Down with Either-Or!

"We should not do what THEY'RE proposing -- we should do what WE'RE proposing!"

I doubt it.

Republicans vs. Democrats, legislators vs. boards of education, education professionals vs. parents, teachers vs. administrators, politicians vs. professionals, this paradigm vs. that paradigm....

We probably should think VERY carefully before ever choosing EITHER this OR that.

I am fairly sure of the former as a global statement, but right now I am applying it to all discussions related to education.

Whether the discussion is curriculum, instruction, teacher evaluation, testing, funding, or discipline (Phooey on zero-tolerance policies!), we should be ever-so-leery of any entity that tries to force an either-or choice. There are too many variables within our world and within our student population to boil any issue down to A or B.

Why? Well, if we choose A, then those who would benefit from B suffer, and vice versa. We are involved in an enterprise that fails if collateral damage results from our action or inaction.

We are supposed to do what is best for every individual child. Generalities do not apply in education. We have failed the student who drops out. We have failed the student who graduates high school and cannot read at an adult level (exceptionalities aside). We have failed the student who leaves us having no idea what his strengths and aptitudes are--what he "brings to the table." We have failed the student who goes out into the world without the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful no matter what post-secondary path is chosen.

ANY discussions related to education must begin and end with flexibility, customizability. One size WILL NOT fit all.

What is Eduthusiasm?

Along with technology integration, I also do school PR. My favorite part of school PR is the promotion. I love to promote -- it is an inherently positive task, and I am a congenitally positive person. My current position as Director of Communications for the school district of my alma mater, Augusta USD 402 in Augusta, Kansas, allows me to show the local community and the world how proud I am of my home community and its school system. It's an easy job because I believe in the quality of both the community and the school district. I cannot help but be highly enthusiastic about both -- just ask anyone who knows me.

I have decided, however, that I am not going to stop there. I am going to use this blog to promote education -- primarily public education in Kansas -- because I am as proud of my state and my primary chosen career field as I am of my community and school district. My enthusiasm about Kansas education is boundless.

That's what Eduthusiasm is – enthusiasm about education -- and we cannot have enough of it. There are so many great things going on in education in Kansas and SO MANY awesome people coming forward to make these great things happen. Of course we have the best teachers, administrators, and support staff that any state could ask for, but we also have individuals, groups, businesses, and organizations that go out of their way to make a positive impact on schools and school children.

Just today I was pleased to be part of the South Central Chapter of KanSPRA and its recognition brunch for the region's recipients of the Friends of Education Award given by the Confidence in Kansas Public Education Task Force. Goddard USD 265 hosted the event, and over 100 people came from 10 different area school districts to recognize the priceless contributions that people are making to public education in Kansas.

The recipients in the KanSPRA South Central region make up an interestingly varied group. There was a man and his service dog, a school resource police officer, a hair stylist/shop owner, an organization that promotes the appreciation and pursuit of music excellence, an organization that promotes the dairy industry, a fire chief and his department, a Vietnamese-war-era immigrant who devotes endless hours to the children in his community, a dentist’s office, a few churches, a medical center, an entrepreneur whose handicapped daughter inspired her to raise tens of thousands of dollars for accessible playgrounds in their community....

The list goes on, and this is just the list of recipients from our region who were able to attend the brunch.

I plan to discuss these people’s contributions to our state’s children and its eduthusiasm over the next several days, as well as “dig up” some more stories as time goes on to illustrate what this blog is about -- @eduthusiasm!

Open the Can of Worms!

"We don't want to open that can of worms! If we do [whatever] for this child, we will have to do it for every child."

DISAGREE.

If we are going to help each child learn and flourish, we MUST open the can. We have to pour it out. We have to examine each individual worm to find out what it has, what it needs, and how best to provide those needs.

One worm might need more moisture. Another might need less. A third worm might previously have lived in peat moss that wasn't properly rinsed and therefore need some special care before growth can occur. Oh, and this one over here was left in the light too long before you received it. That one responds to a cooler environment--say, 55º, while those four over there do better if it's a bit warmer -- about 65º.

If I treat all my worms exactly the same, some of them will die!

I am not a scientist, and I really don't have any interest in worms, but isn't this a great analogy?

Do what is best for each individual child. "Equal" and "fair" are not synonyms.

3 Ways to Support Educational Leaders in the New Pedagogy

Teaching is no longer simply imparting information and asking students to regurgitate, employing special techniques to help students remember information. Teaching is -- well -- no longer teaching. It is facilitating. It is designing rigorous, relevant experiences that cause students to need the knowledge and skills we want them to learn, as they work together to create something (solution, product, concept, change) measurable and meaningful to their world.

Am I preaching to the choir? Maybe.

But how many educational leaders (former classroom teachers) could, right now, today, develop, implement, and sustain a TRUE project-based approach in an English, math, science, or social studies classroom? How many could take over for a teacher tomorrow and turn that classroom into a 21st-century exemplar? Where, even, to begin that process? How many of us know how to "put it all together" to achieve a classroom based on the NETS and focused on the CCSS? How many of us can even simply discuss how to START building this type of learning environment?

As with a large number of current teachers, most of us administrators are products of a 20th-century K-12 education paradigm and a centuries-old university education paradigm. Through no fault of our own, we are conditioned to learn by sitting, and we are trained to teach by imparting knowledge--with lecturing to whole-class groups being the most efficient way to do so. We can discuss standards, objectives, strategies and techniques--define them, explain them, give examples of them, refer to articles about them; and if you'll just tell us the steps involved in accomplishing a new task, we're all over it.

