21k12

Remarks to the student body this morning.

I used to work with a teacher, a history teacher, who was a great teacher, popular, smart, funny.  But one thing always bothered me: it seemed that any time I walked past his classroom’s open door, I would hear him answering a question with the words, “well, actually.”   Actually, he would say, what students had read in a textbook was wrong; actually that historian we were studying was mistaken; actually what happened in this historical event was actually different from what is commonly believed.

I have to tell you, this bothered me.   I don’t think the word “actually” has an appropriate place in the language of teaching and learning.

Our world isn’t composed of truths and falsehoods, or certainties that can be claimed by the use of the word actually.   I realize that I am speaking more about Social Studies, History, and English than I am about Math and Sciences—and there are things that we can be certain about, I know—but I think that in every area.  there are many things about which we can never use the word “actually.”

One of my all time favorite Supreme Court Justices (you do all have your own list of favorite Supreme Court Justices, right?)  is Justice David Souter, who retired in 2009.   In June he gave a speech at Harvard in which he argued against the use or concept of “actually” in judicial interpretation.  Some think that the Supreme Court’s job is to decide what the Constitution “actually” says, or “actually” mean.   (more…)

I’m delighted to have been invited to keynote (1st time!) an independent school educational conference, the NYSAIS Education and Information Technology Conference (NEIT 2010).   I will offer two main presentations, and an additional session during the Open Space format.

Learners-in-Chief:  The Importance of our Own Learning in Leading 21st century Schools.   Our society, our workplaces, and our digital tools are changing faster than ever before, and there is no way for us to lead our students’ learning if we are not leading in our own learning about these changes.   This session will consider the significance of the growth mindset and how to strengthen it in ourselves and our students, and will offer suggestions in how we can best practice and facilitate adult learning in our schools.

Aligning Assessment and Data with Mission: Choosing the Right Measurements for School Improvement.    What gets measured is what gets done.  We can’t manage what we can’t measure.  The measurement is the message.  Assessment matters. Assessing effectively what we most want our students to be learning, and collecting the right data and using it appropriately,  can be very valuable in the messages we send about our priorities and in how we use the results to plan our school improvements.   This session will address both important reforms in internal assessments and also several 21st century data collection tools schools can use for these purposes. (more…)

Someone tweeted today: “when is the last time you were in a K-12 classroom that was not your own?”–with the clear implication that this happens far too rarely in our work as educators.  I agree; I don’t think I visited another school’s classroom in action in the entire decade I was a teacher, and only rarely visited another classroom in my own school.

This morning I visited Empire High School in Vail, AZ; it has received some acclaim for the quality of their 1-1 laptop implementation, even in the New York Times. Our visit this morning was lovely in the warm way we were welcomed and toured; it was unfortunate that a monsoon storm last night had crashed their system, and, we were told, they had the worst internet outage in the past five years this same morning we were visiting!

So unfortunately, our classroom visits were a bit compromised.  Classes we saw were engaged, but not online; one senior English class had underway a remarkably participatory conversation about the meaning of existentialism in Camus’ Stranger.   A Spanish class was devoted to showing students techniques for creating virtual flash-cards; (more…)

• Continuing my review of HSSSE materials, seeking to learn more about how schools are using student engagement data (in part in preparation for a presentation next month).     One great source of information is in the 2009 report, a 25 page letter on the HSSSE data from 2009, and, more importantly, case studies in how the data are being used for school improvement in five schools or districts.

The only independent school profiled, Explorations Academy, takes its HSSSE data very seriously.

When the HSSSE data come back to the school, there are usually two kinds of initial analyses that emerge from the data: One set of responses are the “congratulations,” the things that students affirm the school is doing well.

Another set of responses are the “eye-openers” for staff, the areas that students say need more work…the school works on these issues, through “robust” staff discussions in which “HSSSE figures pretty prominently”; assumptions are uncovered and tested, and student engagement data are used to plan programs and processes, driven by an important central question: “Will something new gain us an additional unit of educational growth?” (more…)

Next month, as previously mentioned here, I am presenting at the US DoE’s Annual Private School Leadership Conference, on the topic of  Aligning Data and School Mission.   They have asked me to speak particularly about HSSSE, the High School Survey of Student Engagement:  I will also discuss CWRA, the College Work Readiness Asssessment,  and MAP, the Measurement of Academic Progress.

In preparation, I am doing some researching to learn more about HSSSE, which we have administered here at St. Gregory since 2009.   On Friday, I had a terrific hour-long conversation with Ethan Yazzie-Mintz, HSSSE’s ED, and he offered me a set of resources that I am now reviewing, and will be sharing and discussing on my blog this week.

I have also launched HSSSE user groups on two nings, both on ise-net for independent school educators and at EDU-PLN for the broader audience.

Ethan is portrayed in the video above, which is a nice gentle introduction to the administration at one public high school in Indiana. At this school, they had received a grant to update instructional strategies, the principal explains, and HSSSE gave data to them about how students viewed learning.   (more…)

My remarks at New Parent Night

Welcome to St. Gregory; we are so glad you are joining our school community.    You have come at a very exciting time, both in the history of our school and in an important moment in our national conversation about K-12 education.   This is a time of great change and energy in thinking about what and how our students need to learn in our fast-changing world.

