Beyond the Stacks

Getting support resources into the hands of the mobile generation

2019-09-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

Anxiety.
Depression.
Stress.

Bummer of a way to start a blog post, I know. And reality in the lives of some (many? most?) of our students. Try as we do to reach every student, to know when a student is struggling with an issue or in crisis, we can't possibly see and know everything. Preach as we do about reaching out for help when they or a friend need it, we don't always hear from them and they don't always have access to resources that can help them.

This is an abrupt transition, so please bear with me. This school year I added an additional professional responsibility to my plate: I am teaching 9 out of 18 sections of a digital literacy program for the 9th graders at our school. The program is integrated with a semester-long academic transition program that is required for all 9th graders. My library media partner teaches the other 9 sections. When faced with designing a way for the students to become acquainted with the health, safety, and crisis support personnel in the building, I had an idea: what if we build an app?

Having recently experienced a couple of basic apps built with GlideApp I knew this was a tool we could use for students to create a support resource without having to teach all 376 students how to code. In fact, they don't need to know any coding at all; GlideApp pulls all of the information that you want to display directly from a Google Sheet. And the easy way to get information into a Google Sheet is to fill out a Google Form. And students can easily fill out a Form!

Here's how it happened:
We divided each class into teams of approximately 10 students. Each team was assigned a person to interview. Within the team, each student had a role: Spokesperson who introduced the team and the project, Interviewers (there were several of these, each designated certain questions to ask), Data Entry person who filled in the Form as the questions were being answered, and the Public Relations Manager who sent the thank you email.

The spokesperson delivered this introduction: "We are the students in ____ class. We are working with the rest of the 9th grade team on a project to create an app which indexes all of the adults at our school who can support a student, particularly a student in crisis. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us today. We know how busy you are, and we are looking forward to learning how you support students at our school."

The interviewers then took turns asking these questions:

To which department do you belong? Admin, Counseling, or Health & Safety?
What is your title? For example: principal, social worker, nurse, etc.
What should students call you?
We would like to take your profile picture. We understand that some people are reluctant to have their picture shared. We want you to know that your image will not be misused and will be deleted from the device used to take it. We think it is important that students in crisis or distress have a picture to help them identify the person whose help they are seeking. If you consent, your picture will be taken by one of our Library Media Specialists. Thank you.
We know that the adults at this school do many things. When it comes to crisis or distress, which is your area or areas of expertise or which best matches your job description? How do you complete this sentence? I specialize in helping students with:

peer conflicts
teacher concerns
safety issues
personal problems
stress or mental health
other

What is your room number or location?
What is your school phone number?
What is your school email?
What is an interest you have or something interesting to know about you? This information can help a shy student reach out to you.

As the students submitted to the form, the app populated with their information. Across the bottom of the screen are tabs for "Admin", "Counseling", "Health & Safety" so the people are sorted according to their school capacity.

When you click on a tab, you see thumbnail images of each of the people in that category paired with their names and their titles. When you click on a person, you are taken to their screen which shows all of the information they shared in the interview and an enlargement of their picture. You can then make a phone call or send an email directly to the person from the app.

I added one more tab called "Hotlines" which indexes various crisis numbers and local support services, and also allows a student to place the call directly from the app.

The app was created as a resource for the students and families in our school so I'm not going to link our app here. Instead, I hope you enjoy this app that I created as a prototype or demo for our students so that when the project was introduced to them, they could picture how their app would work when it was finished. Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of Stranger Things!

Rethinking back-to-school with help from student activists

2019-08-01T15:23:00.000-04:00

The twitterverse and other edu social media platforms are buzzing with back-to-school ideas. Last year, prompted by my daughter packing for her first year at university, I wrote my back-to-school reflection about how much has changed about learning since I packed for my first collegiate year. And I wondered how her professors and her university (Clark University: Challenge Convention, Change our World #rollcougs!) prepared to engage in her learning journey.

This year, I am prompted by her to reflect again. My now college-aged daughter just returned home from a few days of leadership and advocacy training at the March for Our Lives Summit. She was bursting with energy and stories that filled 90 minutes of conversation on the ride from the airport and rendered me simultaneously brimming with pride and speechless.

My takeaway as I listened to her describe and process her experience:

What students do for themselves

when they organize for a purpose

is a call to action for educators.

At the Summit, they explored identity: the varying and fluid aspects of their life experiences that inform their world view.

They engaged in a deep discussion of privilege. They wrestled with types of privilege and our responsibility to recognize the privilege we each have and use it to lift others up.

They learned how to tell their individual stories to build relationships with diverse people. And they learned how to affirm each other in both disagreement and agreement.

They practiced building a Yes, and... mindset.

They examined teams and collaboration to understand how people work well together: each member contributing their talents, identifying group needs, and filling them with more talent.

They engaged in current events. They strive to be informed and purposeful in their actions.

All of this they did for themselves and each other, together. And it makes we wonder, as the educators who will welcome them back to our schools and classrooms in the coming weeks, how are we preparing to challenge, nurture, and empower them? How will we meet them where they are and help them grow toward their passions? And, the same question I asked last year: how will we contribute to their development as empathetic, global citizens?

Feel free to share your ideas, plans, and suggestions in the comments. Let's learn from each other.

Making Motifs and Sense Imagery

2019-05-08T14:27:00.000-04:00

Artist and educator, Tim Rollins,who passed away in 2017, was the founder of K.O.S -- Kids of Survival -- now called Studio K.O.S. Tim's work with students in the South Bronx blended art making with the reading and deconstructing of classic literature. The work of K.O.S. is celebrated by galleries and museums globally.

In 2003 I had the distinct privilege of partnering with Tim for a full day workshop with my students. To this day, I continue to channel what I learned from Tim about making complex texts accessible to all students through visual translation and interpretation. Most recently, I partnered with an English teacher colleague to work with her students making sense imagery to explore Camus' The Stranger.

Her goal was for the students to analyze the author's language and purpose in creating sensory rich images. She planned to start the project by asking the students to crowd-source a Google Doc with imagery quotations from the text. However, she was concerned about how productive and purposeful they would be given that on a previous occasion when she asked them to contribute to a Google Doc in a similar way, they were less than ideally productive and added silly images and other distracting elements to the Doc. I suggested a Google Form as an alternative. The students were each assigned a chapter to examine; they entered the images they identified and the corresponding text passages and page numbers into the Form. Then the teacher shared the resulting Google Sheet with the class and they had an comprehensive, searchable, sort-able collection of images and quotations from which to select for their project.

At this point, I introduced the "making" exercise with these slides. I began with an homage to Tim and K.O.S. as the inspiration for the project and then gave the students step-by-step directions to help them transition their thinking from words to images.

The challenge was for students to create a three dimensional representation of the sensory experience of the image in the text. They were not building dioramas or models of suns (or any other image). They were providing the viewer of their construction with the same visceral or sensory experience that Camus created and Meursault experienced in the text. And they began the creation process by framing their image in a question, such as: what does the door look like that is the gateway to Meursault's unhappiness?

When their work was finished, the students wrote gallery cards in which they explained the construction choices they made and how their renderings connected to the text.

I was careful not to use the words artistic or creative when working with them. While their processes and products can be considered both of those things, many students -- all of whom are very accustomed to writing literary analysis essays -- lamented their lack of creativity or artistic talent. Over and over I explained that they were constructing a prototype of an idea, much like Camus wrote drafts of the text, and that as they watched people interact with and react to their construction they could reconsider and improve upon the impact it had on its audience.

In fact, I pointed out, very few (if any) of the sensory experiences evoked by the text imagery were pleasant so if someone looks at what you are making and says, "Oh, that's so pretty" (or something to that effect) you probably aren't actually making the text, you are making your idea of the image. Anyone can turn a pompom into a sun; it takes a creative constructor and communicator to build the sun that permits someone to take a life. Most of us, if pressed, could turn toothpicks and Popsicle sticks into a staircase. How might you render the dark, dank stairwell descending into depravity?

See what I mean? Not pretty.

Yet, so valuable. When a student started making I left him/her/them alone until they looked stuck, asked for help, or seemed to be assembling without purpose. Then I started asking questions like why that color? why six spokes? why can I see inside? As students began explaining their choices they were flooded with ideas and recommitted to their work. When some students couldn't explain their choices, I directed them back to the questioning phase reminding them that what they made was an extension of and still connected to the text. That the question was the bridge between the text and the construction. For students who were creating something personal and pleasing I asked where Meursault was in their construction.

Hot glue guns are fun. Upcycling, recycling, repurposing for fun isn't necessarily hard. Building a sensory experience is. Some students lamented that they couldn't "just write a paper" which told me two things: one, they were really trying to build something with meaning, and two, they were really used to writing papers and this challenge was a good one for them to confront.

Here are the students at work:

Building empathy through history

2019-03-21T07:13:00.002-04:00

Lately I have been working with a team of social studies teachers who all teach a course called World History. As this curriculum evolves from a western traditions course to one with a global focus, it is vital to curate resources that invite students to explore a range of perspectives and experiences. Our most recent challenge was re-visioning the approach to studying imperialism.

