I believe learning is personal...

I believe that effective education is about people, always. We must reach people on personal levels to foster relevance in what they learn.

 flickr photo via epSos.de

My former principal, Mark Jones, confirmed this belief for me during our first meeting two years ago. I had just started my first administrative appointment as a vice-principal at Mattie McCullough Elementary School, a thriving K-5 school with a technology focus.  He told me my initial responsibility was to get to know the kids at our school and also their parents… sit back a bit and learn how things flowed in my new school. I took his advice and it proved to be the best advice I received during my first year as a school administrator, and very much aligned with my personal philosophy pertaining to engaging students.

In my previous placement as a middle school counselor before coming to Mattie, and as a teacher working with kids manifesting severe emotional and behavioral challenges before that, I learned the value of learning kids’ stories. I was eager to learn the stories of the people that represented the culture of my new school. I believe that every student has a personal learning story, and I think of that story as containing three main components: the student’s past; the student’s present and the student’s future. In a more specific context for me as the teacher, these components translate into the story I need to learn about (past), the story I need to help write (present) and the story with the happy ending (future). Our stories define us, and it's so important that schools are environments that encourage people to share them.

Reflections on fun and learning...

 flickr photo via nigelhowe

During the last week of school this past week, my class and I spent some time reflecting on our year together. I answered many questions about the middle school my students will attend next year, and we spoke allot about the lessons we learned this year that could be applied in sixth grade and beyond. Today on the last day of school before summer break, One of the cards I received from a student had these words embedded inside the thank you message...

If you're learning and not having fun, that's bad.
If you're having fun and not learning, it might be bad,
But if you're learning and having fun... that's good.

I introduced this simple logic to my class at the beginning of the year, and we've used it to help define the tone and culture of our classroom all year long, so I was happy to see the words inside my student's thank you card.

Over the course of the past year, our understanding of this logic evolved to become a major element of our classroom value system. We grew to believe that learning should be fun, and when it is, it tends to stick... just like this message did for my student.

Next year I'm committed to an even greater effort to make sure that fun is a primary element of the learning that takes place in my class.

Thinking, feeling and being in schools...

 

 flickr image via peasap

  

We talk about personal space in schools all the time. We try to teach kids that invading one's personal space is a not-so-good thing to do. As with many things we say to kids, I'm not sure they understand what we're asking them not to do. Perhaps we don't even understand what we're asking them not to do. 

How well do we understand what we're referring to as "space" in schools? I'm not sure.

I believe in public education...

"I believe that the public education system is the avenue by which the principles of democracy are best exemplified."

Democracy. John Dewey knew that public education was a most effective vessel to promote a democratic society in his time, and it still is in our time. Schools are environments that provide the opportunity for kids to realize their fullest potential, and then to share that potential with others in the interest of the greater good. There is no greater democratic responsibility. Public schools are the institutions that enable all kids to exercise this responsibility.

There's a catch though.

Schools provide opportunities, but kids have to seize them. Just like democratic citizens have to seize the opportunity to exercise their democratic right to be heard, only the kids who choose to exercise their right to be taught will learn.  Universal, free public education is the possibility we have created in the western world allowing kids from all walks of life, all socioeconomic, cultural, religious, and political backgrounds the right to be taught; the privilege to learn.

It's somewhat ironic to me that the very institution that first provided this democratic right to be taught is often as of late the very last choice parents are making for their kids when around the world there are millions of kids who do not have the choice to attend any school, leave alone a universal, free public school open to all. They don't have the right to be taught, which is so sad.

Education needs a united front in support of the idea that every single child should be entitled to attend school without prejudice, and on the expectation that his needs will be served at the highest level. Public schools can offer this. In order for the system to optimize, teachers and the schools they teach within must have public support; both financial and ideological, and in the democratic spirit of the greater good. The result will be wonderfully diverse, democratic schools made up of students from many cultural perspectives, all exercising their equal right to be taught, and their democratic responsibility to engage meaningfully in the process.

"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote -  a very different thing." - Walter H. Judd

EduKare- Resilient Communities...

flickr photo via akaalias

"Seems to me if folks understand that EdUkare is about health and security and resilient communities, it would help clarify."

Michael Josefowicz (@ToughLoveforX) tweeted the above a while back in the @EdKare stream, and the point deserves some attention. At the Twitter @edkare stream, Michael, Daniel Durant (@ddrrnt), I and others are involved in what I would call at this stage a global thought experiment in co-creating nemetics. Nemetics is a term that has evolved to explain phenomena surrounding the exchanges that occur in our emotional, cognitive and physical spaces.

