Introit

Answers Are So Yesterday

Pablo Picasso once said in an interview, regarding computers, "But they are useless. They can only give you answers."

Technophile that I am, I am inclined to agree with him, from a pedagogical point of view, when thinking about what skills our graduates need in today's world.

We in independent schools need to STOP asking kids to give us answers.

Answers are so yesterday.

Independent school graduates will be valued because they know what questions to ask.

Rethinking Assessment

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I'm reading Cathy Davidson's tome, Now You See It, which is a study in attention, brain science, and related issues, all within the realm of education.

Though much of what Davidson covers in this book is covered in other publications--and specifically in many blogs, her chapter on measurement has forced me to revisit (philosophically) my beliefs pertaining to assessment and measurement. The historical perspective was very helpful, in terms of highlighting the rise of the multiple-choice assessment as a response to the standardization and uniformity prevalent in industrial society. I won't go any further, lest you are reading the book currently.

Suffice it to say that I'm now very focused on assessment and measurement. In fact, I feel so passionately about it that I am ready to identify it as the issue in education right now. It touches all systems: public, parochial, independent.

There is much to be done here, if one is to move the needle and end up with assessments that speak to a student's ability to handle complex, multi-layered tasks over time rather than a "yes, this is right, and that is wrong" approach to measurement/assessment.

Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in rethinking assessment is rethinking measurement. How do we measure a student's ability to handle complex, multi-layered tasks over time? There are many options here, but how many schools are bold enough to begin moving in this direction, away from the "standardization machine" that drives so much of the testing world in the US?

I still believe, though, that content is important -- students need to have some base of knowledge from which and with which to work. Having said that, I think we can devise ways for students to acquire the content WHILE working on those skills that will prepare them for the complexities of life and work.

Assessment or Asset?

One of my eleven summer reading books is Cathy Davidson's tome, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. Davidson offers a powerful and compelling narrative for us to re-consider how we do school, something this blog treats regularly.

 

Although I've not finished it just yet, I found the following quote to be powerful, perhaps because it is such a cogent statement for all that we read on Twitter, in blogs, in general educational literature, and what we hear at conferences:

"That is the glistening paradox of great education: It is not about answering test questions. It is about knowing that, when tested by the most grueling challenges ahead, you have the capacity to learn what is required to succeed" (85).

Shortly afterward, she states, "Put those kids [a group she had identified] in a lecture hall, give them a standardized curriculum with standardized forms of measuring achievement and ability, and they learn a different lesson. They might well master what they are supposed to learn, but that's not education. When you think of learning as something external to yourself, learning becomes a levy--an assessment, not an asset. The assessment no longer matters after the schooling stops. The asset is a resource one draws on for a lifetime" (86).

Her clarification of assessment versus asset really struck a chord in me.

I'm spending much of my summer considering how to transform my section of 9th grade history into a project-based learning class. That is no small feat, in case you're wondering. Central to this transformation is my own need to attend to assessment versus asset. I want the kids to have the asset, every time. I just need to figure out a way to get them there, while allowing for a way to measure their progress that can be translated into a meaningful grade, since we are still wedded to grades.

Teaching Reduced to a Formula

One word: Really?!

[Below: formula for "value added" by teacher in NYC public school system. 2011]

 

News Flash: Online Learning is Mainstream

Can we please stop talking about online learning as if it's something new?

At this point (April 2012), online learning is not innovative, as a concept. There might be inventive ways of handling teaching and learning via the digital medium, but we've long since passed the stage where we could label it "innovative." The first online class for higher education was offered over twenty years ago (University of Phoenix), and public schools began using online coursework around fifteen years ago.

Online learning is decidedly mainstream. It is a viable option, there are quality providers (and those that lack quality), and there are different methods involved with the classes.

Independent schools are still trying to determine whether to award credit for online courses, whether to allow online courses when the same face-to-face courses exist already, whether the quality is as good as what an independent school would expect normally within its walls, and so forth.

