And they didn’t just teach me.  They taught each other.  For two years they focused on improving students’ written communication, engaged in reflective practice and used assessments to inform instructional decisions.  They found their way with a job embedded learning model that was new to our secondary schools.  They brought student and teacher work to the table and kept student achievement at the core of all conversations.

By the end of the 2009-10 school year, it became clear that students need explicit instruction in subject-specific literacy skills.  For example, if we are to improve how students support their thinking when writing in different subject areas, students need to understand how the types of evidence vary from one subject to another.  Overall, students need subject-specific instruction in:

• the questions they should ask of texts;
• the background knowledge required to decode a subject’s texts;
• the types of evidence required to support thinking in particular subjects.

With this new lens on subject-specific literacy, I wanted to know how each subject would define literacy if they could make the ‘literacy rules’.   I wanted explicit statements of what it meant to be literate in transportation technology, for example.  I closed the school year with subject-based focus groups that worked on developing these definitions.   In some cases, the focus groups also looked at the types of texts they use in the classroom versus the authentic texts of their discipline.  Our goal in each session was to expand the definition of literacy beyond reading and writing tasks.  Below you will find the thinking that came out of our focus group sessions in a slide show created by a collective of Avon Maitland teachers.  This is a work-in-progress and it will evolve, but with this work our learning continues.

So, inspired by Ben Hazzard’s blog post, I now choose to incorporate my thoughts on student voice and TEDx with images from the night and feedback on my writing, provided by my friend Stacy Someville @stacesome (seen below with her husband, Vince).

Me: Last Friday night educators gathered for TEDxOntarioEd. Throughout the evening we heard from adults, or former students. Tim Long, writer and executive producer for The Simpsons, reflected on his experiences as a student in the gifted program at South Huron District High School. Jesse Brown, host and co-producer for Search Engine, reflected on what it was like as a student who enjoyed and honored texts that weren’t valued by his high school teachers. Paul Finkelstein, Stratford Northwestern teacher and slow food advocate, shared his old report cards with us (and apparently with his principal) and recognized that he now creates a class that he would have enjoyed as a student.

My friend, and Avon Maitland’s student success co-ordinator, Stacy Somerville, wrote her master’s thesis on the ways that our school stories shape us as teachers and as people. At the TEDxOntarioEd after party, she spent a lot of time talking about this, but even more time talking about Tim Ludwig, a student presenter from Petrolia. Tim’s story isn’t a reflection. It is now. It is his reality, his everyday life. The pause in his speech while he struggled to find words and his place was, for me, symbolic of the need to listen to our students.

Stacy: Yes! And not fill in the blanks with our thoughts and what we think he is thinking. And wait time. Someone else mentioned time – giving people the ‘permission’ to take time to learn.

Me: We were a room full of educators. If we had jumped in, if we had interrupted Tim while he struggled to find his thoughts, what would we have said? Would our words, thoughts or instructions have changed Tim’s narrative? Instead, we listened and let him find his way of constructing the story he wanted to tell us.

Stacy: And I had goosebumps and a big lump in my throat. Love that kid. To speak fearlessly and honestly – very powerful.

Stacy is right. Our school stories shape who we are, and for our students, they will shape who they will become. We should spend more time listening.

Here are the steps Peggy used to co-construct criteria with her grade 10 Science class, followed by a short video of Peggy explaining the activity.

1. Use an activity to create random groups or pairs.
2. In groups or pairs, students brainstorm 3 or 4 steps or strategies that they follow when answering questions. Students use small white boards and dry erase markers to record their brainstorming.
3. Once the group agrees on their criteria for answering questions, one group member transfers the steps or strategies to the blackboard.
4. As a class, the students and teacher organize the information, grouping like ideas with like ideas, until they have distilled the criteria to 6 points.
5. The class then comes up with a word for each point and they use these words to create an acronym.

Peggy’s class came up with the acronym SPLASH

S – Snap the question (identify the given and requested information)
P – No pronouns. Be specific.
L – Language. Use scientific language.
A – What is the question asking? Am I answering the question?
S – Support my thinking with evidence like diagrams.
H – Use half of the question in my answer (wording).

Peggy explains her activity and SPLASH in this short video clip.

I’m very sad to share the news of Peggy’s death just a little over a week after we filmed and posted this video. Please consider this blog post and video as a tribute to a truly exceptional teacher. Peggy, we will miss you.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_gin/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The program dealt, in part, with using digital technology to preserve memories, heritage and culture. In a particularly poignant story, Meryl Swiatek recalls finding a cassette tape of her mother reading children’s stories nearly nine years after her mother died of cancer.

Meryl notes the importance of technology in preserving the memory of her mom and comments,

“. . . that got me thinking about how my life is preserved. I have almost 1000 twitter updates . . . and a handful of videos on YouTube. I preserve myself and my life digitally every single day without even thinking about it.”

