Teacher in Development

The idea:
“Professional development should be something done by teachers, not done to them.”

First, it’s about culture.
What is our company/school culture around development? When I say culture, I share Kent Peterson’s definition where “culture is the accumulation of many individuals’ values and norms. It is a consensus about what’s important. It’s the group’s expectations, not just an individual’s expectations. It’s the way everyone does business.” I got this great quote from an article on the National Staff Development Council’s website (www.nsdc.org). In it Joan Richardson takes a fascinating look at Shared Culture and it’s powerful role in school and teacher development.

So skipping back to Peterson’s definition of culture, how does the company/school I belong to COLLECTIVELY view PD? Do our people value it? I value it. I strongly believe in professional development, but I am a single individual. I am not the culture.

As I think about our teachers, and as I prepare our professional development program for 2006, this thought about culture really has me thinking. As a company, according to our mission statement and value system, we do value PD. It’s one of the things that the company says is important. I wonder where our teachers are on that one though. Applying Peterson’s definition into the question, is PD collectively important to our teaching staff?

Reflecting on last year’s PD work, I would say for the vast majority that PD is seen as important. They acknowledge that good teachers never stop learning. But I have a sneaky suspicion that for most, our “culture of Professional Development” only goes as far as an acknowledgement. Good intentioned, but skin deep.

An acknowledgement is not culture. I think it’s a step in the right direction, but not culture. Not yet. In 2006, I see a great need to foster and encourage a deeper “buy-in” to professional development by our teachers. It will be a year, I hope, of influencing and creating a culture around collaboration and professional learning.

As I think this out, and that’s exactly what I’m doing here - thinking outloud - I am reminded again and again that this is not a “clickable” thing. It won’t be instant. Richardson really hits that home when she quotes Joan Vydra, a principal in suburban Chicago.
“Shaping a culture takes time. Anything that is top-down will last only as long as the leader stays in that office. Then those ideas will evaporate and everything will go right back to the way it was.”

Love it: Sustained and Passionate professional development is culture, not RULE driven. If it’s not, it simply won’t work. It will be temporary at best, and shallow.

So, if my assesment of our teachers is right, that professional develoment is acknowledged to be important, how can we begin moving from acknowledgement to culture?

Firstly, I openly acknowledge that I’m not even pretending to be an expert on such things. But I do have some ideas, and desperatly hope for suggestions from you.

Richarson quotes Kent Peterson’s story about a principal’s strategy towards recognizing “cultural moments.”

Peterson recalled one principal who recognized that he did not intuitively know when a “cultural moment” was presenting itself. So, using a 3x5 index card, he wrote down five elements of the school culture that he wanted to improve. He stuck the card in his shirt pocket and pulled it out throughout his day as a way to remind himself of questions he could ask.
“You can find ways to encourage yourself to be more conscious of this. Eventually, it becomes internalized,” Peterson said.

I identify very well with Kent Peterson’s principal. I don’t think I’m good at noticing those key moments when you can shape or influence culture. If it’s not intuitive, the good news is that this type of awareness can be learned. That will be what I begin to really work and focus on: developing that kind of awareness and asking the right questions.

I also really liked Peterson’s second story of a principal who incorporated cultural influence into day to day activities - that perhaps on the surface didn’t look like an oppportunity to find and exploit “cultural moments.”

Peterson also recalled shadowing a principal who found ways to blend administrative tasks with opportunities to influence attitudes in his building. This principal had to provide central office with the total number of ceiling tiles in his building. Rather than assign that task to a maintenance employee, the principal assumed the job himself. The principal’s arrival in each classroom was, of course, a big event to both students and teachers. In each classroom, he asked what students were learning that day and asked to see student work–then he counted the ceiling tiles. He had taken responsibility for a mundane task because it allowed him to connect with every classroom in the building and to send a message about the importance of students’ work. (Richardson, 2001 Line 17)

Developing culture is about becoming aware of “cultural moments” but it’s also very much about being intentional around finding and/or creating them.

So, the floor is open. Any thoughts?

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Related Resource:
National Staff Development Council - www.nsdc.org
There’s a tonn of stuff here around professional development, don’t get lost!

“How do your customers know you care?” Cathy Mosca via Tom Peters

A great question after a great article around Customer Love and Care. Now here’s what I’m thinking… “How do your students know you care?”

Is it just great business practice to love your customer? I don’t think so. It’s good people practice. That’s what teaching is all about - people.

This week, amongst a million other things, I’m pausing to reflect on the kind of teacher I want to be next year. This quote, and the story it is taken from - go ahead and read it, it’s worth your while, is how I want to be this year. I want to be more about the person and making that value added connection with my students that would inspire love and loyalty.

