Category: Learning Through Reflecting

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Getting to the Other Side of Confidence

I vividly remember my introduction to email. I was over at my friend’s house down the street — they had a computer in their own house! She pulled up her email account and started showing me how to set up a message to send. But even as she seemed to effortlessly correspond back and forth with friends, I remember wondering, how does an email address work exactly? How could a message possibly get from your computer to another person’s computer? It felt wildly beyond my comprehension.

Next major obstacle in my tech journey: Apple’s “There’s an app for that” commercials. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why one would need an app at all.  If we could access the internet on a smart phone, why would we need anything else? My husband tried to explain ease of use and navigation to me, but it still seemed gimmicky, and again, beyond my comprehension.

And the latest hurdle: Twitter. All seemed well when I initially created an account and posted a couple of interesting teaching links. But months later, when I decided to really expand my PLN and dive in, I felt hopelessly inept. What on earth were hashtags? How did chats work? How was I supposed to actually connect with others in any kind of meaningful way?

Roba Al-Assi

This is, of course, just a short list of hurdles which, at the time, felt insurmountable in my ability to progress with technology. Yet somehow, with gradual and almost invisible progress, I suddenly found myself on the other side of confidence.

Interestingly enough, as I reflect further on each of these three anecdotes, I realize that it has taken me shorter and shorter amounts of time to work past the uncomfortable newness (years for the first, months for the second, weeks for the third).  I don’t expect that my next hurdle will necessarily follow form with an even shorter period of uncertainty, but I do feel that it is indicative of a shift in mindset.

This kind of growth mindset in tech has applications for ourselves in our professional development, and certainly in the mindset we can and should hope to model to our students. Here are my takeaways:

  • Recognize that the discomfort is temporary — if we persist.
  • Use resources in established, comfortable spheres to take you through the uncomfortable.
  • Know that both confidence and broadened possibilities (possibly life-changing) are just on the other side of the current discomfort.
  • For every victory, you build up your growth mindset and flexibility.
  • It’s ok to be picky about what you will pursue through the discomfort (we can’t possibly become experts in every new thing that comes our way as teachers or even human beings in the 21st century) — but not if the only reason you skip out on new ideas is because of that discomfort.

What about you? What have been examples of getting through that discomfort in your growth as a teacher?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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“I thought if I took away the iPads & phones, they’d grow up to be normal people.”

With kids asleep and husband out of town, I thought I’d settle down for some stereotypically comforting chocolate and HGTV. And it was. Until the person getting a newly renovated boat said something I’ve heard in many different forms over and over:

“I thought if I took away the iPads & phones, they’d grow up to be normal people.”

Normal people?

There seems to be a long history of the older generations criticizing and fearing the youth for their abnormal interests.

Like when the Scientific American railed on the insidious game of chess in July 1859:

via Wikimedia commons/Public Domain

“A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”

Or when an earl complained in an 1843 speech in the House of Commons:

via Wikipedia/Public Domain

“…a fearful multitude of untutored savages… [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits…[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody…the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.

Not to mention society’s habit in general to believe:

“that “the good ‘ol days” are behind us and the current good-for-nothing generation and their new-fangled gadgets and culture are steering us straight into the moral abyss. “There has probably never been a generation since the Paleolithic that did not deplore the fecklessness of the next and worship a golden memory of the past,” notes Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist.” (Why Do We Always Sell the Next Generation Short?“)

Excessive screen time, of course, is a legitimate concern. But if we truly believe the adage that the youth are our future, we must temper our tendency to demonize the new and unknown and instead provide encouragement for the possibilities it provides.

We should take care not to allow our fear of change to limit our children’s capacity to influence the future. That includes leading them to believe that if their childhoods look different from ours, they won’t lead “normal” lives.

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Inquiry into SDGs (The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals)

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Recently, Ms. Hilaa’s Fabulous4thGraders in Pakistan introduced me to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in the form of some truly fabulous Google Form questions.

I’m not sure how I missed the roll-out of the SDGs, but now that I’m aware, I can’t stop thinking about them and their implications for our students!

So this week’s provocation centers around helping students consider the creative ways people around the world are addressing these issues.

