Trust the Process

June 30, 2014

I know a young lady who has “Trust the Process” tattooed down the inside of her forearm.  As tattoos go, it truly is lovely with small birds flying up her arm.  I’ve wondered what an 18 year old knows about “the process” and then I think…she knows enough to name it and that is more of a start then many of us have.

I consider myself a “process” person.  I will happily knit a sweater, wear it, not love it, rip it all out, and knit it again.  I typically don’t get easily frustrated by not knowing, I enjoy figuring things out and I simply love to tweak “stuff”. I’ve met with success and I have certainly met with product failure, but I have always learned from the process.  So chapter 13 of Curriculum 21 just fed my soul.

Jacobs in Curriculum 21 suggest we need to identify the “skills and dispositions” that students need regardless of the content. In the Framework for 21^st Century Learning, creativity & innovation, critical thinking & problem solving, communication & collaboration were listed as skills and dispositions needed.   Tony Wagner was reference in Curriculum 21 with a list of his own, highlighting processes that are essential to learning in school, work and life.  It seems more than essential at this stage of humanity to consider Habits of Mind in curriculum development.  I simply couldn’t hit the AGREE button enough.

My district will be using EDUCATE as a recording system for “grades” next year.  There are targets for complex reasoning and Habits of Mind.  Teachers are expected to report out on these standards.  I’m thrilled.  The true task will be to provide explicit teaching and learning opportunities for these skills and dispositions to have adequate practice and coaching for development.  Embedding them into units of study and lessons will be needed. Then bringing them to that metacognitive level that Costa regards as necessary for later application, will be required to close the learning cycle.  We’ll need ways to notice and name these processes in operation as well as ways to provide timely and effective feedback.  Teachers will need to really believe that they can affect changes in students’ Habits of Mind to keep this on the front burner.  I am very excited to be in the here and now with this.

Some people may be naming aspects of this as self-regulation, agency, Habits of Mind, critical thinking, etc.  I’d like to call it empowerment for learning regardless of where, when or what.

Old meets New

June 25, 2014

As I’ve worked side by side with colleagues, sorting through decades of materials and books, I’ve wondered how to (and even if we should) blend the old format of learning (books, handouts, paper/pencil, sit & get) with the new format of learning (technological input and output).  As with everything, it seems there has to be a layered approach.  Seriously, can’t something just spontaneously appear????

We will need to go at this in layers, but not slowly or we’ll loose students in the process.  Chapters 5 and 12 really focus in on the technology and the fact that these students coming to us are not the same students from even a few years ago.  They think differently and they need to.  Unfortunately, many of the adults (me included) have not kept up.  We’ll need to hang on to a few books and extra materials to help bridge the gap while we sharpen the skills we need in order use the tools mentioned in chapter 12.  It’s likely as soon as we learn just one of those tools well enough to instruct with it, another 5-10 will have appeared on our screen.  It’s a sharp learning curve and our best instructors are sitting in the room with us. As a coach, I can infuse what I’ve been learning in the current courses I’m taking. A tour builder here, a voice thread there, here a podcast, there an audio cast….. layers. I just learned about glogster last night!

I lumped chapters 5 and 12 together in my thinking about technology in this blog post, but I have to pull a bit of chapter 5 out and admit that it makes me more than a little uncomfortable.  It’s the idea of social networking. Thinking about it as a developing “relationship” and a process of learning to be was very eye opening for me.  The only thinking I have right now around this and trust me I am thinking about it, is that we can’t just let this evolve without thought.  With any young relationship a bit of grace and guidance is often needed.  It’s a new relationship for adults and our young students alike.  So if we are all in this together, then we need to be talking about it openly and often.  Our years of experience might help while their years of inexperience might just inform.  Communication physically and virtually might just be in order.  Where is Emily Post when you need her?

Schedule: noun vs. verb

June 24, 2014

I am grappling with the whole idea of schedule, scheduling, scheduled.  There is such a need for a schedule, but there is also such a need for flexibility.  I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to listen to teachers think through their teaching/learner needs, think/talk about options and propose a solution. Very empowering and intimidating at the same time. This will be my 2nd year working with this team and I'm fairly certain I will be full-time at this school.  Lots of opportunity for us to get this right or at least closer.

We are an MPCL school and with that comes a framework for instruction that does "drive" the "schedule" a bit.  It is an integrated framework that includes readers' (75 min.) and writers workshop (60 min.), language studies (20 min), word work(15 min.), and content area (this includes math (60 min.), science, social studies) studies.  Within that framework we use the framework of a mini-lesson (demonstration (10-15 min.), guided practice (10 min.), independent practice(30-45 min.), share/closure, debrief (5 min.)).  This follows the socio-cognitive apprenticeship theory.  I am also in an elementary school with art, music, gym, library, lunch/recess and breakfast.  It's a 6.5 hour student day!

