.” I generally focus on ping-ponging back and forth between group discussion/work and whole class discussion, but there is still that lingering focus on the front of the room.

How have you found ways to curb this tendency? How have you been able to find the right balance so that facilitators actually facilitate and not hold the audience hostage before they can move on to the next part of the session/content?

The Next Generation of Educational Leadership: How Do You Know Your Professional Development Was Good?.

This is such a well articulated lesson. I hope many more teachers share this level of detail on what is working in their classroom:

I love the way in which you have laid this out. You had no illusions that what you were doing was more than a well educated guess as to how students would react. The example says it all, though. The discussion points that you would have liked them to get to, they approached of their own accord. The data you needed to make your instructional decisions was not an assessment, but was rather stating a preference or reflecting upong their own knowledge. I think this is phenomenal. 

You are allowing students to take on a role of facilitator and differentiator. You are giving them the responsibility for creating the discusion and for furthering their inquiry. I think the most powerful aspect of this lesson wasn’t necessarily the technology of the Google Doc, but rather in the way that you allowed them to time-shift their participation to emphasize their preparation for the discussion. By allowing them to “claim” a spot, you were giving them an opportunity to preview what they were going to say and try it out even before the class started. Nice work!

What Should We Do With Our Classrooms?: More on Learning as a Community: How Google Docs can Redefine the Roles of Class Discussion for Teachers and Shy Kids Alike.

Relationships are powerful:

You have made relationships a kind of current that flows through all of your work, and I think it has powered much of the growth you have seen those you serve. You are recharging others in professional learning experiences, and in those times why you are a learner too, being recharged. This is the “power” of relationships, and I am glad you have written about it so eloquently.

I’m not sure many folks get to see this power because they are too busy with the point and click of the tools or the listing of apps. The relationships are how we make change, and they are definitely how we learn from another. From these images alone, I believe the relationships have the ability to on influencing folks for years to come.

via Relationships | Kristina Peters’ Blog.

Optimism isn’t necessary when you are making important changes within your school. You are making great things into a reality:

I’m not sure I see this message as optimism. It is building people up rather than tearing them down. It is filling them with growth rather than fixing them to a single place. But, to me, this isn’t optimism. Optimism is a belief in what might happen. It is a belief in what could happen. What you are doing, is about what WILL happen.

So long as you don’t make or perpetuate the systems that boil behavior down to a tally sheet, you are making concrete change. So long as you are building understanding with a child, you are making a shift to shared ownership of learning.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely optimistic about the future of kids who are supported in this way. But, what you are doing is more than optimistic. It is realistically pushing the bounds of what is possible with the “tough kids”. Keep going.

via Optimism: the secret ingredient #ReflectiveTeacher | Hot Lunch Tray.

An analysis of shadows for Groundhog day:

Your analysis of shadows is really wonderful. I love the way in which you have laid out the case for “looking around” and seeing just how large (or small) of a shadow you have cast. Your affect on others is profound, and it should never be taken for granted.

Yet, our shadows are not us, and it is difficult to see the full picture of what a teacher or leader is when we are just looking around at the “shade we throw” on the ground. It is up to us to also look up and see each others’ faces in order to make sure that we see people behind the work.

So, look down to see what you have affected. Look up to see who you can learn from.

via Working in Education through the Language Lens: The Reach of your Shadow.

Should we sell our content to one another? I think we can come up with a better approach:

I think you have hit upon something central to “why we become teachers.” I don’t think any of us do this so that we may become rich, however we are trying to join our vocation with our ability to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. There is this natural tension between the “the why” of teaching and “the how” or existence. If we do not resolve these tensions we get either burnout or exploitation.

I think a better way to resolve this tension is to think about teaching as a professional skillset. If you are getting paid in one space for that skillset, it would only make sense that you get paid for that same skillset elsewhere. So, if you lead a workshop on a given topic, you should be able to be paid for that workshop. However, it breaks down for me when we boil down our skillset to making content. Content is a ubiquitous commodity. I would agree that it is better given away than sold, but if folks want to see themselves as content creators rather than teachers, I think that they have sold their teaching short.

I am not offended that there are content marketplaces, but I would rather see us come together and collaborate to make the best possible Open Educational Resources. That way, we would all have world class content. Then, we could really be the educational leaders the world needs. We could create a marketplace for teaching, for the art of educating others. Everyone needs to learn something new, and right now we are just selling the content. That tension will never go away if we stop there.

via Share the Land (Guess Who) | #slowchatPE.

Children are not “broken” and they do not need to be “fixed”:

I think that your thoughts on the “brokenness” of students are spot on. You have identified a belief system that many in education have without acknowledging it.

If we believe students are broken and it is our job to “fix” them, then there is only so much that we can rely upon them for within the classroom. We cannot rely upon them to make their own instructional choices. We cannot rely upon them to teach one another. We cannot rely upon them to be reliable collaborators.

Fortunately, for the reasons you have outlined here, this is not the case. We do not have to be the only expert in the room. We do not have to make dots or red pen marks on every paper we get in the hopes that these will mean something to our students.

Thank you for helping us to think through the “why” of math and the ways in which we can allow students to authentically think through problems.

Mistake-making to sense-making – The Reflective Educator.