A great example of how our school is changing and aligning itself with contemporary best practices is our new Wings program: 1:1 laptops at St. Gregory, by which every student has a laptop (netbook) and uses it every day.   This is a key step in the development of our educational program where our students exploit the power of digital technology to collaborate, communicate, and create on-line– and develop exactly the critical skills necessary for success in our new global economy.

Our teachers are fully embracing, with good enthusiasm and great attitudes, these developments and this new era in learning.    What is more, they are learning too.  One of the most exciting aspects of this new era of technology integration in learning is the way our teachers are, each and every day, learning in their classrooms and growing in their skills.  (more…)

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Unconferences” and “edcamps” are gaining momentum as new professional development vehicles; we now increasingly recognize that as educators we learn well, sometimes we learn better, from our peers and colleagues than we do from the “experts,” and we learn better collaboratively, better than we do on our own.

If these are true, then wouldn’t we benefit from professional development that is in our own hometowns, with other educators, in an open-source, free or low cost, manner?   Unconferences seek to make this happen.

I attended my first “unconference” in July, in Boston: EduBloggerCon East, hosted by the November Learning group, and facilitated by the excellent 21st century learning bloggers and trainers Liz Davis and Lisa Thumann.  Lisa has a helpful blog post explaining unconferences; to quote,

What is an unconference?

A participant driven gathering of people talking about a common theme (more…)

The video above is great: energetic, polished and professional, informative and inspiring.    It is among the best of its genre, and it make the case: learning needs to adapt to changing times.   In the video, the school district shows a few short glimpses of 21st century education in its schools.

Over at the fine blog The Innovative Educator, Lisa Nielsen has posted it, and challenged a select few educational admin bloggers (not me, but that is ok) to match the video by making one of our own, showcasing 21st century learning at our schools.

If the school couldn’t produce a video message to convey what it is they have to offer for students, what does that say about the school. I think this is a challenge all parents should ask their schools to meet.

On behalf of St. Gregory School, we accept the challenge.  I have already begun meeting with my fine sophomore student videographer, Derek Jobst, and we are preparing an outline and aim to have it completed within a month.

I am beginning to envision some real-life St. Gregory scenes for the video:

Sixth and ninth graders editing each others’ writing on a shared google doc, and then “turn it in” to the teacher by clicking on the share button and sending the invite to their teacher.

Ninth graders presenting their history reports to their classmates using their choice of prezi, bubbles, or glogster EDU. (more…)

We have a Creativity Crisis in America, Newsweek reports: our children’s creativity is declining, and is doing so exactly when it is most important for it to improve.  The Newsweek report comes from the excellent Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, who are double-handedly transforming the way we understand children and learning via their fine skills at popularizing scientific research on these topics.

At St. Gregory we speak of Creating Leaders and Innovators; the Partnership for 21st century Skills puts creativity as one of their four critical C’s for our era, along with critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.    Fast Company recently reported that the single most important trait of successful CEO’s is creativity.

Dan Pink cracked open this idea for me so powerfully six years ago, with what I think is his still compelling Whole New Mind.   As automation, and outsourcing overcome the workplace, the value we all can add is in our creativity and our ingenious, inventive, problem-solving.  We ourselves, and our students too, must adapt to survive, must move with our times, must think anew how to make a difference, knowing that simply fulfilling an already defined role is not going to be enough to be valued and employed.

Newsweek’s Bronson:

The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care.

But, there is a crisis in this critical area:

Creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. (more…)

Dear NAIS:

It is the time of year again when you solicit nominations for the NAIS Board, and it is very generous of you to do so.  There are many fine educators and school supporters on the NAIS board now, but I believe there is something missing from the mix.  As a fairly close observer of our terrific independent school association over the past several years, I have been increasingly awed by the growing role of our ed tech directors as a enormously valuable NAIS brain trust.

Our ed tech directors are not just expert in, and informing us about, educational technology; increasingly as you listen to them and see what they are doing, you recognize that these folks are leading the way in thinking about and guiding us fellow indepedent school educators

• in how learning is changing,
• in shaping schools and the classrooms of the future,
• in effective professional development for our faculties,
• in communication and collaboration among independent school educators,
• and in the nature and process of change in schools.

These folks are excellent educators and great promoters of our independent schools; as members of the board, they can and will greatly and positively influence the agenda that is set and the advances that we make for our association.

I have a list of about a dozen suggestions below, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.   I am not lobbying for any particular candidate– these folks are all great– but I do want to implore our association to add an educational (or academic) technology director to the board.

Howard Levin is Director of Academic Technology at Urban School (CA), and a main contributor to that school’s excellent Center for Innovative Teaching.   He is a guru, I think,  about the intersection of technology and teaching, and is very thoughtful and articulate (and widely published) on how our students can and should use laptops for organizing, publishing, communicating and collaborating online.

Chris Bigenho, at Greenhill School, has been an architect of the NAIS schools of the future program at the Annual Conference, and provided a terrific service at last year’s annual conference as the mastermind of the shared blog and twitter feed for NAIS attendees.   He consults widely and blogs brilliantly; he is a sharp thinker about cognitive development and draws upon that knowledge to inform and shape our understanding  about technology and learning in a very impressive way. (more…)

Less than a week ago, an excellent blogging and tweeting school administrator, George Couros, created a new shared blog: Connected Principals: Shared views on education from a group of passionate school administrators. I am delighted, even exhilarated, to be participating, and to have this opportunity to join forces with other blogging ed. admins in a project like this; in less than a week it already has had over 3000 hits!   It has also created quite a buzz on twitter, with a hashtag of #cpchat.