The things the barber got right:
1. A great service.
2. It’s about long-term relationship, not a money transaction.
3. It’s not about getting you to buy from me once and never again, but to buy and keep on buying because we like each other.
4. I serve you and your kids.
5. I look for you where you are.

What’s this gotta do with teaching? Everything! I think it crosses over nicely don’t you?

Ponderings…
Am I the kind of teacher that would inspire a student to drive further for?
Are the pd sessions I am in charge of worth the two hour parking participants have to pay? Would I drive further and pay two hours of parking to be taught by me?

Two weeks of planning are upon me. At the moment, that means a strong focus on our school’s professional development program.

I fell into a really great article thismorning as I read through my bloglines account. This article, Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks Extending the classroom came up via Will Richardson and then following the link over to Mr. Kuropatwa’s blog which brought me over to one of my favorite thinkers, George Siemens. Phew. Nothing like falling through a few good posts.

I really enjoyed reading Siemens’ article. I think it was the first time I’ve seen a balanced look at learning, where various sides or approaches are examined fairly.

Planning for a Balanced Learning Ecology

“What we know is less important than our capacity to continue to learn more. The connections we make (between individual specialized communities/bodies of knowledge) ensure that we remain current. These connections determine knowledge flow and continual learning.” (Siemens Par.2)

I think this sums up what should be happening to our PD program. At the moment we are following a course based model - everyone working the same topics of study, following the same material, working towards the same certification.

As a result of the things I’ve been reading and studying recently, I have been thinking about how to begin deploying alternative methods, towards a more independent and self-directed scheme of growth.

Marco Polo and EFL GEEK have really given me great food for thought as I ponder my way through this stuff. They helped hit home the idea that PD must be something that is done by the teacher, not something done to them.

But this raises a big question. I totally agree with the idea of “by you” not “to you.” I’m sold on it. But how do you help your peers adapt a similar posture? How can you help create a culture of self-directed learning and development?

I was thinking through this in between coffees today and this thought hit me: Self-directed is not clickable. It grows. It develops. I think we often don’t remember that. We think, self-directed is good. It’s what we want to see happen. But maybe we tend to think instant. Point and click. Note to self: it’s not!

I thought of how my son learned how to walk. At first, he didn’t even care about it. He was happy to be carried around and taken places. Then as time went on, he started to notice that the real fun was had by those who moved on their own. Just look at all the places I could go and explore if I could just move around like the big people could! (I’m no human development expert, but I gotta bet that curiosity and exploration are huge motivators.)

Walking, and this isn’t new info, is a process. You don’t just flip a walking switch on and off you go. You start with getting on your belly and pulling. You crawl. You crawl for a while. Then you’ve got to figure out how to grab stuff to help you stand. Then you start using this stuff to help you take steps, much of the time that “thing” is a helping hand from one of the bigger people. Walking also involves falling, and getting back up again. It’s a process, not a click.

Then you have the big step. When you let go of your support - that big person’s hand, the coffee table, the sofa, and you step out on your own. I remember that my son took his longest free steps in order to go after his favorite ball. He’d go out, take a few steps, and sometimes quickly return to the safety of the sofa or waiting hands. It was a little by little thing. With each attempt, he would sometimes take more risks. Go a little further. Stay “out there” for a little longer before coming back. Then the day came when he did it all himself. No support. No hands. He saw the ball, wanted it, and off he went. The kid was walking.

Nice story. We all know it. But I didn’t realize that I’m dealing with a similar situation with our teachers. It’s easy to talk about self-directed, free learning. We all agree that it’s what we want to see happen in our classrooms. But how do you get there? How do you help people get out of the “I like being carried around” concept, to walking around on their own? It’s not clickable!

That’s my first lightbulb. Just because I am including the phrase “self-directed learning” somewhere in our staff’s professional development program, doesn’t mean it will magically happen. I need to remember that this is not clickable, but a growth and development situation.

Lightbulb two: Self-directed, life-long autonomous learning will follow a similar path of development to learning how to walk. 1. I’m happy being told what I need to know.(taken places). 2. Curiosity and Exploration are great motivators - but someone has to show me and model how cool it could be to explore and find stuff out. How could curiosity and exploration be cultivated? I think a key to successful -autonomous- professional development is awakened curiousity. 3. Structure is good, as long as it is a means to an end and not the end. You need support to get up and moving, but as soon as you can, you need to move on your own. Less and less support. Less structure. In PD I see this as maybe having some base courses available. A groundwork from which to grow from. At the moment we have our teachers all preparing to take the Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test. I am seeing this course like our big sofa or coffee table. It’s something to lean on and move along with. A way to spike curiosity and open doors for future exploration. It’s structure, but to awaken self-directed learning, it must not become the future of our Professional Development program. Only a launch pad not a train track.

Lightbulb 4: My son really took his first solo steps in order to go after his ball. He loves balls. If professional development is not done to teachers, but done by them, a good PD program should be quick to help teachers identify things they love and are curious about. Then it should step back and say “Go for it!”

