Thielmann's Blog Cabin

Twitter Blues

2012-02-12T18:34:00.001-08:00

On Friday, I had an opportunity to speak to the whole grad class at our school about their use of twitter, and I thought it would be appropriate to follow up with a message for all of our students.

There has been a problem building for months among students, that many don't seem to realize that twitter is 100% public by default and that your tweets are being read not only by students but also by your families, employers, coaches, neighbours, and school staff. Much of what we see is "normal" teenage banter, often humorous, sometimes in bad taste, sometimes quite poetic, insightful, even inspiring. Twitter is an amazing medium that gives voice to frustrations, celebrations, and whatever is on your mind. Keep that up!

We also found a significant amount of disturbing content -- tweets about sex, porn, binge drinking, violence towards others, taunts, insults, and an endless stream of f-bombs from a few of our students. I think this is a problem for perhaps 20% or about 150 of our students. These tweets speak to your character and integrity, and don't speak highly of you when they are profane or offensive. For those uses of public social media, I encourage you to think about how your words reflect your values.

More troubling are the tweets from an even smaller group of our students that create a hostile environment for others at D.P. Todd, maybe 10% or about 75 students, and not defined by gender, race, age, social or economic status. While we all have freedom of speech in our society, there are also other legal rights that limit the freedom of speech. Our school district has a legal obligation to provide a harassment-free workplace for staff and a safe learning environment for students. This is threatened by tweets that are homophobic, racist, sexist, or related to drugs, vandalism, assault and slander against students or staff. For that use of public social media, we need to insist that you think about how your words affect others and relate to both the law and school policies.

Since giving the speech on Friday, I've talked with some Gr. 12 students who took the lead to show some class on twitter, and made me proud how they took ownership of their online presence and turned an unpleasant experience into an opportunity to show their strength, character, and integrity. They reminded me that this is an issue for all students, not just a few. Awesome -- I have tremendous respect for how they handled this. They also taught me about some of the contexts for how students tweet, including the importance of music and how lyrics often drift into their tweets. That's a great point that I will think more about.

Not everyone will agree with what I've been saying, or need/want to change the way you tweet, but I think most can agree that our school should be a safe place to work and learn. I appreciate the support for this from teachers since Friday. As a result of this awkward but important issue, some have had great conversations with their classes last week about social media and how it affects students and our school, and where it crosses the line. One teacher told me about how community employers have had to deal with regrettable twitter in the workplace. Another teacher shared that students, perhaps reluctantly, actually want some guidance from their teachers and that if we don't care enough to act on our beliefs, who will? Yet another colleague tweeted to me "not every positive learning experience is a feel good moment." We live and learn.

As I said to the Grade 12s, in high school you are laying the foundations for many of the most important relationships in your life. What do you want that to look like? To read like? I am proud of what you have accomplished. We share a space that I think is about intelligent questions and meaningful ideas. I want you to write the story of your life to be about the same thing -- big questions and great ideas. There's room in that narrative for funny and weird and sometimes even rude, but you have to put some craft and thought into the parts of your story that are so painfully online.

I wish you all the best as you consider how your words and actions have power. Your teachers & school staff care about you; I care about you, and we all care about the school and its culture. I think each one of you is valuable, and that you deserve to treat each other like each one is valuable. I'm not asking that you censor everything you post in social media, just asking that you put a limit on the tweets that threaten the working and learning environment at our school.

Sincerely,
Mr. Thielmann

Enter QR Codes

2012-02-09T16:07:00.000-08:00

These have been around for a while, but have also found their way into education over the last year as a way to communicate content or links with mobile users. Easy to make: just paste a url into a generator like this one - http://qrcode.kaywa.com/. Then grab the QR code and put onto a handout, in an email, on a website, whatever. To access it, the smartphone or ipod needs a "QR reader" (just search for the app wherever you get your apps). The smartphone or ipod then reads it and connects to whatever you have linked. I asked a group of 26 students if they had heard of this. 2 had, but did not have an app to read QR codes. 23 of 26 had smartphones, and within 10 minutes I happened to ask again and 9 of them had already installed the app.

Try it - the one above links to my class updates, something I'm trying out to keep parents and students informed - http://thielmann.tumblr.com/. Hopefully less homework requests or "I didn't know" from students. This isn't exactly a "flipped" classroom, although with my essential content (like handouts) and my daybook online, I can focus on classroom teaching/learning/interaction part which is embodied, visceral, and not available via Google! Students without tech gadgets can still grab handouts from the back of class or find them on my website.

Tip: if you are linking websites for students to check, try to find the mobile version so they can read it on their phones.

Or how about this? As students walk in they scan a QR by the door and an learning object pops up that you intend to discuss as you being your lesson. For me, that might be an image, primary source, map, or news event. They all have their phones out on the way in anyways, so this provides an anticipatory set (nice if you are distracted with getting other aspects of your class underway, talking with students). Students without gadgets can look over at their neighbour or wait for the image on the big screen (if you even need it). It even gives you a natural segue to ask them all to put the gadgets away once you've discussed the item, if that's part of your plan. Your "source of the day" can be given the same name as yesterday's (e.g. BlockA.jpg) and dumped in a share folder, that way the QR code can stay the same for each class.

For perspective, I tend to see more drawbacks than benefits to students being wired 24/7, but I am trying to reclaim some territory for intelligent, creative use of technology. There was a burst of excitement about 9 years ago as students learned how to mess with graphics, build sites, edit video, then blog and youtube, etc. Now I'm finding kids have a hard time with email and basic file management, because the technology has become so easy that many don't bother to do anything but consume. Interesting that this is the opposite of what the BC Edplan experts say is happening. I'm watching a generation of kids with hunched backs, face down, hands fretting over their phones. They can access more of the world but they are blind to the important parts that are full of life and all around them. The distant and virtual are not yet tangible and connected, and we're losing many kids to a neurosis that has eroded their coping skills for reality. Take a look at the mental illness diagnoses in your school or district if you don't believe me. No doubt the BC Edplan of 2027 is going to align its goals around sorting out this mess.

Anyways, I'll do my part to try and make it better... "QR codes for learning" ...welcome! I dunno, is it a fad or the start of something important? I'll let you know a few months from now how this goes, maybe it will be a terrible mistake! Feedback on the tumblr class updates is also welcome... does it look sustainable to you?

barriers to dialogue

2012-02-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

Recently, a colleague asked why our school district leadership didn't seem to read or care about the discussion in our online "Technology Forum." This is a place for various Q&A about technology, but is has also played host to critique and challenges about how our district supports innovation and teacher-led designs for learning though technology. Over the last few years we've seen a number of local structures disappear that once enabled thorough mixing and discussion between senior district leadership, principals, vice-principals, teachers, tech support, and others. More recently, we've seen a spate of teacher (and even principal) initiated "21st century" pilot projects rejected by our board office without much in the way of rationale. The Technology forum has archived the grumbling about this, but the issue of missing dialogue is more systemic than this single online forum or last year's iPad proposals.

Although the reason for the perceived lack of interest may simply be the limited hours in the day, I think at a deeper level it is the result of one or more organizational barriers to dialogue.

Here are some theories as to why our district discussion/decision structures have disappeared and also why we are not seeing much of a readership or response to teacher concerns over the last few years... I'm really not sure which one fits the best, it is probably some combination of these:

1. Management paradigm -- a shift towards a more mechanistic or hierarchical management structure in the district, less open or organic... consultation with employees in this context is seen as a potential liability as it can expose contradictions in the organization, directions that can't be afforded or justified, lack of documentation, etc.

2. Political -- in the current labour climate, management needs a single-minded focus on its objectives in order to implement Ministry of Education agendas; i.e., paying attention to employee concerns opens the door to opposing viewpoints on the BCEd plan or a criticism of the BCPSEA mandate to assert more management rights.

3. Loss of capacity -- a period of downsizing has resulted in too few district staff with too many tasks to complete; this means that management does not have time to address concerns, regardless of how important they are to employees... the result is a reduced ability to read, understand, meet, listen, discuss, plan, and act.

4. Tactical -- stay quiet, redirect, postpone, or feign confusion and sometimes the problem goes away; this is a successful and proven way to avoid conflict and is sometimes recommended when the nature of the problem is deemed to be temporal; it doesn't address the concerns but it can show how the topic of concern ranks as a management priority... it can also be a form of courtesy to avoid an argument that stakeholders are loath to begin.

5. Imposter syndrome -- it may be that teachers feel they are not qualified to take on management processes or district-wide planning mechanisms, while at the same time management may not feel qualified to take on educators with passionate and practiced understanding of a pedagogy or technology; the modern classroom and board office represent unfamiliar ground to each party, and the result is a general reluctance to engage in discourse for fear of exposing knowledge gaps or doubt about needs in context.

6. Philosophic -- simple disagreement over organizational theory (e.g. pedagogy as it relates to technology); when the ideas commonly expressed by employees are not shared by management, a back-and-forth discourse (especially by email or social media, and doubly so during job action) might only further the distance between parties... the work of securing an inclusive and productive medium for discourse is seen as arduous, let alone establishing a milieu in which philosophic differences are celebrated and accommodated.

7. Techno-burnout -- Discussing wikis, blogs and blended learning, the transformative nature of interactive technology, the power of user-built content, etc. was all the rage 8 years ago in our district; we had workshops and teams and coordinators all dutifully spreading the message about what tech could do and how to get started... it is possible that the message caught on, we are generally wiser about what works and what doesn't, and we no longer have a sense of urgency around new technology or district structures that promote uptake of innovative ideas; we've entered an era of laissez-faire education (the "right" technology, pedagogy, and organizational model will present itself to us because the educational world is so connected and fundamentally innovative).

8. System in flux -- the educational models that come and go in our system each brings new and sometimes contradictory approaches to leadership and management (or are sometimes applied with difficulty as organizational rather than educational models): DDDM gave support to coordinated action research, Constructivism suggested system growth requires mediation, PLCs implied more collaboration was necessary in the organization, AFL required better use of descriptive feedback (even from the employer), Inquiry-based learning elevated the incongruent question, 21stCL nurtures grass-roots innovation, and so on... our district may be caught in a loop-error on system change, unable to figure out the best way to involve employees in decision-making without compromising other aspects of the current model(s).

There are other plausible explanations but I think these ones are relatively uncontentious, safe to discuss, and presently observable in our education system and school district. I would argue that if we want employees and management, each one of them professionals and educators in some sense, to be working on the same basic journey towards the total growth of children in a public education system, we would give some primacy to sorting this out. This starts with some self-awareness about the organizational barriers to dialogue, thus I have shared my thoughts for others to consider. As always, comments welcome.

time for a new exam

2012-01-24T07:35:00.001-08:00

It's exam week at my school, and things look different this year. Because our province's teachers are in a contract dispute with the government, we have withheld some supervision duties, provincial exam marking, and meeting with administration among other low-key job actions. This year is also the first without the gamut of Grade 12 provincial exams that were mandatory from the 1980s until about 5 years ago, and then optional up to this year. That left only 5 "checkpoint" provincial exams for students to write: English, Science, Math 10, Socials 11, and English 12. The result? Our traditional exam week -- where students only attend for exams and teachers have a chance to mark and get caught up in planning, prep, and pro-d promises -- was bound to change. Our school board office came up with a plan for the week that principals were compelled to implement; eventually the word trickled down to teachers about what was to happen. It feels like the heady days before email and smartphones, when the pace of communication was approximately the pace of someone walking down the hallway towards your classroom. Day 1 & 2 were extended blocks of regular classes (that ended the previous week), teachers could administer own course exams if they wish, otherwise they were supposed to supervise students who had already finished the course. The leftover bits, plus Day 3 & 4, was to be "I" time, with the I standing for incomplete, I think, or maybe in-progress? Interesting? Independent? Innovative? Indolent? Inert? Something starting with "I" anyways. The idea is that students could get caught up on whatever they missed in the course (which ended a week earlier), at the teacher's discretion. This is a strange assessment practice, and one that does not assist students in becoming responsible young adults who own their learning.

That's the context. Despite my misgivings about the quality of this plan and my skepticism about motives (I can't turn those taps off, sorry), I quite enjoy the challenge of finding order in the chaos and I've got big plans for this week. The part I want to write about here, and the part that will suck most of my school-time this week, is a new exam. For the last few years I've been using the same Social Studies 10 exam (with some edits) that Ian Leitch and I made in 2005. 150 multiple choice questions, 2 short essay questions, and a diagram to complete. This, in turn, was based on old exams and exam banks that go back to the distant past. Many of the questions came with the 2001 edition of the "Horizons" textbook, some were legacy items from the days of Norm Booth, Keith Gordon, Garvin Moles and other Social Studies legends. There is still a place for a MC test in my course designs, but these are increasingly becoming formative checks for understanding (part of what I call Verifications). I'm becoming less enamoured with the way students slog through MC, especially when there are more than 40 questions, or when all the student sees are pages of text.

One of my Socials teacher friends Rob had a vision for a new kind of exam, something different from the "evil bubblesheet" as he put it. The two of us had worked a small bit for Pearson Education a couple of years ago, developing study guides for a SS11 textbook. We were excited to use "benchmarks of historical thinking" and activities that focused on critical inquiry with students to develop understanding and insight into broad focus questions that were important to the curriculum. Unpacking knowledge, organizing content by theme, interpreting evidence, responding to quotes or prompts, comparing and synthesizing the big ideas and events from the course, and making connections between the curriculum and the identity of the student and his/her personal communities. Why not make an exam like that? Being the super teachers that we are, steeped in all things Social Studies, we put this together in a couple of days, one of which was "sprung for" by our respective principals. Now we get to see how the students do.

The new exam focuses on fewer direct learning outcomes and requires a higher level of engagement with the core problem-solving skills that appear in the IRP (curriculum guide). We are very interested to see what the students know, what they come out of the course able to do (not so much how much stuff they can remember). This puts some balance to the process vs product dilemma embedded in assessment. We wanted to move from summative to performative... can students make connections with the ideas & events that shaped Canada in the 1800s? Can they recognize and interpret iconic images and establish the significance of separate events in the overall story of Canada? Can they map it? Can they move freely between detailed content, accurate contexts, overall themes, source analysis, cause & consequence? Can they rank ideas as to their impact? Can they take position on a historical controversy and defend it? There is nothing "new" on the exam, it falls back on the compelling narratives we've used all year to anchor our teaching and devise student activities. The exam ended up as a 3-page double sided 11"x17" entity (one page is the cover/instructions), looking a lot like the unit study guides we built for Pearson. The prompts launch students into formal and informal writing that moves quickly from unpacking the facts though interpreting evidence to critical inquiry. It will be hard work, but nothing the students are unfamiliar with. And, it is a final exam so it gives us a chance to assess pass or fail for students who have lingered around the "no meeting expectations" zone. Rob's students wrote it yesterday, mine write today. Kind of funny; I've been at this for 15 years now and I can't remember ever being this excited by an exam!

Update: 1:30 pm ...very cool to see how the first and now second group is handling this assessment. It's like they're working on a jigsaw puzzle, some starting at the end, some jumping back and forth between sections as one thing puts another into their mind. Some are trying to cram everything they know into an appropriate cubby (which requires it's own problem-solving... "what am I being asked here?"). Others are methodically working on the sections that fit with their way of thinking and ignoring the rest for now. A couple of freak-outs and one attempted scam but with 38 students writing that's not too bad. It seemed different from other exams where the students simply ran down the path, grabbing as many MC questions as they could along the way. The comments I had from my first class suggests that the exam was trying to get them to tell their version of the story of Canada. Justin, the kid with the 200-yr-old spoon, said "this is great, I get to show what I actually learned." That's just great with me, too -- and pretty much the reason I became a Socials teacher. What they leave on the table is more than just a snapshot, it is a performance piece that shows what skills, knowledge, and insight they've refined over the last 5 months in my class. I'm probably making too much of this, but it was a nice change.

thin-slicing

2012-01-08T15:51:00.001-08:00

I finally got around to reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm glad I read it, but was not particularly compelled by the reading experience. I found the repetition of stories a bit distracting -- each case study was given mostly intact, then pieced out 7 or 8 more times throughout the book. Rather than creating layers of meaning, it seemed to create noise. Nonetheless, Gladwell seems good at anticipating many of the questions that an average reader might have as the stories unfold, and gets around to addressing most of them with some clarity and style. This is no easy task for a writer -- most books I put down are the result of a writer having little insight into the kind of interior landscapes they are building with their own words.

I was not necessarily convinced by some of his proximate conclusions (e.g. the ease or consistency of mind-reading, the idea that nuances and emotion can be stripped from observation) but I do come away from the read with some respect for Gladwell's approach to problem-solving:
1. differentiate between straightforward decisions (that benefit from wide knowledge and slow, deliberate consideration) and complicated decisions (that benefit from wisdom and experience expressed in the unconscious)
2. examine the context for decision-making, address the way instinctive judgements are made in these contexts, and narrow the field of evidence (adding or eliminating the parts that interfere with a clean decision) to closely match the decisions that need to be made

barriers to change

2011-12-19T16:54:00.000-08:00

Public education is at a crossroads in BC. As our British Columbia Ministry of Education contemplates how best to implement its new BCED plan for reforming our education system, the government's representatives (BCPSEA) continue to meet for fruitless contract negotiations with the teacher's union (BCTF). As of Dec 7, 2011, they have met 61 times, and have reached no significant agreements on any major bargaining items. The Ministry agenda and the lack of bargaining progress are no doubt related, as the BCPSEA has made it quite clear that changes to the teacher's contract are necessary in order to allow government the ability to realize its educational plan. In return, BCTF would rather have discussion about educational reform take place at local levels where there is more accountability, experience, and context, and is holding out for contract improvements. Their respective arguments for themselves and against their enemies is easy to find on their websites. Search BCPSEA or BCTF.

Whichever side you support (or trust), change is on the table; the charge against our education system is that it represents 20th century adaptations to a 19th century model, and that we need to focus more on a 21st century approach. This is characterized, arguably (and variably) as a flexible system of personalized learning, problem-solving, embedded/disruptive technology, teachers less as content experts and more as learning consultants, and community-based or contracted learning activities. This contrasts with 20th century education which might be defined by an emphasis on knowledge, a reliance on "brick and mortar" schools, teachers as lecturers, and batch processing of students doing the same thing at the same time. Some would suggest that the current reforms are intended to starve traditional learning scenarios and replace them with cheaper ones that require less teachers, staff, and buildings. Rural schools have already felt this sting.

Regardless of how urgent these new changes seem to be, the reality is that our school system has always been a set of compromises. Any one of the competing reform agendas has consequences to the system that limit other changes -- decision-making structures, role of technology, class composition, class size, prep time, common and/or standardized assessments, assessment reform, collaborative models, control of professional development, new elective programs, and so on. Make big changes in one area, and something else will suffer, and too seldom do we replace the lousy ideas with better ones. Decrease class sizes, there is less money for technology. Allow teachers to co-develop vision and make decisions, and the ability of administration to affect change is limited. Start a new cross-curricular program and other core programs get squeezed. Provide flexible hours and blended learning environments and the ability of parents to work full-time is affected. Add more math and elective programs decline. Add more choice schools and students no longer have neighbourhood schools. Provide robust bus service and classroom funding suffers. Insist on network stability and security and lose out on user-generated innovation and differentiation. This could go on forever; the point is that driving hard towards a new goal usually comes at a price to processes or relationships that were already satisfying a need. I’m not one to defend the status quo, quite the opposite, but I understand how compromises are crucial if any change is to last. Very skilled, progressive, inclusive, and forgiving staff can often work out these compromises and make a school a successful balance of good ideas. Trying to push a particular education reform, especially where progressive thinking and inclusion are lacking or too many ideas are at play at the same time, and the school stalls out on change -- all the successful programs and practices come to a stop as the “new thing” gets pushed. There are indeed some exceptional schools and programs in which a single sustained vision is able to take root and flourish, maybe an exclusive private school, or a program targeted at teen moms, and so on, but large-scale public education is not sustained on singular visions or niche clientele. I’ve also met a few fantastic teachers who can pursue their vision come hell or high water and have students and parents respect them for it, they are masters at their craft and often pull entire schools along with them. There are also some schools, I imagine, with remarkable principals possessed of brilliant ideas; but these, too, require some patience, balance and broad foundations among staff in order to secure long-term success when the principal inevitably moves on. Getting the most out of change cycles, and sustaining successful programs and positive relationships among educational partner groups requires something less toxic than the current climate, with an emphasis on management directing the activity of teachers while counting on them to make undefined/unrefined concepts of reform take hold. Schools operate within a set of licenses: social, educational, political, economic, perhaps environmental, and the dynamic between these licenses requires complex management and paradigmatic compromise. It falls on leadership among administrations, teachers, and others, to manage these licenses, and inevitably on teachers to figure it our student by student. It is not fair to task teachers with the burden of system change nor to leave it to administration and board offices to design learning scenarios for students and control all aspects of district learning and working conditions. The challenge must be shared and some kind of balance between a respectful role for teachers in system change that does not make them scapegoats or reduce the basic autonomy that we enjoy that has provided virtually every innovation and successful program in our school district in the last 30 years. Barriers to educational change are well-studied (e.g. here's a random search result with plausible arguments), but I'm thinking more about the ongoing barriers and politics that our BC system, from the local to provincial, faces in 2012.

I would suggest that both the Ministry and BCPSEA will have more success if they realize that the barriers to change lie not with the teachers or the teacher contract, but with the leadership models that are tasked with managing change at the school, district, and provincial levels. There is much room for the teacher contract to evolve, but agreeable changes will only take place when the inconsistent words and actions of the leadership model are addressed. To put it bluntly, teachers will respect change when their own efforts to lead change are respected and supported, and when their own educational leaders can model change and show it to be successful. Teachers want their principals and district leaders to be good teachers, to have actions consistent with their talk, or failing that, to get out of the way and let good ideas flourish where they originate. The most powerful experiment a leader can undertake is to have some faith in the ability of others to produce change and to say yes when they offer to lead. I would allow that we need better mechanisms for dealing with ineffective teachers and administrators, whether it be retraining for another profession or a program of development for addressing the concerns, but we don’t need to shake the entire set of licenses (contracts, expectations, relationships) to make this happen. The government wants to conduct a large-scale social and educational experiment by designing a system in which experimentation must take place, instead of simply supporting the experiment in progress and seeking (contractual) changes when it can see the results. For example, many of the key tenets of 21st century learning have been practiced and pushed by teachers and a few principals for at least twelve years in our school district, and yet it is only recently that the board office talk has caught up with what has been going on. Perhaps fearing a loss of control, the board office has in fact put the brakes on 21st century learning projects for some of this time, slowing the process of change and in some cases disassembling processes that supported change. I've witnessed and documented this trend too often -- teachers (and occasionally administrators) suggest and lead change in real contexts that involve actual groups of students, only to be held up with bureaucracy and a fixation on control and government-mandated rhetoric; they are blocked or sidetracked by their own school board office. This is exactly the kind of evidence that is anathema to the BCTF/BCPSEA discussions, because the government is not at the stage where they want to see that the barrier to change is not with teachers. All parts of our education system should be willing to venture a 21st century approach to education, but should not be anxious to break up the foundations of the teaching profession in order to do so. In this way we get to the education system we deserve, never perfect, but possessed of admirable qualities from many centuries and adheres to a vibrant societal license that respects both the requirements and demands asked of its educators.

What's in the attic?

2011-12-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

One of the ways we started off our SS10 Heritage Project was to ask about the kinds of artifacts that students knew about in their homes. What's the oldest thing in the house? What would you save if your house was on fire (the family and pets are safe, the electronics are covered by insurance, and we'll assume your data is backed up)? What object has the most interesting story behind it? Many students came up with stuff right away -- photo albums, war medals, antique clocks, ancient tools, and so on. For me it would probably be a shelf full of rare books and a small box full of relics, like the coins that survived my great-grandfather's house fire in the 1930s. A few students had artifacts that were more than 200-years old (e.g. spoon, hymnal, travel-desk), but many more had no clue. These students were encouraged to find out what was lurking in their attic or basement, maybe even their mantel (if they still have such a thing), and start asking about how their family history, for better or worse, is expressed in the way their home is configured now. Many of these objects have made their way to our classroom (physically or virtuually through photo and video) and have anchored student presentations. Yesterday M.J. presented her project, describing her parents' life in South Africa before and (briefly) after apartheid. Her ancestors had, for the most part, gotten on well with black families and had received gifts or purchased mementos over the years signifying their respect for indigenous culture. One of the objects was a wildebeest shield with cudgel and ceremonial spear (shown in the photo above) given to M.J.'s grandfather by a Zulu chief. What's in your attic? What artifacts have special meaning for you or your family?