Resource #1: Bringing the SDGs to life video

Resource #2: Kate Raworth on Growth by RSA Animations

Resource #3: Embrace Cocoon Innovation

For the TED-Talk that introduced the Embrace and its background, click here.

Resource #4: Jody Williams on Activism by The RSA Animations

Resource #5: If the World Were A Village of 100 People: A Story About the World’s People (book & trailer)

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Provocation Questions:

  • What is the relationship between sustainable development and innovation?
  • What is our responsibility to encourage sustainable development as individuals? As societies?
  • Why is sustainable development important?
  • What are the different perspectives on sustainable development? Why do those different perspectives exist?
  • How does sustainable development impact people’s individual daily lives?

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Why Do They Want to Erase?

Last week, I came across this interesting tweet:

With how much I value process, I initially thought I’d just retweet with an “Amen!”

But then I started to wonder: why exactly do kids want to erase their work, anyway?

As a teacher, I used to think the answer to this question was simple: my fifth graders had been thoroughly trained that all that mattered was the product, and therefore anything that showed the process (or anything less than perfection) was undesirable.

And for many children, maybe this is the case.

But others, I wonder if it’s along the same lines for why I don’t publish my blog posts to the world with every edit in parentheses next to its original boring synonym, punctuation error, or run-on sentence. I want the final piece I’ve worked so hard to improve to take the spotlight.

What’s more, when I reach back further to my own childhood school years, I can recall a certain sulkiness when we were all forced to use the same writing tool for a given assignment. My desire to use a pen vs. pencil alternated many times throughout the day and different assignments. I always had my reasons, even if I couldn’t always articulate them (the ink was stuck in the pen; my pencil was broken and I wasn’t allowed to use the pencil sharpener; I wanted to shade my letters a certain way; I had a new glitter pen that I was dying to try).

 

If we are truly interested in helping students own their learning process, we need to remember that ownership and choice are inextricably connected.

So instead of making a single choice for them all, why not try instead:

  • Asking students to choose how they will share evidence of their learning.
  • Teaching students explicitly about the value of process vs product.
  • Helping students to cultivate a deeper sense of metacognition to focus their decisions — even simple ones such as choosing a writing implement — on what will best serve their learning process.

Ultimately, this is just one small example of how we can help our students take the wheel to drive their learning. But even small things add up!

 

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“Perpetual Motion:” The Self Driving Engine of Student Ownership

Take a look at Pamela Kennedy’s “Perpetual Motion in Room 17” time lapse video:

What do you observe?

I notice:

  • Flexible seating choices
  • Variation in working in pairs, groups, or independently
  • Confidence regarding when and where to be
  • Order and efficiency, yet choice and flexibility

Now take a look at Mr. Humphrey’s class:

Choice – Making it Happen with 33 Students in a Math Classroom

Additional observations I make here include:

  • Freedom to set the pace of learning
  • Respect for students’ decision-making in how they explore concepts
  • Individuality

These are both wonderful examples of what can happen when we allow students to drive their own learning. And as students continue to steer more and more of their learning, I wonder what the next steps will be in each of these classrooms in furthering that ownership?

 

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3 Tips to Help Students Rise Above the Echo Chamber

I recently had the opportunity to volunteer again as an exhibition mentor at my old IB PYP school. And, as usual, the children were brilliant, brimming with ideas and enthusiasm for taking the lead on their unit of inquiry.

But over the last few years, I’ve started to notice a puzzling trend: no matter how much research and exploring the kids do, and no matter how many counter-articles I suggest, the basic opinion they start with is often the opinion they end with (plus some charts and figures to support it). Why?

How do we help kids make the shift from searching out facts that support their existing opinions (something the internet is all-too-willing to give us all), to instead searching out the truth, even when the truth is surprising?

Here are 3 thoughts I’ve had since the end of this year’s exhibition (that hopefully I can better employ in mentoring next year!!). I would love to hear your suggestions, as well!

