New Teacher Seminar:The Best Classroom Observations --Third in a series on developing new teachers

A great deal of my week is spent in teachers' classrooms observing them teach. I do this work at their invitation, as a part of our school's evaluation process, or at the request of a divisional principal or department chair. This past week I watched an experienced teacher guide his sixth grade instrumentalists through their rehearsal, an intern lead a discussion on Antigone,  a first year teacher review three verbs in a high school Spanish class, a veteran choral teacher work with 7th and 8th grade boys, a second year teacher introduce the Buddha to a high school religion class, and an intern teach math to primary circle students.  In each case, I was struck by the passion and care each brought to his or her work.

DKNG Studios

As teachers in our classrooms we assume that our students are always watching us, they have to be in order for the classroom to work.  Having an adult observer in our classroom while we are teaching is something else entirely. It changes the dynamic, students behave differently, we are more self-conscious. When the observer is an invited peer or a young teacher wanting to observe a more experienced teacher, the experience is more low key. When the observer is a supervisor the stakes feel higher, even when the administrator is there by invitation. Though the act of observation changes what is being observed, observation and constructive growth oriented feedback are essential for every teacher, especially for a new teacher.

Photo by @Doug8888

• The best observations begin with my asking the teacher what they want me to watch for. Young teachers in particular need to develop the habit of self-evaluation: what went well in the lesson, where did I lose the kids, did they learn what I hoped or something else entirely, how did this lesson fit into my plan for this unit, am I reaching every student, what am I not seeing or doing? These are only some of the questions we need to consider. Given our overfull days, creating space for asking and answering these questions is challenging. Observations by others and the conversations they foster create the time and space for this reflection.
• While not always possible, I like to arrive before the students. I want to see how they transition from the minute they cross the threshold. I often keep a running record of what I see within a time frame. I have found this helps me stay focused on the observation. I like to record the time in three to five minute intervals. Time is the commodity of schools. We never have enough and we have to use what we have effectively. Young teachers should be asking questions about their management of time as well as of students
• I also like to look at the physical classroom and how well teachers are utilizing their spaces. While Lower School teachers understand the importance of well-designed spaces, most Upper School teachers think little of their spaces except as containers for teenage bodies. Often, a small tweak in classroom set up can solve a much larger classroom management challenge.  In comparison to his other classes, the religion teacher found this group of students' energy to be flat and and that individuals were easily distracted. After observing his class I asked him to think about how he moved around the classroom and how he wanted students to interact. After listening to him, I asked what would happen if he abandoned his current set-up and experimented with something that made it easier for him to move and that placed his students in closer proximity to each other. Later in the week, he told me that he had moved two tables. Rather than sitting in a large u around the room's perimeter, now the students sat across from each other at the tables. The tables were in two rows running the length of the room. He had easy access to the boards on every wall and he could move easily down the middle of the room. As they were sitting closer to each other, the majority of his students who were engaged and focused, helped the few who faded in and out stay in the learning. 
• During any observation I focus on the teachers' questions about their practice. If I have learned what the students have learned, then I have failed as an observer. I need to watch the teacher and see what she is doing and saying. At the same time I need to watch her students and see how they are reacting and acting. Do they understand what they are supposed to be doing? Do they know the class routine such that the learning is the focus of what happens not the mechanics to make it happen (what should have been prepared for class, what happens as students walk into the room, how quickly is the sheet music passed out, how quickly does the lesson begin, how are class discussions constructed, etc) 
• Most importantly I want to gauge student engagement. I take as a given that engagement goes up the safer the classroom is for students. In a school like Westtown, I take physical safety as the norm, I am looking for something more subtle, what Claude Steele would call the absence of stereotype threat. Often student intellectual and spiritual safety isn't the thing a young teacher is asking about directly. Focusing on this yields greater returns than almost any other tool a teacher might develop.

After the class if I am not meeting with the teacher within an hour or so, I send an email with quick questions and concrete "this is what I saw." Nothing replaces a good follow up discussion. With young teachers, I provide both directive feedback-- "You need to tighten up how class begins", "you tend to call on girls more frequently than boys", "your questions were too basic to encourage thoughtful discussion"-- and ask questions. The questions always take into account what they have wanted me to think about. But the questions also come out of my own wondering about what I have seen. With the intern leading a discussion on Antigone, I wanted to understand how she had planned her questions. I wanted her to think about other ways the discussion might have progressed. I asked "I wonder what would have happened if you had asked a few of the students to tell you more about their answers?" After a few moments of reflection she began to think of how this might have stretched her students' thinking. I asked about specific students. She was worried she might not have gotten them to the conclusion she wanted them to reach, that they would have gone off on a tangent. We discussed the trade offs of moving through her prepared series of questions versus asking follow-up questions and following her students's leadings. There were no right answers, only learning possibilities for my intern.

http://crossroadscn.com/

"I wonder. . ." may well be my favorite question!

