Improving Learning

Educational leadership is not necessarily about the person in charge (it is NOT automatically top down!) – it is about the best idea – a shared energy and a belief for success. Leadership is not the “who” or the ”what” but the ”how.” Leadership is about sharing a common belief. 

 Vygotsky’s Theory works in leadership too! We need to talk about student performance. As we build shared meaning and as we begin to agree, we start to find new ways to improve learning for our students. 

 

So, what can a leader do to begin this process? 1. Ask the question, ”how can we make a difference for our students?” 2. Support the dialogue among the professionals considering the question.               3. Support the risk-taking needed for teachers to learn and to try new ideas, methods, and technology, and, 4. Provide professional learning time for teachers to build capacity with the new ideas, methods, and technology. 

 

There is NO external answer for improving schools, not politics nor programs – WE are the problem and WE are the solution… WE are the teaching professionals.  We can do this.

Two issues bugging me this week:

1.  I am committed to the belief that the function of teaching begins with validating a learner's ability to learn.  I think not validating their ability to learn is, in large measure, why we lose kids in elementary school.  They are what we think they are, capable or not. If we think they can or if we think they can't, we're right and so that's what they come to see themselves as - able or not able to learn. I think this is as much about focusing on the content rather than the learner......    


2.  Why can't so many of our second language learners read (comprehend) in third grade when they have been in our classrooms since Kindergarten?  They can decode (sound out) words, but then have little idea what the words mean in the text.    I think this is similar to issue one.....  We need to focus on the learner not the content.  If we would build meaning first (with pictures), then we can connect the symbols (letters and words).  

What do you think? 

Like many others, I do believe that using technology can have significant effects in education. Not necessarily in the hands of the teachers as much as in the hands of the students.    Yes, many students today use technology more than their teachers - but - my experience in high school classrooms is that student use is not much more than texting, email, and Facebook.  None, alone or together increase student learning.  Teachers use of technology also has typically been limited to presentation/lecture or digital text instead of books.  Increasing use of presentation/lecture and digital text changes little.

When I see significant change in student learning through the use of technology, it is usually when I see student developed technology products and outcomes.  What happens with technology in the hands of students is ALL about learning when properly focused by the teacher.    What the student does with technology is more important for learning than what the teacher does. 

We are inundated with books, articles, blogs, tweets, etc, with folks trying to guess what the future of education will look like and be like.  I think we already know.  It is not as if we haven't learned a lot in the last 25 years from the constant attempts at "school reform."  Thanks to some of the learning we've gained in the early neuroscience research, we know that the brain has "plasticity"(http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html) that allows it to change through experience, has an emotional base, and loves to build patterns and solve problems!  Our need today is to take advantage of what we have learned and have our classrooms exhibit the type of learning that the brain was made to do.  We don't need to change the structure of school first - we need to change the process - from a "teaching" paradigm to a "learning" paradigm, engaging our students' brain to build meaning.  This blog will function as a place to process this discussion. How do we do that in classrooms of today, preparing our students for their future, the year 2035 (an arbitrary number, but students entering kindergarten in 2021 will either be in college in 2035, or already at work in their professional careers

Join me, respond, write your thoughts, struggle your struggle, and let's get this ball rolling - let's help our kids have successful, productive lives!

Learning not teaching

As I consider the function of education, I keep coming back to the maxim - "there is no such thing as teaching, there is only learning and the learner controls it."  The maxim does not necessarily denigrate the process of teaching at all, yet if the learner is not engaged, it doesn't matter what the teacher does.

Related is that fact that if the learner does not feel safe, feel capable, or feel supported, there is little the teacher can do to ensure engagement.  The teaching-learning process is first emotionally driven, with the learner's affective needs being critical.  Secondly, if the learner feels validated, appreciated and respected, s/he is much more likely to be willing to engage in learning.  Learner engagement still requires additional critical skills by the teacher to provide opportunity for the student to learn.   Thus learners need social-emotional support as well as meaningful engagement in the learning process. Wow, this is complicated!  You bet, but I say, "teaching starts with the heart!"

Is education about content or thinking?

I just read a blog post by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post. Valerie was sharing a post by Roger C. Schank, a cognitive scientist, artificial intelligence theorist, and education reformer.  
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/no-algebra-isnt-necessary--and-yes-stem-is-overrated/2012/08/26/edc47552-ed2d-11e1-b09d-07d971dee30a_blog.html)

Schank taught at Stanford and Yale universities and is the John Evans Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Psychology, and Education at Northwestern University. The former head of the Institute for the Learning Sciences, he is the author of “Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools."

Basically, his argument in this post is that we need less learning of algebra in our schools and more helping students to understand their cognitive abilities: "the ability to make an accurate prediction or describe situations, or diagnose a problem, or evaluate a situation, person or object."
I am supportive of Dr. Schank's perspective.  Technology has seriously changed how much we need to memorize content, we have access to so much more than out brains can handle. At the same time it is very difficult to think without content to think about.  Algebra is a value-symbol language, necessary to communicate certain types of concepts. How much of the language of algebra does every student need?   For that matter, how much of any controlled curriculum content does every child need?  These are difficult questions, and yet we obviously need to rethink schools and their functions.  

The inevitable change....

Nothing stays the same, or so we hear.  Yet, by in large, school has stayed the same for much of the last 100 years.  Nonetheless, we are starting to see the inevitable change in schools as we get further into the 21st Century.  As for me, I think government policy has had too much effect, technology needs to have greater effect, and the desire of educators for change must become personal.
We are the professionals; real change needs to be up to us!  We should not be the pawns of policy but rather the authors of change in our system.  OK you say, how?  Technology allows us to "flip" our classrooms from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.  The question then becomes do we believe that the point of student learning is to improve thinking or to improve test-taking?  Policy makers want school to be about test-taking. We teachers should want the point of learning to be about improving thinking.
My feeling has always been that educational policy should be about "desired" outcomes, not mandated inputs or content.  If we see policy as expected outcomes and we professionals control the inputs and process, then we can both meet the letter of the law AND improve student thinking. This is where the "rubber meets the road" in teaching.  Do you know how to control both content and process to improve student thinking? As professionals that is our task.  We each also need to be learners ourselves, don't we!?