The Tempered Radical

New Slide: Making Student Responders Matter

During the course of a recent Twitter conversation about Mike Schmoker's new book Focus, Lyn Hilt---one of the Connected Principals that I admire the most----made a comment about student responders that really resonated with me when she said, "I think what matters is what you do AFTER the "click" that counts."

I took Lyn's comment, adapted it a bit and then added it to this slide:

Download Slide_StudentResponders

 

Lyn's thinking matters, y'all.  Like any technology purchase, there's nothing magical about student responders.  They can, however, make collecting and acting on data far, far more efficient than the traditional data collection and analysis practices that teachers are forced to use in our schools. 

So I guess the question for anyone with an itch to splurge on student responders and a technology budget to burn becomes, "What are YOU going to do to support teachers who are interested in taking action after the clicks in their classrooms?"

If you can't answer that question, you're wasting your cash----and our time. 

Twitter is Only One PLN-building Tool

One of my all-time favorite people is Marsha Ratzel, the mind behind the Reflections of a Techie blog.  Marsha and I have been TLN colleagues---and like minds---forever. 

In response to my recent post on the ways that Twitter can save you time, she wrote:

Maybe Im doing something wrong but Im having much more success in building a PLN through my FB friends and through the readers of my blog.

Maybe the point is that some people gravitate one way because of their style or because of those they find...maybe the point is that you should be out there trying all the forms and formats...finding which one works best for you and then using it to its maximum advantage.

Like most of what Marsha writes and thinks, she's spot on here, isn't she? 

I'll bet that there are literally dozens of educators who have struggled to build a PLN in Twitter.  Like most conversations about technology in schools, though, we've got to remember that the tool is secondary to the behavior. 

That's what I worked to explain in my response to Marsha.

Hope it resonates with you---especially if you're one of those folks who wants to learn online but hasn't had much success in the digital soup that I've fallen in love with. 

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Hey Marsha,

Glad to see you here---and your comment is brilliant!

For a long while yesterday morning, I considered naming my post PLNs can SAVE You Time simply because you are right: Twitter didnt save me time yesterday----my PLN did, and I just happened to build that PLN using Twitter.

Twitter can SAVE You Time

Whenever I’m trying to pitch Twitter to a group of teachers who are new to the product, one of the first bits of pushback that I get goes something like this:

“I don’t have the time for Twitter!  I’ve got papers to grade and plans to write.  It must be nice to have tons of extra time to waste poking around in useless messages posted by people you don’t know.”

Now, I get it:  Twitter---and other social media spaces that people have embraced---have gotten a bad rap simply because so many people DO waste huge amounts of time in social media spaces.

But I can tell you that if you use it right, Twitter will save you time.  Period.  End of discussion.

Here’s proof:

What YOU are saying about Social Media in Schools

A few months back, Jason Ramsden, Eric Sheninger and I asked our collective networks to answer two simple questions:

What do you see as the potential rewards of using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook in schools?

What do you see as the potential pitfalls of using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook in Schools?

Your responses were pretty darn interesting—and might serve as a valuable introduction for school leaders who are just beginning to think about social media in schools. 

Here are five of my favorite responses to both questions:

Twitter as a Social Media Starting Point

I’ve been quiet here on the Radical this week because I’m putting the final edits on my third book—a bit I’m coauthoring with Eric Sheninger and Jason Ramsden on how principals can use social media spaces to communicate with stakeholders and to provide customized professional development for themselves and their faculties. 

In the course of our chapter on using social media spaces to communicate, we make the argument that Twitter—despite being less popular with parents—is the right social media starting point for principals just dipping their toes into new digital waters. 

Here’s why:

Twitter is a more approachable tool than Facebook. 

Maintaining a professional presence in Facebook requires a ton more monitoring and management than maintaining a professional presence in Twitter simply because all that Twitter enables is simple, quick sharing. 

Facebook, on the other hand, enables shared calendaring, warehousing of interesting pictures, videos and documents, and the facilitation of ongoing, threaded discussions with audiences.

While all of those Facebook features are incredibly important because they create interactive and engaging digital homes for schools, they also require more time to develop and maintain. 

If you are a principal with a heaping cheeseton of extra time on your hands, tackle Facebook first.  But if you are completely swamped like the rest of us, Twitter is a more logical—and more approachable—first step. 

 

Who DOES Love Public Education?

