Dangerously Irrelevant

I’m writing this from my hotel room on 30th Street, Manhattan. Looking out of the window I’m confronted with huge buildings and more windows than I can count (if you’ve seen the film ‘Rear Window’ you’ll kind of understand what I’m getting at).

If this blog post was a Wikipedia article, that first paragraph would probably have been edited by now. The name of the hotel would have been included, questions would have been raised on the ‘Talk’ page about just how many windows there were (could I perhaps point to a reputable source?), and a link to the Wikipedia page for ‘Rear Window’ added. It’s not, and there weren’t, but this brings me nicely to the session I attended today led by Frank Shulenburg, originally titled Wikipedia and academia: friends at last?

According to the programme, Frank’s session should have been a presentation about the global education programme the Wikimedia Foundation have embarked upon in partnership with several universities. However, in an appropriately wiki sort of way, Frank skilfully accepted suggestions, amendments and tangents from the audience, turning the hour and a half session almost into a workshop. I love it when form and content come together and, if asked in future to give an example of what I mean by this, Frank’s session is what I shall recount.

Let me explain. Frank started off by saying that he’d prepared three things:

1. A short presentation about what the Wikimedia Foundation do and what they’ve been up to with their global education programme.
2. A closer look at Wikipedia (a peek behind the scenes, as it were)
3. An opportunity for us to get in to groups and think about how we can integrate Wikipedia into our classrooms.

When asked, a show of hands from delegates demonstrated that most people were there for option 1 (Frank’s presentation). Interestingly, no-one voted for option 3!

How we got to where we are

As it was, Frank managed to combine all three points in a very partcipatory way. For example, he started by getting us all on our feet and turning the room into a physical continuum between ‘Strongly Agree’ on the right and ‘Strongly Disagree’ on the left. He proceeded to read out some statements about Wikipedia (e.g. ‘Wikipedia is a democracy’) and get us to move to a place on the continuum representing our views. Once in position, he asked each ‘camp’ why they had moved that way, never giving a judgement but instead teasing out points and allowing people to respond to each other. This was a great way to start as it got us interacting straight away and, without Frank having to tell us, demonstrated how philosophically complex it is to place online (and sustain) a freely-editable encyclopedia.

Once we’d done this, Frank gave an overview of Wikipedia’s fairly humble beginning to where it is now. Did you know, for instance, that the page for Physics originally read ‘Physics is a very broad subject’? Wikipedia’s success (it is the fifth most-visited website behind the like of Google and MSN) has been achieved with zero dollars spent on promotion, a very small team of staff (currently 89) and a non-profit structure. In fact, says Frank, he remembers a time when they used someone’s car for a conference room as they didn’t have enough space! So where does Wikipedia’s success come from? Answer: It’s users. There are upwards of 100,000 Wikipedia editors (known as ‘Wikipedians’) working towards fulfilling the vision of founder Jimmy Wales:

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.” (Jimmy Wales)

As Clay Shirky noted in his book Cognitive Surplus, the total amount of human effort (in hours) spent improving Wikipedia is huge, but tiny compared with the amount of TV-watching the human race does as a whole. It certainly got me thinking about the best use of my time!

Wikipedia and academia

Returning to the Wikimedia Foundation’s global education project, Frank said that they noticed a large and sustained increase in the numbers of professors using Wikipedia for projects with their classes. When they got in touch with them to ask how they could help, the professors’ response was that they wanted support, including printed matter for students. A 17-month pilot programme followed in which professors and their students worked through the following stages:

1. Training
2. Planning
3. Introduction
4. Analysis
5. Research
6. Writing
7. Evaluation

Two of the most important stages, noted Frank, are Stage 4 (Analysis) and Stage 7 (Evaluation). The former helps deepen students’ media literacy skills by getting them to ask of a Wikipedia article, ‘What’s missing?’, ‘Is this from a neutral point of view?’, and so on. The latter, Evaluation, was took various forms at the different educational institutions involved in the pilot. Some gave credit based on a study of the Wikipedia page’s edit history, others asked students to give a presentation, yet others set a reflective essay. The results? From a response rate of 48% (pretty good!) they found that, all told, 72% of students preferred working on the Wikipedia article than on more traditional forms of assessment. Some of the reasons given included authenticity and ‘real-life’ work.