Blogging, and technology use in general, is sometimes depicted as atomizing and anti-social; there is a myth that by being on computer we are isolating ourselves and narrowing ourselves.  This could hardly be farther from the truth, and Connected Principals is a great example: there is not a chance that without blogging and twitter I would find myself in collaboration with these fine folks from across the US and Canada.

What is especially exciting about this endeavor is that not only are we all ed. admins who blog, but it is a greater connection than that: we are also a set which shares a particular set of guiding principles.   These are not a tightly narrow set of principles, but nonetheless, they are, I think, an inspiring set of ten, a set that calls upon us to be principled principals: idealistic, passionate, and devoted to the right kind of educational reform.

Site creator George Couros drafted the initial list, and then solicited and drew upon feedback from the group of us participating.   You can find the list on the site here, but I am going to paste it in below because it is so great, (with full credit to George Couros): I think it is informative to my visitors here at 21k12blog  about my own principles.  I am delighted George included my two suggested additions; the last sentence in number five, and the first part of number ten (though George added the lovely last sentence to it).

The following guiding principles are the basis for the views represented by the contributors of Connected Principals:

1. All of our decisions focus first on what meets the needs of the children we serve.  All other elements of our decision making process are secondary to this objective. The students we serve are our greatest resource in schools. (more…)

As I look ahead to the coming year, I realize I have too many goals and plans,—but I cannot restrain myself, there are so many important, exciting, and meaningful things to do in going forward as a school community. The following list is primarily a list of educational program and school community goals; I am still developing an important parallel list of important institutional, organizational, and financial goals.

Our two major educational advances for the year are WINGS, our 1:1 laptop/netbooks program, and our new Advisory Program.

• Wings: 1:1 Laptops is big, and a big project; by way of laptops/netbooks being in the hands of each and every student each and every day, I am sure we will become a more productive, more dynamic, and more engaging learning environment.

• As for the advisory program, in many ways this is just a very natural, incremental, comfortable next step from the homerooms and other forms of very good rapport and relationships St. Gregory has always forged with students. (more…)

My opening remarks to the St. Gregory student body, the morning of the first day of school.

Welcome to 2010-11!

A popular saying urges us to remember that there are only two things we really need to flourish in life: roots and wings.

I like the saying;   it provides a lovely metaphor simplifying the many strands of what what flourishing requires into two simple metaphors:   Roots and wings, a sense of connectedness to our community,and a sense of freedom and empowerment to go out confidently into the world and accomplish our goals.

I worry about false dichotomies—I resist people trying to trap me into making choices I don’t want to have to make.    There is a book I love that calls upon parents and schools to ensure children and students spend more time in nature and argues that kids are so much healthier when they spend more time outside and in direct contact with the earth, the sky, the water.   Get dirty and be happier and healthier. It surprises some people when I say I love and endorse this notion, because sometimes they think I only want kids to spend more time on computers.   I don’t.  I do think computers are great for learning and growing,  but I also believe fervently that it is so important for us all, kids and adults, to spend more time outside.

We must resist the narrowing effects of Either/Or Thinking, and embrace the Both/And.

And so it is with Wings AND Roots.  I think people sometimes think that because I want to see more computers in learning, they are believing I want less face to face time, less interaction among peers and between students and teachers.  But I want both, and I don’t want to be cornered into a false dichotomy.

Fittingly, and charmingly, Wings and Roots correspond precisely to the two big changes we are making this year, laptops and advisory—because we all need stronger wings and deeper roots. (more…)

Will students be using their laptops primarily for taking notes in lecture?

Above is a common question I hear these days as we unfold our new 1:1 laptop program.   No, not primarily, I explain, and then launch into a slightly too-elaborated explanation of empowering our students with the digital tools they need to best implement Aristotle’s advice (yes, 4th century BCE Aristotle) of learning by doing– learning to create, to communicate, to collaborate in the most modern ways by doing all these things digitally and on-line.

I think we have a problem in education, that of the misunderstanding of the potential uses and value of digitally integrated learning, and I think the solution lies at least in part in rallying around the concept, and incredible power, of the Web 2.0.

Naming things is significant; a name might be simple, might be short, might be seen as jargon, but with a name something becomes referable, deployable, scalable that much easier.   Web 2.0 is this term, and offers this power.

Over the past few years I have had heard the term;  it was zinging around out there on the periphery of much of my very much developing thinking.  But lately it has meaningfully converged– this is the term, so simple and short a term, to capture a concept that has become so very significant to me.

And yet, I fear that still only few educators know the term and understand its implications for teaching and learning.   Eric Sheninger, who is an excellent New Jersey principal and blogger/tweeter, recently tweeted that he interviewed four different Science teaching candidates, and not a one knew what web 2.0 meant.  I think this needs to change. (more…)

Denise Mulloy teaches Math at St. Gregory; just last week she attended the Council for Aid to Education’s CLA in the Classroom Performance Task Academy, which provides to attendees the chance to learn to develop  in their own classroom curriculum performance tasks comparable to those used for the CWRA (College Work Readiness Assessment).