As always, the floor is open to you. I eagerly await your ideas on this.

If I write nothing before, I’d like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas! God bless.

A really great few posts { Blogging Rubric and Reflective Commentary } over at Ken Smith’s Weblogs in Higher Education around grading blog work in the classroom. I really enjoyed reading the ideas these guys came up with. What I especially thought to be cool:
1. Grading around audience
2. Grading around freshness
3. Grading around developing a “house style.” - I really thought this was neat. Voice!
4. Grading around how well participants connected and built community.

I post this for those who are trying to incorporate blogs in the classroom - grades, sooner or later, must come into the picture.

James, over at Palimpsest redux has a great post around purposeful blogging that I think speaks very well to this issue. Edu-blogging must be purposeful. (All blogging I think should be purposeful) but because of the school environment, teachers I think need to consider how to give student’s credit for blog work.

“Students should know exactly what is expected of them when it comes to blogs and the topics they blog about. I find this is a hard topic to nail down, especially due to my own personal blog angst over genre limiting. On the one hand, I just want to see students writing about what is important to them. On the other hand, curriculum rarely allows for this in some courses. Students don’t need another assignment or ‘to-do’ item just because the instructor thinks it is an interesting endeavour. What they need is a real learning experience, one they can get credit for (read: not one that is added on top of assigned work). The idea of expecting students to spend, no invest , time blogging meaningful messages without offering credit for that investment is, in my opinion, unrealistic.” (J.M. Purposeful Blogging…

Can I get an “Amen?”

Well said. I would also like to add here that the student should be a part of the assignment of value around their blogging. (See the entries by Ken Smith, his students had a big hand in the grades.)

Via Stephen’s Web:

Ben Crowell has a really interesting article exploring the concept of free books. If you’ve ever lamented about the rising costs of your school’s text books, or if you would like to explore digital options, check out this article.

“With the cost of college textbooks up 62% over the last decade,[1] pressure is building for an alternative model of publishing: the free book. Five years ago, an author had to be very persistent — maybe even a little crazy — to try the new approach. But now a whole new infrastructure is springing up to make it easier. “(Crowell)

The read/write classroom is about many things, but up near the top of “important things” is the ability of students to be able to hunt down information, connect with it, interact with and reflect upon it, and then write their own content as a result. Open source books are, in my humble opinion, a giant step for 2.0 teachers and students.

Related links you will find interesting:
The Textbook Revolution http://textbookrevolution.org/ - There’s an RSS feed if you want to monitor the site.
— For you ESL teachers out there, there’s even a section for you!

The Assayer - Ben Crowell’s collection of free books.

And Just when we thought the thing was on the way out…

TOEIC test upgraded to include writing, speaking components
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 at 15:50 JST

PRINCETON — The Test of English for International Communications, better known as the TOEIC test, will include new writing and speaking components in the fourth quarter of 2006, Educational Testing Service officials said Monday. (JAPAN TODAY)

Does this thing really work, or is it all about the money it pulls in? Just wondering…

I’m coming to the end of a two year long relationship with some of my students. Like in most other academic places, the end of the “official” teacher/student relationship is celebrated by giving an intimidating examination, a great vomiting out of crammed in knowledge which covers most everything presented during the course. My class will share a similar fate.

We’ve arrived at the end of our course book. I wonder to myself, and now to the rest of you, does this style of assessment really mean anything? Does it really give an accurate picture of what our students have learned and mastered? Do “fill in the blank” and listening for specific information (to fill in the blanks again) really help students demonstrate what they’ve learned and what competencies they have picked up? Does writing a report, having to stick to the format presented in the book, really show that our students have learned how to write well in English and across formats that they are encountering at work? And what about those artificial speeches where they describe something they did yesterday, will do tomorrow…or have done….demonstrating whatever grammar structure is being asked for in the test - “Describe your previous work experience.” Think: use the present perfect here! Follow the formula.

This isn’t how I want to part ways with my students. Our two years together summed up in a four page, open book final exam that they are just petrified over. To be a little fair to the exam, it does a mostly ok job of measuring the student’s ability to “use” the language we’ve been working on. While end of unit mini-tests for this book have been mostly very pathetic fill-in-the-blanks, matching and listening based, the final exam is open book - asking students to steer away from vomiting out crammed vocabulary words and grammar structures, but to actually demonstrate an understanding of how to use the stuff.

In the end though, it’s just a surface scratch. My students will not be able to show how their confidence has grown over our time together. They will not be able to show that when they first started, “umm-ing” and “ahh-ing” really made conversation a hard thing to have, while now we can ramble on about most anything.

There’s no way to show the little things. The slow growth, the not so sexy side of language learning that happens as you walk into intermediate level fluency, is left untouched and unexplored.

