Some interesting comments on paradigm shift, school structure, creativity, and divergent thinking.
Thanks to Joe Bower at Love of Learning for putting this up. I love the RSA Animate videos, I even show them to my classes when appropriate. Hadn't seen this one yet. I don't know what I think about Robinson's comments on ADHD, but the general theme is right on.
This video has been making the rounds on the internet- It came to me by way of a friend on Facebook. Ah Facebook- occasionally good for something other than sucking your creative soul. It is a really fun animated version of Daniel Pink's talk at RSA. I love creative stuff like this, so I was instantly captivated. In fact, I watched it twice in a row so I would remember his main points. And I immediately found myself connecting his comments on drive, or what motivates us, to the occupations of both teaching and being a student.
Here is the video, some comments from me are below.
Pink identifies three factors that impact what he calls 'drive': Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Oh yeah, money is a factor, but not they way we might think, according to Pink (sorry for the rhyme).
Here is how I think this relates to the lives of teachers (I'll address students in another post when I have a chance- because I think what he says is also important in thinking about the experiences of students). For much of the history of public education- at least in my memory, teaching has been a comfortable middle class job. No one was getting rich, but none of us expected that. We made a living. This was using money in the way Pink identified- teachers made enough money to take the issue of money off the table. In return for stability, teachers lived with the fact that they wouldn't be subject to huge financial reward. For most of us that was a fair trade. Of course the high social prestige of the profession made up for some of that (note sarcasm here), but what was important was that it was a fair living, and since most of use have ambitions other than monetary, that was good enough.
What made teaching great was the abundance of the other three factors. Teaching has buckets of purpose. I have never met a teacher that didn't really believe in what they were doing- it's importance, it's meaningfulness, it's worth. You want purpose, education has purpose. Helping children learn and understand the world around them feels as meaningful as anything one could be doing.
For a long time, education has also had a fair bit of autonomy. Sure, in public education we are (and should be) accountable to our students and communities for providing the collective vision of eduction we are charged with, But for the most part, teachers and schools have had a high degree of autonomy in not only how we do our work, but often what that work actually is. Teachers were invited to participate in the discussion of what we should be doing, and had genuine influence. Further, in our classrooms, we often had tremendous autonomy. Though we were often told the what, the how of our work was mostly left up to teachers and groups of teachers in schools. As long as we met the expectations of our community, we were allowed freedom in how we did what we did. Note that the teachers we revere, both in our own lives and in our mythology, are the ones that exercised autonomy (think Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, Dead Poets Society)
And, teaching is hard. Really hard. It is the sort of higher level cognitive work Pink is discussing (I know it is fashionable in some quarters to claim that 'any person with the appropriate background can teach,' but that simply isn't true. It is hard, complicated, and takes time to get competent- a minimum of three years according to most research I have read). So mastery takes work. And we are never done. Over the nine years I have been in the high school classroom I have gotten continuously better, and every time I became aware that I had achieved a new level of competence in some way, it was also apparent to me how much further I needed to go.
So teachers were willing to put up with low social status and the less appealing parts of the job because it provided large amounts of the other things that Pink identifies as key to 'drive.' In many ways it was the perfect job (for the right sort of person). The rewards Pink is describing to produce high performance we actually working pretty well.
However, today what is happening in eduction is changing that. There is less financial stability, so money becomes an issue. I already live with a salary far below the average for my level of education, but the budget squeeze at the federal, state and district level is real and serious. My salary has never held pace with inflation, but it wasn't that far behind. Now we face real changes in the monetary aspects of education. One of my colleagues was literally in tears in her office the other day having heard that our districts 'offer' in this year's negotiations was a pay cut. It not that we are or should be immune from the realities of economics, I'm just pointing out that the game is changing. Money has been put back on the table in education and we are worried. And the stability that we used to trade for the lower salary is no longer. Benefits are being cut or squeezed, teachers are getting laid off in large numbers, and this will continue for the foreseeable future.