But it's not innovative any longer. Rather, it's a question of to what degree a school will assimilate online coursework into its repertoire of course offerings.

Therefore, when we look at the "growth curve" for online learning, we need to understand that this curve shows the degree to which online options are offered and taken; it is not showing any degree of innovation. This is an adoption curve, not an innovation curve.

From this point on, any "growth" in the online learning market place is akin to "growth" in a mature industry. Consider Coca-Cola, IBM, 3M, and so forth: they are still trying to grow, but their growth is incremental because many of their products are already mature. To be sure, they put much time and money into their R&D departments in order to innovate, and these products do produce growth, but the "growth" of their core products tends to occur as a result of adoption in new markets.

Online learning--a core product of the world of teaching and learning--has a place in independent schools. That should be self-evident by this point, and we should stop saying "Wow! Look at the shine on that!" everytime we hear someone talk about it. We will spend (waste?) the next three to five years figuring this out, then realize that we've been smitten so much by online learning that we've forgotten to pay attention to other innovations. Schools won't have money to invest in creating/seeking innovative products that enhance teaching and learning because we will have been so busy implementing "innovative" online learning...that is now entering its third decade of existence.

Third decade?! That sounds as if we're behind the curve. Not in front of it; not riding the crest of the wave. Behind.

Rethinking School

Stacey Childress, who leads the Next Generation Learning group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a very timely piece in the current issue of Harvard Business Review. In "Rethinking School," Childress outlines the foundations that support the vision of a more effective and practical education in the United States.

As expected, Childress underscores the importance of technology in advancing this vision. She immediately touches the 'third rail' of education: teacher productivity. "U.S. public schools have been largely impervious to the productivity gains that other sectors have realized from technology, for two main reasons. First, until recently, they hadn't widely adopted technology: Education ranked dead last, a 2002 Commerce Department study reported, in deployment of technology relative to number of employees. Second, when technology was deployed, it wasn't being used to do anything differently--a problem many industries have long since confronted and resolved" (78-79).

Rather than berate anyone for not adopting more technology, she (happily) spells out exactly what technology can now offer the education sector. "A new generation of sophisticated adaptive courseware and schools that blend the best of teacher- and computer-delivered instruction are making personalized learning approaches feasible and affordable, not as a replacement for teachers but as a way to give them the tools they need to become dramatically more effective" (79).

She goes on, "Adaptive software makes personalized learning practical through a combination of data analysis and pattern recognition technology--something like a more sophisticated version of Netflix's recommendation engine--which tailors instruction by offering up different content and exercises depending on how students did on the previous one" (79).

We're just starting this phase in education, she points out. This writer has to wonder, however: how will independent schools respond to adaptive software? Will we take the typical "wait and see" route, or will we be bold in pursuing blended classrooms that take advantage of the best that face-to-face has to offer and the best that adaptive software has to offer?

Educators as School Marketers: Exploring the Potential Disconnection

Given the need for independent schools to attract and retain qualified students and families, it should come as no surprise that the last few years have likely prompted many conversations in which teachers have been asked to be more sensitive to and proactive in the marketing of their school to current and prospective families.  Unfortunately, many teachers are quite confused by such requests and simply fall back on “doing what I always do” in hopes that such actions fulfill the request.  Such reactions highlight a disconnection between the teacher’s role as instructor and the need to assume a more conscientious role of marketer.

I don’t blame teachers for feeling confused.  After all, I doubt many of them had any formal marketing training as part of their teacher preparation.  Certainly a course in school and community relations may be helpful, but as a marketer?

Probably not.

As an administrator at an independent school that has asked its teachers to be more conscientious of their marketing role, I have spent the past few years reflecting on this issue.  My reflections generally revolve around a few questions.

Why might teachers feel a disconnection between the role of classroom instructor and school promoter?