200 yr old spoon

2011-12-08T23:05:00.001-08:00

Another great day for heritage project presentations! Christine brought us stories of extreme grief from WWII-era Croatia, counterbalanced as is so often the case with the journey to Canada and an end to grief. Bruce contrasted his German/English background with his Filipino background, a contrast that sometimes led to conflict. Braydon told us about his Kookum and Moosum (Cree for Grandma and Grandpa) and the difficulty of maintaining Aboriginal languages in modern Canadian society. Adam delved into his Irish roots, and showed us some Irish turf dub from a peat bog and a carving made from petrified turf. The carving has based on a 7th century crucifix bearing elements from both Christianity and pagan traditions. It was interesting to think about a civilization in transition, turning to local materials to express their defining aspirations. What do we turn to? Am I doing it now? Tyler had a amazing volume of research assembled from his Scottish, Ukrainian, Acadian roots. He brought up the topic of food, and talked about the various dishes that defined his understanding of family. I was left hungry for tortiere, the famous French-Canadian meat pie, and also borscht, to which I am no stranger.

Justin navigated us back in a few directions, notably into his Danish past. Focusing on one family group's experience in Denmark, the immigration experience to Canada, and adjustments afterwards, we got a sense of how rites of passage, choice of occupation shaped identity. We heard about Pier 21 (first time for almost the entire class), of course this gives me clue what should be in a subsequent lesson (another bonus to these projects). The "Vikings" were very good at recording their history, thus Justin had two big charts that took his connections back to the 1400s. He also showed us a spoon that his great-x5-grandfather carved from an ox-horn. This was a communal utensil, passed along with a main dish and used by everyone at the table. As one of my colleagues pointed out, the intimacy of food is high on the list with the other things that we do with our body, including learning, and has an enormous potential for grounding our identity and providing significance to other areas of our life.

I'm thankful for the intimate act of learning that occurred today, in that we allowed carefully researched ideas and faithfully guarded memories to enter our heads and give us pause to reflect on how we got here and how we should now conduct ourselves.

Newfoundland

2011-12-05T15:19:00.001-08:00

Travis with some props from his Heritage Project

As students present the heritage research they've been at (on and off) for a month or so, I've been thrilled to watch how some of them have taken a fresh approach to project design. I'm sure most teachers can relate to the stubborn student that struggles to find a topic, opens up a powerpoint or brings out a poster board, surfs the web, then starts dumping random material inside with no real direction. Travis did the opposite. He has been thinking about this project for a long time, considering his approach and gathering research material carefully. The arrival of his "poppy" in town from Newfoundland provided him with an interview subject and focus for his presentation. The powerpoint was simply a vessel to tell his story, something done at the end of the process (utility in research) rather than the beginning (wishful research). His slideshow and talk gave the impression that we were getting highlights of what was an ongoing, ardent examination of his own background. The story was Newfoundland, as seen through his family's experience. The Newfie coins and stamps were cool, but the other two objects from/about his family members were amazing. The first was the book about the first 500 enlistees in the Nfld regiment sent to WWI, many of who died at Beaumont-Hamel. This had some significance for us as it was the subject of the guest speaker at our recent Remembrance Day ceremony. The second object was a letter sent to the mother of a John McDonnell of the 1st Nfld Rgt. In it a nun from a Egyptian hospital describes the final hours and death of John by dysentery, which we all agreed was a terrible way to go but probably not that unusual in WWI. As with the other project presentations, Travis proved the hypothesis that when identity is engaged and inseparable from curriculum, the quality of inquiry and the confidence of learning is pretty much guaranteed.

Awesome start to student heritage projects

2011-12-03T23:30:00.001-08:00

After a month of preparation mixed in with the other things we do in Social Studies 10, my students are finally ready to present their Heritage Projects (blogged about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times now). Having learned from the past, I knew we had to start on Friday with a few students were very organized and inspiring. That way the rest of the class could home for the weekend, sulk for a bit, and then get to work on the last bits of their projects. As Akhil said "okay, that was good, but you set the bar way to high!" What a great start. First class, Travis and Jennifer fit the bill: thorough, engaging, and ready to go (I'll write about them soon). Erin led the next class off, with a tour of her diverse background, and some wonderful storytelling about tolerance of difference based on a story her grandmother shared with her. What made me very proud of Erin was that I often give her a hard time for procrastinating, so she was determined to go first for this project and prove me wrong. We finished the Friday round with a stunning presentation from Hailey. Her slideshow was modeled after a history book, mostly a British one at that, and she had incredible artifacts like the old hymnbook, journals, an unusual ring, and "the box" (shown above) to go with the slides. According to Hailey's family tradition, and the note included in the writing-box, this belonged to William Beatty, part of their family a number of generations back. He was the ship surgeon aboard Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Assuming this checks out, it is quite likely he used this fold out desk aboard the hosptial ship Sussex in 1806 to write his influential work on Nelson's death, something he was unable to prevent (he did the autopsy, though!). The box shows a few defects, and perhaps some more modern repairs, but is otherwise in fine condition. Hailey's mom brought it in to show us at lunch, and it wasn't long before the history buffs and wood enthusiasts among staff & students were gathered around and jumping in on the conversation. Our shop teachers had the veneer, joints, inlay, finish, and species figured out. Our Socials teachers had the Napoleonic struggle dialed in, with some speculation about how this major museum-worthy specimen ends up in a basement in Prince George. Where's the Antique Roadshow when you need them? Hailey also shared a leather-bound notebook with beautiful script from the 1890s belonging to her great-x2-grandfather, a chemist, containing recipes for tonics, ointments, and cure-alls. This was a journey into Victorian medicine ("maggot wash" was my favorite), a time when mercury, arsenic, opium, ground up bones, and all manners of herbs and spices could be had from the local apothecary. One more of the stories she shared was that of her great-great-grandparents who responded to the Laurier/Sifton "Last Best West" campaigns and came to Manitoba in 1911. Needless to say the process leading up to this day involved some cool learning for Hailey and others, for me, for a bunch of parents. The students are picking up skills related to historical empathy, critical thinking, resilient research, the themes of geography, judgement of evidence, strategic use of technology, and authentic presentation. It is amazing how excited students are when the learning is connected to both themselves and the threads of "social studies" that they identify as interesting and important. I'll try and keep up with blogging about some of the other presentations.

Poutine Glaciation

2011-11-30T07:25:00.001-08:00

The end of a "geomorphology" unit in Geography 12 means one thing... the students have pulled out the stops and are unleashing their creative, intelligent projects for our mutual enjoyment. Time enough for the factual details on the unit test, this is about celebration and individual discoveries. Here are some highlights:

A glacial landscape made from poutine (video). A literal mountain of fries, shaped to show a wall of pyramidal peaks, a cirque (alpine bowl) surrounded by aretes (ridges) with a glacial valley below. Chunks of cheese represented the frost-shattered rocks that would be plucked up to become moraine or erratics. Finally, a huge bowl of hot gravy was poured on the mountains, becoming gathering ice that filled the cirque and showed the characteristic plastic flow associated with glacial advance. The boys stirred it all together and the class dove in with forks and spoons. Very tasty, very popular with the hungry kids. Hayden and Brenden were the most excited; their creation went over as they hoped, and they got to mop up the leftovers. As Nic C. put it "what could be more Canadian, a guy in a cowboy hat pouring gravy over a mountain range to make poutine."

Hydraulic Erosion (video). Kelly and Natasha worked with water and sand to show us a few things, including rill erosion and alluvial fans.

Plastic Flow (video). Caitlin and Rhianne mixed flour, water, and ? to create something that would flow like a glacier. They followed it up with basal slipping using a big chunk of ice cream, with smarties playing the part of glacial till.

Puffed Wheat Seashore. Nic C. and Milan built a blue-jello ocean with chocolatey puffed wheat seacliffs. The shoreline was broken by wave action, revealing caves, arches, and stacks. Longshore drift had carried the eroded material away to form a spit and tombolo. A couple of stick puppets guided us through this edible landscape, one of which was named Nelson Mohorovicic (an inside joke).

The Informed Traveller. Anna and Anda narrated a slideshow made up of various family trips they had been on (like Anna's trip to the Grand Canyon, her picture of a desert arch shown above), and now had the knowledge to interpret the kind of geomorphological processes that shaped the landforms in the photos. Like Blake's Innocence and Experience, the travellers will forever be affected by what they have learned, and perhaps never able to simply gaze at a vista without asking questions. Landscapes will still be filled with wonder, but also with a discerning understanding of origins and change over time. Just to make sure we got the point, A&A made us a cake in the form of a u-shaped glacial valley with a ribbon lake, truncated spurs, and aretes.

Speaking of poetry, Tegan wrote some "seapoems" for this unit, and brought out some older poetry on the same topic. Like the tide, her words ebb and flow from the reflective to the technical, and I'd be curious to see how geography tempers or challenges her poetry in the future. Nature's Choice, like Nature's Voice. You can read her verse here (pdf), or hear her read it here (audio).

Oh ya, and some cave thingy.... video to come

When did thorough go out of fashion?

2011-11-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

I am excited by project-based learning. As a Socials teacher, this has been the meat of my course planning sandwich for 15 years, and is consuming more and more classtime with things like the Heritage (SS10) and Echo (SS11) projects to which the students at my school have been contributing for the last few years. I am excited by learning “empowered by technology” as our ministry of education puts it. This has also been critically embedded my practice for 12 years -- my students and I have tried pretty much anything that has a blinking light and the promise of connecting to something unique or important that supports Social Studies inquiry. I am excited by student ownership of learning outcomes, the pursuit of meaningful learning that connects identity, experience, and curriculum. Fostering critical, independent thinking has been there since the beginning, and trying to make assessment and learning activities formative and authentic has grown alongside my time in the classroom. I am excited by a few aspects of the flipped classroom; starting with a my first website in 1998 I've been steadily extending learning connections and opportunities beyond the classroom walls, although I think there will always be a place for teachers to actually lead learning and use classtime for direct instruction. Students have been using smartphones in my class for a few years, and they also know when to put them away and listen, talk, or write on paper. I am lucky to have such an awesome job in that direct instruction usually involves storytelling about subjects and themes that I care deeply about. I'm just good enough at it that I don't feel I need to turn to youtube everyday to find a better way of getting the point across, although I use youtube, google earth, and streaming news to get points across that I can't put in words or don't know myself. I am excited by other educational theories and practices, too: inquiry-based learning, the role of embodiment and the physical situation of ideas, learning that evokes social and environmental justice, construction of student learning narratives, etc.

So, I should be really excited when I hear that one of our local high schools is planning a project-based school within a school, a program with maximum flexibility for cross-curricular learning, wide-open permissions on learning outcomes, activities, and assessment, and an emphasis on a creative use of technology.

Instead, I came away from the program presentation stunned and disappointed. I caught the proposal via webcast from our local public school board meeting. The idea is for a district-wide choice program with 50-100 grade 8/9 students, 2-4 unnamed teachers, project-based learning, technology-powered, everything else yet to be determined (find/read proposal in the Nov 22/11 board agenda). The plan that was presented had no actual details about achieving learnings outcomes, what the program would look like, how the teachers would navigate 25 individual plans apiece through the PLOs of multiple curriculums. There was no strategy for managing afternoon field trips and unsupervised activities, no indication of how the rest of the school’s services would be impacted (time/cost).

Perhaps the biggest let-down came when I realized the next day that the entire rationale section for the proposal was taken without acknowledgement from a British for-profit website on 21st century learning, and there was not much else to the proposal than some fill-in-the-blank Q&A to meet choice policy requirements. I had been wondering about where the rationale came from -- some of the expressions seemed out of place and even random given the context, and it kind of made sense once another teacher pointed out the source. As you can imagine, this proposal garnered a great deal of discussion on teacher forums in our school district. I'll go out on a limb and assume it was not outright plagiarism but rather hasty research that the authors probably thought would not really be analyzed. The plan had no details, no pedagogy, and no scheme for addressing a dozen or more issues that are sure to come up. We’re in the middle of a job action right now that precludes meetings and formal communication between teachers and administration, so I can understand why the proposal was missing teacher input, but I expect more from something as key as the originating report that launches a choice program. I want to explore this topic because, 21st century learning notions aren't going away, and I want our school system to be proactive and rigorous as it encourages change.

The second shock was the lack of time spent reflecting on the reality that the board office has now approved two conflicting educational parameters for Grade 8 students within the last year. This program represents a high level of freedom in interpreting learning outcomes and may result in students entering Grade 10 with standing granted for Gr 8/9 and hoping for the best as they take formal Math, English, Science instruction for the first time (and face Grade 10 provincial exams in these subjects). On the other hand, the board office imposed three terms of mandatory math instruction on all grade 8 students in the district, effective September 2011, regardless of ability or the loss to elective programs. So on the one hand, all students must have more math in order for Gr. 10 Math Exam results to improve, even those who already excel at Math or if the school principal and staff disagree, but if a student is in this choice program, these rules do not apply and math becomes an essentially self-taught subject unless your teacher-coach happens to have a math specialist. A mixed message and collision of philosophies (one-sized vs. personalized) is created by simultaneously creating new programming restrictions across the schools, while allowing an end to all programming restrictions in a particular program. Paradigmatic conflicts in education are not uncommon, but should not come from the same leadership team.

At a basic level, a choice program should start with either a demonstrated contextual need or an educational vision focused on an authentic horizon, one that is shared by teachers or at least has a firm sense of their role. Every program plan should include referenced research or original research, pedagogy (or multiple pedagogies), consultation and commitment from stakeholders, professional writing with clear goals, teacher and student exemplars, social context, input from the wider local educational community, budget and shared services impact predictions, a roadmap for planning, implementation, delivery etc. Any section dealing with background, guiding principles, influences, rationale can still be focused and succinct, but it needs to show evidence of a depth of ideas, freedom from jargon and cliche, and appeal to an amateur and academic eye alike. Launching a choice program may only come around once or twice in an administrator's career or the life of a school, so it stands to reason that a high standard of quality is expected.

The group assembled at the board meeting was correct to look at North Peace's Energetic Learning Campus as a great example of what can be done, but it needs to be pointed out that North Peace has been building up to this for years with integrated leadership, comprehensive involvement of teachers, 1-1 laptop projects, a tradition of digital content delivery, extensive planning & research, a building designed with a program in mind, and a long-term culture of collaboration on exactly the kind of teaching and learning that are required for a PBL program. There are many examples of successful PBL programs in BC and North America, and I'm quite sure each of them had a skookum plan in place that gave confidence to the educators, parents, and students affected. There is also a strong role for unplanned, wild experiments in education, teachers giving students freedom to inquire, principals giving teachers freedom to discard and adopt practices that inspire inquiry, and boards giving principals freedom to create unique situations for inquiry. I'm having deja vu right now, something is reminding me of Postman & Weingartner's work. The "let it happen, captain" approach is a great one, and one that often guides the approach I take to my job -- I usually seek forgiveness rather than permission to experiment with new ideas. If I waited for the education to catch up to what I am interested in, I would not have changed much about my practice in 15 years. My dad used to talk about his principal when he was a teacher at D.W. Poppy in the 1960s. Whenever my dad or any other teacher wanted to try a learning experiment, usually something unorthodox, the principal would thank them for their enthusiasm and ask how they could support the project, even in cases when mistakes were expected. That's more like asking questions, responding to a group of students or acting on a compelling idea. This is not the approach that is called for, though, when redesigning a system that affects an entire set of educational partner groups -- a choice program requires a more thorough treatment.

Our district has not had the same trajectory or success in laying the kind of foundation seen in the North Peace District, at least not recently. I don’t think this can be attributed to any one person’s bad decisions, but rather to two factors that have dominated district-level changes in the last 10 years: budget strains and decision-making paradigms. I’ll leave the latter for another post or discussion (or for someone else to discuss), but the former is relatively straight-forward. When our board was forced to cut five or six million in structural deficit from the district budget in 2010, it was bound to result in a loss of capacity. We should not expect the same level of service, the same capacity for teacher involvement, funded projects, personnel seconded or promoted from the classroom to dedicate time to coordination, and release time for multi-level collaboration or committee work. As a result of these two factors, we have seen the loss of all of the district-wide tables at which this “foundational work” used to originate. This history has been chronicled in detail elsewhere, most notably in the comprehensive response given by teachers to a collection of technology announcements made by the board office March 31, 2011. The tables include the District Tech Team, Tech for Learning leadership team, the Quality Learning Globally consortium, Key Tech Contacts assembly, Standards Working Group, Tech Coach groups, Teacher Tech leadership positions, Blogging for Change project, Coordinated Workshop and Training program, the Elementary Tech Series, TLITE follow-up initiatives, to name the ones I know about. To put it another way, we had a collaborative renaissance in our district from about 1999-2005, with teachers, administrators, and district staff working on common themes and trying to make sense of how student learning and teacher pedagogy could be improved with technology. They anticipated and participated in almost every aspect of “21st Century Learning” before the buzzwords became a mantra, and the student projects emerging from these efforts were spectacular. Some of this work could be seen at the annual tech fair (now defunct).

The surge of creativity from 1999-2005 was no doubt the result of emerging technology and the internet. This began with the increase of bandwidth, addition of rich media to the web, the ubiquity of email, and the heady days of Napster. Before this, teachers from one school to another did not even know much about each other, islands of learning and often not cognizant of a “district presence” in their midst. Like most teachers, I spent my first few years (1996-1998) not knowing the name of a single person at the board office, or what they did, and wasn't sure what a trustee was. Email, now facebook and twitter, tomorrow something else, have definitely thrown open the doors to cross-pollination of ideas in education, and brought some new joy to the discovery of knowledge, but like anything else this comes at a cost. I've detected at least three costly trends in crossing the email and social media divide, starting with myself. FIrst, the time it takes away from authentic, embodied relationships with the people in the room (family, friends, students). Second, the affect on the brain -- the ability to concentrate on one thing slowly, intensely, has suffered and what looks like multitasking is maybe just doing too many things poorly. Third, the access to knowledge is often wide but not very deep. No doubt the internet contains powerful thinkers, doers, teachers, examples, etc. but when the learner surfs across this knowledge and lacks the tools to interrogate and construct, learning becomes voyeuristic. I've written about the enterprising aspects of life on this side of the digital divide what seems like a long time ago, and strategies for addressing the costs elsewhere. What didn't fully occur to me 6 or 7 years ago was that the transformative capacity of technology and the skills, attitudes, and implications for our school system would be become such an abused fixation in education today, and such a target for corporate interest. What did occur to many educators back then, faced with idea sets like this, was that the coming age required a disciplined and careful approach.

The initial burst of activity waned from 2005-2008, a period of consolidation and standardization, and the phasing out of teacher access to system management. Some of this was highly necessary as the demands of a networked computer environment required some level of control by technical analysts in order to maintain security and stability. The teacher concern during this process was that educational decisions were now being made by non-educators. The last 3-yr District Technology Plan was written and approved by the board in 2005, containing the last serious collaborative/comprehensive planning effort from teachers, admin, and district staff, but was never published to the district website and is all but forgotten as a "best practices" tool. Some efforts were made in 2006 and 2009 to capitalize on the momentum built in the earlier years, particularly by TLITE graduates (SFU teacher tech ed diploma), by offering innovation grants (release time and purchases), and learning team grants (release time). With no sophisticated vehicles for sharing the work of these grants outside of teacher initiated conversations and a handful of pro-d events, the benefits of these grants are hard to assess. The teacher tech coaches wrapped up their service with a "Media Madness" series in 2007 offering a final workshop for recipients of tech grants. By 2009 the last minutes of the District Tech Team were published, signifying a margin to the culture of educational technology that had seen such a wild ride for ten years. A final consolidating move was to phase out the support for two platforms in the district (mac/pc) in April of 2010. This created some real and understandable consternation, and is some cases relief, for the 300-400 teachers and 5000-6000 students using macs. Unfortunately, the portion of innovation that can be associated with platform choice would be sacrificed as part of budget cuts, for which the rationale and transition & support plan is still not clear.

Some parallel trends show a proximate relationship to this "cooling off" period -- I'm not sure if these are cause or consequence. The first is the shift in the origin and purpose of the District Plan for Student Success. Up until 2009, these plans were a response to common themes and goals within the School Plans for Student Success, a process that required considerable study and reflection. They now work in the opposite direction, conveying Ministry of Education goals and conversations as directions for schools to take. Regardless of whether the ideas are sound and the goals legitimate, this shift reduces the need and mechanisms for local thinking and planning on a range of subjects. A second trend was the replacement of staff and student designed school websites with generic shells packaged as a Content Management System. While this brought some consistency to the look and feel of every site (some schools did not really have sites, others had an extensive web presence), it essentially killed the growing web development movement at the school level. The majority of schools are not using this CMS as intended; some schools have a virtually empty website, and one of our schools has embedded a functioning CMS and an updated site within the inert product provided by the district. One of the positive outcomes of the changes to website development is that many teachers have put more effort into making their own websites contain the function, creativity, and content that used to exist on school sites. There have also been more efforts to use facebook, twitter, etc. to celebrate student success and accompany class-based learning, although these tools are still blocked at most schools, as is commercial email, although students can work around this by using their own data plans and 3G network. This diversification and adaptation is sometimes an unintended result of cutbacks; when the system throws up roadblocks, new paths will be found. One important area that has still not figures out how to thrive under cutbacks and the CMS is our district website. Although this banner was probably meant as a temporary feature, it shows some of the limitations in the CMS and the amount of time that can be afforded for web design. An organization with a $130 million annual budget should not have issues with spacing, cropped logos, and random graphics borrowed from another site. I'm certainly not above reproach... my site contains many borrowed, random objects,there are lots of borrowed graphics on my website, but my little blog cabin on the web river is the right kind of place for mashups and amateur (free/voluntary) design. Our district's site still has a reasonable range of functions despite its design limitations, but taking a look at other district sites in the province gives an indication of what is possible -- SDs 37, 39, 43, 44, 60, 73, and 82 are good places to start. If we are a "can do" organization (as our District Plan for Student Success states), then I really hope these trends are pendulous and budget-dependent rather than directional and philosophic in nature.

In some ways, the change in our school district's ability to sustain and promote discussion about technology is an acknowledgement that the digital age is not a new thing to be studied in isolation of other social forces, and no longer requires such intense focus. The gaze of the district had turned to other concerns. Teachers and students are often thought to have crossed the digital divide, and thus the preparations for the journey may no longer be needed. With vibrant web resources for educators and virtual networks replacing physical ones, it was natural to see the capacity for fostering innovation downsized and outsourced. Perhaps as a result, our school board office must have a hard time seeing and assessing the local evidence it needs to make decisions about program support at the school level. Six or more "21st century learning" projects proposed by teachers and administration in the last two years have been quietly turned down by the board office. These included blended learning experiments, 1-1 personal device plans, two student inquiry-based projects for secondary Social Studies (one of those was mine), a tablet pilot with special needs students, elementary lab greening with tablets instead of computers, etc. Proponents are still wondering if the decisions came from the board office, purchasing, tech support, or school administration; they are still waiting for an invitation to discuss why these innovative projects were dismissed. How willing will these teachers and administrators be to buy in to the next set of ideas when their last attempts at "currency" were rejected (e.g. tablets in the classroom, blended learning pilots). When passionate, talented educators volunteer to move the district's learning agenda forward, it would seem the answer should be yes, but I would posit that articulating this yes requires a capacity for which we are no longer provisioned. The recent push to remove district-level blocks to third-party email, facebook, smartphone use in the classroom, teacher installation of interactive apps, and other technologies has only come with pressure from the outside, notably the ministry of education -- in other words yes has been reactive and issued under duress. My school has had a full-function wireless network for about 7 years, but teachers can't access it on their own devices or laptops. Students and staff at my school got access to limited public wireless about a month ago, but are still blocked from accessing their hotmail to retrieve assignments or facebook to share a project photo with a class, can't print or access their server account. I talked with a Communications teacher who noted these restrictions turned what should have been a redeeming moment for a marginal student trying to demonstrate what he had learned into a another frustration because "nothing works." When the school district is being told it needs to catch up on “21st century learning” by the government, and teachers (among others) have been saying the same thing for seven years, the mixed messages need to stop. Conditional yes? Say yes but really it's no? Yes at some undisclosed point in the future? How about "yes, that's the right idea, let's confirm together what we can afford, support, and sustain."

I realized last year, in preparing feedback for the March 2011 board office presentation on "tech directions," how much this chilly climate had affected teacher mindsets about district efforts. I invited as many teachers as I could think of to both attend the presentation, with the hopes that it represented a turn-around on communication, and also encouraged teachers to leave constructive feedback. The overwhelming response I got was "what's the point?" and "we've already been down this road and look where we're at." As a result, although the feedback had depth and expert knowledge, it came from only a handful of individual teachers and one tech committee from our biggest high school. The presentation was a surprise to most of the attendees, as it represented a vision built in almost total isolation of the teachers who would be expected to carry it out, and the follow-up statements bore no evidence that the feedback had been taken into consideration. I fear we passed some tipping point at which a collective approach is feasible or maybe even desirable. Perhaps this is for the best; I've never been a fan of groupthink anyways. When everyone in a room fervently agrees that something must be right, I tend to get a nervous feeling that something bad is going to happen. Smaller, off-the-radar cells of innovation continue as ever, and I believe these are the real hearths of change, because they represent some for of yes in action. The evidence can be seen in how innovation proliferates for a few years in pockets and eventually leaders recognize that these teachers and others have anticipated an important trend and start talking the same language. The danger of this cycle is that when something that is under intense scrutiny (like inquiry-based learning or project-based learning) gains momentum, using the "right language" signifies that "we get it, now." This is how cliches are born, such that I now find myself looking for new words to describe what I do so as not to sound like the repetitious and often shallow discussions on 21st century learning. It works as a hashtag (or blog tag like the one I've used here) because we all know what to expect, but it can't stand in for real ideas grounded in contexts. It's gotten to be ridiculous in our district and probably everywhere in the province (easy to see on Twitter) -- anyone who does anything with a problem-solving skill, a team effort, or social media calls it 21st Century Learning to indicate that they have joined the "movement." I'd love to see more show and less tell... which is the whole point of this blog post: a choice program built on "21st Century" principles needs much more than suggestive language, borrowed no less, to inspire confidence.

