The Poster By My Desk

Next to my desk, I have a sign that the school gave to me. If you can't read it, in this picture, it says,
"Rethink Teaching"
1.  Share everything (or at least something)
2.  Discover, don't deliver, the curriculum.
3.  Talk to strangers.
4.  Be a master learner.
5.  Real work for real audiences.
6.  Transfer the power.

After I got past laughing at the lines Share Everything and Talk to Strangers (because we were hanging this in classrooms where students would read them), I started trying to implement these ideas.

It is impossible for someone who has been teaching for a while to change their entire approach to pedagogy at once.  Thankfully, I am in a school that recognizes that.  They encourages us to add to our repertoire and make some changes each quarter or alter existing assignments to reflect what we are learning about pedagogy.  This blog has been an attempt at achieving number 1 - Share everything (or at least something).  It is my attempt to let others in on my reflections as a teacher or share a great new project or idea.  According to blogger's analytics, I have had almost five hundred page views, some of them in Europe.  I don't know how someone in France or Russia or Germany finds my blog (if you are reading this, comment because I really am interested).  But I am happy if it is helping any of you.

A few years ago, at the NC Technology in Education conferences, someone finally convinced me that Twitter had value as an educational tool.  I've been following CERN, FermiLab, NASA, Scientific American, etc.  It has been fun sharing current science news with my students.  I am now encouraging them to follow Reid Wiseman, an astronaut who posts phenomenal pictures from the International Space Station.  Number 3 - Talking to strangers - Check.

I've always been a learner.  All the courses you hated in college because they were general ed - I LOVED them!  I like knowing things.  Whether it is how microphones and speakers work to why the Mary in Michelangelo's Pieta is so large, I love knowing things.  Number 4 - Be a master learner - This wasn't a shift I had to make.

Recently, I started my first REAL attempt at #5 - Real work for real audiences.  I have been a yearbook teacher for 10 years, so that class has always produced real work for a real audience.  I don't count that because it is inherent in the class and not something I have to try to do.

This year, I decided I wanted us to contribute to the internet, not just consume from it.  To that end, my eighth grade classes are producing a website.  We've only just begun it, so I don't know yet how it is working.  It was great to listen to them working on it.  Each student had the job of either writing or proofing or searching for media.  Some will be editors, and others are managing the work flow of their classmates.  Listening to a girl who rarely speaks set goals and deadlines and deliver that information to each of the other teams was a revelation.  I never dreamed she would be a great manager, but she was.  Listening to the writing team plan across three sections what each person would do was quite interesting as each class had different ideas of what method should be used.  They had to work it out amongst themselves on a shared Google Doc and then live with the result - just like working with a group in the work world.  That week, I got to know my students better than I had in the first quarter of the year.

Tomorrow, I am going to do something else I have never done before.  This is also an attempt at number 5 but also at number 6 - Transfer the power.  I am giving my physics students author authority on a blog, which means they can post without my having to read it first.   When we have long term projects, I have always done weekly "Project checkpoints."  They were checks of their progress that only came to me to grade.  This year, I am changing that to a weekly blog about their project.  Of course, I am still the blog administrator (I'm not crazy enough to hand over ALL of the power), but they will have the authority to post without prior approval for the world to see.  I believe they will rise to the occasion, write better because others will see it, and represent themselves well.

You may have noticed that I skipped #2.  That's because it is the one I am having the most trouble with.  Inquiry advocates, forgive me, but not everything is learned well from labs.  Not everything can be a fun activity that somehow reveals the secrets of the universe.  Not every student is Isaac Newton; some of them do have to be told things.  That doesn't mean I'm not trying, but it is the most difficult one of the list.  One of the phrases we have used as we try to shift our thinking is "get off the stage."  Here's the problem - I have spent the last 16 year perfecting my act.  It is finely honed, every story in place, every joke timed as if I were a stand up comic.  It's the thing I know I have down.  How do I get off the stage?  I don't know.  I know I have reduced my stage time as we make room for sharing and talking to strangers and blogging and all the other good things, but I don't know that I can ever completely give it up.  I'm not fully sold on the idea that I should - after all, I do actually know more than they do, and I do know how to explain it well.

I may never feel completely smooth with all six of these ideas or spend all my time above the line on the SAMR model.  I may never spend all my time in the high end of Bloom's taxonomy or use the Socratic method in a way that would make Socrates proud.  I do know that if students see me remain a life long learner, they will be more likely to become lifelong learners as well.