Middle Earth 11: a rough course proposal

Here's an idea about the Interplay of Language, Landscape, and Imagination that I've been thinking about lately. How about a Middle Earth 11 course for class of Gr. 10-12 students inspired by the creations of J.R.R. Tolkien?

Students would get credit for English 11 and Geography 12, taking half of their "200 course hours" in class; the other half is flipped, blended, online, independent, connected to the teacher and others outside of the regular timetable (some synchronous and asychronous). The overall goal is to apply critical thinking in the Humanities and Environmental Studies to a creative and relatively unexplored subject area, an experiment in how well our students have "learned how to learn." It would also be interesting to see how students inquiry is shaped when many of them are immersed in the subject material. This is also the kind of experimentation that needs to take place if we want to pull value from the BCED plan and advice on blended learning.

English
We would read some key works by Tolkien, short and long poetry and prose, and would also consume other Tolkien and Tolkienish media including literary criticism, art work, music, podcasts and fan fiction. We could make use of Tolkien recordings and interviews, Our smaller projects and learning activities (in accordance with the English 11 PLOs) would exploit skills in speaking, listening, reading, viewing, writing, and representing. Use of social media, creative software, and interactive digital tools would be used to reflect and extend what we do in class, and connect the students to the large and dynamic online Tolkien community. The opportunity to publish critical review and creative response online is almost unsurpassed with Tolkien enthusiasts, the forums, wikis, and blogs are all out there waiting for us. Students could create forms of expression that borrow from favourite Middle Earth elements such as the use of Tengwar script, Elvish languages, annotated maps, and archaic poetics. There would also be flexibility on what they read (or consume), past some staples, and delve into some personalized learning with the contents of their portfolio, the lead on project design, and a buy-in on assessment matrices.

Geography
We would study the historical geography of Middle Earth, gleaning understanding of ecology, climate, geology, geomorphology, conservation, and human geography (in accordance with the Geog 12 PLOs) from the environs of Eriador, Gondor, Beleriand, Valinor and the like. We would build comparative cultural geographies, examining how Tolkien's peoples an societies were affected by their environment and shaped their landscapes. Of course we'd also have some fun exploring rivers, glaciers, deserts, seascapes, caves, and mountains, and learning about the same basic geographic concepts and principles that govern our planet. Key comparisons with local (northern BC) examples allows me to keep it real and retain what works the best in my existing Geography 12 course.

Midst
Putting these two course mandates together is the awesome part, and the place where most of the critical thinking takes place. Tolkien's work had many themes, but two important ones were language and environment. From our "real-world" vantage, Middle Earth is a the perfect learning laboratory in which to learn about how language affects meaning, how people interact with place, how authorship and agency work, how story connects meaning and context, how realistic Tolkien's descriptions were of geographic phenomenon... I could go on about this for a while.

Logistics
Pre-requisites: English 10 and Social Studies 10, an ability to work independently, a willingness to write/express/discuss in an intense seminar environment, permission to post and express online, and an interest in Tolkien (preferably they've already read Hobbit and LOTR so we can fast forward to discussion and entertain other titles). Students get full credit for English 11 and Geography 12, with all work completed in one semester. I'd use 2 (of my 7) teaching blocks for this double-course, one in-class and one in release of the out-of-class time for the flipped/blended/online/sync/async aspects (most of which would happen during the 2nd block, but some of which would be taking place anytime, anywhere). As such, it would be cost neutral, as the two registered blocks fund the two teaching blocks.

The two courses and PLOs themselves are not new, so board approval would probably not be necessary, not that I would mind. The name of Middle Earth 11 (or whatever) is a placeholder for the two gov't approved courses, not a unique offering. The design approach, teaching & learning strategies, and learning resources are unique, but that is what every teacher makes choices about with every course. The Ministry of Ed and leaders province-wide are begging for blended learning experiments, so the other hurdles for permission should be minimal.

Texts
Aside from the massive online Tolkien content, part of the learning resources strategy would be to build a shelf of singleton Tolkien books in the library (as much of the reading would be personalized and not require class sets), perhaps buy one set of class books (e.g. Children of Hurin). Involving our dynamic library & librarian would be a natural; the Tolkien collection becomes a negotiation between student passion and balanced guidance from educators. ePubs are another way to go, so if we could squeeze a few tablets out of the tech budget stone, we could load them up with the CoH or LoTR or the Silmarillion. I think the whole "text" question would involve about between $1100 and $2000, less than a single class set of texts in most other courses. Other existing Eng11 and Geog12 texts could be used as needed. If this was extended include a full-scale tablet or e-reader pilot, we'd have to enlarge our thinking.

Structure
Microunits would be themed around a central inquiry related to language and landscape and would focus on a teacher-student negotiated set of places, times, and body of written and graphic work. I would provide a series of scholarly Oxford-style lectures (live, but also recorded for our youtube page), and move into a series of lessons, talks, in-class activities, online explorations, etc. and presentations from students.  I envision each student giving his/her own top-shelf lecture (live, plus archived for our youtube page) on a work they have read and a theme they have explored. So much has been written (and created) by and about Tolkien that students are almost guaranteed they could pick something unique. There is also almost unlimited potential for literary (and geographic) comparison with other Fantasy & Sci-Fi authors. I have no doubt students would arrive with specific ideas of what they wanted to get out of the course.