 

Is there a way to make the connection between classroom instructor and school promoter that makes logical sense to the teacher?

 

If not, why not?  If so, what strategies can a teacher use to make that connection?

This post shares my thoughts on these questions.

I believe that the reason some teachers feel a disconnection between the role of classroom instructor and school promoter (or marketer, evangelist, etc.) is a matter involving the evolution of what an educator is today.  Today’s educator is trying to operate effectively in a period which will likely be identified by the access to choice, desire for change, and ease of networking.  It is an era that continues to force us to reflect upon and leverage the power of relationships and communication.  Thus, what society now sees as successful, necessary, and desired is undergoing a change.  Most noticeably, this change involves a growing desire for deep and meaningful experiences and interactions which produce a desired sense of distinction and specialness.  I suggest this is a result of almost unlimited choice which demands that consumers reflect much more on, “Why?” one option is more attractive than another.  Herein lies the basic problem.  Before people had access to so many options, “Why?” was not nearly as important as answering, “What?”.  You needed a new shirt, you went to the mall and bought one from the stock available.  Now, you can get a new tie from any tie maker in the world over the Internet.  In order to choose one from another, “Why?” becomes a much greater factor.  

What does this have to do with educators?  

Well, for as long as any living educator can remember, teachers have worked (and have been taught) in a model of education that does not sync well with the growing market for distinction, the market that needs a clearer answer to, “Why?”.  It is a mode of operation that follows a set way of thinking about, preparing for, and delivering one’s class.  I will refer to this model as the factory model and its related mode of thinking as the factory mode. Therefore, this model of education, and the related mode of thinking that accompanies it, has become part of the professional genetic code of educators.  It is part of the educator’s DNA.  This mode of thinking, while useful in clarifying, “What?”, but falls short of clearly answering, “Why?”.

The factory model leaves little room for, and certainly doesn’t place much value in, expanding the nature of a class  beyond the curriculum - no matter how artfully it is delivered.  The teacher’s role in factory mode is limited, teach your course and make sure students are ready for the next course.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that role.  As matter of fact, effectively delivering content is an essential part of teaching.  However, when we ask teachers to expand the nature of an effective class, we then move from content and curriculum to experience and relationships, two areas the factory model cannot and does not address.  There needs to be a heightened awareness of the other pieces of the educator’s DNA to provide the balance and approach to delivering a great class that includes relationships and deep, meaningful experiences.  In other words, the environment created by deep and meaningful experiences helps students and parents answer the question, “Why do I choose this school?”.

These suggestions may seem easy to understand.  I would agree that they are easy to understand, but often circumstances make them hard to employ.  Especially when circumstances prompt a strong response from the factory mode that is deeply embedded in the educator’s DNA.

When things are going well, we naturally are inclined to avoid disruption.  The message most teachers hear is “keep doing a great job in class” or “keep up the good work” which, as open to interpretation as it may seem, for many teachers translates as “keep being a good factory worker.”  

However, in recent years the economic reality many schools face has caused them to rethink operations and work like never before to retain and attract families.  These have been years of uncertainty and pressure to perform at the highest levels, often asking every member of the school to act as “adjunct marketers and school ambassadors.”  Stated a different way, schools need teachers to be more than good factory workers.  In essence, we are asking teachers to ignore a strong and significant piece to their professional DNA (the factory worker) and become more of the artist, evangelist, innovator, and magnetic creative.  We are asking teachers to transform their classes from solely places of learning into places of learning that serve to engage students and families in making deep and lasting connections with the school.  We need teachers to embrace their “intellectual celebrity” and become linchpins for our schools.

Certainly, the switch away from factory mode is not easy.  So, a set of guidelines or examples to help teachers understand exactly what is involved in this new approach is helpful.  For some teachers, this requires an acceptance of a dual perception of their work and a commitment to an approach to their work that is conducive to the creation of deep and meaningful experiences.

