Professional Development Musings

David Thornburg has said that "If you bring in these (new) technologies and don't think ahead to how they'll be used to promote learning and the acquisition of skills, then the only thing that will change in school is the electric bill’. A school district knowing how to use new technologies to promote learning is not enough. The transference of this knowledge to teachers who daily struggle to implement the district’s educational mission is essential.

Teachers are always on the lookout for teaching ideas to improve the ways they are doing things. The ‘just in time, not just in case’ adage applies not only to student learners but also to adult learners. If teachers see professional development as filling a need, they are much more likely to buy into the process. In my experiences there are two approaches to professional development which are particularly effective in serving the needs of teachers. Both approaches tend to use a sustained approach to professional development, which is better than the one-time workshop route.

In the first approach, some school districts such as District U-46 are employing an on-site professional development using the position of Instructional Technology Facilitator. This person is a teacher who holds a regular teaching position in the school but who also consults with the school’s faculty in developing instructional uses of technologies. The person holding the Instructional Technology Facilitator’s position generally receives a very modest stipend which, if the job is done right, is a great bargain. The strengths of this professional development approach are that the Instructional Technology Facilitator:
--is frequently available for assistance, instruction and reteaching;
--knows the people they work with and therefore is approachable;
--understands the technology availability and basics of the school’s equipment, network, applications, etc. in relation to what is educationally feasible;
--knows what fellow staff members will be teaching and therefore is in a position to address the ‘just in time’ aspect;
--knows the expertise of fellow staff members in using technology to improve learning;
can help individual teachers ‘take the next step’

Another approach to professional development is using a strategy such as Aurora University’s Collaborating Academic Partnership Program (CAP), which works closely with school districts to establish professional development partnerships. As stated by Aurora University ‘Through this collaboration, the College of Education strives in cooperation with partner staff to address the unique staff development needs of its partner affiliates." Even a one hour graduate credit course tenders fifteen hours of sustained professional development. In my experiences, teachers welcome beneficial professional development associated with the opportunity to get graduate credit.

The graduate courses I have taught in the Aurora University CAP program in partnership with School District U-46 required participants to make a teaching unit as a final product that can be used in the teacher’s classroom to help student learning. In one respect teachers appreciate the time, new resources and mentoring made available to them during the graduate course as they work on developing new ways to teach. In another respect, new ways of teaching can be thought of as adding another component to the pressure of high stakes testing. Teachers are very concerned with the coverage of curriculum. I try to alleviate the misgivings of trying something new by beginning my courses with a review of research dealing with engaged learning using technology and other related educational theories. A discussion in my courses that seems to recurrently arise focuses on the ‘coverage vs. learning-in-depth’ issue. When teachers realize that their students learn and retain more, and teachers therefore realize test scores should increase with these new ways of teaching, then many apprehensions are diminished. At the end of the course participants have indicated that they are very happy with this form of professional development during which they created an instrument to help their students learn in a better way.

In both types of professional development mentioned above, I think that the dissemination of learning activities is extremely important. Sharing helps build a culture of collegiality necessary for healthy educational environments. My hope is that individual schools as well as districts would make available a database of the products created during professional development activities for the rest of the teachers in the district. Perhaps they can also develop a regular process of sharing ideas, such as during a portion of faculty meetings.

As important as professional development is, we must not forget that the process of professional development is systemically entwined with timely access to appropriate technology as well as prompt tech support when glitches happen. Because teachers as a group are extremely pressed for time, they tend to be very pragmatic. They do not to want to experience frustration and waste time on developing teaching methods that won’t be used because of a lack of availability of reliable resources.

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Career Opportunities

I recently met a number of people for the first time during a social function and a few of us began discussing our careers. An investment trader, when he found out I was an educator, confided in me that his job did not allow him to contribute to society in the way a teacher’s can.This statement surprised me.

This man made many millions of dollars for his company each year trading currency, bonds, and debentures (whatever they are) in overseas markets. He led a team of highly skilled and driven people to accumulate vast wealth for his firm. And yet he was ‘saddened’ (his word) that his career didn’t afford him the kinds of opportunities ‘to make a difference’ (his words again) as teachers have.

Reflecting on this, I do see his point. Consider such educational mission statements as this one from the Newark (NJ) Public Schools, which recognizes ‘that each child can only be successful when we acknowledge all aspects of that child’s life; addressing their needs, enhancing their intellect, developing character, and uplifting their spirit.’

Teachers have an abundance of occasions each day to address issues such as these. Along with helping our students learn new academic skills and concepts, we also nurture them. The prayer of St. Francis ‘where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy’ could have been written as part of a teacher’s job description.

