Sculpting Thinkers

I encountered the following item on an application for an educational leadership position: Explain what you believe are the major characteristics of an outstanding teacher.

Here is my response:

Outstanding teachers are artists, scientists, and craftsmen.

Their art is in their ability to envision the beautiful sculpture while it is still an untouched block of stone (sometimes full of cracks and ragged edges) and to interact with the stone in a way that acknowledges its uniqueness and potential; their science is in their ability to measure the stone’s proportions and properties and then use the resulting data to 1) decide which tools and techniques to apply, and 2) change tools and/or adjust techniques along the way as necessary; and their craftsmanship is in their ability to synthesize their own knowledge of subject matter, curriculum, and instructional strategies to figure out exactly where, how, and at what rate to chip away at that block of stone until the envisioned form begins to appear.

I believe all teachers are part artist, part scientist, and part craftsman, and the outstanding teacher possesses, in fairly equal and strong proportions, the critical traits of all three.

Share Your Excellence!

Attention Kansas educators!

As a proud Kansas education professional (born, raised, and educated in Kansas), I tweet/share Kansas educators' tweets/posts (especially with pictures!) of student, staff, school, and district achievements and of students, staff, and community partners engaged in rich learning experiences.

THINGS TO DO:

1. Follow me on Twitter @eduthusiasm (and mention me in your Tweets).
   
2. "Like" eduthusiasm on Facebook and tag me in your posts. I'll follow or "like" you back and watch for your "retweetable" tweets and "share-able" posts!
   
3. Tweet and/or post regularly (and mention/tag me) about the excellent college and career ready learning experiences going on in your classrooms!

My soapbox:

Rich learning experiences involve:

• inquiry,
• discovery,
• rigor,
  
• relevance,
  
• collaboration,
  
• creativity,
  
• innovation,
  
• critical thinking,
  
• problem solving,
  
• global awareness....

Rich learning experiences result in:

• language/communication literacy
• core subject knowledge and understanding (best learned through purposeful inquiry and discovery)
  
• information literacy
  
• media/technology literacy
  
• financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
  
• civic literacy
  
• health literacy
  
• environmental literacy
  

and in:

• flexibility and adaptability
  
• initiative and self-direction
  
• social and cross-cultural skills
  
• productivity and accountability
  
• leadership and responsibility
  

in other words, COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS!

This list contains items found at http://www.p21.org/. 

Inquiry-Based Learning Could've Saved Me

MY ADVICE TO COLLEGE STUDENTS?
Become conversant in your chosen career field's current issues. Be ready to discuss them, share your thoughts on them, offer solutions for them.

WHY IS THIS MY ADVICE?
In my first professional interview after graduating from college (an undisclosed number of decades ago), I was trying to get a high school teaching position in another state due to my husband's base assignment in the U.S. Air Force. The question that tripped me up? "Tell me about education in Kansas right now -- any problems, issues, controversies?"

My answer? "Oh there is nothing wrong in Kansas! Everything is great! No problems in education in Kansas!"

The principal's face visibly fell into an incredulous expression that conveyed, better than any words could have, that I had just seriously embarrassed myself. And the interview didn't last much longer. Evidently, he wasn't looking for a naive Kansas girl wearing rose-colored glasses.

HENCE MY SOAPBOX.
Kansas schools, colleges, and universities: What are we doing to ensure that high school and university graduates are conversant in current issues and controversies in their chosen fields?

I asked the chair of my college-senior son's academic department how the curriculum prepares the students for this challenge. His answer was not satisfactory: "We cover that." He cited human and financial resources as the limiting factor in the department's ability to cover it more thoroughly. He obviously did not understand my meaning.

I would really love to hear from education professionals on this one.

Describe specific learning experiences that you design for your students geared toward learning how to inquire, study, and possibly even solve an issue or contribute intelligently to an important debate in a professional setting.

Offering any number of "current events" classes is not enough. These inquiries should be embedded across the curriculum. Whatever the subject, students should be challenged to discover what the issues/controversies are in subject-related business/industry and those issues/controversies' impact -- locally, regionally, nationally, globally. Students should also be required to collaborate with each other and business/industry pros on possible solutions.

This is what inquiry- or problem-based learning is all about. Are we making it happen in the classroom? If so, how? If not, when do we start?

Kansas State Library - Awesome (and FREE) Resource!

I'd like to tell you about a little-known FREE resource for Kansans. I have been aware of its existence for a long time, but I have not remembered it when I could've used it! After attending a presentation about it at work last week, I will not forget again; in fact, I've already used it several times to benefit my work.

ESPECIALLY if you are a student or teacher (any level), but also if you are a parent, business owner, consumer, researcher, employee, or employer, the Kansas State Library is a one-stop information resource.

When you go to the website, hover over the "Kansans" tab at the top, and a window pops up showing many of the options available to you (free) -- just for being a Kansan.

If your internet service provider is located in Kansas, you can access the "Kansan" resources on the website without logging in. Otherwise, you'll need your Kansas Library Card information. To obtain your Kansas Library Card, go to your local public library and request one. I don't know the exact process from there, but the librarians at the public library will. You can also call the Kansas State Library at 785-296-3296 if you have questions.