Assessment
There lots there to assess already, maybe too much, from either the English 11 or Geog 12 angle, but I also imagine a single summative project would take shape near the beginning and consume more time (and soul) as the course progressed (like a ring of power). One project that comes to mind is the creation of an artifact, like a leather-bound tome or an inscribed object, that carries some (or the best) of the student's learning and blends digital skills with graphic design, multi-modal voice, multi-genre fluency, and critical inquiry. The process of creation would also be documented in writing and film, a component of the "blended" part of the course, maybe something like what did Neil Stephenson did with his cigar box project. I have some newish ideas on assessment that would be great to try here, too, a system where students contract for achievement competencies based on their interpretation of the PLOs and their design for learning and assessment. The result is a kind of matrix that nuances rather than offloads assessment, giving students as much control with assessment design as they want, to the exact degree as they take responsibility for learning outcomes. The way I envision students grasping and working with this process is akin to the kind of character choices gamers make when selecting RPG characters, maybe even with a mimetic digital process. I'm not in to "that" end of the fantasy genre, but I recognize the addiction. To put it simply, I want to know if assessment can revolve around student intention and intrinsic motivation, and still meet high standards in our public education system.

What do you think?
I'm curious for feedback from students, teachers, and administration... would you support something like this, say for 2013-2014? If you're a student, would you take this combo-course? I'd like to hear from others before I sink any serious time into the idea. I realize that every one-off we have in our school of 750 complicates other elective offerings, but that shouldn't stop one from having dreams. 2012-2013 would have been the way to go, capitalize on the first installment of Jackson's Hobbit Movie coming out, but job action kind of killed the ability to plan ahead as a school team. I have no misgivings about the kind of work it would take to set this up, but I also think it would be a great "21st century learning" experiment that would engage students, me, and other educators and provide some evidence about what works and what doesn't with blended learning.

As a Tolkien expert with an English & Geography degree, I'm surprised I didn't push this 15 years ago. The idea has been smoldering for many years, but I suppose I don't move very fast, very much a Hobbit at heart, even if I look more like a Beorning.

Heritage PBL in Social Studies

The Great (x3) Grandparents of one of my students;
he found this photo online today.

Spring is in the air, which means that it is time for my SS10 students to sink some serious PBL time into Heritage Research. The last cycle of research and presentation wrapped up last December (blog post & background here), and this new class is showing the characteristic enthusiasm that this project generates.

My students will use some class time and their own time to work on this project over the next 6 weeks, and then we'll take a week or more of class time for presentations in early May.

What I've noticed this year, is the how to boundaries of this project have been blown open by some changes in the way students learn and the way learning takes place in my classes and our "learning commons" library.  At this point, I'm seeing four trends:

1. Self-renewing tradition of story-telling
So many students have done this project now that students arrive in SS10 with some anticipation about this project. I get siblings coming in, armed with existing family trees, interview records, albums, etc, who are excited to carry on and add a new layer to the story with their own questions. The project has spread across all of the SS10 classes in our school, with a basic inquiry about heritage connections that has a place in all other SS classes. We've found some pretty solid ways for students to complete this project for whom "family" is tough sell, whether due to a lack of data or the presence of drama (divorce, custody, neglect, painful pasts). In fact, probably two of the most powerful projects we've seen in the last year involved students pushing through the difficulty of the project and using the inquiry as a means to bring some healing to their experience of family. One involved a critical examination of residential school survival and the other was pretty much a survival guide for broken homes. It is, in fact, heritage and identity that are under the microscope, not necessarily family, and the primary skill being developed is the ability to tell a story, not necessarily to investigate problems in personal histories. The stories invariably connect to the major themes of Canadian history and geography, indeed connect to virtually every major learning outcome in the Social Studies curriculum. Just this week one told me about her great-grandfather who fought in the Battle of the Somme, and another student told me how she is related to the Dionne Quintuplets. They weren't in my SS10 class, but it is increasingly important for students to weave their identity into the context of learning. My colleague Ian has noticed that his SS11 students are jumping in throughout the course with anecdotes about 20th century events that come from shared personal recollections. Colleague Joe notices the same thing in History 12, and Cheryl builds up her SS8 and SS9 students with a sense that their own history is important and relevant. This narrative skill comes across at every stage in the project; the students talk freely and without invitation when the learned experience of their heritage comes up. When they present, they rarely look at their notes or read from poster or screen, they speak passionately and with a sense of importance and usually use up more time than they thought they needed. It has to be seen to be believed (I really should suffer through the FOIPPA maze and record some of them).  The coolest part is to see students who are otherwise weak or reluctant come alive when they are making personal connections to curriculum through their own stories.

2. Cross-curricular learning

Today we met in the library, truly a learning commons at D.P. Todd, me, the teacher-librarian, 27 students, and on the sides a dozen or more students on spares who usually spend their time in the library. The students have heard my stories and background a few times now, and have shared some of theirs, and today was the librarian's turn. We gathered around in chairs and listened to her talk about life for her grandparents and their generation (1920s-1940s). Her story (history/herstory) wove between fashion, shipwrecks, technology, illnesses, expressions, immigration, attitudes, hair, sports, travel, and work. Her comments (and the students comments in reaction) would have been as appropriate in a Science, Planning, Textiles, PE, or English class as they were in my SS class -- there are heritage connections and associations in every context, and today reaffirmed that student identity, the one they negotiate between past/present/future, is the true curriculum. The students were rapt by her fast-paced story, and we followed with the Socratic thing where we examined what she had said, how she said it, and speculated on what kinds of questions would be needed to gain that level of intimate and engaging knowledge.