The Set-Up

We started with a QFT process so that each student could develop a guiding question that would govern his/her/their examination of the content. They measured their best question as one that requires multiple perspectives be understood in order to arrive at a meaningful answer.

Enter Geography

After a couple of days of instruction by the classroom teacher I returned to facilitate a geography exercise. We divided the class into groups and used Google Classroom to push a map rendered in Google Draw to each group. In fact, I created three different maps. Each was the same land mass with different information provided. One map showed land forms, another showed natural resources, and another showed patterns of ethnic settlement.

We explained that the map was of a continent; they could see from the lines of latitude and longitude how expansive it was and what climate zones it occupies. Their first direction was to work on their own to divide the continent into countries. And they did, without asking any questions.

After a few minutes of independent work we asked them to share with their small group (all of whom had the same map) how they divided the land mass and why they made those choices. Then, as a group they had to create one map which they agreed was a reasonable compromise between their ideas about what was best for the continent. And they did, without asking any questions.

Each group submitted their collaborative map to Classroom so we could project them. We started with the land forms map, and the group that created the map talked about why they divided the land as they did and then we asked the rest of the class to decide what the priorities were that informed those decisions. For example, when the land forms group presented, they might have said that they used natural borders like rivers and made sure that every country had access to the coastline. Then, the class might decide that open trade routes were the priority that underscored those decisions.

Next we projected the natural resources map and followed the same procedure. Some classes tried to give each country a resource. Some tried to give each country some of each resource. And other groups consciously created resource-rich and resource-poor countries. After they presented we downloaded the Google Drawings as .png files so they had transparent backgrounds and layered the resource map over the land forms and asked them how the combination of information might impact their decisions. One thing they always noticed was that the large oil reserve in the southern portion of the continent was now beneath the mountains minimizing any chance that the country located there could access it. And so it became a resource-poor country and changed the economic balance of power on the continent.

The third map we showed was the ethnic map. These groups struggled. Generally, upon first review of the map, they said, "we don't have anything to do. It's already divided." Then they wondered, squeamishly, if they could move groups around so people of the same ethnic group were together. And that caused debate. They referenced past forced removals of people as historical precedent and as justification for not moving anyone. Then they questioned whether a multi-ethnic country is more or less stable than an ethnically homogeneous country which led to a discussion of civil war vs. international war. When we presented these maps we began by saying this is the hardest map to talk about it, because these are people. Overwhelmingly, their priority was continental harmony and when we combined the land forms map with the resource map and the ethnic map they became very frustrated. And that is when the class began to question why they were imposing their priorities on this place.

Their final reflection was about the choices they made and how the accumulating information complicated their decision-making. In each class, they realized that they fell into familiar historical patterns. That none of the fictitious groups on the ethnic map were a part of the process and they started to ask about the people and their history.

Primary Source Artifacts

Ultimately, the students used their guiding question from the QFT process to examine an instance of imperialism and create a museum exhibit in response to their question. Our goal was not to teach museum curation but some practice telling stories with artifacts was necessary.

The class was again divided into groups and each group was given a collection of 5 objects. They were told to arrange the objects to tell a story. All the object groupings were selected because they came from a fairy tale the students would know. Now some groups caught on quickly to the "real story" of their artifacts and others composed elaborate tales to explain the connections between the objects they had been given. Then the class discussed how accurately the artifacts told the story and the difference between an artifact that was of the character (like straw for The Three Little Pigs) and an artifact that was about a character (a scientific diagram of a wolf). This time they caught on quickly to the notion that a meaningfully selected artifact, at least for this purpose, was not filtered through someone else's lens or experience.

Building empathy is a challenge and a necessity. This is a description of how we tried to embed that practice into content examination. I would love to hear from you about how you do this work with your students!

New semester and courses start with a design sprint

2019-02-04T13:32:00.001-05:00

I am mid-way through my second year at my current school and have begun a new collaborative partnership with a colleague with whom I haven't yet had an opportunity to work. She teaches two sections of Sociology. The students in the classes are all seniors and the semester is a bit abbreviated since they will be going on internships for the last month of school. We have met a couple of times to discuss the challenges she is confronting:

second semester seniors can be an engagement challenge
contentious civic climate means some of the course topics are challenging to discuss
teaching the same course for the sixth semester in a row means she is challenged to keep it fresh and relevant

This partnership is going to be exciting. My colleague is my pedagogical soul mate. She thinks 10X about any curricular idea. She is a model of risk-taking in the classroom. Failure is always forward so it isn't really failure at all. Given these habits of mind, we started with a blank slate and this question:

How might we disrupt senior-itis and

ignite students' passion for working on solutions to social issues?

Where do we start when we have a blank slate?

We began with our general musings about how to personalize this study, how to help students wrap their heads around the macro and micro views of sociology. Addiction is an issue that lends itself to sociological study on a macro level and juuling at our school is a micro view. Gender is a macro topic; professional training of our teachers around issues of gender identity in the classroom is more micro. The more we talked, the more it became clear that the students are going to have autonomy over their focus for the semester and their purpose was going to be to apply their skills to solving a community problem. The question was: How?

Embracing the principles of Universal Design for Learning we considered how to remove barriers to:

student engagement
content access
expressions of learning

We discussed how to promote divergent and convergent thinking processes to encourage students to think of societal issues in both macro and micro ways and invite them to see connections between the different topics.

We continued brainstorming. What if we present them with an artifact (inspired by the Q-focus from the Right Question Institute's QFT protocol documented in Make Just One Change) and have them list on one side of the artifact all of the macro issues related to it, and on the other side list all the micro issues indicated by it. Then we thought about showing them these two videos for the purpose of macro-micro comparisons:

Dove's ad about beauty standards and young girls:

Greenpeace's response:

Enter Design Thinking

But here's the rub. These students don't have experience really owning their learning. They have had choice, as in make this product or that product, but they haven't had complete autonomy. Realizing that we were already flexing our design thinking muscles trying to empathize with this group of students and design an approach to the course that would meet their needs, we decided that we needed to guide them through this same process so each student could meaningfully chart his/her/their own path through the curriculum.

To figure out what this would look like, we turned to the Future Design School app which has a Design Thinking for High School Students curriculum. Everything my colleague needs to confidently facilitate her classes adopting the mindset of innovators and successfully navigate this personalized experience is included. They will identify macro societal problems, focus them to the micro school or community level, and then engage in the necessary work of empathizing with their peers and fellow community members to research, design, test and iterate the best possible solution to these shared problems.

The Design Sprint

Because we were concerned about student buy-in we thought it would help the students if they knew where this was all going, as in what does "the design process" mean soup-to-nuts? what are we in for? To that end, we decided to do a design sprint with them: the whole process in 45 minutes. Drawing on my experience at the Google Certified Innovator Academy, we decided to have one class design a chair and the other design a wallet. In each class, I was the stakeholder; the students were all designing to meet my needs. In each class I stood in the center of the room and told a story. To one class I told the story of traveling 10 years ago and being pick-pocketed and needing to replace my wallet. Now that wallet was wearing out, and my wallet needs had changed dramatically. The class began peppering me with questions about my shopping habits, about my phone, about my acceptance of or aversion to change (the state of being, not the coins -- we had to clarify), about my likes and dislikes, about how my life has changed over the last ten years. In the other class I told a tale of whoa about aging, body breakdown and injuries and the impact all that has on sitting. Again they questioned me and asked about reading and computer habits and other lifestyle habits.

After these intense Q&A sessions, the students were each given the following materials:

one piece of 8.5x11 scrap paper
one piece (roughly the same size) of aluminum foil
a single pipe cleaner
a piece of wire-edged ribbon about six inches long

They were given five minutes to build the perfect wallet or chair to suit my needs. At the end of five minutes each student paired with a student across the room. They were each given 30 seconds to pitch their design to their partner. At the end of a minute, they chose which of their two designs was best, set the other aside and became a team pitching the winning chair to another newly-formed team. We continued the process of pitch, choose, set aside, merge and re-pitch until they were down to two designs. They then pitched to me. I critiqued each design and then chose the one that best met my needs.

Reflection on the Sprint

My colleague and I then guided a reflective discussion about the process. The students acknowledged some important elements of the design process.

Empathy: they all realized that they were intently focused on me the whole time. When they pitched it was about being best at meeting my needs. They never judged me or disregarded something I said and they never presumed to know me better than I know myself and my needs.

Collaboration: each time they re-grouped their pitch improved when new voices helped explain the product. And when I was critiquing prototypes at the end, they realized that most of the features I wanted were in some design somewhere in the room. If they worked together they could have combined those features into the best possible design.

Iteration: without either of us saying anything, both classes said they could make a new design where they could combine their best ideas into one chair (or wallet), maybe use better materials and test it again. And they also realized that talking to me with a prototype in their hand elicited important insight into my needs and how to satisfy them. They wanted more information. They were designing with me.

Going Forward

We are excited about the next steps: helping students identify a societal issue that authentically concerns and engages them and begin the process of defining that problem and finding the stakeholders who experience it. Design thinking as pedagogy is the most empowering approach I have experienced in 26 years teaching.

