EduKare: Choice is the rule of engagement...

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Aristotle 

flickr photo by Benimoto

Recently the folks over at #ecosys were discussing the issue of student engagement in schools. This issue is prominent in education circles everywhere. Few would debate the necessity to engage students in their learning, so the dialog is centering around how best to actually do it. As I was reviewing the #ecosys Twitter stream from the latest chat, something I've been mulling lately popped back into my head. Engagement is about choice.

Self-determination is key if kids are to find relevance in what they learn; nobody appreciates being dictated to without the opportunity to have input... which makes it difficult to understand why we don't begin offering any learning content choice to students until secondary school.

It has always struck me that much of what is done in elementary school would benefit secondary school kids, and much of what is done in high school would benefit elementary school kids. Interestingly enough, so many of the exemplary teachers I have met and worked with from both elementary and secondary school are the same ones I'd be inclined to complement by telling them they'd be awesome teaching in the opposite school setting. There's something about secondary school teachers that haven't lost their inner child... their ability to be totally in the moment and uninhibited with their students; the ones that haven't forgotten that school is always more engaging when it's fun.

Conversely, there's also something about elementary teachers who understand that choice is a vital element of engaged learning, and who strive to establish a teaching and learning environment that encourages kids to steer their own learning ship as kids in secondary school should be expected to. This element of self-determination is fundamental to Edukare school philosophy.

Good teachers can be engaging just because of who they are. Because of their personality, perspective and ability to connect emotionally with kids, they stand out as those who have that extra bit of with-it-ness. Good teachers also scour the horizon routinely for the latest teaching tools to engage learners, but I'm not yet convinced that all good teachers understand the efficacy of choice as a tool to engage students. Tom Whitby recently tweeted...

@tomwhitbyTom Whitby

A good teacher can be effective with a dirt floor & a stick. Add tech knowledge & Tools and things, more often than not, get better. #Edchat

As one who values the inclusion of contemporary technology advantages in education, I agree with Tom, but I have to ask whether any tool, including technology in education as a generalized tool, can be considered ubiquitously good if no choice is provided to students who would be potentially benefiting from using it? Under dare I say "normal" classroom circumstances, the only truly engaging tool in education is the provision of choice to students. We understand this in secondary school, but not so well in elementary school. If we're going to help kids write their own learning stories, we need to consider seriously how choice can factor prominently into teaching and learning in the kindergarten to fifth grade set.

Seek First to Understand...

Behavior isn't something to manipulate, it's something to understand.

flickr photo via kokichuelo

I have spent the better part of my teaching career to date working with kids who manifest very adverse behavior. I have received hundreds of hours of professional development related to helping these kids improve their behaviour, some of which was considered to be severe. I've been trained in behaviour management techniques designed to manage behavior, corrective techniques to correct behaviour and modification techniques to modify behaviour. What nobody ever trained me to do however, was understand behaviour.

Behaviourism is a well known school of thought relative to working with kids who display challenging behavioural tendencies. According to Wikipedia, behaviourism, sometimes referred to as the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behaviour), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling — can and should be regarded as behaviours. Applied Behaviour Analysis  is a term used commonly in education to describe how we analyse the behaviours we see in schools. In my role as an educator working exclusively with severely behaviourally challenged kids I have participated in many functional behaviour analysis (FBA) that are designed to provide hypotheses about the relationships between specific environmental events and observed behaviours in students. I must admit, the FBA process is as close as I've ever been to actually understanding behaviour, but even this process has left me wondering, "do I really know the story behind what I'm observing when I witness adverse behavior?"

I believe in collaboration...

I believe in collaboration. Effective leaders work among their people, not above them.

flickr photo via TerryJohnston

Barry Litun, a former Superintendent in my school district taught one of my graduate school courses in leadership. Something he said has stuck with me since taking that course. In describing how an effective leader fits into a high-functioning staff of teachers and para-professionals he said,

When people need defending, good leaders stand in front of them. When people are being celebrated, good leaders stand behind them. Most of the rest of the time, visitors to the school shouldn't be able to guess who the leader is.

I really appreciate this point of view as an educational leader. I agree that good leaders in schools need to be bold enough to shoulder the responsibility for what happens in the school, especially when they don't go well. I also agree that good leaders need to be humble and willing to let others receive the credit for doing good things (a sidebar to this is that good leaders surround themselves with good people... and they believe all have potential to be leveraged.) Most of all though, I totally agree that good leaders know how to distribute the leadership within their schools by enabling others to play to their strengths and do what they well know how to do; they honor the teachers and para-professionals in their schools by letting them be their own leaders.

Great leaders want their followers to be better at what they do than they would be at doing it themselves. They serve their people without expectation of credit as just another piece of the puzzle required to make things work. I think folks appreciate these qualities in a leader; they appreciate the respect, trust and confidence that they receive, and they are motivated by these things to offer their best as well.

Effective leaders work among their people, not above them.

Kids learn now... Let's prepare teachers to teach now

flickr phot via mac.rj

I'm not fond of the term "21st Century learning." It has become a wildly referred to catchphrase in education, and as catchphrases go, I worry that the original intent of the term has been lost in translation. So often the term is equated with technological advances, and more specifically, how to utilize them in teaching and learning. I think 21st Century teaching and learning is way more involved than this.

Taken on the surface, teachers everywhere are challenged with the task of preparing kids for the 21st Century, or at least the remaining 89 years of it. A daunting task. This report commissioned by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) suggests that the teaching profession needs to think differently about how teachers are prepared to teach kids for this century; to enable, empower and engage them. The report lays out a plan to emulate a more clinical approach to teacher training similar to how doctors are trained with practical experience taking a more prominent role throughout the process. In so many ways, if done well with serious consideration for the practical value of learning how to teach in an actual school, I believe a clinical approach to teacher training is a very good idea. I have to ask though, does the medical profession attempt to prepare doctors to provide up-to-date patient care 100 years at a time? Perhaps a grounding of the term 21st Century as it applies to education is needed so we know what we mean when we say it. It has to be about more than just technology... it's a thinking thing.

Unfolding- Classrooms emerging from a platform of creativity

A recent tweet in yet another fascinating conversation with the Nemeticists...

Unfolding-a word with such great connotation as applied to nemetics- its what has always been, just "unfolded."

flickr photo via lorraine santana

There is a saying that the best place to hide something is in plain view. I think we miss a lot of plain views, important things within our classrooms because they are all folded up. Just like the comfort of a favorite blanket that's sitting nicely folded on the armrest of the couch, our students' creative abilities aren't realized until we unfold them, and boy do we need to unfold them. I believe the viability of our collective human future depends on it. Schools are the best places to nurture the creative wonders of children... our gifts to the future. We have to package them well.

The shrinking world is throwing more curveballs at us every day. Increasingly complex social, emotional, and cognitive challenges confront us in an ironic world where surging technology has made every corner of the globe accessible to us, whether in person or through a cyber-connection. At the same time, our exposure to each other's social, emotional, and cognitive realities has never been more prominent; our collective worlds are growing. As the perceived distance between us is reduced, we are now presented with glorious opportunities to harvest consciousness and be more attuned to each other's creative purpose; to collaborate on solving problems together. Educators need to focus on this creative purpose by ubiquitously supporting the development of creativity in kids.