Students, teachers, schools, and HR folk are left wondering, “has anything happened at all?” and “What have you been doing for the past two years?” Sure doesn’t feel and look like much. “Well, we finished this book.” Great. Lovely. But what can you do?

That end of course final exam is looking mighty flimsy at the moment. How can a four page exam, open book or not, successfully and adequately measure the growth of a human being?

Answer: Doesn’t come close.

We need to shift, and shift radically. Testing has it’s place, but cacheing and strategically displaying development over time is where real progress can be assessed and evaluated. Language learning, especially after you break through the opening rounds, is about as fast and noticeable as tree growth. It’s really hard to notice because it’s usually quite slow and long-term. That’s right. Language acquisition for most people, is long-term. Tests, for the most part, are short term selective measuring devices.

Wouldn’t a portfolio give teachers, students, schools, the public in general, a more accurate picture of the person it represents? If developed in alignment with school wide benchmarks and proficiencies, ePortfolios become a giant life mural - spanning time and development and capturing a person, telling their story.

A grade is data. A number. Why are we so in love with the idea of attaching a number to a person? Why do we think that this number really gives us an accurate picture of growth?

Personalized learning, I think, pairs very nicely with ePortfolio evaluation. A well done portfolio shows a person. It demonstrates growth and the meeting of competencies.

A number looks pretty on a report card, but I suggest that it’s merely a freeze frame, a snap shot of something here today, but vanished tomorrow.

Just think about it. Do you remember your grades from school? I bet you can remember a few. But how about the content that that grade described? I hardly recall what I stuffed into my head to spew out on a final exam.

So a student scores well on their final exam. Their course book is finished, and supposedly a level of English completed, but has all this found its way into their day-to-day reality - which is what really matters anyway?

This is a pre-reading and studying post. Perhaps my blueprint for action research in an area that I find to be fascinating, exciting, and elusive all at the same time. Personalized learning.

To me, personalized learning experiences are exciting because of how quickly and completely they engage the student. Content is devoured. Time flies. Fun and Joy blaze into the classroom. Flow!

But then I’m faced with that “C” word. Curriculum. The “must knows.” The final exam that pretty much every human resource department head asks us for. (If you’re inside a school system, then replace that last bit with school board or district or principal etc.)

We live in a programed world don’t we? We grew up in and under the big C and we’ve been trained to reproduce it and expect it in all other “learning” experiences/environments we encounter.

My questions around curriculum largely remain the same: Is Curriculum bad? It’s push technology. It’s a broadcast that all of our students must tune into, or face failure. It’s a broadcast that teachers have to transmit, or they too shall fail. Is that kind of setup incorrect? Have our times changed so much that “the way it’s always been” no longer applies?

I’m thinking that the answer to that question is yes, but I have no idea what it really means. I admit to being in a state of ignorance around an updated educational model, where the power of personal is released.

So I embark on an exploration. Over the next few posts I would like to learn more about Personalized Learning. I have some towering questions that I would like to echo and ask. This post from Stephen Downes really helps frame my questions:Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Personalisation and Digital Technologies

“The logic of education systems should be reversed so that the system conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system. This is the essence of personalisation. It demands a system capable of offering bespoke support for each individual in order to foster engaged and independent learners able to reach their full potential.” Good stuff, and I support most of it, though I note (and this is a small criticism) that the authors can’t quite let go of the reins, as evidenced by their suggestion that students take merely “joint responsibility” for learning choices and able only to “co-design” their own curriculum. When two people - one with power, and one without - are sharing “joint responsibility” and “co-design,” the person without power is inevitably overruled by the person with power. Status quo.

1. How do you let go of those reigns?
2. Should their be reigns of any kind?
3. Shouldn’t there be some kind of…framework set out around what is to be covered in class? A curriculum that is, but isn’t at the same time? It’s hard for me to get my words around this one. I think J.M. over at Palimpsest redux really hits this one well: Curriculum as guide not a gavel.
4. How do you get co-design that is really equal? Should it be all student? If it is all student centered course design, what happens to society when these students graduate? Will we be failing to reach key and important learning targets that are required to live and work outside school? Will unleashing self-directed learners…those who learn in a “just-in-time” fashion be able to fit in to our world successfully?

Lots of questions, and exciting directions to explore. As always, the floor is happily yours!

First of all, sorry everyone for not posting in a long while. Life…and a great deal of it, has been happening to me and well…posting, heck, thinking has been a very difficult thing to do lately.

I just wanted to post this link which I found to be very interesting. For all of us who try to evangelize and spread the good news about blogs , here’s some reall great ideas around explaining the whole RSS side of the coin. (Marshall’s tag line is super: Inhale feeds, Exhale bog posts. )

Enjoy! Marshall Kirkpatrick » Teaching RSS: A Discussion