A Service Learning Program Proposal

2019-01-27T16:27:00.002-05:00

by johnhain courtesy of pixabay.com

I am enrolled in the EdTechTeam Teacher Leader 2 course. The first unit for this course is service learning. After studying the work of Cathryn Berger Kaye and engaging in dialogue with other members of the cohort about their schools, I have undertaken writing a high school-based service learning plan. I envision a program for 9th graders that will set the tone for how they approach learning for the rest of their time in high school. In my grand vision all rising 9th graders would participate in a full quarter (if not semester) of “boot camp” for lack of a better term. It could be kicked off during freshmen orientation. The boot camp experience would be a deep dive into design thinking, problem solving, and service. The normal bell schedule and daily routine would not apply to 9th graders during this marking period. The program would provide 9th grade students guidance developing what we know are critical life (not just learning) skills: critical thinking, empathy, collaboration, problem solving, communication, creativity, flexible thinking and comfort with ambiguity. There is also room for computational thinking and entrepreneurship. All of this can lead to global mindfulness and an innovator’s mindset. Emerging from this experience students would be well prepared to engage in two years of problem-based learning curricula and transition into an internship and continual service-oriented senior year.

Imagine if all teachers of 9th graders from all disciplines as well as the guidance counselors and library media faculty participated in design thinking professional learning as well as orientation to service learning. Then they could rotate through the program facilitating the work of the students, lending their expertise and support to projects that align with their areas of interest and skill set. Ultimately this would be an eight week, full day program which would then carry into the advisory groups of the students throughout the duration of the year.

The type of service in which each student engages will be determined by the student. As they undertake an examination of the needs of the school, the community, and the wider world, students will choose the focus of their service and design an approach that marries their skills and resources with the needs of the group they choose to serve. Ultimately, I imagine students would engage in multiple forms of service and will collaborate on combined interests to maximize the services offered and the impact of their work.

Students might address the prevalence of juuling in their school in the interest of promoting community wellness. They might tackle intersectionality which is a particularly potent topic where I live in the wake of a proposal in our state general assembly that a mostly white and affluent district be merged with a neighboring district that has a multi-ethnic population and significant funding challenges in its schools. There are so many possible ways students can work to improve their school, their community, and the wider world and the skills they learn in the process will be essential to the rest of their education and life beyond school.

As part of their experience, students will create a social media campaign through which they can document and publicize their research and service in order to inform the community of their work and recruit participation in order to sustain and even scale up their projects. These networks and means of telling their stories, which can also include student blogs and school newsletters, will allow for ongoing reflection on the work they are doing and the value of service as well as provide a channel of communication which can also facilitate the development of empathy among the various members of the community.

As facilitators of the boot camp, all teachers of 9th grade will be able to integrate the students service learning into the curriculum throughout the year. Advisory and other student groups and clubs will also serve as a means of continuing the reflective dialogue about the importance of service in learning and beyond.

Disrupting Gen Z

2018-12-06T15:07:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week one of my students said something that stopped me in my tracks. He remarked:

"I want to be able to learn how to drive myself someday."

It was more a lament than a remark.

My daughter learning to drive stick.
Yes, we drive old-school in our house!

Let me put his lament in context. In his class, Digital Literacy, we have been doing a lot of design thinking work focused on solving the problems of social media (discussed in three parts starting here). As we await feedback on our prototypes, we engaged in an Applied Digital Skills exercise from Google focused on the role of technology in current events. This student chose to focus his study on self-driving cars and the impact they will have on teenage drivers.

He examined issues of driving safety including distracted and impaired driving as well as the implications of self-driving cars on the insurance industry. Then he stopped what he was doing when, out loud, he wondered: "Will we even need to get our license anymore?" And after a pause, came his lament; something he has aspired to do, a suburban teenage rite of passage, may someday (someday soon?) become a thing of the past, no longer something to which he and his peers will aspire. The class was a little sad at that prospect. And I was a little giddy.

Why? Because there it was, the perfect example of technological innovation as a disruptive force and it was an example that resonated deeply with my students. And, as a disruption that hasn't yet occurred but is one they can anticipate, they feel the tug of resentment over how technology will change their lives. For that moment, we understood each other across the gap of a generation.

This student's epiphany prompted a very interesting and organic dialogue. We talked about the difference between the manual transmission cars that I learned to drive -- and still drive today -- and automatic transmissions. About why a driver might prefer one or the other. About how an automatic was a luxury when I was learning to drive. And designers have continued to improve on the automatic design with the development of the continuously variable transmission. Only the student who is a fan of race car driving even knew what a manual transmission is. Some students shared the self-driving features of their parents cars like warnings when drifting out of lane, alarms that indicate another car in the driver's blind spot, auto parallel parking features, etc. And talked about whether they trust that technology and how it feels when it is operating.

As excited as they got talking about the coolness factor of these features that are becoming standard on new cars, my self-driving car researcher said again: "I still really want to get my license." And they all got quiet again.

Today he presented his research, and having come to the realization that the self-driving car will not be ubiquitous before he is of driving age, his mind was put at ease and the discussion he facilitated for the class focused more on how the auto insurance industry and legislation will have to respond to this automotive innovation. His presentation was followed by another student whose research focused on robotic disruption in the labor force. Given their brief engagement with the potential loss of licensing privileges, the class embarked on a discussion during that presentation that had more potency than it might have otherwise. It was definitely an unanticipated way in which a student found the personal relevance of his learning and it helped the class develop empathy with people that they otherwise might not have considered as carefully.

Students solving problems of social media, part 3

2018-11-20T07:17:00.002-05:00

FutureDesignSchool.com

Thanks for following this design thinking journey!

In case you missed parts one or two, my students are tackling problems they have identified with social media while preserving the benefits they experience from engaging in those platforms. We replicated a social media dialogue during the problem definition and ideation phases. Blog posts about parts one and two explore these processes in detail.

Now, the students have completed their prototypes and are seeking user feedback. The students had a few options for how to proceed with building their prototype. They could use cardboard and other basic supplies from our makerspace to build a 3D object. They could use paper templates to design or redesign and app. Or, they could storyboard the experience of their solution in action by drawing the sequences on post-its and creating a short video. I used the slides inserted below to show models of what they were doing and facilitate discussion of the prototyping process.

Here are some of the prototypes in the process of being built.

Now that they have finished building their prototypes, it is time for user testing! The students met one-on-one with members of our school community to watch how those people interacted with their prototypes, and they were able to interview those users about their reactions to the proposed solution both in terms of the viability of the concept and its appeal.

In order to solicit a broader spectrum of perspectives, each of the students uploaded their design to a Google Form which they used to ask key questions about their design. Then I added each Form to a Padlet that indexes each of their "How might we..." questions with their Google Form for collecting feedback. The students and I shared the padlet through our social media networks in order to reach a wider audience of social media users and increase the perspectives provided in the feedback. We welcome any comments you would like to offer about the viability and appeal of their designs. You can visit the padlet (also embedded below), and please feel free to share with your students and encourage them to provide feedback as well! Thank you!

Mind over Matter: Overcoming Learning Obstacles by Building Habits of Mind

2018-11-12T10:39:00.003-05:00

creative commons; john hain on Pixabay

Educators and students all bring particular habits of mind with them when they enter their schools and classrooms. And under the pressure of data crunching and competition for high scores, some of those habits -- developed over an educational lifetime -- become self-sabotaging. As a public high school Social Studies teacher, I had long recognized patterns in student behavior that were concerning: self-put downs, approval-seeking, and excuse making, to name a few. It was not until I read the work of Art Costa and Bena Kallick about Habits of Mind, that I began to understand those expressions and behaviors as being the manifestation of patterns of thinking. What I was observing was the consequence of counterproductive (even destructive) habits of mind. So I let go of content and set out to improve the ways my students thought about and understood learning, each other, and themselves.

Now, I realized that I was facing institutional and cultural and even legislative obstacles. And it was clear that my students were invested in extrinsic measures of achievement, satisfaction, and even happiness. So I adopted a two-prong approach:

Remove, as much as was possible, the extrinsic measurements; and
Provide daily practice and reinforcement of new ways of thinking about learning, each other, and ourselves until those ways of thinking became new habits of mind.

Then, I predicted, the external metrics could be returned with minimized deleterious impact because students would have a new paradigm for understanding achievement, and this focus on continued growth would translate into improved scores when compared to those external metrics.

Step one: I stopped giving grades (for as long as was institutionally possible).

We just stopped using the word. When students stop using that word and learn to substitute so many more specific and meaningful terms and phrases, conversations about teaching and learning become so much more honest and effective. Instead of: “Why did I get this grade?” students began asking, “How can I write better quotation blends?” Even better, was when they started turning to each other and asking for feedback on what they were trying to do and understand!

Step two: We focused on habits of mind, not patterns of behavior.