The New Teacher Seminar:books that work - Second in Series on Developing New Teachers

I recently gave a presentation at the PAIS Biennial Conference titled "From Hiring to Mastery: A Comprehensive Induction Process." Mentorship was one of the themes I stressed. However, good mentors are only a portion of what new teachers need. As a part of our support for our teachers, Westtown requires all of its new to teaching folks to participate in our New Teacher Seminar. Where once I led 10th graders through US History,  now I teach a curriculum intended to help interns and first year teachers take successful first steps towards a career in education. There is very little theory in this curriculum, instead we focus on practical ideas for the next class. The class is a mix of discussing books, sharing successes, asking questions, meeting with seasoned teachers and support staff, and building a personal learning network.

First and foremost the sessions are designed to provide ideas new teachers can implement now. When our group is largely teachers who will have their own classroom we begin with two intensive sessions of mapping out units of study and writing the first two weeks of lesson plans. When the group is weighted towards interns or assistant teachers we focus on classroom management. One of the best tools for rapid improvement in classroom management is Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion. While Lemov's audience is teachers working in school's with at risk students, his techniques translate to Westtown's independent school culture. The beauty of this book is its focus on concrete techniques easily implemented in the classroom. Such things as "100 percent", "no opt out", and "post it" provide our newest teachers with a means of achieving high classroom expectations. Furthermore, and this is most important for young teachers, these techniques provide a means of helping young teachers get over their fear of not being liked. The specific techniques take the practice of teaching out of "I want them to like me", and put the focus squarely where it needs to be on the students and their success. I follow up on our class discussions with direct classroom observations. In my post observation meetings, I am able to speak directly to how well I see them implementing something like "Right is right" or "Stretch It." We talk about what worked, what didn't and how they might adjust to make it better the next day. At some point, these teachers will need to better understand the theory underlying their practice, but in their first year, they need to do, to get feedback, and do it again.

Later this year we will read Peter Gow's The Intentional Teacher, which is focused on teaching in independent schools. Mid-year Gow's book fits well with that moment in which new teachers find themselves wondering if this is the right setting for their aspirations. His is one of the few books for new teachers that is geared towards independent schools. Most importantly, his book helps to provide new teachers with a context for understanding their work in terms of Westtown's Mission. We will finish the year with Mary Cowey's Black Ants and Buddhists. I use this book as a means of transitioning from surviving the first year to thinking creatively about their next year. Cowey's classroom serves as a model for where these young teachers should aspire to go in creating a student centered approach to teaching.

These texts were selected with specific outcomes in mind:

• day to day success in classroom management and student learning
• developing a sense of what it means to be a professional in an independent school
• creative planning for year two

What's your Freebird?

This past weekend my daughter played lead guitar on Lynryd Skynyrd's "Freebird" at Downingtown School of Rock's Southern Rock show. She assures me that along with "Stairway to Heaven" (which she has also played in a show), this song is one of the givens for aspiring guitarists. She learned she had the solo in late May. Along with preparing pieces for a touring show with the School of Rock All Stars, "Freebird" has been her particular focus all summer. After the concert she shared with me that she knew she had given it her all and that her two performances were true reflections of her effort, technical ability, talent and pleasure. Last week when she created her Facebook list of the ten albums that had most influenced her as a musician, "Lynryd Skynyrd" (and its song Freebird") was not on the list. For her the song was a right of passage more than an influence. (If you were wondering, her number one influential album was Tedeschi Trucks Band's "Revelator.")

We all have a "Freebird."

I asked my Independent Seminar students to imagine it is January 10, 2015 and they are reflecting back on their first semester work including their demonstration of learning. In essence I asked them to imagine the day after their "Freebird" performance. I wanted them to project forward and then backwards, to engage their imaginations in self-reflection. I wanted them to imagine what a successful learning process would feel like; how they would know they had achieved all that they could even if the final product was missing elements they had planned for in their Independent Seminar proposals. While some students struggled with the idea of looking backwards, they all understood that for each of them the process was more important that the product. Three examples of their thinking follow: Lili (creating podcasts) wrote "I have had practice doing what I hope to do with my life and I have seen if it is really the right fit for me. I have also found strength in myself to interact with my community and present this to them. I feel proud of myself for this and have learned much from those around me. I only accomplished this with the help and support of the people around me. I now know more about my priorities and goals and hope to continue to experience life through the lives of others." Joe (studying Game Theory) asserted "I tried my best throughout the semester. Although the phrase “try my best” is platitudinous and has different meaning to different people, I interpreted it as exploring my potential and having no regret for myself even when I failed to comprehend part of the material." For Margot (studying Beatnik Culture)  the tangibles were easier to project forward than backwards. "I find it intimidating to be so heavily reliant on self-direction, because I know that the effort and attention I put into this course will truly be reflected in the work I produce. I am fully accountable for every aspect of my own success, which is exactly why I am so determined to take up this challenge."

