KARE Givers

The Collaborators...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:22:32 PDT

by Brenderous

They engaged, they listened and they collaborated. Red Deer's and central Alberta's first edcamp unconference is on the books... what a fantastic day it was.

I really appreciate the reflective post, "If You Build It, They Will Camp," by @robertsdrb and especially this comment...

Every session I went to gave me something which either changed, deepened, challenged or furthered my thinking. And there were many other sessions that I didn't get a chance to go to but wish I would have had the time for as well.

There's not much I could add to Diane's excellent recap and reflection of #redcamp13, except to say that I completely agree with this statement. As one of the other organizers of the event, and a host representing Glendale Sciences and Technology School where #redcamp13 was held, I felt responsible for keeping the flow going, and as a result didn't get to sit in on as many sessions as I would have hoped. That's OK though, because stepping back a bit gave me a unique perspective. From the sidelines I was able to make a few observations, some new friends and I had time to think about what we could add to #redcamp14...

People. One of my hallway conversations with a school board trustee in attendance (thanks so much for that Cathy:) highlighted the wonderfully diverse nature of our unconference participants. Registered participants included...

School Administrators= 23
Senior Administrators= 2
Local Red Deer Teachers= 41
Out of Town Teachers= 33
External Agencies Supporting Schools= 6
Educational Assistants= 1
University Students/Recent Grads= 12
School Board Officials= 4
University Professors= 2
Seventh Grade Glendale Students= 3
Politicians= 1
Parents= 2

Cathy and I agreed that there are many stakeholders in providing high quality education, and many were represented at #redcamp13, but we could get more. Capturing the diversity in their perspectives is an important goal of the edcamp process.

Kids. We had three (committed seventh grade students offered a session off the cuff explaining their edible landscaping project, and how they convinced the City of Red Deer to join them in creating a beautiful community resource on our shared property; an edible garden plan for everyone to enjoy and benefit from...) but more would be better. I had another conversation with a group of redcamp champs discussing the tremendous value of capturing student voice in an edcamp context. We were thinking out loud how great it would be to provide opportunities for students to share their thoughts about what can and perhaps should be done to continue supporting improved teaching and learning. We thought a TED style format would fit very nicely where kids briefly present their position, idea, dream, challenge etc. and then host a dialog around their topic of focus. This came to me during the session I presented addressing authentic and creative learning tasks, and we watched this...

Collaborative Projects. The image at the top of this post made me think about this very cool #redcamp13 session... I'm wondering why a collaborative, one day art, writing, drama or blog project couldn't materialize as a feature outcome of #redcamp14.

Topics. We had a rich and practical list of session topics; all proposed and presented by redcamp13 delegates. Presenters included politicians, teachers, administrators, senior administrators, pre-service teachers, recent education graduates, university professors, external agency representatives and even middle school students... it was an awesome range of choices, and one day just didn't seem like enough to fully address them, but maybe that's what's supposed to happen at edcamps. Perhaps some of these conversations will continue to evolve at the next edcamp offered in another town or city. At any rate, the more choice there is in session topics, the higher the chance we can create engagement and value in our conversations.

So my final words to close out the day included a simple invitation. I asked redcampers to consider that the interactions and conversations having occurred during the event could (perhaps should) be considered as beginnings; not endings. I suggested that the dialog should continue and the connections should strengthen through an effort to maintain a level of social and professional engagement with each other.

One thing I know for sure is that the people who made up #redcamp13 were already attuned to the social side of collaborative efforts.

They were motivated to make themselves visible and to participate. They shared what they knew, tools they had and thoughts they pondered. They showed up at #redcamp13 on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning in May when they could have been doing other things; I think because they saw the value in finding each other. They readily connected and related personally and professionally with each other. They contributed.

Perhaps all of this is why the forming, storming, norming and reforming they did above the social collaboration wave went so smoothly.

I am very much looking forward to #redcamp14!

Social Collaboration...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:56:10 PDT

by oscarberg

The Collaboration Pyramid offers a great visual to dive deeper into the nature of authentic collaboration and optimized production.

In traditional team-based collaborative models we experience the "form, storm, norm and perform" process, and it has proved to be very useful in the context of team effectiveness, but perhaps leaves a bit of a void in the area of personal responsibility, or individual motivation to make a meaningful contribution to the team.

The Collaboration Pyramid displays a broader platform to support a different context for collaboration that may eventually lead to more authentic and meaningful personal investment in the team process. I think social collaboration as framed in the diagram is closely related to the concept of morphic resonance.

morphic resonance [ˈmɔːfɪk]
n

(Life Sciences; Allied Applications / Biology) the idea that, through a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration, an event or act can lead to similar events or acts in the future or an idea conceived in one mind can then arise in another...

In the first stage of social collaboration it is assumed that individuals have reflectively defined their own purpose and values, and that through reflection, these have manifested as personal philosophies; relative degrees of self-awareness and motivation to be present and contribute. This is the point where individuals become participants; they feel confident to share what they feel, think and do. Their personal philosophies become known and ideas conceived in their minds can then arise in the minds of others by way of social interaction. They are sharing, and also receiving...

You are a RCVR from Jason Silva on Vimeo.

This act of becoming visible and participating as a receiver creates possibility in teaching and learning. It's where morphic resonance begins. It is the first stage of interaction in the social collaboration process. Putting ourselves out there as receivers in the collaborative process frames our participation in group learning as self-motivated, reflective and social. It puts us in motion toward others who are also self-motivated, reflective and social, and the interdependent levels of the collaboration pyramid begin to flourish.

When we share what we feel, think and do, we are displaying vulnerability in the learning process. Sharing is a fundamental element of social participation that feeds a self-organizing learning environment. When we are vulnerable and put our knowledge and thoughts out there, we tend to attract others who are compelled by similar domains of knowledge and ideas. When we begin to talk about these shared domains, the dialogue may attract new collaborators intrigued by a perspective they hadn't considered yet. People find others and discover their varied points of view, and they choose to connect and relate, or not... and the or not part of this is very important. The foundation of purpose, values, self- awareness and motivation that underpins everyone's relative participation in the collaboration pyramid helps them decide whether to engage, or not. It is more than OK for people to not engage. Choice is the rule of engagement. Everyone has the right to choose whether to engage in sharing and receiving, or not depending on their independent purpose, values, self-awareness and motivation.

The social collaboration side of the Collaboration Pyramid posits a collaborative model where the processes of building trust, engaging with others and their ideas and seeking learning opportunities becomes more ubiquitous, open and visible as a result of our willingness to share, receive, connect and contribute.

APA citation: Berg, O. (2012, February 14). The collaboration pyramid (or iceberg). In The Content Economy: Envisioning the Future of Knowledge work, and Defining the Steps We Must Take to Get There. Retrieved January 10, 2013, from http://www.thecontenteconomy.com/2012/02/collaboration-pyramid.html

A "Starbucks" classroom...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:23:28 PDT

We started with an inquiry question... "why aren't Starbuck's Coffee houses drive through only?"

We discussed this question for quite some time... here's what we came up with:

They wouldn't sell as much coffee (to which we asked why, and the answer was "people like hanging out at Starbucks")
They like hanging out at Starbuck's for a number of reasons:

The smell
The coffee
The treats
The books (if the store is inside a chapters book store, which they often are in Canada...)
The leather couches
The fireplace on a cold winter day
The free wifi
The ambiance (we looked that one up...)
The public art (done by local artists)
The comradeship; hanging out with friends
The patio (on warm summer days)
The friendliness of the baristas (we looked that one up too)
The background sounds (music, chatter about interesting topics)
The "coolness" of it all... the environment as described by the above reasons. We felt it was a laid back, relaxed and enjoyable place to be
We even figured out that every time you turn around in a Starbuck's coffee shop, you run into something (and further realized that what you run into is usually for sale:). We realized that cramped spaces don't have to be cramped in a bad way if they're set up right, and if the folks within the spaces get along OK. So we came up with this model of learning and living, and put a giant version of it on our wall.

We reference the Hope Wheel often. We use it to contextualize our learning, to solve problems, resolve conflicts, set goals and teach others (that's the "Elder" part of what we do in the Responsibility phase of the north.) It has become the social, emotional and intellectual platform that our physical learning space is supported by. It's the model we use to think about things. You can learn more about this learning model here.

So we took a look at our classroom and decided that we could create this type of environment to learn in, sans the coffee perhaps:)

We decided that couches, books, free wifi, public art (done by students), comradeship, friendliness and the "coolness" of it all would be easy to emulate.

We got rid of the desks and put tables in their place. We found a couch and a coffee table. We hung (and continue to hang) art created by students. We put some mats on the floor. We created a private corner office that we take turns using each day. We already had free wifi. We created some cool lighting effects with a couple of lamps. Recently we even took a donation of a free electric fireplace! How cool is that?

So now we learn in a "Starbuck`s classroom," and we really like it.

"We're raising boys..."

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:03:46 PST

This is cross-posted from Grow Boys Red Deer at http://www.reddeergrowboys.com/. I have been involved with the Grow Boys project for three years now, and it has been one of the most rewarding initiatives I have taken on. For more information on the Grow Boys concept, please get in touch and we can talk.

by Ryan Qiu

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.

Mother would come out and say,

"You're tearing up the grass!"

"We're not raising grass," Dad would reply.

"We're raising boys." -author unknown

We are raising boys. All of us. No matter who we are in the community, whether we are a parent or not; we all have a responsibility to support the happy, healthy growth and development of boys. Of course we need to do this for girls as well, but Grow Boys is a collective that focuses specifically on what can be done to nurture the particular needs of boys; and there are many. As the dad in the poem suggests, we need to take a critical and reflective perspective toward what our boys need from us, and how we're going to provide for them.

by Dave_B_

Herbert Vilakazi's opening address to the National Association of Child Care Workers 1991 Biennial Conference (http://tinyurl.com/yfxzdwn) in South Africa provides one such perspective with his brilliant insight to how we need to think and act if we are to support today's children as our gifts to the future.

"The problems of children and of youth, giving rise to child and youth care programs, can only begin to be solved in that society of humankind’s dream; a more collective-oriented society than at present, when the father of the child shall be every man as old as the child’s father; when the mother of the child shall be every woman as old as the child’s mother; a society of responsibility of the entire community; a society without poverty; without the inequalities of society members, based upon race, class, or sex; a society without the use of violence against other members of society; a society without any exploitation and oppression of any group by any other group; a society of equals; a thoroughly democratic society; last, but not least a society that shall have, once more, incorporated productive labor into the educational process."

