Teacher in Development

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.

Dekita.org: Classroom Blogging: two fundamental approaches

All I can say is wow. What a great article. Aaron Campbell explores the same issues I’ve been wrestling with. I’m working with our team of teachers to get them into the brave new world of blogging for purposes of Professional Development.

All I can say is that it ain’t easy.

Big question: How do you encourage people (in my case, English teachers) to blog? What is the best way to motivate them?

Campbell’s article touches on a variety of issues, but the most interesting to me was around increasing reader participation.

You know it’s totally odd how many teachers approach all things new. Specifically: Things blog and technology related. As J.M. puts it in his comments from a tech conference he attended, most teachers adapt a “head in the sand” approach. There seems to be great…maybe not fear, but perhaps unwillingness around this stuff.

The unwillingness of busyness.

So the article explores two methods of encouraging participation: “Crack the whip” vs. student centered motivation.

Crack-the-whip:
Forced participation as students are graded, or will be graded on blog participation. There are also regular assignments and projects - assigned by the teacher - that students must complete in order to pass the course.

Problems: More than likely, the fun will get squeezed right out of this approach. They’re doing the blogging for a grade and may, or may not see the fun side, see the potential for networking, learning, exploration, connections etc. that could be made. The almighty grade is king.

Student Centered Approach:
The teacher basically steps away from the vehicle and the blog becomes whatever the student wants it to become. They blog for enjoyment. I will quote Campbell directly because…he just explains it so well:

“The teacher sees herself as a facilitator of a process of creation, not as an enforcer of behavior. She makes no demands on quantity and does everything she can to inspire her students to blog through her own examples, stories, enthusiasm, and passion. Qualitative and reflective self and peer evaluation are both encouraged and valued; and students are given considerable, if not complete, control over the pace, content, and direction of their blogging activities. Whether or not students will enjoy blogging, see the potential value of it, and continue blogging on their own after the course is finished is the primary consideration.”

My reflections:
Like Campbell points out, I think the middle ground is the safest place here. We cannot control the blogging experience so much that the fun dies, and students merely work for a grade. The real value of blogging, I think, is lost to this approach. It may look good on report cards, but we likely fall victim to joyless, powerless, exercise. Thou shalt not solely rely upon this method!

But, it is not totally evil either. I think there needs to be some sort of control. Students, I think, need to know that what they’re doing will matter for future evaluation. I think if we swing the other direction, 100% towards the student centered approach, where it’s all up to them 100% of the time, we’ll fall into another trap: Directionlessness.

We’re trajectory coaches. We do need to influence, and not just follow a “hands-off” approach in class - even in a student centered classroom.

There does need to be some, perhaps lite, control, though those controls could also be very much created by and centered around the student.

I really like Campbell’s approach to blogging in the classroom. He unites the best of both worlds:

“Until now, my approach has been to design assignments that mimic the activity of a self-directed blogger: choosing a topic to write about, using social networking tools and tags to find other bloggers, linking to those bloggers in the posts, linking to resources for further reading, connecting ideas and expressions of emotions to images and photos, following up on comments in future posts, etc.”

Encourage Self-directed blogging. (Love that!)

1. Students choose topic to write about. - Perhaps following a theme that you need to be following in class.
2. Use social sofware and keywords to link to others who are talking about the same thing.
3. Link to, and comment on those newly found resources. Students create their own content based on what they learned.
4. Following up on comments.

Really important idea: Trajectory coaches DO have a role and place in the classroom. They need to exert influence! Around blogging in the classroom, we need to model best practices around blogging, social software, photo sharing etc.

That means, TRAJECTORY COACH: GET THYSELF A BLOG! SHARE IT!

Small is better. Less is more.

Effective Trajectory Coaches live in small groups. They thrive in them. They push to create them.

The classroom of today may have 5, 25, or 125 students in them, but if we want those classroom experiences to be successful, addictive, and relevant, then we must learn the fine art of making “many” into “few.”

A few weeks ago I ran across this post over at The Savvy Technologist blog. It stopped me cold. It made me think. Best of all, it made me realize something new…

“I’m starting my third year as a “technology integrator” and I, too, am more convinced than ever that I will be more effective as a one-on-one “coach” rather than a “trainer” who conducts large-group sessions. I’ve done too many training sessions and workshops with almost no discernible impact over the past two years. Casting a wide net just doesn’t work.”

Trajectory Coaches think big. We’re visionaries. We’re early adaptors. We’re - to borrow from Tim Wilson (above) - smart casters.

Trajectory Coaches are big thinkers, but small connectors. Not because we’re afraid of the large audience - we’ve been working them for years - but now we’re realizing that coaches may be the head of a team, but they do their deepest influencing, and have their most powerful, life changing interactions, on a one-on-one level.

Tim Wilson’s post hit my brakes. I’m in charge of training our growing team of 20 teachers. Not many I know, but they’re more than a one-on-one ratio.

As our training program has been running, I’ve been noticing the same things Wilson has been, that trying to influence large groups of people is just an exercise in futility.

