Month: March 2018

Twelve Year Internship

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This post is part of a series inspired by the #IMMOOC book study of Katie Martin’s book, Learner-Centered Innovation.  

A few years ago, a friend was at a conference where a speaker commented that teaching is the only profession that has a twelve year internship.  The statement is both funny and painfully true.

So often in my career I’ve seen colleagues happy to stick with the status quo and do what’s always been done.  Behind closed doors they toil away as they always have, asking few questions other than wondering why there has to be change.  I agree with Katie Martin in Learner-Centered Innovation when she says, “when we work in isolation, we limit our potential to develop a full range of capabilities.  In contrast, growth is accelerated by guidance and peer collaboration.”

I cannot emphasize enough how my online life has enhanced my teaching, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of how the online world can impact me professionally.  I’m still somewhat of a lurker, but I love being able to look inside the classrooms of master educators like Aviva Dunsiger (@avivaloca), or glean ideas and new ways of thinking from ONTSpecialNeeds (@ONTSpecialNeeds) or A Kids’ Guide to Canada (@akgtCanada).  The Thursday night chats with the #saskedchat crew are becoming a highlight of my week.  Every single one of the people I interact with or read about online remind me that things don’t have to stay “the way they’ve always been done”.

Teaching in a small, rural school can be extremely lonely and can leave you feeling quite isolated.  I am so grateful for the PLNs I’ve been able to develop through technology, and that they push me to think beyond my “twelve year internship”.

 

Vygotsky and Me

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This post is part of a series inspired by the #IMMOOC book study of Katie Martin’s book, Learner-Centered Innovation.  

Most people in education remember that Lev Vygotsky was the Soviet psychologist who developed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).  ZPD is the sweet spot of learning between what the learner can do without help and what he or she cannot do, as illustrated in this diagram:

from “Innovative Learning”
http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/development/zone-of-proximal-development.html

We often talk about ZPD in terms of students, and keep it in mind when developing activities and providing scaffolding.  It’s important to remember, however, that we all have a ZPD, and we need to be cognizant of that when seeking professional development opportunities.

Sometimes I read an idea or watch a video of something that is happening in another classroom, and I feel completely overwhelmed.  Where once I would have beaten myself up about being behind in an area of pedagogy or innovation, I now try to remind myself that the concept or skill is probably currently out of my ZPD.  I set myself incremental goals of how I’ll grow towards that new skill or understanding, and I’ve never failed to see growth.  As Katie Martin says in Learner-Centered Innovation, “supporting individuals requires moving away from the notion that we all need to (or even can) learn the same things at the same time.”

It’s important to remember that Vygotsky wasn’t only talking about students, he was thinking of learners at all ages and stages.  If we can recognize our ZPD and incrementally work toward a learning goal, we will always see growth.

 

Flipping the Org Chart

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This post is part of a series inspired by the #IMMOOC book study of Katie Martin’s book, Learner-Centered Innovation.  

The organizational chart for the school division I work in looks like this:

It’s a pretty typical org chart with the Board of Education at the top, followed by the Director of Education, the superintendents, and so on.

A good friend and I have often speculated how education might change if the org chart were to be flipped, so that students took the top spot, followed by front-line staff, staff at division office, with the Board of Education at the bottom.  Would it change the outlook of the system in general?  Would having students at the top of the chart be the constant reminder that we are all there to serve them, and that our relationships with them are of primary importance? If nothing else, I believe the idea would produce interesting discussion.

My school division is a good place to learn and work, but I wonder if this one small innovation would make it even better. I’m not sure if this is “thinking inside the box”, but I believe that having students at the pinnacle of the organization would send a clear visual message that students are first and foremost in the work we do.

 

Producers vs. Consumers

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This post is part of a series inspired by the #IMMOOC book study of Katie Martin’s book, Learner-Centered Innovation.

When I listened to the first YouTube Live broadcast with Katie Martin, George Couros, and A.J. Juliani two weeks ago, it made me consider two things:  compliance and creativity in kindergarten, and fighting trained compliance in middle years students.

