David Truss :: Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts

Ladders, leaders, students and storytellers

2010-09-08T00:44:28Z

I had to move to China to see the ‘ladder walk’. A man, standing on an ‘A’ frame ladder, painting a ceiling of an outdoor entrance cover had finished the section he was working on. Instead of stepping down to move the ladder, he stepped up and put one foot over to the other side of the ladder, straddling the ‘A’. Then he quickly but methodically ‘walked’ the ladder to a new location, like a man walking sideways on connected stilts. He then stepped back over to one side of the ladder and resumed painting. I have no idea how many codes that would have broken in ‘The Bubble Wrapped West’ but I’m certain workers’ compensation would have issues with this process. That said, from my perspective it was an effective way to move.

And that’s exactly what teachers are trying to do at this time of year. They look at their past years and think, how can I make this better, more efficient, easier, and meaningful? They are hungry for different, more effective approaches to things. Recently I’ve had a few people contact me, looking for resources regarding student leadership. I wrote my Masters in Educational Leadership final paper on the topic of developing an effective student leadership program and created a rather large appendix of resources to share, (I link to this later in the post). Today I took some resources I only had stashed away online due to a computer crash and put a number of them on the document sharing site Scribd, so that I can share them easily with anyone interested. This got me to open up my Master’s Paper again and I came across the actual ladder that this post is really about.

Taken from: A Guide to Meaningful Student Involvement, Adam Fletcher, 2003. p. 9.

I really like this Ladder of Student Involvement, and the focus it has on “Degrees of Participation”. True participation is based on shared leadership and empowering students. There are real parallels here to what we are seeing today with meaningful technology integration. (Ideally) real participation involves students being initiators of what needs to be learned and then working with their teacher to determine ways to demonstrate and assess the learning.

At both the classroom and the school levels, how much do we empower students and how much do we limit their participation in their own learning?

This got me thinking about our adult leaders in a school. How much of our leadership do we really share? Am I helping my staff climb the ladder of participation or am I doing a “ladder walk” moving us along where I think we should all go? What things should I just decide, doing the whole staff a favour, and what things should go through a slower, but far more powerful, shared decision-making process?

The reality is that there is no simple answer to these questions and I think that the staff at two different schools would need to be worked with in different ways. Switch the word ‘Adult’ on the participation ladder to ‘Administrator’ and the word ‘Student’ to ‘Teacher’. How truly empowered are our staff? I think the answer to that question is a strong determining factor to ‘how truly empowered are our students’? The answers to these questions significantly influence our school culture and our school community.

“Good leadership consists of motivating people to their

highest levels by offering them opportunities, not obligations.”

John Heider, The Tao of Leadership

So now I’ll head back to the idea that this time of year teachers (and administrators) are looking for new and different ways of doing things. I’ve had the privilege of joining a group of Connected Principals and learning from them. One of the most impressive things about this group so far has been their willingness to share ideas and to learn from one another. There is an exchange of ideas, and stories, that we all gain from. It is in that spirit that I share the following resources.

First I’ll share my master’s paper, Developing an Effective Middle School Leadership Program, downloadable from Slideshare or Scribd. The appendix is designed to be a resource for others… so skip the the paper itself and just head to the table of contents for the appendix on page 54, and you’ll have access to many resources. Two more resources, both on Scribd, are a collection of Leadership Lesson Plans and a collection of stories or rather Metaphors to Learn By.

It’s a subject of a whole other post, but I strongly believe that storytelling is a powerful and underused tool in teaching and learning, as well as in inspiring a common vision. That’s why I started this post with a story. A short story of a man doing something simple in a way I’ve never seen it done before. From my cultural context it wasn’t something I would have thought of doing, but his ‘ladder walk’ was an effective approach to completing the man’s task. I hope that my resources can help others find different, hopefully better, approaches to their student leadership programs and I look forward to the new approaches in many areas of leadership that the Connected Principals will lead me to.