We cannot know where the next Beethoven, Einstein or Mother Teresa will come from. Great things are possible, and probable as human history has proven. Educators today need to support children's natural curiosity and spirit to learn in ways that don't stifle or restrict their potential to do these great things. The world we know is changing, and it always has, but not at the rate or in the manner we are witnessing today. Today, in the midst of what amounts to a perfect storm within the social, political, geographical, technological and economic realms of the new global society, transformational change is inevitable. To deny this would be ridiculous. To deny that we as citizens of the emerging global society must be proactive to ensure the transformation is managed effectively, and results in an improved society, would be even more ridiculous. The notion that children are the most important factor in this transformational future is undeniable. It is from the minds and souls of children that every future discovery, every idea, every solution and all hope will come. Grow Boys is focused on divining ways to ensure happy, healthy boys are ready for the challenge as they grow and develop in mind, body and spirit.

Within his 1991 address, Professor Vilakazi touched on what I believe to be the key to managing the effective and purposeful transformation of our world. With respect to the issue of caring for children he states that,

We are not further along, than peasant culture, in our knowledge of child psychology. What we should do, in our efforts to increase and improve our knowledge of child psychology, is not only to study what our specialists child psychologists have written, but also to go out to learn, and collect, and record, and collate carefully, the psychological and psychoanalytic theory of childhood contained in peasant cultures, and to integrate or synthesize the two. This applies to all spheres of knowledge.

Vilakazi is susggesting that there is contemporary wisdom to be gained through modern scientific processes that helps us develop insight maximizing support for children, but also that there exists timeless wisdom yet to be fully acknowledged by contemporaries about how caregivers have effectively supported children since the beginning of mankind. This is the essence of Grow Boys. Based on a learning model that has endured millenniums, our hope wheel is the platform from which we work that helps us assess where our boys are on their learning journeys, and what they need from us to continue moving forward.

Building our approach on the hope wheel model, and understanding that the integrative nature of combining contemporary with traditional spheres of wisdom, allows us the largest capacity to package our 'gifts to the future' well enough so the promises of our boys will be fully realized. The good people within our community that work with boys every day are the doors that need to be opened to both contemporary and traditional approaches to supporting boys specifically. The answers are within us. We are the peasant culture Vilakazi refers to; the grassroots, community-based core of caregivers so critical to setting a solid base for our boys, and through our connection to contemporary practice and research into positive child development, we are also the access points to innovative and effective science-based interventions.

By taking two or more perspectives on effective and positive child development and combining their best elements into a synthesized hybrid of all of them, a new paradigm is born, and those who brought each perspective to the process no longer operate independently and in defense of their point of view, but rather interdependently in support of each other and the best possible course of action. Grow Boys calls this 360 degrees of support, and it can be applied in any community when the father of the child shall be every man as old as the child's father, and the mother of the child shall be every woman as old as the child's mother; a society of adults that truly cares for children and understands what their happy, healthy growth and development means to us all from a species perspective.

Grow Boys believes that our children will be best prepared for the future when we all share the responsibility to move to an interdependent and proactive paradigm of child development that acknowledges and celebrates diverse thoughts and theories no matter where, and from what point in history they originate.

Answers need questions...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 20:07:30 PST

by walknboston

Generally speaking, questions need answers, but a colleague reminded me this past week that some answers need questions too.

Learning slows down drastically, or even stops completely when we get to a point where we believe we know everything we need to know about something. When we think we have all the answers, perhaps that is when we need to question things even more. Innovation to me isn't necessarily a completely new approach, idea or process. Innovation can often mean a retooling of elements that already exist.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ― Marcel Proust

At the heart of inquiry is the art of questioning. I believe the "voyage of discovery" Proust refers to is entirely about perspective. When learners instigate their own and others thoughts through questioning they are pushing the boundaries of perspective. Challenging our conventions about learning and knowledge happens in that cognitive place where time is taken to deconstruct what we think we know about how things should be, and where unencumbered thought magically turns into innovation. I am encouraging this process within my classroom.

I teach humanities in an inquiry based school. I am working with my seventh grade students to help them understand how to provoke thought through the art of questioning. We are trying to regain the perspective that I am sure every one of us had during our preschool years. In our exploration of thinking and questioning we have agreed that young kids are very inquisitive and unafraid to make mistakes. Their learning is rather organic and fluid, and they are less afraid to make mistakes understanding perhaps implicitly, that mistakes are actually perspective adjusters that allow us to refine understanding and improve skills as we reflect on them and make adaptations for the next time.

Young children are mindful in this manner. Something happens to us as we get older, and we seem to lose this mindful perspective toward mistake-making. We begin to think of mistakes as inherently negative occurrences that reflect a lack of ability or knowledge instead of necessary elements along the voyage of discovery. It would be easy to say that school does this to us, but I don't believe that. There is absolutely no reason why a mindful perspective that accepts mistakes as necessary elements of learning cannot work in schools for students, but perhaps more importantly, for teachers too. If teachers were to display vulnerability and model this perspective for students, it would be an indication that they haven't lost their ability to see learning through a young child's eyes... and that would be a very good thing. It would mean that they were joining their students on voyages of discovery that define questions more readily than answers.

I think we can ensure that our learning spaces are the type that will be adored by kids; magical places in their eyes that provide opportunities to discover, question, explore and share without fear of scrutiny or failure. They should be places where mistakes are welcome elements of the learning process. After all, if mistakes were the end of the world, nobody would ever learn how to ride a bike. I have been in many classrooms like this, and each one was physically different. It's about the way a place makes you feel, not what the place looks like. I think the term learning spaces includes a broad range of elements. Learning spaces can be physical, measured by time, cognitive, interactive, digital, global, local, individual, collective, collaborative, personal, public... and the list goes on. The important part is that all of them should be contextualized as navigation points on each person's voyage of discovery; places to be explored, questioned and appreciated.

As teachers and students move within and through the diverse learning spaces that classrooms can be everyday, they become traveling partners within each others learning journeys, and they become part of each others learning stories. This is how I like to think of the interaction between teachers and students. We are traveling companions sharing our stories with each other until it is time to move into different learning spaces, and then we meet new companions to take new voyages with that lead to new places to be explored and appreciated; the places where answers get questioned and together, we become innovators.

ETMOOC- Redfining Success...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:34:00 PST

Hello, my name is Sean Grainger. I'm in my 19th year of learning as a teacher having experienced a diverse range of assignments. I am currently a Humanities 7 teacher at Glendale Sciences and Technology School in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. I am also my school's vice principal, (a newly re-tooled K-8 inquiry-based, science and technology focused school.)

Before returning to Glendale this past fall, (I was Glendale School's counselor three years ago,) I was a vice principal in a K-5th grade school here in Red Deer, and before that I worked with kids from at-risk environments in Red Deer Public School District's Alternative Programs for eight years. My career started at Tall Cree Indian Reservation in the far north of Alberta at the end of a four hour drive on a gravel road once the pavement ended. I worked within three First Nations communities for a total of six years before moving to Red Deer. My time working with First Nation's people taught me so much about learning and living; it was a priceless way to begin my career.

I am a firm believer that, more often than not, the path chooses us. If somebody asked me how I thought my career would go when I left undergraduate school, I would not have predicted my story would be told the way it has evolved. I appreciate this. More than anything about teaching and learning, I appreciate the fluid, organic and unpredictable nature of my job... there is a new and different challenge everyday for which I am thankful. I consider it a giant privilege to be immersed in the learning process everyday, and I am blessed to be surrounded by kids who are inquisitive, intelligent and eager to learn with me.

Joining #etmooc is another opportunity for me to learn from others, and to share experiences with them. I have been blogging for three years, and I've been a fierce consumer of educational technology since leaving graduate school in 2006. My learning spirit was rejuvenated there when I was introduced to blended learning through my cohort-based experience at City University, Bellingham, WA. I went to grad school because I wanted to... I had no tangible goal other than to learn on a different plane. I participated on my terms, and it is the most engaging and enlightening formal learning experience I have had. My work at City U opened many doors, but even if it hadn't, I was successful because I was there on my terms. I think I will be successful as a member of #etmooc for the same reason.

Beyond #etmooc, the concept of massive open online courses in general is very intriguing to me. This is my first participatory experience, and I am seeking insight into how MOOC's can benefit learners who don't have the privilege of geographic location, financial means or time to participate in face to face, traditional learning institutions.

Looking forward to connecting!

The story behind the story...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:25:46 PST

A Chinese hanzi is often made up of multiple characters to create a unique meaning. The hanzi above is constructed of different characters that individually represent ears, eyes, undivided attention and heart. A beautiful alternative definition of the verb to listen is created... to listen means to hear with your heart; to be totally engaged and focused on understanding deeper meanings behind what we hear.

Every day I am reminded how important it is to listen to student`s stories. I am fortunate to have time during the school day to hear with my heart as I listen to the real reasons why kids end up in the office talking to me. Like the young man in this clip, sometimes kids just need an opportunity to be honest and real so we can understand their struggle better.

In my school we don`t think of a trip to the office as a punitive thing. We think of it as a resiliency building thing. An office referral is one of four resiliency pathways (as we call them) within our school that kids travel down depending on the nature of their challenge on any given day. An office visit more often than not means some adverse behavior would have been displayed.

When kids arrive in the office to speak with us, we've already heard about the behavior story that got them there; what we need to know is the story behind that story, and there always is one. We need to hear this story so we can begin to re-frame the student's challenge. What has happened has already happened, but more often than not, we don't want it to happen again. If we can find out the story behind the story, we can begin supporting the student by focusing forward and working on 'bounce back' strategies that build a more resilient child who will know how to handle a similar challenge differently and more effectively in the future.

For kids to truly feel a sense of belonging at school, we absolutely must be empathetic to the story that lies under the surface of what we think we know about their problematic behavior. Sometimes kids behave in ways that really confuse and upset those around them. I believe in many cases of adverse behavior, what kids are really doing is giving us a test; a test to see if we'll still be available for them the day after they've given us their best (which is actually their worst) behavioral routine.

I don't believe that kids come to school with intent to make others miserable, or to make their day more difficult, but when it appears to be the case, I do believe they are simply choosing us on that particular day to see if we'll be able to take it, and if we'll be available the next day to perhaps take it again until a trusting relationship evolves and all of a sudden it's not necessary anymore. Being chosen for this test is a backhanded compliment. We are ultimately hardest on those we're closest to in life because we know their love and care for us in unconditional; we know they'll stick with us in the difficult times. If you are chosen for the test, what it really means is that a child has some reason to believe you've got what it takes to love and care for them despite the stress and pain they will share with you that makes it so difficult for them to function effectively in school.