To do this, we needed new vocabulary and ways of connecting that vocabulary to our work and our interactions. As a framework for learning and applying this new vocabulary, I built this rubric based on the sixteen habits of mind. Note that the headings of each column have song titles, not points or edu-speak like “Exceeds Standard”. Anywhere an external or summative metric could be removed or replaced it was. Student focus was continually directed to an examination of their habits of mind. When the rubric was introduced at the start of the school year, students were assigned to groups and each group was given a chapter from Denise Clark Pope's Doing School. Working together, the groups examined the habits of mind of the student they were assigned and decided where the student about whom they read would be starting on the rubric. They had to use specific evidence from the students words, actions, and interactions to justify their assessment. My high achieving students from relatively privileged backgrounds were reading about other high-achieving students and identifying with their stresses and learned behaviors for surviving their school experiences.

Now that they had practice with the new vocabulary and had applied it in a safe way to other students, it was time for my students to self-examine and decide where they were starting. For this step they journaled about their past school experiences and talked with other members of the class they thought knew them well. Once they had identified their origin on the rubric, each student wrote a goal and a specific action plan for the first marking period. Together, we reviewed their goals and plans and I offered feedback. The action plan was very hard for most of the students to write. They struggled to get past statements like: I will try harder, I will get my work done on time, etc. A huge point of growth was when they could see that one vague goal statement is not the action plan for achieving another goal. Eventually they learned to write action plans that included steps like: I will visit the humanities help center each Monday to review my primary source annotations, I will reserve 8-8:30PM as reading time every weeknight, I will complete essay drafts one day before the due date in order to have a partner give me feedback before I submit it, I will not speak in a group conversation until the quietest member of the group has contributed, etc.

Just as they did with the student they examined in Pope’s book, the students had to curate evidence of their own growth and achievement. At the mid-quarter we met to review progress and the accumulated evidence and revise their goals and strategies as necessary. And this was key, I didn’t want students setting goals they knew they could achieve. That’s not a goal, it’s a given. It was also important to acknowledge when a strategy wasn’t working or a goal was not going to be obtainable… yet. At the end of the quarter, students wrote self-evaluations and had to present three pieces of evidence to justify each claim they made about their habits of mind development. All of this thinking about thinking and learning and the evidence was accumulated in a web portfolio.

We repeated this process each quarter and then met one-on-one at the end of the year when it was time to restore the external metrics of grades. To prepare for this conversation, each student converted their web portfolio into an exploration of their growth that we reviewed together in our meeting. What did we find? Because students continued to:

set goals;
reflect and evaluate their work and habits;
set new goals and modify their work, habits and effort accordingly;

they all realized increasing success and achievement throughout the year. In other words, all assessments were formative. Thus, when it came to determining grades, rather than penalizing a student who began the year as “a believer” on the rubric and ended the year with “nothing compared to him/her” by averaging a lower earlier grade with a later higher one, the students were evaluated according to mastery and achievement and their grade was an authentic reflection of their progress made and growth consistently demonstrated. Best of all, they carried these new, positive, practiced and ingrained habits of into all of their other work and relationships. Constructive habits of mind are essential to overcoming obstacles, making progress, and being fulfilled by the process regardless of the product.

Costa, Arthur L and Bena Kallick. Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008.

Students solving problems of social media, part 2

2018-11-06T17:16:00.000-05:00

In case you missed part one of this posting series, in it I described the design thinking process we used to define "social media", identify the pros or benefits of it as well as the cons or detriments. Then each student chose one "pro" to preserve and one "con" to fix when crafting their "How might we..." questions. You can read about the specifics of each step and see pictures in the part one post.

Here is how this process is unfolding.

Once the students each had a "How might we..." (HMW) question they were ready for the next design thinking step: ideation. On two occasions earlier this year, we used Crazy 8's, and for this experience I wanted to expose them to a new brainstorming technique. I chose a round robin approach because that process would continue emulating social media posting, which is the focus of our problem solving.

We started out with blank paper covering the table. Each student wrote their HMW question across the bottom of the paper at their spot at the table. Then, they began to draw what a solution to their problem might look like. They could use a combination of words and graphics to convey their vision. We spent 15 minutes drawing ideas, and the room was silent almost the whole time. At one point, one student said, "I'm not sure..." and then trailed off. I responded by saying: "Try drawing what it would like if your problem didn't exist."

After 15 minutes we rotated seats. I asked the students to review the idea captured on the paper in front of them and then add to it. I said they could add clarifying questions about elements they were not sure if they understood, they could add ideas in the form or words and more drawings. The only thing they couldn't do was cross anything off the page. Once an idea was written or drawn, it was there to stay -- just like social media. The only thing I did allow students to cross out, was something they had written, there was not erasing other people's thoughts. And, we were all working in pen or marker so even cross outs left a trail. In this way, our pen and paper process emulated social media posting. We stayed at our new seats for several minutes to give each student ample time to reflect and contribute before rotating again.

With six students at a table, the mid-point of the exercise was after the third rotation. At this point we stopped to reflect on the process. I directed the students to talk about what they were doing and how that compared with their typical role or conduct in class. I asked them not to talk about the ideas on the paper, just to talk about what they were doing, how they felt or what they thought about the process. I was struck when my student who is most anxious about contributing to class discussions said that she had time to thoroughly consider her ideas and write them carefully so that they would make sense. She remarked that when she tries to talk in class she gets wrapped up in her thoughts and can't articulate her ideas clearly. But with this process she had a lot to say. How cool?! And a happy by-product that I didn't anticipate.

We continued rotating seats and adding ideas until everyone returned to their original spot. We ended class with students sharing with the group how their idea was evolving and collecting for themselves follow up questions they want to ask the group during the next class.

And the focus of the next class is: prototyping!

Once again, stay tuned for more about how my students are using design thinking to solve the problems of social media!

Link to Part Three!

VR Big Takeaway? Empathy!

2018-11-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

When I think about Google, I tend to really be focusing on Google for Education. Last year I learned about a different team, Google’s Trust & Safety group. First, I was struck by the seriousness with which Google considers the online conduct and interaction of all of its users. Consider the comments section in a YouTube video, the Trust & Safety group works on policies and technical mechanisms for trying to maintain civil and constructive dialogue within that platform. They may not use the term digital citizenship to describe their focus, yet, in essence, that is their mission: supporting positive and productive digital interaction, globally. And I thought just trying to do it in my school was a daunting mission!

Last year, the Trust & Safety group brought their work to schools in the form of a virtual reality anti-cyberbullying curriculum. Partnering with the media production group, Harmony Labs, researcher Dr. Dorothy Espelage, and others, the team unpacked some important research:

Furthermore, they learned that more than half of bullying incidents stop when a peer intervenes which lead them to the curricular objective of empowering bystanders to intervene in bullying situations. And, they chose virtual reality as the means of delivering the program they developed because VR provides a private, immersive experience. Participants do not have to be concerned about how they are being perceived by their peers which results in sincere and thoughtful engagement in the content.

With that introduction to the program I jumped onboard with a class of ninth grade students. With a little advanced planning, implementation was easy! I do not have access to a class set of Daydream viewers and Pixel 2 devices so we substituted our Google cardboards and the students’ smartphones. I asked (and reminded) them to bring their own headphones so they each could listen to the videos without disturbing each other. The curriculum guide that Google provides is easy to follow with thorough teacher directions and talking points. I could easily modify it to meet the experience level of my students. Here is a quick schedule of what we did:

Day 1: I posted this Google Classroom announcement: For the next week you will need daily access to smartphone and headphones. Please let me know if you would like me to provide you a device. (For those students I had iPods in our library they could borrow). If you do not already have it, please install the YouTube app.

Day 2: I made this in class announcement and posted it as a Google Classroom reminder: please bring your phones and headphones to class tomorrow with the YouTube app already installed.

Day 3: The lessons began with a quick discussion of “what is virtual reality?” Then we followed the instructions in the curriculum guide for the first video lesson which included immersing in the 360° video experience. Students watched the 8 minute long video twice. The first time, the students watched on their own. The second time, I divided the class into three groups and assigned each group a character or group of characters on which to focus as they watched. Then we dove into a deeper conversation about the content.

Full disclosure: I was nervous. I was so concerned that this would just be one more forced conversation on a topic they didn’t want to discuss where a couple of students say what the teacher wants to hear just to get the lesson over with while the rest of the class stares into space and disengages entirely. Spoiler alert: the exact opposite is what happened, and I was amazed!

In small groups the students engaged with each other in a thoughtful discussion of what they had experienced, virtually. They discussed whether they thought the scenario was realistic, they considered the authenticity of the characters, they commented on identifying with certain characters based on their past experiences. When we reconvened as a whole class to talk some more they started to share experiences and talk to each other about how those real situations unfolded and what they could be doing about it. One student said, “It doesn’t end like that. We aren’t going to be friends in the end. We can’t be. When something like this happens, your friend group shifts. I want these programs to help us with that.” Lots of students added their agreement to that comment. Another student said, “Just like Kacie in the VR, sometimes you are bullied because of something you have done. And if I did what she did, and was bullied, I’m not going to tell an adult what I did so I’m not going to get help. I need someone else I can talk to for help.” Finally, another golden comment from a student: “I once did exactly what this told us to do: I told a safe adult and that person didn’t help me. So I’m not going to tell an adult again.”