At the same time, there are major changes in the other factors Pink discusses. It is, again, fashionable right now to blame teachers for the problems in education. This has produced the most top heavy, top down model of management one can imagine. Teachers are losing autonomy very quickly right now. At the federal, state and district level, more focus is being put on controlling not only the what, but the how of teaching. Teachng is being transformed in some quarters from the cognitively challenging work it should be, into the sort of mechanical, menial labor that Pink says is exactly the sort of work in which the simple reward paradigm does work. Which might not be that big a deal, except that if you remember the best teachers you ever had, they probably weren't the ones who treated their work as mechanical menial work. They treated it like the intellectually complex challenging task that good teaching is. And if you think about the worst teachers you ever had, they were probably exactly the type of teacher that will fit well in the new vision of teaching.
As for the other two factors, education will never lack purpose, but if it feels like the very system you work in has committed itself to making it difficult if not impossible to achieve that purpose, then eventually all but the least imaginative will quit in frustration. And if we turn the job into a mechanical menial function, then there is no challenge in mastery, and that will cease to be a factor.
Now for the editorializing. As if I wasn't already doing that. It is always interesting to me that we (the collective 'we'- read 'that guy who has the Secretary of Education post and many others like him) think that 'business ideas' will save education, but when you hear that, the person saying it does not mean ideas like the one in Pink's lecture (or in the awesomely creative deployment by RSA Animate). No, the lessons of 'business' that we want to deploy in education all come from the manufacturing sector. Efficiency, scale, standardization. A business model with little room for the factors that Pink identifies as key to "drive." Also, interestingly, it is the part of our economy that our leaders continually tell us is not the future for our country. So we are trying to make a system for educating children (which NO-ONE ever says is not of grave importance), who we want to be passionate, autonomous and committed to mastery, using a system which researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and University of Chicago found is unlikely to allow the people who are the delivery system to be passionate, autonomous or committed to mastery. But we really want innovation? We think we want creativity in education? We want teachers passionately committed to the work they do and willing to labor at continuously improving? We could do that. But I don't think that's the direction we are heading right now.
It's two weeks to the end of the school year. I just spent two hours in which I should have been grading thinking about this, which is perfect anecdotal support for what Pink was saying. But I REALLY have to grade some papers today. Really.
This is maybe the best articulation ever of why current reform efforts underway in our nation's capital will not work. Funny- it took someone who actually knows education to point it out.
I'm supposed to be writing a paper (the same paper I've assigned to my students to show up in rough draft form tomorrow). Procrastination sets in so I'm writing, but here instead.
In conversations with colleagues over the last few days, I've gotten to a place where I feel somewhat stuck. Or maybe overwhelmed.
It's one of those times where I feel like I just want to shut my classroom door and do my own thing despite what the rest of the school is doing.
But unless there's some way to enact real change in the rest of the school, I will not be able to realize the hopes and visions I have for my students.
See, I really truly want to figure out what it means to teach language arts to high school students in ways that will meaningfully prepare them for success in our ever-changing, complexifying world. The jargon for this is 21st century skills. What does it mean to create a 21st century high school?
I am willing to chase this question, even if it means I have to throw out everything I've done before and remake my classroom and my teaching.
But I'm not sure my colleagues are equally willing.
When I get little glimpses of what is possible--of cool ways to integrate technology to get students more engaged, of interesting potential for doing cross-disciplinary work, of the options that begin to surface when we consider putting aside the daily/weekly schedule that currently rules our lives in the traditional American high school--I get excited.
But these are changes on the level of paradigm shifting.
Paradigm shifting is really, really difficult.
For now, I feel somewhat stuck within the boundaries created by the ways the community where I teach defines the purposes and practices of school. There are definitions about these things--about what students do, about what teachers do, about what is supposed to be happening in classrooms, about what a day at school is supposed to look like--that we all share and buy into, that we live and exist within, that are as invisible (yet omnipresent) to us as the air we breathe. So within that context, it's really hard for me to make the real change that I would like to move toward.
So there is where I feel stuck. It's such a daunting prospect (paradigm shifting--questioning the air we breathe) that I don't even know where to start.