This brings me back to the Nov 22nd board meeting. The proposal hits on all of the keywords of the new government plan, and will no doubt test the appetite for "21st Century Learning" among staff, students, and parents. It will also test some contract expectations related to distributed learning ratios, instructional time, school-based supervision responsibilities, etc. At this stage the proposal seems to be at the idea level and does not yet appear to be a teacher-driven program, as there are many teachers at the host school that are unaware of this initiative, and have not been involved in the program planning. I realize, however, that staff-admin consultation is difficult during the current job action.

The proposal does have positive potential, though, and I believe the incoming board should use the discussion of this program proposal as an opportunity to thaw some of the disconnect between teacher & student innovation with technology-embedded learning and a restrictive set of practices from the board office on similar projects elsewhere. Teacher buy-in, particularly by technology leaders, is required for success as they will do the heavy lifting for this kind of program and have felt sidelined by the school district on a range of technology issues over the last eight years. The program might also fulfill one of the key recommendations from the QLG group in 2004. The QLG was a district-supported teacher & admin group that researched blended, distributed, personalized, and online education models. They suggested that all secondary schools encourage and be supported for pilots that combined dynamic teacher and student-group time with online learning and project-based learning. The QLG recommendations related to wide school-based online learning pilots were not well accepted by the board office at the time and the mandate for developing online learning was instead given to our distance educational school. This school is also responsible for wide range of community and alternative programs, and was focused on doing well by these tasks, and has not been able to make the focus on blended learning a priority.

There are an amazing programs, projects, teachers, leaders, students, and learning environments (with or without technology) throughout our district -- and there is always room for change. The problem is that educational change that sinks in and makes a long-term impact requires a high standard for both leadership and also teacher involvement. This is very hard to effect at a class-by-class basis, or to pursue without coordination. It can also be expensive. For a district-wide choice program that claims to lead the way for a new style of learning, I expect it to attain a higher standard for thorough, original, and inclusive planning. The bumpy start and fallout from the proposal’s contents should not be a dismissal of the need to take “21st Century Learning” ideas seriously. Rather, it should initiate a new emphasis on depth of preparation, vigorous discussion, professional writing, avoidance of cliche, and careful critical inquiry into how our programs and pedagogy adapt to the changing world around us. In this regards I would agree with the board member that said “we are a can-do district” if we can use these kinds of discussions to show we are focused on the ultimate impact on the student experience in our school system, and are willing to put in the hard work for teaching, learning design, and coordination. That's the positive part that I want to take away from this experience.

I get excited by possibilities for what I can do, what my students can do, and I try to be thorough about it, ask lots of questions and so on -- I really hope that "thorough" doesn't become an anachronism in our education system. Feel free to fact-check my history of tech in SD57, or to leave a comment with your own thoughts

Freerunning and well-spent youth

2011-11-26T18:00:00.001-08:00

My very dear friend Derk and I used to run around jumping off of things in university. UBC endowment lands circa 1989 -- tree stumps and the sand banks behind the Museum of Anthropology mostly. I was never particularly good at it, jump up and down kind of thing, but still remember that time period as the "best shape of my life" and something lost that might one day be found. So, it is with some vicarious joy that I watch Derk's son Justin perfecting the art of freerunning. Here he is with his friend and parkour conspirator Liam tearing it up in the Kootenays.

Red Fife

2011-11-25T19:59:00.001-08:00

I was giving a lesson yesterday on the big immigration drives during Laurier's time as prime minister (1896-1911) and the work of his minister Clifford Sifton. My lesson was all over the place, I talked about the CPR and what John A. Macdonald had in mind. I had maps and digital images of "last best west" posters on the go, textbook stuff, a short video clip, asked students to relate the immigration stories they were digging up in the computer lab with their heritage research, etc. We talked about dryland farming, boat rides, sod houses and various people's ancestors (including mine). We found a few of "our people came over" as a result of Sifton's campaigns. I had an recent news story lined up for a current events connection but the streaming video wasn't working on the browser; luckily a student new what I was trying to find (Canadian gov't decision on uniting families of immigrants) and read out another version of the story he found on his iphone. I wanted to introduce them to the concept of critical inquiry benchmarks, thought this was the day to do it, but didn't remember to do it (although I suppose we practiced about 5 of them). Typical chaotic Thielmann lesson, a little bit of everything... yes, some "21C" but lots of 20th Century stand-and-deliver and even "random century" stuff thrown in for good measure (shared story-telling). It bugs me that our educational leaders try to create a divide based on technology where it does not really exist. This lesson is essentially the same as one my father might have given 40 years ago.

Anyways, I made a brief reference to red fife, the wheat that fed Canada until about 1904, and a student chimed in that she and her folks had found a bag of red fife in her granny's attic. This is pretty significant, because the original red fife all but disappeared when it fell out of favour in the early 1900s, although it was bred with other varieties to become the "grandfather" to other important wheats. A few farmers have kept the grains, fewer still have kept it growing in small plots, and apparently it has made a bit of a comeback as an heirloom grain with good nutrient and protein characteristics, as a landrace it has an honourable spot in the discussion about genetic diversity and ecological resilience. I imagine few students, especially Kaitlin, can envision their great-great-grandparents picking up a bag of red fife grains from caring neighbours at the turn of the 20th century, to begin their Canadian Prairie odyssey. Afterwards, I read through my own "family book" today and realized that this was the same variety of wheat that my great-great-grandfather Jacob Loewen broadcast seeded on his new 160-acre homestead in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, 1902. I think the students "got it" when I tried to explain that even something like food can have a impact on the social and economic development of a nation. Of course we all asked Kaitlin "what did you do with the wheat?!" ..."we threw it out -- it had mouse poop in it."

Weathered Stone

2011-11-15T15:37:00.001-08:00

As my students continue to make fabulous connections to their heritage and ask questions about what defines oneself, I find myself drifting back to the hobbyist genealogy work I began a few years ago. One of the links I found for my students (see the Heritage Research Tools on the right bar of the Webriver Blog) introduced me to some new names in my wife's family tree, and some interesting sites on cemetery archiving. Genealogists talk about hitting a brick wall, and how excited they get when it comes down and there is new territory to explore. My students have described this, too, in the last couple of weeks, the experience of staying up all night to find one more story, names, event, or connection online or in an old book rediscovered. Finding out about stuff that was "there" but hidden from them for a variety of reasons, mostly that their curiousity was never trained on the subject.

The students have been telling me their stories, so I told one of mine... here's a part of what I shared in class today, using good old-fashioned story-telling, Google Earth, a couple of websites, and a pull down map. My "treasure" was found at about 1 a.m. as I trained my own curiosity on some of the missing links in my wife's family tree. It seems a researcher visited a Cape Breton cemetery, wandered over to the adjacent woods, and found an old gate leading to more gravestones midst the brush and trees. One of the stones he found marked the grave of my wife's great-great-grandfather in Point Edward Nova Scotia (pic shown above). The only other info I had for him was that he was lost at sea, so now I have two stories to reconcile, and some excitement about the evidence. I'll have to visit there one day to see for myself and look around for the stones of two others whose names are listed as being there. The street view on Google Earth, which includes the old church and cemetery helped me visualize what was going on and speculate about the cultural, economic, and geographical adaptations that had been made in this area of Nova Scotia. Like my students, I find my thoughts drifting back to images, maps, stories, historical contexts, concurrent events, and evolving landscapes... not a bad way to spend time in a Social Studies class.

Peace and Remembrance

2011-11-10T08:00:00.001-08:00

I wrote about this last year, about respect for the war dead, and thought I'd update my thoughts. It didn't really occur to me until recently, but I've been walking a tightrope of sorts for the last 15 years as a teacher, balancing my belief that war is evil with the reality of sacrifice shown by veterans.

Growing up in a home with Anabaptist/Mennonite cultural background and beliefs, I was attracted to the peace theology of the Mennonite church. I had sense of the sacrifices my ancestors made to stand apart from the senseless violence and warfare that accompanied their sojourns in Europe for 400 years. More directly, both of my grandfathers were conscientious objectors. My mom's dad Johann Enns, with many of his brethren in Russia during WWI, was able to do alternate service at forestry camps in Siberia. He returned in time to endure the Russian Revolution. The Mennonite families experienced starvation under war communism as the Red Army soldiers came by to steal their food. The families suffered theft, murder, and rape at the hands of Makhno's bands of so-called anarchists. The White Army used the presence of German-speaking "colonists" to justify invasion. Most Mennonites bunkered down, prepared to flee, and (in a few cases) offered some armed resistance. Every combatant probably felt they had just cause to carry out war, some were simply bloodthirsty and willing to use death and chaos to force change. My Enns grandparents lost 2 children to poverty-related illnesses in Russia before scraping together the fare to escape to Canada. They arrived in 1924; the windswept prairies must have been visually similar to their home town of Dolinsk on the steppes of Russia, but different in most every other way. I can only imagine my grandfather's thoughts as he stepped off the CPR in Southern Saskatchewan, knowing not a word of English, and considered that this could be a landscape free from fear. In some ways this was a hard-earned freedom, purchased with lives, but Canada in the 1920s was not what we would call a tolerant society. My grandparents had one good crop year in 1928, and then experienced a new set of hardships in the forms of drought and the Great Depression.

My other grandfather Gerhard Thielmann was a conscientious objector in Alberta during WWII, exempted from service to continue farming his land. He, too, endured WWI and the Revolution in Russia as a child, and was given food and aid by the Mennonite Central Committee, allowing him to escape starvation and be the only member of his family of 8 kids to make passage to Canada, a skinny 17-yr-old tagging along with some neighbours and hoping to eventually secure his family's safe passage to Canada. Stalin closed the Soviet borders and his family never made it. After marriage and children and the Great Depression, he split his farming time with teaching and preaching, some of which undoubtedly focused on the practice of peace. He preached in German and English for many years; I still have many of his oldest books with underlined passages, mostly English phrases he sought to understand deeply, and many of his early sermon notes written impenetrably in German with fine ink in Gothic script. I may have set aside some of my Mennonite past and beliefs, but the legacy of peace and the cultural memory of a people who were pursued by violence for hundreds of years is still strong.

This heritage is often in stark contrast to the history of my wife's family, steeped in military service, and the stories my students provide about their ancestors who fought in and suffered through various wars. Their narratives are equally riveting, and rooted in authentic service to deeply held beliefs. It is hard to argue with the sincerity in an 18-yr-old's face as he heads off for the European theatre in 1940, or the letter written home describing rations, travels, and lack of sleep. Or the medals and photos from a Canadian peacekeeper, now deceased, the father of one of my students. These and many other war artifacts are coming in and out of my class these days with the student's heritage projects, and have given many of them a profound connection to what will come up in the school Remembrance day ceremony that will be starting in a few minutes. I'll walk the tightrope into the ceremony, still not exactly sure how I feel about the memory part of why we are there. Being a soldier, especially in the distant past, is not by itself a cause for honour, for they have been the witting or unwitting instruments of horror throughout human history, and their needs to be some shame attached to needless bloodletting. There is nonetheless honour in sacrifice, and a need to dwell on the grief born by the families of war dead, casualties, and affected veterans, a need to focus on healing. Do we honour those who took up arms or those who suffer because of war? Is it just about the dead, with judgement suspended on the killers? What measure of shame do we bring to the warmongers and the use of murder as a political tool? Is this still primarily about WWI and other western conflicts or do we shed light on the myriad other conflicts that have plagued the last century, some of which continue today? Canada has usually set a good example for the world, and I'd like to think military service here is more about alleviating suffering and promoting justice than it is about oil or money or unresolved differences. The great-grandparents of my students knew about sacrifice, and some of them gave up their lives for their family, for values of freedom, and perception of what their country required of them. It is enough for me to respect that, but the ideal of peace has to float midst these thoughts, the knowledge that war is a failure of humanity, a destroyer of families, and not something to be celebrated or define our national values. My students will build their own understanding; among them are peacekeepers, heros, martyrs, and proud warriors stretching back over hundreds of years; they have inspired awe and fascination in their descendants.

A little hymn book

2011-11-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

Hailey brought in more artifacts today as part of her heritage inquiry for Social Studies 10, a yearbook from PGSS 1988, where her mom went -- my dad was a teacher there so she wanted to show the picture (apparently I'm looking more like him these days). She had a book of nautical engineering that was given to her (great?)grandfather before going off to WWII. One can imagine him looking through the book with the horrific backdrop of the war. He went on to invent many things and register patents... according to Hailey he invented the ping-pong ball and improved the tennis ball. The other cool thing, plucked from a shelf in her basement, was a little leather-bound hymn book. We found the background online and figured out it is the 1780 edition of John Wesley's Methodist hymn book, so it was published some time between then and when the 1876 version came out. The first few pages are missing so it is hard to tell which printing, but it is definitely the earlier edition and appears to be on acid-free paper. We gathered some students and teachers around , and talked about what we were holding and looking at. This little book was carried to church, carried around, a source of comfort (probably) and also a reflection of faith, theology, values, etc. for her ancestors. This one came from England, but one can imagine many Methodist pioneers in Upper Canada using the same book. But more specifically, more intimately, the holder of the book spent more time on certain hymns as evidenced by worn pages, pencil marks, and ancient finger smudges. It is a reasonable guess to assume that these hymns represented the aspirations, doubts, concerns, and reassurances that would have been very important to her family. Or maybe it belonged to teenager who opened up to the same spot every time he was told to look busy! She didn't know about any of this a week ago (e.g. like the Admiral Nelson story), and she says she goes home these days and brings out the laptop and is trying to figure out these people, places, and ideas and start to fill in the details. The power of a little book worn ragged by a distant hand... in the absence of journals and such, how often do we get a glimpse into the minds of our ancestors? Again, wow... I want the clock to stop so we can dwell in these stories for longer than one hour at a time.

Stories keep breaking like waves on the shore

2011-11-08T15:25:00.002-08:00

where Beatrix Potter bought her tinned veggies and tea

I am astounded at how many of my students are learning basic history about their background for the very first time. The conversations that are opening up at home sound very interesting... neutral ground for some of my students to talk to semi-estranged parents or realize that their step-mom's family background has a direct relationship to the kind of values and parenting skills used now, etc. etc. There have been some powerful, awkward, messy stories involving residential school survival and the impact of colonization, and lots of research dead-ends that are that way for a reason. Today, though, was about classic history... Hailey has waited patiently to show me an album and share the family stories she is discovering. Her background seems mainly British, and her grandmother who lives here in Prince George has kept great records. One of the pictures (shown above) is her family's old store in Windermere, UK that was frequented by Beatrix Potter. We've been seeing incredible photos this week, including daguerrotypes going back to the early history of photography. The artifacts in granny's house, though, were what really got us intrigued. One is a tiny worn leather-bound bible or such, maybe old enough to be alkaline paper pre-1800 - she may bring it in tomorrow. Another is a small wooden chest, curly maple with brass strapping. It belonged to the William Beatty, the chief surgeon for Admiral Nelson during the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He is tied to Hailey's family tree and the box, which looks almost new, has passed down the line and has ended up in our backwoods city in northern BC. What other treasures are hidden here? A movie has been made about Beatty and the surgeon's perspective from the lower decks of the HMS Victory, including the treatment of the injured and dying Lord Nelson.

The Big Connection

2011-11-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

Joachim and Caroline Murat

Students working on their Heritage projects in my SS10 classes are coming up with all kinds of interesting connections. Some of the stories are just interesting... overcoming adversity, immigration, settlement, heritage skills, many stories of leaving behind all manners of old world grief for new world promise. In some ways they are documenting a Canada that may no longer exist, an identity that has changed substantially in the last 10 years. Even the evolution of "family" is under scrutiny -- we have a few "go-arounds" for complicated histories with the goal that every student can get something powerful out of this project (class handout). All of the stories relate to big themes in the study of history and geography, make use of most of the benchmarks of historical thinking, and access the main curricular topics from every Social Studies course in our school -- I have no doubt this is the most valuable project we do in terms of "personalized learning" directed at higher level understanding of key curricular outcomes. Technology and mobile devices are being used for research and will be a part of the presentations, but are largely in the background to the big focus on students engaging in historical/narrative self-inquiry. I am also incredibly impressed with how the students carry their learning into other courses and have created a school-wide demand for more projects that engage their identities. George Abbott should really be paying me to write this stuff. I've been doing one form or another of this project for about 11 years and its the one that students tell me is most important. Some of the stories are connecting up to big events in history, and a few of them actually have key figures or participants in their family tree from major events in Canadian and world history.

Yesterday we discovered one of the coolest connections yet. Bethany, the same student whose Upper Canada heritage paralleled our New Home simulation, had a compelling name on her chart. Bonaparte. Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon's youngest sister. Her family was not completely sure, but many of the sites she found using GenWeb tools appear to confirm the connections, with some compelling documentation. Funny, the only prep I did specifically for this class today was to post heritage research tools on the webriver blog. Her great-x5-grandmother, an Alice Murat, was the child of Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon's generals, and Caroline Bonaparte. Bethany has been pouring over histories, trying to figure out how the French elite ending up having Alice in Ireland (exile? grand-daughter not daughter?) and so on, and picking up an arsenal of world history along the way. Hopefully the connection is not just a family legend, but that's a story in itself, too. The name-game is cool enough, but the excitement of a student who is enthralled by a learning trajectory like this is very fun to witness. Napoleon is just one of the stories she is figuring out. She found a that one of her great-x5-grandfathers, a Duncan Livingstone, was killed at Waterloo (she noted the irony that he was a victim of her other relative Napoleon!). This fellow was an uncle to the famous David Livingstone. In her growing portfolio there is also a tank picture and WWII scrapbook that feature her great-grandfather, and a dozen other connections to many of the events and themes that have identified Canada in the 20th century. And there are 56 other students trying to make the same connections. Heady stuff, and I've been kept busy on the scanner and internet, assisting research and giving background to the places and historical events they are asking about... learning on demand. Check later for another student's "connected" experience.

The Blogging Supers

2011-11-07T18:59:00.001-08:00

I was reading a post about blogging superintendents on Chris Kennedy's blog.

This was also reposted to Janet Steffenhagen's Van. Sun Education blog.

I find it interesting that most of the "blogging supers" on the list are using this tool for an authentic, thoughtful web presence that respect their local context and challenges. I wonder if the supers were strongly encouraged to start blogging, as a third of B.C.'s supers starting blogging around the same time this year... if so, it must have been a convincing workshop, directive, suggestion, whatever. A quick survey shows that most of them go beyond newsletter or generic edubabble and engage educators and the public (by allowing comments), or celebrate local successes because they have a deep and evidenced understanding of their schools and the kind of work done by students, teachers, and principals. Most of them take a corraborative view of the new BCED plan (not unexpected), although a few of them, like Chris Kennedy (still a fan of BCED plan), are willing at times to deconstruct cliches and go deeper than the acronyms and buzzwords that characterize most educational discourse these days. Elsewhere, Mr. Kennedy is immersed in the digital media jargon: I watched him speak at 1:05:00 in this video and I'm still not sure what to make of his energetic flurry of ideas. I don't think the "game" they speak of, or the nature of technology as tools, is fully understood. I think the first steps for this level of understanding would be an anthropological one. The iphone and social media connection might seem like a flint arrow and preparation for the hunt (tool/game), but in both cases they are also cultural extensions and identity markers that bear more scrutiny than inert objects or ritualized pastimes. What do these tools do to us as social animals? What is the neurological consequence of playing the game? Is it o.k. to remain eternally optimistic if the evidence suggests that all is not positive?

I am both troubled and challenged by the super's blog (as of Nov. 7/11) from my own school district. Troubled a bit, as it is not yet inviting a local dialogue that most of the supers have demonstrated as central to their blogging experience. Troubled a bit more because it describes innovations & approaches to technology and blended learning that are currently blocked or postponed by our board office and school administration. The Pacific Slope Consortium's report "Chilly Climate for 21st Century Learning" gets into this in more detail; rejected proposals, suspended collaborative groups, and reactive policies, as well as a blueprint for change and many suggestions for principals and teachers to try "workarounds." I am challenged by the blog because I am left confused by the apparent disconnect between what is being said and the restrictive mindset regarding teacher innovation at a variety of levels in our district. I am also challenged by the blog as it suggest many areas of inquiry with which I should probably be familiar.

To be positive about it, I think it is a good start... for educational leaders to put their thoughts, plans, and professional learning on the interwebs. Perhaps in committing to various ideas about educational change, and slowly shedding the popular cliches and ubiquitous references to 21C Learning, etc. all of the supers' blogs will come around to a high standard for engaging local educators on educational issues. I think it is a reasonable expectation, and I write this as an encouragement and not a baseless criticism. It is also possible that the discrepancy between the local blog musings and actual district practice are deliberate, perhaps a challenge from our superintendent to the thinking of his peers and colleagues. I really don't know, other than noting the apparent dichotomy. Being in the middle of a job action, I may not find out for quite some time!

The local disconnect between management and teachers on a variety of issues features in a number of the statements made by trustee candidates for the upcoming school board election. The parallel between the BCTF/BCPSEA gap is not lost on most of them, although some realize that our local gap has its own peculiar history and is related to the erosion of almost every district-level opportunity for district staff and teachers to sit down together, share visions, discuss projects, examine issues, etc -- inflamed by this year's job action but going back about 6 years. I think that working on the relationship, restoring committees, sorting out the inconsistencies in the district plan, discouraging talk that doesn't match the walk are good projects (or habits) for the new trustees. To see them in conversation, less guarded and more direct than their official statements, I would really suggest joining the CORES Rural School Facebook group where many relevant issues are being discussed.

I was also intrigued by our super's blog because it seems relatively easy for him to post, and his message is rebroadcast on every website in the district, and yet many of our schools' websites are virtually empty of any other content. The CMS webtool used to build these sites is a real pain and prevents teachers and students from making the rich, varied, quirky, and detailed content additions that used to characterize school websites, with a few exceptions. Some of our dedicated staff who are willing to suffer the design tool have "broken through" the code, perhaps the same ones who actually enjoy BCeSIS! Our biggest school, PGSS, has embedded a renegade working website within the shell provided by the district. This is a kind of policy violation, I suppose, but is pretty hard to argue against -- they've opted for a web presence of higher quality, impact, and authenticity than they could with the tools provided. In the area of dynamic, attractive, relevant, engaging websites we are painfully behind almost every other district in the province. Our great DPAC site, however, and many teacher blogs, sites, fb groups, twitter feeds etc., help make up for the emptiness elsewhere.

A web presence isn't necessary to be a good teacher or caring school, but the parts of "us" that are online should reflect the same level of professional pride and personal resolve that define our classroom practice and the public face of our schools.

routes trailer from blackspruce films

2011-11-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

Routes Trailer on pinkbike.com
Top shelf film from two former students Josh Patterson and Jared Urich, premiering at the PG Playhouse Nov 12.. Glad to see they are putting their film studies classes with Ms. Riches to great use. We were always glad to see Josh's video creations in Geog 12.

4 stories, 4 connected students

2011-11-04T19:46:00.001-07:00

What a great day to be a Social Studies teacher! I had two SS10 classes in the library today taking a 2nd, deeper look at what they could find online to support their ongoing heritage projects. Some sat at tables sharing what they had brought in, others were plugged in surfing for maps, photos, and family trees. Holy cow, they were finding amazing connections and very eager to talk about it. I'll share the stories of four girls to illustrate. The boys were too quiet today, I guess.

Courtney produced a box of family history material that contained albums, journals, genealogies, reunion scrapbooks, and loose photos. She said it would be overwhelming to go through it all to figure out what kind of story she was going to tell to make sense of it... but she had a huge grin and obviously relished the task. She had done some of this kind of work in SS9 and figured out her French Canadian roots went back to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Company of 100 Associates in the 1660s. This year she is taking on the German side of her family.

Bethany produced a family chart and family history book and began writing out a clean copy of her family tree. I looked at some of the names and dates and one set caught my eye. She had Irish great-x?-grandparents who came off the boat in the 1840s and made their way to "Concession 10, Lot 19" in South Plantagenet, Prescott township of Upper Canada. The family history book told some of their story, clearing land and building a cabin, the birth of children and hardships endured, and included a map of the land grants. I found the place on Google Earth (see the picture above, the land on either side of South Nation River, a tributary to the Ottawa) and it still retains some of the features that must have been original improvements in the early 19th century. There is also some extraction of ? going on, complete with drainage ponds - a chance to ask questions about what's going on now. What made it extra neat is that the immigration story, land grant, map, story, and location were pretty much an exact match for the "New Home" simulation we did in class a few weeks ago. She laughed when she realized how her fictitious story about the role-play was so similar to what her ancestors went through; she got that "genealogist's chill" when one connects something real and fascinating to one's identity and personal/historical timeline.

