Authentic Learning is the Kind We All Remember

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As much as I was dangling them in junior high school, I cant remember the rule about participles. Maybe a more authentic lesson would've helped me get it right on the test.

In all seriousness, I was speaking with parents at parent/teacher interviews last week about the difference between how kids were taught a generation of students ago, and how we are teaching their children today, (or at least how some of us are trying.) I can remember doing worksheet after worksheet correcting sentences that contained dangling participles, but although I know one when I see it, I couldn't give you a really good description of what one is. Perhaps it's not important beyond knowing what one looks like so I can avoid using them in my writing. That's where authentic learning comes in.

With regard to developing writing skills, why not allow students to simply write? They can write about whatever they want in so many many different forms... and I'd know they used dangling participles because I would read their writing. After reading, I would provide feedback regarding how to do it differently and more appropriately. My kids love to write; they do it all the time. When we're at home and they ask me to read their writing, I don't give it a mark as if it were one of the worksheets I did so long ago; I just tell them that I'm proud of how hard they worked, and then I suggest some things they could do next time to improve their writing. They seem to appreciate this feedback. If it works with my kids at home, why can't it work for my students at school?

One way for teachers to provide more authentic learning opportunities for their students is to provide choice in the manner students desire to show us what they can do, and then use formative feedback to assess how they're doing. I had some really good teachers in junior and high school, and I remember many writing assignments they gave me; all with an element of choice embedded within them. One of my favorites was a poetry assignment within which students were to choose animals that each of their classmates reminded them of. The teacher made a list of students and the animals that were matched to them, and then we were to choose one from the list that matched our name and write a poem about ourselves as characterized by the traits of that animal. Another one was to write a manifesto that was designed to change the world... just like that; whatever we wanted to write. I chose to write a statement about how to solve the world's eventual overpopulation problems. Yet another was to write a first-hand account of the scariest thing that ever happened to me without using a single adjective. I wrote about my first spill of one of our horses.

I'm sure that all three of the teachers that assigned me these tasks provided feedback; after all, that's their job- to assess my writing- but the fact that I remember these assignments at all over twenty five years later is a testimony to their skill in designing writing activities that are fun, meaningful, motivating and dare I say, authentic.

I am certain my love for writing is in no way attributable to those damn worksheets. Other than remembering having to do them, those worksheets didn't leave me with a lasting impression at all.

Why not teaching schools for teachers?

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Doctors receive real-time training and support from their profession during their internship. This process is generally recognized as an automatic and routine element of physician training. Teachers, on the other hand, if they are lucky, only get a few weeks of practicum experience during their pre-service training, and they don't receive any tangible on -the-job training at all. If internships are good for doctors, whey wouldn't they be good for teachers?

Teacher training doesn't appear to be keeping up with things. The training pre-service teachers receive in university has been under scrutiny at least since I was an undergrad, and things don't seem to be improving. Unbelievably, like I was required to take a course learning how to laminate things and use a photocopier while I was in university, today pre-service teachers are required to take classes learning how to use digital technology in the classroom. It's ironic that teachers in the field are starting to understand that teaching about technology is ineffective when compared to using technology to teach, and the newest teachers among us aren't getting this message in their own training. They should be using 21st Century technology as a tool in their learning. This is just one example of the unimaginative and static hoop-jumping pre-service teachers are required to participate in.

To improve the situation, I believe it would make a bunch of sense for teachers to continue their practicum work during their pre-service training, but to also be expected to work under a mentor for a period of time after graduating from teacher college in what I would call a teaching school. Teaching schools would employ intern teachers just like teaching hospitals employ intern doctors. I see great possibilities to get new teachers into schools where they can begin to ply their craft as apprentices without the high levels of stress and anxiety new teachers routinely describe as they are thrown to the wolves in their first years. I also see great possibilities to connect in more meaningful ways the work that is done preparing teachers in pre-service training, and the real-time, action research-based work that is done in the field. There is such a chasm between the theory teachers learn in college, and the practical use of these theories in the field. We need to bridge that gap.

Doctors intern, lawyers article and even engineers participate in a mentorship of sorts before receiving their final accreditation from their professional governing body. It's time for teachers to do the same if we intend to raise our stake on the professional landscape. A collaborative, three-way partnership between government departments of education, teacher preparation institutions and school boards makes sense to me if we are truly interested in establishing a holistic and effective framework for teacher training and accreditation.

