Exploring Innovation in Education

Often as we strive to create new instructional models, methods, and practices we are asked to prove that our new methods have merit. The answer is often not spending the time to find the support outside of ourselves, but to share our experiences and classroom results. One of the tools that every agent of change needs is Action Research. Action Research is the tool needed to move forward with new ideas and collecting data to provide feedback that both supports the merit of your idea and valuable feedback to adjust, modify, and re-craft your idea.

Learn more about Action Research:

Derrick Willard, Upper School Science teacher using Action Research

Action Reseach by Eileen Ferrance at Brown University

Teachers & Action Research – George Mason University

Elementary Education Wiki

Guide for the Teacher Researcher by Geoffrey Mills

If you find other good resources or more importantly know about other teachers sharing their models of action research, please share.

Below is my recipe for my new (new to me but not new to many of you) classroom model which builds on the idea of the classroom as a learning studio.

Take one part Vygotsky, two parts Dan Pink’s Drive and mix gently. Fold in Shirky, Richardson, Ted McCain – you can substitute Ian Jukes if you don’t have any McCain. Wrap mixture firmly around your curriculum. I prefer some Shakespeare especially Romeo and Juliet. Sprinkle a liberal amount patience and exploratory spirit on top. Serve warm to Middle Schoolers. Be prepared this is a messy meal best eaten with your hands.

The reality is that students are passive in many learning environments. They are told what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, when to switch topics; not to mention when to eat. When we’re done with them they move on to coaches, parents, tutors who lovingly continue to them what to do, when to do it,  and how to do it. We all mean well. We all want what’s best for the students in our care. Part of the problem is that we are products of similar learning environments. All of that to say I felt it was worth a try to let them have some control, some choices by building a space where they can explore.

Now despite the rumors, I am not a complete idiot. Our classroom is not a modern version of The Lord of the Flies. My students are now collaborators but not equal partners. The goals of the units – content and skills –  are still determined by me. The methods of reaching our goals are where most of the collaboration happens.

For example, we are working our way through Romeo and Juliet. The final project is a paper – written in google documents or posted to their blog- that either argues that Romeo and Juliet are a shining example of true love or merely an example of infatuation gone wrong. I created this final assessment to measure their ability to use several sources including the original text to support an argument. The idea is that you cannot complete this assignment without knowing Romeo and Juliet. We quickly realized you also need to know what true love is and this is where things got messy.

My 8th graders had some interesting theories on true love. Some pretty good and some really bad. As a class we struggled to define true love. So at our weekly board meeting – a meeting where students and I discuss activities and goals for the week - I said “How are we going to determine the definition of true love?” Below is a list of the activities the students designed and are implementing.

• Look for examples in movies.
• Examine the lyrics of Love songs for common themes.
• Invite guest speakers to share their definitions – everyone from the Head of School, Biology Teacher, History Teacher, Coaches, Manager of the Cafeteria, Head of the Visual Arts Department, Upper School Counselor, my Wife, and more.
• Compare examples in books that they have already read.
• Use definitions from dictionary.com, wikipedia, and other sources to build and online survey to be sent out to the entire school.

Students are videotaping the speakers to be able to review their answers and we are taking notes using the smartboard. Both the video and the notes are posted on our wiki.

Student also decided that they would rather watch scenes from the play in class and read for homework. They were cautioned that this sounded like the easy way out so they said that the reading at home had to be active reading – highlighting where love was discussed, taking notes in the margins, posting questions on the wiki that could be used a reading quizzes, searching for literary devices. Despite my misgivings, I agreed. So far, the level of engagement has been extraordinary. Students are making connections between guest speakers and events in the play. The level of discussion in class has been of a higher quality exhibited by students supporting their comments with evidence which is one of the desire outcomes of this unit.

So what’s next? I really don’t know. At least, I am not aware of the details. I do know that I won’t be spending any class time lecturing on what I know about Romeo and Juliet. Instead, I answer questions posed by individual students or the groups working to define love. There are some activities that I will steer the students toward including:

• building a rubric to assess the quality of the final projects
• sharing information about the definition of love collected by the groups
• class time spent peer reviewing final projects before they are final

Beyond these activities, I have no specific plans, but my lack of detailed planning seems to be in direct relation to the increase in student engagement, student productivity, and student excitement about learning. I will post more as I learn more about the successes and failures on this “new to me” classroom model.

Close your eyes. Imagine a classroom where every student comes through the door wanting to be there and wanting to learn. What does it look like? What is happening? Now for the more important question… Could you create this classroom? I am willing to bet that many of us immediately jump to listing the obstacles that would prevent us from creating this type of learning space. The students would have to change. The administration would need to be more supportive. I don’t have enough time in the class period, prep time, etc.