Here is her report:

It was an interesting and challenging training on bringing the Collegiate Learning Assessment (and the high school version College and Work Readiness Assessment) into classroom teaching using Performance Tasks. “The Performance Task Academies aim to help faculty develop and assess student learning holistically, and to focus on key higher order skills in ways that replicate how these skills are uses in the ‘larger world.’” It was similar to the work we have been examining in the HEAT conferences and the visits to High Tech High.

The highlights for me were:

The illustrations of traditional testing vs. the CWRA test which tests all of the following:

• Problem solving (more…)

I’m delighted and excited to have been invited recently as a panelist at September’s annual US DoE’s  Office of Non-Public Education-Office of Improvement and Innovation’s Private School Leadership Conference (that is a mouthful).  I’ve been invited to present on the topic of “aligning data collection with school mission.”

Regular readers here know I have long used this forum to advocate for the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA) and the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE); speaking at this event to an audience of influential private school educators and association executives will give me a great opportunity to carry forward my advocacy.

It is also a chance to think more, more thoroughly, more deeply about the panel’s helpful title and framing. I hadn’t myself focussed squarely enough until now  upon the simple but elegant and critically important concept of “aligning data collection with school mission,” but that is of course exactly what I am circling around and trying to get more fully in focus.  I will be developing my remarks and presentation over the next few weeks, and I will certainly share/post it here, but here is a first stab at summarizing my thesis:

Most of us who are leading in private and independent education place high priority, in our educational missions and throughout our school cultures, upon three core goals:

• upon delivering and achieving personalized and differentiated teaching and learning which has a significant and positive impact improving the educational progress of individual learners of a wide range of abilities, maintaining a focus upon the individual and not the mass of learners;

• upon forging and sustaining a connected community of engaged, active, intrinsically motivated, extracurricularly involved, technologically employing, hard-working learners; (more…)

I loved this book.   It is a complete delight, and so powerfully aligned with my own developing thinking about the ways our connected world of the web can be such a powerful force for good in the world, and is more and more (and more) about creating and producing knowledge, and sharing and collaborating to do more and get more good things done.    And to think, we used to spend so much time watching TV!

Rather than a review, I just want to share a few favorite quotes, but watch the video, read the book, and embrace the tremendous opportunity our era is presenting to share, to connect, to collaborate and cooperate, to create and produce.

I am partially adjusting and modifying a few of the quotes to elaborate the point each is making.

Today’s twentysomethings cannot begin to understand how profoundly the world has changed:.  A much harder thing to explain to them is this: if you were a citizen of the world twenty or more years ago, and you had something to say in public, that you wanted to share publicly, that you wanted others to know you were thinking, you couldn’t.  Period.   (more…)

My contribution to Leadership Day, 2010:

I have had the incredibly good fortune (for which I am so grateful) to be an educational leader for 13 years now, but only in the past several years have I sought to be come an educational leader– and it’s been a great ride, one I wish all my school leadership colleagues will take!  Here is a smattering of thoughts on techniques for 21st century ed leadership, with one most important message: today more than ever, leadership is about learning, and those of us who aim to lead learning must be ourselves Chief Learners in order to be Chiefs of Learning.

Focus on yourself.   You must become the change you wish to see in your schools.  Unfortunately, this can be hard if we are, as I think I was, trapped in a fixed mindset.  Carol Dweck’s book Mindset was critical to me; she explains how there are only two mindsets, fixed and growth, and many of us, students and even more so adults, are trapped in a fixed mindset.  In this, we think we are what we have been, and cannot become something different.  We think that to seek to grow, to learn, to change will demonstrate weakness, flaws, or failings.  We think that if we have not been, in our past, digitally savvy, then we cannot change ourselves.  But if we take Dweck and adopt a growth mindset, there is nothing we cannot become.

Having adopted a growth mindset and made the pledge to learn and grow, start learning.  Reframe your own self-image as Principal, Head or Superintendent; you are not just Chief of Learning but you are Chief Learner, you are Learner in Chief.

Learning is not just about reading more widely, or attending more conferences (though those aren’t bad ideas).   We must also learn in the field, visiting other schools with all the frequency we can possibly find, and make it a priority to do so.   Visit widely, and do your research: where are the schools that are doing the kind of work you most want to do in your own schools. (more…)

This is a post inspired by blogging friend and colleague Josie Holford, who did a great post last week on the topic Advice for New Teachers.   Let me quote a couple of my favorite of her points before adding my own.

Assume that your older colleagues want to be helpful and see you succeed. This includes administrators. Invite them to your classroom. Ask their opinion. Ask to see them teach – or whatever it is they do. See if you can find a project of theirs in which you can participate.

Sign on to Twitter. Follow the smartest people you can find in your areas of interest. Build a great PLN – personal learning network – of the wisest and most helpful people you can find. Follow people with whom you agree and those who challenge your assumptions.  Follow people like you; follow people not like you. One place to start looking: Twitter for Teachers wiki.

Take advantage of the opportunity to work with students outside the classroom – clubs, teams, school trips.

