Monthly Archives: July 2012

How We React

I’m sitting on my couch this morning watching news coverage of the horrific events in Aurora overnight. I am saddened for the victims and their families, as well as for the shooter and his family.

What has me seriously troubled is listening and reading the reactions around the country… well, around the world actually. News like this isn’t limited to a specific region anymore. I’m touched by the concerns of friends and acquaintances, and I’m hopeful because there are so many out there calling for peace, forgiveness, and empathy. BUT… sadly, those are in the minority. What I see more of right now…

  • calls for justice
  • hopeless pronouncements of a lost society
  • speculation and assumptions
  • the word “evil” spewed over and over again

I know these are all natural reactions to a tragedy. I understand that fear takes over our rational selves and immediately puts us into fight or flight mode. We want to ensure we are safe. We want to ensure our loved ones are safe. We are scared.

What’s troubling me the most is that we, as a society, continue to react in shock to events such as these, but we turn our heads away from those who need the most help. We are reactive, instead of proactive. We look down our noses at people who are different, troubled, struggling with addictions, mentally ill. We ridicule the loners and expect them to snap out of it and just “be normal.”

And then we crucify those people when they lash out.

Right after such events, we pay lip-service to programs that are supposed to help people. And then most of us forget about the tragedies and go back to complaining about the lines at Starbucks, the state of the economy, and watching Jersey Shore.

The problem in our society isn’t that we have people who are evil running around our streets.

The problem in our society is that we have a lack of empathy.

We don’t help those in need when we can and should… but we are the first to throw stones at them.

We want to assign blame.

We want to attribute these senseless acts to evil, because that means there is someone to take the blame off ourselves.

 

WHAT IF…

  • we TRULY reached out to those who seemed different… weird… strange… troubled? (not just as a reaction to a tragedy)
  • we taught our children to be empathetic instead of competitive?
  • we concentrated on building up all children, instead of ranking and sorting them as data and test scores?
  • we practiced random acts of kindness every day, not just as an afterthought when something bad happens?

I’m not going to speculate about the young man who walked into that theater this morning. I don’t know anything about him, and the media are doing enough speculation as it is. My heart is so heavy today. I wish I could do something right now for all the families of the victims. I wish I could comfort that young man’s family, because they’re hurting, too. And I wish I could talk to this young man to make some sense of out his actions. I know that’s not going to happen… and that all I can do now is to reach out to those who are hurting, to pray, and hope that, together, we can all learn something from this.

I remain hopeful.

Content-Specific Marketing

cc licensed Flickr photo by neptunecanada

I read this article today on CNN’s Schools of Thought Blog: “Want more kids to take calculus? Convince mom first,” by Jamie Gumbrecht. In the post, there is research stating that involving parents in talking points about math and science electives will be more likely to influence kids to choose those classes:

“These are the critical years in which mathematics and science courses are elective, and our results indicate that parents can become more influential in their children’s academic choices if given the proper support,” the study says.

How simple was that support? Just a couple of brochures, a web site and a little guidance about how to use the information.

My initial reaction after reading was one of wanting to push back.

First, as some of you know, I tire of the constant push for more STEM, more STEM, more STEM. Please don’t misunderstand. I love math and science! When I had the options in school to select electives, I chose calculus and advanced science classes. As a teacher, I get all geeked out with my students when we stumble upon interesting activities that involve math and/or science (read “geeked out” as getting extremely excited about all the amazing learning possibilities). [photo credit: Science Lab by neptunecanada]

BUT… shouldn’t we be concerned about pushing certain content areas at the expense of others? What about the kids who really don’t have an interest in pursuing careers in math, science, engineering, etc? I believe in exposing kids to many areas so they can discover what they don’t know they don’t know, as well as to start to put the pieces together to understand the world around them.

And how about the misguided information from those who form education policy stating that we don’t have enough scientists or engineers? Read:

Do We Really Have A Scientist Shortage?

US Pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there

(There are many more… I’d be glad to link them here if you add them to the comments section.)

 

We know that what is valued eventually becomes policy. And in current US education, that also means what is assessed. Again, placing too much emphasis upon certain content areas does so at the expense of other areas… and at the expense of kids.

My oldest daughter graduated high school in 2007. She liked science, and declared biology as her major at university. After almost two years of that, she called me and was rather upset. She felt she needed to change her major to English. After a long discussion reassuring her 1) that changing her major was not a horrible thing and 2) that she should do what she loves, she promptly changed her major. She adores writing and editing and is now an assistant editor for a local publication company. After the fact, I asked her why she was so upset about changing her major. She said she felt pressured to go into something “more academic,” and she was worried about availability of jobs for a BA in English. Science and math classes were heavily encouraged in her high school.

Now to argue with myself – sometimes “marketing” helps kids to see themselves in a future they didn’t realize was possible. This could be due to stereotypes based in race, gender, status. My favorite way to ‘combat’ the stereotypes is to share examples with my students of strong role models who cross those lines. Is that enough, though?

Marketing can go horribly wrong, though, as evidenced here: How not to market science to girls

(That’s fodder for another blog post.) Moving right along…

Another question I  am still wondering and have blogged about before: why do we continue to teach content areas only in isolation? I agree that there are concepts that probably should be taught separately to avoid confusion and to allow deeper exploration. However, if we want kids to be able to think about what they want to learn and how they will apply that to a career or lifestyle, they must see how those concepts apply in their world. Content areas must overlap, because that’s what they do in everyday life.