Signing off (to write that paper I need to write)-- M. Shelley
Oooooof. A week or so into this experiment. There are a lot of things I could comment on here, but the main thing to think about right now is my own reaction to the change in dynamic. I (we?) are so used to having not only the control, but also the responsibility, for what our students do. I was really feeling a lack of both this week. I wanted to jump in and start telling them what to do. My teacher brain was screaming, "Oh no, they might do the wrong thing!" The impulse to be the one in the room 'making things happen' was pretty powerful. As much as I was able, I refrained.
In both sections the students had planned to 'have discussions' this week. Both groups decided that they did want to read from the text as a way of gathering some background information, and then have a discussion in class. On the day of discussion, I came in to the room, and rather than taking 'center stage' as I might normally do, I just sat in back and took attendance. The students sitting near me in both classes we watching to see what I would do, but for the most part the group happily ignored me.
In my first class (a bit smaller and harder to hide in), a student asked me after a moment, "aren't we having a discussion today?" I tried to keep my response as neutral as possible. I think I said something like, "I believe that's what you had put on the calendar." She got the point and immediately enlisted some of her fellows in organizing the class (the classes are filled with motivated honors students, so their willingness to take initiative is pretty high). That class launched into a discussion that lasted almost an hour.
On the whole they stayed pretty on topic. I noticed that, especially given the nature of the topic they were discussing (the formulation of knowledge in the social sciences), they raised and discussed some pretty complicated ideas. This class has been doing this with my direction for almost a year now, so they have had practice and some modeling and coaching, but it was still pretty cool to see them try it on their own. After a few minutes they realized that
I just wasn't going to say anything, so they ignored me.
It was really tough to keep my mouth shut, especially when I heard things that were factually incorrect or not well though out. Several times the group shied away from engaging an idea because the voice asserting it was particularly aggressive, even when I could see some pretty significant disagreement in the group as a whole. It was tough not to play 'referee' or my normal role as devil's advocate, especially in the face of ideas that deserved more interrogation than they received.
I kept track of how many members of the class participated- in a group of 22, six voices carried the majority of the conversation, nine participated at some level, and seven did not speak. Of those who did not talk at all, I would say four of them were engaged, but just chose not to speak, and the rest seemed outwardly disengaged (though it can be very tough to tell- just because they look like they aren't listening does not mean they aren't tracking the conversation.
Other than my own struggle to keep my mouth shut, I actually found it quite relaxing. On the whole the discussion was at least as good as an average discussion led by me, and in some ways perhaps more genuine. While it was hard not to immediately jump in when I heard something I thought was 'wrong' the group seemed to work through those moments on its own, more or less, and I almost always heard the 'right' or more accurate information at least raised. I also found that I had the time to observe the class much more carefully than I do when I am leading the discussion. I was much more aware of who was engaged, who was participating, who seemed totally checked out.
When there were only a few minutes left in class, and the conversation was winding down, several students turned to me and asked essentially 'how did we do?' I shared some of what I wrote above, and then asked them how they thought it went. On the whole they seemed pleased. I told them that I would be asking them for ideas on how they could make it even better when we were done with this unit.
Trying this experiment has raised what I think is a major issue in education (for me). When we talk about teaching/learning, are we talking about what occurred in the classroom, or are we talking about what the students take with them when they leave. We all know the dynamic of 'covering the content' in which we make sure that whatever material we feel beholden to is exposed in the room. But we also know that there is a great distance between that and what students actually retain. Engaging my students in their own sense of responsibility for learning certainly seems like it will up their level of learning. But my urge to make sure everything is 'covered' in class is pretty powerful.
I will have to wait and see how they demonstrate and difference understanding on the next assessment, which is next week. They, of course, is the real proof here. I plan to video the presentation so we can digest them as a class. But so far I have to say that the class experience seems a lot more genuine. There is less 'playing at school,' on all our parts. That has to be good, I think.