3. Multi-age learning network

As we told stories in the library, I was able to look around and realize that the Gr. 12 students on spares had all done a Heritage Project when they were in Grade 10 (and a related "Echo" project in Gr. 11).  I used some of them as examples of how to prepare and present heritage research, and before long they were chiming in and sharing what they had learned about themselves and the characteristics of past societies. I encouraged my students to reach out to others who had done this work and get advice, which they did. I left today wondering what would happen if we threw multi-age groupings together more often, especially students on either side of a specific comprehensive project. I also wondered about how I could make useful ties with students in other schools and so on. With four full classes to teach and an otherwise busy life, I'm not feeling terribly ambitious about expanding the scope of this project just yet.

As we finished this story-circle, grandiose advice from me & the librarian, and contributions from past students, there was weird silence like we had all just shared something important (that doesn't happen too often, believe me).  I yelled GO and they sped off to start on 27 different paths (that also doesn't happen too often).

4. Leveraging technology to involve parents
We use a variety of tech tools, sites, and strategies to get in to the research (e.g. Heritage tools on right column here).  We also rely on books, photo albums, heirlooms, recipe cards, old Bibles, and interviews with anyone willing to share).  Today was day one for most of them, though, and we had an hour at the computers to play with the project design and start differentiating between what would be useful to find online and what was worth looking for elsewhere. Naturally, many students wanted to plug their family names into genealogical search engines and hit the heritage jackpot (one actually did, finding a site tracing her family back 12 generations to 1600 in merry old England). Most students had no clue what names to use, some didn't even know the first names of their grandparents. The before and after questions I ask area always stunning, well over half the students report at the end that almost everything they learned from the project was new to them, that the family stories were somewhat known to parents, better so by grandparents, but few of them shared their stories unless they were asked... that's all it takes... just ask!  And ask they did today... I "made" them text or call their parents on   the spot, with questions like "what's oma's first name?,""where was grampy born?," "what was the name of the town that our family helped build?" and "where should I start when doing the Moffat history?"(that name opens the door to some of the most colourful local history in our region). There were some delays and call-backs and lots of students wandering around on their phones, getting something they thought "juicy" and diving back to their search to see what came up. It was interesting that they turned immediately to their own tech devices to solve problems (and their own data plans -- our wifi is hopeless), and were not as natural on the computers. One boy talked to his grandmother in Punjabi and learned, new to him, that his relative was an important Sikh leader embroiled in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar and the raid on the Golden Temple.  He got the name of some villages and such that probably won't seem like much to him now but I have a gut feeling will ring about in his head for the rest of his life. Another boy had a great tree with notes and photos set up online by his family, so he was texting his mom back and forth in order to interpret it and figure out what was significant about what he seeing on the screen (picture below). He had found discharge papers online for a WWI vet that matched a name in his family and wanted to establish the connection. From what I saw on the screens and in conversation, I think there were dozens of "lights going on" around the library-lab.  I got to play facilitator, playing off what they already knew, were learning about, and where they might go next.

"hey mom how are we related to the henry king guy that was in WWI on the ancestry tree"

Although we've set up this project for a couple of months with prompts, testimonials, and exemplars, the is just day one (of the dedicated time for the project), so I'm keen to see where we end up.

Staff Meeting Blues

As BC school administrators and teachers consider what will happen in the wake of Bill 22 and the better part of a year in "Phase 1" job action, it's time to take a closer look at the eventual return to staff meetings.

One of the most common quips heard during job action was "it's been real nice not having to go to staff meetings." That's dreadful -- if the meetings are that bad, why have them?

If your school staff is excited to return to the meeting table, then you really have cause to celebrate. But if you're with most schools and you are looking for ways to make staff meetings more effective, purposeful, engaging and generally less mind-numbing, you may want to read on for resources and challenges to your thinking.

Professional tools for administrators
This staff meeting assessment tool is from the Pacific Slope Consortium (critical thinking initiative, local/BC focus). It is intended to provoke some thought around what's working, what's not, and what's next. The discussion questions focus on the effort that takes place before a staff meeting begins.

First chance for new start
The stakes are high for the first get-together after job action. Local teachers have formally expressed their reticence to engage in email communications and professional development that is directed by administration, so the attention to detail at staff meetings is one of the most significant short-term actions an administrator can take towards positive patterns and intentions towards staff development. The "post-Bill 22" landscape may seem to have a chilly climate, but administrators are encouraged to see this as an opportunity to model a collaborative vision for their schools or even to make a fresh start on school culture.

Administrators have had ten months to plan for the "next" staff meeting; teachers will want to know what their team has prepared. Will we sort out how decisions are made? Revisit plans and projects that have been put on hold? How is the agenda set? How much "learning" or staff development can we expect, how much is just information, how will we be involved and valued? When we are unsure about process, do we establish some norms, use Robert's Rules, or make it up as we go along? Who gets left out when the process is in doubt? What value is placed on inclusion, on rigorous discourse? How much time should elapse between the introduction of an idea, a proposed action, and a staff decision? How unique is our experience at staff meetings? What other "elephants in the room" will we acknowledge and address? Each staff has a glut of questions and expectations, built up over months if not years, many of which they are reluctant to express.