Will you be ready when a child chooses you?

What if your professional development looked like this?

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 06:24:56 PST

This post was written by my friend and colleague Chris McCullough (a #redcampchamp.) He is a high school teacher in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

If you've watched the following video, I hope you've come to understand a little bit about the power of intrinsic motivation and autonomy.

With regards to Teacher Professional Development, these seem to be new concepts. Personally I believe many teachers in North America have forgotten how important it is to maintain the professionalism and art that is teaching.

As teachers, we have to do more than handout worksheets, and get students to fill in the answers. As an example, I recently had a conversation with a colleague who explained that a student of hers was complaining that her Social Studies school work was too hard. "Couldn't we just complete worksheets, you know, the kind where the answers are in each chapter of the textbook?" This is an interesting dilemma for a teacher; the idea that a student would complain that their assignments made them think, create, and problem solve. As Professionals it is important that teaching is much broader than handing out questions. Great teachers engage, discuss, and get their students thinking. Teacher Professional Development should be like this too. The #edcamp model is a great example of how this could work, and I truly hope that teachers throughout Central Alberta will give this kind of learning a try. Teachers love to "talk shop" and this un-conference provides an opportunity for them to do just that!

In life, the answer isn't always at the back of the book, and I believe when it comes to teacher Professional Development this is true too. As a profession, we can't be the students who are complaining that they have to think at school. We have to embrace our learning needs, wants, and challenges. We can't let people do this for us. If we do, then we are just technicians, we are less than professionals. Professionals always try to better themselves, so why not try #redcamp. It's local, it's free, and it may just be the kind of Professional Development you're looking for.

For further information, check out this great TED talk by Kristen Swanson.

Comprehensive character curriculum...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 01:24:07 PST

flickr image via stevendepolo

I was compelled by this NBC Education Nation presentation. The idea of character development in schools always grabs me, and the panel poked at my brain a lot...

NBC News Education Nation: Can Character Be Taught? from The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic on FORA.tv

Among other elements of the dialog that peaked my interest, the idea at 18:45 was, I think, particularly important. Collaborating across difference as Russell Shaw referred to it, is a concept I feel educators need to be open to, and explore with increased rigor. I wrote about this idea in chapter 17 of Innovative Voices in Education- Engaging Diverse Communities...

Culture is more than who we are, our skin color, where we come from or our ethnic or religious values; it’s the summation of all the elements of our lives that influence our thoughts, ideas, values and passions. The kind of school I want all kids to attend is one where thoughts, ideas, values and passions are nurtured and shared toward increased understanding of others. When we are exposed to the thoughts, ideas, values and passions of others, our eyes are opened to learning possibilities we may never had considered otherwise.

Alas, it is the differences among us that make life and learning interesting. Each one of us is at a different place and time along our own learning path, and there is no need for anyone to slow down, or catch up. We are where we are, and that is where we all need to be.
Engaging each other from our personal learning places authenticates all of us; where we're at individually in our learning stories. It enables us to throw ourselves into the mix without feeling a necessity from the outset to conform to any group-think or predetermined set of notions. Learners may ultimately conform to a broader perspective (the thinking of the group as opposed to group think,) or understand a predetermined principle more deeply as part of the interpersonal process of questioning and creating dialog, but when we expect and celebrate individual differences at the forefront of any group interaction, we remove the pressure many feel to conform to something; take a side, so to speak, right off the bat.

In groups, I actually believe there is great value in common thinking and the acceptance of predetermined principles with one caveat... every member of the group must be included in the process designed to arrive at either of these states. In the realm of character development, my school (Glendale) has begun this process. We haven't at this point determined absolutely how that will look, but we're working on it. The statements starting at 6:02 of the presentation by Dominic Randolph got me thinking about how we're doing this, and perhaps how we can do it better. He explained how it was necessary in both schools (although it looked different in each; an important point regarding the necessity to grow from a core as opposed to looking for a boxed solution for an institution... a harder, but infinitely more rewarding and productive process,) he works with to vet a "common set of strenghts" between them that moved away from the set of moral character traits like honesty and integrity that seemed vague, and try to define a list that was much more concrete.

I'm particularly intrigued by Randoph's description of the Riverdale method designed to create a narrative of character... a common language if you will to define what character looks, sounds and feels like at the school. This is something we intend to develop at Glendale so we can move character teaching and learning away from a typical focus on traits like honesty or integrity where September may become honesty month which folds into integrity month in October and so on as the year progresses. My experience over many years has shown me that toward a context of sustainable and transferable character development, this sort of approach is not optimal. For character development to be optimized in schools, it needs to be comprehensive and ubiquitous so every lesson plan, classroom and school-wide activity includes within it an element of character growth.

In graduate school I learned a great deal about comprehensive school guidance principles. This video presents comprehensive school counseling in a beautifully simplistic way...

The only element of comprehensive school guidance counseling that I feel is missing from this brief and simple explanation is the notion that every member of a school staff can, and should be part of the process. In order to do this, however, a common understanding (common language is a critical element of common understanding...) of what needs are to be addressed, and what sort of outcomes are being sought is imperative. If this framework is viably put in place with input from all involved, it becomes easy for all staff to support kids in common, but also creative ways working from the established platform. It makes sense that there isn't one counselor in a school building, but that each teacher and support staff member supports the counseling process comprehensively as lay counselors providing multiple points of access to support for all kids (and for each other.)

So working off the context of comprehensive school guidance counseling, I believe that comprehensive school character development is not only possible, but necessary in the quest toward better schools that support kids in becoming high quality graduates entering an increasingly competitive world. The "non-cognitive" skill-set required to thrive in the world hasn't really changed much over history, but as the panelist suggest, perhaps we haven't defined it as comprehensively as necessary in school contexts. At 11:22 Russell Shaw alludes to the value of resiliency at age 35; the ability to fail, rally around the failure and then take something useful away from it is undoubtedly a very good skill to possess. So how do we define skills like this, and then teach them in implicit and explicit ways so they engage kids and become transferable to other contexts? This question speaks directly to the heart of what we're trying to evolve at Glendale.

Like they are asking at Georgetown Day School, culturally speaking, we need to ask ourselves at Glendale School, "what is our desired skill-set, and what do we intend it to look like in kindergarten, grade four and grade eight (we are a K-8 school), and importantly to measure transference, what will it look like for our kids as they move onto high school and beyond? This is our first step.

To that end we have established a team around what we're calling our Empathy ReBoot Project. We understand that empathy is one of those less specific character traits that needs a more specific context if we are to effectively teach and learn about how it looks at kindergarten, fourth grade, eighth grade and beyond. Our Empathy ReBoot Team is tasked with the responsibility to frame this at Glendale, but if we're to do this comprehensively, we're going to have to solicit the perspectives of every member of our school family willing to contribute. In the new year we're going to begin this work using Thought Stream as our medium, (we are after all a science and technology focused school.) We need to define the shared values of our organization and not be afraid to promise that Glendale students will be prepared at every stage of the game for the learning and life challenges they will encounter, and they will display resilience and creativity as they walk their learning paths.

Hope is an action word. If we are to authentically hope for this to happen, this is the action we will take.

Leaps of faith...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:51:17 PST

flickr image via Scarto

In teaching and learning, whether we're jumping off a cliff, or jumping off a curb, the important thing is that we're jumping off something. I've never been one to make a lot of resolutions for a new year, but this year I will make at least one. Im actually thinking it's more of an unresolution than a resolution owing to the notably not so much a SMART goal nature of it.

I'm not going to stand still.

I intend to keep moving down the learning paths I've set for myself; maybe even define some new ones understanding that the journey is something to be enjoyed, and perhaps that in learning, we never really arrive at the place where we can check 'that one' off the list. As soon as we think we know something, a truly authentic pathway of learning will show us a new direction or branch of the path that sets us off asking new questions so we can learn more, or differently along that path. I'm OK with this ambiguity because I think it will enable me to see beyond a more specific and narrowly focused goal (resolution.)

Teaching and learning involves motion. We have to move in the directions that suit our teaching and learning needs. When we don't feel like we're on solid ground, sometimes this means taking a leap of faith. To find stability again we have to take a jump. Finding ourselves standing on the proverbial precipice, we have to recognize that where danger exists, so does opportunity. We have to remember that there are no emergencies in education, and that there will be a safety net at the landing point. This is the faith part. Little jumps, or big jumps; it doesn't matter as long as you're making some sort of jump.

More than any other biological species, it appears that humans are born to learn. We learn in so many different, and natural contexts. We are in constant motion; traveling in simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive realms. Robert Sylwester characterizes this need to be in motion ...

The planning, regulation, and prediction of movements are the principal reasons for a brain. Plants are as biologically successful as animals, but they don’t have a brain. An organism that’s not going anywhere of its own volition doesn’t need a brain. It doesn’t even need to know where it is. What’s the point? Being an immobile plant does have its advantages however. Plants don’t have to get up every day and go to work because they’re already there.

On the other hand, if an organism has legs, wings, or fins, it needs a sensory system that will inform it about here and there, a make-up-its-mind system to determine whether here is better than there or there is better than here, and a motor system to get it to there if that’s the better choice – as it is, alas, when we have to go to work.

Really high functioning schools are committed to honoring the learning paths of each one of their teachers. I work on the premise that teachers show up everyday wanting to do their best work; I'm totally convinced of that. People who work in schools do the best they can with consideration for the skills they possess and the resources they have been provided. We do the best we can to support each other in acquiring new skills and establishing new resources, but there is one caveat. For these skills and resources to be purposeful and effective, staff need to be ready to move; to take a jump, whether off a curb, or a cliff... they have to be willing to move from one uncertain place, to another perhaps slightly less uncertain place.

It's imperative that leaders in education (to me, everyone involved with teaching and learning has the capacity to lead) recognize that some will feel comfortable jumping off a cliff, but others not. The size of the jump depends on how comfortable we all feel about our learning place. Some will most definitely jump off the proverbial cliff and enjoy the ride all the way down. Others are just ready to jump off the curb, and perhaps will even feel anxious about that risk. That's OK because we're all different, and it's the differences among us as teachers and learners that make what we do so infinitely engaging and interesting. Each one of us is at a different place and time along our own learning path, and there is no need for anyone to slow down, or catch up. We are where we are, and that is where we all need to be.