Finally, and with a Wikipedian in the room who gave Frank a hand, we were given a quick look behind the scenes of Wikipedia. During the discussions, one of the delegates had admitted to ‘vandalising’ Wikipedia whilst at school but she had always wondered how they had ‘caught’ her doing so. Frank put up on screen the ‘Recent Changes’ page and also demonstrated the way in which, if you ‘star’ a page once logged-in, you can have your own personal Recent Changes page. Hundreds, if not thousands of people, therefore, are monitoring their favourite pages for changes. Any alterations not improving the quality of articles are therefore picked up quickly and reverted to previous versions.

Conclusion

I came at this session with my experience of both using a wiki extensively in my everyday role at JISC infoNet (we use PBworks) and having asked students to edit the Simple English version of Wikipedia when in the classroom. To my mind, we have a responsibility to the young people of today to prepare them adequately for the world as they experience it now and will experience it in future. To do that, we need new forms of assessment (which is why I’m all for initiatives such as Open Badges and DML Badges). We do students a disservice by continuing unimaginative and potentially exclusionary grading practices.

As I argued along with Pragmatist philosophers such as C.S. Peirce and William James in my Ed.D. thesis ‘truth’ is what a community of inquirers agree upon in the long run. It’s like an asymptopic line with knowledge constantly in flux. Teaching students to use and edit Wikipedia responsibly can only help them becoming more fluent in Digital and New Media Literacies. It was an excellent session, and an auspicious start to the Mobility Shifts conference. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the week!

3 Things I’ve Learned about NYC today…

• A ‘block’ is not a standard length. Walking 50 blocks, even on a sunny day, is a very long way.
• Don’t go up the Empire State Building on a public holiday (it’s Columbus Day)
• Prices are confusing because they don’t include sales tax.

Encouraging clearer thinking in education, technology and productivity, Doug Belshaw is an educator and activist. He lives in the north of England with his wife and two young children. Doug is currently Researcher/Analyst at JISC infoNet (hosted by Northumbria University) after spending seven years as a teacher and senior leader in various UK schools. He has just submitted his doctoral thesis on the subject of ‘digital literacies’.

Blog: dougbelshaw.com/blog  
Twitter: @dajbelshaw / @dajbconf

I’m writing this whilst waiting for my connecting flight in the fabulous Amsterdam Schipol airport. I’ve just arrived from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and am headed for New York where I’ll be attending the week-long Mobility Shifts conference. My presence there is a combination of determination, good fortune, and Scott McLeod’s generosity. Scott saw my request on Twitter for assistance in attending Mobility Shifts and made it possible for me to attend for the entire week. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to thank him adequately for the opportunity.

One thing Scott and I have agreed I can do whilst I’m at the conference is blog about my experiences for the readers of Dangerously Irrelevant. I’m more than happy to do this: there’s a plethora of interesting sessions at the conference and, whilst I can’t cover all of them, I intend to go to as many as possible reporting back in guest posts each day. I’m also fairly active on Twitter, with my main account being @dajbelshaw and my conference account @dajbconf.

The programme and further details about Mobility Shifts can be found on the conference website: mobilityshifts.org/conference.

Encouraging clearer thinking in education, technology and productivity, Doug Belshaw is an educator and activist. He lives in the north of England with his wife and two young children. Doug is currently Researcher/Analyst at JISC infoNet (hosted by Northumbria University) after spending seven years as a teacher and senior leader in various UK schools. He has just submitted his doctoral thesis on the subject of ‘digital literacies’.

Blog: dougbelshaw.com/blog  
Twitter: @dajbelshaw / @dajbconf

What is information literacy in the context of an MMORPG?

How do you assess learning in a tabletop RPG?

What makes a proficient reader of graphic novels?

How do readers approach text in video games?

What literacies will be essential for 21st century learners?