In other words, in order to specialize later, they must see how everything fits together at an early age. We are  not doing this in most schools.

So again… having mom and dad sit you down with a glossy brochure (as noted in the calculus/science article I mentioned at the beginning of the post) essentially marketing math and science classes… is that really where we want to take our kids? Aren’t they already get enough marketing thrown at them every single day?

I’m not sure exactly how to feel about this. I do know I sat with my own kids when they were filling out their choices or class schedules. We talked a lot about options and how those choices could possibly shape where they wanted to go in their learning adventures.

Help me, please… share your thoughts.

 

 

The Problem of Either-Or

I wrote this on Coronado – June 23, 2012

I waited almost a week to write my ISTE takeaway post, because I really wanted to process the discussions, the sessions, and the entire experience. I love attending the conference – seeing old friends, meeting new friends, and talking education into the late hours of the night.

The ISTE conference is so enormous, it is a wonder to me that any two people could have similar experiences (unless they stay glued to each other’s sides the entire time). Also, this may have been the first year that I have enjoyed all three keynotes (although I watched Dr. Yong Zhao on video instead of live), and I have so many ideas swirling around in my head from them. I can’t wait to talk to my colleagues and students about them and see what ideas they have!

I didn’t even once make it to the Exhibitors hall this year. I’m not a huge fan of the “in-your-face” marketing style from many of the vendors (orange morphsuits – really?), but there were a few I really wanted to find and say hello.

There were a lot of really great things I learned at ISTE… and more importantly, there were a lot of new connections made. I think, though, that those are always the benefits I take away from ISTE. For now, I want to write about a “takeaway” that has me thinking the most, and that’s the “Either OR” mentality.

At every conference, as well as in many blog posts and tweets, we often read about this great tool or that great company and how these are the saviors of education. Whether it’s the debate of iPad vs Chromebook vs laptop, Dropbox vs Google Drive, Flipped vs Non-Flipped Classrooms vs Khan Academy… I’m constantly wondering why we have to debate them in an “either this or that” fashion.

Yes, if you are in a large school district, and you want money to purchase tools, it is more cost efficient to buy, for example, 10,000 laptops or 10,000 iPads. But I rarely hear that as justification for the debates. I’m not going to even attempt to post links to all the arguments for or against iPads or any other specific tool, because there are simply too many. Do a quick search for “flipping the classroom” and you’ll find hundreds of resources, as well as pro and con arguments. These discussions  and  (most of the time) civil arguments continued face to face in sessions, the Bloggers’ Cafe, the Social Butterfly Lounge, and in hallways at ISTE: “The Flipped Classroom is the best way to teach.” “I’m a Chromebook user and would never use an iPad with students!” These are statements, among several others, that I actually heard from people during the conference.

Please pardon my slow-ish processing, but… what if we weren’t forced into “Either OR” thinking about any of this? What if, in addition to differentiating what and how our students are learning, we also differentiated the tools they used to learn? What if, in any given day, my classroom contained students working on Chromebooks, iPads, smart phones, and paper? What if they had the freedom to choose using an app or a web tool of their choice? What if some chose to watch a video at home and do “homework” during class time, and others chose the opposite? (I know this isn’t the exact definition and practice of “flipping” a classroom, but bear with me.)

Obviously, there are some web tools/apps that are not free, so this option doesn’t work if students choose to work in premium tools to which the school isn’t subscribed. There are, however, several web services and apps that ARE free, and I want my students to be able to make choices (albeit guided choices in many cases) about which tools work best for them.

There was a lot of discussion about personalizing education for kids at this conference… much more than I’ve ever heard before. If we truly want to provide personalized learning for our students, how can we live in an “Either OR” environment when it comes to how they learn and what they use to help them learn?

My takeaway is this: we shouldn’t force our students into “Either OR” learning of concepts and skills. We shouldn’t force them to use a specific tool because it’s preferred by one of the adults in the room. We shouldn’t force them into an instructional/learning style because it’s what works best for the adults or most of the students in the classroom. We need to personalize learning… and understand what that really means.

To me, personalized learning means our classrooms cannot resemble the classrooms of the 1900s or the 2012s. There cannot be 25, 30, or more students shoved into a room with one adult who tries to meet all of their needs. Students can no longer be grouped by possibly the only thing they have in common – their ages. And we can no longer give them the “Either OR” option.

There must be fluidity in learning… in the tools they use, with whom they are learning on a daily basis, how they learn and communicate what they are learning. They need school to look and feel different. They need their school days to be free of bells and strict, unchanging class schedules. Our kids need the freedom of “AND.”

“In our school, we use laptops, and Chromebooks, and iPads. We use Google Docs and Tapose, and… ”

I’d like to approach the freedom of “AND” the same way I do a smörgåsbord. You can’t eat everything on the table and not regret it later (well, at least I can’t). Go up to the table, find the things with which you are familiar and know you like. Next time, try something new. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it. Go back and get something else. Maybe it’s another new food. Maybe it’s an old stand by. Eat the foods that work for you.

That’s a discussion I’d like to have before the next ISTE.