I have come to believe that acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow us to be in positive motion toward better learning places is the purpose of contemporary teaching and learning.

The short and long now of education innovation...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:14:41 PST

flickr image via return the sun

Now is a curious word. For something to be happening now, now has to have a length. Whether a fleeting instance like a millisecond, a minute, day, week or longer, now has to have some degree of length so something has time to happen in the now. I think of now as being short or long. Each day I spend at school, when compartmentalized as a block of time where things happen quite quickly, is to me a fairly short now. I would consider what might be accomplished in an entire school year in a longer now context, and something like the continuum of technology integration in schools a very long now process. I think this short and long now perspective is a big factor relative to innovation in education.

My west coast Twitter colleague, Jamie Billingham (@jamiebillingham) put out a very interesting post recently on the Thought Stream blog. Representing feedback from the entire Thought Stream team, Jamie wrote about what they at Thought Stream feel 2013 and beyond will look like in the education innovation context. Jamie made some thought-provoking predictions in her post about a broad range of initiatives that are already in play in the short now, and that are certainly worth extending into the long now education reform context.

One of Jamie's predictions...

Blended learning opportunities will increase - The flip will not flop, it will fly. We think that blended learning including the flipped classroom model, will take off this year. Funding cuts and increased demand for choice will raise awareness and the adoption of blended learning will hit the tipping point.

I have to agree with Jamie on this one... wholeheartedly. I have been experimenting with the "flipped" classroom, and early signs with my class indicate it's a winner. In the long now of education innovation, I think flipped classes will become commonplace sooner than later. Using technology tools to empower learning at home allows me to concentrate my attention on how kids are learning in my classroom. To me, blended learning is a balance in learning that provides expanded choice in terms of how we engage in the learning process. Ours is a 1 to 1 school environment, so we have really been able to optimize blended learning opportunities in my school. In the same vein, Jamie mad a second prediction...

New technologies will integrate learning regardless of the learners location - In school and out we will see more integration and cross platform use.

In the short now at my school we operate within a dedicated Google domain enabling our students to seamlessly operate in the cloud whether at home or school. I also predict that this will become mainstream sooner than perhaps some may be comfortable with (and we have to be sensitive to this.) I advocate for technology in school as a set of tools to be accessed to improve teaching and learning. When kids can access the same tools at home, learning becomes more accessible and consistent. As our cloud-based technology toolkit grows, opportunities to choose what works best for teachers and students on an individualized basis equates to heightened levels of personal engagement in teaching and learning. There is no doubt in my mind that this trend in cloud-based learning will continue, and eventually in the long now, become standard methodology.

A third prediction from Jamie regarding curriculum really caught my attention...

Curriculum will improve - With more and more educators connecting and sharing resources and their own learning and with big data informing analytics educators have more choices and are able to make better sense of those choices in their instructional design. The shift in instructional design to just-in-time, personalization and differentiation will change the way curriculum is designed. Curriculum will become more agile and responsive and as a result curriculum that doesn’t work will be changed quicker.

This prediction really interests me. The world is growing and shrinking at the same time. As technology allows broader access to people and information that previously were hard to reach, or even unreachable, awareness of our world expands. At the same time as a result of this phenomena, we are becoming closer to each other and what we know; the distance between us is shrinking. This bit of irony will continue to have a massive impact on contemporary teaching and learning.

Depending on how we frame curriculum though, I believe the impact will be more on how we teach as opposed to what we teach. What we teach is established through government, and there is a need for this structure and framework. Is there room to improve curriculum content? Perhaps there is, but that's for another day to talk about. For now let's just say that while our teaching and learning content is determined for us, there are countless ways we can make that content engaging and interesting for students through the instructional design options Jamie alludes to. The teacher's job is to weave some pedagogical magic into their practice, and making good use of emerging teaching tools and strategies will make this easier.

A fourth prediction that Jamie makes also interests me very much as I've been working hard on some initiatives related to it...

Increased engagement between community, parents, educators, students - The education system as we know it is like an ocean liner. It just can’t turn on a dime. Schools on the other hand are more agile, more maneuverable. Principals and teachers are taking on the role of engagement specialists and leading from the middle. We see grassroots movements going mainstream with the likes of TEDxEducation, EdCamps and SXSWEdu leading the way. The hope is that this doesn’t lead to rampant commodification. Time will tell.

I believe that effective change and improvement always starts at the grassroots level. I agree with Jamie; schools as grassroots institutions can be very agile and maneuverable if they choose to be, and also without being provocative or controversial. Nobody is going to criticize sound educational practice that gets results, and at my school we have initiated a number of innovative projects designed to increase engagement between the school, our students, their parents and the extended community we serve that we feel will yield positive results.

One of these initiatives is called Empathy ReBoot. Collectively at Glendale Sciences and Technology School, we are committed to re-booting empathy within our school community. We know empathy exists within our school, but we also know that it needs to grow. We intend for our school to operate from a foundation of empathy so that every action, every interaction and every intervention is grounded in an empathic perspective. We believe that focusing on building an empathic school environment will lead to heightened feelings of engagement in the school as well as a greater sense of welcome and belonging. I share Jamie's concern about commercialization of programming. There is no one size fits all solution in education, but we wouldn't mind at all if our Empathy ReBoot project was to go viral. We're happy to share what we're learning with anyone or any school that's interested.

Jamie's last point, and the one I am most passionate about, is in my opinion the one that needs to scale the quickest...

Social and emotional learning and the importance of attachment takes hold – We will see (are already seeing) a more unified and comprehensive approach to social/emotional learning. School boards and districts are beginning to talk seriously about self-regulation, applied empathy, and empathy re-boot projects. The idea that schools are a Village of Attachment is a clear steps toward the ”paradigm shift from a behavioral approach to a relational one” throughout our educational systems. Sean Grainger on Learning Circle University writes:

The culture of any learning environment is created in a prominent way through the feelings of those immersed within it. Learning is as much, or perhaps more so, an attitude as it is a skill. When we are impacted emotionally, the attitudes we develop can represent deep engagement, or in the case of negative emotions, deep disengagement. Teachers who are disengaged likely will not encourage much positive engagement in their students.

Thank you Jamie for including a most important, and hopeful prediction in your thoughtful post. Obviously, I agree with your assertion that schools need to be places where kids feel a sense of belonging and purpose; that they are attached to something bigger than themselves. The best thing about this prediction is that, when done thoughtfully and well, creating significant attachments for kids at school costs virtually nothing in the short or long now... as long as we don't start branding best practises and then charge people to access them.

It's up to all of us that work in schools to model a collaborative and cooperative school culture so kids can learn by our example about how to be so themselves. I believe this is best done through the process of morphic resonance. Nurturing morphic resonance is the ultimate version of leading by example. The function of leaders is to lead, but people need to follow if leadership is going to resonate. Of course, different forms of leadership are effective in addressing different situations, and we all have our preferred ways to be led; morphic resonance, however is a concept that applies to all forms of leadership. It's what happens when effective leaders (all personnel involved within schools have potential to be leaders) tip their leadership so others are inclined to follow. Morphic resonance is what you feel when leadership evolves from a form of control to one of influence; the element that you tacitly feel when you enter a school displaying an authentic and positive school culture where every member of the organization is attuned to the same philosophical and systematic principles. We are more influential than we believe, and we don't need any extra funding to be present and accountable for kids, their families and the communities we serve.

Thank you again Jamie for your thoughts. Looking forward to more dialog with you and your collaborators.

Why Empathy?

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:16:32 PST

Empathy Symbol image retrieved from http://www.empathysymbol.com/

This is a guest post by Larry Hartel, my principal at Glendale Sciences and Technology School. Click here to read it where it was originally posted at Empathy ReBoot, one of our school blogs.

Why Empathy?

Good question. Undoubtedly there are those who believe a successful inclusive school is one that tries to accommodate kids who don't really fit the mold of a 'regular' classroom. Perhaps they would view inclusion as a set of strategies enabling the rest of us to tolerate their presence in our classrooms. They may even go so far as to say they accept these kids. At Glendale we're not those people. Tolerating kids who are different isn't good enough for us. As we design a cultural shift toward full and ubiquitous inclusion at Glendale School, we're not even comfortable saying we've accepted the kids who are different from the rest. For our school to be truly "inclusive," it must be one that celebrates difference.

We are on a journey to learn how to celebrate the diversity of students we encounter within our school as a cultural reality worthy of celebration; to glare at strengths while only glancing at weakness. To do so, we must understand that inclusion isn't simply a set of strategies, but rather a reality in the world that schools should be reflecting and influencing. The world is a wonderfully diverse place. We have to reflect this if we are to create authentic and optimized learning environments for ALL students.

A balance is struck in culturally diverse schools when students realize that being different isn’t a quality reserved for others, but rather a state that describes each one of them. When students learn how to celebrate this balance in support and recognition of each other, the gap of ignorance between them narrows, and they begin to function as interdependent learners on their way to becoming well-adjusted, high-functioning peaceful global citizens of an intercultural society. If it is to be, it's up to we.

In order for a classroom to be inclusive, the environment has to recognize and celebrate each individual as the person they are. Inclusion must go beyond looking at ways to include students with disabilities that are obvious. Inclusion must look at the myriad of ways that students can differ from one another. This will include race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, family background, sexual orientation, language, abilities, size, religious affiliation, and many other ways that we are all truly, (and thankfully) different. Inclusion did not create the differences we have in our classrooms; they have always been present, but it does provide us with the golden opportunity to re-frame schools so they honor and value the presence of every single student, staff member, parent and significant other person associated with them. Inclusion provides a context for us to recognize that the classroom is diverse and that we need to perceive this reality as a feature, not a bug.

I believe that the heart of a truly inclusive classroom is empathy. At Glendale we have looked long and hard at our counseling and discipline referrals finding that a lack of empathy seems to have emerged as a frequent and common theme. This has led us to conceive our Empathy Reboot Project. I feel that empathy may be the quintessential people skill necessary for all of us to create an authentically inclusive school community. "Empathy is a fantastic tool which can help us reach better consciousness of ourselves and the surrounding world. Anyone can develop empathy skill".

I attended a conference in Edmonton two years ago surrounding issues facing First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples. Best practices were shared freely. One of the Elders stated during the opening prayer that he wanted us all to ensure that the knowledge we were about to gain would touch our heart first, and then our head. What an important sentiment, “Heart, then Head”.