Context for staff meeting success
As with most school-wide endeavours, the whole staff should own the success or failure of staff meetings, but the meeting at its most basic level is a chance for administration to involve staff in a collective effort for improvement of student learning and stakeholder satisfaction. The principal or his/her designate has a captive audience, sets the scope & tone of the meeting and usually the agenda. With that in mind, here some resources for

1. Developing a positive school improvement culture:
http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/pdfs/culture.pdf
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/sihande.pdf
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/26095/
http://www.realjustice.org/pdf/IIRP-Improving-School-Climate.pdf
http://www.saskschoolboards.ca/research/leadership/95-14.htm
http://www.bcpvpa.bc.ca/downloads/pdf/Standardsfinal.pdf

2. Exploring ideas on fixing staff meetings:
http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2012/04/communication-isnt-everything.html
http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-can-we-improve-pd-and-faculty.html
http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin277.shtml
http://www.shift2future.com/2012/10/technology-influenced-leadership.html

3. Professional growth plans with a focus on dynamic standards and staff development:
http://valkilbey.blogspot.ca/
http://pgp4cbirk.blogspot.ca/

4. Factors affecting staff motivation:
http://vodpod.com/watch/3461870-rsa-animate-drive
http://iel.immix.ca/storage/6/1307461574/seven-claims-about-successful-school-leadership.pdf (see claims 4-6)

New Expectations
The BCED plan highlights innovation, accountability, collaboration, flexibility, and use of technology. BCPSEA, the government's negotiator, aims to give more oversight for these things to administrators, so teachers are naturally wondering what this look like and whether their administrators will lead with something creative, accountable, collaborative, flexible, and digitally adept. At the same time, the current contract mediation raises issues of where the locus of control resides on job suitability, professional autonomy, and class/composition issues. Staff are looking for some concise and thoughtful reflections on how their administrators will approach these issues in their school context. Will these items come up at your next staff meeting? How important is the "reassurance" factor? What kind of meeting do you envision when the status quo has been dissociated? What are your other staff meeting issues or goals? How do you plan to take them on, either as leaders or as a whole? If you have the time -- administrators, teachers, or others -- I'm interested in your responses; please leave a comment below.

Hunger Games Experiment

My school's teacher-librarian and I were discussing the popularity of Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and came up with an idea to get more students reading. Ms. Jandric, our T-L, has been getting many requests (and fights!) for the book; her two library copies are in constant demand. Students also gravitate to the library and librarian to discuss their thoughts about the trilogy and predictions about the movie. This is a pattern I love to see, ever shifting as new books trend among teenagers. As she does with any popular book or book-based movie release, a themed display goes up, the book is pushed out, conversations started (impromptu book clubs gathered around the circulation desk), and sometimes a special event is planned for the library. Our "learning commons" is a dynamic place, the best of research-driven library practice combined with caring, personalized attention to students through conversation, literacy, and digital media. The library has become a place that students naturally associate with discourse, support for their aspirations and challenges to their thinking. It is one of the few places where multi-age, cross-curricular learning takes place without being staged or contrived. Wrote about that already.

So here's our idea.  Our librarian bought five copies last night, and she has affixed a sticker to the front that reads: "This is a travelling book. Read quick. Pass it on. Tweet your thoughts with hashtag #hgdpts. Return to DPTS library by June 11, 2012."

What will happen? These books do not have barcodes, and may or may not come back, so it will be interesting to see how the honour system works. How many students will get involved, how many times will these books be read between now and June? What (if anything) will they have to say about it on twitter? We've had some great school-wide discussions about twitter recently, so this might be one of those things that gets students thinking about positive uses of social media. Anyone else have cool ideas about leveraging social media for literacy? Could this work with an ebook? The principal predicts that none will come back, the librarian predicts 3 (but will be happy with 2), I'm going with 4, yet we're all interested to see how this $45 experiment will turn out.

Please let us know here with a comment, by email, or in person, if other teacher-librarians try something like this with Hunger Games or any other book.

Tsunami before and after

source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

The Big Picture has posted another amazing photo essay -- before and after pictures from the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11th, 2011 (a year ago today!).  Click on the pics to compare then and now. Link: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/03/japan_tsunami_pictures_before.html

Bill 22 Q&A

Some interesting debate occurs among union members, some of it subject to my response. I’m posting a selection of my responses here as they extend the thinking in my my earlier post on Bill 22.

Statement: We only have one option - illegal job action until Bill 22 is defeated and a just contract is negotiated.  

Response: Disagree - there are many options. Extended illegal job action is not likely to convince the Liberals to repeal legislation, and would bankrupt the union and many of its members within days. Working to contract would be an option.  Court challenges would be an option. Passive resistance in the workplace would be an option. Suggesting system-wide changes that could give us a raise under net-zero would be an option. Voting for someone other than BCLiberals in the next election would be an option. Pressuring that “someone else” would introduce corrective legislation would be an option. We could also ask the BCTF to address (at least) three areas of concern to BCPSEA (teacher evaluation, direction on pro-d, and selection based on suitability) with compromise positions. I disagree with BCPSEA's bargaining position (or "contract insistence"), but they have definitely found some weak spots in our profession. We do an erratic job self-regulating in these areas, and so it is logical that they wish to fill the vacuum by giving more control to management. We often complain about how unqualified and unimaginative our administration are in providing educational leadership, but we struggle to provide it for ourselves. While I would consider an illegal strike for other reasons (like the right to bargain, the conditions of mediation, and a better formula for composition issues), I wouldn't do it to defend our current approach to self-regulation. This is not quite the same as loss to professional autonomy (which is a feature of Bill 22), this is about accountability for reasonable expectations.