Is there a wrong reason to teach?

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I have heard the phrase "teaching for the wrong reasons" enough times now that it's become annoying to me. It has become common for teachers who intend to criticize their peers to use this statement. Please tell me, what are the wrong reasons to be an educator?

During a recent Twitter dialog I was involved in, I heard someone used this phrase once again, and I challenged her to define what she meant by that. She cited a flexible schedule, low intrusion by management, time off when kids are off and teacher independence as "wrong reasons"... seriously. I had a tough time imagining any of these things as wrong. These are perks to be sure, but who in their right mind would become a teacher for any one or all of these reasons alone? Liking and appreciating these perks doesn't make  teachers bad people, it just proves they are human. I also found it contradictory that I often hear teachers talk about too much control over what we do, and this person was listing low intrusion by management and independence as wrong reasons to teach.

Now, of course there are those who may read this and counter with an assertion that there are individuals who don't have kids' best interests as a priority, and that some of them may become teachers. What exactly would be the draw though, if in fact these people didn't really care for the kids in their care? It's certainly not the money, and although teachers are generally well-provided for in the health care and pension departments, we aren't that far ahead of any other vocation that someone would hate kids and still become a teacher just to get these benefits. Notwithstanding the cohort of sociopaths that seem to find their way into every profession and vocation, I find it very difficult to believe that a teacher would knowingly hurt kids.

We speak out of both sides of our mouths when we say that marginalized students need extra support and remediation, but also that marginalized teachers should be fired. "Bad" teaching often results from bad teacher preparation, and I could go on forever about that, (another post for another time.) Undergraduate teacher training is still locked in Second Way (see page 8 of the Google preview at this link) philosophy. The teacher preparation process needs new thinkers, new ideas and strong candidates in order to improve this situation. A paradigm shift to Fourth Way thinking is required... good teaching will require support, coaching and care from those established teacher leaders that feel passion for what they do, and are connected directly to the teaching and learning process in schools; not tenuously at a distance as some tenured education professors seem to be. The teacher preparation process needs tacit leaders who can connect pre-service teachers to the grassroots reasons teachers do what they do, and provide some teflon from the negativity that some among us appear to want to perpetuate without explanation.

I invite you to consider something about the negative teacher in a similar fashion to the way you may consider the negative student. In their book The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone-Zander and Ben Zander discuss the strategy of giving people an 'A.' Giving people an 'A' is all about seeing the vulnerable person behind the perceived problem, and looking for the latent positive elements that person brings to the table. I really like this concept. They also speak about the virtue of seeing negative people as those who are truly passionate by nature, but have just been disappointed or unsupported too many times. Taking these perspectives allows us an opportunity to re-frame problem teachers as simply vulnerable, faltering colleagues that desperately need our support as opposed to our judgement.

I also invite anyone who actually believes there is a "wrong" reason to get into teaching, to let me know what that reason would be.

Hybrid Thinking- Why We Shouldn't Care Where Good Ideas Come From

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Our human tendency to debate opposing ideologies without apology until one is accepted by a majority resulting in a "winning" idea or concept is counter-intuitive to progress. On the contrary, the integrative mind understands that within the current change climate we find ourselves immersed in, our viability as a global society will depend on a synthesis of ideas that should not be considered dichotomous, but rather complementary to one another. In the context of supporting effective child development, this form of hybrid thinking will ensure that we don't miss the boat on any developing idea's potential.

By taking two or more perspectives on effective and positive child development and combining their best elements into a synthesized hybrid of all of them, a new paradigm is born, and those who brought each perspective to the process no longer operate independently and in defense of their point of view, but rather interdependently in support of each other and the best possible course of action. Don't our sons and daughters deserve our absolute best objective thinking relative to the care we provide them?

 To that end I make two suggestions... read The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin,
 and next time you find yourself in a heated debate defensively stating your
 opinion, simply stop doing it and do something very different. Instead of
 defending your position and fighting to win the battle, take a breath, think deeply
 and objectively about the issue, and then take a serious critical perspective toward
 the opposing argument, looking for any shred of a good idea or element that you
 can live with, and that may even synergize with your position. You may even want
 to suggest to your opponent that he/she does the same with your 'side' so both of
 you can see the middle ground you were both previously blind to.