We are framing empathy as the ability to identify and associate as much as possible with another person’s feelings, life situation and story. We do this effectively when we put ourselves in someone else's shoes and hence become tuned in to how he or she feels about things. We must deal with the feelings first. If we can identify with feelings first, then we can begin to think deeply about why those we encounter say and do what they do, and then finally we can talk about the tools they need to prevail, and the tools we need to help them prevail.

Feelings first; thinking second; tools third.

In the world that we live in; the one that screams past us at breakneck speed, there are so many influences that have an incredibly desensitizing effect on our students. We have to be empathic to this reality. It is the moral imperative of schools to provide safe, caring, compassionate, responsive and empathic environments for our students if we are to take actionable hope by packaging them well as they encounter the challenges of life. They are our gifts to the future; the citizens we need to sustain and lead us into that hopeful future.

Kick Some Assets!

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:17:06 PST

flickr phot via Jenn Durfey

It's funny how when we become attuned to something in a deeper manner, it seems to heighten our sensibilities to others who are on the same path, and to other efforts that mirror our journey. Recently at my school we have embarked on a journey to learn about empathy and build empathy in our staff, students and their families. Our project is called Empathy Reboot, and after only two gatherings of our school Empathy ReBoot Team (ERT), we are certainly beginning to notice a convergence. We even have other schools wanting to partner with us to reboot empathy within their building.

We have received emails and telephone calls of support from our colleagues, other administrators from near and far and most recently, from other agencies who would like to collaborate with us on our project. One very exciting connection that fell in our laps last week occurred when we received an invitation from the Superintendent of the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) detachment to sit down and have a conversation about the Search Institute's 40 Developmental Assets. My principal, Larry Hartel and I had this conversation with Supt. Warren Dozko and our District psychologist, Jay Hetherington, last week. Warren has significant experience working with the Developmental Assets in his capacity as an administrator with the RCMP, and Jay also has worked extensively in the past to develop initiatives that support Asset building within our community. I too have experience with Asset building. I conducted action research as part of my graduate school program into the concept of Asset building in kids from at risk environments.

We had very good dialog about the possibilities surrounding the re-tooling of our school as an Asset building institution. As a vessel to build empathy, the process of identifying Assets in kids, and particularly Assets that have yet to be built, we believe we can do some good things with the Search Institute's 40 Developmental Assets. When we take the time to assess a child's Assets, we are essentially peeking into their private logic regarding how supported they feel externally, and how confident they feel internally with respect to their Asset toolkit... their Asset perspective.

At last week's ERT gathering, we discussed how an Asset building process would look at our school. I reiterated Warren's point that building Assets in kids is not a canned program to be added-on as one more thing we have to do. It is a re-framing of efforts already in place in schools that most definitely build Assets. For example, I coordinate an after school program for third to sixth grade students every week that involves two volunteer college students (they are pre-service teachers) providing what they are calling the Youth in Action Program (YIA). Kids participate in fun, safe and non-competitive physical activities to strengthen their physical and social literacy skills. This is directly correlated to building a number of External Assets for this age group...

External Assets
3. Other adult relationships—Child receives support from adults other than her or his parent(s).
5. Caring school climate—Relationships with teachers and peers provide a caring, encouraging environment.
7. Community values youth—Child feels valued and appreciated by adults in the community.
10. Safety—Child feels safe at home, at school, and in his or her neighborhood.
14. Adult role models—Parent(s) and other adults in the child’s family, as well as non family adults, model positive, responsible behavior.
16. High expectations—Parent(s) and teachers expect the child to do her or his best at school and in other activities.
18. Child programs—Child participates two or more times per week in co-curricular school activities or structured community programs for children.

...and also potentially correlates to some Internal Asset building opportunities as well if framed in the right way (for example when a participant self-regulates his/her association with peers to avoid conflict, or acts effectively to resolve a conflict or disagreement)...

Internal Assets
21. Achievement Motivation—Child is motivated and strives to do well in school.
22. Learning Engagement—Child is responsive, attentive, and actively engaged in learning at school and enjoys participating in learning activities outside of school.
35. Resistance skills—Child can stay away from people who are likely to get her or him in trouble and is able to say no to doing wrong or dangerous things.
36. Child seeks to resolve conflict nonviolently.

So simply by continuing to provide a program already in place at our school, we are potentially building eleven of the forty Assets for kids who volunteer to participate, and without any extra effort than was already being applied. This is a multiple win from many angles, and the fractal effect for kids who don't participate spins off from the program. When the kids who do participate exemplify their Assets out on the playground, in the hallway or in class, the hope is that through the awesome influence of morphic resonance, their Asset qualities will rub-off on others.

Needless to say, we are very excited about the potential to positively support kids through the Asset building process within our school. We plan to meet again in a couple of weeks with Warren and Jay to discuss the issue of transference; to truly create a ripple effect with Asset building, the paradigm needs to scale from the school outward to our student's homes and the broader community. We want to discuss the challenge of getting sport groups, business groups, government and social support agencies to join our initiative and share the common language of Asset building.

We want to work with others within our community to create possibilities in building Assets for everyone. I was thinking out loud about the proverbial t-shirt during our conversation with Jay and Warren last week, and because I am close to the sport of lacrosse in my community, I said it would be cool to print a shirt with a logo stating "build Assets, play lacrosse." Knowing a bit about lacrosse, and being a big football guy himself, Jay was quick to modify my shirt design idea by saying "even better, why not go with kick some Assets... well said Jay.

One size fits all?

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 15:53:25 PST

flickr image via cameronparkins

My school (formerly a sixth to eighth grade middle school,) is now an inquiry-focused, sciences and technology kindergarten to eighth grade school... elements that when put together can also be called my dream job. The school is in its third year of this paradigm shift toward a custom-built K-8 inquiry, sciences and technology context. We believe that our new school context creates an optimal environment to perpetuate the learning goals of our District.

The inquiry part of what we're doing at our school is what I want to focus on here. What is inquiry, and how are we building an inquiry-based school? This is the inquiry question we've been working on answering. To me, the process of answering this question is what's so exciting about being part of Glendale school's transformation. Our group of teachers are all at different places in their understanding of inquiry, technology and sciences, and that is not only OK, it is expected in an inquiry-based learning environment. We all have personal learning tendencies. Some like to go fast, take risks and make mistakes... others are more cautious and calculated, but everyone needs to be supported if we are to effectively balance the professional development needs of all staff. I believe it is very important to remember that an inquiry-based school doesn't work very well as a one-size-fits-all environment to address this diversity.

It is very important that we, (meaning all members of the school family: students, staff, parents and significant community members as partners,) have a collective vision and mission that guide our practice, but it's also very important that each individual member of our school understands that the collective vision and mission does not dictate that there is only one correct way to do something, and that we don't all have to be at the same place, and on the same timeline as we learn forward. If we were to believe so as teachers, we would not be modeling an authentic inquiry teaching and learning context, as surely we understand that our students don't learn in the same way, and at the same pace. The inquiry learning process is in part driven by the students themselves making it impossible to line everyone up in order of learning space and learning time. From Alberta Education on inquiry learning,

Effective inquiry is more than just asking questions. Inquiry-based learning is a complex process where students formulate questions, investigate to find answers, build new understandings, meanings and knowledge, and then communicate their learning's to others. In classrooms where teachers emphasize inquiry-based learning, students are actively involved in solving authentic (real-life) problems within the context of the curriculum and/or community. These powerful learning experiences engage students deeply.

As we move forward we are asking ourselves over and over again, "how do we create authentic inquiry learning within our classrooms and school," we are confronted by the reality that, (like any good inquiry question,) there is more than one answer. There has to be, owing to the fact that every member of our school family possesses different knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) relevant to inquiry learning, and even within each KSA, we all possess different levels of function. This is real life, and it's awesome. The diversity we have among our school family members is not a bug; it's a feature... as long as we frame it that way and are able to let go of our anxieties about changing the way we are teaching and learning. There is no one size fits all solution to our guiding inquiry question... we need everybody's answers.

As we ubiquitously create the school we want to serve kids best in an inquiry-based, science and technology focused context, it is critically important that we understand the answers are in here... we are the answer to every question we ask regarding the directions we go, the services we provide and the ways that we care for each other, our students and the rest of the Glendale school family. In the authentic spirit of professionalism and collaboration, we must look first to ourselves for the answers to our own questions... that's what creativity is all about.

Returning to our District Education Plan, we couldn't ask for a better frame to guide our inquiry. We are representing the District-wide goals of inclusion, literacy and high school completion. We see the process as constructive. We start by inquiring about inclusion. We ask ourselves the inquiry question, "how do we create a sense of belonging for every single member of our school family?" and then we work off this foundation building toward other inquiry questions that guide our effort to promote literacy across the curriculum, and eventual successful high school completion.

When we work in a many sizes to fit many inquiry teaching and learning environment, we recognize the value of perspective. We all have one, our students included, and making the effort to know each others is inherently engaging and inclusive. We are focusing on each others strengths, and the strengths of our students to point us in the direction of likely engagement. We all come to school wanting to do well, and focusing on what we can do instead of what we can't leads us down paths that we want to travel. We fully understand that our strengths are differential, and we consider this a bonus... we promote the sharing of strengths openly so we can learn from each other and leverage ability to maximize positive effect without the pressure of feeling that we're alone on our journey. This is the inclusive path at Glendale School.

Literacy to us is not just a reading and writing issue. We promote literacy in a wide range of developmental knowledge, skill and attitude domains. We understand that kids need to grow literacy comprehensively... physical, emotional, social, environmental, numerical, artistic, musical etc... if they are to be well-rounded learners who recognize how different levels of competence in different domains complement each other, we need to support inquiry into all these domains. We're framing them as the Sciences, and to us, they are also inclusive,

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

– Isaac Asimov
“Prometheus,” The Roving Mind (1983)

We believe there needs to be a zen-like balance between the arts and sciences... what for many are dichotomous domains. Staff members are involved in teaching the sciences as related to their relative knowledge, skills and attitudes within particular areas. We play to people's strengths. Everyone contributes based on what they have to offer. This is our balance, and we have great capacity to represent good inquiry teaching across the spectrum.

As we strive to provide inclusive environments targeting the development of literacy across domains, we believe we are promoting high school completion. One of our projects in the context of inclusion is called Empathy ReBoot. We believe that feelings come first, thoughts second and then tools... in other words, we believe we need to be empathic to the feelings of others before we can help them think with purpose. When we become attuned to the feelings of others, even if we don't fully understand them, we can at least have insight into their perspective. This insight allows us to help them form purpose; to write their learning stories during the time they are with us; to explore and develop literacy in multiple domains.