Statement: All other tacts [sic] will lead to the destruction of our union, our profession, and one of the best education systems in the world.

Response: The union and profession no doubt faces a shift in its role if the Bill passes, but "destruction" is hyperbolical. The problems that exist in our education system will still remain regardless of Bill 22, as will much of the excellence. Nonetheless, I will support my union leadership's decisions as to what happens next. I have certainly appreciated our local union leadership's insight into Bill 22 and their proficient organization of Phase 1 and the current Phase 2 of our job action.

Statement: We will gain respect for ourselves and from the people of our province. Canadians love and respect the courageous, not whining victims.

Response: There is often something in terms of historical respect to be gained from civil disobedience, but I think the part of the public that has kids in school will not think us courageous, but rather whiners who are causing them daycare hassles. The reason we are an essential service is that we warehouse kids during working hours. This is one of the reasons why the parts of the BCED plan that call for students to escape "brick-and-mortar" schools will be a tough sell with parents.

Statement: The actions you propose [alternatives to illegal job action] will not change Bill 22.

Response: I agree. I believe Bill 22 will pass regardless of what we do over the next two weeks.  I think the chance of Bill 22 being rescinded in the current session are slim. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and do something about it, but there must also be a plan for what we do after it passes. I think that's why so many letters to trustees and union statements are directed towards the mediation constraints. Perhaps enough pressure would convince Abbott to amend Bill 22 on mediation.  

This reminds me of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Before it got really bad, the "beetle boss" Bob Clarke told the MoF, industry, and the public that we should start planning for "life after pine" in B.C. Many in the MoF thought it was premature, that the epidemic could be stayed, but Bob suggested the focus on should be on what wood supply, markets, and silviculture should look like after the Central Interior loses 75-80% of it's lodgepole pine. He then quit because his work in "prevention" was done -- all this before the epidemic had even hit full swing.  

I'm not sure if we've reached the tipping point for the potential impacts of Bill 22, but I do believe we should focus our efforts on how our teaching practices, messages to parents, communication with administration, approach to the BCED plan, contributions to school culture, etc. need to change. Personally, I would like to see more self-sufficiency and interdependence in these areas, less dependence on the management hierarchy to define who we are in our vocation. I realize this sounds ironic given that Bill 22 gives more rights to management, but I'm talking more about the "self" who teaches rather than the job that is laid out for me by SD57 or the Min of Ed. The struggle to reconcile those modalities is, for me, an important place to dwell. Midst Bill 22 and what we all be experiencing a year from now is still largely up to us to define and explore (as individuals, school groups, networks, and a union), so I do think present efforts to reject, protest, frame, reshape or limit Bill 22 are not wasted -- this is an important part of carving out that space. Perhaps the collective agreement pine beetles can still be stopped or their impact mitigated. This may require both the immediate actions that you and others are contemplating, and the other options that are available (like court challenges) and conduct more up my alley (like institutional iconoclasm and Neil Postman-styled subversive commentary).

Statement: What do you mean when you say "working to contract?"

Response: I've attempted working to contract for a few years, trying to replace time put in for admin and extracurricular with time put in for self, family, friends, colleagues, professional & staff development, and being an activist stakeholder in public education. The students get just about the right amount of time from me -- classtime, occasionally help at lunch or after school, digital support ("blended learning"), supervision (if I remember), marking and formal/informal prep time. That fills at least 45 hours a week and is mostly what I'm paid for, so if my employer wants more of that they can pay for it. I can be more relaxed about working to contract than others though; I have not coached since our work-to-rule in 2002, or put the hours of after school time into students like others do with comprehensive programs like film & drama.

Bill 22 blues

I'm still trying to sort out exactly what Bill 22 means to me as a teacher, and with how it will impact my teaching practice and my profession in general. This is important to me because I want to enter the forthcoming three-day strike with sense that I know why I'm out there. 

Bill 22 proceeds with a contract solution via mediation, and the mediator's hands are tied with both the net zero mandate and a long list of preconditions. Add to this the abrogation of democratic rights to bargain and create fair conditions for employment, the proposed contract strips, and the return to larger and more complicated class sizes, and I can see why this should be a fight rather than an inconvenience. Nonetheless, I've read though the bill a few times and I'm left with questions. I'm trying to understand the history of legislation better; a couple of hours on the internet and I still can't figure it out.

Bill 22 - look at amendments to the School Act Section 27 (1) to (7) http://www.leg.bc.ca/39th4th/1st_read/gov22-1.htm#sections8to23
and look at Existing School Act Section 27 http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/LOC/freeside/--%20S%20--/School%20Act%20RSBC%201996%20c.%20412/00_Act/96412_03.xml#section27

The only difference is that the amendment proposes 27 (7) Subsection (3) (d) to (j) is repealed on June 30, 2013.