(Cross-posted on Connected Principals)

I (Heart) Libraries

2010-08-24T21:47:14Z

Belinda Kuck of Davis School District contacted me recently through my blog and said, “We are starting a 1:1 pilot in our district this year. I am the library media supervisor in our district and I would be interested in your thoughts about 1:1 and how libraries support students, teachers and curriculum and digital libraries.”

This was my response:

1. I think the library should be the hub of the school.
2. It should be the place students want to go and it should be available whenever possible (no easy task in many schools with limited staffing)
3. Librarians today should spend just as much time, or more time, preparing and collecting digital resources for teachers as they do books etc.
4. Digital resources are not just web pages but web-based tools that enhance teaching and, even more so, learning.
5. Books are still an important part of a library and they aren’t being replaced, but a librarians job now goes well beyond books!
6. As much collaboration as possible should happen between the librarian and the teacher, and as much as possible it should be co-teaching time when a class goes to the library.
7. Students time in the library should not all be prescribed/teaching time, they should have time to read, research, and even play.
8. Reading is still one of the most important skills needed and libraries should run activities to promote reading.
9. Tools like diigo and delicious are invaluable to a library and they should be used by librarians, teachers and students.
10. I’ve collected some library links that I think all librarians (and for that matter teachers and administrators) should read, and they can be found here: http://delicious.com/dtruss/library/

I didn’t talk specifically about 1:1, but I hope I’ve given you some food for thought and once I get my school up and running I will be happy to share thoughts about Library support and moving to 1:1 as my school is also doing this for the first time this year, with our senior classes.

Unstandardized

2010-08-20T11:31:45Z

My father passed this on to me, (thanks dad). I love that the venue was a valedictorian speech, by someone who graduated at the top of her class. This is probably one of the best arguments I’ve heard against standardized testing and perhaps against standardizing education for the masses for that matter.

It starts with the ‘Try Softer‘ story that I have often used to make similar points. From there she basically describes feeling like a square peg in a round hole, with school being something necessarily required but not really about learning.

I’ve included both the video and also the full speech below, but I’d like to highlight two sections that struck a chord with me:

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

And also:

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again here:

Are you an agent of change? Are you a catalyst that makes things happen? Do you create opportunities for collaboration? Do you initiate and inspire Learning Conversations ?

We have amazing students in our schools and our schools are also filled with some incredibly hard working, bright and passionate teachers. It’s time to debunk the now famous quote by W. Edwards Deming: “A bad system will defeat a good person every time…“ Because Deming also said, “Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.”

How will you un-standardize your classroom? How will you be a change agent in the transformation of schools?

See my ‘SHIFTING’ series if this interests you:

Part I: Shifting Education Part II: Shifting Learning Part III: Shifting Attitudes

That’s enough from me! This speech was delivered by student Erica Goldson during her graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010. The video starts a few seconds past the beginning so you can read the part you missed just below the video.

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years . .” ?The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” ?Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”

This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.”

To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!

By Erica Goldson, June 25, 2010 [Text Source]

First Day of School 2010 – a Google Search Story

2010-08-14T22:54:54Z

I had some fun this morning creating a Google Search Story.

The tag line (description) for this video is, “If you are just looking for activity worksheets, then you are missing the point!” I took advantage of my own high search-ability to do a little self-promotion in the search results, but the link that shows up is actually to my old blog site. Still, the whole thing took less than 20 minutes and the creation steps are really easy. I can see this activity being a lot of fun to do with students as an introduction to a topic in just about any subject. If you have students create some search stories, share them with me.

Enjoy the first day of school 2010!

Here is my YouTube channel if you are interested.

Thank you and no thank you

2010-08-05T17:39:51Z

Yesterday I went to renew my drivers license and after being away for a year I did not realize that the office had moved. So, a planned, (very short), walk to the renewal office became two, (very long), bus rides across the city of Coquitlam into Port Coquitlam. But this isn’t a post to whine or complain, rather it is to say ‘Thank you’ to the everyday bus-goers of the city I call home. It was at the very first stop that I noticed the start of a trend.