I think all teachers need to see this. A new vision. You should no longer see your classroom as one big group. Stop trying to cast your net wide. If you want to be a wide caster, you’ll experience two things: 1. You may catch many in your net, but how well will you be able to convert them into lifelong thinker/learners? You may have many, but how well have you influenced their trajectory? 2. You may have many, but they will leave your classroom the same way they came in. (related to point 1 a little) - but thinking more about a person changing and accepting, or at least trying out, the concepts in your class. Thinking about Wilson’s post, I found similar things happening in my large group training sessions. Many, speaking about technology, have had little to no contact with it - and when I mentioned that we’d be blogging, the blank stares that came back at me were just….mush.

I’ve left behind the big group. I still have one to deal with, and likely so will most other trajectory coaches out there, but it’s time to carve small outta the big. It can and should be done.

The amazing differences I’ve noticed in just two weeks:
1. Engaged teachers.
2. Thoughtful questions.
3. “Aha! I never thought of that.” moments.
4. Peer teaching and correcting. (It’s so much safer in groups of three.)
5. Way more head nodding and faces which say: “I get this stuff!”
6. Way more exploration on how to take the book stuff and turn it into classroom practice.

My big change: Instead of large group workshops, I’ve opened up three “You pick the time” sessions a week for all our teachers. The largest group I’ve had so far was five teachers. Today I have a one-on-one. I’m super excited about it, you know why? Because small is where the influence is.

I’ve been learning a great deal about harnessing the power of FLOW, Passion, and Addictive experiences, mainly in the context of the ESL classroom and with my students. But this week I’ve been forced to consider how to apply those same principles in the Professional Development program where I work.

No FLOW, No Passion, No Addiction = No learning
I’m in charge of our company’s PD program, and am often the one tasked with facilitating each session. I was reflecting on our first sessions which were held in August, and was just not happy with how they turned out. They were flat. Directionless. And sometimes just plain boring. I’m not sure I really did a good job…at least that’s how I felt a few days after the event. I’m sure very little was picked up by our participants.

I began asking myself, what could I do differently? Our opening sessions in August were far from addictive learning experiences, far from FLOW, and likely not that effective as a result. How could I begin applying what I was learning for my classrooms, to what I’m doing with our team of twenty teachers?

Some realizations:
1. Working with teachers is a whole different mental ballgame.
I’ve partnered with students of all ages and positions, from children to company presidents, and have rarely felt intimidated by them. Working with my peers, my collegues, has been an entirely different matter for me. I’ve been very intimidated by them. Why? I don’t know yet. I’ll have to continue thinking that one through.

2. I made a deadly asumption: Teachers are already turned on and passionate about teaching and learning how to be better teachers. This little asumption is what shot me in the foot. Because I was already thinking our team of teachers would be pre-stoked and rearing to charge into our training material for August, I neglected to take the time to stoke, and fan, and employ the ideas I’ve been reading so much about lately around addictive classroom experiences. Big mistake. I thought, wrongly of course, that since they were teachers they would already be turned on by professional development….that maybe all the work in that area has already been taken care of?

Big realization: Teachers need to be “turned on” to developing their skills just as much as students need to be “turned on” to developing their language skills. In some cases, teachers could be easier to stimulate, but in the end, as I realized the painful way, you have to take the time to light those fires, engage, create and sustain FLOW.

I’ve been following Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users around now for a good three or four months. The site is….incredible. I love it. Here are a few posts that have particularily begun shaping the way I live and move in the classroom.

1. Kicking Ass is more fun : What are you helping your students LEARN? The better your students become at something, the more their passion for that something grows. Before reading this article, and I’m trying to track down another one where she brilliantly shows how learning is addictive in itself, I never stopped to think that when I take the time to help students really learn something well, I am actually building passion in them to grow for more.

1.2 Upgrade your users, not just your product: What should you be “selling” in the classroom? The next grammar point? Or how you can talk non-stop about your previous work experiences at your next “English only” job interview?

2. What can software learn from kung fu?: This post just made my head spin. How to create “sucked-in” user experiences. There are so many really good points around this post…but I drew a major…new way of working from it. I wanted our teachers to be aware of what exactly our training course was doing, and where it was going. We’re preparing to take the Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test together. So instead of just handing out a copy of the course book to everyone, I also built a “Learning Map” - borrowing from Sierra’s “levels’ approach. When students or course participants know where they are, and what they have to do to move forward and gain “the next superpower” - in this case certification, passion and motivation shoots up.

I found this to be true. Last Friday we had our first PD session for September. The first thing I did was hand out a copy of the “Learning Map” I had built. Together we went over it, explaining what each “level” required of everyone, and how we could move along to reach certification at each end of module.

It was quite interesting to see how everyone seemed to get interested in the idea of certification. There were lots of head nodding and “Ahhh, now that’s neat, interesting, and cools” going around the room as we talked about it. Interest was happening! *Big difference from August’s first sessions let me tell ya!

I will be posting more to this category, because right now I have to leave. But I am excited about what I have learned from Sierra, and that I also need to apply all this to working with teachers too. Maybe a “Duh” realization for some…but for me, it marked a great change in how I work with our teachers.