Melanie had some books and an enormous family tree/chart that included a picture curious little run-down house. It seems one of her relatives lived there for a time. According to the caption, the shingles concealed a log cabin underneath that was part of the original 1876 Hudson Bay Company post in Calgary, and as such is the oldest building in the city. We found it on Google Street view and were able to piece together that its identity was recently (re)discovered and there are restoration plans underway. Needless to say, she is dialed in now, to the course and to her past, and wants to know more about who put together the information and how the house is connected to her history.

Kaitlin has been gathering copies of records and photos from relatives over the last few weeks. She has looking at towns in Luxembourg, French, Irish family photos, lots of maps, and an interesting pile of records, and a collection of WWII-era documents, including a Kennkarte although we're not sure how this is connected to her family. One of the issues students encounter when doing online research is the volume of material that comes up when they search their roots -- sometimes it is connected, sometimes it is not. She also told me she was "wearing her heritage" -- her black leather shoes and white, wide-collared shirt were her great-grandfather's, both a size too big but a great look for 2011 anyways. A neat start to her research.

Four stories, four kids engaged in project-based learning, four beginnings to what will be awesome presentations in a few weeks. These "identity narratives" start with student-generated content and speak to the heart of the big themes and skills in SS9, SS10, SS11, History 12 curriculum, and cool connections to events that had significance to Canada and the World. These kids will walk into every subsequent class, family conversation, and learning situation armed with social context, historical perspective, and a view of the world that extends ever further from their selves... what an absolutely amazing day to be a Social Studies teacher!

Cross Hairs

2011-11-02T12:45:00.001-07:00

I was reading a post on a former colleague's blog and my comment for him turned into a bit of a diatribe... perfect for a post here!!! So... here it is...

Your positive attitude is appreciated, but there has to be room, especially among principals and leaders like yourself, for skepticism, critique, and deconstruction of the gov't vision for the BC Ed system. If we don't put plans (of any kind) in the crosshairs, it is too easy to build self-justifying narratives that make the plan's assumptions seem indisputable. Depending on the agenda, constructing these narratives can also make the "plan" look inevitable, like it is part of the flow of history, or original, like it has never been tried before. An example is the rhetoric around 21st century learning. As you've posted before, it can be about the 7Cs etc., but it can also be about privatizing education, replacing teachers with commercial services, downloading the costs of public education to the users (esp. re technology). It is used to describe project-based learning, embrace AFL, PLC, DL, PL, develop group skills and habits of mind, accept vertical corporate integration in delivery models and student data systems, even new school building construction, school closures (brick and mortar is old school, apparently), hiring practices, both liberating and restrictive tech policies, etc. Too broad to be a movement, or even a school of thought. We live in the 21C, so duh. Let's go 22C or 26C if we want progress. At some point in there we get to fight aliens for sure. Anyways, the first task for educators going from either harsh critic or loyal supporter to a habitual critical inquiry is to step away from the jargon. I've followed your posts and contributions to educational discourse for a while and I think you are gradually getting the buzzwords out of your parlance... keep it up! It is so neat to see how your staff and school reflect the value you place on teamwork and creative thinking. While I don't always agree, your ideas and approach to educational theory are very positive and will have the most impact when you can stand apart, just a bit, from the "managed message" that is so apparent in the BCED plan. The hard work is facing the task of putting all of it in the crosshairs and allowing the authentic parts to make sense in your context... a slow reveal, usually, but worth the patience. I've noticed other BC principals and superintendents starting blogs, etc. and most are hopelessly locked into the jargon and don't appear to be coming from "selfs" the way yours is. Most of them don't allow comments for fear of the inevitable critique from jerks like me. Most repeat the ubiquitous videos and quotes on "21C"ish topics. But, they've got it started. The majority are still not ready for a web presence, and will find it hard to lead teachers into any kind of "21C" until they realize we are actually wanting them to set their ideas out in a place we can examine them. Our district (57) seems to have slipped 10 years back in terms of the teacher-district partnerships that used to support technology (you'd be shocked to see how the momentum is gone and distrust has taken its place), and I think one thing our leaders can do (on both sides of the admin gap) is to abandon fear and let their "selfs" loose on the old interweb, crosshairs and all. This interactive landscape should not be about career moves and reiteration of cliches, but about horizons of significance (to borrow Taylor's term) and rigorous discourse. I've directed a few of "them" to look at your blog and think about how they may wish to begin a thoughtful web presence. Good luck, keep it real.

Heritage redux

2011-10-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

Another year, another two groups of SS10 students embarking on heritage projects. This is so cool, and I'l trying to stay "present" for them as they have a hundred questions, and many want to share stories at once. It's becoming a tradition at our school, and the evidence that doing heritage research (necessarily a combined reflection on identity and culture) is popping up in many courses. Brandon told his english teacher the other day that he is connected to key figure in the Salem Witch Trials (which they were reading about) and showed the family charts, something he started in SS10. Students in Ian's SS11 class are frequently jumping in with "my great-grandfather fought in that battle" or "we've got photos from the Depression, I'll bring them in. Two kids realized, in doing their heritage projects, that their ancestors shared a Northwest Company canoe during the fur trade (pre-1820) -- one a hivernant and the other a voyageur. These new students are learning that their heritage is within reach. In class yesterday I asked what they'd save from their house in an emergency (xbox etc. covered by insurance, family and pets are safe blah blah). Jacob mentioned ggfather's war medals, Bruce mentioned grandfathers trunk (with which he fled E, Berlin before the wall went up), Alyssa mentioned family photo albums. We're in the library lab right now, and when I look around at the screens I'm seeing a Kennedy tartan, a marriage register from Halifax in 1912, a map of some village in South Africa, also lots of dead end web searches, a few kids on the #Occupy trail, one guy playing some game that messes with google searches, many kids trying to figure ot how to spell their grandmother's maiden name. Anyways, I'm excited to see how this year's projects develop.

PRO-D !!

2011-10-20T10:52:00.001-07:00

Off tomorrow for some great professional development with the Pacific Slope Consortium. This is our 2nd annual Purden retreat, and our model caught the attention of the Ministry of Education last year. Some combination of the minister, deputy minister, and ministerial secretary thought this was exactly what was needed in our province and asked how they could support us. Ian has this dialed in, he's been hobnobbing with the higher-ups. We're looking into a camp-and-confer later this year or next year near 100 Mile? Our model is pretty basic -- bring together sharp minds, rich topics related to teaching, learning, citizenship, sustainability & identity, and a setting that inspires revery, discourse & self-reliance. This fits into the larger vision of the PSC that sees small-scale self-sufficient cells of innovative educators practicing as if the ideal learning environment already exists, combined with a willingness to take its pedagogical cues from history as much as the future-focus that drives most of the current educational discourse in British Columbia. Anyways, our topics for tomorrow's session include: role-play simulations in SS10 and SS11, what we're learning from our use of twitter, considering the possibilities for a Vimy Ridge trip in 2017, a 10-year futureshock exercise, and collaboration for call-for-papers (ed journals) & conference presentations. I must remember to update my professional growth plan with the details. Although I love my job and I have great classes, the climate for professional growth is often polluted by politics and agendas. That's one of the reasons I started maintaining a growth plan -- I would rather anticipate and respond creatively to what will no doubt be perceived as a burden by teachers in years to come... do something well now (at least to me) so that nobody can ask me to do something crappy in 2 years... I should make that my motto. So, it is with some real joy and enthusiasm that I look forward to the critical inquiry and exploration of social capital that the PSC brings to the campfire.

We Day

2011-10-14T22:50:00.002-07:00

What an amazing day yesterday... I was in Vancouver with students from 5 PG schools for the "We Day" event at Rogers Arena with 18,000 others. We heard speeches from Mia Farrow, the Kielburger brothers, Holly Branson (her dad Richard also made a surprise visit) and many more. Entertainment from Shaquille O'Neal, Down with Webster, Hedley, and others. The speakers and hosts repeated many similar themes and catch-phrases (and lots of ads), but the message was focused on human rights and social change. It was as much a celebration for work already being done by student leaders around the province as it was about inspiring kids to action. The highlight or me was the keynote from Mikhail Gorbachev! He spoke about the need for this generation to pick up the peacemaking torch. Kind of amazing to hear someone start a sentence with "When we were ending the Cold War..." I tried to give the students a crash course on the Soviet Union and the Cold War... most had taken Social Studies 11 and had the context if not the person figure out. We had a great group... curious, compassionate kids; very respectful but also energetic about making a difference in their world. Great conversations and storytelling with the other chaperones, too, about activism, honesty in education, and history.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

Took a screenshot just now... the news today that Steve Jobs has passed away is hitting me like a brick. I'm not surprised, I guess, but sad nonetheless. Apple computers, software, and stuff have accompanied my entire teaching practice, and Jobs has influenced my approach to teaching and use of media, and wedged his way into my family in some ways. Elegance, function, aesthetics, and intuitiveness are very important to me... I'm a Mac.I suppose he is famous because of his business success and ability to read trends -- he was really good at making and selling things that people wanted to buy (even if we didn't know we needed it!) -- but more than that he had a way of pursuing high design and performance standards, often when those around him were not, or didn't understand what he was doing. That's the part I've tried to emulate.

Waffle Tectonics

2011-10-05T11:35:00.002-07:00

What a great way to wrap up our unit on earth structure, geology, plate tectonics, faults/folds, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Nick and Nick served up waffles for the class, using each one to demonstrate some kind of plate boundary or fault type before their classmates devoured them. We didn't learn anything new about tectonics, really, didn't need to as this was explored in depth elsewhere, but we did congratulate ourselves for hard work with some great waffles -- crisp golden outside, fluffy and light inside... I skipped the syrup and choc chips with no regrets. It couldn't have tasted better if the gauffre iron were crushed on thorns of fire (I think of this reference to Pattern Language every time I have waffles).After all of the lessons, slideshows, reading, videos, quizzes, and demos in our unit, we've had some fantastic presentations that fulfilled three criteria: deepen our understanding of selected learning outcomes from the unit, reflect the interest & talents of the student as applied to meaningful inquiry, and embody learning in some way -- voice, performance, demonstration, physical construction, etc. Today was a small feast, a celebration of the interesting things we've done over the last 3 weeks, but is was also a celebration of how GOOD students are... I hear a lot of complaints about how students are tuned out and need a contstant barrage of technology to be entertained. This was a nice, slow, quiet... and tasty.

A New Home

2011-09-29T00:46:00.003-07:00

Social Studies 10, early Canadian history... yesterday and today we used a simulation/role-play to explore what life in Upper Canada might have been like in the early 1800s. Most of this activity I borrowed from other teachers (like Rob) and an old print resource -- on paper it looks corny and old school, but for some reason the students buy in immediately and will keep it up for hours. After figuring out who was rich and who was poor, they were scheming how to raise funds for building a school, how to set up a shipping system for exporting goods, wealthy folks offering land in exchange for monopolizing skills of the poor (e.g. exclusive rights to the cobbler's services), lots of marrying and deals. One of the students whose role card said "judge" has built a courthouse and is now granting land on behalf of the colony in exchange for promising contracts to improve life for the colonists. Of course, he ended up with controlling interest in two sawmills and share of the profits from a railway project. Others were arguing over horses and what a broadaxe could do, defining "clergy reserve" and "grist mill." Churches were built ("hey what's a presbyterian?"), docks and bridges were stretched across the river, and roads cleared. Gender and race came up, as did wealth, distribution service to community, and representation. Somewhat surprisingly, environmental issues did not come up much -- almost all were content use every scrap of resource, to log off their land grants and mill the wood ASAP. I was really quite something to see two classes of teens being very excited to imagine and act out a different time and place for two hours -- no props, not prep, no fixed rules. This is a nice little shared learning experience that helps gel a class and anticipate the big questions and learning outcomes of the course. It gives them a phenomenological foundation and embodied empathy for the challenges of pioneer culture, setting the stage for their own heritage inquiry further into the course. Many asked if they could "keep the game going" tomorrow -- one girl thought we had switched into these roles for the whole course and would make our way through the curriculum in the first person. What an intriguing idea! I asked if she thought she could handle being in character for 4 months and she said "why not, its a great way to learn." Needless to say I'm thinking of the next opportunity to (re)introduce a role-play.

My plan is to have them synthesize in a narrative what they learned/did in the last two days with what they have been studying from text/teacher/library sources about British North America in the 1820s. I've done this activity and follow-up for a few years, trying to add to the simplicity and joy of the role-play with a little bit of relevant/elegant technology. Now if we had a wireless network or working computers I could get them to video-journal their experience and send it to me as an assignment and self-assessment. Too much to ask, I suppose -- what was accessible, easy, functional, and progressive from 2003-2009 is now out of reach... can someone explain to me how that is moving forward? The mac I had set up for video-journalling has been removed, as have the computers at the back of my class, but have not been replaced. We have a secured wirelesss network that we're not allowed to use, and the public wireless has not yet arrived. Cellphones and email are still blocked (in terms of policy), and virtually every one of the district-level supports for innovative use of technology has been undermined or axed. I suppose the kids with smartphones can work around the deficit of technology, but there are many that will have to wait out the "21st Century Learning" possibilities of this activity until our school gets its act together.

I'm not frustrated, though. This activity was about movement and problem-solving and creative engagement, and most of the students will be happy to write up their stories on paper or a computer and submit them to me and the class. The video option is powerful, though, so I may try to figure out a Plan C for getting the students in front of a webcam to talk about life at their "New Home."

very fitting, very moving

2011-08-30T22:38:00.002-07:00

gaming / learning

2011-06-13T09:42:00.002-07:00

Watch the full episode. See more Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century.

This stuff sure pulls me in two directions... there are some aspects of this that appeal to me, and so much else that seems dystopian. The idea of a class without walls and guild approach to learning has always appealed to me, but I'm concerned that this approach has been derailed by corporate interests and a misreading of what self-taught looks like in kids compared to adults. Neither a fan nor stalwart critic, I need to "interrogate" the paradigm presented in the video because I want to know what I can learn from it. I'm left with questions about:

How does society, consciousness, ethics, sense/value of history change when knowledge is accessed on demand rather than stored in the brain? Are we still intelligent if we just rely on problem-solving skills and a personal interpretations? Are we independent simply because parents and teachers have left us to be peer-raised or raised by whoever dominates broadband?

The video features a wealthy school and tech array designed for self-indulgence. How can "21st century education" build interdependence without narcissism? How can the poor benefit from this approach? How can cash-strapped schools embrace a vision without being willing to foot the bill? How will Aboriginal Learners fare in this environment? (I can see some scenarios in which the concepts actually align better with a Aboriginal approach to learning, but also some barriers)

What do these "21C" ideas look like if we take the technology away? Is is really a new approach to education? Do none of these qualities appear in traditional classrooms? Is it the revolution or change in thinking the experts describe, or do they just make the contrast greater so they can sell their unique product? Half the time I wonder whether public institutions pick up the "21c" stuff in order to reduce costs.

Gaming addictions are just passion for learning (bit at 13 minutes)? Really? What about the whole area of health, avoidance, procrastination, and social interaction?

I'm curious to hear some of your thoughts on this video and the broader topic(s) it suggests.

Stunt in the Senate

2011-06-06T06:07:00.003-07:00

Senate page and her silent protest during the throne speech... CBC's version here, including the press release issued by the page, Brigette DePape:

"Contrary to Harper's rhetoric, Conservative values are not in fact Canadian values. How could they be when 3 out of 4 eligible voters didn't even give their support to the Conservatives? But we will only be able to stop Harper's agenda if people of all ages and from all walks of life engage in creative actions and civil disobediance," she says.

"This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces."

Or, another take on the page protest:Harper stunt interrupts Canadian statement delivered by DePape

In Defense of Libraries

2011-06-04T13:53:00.006-07:00

LIBRARIANS FIGHT FOR A ROLE IN A DIGITAL WORLD http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/social-networking/librarians-fight-for-a-role-in-a-digital-world/article2023169/

The article was timely for me, as I was thinking lately about how various applications of so-called 21st Century Learning pose challenges to traditional roles in our education system, including libraries and librarians. If you're unfamiliar with the "21C Ed" collection of ideas, don't feel left out... it is a bit of catch-phrase for anything new in education, but often includes a few basic characteristics:

-students can/should learn more independently
-students should have more choice about what & how they learn
-teachers should do less direct instruction and more direction towards resources and opportunities
-students should learn more out in the community and less in schools
-parents should have more opportunities to co-develop learning environments and designs
-all of these things should make better use of digital technology and web resources

There is no single definition, but these links provide a few different views on what "21C Ed" looks like:
http://www.21learn.org/site/archive/about-the-initiative

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2779372&archive=true

http://educhatter.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/the-“21st-century-schools”-movement-is-burying-the-past-the-wave-of-the-future/

http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/technology_council/news.html (try the reports to see the BC gov's vision for education, albeit from the last premier and with no real idea about how to bring this about -- other jurisdictions have had to either commit serious time/money or force of legislation to make these kinds of changes)

21 Signs You're a 21C Teacher http://www.technologybitsbytesnibbles.info/archives/4595 (this one presents the real dilemma to me - some of these things are great and I've tried them for years, others, I think, are destructive and promote disassociation)

http://www.bctf.ca/IssuesInEducation.aspx?id=23050 (this positions"21C Ed" as anything innovative, especially if it involves technology; the BCTF seems to struggle between embracing innovation and change (as it needs to do from time to time) and offering critique to ideas that erode teacher autonomy or shake up the school system)

I've got criticism and praise for different aspects of these ideas from a purely educational point of view, but the Globe & Mail article reminded me it will probably be used as a cost-savings measure in our school system. The rhetoric is often buried under terms like "choice" and "flexibility." If one follows the reasoning, students of the future will need less teachers and fewer schools, and will need more apprenticeship-like opportunities, greater choice about what and how they learn, and better guidance through digital resources and and technologies. My reserved praise relates to the angle of deschooling society, an old idea that becomes more relevant when school culture supplants key aspects of family and society-based culture (see Illich's work, or Gatto's at http://www.preservenet.com/theory/). One of my concerns, however, is that the "21C Ed" ideas seem to assume that the trend towards our students being peer-raised and emotionally detached is inevitable (see Gordon Neufeld's work on this topic e.g. video clip on parenting), and that a narcissistic technology-addicted lifestyle is conducive to deep learning and social growth. I think this trend, unexamined, is a sure way to build a dystopia. We can only deschool society if we have something better suited to educate kids in a way that leaves them whole, connected, balanced, intelligent, and useful. Allowing students to follow their own technology-enabled course of study (and personal development) will only work for a very few students, probably those who can set their own standards and start with a socioeconomic advantage.

So, how does this relate to schools and what does a library look like when the traditional roles are being challenged? If anything, "21C Ed" tries to make librarians out of all of us -- directing students to appropriate resources, effective use of educational technology, facilitating learning alongside guidance in ethics, critical thinking, habits of mind, and multiple intelligences/literacies. I'm not sure how realistic this is, but I could see it as an excuse to follow the trend mentioned in the Globe article. Librarians will likely be in a defensive position over the next few years (already have been?), alternately defending the impact they have on people and learning, or reinventing their programs to meet new challenges.

I would like to share some thoughts drawn from observations of our library at D.P. Todd Secondary School. Perhaps these traits are common at all libraries, but my experience has been shaped by the library I know. The librarian Sandra will forgive me if I idealize some of her contributions, but I also know what a dysfunctional library looks like and I'm so very glad to celebrate one that is working well and has set a positive model for the emerging librarian.

Meeting place: The Market of Ideas
Our library is fortunately positioned at a crossroads in the school, especially for staff... some schools have libraries tucked in a corner or are tangential to the traffic. The result for us is an inflow of people and ideas all day long. It is by the librarian's desk (which is not hidden in a back room) or the circulation counter where many staff pause and work something out. It is a neutral ground for a good argument, or a critical examination of a school issue -- the classroom is too private and "turfed" for staff discourse, just as the hallway is too public and unmediated. The librarian often finds herself playing facilitator, referee, and instigator (e.g. when new ideas are needed), or simply someone to ask how's it going and mean it. Many students, especially seniors, head to the library to orient themselves in the morning or wrap up loose ends at the end of the day. It is our only lecture hall (grad meetings, guest speakers, etc.) and is one of the few places that can be easily reconfigured to suit a purpose. Like a marketplace or town square, the "meeting-place" quality extends into ideas as well as physical encounters. The librarian resides at the centre of the collaborative culture of our school, bridging school-wide goals and programs precisely because she has to deal with every kind of idea and problem, not just those specific to a subject area. While this relationship between librarian, ideas, and passers-through often begins with a book, it invariably progresses to other media and a deeper conversation. Our librarian knows the reading habits of kids because she knows the kids -- they arrive with a completed book and she asks them about it, what they liked and didn't, what they want to try next. She often has a next book waiting. In return the students open up and provide the kind of introspective reader-response English teachers would pay for. The "mode of literacy" is not just about the books, it can be about what the students use on their phones and ipods, the knitting (and knitting books) set out for students who need to unwind, the start of a video editing or cartooning project, the book and media displays that coincide with current events, and the websites recommended to put a twist on someone's line of inquiry.

Skills and Contexts
As a true learning lab for the school, the library has become associated with two ends of a spectrum that are often missing in a classroom -- research skills based on critical thinking (separate from curriculum), and deep curricular contexts explored through sourcework (that are often beyond what "comes up" in the classroom). These are the zones in which the librarians shine and apply diverse strategies: storytelling to model self-inquiry, table-by-table group brainstorming and division of tasks, decoding a special photo or passage or map, preparation of websites and webquests to redeem the time spent at computers, small group circle-time to work out issues. Because the librarian knows a bit about almost everyone that comes in, she can match resources, learning objects and webtools to individual students -- the practice of personalized learning. Behind the scenes is some expert resource selection (books, digital tools and media, etc.) that requires intensive collaboration with staff and students. The library has been culled of what doesn't get read or used, and is replenished with requests and artfully anticipated hits-in-waiting. The librarian is also the usual suspect for the introduction of new technologies -- 7 years ago it was educational blogs, now it might be a request for e-readers or a pro-d session on apps. In some magic time between class visits and needy students, the librarian also finds time to set-up Olympic-themed events with books, displays, and big-screen live coverage, a tea party for the royal wedding (with books, displays, big-screen coverage and those little sandwiches), or a Harry Potter Event, a card-making station set out for mother's day, and so on. The librarian isn't trying to "get through" curriculum or teach Socials, Science, or English. She is offering cause & effect, pattern recognition, assessment of significance, interpretation of meaning, application of judgement, comparison of sources and evidence, and venturing into multiple intelligences. As a classroom teacher, it becomes easy to beat the same drum and try the same tricks, but the librarian starts with the premise that a trip to the library is a chance to explore ideas from a fresh perspective, to gain something for the teacher and students that can't be had just a few feet away in a different room. It is the emphasis on critical thinking and deep contexts that sets the library apart from the classroom which has the added burden of a curricular calendar and a fixation on evaluation.

Island in the Stream
Libraries are often a place for students to take a break from the intensity or monotony of classroom experience -- the librarian and her space round out the "whole education" students receive at school. Like an island, it is a calm place to stop moving and reflect on the journey -- read something, talk to someone, look something up, get caught up, spread one's things out and get organized. Some students on spares really do look like they've just clambered out of a swamped canoe -- the library is the safe place where they can get their act together before facing a tough class or difficult conversation with a teacher. The librarian walks this island and offers help, comforting words, a voice of experience, listening, and a fresh perspective. She seeks out the students (and staff) who are most in need and takes a very human approach to coaxing some productive action -- less formal than a counseling appointment but usually more one-on-one than a classroom teacher can afford, a balanced "boundary-zone" in which the practice of empathy is viable. Students enter high school and have a kind of conversation with themselves that lasts for 5 years -- they pose questions about their own relationships, reading, thinking, emotions, body, behaviour and gather "evidence" each time they come to school -- they live the teenage life but they also imagine it endlessly, playing out possibilities and speculating about "what-ifs." This all takes place in secondary schools which overwhelmingly are fragmented and chaotic. Staff find it difficult and sometimes unattractive to build 5-yr relationships with students, and yet the students beg this continuity from us -- they may constantly be pushed towards their peers, but I think we'd be surprised how many would soak up any time their parents had for them (if they weren't so busy) and, failing that, from other caring adults. The library forms one of the few welcoming spots where the students can attach and make sense of that five-year questioning -- and the librarian is a key part of that conversation -- a caring person who can often suspend judgement (e.g. doesn't have to assign a grade), but is nonetheless an adult with the long-term growth of students in mind.