 You'll be amazed at the results this strategy produces; trust me, I've tried it. You
 can do this when involved in debate over any issue, but when it comes to doing
 our best thinking relative to providing every possible outside-the-box opportunity
 for our kids to learn and grow, we can't afford to do anything less.

The Teaching "Profession?"

I read David Warlick's comments on teaching as a profession at his 2¢ Worth blog, and it conjured up a question I have struggled with ever since becoming a teacher... do I belong to a profession?

In David's post, "The Teaching Profession," he describes an ongoing conversation at Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed blog pondering the question whether teaching is a profession. David states that,

Semi-profession might actually be generous. Much of the job, especially as addressed by NCLB, is more like being a technician, applying prescribed, researched, and government-approved techniques on students, based on high-precision measurements... I suspect that the term professional, has described teachers because they've earned a college degree, and years ago they were among the only people in many communities who were educated to that level.

It's true, teachers have been called professionals, and for all the right reasons; I agree that we are. I can't, however say that just because teachers act professionally, that we belong to a profession. Defining a profession is evidently not as easy as it sounds. Even the Wikipedia article on the subject is controversial. The article mentions its own factual accuracy as potentially questionable. The part of this article under dispute is about the vernacular vs. legally-accepted use of the term. So often in education we use terms that we don't seem to implicitly understand, and alas it appears, that referring to teachers en masse as a profession may be another one of those terms. I don't believe that acquiring a university degree automatically means a person is a professional.

 So, I think we need some context if the rest of this post is going anywhere. One thing I've noticed about other "professions" is the relative control and influence they have over their own ranks, and also their purpose for existing in the first place. I'm not sure that within this context I could confidently define teaching as a profession. Teachers as professionals don't enjoy much control or influence over their own practice, and they sure don't appear to have much control or influence over what they're expected to do and how they do it.

My friend Joe Bower wrote a great piece recently at his For the Love of Learning blog entitled Five Ways to Get Education Right. In the post Joe compares Seth Godin's perspective from his new book Small is the New Big, regarding five reasons why companies make mistakes and then do nothing to remedy them, with what he feels is wrong with education reform. I'm going to key on Godin's second reason- The people in the field aren't given the ability to influence management without appearing to be troublemakers. Joe correlates this reason with the ridiculous concepts within education of larger rewards (merit pay) for "good teachers," or that harsher punishments (mass firings) will induce poor teachers to be better. I'm not sure that's a straight across correlation, but I think there's another possibility. I think Godin's second example of a mistake the business world makes correlates well with the biggest mistake education makes, and the one I feel precludes professional teachers from membership in a true profession... a lack of control and influence from within our ranks. We don't control or influence our own people, and we don't control or influence our purpose... the autonomy true professions enjoy regarding these points is not shared by teachers.

In Canada doctors have their College of Physicians and Surgeons, lawyers have their Bar Association and engineers have their Association of Professional Engineers. Within these cohorts, accreditation is granted, and monitoring of purpose is a perpetual responsibility that defines each cohort as a profession; they control their own. Teachers belong to their associations too, but there are two critical differences. Firstly, I received my accreditation from the government Department of Education, not my professional association. Secondly, the monitoring of my professionalism is ultimately the responsibility of the same Department of Education... the Minister of Education signs my teaching certificate, and only the Minister of Education can take it away. The critical difference between the teaching cohort, and the professional cohorts that lawyers, doctors and engineers belong to, is the ability of the latter to have control and influence over their ranks, and control and influence over their purpose. Teachers don't have this same control and influence because for some reason, we are not trusted to act on them responsibly.

So it boils down to respect in my opinion. There is no better entity to direct the future of education than teachers, but the general consensus among non-teachers seems to be otherwise. Teachers need to lobby and advocate for this privilege. We need to display our professionalism and work much more closely with our associations to assert that more autonomy to do what is pedagogically sound, morally and ethically proper and professionally astute would allow teachers to be seen as the knowledgeable and responsible experts they know themselves to be.

Perhaps then we won't be a bunch of professionals without a profession anymore.