We have a large special education population that includes the district's day treatment program and our Title I population is at an all time high.  We need to layer instruction within the workshops which means students need to be available for mini-lessons (first 15 min. ish) and then receive supplemental instruction.  We have limited resources.  It would seem that we need a fairly well orchestrated schedule in order for the supplemental people (special educator, interventionist (new position), and coach) to supplement.  Teachers want to "share" students yet instruction isn't aligned and our struggling population is very instruction sensitive.  They spend their time trying to figure out what they are suppose to do in these parallel, instructional universes.

There has been a great deal of autonomy as to when teachers teach what they teach within their classroom.  There were times of the day when supplemental just couldn't happen as a result.  With limited resources yet a serious need for layered instruction, we really need a school wide structure for "scheduling".

Prior to reading chapter 4, I was all for a very structured schedule until we could get the supplemental services delivered in a layered way while we were improving our instruction practices as a team.  I am starting to think we might be able to do both. First of all we need to think of "schedule" as a verb and not a noun. Then the three aspects of chapter 4 that I think we can use to help us think through this is the notion of time as currency, cooperative grouping and virtual vs. physical space.  I'm thinking that within workshops we can determine time needed for projects, group cooperatively and by choice and allow for contact physically or virtually.  As always it will require a well thought out instructional plan, but I can see some areas for flexibility while we work on the areas that really need some structure to them.

YIKES!

June 21, 2014

One of the schools I work at is beginning a curriculum/materials review next week.  First we needed to unearth the materials in what has been an epic, two day, educational, archaeological dig.  I have great hope that we will find the materials of most value and.....donate the rest.

June 17, 2014

I've been thinking about the upgrade of assessment types  that Heidi Jacobs talks about in chapter 2 of Curriculum 21.   I just wrote a multi-genre "paper" for the integrated unit of study I developed for the course Literacy Across the Curriculum.  The "paper" was engaging and I could see where we could use replacement assessments in our curriculum. Creating something "new" provides opportunity for students to apply high level comprehension skills like synthesizing.  Yet, I have a concern.....

When my own sons were in grades 4-12, a great deal of technology was being explored in the classroom.  They had the opportunity to attend a small rural school that put an emphasis on the integration of technology in the classroom.  They had 1:1 laptops by the time they were in grade 6. What I saw though was a great deal of low level "harvesting" from the Internet and the development of a keynote/powerpoint that were just reorganized facts from someone else.  They didn't seem to achieve that synthesis of information in the  creation of something "new".  On top of that, they NEVER wrote papers, essays, paragraphs, letters, etc. Then when they had to organize information for a more formal product it was difficult. Both are in college now with the expectation of research papers, essays, summaries, etc.   I don't disagree with Jacob's notion that colleges need to take a long hard look at what they are doing, but they aren't there yet.  So......

Don't through the baby out with the bathwater, as my mother always said.  All good things in moderation, another favorite phrase of hers.  In other words, a blended approach to assessment is more comfortable for me. Have students choose from an essay, letter, summary,  podcast, poem, tourbuilder, blog, keynote, etc. It might be necessary to have a list of more traditional pieces and ask them to complete a certain number per tri-mester.  Something like that. And when the newer modes are being used the process of "writing" that mode needs to be explicitly taught.  Mentor pieces need to be evaluated, rubrics made, and lessons taught with an eye on process and product assessment.

June 15, 2014

I've had a variety of experiences with using and developing various curricula, all of which have been shallow.  As a classroom teacher in the 90s I taught content through themes.  During dental health month it was all about teeth.  I used a variety of texts both fiction and non-fiction to drive home the why and the how of good dental hygiene.  Some activities-writings/readings worked well, while others just had teeth in the title.  Shallow.  As a special educator and interventionist (Title 1), I supported classroom instruction while providing the skills and strategies students needed-through those themes again.  At one point my school was a Reading First school.   I had to wrap my head around a basal program for the first time.  The ultimate in shallow experiences! It was ridiculously scripted and didn't interface at all with student needs.  The scope and sequence held some merit at "stacking" skill and strategy.  That was it!

I was then "invited" to participate in a district wide attempt to look at the CCSS and formulate curriculum to meet those standards.  I was on the ELA committee and my group was focused on grades K-2.  We looked at what other districts across the country had done to meet the demands of CCSS and we drafted our own version.  It took almost 2 years and by the time it was in teachers' hands it was outdated by the newest thinking around CCSS.  It's "on the shelf" with other documents from 25 years ago collecting dust.  Shallow, shallow, shallow.

I have since trained as a literacy coach, looking at the "how" of explicit teaching through the framework of the partnership and  sociocognitive theory.   The "how" to teach is a bit clearer to me. What I now spend a great deal of time doing is planning the "what" to teach with teachers.  We aren't using any of the dusty relics on the shelf.  Every teacher is flying by the seat of their pants-daily.  The evidence is in the outcome.  I have embarked on planning units of study this past year with 3 teachers independent of each other, 1 team of teachers, and 1 unit on my own through a grad course I am currently taking-Literacy Across the Curriculum. It's been quick learning, driven by a serious daily need.  At this point, I think I'm looking for a common "theme" that involves depth of study across various disciplines, process and purpose with lots of talk!  I think I'm in the right place at the right time.