Whoa. On the surface, this may sound like the experience missed the mark, but it didn’t at all. Look at all of the important information it exposed: Students want us to understand (empathize with) their experience so we can help them accurately. Students want and need peer support, so we need to train peers to help peers. And, students want us to be equipped to help them and many of us might need training to do that well.

Days 4 and 5: We continued with the two remaining VR experiences following the curriculum guide outline. Then I asked students to compare the VR lessons with other digital citizenship and bullying lessons they have experienced. They were in 100% agreement that this experience was different in a meaningful way. Here is how one student explained it: “We were there. I mean, you couldn’t avoid what was happening because we were in the scene. I had to admit what was happening was real.” When I pushed them to comment on why that mattered, another student said, “I felt bad about what was happening to someone so I wanted it to stop.” And that is the magic of this experience: it helps build empathy. VR is more than bells and whistles when it is used to quite literally help students walk in someone else’s shoes!

Days 6 and 7: I am fortunate to have a 360° camera so the final exercise for the students was to create their own VR video which we loaded to our library YouTube channel. Just as with the curricular videos, the student-created ones can be launched in the YouTube app and watched with a Google cardboard for an immersive experience. I gave students one day to examine how a 360° video is different from a traditional one and plan their script for a one minute video. The next day, five student groups each filmed their videos. This might be the fastest video project I have ever facilitated!

Day 8: We took out the cardboards, phones, and headphones one more time so they could watch each others videos and provide feedback. The students were able, in their own voices, to explore what cyberbullying looks and feels like in their own peer groups and begin the process of starting a conversation in our school.

Of course this curriculum is not a one-stop, surefire solution to a problem we all face in our schools and communities. It did start a conversation among my students that had more depth and buy-in than anything else I have experienced with students on this topic. And it all comes back to how the virtual reality helped them develop empathy.

To Story Is Human

2018-11-03T15:43:00.000-04:00

Note: This post was generously cross-posted by EducateLLC.

I would like to tell you a story. It is about my son when he was in fourth grade.

By the time Zach reached fourth grade he said he hated school. This wasn’t entirely true. All evidence suggested he loved gym, recess, lunch in the cafeteria, and the bus ride to and from school. Unfortunately, by fourth grade he didn’t like reading or writing or much of the academic side of school. These likes and dislikes were well-known by his teacher by the point in the year that the first round of report cards were issued and it was time to launch the annual penny book project. For this project Zach had to find a one penny minted during each year of his life, he had to attach that penny to a piece of paper and on that paper write a story from that year of his life. Then, he was to assemble all the pages into his penny book. You might be able to imagine my parental response to learning about this project! How was I going to get him to do this?

Thankfully, Zach’s teacher was as interested in Zach’s happiness and success as I was. I presented her with an idea: Zach would create a different project, he would meet all of her curricular objectives, we would document all of his work so she could see that everything was authentically his, and he would submit it on time. She agreed.

So Zach set out to collect pennies. He reminisced with all of our photo albums to find the perfect story from each year of his life. He digitized on our printer/scanner all of the photos that were important to each story. He took a video camera and interviewed anyone he could find about their memories of those stories. Then, he collected all of his ideas into a storyboard which he used as a guide to create a digital movie of his life. He showed each penny, he narrated the stories in his voice, he chose the soundtrack, and made a final screen of rolling credits. I don’t think he was ever been so proud of any school project. This was in 2007.

When Zach brought his project CD and his box of pictures, pennies, and storyboards to school, the teacher played his video for the class. Then she called me to say she cried. “He had this in him all this time,” she said. His teacher asked if I would come to the school and show her how to make a movie like that. I politely declined, and suggested that Zach would be happy to show her anytime!

Telling our stories is so important. It is a very human thing to do. Cave drawings are the stories of our very early ancestors. The printing press enabled the widespread distribution of stories. Some cultures have traditions of oral telling of stories passed through generations. The scientific development of photography in the mid-1800s with the daguerreotype resulted in widespread making of tin types so people could leave them as calling cards when they visited one another’s homes. Business cards, school pictures, home movies. The list goes on of all the myriad ways we make ourselves known and build connections with other people, document our existence, tell our story. Technology may change, but our need to know and understand one another, build common ground, and work out differences is eternal. And we do that through our stories.

Social media platforms know how much this matters to us. They enable us to combine our pictures and words into the stories of our important moments. We and our students have been using social media to tell our stories ever since we subscribed to those platforms. The actual story format started in 2013 with SnapChat stories and other services have followed suit including Instagram in 2016 and Facebook in 2017. Those aren’t the only ways we tell stories; Skype has highlights and YouTube allows us to create reels.

When it comes to engaging our students in sharing their stories, the possible formats are endless! Within the Google Apps realm students can write and illustrate interactive stories in Slides, Docs, Sites, Draw, Maps or Tour Creator. They can record themselves and publish to YouTube where channels and playlists host videos students make and others they curate.

Beyond gSuite, students can tell video stories in Flipgrid, they can annotate visual stories in ThingLink, and they can publish ongoing stories as podcasts. And when we consider the possibilities for synchronous and asynchronous interaction, students can share stories in Twitter chats, in private Facebook groups, and in Google+ communities. Building an audience for their stories by publishing them not only validates the importance of their experiences, it fosters interaction with new people which expands their horizons and their learning community and allows for authentic, embedded lessons in discourse and digital interactions.

Solving the Problems of Social Media, Part 1

2018-10-30T19:33:00.001-04:00

This week we began a new unit in the Digital Literacy class that I am teaching; I called the unit, "Social: the new media". I curated a playlist of videos on YouTube for creating flipped lessons and giving students opportunities to explore sub-topics of interest to them. I consulted the lessons and ideas published by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), Google's Applied Digital Skills, and the Sift from the News Literacy Project. Clearly I had lots of stuff I could ask the students to do, but I was owning it and that didn't feel right.

So I put everything to the side, cleared off my desk, and got blank paper and some sharpies. I started to think about problems with social media. Not because I want to make a case for my students that social media is rotting their brains and they need to do something healthier with their time. Frankly, that would be quite hypocritical of me! Instead, we are setting out to solve the problems. To the right is my lesson plan for the first two days.

Here is how it worked in practice.

First, I covered tables with paper, piled a bunch of sharpies and markers in the middle, and let each student claim a spot as s/he arrived. In the center of each table I had written this:

The lesson on the first day unfolded in four phases.

Phase 1: Defining

Round 1: write your definition of social media on the table where you are sitting.

Round 2: rotate clockwise, read what you find, and add to or amend it. Do not cross out or cover anything you find.

Phase 2: Pros

Round 3: rotate again, read what you find, make a list of the "pros" of social media. What are the benefits?

Round 4a: rotate, and, once again, read what you find and add to the list without covering or removing anything you find already there.

Phase 3: Cons

Round 4b: now start a list of "cons" when you think about social media. What are the drawbacks or detriments?

Round 5: rotate one last time, and now you are back where you started. Read what you find. Add anything you want. And then, circle the pro that matters most to you and the con that most bothers you.

Before moving to the next phase we discussed the process we had just used and how it mimics social media posting and commenting. We considered why I asked them to only respond to previous comments and be sure to not write over or cross any out. We also talked about how or whether they filtered what they wrote because it was on the table where I could see it and it felt "permanent" doing it with Sharpies. A little nod to digital citizenship.

Phase 4: How Might We

Round 6: Write your "how might we" question. How might we preserve (your pro) while fixing (your con)?

Here is what a table looked like at the end of the lesson:

And here are some of their How Might We questions:

HMW preserve a way to connect and share ideas while fixing a false sense of success?
HMW preserve the connection between others while fixing the distribution of hate?
HMW preserve the freedom of being able to share what we want and being able to connect with others while fixing the consumption of time it takes?
HMW preserve social media's ability to connect us with varied communities while fixing the way it encourages dangerous comparisons?
HMW preserve connecting with friends while fixing the spreading of hate and false information?

Day 2 was all about growing empathy with social media users other than ourselves. The students started this process by thinking about someone they know who has experienced the social media problem they are addressing. They listed all they know about that person: what they do, what they say about themselves and about social media, etc. Then, they wrote three open-ended questions they could ask that person to learn more about that person's experiences with social media. And then they conducted interviews. Some students called people on the phone and discussed their topic that way while taking notes on what their subject said. Others went to other parts of the school to find people. Others sent emails.

At the end of the class, they all came back to our classroom to review their interview notes. They highlighted anything that their subject(s) said that was interesting, enlightening or new information that they didn't already know about the person.

Later this week, they will refine their HMW questions to more accurately reflect the needs of the people they interviewed and we will begin the ideation process. Stay tuned to learn about the brainstorming techniques we use and the ideas that the students will begin to prototype.

Remember all of the resources that I collected in preparation for teaching this unit? They now will become relevant as the students begin to research possible solutions to the problem they are tackling and they will have a vested interest in reading, watching, and unpacking the resources I curated for them. This learning process, over which the students have agency, is much more meaningful and empowering than any teacher-directed instruction I could have created. I can't wait to see what they create!