For each of our students there are both foundational influences and rights of passage. Independent Seminar attempts to create space for students to bring these two strands in their education together. Whether its a self-created recital for the student body, a portfolio of visual work, a forty page research paper on the Syrian Conflict, or an application of mathematical modeling, or a podcast of student life, the final product is more than the sum of its individual elements and the learning is as much about the process as the product.

The Risk of Creation

I love vacations, for time apart--what Henri Nouwen might call renewal in solitude. I have read new books by favorite authors Louise Erdich and Barbara Kingsolver and discovered a writer I will read more of, Nicola Griffith. This is also a time for cleaning house - reclaiming my space-- and visiting with friends. Throughout this time two questions have been percolating in the back of my brain --What is excellent teaching (and can you measure it) and how do we foster creativity in our students? I will let the teacher question season some more before I pursue it here. However, the second question has taken an unexpected turn today. This morning I read a short piece by Janet Scott in Daily Reading from Quaker Writings Ancient and Modern. She writes that "As we act in obedience to the Light Within, we may become mediators through whom God's love is known. . . it means that we join ourselves to the risk of creation, to the authentic human being."

This phrase "risk of creation" has stuck with me all day, as I watched the snow (on March 25th!),  graded late work, folded laundry, read Griffith's Slow River and cooked for my family. What is so risky about creation? Is creation the same as creativity? As I visited with my daughter, home from her music rehearsal,  I found myself thinking about an interview I recalled in which Ravi Shankar, the late sitarist, talked about his long years of learning to master the traditional sitar technique and traditional sitar music before he ever attempted to create something new. His years of practice, memorization, study, and imitation had been necessary first. I recall a similar story about Izak Perlman traveling in China and listening to a young student play with great technical accuracy a challenging violin piece then Perlman played the same piece and the two were as different as night and day as he bought a life time of experience to creating something new from the score-- the difference between being accurate and authentic. How much mastery of craft (obedience) is necessary for creativity?

By this time in the year, I am actively encouraging my students to push through the boundaries of what they think I want them to know, to pursuing what they want to learn. But how do they share the new meaning and understanding they are gaining for themselves if they are still learning how to replicate and manipulate the forms and medium we use for communication -- essays, class discussions, on-line forum, blogs, debates, movies. Shouldn't it be enough for tenth graders to master skills and forms (and learn some history) and build a foundation for creation when they are older? I have respected colleagues who believe that high school must remain the place for skill and content mastery while college is the place for experimentation and individualized pursuits. I suspect Shankar's teacher would agree.

Teenagers are risk takers, its inherent in their unformed brains, so why not have them take risks within their learning? Why not encourage them to makes leaps from knowing one thing to conjecturing about another. Why not reward risk in the name of creativity. I have always looked at history as a means of teaching a set of skills. Why not create something new within the limits of the forms needing mastery? In recent years, I have come to look on history as a means of moving students from knowing to doing. I don't have an answer for the question I posed myself above except that I keep asking my students to think new and original thoughts and to adhere to the limits of the formal essay or the public blog or the round table discussion.  And sometimes out of this complexity they do venture something new and exciting. Perhaps obedience is about practice and over time practiced creativity leads to a courageous willingness to risk creation.

The Children Are Watching

This morning I woke to snow and fog. By lunch time, the snow was largely gone and the temperature had risen into the high 40s! All of a sudden every bicycler in the tri-state area was cruising down the road below my house. My teenage daughter said it made her wish for spring! She went for a four mile hike with a friend and two Bernese Mountain Dogs at Ridley Creek State Park. I went for a more sedate walk in the neighborhood. While I was out I noticed a little boy, probably three or four years old, pushing his bubble mower around the yard. He was happily mowing the bit of snow that remained on the north side of his home. He reminded me of my own son, now 23, who loved his bubble mower. He thought nothing of working over an acre of our yard as he helped his father "cut" the lawn. The boy I watched today wasn't making bubbles but he was fascinated by the way he created patterns in the wet grass. As I watched he stopped mowing and started to head in, then he stopped, came back for his mower and put it into the garage, next to his parent's lawn mower ! I would like to think he has watched his parents cut the lawn and then put their machine away. He might have left his own toy outside, but he knew that wasn't the way to finish the job.