Each time a child learns a new academic skill, we make a difference. Each time a child’s tears turns into smiles, we make a difference. Each time we help a child to learn to care about others, we make a difference. The possibilities for teachers to make a difference are as endless as the numbers of lives we will touch in the course of our careers. Clearly many of these differences lie outside of the domain of the standards movement our nation is embedded in. But as Albert Einstein (who by the way knew something about standards himself) said ‘Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted’.

Obviously there are other jobs that allow opportunities for contributing towards society. I’m just pleased to be part of a profession that makes it a point to make a positive difference, day after day.

Research Competencies Students Need in a Technical World

Things were different when I went to school. in the fifties and early sixties. As an example of one difference, we trusted the information we received. Textbooks, encyclopedias, magazines, and films were there to supply us information we could depend on. We weren’t in school to question the information; we were there to write reports about, as examples, the Boston Massacre, the space program, the Holocaust or Martin Luther King.

No one questioned the resources we used to write our reports. It never crossed our minds to mistrust the materials our teachers supplied us. We were taught how to use the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature to find magazines, not to debate whether or not the information contained in the magazines was accurate. We never had to face the dark side of knowledge or even know that it existed.

As said, things were different when I went to school. The sources of information that are now available to our students have increased since then by the hundreds of billions. Before, an editor had to scrutinize a work before it was published as a book or in magazines. Today this is not necessarily true for the information sources our students have available (among these being web pages, blogs, podcasts, uploaded videos, etc.). For example, it’s possible for a student to find a web page written by a Northwestern University professor stating that the Holocaust never happened as well those proclaiming landing a man on the moon was a hoax and the tragedy of 9-11 was a conspiracy created by our own government. Students can find a web site about Dr. King which looks legitimate on the outset but which has facts skewed because it is published by a white power group.

It follows then that another type of literacy is very necessary; an information literacy. Students must be able to narrow their search using the best resources. For example, can they find evidence from both sides of a debate, such as what really did happen during the Boston Massacre? Can they evaluate information by determining its validity and reliability? Can they rephrase information to show understanding, or are their notes and written work simply a result of copy and paste? Do they respect copyright by citing their sources?

To paraphrase an old saw, knowledge is power, but only knowledge that can be trusted as true. As future citizens of our form of government, our students need to know how to find information, how to separate the wheat from the chaff and determine what the truth is. Teachers need to help our students by designing learning activities that fosters information literacy.

(This article first appeared in the ICE Cube Bulletin, Volume 2006, Issue #1 p.18 published by the Illinois Computing Educators)

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How to Walk Backwards and Other Things I Learned While Teaching in a Catholic Elementary School

Retirement was great. After teaching for thirty-three years in middle schools or high schools in this country and overseas, I became an educational consultant. I was enjoying working with school districts and individual schools, community organizations, private educational firms, regional offices of education, as well as giving presentations at conferences.

Then, three years after retiring from full time teaching I was asked to take the seventh grade position at St. Thomas More School, a pre-K through grade 8 school in Elgin, Illinois. STM School was one of those I was working with, giving workshops and mentoring teachers and other staff. Penny Reid, the principal of STM, had asked me to assist her in interviewing prospective teachers. The request came unexpectedly. When discussing the parameters of the teaching position with her, she casually asked ‘Would you consider taking the position’’ Though I had kept my teaching certificate valid, I had no intentions of teaching full time again and abandoning my consulting business. Cool Lessons Consulting (coollessons.org) was just beginning to really take off. Putting the consulting work into hiatus and letting my clients know that I am no longer available was something that wasn’t even considered. It surprised both of us when I didn’t respond ‘No’.

It came down to two reasons why I eventually agreed to teach full time again. The first was that I enjoyed working with Mrs. Reid and the staff of STM School. The second was that I needed to ‘walk the talk’. For years I had been suggesting teaching ideas to these people who would become my fellow teachers, but have never personally been through the day-by-day trials they go through as elementary school teachers.

The following is a list just some of the things I learned while teaching in a Catholic elementary school. One is that elementary school teachers are extremely pressed for time. I realized that it takes any new teacher time (measured in years) to develop a variety of educational experiences to help students learn. In the middle and junior high schools I am familiar with, we would have, on an average, three preparations (different lessons plans) each school day. Some years we would have fewer preps and very infrequently did I hear about more.