To clarify, here's some notes via Michael (with a few supplemental links added by me):

1. Nemetics is based on three fundamentals: Nemes, NemiTubes and NemiSpheres. The focus of nemetics in an EduKare context is the study of neme exchanges called "NemeX" 
2.  The term neme indicates a superset of replicators in all Complex Adaptive Systems. Replicators are memes, genes, "Lumenes"
3. Memes are replicators in Cognitive Space. Genes are replicators in Physical Space. The term "lumenes" is coined by Mark Frazier, President of OpenWorld...for a free, resilient, and generous world (@openworld) in Emotional Space. 
4. "Neme" is an acronym for the fractal learning process of Complex Adaptive Systems. Notice (or not) Engage (or not) Mull (or not) Exchange (or not)... NemeX connotes the actual exchange in progress.
5. Notice/or not, Engage or/not, Mull/or not, Exchange/ or not, and tweaking Time and Space is the basis for three dimensional Automaton Modeling Complexity. 
6. Physical Space is said to be Pwaves. Emotional is Ewaves. Cognitive is Cwaves. A Neme is said to Collapse ECPwaves to a Neme. 
7. A NemiSphere is a snapshot of entangled NemiTubes in which NemeX is constrained by Tacit and Explicit Rules. 

I know, I know... clear as mud, right? Don't worry; we're all figuring this out as we go in what I would say is a real-time, distributed, online NemiSphere... hence the descriptor "thought experiment." The boiled-down point illuminates the fact that we exist in society as an infinite series of complex adaptive systems; complex as identified by the absolute diversity of people, perspectives and levels of knowledge that exists within them, and adaptive as identified by the natural and intentional fractal ways that individuals and groups adjust to the social, emotional, cognitive and physical characteristics of their NemiSpheres.

flickr image via Song_sing

To ground all of this in a purpose-driven context, schools are if nothing else, complex adaptive systems. An EduKare approach within schools posits that the complex adaptive system describes the fact that kids are social, emotional, cognitive and physical beings that require individualized services and supports within a system that is complex because it is comprised of the litany of unique individuals (students, staff and others who support its purposes,) and adaptive simply because it recognizes and strives to meet the needs of each one of them.

EduKare schools are about health and security and resilient communities. They understand that before kids can learn in the cognitive spaces (Cwaves,) they have to be stable and high-functioning in their social/emotional/physical spaces (Ewaves and Pwaves.) An EduKare school places the deliberate support of healthy Ewaves and Pwaves as their primary objective. For so many kids, the process will be quite efficient as many arrive at school in kindergarten as adequately well-adjusted in the social-emotional and physical domains... but there are those (and to be honest, we can't seem to find an algorithm that would absolutely define predictive determiners,) that are not OK in the social-emotional and physical domains for any number of reasons. It's virtually impossible to determine this in a clinical sense owing to the factor of resiliency. Resiliency is the X-factor that helps us determine how well-adjusted kids are when entering school, but more importantly, it is the known factor that provides a targeted focus for supportive adults to nurture increased levels of resiliency in the young people they serve. Resiliency can be nurtured and taught as evidenced by contemporary research in the fields of education, psychiatry, social psychology, medicine, social work, mental health etc.Until we know how resilient individual kids are (or are not,) and then begin work to support the requisite growth of resilience in all kids, we can't optimally support learning.

Although we can't know how resilient kids are upon entering school, we can embark on a process of learning their stories that helps us put the pieces of their resiliency profile together. In the context of nemetics, we have to notice these stories, mull (think) deeply about them, and then make responsible, informed decisions about how we are going to exchange with the data they provide to support the growth of resiliency in all students, but particularly the more challenged ones. It's critical to understand also that the primary writers of these stories are the students themselves; we simply support the process by empowering them to weave their own stories; to take ownership of their learning paths in a complex adaptive system we call the EduKare school environment.

Who does this in an EduKare school? Good question... In the first EduKare post at KARE Givers, I explained that an EduKare school is one that accesses the specialized skills of helping professionals in a wrap-a-round service provision model. Ideas for a Comprehensive, Integrated School-wide Approach is a UCLA paper from all the way back in 1977 that proves this is not a new idea, but perhaps one that will need a deeper NemeX process to divine where the rubber will meet the road in providing comprehensive, coordinated services for children in general. More specifically, the EduKare model posits that the locus of service provision should be based in schools; the places where kids spend a large part of their wakeful hours for thirteen years of their lives, and one that is designed to support learning. This point is key...

To optimally support learning, teachers need to be present and accountable for what they are trained to do; teach. The fact remains, however, that learning detractors are present in the social-emotional and physical lives of children... these detractors are part of their learning stories. In order to help learn these stories, and to help write them in a teaching and learning context, teachers need support from those other helping professionals that are trained to do what they do; mitigate social-emotional and physical detractors in the lives of children, (that will ultimately also detract from learning.)

What better place to coordinate these processes than the schools that conveniently dot our local landscapes, that reflect our diverse nature and that are designed as teaching and learning environments? 

EduKare schools are fundamentally those that understand their role in promoting the health and security of resilient communities through the nurturing of healthy, secure and resilient kids and their families. EduKare teachers are those that fundamentally understand that support for the cognitive growth of their students depends largely on how effectively the social-emotional and physical needs they manifest are provided for. Working collaboratively with others who support these needs is the path to a successful EduKare service provision model.