Learn from failure, learn from practice, learn from collaboration with colleagues, learn from theory. Most of all – stay a learner.  [One of your chief roles in the classroom is as Chief Learner, not just Chief of Learning] And here is Cybrary Man’s website of resources for new teachers. He is Jerry Blumengarten and twitters @cybraryman1

Thanks Josie: And now some of my own to add (readers, please add your own by using the comment box); some of these first appeared in a comment I left on Josie’s compasspoint blog post.

1. This can be counterintuitive and counter to how you were taught, but try this:  Problems first.  Invert the normal paradigm where we used to deliver the content, information, and skills first, and then ask the questions. Ask the questions, pose the problems at the outset, and then envision yourself a mountain climbing guide roped in with your students as you facilitate them in climbing up the mountain that is the challenge.  (See Ted McCain’s Teaching for Tomorrow for a fuller discussion of this). (more…)

John Medina’s Brain Rules is a great read: fun, breezy, informative and applicable.  The website too is an awesome collection of resources.

One of the coolest growing practices in teaching today is that of the experimental teacher, one who deliberately, and collaboratively, tests techniques in learning as an active educational researcher, and draws conclusions about best practice from first hand trial and error.

For those educators practicing this, Medina’s book is a great resource: in every chapter he provides examples of brain-research based practices which should, he argues, improve learning.  But don’t take his word for it– try it and assess the results.   (And then publish them on your classroom teacher blog!).

Below are 10 of his suggestions especially well suited for such classroom experimentation.

1. Exercise so boosts brainpower that learning is enormously enhanced when students are engaged in light exercise during or in times adjacent to learning.   Medina recommends treadmills under each student’s desk, which seems a bit impractical.   What if a classroom, in a 75 minute period, divided the students in half, sending one group out for a five minute brisk walk halfway through the lesson while the other group review notes, and then quizzed both groups afterwards.    Which group would perform better? (more…)

At the Edu-Blogger Con East, the  first session, is about Glogster as a tool for learning in classrooms.

Participants share, and one enthuses about universal design of learning (UDL).    She offers a big endorsement, particularly for the classroom poster board program as an alternative to the normal paper posterboard projects so often used.

GlogsterEDU participation among students is equally split among elementary, middle, and upper schools.  The original glogster is a social network site,  ”mostly used by teenage girls who use it express their angst.”   Now, more and more schools are using it as an online scrapbooking, journaling, and poster making site.   EDU Glogster is entirely separate, and has no links back to glogster.

As schools like our own, St. Gregory, adopt 1:1 laptop programs, we need to become better informed about options and tools for classroom use.  As at most schools, our students regularly do posters for presentations, but with each student having a laptop, the opportunities for them to do work like posterboard presentations online.   Glogster seems a great tool. (more…)

Earlier this week I attended my first ever “unconference”: EdubloggerCon East, hosted at Boston’s Park Plaza by the November Learning Group.   A big thanks to Alan November for providing the venue for free.   An unconference is a new concept, but not that hard to explain.  One of our two excellent facilitators, Lisa Thumann (@lthumann) has provided a nice explanation on her blog, but let me offer a quick summary.

Simply put, when a venue has been established, perhaps by donation, the word is put out by Twitter and blogs that there will be a gathering of folks with a common interest, a wiki is established to manage the attending and the agenda, attendees offer up potential sessions,  and then as the event opens, introductions are made and the plan for the day finalized.

The event I attended, as it would appear, was for folks who blog and tweet about education, and more particularly, about 21st century learning and the reform movement advocating for technology integration, 21st century skills, and web 2.0.  There were about forty of us, I would say, in attendance, and I made great connections and learned a lot.    I was only there for the morning, and enjoyed a very informative session about Glogster EDU, and then participated vigorously in a second session, on the topic of Rethinking/Renaming 21st Century Learning.  I really want to thank both Lisa Thumann and also her excellent co-facilitator, Liz Davis (@LizDavis).

Another version of an unconference is an “edcamp.”  I felt priviliged to sit next to and learn more about edcamp from one of its Philadelphia founders, Dan Callahan (@dancallahan).   Edcamps have only just begun, and similarly they are all about free or very inexpensive “meet-ups” of educators who conduct professional development by sharing resources, collaborating in a peer-to-peer learning dynamic, and using the power of the web and wikis for communicating key information and distributing resources.

The question for me becomes then: Edcamp Tucson?   Who is in? (Share your enthusiasm for the concept by using the comment box on the post here).    I am tempted to try to work with Tucson folks for a mid-fall event (early November, anyone?) and use our centrally located campus to try to promote a Tucson wide Free Edcamp event.

Last week I had the pleasure of being invited to discuss in an EdTechTalk webcast St. Gregory’s program and initiatives in 21st century learning this past year. The 22 minute conversation can be accessed here; scroll to the bottom of the chat transcript to find the speaker button.

From the heading:

Jonathan E. Martin, Head of School at St. Gregory College Preparatory School in Tucson, Arizona joined us to reflect on his first year.  We discussed how Tony Wagner’s Global Achievement Gap has framed the work he is doing with his faculty.  Jonathan led us through a number of assessments that St. Gregory is using to measure how collaborative, creative, and engaged his students are at St. Gregory.  Interested in the 21st Century School, this is definitely one version!   What a way to close out another another great year of podcasting.