Wait… slow down. Ignore the obstacles for a few minutes and consider what we can do. Most of us are after all the Supreme Ruler in our classroom and can do most anything in that space. So if we start by asking what motivates our students and then start changing the things that fall within our scope of influence… maybe we could build a different learning environment that engages our students to do more than collect points and score well on quizzes.

So what motivates our students? Consider for a minute that our students are typically being acted upon instead of being decision makers. Most of the time there is some adult who is laying out for them what to do and how to do it. What if they could exercise some control? Being in control even in a heavily scaffolded environment could provide the students with an internal drive. Control could be shared by setting the final outcomes of the unit and letting the students explore how to obtain the skills and content necessary to successfully complete the final outcome/assessment. You could also create opportunities for students to build the assessments. They could write the quiz questions, build the rubric, design the project, etc. Weekly or biweekly class meetings where as a class decisions are made about the schedule, homework, etc. could be a powerful tool for sharing control and in turn creating intrinsic motivation for learning.

Sharing control is just one way to get students more engaged in our classrooms. Motivation is a tricky thing. What motivates us often depends on the type of task so maybe it is so not much about what we could do but more about what we shouldn’t do. For example, providing extrinsic rewards like extra credit points, no homework nights, class treats, etc. can actually have the opposite effect. *see Daniel Pink’s Drive So the goal would be to create activities that have their own inherent reward. This is where the zone for proximal developement (Vygotsky) and flow (Csikszentmihalyi) apply. Students can find intrinsic reward in completing an activity is there is the right balance between challenge and ability.

So I propose that we bring together Lev Vygotsky’s ideas about scaffolding and the zone of proximal development, Daniel Pink’s study on motivation in his book Drive, and Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational to better understand our students needs and motivations. If you are interested in examining these ideas further and looking at one model of these ideas in practice, come to NCAIS Innovate on March 11th and 12th at Cary Academy in Cary, NC.

’tis the season… not just for holly, mistletoe, and goodwill but exams. So as we begin reviewing, cramming, and stressing out I thought it would be beneficial to share two examples of relatively stress-free exam review.

The first stop is a AP Environmental Science where Mr. Derrick Willard has been using a class blog to have his students write “scribe posts” all semester. The definition of scribe posting that follows is from Darren Kuropatwa, an amazing educator from Canada.

The original assignment was simply to post a brief summary of what happened in class each day. A different student is responsible for the daily scribe post and they end their post by choosing the next scribe. The first scribe was a volunteer. My daily involvement is limited to updating a post called The Scribe List which is at the top of the links list in the sidebar of each class’s blog. For all three classes this takes less than five minutes of my time each day.

Derrick has effectively applied Darren’s scribe post model in his science classroom.

Here is why this model is a great end of semester review tool. Students have access to student created daily summaries from class. These daily postings have links to additional resources, embed maps, charts, and links to current news articles. There are also comments posted that correct or add additional content to the daily summaries. The pressure of knowing that your peers are relying on your work to help them review combined with the rotating schedule that minimizes your nightly homework allows students produce high quality summaries.

In addition to srcibe posts, students post questions about class content and their peers answer the questions. Mr. Willard only needs to chime in when the conversation strays off point or misses the point. Students have shared that the very act of creating the summaries helps them retain the information and allow them to act as experts on those section of the course. These notes and summaries are always available online.

The next stop is a Middle School English course that has been using a wiki to collect resources to assist with review as they went along. Students decided that they want a page for chapter summaries of Steinbeck’s The Pearl. They create a page for their own examples of literary tools when they felt that their teacher’s examples were out dated and obscure. On the same page are links to definitions of literary terms. They found videos of Poe’s Cask of Amontillado and The Raven which some students are watching to refresh their memories. They collect links to resources for parts of speech including an embedded mad lib game. The wiki is used in class each day for 20 minutes in small groups to focus on the area they feel needs attention. Students work together with teacher to identify new tools and clarify how to use the tools to study. By working in groups, students are able to model good study behaviors for each other and share study tips.

Hope these two examples perhaps create a opportunity to reduce your and your students’ stress this exam season. Don’t forget that these are the types of ideas shared at NCAIS Innovate on March 11 and 12th.

I am worried that my system admins will see this commercial and create yet another server password than no human can remember.