So this tells me that in 2002, the employer had control of professional autonomy, class size, ratios, teacher loads, etc. and will have it again until August 2013. After that, all aspects of our working conditions are back up for debate. Legislation in between 2002 and now (all the stuff that came out of the 2005 and 2006 struggles?) gave us back some class size limits, etc. which we have enjoyed until now. If that's correct, the contract strips resulting from the amendments to the School Act are not unprecedented, they are a return to what we had in 2002. It was lousy in 2002, and it is lousy now, but I just want to be clear that it is not something new we are facing.

So what are new issues, ones that might justify escalating job action or even civil disobedience? The terms of reference for the mediator in Bill 22 Part 1, number 6 (1) to (5) may result in further contract strips (like evaluation process, direction on pro-d, and selection based on suitability) until August 2013, and likely beyond (a new round of bargaining almost always involves extending collective agreements. The net-zero mandate means we make no gains on salary or benefits, we thus fall behind inflation and cost of living increases. The imposition of preconditions hampers our democratic right to bargain, and the fines seem unfair. Removing caps (or returning to 2002 standards) on everything from class sizes to librarian ratios will be a recipe for funding cuts. I have no doubt my class sizes will increase to help pay for other areas in my school that are currently underfunded. The issue of bound mediation is also troubling. A free and democratic society that stands by its Charter should look cynically on an attempt to hamstring bargaining as a precondition for settlement. The starting point for mediation is that government gets everything it is asking for, and will not put a dime towards fixing known problems and wage disparities. No doubt parts of Bill 22 will end up as valid Charter challenges and we will be back to this point again.

What part of Bill 22 is valid? There is some redress for the Supreme Court decision stating that the BC Gov't unconstitutionally imposed working conditions that should have been negotiated.  It even appear that I could be compensated for teaching more than 30 students at a time, but I have a feeling it won't actually work out that way because the fund is so small and net zero will kill anything additional. Maybe they'll pay me in lieu time, or pencils. I do think it is fair to point out that evaluation process, direction on pro-d, and selection based on suitability are all valid issues for the employer to seek change, but (again) these should be negotiated, not legislated.

This won't be a popular position, but these three areas (evaluation, pro-d, and suitability) were well picked by the government as potential contract strips -- these are weak spots for the BCTF.

1) Evaluation: The union protects our interests very well, and is able to prevent many injustices against teachers, but this sometimes involves protecting some truly incompetent teachers. We need a mechanism to expeditiously identify those few teachers who are a "poor fit" and use a respectful process for transitioning teachers into some other profession or getting them the help they need to sort out their practice. There needs to be some kind of "in-between" evaluation that is not aimed at termination but rather at growth and renewal. If the BCTF took this seriously, teacher evaluations (especially of this kind) would be teacher-initiated.  We should voluntarily submit to cycles of peer accountability that result in improvement. I have not really been able to get this from the BCTF and definitely not from my employer -- that is why I have co-formed and joined a consortium of similarly-minded teachers with our own mutual accountability model. If you want it done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself.

2) Professional development: It is used wisely by most, but I get frustrated by the small but conspicuous minority of teachers who have no clue what to do for pro-d and are content to ignore pro-d time and opportunities. Why shouldn't the employer insist we use pro-d time wisely? An argument would be that the employer often has no clue, either, as to what good pro-d should look like, just as some of them also blow off the idea of pro-d for themselves. We don't need Bill 22 for the employer to peek in on our professional trajectory -- they can do that now but rarely take the opportunity. I remember my first month at D.P. Todd (2003) when the principal Garry Hartley stopped by and took an interest in what I was doing, asked questions, discerned my philosophy, engaged my thinking, and encouraged me with specific ideas relevant to my classroom practice. That was the first time I had ever had a principal do that, outside of a cursory teacher evaluation in my first year (1996). Maybe other districts are different, but our management are so consumed by "management" that they don't have a lot of time or organizational leeway for key aspects of educational leadership. These limits are also limits on what Bill 22 can achieve, because the ed reforms sought from the teacher contract needs to be matched with ed reforms in the leadership structures in our province. I've written earlier that the barriers to change are usually outside the teacher's contract, and I think this pro-d issue is a good example. Will Bill 22 actually motivate teachers (or principals, for that matter) to improve their use of pro-d opportunities throughout the year? Will administration all of a sudden start offering on-going, targeted pro-d for teachers, and without adding costs? I don't get how pro-d will change. If this is a "growth plan" issue then big deal... most teachers will start filling in generic templates and saying they're up to something good. That's basically how our School Plans for Student Success work. Now, I'm proud of my growth plan and I think everyone should have one, teachers and principals, but I don't see growth plans transforming the culture. If you want system-wide change you actually have to seek system-wide reforms, not just a backstep on the teacher contract. For example, if BCSPEA wants more responsibility for management, it needs to develop educational leadership standards, guidelines, and expectations for management. I would argue that It would also help if the ed reform agenda could be made plain and laid bare, far more so than can be discerned from the BCED plan -- let us know where you want to end up, and don't be afraid to be honest.

3) Suitability: I have no problem with teachers receiving placements based on demonstrated ability. Seniority is great, but it does not guarantee excellence. Again, when this is placed with management we have no assurance of improvement, because the conditions of suitability are unclear. We've all seen examples where there is shock at a job placement among teachers or administration... "what were they thinking?" Suitability needs to be the subject of mutual agreement and ongoing negotiation case by case at the local level. Figuring this out is crucial if we want to take mentorship, job satisfaction and efficacy seriously.

