Relearning Learning

This week we had a much energized #Edchat. #Edchat is an online discussion involving over 1,000 educators on a specific topic each week. This week’s Topic dealt with Professional Development being relevant for educators. This seems to be one subject that rivals in popularity the opposition to standardized, high-stakes testing. It seems that most educators have an opinion on PD. There are so many aspects of this subject that one post will not cover it all. It may however, be able to at least frame a discussion.

The best first change for Professional Development would be to rename it. PD has become a hot button issue amongst many educators. Since each district develops its own policy, there are some districts that do a fine job. Based on comments by many educators on social media sites however, these districts seem to be few, and far between. In addition to district mandates, there are also different PD requirements enforced by individual states. Before the movement to change the name takes hold, let’s talk about PD as we know it today.

Read the rest @ My Island View

I frequently conduct large-group workshops for an entire school or district. I use a variety of methods (like audience response systems) to create engaging events that model the practices I am promoting. The workshops resonate well with teachers and I am often asked to come back and “do some more.”

My reply is typically something like, “I’m done talking … it’s time to take this training into the classroom – that’s where the teaching is going on. Besides, you need to build your local capacity.” Over the last 3 years I have developed a classroom walk through (CWT) approach that works. When I return to a school my goal is to serve as a catalyst for dialogue that can be self-sustaining (read – no consultant required).

During my return visit I typically lead groups of teachers on brief CWTs in an effort to try to identify the instructional elements that we addressed in our large-group session. For example, if my large group session was on fostering higher-level thinking skills, then our CWT focuses on trying to see if the CWT visitors can answer the question, “What kinds of thinking did student need to use in the lesson segment we just saw?” If the large group session addressed fostering student engagement, then my walk-through reflection might be “What choice did students (appear to) have in making decisions about the product, process or evaluation of the learning?”

If the large group is “the lecture,” the CWT is the “lab.”

Read the rest @ Copy/Paste

On Monday, our faculty participated in a technology in-service, and while I had been reconsidering my writing and literary pedagogy for a while, one sentence struck me as more indispensable than any other in the day’s ideas:  “You cannot opt out of technology.”  Mike Wesch, the brilliant cultural anthropologist from Kansas State, spoke these words while giving a talk at TEDxNYED in April 2010.  If you have not seen his talk, take sixteen minutes and watch it; it is quite thought-provoking.  Ultimately, Wesch argues that once technology is introduced, it changes us; yes, we ‘act’ on it, but it ‘acts’ on us as well. I believe that in teaching, to use a somewhat ironic metaphor given the character and focus of the Borg, ‘resistance is futile.’

As educators, though, many of us do resist.  This is often particularly true in the fields of English and writing, where so many of us become teachers because we love books, words, and writing, as well as the joy of learning from the interplay between them.  Our books are sacred.  The written word, its meanings, and its proper uses are sacrosanct.  And, for some, traditional models of writing are venerated.  I must admit that I fall prey to these feelings; I have found myself nostalgic for the days when reading a ‘real’ book was something that students wanted to do, or when the act of reading was not merely cursory, but deeply committed, for students wanted to know what the authors meant, not simply what they wrote, and who the characters were beneath the surface descriptions, not simply the who, what, when, where that would get them an ‘A’ on a formal assessment. I have read student papers and longed for the time when knowing grammar rules was common, when students understood that an argument has a foundation that must be articulated before it can be sound, and that evidence is not simply the first website that pops up, but the result of source perusal, assessment, and selection on the basis of merit.  We have all been there.

Read the rest @ Education in My Mind’s Eye