Found interesting article in NYTimes oped discussing the philosophical & psychological approaches to character. The psychological approach, as discussed in Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, a Princeton philosopher, book “Experiments in Ethics” challenges the traditional philosophical approach that we all have ingrained character traits. Appiah and others suggest that we don’t have one thing called character but instead a multiplicity of tendencies that are applied in different contexts. In other words, we are not always dishonest or honest but react to each situation individually. In reflecting on this approach, I wonder if it helps us better understand our students and their behaviors. What do you think?

I know it sounds wrong to claim that a potential pandemic has an up side, but it does – instructional continuity planning. I have been asked like many of you to plan for

three possible scenarios related to the potential disruptions caused by H1N1.

1. High rates of extended students absenteeism (7-10 days)
2. High rates of extended faculty absenteeism (7-10 days)
3. School closure initiated by County Board of Health

All three of these scenarios lead to discussions about the role of distance learning tools, social media tools, wikis, blogs, and even cell phones in maintaining instructional continuity. In planning and sharing our instructional continuity plan with faculty and school leaders, I have participate in some of the most innovative, open, and frank conversations about new learning tools. These conversations are encouraging teachers to see the benefits of these new tools outside of the framework of flu preparation planning especially since we are encouraging teachers to explore these tools before the flu arrives in full force.

H1N1 has create more buzz about new learning tools than my team and I have been able to generate over the last two years. Even our most resistant teachers are concerned about how to keep our students engaged and learning while recuperating at home. The potential need is driving the exploration but I am continuing to hear teachers commit to using the tools regardless of flu season or high absentee rates.

So to all of my comrades in our learning rebellion, now is the time to push new learning tools and promote social media tools. Use H1N1 and instructional continuity to gain a foothold then dig in and hold your ground. Let’s use this one possible silver lining to the H1N1 flu season to encourage innovation, exploration, and engaging new learning models.

If you are interested, please visit Providence Day’s H1N1 Instructional Continuity Planning Blog. If you have any comments or suggestions about the site, please forward them to me.

This 2006 painting by Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An is in fact an image map with titles and wikipedia links — click on the image to visit the painting online, and explore the many stories it contains.

Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante

Joe Graba’s above quote grabbed my attention and it still hasn’t let go. I am struggling with understanding the truth of this statement. All Educators surely want what is best for our students so why are we often the obstacles preventing the improvement of our schools?

If you don’t agree that the general Education model is out of date then the remainder of this post may not work for you. I am a believer that our current model with its agrarian calendar and the industrial assembly line structure needs change. I also believe that educators in the classroom are the most important element in creating lasting, meaningful change. This is why I become so concerned when I witness examples of teachers acting as obstacles to growth based on it will impact us, the adults.

I readily concede that teachers have extremely large work loads and that the majority of us are dedicated professionals. My concern is that the heavy workload and multiple roles of our positions create an environment where we so concerned about our needs that we overlook the needs of our students. It is easy to believe that if the current model work for me then it should work for my students and the reality is that so many of us are in survival mode that considering changing our instructional practices is overwhelming. The evidence is everywhere that proves that we must set all that aside. We need to stop being obstacles.

Let’s face it. We all teach the subject or grade level that we know best. We don’t typically change because it would remove us from our comfort zones. We like being in control and being masters of our environments. Change threatens our comfort zone. In the world outside of the classroom, success is about being dynamic, flexible, agile, and innovative. These are not traits that promote status quo. They are traits that encourage risk taking and experimentation. Hard to do from within your comfort zone.

So let’s start a conversation at our organizations. The conversation needs to be about learning and creating opportunities for students to actively engage in learning. To often, especially after they leave the younger grades, students are passive recipients of information. Below is an example of how Southern Methodist Univeristy is struggling with a new model where students are asked to be participants in class and teachers are being to active engage their students. Our current model is the reason why students expected to just be spoon-fed.

from When Computers Leave the Classroom, So Does Boredom|
article in The Chronicle for Higher Education

The conversation about this type of change is not new. In fact, there are many places where we can find the inspiration for new instructional models. From Dewey to Pink to Robinson to new understandings of learning based on brain research, we can find many places to start. The trick is to stay focused on first building solutions then adjusting to make them manageable. Too often the conversation gets derailed by logistics, the “realities” of daily life, and the lists of reasons why not. we must be prepare to build something different. If we believe that our students need a better system that let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work by building learning communities where schools once stood. Let’s get out of our own way but more importantly, out of the way of our students.

More to think about…

Will Richardson’s Tinkering toward Utopia post

The Chronicle’s article on Transforming Instructional Practice by removing powerpoint

eschoolnews article on Brain Research and Classroom Practices

Dangerously Irrelevant blog post on teachers’ motivation to self-educate