I am also pasting in, after the jump, the chat conversation that accompanied the interview: I have to say, I was not able to multi-task powerfully enough to both fully engage in the conversation and also follow the simultaneous chat happening about the interview.  It was interesting to catch up with it later and see what people were saying.

How do other heads react to your strong use of Web 2.0 tools? Yes, this is a funny topic for some of my colleagues; many do, in a very friendly way, tag me as the blogger guy, or joke when in discussion, will this conversation appear on your blog?     Twitter seems entirely foreign to most, and is an easy thing to disparage when you don’t use it.    I think it is funny too how many other heads think of me as the “technology guy,” when I feel like I am far from being a technology expert, though I am an enthusiast.  Using blog platforms and twitter is hardly demonstrating excellent technological skills.   But I have had great support too; our Southwest association (ISAS) executive director has been very strong in her encouragement of my blog, and there is also a small circle of other Heads who blog regularly or are on Twitter who are terrific comrades and wonderful writers and web 2.0 users: Josie Holford is first among them.

Jonathan-time is always the number 1 identified barrier for the development of professional learning teams. How have you addressed this?? Have you changed the traditional meetings which focus on operations to allow for organic learning communities to emerge?? (more…)

Dr. John O’Brien is a community college president and an expert on integrating technology in education.  He spoke  at our conference Tuesday morning.   He is associated with Mark Milliron, who spoke to this group (ISAS Heads) in November.

Dr. O’Brien was here to advocate for the wisdom and power of blended learning, something I too am enthusiastic about, but because the power was out, his presentation was unavailable to be screened, and instead it turned to more of a discussion of the implications of our new era.  (I will say, very gently, that though I found the conversation important and provocative, it would also have been great to learn more about blended learning from O’Brien, and I hope both that the presentation will be shared and that I have the opportunity to post and comment upon it here.)

Key topics that especially interested me were the following five, each of which I have commented upon:

We used technology committees to consider what technologies to bring into our schools, but we don’t have ongoing learning committees (or attention) to determine how learning needs to evolve to align with these new tools.

I know Dr. O’Brien, or John as I will refer to him here-on, would agree with me that this is perhaps the most important point made in the session.   We don’t implement tech for the sake of the tech, but for the sake of the learning, and we need to never stop thinking how learning changes with tech to become more effective and more powerful.   Since Aristotle we have know we learn best by doing; since Socrates that we learn best by questioning received wisdom.   (more…)

21st century schools deserve,  and most likely require,  21st century boards, which could be defined as ones where trustees actively engage in a dynamic of learning by doing, collaborating, questioning,  critical thinking, problem-solving and innovating.    This phrasing was not the explicit message of Dr. Cathy Trower, a governance expert from Harvard, but I think it is a reasonable inference from her message.

The essential ethos, she suggested,  for 21st century boards must be one of powerful questioning and problem identification.

Rather than recording Professor Trower’s remarks here, I am going to suggest a progressive pathway forward for boards to become higher functioning, 21st century governance agencies.

Putting first things first, start with an inquiry into and clarification of the work of governance.  Get Governance Right First– Trower implored. Do so even if some individual members might push instead for a priority upon strategic planning or fund-raising, Trower advocated. (more…)

Pat begins speaking about the “red book”– the most topical issues that will impact the industry.  If you only purchase one book this summer, you should purchase the NAIS Guide to Change management.   Recommended for assistance: Governancehelp@nais.org.   Email this address anytime you need prompt guidance on governance issues. Ten Trends:

1. Access or Affordability is Becoming Sophie’s Choice:  The difference between access and affordability we have spoken about for a long time.   As I look at the data, and I see where the industry is going, it is going toward affordability and away from access.    When you look at income by quintiles, you find the distribution of aid is going less and less to the lowest and middle income families who need it the most, and more and more is going to the upper income quintiles.    Initially, aid was used to support bringing in families who had previously had never had any access to our schools.    But now, and NAIS has been recommending this, we are using aid, as NAIS has urged, to support higher and higher income people to be able to come to our schools.    Which will serve the school better: taking the all-star Hispanic kid who is full load at 25K , or should you take in five kids with incomes of over 100K who you can give 5k to each. (more…)

You got to love this guy: Chris Lehmann is among the most inspirational of all 21st century school-leaders today.  This speech is excellent-coming from TEDxNYED, which I would have killed to attend (and blog!)

There are now 14 of these talks available on the site, and I hope to view, and blog about, most in the weeks to come.

From Chris:

I love school!  Some say we need to reinvent learning, but I love school. (more…)

This post may stray a tad away from my usual topics here, but this speech strikes me as so important, and so aligned with my own values, that I felt compelled to share it here.   Justice Souter is a long-time intellectual hero of mine, and so it is exciting to see him addressing my own alma mater at an event I have often attended, Harvard’s Commencement.

But more importantly, it is the content of his speech which compels me to share.   Far too often, in every arena of leadership and decision-making, we fall into the mental trap of believing that we are choosing between right and wrong, good and bad, or better and worse.   But that trap is so dangerous: we are not doing so.  We are choosing between good and good, right and right, better in some ways and better in other ways.   (more…)

Tom’s presentation is here.