So, why would I mention these sore spots? I'm stating that these three areas are reasonable places to have discussions between BCTF and BCPSEA. Bill 22 forces this discussion, imposes a solution (involving management control), but it is nonetheless a discussion that needs to take place. I really wish our union would not have been so stubborn on these -- the BCTF should have started out with plans on how we would have improved peer evaluation, responsibility mechanisms for pro-d (including growth plans), and an objective suitability flow-chart. I'd even write these plans for them!

Any other lingering concerns?  If the government were interested in breaking the union and dismantling public education, Bill 22 would be a necessary first step. Will we see our public system replaced with a two-tiered system involving privatization or corporate intervention, and trading real schools for virtual ones? I doubt the intentions run that deep, although these themes were clear to find in Gordon Campbell's blueprint for education, sponsored by corporate players and written by a roundtable that was virtually bereft of regular practicing teachers (maybe all these kinds of plans are?). The new BCED plan buries (or alters?) some of these intentions with "21st Century Learning" jargon, so it is hard to say what is meant when "brick and mortar" schools and "teachers as content experts" are considered a thing of the past. I'm not afraid of 21st Century Learning" because I'm already doing it, but I wish its advocates could step away from the clichés more often. The last bit that gnaws at me is that once contract concessions occur (like class composition limits or a trend towards more management rights) they don't tend to come back. Come June 2013, I doubt either a Liberal or NDP government will be willing to budge from the financially and directionally advantageous position Bill 22 gives them. It's like taxes, they don't tend to disappear. Income tax was brought in during WWI as a temporary measure, and set at 3%! Last I checked, I'm paying closer to 30% now (and I'd pay a bit more to support a social democracy that places more value on education).

So, if anyone with more legislative insight than me to would like to comment on my reasoning, please be my guest. I've had a few emails and tweets about it, but I'd like more feedback. I want to be clear about what parts of Bill 22 are new or not, what parts are offensive, and what parts may serve a useful function.

lost in translation

My 7-yr-old daughter is in French Immersion, and is finally getting around to sorting out the difference between written English and French.  I can't imagine how difficult this must be, being quite solidly unilingual myself.  Cleaning up the mess on the floor tonight I came across one of her poems or songs that she writes in between all the other stuff 7-yr-olds do to keep busy.  See if you can figure it out:

I love you mom
I love you wene I wase bone
I lade mi ise ane you
you were the feste pesene vete I lade mi ise on
mom I love you
cate you see I love mom
cane you seye ete on mi frrte mom

The semantics are cute, the diction I can live with, there is a historical inaccuracy in line four, but it is the spelling that I find both exhilarating and terrifying.  I think it holds the clue to the sheer possibility of the human imagination and also the threats to the very survival of human culture.  I have a glimpse of the hoal werlt in a grayne of snad, and a hevin in a wide flore.

My kids are both at awesome ages where we don't really want them to grow up for a while.  It seemed like forever to get here (and it couldn't come fast enough), but now we want things to slow down a bit.  Just the right mix of self-sufficiency and need for love.

Check comments for the translation.

self portraits

my 4-yr old son and one of his many self-portrait studies on the iPad

Twitter Blues

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. Twitter is 100% public by default -- 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 and insightful. Twitter is an amazing medium that gives voice to frustrations, celebrations, and whatever is on your mind. I have often felt recharged and even inspired some of the positive things students share on public social media. 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 kinds of 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.

Even more troubling, though, 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 or bullying 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

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

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.

iBooks2 if only

iBooks2 textbook concept for iPad -- http://edudemic.com/2012/01/ibooks2/

Reading this piece, it seems really strange and backwards that our district has a purchasing ban on ipads (most other tablets, too?), one that has not yet been explained or even defended. I'd like to learn more about writing course content for ipad apps -- I suppose loading pdfs is an easy way to migrate learning objects and handouts, but I'd like to "invert" some of my classroom and have it available on the ipad -- interactive rich media that students pick up when they start a course, or for general consumption. I had a chance to consult with Pearson on their ipad version of SS10 Horizons and SS11 Counterpoints, so I have a small idea what this might look like, and I'm quite sure that if teachers are to be encouraged to experiment with this concept, it will require time, support, and some investment in equipment for teachers and students.

I followed along with the #bcedplan twitter chat on Jan 19th, 2012  -- George Abbott and anyone with an opinion discussing what curriculum looks like in a personalized learning setting. Many ministry/admin/teacher folks were excited by the role technology plays and what the new iBooks2 could offer, and were surprised to know that our district has blocked purchase of ipads, somehow an extension of the single-platform affair. We've opened up cell phone use in the classroom, opened partly functional wifi networks, and unblocked some of the dreaded apps like facebook (at some locations?), and encouraged BYOD "bring your own device" mindset, yet a teacher can't even ask about getting an ipad for self or students to do project work, create content, etc. In other words, we're allowing students to practice their addictions non-stop, codifying the disconnect that has grown up around us in the last few years, and yet hamstringed the teacher initiatives that try to make sense of the technology and use it for positive outcomes. I know many teachers have been at this for a while; sadly it will probably take a progressive administrator to question the ludicrous ipad ban and figure out how to by a pod or two for staff or students. It doesn't need to be 1:1, but we can't expect widespread uptake of new ideas when teachers have to finance it themselves. I think it was one of our “techie” teachers that figured out in 2010 how it would pay for itself in saved textbook costs.