The Perception of the Work

Many teachers talk about their responsibilities, but rarely do they speak of their cause.  I believe this is directly associated with the factory mode.  Responsibilities are external.  They are dictated to us as part of the job.  They represent a contractual agreement between school and employee.  Typically, responsibilities are specific and measurable.  There is a place for responsibilities, but that place is part of a market agreement between school and employee.  With responsibilities, there is an expectation of immediate reciprocity.  You fulfill your responsibility and you get something in return (a paycheck).

Your cause, though, is personal.  You chose it.  It defines you as a person, not as a worker.  The only contract you have with your cause is with yourself.  Any agreement involving your cause is social.  There is no immediate expectation for reciprocity.  You give of yourself for your cause because you recognize the value in sharing your talents for the betterment of others.  You may not even get a “Thank you”, at least not right away.  That’s “ok” because you do not engage in your cause for the rewards.  You engage in your cause for your contribution.

In order to suppress the factory mode and embrace the marketer inside, teachers need to accept their responsibilities, but adjust their approach to their class as their cause.  Perceiving one’s class as their cause (instead of their responsibility) begins to place the emphasis of the work on the receiver (student) and not on the giver (teacher).  

In other words, if you view your class as your responsibility, you are doing YOUR job, fulfilling YOUR obligation, serving YOUR need to collect a salary.  Again, there is nothing wrong with being paid a fair wage for doing a good job.  However, viewing your class as your cause places the emphasis on the receiver.  Your class is serving THEIR needs.  You are responding to THEIR issues.  Your role is to demonstrate that your class is worthy of THEIR following and participation.

Your cause is student centered.  Your responsibilities are yours alone.

Accepting the cause perception, and the social agreement from which it operates, is not a denial of the factory mode of thinking and the responsibilities that accompany it.  After all, the market agreement that brought a teacher into the classroom must be honored and there does need to be some markers set up for the teacher to measure content delivered progress.  Finding the balance between the two, or applying the correct approach to any given situation, is the key.

The “Open House Culture” in Your Class

Once you begin to perceive your class as your cause, you are in the right mindset to build an inviting and engaging culture in your class, one conducive to deep and meaningful experiences.  To do so, I suggest borrowing the characteristics of one of the more enchanting events at schools, the Open House.

Open house is your school at its best.  Your doors are open and you welcome new prospective families to tour and learn more about your school.  Ultimately, successful open house events prompt the attendees to take the next step in the admissions process with the eventual desired outcome being a new enrolled student.  Your class’ “Open House Culture” operates similarly.  In an “Open House Culture”, you are presenting your class (your cause) at its best.  An effective “Open House Culture” prompts students to “take the next steps” towards becoming an active contributor to your cause (your class).

Borrowing from the numerous Open House experiences I have had, I suggest their are five qualities of effective open houses and also provide the ingredients for an “Open House Culture”.  These qualities are: friendly, trustworthy, reliable, responsive, and interactive.

The Director of Admissions at my school frequently reminds us all that every interaction with parents and students is an opportunity to either improve retention or motivate that family to recommend a friend.  Having a cause mindset and nurturing an “Open House Culture” in your class are powerful foundations upon which you can clearly address the dual role of educator and marketer in your school.

Final note:  If you and I share some of the same reading preferences, you probably noticed the influence of a couple of different people in this post.  Over the past few years, I have found the writing of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki among the most influential.  Kawasaki’s Enchantment has become my “go to” guide for winning the hearts and minds of people.  Godin’s Linchpin, Tribes, and practically every title from his work with the Domino Project are invaluable reminders and prompts for us to embrace our ability to do great work.

Troy Roddy is the Head of Middle School at Wakefield School in The Plains, VA.  In addition, he frequently shares his thoughts and reflections about leadership and education on his blog, The Art of Education.  Dr. Roddy is the author of two eBooks, Paying Attention: Thoughts on Communication in Schools and Foundations: Examining Vision, Beliefs, Mission, and Philosophy.  Troy invites all independent school educators to join his LinkedIn group, the American Society of Independent School Educators.