Filling the Leadership Gap
Our district and secondary school administration are tasked with being educational leaders, and yet this is a part of their jobs they often do not get to. Most of their time is spent on the "business" of education, a variety of duties related to the community (e.g. student discipline and follow-up, parent inquiry, policy & process discussions, ministry requirements, etc.), the management of staff, and indirect efforts at affecting learning. Elementary admin seem to have more direct involvement, although they have many duties that pull them away from educational leadership as well. What's missing is the inspirational role, the task of teaching teachers. So who takes up the slack? Much of it goes undone or left to chance (e.g. follow-up on professional development, delving into school data, matching resources to teacher's expressed needs, etc.). The rest is delegated -- just as some administrative tasks that used to be shared responsibilities have been downloaded to counselors, many other educational leadership tasks are now completed by teachers and librarians. For the latter, these functions include review of professional material related to the craft of teaching and specific subject areas, assessing teaching and learning resources with a school-wide perspective, establishing a research (or inquiry) focus for staff practices, voicing the educational arguments and student perspectives in discussions involving budgets (particularly technology), judging trends in education (problems and possibilities) and setting new paradigms into motion, connecting the individual and collective learning trajectories and educational goals of teachers with relevant resources, and taking a lead role in the value-setting events in the life of a school (e.g. network ethics, plagiarism, cyber-bullying, tone at staff meetings, etc.) Suffice to say that if a librarian is good at these things, the school has a solid foundation for staff morale and program longevity, and that if these functions are absent the school runs at an emotional, professional, and educational deficit. it is often the librarian who picks up the pieces of a poorly or hastily planned initiative, plan, or dictate and makes it staff-friendly or gives it a pedagogical backbone. Administrators, Curriculum staff, and School Boards groups should thank librarians routinely and emphatically for taking up the torch when their part is finished. Our current teacher contract negotiations face demands for more management rights by the government's negotiator BCPCEA, in part to lubricate their plans for "21C Ed", but I don't think they realize how scared and unqualified a huge part of "management" is to take this on. If we want change is has to be a partnership and can't be administration directing teachers to use the latest jargon, which is where the commitment to change usually ends. Please correct me if I'm describing an isolated phenomenon, I would love to see the exceptions to this "torch dropping" become the norm.

These roles for librarians range from concrete to abstract, but all are invaluable in the culture and journeys of students and staff. If librarians were simply wardens of books, replacement teachers for resource-dependent class activities, and cataloguers, then their role would and should be in jeopardy. Similarly, if the librarian is concerned only with learning technology and new digital tools, she will again become superfluous as this is everyone's business and her only edge is that she has more time to evaluate resources. I would make the case, however, that the emerging librarian is someone our schools need more than ever. She is grounded in principles of learning, moves deftly through the terrain of ever-changing resources and technologies, has a mind to the whole development of others (intellectual, physical, emotional, social), is able to connect people to ideas using a variety of tools, anchors the professional development of staff, loves the kind of knowledge and passion for the world that comes (in one form) from the written and spoken word, and has created a welcome, safe place for thought, growth, research, and experimentation. In short, she nurtures the boundaries between all the disparate pulls in our learning communities, and both moderates the difference and spurs staff and students into thought and action. I don't think these qualities are new or "21st Century," but I do think they are the ones we should celebrate when we look at the role libraries play in the future of our education system, and not the books or the technology. My school would be heartless and cold without the library and librarian. Still, the promise of new interactive, personalized technology and the necessity for critical examination and experimentation is well suited for the library, and is probably one of the future criteria by which library programs will be judged. In the midst of this, the librarian's continuous learning curve relates somewhat to resources and technologies, but more importantly to finding the rich existential boundaries in which she cultivates habits of mind and meaningful relationships with staff and students.

Further reading:
Libraries in the Internet age http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/994225--libraries-in-the-internet-age

Area school libraries still popular, even if things are changing http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/local/article/534196--area-school-libraries-still-popular-even-if-things-are-changing

The Role of Librarians in the 21st Century

Technology is changing role of librarian into that of a teacher http://www.librarybeat.org/read/show/233

School Library Journal's 2011 Technology Survey: Things Are Changing. Fast. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/890197-312/sljs_2011_technology_survey_things.html.csp

Mount Nyiragongo in Africa

2011-03-09T07:12:00.002-08:00

Looks like something one would find in Mordor... check out the amazing photo essays at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/. This photo came from the one on Mount Nyiragongo.

2011-02-15T16:51:00.003-08:00

A colleague of mine recently asked some questions about why certain topics that come up for staff discussion are relegated to "chat" forums or subcommittees and not looked at by the staff as a whole. She seemed concerned that we've missed an opportunity to take on the challenges of our school as a collective activity. The context for her questions is a year (or more) in which we've seen many teacher-guided processes in the school and district become the responsibility of administration. Some are relieved by the pattern (less work) but others see that they now have to deal with the aftermath of decisions they had no part in (or a reduced role).

I'm glad she asked this because I think she has tapped into three significant trends that are not confined to our school:

1. Mistaking networks and institutional structures for communities -- seen clearly when we try to solve individual and collective problems through email, digital forums, and social media. "Community thinking" is highly desirable as a context for teaching & learning, but runs into problems when it is applied to institutional structures. As teachers we have to be able to move between network and community frequently and it is neither easy nor a good fit with the overall change in society towards indirect communication and less privacy (but more personalized mediums and a much wider audience).

2. The difficulty of collaboration and shared leadership within institutional hierarchies. Although they may share the same general mission (e.g. service to student learning in the case of education), the goals of frontline workers (and their expectation of democracy and inclusion) are often not the same as the goals of management structures (for which democracy is a limitation on decision-making, and inclusion is strategic rather than pervasive), even if both of their goals are necessary to pursue. This basic (and perhaps inescapable) discrepancy is modeled at almost every layer of society from classrooms to the federal government.

3. Confusion of educational models with organizational models. Within education, this problem is partly due to the wholistic approach taken by many modern theorists. Not content to simply suggest better ways to approach teaching and learning, they also look (understandably) at institutional reform as part of their suggestions for transformation. The issues begin when the pedagogical changes are pursued by an organization but the organization is not capable of making the institutional change necessary for the theory to make sense. This confusion is also more prevalent in organizations (like ours) where management and frontline are so close in terms of background, workspace, and focus.

I would argue that these trends share common roots and have their own peculiar manifestations at our school, but I think we are not alone. I also think they share the same basic paradox in that "working together" is crucial for success (think universal health care, American Civil Rights, United Nations, Indian Independence Movement) but "working together" usually means significant compromise when it requires vertical alignment of goals (think waste in our medical system, Stalinism, League of Nations, India's Partition). I know these examples are beyond the scale of school workplace processes/folders/councils, and contain their own internal contradictions of the paradox, but they are all understandings of how rights and responsibilities are distributed across various societies. The issue of incongruent goals also informs this paradox. We've seen what can happen when governments deny rights and are not responsible to their citizens, but we would also not have a Charter of Rights in Canada without "management" cutting corners on democracy and inclusion. If we submit to the necessity of government, we have to expect some forfeiture of freedom. Our public education system is built on the basic notion that students must give up some freedom in order to receive the ministrations of society's decision-makers. The expectations placed on teachers are never completely clear (most, in fact, are self-imposed), and so we dwell in a dynamic spectrum of rights and responsibilities that are often in tension with the system in which we work, including the students. Personally, I don't mind the "spectrum" as it allows for individuation and the alternative seems very limiting and unimaginative.

The paradox takes on new dimensions when it is seen in our local context. Our school district has been affected by many trends in educational theory*, many of which I admire for different reasons on their own, but our schools have attempted a difficult project of combining many elements of these theories within existing hierarchical structures in order to put them into practice. While a "mashup" can be very creative, it can also result in confusion and lack of uptake. I think this flux compounds the three trends noted above and explains why they create added tension (creative or otherwise) in our workplace and are not simply part of the organizational issues that exist everywhere and throughout history. I think it is right, though, that individuals, schools, and districts experiment with educational and organizational theory, but I wish we put more thought and time into finding out the difference and realizing the limits of what teachers and students are able to assimilate given the other challenges of the classroom. I've come across some good professional resources, school organizational models, political paradoxes, and historical examples on these topics that I'll have to come back to as time allows.

* Many have been "tried" (found their way into school and district initiatives as evidenced by pro-d offerings, programs/policy, release funding, and travel expenditure). While they most often gained attention via our Curriculum & Instruction department, some were introduced from "above" (Ministry) or "below" (local educators). Others theories, like Mezirow's Transformative Learning or DeVries Constructivist Education, have simply been influential (e.g. from teacher training programs) but haven't been "sponsored." Of course, individual teachers have put a myriad of theories into practice, only some of which are/were even on the district's radar. Here's some of the theories that our district (and most secondary schools) have tried/are trying over the last 14 years; I'd be curious to know what other significant ones I've missed:

- Dimensions of Learning by David Brown and others (c.1995-2002 ?)
- Data-driven decision making or "D3M" (c.2000-2007 ?)
- Dufours' Professional Learning Communities (c.1998 ? -2009, less so after that)
- Assessment for Learning as put forward by Black and Wiliam (c.2004-2011)
- Inquiry model of the Network of Performance Based Schools (c.2006-2011)
- John Abbott's 21st Century Learning Initiative (c.2010-2011)

2010 in review

2010-12-22T17:45:00.006-08:00

That was quite a year... I'd have to say the highlight was our summer travels. The cruise to Alaska with my parents & family and the preceding camping across three provinces made for a great vacation. Kate had it all planned out and I’ll admit to some skepticism about it all working out. Our tent trailer was thoroughly broken in and we got to see some amazing sights and people. Cookes, Zimmers, Gorbys, Campbells, and a Friesen for good measure. Onboard the Volendam our Thielmann party of 15 comprised 1% of the passenger list. We had some time to reconnect; it was a blessing to see my parents surrounded by such a healthy, loving, and individuated family, a real witness to their 50 years of marriage.

This year, I find myself growing more... hmm... I’m not sure what word to use. Not conservative, if that’s what you were thinking. Perhaps more cynical (see the school stuff below), maybe stalwart or something like disaffected (in the misanthropic sense), and overall more grim. This has something to do with the time of year and the fact that my chopped woodpile is empty and it is -21˚C right now. Balancing this is the love and joy from a very amazing family; I really can’t or shouldn’t complain. I think 2011 will be less grim.

Our school district went through a rough patch in 2010 with a massive deficit brought on through changes in government funding, declining enrollment, and some delayed financial planning at the board office. I invested far too much time trying to keep our district accountable and honest in terms of spending, the nature of cuts, alternatives to school closures, and some sanity around technology decisions. I was also able to work with an amazing group of parents and teachers who modeled “sustainability” for the district as it offered its own plans and recommendations based on rigorous educational and community values, excellent research, and diverse perspectives. In the end we saved the French Immersion program from being dismantled and exposed some incompetencies, but I don’t think we were able to shift the basic narcissism that guides our local system. In the area of technology, our BC school system envisions that teachers will be able to use digital tools to increasingly guide students at a distance, and that face-to-face classrooms where the teachers are experts in their subject is an outdated mode of learning. As problematic as this may seem, our school district has embraced this vision while at the same time restricting access and planning to the very technologies that are supposed to bring about this brave new world. My own school mirrors many of these disturbing trends and ironies. So, that provides some context for all this talk of grimness and cynicism, but I am growing weary of being a whistleblower, especially when it is off the side of my desk and has come at a cost to my family, self, and students. Thankfully, I’ve been able to share this load with a dedicated and humorous group of teachers we’ve dubbed the Pacific Slope Initiative. Kate forgave me of many evenings locked away at a computer or at meetings, and was always the first one to push me into a good debate.

This is my 15th year as a teacher and I still feel lucky to be in the midst of so many stories, so many discoveries. I’ve had some challenging Grade 9s in Social Studies but I’ve tried to put their high energy to use. I haven’t taught SS9 for many years so it has been constant experimentation on my part, some of it pure disaster. New lessons, assignments, resources, assessments. Two projects in particular stand out. The first centered on Heritage Skills -- how people made a live for themselves, adapted the resources at hand to their needs “then and now.” One student brought out his grandpa’s hand-made woodworking tools and talked about the objects in his house (made by GP) that had special significance. Another talked of canning salmon with grandma and how this was one aspect of her ancient culture that she was keen to learn, remember, and pass on. Some of the projects were a bit rough -- I’ll admit that the students benefit from exemplars and previous trial-and-error but one must do what one can. The second project involved students examining a cultural landscape of 17th and 18th century North America and reporting back on their research and conclusions. We used “benchmarks of historic thinking” (a critical inquiry model) to explore the topics and each student used a modern example to compare with their topic. Order of Good Cheer & the Habitation at Port Royal, the Seigneuries of the St. Lawrence valley, draining the marshlands of Acadia, and so on. One of the students came across information that linked her family to one of the first habitants that were brought over by Jean Talon as settlers in the Royal Colony of New France. Her great x 10 grandfather turned the earth a few miles from Quebec in the 1660s. Another student examined the Jesuit subculture as they made deep impacts on the Huron people. His modern comparison was the humanitarian interventions in Haiti. There were some interesting parallels between clashing cultural values and also between the spread of smallpox (Huronia) and cholera (Haiti). Again, some of the projects evidenced incredible learning and some fell flat, but I think I’ll try this again the next time I teach SS9 and try to work out some of the kinks. I was also lucky to be a small part in the creation of Pearson Education’s new Social Studies 11 textbook over the last year, and I also had a contract to create and write an online course for the Distance Ed Consortium of BC -- Sustainable Resources 12 Forestry. As of this exact moment, it is not 100% complete!

I hope 2011 brings you health, happiness, and insight.

trying to take the long view

2010-11-19T22:17:00.007-08:00

The average tenure of a teacher at most Prince George high schools looks something like a decade or more. Most teachers seek stability in their job situation and this means becoming rooted in a school community and establishing a long-term relationship with staff, students, and parents. They become the guardians of policy and programs, the historians, the practitioners, and the futurists. While the teacher's role in the classroom has seen more "adjustment" than radical change over the long term, the teacher's role in school leadership has often been difficult to nail down and has been subject to some significant change in the last 10 years.

High school administrators have seen their role change, too, in regards to the school leadership. There was perhaps a time when principals and sometimes vice-principals were embedded in the school culture and community, five or ten or more years of service with staff, students, and parents. The recent pattern has seen administrators move schools more often, a result of a change in direction from the board office, but also a reflection of demographic necessity. The retirement pool in the last few years includes many ex-teachers from the cohort that was hired in the 60s and 70s to teach the baby-boomers as they expanded our school system. With the majority of this "bump" retiring in the 2000s, administrator turnover has been high and thus movement has been a necessity. The result? It is not uncommon for our principals to be at a school for less than 4 years before moving on, and the average age of principals has steadily lowered as the retirement gap has been filled.

This trend may halt, again due to demographics, but for the moment we are in the midst of a school leadership culture that features long-term tenants and short-term landlords.

What does this mean for school communities? Assuming that the pattern is not going to change over the next few years, it means that all staff have some challenges they need to face unless they wish to practice resignation. Administrators have to develop portable skill-sets that include robust communication skills, flexible strategies, capacity for inclusion, and ability to dialogue. This is in addition to their regular and important duties related to student success & discipline, management of staff, budgets, parents, etc. This also means that teachers need to own the culture at their schools, take responsibility for program success, be proactive with staff development, and be mindful of their role in making collective efforts at student growth and sucesss work. This is in addition to their regular duties related to teaching & learning in the classroom, curriculum design, marking, etc.

Is the challenge presented by the trend any different than it has ever been? Perhaps not, but to be blunt, teachers have to realize that adminstrators are guests at their schools, 2-4 years, and that teachers have to step up to the plate and provide or share leadership on key areas that used to be outside their purview. Or they can hope for the best and simply shut out as much of the school culture as they can and focus on their classroom. I'll admit I am torn between these stances: do I make the success of the whole school (students, staff, parents, other stakeholders, the physical plant) my concern, or do I retreat into my class and try to do my best by my students. They are not often complimentary as they require different investments of time and energy. For adminstrators, there needs to be a recognition that their legacy will likely have more to do with the relationships they foster and less to do with their impact on policy, progams, and long-term impacts on school culture. These latter pursuits are hard to achieve in 2-4 years, yet positive relationships can begin immediately.

I'll stop at that... their is a strong role for "vision" that I haven't really introduced into these arguments. Likely as not it would change my basic thesis. I have also not looked at how educational philosophy trends (local or otherwise) factor into the movements and challenges I've mentioned, nor have I speculated as to what the changing role of teachers has been over the long-term... blurring the parent vs teacher line, for example. All this will have to wait for another time.

Peace and Remembrance

2010-11-11T06:42:00.009-08:00

My daughter came home from school and asked "what does peace mean for you?" I think I told her "when you and your brother get along."
What a tough question., though. I took this as a Remembrance Day question, so that helps me frame the ideas I have.

War is hell. The veteran that spoke at my school's RD ceremony reminded us of this, the dead, the devastation. There is some glory in war, honour in service and sacrifice, but I think few would agree that war is the best way to solve problems. I think wars are an easy way out for countries who have alternatives, and I think that wars usually create more problems than they resolve. We tend to remember WWI and WWII in RD, maybe Korea and Afghanistan, and we emphasize the defense of freedom and the sacrifice of lives. WWI in particular, the origin of our Nov.11th pause, features prominently. I understand the need to remember -- as a Socials teacher most of what I do is remember -- but I think we often forget the other important stuff, like why WWI took place and what it accomplished. We need to confront the ugly past, even when the cause and consequence don't support the glorious view we take of our history. We also focus on "our wars" and are hesitant to make the connections to Rwanda, the Congo, Pakistan, etc.

Red poppy, white poppy, green or black, I think we need to invest more thought and meaning into the symbol rather than being so symbolic with our meanings. I don't think a white poppy is disrespectful, I think it is an attempt to tell a more inclusive and historically relevant story about what is important to remember. We owe it to the war dead to find ways of solving problems without resorting to war. That would be the ultimate respect born out of remembrance.

sense of relief

2010-10-09T15:43:00.006-07:00

Nice to have a change... for five years (2005-2010), besides teaching I've had the small extra job of P.O.S.R. at D.P. Todd (sounds awful, I know, but it stands for Position of Special Responsibility). This involved Technology planning and assistance, Advocacy at school and in the district on educational issues, attending lots of meetings, supporting teaching & learning projects, and writing the annual "School Plan for Student Success." I learned a great deal from this role, not all positive, but it has certainly reinforced the need for me to pursue and model rigorous inquiry and self-governance. Our school system tries to accomplish too many things* (see below) to be great at any one of them, so it comes down to individuals and groups working together in free association for mutual benefit to achieve some of these things in context. To be succinct, I haven't got a lot of faith in groupthink, and I think this impacted the kind of job I was able to do as P.O.S.R. I think vision has a strong role to play in education, I just don't believe it comes from the places we normally look to find it. And I'm glad to take a break from it... I had unrealistic expectations of the system I worked in and found I had to keep setting the bar lower when trying to get issues taken seriously. This is not a criticism of my employer, but rather an admission that I was probably focused on criteria that was not shared by my superiors... my bad, so to speak.

*What does our system try to do?...
providing a general liberal arts education vs vocational training, addressing specific student needs while managing large groups of students, preparing citizens vs preparing consumers, sheltering/nurturing/warehousing young people during working hours, in-school attention vs distance learning, fostering inquiry vs coercing a focus on set outcomes, teaching responsibility vs vicarious parenting, socialization vs assessment of academic progress, class vs school vs distirct vs provincial-based goals and decisions. These and more each have their champions, their trends and philosophic underpinnings, and their political tendencies, and are at times incongruous, especially at the larger levels but even within a single classroom at times.

Trudeau's Memoirs

2010-07-28T23:00:00.008-07:00

I just got around to reading this in the last couple of months... wow. I've got a lot more respect for someone who was already a hero to me, a deeper understanding of the Just Society, and a real sense that Canada would be in big trouble if he wouldn't have come to power. The vision of a caring, creative, resourceful middle power, not American but also not European is in such contrast to our current government's view. Trudeau's ego was a bit stunning at times, but admitted mistakes, too. Not to kind on Bourassa, Levesque, or Mulroney, but it's easy to see why.

thoughts on assessment

2010-07-02T17:59:00.005-07:00

What kinds of values do I hope to encounter as I explore assessment?

fair, balanced, and reasonable measurement
balance of skills, knowledge, habits, means (process/path), and ends (outcome/goal)
strong orientation towards development of student identity
building self-governance, self-reliance, and responsibility in students
building community without coercion, interdependence not dependence
rigorous learning related to relevant and meaningful learning outcomes
respect for student inquiry and constructivist learning
creativity and diversity (multiple modes of knowing)
learning that is embodied, holistic, and well-rounded

What kind of assessment structures do I currently use in Social Studies?

1. Verifications of learning outcomes -- usually open-notes quizzes or assignments. These require the students to have made sense of some connected learning outcomes, most commonly through some notes or gathered evidence that answer focus questions and more detailed content questions. This tool is formative in that students are required to revise their work and responses if they have not met expectations on the first attempt (≥67%), and can also use other methods and formats to express their learning. It is “for/as learning” in that the assessment activity is a chance to reflect critically on the evidence gathered by students and prepares them for other learning outcomes and assessments in the course. It is also integrated (formative/summative/progressive), as their best mark for each verification is recorded, and their lowest verification score is dropped.

2. Projects -- usually long-term unit assignments and creative demonstrations of learning. Assessed with a rubric (usually one for students, one for teacher). I give a basic set of options for completion, often with use of exemplars, and sometimes with expected outcomes and products (e.g. a piece or writing or a class presentation). This tool is formative in that students are requested to revise their project if they have not met expectations on the first attempt, and can also use other methods and formats to devise their projects and express their learning.

3. Unit Tests -- summative assessments, usually closed notes, but sometimes taking the form of an assignment. Students not satisfied with (or missing) their first attempt are given an alternate test to complete (e.g. re-write), and can repeat this as many times as they like

The message is that i am interested in having students show what they have learned, by the methods I have designed or by the methods they have designed (by choice, i.e. if they have not met expectations or they wish to pursue another mode of expression).

I don’t give unalterable zeroes -- I have null scores that students can turn into a mark ≥67% any time within the current term. These scores turn into zeros if the student refuses all opportunities to meet expectations and reasonably address the learning outcomes. Why? Students can demonstrate they have learned something interesting or important any time it makes sense for them to do so. They get to decide when they are ready and they can decide what it is (if anything) they have learned.

I have due dates, but I do not have late penalties. The due dates usually coincide with natural breaks between topics, and often involve some class sharing (non-marks motivation). The due dates apply to unit projects, of which the number is few and the intake manageable.

What kinds of learning activities and formative assessment tools are used within these structures?

In no particular order, and probably incomplete: notes & written questions, exercises & problems, essays, maps, reports, presentations, timelines, readings, debates, webs & clusters, library work, posters, tests, portfolios, graphs, diagrams & drawing, scales & rubrics (teacher, student peer), journals, arts-based interpretations, group projects & groupwork (e.g. charts), video logs, field work, blogs, student-teacher conferences, digital mashups, direct questioning

How committed am I to this scheme?

I have set some core assessment values in front of me for 15 years, and every change I have made has been an attempt to draw closer to a system that embodies these values, more-or-less. I usually look at minor changes whenever they make sense, and I try to keep major practices in place for at least two years. I am currently one year in to a major set of changes, probably the fifth time I have done this. My values are, of course, the result of my own identity trajectory and an attempt at authenticity, but they also form an external horizon of significance, partly derived from the strong influences by the circle of friends and colleagues who have modeled successful pedagogy for me, and by the authors that have attended to my imagination.

How are students affected by my assessment practice?

The changes I've made to assessment over time affect students differently. Mainly, my concern has been how to find out if the students actually know or understand what is expected (learning outcomes and broader curriculum). Self-motivated students usually find a way to excel in any assessment context. Struggling and at-risk students have difficulty in almost every context as well. The rest will usually rise to the expectations that are set for them, but may often try to get through by minimally meeting expectations. I have developed structures now for helping (1) the weaker students meet expectations, (2) for ensuring that students in the middle are in fact meeting expectations and addressing the learning outcomes, and also (3) for any student to have a means to exceed expectations. These are all structures in addition to the regular assessment that establishes student achievement in my courses, and they involve the use of formative work, rubrics regarding expectations, alternate assessment, and multiple attempts. Some “quick research” on this semester’s classes reveals the following observations.

(1) within two weeks of the course’s end, about eight students of my current eighty-three were at risk of failing the course or term. Two of these would probably not thrive in any sound assessment regime within a regular academic stream, and six have some very clear and realistic means available to them to get through. These six would not have passed under the assessment scheme I have used in the past, and they will probably do and learn more under my present scheme. As of the semester end, the two did indeed fail, and the six ALL were motivated to complete some missing work, address some weaker learning outcomes, and fulfill some expectations regarding demonstration of understanding.

(2) I have a much clearer view of what students know -- as far as marks it has meant that most students are "repelled" from a mark in the 60s -- either they fall below this (no work handed in, no catch-up, no re-writes, etc.) or they have latched on to the support structures I've provided, found a way to meet the learning outcomes, and are getting 67% or better. It has definitely focused who I need to spend time with for certain purposes -- help for some, deeper learning for others.

