Staff Development on TV

I have spent the last 2 nights fascinated with watching the finales of reality shows - The Biggest Loser, Celebrity Apprentice (Yah! Bret), Dancing with the Stars, American Idol.

And there's such a strong common theme in all of these - transformation. We use this word in education all the time. "We need to transform this and transform that, transform our instruction, transform the classroom, transform learning."

What does it mean to transform? How do we know we are transforming?

So one of the pieces is change. Change implies a significant difference between before and after, right?

Does it mean that the after is better? That's still to be seen, but based on what I've seen so far, there is evidence that it might.

So what? There's a big difference between something that LOOKS different and something that IS different. What is that???

I think it's deeply personal, emotional and it only happens as a result of challenging oneself and going through, yes, through the struggle. It's not easy to get to a different place, but if we go there together, we can. And that's the second ingredient - having a someone to push you there. I'm not sure if push is the right word, but it's what Jillian does in The Biggest Loser. I can relate to her b/c there are teachers who are afraid they will fail at using technology - they compare themselves to a younger generation, even their students who are more adept at using technology, but what I see when a teacher goes through the struggle of taking that risk - to learn and grow, is amazing. They just need someone to tell them they can do it, hold up the expectation, and hold out a hand if they stumble or fall to help them back up.

Well, if education really does need to transform, then why aren't we looking to what's happening out there? It's right in front of us - we don't need a book, or a manual or a step-by-step guide to tell us how to transform! Sylvia Martinez stated at ISTE last year that the past 30 years of technology staff development has not worked. I think we can look to other sources in our world to receive and provide staff development. Why are we limiting ourselves to only educators when we have Stacy and Clinton and Jillian and Bob and so many others teaching others how to transform? If they can do it, so can we!

Who inspires you?

The Beauty of Collective Thinking

One beauty of collective thinking is the contribution of each person's unique perspective. Sure one person can create a vision and see it through to it's completion - sure, there's a time and place for that creativity.

For the vision of what a learning space could look like, the collective contributions of teachers, students, parents, administrators, a guidance counselor and professionals from different companies - wow! Each person looks at it from a different lens.

A teacher will look at it from a mobile learning environment, a student will look at it as a place they want to be, a buildings and grounds director as a place that can be sustained and maintained over time, a principal as a place to support and fund learning, a technology coordinator as a place where instruction takes place to support kids' learning, a guidance counselor as a safe place, an interior designer as a place to make functional and beautiful, a construction engineer as numbers to meet codes and create a real life drawing - all bringing the space to life. There's more to be sure.

I'm not an expert in all these areas - I wouldn't know the codes or be able to choose the best matching colors, but I don't need to if the door is open to allow others' ideas to be part of the solution. While a few of us started with the vision of redesigning space, the full vision would not have been realized it's potential without everyone's contribution and participation.

Here are a few before pictures and the team that is constructing the vision.

We've taken a long time to build this

Remember the Madeline Hunter method?

Something suddenly occurred to me the other day while collaborating with my teammates.

One of us is terrific at using a whiteboard so much so that we use it as a verb - let's go whiteboard!

While we were using the whiteboard it occurred to me that this could have the potential to change the way teachers collaborate and write lesson plans.

Over the past year, our team has come to respect and build upon each other's strengths. Synergy. Our outcome is better than if each of us tried to accomplish the task alone. It's like we are a band. Each part creates a really great song that leaves a lasting impression.

This is evident on our whiteboards and our process. We have a vision; we plan strategically and then we implement and reflect.

Couldn't teachers do the same process with each other? I mean - what if each team whether by grade level or content level, got to know each other's strengths and then tapped into those strengths, map it out on the whiteboard with learning targets in mind, but strategically plan how they want their students to discover them, implement and then reflect. It's not like each teacher would have to implement the same way, but that they contribution to the whiteboard conversation is valuable bringing the entire group and ultimately, process, to a higher ground for student learning.

I wonder...

Speed Dating

It's a quick way to get to know someone, right? One of the things we know about building capacity is that we need to build relationships.

Even though we are all interconnected, that doesn't necessarily mean there is a comfort level for working together.

So how does this work? It's starts with an idea that gets spelled out on a whiteboard. It's strategically planned. Then we jump in.

Last Thursday, we invited members of our community and teachers from our district to do such a thing. We introduced what a charter was, what our charter was all about and then began the experience. Each pair had 2 minutes to answer questions, such as "What was your favorite subject?", "What are your interests?"

Fine, right? Well there's more to this besides building relationships between teachers and community members.

Let's examine it - what do people typically do in these activities? how do they feel?

Right. Avoid questions they don't want to answer, feel uncomfortable with the people they don't know.

Well, if we know that there are global issues such as the environment and economy that our children are going to encounter in their future, engaging our students with others around the world now will help build those global relationships so that it just becomes the norm for working with others around the world. Students are used to working with their peers and teacher, but working with experts or other adults - it's not something we can assume.

The other point noted was that when there was a comfort level, people thought 2 minutes was not enough - they had found that each had something to share that had value.

What if we engage students in this type of experience? Will they grow up expecting to include various perspectives when solving problems?