 

 

 

 

Technology Changes Everything: Guest Blogger John Davies

The first books created by Gutenberg on his new invention were designed and printed to look like a handwritten manuscript.  When his financial partner, Joachim Furst, took a dozen copies of their Bible to Paris to sell, he received a very hostile reception from the book trade guild.  The guild hauled Furst and his newly-printed scriptures off to court, convinced that he was in consort with Satan.  Furst’s accusers argued that so many identical texts could have been created only with the assistance of the devil.  This story is but one of many anecdotes about the chilly reception that mechanically reproduced texts received in the aftermath of Gutenberg’s marvelous technology.  In many ways, the response to electronic texts today parallels those of the printing press.  Academic and religious institutions wasted little time in seeking censorship of books.  Critics argued that too many books lent themselves to superficial knowledge.   Authorities worried that works with illustrations with sexual content or erotic poetry would fall into the hands of the young.  Meanwhile, proponents of the handwritten manuscript, often beautiful works of art in and of themselves, denounced printed texts as vulgarizing intellectual life.  Academics, initially thrilled to find their works in publication, soon grew nervous.  The multiplication of texts meant greater access.  Greater access translated into their students becoming independent thinkers.  The history of the printed word reveals a concerted effort to limit access to reading.  Laws were passed to prevent texts from being printed in the vernacular.  Well into the eighteenth century, many European universities limited undergraduate students access to the library to a few hours per week.

The printing press, one of the most important technologies in the history of communication changed everything, including our understanding of education.   Digital technology is doing the same thing.  Today the pace is radically different.  Another  brief story as a point of comparison.  When Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-five Theses” on the church doors in Wittenberg, his ideas made their way around Germany in two weeks and spread across Europe in a few months.  This would have hardly been possible in the age of the handwritten manuscript.  Today, we can post an idea on the Internet, and it can make its way around the globe in a matter of seconds.  The availability of knowledge and information, without the constraints of time and distance, is changing everything, including how our students are learning.  The rapidity at which data moves around the globe is mirrored by accessibility.  A middle school student studying the history of slavery has access to historical sources that would have been available to only a handful of scholars a decade ago.  Now add to the equation that much of this knowledge and information is free.  And this is only the beginning.

What makes the change coming to education unprecedented is the dynamic way in which digital technology scales, i.e., faster, cheaper, better.  As heads, it may not feel like it’s cheaper when we look at technology as a line item in our budgets.  Tech budgets keep growing because our world (and our students)  find more and more ways to harness digital technology.  Bandwidth keeps getting cheaper while the demand grows exponentially.  In January of this year, you could find 300,000 iPhone apps.  It’s November, and that number is now  closer to 500,000.

I often reflect on author educator David Warlick’s comment, “For the first time in history our job as educators is to prepare our children for a future that we cannot describe.”  As a head of school, I find Warlick’s observation exciting, challenging, fascinating, and sobering.  It is because technology clearly changes everything that we stare head on into a future not yet known.  Finding ourselves at this historical moment presents interesting questions and challenges for heads of schools.  I would like to mention two.