Education Week (@educationweek) played right into my hands today by Tweeting its article calling for more support of principals. Many education discussions and programs center around the critical need to develop teachers' (especially veteran teachers') grasp of the 21st-century learning paradigm and its accompanying shift in educational practice. While I recognize this challenge, I am also deeply concerned about educational leaders on this issue.

Here are three very basic ways to support educational leaders during this time:

Educational leaders need to have continual, in-depth teacher training (as opposed to an administrative overview) in the new pedagogy.
For starters, districts should require educational leaders (building- and district-level) to study available resources on facilitating the CCSS and NETS in the classroom. I recommend the free online Intel Teach Elements courses. Maybe your district's administrators could do this together over the next year in place of a book study -- online using a blog to discuss when they can't get together face-to-face.

Educational leaders should be expected to belong to and participate in a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for educators. Online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all allow people to tailor their experiences to specific purposes such as professional learning. Educational leaders need to immerse themselves in the topic of educational pedagogy.

Educational leaders need time to study, explore, observe, mentor, and...LEAD.
We all need this; teachers need this; and, as the front-line educational leaders, principals specifically need more time -- to be unburdened by all of the other areas of responsibility that they traditionally handle. Principals are too heavily weighed down by managerial tasks when they should be enabled to focus solely on educational leadership -- learning, mentoring, observing, collaborating, developing excellent teachers and ensuring deep, long-lasting learning for students.

Is my head in the clouds? Probably. But that's better than having my head in the sand.

Teaching Students How to Converse - 5 Tips for Drawing Them In

In preparation for my first year as director of our small alternative high school, having known there was a definite "climate" issue, I had put a great deal of time and effort into creating a pleasant, welcoming environment for the students, including a break area especially for the students, complete with lots of wall posters, as well as sofas and chairs from Goodwill, all of which I knew the kids would like because they were "totally ghetto!"

However, during the first week of school, it became apparent to me that the issue was much worse than I had thought. Before school, during break, and during lunch period, I noticed that the two teachers and two para-educators were rarely in the same room where the students were. To put it another way, the students were not using the break area and were choosing the make-shift library, which had no windows and only straight-back chairs and folding tables, rather than gather in the break area I had created for their enjoyment.

When I mentioned to one of the teachers that we needed to have a supervisory presence in the same room where the kids are during these times, she quickly and breathlessly informed me that the students "do not want us in there, so we give them their space." She indicated that the students became verbally hostile toward adults who encroached upon their "private conversations" during these times. So, basically, the kids were actively moving from room to room to be wherever the adults weren't, and they were successfully making the environment less than pleasant for any adults present.

This information disturbed me on three levels: 1) We had a responsibility to supervise properly; 2) The staff had evidently resigned to this bullying behavior; and 3) I had always enjoyed interacting with students during such times as breaks and class changes and could not imagine working in a climate where that was not possible.

The first concern was dealt with easily enough. I simply issued a mandate that at least one adult be present in any room where kids were located -- not only during class, but also before school, between classes, during breaks, and during lunch period. I also made myself available as much as possible during these times to show my administrative support for this new practice. And we did have to explain, reiterate, and explain again why we were there and would not "leave them alone" -- because they wanted to know why we were "spying on them." So this is how the year began, and it was not okay with me.

Through further observation of the environment and conversation with the staff, it became apparent that these young men and women, in their minds, had only ever experienced negative interactions with adults at school -- and, furthermore, that regular, casual, non-threatening, positive interactions with adults had most likely not been a part of their home lives. Even with the adults right there in the room, the students avoided interacting with us whenever possible.

In our team meetings (consisting of two teachers, two para-educators, and me), we discussed this issue in relation to our desire for a positive change in climate. We determined that we needed to model the kind of casual conversations that are appropriate in our environment -- at school, during the school day, between adults and students. We decided that we would all be present as much as possible during the out-of-class minutes of the day, and that we would converse with each other in the presence of the students. We talked about books we were reading, current events, music we liked, our favorite shops and restaurants, recipes, home projects, and so forth.

An interesting thing started to happen. Every so often, a student would connect something we were discussing with a person, place, or experience from their own lives, and they'd speak up and share. We continued in this manner until we were noticing a definite increase in students sharing, and then we "kicked it up a notch," as famous chef Emeril Lagasse would say: we started actively addressing questions to the students.

To make a long story a bit shorter, we continued to be present (in force) in the room, converse with each other, and invite students to join our conversation, and by the end of the year, the minutes outside of class, which the staff had previously dreaded, became the adults' favorite times of the day. We suspect the students enjoyed those times, too, as more of them arrived at school earlier as the year went on, and the break area furniture's capacity was stretched daily as they all claimed their favorite spots, as humans habitually do.

I am sure there is actual research out there, official guides and curricula designed to teach the art of conversation, but this article describes what we did -- and it worked. I am also sure that our small number of students (fewer than 20) and our small facility (really only four rooms and the break area) were factors in the way this worked out for us. But it did work.  Our "5 Tips for Drawing Them In" would have to be as follows:

1. Be present among the students.
2. Be insistent about where students are allowed to be and where adults must be (where the students are) during out-of-class times. If the area is large, insist that the adults circulate and interact with students. Model this. Be a part of it.
3. Go out of your way to learn as much about the students' lives and interests as possible.
4. Converse in their presence, with or without their participation. Use the "stuff" you learned about them in step 2 as subject matter. Share about your life and interests so that they can know you are human and have human dreams, frustrations, problems, faults, joys, and pain. They are listening, whether they are participating or not.
5. The students who are the most difficult to approach are the ones who need it the most. Find a way to be persistent about drawing them in. Devise reasons and topics for seeking them out and starting a conversation with them/their group.