As an elementary teacher we had six preps. For those who don’t think this is a big deal (obviously people who haven’t tried it), someone once said “Teaching is an easy job to do poorly, and a tough job to do well.” I won’t get into the fine details of lesson preparation: just suffice it to say it takes an immense amount of time to plan. First one has to evaluate student progress and then prepare learning experiences you feel will be successful. Therefore, my workday extended from about 5 a.m. through 11 p.m. On school days I had no other life than education. On weekends, one of the two days was devoted to school related matters. During a weeklong vacation, typically at least two of the days were like wise taken up.

Included in the ‘pressure of time’ theme, I liken elementary school teachers’ jobs to images of pony express riders who, without a break, arrive on a galloping mount, jump off, run to the next horse and, without stopping, climb aboard while their chargers are moving on the dead run towards the next destination. This analogy expresses exactly the feelings of time pressure teachers experience as learning experiences flow from one to another in order to keep students on task and on time. Add to this the ‘extra’ things to consider, some happening each day, and some sporadically, which can make for a hectic experience. Some of these are: picture, lunch, field trip and magazine money collections; schedule changes; morning, lunch and closing prayers; rehearsals for singing at Mass; helping students get ready for the morning scripture readings and for mass readings; and going over to the church to attend masses, participate in Reconciliation (the Sacrament of Penance for all you old timers), Eucharistic adorations and the Way of the Cross.

Related to the ‘pressed for time’ theme is something that is easily forgotten by some who claim teachers have it easy because of their shortened work day. As mentioned before, we are one of the few professions in which our clients (the children we teach) are physically with us throughout the day. Lawyers are not legally responsible for knowing where their clients are and having to constantly physically supervise them; neither are doctors, accountants, businessmen and women, policemen, etc. Few of these have ever had to ask someone to ‘cover for’ their clients for a needed washroom break. Of course, teachers do have a thirty minutes lunch break (unless one has playground duty and gobbles down food, rushes out the door to supervise children and to take heed of assorted ‘owies’ and problems in caring ways. Even that thirty-minute lunch break many times is only twenty minutes (it takes time to accompany your students to lunch and to pick them up afterwards). I was amused by an article written by a journalist who taught in an elementary school for a day. She went home totally exhausted, wondering how people can do that kind of work without opportunities to mentally refresh themselves as the journalist had while working in her office.

Another thing I learned is how like a loving family the STM School is. One positive aspect of working in such a small (about 240 students) school is that everyone seems to know everyone else. The STM School office and teaching staff not only knows the names of each student, they also know their siblings and parents by name, as well as their family background. Students regularly come into the office just to say hi, or for a hug, or for reaffirmation in one way or another. They are always greeted in a loving fashion. People pitch in and help each other. When something happens, someone is there to provide backup. It’s truly amazing what a group of people can do when they have a common vision and the will to reach it.

The vast majority of teachers I have known are caring people. You have to enjoy associating with children and want what is best for them in order to be a good teacher. Jaime Escalante, of ‘Stand and Deliver’ fame, states that all schools should show and teach respect, hard work and discipline. STM School does all this under an aura of true Christian love. On a side note, one advantage of teaching in a Catholic school is that we could address the entire child’s educational, physical and spiritual growth. Kids many times have a strong sense of ethics and want opportunities to talk about events. When ‘stuff’ happened, we could deal with it within a moral framework. Another lesson was that my STM students really knew the system. In my previous teaching jobs, I established classroom management procedures due to the fact that students fed into my middle school from a half dozen or so different schools. However, because my STM School students had been together as a group for years, they were used to doing things a certain way and as a new teacher I had much to learn about their established routines.

My students frequently made suggestions as to how I could improve classroom management techniques such as which ‘jobs’ needed to be done and how they should be done, based upon how they did it in previous years. Included is the routine of how the class should be moved from one location to another, such as to the LRC, lunch, music or art. When it was time, the girls and boys automatically got into separate lines and marched down the hallway with the teacher in front walking backwards to assure discipline in the ranks. I had marveled at seventh and eighth graders doing this when I started teaching there, and vowed that you wouldn’t catch me walking backwards in front of a class. However, due to the nature of the seventh grade students’ need to establish their independence by the class forming a moving, talking amorphous blob in the hallways, I had to admit I was wrong and learned to walk backwards without running into obstacles.

Related to this, I learned that there are some good and also not-so-good things about students being together as a group for a number of years. The good was that they treated each other like family members. They basically cared for each other and did much sharing. They knew the strengths and weaknesses of each person in class much better than I did and when, in private conversations, they expressed their thoughts on whether or not certain individuals would come through as part of group learning activities, their prognoses were right on the money. They knew who could carry home the homework for ailing students, and who could get rides after school with whom. The no-so-good was that they treated each other like family members, brothers and sisters. They had their alliances with others already established when I came. It was difficult for a person to move from one clique to another. They also knew exactly what buttons to push and how far they could push with each person in class before that person would be set off.

