Last week I met with a colleague to help her plan the first semester of her Algebra class; we both participated in an Understanding by Design (UbD) course earlier this summer, so we were on the same page with our language and mindset around backward planning. It was the “Essential Questions” that really moved our thinking forward; we know these are important (critical really) while teaching, but, once you are in the daily mode of teaching, these are the questions that are difficult to keep in perspective. For this reason, they must play in a role in daily planning and daily classroom conversation with students.
Its interesting that sometimes when students ask the “Essential Questions” in class it is looked upon by some as disrespectful, perhaps even insubordination (and this can depend on the delivery of the question by the student): Why are we learning this? Why should I study Algebra (or insert any subject here)? I have seen highly effective teachers take this question as an opportunity and invitation to move students' thinking (and investment around the content) further.
It is critical that teachers not only anticipate these questions, but also ask them before the students do. As teachers, we must be ready to answer the “Why” questions around the content and subjects that we teach. This is one of the great qualities of the UbD template; it suggests you lead with these questions while planning, so that the assessments and learning activities are aligned with the essential questions and understandings.
All of this late Friday afternoon processing last week, led us to thinking that a “Why Project” should be created to help and support teachers in asking and answering these big questions. The great thing about answering questions like “Why should I study Algebra” is that there are a multitude of right answers…
A senior passage is a presentation of a student’s final demonstration of learning at Denver Academy; students are required to show an understanding of their learning profile, learning history, connections to specific academic content areas they have studied and strategies they will incorporate in future learning to be successful.
“I always loved the content of books and stories when I was growing up; everyone around me seemed to have it easy with reading; for me it was just that the reading of the actual words got in the way. I loved the stories and often stayed up all night listening to audio books; I didn’t know then that I had dyslexia.”
“When I was younger and my mom was reading with me, she would fall asleep and I’d say, ‘Wake-up Mom, I want to know what happens next.'”
On having dyslexia:
“This doesn’t mean I don't want to read, its just going to be more difficult for me when I’m first learning how to do it correctly. I’m still working on fluency and still really need tools that will help me. Like in construction, you have to have the right tool for the right job.”
This student’s insight is exactly what a passage hopes to capture: a self-reflection and understanding of learning as well as a plan and motivation to move forward. I think these quotes are so powerful because they challenge the notion that the student is not reading because they don’t want to read. Often an undiagnosed reading disorder can represent itself like a misbehavior or discipline issue in a classroom. The ability to get to the root of the question, “What is the reason for the behavior,” is critical. Then instead of punishment or negative consequences, a specific learning plan can be developed to move the learner from struggling to successful.
It is graduation season.
During this morning’s graduation ceremony at Denver Academy, a parent said something that resonated deeply with me. During our conversation, I shared that graduation is one of my favorite days in education. It is one of those rare moments that education briefly stops being process and is an event. We pause and acknowledge student accomplishments with a big ceremony of music, speeches and diplomas. There are of course on-going celebrations of learning throughout a student’s school year; I think few would argue with the statement that for the HS student, graduation is the biggest of those celebrations.
At Denver Academy, each student selects a faculty member to speak for him or her during the ceremony. For the faculty this is a great honor; just prior to the students receiving the diploma, the teacher or staff member says a few words that range from advice to short remembrances of times spent together (a few of my speeches are copied below). The intimacy that this brings to the ceremony is truly extraordinary. I also like this tradition very much because it is reflective of the learning that happens on our campus and the value of the teacher/student relationship.
So for this reason, I am fond of saying that graduation day is one of my favorite days at Denver Academy. As I shared this with a parent today who’s son had just graduated, he paused for a second and said, “This is a great day, but you know what, the best day at Denver Academy for us was when we found this school.”
Other parents standing in the group agreed. I was humbled.
This morning’s graduation was also filmed; as soon as this video is available, I will post some clips here in an effort to provide visual evidence of this most amazing day.
Examples of Speeches:
For Branden:
Branden and I got to know each other through journal writing. I knew of course who he was prior to our letters, but it was in the exchange of letter writing that our conversations entered a new dimension. In one rather now famous letter, he wrote about his love of hockey and being in the zone during a game where everything seemed to be like watching a movie. So here is my last letter to you as a HS student: Dear Branden, Your life is a movie and you are the star; you’ve seen glimpses, even replays, out-takes & bloopers.
Over the last four years you’ve taken more ownership of your script, more mindful with your selection of settings and aware of your angles and blocking.