Trying to manage change when one of its largest byproducts is uncertainty is a challenge.  It makes predicting enrollment seem easy.  I occasionally joke that, if I told people what I really believed will happen to education in the next five to ten years, I would be out of a job.  But I’m only half joking.  In the past, education has had the luxury of embracing change at a conservative  pace, especially in terms of technology.   For independent schools, a certain irony may be at work.  Our institutions sometimes evidence a built-in resistance to change because we are so successful at what we do.  Consider that a quarter of the schools in the  2011 NAIS survey on hybrid/blended learning do not offer or plan to offer online courses.  Ironically, it is this independence that should create opportunities to more readily embrace, if not create, change.  I am absolutely convinced that education will change dramatically, and it will come sooner than many independent schools expect.  Every aspect of our lives is being reinvented by technology, particularly how we learn.  If the way our students are learning is dramatically different, then I suggest that teaching should be as well.  We have already reached a point where our students live and learn in one type of culture, call it the electronic culture, while education continues to be practiced from a very traditional perspective.  So how do we manage an unprecedented wave of change?  The truth is that I don’t know.  What I do know is that it will require being open to a very different, perhaps radical, way of approaching education that will require us to question our favorite assumptions, to think counter intuitively, and to be willing to take risks in the face of uncertainty.  I predict discussions regarding the marvelous benefits of risk and failure in just about everything including education will become a national, if not global conversation.

Most of us have written somewhere in our job descriptions something about being the “instructional leader.”  The traditional title of “headmaster” is partially rooted in this idea.  And while that role has been marginalized by our ever growing list of responsibilities, we still need to be able to articulate a vision for teaching and learning to all our school’s constituencies.  This may present the greatest and perhaps most exciting challenge that technology presents for us as heads of school. Individualized education is a powerful example.  If we’re honest with ourselves, I think many of us will admit that our schools still have vestiges of the “one size fits all” approach to learning.  Mine certainly does.  Yet, in every corner of the marketplace, customization is the order of the day.  The new generation of independent school parents don’t just want this, they expect it.  And why shouldn’t they?  As the new NAIS Trendbook highlights, choice abounds in the educational marketplace.  Schools that continue with business as usual will cease to be competitive.  Again, technology is the culprit.  It creates a myriad of opportunities for independent school teachers to individualize instruction.  Pat Bassett wisely observes that in the ever expanding universe of educational choice, differentiated instruction is that one area where independent schools have huge opportunities not readily available to our public schools.

As instructional leaders, in order to create this vision we need to have an engaging dialogue within ourselves about where we believe education is going?  What do we really understand about what has changed in the teaching learning process?  What fears do we have regarding change in our schools?  (I would love to sit with a group of my colleagues and openly discuss this question.)  What things are truly worth knowing?  What skills are truly worth acquiring?  What is our understanding of literacy in a world that is becoming increasingly visual and iconic?  These are but a few of the questions that might shape part of that internal conversation.   What a daunting responsibility; creating and communicating an educational vision that will prepare young people for the future, but a future that is still very much unknown.

I conclude as I began, with a story.  The pencil had been around for nearly 300 years when the first pencil factory opened in the United States in 1861.  Around the same time, an enterprising pencil maker decided to add an eraser to the end of the pencil.  The fear that combining these two technologies into one writing implement would encourage students to make errors created quite a stir in education circles. The pencil with an eraser was attacked by teachers and even banned in some classrooms. Indeed, technology does change everything.

John Davies is Head of School at Miami Country Day School (FL) and can be reached at [email protected].

Test of Character

In case you missed it, click here to read a great piece on character education by Paul Tough in the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times on September 18, 2011.

Character education is clearly the value-added that independent schools bring to the table!

Grit. Perseverance. Self-awareness. Control.

Those skills, among others, will serve our graduates well in life, not a score of 4 on AP ______.

VP of Starting

"If there's no one starting stuff, then where does innovation come from? Not the ideas; no, there are plenty of those, but the starting. If all that we're missing is the spark of life, the motive force, why is this overlooked?" (Seth Godin, Poke the Box, 9).

I read Poke the Box about six or seven months ago, but I find myself returning to it frequently as an exercise in refocusing my senses. The overall theme of "go, start something" holds enough value as a mindset that I have decided to use it as the year-long theme in my advisory group this year (my group has ninth through eleventh graders).

My question this week to the group was, "In an organization, whether it's a school or some other kind of company, where is the Vice President of Starting? Where does that live?" They are to return to the next advisory with an articulate answer.

I ask you the same question. Where (Who) is the VP of Starting in your school?