How often we forget that our children, our students are watching. At our house, we have a rule that cell phones are not allowed at the table for any meal or in the living room when we are visiting, relaxing or playing games. We don't even answer the house phone when it rings (this drives some of our extended family batty!) At Westtown School, our dining room is a place where mobile devices are not permitted. Instead, this is a space where the people present are the focus. Were the adults in the community to ignore this rule, pull out their phones to check appointments, texts, or emails our dining room would quickly become a place where nurturing relationships would be replaced by what Sherry Turkle calls seeking validation. We model for our students, electronic disconnection in favor of personal connection. Meals are about more than consuming calories!

In our classes our students are watching too. Are we comfortable with all of the technological changes constantly coming our way? More importantly, are we able to navigate these changes? In my most recent project, my students created films on the amendments to the US Constitution. Because we operate as a BYOD school, my students were using at least three different video editing programs. I only know the most basic features of the technical aspects of creating films. And yet just as I can help my daughter with Calculus -- a subject I have never taken. I always begin by asking her what she knows. She talks me through the problem and often arrives at a solution or a resource to help her find the solution--I am still able to help my students produce better films. For instance, one group showed me their film in draft form. I found it hard to hear two of their narrators over background music. I asked them to show me their editing program and then I asked them how to adjust sound levels. By walking me through what they knew, they were able to extrapolate to what they needed to do to create a more understandable film. I also consciously and publicly go out of my way to ask for help from colleagues in this and all of my students' projects. I want my students to see me asking for help, stepping out of the "expert" role into to "learner" role.

Unleashing Talent

I have always considered my Lower School Colleagues to be creative and intelligent educators. In a recent Lower School faculty meeting many teachers shared new and exciting examples of successful integration of technology into existing curricula. Successful because each example demonstrated enhanced learning by their students; integrated because each example showed technology supporting the learning rather than being a flashy add-on. Two years ago, this same faculty held technology at an arm’s length. Computers had been removed from primary rooms, Smartboards were nuisances taking up valuable white board space, and concerns for on-line safety trumped interests in the possibilities for connecting students to people and information beyond our school walls. So what changed?

During our summer vacation in 2011, our third grade teachers received professional development funds to attend the annual ISTE conference. Along with lots of wonderful and overwhelming information, they came back with one concrete idea for a shift in a current project. They decided to replace their students’ usual African Animal Project Posters with Glogster. As a part of the third grade’s term long exploration of African Culture, Geography, Fauna and Flora, each student researches an animal. Previously each student created a poster about their animal; in 2011-12 each student created a glog! (The added bonuses were greater longevity in projects' life span and trees saved!!)  That same year, the second grade teachers experimented with creating class blogs and asked to have the computers returned! Two other teachers provided leadership for using an on-line discussion tool to help collect information for writing student comments. From these first adopters the rest of the faculty was interested but not ready to make a huge leap in their own technology experiments.

Over the past summer, the Lower School gained a new principal committed to technology innovation, and a new librarian with a job description shaped to combine media literacy and technology skills. We also hired a three division, dedicated technology integrationist. The librarian and tech integrationist have created a wonderful tag team meeting with each Lower School teacher to explore current curricula and look for opportunities to create shifts. While the first adopters were able to make the leap from an ISTE presentation to implementations, others needed help to find the right place to use a new tool, explore a different information gathering means, extend learning using an ISTE Net, or adding a new creative dimension. This is the gentle lifting our new teachers provided. Having been supported and successful with a first adaptation, faculty find themselves looking for other intelligent places to shift learning.

Some of these shifts were on display in the aforementioned faculty meeting. Besides the third grade glogs, our fifth grade teachers have modified the final product of their Peacemaker Biography project from research papers to individual web pages using Weebly. Everyone involved from students, to teachers, to parents loved this new media for communicating learning. Research and writing still mattered but now the audience for student work was much broader than the single teacher reading the paper--classmates, parents and others were able to read and react with student work! Next year the plan is to teach students enough html to do their own website programming! Our science teacher showed us the Lego Robot students were learning to program. Finally, one of our art teachers showed us student created stop animation films using iPads and the clay figures each student created for their films. We ran out of faculty meeting before we had run out of examples of experiments and successes folks had brought to share.