And that got me thinking about the first time I ventured down this thought path. It started as a conversation about narrative when Alec Couros @courosa helped me recognize how the digital medium changes story telling.

And that is where I was stuck for oh . . . 5 months.

Although we weren’t discussing history in these tweets (above) , that is where this has ended up for me.

Digital History

The internet has no shortage of digital history resources. Digital history involves the use of digital media to preserve, present and study history. Scanned archives, audio files, timelines and interactive maps are examples of digital history and history teachers are using these resources to bring history to life for students. But there is no reason why history students shouldn’t contribute to the digital history ‘pool’. Ideally, they should be creating digital history resources by capturing oral histories and archiving documents and they should learn these research and archiving skills in their history classes. The CBC Spark episode referenced at the beginning of this post provides suggestions and ideas for scanning and capturing audio, including interviewing tips.

Currently, digital history seems confined to websites or blogs as public museums or places that house resources for the study of history. It has yet to fully embrace the idea of digital texts as primary sources. If we are preserving ourselves and our lives digitally every single day, these records will be the historical evidence we use tomorrow.

Shouldn’t students’ research skills shift to consider digital resources, like websites, blogs and tweets, as historical texts? If a diary entry is a primary source, a blog post is a primary source. Shouldn’t students understand how they differ (hint: audience and purpose) and how that shapes the reading of these texts?

Will political historians consider tweets?

What will the future make of tweets like this one by President Obama (or his ghost tweeter) which may have been read by as many as 3,477,140 of his Twitter followers?

What happens to the study of history in a world of living documents?

What happens to social history in the world of social media?

What happens when our students ask “how do we reference twitter in an essay?”

Please share your thoughts on our digital lives becoming digital histories.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/danisarda/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Richard does not have expensive, new materials in his room. He has salvaged tables from around the school, but the arrangement of his classroom space speaks to the value he places on social learning. Here are two video clips and some pictures. Richard has given me permission to share.

Reichert and Hawley note the following:

Boys are relational learners.

Teachers who experience success with boys emphasize the relational dimension of teaching, “regardless of the subject”. The boys Reichert and Hawley interviewed recognized and acknowledged when a teacher was open “to what interested, excited, and worried them.”

Boys elicit the kinds of teaching they need.

If either the content or the way it is conveyed to boys is not ‘right’ boys will disengage. As Reichert and Hawley explain, “boys will engage in either passive inattention or diverting disruption.” The teacher will know when he/she has made the proper adjustments when “better engagement, sustained effort and mastery on the boys’ part” is evident.

Lessons must have an element that interests students and holds that interest. Examples include unexpected surprise, kinesthetic activities or competition.

What can we do in Avon Maitland?

Continue to focus on knowing the learner through individualized conversations with students.

Use class profiles, interest surveys and student feedback when designing lessons and activities.

Create fluid and flexible lessons that allow us to make the proper adjustments when we see that students are not engaged rather than expect students to conform to a specific teacher’s prescribed approach.

Recognize that student interests and readiness may vary from semester to semester and from class to class.

Differentiate instruction based on student readiness and interest.

In order for this to happen, the teacher must be an empathetic, reflective practitioner and willing to take risks and try new teaching and learning strategies.

Sir Ken Robinson and Steve Martin

As I began sorting through the idea of creativity and critical thinking, I remembered watching Steve Martin’s biography. In 1993, Martin wrote a play called Picasso at the Lapin Agile in which he creates a fictional encounter between Picasso and Einstein in the year 1904. In Martin’s words, “the play attempts to explain, in a light-hearted way, the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science.” Picasso brags about his artistic ability, commenting that it is all in the wrist and the wrist starts in the head. He says, “If I think it, I can draw it.” Einstein confesses that he works “the same way” and makes “beautiful things with a pencil.”

I started thinking about Picasso at the Lapin Agile after reading this statement by Sir Ken Robinson:

A big part of being creative is looking for new ways of doing things within whatever activity you’re involved in. 

Einstein and Picasso did this.

Robinson also states that you “can be creative in math, science, music, dance, cuisine, teaching, running a family or engineering. Because creativity is a process of having original ideas that have value.”

Martin understands that the creative process applies to any activity (as well he should, since he is an art collector, musician, comedian, actor, author, director and playwright).

If you are interested, watch part of Charleston Stage’s version of Picasso at the Lapin Agile (a little explicit language at the beginning). If you cue the video to 8:35 you will see Picasso and Einstein compete to make something beautiful with their pencils. When they are done they argue.

Picasso: Mine touches the heart

Einstein: Mine touches the head

Picasso: Mine will change the future

Einstein: And mine won’t?