The website has an online chat feature (Click on "Ask a Librarian."), and a reference librarian is available during regular business hours to assist you via this feature. Reference librarians are also available via e-mail and phone to help you find the information you need.

The journal finder is particularly handy and replaces all those old indexes that we used to have to plow through in the school or university library to find scholarly research on our assigned topics.

CHECK IT OUT! (It's free!)

kslib.info

Kansas Needs a Veto

Here is what I sent to Governor Brownback using his "Legislation and Policy Issues" website. 

Dear Governor Brownback:

I am asking you to veto the education bill that the legislature just passed Sunday 4/6/2014.

First, I do not believe the bill is a fair representation of Kansans' opinions on ALL the issues addressed in the bill. I believe that it is, instead, shameful political maneuvering. Each issue should be addressed in separate legislation so that it can receive the amount of concentration and deliberation that such weighty issues deserve.

Second, I am deeply troubled by the "cut the pie into smaller pieces" approach to running our state's budget. Apply this concept to feeding a family, and the result is a starving family. As the family grows and its needs change, more pie has to be provided. Please quit "robbing Peter to pay Paul."

Third, on the specific subject of education funding, the children who are in our schools NOW and over the next few years need properly supported education NOW. Education funding that is based on an economic plan that will take years to come to fruition (if that ever happens) does TODAY'S children NO GOOD. The current funding formula will work if our state's leaders will fund it properly. Please lead our state by guiding the legislature to  pass adequate funding for education using the current formula and passing the taxation necessary to fund it.

Be Logical About The Common Core

The people who are against the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been listening to politicized propaganda, not the least of which is from Obama-haters who simply hate "the Common Core" because Obama supports it.

"But that is illogical," as Spock would say. I am no Trekkie, but it does seem more logical to me to evaluate the CCSS based on their educational merits.

Guess what? The old standards were centered around a "common core" of knowledge and skills that education professionals and our society felt were important for all citizens of a democracy to possess.

The CCSS are centered around that same core of common knowledge and skills. However, the CCSS "kick it up a notch," as Emeril Lagasse would say. These new standards require higher levels of cognition on the part of the student in learning activities.

Education professionals use Bloom's Taxonomy and its revisions as the standard for evaluating the cognitive levels at which students function during a learning activity. ALL levels of Bloom's are important; however, the key here is that the old standards did not require learning at the higher levels, and the new ones do.

The previous standards required students to remember and understand concepts and to do some low-level application of concepts. The excellent teachers were (and still are) having their students analyze, evaluate, and create using their new learning, but the standards did not require this higher-level cognition. Until these types of learning experiences are required, many students will not experience them.

The new standards, which originated through a partnership of state leaders, require ALL students to use new learning at a much higher level of cognition. This results in a much broader and deeper understanding of the concepts, as well as the ability to tackle complex problems intelligently and find or create solutions.

You can find out more FACTUAL information about the CCSS at http://www.corestandards.org/.

Interest-Based Reading with a Purpose

I was scanning my Eduthusiasm Facebook feed, just about to leave it and get busy with my work-related "tasks at hand," when Curtis Chandler's name caught my eye in a post from ESSDACK. His stuff is always good, so I clicked. His article on "hunting and gathering" brought to the forefront a recurring query for me.

Recognizing that there are exceptions to this -- every situation has its specific needs -- I still cannot help but wonder: Why can't we have the students do the hunting and gathering along with or rather than the teacher?

Here's an alternate idea to gathering a bunch of specific pieces of literature and asking students to read them and identify their plots, characters, themes, and "lessons."

Use interests as ONE of your grouping criteria. Then have groups identify a topic of interest they all share. It might be a hobby, a career interest, a hero, a handicap or disease -- the possibilities are endless.

The assignment will be to develop an annotated bibliography of reading materials designed to educate people on the topic. It should include fiction and non-fiction, books, magazines, journals, websites of agencies/organizations, etc.

Then:

1. Have each group identify an upstanding organization associated with the group's specific interest. The teacher can then communicate with an official of the organization to partner with the group of students for the project.
2. Have the group Skype with the organization official to learn the org's purpose and activities. What kind of help does this org need? What knowledge does this org want people to have? What message does this org need to disseminate? Does this official know of books and other resources that are available to help people understand the issue/topic? Who can interested parties follow on Twitter to gain further insight?
3. The group then needs to use the official's recommendations to identify further resources.
4. Eventually, each student needs to bring his/her recommendations to the group regarding which literature to include in the group's final bib.
5. The group then needs to come to a consensus and complete a draft of its bib.
6. The group should then submit the draft to the org official, give him/her time to peruse it, then use Skype to discuss his/her recommendations for the group's consideration (items to leave in, take out; points to add in annotations; etc.).
7. The group decides on its revisions and then submits its final version, sharing it with the partnering org.
8. Is there a local org where the group could present its reading recommendations?

Lots of work to do before this gets to a classroom, but the idea here is interest-based reading and research with a purpose outside the classroom.