Reflections on this online learning experiment

First, would I teach US History in this online format again??  YES
Second, did this consume too much of the time I would have otherwise spent reading for pleasure or sitting on my mother's dock starring off at the lake?? YES
So why, given how much I value summer for the time to read would I do this again?

The paradox in the above statement is emblematic of so much of teaching 10 students US History in an online course. There are real trade offs that have to be made.

Face to face versus virtual: I believe absolutely in the teacher student relationship that happens within a bricks and mortar classroom and the peer relationships that develop around those tables. The online experiences is different. You have to work with great intentionality to make it personal, to make it human. It helped that we began with two days in a real classroom. Assignments were created in such a way as to "force" conversations between peers in the discussion forum and the class wiki. And early projects were designed to be collaborations. Regular SKYPE check ins between myself and the students, even for just a five minute discussion of an assignment idea were a necessity. But the upside of this individualized approach to building class cohesion and student support is that the learning is individualized. Rather than spending time preparing for four classes a week, I prepared for one class and focused on individual student thinking and learning the rest of the time.

Time is an all too precious commodity in a 6.5 week summer school course: Over the course of 9 months, teachers feel pressed to cover all the content. 6.5 weeks raises that pressure at least five fold. I had to stay focused on the themes I wanted my students to have ingrained in their brains: the evolution of the meaning of freedom (and who it includes) over three hundred years, the development of a market economy, the rise of American imperialism/exceptionalism,  the Constitution as a living document with meaning for their lives, and the agency of ordinary citizens for creating change in their communities and nations. Over these themes, stood my own working assumption about history--that history is created by the actions of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary people). Within these themes, I had to let go of insisting every student learn every detail of the battles of the War of 1812 or the Civil War, the many treaties signed by the US over the course of the 19th century, or even all the places the CIA fomented rebellion during the Cold War. Did I make the right choices for my students? Should we have spent more time on Reconstruction or the Taft Presidency and how it compares to Roosevelt's or Wilson's (something I do when I teach US History over the course of the school year)? I have colleagues who believe this is the only chance many of our students will ever have to learn the details of our history. In 6.5 weeks, either the details come fast and furious -- in a blur-- or the focus is on the big picture with details helping to ground those themes in time and place.

Students still need to communicate: Thursday evening class was a rich experience (even when the technology wasn't perfect). The short class time worked because students had already been "talking" in the forum. The discussion forum worked because the students came to trust each other to read carefully and respond honestly-even when they didn't agree.

There is a place for this sort of learning within the continuum of bricks and mortar to large scale MOOCs. Done well, student's learn content and skills--skills they will encounter in their life. This sort of learning helps to break down that artificial wall between what you learn at school and the rest of your life. The students learned at a time they were ready and in a manner that served their very different learning needs.

The Third Week -- interest based learning

Ten students and one teacher:

• One is dealing with connectivity issues in Central Pennsylvania
• One is just returning from ten days of being off the grid in Mexico and poor hotel wifi in Toronto
• One spent six days at wrestling camp--no time after three a days and three showers a day.
• One is in China and finding the Great Wall applies to the internet as well. After five days of silence he finally reappeared to write an eloquent comparison of a speech by abolitionist Angelina Grimke and an essay by slavery apologist George Fitzhugh.
• One student is in Italy
• Six other students are chugging along juggling work, friends, US History and managing to have some fun as well.
• I am behind in my grading.
• I SKYPED with three students since last Thursday and had email exchanges with the rest.
• By design I was less active in the Discussion Forum. The kids carried on beautifully.

How do you manage time zones? Our class meets in the evenings from 7-8:30 EST. In Italy that is 1-2:30AM and China 7-8:30 AM.

Tonight we shared projects! Every meeting adds some new experience and some new snag. The new feature was figuring out how to share videos with the kids. When I tried this the first week they could see but not hear. Tonight I had a solution and we had two student produced videos. The first two students shared a video they had created about women's participation in the Civil War. One student said "I had no idea women dressed as men to enter the army, I thought they were just nurses". This led into a discussion of nursing and Florence Nightengale and his "just nurses" comment withered. Discussion shifted to disease in the camps, medical practices and what made this a modern war. Another student researched the role of drummer boys and created a film demonstrating some of the drum signals.


And now the snag: I had a great deal of lag caused by my audio. It got so bad, my computer froze and I decided to exit the program and reenter with IE instead of Chrome. Tonight I learned that the class continues even if I exit the program! While I was out a student shared a poetry slam on the Ghost Dance and Wounded knee. Other than the fact that my name disappeared they didn't really notice and judging by the chat when I re-entered they had a lot to say about this poem. 