1. Model research that responds to the unexpected.

My first thought was on how we model research to our students. Most teachers extensively model how to find answers to their questions. But I wonder how often we show them what it looks like when we encounter an article or chart that assert alternative possibilities? Do we think aloud as we digest this new information, or do we discard it in our search for the information that backs us up? If the latter, I think we’re missing an important opportunity to teach students to be open to new ideas.

2.  Employ visible thinking protocols — especially “I used to think…Now I think…“

This is a kind of mental scaffolding exercise to help students break down their thinking and how it is evolving. Reflecting not just what our opinions are, but on why we have them is crucial for healthy metacognition for us all!

3. Play the “Devil’s Advocate.”

I have had a tendency as my students’ mentor to help them find articles to help them find out more about their topic — which generally involves research on their existing opinions. But I have come to realize that what they need more from me as a mentor is just the opposite — to share resources that directly contradict their claims, encouraging deeper digging and questioning.

Videos like these from Futurism come to mind, especially since they start with phrases like “Despite what you might have heard…”

https://futurism.com/videos/genetically-modified-food-is-a-great-advancement/

https://futurism.com/three-major-reasons-automation-wont-leave-you-unemployed/

In this information age, it’s easy for all of us to get stuck in our own echo chambers of opinion. It’s crucial we help our students learn to rise above it now.

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“Taking Context Seriously” to Cultivate Student Ownership

In the video below (recently shared by AJ Juliani in my PLN — thanks, AJ!), Todd Rose shares the following story (starting at 22:07).

In the 1960’s scientists were puzzled why the infant reflex to “walk” disappears after around 2 months, later returning when they are ready to walk at around a year old. Based on a method of averages, they determined it had to do with the fact that our brains mature and therefore suppress that reflex. This belief ended up in pediatrics books, which landed babies getting checked for developmental brain delays and remediation if their reflex didn’t go away by 2 months. Fortunately, Esther Thelen later proved this false; by looking at individuals rather than averages, and by varying the contexts with each of these babies, she discovered that at 2 months of age, infants’ thighs simply get chubbier, rendering their legs too heavy to lift that way.

“So here we have this really complicated story about brain maturation that we’re sending kids off to remediation off of, when it turns out it has nothing to do with that, just by taking context seriously.”

As an educator, the phrase, “taking context seriously” jumps out to me. We know we are in the business of working with people. We know learning is a messy process. We know that we need to see our students as individuals first.

Yet all these truths seem to take a back seat when it comes to testing, GPAs, and report cards.

Why? Because we consistently sweep away that context of the individual in favor of finding and measuring up against that ever-supreme average.

 

Fortunately, research like Todd Rose’s is finally shedding light on just how misleading the average is when we are looking at the individual (he makes the point that it can still be very valuable when looking at large groups, but that when it comes to individuals, average does not exist). Though the longstanding belief has been that we use the “average” because it matches the largest number of people, the truth is that we are so complex that the average actually ends up matching virtually no one.

So in education, it’s when we “take context seriously” that we find out where a learner really is on their journey.

We take into account all the nuances and complexities of the individual to not only analyze just how far they’ve come (ie, taking into account poverty, developmental delays, etc) but to identify their strengths that will help them work toward mastery.

As Rose says later in the talk,

“Empower students with self-knowledge to make choices on their own behalf.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6otfpZV9Zao

We have the tools in our 21st century world to help our students understand their own contexts and leverage that knowledge to take ownership over their own learning process. We need to resist the idea that certain skills and knowledge need to be attained by certain, average benchmarks in time because these averages, in fact, apply to so few people.

Our individual contexts are just too unique to be lumped into the average.

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Note, at the end of the Google Talk, Rose addressed some excellent audience questions, including how we measure success in the education system in lieu of the average. Rose shares two fascinating possibilities I also wanted to share here:

1. As tech is giving us greater opportunities for individualized learning, we’ll soon see a shift, especially in higher-ed, toward “Micro-credentials and competency based measurements” instead of the traditional semesters/grades system.

2. We need to use clearly defined, competency-based outcomes to measure success. To know how well an individual is doing, we need benchmark them against their own progression in that competency, and you don’t have to look at anyone else’s progress to know that. (“A diploma with a 3.2 vs. “I have these competencies.””)