(3) this is relatively untapped -- I've had only a handful of students try this out during this school year. Most students getting marks in the 80s or 90s are usually quite content and did not pursue more.

Success for all? 81 of 83 passed with an average mark of 75% (11 C-s, 10 Cs, 9 C+s, 30 Bs, 21 As). There are so many reasons why this is the way it is, but it appears to me an improvement on my classes from a few years ago, with no loss of “learning” as far as I can tell (i.e. I’m not “easing up” on expectations, if anything they are higher). The two that failed will be supported in an alternate program that meets their significant needs.
What was my previous assessment policy?

Same tools and similar structures, but they were used less “formatively” -- no requirement to meet expectations, less second chances, and 2 days dues, 2 days late (assignments due over two classes, then accepted for two more classes with 20% deduction). I used a series of technology solutions for dealing with missed or below-expectations work, and I did not allow rewrites on unit tests.

Why did I change it?

1. I saw other teachers using methods with their class and achieving similar goals more successfully
my understanding of multi-modal literacy convinced me that students needed a variety of ways to demonstrate learning that were authentic and elegant

2. the changes helped me draw closer to some of my values such as self-governance and non-coercion
the reading and research I have done on the inquiry method and role of student identity in engaged learning, as well as my work on ecosystem theory in education

3. my method did nothing for the students most at risk, it was superfluous to the high achievers, and it did not challenge the students in-between to wake up and try to really succeed at something

4. some students would “muddle through” and aim for the bare minimum in order to achieve 50%; the message sent was that mediocrity was encouraged and rewarded

What assessment tools or practices have I used through-out my career (sacred cows)?

open-notes assessments (test what they know as “larger selfs” not confined to a brain)
some form of self-assessment on major projects (what did you get out of it?)
some basic acknowledgement that student identity is the curriculum (the medium is the message)
reality timelines: the closer to the original assessment event, the more detailed and objective the marking and feedback
strong role for fairness: I want students’ final marks to reflect the degree to which they seized the opportunity to learn
not interested in marking for the sake of marking, e.g. collecting notes to check for completion or assigning new homework to see if they’ll work at home and then checking it off
students are ultimately responsible for their own learning

What should I probably do more of?

I’d like to use more co-creation of assessment tools, criteria, and timeline with students. I need to create shorter, tighter assessments more closely tied to focus questions, some of which need to be generated by students (inquiry-method). I’d also like to ensure that students know in advance how the assessment relates to marks, and to wean students from being motivated by marks and replacing this with intrinsic rewards and self-determined indicators of success.

What do I make of the current (e.g. SD57) emphasis on Assessment for Learning and some of the associated pressures on policy & practice?

1. I’ve come across some very good ideas, many of which I think I use in one way or another, and have used increasingly with time (e.g. more use of formative assessment, more use of multiple attempts to demonstrate learning based on student’s self-developed approach, more use of self-assessment).

2. Most of what I’ve read on assessment in the last six years seems to me to be educationally sound with some exceptions in the area of using coercion to follow up on assessment results and the “guide on the side vs sage on the stage” metaphor. Some of the very best and most successful teachers I know, and have ever known, are story-tellers with spartan assessment techniques.

3. A general skepticism that “AFL” proponents have not fully grasped context -- the realities of the classroom, the limits of a teacher’s work environment, and the nature of our public education configuration in B.C. preclude certain idealistic, trend-based, or expensive practices. For example, the district plan for student success speaks about focused support in every classroom and with every teacher to address the “knowing/doing gap.” How have they determined what teachers know, whether it is relevant or important for them to know this, and what is gained or lost in a shift in practice related to what should be known. I’m not convinced of the problem that needs fixing.

4. “AFL” has been blended with PLCs, SPSS, Continuous Improvement models, and Data-driven Decision-making as part of a then/now mashup, a shift from the bad old ways to the good new ways. Combining educational theories like this is incredibly complicated and often contradictory and seems to be done in order to convince practitioners that coordination exists when none is needed nor asked for. Criticizing specific past practices (with relevant evidence) can be beneficial, but to sweep away “the old way” is not respectful of what has worked well in the past nor does it reflect the incredible diversity that exists among current pedagogy.

5. To the extent that “AFL” has been a “conversation” I applaud the implication of respect for teacher autonomy; I also fear that when these conversations have been invitation-only, many teachers voices’ have not been heard, and yet the “conversation” seems to be the first step towards policy language. First it is a popular theory, then it is saturates the district “offerings,” then it becomes a recommendation, then an expectation. I appreciate that to date the plan to implement assessment strategies has been to provide opportunities (e.g. learning grants) as opposed to the use of directives.

6. Our district plan for student success makes some assumptions that a particular approach to “AFL” is the best way to achieve it’s goals and that teachers and administrators should make the “paradigm shift.” This does not seem congruent with the “AFL” strategy of allowing learners to be actively involved. In other words, if we expect students to construct their learning, we should expect teachers to do the same in regards to assessment. Assimilating an externally-determined teaching philosophy, even if the goals are the same as our own, takes away from teachers’ ownership of professional learning and bypasses a key step in the inquiry process.

What are my views on adopting school-wide assessment policies, non-binding or otherwise?

I believe, generally, that a compromise or “median” position does not serve a school well as it excludes the creative and robust theory and practice that exists on either side of the median. Compromises work best when a single solution is needed to address a single problem but multiple solutions exist. What we are facing in our school is not a single problem, but a set of conditions (most of which are not problematic) to which an appropriate response is a variety of approaches, each matched to a condition. To state this for my own practice, I believe, with thought and evidence to back it up, that what I do is successful, intelligent, fair, non-coercive, and focused on student learning. I can think of ways to move this “forward” as they say, but to align with an unnecessary compromise that might erode what I am developing is a “move backward.” Many aspects of an assessment discussion will benefit from cross-curricular collaboration, but much of it needs to be worked out with my Social Studies and classroom context. I can govern myself and be a teacher for my students, but it is not just for me to impose norms on the unwilling or take something that is individual in nature and apply it to a perceived community without appreciating difference or context.

What would be my recommendation for staff regarding assessment?

Continue articulating to each other and to students how and why you structure assessment the way you do. Be willing to adjust, change, experiment, and take risks with assessment. Probably the most difficult and important person you have to convince for permission to change is yourself. Beware of global solutions to hypothetical problems. Avoid sameness for the sake of being the same (this is frightening); it is more interesting to differentiate in all areas (including assessment) and look for internal consistencies. Trade a discussion about zeros and penalties for a more productive and transformative discussion about assessment values and what we intend for our students.

spinning my wheels

2010-03-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

i still hear guitars in the air as we sat in the sand

where the wild things are

2010-02-28T08:25:00.010-08:00

Just finished the 2009 film version. Like most people my age, I read that book a thousand times as a kid, imagined myself as Max whenever things weren't working out. This connection goes deep, and so watching the film was difficult. I felt as if my own subconscious was being payed just as Max's was given agency in the film. Powerful and very satisfying on some level, but I'm left a bit disturbed and I assume the fim is aimed at adults who remember the book, not for kids.

...?

Please don't segregate my child

2010-01-24T23:11:00.007-08:00

The challenges facing our schools in Prince George are stunning. With demographic change, declining enrollment, transfer of provincial burdens, and spending of money on new school construction and facelifts, we are short $7 million. Sadly, there will be layoffs and cutbacks throughout the district. Shrinking schools, many of which are below 30% capacity, face "right-sizing" (as the superintendent put it). Rural students will face long commutes in exchange for a sustainable school with a range of services and programs. I completely get this; the district, due to past decisions and current economic crunches, has to cut programs that are not sustainable and look for ways to trim the fat off its self-admittedly top-heavy infrastructure (p 41 of the Sustainability Report).

The part that confuses me is why viable and successful programs have to be eliminated at the same time.

We have four successful dual-track French immersion schools in Prince George (English and French classes side-by-side). We've enrolled our daughter in one of these so she could learn French and reflect our vision of what it means to be an inclusive English Canadian in a bilingual nation scarred by separatism and racism. We have to drive her there (10 minutes each way), but it’s a school grounded in and reflective of its neighbourhood, the kind of place where English and French have a legacy of mutual understanding reinforced from kindergarten to Grade 7. We are very proud of our school and want to be involved with the school's success.

The district is proposing the idea of a segregated school where all the French Immersion students in our district would attend, no other options. The intended school needs expensive and extensive renovations to be ready for this, and the timeline is set for September 2010 (allowing two summer months for renos). It will likely require portables to house 650 students (it was designed for 450) or they'll simply have to cap enrollment. Families with one child suited for immersion and another not ready for it will now face the choice of sending siblings to two schools, or withdrawing one from the immersion program. This is segregation and it does not appeal to us on many levels.

Integrated French immersion is something our district does well and should continue to support. It needs tweaking, not dismantling. There are many alternatives to segregation (my wife and I have figured out at least 6!) that would save more money and keep one our district's success stories intact. I really hope the elected school trustees take French segregation off the table and focus on areas of decline, largesse, and mitigating the cutbacks on affected communities.

Going Prorogue

2010-01-10T08:38:00.003-08:00

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15213212

Further evidence that we have a vacuum in leadership, this latest move by Harper is not just a slap on democracy, it's a slap on our intelligence. Harper is banking on voter apathy and Canadians being cynical about what happens in Parliament. What an amazing leadership style -- count on apathy, push aside the democratic structures that normally keep governments accountable and press on with new propaganda.

Olympics, yeah right. Mulroney managed to run parliament during the 1988 Calgary Olympics... they took a one-week scheduled break so the politicians could attend events, and then back to business. This one is different -- the prorogue means all gov't legislation is dead, all committees (and accountability) are suspended, and the gov't can disregard the parliamentary order to turn over documents related to Afghan detainees.

Here's a nice quote on the subject of prorogation: “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they decided to prorogue Parliament... I’m sorry if I sound a little cynical. This is a government (for which) the rules of engagement don’t apply. They’ll move the goal post, change the boundaries and bribe the referee.”

- Deputy Conservative Leader Peter MacKay commenting on unfounded rumours that the Liberal government planned to prorogue in 2005 (Nanaimo Daily News, July 18, 2005)

proliferation of resemblances

2009-11-24T21:56:00.004-08:00

I had a curious lesson today... not really planned but turned out great. By not really I mean my course calendar said "Complete 4E, intro 4F" -- sounds exciting, eh? We did two current event (Global video) stories: troubles with a ferry on the crossing from Rupert to Skidegate, and a helicopter tour of 2010 Olympics venues. Then a video clip on the 1858 BC Goldrush and a lesson looking back from 1858 on what we've already learned and a look ahead to BC joining Canada. Hmm... this could have gone many ways, but a couple of connections were made and this turned out to be a good day (my criteria for a good day is that my two SS10 classes go well... Geog12 is always cool especially today a tour of the PG Wastewater Facility... poo and machines!). What did they connect? The Queen Charlottes are isolated... linked to the mainland by a single ferry route and a few other expensive options. Whistler is isolated from Vancouver... linked by a single hwy beset by rockslide and debris torrents. BC in the mid 1800s was isolated from Canada, linked by a long boat ride and an American railway. Each is/was an outpost, an experiment in a particular set of cultural, economic, and environmental adaptations, and in need of an injection of some kind. Each was also nervous... QC because of the Queen of the North ferry sinking (which we got into, hanky-panky on the bridge and all), Whistler because of the rockslides, and BC because they were inundated with Americans during the goldrush and broke afterwards. For a four-walled affair, it was pretty good. There was even the obligatory tangent on the reconstruction of Barkerville in 1958 as it was told to me by C.P. Lyons and stories about the eccentrics that Barkerville attracts. A bit on bias, on people that get paid to say things a certain way, on wave motion in shallow water and differential friction, on fiord bathymetry, and about people who flee mainstream society in search of alternatives (aka Haida Gwaii, Whistler, Barkerville). Great day, great classes. O.K. with my career choice today!

The Fine Art of Procrast

2009-11-15T12:58:00.001-08:00

IT

2009-10-25T22:42:00.008-07:00

"It is really raining outside" my 5-yr-old daughter Lu says as we are driving towards the art gallery for Sunday afternoon drop-in crafts (our alternative to church). It was more sleet than rain, maybe even snow, as the road was slushy and the cityscape was whitening. I wasn't sure if she was saying this because we had an argument about rain vs snow. Earlier she said that snow was slower, rain was faster. Hard to argue with that.

"IT", I thought...it is raining? I ask "who is IT?"

She pauses and responds "the clouds have decided to really rain today."

"The clouds decided? The clouds are IT?"

"Yes daddy."

I could have drawn this out.. the purpose of IT. I considered and then jettisoned the notion of having our monthly discussion on whether something exists beyond ourselves, something higher, something lower. something connecting, something animating, but we had scooched by city hall, the art gallery was in view, and we started talking about parking lots and swimming pools and who would be in the art gallery, etc. 2-yr-old Finn, of course, was just watching the sleet as Lu and I yakked on and on like the external processors we are. Sort of.

While this was happening my mind dwelt on the nature of IT, the fascination of why we construct an IT to balance the world or prop up a supposition, an OTHER to act as scapegoat, deity, friend, or foil, a THEY to posit origins, causality, and establish credentials. I wondered whether the use of IT correlated to the rise of individualism (and the reminder that I need to read Charles Taylor's book Sources of the Self), or if IT (the referring IT, maybe the cleft IT) fulfills a need to be feel connected to a community... as in IT takes a while to do this, IT's interesting that you say that. Maybe IT is a grammatical lens on the origin of consciousness (IT is the self that makes things be, but IT is also the rest of THEM that makes a self possible). I tried to analyze a stereotyped modern perspective on self... was the digitally-raised teen more reliant on the construct of IT than someone of my generation? Was the stereotype valid considering that I also believe that SELF drifts into OTHER in a virtual environment. I wandered into Daniel Dennett's ideas and the arguments about who the SELF was that constructed IT and I was also thinking about the renovations to city hall and the compacted soil, the rainwater sitting on the mud midst the elms and ashes. Also, was IT rainwater if iIT came from sleet? All these things came to conversation and to mind as we drove from Patricia and George St to 7th and Quebec... 2.5 blocks!!! Amazing I didn't crash into a tree. Is IT any wonder why I appear to many to be drifting off or distracted? This junk swirls around in my brain all day long and I can't shut IT off. Someone please help me and switch my brain for one that focuses on deadlines and gets things done.

refreshing/reminding

2009-10-02T13:51:00.007-07:00

I've had two experiences in my Socials 10 classes in the last week that have refreshed my perspective and reminded me of how important a role student inquiry plays in meaningful learning.

1) I was talking about generational differences and used my parents/their grandparents as examples. I asked a few student to volunteer evidence and soon everyone was turning to a neighbour and chatting. I was about to enter "teacher-mode" and get everyone to shut up so I could move on to my next point when I realized they were doing exactly what they should... making connections between curriculum and identity, between suggested learning and prior knowledge... they were, literally every one of them, swapping stories from their family about heritage skills, traditions, history. I stopped my "interference" and walked away for a few minutes.

2) I tried a "pioneer experience" role-play in class and the students went wild with it... they're 2 hours into it now and are still enthusiastic about making deals, banding together, selling off their children, trading a plough for 5 muskets, swapping blacksmithing for cobbling. etc. Both classes would have kept this up for days. Chaos, noise, no props at all, just imagination and conversation and pretty much everyone is "on task" with making connections between curriculum and identity. A wealth of unexpected and powerful outcomes. A real treat from a generation that is stereotyped as lacking imagination and having no attention span.

Pure Vanity...

2009-09-20T22:06:00.023-07:00

My friend Rob inspired me with his lookalike post... I always get Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry confused myself. Anyways, I found site that runs your pic through a celeb database to find a facial match... I'm o.k with Gary Oldman as he is one of my favorite actors

imogen heap

2009-09-20T21:46:00.003-07:00

Here's the day you hoped would never come
Don't feed me violins
just run with me through rows of speeding cars.
The papercuts the cheating lovers
The coffee's never strong enough
i know you think it's more than just bad luck

Sleeping pills know sleeping dogs lie
never far enough away
Glistening in the cold sweat of guilt
I've watched you slowly winding down for years
You can't keep on like this...
now's a bad a time as any

There there baby
it's just text book stuff
it's in the ABC of growing up
Now now darling
oh don't kill yourself
cause none of us were angels
and you know I love you yeah

it's ok by me..
it's ok by me..
it's ok by me..it was a long time ago

------------------------------------

sometimes the right set of metaphors just.................... hits the spot

Muslim Enlightenment

2009-07-07T08:35:00.013-07:00

I'm coming to the end of Ali's book on fundamentalism(s) and he is carefully trying to explain how, as a critic of religion and believer in Enlightenment values, he can nonetheless sound the call for a much-needed Reformation within Islam... his take on the nature of this justification struck me:

"The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppressions, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance. Why then should I abstain from religious criticism?" ch.22/p337

After a thoroughly eye-opening and depressing read about political corruption, slaughter, rape, theft, and mayhem in the Middle East and elsewhere, some by fundamentalists, some by imperialists, some by murderous power-mongers, I am glad to get to the bit where he looks with some hope towards the future. He bemoans the lack of Nobel Prizes in the Muslim world , the lack of political, philosophical, and religious debate that was once present in Islam and was so powerful in shaking up Europe. He speculates on the chance to skip right past the neo-liberal global agenda for commodification enabled by "modernity" and move on to something new... if only Islam could open up real debate and scholarship and separate state and mosque.

I expected to learn a great deal about the layers of Muslim society past and present... blown away by this actually. I also hoped to read a different perspective on 911. One of the unexpected outcomes, though, is the idea that someone who has stripped their faith of religion and embraced humanist ideals still has a valid perspective on religion. This is obvious to most people, I'm sure (that the reformed/deformed can and should engage the rest) but it is often these simple ideas that grab me, give me something to build on.

To be fair to Ali's thesis, he makes pains to show how religion is most often the vehicle or instrument of oppression rather than the ultimate cause, especially in the case of American fundamentalism, which lies beneath the surface throughout many if its international blood-lettings (I'll save that for another post)...

"Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends. It's true that this is not the whole story. There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves. The Catholic Church victimised worker or peasant priests who organised against oppression. The Iranian Ayatollahs dealt severely with Muslims who preached in favour of a social radicalism." ch.22/p.329

I am reminded of how education on climate change, peace, and women's rights, and HIV/Aids (to name a few) still have an uphill fight within evangelical denominations in Canada. In the Mennonite Brethren church I grew up in, the environmental movement throughout the 1980s and 90s was considered "New Age" (of this world, or Satan), something to be viewed with suspicion. On the question of peace, a telling example came with the first Gulf War in 1990. How would this war for oil be met by our belief in non-resistance and the stance of non-participation? After some pressure for some kind of response, a prayer meeting was held - not to ask for peace or and end to conflict, certainly not to condemn violence or examine causes - but to wish Bush, Sr. and other leaders wisdom as they made tough decisions. It marked a key moment in the church -- Anabaptist peace theology got locked in the closet. On the question of rights, the same church continues to bar women from serving as elders (trustees), in violation of it's own Conference principles (from 1985 to the present) and probably the Charter of Rights. The subject of gay rights & acceptance wouldn't even make it past the front doors (please please someone prove me wrong on any of this). I am sure this and others evangelical churches do remarkable things, and that most individual attenders might not even realize these issues exist in their midst, but if they want to rise above the history of institutional oppression, they need to collectively engage with tough issues in the world they presume to affect (start with peace and equality).

So... adieu Tariq Ali... I will never think about Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Israel, or the United States the same way again.

What I'm reading

2009-06-27T21:27:00.006-07:00

Clash of Fundamentalisms by Tariq Ali (see interview on his even newer book). After he establishes his leftist credentials, he moves into a stunning and learned history of Islam from its origins to the present, particularly its abuses by murderous power-hungry despots and imperialists alike. That's as far as I've got, but it's heading towards an early (2002) analysis of 911. I'd like to follow up with Rushdie's The Satanic Verses!

Dressing the Assessment

2009-06-27T11:40:00.007-07:00

I read an interesting op-ed piece in the PG CItizen... Student Academic Excellence Deserves Recognition, basically arguing that removing academic awards in favour of you-learned-alot awards is a bad idea; competition and achievement are valuable and relate to actual learning.

I'm 50/50 on the argument but the causal "debate" I detect is one I find very interesting and it reminded me of two questions that have been on my mind for a couple of weeks (well o.k. since 1994): What kind of people is our education system designed to turn out? What is the difference between schooling and learning? I've seen a spate of pro-d, school, district, and teaching & learning initiatives focused on the second question over the last 6 or 7 years, increasing in frequency with a recent focus on assessment-for-learning and varieties of the "PLC™" (professional learning communities). Given the chance to "jump in," I am torn, like many of my most respected colleagues, between the inherent logic of certain ideas (meaningful assessment, clear learning goals, the value of collaboration, the importance of coherent support strategies, etc.) and the willingness of educators to adopt structures and philosophies they haven't critically examined or taken the time to practice or understand. My own dedicated and caring staff seems to struggle with the basic difference between classroom (personal/relational) structures and school (institutional) structures. The idea of "moving forward" spellbinds leaders and followers alike, with the promise that a new set of packaged concepts will seamlessly bridge the personal and institutional domains. It's much like our political system... I believe in democracy but I'm not confident that most people know what it is they are voting for, or can navigate the span between self and society. I don't think my staff is any more reactionary or fickle than any other group, I just that our educational culture dumbs us down and erodes the middle ground between the two. The result is a fear of theory by folks who are otherwise skilled and learned. Anyways, I'm seriously digressing... I should get to my point.

I've been as guilty as the rest of shoving kids through the turnstile of schooling, of not equating success with learning. I think I've built a rich learning environment with many opportunities to demonstrate understanding, a place where the ecology of identity is as much the curriculum as "social studies." But too many of my students (always seems to be 1 or 2 per class but maybe it's more?)) who have scraped through with 50% or better would not be able to articulate a genuine response to 50% of my intended learning outcomes. That's O.K. in some ways -- many of the learning outcomes are and should be student-generated, some of them can not be found in the curriculum guide, and others relate to the great social functions of our education system (like training kids to follow instructions, be good workers, and stay off the streets so their parents can be good workers). So, I don't pretend that my panoply of learning outcomes (that I find interesting as a "Socials" guy) are necessary for students to be whole or educated or even employable; thus, many who do not meet expectations get a passing grade anyways. Nonetheless, I wonder if I underestimate my students I teach, maybe they will work to "pass" whatever level the bar is set at.

Hmm... I pause here to say that I've had a cynical week, emotionally and intellectually draining, so take all this with a grain of salt... I'm a lousy blogger, only writing when I want to vent. Also, I'll freely acknowledge that I've stolen many ideas here from friends like Rob and Ian and even Norm and Derk!

Solutions? Here's what I'm going to try next year in order to close this philosophic gap (success vs learning). I'm sifting through all the courses I teach, and I'm reducing the content to a short list of basic questions to be answered, although demonstrating mastery of the material will still require some serious thinking, working, and learning. I'll continue to use the formative assessments I've developed over the last 8 years, but I'll use two summative assessments (test & a project) to gauge whether a students has met expectations (2/3 of the learning outcomes) or not. Met the goal? Marks are recorded and all the rest is bonus. Did not meet the goal? No marks are recorded and the student has one more teacher-directed opportunity to demonstrate learning, followed by as many student-led attempts as he/she wants. I won't coerce learning from my students, but I also will not let them drift away for lack of opportunity. To force learning (especially as interpreted by the state or even a teacher) is arrogant, something that belongs in a taliban madrasa, not in a free society. I also want my practice to swing (wildly) towards an inquiry model, one in which students will challenge not only themselves and my classroom structures, but the group-think encountered in wider circles (school, community, beyond). Realistically, this means that 6 or 7 kids in every class are going to be confused when a minimal effort does not guarantee success, but are confronted with some new questions (for them) -- what am I learning? how can I express this? how'd that work out?

I predict that the net result will be both higher achievement, both in my "schooled" sense of success with learning outcomes and also in the self-esteem sense as students are able to answer questions (theirs and mine) with some confidence (maybe after multiple attempts). That brings it back to the Citizen article I guess; I believe the author was trying to connect these. There's more to this of course but this much at least I needed to get out... catharsis or whatever else comes of it.

Election Day in BC choices

2009-05-12T10:45:00.002-07:00

Why I want to vote Green... their platform represent the kind of society I'd like to live in: sustainable development, just and caring society, protection of resources for future generations.

Why I don't want to vote Green... under our current system it would be a vote for an ideal, but not a vote that could elect in my riding where strategy is important.

Why I want to vote Liberal... I think the carbon tax is a good start for dealing with CO2 emissions, and their promise (which is just a promise) to negotiate treaties is the right thing to do.

Why I don't want to vote Liberal... the run-of-river projects are scary, sounds like a resource sell-off, Gordo and the rest are capitalism crazy. The education minister is out to lunch and she represents my riding. The scandals don't help either.

Why I want to vote NDP... best chance to stop-and-think on the run-of-river projects, best chance to change my local representative. Balance of capitalism and socialism.