In all there were presentations on drummer boys, a case for the most illustrative of the time events from 1878-1900, the Diary of a Mill Girl, women's contributions to the Civil War effort, and a poem on the Ghost Dance.


We finished with a short discussion by me on the overall strategy of the Union and Confederate armies in the Civil War and Lincoln's generals. 


I asked one student to stick around after the other's left to discuss with him the need to be more active in the chat! I was worried he had left on his computer and walked away. He talked with me about some of what was discussed and I was reassured he really had been present.

Overall a good class!

ARRGH and success!

Last week was our first week of online learning in our US History class.

Here is what I have learned. . .

First: I gave way too much work, for the kids to do (they did finish) and for me to grade (I am still reading blog entries).

Second: You need to know your technology cold (unless you have helpful and understanding students!).

Our first 30 minutes of virtual class were plagued by audio problems--echoes, dropped lines, and people talking to quietly. I had planned a break after the first 40 minutes. After the first trying thirty I suggested a short break. I moved to a different location in my home --carpeted floors, wing back chair, no feedback! I turned off everyone's speaker rights, opting for a one speaker at a time format. It took a bit for the students to realize that when the mike icon appeared next to their name on the screen, they had the "floor" so to speak. I had to remember to toggle between each of them and myself until I figured out that I could "be on" even as I toggled between each of them. And I made sure everyone participated. The last 45 minutes were much improved with a solid discussion of the importance of slavery to all parts of the British Empire's economic wealth, the point of no return in the lead up the American Revolution, and finally the crucial precedents set by the first three Presidents and the challenges they faced. Can you guess what they felt was George Washington's greatest action (hint he did it twice!)?

The slides I had prepared kept us focused, but when I shared a web page, two students lost audio. I decided not to even try the Youtube I had cued up. But I did use the chat to have students suggest ideas and post questions. I can see why, in managing the chat and assistant would be a huge help!

You must block private chats with high school students!!!

Third: The discussion forum has rocked!!!! Students wrote substantive analysis on Native Americans and why the French tended to co-operate with Native Americans while the British tended to opt for pushing them west, away from white settlement. On the topic of women and Republican Motherhood, students were intrigued with this "bone" to women and quickly began to discuss its flaws. One student wrote, 

"The fact that republican mothers were educating their sons, but were uneducated themselves, leaves a gap in the theory. It could be implied that women are already educated with necessary life skills, and that they must pass these life skills on to their youth. But then again, it is the ever so important future of America, how could they possibly benefit from being raised by an uneducated individual. At this point in American history, politicians had to wake up and smell the change. The system of republican motherhood wasn't sensible, and the only solution meant women’s education".

Possibly, the most impressive discussion centered on a reading on the changing definitions of freedom in the 17th and 18th centuries. One student wrote 

"I think that the people who had freedom believed that they had more responsibilities than those who didn't, but really, they were just different ones. Property owners had to ensure that everyone under them was surviving, and that their property continue to gain profit. Women and slaves had different responsibilities. It also depends on the type of freedom we are talking about. Religious freedom would bring, as you said, servitude to God. Moral liberty would bring the responsibility to do the right thing. Property + economic freedom would bring the responsibility to stay in that state of stability and to provide for those around you. In the 18th century, this type of freedom would also mean that you were responsible to be politically active and participate."

 In response, another student argued, 

"When the United States was first founded nobody was going to be freer than his neighbor, or at least that was the idea. There were slaves, and they weren't free obviously enough, women though not in slavery didn't have the rights of a freeman, women couldn't vote like men, and they couldn't do many of the jobs men did. Even among men there was a difference in the rights associated with freedom, men of higher economic class were considered more free than a common worker. Today, we like to consider ourselves free to do as we please, but everybody has to answer to somebody, we all have to abide by laws whether we agree with them or not, we all have to do something we don't want to do because we have to do it. So when you think about it we're free in a sense, but are we really completely free in the way that the fore fathers of this nation envisioned?"

 These were but a few of the comments of a discussion that ranged from Seneca, to John Locke, to Puritan sermons, to capitalism's implications.

I am still grading ( but the quality is excellent)

No one is behind (except for maybe me)

Students are fully engaged

Next week, I will be a better manager of Adobe Connect

Day Two

All the kids came back! Well to be fair their parents had paid tuition and they all had their own reasons for being present. We spent less time going over technologies and more time on content. We even had our first discussion. My one student who was connecting from Missouri had some internet problems at his end but I will follow up with him today on the phone (he left his cell phone at home).