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feuilllu/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Over the next few posts, I am going to expose my thinking as I try to sort through something that Sir Ken Robinson said about creativity and critical thinking in his a September interview for ASCD’s Educational Leadership. He stated that “people see creativity and critical thinking as being opposed.” I am guilty of this. When I think of critical thinking, I think of analyzing and deconstructing, questioning and challenging. When I think of creativity I see inspiration and the formulation or making of something. I agree with Robinson when he says, “you can’t be creative if you don’t do something” and I also agree when he goes on to explain how creativity applies to any subject or activity. In this particular interview, however, he alludes to the idea that creativity and critical thinking are not opposites, but he doesn’t help me reconcile my definitions of creativity and critical thinking. Add to this all of the reading I have been doing about 21^st century skills (including creativity and critical thinking) and my thinking is muddy.

If you want to wade through the mud with me, click here to listen to an excerpt of Why Creativity Now? A Conversation with Sir Ken Robinson or click here for the full interview.

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfv/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Click on the image for a closer look and try playing with wordle yourself. Many teachers are using it in the classroom to help students edit for overused words or to create poetry.  How could you use wordle?

Image by http://www.wordle.net/.

Beginning last spring, a group of board consultants, administrators and curriculum resource teachers, met to explore how we would implement the big ideas coming forward in many of the Ontario Ministry of Education documents. Our guiding question for our work is: What are the skills, knowledge, and principles needed to live and to work for sustainable development? Although technology does not have its own ministry document and receives remarkably little attention in any of the ministry materials, we felt it was crucial to our conversations about sustainability. My sense is that if the ministry is rolling out documents around character education, environmental education and equity, to name a few, the internet should be a significant part of these conversations.

Character Education

If teaching students about respect, citizenship and leadership is important in our brick and mortar spaces, it is just as important in our virtual spaces. I recently received a letter home from my daughter’s school explaining that someone had generated an email with a list of girls’ names (called a ‘hoe list’ note the spelling). This list had circulated online inviting students to add new names and ‘rank’ the girls. The students involved are in grade 7 and many were very upset. I am pleased to report that the school is treating this as a learning experience for the children and an opportunity to talk about character and online behaviour. Personally, I’m interested in how this event differs from a note being passed around the school. It isn’t quite the same thing. The action of passing the email version of a note takes place outside of school time. It would be interesting if the outcome saw these same students participate in a online activity to reinforce positive character attributes. Anytime, anywhere learning applies to the unwritten curriculum too. Environment: Our Ecological Footprint

This is not an area of strength for me. I rarely reflect on where my possessions ‘go to die’. Yet, in the past 8 years we, as a family, have gone through 1 Personal Computer, 3 laptops, a netbook, a number of cell phones, satellite radio devices, and much more if I move into what we did with our VCRs or the many MP3 players that were lost. So, there is an issue around materials consumption and waste when we make a connection between the environment and technology, but also around the energy required to operate home/office computers and data centres. Internet data centres require energy to operate and to run cooling systems. Bill St. Arnaud claims that the internet is the fastest growing source of CO2 to the atmosphere. This doesn’t mean that companies aren’t taking a green approach; many, such as google have developed zero-carbon policies.

Equity and Universal Access: Who gets access and how?

There are many logistical issues that impact internet access, such as limited bandwidth in remote areas (Northern Ontario is a local example). When we think globally, Africa is an example of a continent with limited internet access. According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, “Africa’s only connection to the internet backbone is an undersea cable running from Portugal along Africa’s west coast.” Add to this that

• monopolies held by telecommunications companies make internet access very expensive;
• the hope of another fiber optics project was stalled for political reasons;
• East Africa is primarily dependent on satellite connections for internet access;
• “land-locked countries” such as Rwanda, “face a special challenge as they will only be able to access bandwidth via an intermediary country.”

When we talk about equity and internet access, we have to ask, “who gets what content and how?” Even when we reflect on recent events in Iran we recognize that this is an issue as countries develop different regulations around accessing content on the internet. Our schools are a microcosm of this issue when they block sites like YouTube. They are doing more than inconveniencing teachers and students, more than sending a message about internet safety and undesirable content. They are embodying the kind censorship that we fear and that we would not tolerate if imposed on a national level in Canada. They are preventing the students who need internet access the most from learning with and about the internet (I am referring to those students who may not have internet access at home, or may not have permission to use the home computer).

Other Equity Questions

• In what languages is content available?
• Will all countries be supportive of the free use of knowledge?

I want to mention that our Big Ideas group doesn’t focus on technology alone. We delve into ministry documents that we are expected to implement and topics like student voice, aboriginal education and inclusivity. The important part is that we are working at making connections and trying to incorporate these big ideas into our work with teachers, but we would be remiss if we did not make connections to technology. I welcome your thoughts on the big ideas and hope that you will push my thinking.

Compare internet world statistics

Read more about Internet access in Rwanda

Listen to Bill St. Arnaud on CBC Radio as he discusses how Canada’s broadband access compares to the rest of the world.

See how Google is reducing their footprint

Picture by http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/ / CC BY-SA 2.0