Here is Part 2: Ideation

When we talking about embedding something into existing curricula what do we mean?

2018-10-04T07:50:00.001-04:00

When I describe something as embedded I mean that the content instruction or skill practice does not require a break from our regularly scheduled programming

What sometimes happens instead is that add-on lessons are developed by one team and handed to classroom teachers to deliver. The classroom teachers interrupt their planned unit to deliver a stand-alone lesson and then resume regular programming. Or, a member of the outside team -- perhaps a library media specialist or a tech integrator -- visits the class and interrupts the ongoing instruction and experience to insert the stand-alone lesson and then leaves.

This is not embedded instruction.

For the additional content to be embedded certain things have to happen first. Either the outside team has to understand the classroom curricula, content and standards (as well as their own) in order to enhance the learning experience with their own content and skills. Or, and better yet, the outside team (let's say a library media specialist) and the content team can co-plan the embedded experience. And, in a real ideal scenario, they also co-facilitate it.

I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with a new member of my PLN, Lauren Jones (@mrsjonesfhs), who is a high school English teacher on the west coast of the U.S. I am a library media specialist on the U.S. east coast. We are members of the same cohort in an EdTechTeam teacher leader course. We collaborated through a Google Hangout and Google Docs to create a lesson as part of her unit on satire in which students would also be examining and practicing good habits of online conduct. Notice that nowhere in the lesson materials do we use the phrase "digital citizenship" yet throughout the satire lesson students are reflecting on different people's online conduct and practicing digital interaction with their classmates.

This series of slides outlines the lesson step-by-step:

And here is a Google Form with questions to gather insight into the students' thinking and learning;

Loading... Lauren is excited to use this lesson with her students and has shared it with her colleagues. They may implement this lesson on their own or in collaboration with their school's library media and tech integration faculty. What is exciting to me is how authentic the students' digital citizenship experience will be!

Five lessons for teachers from a field hockey team

2018-09-17T09:53:00.001-04:00

As you may know from a previous post, my daughter has begun her first year in college. She is a member of her university's field hockey team and this post is all about a recent team event and all the lessons I am deriving from her experience for my teaching.

Last Thursday was "team date night." Unlike team bonding events which include the whole team and are usually on campus, date night is for small groups of a few team members to head off campus together. Here is how date night unfolded:

My daughter and two of her teammates (one a sophomore and the other a junior) were assigned to go on their date. They were paired because they all play mid-field.

Lesson 1: When I, as the teacher, form groups, I should let the students know why I put them together. What is the value of their combined efforts to the anticipated product or collaboration goal? What strength or vision do I see in them, combined?

The first stop on their date was at the Dollar Tree to stock up on supplies for the tradition of decorating in the locker room. Then they went to a gourmet frozen yogurt shop to hangout, bond, and do their homework. That's right. The captains assigned homework.

Lesson 2: Admittedly, I struggle with this one since I don't believe in homework (which is another post entirely). So here are a couple of questions: was it really homework? Am I calling it homework because they had to do it without adult or leader supervision? It may be more like classwork in that it was assigned to be accomplished at a specific time as established by the team. That they were doing it together means it wasn't an isolated and isolating task; and I think it is important to understand the nature of the assignment, too. It wasn't unsupported repetition of a skill or something they were supposed to learn during organized practices.

Their task, while out on their date, was to come up with three ways the team could improve their pregame, locker room experience. Friday (the next day) the team had a pre-practice meeting scheduled during which each "date team" was to present their ideas to the whole team.

Lesson 3: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose (have they been reading Dan Pink?!) They were being asked to contribute to a goal that mattered to all them, both individually and collectively. Everyone had a reason to be invested and feel a measure of safety when brainstorming ideas. Each "date team" had complete autonomy in how and where to accomplish the task. They had complete license to be creative in their own ways. They were aware of the unique perspective they could bring to their ideation process because they knew why they had been paired with each other.

While they were eating yogurt and brainstorming their ideas, they received a Snapchat message from the captains. "Please send pictures of where you are and what you are doing."

Lesson 4: Accountability and celebration. I was so interested in this and pressed my daughter for more information. "It wasn't that they didn't trust us," she said. "When we checked in, they sent us back a 'good job!' message." The captains let the team members know they were interested in how they were doing -- not just what they were doing. And the dates were excited to share their process and progress. It was a celebration. And the documenting of it allowed for fun reporting back at the team meeting on Friday.

While on their dates, they also received a message instructing them to watch their step when they returned to their dorm rooms. Here is why: the captains were part of the fun, too! Outside of each players room was a muffin tin liner with an egg cracked in it. Next to the egg cup was a note that said: "Let's Yolk Mt. Holyoke" (their opponent in that weekend's game). Sending the team off campus meant they could distribute their items without being caught. I asked my daughter what everyone did with the eggs, and she said, "I don't know about everyone, but one of my friends walked right to the dorm kitchen, scrambled it, and ate it!"

Lesson 5: Be an active participant! Anything I ask my students to do, I should be doing myself.

My daughter has joined a wonderful community: one that is challenging, accepting, supportive, and creative. They focus on the individual, the collective and the relationships that bind and bond them. I want my students' families to know that same is true about their children in my class!

Empowered by design thinking

2018-09-08T20:45:00.000-04:00

As the new school year begins, I have a concern. I am not concerned about the new course I am teaching or the new students I will soon meet. I am not concerned about inclement weather and the forecast for a snowy winter interfering with our learning mojo.

I’m concerned about buzzwords.

More specifically, I am concerned that a tenet of learning, a foundational principle for how I understand my role as an educator, will be reduced to a buzzword. What is that word?

Design Thinking.

OK, that is two words. And those two words represent the mindset from which I approach planning, collaborating, teaching, relationship-building, and my ongoing learning. Being an educator with this mindset helps me embrace and empower what I value most in my colleagues, students, and myself: creative possibilities.

When I was a social studies teacher working with students in an American Government course we would discuss what makes us human. As we set about to examine how and why the founding generation established our systems of government, we wondered: what sets us apart from the kingdom of animals co-existing in prides, packs, gaggles, herds or any other animal collective? Students had all sorts of thoughts about what makes us human, what defines our humanity. Some of those ideas were dark, like cruelty. But most were breathtakingly optimistic.

To be human, they decided, was to be curious. Not the kind of curiosity that killed the cat. Instead, unbridled wonderment. To be human is to have an imaginative capacity that inspires others to join together in pursuit of ambitious quests, to persevere against odds and obstacles, to new frontiers of exploration, discovery, and action. Why do humans do this? Because as we benefit from the very nature of those who preceded us, we are bound to serve a greater good, to meet challenges with solutions, to make a bright future for those who come next.

And that, in a nutshell, is design thinking. Design thinkers see problems as opportunities. Constraints only fuel more unusual and untried solutions. Design thinkers have empathy for the many different points of view surrounding the problem they are trying to solve. They design, prototype, and redesign to create a more perfect solution, to improve the lives of people in their schools and communities small and large.

The best part of design thinking is that anyone can do it. Anyone.

Building this capacity in ourselves, in our colleagues, and in our students is an essential component of future-ready skill development. When Google plans for the evolution of its products and the development of new ones, they think about and empathize with what they call “the next billion users”. They aren’t planning for now, they are planning for a future they can only imagine. Consider, for a moment, who those next billion users are and what their experiences have been. Think, for example, about vocabulary we use for which they have no context, words that are meaningless to them. Words like: clockwise, desktop computer, MP3 player, pay phone, gasoline-powered engine, and more. How is their navigation of the world via a handheld device that gives them access to all the world’s information, organized and made useful, an essential component to how they will learn, communicate, and contribute?

Now consider the issues and challenges that face the next billion users’ local and global communities. As their educators, we have accepted the challenge of equipping them with the skills and habits of mind they will need to jump into the void and tackle those challenges. They will suffer defeat. Some of their setbacks will be heartbreaking. And they will be resilient. They will persevere in tearing down obstacles. They will push limits and defy odds. They have no choice. The world needs them.

Remember the best part of design thinking? Anyone can do it. I was so fortunate to take a deep dive into the processes of discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution that underpin the design thinking process when I worked with and learned from the Future Design School at the Google Innovator Academy. Learning to think this way, to fall in love with problems and see every challenge as an opportunity, and then to apply my energy to the steps inherent in designing solutions has transformed how I work with students and my colleagues from how I plan lessons to how I facilitate meetings and write curriculum.

In fact, one of the latest resources created by the Future Design School is a curriculum series for elementary, middle, and upper grades. The grade specific, modular programs are mapped to relevant standards and can be implemented across disciplines; the carefully crafted curricula keep student interests at the forefront. Each course contains: videos, assessment, slide decks, a robust, teacher's guide, handouts to deliver exceptional learning experiences for all students. They are a tremendously supportive resource for educators experienced in design thinking and those just getting started with this approach. Create a classroom culture that empowers students to solve-real world problems!

What will you empower your students to do?