Now you are moving to the position of full-time director. Parents will continue to help with production and consultation, friends will continue to play strong supporting roles; I’ll happily move to key grip or whatever you need. I encourage you to assemble a strong supporting cast at Boise State and stay true to the mantra you shared last week during your senior presentation. You remember this; the letter on the back of that old Nashville Skyline record.
That was a great moment, as you were reading Johnny Cash’s words, you also seemed to be channeling Bob Dylan:
“You can be incredible without being anyone else.” I can’t think of a better truism than that.
Go be yourself Branden and you will be incredible.
For Michael:
In the opening lines of a long & on-going story that Michael has been working on for a number of years, he wrote:
“This book begins, as many interesting things do, with an explosion.”
Thinking back to when I first met you, as a visiting 8th grader, that’s a fairly accurate description of our encounter. But the explosion was not one of billowing, deep, black smoke…
Michael is an explosion of absolute brilliance: actor, artist, stop-motion filmmaker, clarinet player, ballroom dancer, stand-up comedian, writer, deep thinker, and dedicated advocate for a more creative and honest existence.
Along with committing countless hours to our theater department, Michael has also been part of a student panel that has traveled across the state to educational conferences sharing his story of learning and promoting understanding in the field of cognitive diversity.
At a workshop a few months ago I used the word revolution to describe the innovative strategies and passionate stories he was sharing.
In classic Bilker form, he politely interjected:
Mr. Ernewein, revolution implies something is spinning around, going in circles and coming around again; I think what we are talking about here is evolution.
And I knew you were referencing your favorite author Terry Pratchett…right,
“Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.”
At that moment the student became the teacher.
I put my faith in you Michael; simply put, you make the world a better place.
Since my first days in the classroom, I have always had a very liberal, broad-brush stroke definition of literature and literacy. I found this necessary, as many of the students I worked with did not have positive or successful experiences with traditional forms of literature. Not to discount Shakespeare’s plays, Hemingway's novels or Plato’s dialogues (I am a big fan of all of them), but leading with this material seemed to be utterly counterproductive with reluctant learners and students who had not had meaningful experiences interacting with these forms of literature.
So I started my lessons with music, reading, analyzing and listening to current popular music as well as writing that isn’t commonly found in literature books or traditional syllabi: comics, news articles, editorials, student poetry and magazine articles. Even as we were reading Berkeley Breathed and trying to figure out what Bill the Cat was really saying, the end goal was to move the love of reading and literature higher on their list of priorities.
I was reminded of this today while visiting two highly creative and innovative teachers at Denver Academy. As part of their fourth quarter literature unit, their classes collaborate using Literature Circles and graphic novels. Along with the daily responsibilities of reading, discussing and writing, part of the final project is creating a short movie trailer for their book. During this presentation they also have to answer the question, “Does a graphic novel have literary value?”
As I was watching the presentations, I also read a few of the essays the students wrote as part of the project. Here is an excerpt from a 9th graders essay:
Many students have difficulty reading or don’t find pleasure in reading. Even in my own childhood when I found reading to seem boring until my mom bought me the Captain Underpants graphic novel. I found them to be more engaging with the pictures to go along with the story. My mother was so pleased to find me reading on my own. I tied my own underwear to my head and ran through my house yelling, “Captain Underpants to the rescue.” It was one of my first connections to reading.
From Captain Underpants to Captain Ahab, I am confident that honoring students’ interests and readiness levels are among the most critical steps we can take to make literature more accessible and enjoyable for all students.
OK. I’ll use that line only once to explain the absence of new content on the blog. And it is true; we really did have a baby. She is almost 2 months old already.
Along with a new baby girl, there were also a number of presentations around the state on the topics of Cognitive Diversity and the impact of New Digital Media on unique learning profiles.
I received an email today from an audience member at the Denver Parent Transition Conference; she attended with her son. After the students shared their stories in one of the small group rotations, Katie invited him into the conversation. Asking him about his strengths and interests. In the email, the mom wrote, “Please let those kids know they made a world of difference to one kid, for one day and that's enough sometimes isn't it?”
Emails like that are always nice to receive.
Along with weekly quizzes, unit tests and standardized test, students at Denver Academy are often asked to show their understanding by way of presentations. These presentations push students to higher Bloom’s Taxonomy levels like application, analysis and evaluation.