When will formal testing adapt to the shift from individual knowledge to social knowledge, and what will that assessment look like?

These are but a handful of the topics broached in the GLS7 presentation on digital literacy that left game designers, researchers, and educators alike wondering what’s next. These are great big questions that I can’t even begin to answer, but that will no doubt be important topics of study and debate as our society and educational institutions slowly catch up with the rapidly changing nature of knowledge, communication, and collaboration.

So what do you think will be the essential “new” literacies of the 21st century?

[photo from Flickr user Will Merydith]

This article cross posted at edstuckinthecloud.com

Josh Caldwell is a Junior High English teacher and technology specialist from Seattle, WA. Prior to entering the world of education, he was a systems administrator, programmer, and designer. Inspired by the potential for technology to empower students, he is constantly subjecting his poor students to experiments in gaming and technology while providing professional development opportunities for other educators. Josh blogs at edstuckinthecloud.com

The first day of GLS7 brought with it plenty of spirited debate and intense arguments, as you are likely to have with any diverse group of passionate professionals, but none so hotly contested as the validity of gamification as an educational tool. Commonly associated with social media marketing, gamification seeks to engage consumers by incorporating game mechanics (most commonly achievements or badges) into otherwise boring or unexciting activities, such as filling out surveys – in essence, the Madison Ave version of hiding your dog’s pill in a block of cheese. This, arguably crass, commercial interpretation of gamification has tarnished the concept of using game mechanics in education for feedback or recognition. As a telling tone-setter in his Wednesday keynote speech, Eric Zimmerman characterized educational gamification as the beginning of an “unholy alliance” between marketers and learning researchers; certainly reasonable call to be careful and cautious about with whom and for what reasons we share student information, but is that really reason enough to eschew gamification outright. Is gamefication so tied up in commercialism that we can’t we have a successful discussion about it in education with adopting new terminology?

Why Such Aversion?

Aside from the unfair connotation with advertising, many argue against gamification because they see it as purely a source of extrinsic motivation (though the extrinsic/intrinsic argument is a whole other kettle of fish). Must achievements be purely extrinsic? Is providing a badge for meeting a learning goal a more extrinsic motivator than providing a grade?

Others express concern that achievements or badges take focus away from content, providing opportunities for students to “game” the system for grades. Just recently a keynote speaker presented gamification as a way to get students to do something they don’t want to. Again, these concerns speak to the purpose and design of a given achievements. If you are concerned about students gaming the system for grades, you’ve got to wonder if your achievements actually reflect meaningful learning.

Couldn’t these arguments be leveraged against any number of instructional tools or grading systems, when used poorly or without sufficient forethought?

Why do so many assume that educational gamification as a concept is inherently flawed?

Achievement Unlocked!

In reality, teachers began gamifying education long before there was a term for it. What are gold stars, certificates, even grades if not signifiers of achievement? We have to acknowledge that the game-based framework of achievements, badges, and social recognition is familiar and meaningful to students; they share them on Facebook, or FourSquare, or Xbox Live, or a plethora of other environments that may be inherently more or less game related. Gamification isn’t just a marketing tactic, it’s a way of documenting and recognizing effort exerted, challenges bested, and goals reached. It’s up to us as teachers to ensure that we use this tool to recognize meaningful achievements that align to learning goals, instead of to coerce students into participation. A few great ideas for achievements/badges that came up at GLS7:

• Mark student progress in terms of an overall school narrative
• Acknowledge mastery of specific curriculum standards
• Identify students as specific resource “gurus”
• Reinforce cross-curricular
• Celebrate students who demonstrate “non-academic” skills in an academic setting
• Combine known achievements with “mystery” achievements
• Display progress toward certain achievements

The key here is to provide a variety of achievement types so that all students can experience success while allowing for exceptional students to receive recognition for their talents. Take advantage of the social nature of gamification to connect struggling learners with peer “gurus.” As I personally strive towards standards-based grading, properly aligned achievements could serve both as a benchmark for my students as well as a tool to keep me honest with my grading.