A young lady took the bus only one stop from the station then stood at the back doors to get off. When the bus stopped and the back doors opened she paused and said in a loud voice for the driver at the front to hear, “Thank You!”

On my 4 bus trips I think I heard ‘Thank You’ to the driver at least a dozen times. This got me thinking about the reading and watching of the news I’ve done recently, (something I rarely do except on holidays). Earlier this summer I read about a bus driver that had been attacked by a passenger. I don’t remember the details, it was one of a number of depressing things that I read, forcing me to put the paper down in disgust. Some bus driver in a far-off city gets harassed and it’s news, but wonderful thankful people are never mentioned. They may not be ‘newsworthy’, but I’d like to think that they are ‘blogworthy’!

A couple days ago I watched the late night news and the two headlines on Canadian National news were 1: The high incidents of drowning this year, and 2: A shooting in Connecticut, USA, by a disgruntled beer and wine wholesaler employee. Depressing.

So to end ‘Part 1′ of this post, ‘Thank you’ to the wonderful people of Coquitlam for being so kind and uplifting! I too gave the bus drivers an inspired ‘Thank You’, and my last one was followed by several others as we all departed at the final stop of the run. And a big, ‘No thank you’ to newspaper reporters and newscasters who drivel on and on about all the evil in the world. I’ll stick to blogs and twitter for my information and take a pass on reading and viewing news about countless tragedies and disasters and perhaps, if I’m lucky, one ‘feel good’ report. There is too much good in this world to have you shift my attention away from it.

– Part 2 –

I’m currently reading a book called Disrupting Class, by Clayton M. Christensen, and one of the key messages early on is that schools have done a remarkably good job over the years, but the measurements we use to judge them keep shifting. To use a sporting metaphor, they keep moving the goal posts… with ‘they’ being parents, policy-makers and society in general. The shift to greater and greater standardized testing has compounded this because we are on a shift away from that kind of learning being important, but the goal posts have not shifted away yet. However if you read ‘the news’ then schools are filled with failures on every level. Meanwhile, my news feed is filled with wonderful teachers and amazing projects.

So ‘Thank you’ to all the amazing teachers in my network that I learn from whenever I get online, and ‘No thank you’ to people who complain about ‘the system’ and ‘failing schools’ who don’t actually try to do something about them.

– Part 3 –

I remember watching The Razor’s Edge years ago. Bill Murray plays Larry Darrell a taxi driver ‘in search of himself’ who at one point serves as an ambulance driver in World War II. His partner/co-attendant Piedmont is a sour man that is bitter and unpleasant.

If memory serves me correctly there are also two wonderfully optimistic, volunteer, British ambulance drivers that work with Larry and Piedmont. In a scene, these two happy-go-lucky ambulance attendants have engine trouble as they attempt to bring injured soldiers to safety while under fire. Stalled, the Brits attempt to repair their ambulance while enemy fire pinpoints their stationary location. Bombs get closer and closer until they blow up the ambulance, killing these two men. Larry is distraught and the bitter Piedmont says a few kind words about how nice these two were and then says, to Larry’s disgust, “They will be forgotten.”

Later, Piedmont is killed (I don’t remember how), and in a monologue Larry talks of this unruly, unkind and cantankerous man and then says, “He will be remembered.”

I was still a teenager when I saw this movie but it has a powerful lasting affect on me. I realized then and there that we tend to pay far more attention to people and things that are negative and annoy us than on the things we should be happy and appreciative about. I’d like to think that this is learned and not human nature. We don’t have to focus on the negative, and we are better people when we don’t.

– Epilogue –

So I’ll take heed of lessons learned and avoid the “No Thank You’s” as I bring this post to conclusion.

“Thank You” to the bus-goers of Coquitlam for inspiring this post. Thanks also for reminding me of the valuable lesson Bill Murray taught me so long ago.