Blogger’s Warning:  This post ain’t full of rainbows and unicorns.  If you’re looking for a sunshine-and-candy-corn wrapped around an apples-and-hope kind of post, close your browser and walk away.

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When Nancy Flanagan—one of my closest professional mentors and friends—asked me to take part in We Love Public Education day, a grassroots attempt to push back against the never-ending crush of negative rhetoric spun by the Oprahgandists of the world, my thoughts immediately turned to Maggie.

Maggie was a first year teacher in a high-poverty school outside of Atlanta a few years ago whose eyes were opened to the challenges of life after two short weeks in the classroom. 

As a part of a longer letter to her college mentor, she wrote:

I have learned that most kids do not go home to mom or dad and get help with homework--they go home to an empty house.

It's hard to understand how some of these students survive in the living conditions they were born into. Not that I didn't know it already... but I see how lucky I am to have had the "tooth fairy," "Santa Claus," stuffed animals, clean clothes, food, candy, tv, air conditioning, a clean bed, and parents always around.

Sometimes I get home and it's hard for me to get my mind off of my children and whether or not they are safe, being fed, etc.

While there is so much sadness in these children's lives, they are, for the most part, incredibly happy children (at school). We have our times where discipline must be enforced, but these children are so good at keeping their lives a secret... no one would ever guess that these children are living a silent war that begins at 2:15 everyday.

What Maggie—and most of the general public—didn’t realize is that there are thousands of teachers living the same silent war every day.

They are the dedicated professionals who commit themselves to working in high-needs communities because they care about giving every child—including those that our society is only-too-ready to throw away—a fighting chance to overcome the circumstances of their young lives.

Read This: The Hidden Contract of Urban Schools

The Hidden Contract dominates decision-making in an urban school. In many schools, the implied contract between teacher and student is the following. You the teacher will agree to not challenge me, force me to work hard, embarrass me, or make me struggle, and I the student will not act out, disrupt the class, embarrass or challenge you in any way.

This same contract exists between Principal and Teacher as well. If you the teacher do not disrupt my day, excessively ask for students to be removed from your class, push at what should and should not be taught, then I the principal will support your decisions, evaluate you positively and leave you alone.

Essentially, between and among all parties; you leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.

via www.connectedprincipals.com

 

Stumbled across this great Eric Juli piece the other day. You'll remember Juli as the urban school administrator who wrote a guest blog entry here on the Radical last weekend about the flawed nature of the "us v. them-ness" in our conversations about accountability.

This quote really left me thinking because as ashamed as I am to admit it, the hidden contract Juli's talking about has been in full force at different times and with different students in my classroom over the past 17 years.

Most of the time, that embarrasses me---I should ALWAYS do more for every child who walks in my door. But other times, I think that should embarrass those who are responsible for creating the conditions necessary for me to succeed.

Here's what I mean:  For the better part of my career, I've been completely overwhelmed by the range of abilities in my classrooms----and I'm supposedly an accomplished teacher.

I'll have students who can't read sitting next to students that are reading far above grade level.  I'll also have students with severe learning disabilities who don't qualify for services in smaller classes or with educators trained to work with children who struggle academically. 

When I ask for help, I'm told that all I need to do is differentiate my instruction. 

"Craft tiered lessons," the learning experts say.  "Have several different activities for each concept that students of different ability levels can work through.  Create multiple versions of tests.  Design multiple ways for students to show you what they know.  Pay attention to their learning styles.  Play to their strengths.  You know what motivates kids.  Tap into those motivations in every lesson." 

But "crafting tiered lessons" and "creating multiple versions of tests" just ain't that easy. 

It requires a ton of time for planning and preparing several different sets of materials.  It requires time to collaborate with qualified colleagues who understand just what students who are struggling can do.  It requires time to collect and then to analyze data---most of the time using nothing more than three ring binders and sticky notes----in order to figure out which kids in which periods need which lessons. 

Then, it requires assessing mastery on multiple sets of assessments and crafting new sets of tiered lessons for new units----all while trying to answer email, attend parent conferences, implement new school initiatives, implement old school initatives, implement even older school initatives, work part time jobs, and be a dad all at the same time. 

A little professional development would help, but money for that has been hard to come by for years.  And digital solutions might could provide a few answers, too----but technology budgets are limited and the time that it takes to develop online resources to provide academic challenge is just as overwhelming as the time that it takes to develop the tiered lessons that everyone's pushing me to make. 