Tom opens with his own background, emphasizing he began as a teacher who then began using technology, skeptically, and then became enthusisatic, and now is a trainer.

Using polleverywhere.com, Tom collects input from all participants here to express our edtech feelings:

55% enthusiastic, 32% interested but concerned, 13% mostly skeptical.

(more…)

Good morning 8^th grade students and families

Just this past Saturday, our 12^th grade seniors graduated, and at their request, as they threw their caps in the air the stereo broadcast, quite loudly, the song Don’t’ Stop Believing.   (not, though, the Journey original, but rather the cover version performed by the cast of Glee).

Sentimental that song is, but I have a different request to make of you: Don’t Stop Asking Why?!

An interesting and important book was published last year by Andrea Batista Schlesinger, a woman still in her twenties, entitled The Death of Why?: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy.     Parents, you might appreciate its dedication: For my parents, who have suffered the most from my love of questions.

In the book, she argues that “questions have always been power.”   We know that throughout the history of free societies, questioning has been both essential and provocative: Socrates is famous for saying that a life without questions is not worth living, and he is also famous for being put to death for his relentless and pestering inquiry.

Yet, our schools, Schlesinger says, and she is NOT speaking of St. Gregory, “send the message to children that the answer is all that counts.” (more…)

There is a second climate crisis: we make very poor use of our talents.

Life is not linear, it is organic.   We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relationship to the circumstances they help to create for us.

Human communities depend on a diversity of talents.

I came across a statement: college begins in kindergarten.  No it doesn’t.   Kindergarten begins in Kindergarten.

Zagat guide restaurants are the opposite of standardized fast-food restaurants; they are customized into local circumstances.  We have sold ourselves to a fast-food model of education and it is impoverishing our spirit and energies. (more…)

Good Evening.

We are graced tonight by the presence of many educational leaders; it is an honor to welcome them.

Among them are

• our speaker, former University of Arizona President Dr. John Schaefer;
• former St. Gregory Head of School Bill Creeden;
• both the former and current Heads of Green Fields Country Day School, Rick Belding and Matt Teller;
• our own Board of Trustees, and our fine faculty;
• and perhaps most importantly, a founder of three schools in three states, including St. Gregory, Mrs. Bazy Tankersely.

Leadership, like everything else, is fast changing in the 21^st century.   The military is overhauling its philosophy and practice of leadership, as I have heard this year from my new Tucson friends who are Air Force officers; it realizes we must place a higher priority on flexibility, initiative, creativity than ever before, and that command has become more about influencing than directing others.

Author Dan Pink published this year Drive, a book demanding the complete reinvention of management; he calls upon us to place autonomy, mastery, and purpose at the paramount goals of each and every work-place and institution.

Similarly, in his recent book Tribes, the brilliant Seth Godin explains that

The power of this new era is simple: if you want to, or need to, or mus,  lead then you can.  Every leader I have met shares one thing and one thing only: the decision to lead.

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in.  Paint a picture of the future.  Go there.  People will follow.”

These developments in leadership have been anticipated for many years by educational leaders:  the best schools and universities have always been places where principals, headmasters, and presidents have chosen to lead in ways that honor and celebrate the individuality of their followers.

School leaders know our role is

• to unleash, not constrain,  by respecting the value and significance of autonomy; (more…)

by Sloane Burns

All the new goings on at St. Gregory for the 2010-2011 School Year

Mr. Martin, headmaster at St. Gregory has decided to institute a couple changes for the upcoming school year. He has decided to put in, a 1:1 Laptop program, an advisory program and new late start days.

The new laptop program that is being incorporated is entitled W.IN.G.S which is short for (Wired for Innovation and Global Success).   Mr. Martin is really enthusiastic about this integration; it is something he has wanted to do for a long time. This enthusiasm transferred into his letter to become headmaster, he also mentioned in his interviews that he did this integration in his previous schools, so he was able to see it in action and he has some experience with it.

In the fall, Martin started talking to the technology people at St. Gregory about this plan of his. (more…)

Collaboration by Susan Heintz:

One of the take-aways I have from the time at New Tech is this:  each project that is given to students in class is first brought to a review session of the entire faculty.  The faculty of about 40 people is usually divided in two, so that two projects can be reviewed at once.  The reviewers are from various departments.  They hear about the project from those who wish to use it in their classrooms, giving feedback in the categories of “I like”, “I wonder”, and “Next steps”.

This struck me as incredibly valuable, rather than a teacher all on his/her own trying to imagine how a project would actually roll out in class.   Remember, in this model, all learning comes through the process of completing the project.  Other faculty members, in different departments with different strengths, would notice things and suggest ideas that might never occur to the actual teacher of the course.  It seems to me this would enhance the project before it is even introduced, as well as preventing some of the inevitable errors in judgment that occur the first time a teacher uses something new.

In  Critical Friends Groups here at St. Gregory  we are working together to improve not just our own teaching, but all teaching in the school.  Expanding on this commitment, I would hope we could adopt the above model for any project-based learning, as we have so much to learn from one another that can have a powerful impact on what we bring to our students.