“Thank you” to the amazing people in my digital network that inspire and teach me. You make lifelong learning fun!

And, “Thank you” to those that read my blog and to those that take the time to comment. I appreciate the conversation and the encouragement.

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. ~John E. Southard

Parents as partners

2010-07-07T18:42:29Z

I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be engaged.

This past school year I had a ‘Parents as Partners’ section in my newsletter and I thought I’d share the monthly sections here. These aren’t really about creative engagement of parents in your school, but rather parenting suggestions to help maintain consistency of expectations both at home and at school.

Parents as Partners: Questions & Advice

I am happy to offer some advice to parents about supporting your child’s learning. However, please note that I will often answer questions with questions since I believe that there is no such thing as the ‘perfect parent’ and what works in one family or with one kid, may not work as well with others.

Children and Computer Time

Here is a question I often hear: How much computer time should my child have?

(Or how much ‘screen time’, since television time can also be a concern.)

Here are my questions to you. Again, there is no ‘right’ answer here, but discussing this as parents, and/or as a family, can help you decide what your limits and comfort zones are:

How long does your child spend on the computer or in front of the TV? Are you comfortable with that amount of time? Have you discussed this with your child?

Do you know what your child does on the computer or what he/she watches on TV?

Is the computer in a central location in the house? Is there a better place for it?

Does your child have a computer, or internet access, or TV in their room? If so, is it on when you ask them to have it off? How do you know what they are doing online? Do you ask them to show you?

Is it a good idea to have a computer or television in a child’s bedroom?

What computer games does your child play? Are these games appropriate for their age? For older kids: What social networks does your child belong to? Are you their online friends?

The younger your child is, the more important it is to determine these things for them. As your child gets older, it would be wise to allow them to negotiate these terms with you, although I firmly believe that parents should maintain the right to make the final decision. (Also see ‘Raising Digital Kids’ below.)

Homework Routines

Often it is difficult to determine just how much homework a child has to do. “I got most of it done at school”, “We don’t have any today”, and “It isn’t due until later”, are all comments that most parents have heard at some point. Here are some questions to discuss.

Does your child have a specific location where they do their homework?
Is it done at a specific time? Are there minimum time requirements for homework?
What are the distractions to homework getting done? Can they be removed?
Do you monitor what is done for homework? Do you talk to your child about their homework? Are you available to help them? Is someone else?
If they have no homework or limited homework, are they ‘done’ or can they spend more time doing review or pre-reading to prepare them for the next day?
Is reading part of their homework or evening routine?
Is there such a thing as too much homework?
When should I speak to my child’s teachers about our homework concerns?

There are no ‘right’ answers here, but discussing these as parents, and/or as a family, can help you decide what your limits and comfort zones are.
Thank you for being our partners in your child’s education!

Students as Partners

Not just parents, students are our partners in education too!
I think we sometime forget that our children have a vested interest in their own education. Often we go to meetings and talk about kids rather than going to a meeting with kids. As students get older, it is important to include them in conversations about their learning. When you are going to a meeting with a teacher or with me, please ask yourself first, ‘Would my child benefit from being at this meeting?’ Sometimes the answer will be ‘No’, but more often than not, they would benefit from contributing to the conversation. Furthermore, it is helpful for your child to see that their parents and teachers are on the same team, working together to make their education the best that it can be.

An Engaged Parent

Often we can get trapped in a routine where our only conversation with our children is ‘What did you do in school today?’
When my children were younger, I stopped asking them that, and started asking them two other questions:

1. ‘Who did you help today’– A question that shows that I value generosity and kindness. I accepted ‘No-one’ as an answer, but that answer decreased over time.

2. ‘What was your favourite part of the day?’ – A question that gave me far more to talk meaningfully to them about than what I got when I asked ‘what they did’.

It doesn’t matter what you ask your child about their day, what matters is that you ask, and that you show a genuine interest in what they say. In my years as an educator I’ve learned that students both want and need to be heard, and students who have parents that they talk to, openly and regularly, tend to be much better equipped to be successful in the future.

