next-ed

A few unpredictable things have happened to me in my interactions with kids lately, and all of them point in one direction: my students are conservative and risk-averse. Sure, what they do on the weekends may be an entirely different kettle of cetaceans, but as learners and social beings they seem, well, prudish.

First, we ask students about their politics, they say they have none, but ask them to take a stand on political issues, and they begin to lean further and further to the right.
Second, we asked the students what changes they’d like to see in the school rules. They want stricter, clearer rules with punishments that modify behaviour!
Third, I offered all of our new college leaders access to social media tools to manage their profiles in the college, create networks and spread good news about their work. What do you think happened?
Nothing.
Awkward silence.
Then came the type of skepticism you’d expect from end-of-career teachers, retired on active duty. The students said “Whoa, that’s a bit too risky in the school environment!” One student said “That couldn’t work”, another just asked “What for?”
So the real question is, in the face of the social media megalopolis – what is it the students don’t get?
I think the answer is, nobody is teaching these kids how to use powerful tools.
If I asked all of the MySpace, Facebook and Twitter users in my school “How could these tools improve your learning?” they would not know where to start.
Hey, it’s St Mary’s… maybe we should just start another club!

Sometimes I think we could do a much better job listening to students.  I was at a forum on Catholic Education where leaders, parents and students responded to thoughtful questions about what we do well and what we don’t.  It was refreshing, frank, confronting, but not at all surprising.  The students assembled all love learning, love their schools, but did not unanimously love the experience as it was mediated by their teachers.  In response to a question about the teaching of Religious Education, one student said “Schools are not authentic and tend to cloud belief”.  Challenging!

What do you need from a teacher?  “I need to be engaged by someone who loves what they do.  I need an effervescent teacher.  I want to be able to see the learning fizzing out of them!” 

I don’t know about you, but there are few days when I feel effervescent in the classroom.  Maybe on a really good day I might feel a little fizzy (think asprin), but rarely would I communicate effervescence (think Verve Cliquot champagne).

So, what is the standard for student engagement these days?   I hate the thought of the new generation of teachers needing to be entertainers first: Late Show meets Early Class?!?  The related question is “will high engagement = improved learning”.  I know I may be sounding conservative (think old), but should the profession be competing for attention with popular culture?  I don’t need my doctor to deliver her diagnosis in rap just so I will pay attention: I want to know and understand what she has to say.

So maybe, just maybe, it is a combination of quality relationships and a compelling lesson.  If we place too much emphasis on engagement, we run a real risk of losing the balance and students will see the show for what it is:  froth and bubble!

I have just finished the script for a documentary about the Learning Projects at St Mary’s in Wollongong.  The film will trace the history of Action Learning at the College, our relationship with the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools and the process for sustaining action learning in out context.  I am quite happy with the last scene where, scenes around the school slow dissolve with images of teachers engaging with students in collaborative learning, the voice over says:

St Mary’s:  a college where the students teach the teachers, where teachers submit assignments, and where no-one has all the answers.  It is fast becoming a community of learners deeply committed the development of everyone and to the notion of building knowledge through deep listening and powerful reflection.

Teachers learning – learners teaching.

Whaddya think?

Because I am teaching and being a principal at the same time, I am not always in the classroom with my students when I am supposed to be.  As much for my convenience as for the students learning, I use wikispaces to hold it all together.

One week into a new class, one of my students sent me this email, entirely unsolicited:

“In my opinion, I feel that using the wiki, is an effective tool for people who are unsure on what a particular topic may be about. However, uploading information onto it, has made me have a greater depth and understanding of the Hajj, and it is a great way to learn, because it is what I call ‘active learning’, and to have
effective knowledge and understanding of something, people need to be able to hear it, see it and do something with what they know, and then people will be able to succeed to the best of their ability – which is what I want everyone to do in these up – coming exams.

I hope this has made you realise that the wiki is excellent and I enjoy doing tasks like those – Brooke”

Some people, upon hearing I am a teacher, ask “How do you put up with teenagers every day?!?”

I spent two days interviewing students for Year 12 leadership positions at my college.  What a heartening and privilged job teachers have.  We spend every day surrounded by people with optimism, energy and an ‘unadulterated’ sense of ethics and justice.

The young women who presented themselved are, by process of selection, the best of the best, with CVs more impressive than mine, but that was not the aspect that touched me most.  It was the capacity they show to think deeply and express their yearning for community and connection.  They really want all young people to experience belonging and a sense of being valued and known.

Makes selecting leaders a difficult job when there are so many to choose from.  At least I know that the future is in safe hands!