Why I don't want to vote NDP... screechy campaign, focused on bad liberals and head-in-the-sand on the carbon tax. Bad memories of Glen Clark (bring back Barrett).

Why I want to support the STV... provide better electable choices, represent a larger and more diverse voice in legislature. Cool election result to break down with a Socials class.

Why I don't want to support the STV... might mess with local representation, esp. for rural areas (although this is a problem now, too).

moving forward

2009-04-01T13:09:00.004-07:00

Wow do I ever dislike this cliche... a handy and trendy catch-all that suggests "we've made a decision, we hope it's the right one, we'd better call it progress so nobody challenges our assumptions." It's like Billy Bragg's song: Just because you're better than me/ Doesn't mean I'm lazy / Just because you're going forwards / Doesn't mean I'm going backwards.

Still, when I think of moving forward I a reminded that we finally put the toilet paper back on the toilet paper holder a couple of weeks ago. We took it off 4 years ago when our daughter could crawl up to the roller and start spooling off heaps of tp. She was barely weaned from this when our son came along with just as much passion for lining the floor with shwipes. They done with that now, and although there are still diapers and plastic toys and crayons and teddies and half-done art projects everywhere all around, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. A tenth of my life has whizzed by with no toilet paper handy, always just out of reach on the counter. The little kid things, the toys and crayons and what not, some find cute or sentimental, but we find annoying. We can't wait to graduate to the time when the kids are more self-sufficient and conversational. At this point, it doesn't look like either one will be the pensive bookworm or reflective observer (dream come true), they will be quick-thinking fiery clumsy strong funny, but not quiet.

Eastwood's Gran Torino

2009-03-19T20:56:00.010-07:00

I guess this is my movie pick of the year... which says a lot to me. First, It was good -- the redemption factor of Unforgiven and the very direct film-making style of Million Dollar Baby. I like a movie that delivers the forms of "modernity" and leaves the abstraction to the viewer... bizarre stories with no real endings or resolution leave me exasperated. I'll take postmodernism for spirituality, politics, and philosophic discourse, but I'll stick with modernism for art, film, architecture, and food. Second, when I think of what the film does to me, I am reminded of some of my other favourite films like Deliverance, The Mission, Clearcut, Apocalypse Now, and Rupert's Land -- intact stories with round characters, a generous pace, and a complex of values which emerge from the telling. I could see it coming but was still floored by Walt Kowalski laying down his life in an act of nonviolence (yet no less bravely/insanely than a Dirty Harry move). Third, I loved the references to his other film characters... especially the spitting of large wads of chaw-juice. Fourth, I liked the car, even though he never drove it... the nostalgia reminds me of my 1972 Dodge Charger which I got to drive from 1986-1991 ish. Fifth, the racial epithets were handled well... the idea of slandering and denigrating everything "Other" (saving acts of kindness which were given tender treatment) was an interesting way to convey time (i.e. time periods), history, and values. Sixth, it says a not because I don;'t really read much anymore (when will that change?) and I've seen a fest of movies in the last few months so yeah this one rose to the top.

Digital Storytellers Pro-D session

2009-03-06T15:06:00.005-08:00

How can/do our students tell us about what they are learning? How is technology helping or hurting in the demonstration of
learning? How can we build on this?

Thanks for helping us address these questions today. Can you add anything to what we talked about today? Could leave a comment about what you got out of the session? Click on the comments link below to leave some feedback.

carts of darkness

2009-03-02T12:25:00.003-08:00

A student reminded me about this one... I remember it was in the news a couple of years ago, some controversy over the ethics of making a film about high-speed homeless cart-riders in North Van. Anyways, here is the full movie -- http://www.nfb.ca/film/carts_of_darkness/ --shorter clips are also available on youtube.

Anthem in N.B.

2009-02-10T09:29:00.005-08:00

You've seen the story? I caught a video story on this again last night, too. A New Brunswick elementary principal (Millet, see pic) decided (with his staff's support) to stop playing the Canadian anthem every morning in response to "inclusion" concerns from some parents. Another parent fired back, making it a patriotism/support our troops issue, her daughter likes the anthem as it reminds her cousin who died in Afghanistan. The principal suggests that the anthem can be played at regular assemblies; the daughter can even lead in O Canada. But... the principal is vilified by his community (threats of violence) and the press (making it out to be a ban on the anthem), thousands of calls and emails (including death threats), even Conservative MPs put on their pointy white Reform hats in Commons and stand up to condemn the principal for his unCanadian actions. To top it off, his N.B. school district superintendant overrules his decision (even though it was a school choice to begin with to play the anthem daily) and the education minister is considering mandating the anthem in all schools.

In my mind, having an anthem played to children every day (just like the Lord's Prayer or American pledge of allegiance, etc.) is a form of indoctrination, a propaganda technique that fits a totalitarian or nationialistic regime but not Canada. I admire quirky rituals and chance to sing in public, but once in a while is fine for flag-waving and musical salutes. I am a creature of the earth on which I was born, a citizen of humanity, a plant grown in a Canadian ecosystem. I do not have to be patriotic to love certain Canadianisms, nor is "country" always right (although it could be always wrong). My wife jokes that Maritimers are messed up with each other and cruel to the "different" and blind to change when it is needed... too bad the "attackers" on this issue fit the stereotype. I am disgusted with the people who trashed the principal (especially the neocon/nutter-mother and the ball-less superintendant) and used ignorant 19th century arguments to do so. I wish we could find him a job in our district... he seemed completely broken on the news last night.

Skookum Presentations!

2008-12-15T16:10:00.014-08:00

So, my two Social Studies 10 classes have been presenting "Heritage" projects for the last few days and I am "caught" (as an old prof used to say) by the powerful sentiments and connections the students have revealed. Their job was to ask some questions of their own past (family trees, interviews, story-gathering, etc.) and report on interesting findings and connections to Canadian history (where do I come from? where do we come from?). We've heard of new languages learned, sod houses built, businesses started, wars fought (one g-g-gfather fought in 3!), and doing things "the old way" (heritage skills). The Irish Potato Famine came up, as did the Royal Wardrobe of Elizabeth I, Japanese internment, the RCAF, racism & residential schools, Ellis Island & Pier 21, the potlatch, the smudge, the Stock Market Crash, Nazi spies in Prince George, escape from terror, family break-ups, sad deaths, and and also times of healing & celebration & humour. I've learned (again) that students are hungry to ask questions when their identity is involved. For example, one student talked about interviewing her grandmother who used to jump on the frozen river and ride rafts of ice... she asked "why don't we do stuff like that anymore?" A student then asked "what will we tell our grandchildren?" Another student suggested her generation watched the world go by: our grandparents talked of their adventures and "we talk about going on facebook" -- many thoughts turned to "what difference will I make in the world, in the lives of others?"

We got to see, and have explained, photo albums, ration cards, old leather books with curious hand-writing, moccasins, teapots, an A.R.P. helmet, and lederhosen. We are, it turns out, Aboriginal, American, Chinese, Dutch, East Indian, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Metis, Phillipino, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Scottish, Slovakian, South African, Syrian, Thai, and Ukrainian, and probably a few more... as one girl said "I'm a typical Canadian Calico kid." We got to eat tea biscuits, samosa, egg tarts, gingerbread cookies, and canned wieners. We thought we were going to meet a cat. The classroom walls are festooned with photos and family trees -- trees shaped like trees, like charts, like maps, and even one shaped like a dream. The students have been wowed by the presentations and many have caught a genealogy bug which they will pursue beyond this course -- "this is something I'm going to look into later" or "I didn't get ahold of this story but I'm going to track it down at Christmas." To all the students who have so thoughtfully made connections with their/our past, I thank-you!!! This project, and these two wonderful Socials classes, will occupy a special place in my memory. I'm talking about it like the semester is done but I wanted to get this out while the gratitude was fresh.

It's just hair!!!

2008-12-04T13:11:00.006-08:00

I'm amazed how many people freaked out when I put in the dreads and then later when I cut them off. Most comments implied that it all meant something. Can't a guy just have long hair or short hair without it being about subversion or complicity with the system? Can't a guy wear a tie without people asking him if he has a job interview? O.K. who am I kidding. I don't really have a tie and I'd have hair 10 feet long if I wasn't going bald. Speaking of subversion, I'm reading a fantastic book right now... "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" (Postman/Weingartner 1968)... one of my dad's old books which found a home in my library. What's amazing is that the "charges" they level against the education system of the 1960s, the slow response to change, the teacher-knows-best attitude, and the factory system of classrooms, could be used effectively today with very little change in syntax or semantics, although I think many modern proponents have hijacked inquiry-based learning for privatization agendas. I am reading it slowly (nothing new there) because it poses many challenges to my teaching practice which are not easy to resolve. Like the dreadlocks, my thoughts are bound tight and hard to work with, but also provide some joy, interest, and concern to others. There's the meaning you can take from my hair.

Paris of the North

2008-05-28T09:57:00.006-07:00

Saw this on the CBC News website story on the big plywood plant fire and subsequent fires in the BCR industrial site in Prince George. The interesting part comes in the comments, where PG's industrial zone is elegantly slandered and someone rebuts... a good case study in heartland/hinterland dynamics!

Punchinello's comment #1 "Yes, Prince George is the Paris of northern BC. This cultural icon, the industrial district is the Champs d'Elysée of the Cariboo with it's famous neo-baroque second empire poured concrete cinder block truck stop. I think it was about to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site too. What a loss."

kristahuot's response: "To Punchinello: I see a Vancouverite has seen fit to grace us all with their perspective on Prince George. Congratulations on knowing the main street in Paris, how extremely worldly and cultured of you. It is industrial cities like Prince George who provide BC's economy with most of its revenue, so this fire is actually more devastating than your comment implies. Many of those hardworking people will be out of jobs, and they are already suffering enough due to the pine beetle infestation and the softwood lumber crisis. I grew up in Prince George, and I lived in Vancouver for 5 years. I've also lived in Toronto and Montreal which are both 5 times the city Vancouver will ever be. Call Prince George whatever you like, but Vancouver as a city is nothing but a cultural black hole, with the artistic merit of a condo developer's sales model made out of used syringes. The beauty in that city is its natural surroundings, not the city itself. The poverty and addiction in Vancouver are an absolute disgrace, something that most Vancouverites turn a blind eye to, while they hang out in Yaletown sipping lattes and toting around tiny dogs. Maybe Main and Hastings can be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site too?"

Romeo

2008-05-28T09:56:00.003-07:00

I had a chance to hear Romeo Dallaire speak to delegates at a Colleges Conference in PG. Wow... he had a few interesting loose ends that left me with some questions (military simplicity vs political ambiguity), but I came away with a renewed sense of the difference between management and leadership. He suggests we have too much of the former and a vacuum of the latter in Canada ("there is no one selecting and maintaining a vision for Canada"). He also suggested that Canada has stumbled onto world power status and thus needs to be more responsible on the world stage in preventing and addressing humanitarian issues (perhaps starting with keeping the Americans accountable for their human rights abuses in Gitmo). He figures the way forward is better cooperation between gov't, military, and NGOs.

All grown up

2008-05-13T09:43:00.004-07:00

My Nephew Matt has moved to Squamish! He's the first of my siblings' kids to leave the nest and has set a unique standard for doing so. After years of biathlon and related training, he is off to work with a world-class team near the 2010 Olympic venue. I think he might be a year too young to compete at Whistler, but he has kicked some butt this year, winning the PG Iceman and grabbing a gold for his age category at biathlon nationals. We're proud of Matt and a bt anxxious, too... will he starve? Will he understand the saltwater and the cedar? Will he fall victim to a shameless timeshare scheme?

Identity Curriculum Technology links

2008-03-06T22:47:00.008-08:00

wikis and currikis - online community used to develop and share open source knowledge and curriculum 
Wikispaces -- http://www.wikispaces.com
PB Wiki -- http://www.pbwiki.com/education.wiki
Curriki -- http://www.curriki.or

blogs - web journals for teachers and students 
Education Blogs -- http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blog
Blogmeister -- http://classblogmeister.com/
Google's Blogger (blogspot) -- http://www.blogger.com/

ipod extras - using portable players for quizzes, notes, references, news feeds 
ipod in education -- http://www.ipodined.org 
iPrep Press -- http://www.ipreppress.com

podcasting - audio (and visual) storytelling for learning, review, expression 
Zencast -- http://www.zencast.com 
Variety of podcasts -- http://www.podcast.net 
Variety of podcasts -- http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html 

tags and social bookmarking - labels on web entries and web-published bookmarks for easy access and sharing Delicious -- http://www.del.icio.us 
Digg -- http://www.digg.com 
Technorati -- http://www.technorati.com

online communities (com/unities) and forums - many kinds, some to join, others to watch, others to mine for curriculum and inspiration -- add community to your google search 
Technology, Entertainment, Design -- http://www.ted.com
 Amateur musicians sharing work -- http://www.macidol.com
Historical Recreation --  http://www.ancientworlds.net
Teacher's forum --  http://www.educationforum.ipbhost.com 
Matching goals with others -- http://www.43things.com/

online conferencing and collaboration - shared documents, video/online classroom tools, communities focussed on contribution (other than wikis)
Virtual Conferencing --  http://www.elluminate.com 
Collaborative Editing -- http://docs.google.com 
Amateur writing community -- http://www.fanfiction.net

youtube on education
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

DOCUMENTS
Session Handout
Great Primer on Web 2.0
TechLearning New Literacy

Swaraj

2008-01-28T09:22:00.001-08:00

I've been reading The Essential Gandhi (edited by Louis Fischer), and have emerged with both guilt and hope. Guilt because I recognize the truth about my complicity with consumer culture, but hope because of the strength a non-violent, self-sufficient, and power-resistant mindset affords.

I've been trying to think about how the concept of Swaraj (independence, beginning with self) applies to some of the power-structures I interact with: family/social, classroom/school/district, community/society. Also the identities of self, space, and landscapes (natural, human, and imagined). For example. what my classroom look like if I refused to exercise coercion in any form? What would our school's interaction with the district be like if we engaged in passive resistance to the policies and language which are ill-conceived for our context and collective goals? I often think that there are many fights which deserve my involvement, mostly educational crusades of one kind or another, but I'll admit that my motive is often not peace , love, and understanding so much as exposing bizarre thinking and thoughtless action in others with the hope that they'll leave me/us/them alone. Hmm... I'll read some more Gandhi before I pick this up again... the sleeping anarchist in me needs more time.

Quatchi, Miga, and Sumi

2007-12-06T11:16:00.002-08:00

What do you think of the 2010 mascots? Compare them with some "winners" from past olympics.

panic and mirth

2007-10-20T21:12:00.001-07:00

So... our server crashed at school on Thursday and the staff and students went without internet, email, home folders, everything on the computers, in fact (couldn't even log in as this requires a server connection). Thus, midst the frustration and despair, there was lots of storytelling, chalk & talk, bookwork, conversation, and face-to-face interaction. Let's not have too much of that or the system will collapse!

An outcome... I've put a backup website on my home computer which will only work if the computer is on at home!

Finn

2007-05-05T21:10:00.001-07:00

Finn, our son,
born 4:55 am, Tuesday, April 17th

weighed 8 lbs 7 oz (3.83 kg)
length 20.7" (52.5 cm)
head circumference 13.8" (35 cm)

Of our daughter Luthien I said she came from one place of wonder to another, slowly, with great pain, and many scientific interventions. With Finn, the story is quicker and more connected with the elements. Following building contractions for days, Kate entered active labour at about 1:00 a.m. on the 17th. After a check-in at the hospital at 3:30 a.m., a rushed ride home brought Kate (with the midwife and the doula) in at 4:30 a.m. to make noise and bear down, waiting for the big black watering trough to fill. Someone cranked the heat and I dimmed the lights (pleasant to some, but I found it rather spectral). At about 4:50 Kate slid into the tub and pushed a few times as the baby and her body led themselves to "outness" and Finn came rushing out. The midwife Ruth (not my mom) caught him in the water and placed him on Kate's breast, where, after some gurgles and squawks, he fed and we all started to breathe deeper.

Finn's eyes dark blue-grey, some dark hair, red skin and white wrinkled hands and feet. Digits long and ears close to his round head. Cry is soft, but his neck is strong. He has slept well, some 4+ hour stretches, and is latching with relish. Peeling now less red, no white, skin and hair becoming fair.

The name Finn comes from Gaelic or Old German meaning fair. In Scandinavian languages, it would refer to Laplander. The story of Finn and Hengest (a version of which has been written by Tolkien) in Beowulf and the FIght at Finnsburg has Finn as a Frisian king. Now there is also Twain's Huck Finn and the Irish hero Finn and the giant Finn who built the cathedral in Lund.

Fin is also a root word in Tolkien's mythology meaning skill in Quenyan. It is found in Finwë, his sons Curufinwë, Fingolfin, and Finarfin, and many others. They were a powerful family of Noldorin elves, and none were more skilled and beautiful than Finwe's eldest son who was named Fëanor by his mother (Sindarin for spirit of fire). Fëanor wrote alphabets, crafted three powerful gems called Silmarils, led a rebellion against the gods, and was exiled with many of the Noldor to Middle Earth, thus setting up much of the history that Tolkien described in his books.

Some of these strands have resonated with us, and may make more sense as our children grow. Perhaps our Luthien has more of the charactersitcs of a Fëanor, and maybe Finn will have more of the grace and calm of a Luthien Tinuviel than his Noldor namesake. The name Finn appeals to us for many of the same reasons that Lu does, something easy shout as you watch your child run towards the edge of ravine or what not, but their longer names speak of our hopes for our children in some ways, which are probably our dreams for ourselves. Like many of Tolkien's characters, there is much grief to balance joy, but hope also comes from strange places. For our fiery and talkative daughter, we bless her with peace and patience, and for our (so far) gentle son, we bless him with bold words and deeds.

Help me pick our baby's name

2007-03-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

MALE (pretty sure it's a boy): Alec, Aragorn, Avi, Bëor, Fëanor, Fin/Finn, Hemlock, Lewis, Lief/Liev, Mac, Max, Oromë, Ossë, Owen, Pierre, Rowan, Thor, Viggo

FEMALE (just in case): Arwen, Claire, Freya, Galadriel, Hilary, Lauren, Olivia, Rose, Yavanna, Zoë

be kind!

fun with photobooth

2007-03-16T17:30:00.001-07:00

response to technology issue

2007-03-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

A response to a developing technology issue in my district... the plan to make elementary schools go to a single platform ("minutes" related to this decision are in the previous post). I publish my thoughts here as a personal record and in case it serves to inform others.

Who am I and where am I coming from on this issue?

I’ve taught in SD57 for 11 years and have been an active user and teacher of technology and advocate for choice & experimentation. I have sat on and chaired school tech committees, acted as a teacher rep on the District Tech Team (DTT), served as a tech trainer for 4 years, serve as a Key Tech Contact (KTC) and hold the “POSR” position at my school (D.P. Todd) which provides technology leadership and facilitates school planning. The 40+ workshops I have conducted in the last 7 years on technology for transformative learning have included topics like blogs & podcasts, audio and video editing, web design, and the connection between student identity and the new digital world. This was also a key focus during my last university degree, and has guided the use of technology by students in my classes. My school (D.P. Todd) and district 57 (central administration and the DTT in particular) have been very supportive of my work, in terms of professional development, grant money, release time, hardware & software, and opportunities to lead, share, and learn.

I understand the rationale behind the funding and evergreening plans, but the single-platform issue warrants my feedback. It has already been the subject of 62 posts to the teacher’s union folder, and 22 posts to the district-wide Technology folder. Within the context of mass-delivered tech services, some decisions based on efficiency are necessary, but I believe the nature and costs of efficiency are often overlooked. I also understand that there must be a compromise between maximum efficiency and maximum choice; also a compromise between the ability of techies to administer a system and the ability of teachers to direct their own use of educational technology.

Nonetheless, I have concerns about the district’s past commitments and the current lack of inclusion on an educational decision.

A long-term commitment to being a dual-platform district was publicly made by senior admin this year and last at Key Technology Committee meetings and the previous year at an open Tech Conversation meeting. This commitment is also described in our published District Technology Standards and has been one of the diversity themes which has distinguished our district and helped make it a technology leader in the province. This commitment was also reiterated when the Debian server was introduced in the district. The DTT was told that the choice of servers was not a judgement on platforms and was specifically chosen for its purported ability to work with both macs and pcs.

The decision appears to have been imposed without adequate consultation or respect for existing processes and users; only an incomplete and group of elementary principals were involved to some (unknown) extent. The teachers on the DTT, the KTC, and the tech committees at elementary schools were avoided for decision and/or input. This issue of consultation without actively considering other frameworks (i.e. one represented by teacher/user-input) is problematic and does not lend itself to “buy-in.” Teachers, not tech support or principals, are the ones most closely tied to daily implementation of classroom curriculum and adaptation of technology.

It is not too late to consult on this issue, consider impacts, allow flexibility or room for variance. Perhaps some of this is already in the works, but just needs to be communicated to affected educators? In addition to the commitment and lack of consultation mentioned above there are other reasons why this decision warrants a second look.

Was efficiency the criteria for making the decision? It may be simpler for system technologists to conceive of a single-platform management environment, but this will not guarantee that tech problems will go away or that their jobs will be easier. The migration to a new platform and software set will require a vast amount of time and help, and will not shorten the workloads. Teachers have developed curriculum based on software which is platform-specific and is not available on pc without considerable expense or support which is not currently provided. Finding, installing, licensing, debugging, training, supporting replacements for mac's iLife suite alone would overwhelm our tech support, unless there are no plans to match level of "service" provided by existing computers. A plan to lower level of service will result in teacher frustration and cynicism as a trade off for efficiency and centrally administered delivery.

Was this decision made for financial reasons? When some of our techies studied costs this last year, they found (and published) that similarly stacked & equipped macs and pcs cost about the same; this initiative won’t save much money, but it will create work for those who are already well-served by their platforms; to start with it would fall on teachers to find replacements for software currently used and convert their files and projects. Many teachers have purchased their own computers and peripherals to match what they use at school with the belief that the district had a long-term commitment to supporting dual platforms.

One only has to see the teaching & learning projects resulting from the numerous TLITE (SFU’s tech ed diploma program) alumni in our district to see an explosion of innovative work in the last four years. A significant portion of this innovation relates to media-rich, platform-specific software beyond the cross-platform “Office”-type programs and internet browsers. What is said about this work when the tools are taken away? Teachers have been very busy spending school time and free time developing curriculum based on software which is not available on pc without considerable expense or support which is not currently provided. Finding, installing, licensing, debugging, training, and supporting replacements for mac's iLife suite alone would overwhelm our tech support. A recent case involved a teacher at Heather Park looking for a pc alternative to Mac’s iMovie which is commonly used by teachers and students for video editing. Tech Support here was limited to suggesting names of other software; the work of getting an alternative will fall on the teacher. How much extra work will teachers need to do to in order to archive and reformat years of teaching material? What will the district offer in the way of re-training, assistance with file-migration, and purchase of new software to allow new pcs to measure up to the educational uses provided by macs in the past? WIll they allow schools to purchase intel-based macs which can handle both platforms? Limiting the kinds of work teachers and students can do with technology is not a progressive move, even though I’m sure it will be marketed as “moving forward.”

Standardization and reducing the variety of configurations available to students might make tech planning easier and tech support conceptually simpler, but it does not necessarily help us teach and learn. In my school, we have a variety of tech needs: teachers with media-rich tech demands, teachers with basic computing needs, physically and mentally disabled students, film students with huge storage requirements, mini-labs with recycled computers and scaled-down configurations, "locked down" labs, wide-open workstations, office staff and admin with particular needs, and so on. Our “techie” works skilfully to accommodate these different platforms, software-sets, configurations, and generations of computers. He shares the vision of the transformative use of technology and knows how unwanted and unstudied standardization will kill programs and projects in our school.

from the District Technology Team Minutes 07.02.27

2007-03-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

[Here lies an issue which deserves a response...]

"Funding for technology at the elementary level

Given the challenges elementary schools face from year to year, a system is required to provide predictable and increased funding for technology. There are 2 objectives:

-Redistribute the funding among large and small schools to support differences of scale that these different sites.
-Raise the overall funding level in all schools.

Elementary school principals were consulted regarding a plan to give them “targeted” funding on an annual basis to green technology over the course of five years.

Feedback from schools was positive for the plan, many of whom suggested that if funds were to be targeted, it would be easier to have it handled centrally.

[HERE IS THE CONTROVERSIAL PART]

If systems are going to be deployed centrally, principals suggested the efficiency of using a single operating system platform. With this feedback, Tony went to Senior Administration and has been given a mandate to begin to develop a process for moving the systems to centrally administered single platform system across the elementary schools.

This process will begin in 2007/08 and will employ a five year greening cycle for all elementary schools."

Frankenfoods... my kids will not be lab rats!