Outside the Box by Linda Mount:

Our very quick trip to Dallas to observe New Tech High School had outcomes different from what I had expected.   Choosing to focus on Project Based Learning rather than 1:1 laptop use, Tabitha Branum, the principal, leader, and “artistic director” of the school, shared her knowledge of, enthusiasm for, and commitment to this new 21st century way of learning using “real world” problems to entice students into becoming more involved and engaged in the process.

What it demands of the teachers (facilitators) is that they become expert designers of problems, questions, tasks that the students collaboratively explore and solve using technology (at their fingertips), creativity, innovation, and partnership.  Interestingly, though it seems as if it would release teachers (facilitators) from their daily lesson plan preparations, in actuality, it requires teachers to become imaginative creators of interesting, authentic, and new problems and projects complete with entry documents, benchmarks, scaffolding, workshops, and outcomes.  As a predominantly 20th century educator, I found myself inspired, energized, and thinking about next year outside my 20th century box.  It was great fun!

From Dr. Michelle Berry:

The Advanced Placement United States Government class wrote their own textbook in the first semester using a wiki software known as PB Works.  The purpose of the e-text was to encourage students to collaborate on an intellectual and creative project that would be used by future students in the APGOV course at St. Gregory.  Students worked in groups of 3 on chapters traditionally found in AP Government textbooks.  The difference?  The e-text comes complete with a casual tone and accessible writing, Youtube videos, podcasts, and widget study breaks.  The interactivity of the e-text coupled with its in-depth explanation of the United States government make it a wonderful resource for future students.  Next year’s students will add to the e-text which ensures that it will be an evolving and current text — something traditional textbooks just can’t be quite as easily.

In a 7th grade science class:

Our MS digital natives, as opposed to those of us who are digital immigrants, are off and flying with their netbooks. In the first week of the seventh grade pilot of the 1:1 WINGS initiative students are pushing the envelope of learning with their netbooks. I observed one noteworthy application emerging in Ms. Faircloth’s science class. Her students were participating in a virtual heart anatomy lesson. (more…)

We are here today to pay tribute to Mrs. Cheryl Pickerell, upon her retirement after twenty years as a St. Gregory teacher.

She is a lover of wisdom, a lover of beauty, a lover of learning, but more than all that, she is a teacher whose students feel every day the quality of affection she has for each one of them as individuals.

Mrs. Pickerell and I share in common several inspirations to our work as educators, and I thought it’d be fun to imagine what they’d say if they were to see her teach in her St. Gregory classroom.

The Courage to Teach is a book which challenges us to teach from the deepest wellsprings of our inner selves, and if its author Parker Palmer were to visit us here and observe Mrs. Pickerell teach, I know he would say that her “authority as a teacher is the result of her students perceiving her as the author of her own words, her own actions, her own lives, rather than someone playing a scripted role at great remove from her heart.”   (more…)

Friday a dozen of us from St. Gregory flew to Dallas for a six hour visit to New Tech HS @Coppell, and had a great experience.    The Principal and her team were incredibly warm, welcoming, and hospitable.   The school, only in its second year and thoroughly renovated in Summer 2008, was an attractive, shiny, comfortable, tech-ie, environment, in a palette or mostly blacks and white with occasional splashes of red thrown in.   Our visit was composed of two lengthy, 90 minutes conversations with the principal and some of her teachers, bookended around an hour-long tour led  by a student.

Principal Tabitha Branum:  You have to change instruction when you put laptops in place, and you have to see the program change where kids are empowered to use laptops to inquire, you have to give them good projects and good hooks and good needs to knows, so they can then go and research and discover and learn.

If you don’t change the culture of the school and the classroom, if you don’t change the way kids are learning, laptops are more engaging than the lecturing teacher, and laptops then don’t help learning.  But if you use them in an environment where kids are challenged by needs to knows they go and do it.

Things that struck me (many of them tweets I posted during the visit):

1. There are no teachers and students here, only facilitators and learners.

2. New Tech HS 3 principles: small learning community; emphasis on technology use for learning; and project based learning

3. New Tech HS principal says she hates the school’s name. She says they are not for tech-centric kids, but for all kids, and tech is not what they are learning, rather, it serves learning. (more…)

As part of my continuing campaign on this blog for the value of the CWRA, the College &  Work Readiness Assessment, I am happy to share this map with readers; all blue dots represents high schools in the US using the CWRA; St. Gregory remains the only school in Arizona.

My goal is to see many more blue dots crowd this map in the years to come.

The full interactive map is available here.

This is great.   We know that more than anything else, we want our students to be effective problem-solvers and creative thinkers; this project is a way for students to work with the simplest of materials, collaborate, innovate, and measure the results.   By its bare simplicity, then, it can be deployed again and again and results compared, so that we can learn, as this video demonstrates, what is, and what is not, effective group process for problem solving and innovation.

The full Marshmallow Challenge site is here, and I am eager to bring this to my students soon, and then again and again as a tool to both prod and measure their ongoing growth as innovative problem-solvers.

Often I have written here about St. Gregory’s long-standing commitment to leadership education, and that this year, we have taken that commitment to the next level with the formation of our new leadership institute.  A week ago we hosted our first annual Providence Corporation Youth Leadership Summit, a 12 hour leadership development program for nearly 70 attending seventh graders, representing 2o different Tucson-area schools, each of which nominated their outstanding 7th grade leaders as representatives.   The video tells the rest of the story.