Honestly, challenging every child at the appropriate level would take a super-human effort that I just can't afford to give.  I do the best that I can, but that "best" just ain't good enough in more cases than I'm comfortable to admit. 

Don't get me wrong:  I SHOULD be held accountable for working to meet the needs of every child.

But YOU---and that YOU includes EVERYONE outside of the public school classroom from parents to principals and policymakers----should be held accountable for making that possible by ensuring that there are enough resources to actually do the job in my school.

#itsreciprocaly'all

 

New Slide: Sustainable Change in Schools

As I've mentioned before, the ideas of Steven Johnson are really influencing my thinking about school change right now.  What Johnson argues is that sustainable change in any field really isn't about revolutionary ideas.  In fact, Johnson believes that embracing revolutionary ideas about change is a recipie for disaster.

Johnson's ideas are echoed by Kevin Kelly, who writes in Wired Magazine:

Ideas that leap too far ahead are almost never implemented—they aren’t even valuable.

People can absorb only one advance, one small hop, at a time. Gregor Mendel’s ideas about genetics, for example: He formulated them in 1865, but they were ignored for 35 years because they were too advanced. Nobody could incorporate them.

Then, when the collective mind was ready and his idea was only one hop away, three different scientists independently rediscovered his work within roughly a year of one another.

Interesting stuff, huh?  And still more proof that 'out-of-the-box' thinking isn't going to get us anywhere in education---whether we're talking about reforming teacher evaluation models or reforming instructional practices.  What we really need, argues Johnson, is thinking at the edges of the box:

Download Slide_EvolutionRevolution

 

How does this sit with you?  Are you exhausted by the "we need a revolution" rhetoric surrounding education?  Do you think evolutionary change for schools makes sense instead?

Do we have the time for evolutionary change to occur? 

What are the consequences of too much out-of-the-box thinking in our schools?  How about the consequences of not enough out-of-the-box thinking?

Will we ever get the balance just right? 

 

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Original Image Credit:  10_cardboard_rough_03 by Six Revisions

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31288116@N02/3066482220/

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on February 6, 2011

Guest Blogger: Why ‘Us v. Them’ is a Flawed Accountability Construct

My recent post describing what I’d like to hold principals, district leaders and policymakers accountable for has drawn quite a bit of interesting conversation.

In particular, I’ve enjoyed a bit of pushback that I sparked when I argued that the ‘us v. them’ feeling that exists between principals and teachers around accountability is appropriate. 

Here’s a bit of what I wrote:

While I agree that the us v. them vibe you get from my post is disconcerting, I really think its appropriate.

In fact, the were all in this together and we have equal responsibilities for driving change lines that I hear in so many conversations about education actually drive me bonkers.

Here’s why: Principals and policymakers and school leaders beyond the classroom DO have more organizational power than teachers.

Eric Juli—the Director of Secondary Curriculum for the Lawrence Public Schools, an urban district with 13,000 students about twenty miles north of Boston—has probably forced me to think about the ‘us v. them’ vibe in my post more than any other Radical reader.

Our conversation continued offline, too.  I asked him if I could share his thoughts here on the Radical as a guest blog post, and he’s agreed.

I hope you enjoy his pushback as much as I did!

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Why ‘Us v. Them’ is a Flawed Accountability Construct in Education

By Eric Juli

 

Dear Bill,

You are correct, there is some "us v them"-ness in accountability conversations between principals and teachers in schools.

We each have our roles to play, and ultimately, when tough decisions, whether financial or staffing or curricular are made, I'm one of the leaders making them. So we do not have equal responsibility even though that’s what the altruistic members of our profession would like to believe.

And while all of what you say about control is true, I still don't totally buy into your conclusion that, "School change is more dependent on you than it is me." 

What I’d Hold YOU Accountable For.

I got a rush out of the time that I spent at Educon last weekend.  There’s nothing quite like having the chance to meet people that I’ve learned from online for so long in real life. 

Intellectual networking—finding connections between my own thinking and the thinking of peers working in dozens of different schools—was awesome. 

But I think I rubbed several principals the wrong way on the first night of Educon when I wrote:

 

 

Seemed harmless enough to me.  It’s not like I haven’t written about the frustrations I feel with being held accountable for student performance while having my professional hands tied by decisions outside of my control before. 

But I quickly found myself buried in pushback replies from principals.  “You can innovate if you want to,” they’d say.  “You’ll have better luck if you’d just try.”