2007-01-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

After watching "The Truth About Genetically Modified Food," I’m more convinced than ever that Canada needs mandatory labelling of GMOs. Here are some reasons why:

(Problems with GMOs)

-testing is limited, left to others, or done by gmo company funded reseach
-use of invasive bacterial/viral technlogy to mutate food
-concerns over toxiicity/ effect on immunity
-poses threat of new allergens and tampering with antibiotic
-cell-invasion process affects nutrition
-patenting of life and native plant species by gmo companies
-ecological/soil cutrient cycling impact of gmo plants
-use of gmo-associated pesticides and herbicides
-gene-patenting & threats to individual privacy and freedom
-malicious lawsuits by gmo ccompanies to protect patents
-conflict of interests - gmo execs become government officials (EPA/FDA)
-impact of monoculture on genetic/bio divesity
-lobbying/campaign contributions to ensure deregulation
-unfair/subsidized competition with traditional plant varieties
-demands for payment when gmo plants contaminate adjacent fields
-threat to food secuirty/genetic heritage through gmo hybridization
-consolidation of food supply/mulitnational character of gmo companies
-use of suicide genes to prevent re-use
-creation of green deserts of genetically locked species

Diamond's top 12

2007-01-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

From "Collapse," here is Jared Diamond's most serious environmental problems facing past and present societies:
1. Destruction of natural habitats
2. Loss of wild food sources (especially fish)
3. Loss of wild species and biodiversity
4. Soil loss and damage
5. Reliance on non-renewable energy sources
6. Threats to freshwater
7. Abuse of the photosynthetic ceiling (reducing growing capacity)
8. Chemical pollution and toxic overload
9. Introduction of alien species
10. Greenhouse gas emissions (global warming) & ozone depletion
11. Unchecked population growth
12. Resource consumption & per-capita impact

What would you add to the list?

Christmas reading

2007-01-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why, but against the advice of almost everyone I respect, I never bothereed to pick up and read A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Well, I finally did, and I think it was worth the wait as the ecological wisdom might have been lost on me 16 years ago when my brother-in-law John first recommended it. John got me a book for Christmas (Dillard's For the Time Being)... hopefully this one will take me less time to read!

2 weeks of playdough

2006-12-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

Christmas break is here and I'm looking forward to doing not much and puttering around the house. My daughter has discovered televsion (she resisted all previous attempts at "couch=training") and thus (finally!) gives Kate and I breaks to cook, clean, read, whatever. Lu's favourite is Little Bear, and then Franklin (probably the Cockburn intro). Three years ago, Little Bear, Franklin, and Cockburn were not names I associated with kid's shows (constellation, Arctic explorer, folk icon)... how far I have fallen. Well, Christmas day, the gifts are long unwrapped, and I've got 2 weeks of playdough, snowshoes, blocks, books, puzzles, and kid's shows to look forward to. Playdough video here, btw.

blog cabin fever

2006-12-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

Like I said in this year's Christmas letter... I have written many things this year, dispatched many trees in the service of this writing, but, alas, very little of it was good writing.

GarageBand workshop

2006-11-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

GarageBand has many purposes among educators. Some are using it to create student or teacher podcasts, others are using it more musical composition or to aid in creating media-rich presentations. There are a number of communities sharing GarageBand-made music, many by and for children & students. Here are some useful links:

Tutorials & Guides
Apple's intro to GarageBand capabiliites & possibilities
Apple's guide to GarageBand includes tips & video tutorials
NewMediaGuides on Audio thorough guide to audio editing, hardware choices...
MediaBlab how to build your own microphone popscreen

Shared GarageBand songs & ideas:
Macband.com very cool, GB songs and loops
Macidol.com wicked cool, amazing repository of sound
Garageband sample songs Apple's rss feed of student GB projects

Other related links:
Macjams.com all about audio, includes GB resources
Audacity free cross-platform audio editor & recorder
Apple project gallery student video uses GB
Teaching with GarageBand creating recorder accompaniments

Any other feedback or suggestions?

campus 2020 thoughts

2006-11-23T19:53:00.000-08:00

I recently spoke at a "Campus 2020" forum where participants were asked to respond to some questions about the future of post-secondary education in BC... here were my responses:

1. Understanding the future: How will the BC of 2020 be different than today? How will these differences affect the way people live and the way people learn? What will this mean for our post-secondary education system?

Threats to the environment will create & deepen issues which are not present priorities; mostly related to habitat loss, agriculture & forest land alienation, and loss of biodiversity

Electronic learning & the interactive web will challenge & replace much of what occupies present pedagogical space. By this I mean that new media and new ways of connecting people & ideas don’t necessarily fit well with how education is done in most schools

The connection/disconnection of people from sense & place will become a major theme for both of these trends, and post-secondary education will increase the time, effort, and money it applies to this theme.

2. Creating opportunity: In 2020, what are the barriers people face in getting the education or training they want or need? Are those barriers geographic? Financial? Technological? Other?

Yes, yes, and yes. Besides these ones, I think one could find lots of evidence for age, gender, and race barriers in BC.

Probably the best thing we could do to address barriers is to deconstruct colonialism in the system and make it easier for people to take post-secondary education at any age or situation.

Another barrier will be overcoming the socially isolating tendencies of technology and environmental disconnect.

3. Understanding the purpose: As we move toward 2020, what are we educating people for – jobs? intellectual achievement? informed citizenship? personal interest? all of these and others? Can our institutions, programs and services be better designed and governed to support these goals?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes. Like the caption on the 2020 Think Pieces page states: “be intrigued, be enlightened, be outraged, be an explorer.” Whatever the purpose or designation of an education program (trades & training, arts, sciences, continuing studies), allowing the experience to be open to experimentation and dissent will help guarantee that it stays intriguing and enlightening. Practically, this could mean developing and funding programs enhance quality of life and aren’t tied to research dollars.

As a secondary teacher I’ve seen what often happens to elementary students when they come to high school. We beat the “play” out of them and then wonder why they lack creativity and original thought. Society can do the same things to college & university grads, so I think it is really important that young people squeeze all the revolutionary juice from their post-secondary experience -- deep questioning, energy, passion, originality; the man will try to beat it out of you, so get your kicks in while you can.

4. Defining quality and measuring success: How we will define terms like “student”, “teacher”, “program”, “institution” in 2020? How will we measure their success? Do we have the appropriate mechanisms to measure our progress?

Too little emphasis on accountability and things don’t change, teachers and students get lost in the system or stuck in a rut.

Too much emphasis on accountability and individual experimentation gets stifled, teachers and students have to follow the program and don’t have the free space to innovate. Collaboration is forced from aboev, and not allowed to develope as an deeply felt need withing a community of educators. It is tough to create mechanisms which support the right kind of accountability without prescribing behaviours for teachers and students.

Concepts like life-long learning will become more relevant as people see education as something they return to over and over again and as education becomes deschooled. Campuses will still be important places, but they have to offer something special to compete or coexist with virtual schools and independent learning

5. Supporting innovation: As we move toward the future, how should our post-secondary system define BC’s position on the national and world stage? How should we support individuals and institutions to be innovative and responsive to change and opportunity?

Take some cues from the environment: we have an incredible biophysical heritage in BC which has sustained people for thousands of years and must continue to do so.

Take some cues from the interactive web: innovative work which honours student identity and pushes teaching and learning is taking place in elementary and secondary schools all over the province. This work experiments in multi-modal literacy and both reflects and develops a new kind of learner. I’m talking about podcasts, blogging, wikiwork, videojournals, web portfolios, gaming, and forums. Post-secondary universities need to pick up where this leaves off and really provoke society with high-quality, thoughtful, poetic forays into new media and critical response to relevant issues.

I think the most innovative work will focus on the issue I’ve raised, that of connecting people with their senses, with others, and with the earth in a future that faces environmental crises and pervasive technology. With our cultural and ecological diversity, high-tech & media industries, and the need to move beyond resource extraction in BC, I think we could be a real leader on this issue. I know many post-secondary institutions have already started to make this shift, but it is by no means mainstream.

Finding Enkidu

2006-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to put a bit of this online for a while (I haven't tried to embed video before). It is a scene from a video project I completed to accompany a writing project on the ecology of identity.

summer before you know it

2006-08-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

To beat the clock, I've continued my school year ritual of rising early to get stuff done before anyone awakes. Now I've banished school worries for the summer time, and have used this time rather selfishly to watch movies and tv shows. Movies so far: bronx tale, capote, casanova, fargo, godfather series, green mile, junebug, match point, prime, red eye, and syriana. For tv: Carnivale season 1 and 2, Deadwood season 3, next will be Lost and Entourage. I'll put these shows on half the screen and flip through related websites, email, or read ezines on the other half of the screen. Headphones in, everyone else sleeping, cat on a cushion and the first cup off the coffee pot beside me, maybe yoghurt with saskatoons; I'd say this is a pretty good if self indulgent way to start a summer day. It's either that or go swimming.

Now that was a nice river

2006-06-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Stellako flows out of Francois Lake and drops 45 metres over 11 km down to Fraser Lake. With a shaky knee and gimpy foot I didn't go more than a few hundred metres down the river and I caught a total of 0 fish in the river. The lake was easier and the whole place was quite idyllic. I was there with a bunch of yahoos but that was by choice!

Samorost Game

2006-05-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

O.K. this is a very cool game which stole an hour from me early this morning.

Spring Break in Victoria

2006-03-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

Magnolia trees blooming, cherry trees spent... wow - a nice change from snowbanks and the "dog days" in PG when the melting uncovers successive layers of canine droppings. neways...
I attended an interesting discussion at Royal Roads University last week. It was a meeting of people interested in the role of Arts in Health Care with the aim of forming a basis for national dialogue and organization. An amazing assemblage of people: artists who did paint therapy with cancer aptients, hospital admin looking for info on how aesthetics and wholistic architecture affects healing, a plant therapist (who uses gardens and person-plant connectons to aid in rehab), an interfaith chaplain looking at the role of meditation in healing, an aboriginal artist/filmaker who developed a shield-making workshop to uncover and discuss personal symbols, an educator who focused on healing the mind/body split through ecotherapy, directors, artisans, health care workers... very enlightening discussion. I was a guest of one of the organizers, and tried just to listen, but was pulled in a few times when the talk came around to ecology, identity and technology.

March 3 workshop links

2006-03-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

Blogging and Beyond... Educational Technology to bridge the gap between curriculum and identity. Here are the workshop links:

Formal Webquest search site
Tree octopus... the result of an informal webquest
Free & easy blog service (Blogger)
Geography 12 course blog
An English teacher's blog
Committed Sardine blog (education)
Wikipedia... the big wiki
Amazing collection of fiction
Example of a forum (Bigfoot)
Example of a Web Portal
Example of a community (msn)
Example of a community (Bjork)
Example of a cybrary (Holocaust info)
Instant Messaging service
Peer 2 Peer information
Class project involving realtime/RSS
Podcast.net (free) directory
Zencast - free podcasts

For public_html (web share folder) try http://www.dpts.sd57.bc.ca/~gthielmann/education/docs/ as an example. The idea is that anything you put in your public_html folder (which most of our district techies can "enable" for you) will appear at the addres http://(your school address)/~(your username) --if you have trouble with this, email Jason Mager (techie) at the board office for help. He has done some workshops on this.

Try itunes music store to see their free podcasts and video podcasts. My Geography 12 webpage should have podcasts up as soon as I have permission forms in.

Try any of the above tools with a Google search in your currciuluar area (e.g. blog, wiki, portal, rss, podcast with science, math, elementary, language arts) -- it won't take long to find something you can use.

Thanks for attending and good luck experimenting!

Yurting

2006-01-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Watch a 15-yr-old in a school computer lab and you'll see something new to a generation: yurting. Like Mongol nomads, the students pack their familiar things, move to a new pasture on an established route, and set up a temporary home. The goods, however, are virtual, and the landscape is digital. A yurt (actually a stretch of grazing land, but often used for the circular Mongol tent or gher) is an encampment built by students where they store and display photos, songs, movies, software, sites, and text -- a changing scene which reflects (and alters) individual and group identities. This is something different than putting family photos up in the office cubicle, or wearing something that reflects personality -- it is an external, dynamic, and portable "unpacking" that changes with the context. Students are erecting yurts which articulate their values, goals, tastes, and trends -- at arms length (literally) from their own words and actions.

Stewing, like yurting, is a new phenomenon in our age of technology-inflenced learning. A stew, for the purpose of this discussion, is the product of research, exploration, synthesis, and identification that learners experience when working on tasks in an online envrironment. Often taking the form of a video or multimedia preentation, the stew is a place to stick all the "stuff" a student finds relevant to a topic under investigation. Initially, the stew is often a computer desktop full of video clips, text files, url links, mp3s, jpegs, and gifs. In the past, the project-junk which was hunted and gathered in magazines, libraries, and textbooks, was then copied or redrawn and pasted onto a poster. Now, it is archived and retrieved in a system designed by the learner. The pathways to the information (and thus, I suppose, the learning process) has the potential to be much more synced to a learner's own style than the pre-planned research in the past. The stew can still taste pretty bad, but there is (maybe) a greater sense of ownership. Mongol nomads called there stews "sulen" if someone would like to play with this idea in the yurting metaphor.

what I'm reading Christmas 2005!

2005-12-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

Data & Education

2005-12-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

pet peeve... when people analyze ordinal data as if it were interval data...

I wasn't even aware of what this meant until a couple of years ago -- see the difference among types of data

What I'm watching

2005-11-15T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've been getting up at weird hourse lately and have ended up watching a bunch of movies lately...

1. Apocalypse Now... I hadn't seen this one in 15 years and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the storyline, the descent into madness and the mythical elements of Willard's journey. It reminded me of some work I did in the McGregor Mtns and again in Northern Alberta, walking into a sort of jungle or sorts and feeling crazy from the dense brush and mosquitoes and my own thoughts. If I've ever wanted to copy a narrative technique, this has to be it -- the descent into chaos/intimacy/self represented by a physical journey.

2. The Corporation... very insightful and depressing look at corporate culture and globalization. I found it gave me new purpose as a Social Studies teacher but I also lost some hope that the future will learn from the past. We live in a world of greedy people with ugly Walmart tattoos on their souls, people who would sell their own children. The ugliest part of humanity is that we reward these greedy maggots by electing them to power and allowing them to convince us to buy their crap.

3. Hotel Rwanda... this ended up being the motivation behind some research into Rwanda's problems in the 1990s. A very powerful story although one is left with desperate thoughts. I am curious to know what Jared Diamond's Collapse has to say about Rwanda (I take it he fits the racial strife into a resource/environmental context).

4. Amelie... this to counter the depression from #2 & 3. Really really really good.

What I'm reading

2005-10-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Short History of Progress... finished this one in summer. The book laid out a timeline of human evolution as it relates to environmental impact. I was thoroughly depressed by the end, wondering why I would bring a child into a world so filled with greed and destructive potential. On the other hand, the book gave me some perspective and greater sense of calling with which to start the school year anew as a Social Studies teacher.

Miracle Beach .. just started this one but it looks like a winner. Follows the strands of a narrator's memories growing up in Haisla village on the West Coast (near Kitimat).

Back to Jack's room

2005-09-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

This year I find myself teaching all Socials again (finally) after the bumping and reassignments of the last few years in our school district. I've even inherited a classroom from Don Jack (retired Socials teacher) complete with a Geographic library and the ghosts of earlier Socials teachers. This is my 3rd year at DPTodd and I still feel lucky to work here... very supportive staff and admin, great students, positive experiences, etc. My last school was a study in disfunction from the office down to the foundation... low morale, bizarre policies, ineffective leadership structures, brutal communication, staff animosity, even low-level corruption! Anyways, I make the comparison becaue I don't want to forget how a school/teaching/learning environment can go from good to bad in a hurry, but takes a lot of work to go from bad to good. My present school has worked hard to cultivate a great learning school culture!

reflections on a meeting

2005-09-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

I met yesterday with a group of educators to review concepts of leadership, teaching, learning, and collaboaration (among other things). Here are some preliminary thoughts to provoke some thought and encourage discussion:

What I liked:
-emphasis on reflective practice and improvement
-modelling a review of relevant literature
-welcoming space for the practive of educational theory

What I'm not so sure about:
-that money in the system (as in reduced class size) is not important
-that everyone needs to be "on the same page" for progress to be made
-that students, parents, government, media, etc. don't share a large responsibility for educating kids

1. Money... I would agree that there are many other factors which can improve student learning besides reasonable class sizes, but over-stuffing a class is not working. I have a Socials 11 class with 34 kids in a small classroom. I would like to design activities which generate movement (stations, flexible groups, etc.) but there is not enough room; as it is the kids have to slide sideways to get across the room. When I have a screen projector rolled out on a cart, the one functional isle is blocked. Our school has limited facilities -- I can't always book the library when I want the students to do something other than sit in their desks and not move. I also have reduced the scope and number of assignments I will give because I'm not willing to commit extra hours to marking. I suppose I could design more peer marking activities, or get rid of the desks or the table with 2 computers for student-use, or a hundred other adaptations, but what I'd really like is to move ahead with ideas I'd love to try out but which require class sizes which fit my classroom.

2. "Same page"...I always get worried when I hear that everyone should be working in concert... groupthink comes to mind. Diverse goals (sometimes incongruent), multiple perspectives, a spirit of debate, a sense that rich uniqueness trumps tacit consensus -- these are values I honour in the classroom and work for in my professional relationships. If everyone in a room agrees on something, I tend to be frightened.

3. One the hardest and most important things I try to do as an educator is teach responsibility. Students who learn responsibility will unlock talents, build confidence, become effective citizens, and pursue healthy relationships. I realize there are many things I can do to improve my practice (and the learning that takes place on my watch), but I am only a piece in the learner's puzzle, a puzzle which is ultimately the property of students, a function of their identity. To claim that I am the problem if a student in my class does not learn is to take something away from the identity of my students; it usurps control and assumes that learning = higher marks. I will do my best, but sometimes my best is to allow students to make up their own minds about what/how/when to learn. I don't know whether teacher, school, or district, or public education can be individually responsible for student learning -- none of them are on their own -- teachers have departments and schools to influence practice, schools can't create solutions without conforming to district rules, districts can't work in isolation of the government, etc. I think the "whole vilage" it takes to raise/educate a child can claim responsibility (including parents, media, corporations and the learners themselves), but this does not seem to be the message I am getting. Yes, I want to get better at the things under my control, at facilitating learning, but I want to do so without robbing students of responsibility.

some thoughts on PLCs

2005-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Having recently attended a two-day workshop on instructional leadership (featuring/promoting the Professional Learning Community concept), I have a few thoughts and questions...

This is a bit of a long post, so... you can read it here as a pdf file on a white background or you can go bug-eyed reading below... Also, this is my first crack at a response; I will take any feedback I get to offer a revised look at PLCs -- my opinion, so far, is easily influenced by what others may know that I do not. If you are new to blogging, just click on "comments" below the post in order to leave a comment.

First, briefly, my interpretation of the PLC concept:
-School system organized into hierarchies of learning communities, each roughly accountable to themselves and the next higher order
-Communities are distinguished by structures which focus on student achievement (asking questions like "what do we want our students to learn"); some of these structures follow...
-Time is sought for staff to meet regularly to collaborate on practices and results, study issues & questions, conduct & respond to casual research
-Problems with student achievement are met with timely, consistent, and structured interventions
-Student learning and classroom practice are valued over isolated teaching & professional development
-Supporting the development of a well-rounded, healthy student is balanced (or off-set) with the need to improve academic results
-Leadership is shared; administrators devote more time to instructional support and less on discipline and monitoring

Background on the PLC concept:
-The concept, with its attendant philosophies and terminology, is a product of Richard DuFour and others at the American National Education Service, a for-profit foundation which offers books, tapes, study guides, etc.
-Their system has much in common with other current educational theory (Dufour's is maybe less theoretical or inquiry-based and more "let's get to it") with varying levels of acknowledgement. Lave & Wenger's work on communities of practice is a good starting point for comparing similar theory.
-The PLC lingo and ideas have parallels in current business philosophies and government (USA to BC) emphasis on accountability and decentralization

PLCs in our district -- positive
-Following the conversion of a number of individuals in our district to the PLC concept over recent years, senior administration is encouraging the application of the concept at district schools. The PLC concept provides one way of meeting accountability requirements and School Plan for Student Success goals, and may also remind educators of what they are called to and help them ask if they are doing it well.
-The underlying concepts of focused collaboration, aiming at greater overall student success & educating the whole person, community-based approach, and shared leadership are well rooted in respected theory and are a natural evolution for conscientious schools and school systems.

PLCs in our district -- problems
-The collaborative model is being "tasked" out to schools. When dealing with a shift in guiding ideas which is ultimately meant to impact classroom practice, a top-down approach is probably not the way to go. With any change, the "buy-in" window is narrow and, if those heralding the change haven't covered all the angles, can turn what could be a groundswell movement into a perceived mandate or imposition. If the ideas have merit in the classroom, they need to be field tested in the classroom by volunteers with support.
-The DuFour model is a "total package" system. As such, it has the potential to exclude those who don't understand it, accept it, or have differing views. This is not the same as resisting change, this is simply that change of "governing" ideas often involves dispensing with the old order and marginalizing alternate voices. If the old order was yesterday's "good news," there can be justifiable scepticism about rapid cycles of change.
-Shared leadership, in the business world, often involves pushing decision-making to the lowest acceptable level... While this is not necessarily a feature of the PLC concept, our district is reluctant to let go of centralized decision-making (not saying this is good or bad, simply that it creates a philosophic tension with shared leadership ideas)
-An important emphasis on diversity, site-specific transformation of PLC lingo & practices, and student responsibility for learning appears to be missing or of secondary concern. The PLC concept, as it has been passed on, has the danger of being a "one size fits all" solution to problems which have not been very well articulated.
-The depth to which new ideas enter the educational scene will be a good test of the PLC concept's merit. Will it just involve use of new lingo (out with department meetings, in with collaborative team meetings), or will a new attitude about teaching & learning sink in on the front line (classrooms)? What makes the difference? Where does hoop-jumping turn to meaningful change? Much of it has to do with meaningful questions and data. If the questions asked by staff are arbitrary or determined in 3-minute think & paste activities, the results will be limited engagement and cynicism. Similarly, if the data (on which to build goals or examine practice) is not relevant to the daily classroom experience and broad questions pursued by teachers and students, it will be ignored.
-Formalizing the mentor relationships that occur spontaneously throughout schools, and formalizing the collaboration
-Time, energy, and will... what is it that individual classroom teachers need to improve their practice and affect student success? What barriers exist in supplying these needs? Starting by asking these questions could create problems for PLCs because the results will reflect tremendous diversity and will reflect a variety of philosophies. One teacher may need more collaboration time with others, one might need access to technology, one might need specific training, etc. This could all fit within the PLC concept, but it might not, therefore it is problematic to ask these questions unless we are ready to see the PLC concept as a set of ideas to evaluate, deconstruct, and allow to re-emerge where it makes sense to do so.
-These problems, I think, are worth the trouble of examination and response because the PLC concept has enough merit that it should be taken seriously. If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth evaluating (i.e. extract value).

What I plan to take away from the PLC concept:
- some powerful questions... I really like the one "what do we want our students to learn?" -- follow this one through and it has the potential to transform practice -- it is at once practical and highly philosophic. For me, it pushes me back to another question "what characteristics do I want members of society to exhibit?" and "how does what I teach show of my view of human nature?"
- some tools for collaboration... I have higher expectations for department and staff meetings now; I want to move past business and information and get to issues and beliefs.
- some renewed focus on theory & practice & identity... where is my classroom centered? teacher/student/subject? how does this affect student success? who is the self that imagines this reality and what do I want to learn by being a teacher?

What I'm reading

2005-05-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

Just finished Golden Spruce by John Vaillant... more than just the story of the guy who cut down the special tree on the Charlottes, this book tells the story of forest "harvesting" on the West Coast. It brought to mind writing by Peter Trower and Martin A. Grainger, so I'm re-reading books by them now! I find, as with most acts of eco-terrorism, that there are many things to learn from (spruce-killer) Hadwin's actions, even if he did cut down a sacred tree. What did I learn? It is easy to focus on the poster-species (like big special trees) while whole ecosystems are threatened with destruction.

Website help needed

2005-03-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Students!!! Please!!! I haven't updated my website in a looooong time. I'd like to redesign the whole thing... but what should it look like? Do you have any favourite websites that have a good design I can "imitate" (I can't do flash!)? Also, what should I call the thing? Thielmann's website sounds like its all about me, but it should be more about learning, etc... more of an online community than a personal website. Comment here with your thoughts.

March 4th Blog This! links

2005-03-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

Digital Slideshow Presentation as a pdf file
Internet bookmarks the from presentation - blogs, wikis, etc.
A movie link to the Flintstones/Winstons commercial
Please feel free to leave workshop feedback here -- what did you think of the presentation? (click on comments to leave one). Also, I'm trying to write something decent to address what I refered to as the "Mongol Phenomenon" and on the theme of digital identity -- let me know (here or by email) if you have any supportive or critical ideas on this subject.

Interesting find

2005-03-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is kind of cool... I came across an unofficial DP Todd newsblog

Semester 2 blogs

2005-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Parents/Students: class blogs have been created/renewed for the second semester. Find your class at the Planning 10 blog, the English 9 blog, or the English 8 blog.