Because of working with the same students most of the day, I knew my students as individuals more quickly and better than ever. It’s more difficult for a student to ‘hide’ academically in such a situation than it is if the teacher only sees the person fifty minutes a day as in middle or high school.

The list of what I learned is by no means all encompassing. All and all my experiences just reinforced my belief that people who work in schools deserve all the respect we can give.

In my middle school teaching career, I have heard some people hope to have a chance to move ‘up to’ high school. I think that the State of Illinois allows high school districts to tax 150% that of elementary or unit school districts, seemingly implying that the high school has an exalted status (money does speak). These attitudes seem to me to turn what should be the true priorities of education on its head.

I had to resign from teaching full time due to medical concerns (it was difficult when faced with the fact that one can no longer perform up to the standards one sets) and am back to being an educational consultant. I did ‘walk the talk’ and found that engaged learning principles do work in an elementary school setting. My consulting business has picked up again surprisingly fast, at which I am as busy as ever.

In the end, I can proudly say that I was an elementary Catholic schoolteacher.

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School Dreams

Like clockwork, every year I start to dream about school a few weeks before the first day in late August. Guess it is my brain’s way of getting ready for the beginning of school.

If you are an educator, have you ever had this particular dream? In the dream you are trying to teach a class but the kids are being TOTALLY unresponsive. You are running into a brick wall. It’s the educational counterpart to that common dream in which you’re trying to run but discover your legs are moving awfully slowly, as if you are held back by some unseen force. Your frustration with what’s going on in the classroom builds and builds, but your students also seem to be being held back by something. The things you are trying with your students just don’t work. Students are doing off-task things because they are mentally lost, bored, or uninvolved, and these add up to an educational anarchy. Deep in your soul you know there has to a better way to reach them.

Waking up, it’s a reprieve to realize it was only a dream. But this dream has had a basis in reality at times. It’s uncomfortable to recognize that we’ve all been there at one time or another - the realization that the kids we teach just aren't getting it, and that there just has to be a better way.

The purpose of my work is to allow educators to explore other ways students can learn. The way students learn can dictate not only how well they learn but also what they learn. The process can become a part of the product.

As a side note, I read that when military personnel make a career transition to teaching, they are surprised by the lack of continuous schooling teachers do through out the year to improve their skills. In the military, people are almost always going through training. I think that some of the reasons educators don’t are due to the pressures for our time and our attention we constantly face. Unlike lawyers, doctors, policemen or businessmen, we are almost always with our clients (students) throughout the working day. In those times without our students, we are conferring with other professionals, planning, evaluating, setting up, cleaning up, etc. etc.

I hope you find these postings are worth the time and attention you so graciously are allocating; ‘worth it’ in terms of discussing how we help students to learn in the best ways possible.

Hello

Permit me to introduce this web log and myself. The purpose of this blog is to share some thoughts about education.

As to vitae, I am most proud of being a teacher in public and private schools, here and abroad, for thirty-four years. I am presently a full time educational consultant (Cool Lessons Consulting) working with many schools to help teachers ensure all children have access to quality engaged learning activities.

David Thornburg has said "If someone brings a lot of new technology into your school district, and doesn't provide staff development, the only thing that will change is your electric bill." This quotation spotlights my role: I am a teacher, not a techie. We all admire techies for the wonderful tools they create and keep running. I help focus these tools on helping teachers to help student to learn better.

I have taught for Aurora University (Aurora IL) as an adjunct Instructor and have presented for multiple Role of Technology in Education Conferences and at a National Educator's Computer Conference. I've also presented at multiple Kane County Office of Education workshops, multiple School District U-46 and private schools' staff development workshops. My web pages at http://www.classblogmeister.com/www.coollessons.org, as well as the graduate courses, workshops, presentations, etc. permit me to help teachers explore other, more effective ways their students can learn.

The learning experiences I endorse through inclusion in my web pages are effective not only because of technology, but because they also involve students in activities that challenge them to solve problems by doing quality research, analyzing and rearranging information, synthesizing possibilities, making judgments and then creating interesting products in order to communicate their results. Technology can be used as tools in making these exciting learning experiences even deeper, richer and more motivating. It can give new purposes to learning. It can be used to transform the way students learn.

Awards and recognitions include: Kane County (IL) Middle School Educator of the Year Award; Kane County Distinguished Educator Award; Dolores Kohl Foundation Award for Outstanding Service in the Field of Education. The web site http:/www.coollessons.org has also won a number of awards.