Playing the Long Game

2018-08-31T14:17:00.000-04:00

This year I am playing a long game when it comes to building partnerships with my colleagues and expanding design thinking pedagogy. I had an opportunity to offer a PD spark to the faculty at my school and chose to focus on the question of how might we shift how we think about what we do so that we are teaching the students in the room, so that we are acutely in tune with who they are?

We began with a brainstorm in AnswerGarden of the best possible outcomes of "group work". Here is the word cloud they created:

Next I asked my colleagues to turn and talk about the obstacles that interfere with students achieving those outcomes. When I asked them to share with the whole group, here is what they said:

"they don't get along"
"indifference"
"they change topics rather than staying on one topic and delving into that"
"they socialize"

At this point I invited my colleagues to go on a journey with a group of students. We watched a video of students engaged in group work. While watching, I asked my colleagues to look for instances of the positive outcomes being achieved, interference by any of the obstacles, and any unanticipated outcomes or occurrences. I explained that as the students in the video were working, things get a little heated. I promised to do my best to hit pause before the expletives started flying.

Thanks to Micah Shippee there is a clean version of this video with subtitles, so if you choose to use this with students you don't have to worry about the language.

Embedded here is the video version that I showed by colleagues. I stopped it at 1:38.

Now, full disclosure: I would have avoided all profanity if I had stopped at 1:37. I purposely used the explicit version and let it play until the first bleepable word before hitting pause. I did that for two reasons:

the dropping of the f-bomb is an indication of a change in tactic
it got a laugh from a room full of teachers who had just sat through an hour of blood-borne pathogens and other required training

After the video I asked if they agreed it was group work. They did. And we talked about all of the successful elements ( with evidence drawn from what they could see and hear) and how the obstacles emerged and, in some cases, were overcome. And then we wondered together about how to make our classrooms the kind of environments that promote that kind of collaboration. What we discussed is summarized in this slide:

The next day I surreptitiously delivered a small maker kit to each department's work room. Each kit had the same craft materials and one piece of a little bit. They looked like this:

Each kit was accompanied by this note:

The Science department has already submitted their animal! When all submissions have been received, I will display them in Library with a sheet of paper listing the directions for the project, anyone passing through the library will be invited to post stickers on the sheet corresponding to their favorite animal or the one they think best represents the department that created it. They will be invited to write feedback on a post-it and leave it with the animal. Based on those votes, I will announce "the winner". That department will receive the "Leeroy Jenkins Collaboration Award" -- a costume warrior helmet.

They will be able to proudly display the helmet in their workroom for the rest of the month. While in possession of the helmet, they can decorate, adorn or build it out in anyway they see fit. At the start of next month, I will announce a new challenge. The winner of that challenge will be the new keeper of the helmet, and so on. My goal: together we learn to make, we have fun, we practice pedagogy, we take safe risks, we celebrate each other's creativity, and we build a culture of innovation. It is only Day 2 of this long game. Stay tuned for updates!

Off-to-college packing list

2018-08-04T15:38:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of the content of this post, I am attempting to author it entirely from my pixel 2 phone! And because I struggle to type on a phone, I'm using voice tools.

My daughter will be leaving for her freshman year in college in about 10 days. Needless to say, we have been busy preparing everything she might need to bring with her. As we have been perusing the back-to-school shelves in various stores, something dawned on me. Most of what I packed to take with me to my freshman year in college back in 1986, has been replaced for my daughter, in 2018, by her smartphone.

Some of these things that she does not need to pack are obvious. She doesn't need a touch-tone landline. Nor does she need a flashlight, or an address book, or envelopes and stamps. Some of the things she doesn't need are a bit nostalgic. For instance, she doesn't need a push pin cork board or a white board to hang on her dorm door. Who will stop by to write a message on her door when they can just send her a Snapchat?

The more I thought about what she didn't need, the list became more and more interesting. Is there really any use any longer in your dorm room for a television or a calculator? She has never owned a stereo so she won't bring that. And her headphones no longer keep her tethered to her music source. She doesn't need a checkbook or even a physical credit card or debit card. Ostensibly, she could Google pay or Apple pay her way through any necessary transactions. She certainly doesn't need a printer. Go paperless. And, I can imagine the day when she wouldn't even need a laptop.

Now the question arises, what does she need that I would never have thought of bringing with me because, in all likelihood, it didn't even exist? Likely, a bunch of portable chargers. And a complement of cords and different adapters to be sure that all of her devices can charge on the fly. It is on those devices that she will access the services to which the she subscribes and the databases her university provides, because she won't have magazines delivered to her mailbox and will have less need (any need?) for textbooks. Do college students even have mailboxes anymore?

So the question that I am now asking not just as a parent but as an educator is this: how are her professors and her university prepared to engage with her in this learning journey because she is not, and really never has, lived in an analog world? And when we engage with our K-12 students, how are we preparing them for their unknown future? How will we nurture the habits of mind of innovation, problem solving, entrepreneurship? How will we contribute to the development of empathetic, global citizens? How will we encourage and cultivate the flexible thinking necessary to adapt to and thrive in this rapidly changing world? (Please share your thoughts in response to these questions in the comments!)

Making Converts

2018-05-18T13:29:00.001-04:00

For several weeks it felt like spring would never happen. It was cold and dreary. We were having snow days in April and the year kept getting longer. Finally, the sun came out, the air warmed, and it started to feel like the year was winding down. There was prom. Now the seniors are leaving for internship. The exam schedule has been published. And that is either coinciding with or maybe causing a shift in the thinking of a few of my colleagues. This is what I am hearing:

- They need to do project.

- The seniors should do something fun before they go.

- They are checking out; I need a way to hook them back in.

And, then, a couple of them asked: can you explain that makerspace to me again?

Of course! YES! I would love to! And then I put some pipe cleaners in their hand while we talk.

This week I have been working with a Social Studies teacher in two of her classes and with an English teacher colleague in two of her classes - both pairs of classes are a mixture of juniors and seniors.

Today was the project due date for the Social Studies classes and here is how the teacher described what happened:

"We had a board game day today and the class broke into groups to play each of the games. And I did what you said, I told everyone they couldn't play their own game because one test of the effectiveness of the game was whether or not someone could follow the directions and understand how to play without them there to explain it all. And they didn't want to leave their games! They were so proud of them, they wanted to be sure that everyone else really appreciated and understood them." And then she added, "Remember that kid I told you about who still owes me so much work from last quarter? The one who never does any of the assignments? He made the coolest board game! He refused to leave his game. Flat out refused. And I let him stay so he could have that pride in what he had done."

That's when I told her a story about a group of girls in her class who had worked together on their project. They did all of their work in the classroom until the very last project work day. On that day my colleague, their teacher, was out. To get away from the sub, the students decided to work in The Garage (our makerspace). When they arrived they asked me, "what are we supposed to do?" I put pipe cleaners in their hands and replied "Well, what do you need?" They said they needed a spinner and playing pieces. So I asked: "Well, what should the pieces look like or represent?"

You know where this is going... those pipe cleaners were quickly bent into a prototype of the animal shapes they needed. I directed them to our bins of supplies and recyclables and they looked at me with open mouths; "Has this been here all year?!" they asked. I nodded. They grabbed each others arms and exclaimed: "Can we come here during a free and just make stuff?" I told them, "Of, course!" To which they responded: "This makes me so happy!"

I couldn't join their class for project sharing day because my English colleague brought her classes to The Garage for their first full-period making session. This project is the culmination of their study of Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle. Last week, I introduced the project to them with this discussion of unattainable dreams, symbols, and the relationship between artists and their audience.

Less than a minute into class she leaned over and said, "Oh! This is amazing. I am so glad you are getting pictures of this! Should I take some, too?" Here is what was so amazing. Complete and total engagement in selecting the only required element of their project: a piece of glass. The students were sharing and comparing. Discussing the merits of clear vs. translucent glass. Shape and texture were important, too. Then I delivered a 3-minute orientation to the space, listing a variety of materials from pom poms to old "steampunk" hardware and ended with: "If you are thinking about a material you can't find, just ask." That's it. They were off!

Once they had been planning, designing, and experimenting for about 10 minutes, I approached a small

group who were intently debating the best way to attach two parts of a project. I asked what problem they were trying to solve and they showed me and launched into an explanation of the merits of the different solutions they were entertaining. Their English teacher approached and looked over my shoulder, and the students entirely shifted gears. "Don't worry, don't worry!" they said. "It's going to be good. You're gonna like it. There is a good reason for what we are doing. I promise: we are working."

My colleague pulled me away from them and asked, "Did you see that? Did you see what just happened? As soon as I walked over it became all about the grade, about reassuring me they were making something I would like. This is entirely different than when you come to our classroom. Our roles here are totally different. But they are thinking so intently and in such different ways. I mean, look at them! Some of these kids checked out weeks ago and now they are so engaged I can't even talk to them!"

The best observation came next:

"You need to come to one of our department meetings at the very beginning of the year next year and tell everyone about this. And then people like me will back you up. I know you told us about it at a meeting earlier this year, but we didn't get it. But now there are more of us to help people get it."