Saying “Sorry”

Childhood involves making mistakes. What makes us better, wiser, adults is what we learn and remember after making mistakes, so that we do not make them again. Too often a child will be quick to say “I’m sorry”, without really thinking about what they did, or why they should be sorry, other than the fact that they know they will be in more trouble if they did not say it.

There are actually 3 parts to an apology and when we expect all three parts from our children, then they are more likely to think twice before making a poor choice for a second time. The three parts of an apology are:
1. Saying “Sorry”.
2. Saying what they are sorry for.
3. Making a commitment to do something else, better, next time.
For example:
1. I’m sorry
2. I should not have hit you even though you made me angry.
3. The next time that you say something mean I will tell you that it hurt my feelings and I might even tell a teacher, but I won’t hit you.

In an incident like this I would also want the person who said something mean to apologize. However, often the person who hits or retaliates thinks that the other person started it so their behavior is justified. Here at school we try to show both children that their behaviors contributed to the problem and yet it isn’t about blame, it is about admitting their own contribution and thinking about how they can make things better next time.
When your child says, “Sorry”, does he/she mean it? Are you focused on punishing the behavior or having your child learn from their mistakes?

Value Reading

There are many websites that will read stories for you and your child, which is very helpful for families that do not speak English as their first language at home. The best resource that you have is YOU! Read to your child (in any language) and read with them, or at the same time as them. Show them that you love reading!

Report Cards

Report card time can be both exciting and scary for a child. We all want our children to be the best that they can be. As tempting as it is to focus on the letter grades on the last page of the report, please take the time to read the comments (translating them to your language if necessary). Comments can provide you, your child, tutors & other teachers, and future institutions with concrete and specific information about your child’s progress.

Your child’s teachers have taken time to carefully analyze what your child is able to do, and provided details about the specific things that he or she are working on – in every subject. This snapshot is a wealth of data about where your child is right now, and what teachers are working on to help your child be more successful. Talk to your child about their report card comments, and also about their work habits too if those need improving or commending.

Spend some time finding out what your child likes and dislikes about their report cards and ask them what they are proud of, and what they would like to improve? We learn from our mistakes and if we come to school knowing everything then there really is no purpose for school. In the end, it is our hope that every child leaves school with a love for learning and so report cards should be an opportunity to seek new opportunities to learn.

When seeking improvements from your child, set learning targets rather than letter grade targets. Ask your child what skills, such as proofreading, note taking, and editing, that they can work on and help them determine a schedule or plan to meet their goals to improve. As always, continue to show an interest in what your child does at school and they will be far more likely to find future success than if they are punished or rewarded for letter grades.

Photosynthesis and Learning

Students learn that plants make sugars using the energy of the sun. A byproduct of this process, called photosynthesis, is oxygen but the goal of the process is to produce food, not oxygen. In a similar way, marks are the byproduct, and not the goal of learning. We all want our children to be successful students but sometimes our approach to this is not an approach that successfully motivates our children. Asking a child about how much they liked a project and asking them questions like, “If you could change one thing to make this better, what would you have done?” will go a lot further to improve their future success than just worrying about the marks they get, or rewarding or punishing them based on their marks. We all want our children to do well and get good marks, but let us please remember to promote a love of learning (the goal) not marks (the byproduct), and we will be sure to see more positive results from our children. (post link)

Giving Children Choice

We make a lot of decisions for our children. This is a good thing, since children do not always make the best choices for themselves. But often we don’t give children enough choices when they are older, or we give them too many choices when they are younger. Here are some strategies for giving students choices. What you have to ask yourself is, “Am I giving my child good choices?”, “Am I giving my child enough choices?”, and “Are the choices I give them legitimate?”

Here are some examples to help guide your answers to the above questions.

“Am I giving my child good choices?”