I've beat this drum before but it seemed relevant given Abbott's twitter chat and the announcement from Apple. A retired colleague sent me an email about the ibooks2

"Wow, Apple into the textbook market. Guess the economic argument against dual platforms in the District just evaporated. Even a free app for those who want to write interactive textbooks. What does the District do in face of this tsunami? When you have the likes of E O Wilson writing textbooks, one of which is free, you better work on bandwidth. Have a good day."

To date, no one has actually confirmed why it is that pc-ready ipads have been blocked in our district; I'm not convinced it is tied to the single-platform issue, but perhaps it is one of cost? Something along the lines: if we block the tablets, we force the idea that teachers and students will supply their own technology? I suppose the full conversation will have to wait until after job action... the board office needs to finish what it started when ipad/ipod projects (& other "21st Century" pilots) were rejected last year without explanation. The bandwidth conversation needs to happen, too... I'm curious to know how we plan to deal with capacity.

Anyways, my present interest in the issue raised by my retired colleague does not involve any purchasing -- let's take a serious look at the creation of content for etexts.

Does anyone know what it takes to get our district or province registered with iTunes U so we can start building? So far, it seems only Alberta is registered -- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5113 - I could register my own personal school district or province but that might not get very far!

Back in the day people used to call SD57 a "lighthouse" district but that moniker has not fit for a number of years, perhaps since TLITE, tech coaches, KTC & coordinated leadership, DTT & collaborative decision-making, and teacher-driven standards all went bye-bye. If we keep burying our head in the sand on tech conversations, tech devices, etc. we will stay in the dark, waiting for other districts and entities to generate content that fits our needs. There is awesome stuff out there, that's why iTunes U, Khan academy, TED, youtube, etc. are filling needs, but there are also powerful local voices (individuals and groups) that deserve a sophisticated means of delivering their ideas, and an enduring need for something authoritative like a text. I'd like to see the opportunity met before the ship sails past SD57.

So, if anyone has any insight how to get registered, please let me/us know. Probably requires a ministry contact?

time for a new exam

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.

what is professional development?

http://dpts.sd57.bc.ca/~gthielmann/about/
docs/professional_growth_plan.pdf

One of the great things about being a teacher is the chance to be deliberately engaged in life-long learning. This happens during the work day, on my own time, on non-instructional days, and in summer.  It happens when I am alone -- reading, writing, viewing, musing, planning, creating.  It happens with colleagues at formal get-togethers like workshops and conferences, it happens less formally in deliberate conversations at school and on the internet, and it happens very informally in the unexpected conversations in the hall, on twitter, and via email.  When looked at as a whole, personal and professional learning are part of an “ecology,” a connected cycle of theory-making, reflective practice, and action-research. This “pro-d” takes many turns around a few key topics for me:

• conducting research and reflecting on how, what, and why students learn, and understanding the educational landscape in which this takes place 
• learning more about my subject area as I plan for lessons, read and write on topics like democracy, citizenship, environment, sustainability, and history, and focus on what students do/can’t do/could do/should do 
• participating with other educators in collaborative discussions and projects on topics like heritage research, identity & inquiry, analyzing trends in current events, authentic balanced practice, critical thinking, meaningful assessment, and educational technology 
• independent study, course design, textbook review/writing, advocacy for public education, and follow-up on all the powerful questions raised by colleagues and students. 

My classroom is about student learning and student achievement, as is the planning, instruction, assessment, and humanity I put into my time as a teacher. Reflecting on my professional development is a step back (or a pause, at least), centered on what I am up to, but it is ultimately about the same thing... the social, intellectual, cultural growth of the students I meet. Regardless of the theme or focus, pro-d is ultimately about what I am learning, and what others are learning around me.

There is a special role in my reflection for interrogating the structures that accompany public education, for celebrating the emergence (in any form or context) of cultural attributes that signal a new attitude towards community development, environmental sustainability, total cost economies, and perhaps some other “cultural” values that reckon with my own. The BC public education system is rife with dysfunctional structures, shallow thinking, and misunderstood paradigms, but it is also filled with creative ideas, caring educators, curious students, and committed parents who are making moves towards new cultures of being that are good for people and the planet. When we see formal learning as a relationship between real people in community, more like a guild and less like a factory, the bizarre eduspeak and various social agendas attending our system can be broken down and allowed to find their appropriate place. A central irony in my practice is that I seek some form of disruption, not unlike the calls for education reform from our own government, and yet the approach reformers take is almost always at odds with both my way of thinking and what I believe to be sound politics, discourse, and progress. I suppose I am fated to dwell midst the irony, and do so as a polemic loner.

I have also come to realize that in order to remain caring, hopeful, and optimistic as an educator, I have to own my trajectory and work towards my dreams with or without the support or understanding of structures and people around me. At the same time I am compelled to work at improving the structures around me, listening to others, and being open to interdependence. This hit home for me while listening to Stephen Lewis’ eulogy for Jack Layton (Aug 27/11). The basic idea that caring public service starts with a desire for fairness and mutual aid is a deep conviction and compelling goal.

thin-slicing

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