As I was observing a student presentation today, I was blown away by the insight he shared not necessarily on his topic of study about high-voltage transformers, but about his sidebar comment on effective teaching. Here is the quote without edits, “Just one awesome thing in class can be so important, like playing a song to start class in English, or an explosion, of course, fire, in a science class, or reading about a first-hand account in a history; some teachers don’t know how incredibly awesome and important just one of these things can be to get us excited and more interested in what we are learning.”
I think most of us do know this; and it’s nice to be reminded by a student. Ask yourself, "How I am investing the students in this lesson?"
About a year ago I started having conversations with Jeff Vankooten at our favorite coffee shop, Kaladi Brothers, about a big idea. During those wonderful caffeine-fueled exchanges we spent most of the time connecting this big idea to a topic we are both extremely passionate about: education. More specifically, how to best support and motivate teachers. We are also both big fans of TED.com After a bit of investigating, Jeff learned that TED.com was spreading a new idea: TEDx, a local, self-organized event that brings people together to share a TED-like experience. He immediately submitted a request and TEDxEducators was born.
After a few months of more coffee and fellowship, a date was set and speakers lined-up. On February 16, as part of on-going professional development at Denver Academy, the first TEDxEducators was held. The videos were uploaded earlier this week at the TEDxTalks channel on YouTube. You can find my clip here. And Jeff's introduction here.
Jeff has called me his co-conspirator; as our meetings often did feel like we were conspiring (plotting to support teachers and students, perhaps even scheming to elevate the professional development and training that teachers receive on par with that of doctors and engineers).
We hope to make this an annual event and include a few more schools next year.
Thanks Jeff.
During the presentation at the Courage To Risk Conference last Friday, as I’ve incorporated for many years, I talked about the five basic needs as defined Dr. William Glasser. Dr. Glasser, probably most noted for his book Schools Without Failure, believed that the five basic needs of fun, power, security, belonging and freedom must be addressed in our classrooms in order for learning to be optimized and students to be engaged and motivated to learn. Making sure these needs are met in the classrooms is a central pillar to Denver Academy’s educational approach.
Eric Jensen, interviewed recently on the Whole Child Podcast (1/7/10) and author of numerous books on learning and brain, has extensively researched the neurological needs that must be addressed for the brain to be primed and maximized for learning. In the interview Mr. Jensen says, “Humans learn in an integrated fashion…if the emotions are not right, the cognition is not right, if the body is not right, the cognition is not right, if the social role isn’t right, the cognition won’t be right.”
When you take a close look at all the moving parts that are in play when it comes to teaching, when you deeply examine the intricacies and complexities that are present in the various learning profiles that our students present, teaching really is rocket science. A lesson plan and an objective is just part of the equation; the other elements that Glasser and Jensen bring to the conversation are equally important.
Leading a tour around our campus today with a visiting student-teacher from a nearby college, I stopped in the Progressive High School. In a Geometry class we talked with a student who was intensely engaged in an activity that involved poster board, scissors, tape, and colored markers. Upon asking her what she was learning the student said, without any other prompt, ““You see, what we are doing here is directly feeling the lines, cutting through the paper, so we actually know what architects do and feel when they are designing, measuring angles and building models.”
Learning by doing and feeling.
Things I’ve learned in 15 years of actively collecting used poetry books.
· Buy outside of focus area if seller doesn’t know the value of the book, business is closing, unnoticed signed or mis-priced book.
· These books can be used for trade or re-selling to add value to your collection.
I recently heard Dr. Ned Hallowell, author and ADHD expert, describe the New Digital Media as a societal behavior modification experiment that none of us volunteered for. The speed of information has been steadily turned up over the last 10 years and we have in turn tried to keep up. Mail is no longer delivered once or twice a day by a mail carrier; it now arrives every single minute of the day delivered digitally to our inboxes.
Upon hearing this, my mind immediately turned to our students. If I am often overwhelmed with the speed of information (as I answer three emails, six more appear), I wonder how this seemingly relentless bombardment of information is impacting students’ attention and learning. How is this influencing their ability to prioritize and make decisions about what is important in meeting learning objectives and what just needs to be deleted?
As recent publications by the MacArthur Foundation and GoodWork Projects have stated, New Digital Media (NDM) – social networking, cell phones, video games, as well as the Internet – is not a fad. It is a game changer that is having an undeniable impact on our learning environments. So how can we harness this new and powerful force in order to have that impact support learning?
A question that rises to the top for me is how can we best utilize NDM in our classrooms?