So- two days in. What an interesting experience! I teach two sections of the same course, and the most startling part of doing this so far is that the two classes have VERY different characters. Not really a surprise, but still interesting. One class is very gung-ho- move ahead, what do we need to do next. The other class wants to spend more time ruminating on data from their last assessment (I gave them scores from their lat presentation as part of our planning today).
I really like just asking them what they want to do. I expressed in both classes that it might be really easy to decided not to do anything, and take the consequences (Luckily, there are honors level classes with highly motivated students- ultimately they do care about their grades quite a bit). I told them I would let that happen if they wanted, but expressed concern about the consequences to them. Since they have almost a years worth of experience in this course, they understand much of what we do and how it relates pretty clearly. As I said in my original post, this is also the class that is closest to this model already.
Both classes wanted some time to work as a large group, obtaining a deeper understanding of the larger subject, and both groups wanted time to work independently on their particular topics in the larger subject. They asked me to do some direct instruction as it relates to the concepts embedded in the rubric, but after that they wanted to direct their own learning in the form of discussion and some looser classroom activities.
By far, the best moment for me came yesterday, at the end of the second class. A student who is generally pretty quiet, though always very engaged was leaving the room after the bulk of the others had left. As she slung her over-large backpack over her shoulder she looked at me and said, "this is actually the hardest thing you've asked us to do so far, isn't it?" I nodded an affirmative, but inside I was jumping up and down. Yes!
I have been reading a series at The Edurati Review called "Making the Shift," by Kevin Washburn. I posted about it a week or so ago. He just published part 4, "From Target Future to Teaching."
I have really been interested in the way he conceptualizes what we might do in the classroom. His view has really spoken to me, and to the needs of the young people who show up in front of me every day. But blogging about a new idea doen't mean much. So feeling inspired by the 4th installment, I am going to take a shot at doing it. We are starting a new unit in a course I teach tomorrow. Rather than having a filled in calendar of things was are going to do, read, discuss, and produce, I am going to had out a blank calendar of the next four weeks.
We will do presentations at the end of the unit (form), there is a subject we need to cover (focus), and we have about four weeks to deal with this topic (frame). In this particular class there is already a rubric for presentations which focuses students on the skills of the course. I didn't write the rubric, though I think it is a good one for the course in question, so rather than re invent the wheel, I am sticking with it.
But tomorrow I am going to ask my students, "given that you will have to do a presentation with some of your colleagues in four weeks, and understanding the rubric as we do, what do you need to do to be successful in that presentation, and go from there. In consultation with Shelly on Friday afternoon, I am putting together a list of suggestions for things that might be useful to them, and I have some concerns that they need to address in their plan, but other than that, it is up to them.
I am going to give them a copy of Washburn's Part 3 article, so they know why we are doing what we are doing, and I will present them with the data from their last set of presentations, so they have a sense of why I might have concerns about how they use their time and what they do, but mostly I am going to try to turn it over to them.
And than I'm going to write about it. Not every day, but regularly over the next few weeks. So we will see what unfolds. Stay tuned...
Greetings. As promised, here are my thoughts on why we are often unable to teach literature as we should, or to really, truly, enact any meaningful change in the classroom (such as making space for the kind of professional development that F. Scott wrote about a few days ago).
I've been working with a classic study in the field of education, Willis's (1977) Learning to Labour, to help me explain some of the resistance I got from my students last year during my dissertation study. Willis studied a group of young men, "the lads," whose consistent, overt, naughty resistance to school ended up reproducing the omnipresent class system of their community. Due to the culture of their working class lives, they interpreted school as having nothing of real value to offer them, so their days at school consisted mainly of resisting and opposing anything that the school asked them to do. In so doing, "the lads" made it certain that they would continue along the path toward their working class existence, only realizing at a point in the future how they had missed out on their opportunity to get an education that would provide them other options besides a working class destiny.
One particular aspect of Willis's study became incredibly relevant to my dissertation study. The opposition I got from my students in my classroom was often naughty and characteristic of the opposition of "the lads"--which is what led one of my committee members to suggest I take a look at Willis. But what was most salient toward my dissertation was not Willis's finding about class reproduction, but rather his characterization of a dominant teaching paradigm that organized school in the minds of everyone involved in the study--"the lads," the other students, the teachers, the administrators, and the parents.