Caring for our students in this way shows them we are interested and want to walk with them down their learning paths; to think forward. Once we enter this forward-thinking mindset, it becomes much easier to develop tools together making the journey more purposeful, efficient and enjoyable... the kind students don't want to end, even past high school.

A motto I like to use, and it's permanently fixed on my classroom wall...

If you're having fun and not learning, that's bad.
If you're learning and not having fun, that's worse.
If you're learning and having fun, that's our classroom.

If either of the first two situations arise in my classroom, it really just means we haven't asked enough of the right questions.

Drawing the Circle of Courage...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 21:15:45 PST

Original artwork by George D. Bluebird, Sr.

Everett Tetz, my friend and colleague at Glendale Sciences and Technology School, is guest blogging this post. It's a perfect follow-up to my last post, "Empathy ReBoot Project." Check out our fledgling project blog, Empathy ReBoot. Many thanks to you Everett.

I believe that the importance of belonging to a larger group, community, or family cannot be understated in relation to today’s societies. On a large scale, we’ve wandered away from the village mentality into a highly individualized existence resulting in disproportionate demands on the person rather than persons. Pockets of true community are now sparse but tend to be the driving force for social, economic, and political change. On a smaller scale, in a school for example, a sense of community may be what makes true social and academic learning possible.

I believe a true sense of belonging is one of the most important factors to being engaged and successful at school. The truth is though, that this does not come often enough and certainly not without work and intention. At times, we need to choose to accept what might be different, what might make us uncomfortable, or what may even scare us. We must challenge ourselves to view the world through someone else’s eyes and see what they might see. We have all found ourselves in moments when we have desperately wanted someone else to be able to feel what it is like to be “us.”

In Native American and First Nations cultures, significance was nurtured in communities of belonging. Lakota anthropologist Ella Deloria described the core value of belonging in these simple words: "Be related, somehow, to everyone you know." Treating others as kin forges powerful social bonds that draw all into relationships of respect.

I want you to think of those around you. Think of someone who may 'feel' different, or perhaps that they don’t belong to the group. What would that actually feel like? Maybe you feel like one of these people. You are certainly not alone. As we strive to create inclusive environments in our schools, we must work together to create a culture where all are accepted regardless of ability, religion, sexual orientation, cultural background, skin color, hobbies, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and family history. We must work together to be a truly inclusive community of learners. I personally believe that a sense of belonging is the foundation on which we build all other skills.

"Belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity, these are the four well springs of courage." –Martin Brokenleg

In essence we may actually be discussing the underpinnings of community and belonging which is empathy. Our ability to recognize feelings experienced by another being is the skill needed when forming connection, community and belonging, ultimately bonding us to the larger human experience.

Empathy Re-Boot Project

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 21:40:58 PDT

flickr image via Allen McGregor

My colleagues and I along with our students at Glendale Sciences and Technology School are embarking on an exciting and challenging journey. We are calling it our Empathy Re-Boot Project.

I have returned to Glendale as its vice-principal three years after a one year stint as its counselor. I loved my time at Glendale before, and always felt like there was unfinished business there. The first time around in my role as counselor, I spent a good deal of time helping kids, and staff members too, develop their empathetic lens; the one that allowed them to walk a mile in the shoes of others toward a deeper understanding of their learning stories. We all have a learning story... the part already written; the part we are writing in the present and the hopeful part we intend to write toward the happy endings of the future. In my second term at Glendale I am thrilled to continue this work with the staff and students of my reunited Glendale family.

In Alberta, all schools are in the midst of an important and necessary paradigm shift toward inclusive learning environments. At Glendale, we have been working hard to re-frame our educational perspectives towards the diverse population of students at our school. We don't have segregated programming at our school. We don't pull students out of class anymore; we hold their hands as we walk alongside them. As we walk alongside them we talk to them. We talk to them about their learning story... what's happened in the past; what's happening in the present and what they want to happen in the future. Our goal is to learn their story behind the story, the one that enlightens us toward deeper understanding of what may be challenging students, and ever more importantly, what they need from us to help work toward mitigating the challenges. We're focusing on students' strengths in as asset-based model of intervention. We're downplaying student weakness and focusing our empathy lenses on solutions.

We are re-booting empathy.

Thinking deeply about virtues and character development, we have concluded that true inclusion in our school requires an intense understanding of others, and in particular, their stories. We are taking a phenomenological-post modernist perspective. We believe that individual circumstances can distract from the learning process, but also that striving to know these circumstances, and focusing on supporting strategies that mitigate them at school will lead us down solution focused paths toward optimized teaching and learning. There is always a better path to take. We must honor the perspectives of those we work with when helping divine the best paths.

We are using our empathic lenses to focus on the resiliency of our students, and we are tapping into that resiliency with intent to nurture its growth. We are recognizing resiliency in ourselves, and we are using it to support kids who are vulnerable. We are teaching them to be more resilient over time by making sure they know we care, and that we want to help them write personal learning stories with happy endings.

In all sincerity...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 09:16:43 PDT

flickr image via Sam Howzit

I believe that sincerity is paramount to nurturing trust and commitment in people, and critical to effective communication.

In Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the absence of trust is listed as dysfunction number one for good reason. Trust is obviously critical to team function and team success. Without it we can't be truly committed (lack of commitment is the number three dysfunction) to anyone but ourselves; that is to say if we even trust ourselves... I'm not sure we all do. Trust requires sincerity. We have to be honest with ourselves, and honest with others before we can trust, otherwise our function and purpose is a facade based on insincere and false (or perhaps not entirely true,) premises.

Commitment is not a half-way thing. It's what makes us accountable in the truest sense of the word. To be truly committed to another person, a process or an organization is a selfless act that makes us accountable and requires a sincere and unwavering honesty... even if the act of being committed isn't associated with any form of personal gain or enrichment. In reference to Peter Block's work, my friend Paul Shamlet articulated this very well in a recent post at the #ECOSYS blog...

In his book Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block defines accountability in a novel and compelling way: “Accountability is the willingness to care for the whole, and it flows out of the kind of conversations we have about the new story we want to take our identity from. It means we have conversations of what we can do to create the future. Entitlement is a conversation about what others can or need to do to create the future for us. Restoration begins when we think of community as a possibility, a declaration of the future that we choose to live into.” (48)

Peter Block talks about the new story... but I don't think it's new at all. Our story has always been there waiting to be told in different contexts for different purposes. Perhaps the new story Block refers to really means the new way to tell our story; to give it purpose and authenticity. Through stories it is often said that we can learn from our mistakes, and from our successes. When we tell our stories of failure and success, we are creating vessels for these teachings that benefit all who have an ear for them. This is what makes stories so powerful and important. If we could just get better at telling stories, and in turn listening to them, infinite possibilities emerge.

Our stories are the basis of all the good, and bad, that have befallen humankind since the beginning of time. We all have stories to tell; stories already written (past), stories we're writing now (present) and stories we have yet to write (future.) We obviously have the most control over the story we're writing in the present, but how long is the present? Is it a fleeting moment, an hour, a week, a year or even longer? I think the point of the long-now present is that we should try to make it as long as possible. In order to connect our past and future to each end of our present, the present has to have a length... this is the long-now, but I think how we determine that length is entirely up to us. Our long-now history extends toward our past and our future. We need to connect with our long-now history in a more meaningful and purposeful way. The longer we can make our long-now history, the more we are able to connect with stories already written, and the stories we have yet to write. Our past helps to show us the way to our future.

Sadly, in the midst of our fast paced lives these days, our long-now histories have become much shorter. Our hectic lives are spent scrambling to 'get ahead' and we've lost our connection with the powerful stories already written; our own and those of others. We are living in very short long-now's, and when this happens our ability to connect in useful and purposeful ways is hindered. We have lost a sincere connection to the teachings of our past, and we've lost a sincere connection to our goals for the future. We are alas, living in the moment... not necessarily a bad thing if we could just make that moment a much longer one. We have to be more accountable for our stories; we need to be committed to sharing them in purposeful ways, and we have to listen to the stories of others trusting that there is always something to learn from them.

Using our long-now stories like this will draw us closer to each other as we seek interdependent networks of support in others, our processes and our organizations. The long-now narratives we share with each other illuminate the imperative that we be committed to our collective well-being; they expose our individual vulnerability, but they make us stronger as a team or group at the same time when we realize we are not alone in our story. Being sincere and honest with each other allows trust to grow and all of a sudden our long-now histories start to overlap and we communicate more effectively; we move from independence to interdependence. Not a bad place to be.

Smile... the world is good.

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:15:15 PDT

flickr image via ephotography

"Always smile back at little children.
To ignore them is to destroy their belief that the world is good." ~ Pam Brown

This fall I began teaching at a new school. I am also the new vice-principal of my school. My old school and my new school are very different in many ways... different enough that they are almost incomparable. For the most part, the two schools side by side represent totally different educational contexts. I have been asked by many this fall to make comparisons between them, but I can't; they're like apples and oranges. They are both great schools doing great things, but in mostly different ways. There is one way, however that the two schools are identical.

When I get asked to compare my old school to my new school, I simply say, "kids are kids." No matter where I've taught, or whatever context I was teaching in, I have always kept this notion at the forefront of my practice. Remembering that kids are kids no matter where in the world reminds me to make sure I help them preserve their innocent perspectives as long as they can. The world will happen soon enough... for now they're just kids, and they deserve to live in the world they dream of... the one that's good and happy and safe; the one that makes them smile just because they are excited to be a part of it.

When I walk down the halls, around our campus and into classrooms everyday, I remember to smile at kids, even before they smile at me. I greet them and take the time to speak with them as often as I can about anything they want to talk about. This is the best thing I can do as a teacher and school administrator to help kids feel a sense of welcome and belonging at my new school. I did this at my old school too, and every school I taught at before that.

The more I do it, the more I'm convinced that the kids are right. The world is good, and they are going to make it even better.

Rural EduKare

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:47:58 PDT

image via Imagine Rural Development Initiative

poster designed by Gigi Luberes

In my original post on EduKare I contextualized it as a concept that mitigates problems inherent with urban education. The reality is that EduKare as a concept can also mitigate problems inherent in rural education. The reason it can work well in both settings is the principle behind it- empowerment of individuals in a local context.

Recently I had the good fortune to meet (virtually) Steven Putter (via Twitter @stevenputter.) He lives in Zambia and is involved with a very exciting project; one as exciting as I have come across. From the Imagine Rural Development Initiative (IRDI) website, this statement sums up the purpose behind IRDI...