I will gratefully accept an opportunity to discuss making with them. And, next time, I will bring pipe cleaners!

What started as a proposal to present at a conference became this blog post

2018-05-10T20:19:00.004-04:00

Print tabloid journalism was one-way information distribution. No matter how much the headlines yelled at passersby from the newsstand, they couldn’t yell back. Standing in the grocery checkout line, all you can do is scan the all-caps headlines yelling at you from the pages and passively receive their messages. To dispute the claim that Elvis fathered an alien love child, required that you purchase the journal, write a letter, stuff it in an envelope, find the address in the journal, address and stamp the letter, deliver it to a mailbox… Right. It wasn’t going to happen because it likely wasn't worth it. Digital delivery of and access to information happens at an ever accelerating pace, and we can and do respond, instantly, from anywhere, at any time. The limits of time, place, and access imposed on us by in-real-life civic participation sometimes also serve to temper our contributions to these discussions. So how do we foster productive, thoughtful, effective engagement in digital communities?

Perhaps we could debate the notion that digital citizenship (not the behaviors, but the state of being connected) is a choice. After all, being born (as I was) in the United States by default conferred citizenship status upon me. But digital citizenry required me to make a choice to join a community (actual, multiple communities) and agree to their standards of conduct. Even though I periodically self-impose a digital citizenry hiatus upon myself, I can’t imagine this as a permanent state of being. Whether we distinguish ourselves from our children, our students, or a younger generation as digital immigrants vs. digital natives, joining a digital citizenry is, to some extent and at least at some point, a choice. If we choose to be and to educate digital citizens we must hone a new and complex skill set. We must:

Develop graphicacy: the ability to unpack images that blend data, text, and iconography
Think like fact-checkers: triangulate the information we consume to verify its origin, purpose, and accuracy
Understand our own bias: know when our bias prevents us from critically seeing someone else’s and inclines us to confuse opinion with evidence
Empathize: understanding and accepting the hopes, fears, and other motivating factors in another person’s life is essential to building constructive dialogue
Employ emotional intelligence: recognize when an emotional response to something is suppressing our ability to speak or write with measure.

Consider Dylan Marron starting a podcast of phone calls with the people who leave hate comments on his videos. Marron’s conversations help him and his detractors build empathy with one another. Marron invites people who posted rather hateful comments to and about him to discuss their opinions with him. He doesn't seek to convert, only to understand them. In return, they reflexively dial down their vitriol in favor of a reasonable exchange of ideas. Proving that agreeing to disagree can be an acceptable and productive outcome to dialogue.

We could make Dylan Marron's life a little easier (although that might rob him of an incredible podcast) because it is possible to teach our students to engage in effective digital dialogue. Empathy and emotional intelligence, combined with media literacy are the keys to healthy digital citizens and productive digital community interactions. Kristin Mattson writes convincingly and authoritatively about how to foster a networker's mindset and build students' effective digital communication skills through guided practice unpacking digital conversations that scaffolds to the ultimate goal: positive and productive digital agency.

A couple of months ago I was fortunate to work with a group of students at my school piloting the anti-cyberbullying curriculum designed by the Trust and Safety group at Google in partnership with media production company, Harmony Labs. The key to the effectiveness of this curriculum is that all the material is delivered via virtual reality. By immersing themselves in the scenarios they are going to discuss, actually becoming a part of the scene, students are drawn to certain characters in the video they are watching. They are likely also put off by or dislike characters. And they can be guided to watch and follow a certain character as a story unfolds seeing the action as that person sees it. Again, it's all about empathy. All of the videos are accessible on YouTube via the phones students carry in their pockets and the virtual reality experience is made possible with a Google Cardboard. I like the symmetry of using the power of media access provided by their phones to teach them to use their phones (and all they can access via them) to conduct themselves wisely.

This experience with the anti-cyberbullying curriculum reminded me of Anna Deavere Smith's TED performance: Four American Characters. When I was a history teacher I used her talk in my US History classes to show students why primary sources mattered to understanding history. "Look what she is doing," I used to say to my students, "spending so much time with a person that she can become that person. That is what primary sources do for you. If you can wrestle with them and unpack them, they return you to a place a in time to live a moment the way a real person experienced it." After I discovered this 2005 TED talk, I started building living tableaux with my students. I would present them with an iconic historical photograph and let them work in teams to pose one another in order to replicate the action of the photo. Then, they worked together to unpack the image we had reconstructed in order to understand the motivations of the people depicted. We would consider how the image we were examining was distributed, what voice the subjects of the image had in its making and distribution, and what we need to keep in mind as viewers of this snapshot of a moment in time composed by someone else with his/her/their own purpose or agenda. Finally, we compared the historical image to a very current one to illustrate the challenge in applying these skills to media that incites a visceral response and inclines viewers to unsavory, hateful, or otherwise nonconstructive posts. Or inhibits viewers from engaging in dialogue about posts that are hateful, discriminatory, or in some way offensive. (For more on this methodology, see this post.)

That's empathy.What Deavere did, what Marron does, what we must do as educators, is provide our students as many ways as we can, to develop empathy with the subjects of their studies, with the authors of the information they consume; so that they can compose their reactions (whether those reactions are research papers or social media comments and posts) from a place of insight into the motives and experiences of the original author and self-awareness about what their digital relationship with that person is and can be.

So, given that this started as a conference proposal, would you attend this workshop?

Design Thinking to build a unit with a Science Colleague

2018-05-03T14:45:00.000-04:00

It likely comes as no surprise to know that as a library media specialist, my most frequent collaboration is with Social Studies and English teachers. This week I ventured into new territory co-planning a unit with a Chemistry teacher. She contacted me because, as the teacher of AP Chemistry, she will have some found time between the administration of the exam and the end of our school year. She was hoping I could help her plan something meaningful and interesting for her students.

This conversation became a two-fold exercise in applying design thinking! First, I put aside the different ideas that were bouncing around my head, things I thought might interest the students. Instead of offering suggestions (which is what she hoped I would do when she came to me), I started asking her questions. What outcome would make her think the time was well spent? What difficulties did she have this year when teaching the class? Or what difficulty had the students had? As I listened to her share about her year, I gained empathy with her as a teacher, as a teacher of a specific discipline, and as a teacher of a particular high stakes course. That helped me to hear things she was saying, like: “It’s more my Honors Chem students (an entirely different class) who have trouble with some of the concepts of their class, but I don’t have time for a big project with them.”

I asked her, “Do you have enough time to ask them to share what areas or concepts caused them the most difficulty?” She said that she didn’t have to ask, she knew. I pushed again by saying, “Your insight about their struggle is really important, and could you put together a form that asks them to tell you? It would be interesting to see their self-awareness.” She agreed that would be an interesting comparison. Then I asked, “How might we harness the found time in AP to empower the AP students to help the Honors class finish the year strong and prepare for their final exam?” And a project was born!

We started, organically, thinking 10X and growing the idea with “Yes! And…” It went like this:

- “We can start with a survey of the Honors Chem classes…’

- “Yes! And, we can ask each AP student to choose to work on one of the problems identified.”

- “Yes! And, they can interview the students in Honors to understand why that concept was difficult.”

- “Yes! And, the AP students can build new teaching materials for the students to use to practice the concept.”

- “Yes! And, next year those materials can be used again to differentiate for the new class!”

So that was the first layer of design thinking. The cool thing is that the product of that planning session was to put the AP classes through a design thinking exercise as the path to developing their solution to the learning problems of their peers! My colleague asked for reassurance that I would be with her (and her students) throughout the process. She also asked a bunch of “what if” questions. Mostly they were about what if something goes wrong. I asked, what do the AP classes lose if their projects flop? Not much really. What does the Honors class lose? Again, nothing. They don’t gain anything, but very little of their time and energy is invested in the project. They are the beneficiaries if all goes well. I then asked if she would lose anything if all goes awry. She didn’t hesitate to say, not really. She likes her students (and they like her), she considers them eager learners, thoughtful people, and she trusts them. Ultimately, she realized that if this flops, they will be rather forgiving. That is when I felt safe to tell her, it won’t flop. It may evolve differently than we anticipate, and that is OK. Ultimately, everyone stands to gain much more than anyone stands to lose. And then she asked if I could write up the unit plan.

So here is the project outline that the students in AP Chem will follow:

The exam is over. (Phew!)

The final lab is complete. (YES!)

Now we have the gifts of found time, sophisticated chemistry expertise, and a cohort of innovative risk-takers. Here is how we will use these gifts to solve problems and keep learning ourselves:

To start, we will survey the grade 10 students in Honors Chem. What we want to know about each student is:

What was the hardest content or skill for you to master this year?

Or, looking ahead to the final exam, what potential questions or problems most concern you?

This is where YOU, the students in AP Chem enter the equation. Each of you will choose one of the issues identified by your 10th grade peers and design a learning module to help them overcome their struggle.

You will use this guiding design question to frame your work:

How might we create learning experiences to help students who struggle with _________ concept?

These are the steps we will follow to design and answer to that question:

User Discovery (Also called stakeholder interviews)