A bad choice: “Do you want to go and brush your teeth?” ~ What if they say no? A good choice: “Do you want to brush your teeth before or after you put on your pajamas?” ~This is called an embedded command as brushing teeth is not a option, when this is done is where the choice comes in.

“Am I giving my child enough choices?”
After school, are there times when your child can decide what they want to do, or is all their time structured? Do your children (sometimes) have a say in where you will go out for dinner? Do you ask them for their opinion when shopping?

“Are the choices I give them legitimate?”
Sometimes we offer ‘no win’ choices to our children: “Come here right now or else you are in big trouble” ~ Either way they are in trouble!

When dealing with a tough situation (with older students) here is a simple strategy: Either give them 3 options, not 2, as this makes the decision easier for them, or you can make the choice open-ended, (“When are you going to get your homework done this weekend?). Then, make sure they follow through with which choice they make, even if it isn’t your ideal choice!
If we want our children to feel empowered and that they have some control over their own lives, then it is important that when we give them choices, we actually allow those choices to happen!

Raising Digital Kids

The ICD (International Club of Dalian) invited me to run a presentation titled, “Education in the Digital Age: A Reorientation for Parents”. The intentions of this presentation/workshop were to:
• Examine children’s use of technology.
• Increase awareness of the potential challenges around technology use.
• Learn practical, proactive parenting strategies to maintain connections with children using the media they are using.
• Learn how to guide children in appropriate and safe interactions on the Internet.
• Find support and resources to better understand these issues.
Here is the web-page ‘hand-out‘ with many questions that can promote conversations for your family to help guide your understanding of what guidelines and expectations your family should have when thinking about students and their digital (screen) time. (post link)

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Please contribute your thoughts and feedback. Also, I’d love some ideas for new things to share with my parents to help them be our partners in their child’s education.

Parenting in the digital age

2010-06-26T19:16:27Z

Three weeks ago I did a couple presentations to parents about Parenting In the Digital Age:

This FREE workshop is for parents, both the tech savvy and the less technically inclined, who would like to develop family expectations around the use of technology to play, learn and connect.

For this presentation I created a wiki: http://raisingdigitalkids.wikispaces.com/ and tonight I’ve finally uploaded the presentation to Slideshare.

These were the learning intentions:

Examine children’s use of technology
Increase awareness of the potential challenges around technology use
Learn practical, proactive parenting strategies to maintain connections with children using the media they are using.
Learn how to guide children in appropriate and safe interactions on the Internet.
Find support and resources to better understand these issues

A key part of the presentation is the handout called ‘Engaging with kids‘. It is made up of a series of questions based on the presentation, but not necessarily in the presentation. The point is asking questions and finding the right balance or ‘fit’ for each family rather than offering any kind of prescribed answers.

I spent most of the day writing presentation notes and editing my slide transitions out for the Slideshare version. My goal was to create an online presentation that others could use.

Special thanks to:

• Dave Sands, much of my presentation came from ideas shared in his presentations. I had the honour of co-presenting with him, on an earlier version of these presentations.

• Amalia Giebitz, who organized these presentations, doing all the work to get ICD support and even recruiting friends to come to the events.

Feedback, as always, is appreciated!

One last time

2010-06-25T07:14:17Z

Here is a little slide show of me in one of my ‘roles of a principal‘: Ball-retriever.

Before I got into administration, my good friend Dave Sands always used to say, “Being an elementary school principal is like being a rock star in a boy-band“… I got the first taste of that two weeks into being here at my school in China. Our intermediate boys always play soccer in the back corner of our playground and will often, accidentally, kick their soccer ball up over a large wall or on a nearby ledge. Usually they would have to wait until one of the school guard’s were available to retrieve the ball, but I decided that day that I’d just climb up and get it myself.

Well it didn’t take long before students would come to me first before the guard, as I spent almost every lunch period on the playground. And the ‘rock-star’ status began on that first effort when 1/2 the playground were chanting “Mr. Truss” while I was up on the wall being chief ball-retriever. I actually had to threaten not to go up anymore if they kept that up, as I found it rather embarrassing.