Willis argues that embedded in the consciousness of our society exists an understanding of school as essentially an exchange between teacher and students. Students comply with what the teacher asks in the classroom in exchange for something. In the school Willis studied, the exchange was for knowledge, which led to certain qualifications for certain jobs, income, and eventual ability to purchase goods and services. In short, if students complied with what school offered, they would eventually be able to get jobs to support themselves.
In reading about this exchange-based teaching paradigm, I realized that the school where F. Scott and I teach is also, at its center, swirling around a basic exchange between teacher and students. Students comply with what we ask of them in the classroom in exchange for grades. These grades will eventually lead to college admission, hopefully at the prestigious college (whatever that might be for each individual student) that our school community holds as the goal. Over 90% of our students go on to 4-year colleges every year. The College Admission is the end goal, and students need the right kind of grades for that, and that is how we get them to comply with our classroom requests. I believe this to be the case because of how often I hear, "how many points is this?" and "what do I need to do to get the A?" and my colleagues belief that unless we give students a grade for everything we ask them to do, they will not do it. Students are not concerned first about actually understanding; their first concern is about their grades.
Willis's framework becomes powerful though when you consider his argument for how impossible meaningful change is within this dominant, exchange-based teaching paradigm. He examines several other versions of teaching and shows how they are all just revisions of the basic paradigm, and not very meaningful ones at that. At the center of all the reforms he examines, he argues, sits still an offer from the teacher in exchange for students' compliance. What changes in what the teacher is offering. Because the basic paradigm is so completely entrenched in everyone's understanding of school, if what the teacher is offering is too far off of what is expected in the exchange, students will not be able to interpret it as anything but some betrayal of the basic exchange, and then you get the naughty, resistant, oppositional behavior cropping up.
Willis argues that the only way to actually enact meaningful reform is to disrupt the basic exhange-based paradigm. How to do this? Well, you have to make changes to the material structures, organization, and practices of schools that are both evidence of the presence of the teaching paradigm and the defining characteristics of it. The material structures have to do with the physical spaces of the school and how students have little privacy, how their movements are often constrained, and how they don't have free access to all areas of the school (think locked up computer labs, off-limits teachers' lounges, restricted student parking areas, smashed-together lockers, small and uncomfortable student desks, etc.). The organization has to do with how the school day/year is structured (think bell schedules, attendance policies, seat time guidelines, etc). The practices have to do with how school is done in a particular community (think advanced vs. regular tracks within schools, teachers starting and ending class periods at the bells, teachers making all the decisions about the curriculum, etc.). If we want to make meaningful change, we have to make real changes to the material structures, organization, and practices that maintain the exchange-based teaching paradigm.
What might those changes look like? I imagine school campuses that feel more open and inviting to students with access at more hours of the day and comfortable places for students to hang out. I imagine flexible daily schedules that can ebb and flow with the demands of the curriculum and the individual needs of students--a class can end early if the goal for the day is met or students can work from home on a particular day if there's no need for the whole class to meet for example. I imagine a dedicated effort to include students in more decision making about curricular in instructional issues. Yes, teachers are the ones with the professional knowledge surrounding this stuff, but we should be looking for meaningful places to involve our students in decision making whenever possible and strive to work to put our students much more at the center of their own education. I imagine using technology in powerful ways to better mirror students' lives outside of school and to create more flexible learning spaces.
I tried last year to deliberately offer my students something outside of this dominant exhange-based paradigm, but the expectations about what school is supposed to be in my students' minds, in my colleagues' minds, even in my own mind--kept getting in the way. I know that unless we examine the assumptions we all carry around about school that serve to maintain the basic, dominant teaching paradigm, we will never be able to make real, meaningful change for our students. We have to look for and examine these assumptions so that we are able to truly imagine ways to meet the needs of our students, now and into the ever-changing future.