Propagating sustainable success. Creating scalable models for impacting change, IRDI engages real time development for building sustainable communities through the empowerment of individual skills.

The magnitude of this statement is important to note. As a lacrosse player and long-time coach, I often describe the game to non-lacrosse folks and new-to-the-game players as "a team sport played by individuals." Essentially a team is only as strong as its weakest link; in sport and in life. Empowering individual skills in local contexts is a powerful effort that must be made when the goal is a sustainable community, sports team, culture, classroom, school etc. One element of IRDI that resonates strongly with me is Emergent U. Emergent University is part of a larger initiative at Water's Edge, Zambia. This presentation is an overview of the awesome things that are happening there...

Click here to view full presentation

Water's Edge is what EduKare looks like in a rural setting. The underlying principle behind Water's Edge is sustainability. IRDI's effort to create sustainability manifests through support of the individual... just like EduKare...

An EduKare teaching and learning environment considers pivotal learning variables in each student's story... the story already written, the here-and-now story and the future story every teacher helps write. EduKare is an approach based on the foundational belief that every child can learn, but that detractors to learning can be powerful debilitating forces in a child's life. If these forces are not mitigated, learning will not happen effectively. The EduKare teaching and learning environment very simply provides the services required to mitigate powerful learning detractors in the lives of young people so they can then focus their energy on achieving relative academic success.

In the real world people have problems and challenges in urban and rural settings. Negative factors like poverty, violence, limited exposure to good education and lack of family privilege don't discriminate between rural and urban settings... these are borderless elements that prevent individuals from focusing their energy on moving forward in life to overcome the odds they create.

We often place geographic borders around negative factors like poverty, and we convince ourselves that these are actually what's holding us back. I have heard many wish that "if I could just get out of this place, I'd be free from the bounds that hold me back." I think this is an unproductive perspective, and I think Steven Putter does too. Sustainability, to me, is synonymous with productivity, purpose, vision and pride. Instead of taking people out of the environment they believe is holding them back, we should be reinventing the environment so it is productive, purposeful and visionary; one that people are proud to be part of and want to stay in. The process needs to be more than just window dressing; when successful, it's a process of creating vision and purpose so people can thrive as productive, proud members of the reinvented communities they live within. Sustainability in communities is supported by learning; it requires that we learn from our place.

I think learning and movement can be thought of in a synergistic way. How we frame learning is key if we are to create a platform of support that sustains it over a lifetime. Our innate desire to learn; to navigate the world we live in needs environmental support to be sustainable in a given environment. It needs a local context making our place a learning place.

More than any other biological species, it appears that humans are born to learn. We learn in so many different, and natural contexts. We are in constant motion; traveling in simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive realms. Robert Sylwester characterizes this need to be in motion ...

The planning, regulation, and prediction of movements are the principal reasons for a brain. Plants are as biologically successful as animals, but they don’t have a brain. An organism that’s not going anywhere of its own volition doesn’t need a brain. It doesn’t even need to know where it is. What’s the point? Being an immobile plant does have its advantages however. Plants don’t have to get up every day and go to work because they’re already there.
On the other hand, if an organism has legs, wings, or fins, it needs a sensory system that will inform it about here and there, a make-up-its-mind system to determine whether here is better than there or there is better than here, and a motor system to get it to there if that’s the better choice – as it is, alas, when we have to go to work.

Yes we do. Each of us is responsible for our livelihood, and for supporting those who depend on us for love and care. Acquiring the skills necessary to fulfill this responsibility is a challenge for all of us. Creating local contexts that reduce our far and wide search for a sustainable life is key to a sustainable home community. Empowering individuals to move within communities instead of away from is how we get to vibrant, self-sufficient communities.

Another recent Twitter acquaintance, Mpule K. Kwelagobe (@MpuleKwelagob) introduced me to the term endogenous (thank you Mpule.)

... from Dictionary.com

[en-doj-uh-nuhs]
adjective1.proceeding from within; derived internally.

Mpule is doing awesome work in Africa to empower people from within. We don't need to move away from the places in life that we believe are holding us back; we just need to learn how to move (learn) within them. Local efforts to support individual members of a community creates a ripple effect that sustains the larger community making it viable and productive. This is the key to creating room to move within communities.

Purpose leads to pride.

The Kugluktuk Grizzlies- LAX for Life

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 13:22:50 PDT

I was facilitating a lacrosse coach's clinic this weekend and we got into a conversation about what involvement in sport can do for kids. I am a strong believer in resiliency. Resilient people have purpose; something that keeps them going in the face of adversity when the odds are against them. There are many ways we can find this purpose... for many it is found through sport.

Tyler Waycott, a great lacrosse guy was one of the coach participants at the clinic. He shared this story with us, and being a lacrosse guy myself, I was choking back tears...

Turns out Russ Sheppard is also an acquaintance through lacrosse, and a fellow lacrosse coach facilitator. I had heard him talk about his time teaching in Nunavut, but I had no idea how great a thing he did up there. Unfortunately the lacrosse program is no longer operational in Kugluktuk, but one lacrosse blog reports that the community is rallying around other sports like soccer and keeping the spirit alive.

I'm going to guess that Russ leaving Kugluktuk was the main reason lacrosse is no longer played in the community at an organized level, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it's too bad that the program is no longer.

This story however, is one of the great ones and will last as an example of how to build resiliency through sport. Russ was a "significant other" in the lives of many kids in Kugluktuk. He cared enough to go the extra mile and support them through a sport he loves. What an honorable thing to do. Sharing his passion for a game with those who felt they had nothing saved their lives.

Sometimes all it takes is for one person to introduce us to one thing that creates purpose... then we're off to the races.

Teachers have the opportunity to do this for kids everyday.

Hope and Fear...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:00:31 PDT

flickr image via AMERICAN ARTIST BEN MURPHY

Hope without fear doesn't exist; that's called naivety.

Hope is the alpha. All resiliency, all fear, all action is derived from hope, "the thing with feathers... that sings the tune without the words" as so beautifully described by Emily Dickinson in her poem entitled "Hope"...

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

Emily Dickinson

My friend Daniel Durrant (@ddrrnt ) recently wrote about hope in a nemetics context. Nemetics is a term that has evolved to explain phenomena surrounding the exchanges that occur in our emotional, cognitive and physical spaces.He aligned hope with the nemetic element of engaging. I think he is saying that hope needs to be actionable to be called hope.

Frankl called it purpose in logotherapy. I call it action, but nonetheless hope without action is wishful thinking. How can teachers nurture this hope in students? If we allow Daniel to take us on a nemetics mini-tour of the process perhaps it will resonate more clearly.

He quite cleverly aligned faith, hope, charity and patience as nemetic elements that align with the Notice- Engage- Mull- Exchange pattern. The full spectrum of the pattern looks like this:

FAITH is why we NOTICE- this aligns the seen and unseen. It is the first impulse that triggers everything.
HOPE is why we ENGAGE- this aligns the decision to engage with the value and quality of hope. somewhat a paradox, but oh well.
CHARITY is why we MULL- this aligns the notion of time spent mulling with more purposeful and selfless reasons. also triggers gratitude, which might sync up with patience.
PATIENCE is why we EXCHANGE- this aligns the awareness that what was believed and so engaged by giving time may not be reciprocated when and how we expect. Yet we do so because patience releases attachments and fills our hearts with gratitude for what is present.

"Neme" is an acronym for the fractal learning process of Complex Adaptive Systems. Notice (or not) Engage (or not) Mull (or not) Exchange (or not)... NemeX connotes the actual exchange in progress. Interaction involving these elements surfaces through waves of resonance, and thrives through waves of dissonance, an unsettling of sorts; some may even describe these waves as fear.

Click to Run

Our decision to become part of a neme means our reality will change, whether slightly or dramatically, it all depends on the nature of the exchange and the degree to which we engage within it.

In Andrew Razeghi's book, "Hope," he describes the process of engaging a little or a lot as either jumping off the curb, or jumping off the cliff. A small leap of faith, or a large leap of faith is still a leap of faith. Teachers take a leap of faith every day, and depending on their relative experiences and perspective toward life and teaching, either can feel like a very big deal to any given individual... it's all relative.

So again, how can teachers nurture this purposeful hope in their students? Starting with FAITH is why we NOTICE... teachers need to take acclaimed National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones' advice and "see what they believe."

"Our perspective is what holds the key to whether the solution is ordinary or extraordinary. If we want truly extraordinary vision then we have to continually expand our horizons, take risks. If we don’t push our edge we’ll never expand our view. It’s not trespassing to go beyond your own boundaries." Dewitt Jones, National Geographic Photographer

So whether we're jumping off a curb, or a cliff, we need to have faith that something good will come from the effort. We need to look for the good in our students and expose it. This is the HOPE is why we ENGAGE... part in celebration of our student's strengths and dreams. Every student has a story, and like Dewitt Jones does when he finds the story behind his photographs, we need to find a story behind our students; the one already written that will give us a glimpse into their hope and their purpose.

As our student's stories evolve, so do our approaches to supporting them. This is the CHARITY is why we MULL part. Using the word mull interchangeably with reflection makes it a bit easier to understand this part of the process. Reflecting purposefully, selflessly and perhaps collaboratively with other supportive caregivers is how we display our willingness to walk the learning path with our students; not to pull them along, or push them on, but simply walk the path with them, learn with them and from them. We are fortunate to have this opportunity. It is a privileged opportunity teachers have to spend every day with curious, excited and eager-to-learn kids... an environment that should make it easy for all of us to also be curious, excited and eager-to-learn adults. Like anything in balance, however, eagerness on the part of any learner has to be tempered with patience.

Teachers need to be patient by nature. Every child is on his own learning timeline. Homogeneous classrooms full of kids perfectly aligned with the education system's developmental guidelines don't exist. There is no average student anywhere. Each child is unique and skilled in his own way, and the PATIENCE is why we EXCHANGE part indicates our understanding of this fact. Living in the present; walking multiple learning paths with students every day is the exchange that exemplifies our patience. We know full well that the outcomes we are working on with students may not be met until long after the paths we walk together diverge and our students have moved on to work with someone else. We exchange with our students in the present to the best of our ability so that they can move on and continue to build their learning paths forward... and back to faith we go; faith in our students and the teachers who will continue the good work we have shared with each student.

Full circle.