Today, the last day of school, I performed this duty one last time. It won’t happen again since our school is changing locations next year. So, in memory of this special role I played, I had my wife take a few photos of the occasion.

It’s a bitter-sweet time of year. As much as I look forward to summer, I always want a week more to do/say all that ‘should-have’ or rather ‘could-have’ been done and said. And the end of a school year brings so many ‘one last times’ to the forefront of our minds. This wasn’t a huge thing, but the fact that so many of my ‘lasts’ here at the school are fond things, I feel great about the year that has passed and I’m excited too about the year ahead.

To all the students, staff and parents at our school, I’d like to say one last time…
Thank you for playing your part in making this year a great year!

Congratulations on being duped

2010-06-15T21:48:04Z

Congratulations edublogger, you’ve been duped!

Here is a wonderful badge to put on your website.

Now all you have to do is link back to our website and you get to share this wonderful badge on your blog. That’s right, all it costs is a link to our site where we advertise college degrees or not-so-free ‘free educational resources’.

You see, we are “an organization dedicated to online education and learning technology and would like to recognize the top resources on the Internet that parallel the same goals of promoting the expansion of learning into new and innovative formats. Your website has shown its commitment to the advancement of education and this award is intended to commend your efforts.”

Translation: We create a fancy award badge, tell you that you are great, then you freely put a link to our blog or website on the sidebar, and thus every page, of your blog. We get free links and an improved Google/search engine ranking and you get a shiny badge.

Thanks for playing along.

Who Owns the Learning?

2010-05-30T21:09:31Z

I found a really handy tool recently: blogbooker.com

“BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog’s entries and comments.”

I then took the pdf and archived it on Scribd, Slideshare, and a fun (but not-so-convenient) reader called Youblisher. Bookblogger numbers links and adds them at the end of posts and does a great job of creating a table of contents that is clickable, (not in Youblisher). All three platforms allow downloads. Scribd let’s you choose a mobile version, but I tried and don’t know if it is a China cell phone issue or not, but I did not get it sent to my iPhone as requested.

I occasionally save back-ups of my blog, but it’s nice to know that I have preserved and digitally archived my blog, with comments, on a few online places. The reality is that I wouldn’t want to lose a record of all the things I’ve learned, and I actually do go back and read old posts and follow old links. So, I want my learning archived.

I shared Blogbooker on Twitter and then got an interesting reply.

Sam Morris suggested using it to use it for student eportfolios:

This brought about the idea for this post, as I’ve thought of this often:

When we create projects with students and then share them digitally, who owns the learning?

When a student leaves a class or a school, what happens to their blogs, wikis & ePortfolios? Can students take these with them? Blogbooker seems like one way to help with this… at least with (public) blogs, but I think we need to ensure that there are opportunities for students to export their work from our Kindergarten all the way up to University programs.

I left my ScienceAlive project ‘out in the open’ and students along with about 65,000 others, (including over 6,000 from a total of 108 countries in just the last 2 months), have been able to go back to the site… a site that has been dormant for 3 years. Now, I’m not sure if students would want to have a record of this project, but it is there for them. My point? Everything we do digitally has the possibility of being kept, shared & redistributed by students long after they projects are completed or ‘handed in’. Yet, much of what is done is hidden from students or deleted after the class is over, or archived on a school’s district server somewhere.

I know privacy is an issue many districts are worried about. I know some projects will be done safely and securely inside private, protected, ‘walled gardens’. Yet, I think it’s time for us to realize that portability of projects, of the learning that happens online, needs to be a consideration when deciding what tool(s) to use.

We don’t own a student’s learning; It’s their learning. Whenever possible we need to be thinking about how we can provide students with an archive of their work… and that has to include the conversations (or comments in the case of blogs) and the hyperlinks that made the learning experience richer and more desirable to keep.

We don’t own the learning and so we shouldn’t keep it away from the learners. Let’s not put an expiry date on our digitally shared learning experiences.