We spent most of the morning considering the lead up to writing the US Constitution. A short video reviewing the issues in the years following the American Revolution led into an examination of the three main plans brought to the Pennsylvania Convention. In small groups students compared the features of the plan and then began to examine the Constitution. The students quickly realized that this work --their first assignment-- was going to be bigger than they could complete before we went our separate ways at noon. I helped the groups discuss strategies for working together. While not every student knew about google docs, by the end every group agreed to use it to complete their work. Beyond that two groups set up cell phone dates, two others (including the boy without his phone) agreed to use Facebook's chat feature. Nothing earth shattering here except that for 5 of the students using Facebook for school was a new concept!

So why start with the Constitution when the focus this first week is the time from the French and Indian War through to the War of 1812? The Constitution creates an important pivot in history. Students can follow threads from it back in time and make connections forward. The documents surrounding it, Madison's notes, the Federalist Papers, writings from the Federalist and Anti-Federalist are challenging. I wanted to be physically present to work with students and assess their ability to handle some of the most challenging documents we will approach together. Now I have a sense of my students strengths, weaknesses and strategies for handling challenge. I know who is going to fly, just need encouragement and directional pushes from me, who is going to need a fairly supported and scaffold-ed approach and who is somewhere in between.

Before we broke up for the day we discussed the challenges they felt they would face going forward. I asked them to be very aware this week as they work through the readings, forum and wiki to consider their own learning style and what they will need to create meaning for themselves for this first 50 years we are covering.

Our next collected meeting will be in Adobe Connect next Thursday. Until then they meet asynchronously. I will be checking in via SKYPE with each of them before then.

The Great Experiment Day 1!

Today was the first day of summer school --nothing new there. I am teaching US History--I've been teaching it off and on for 16 years! Nothing new there. The experiment is all in the delivery. We are engaged in a blended online class. We have two days of face to face class time in a Westtown School classroom. After this we will meet for five additional weeks without ever being in the same room. One student will be traveling to China, another to Canada, a third to central PA, a fourth will be hiking in New England and the others will be scattered through out the mid-Atlantic--ten students and me. We will meet asynchronously and synchronously using a variety of online tools. Every Thursday we will meet using a program called Adobe Connect. Between Thursdays discussions will happen in our forums, wiki's will be constructed, assignments uploaded and quizzes taken all within Moodle.

When I thought about the organization of this class I was stymied by the challenge of covering the full sweep US History from pre-conquest Native Americans through to the election of Barack Obama in just six weeks.   Every online US History course I examined seemed to take this approach and rely heavily on weekly assignments and pacing that resembled the nine month school year course. Fortunately, a wise and forward thinking colleague reminded me to start with the outcomes I wanted and that with a new medium I needed a very different course structure. In his opinion, the problem with online high school classes is they try to replicate a face to face curriculum in a virtual space.

My outcomes for my students include garnering a sense of the sweep and power of US History, to write well and to be able to think creatively about US History and make connections between the past and the present (I suspect we will skip over President Garfield yet again).  I want them to know US geography and the inter-relationship between history and environment. Finely, I want them to see themselves as the next generation in a long line of people actively engaged in making history, involved in the civic life of their country and responsible for their future. We will do a lot of writing--two 5-7 page essays with proper bibliographic citation-- as well as significant and regular writing in our discussion forum and their own current event blogs. The forum will be centered around questions of analysis, synthesis and creative thinking. Our wiki's will be more fact based; geared toward building a foundation in the scaffold of events, issues, and people. There will be a collaborative project of their choosing. The final project will ask them to track a current event issue over the five weeks and write about it in a weekly blog. As they learn more about their topic, they are to engage with others beyond the confines of our class.

The first day went as I expected. It took us a significant amount of time to down load the exact media driver for our school's video streaming program, Safari Montage. Each different student computer has its own particular hurdles and driver needs. Once we had everyone's computer ready to stream videos, we showed them how to search the movie database and then I explained that while we would have a text book as a reference, they were free to read or watch videos to learn about any topic we were covering. One or two history channel buffs were thrilled! We then reviewed a number of online subscription services available to them as another alternative to the textbook. Tomorrow I will review with them how to select the best sites for learning and show them how to use the textbook most effectively.

We spent the last hour drawing free hand maps of North America. Students were to locate major rivers, oceans, lakes, mountain ranges and other geographical features. They also had to locate some major cities and correctly draw in the boundaries for all of Canada's provinces. We will add the US states over the next few weeks. I was interested to watch strategies for locating things to be placed on the map. Some turned quickly to the textbook, others found maps on line and still others googled terms like Hudson River.