I am very proud of the fact that my staff have reached a concensus about how best to care for kids in the learning process.  The debate about the effect teachers have on students’ well be ing is long over.  What is left is the ethical and paradigm shift within teachers.  We have gone a long way down that road at St Mary’s, producing a deeply ethical statement about what we do to enhance well being and learning at the same time.

It looks like this:

Teaching styles and methods
Teachers at St Mary’s use a variety of styles and methods to engage all learners and to meet diverse learning needs.  They plan and tailor their teaching to match the content, student ability, available technology and other situational factors which affect learning.

Learning styles and needs
Teachers at St Mary’s recognise and cater for students who learn in different ways.  They facilitate optimal learning experiences that nurture emotional well-being and personal achievement.

Authentic learning experiences
Teachers at St Mary’s create authentic learning experiences which engage students in the development of significant and life-centred knowledge and skills.  Their lessons promote problem solving, critical thinking and a love of learning.

Reflection in learning
Teachers at St Mary’s build reflection, assessment for learning and evaluation into the learning process.  They explicitly teach the skills of listening, questioning, goal setting and planning.

Assessment
Teachers at St Mary’s measure student learning in a range of meaningful and equitable ways.  They create assessments of high quality which support learning for all students and they provide feedback which is timely and constructive.

A positive learning environment
Teachers at St Mary’s create positive learning environments with a balance of challenge and support, where every student’s right to learn is protected and promoted.  They create stimulating lessons where students feel secure enough to take learning risks.

Expectations
Teachers at St Mary’s expect all students can learn and all students can achieve personal excellence.  They communicate this expectation to their students and encourage and support them to be motivated and optimistic learners.

Relationships
Teachers at St Mary’s model and promote empathetic relationships with students based on mutual trust and respect.  They engage with all students in a way that is purposeful and is directed to all students’ growth and well being.

Now we watch to see it come to life!

I am thinking that the major impediment to the creative use of ICT in the classroom is neither the technology, nor the capacity of teachers, which is growing daily.  The major obstacle is actually teacher self-concept.  How we conceive of ourselves and our role in our classroom will determine the limits of our creativity.

So, if we finally decide that we are not required to master the technology, and only master the teaching, we can be liberated to be the best teachers we can be.  I don’t know about you, but I did not sign up to be a computer programmer: I am a teacher.

Well that is what some teachers at St Mary Star of the Sea College are given every year.

They will head in to the new year with the resources to study, measure, design and implement a plan to improve student engagement and learning outcomes.  Using the principles which underpin the NSW Quality Teacher Framework, these leaders and their teams will create a cycle of action learning as courageous and innovative as their imaginations will allow.

Most importantly, they will listen to what students have to tell them about their learning.

What would your students say if you asked them, say, at the end of a lesson:

• what point in the lesson was the most exciting?
• what did you learn today that was valuable?
• how would I know you succeeded in this topic?
• what would you tell next year’s students about this lesson?

Practitioner enquiry – an ethical approach to student learning.

What should we be asking?

In a recent article in Teacher magazine, Joanne Pace reflects on the learning taking place in her junior environmental science class.  What she discovers is that the students are not engaged in anything deeper than the strict instructions and single learning path she has been offering them.  Things must and do change when she asks “What should we do to make our school more environmentally friendly”? Suddenly, an open ended conversation leads to new learning.

It takes some courage, but Pace begins to plan for her students’ learning based on their emerging understanding.

People who know me know I am passionate about learning how student voice can be used to improve practice.  This ethical practitioner enquiry model holds great power for shaping the learning environment.  How could it work in your classroom?

Mark Pesce has offered us a deeply thoughtful and sometimes disturbing look at how the Internet is evolving to meet the needs and expectations of the mob, at the expense of the hierarchy.  As he says: “The net regards hierarchy as a failure, and routes around it.”  By asserting that the mobis larger, smarter and stronger than any institution, Pesece describes a net that is organic and which actively works against censorship, control and order. Cool, but…

where does that leave schools (as we understand them).  Can you name a more highly centralised, controlled and censored environment on the planet (short of prison)?  While knowledge and content is being happily democratised in the online world, and while young people create, distribute and consume media of all sorts without so much as a thought about who controls it, schools continue to package knowledge into pre-prepared, bite sized and tasteless peices of knowledge-lite.

Our struggle therefore, is two-fold:

1. We must use the net to our own advatage by providing opportunities to create, publish, solve and share in real and meaningful ways; even if this means confronting the chaos.
2. We must ensure that the world of the school does not recede from the world view of our netizen students.

As Pesce says:

“We live in increasingly interesting times.  Half of humanity has suddenly dropped in – uninvited and unannounced – crashing our private party, eager to participate in an exploration of the possibilities of human communication.  Whatever they want, they’re going to get.  That’s the way things work now… Things are going to change.”