Teaching kindergarten is a balancing act on so many levels.  Little self-centred human beings enter your classroom every September, and you have to mold them into a community of learners who share, take turns, and take care of each other, while still honouring them as individuals.  I’ve often thought this requires teaching a certain amount of compliance: When is it time to sit and listen to others?  How do we indicate that we have something to say and want a turn?  How are our personal and shared supplies stored and cared for?  In Learner-Centered Innovation, Katie Martin described her daughter’s third-grade teacher commenting that she doesn’t “have a lot of rules and consequences.  I respect students, and I hope they respect me.”  This comment re-framed how I think of my classroom.  I believe any success I have building community with my kindergarten students is firmly rooted in respect, not compliance.

One of the great pleasures of teaching kindergarten is that it is a play-based program.  A confident teacher is able to build on interests and ideas of students in order to reinforce the wide array of skills and outcomes required in the kindergarten curriculum.  As I gain more experience teaching at this age level, I find myself steering away from the “cute” Pinterest-type activities that I direct and manage, to letting students guide me with their interests and needs. Katie Martin describes in Learner-Centered Innovation that “educators who are providing learner-centered experiences have prioritized the learners’ and aligned learning experiences to meet and develop the desires, knowledge, skills, and mindsets.” Through the play-as-work model, kindergarten students are in many ways the greatest producers of learning in the school system, as they work their way through questions and problems every day.

On my non-kindergarten days, I’m a middle years teacher (teaching in a small school provides the privilege of teaching a wide range of ages and subjects).  The difference between five and 13 year olds can be stark!  My grade 7/8s are definitely less likely to take risks in their learning, and they’re definitely more likely to want to know exactly what the expectations of the assignment are, so they can do exactly that much.  Their light for questioning and inquiry seems to be almost extinguished by years of compliance, so that even when they are given the opportunity to participate in learner-centered experiences, they express that they’d really rather not because it seems like a lot of work.  As one grade 8 student said to me this year at the onset of an inquiry project, “Don’t you know the answers to these questions so you can just tell us?”  Where the five year olds are producers of learning, the middle years students are consumers of something they’ve been trained to call learning.

One of the big “a-ha moments” in my career was moving into the role of kindergarten teacher after years spent in middle years, and wondering how the joy and naturalness of learning found in five year-olds could be replicated in older students.  Of course the answer is to stay focused on the learner, to keep that sense of play and discovery, and to create conditions for students to have ownership of their own learning.  Our goal as educators should always be to encourage producers, not consumers.

Evolving

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This post is part of a series inspired by the #IMMOOC book study of Katie Martin’s book, Learner-Centered Innovation.

This fall will mark 27 years since I first entered the classroom as a full-fledged teacher.  When I reflect on the journey, and how I’ve evolved as an educator in that time, I often don’t recognize the teacher I was then.  I know the young woman who enjoyed being with her students, dabbled in some early education technology, and strove to refine her skills and knowledge, but I don’t recognize the person who felt the need to be “in charge”, the “expert”, the perfectionist.

Part of my transition to the educator I am today was actually stepping away from teaching for a while.  After eight years in the classroom, including a particularly disheartening year at a school that offered little teacher autonomy and a very tight focus on rules, procedures, and testing, I took ten years off to stay at home with my children.  Coming back to the profession after a decade was confirmation that the job was right for me, but it also made me feel at a huge disadvantage; I felt that I had missed out on crucial discussions, learning about various ed tech advances, and developing updated teaching strategies.  With the support of a wonderful administrator, I threw myself into professional reading and various professional development opportunities, including a series of university classes.  Through these experiences and learning activities, I’ve been able to embrace the evolving role of an educator on several fronts, but still recognize where I have room to grow.

In Learner-Centered Innovation, Katie Martin outlines the four aspects of the evolving role of the educator.  A tweak I would make is to have a greater emphasis on being a Community Developer with students’ families.  Especially as a kindergarten teacher, it’s important to honour those first family relationships students have as they enter the new and larger community of school.  There is so much support and goodwill to be gained by having good working relationships with families, and students are excited and motivated to share their learning with parents and guardians. This is an area that I struggle with and constantly try to improve on, and I am grateful for apps such as Seesaw that make communication and digital sharing so much easier and more satisfying.

The world of education is truly always on the move, and it’s our professional responsibility to question our current practices, and move forward with research-based solutions to best meet the needs of our students.  I have changed so much in 27 years, and I know  – thankfully -the evolution isn’t complete. The ability to constantly evolve and improve is one of the things that makes this profession so exhilarating.