Tomorrow, we tackle the US Constitution and how to use Adobe Connect.

How did I do?

Last year I set two goals for myself: close my computer when students or colleagues came into my office to speak with me and to regularly visit classes across the school.

Of the first goal I give myself an above average assessment. I did almost always shut my laptop. I noticed rather quickly that I still got everything done, my email still was answered  and I was more or less prepared for each class. More importantly, I realized that I was remembering the conversations! This helped me as well as I didn't have to re-ask questions as frequently. Also, I would like to think that when someone was looking for help, advice, an answer or just someone to explore an idea with what they received from me and my undivided attention was better...it certainly felt better from my end. This shutting my laptop has become almost second nature -- not quite as automatic as buckling my safety belt but almost.

Visiting classes has been harder to make habitual. The first goal occasionally got in the way of the second goal. Shutting my laptop invited longer conversations. I allowed meetings to be scheduled in the times I had set aside to visit classes. I also allowed peer diffidence over having a colleague drop in for 10-15 minutes of their class to observe slow me down. But what I learned about our PreK-12 from the visits I did make was invaluable in my own growth as a teacher and in my greater understanding of our entire program and the way students' experience their education.

This year I will have "visiting classes" as my number one goal and enter periods for visiting into my calendar so that no one schedules over the top of these times. This will put me in more classes. Once I am in them, my next goal will be to share with them what I see, hear, learn and think.

Change at Independent Schools

This is a "reblog". I originally shared it with The Association of Deleware Valley Independent Schools, Powerful Learning Project Cohort in March 2010.

This past winter I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and I recently finished Dan and Chip Heath's Switch. Both books have provided me with a lot to think about in terms of how change happens. From Gladwell, I take heart in how connected we all are and how much of what we do and succeed at comes from taking a close look at who we are and the assets (or encumbrances) we carry with us each and every day. We may not all have access to super computers at an early age as did Bill Gates, but we are surrounded by people and opportunities who provide us with the tools we need in exchange for our hard work and personal investment. (10,000 hours is now my aspiring rock star daughter's mantra. According to Gladwell this is what separates the amazing athletes, writers, and musicians from the ordinary).

And now I have a caveat. One of the complaints I hear at my school (and I can only assume at other schools) is that groups are charged with tasks, they do a lot of research, engage others in conversation, debate possible outcomes and then generate recommendations which get passed onto administrators who are always busy. Sometimes one or two of the recommendations are implemented while the rest of the report gathers dust. Over time, faculty become jaded and wonder what all the effort is for. I recently had an administrator tell me that the reason most recommendations don't get implemented is that they are bad. But that is short sighted, bad or good, the correct response to the hard work a group of people was asked to take on is a response—a complete consideration of the entirety of their report. That doesn’t mean all or perhaps any of the recommendations are implemented. It seems so simple; people want their work (and time) acknowledged. This is where this caveat connects with personal investment! Change happens when a faculty is empowered to work on a challenge or idea, work through the possible answers and solutions and then tasked with implementing their ideas within the fiscal constraints that exist.

Heath and Heath make change seem possible, even at 200 year old schools steeped in tradition. One of the most interesting pieces of their book is the way that many of their examples of transformation begin with an initial solution that is small (all out of proportion) in comparison to the problem, but the solution is easily articulated and implemented, it involves changes in behavior (rather than attitude), it quickly builds energy and community, and shows results. Heath and Heath call some of this creating a path and I think that this is where independent schools most fall down. Many Heads of School start the year with a short list of projects for themselves and for the staff. Divisional heads have their own divisional goals and faculty are asked to write individual goals. All laudable in themselves but in the aggregate they end up being diffuse and perhaps overwhelming. And how are we to measure success? Retention? Yield on applicants, college admission results? The increase in the annual fund? The decrease in annual expenditures? What are our metrics?

Thinking about 21st century education or education in the 21st century can feel so overwhelming, so many programs, so many shifts, so many tools and cool lesson plans, so much to change in our current schedules, texts, assessments, that paralysis or TTWADI or entropy win out. The antidote seems to be a clear, specific path that focuses on shifting a very few behaviors. Each school will have its own particular path and I could imagine that each could easily choose to change very idiosyncratic things. Our Middle School has been involved in a multi-year re-envisioning process. Two years ago they implemented one change, one of the very few that was possible at the time--they created grade level teams and these teams started meeting weekly. These meetings have had tangible results in both jump starting program review, increasing collaboration and better attention to individual student strengths and challenges.

Now what small shift would it take to rethink our school year. . . . . ?