Does a sense of fear and doubt ever creep into this process? For me, every single day. Hope without fear doesn't exist; that's called naivety. I don't know how things will turn out for each of my students, but I want them all to be successful on their own terms. Students have fears too... for many the fear of failure. Embracing failure as a necessary element of learning is a critical element of success. If failure was absolute nobody would ever learn how to ride a bicycle. In a strange way, fearing failure is the same as fearing success for if we don't keep trying when we come up against a roadblock, in a way we're saying "what if I get over that roadblock... then what?" Balancing hope and fear on behalf of my students is what drives me to support their pursuit of personal and relative success.

Informed Practice Makes Perfect...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:47:05 PDT

flickr image via matthewpiatt

Well, maybe not perfect, but a whole lot better.

I was involved in a conversation about learning disorders recently, (I actually prefer to call them learning challenges.) I myself am a challenged learner... learning disabled in the traditional sense. I am dyslexic. The problem is I didn't know I was dyslexic until I was in my second year of university. I was taking an educational psychology course and we were talking about learning disabilities. As the professor described dyslexia, I began to remember the sorts of problems I had in school, and then I began to wonder if perhaps I was dyslexic. I spoke to him after class, and we decided to assess my problem. Sure enough; I was dyslexic. So how come it took until I was 21 years old to figure that out?

There isn't a teacher in the universe that would deny learning disorders can be terribly detrimental to a child's learning progress. I am certain that I have dealt with dozens of learning disabled kids during my teaching career. I am also certain that the vast majority of these kids are surviving in school, as I did, undiagnosed, or perhaps misdiagnosed... an equally or perhaps even more serious concern for teachers trying to do the right thing for all students.

Here's the problem... teachers aren't qualified to diagnose learning disorders, (unless of course they are also trained psychologists,) however, they are expected to effectively support kids who suffer from one or more of them even if they don't know exactly what the potential disabilities are. Teachers are confronted with the reality that they must teach kids who may very well present with a legitimate learning disorder, but also that they will seldom be working with really good data to support the effective mitigation of the problem. We are not practicing in an informed way when it comes to learning disorders. We need to know what a child is challenged by, and we need to know that early enough in the game to curb any added anxiety and stress a child will inevitably feel when he knows he is struggling.

I submit that we need to invest in a process that assesses every child early enough in primary school to know what learning path we should be travelling. We need to ask every child what works best for them, and investigate ways to make that a reality. We can't continue playing guessing games long after a child is deemed to be struggling... we shouldn't let them get to the point of struggle. We should be responsibly assessing them at the beginning of their learning story in order to support them all the way through their kindergarten to grade twelve journey. A cognitive test for every child early enough in the school experience would eliminate the ineffective trial and error game we play later on when we notice a child isn't "getting it."

Assessment costs money... of course it does. Pay now, or pay later? How many teacher, counselor, learning assistant and educational consultant hours are spent guessing and checking what challenges may be present for kids? I will guess when compared to the cost of early and comprehensive assessment for all kids so we can fly with instruments right from the start, that the total cost in person hours trying to deal with the problem is very high, and may end up being more expensive than just doing the assessment in the beginning.

I recently viewed this TED talk by Dr. Aditi Shankardass... A second opinion on learning disorders:

I can't imagine there would be more compelling evidence supporting the effort we should be making to be informed about every learner before they begin to experience stress and anxiety as a result of potential learning disorders. It appears Dr. Shankardass has proven that these "disorders" need not be terribly detrimental if we can become aware of them early enough to establish good action plans mitigating the challenge and maximizing learning opportunities for kids. Knowledge is power. We need to empower kids by helping them understand themselves within their own learning contexts.

I sure would have liked to know about my dyslexia when I was a kid.

Learning from place...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:33:25 PDT

flickr image via ws_canada

I read an insightful blog from David Timony (@DrTimony) recently. In his post he alludes to what for many becomes a boundary; the boundary of our own experiences, and our perspectives toward them. In our noble, but misdirected effort to create interesting and engaging learning environments we often default to the orientation we know best; our own. Perhaps there is a better, albeit more unsettling and less controlled orientation to take.

I have come to understand the value of "learning from place." Taken literally it actually is learning while at, or immersed in a place. In a more representative context learning from place is a mindful, almost spiritual experience. Thinking deeply about what a place has represented to others gives us a glimpse into their experience and what their life may involved there; what they saw, felt and thought... it's a powerful experience beyond measure.

David Timony says that,

It is important that we acknowledge who we are and what we bring to the situation so we may set it aside and teach from a more neutral space. Not everything that we teach requires connection to our own lives. It does not need to be shown through our lens nor does it require a frame in order for appreciation to occur. Surely, our desire to explain and expound–to mediate through language–often reduces experiences.

I have had a feeling of awe in a few places in the world, mostly close to home... places many take for granted because they are close to home. One of those places is Dry Island Buffalo Jump. Thousands of years of history have occurred at this sacred place. Aboriginal people have been going there for that long to hunt, gather and live together. I feel them when I've been there. I didn't have to explore every square inch to absorb the magnitude of the place... I just sat at the top of the jump and thought deeply about how many others had done the same thing, and what they may have thought in their place.

Learning from place. We all have our place and we can get closer to the places of others if we slow down, let go of our need to be in control and simply listen.

Take class(room) action...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:19:07 PDT

flickr image via jbj

I believe in the power of action research. Initiatives often start in one direction, but end up going in a completely different direction and we sometimes view this as failure, but within the context of action research, this shift in focus is often a good indicator of progress. Some are uncomfortable with the intangibility of this, but I like it. I like to think of the action research process as a cyclical path that puts to use the other four R's: reflect, retool, reframe and reclaim. These elements are key to keeping a project dynamic and malleable, but at the same time focused and purposeful in the effort to support quality education.

My Alberta teaching colleague, Greg Miller (@millerg6) recently shared this video.

The author in the video is Dylan Williams. He writes about assessment in schools; the virtues of formative assessment in particular. I agree with his message that the power of reform in schools lies mainly in teachers. There are many camps within education reform, but without getting into the debate about which one is most correct, I just want to draw attention to the fact that the single common denominator in any teaching reform effort is teachers. As individuals, and even more powerfully and effectively in collaborative groups, teachers have a distinct and brilliant education reform platform to work from because together, they are immersed daily within classrooms and schools.

Useful feedback loops don't occur in isolation. The collective intelligence of a group will always provide a depth of feedback from different perspectives and bases of knowledge that help steer the research ship purposefully from informed and diverse perspectives. Action research is an exciting process with the power to inform, but also an under-utilized tool when teachers don't talk to each other. To leverage the power to do things better, teachers should embrace the action research process and initiate their own local, classroom-based projects designed to improve what they do. Sharing the results of this research with other teachers allows them to learn from our experiences also which essentially streamlines their reflective process in the event they choose to conduct similar research; it's the edu-conomy of scale in action.

Collaborative education reform is powerful. Action research is a collaborative process. Much can be accomplished in better, faster and cheaper ways when we put our heads together in education. Teachers have skills, knowledge and experience, but don't utilize them often enough to challenge each other; to step outside the box and do things differently in search of doing things better. Why should they? Because taking a different perspective or direction typically leads to greater insight, learning from mistakes and improved practice if we keep an open mind. Action research provides a conduit for stepping outside the box; making ourselves vulnerable together in the name of learning how to teach better and support kids better.

When we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Of course this is true for research as it is for anything, however, I would also say that when we fail to adjust a plan, the plan is doomed to fail. The nature of action research is to adjust. The action in action research includes adjusting plans according to real time data and feedback that the research is providing. It's a participatory and collaborative process that works well when those involved understand the value the four R's of good action research.

Reflection is looking back to empower learning forward. In research, its learning from mistakes by being honest about our process and willing to take a critical perspective. Re-tooling is the natural selection process in research; the ability after reflection to recognize that something isn't working, and then make re-calibrating changes to the research design or process. Re-framing is the process of creating an adjusted context for the research that reflects the new responsive process that reflecting and re-tooling has resulted in. Re-focusing is the product of distributed leadership within the group; a willingness from all sides to embrace and value the new or adjusted research direction. The four R's of action research are responsive strategies that allow us to function as classroom-based researchers understanding that all is not lost if the organic nature of teaching and learning causes (as it nearly always does) a deviation from the original classroom-based research plan.

Of course it's very important for teachers to stay abreast of current pure research, but in reality, teachers in the classroom are often distanced somewhat from the basic research that occurs at universities to increase understanding of fundamental pedagogical principles. They are consumed with the application of these principles as presented through various forms of professional development as new ideas and ways of thinking about education come on line. Perhaps participating in collaborative action (applied) research projects while doing the great work teachers do in the classroom everyday is a way to bridge ideas, theories and principles with real-time action to test their validity. Participatory action research is how this can be done, and it often, if not always can be done for little or no cost in dollars and cents, but it does require the will of people to get together and spend some human capital.

What will your next action research project entail?

Differentiated assessment...

graingered@gmail.com (Sean Grainger) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:49:51 PDT

flickr image via Stuck in Customs

Great strides have been made to adjust our instruction to meet individual student needs, but often we don't adjust the way we assess this individualized learning. Differentiated instruction must at some point lead to differentiated assessment, otherwise we're fooling ourselves.

Students are all on their own timeline and we're finally starting to realize that we need to figure out what that timeline is in order to apply an optimized and purposeful learning experience. We need to meet them where they're at and help them learn forward. This is the differentiation process. It accounts for a student's particular learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses and adjusts for them to optimize learning. However, once we've done such a good job creating an appropriate and fair learning context for individual kids, we often ruin the process by not making a reciprocal effort to create an appropriate and fair assessment context for individual kids.

There are countless ways to assess learning; some really good and some really bad. I'm not going to get into the debate over which are which here. I'm just going to say that teachers should be making as much effort to find the right way to assess each student as they do to find the right way to teach each student based on the learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses of each one.

How best to do this is up to each teacher and how much is known about each of their students' learning stories. Time should be provided for teachers to investigate the background of each student. A major element of this process should include asking students how best they learn, and providing learning opportunities that match what they tell us. We should be engaging them as early as kindergarten to do this.

The thirteen year learning story starts in kindergarten, and there are many ways kids show us what works for them and what doesn't. Observing and noting their reactions to particular learning tasks, watching them play and discover provides us the chance to get a glimpse into their unique perspectives. Keeping one eye on the prescribed curriculum outcomes, and the other on creative ways to achieve them in consideration of each child's learning preferences seems to me a great strategy to begin walking a good learning path alongside each of them.

However, assessing a whole class the same way after successfully and creatively designing a learning environment that accommodates the unique and individual learning variables of each student doesn't appear to make too much sense to me.