The tools of the NDM must of course be balanced with the core reason we got into this profession in the first place: spending face-to-face time with students teaching and learning. As John Naisbitt wrote in 1982, the more “high tech” humans have, the more “high touch” humans want. In our classrooms we must balance screen time with teacher time.
I’ve heard stories of students sleeping with their cell phones under their pillows in order not to miss a status update; this balance is more critical than ever. Our classrooms can be those places where students (and teachers) disconnect from technology and reconnect with each other through lesson plans that make time to read student writing aloud, discuss books that are being read in the workshop and brainstorming ideas together on how to mindfully take the next steps that will create a balanced learning environment of high tech and high touch.
More information:
www.drhallowell.com
“Learning: Peering Backward and Looking Forward in the Digital Era.” Margaret Weigel, Carrie James and Howard Gardner. International Journal of Learning and Media, March 2009. (http://www.goodworkproject.org)
“Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, November 2008. (http://www.macfound.org)
Naisbitt, John. Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. New York: Warner Books, 1982. (http://www.naisbitt.com)
The creation, even momentarily, of a figurative campfire in the classroom that the tribe of students, teachers and elders gather around is where important stories are told and retold and remembered.
OK; that might be an overstatement.
Well, it is an overstatement.
The possibilities of ITunes and digital media continue to fascinate me. I recently discovered the ITunesU feature at the Apple ITunes Store link. Schools like Harvard, Yale and others are posting entire courses of lectures to download for free called "open courses."
This past week I’ve been (virtually) attending Dr. Bloom’s Introduction to Psychology class. Over 20 hours of an engaging lecture with great anecdotes and illuminating facts; I’ve mostly been listening while working out or driving in the car. There is even a feature where you can access the visuals of the lecture on-line. Next week I’ll be auditing a course at MIT on comparative media studies.
Students in the middle and high school at Denver Academy used a variety of critical thinking tools to reflect on President Obama’s “Back To School” speech. Previous commanders-in-chief, President Reagan in 1998 and President Bush in 1991, have given similar speeches but this is clearly the first of the digital age.
In the digital landscape of a flatter classroom the immediate availability of the President’s remarks present both challenges and opportunities for teaching and learning. Without appropriate learning tools in place and an anchor to the bigger educational mission of the school, viewing the President’s speech could be seen as a waste of valuable classroom time. From my observations in classrooms this morning at Denver Academy, the lessons the teachers created around the speech were thought-provoking, promoted comprehension, enhanced critical thinking skills and supported DA’s mission statement.
Many students were marking up copies of the speech as they were listening and watching the Mr. Obama speak. On hand-outs that teachers prepared, students were practicing a during-reading comprehension technique called “Code the Text." With pens, pencils or highlighters, students mark (or code) the text using a variety of symbols. For example, what is interesting, negative or positive about the content they are reading. The students then use this information during future discussions or writing assignments.
I was most impressed by the thinking guide created by Gayle Bell, a high school teacher in Core Knowledge HS. Using the language of Dr. Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats, Gayle created a questionnaire for students to work on during and after the speech (highlights of document below). After the students completed answering the questions, Gayle led a classroom discussion using the thinking hats as prompts. The students used their responses to the questionnaire to support their contributions during the discussion. Another teacher, using the same document, structured her lesson using Think/Pair/Share; during this activity, groups of 2 or 3 students completed the questionnaire together and then participated in an all-group discussion.
With the proliferation of digital media and the daily bombardment of information, even the president has a Twitter account, teaching critical thinking skills is more critical than ever.
President Obama Speaks to American Students
In a 6 Hats Guide
Directions: Use your viewing of the speech as well as a copy of the prepared text to help you complete this guide.
White Hat – Pure Facts
List 3 points that President Obama made in his speech:
Green Hat – Creative
PMI: List one positive, one minus, and one interesting from the speech.
Positive:
Minus:
Interesting:
What would happen if every student that heard this speech did exactly what President Obama urged them to do?
Black Hat – Critical Thinking
List at least 3 pros and 3 cons (positives and negatives) of President Obama addressing American students.
Yellow Hat – Constructive Thinking
What are some possible positive outcomes of the speech?
Why are some people so excited about the speech?
Red Hat – Emotions and Hunches
OPV: Why do you think some people are so opposed to this speech?
What is your reaction to the speech? What emotions or opinions has it sparked in you?
Blue Hat – Metacognitive
What is the overall message that you are taking away from the speech?