As I see it, creating meaningful achievements that align to standards is the fun and easy part; getting a simple yet usable gamification system set up, now there’s the challenge. For those interested in a DIY setup (probably the direction I will take) there are a few fledgling frameworks out there with some potential, such as the Mozilla Open Badge project, UserInfuser, or this hodgepodge of WP plugins. On the other hand there are university projects, such as the MS/RIT collaboration Unified Game Layer for Education, which could be good tools for K-12 ed once they make it out of the university and into the public. To my knowledge, however, there aren’t yet any plug-and-play education-specific gamification platforms available, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s only a matter of time.

[photo from Flickr user rocket ship]

This article cross posted at edstuckinthecloud.com

Josh Caldwell is a Junior High English teacher and technology specialist from Seattle, WA. Prior to entering the world of education, he was a systems administrator, programmer, and designer. Inspired by the potential for technology to empower students, he is constantly subjecting his poor students to experiments in gaming and technology while providing professional development opportunities for other educators. Josh blogs at edstuckinthecloud.com

This simple, succinct introduction opens the door to the rich immersive environment of 1980′s Zork, the most iconic example of the text-based adventure game genre. No graphics, no sound effects, just the richness of language to draw gamers into the experience. Though text-based games largely went by the wayside with the advent advanced graphical environments, it’s hard to ignore such games as examples of the beauty and power of language in an interactive narrative. Would that my Junior High English students possessed such descriptive prowess.

Jeremiah McCall and Greg Martin had the same thought and are putting text-based adventures to work in the classroom. Using the (ridiculously easy) Inform engine, McCall and Martin are empowering their students to write interactive fiction (and non-fiction) while introducing text-based gaming to a whole new generation. Using Inform’s incredibly intuitive syntax, students can demonstrate historical knowledge by building realistic (yet entirely textual) worlds, or work through the epic format with an interactive narrative.

While the idea of asking students to create video games could be daunting to a teacher with core curriculum concerns, it becomes quickly evident with use that Inform is crazy easy to use. By the end of the one hour workshop at GLS7, I had built a text-based framework of an Elizabethan theatre, replete with a mysterious Bard, a stage to explore, and several theatrical props. The potential for using Inform in a classroom is endless, whether you approach it as a vehicle to create games, simulations, or narratives. The nature of the programming language is such that it reinforces for students the importance of grammar, spelling and punctuation (for example, the system will tell you if you’re missing an action verb while giving examples of how to fix it). Just look at a line of my “code.”

The Bard is a man in the Globe stage. The description of the Bard is "A pale balding man dressed in black with a modest ruff. A pained expression plays across his visage as he angrily aims his rolled quarto stage left."

Let’s get excited about text-based gaming again! I have a feeling I’ll spend a good portion of my summer putting together instructional interactive fiction and thinking of ways to get my students to do the same.

[photo from Flickr user ajmexico]

This article cross posted at edstuckinthecloud.com

Josh Caldwell is a Junior High English teacher and technology specialist from Seattle, WA. Prior to entering the world of education, he was a systems administrator, programmer, and designer. Inspired by the potential for technology to empower students, he is constantly subjecting his poor students to experiments in gaming and technology while providing professional development opportunities for other educators. Josh blogs at edstuckinthecloud.com

As an administrator I feel that my job is to create, foster, and sustain a culture of learning that focuses on the success of each and every student.  Paramount to this objective is the daily instruction that takes place in the classroom. The teacher, and his/her ability to promote student learning and achievement, is the single most important factor that will influence a child’s success in the classroom and beyond.

First and foremost, I want teachers who genuinely care about kids. If you don’t like being around adolescents for more than six hours, on average, each day then how will you be able to effectively teach and meet all of their diverse needs?  Connected to this is enthusiasm.  In the classroom, if a teacher is unenthusiastic about the lesson and the content then how can they expect their students to be excited about learning?  Passion and enthusiasm are qualities that I look for when interviewing prospective teaching candidates as well as during observations and classroom walk-throughs.   These attributes are contagious and together are two of the most important tools that a teacher can utilize to reach even the most challenging students.

From an instructional standpoint I want teachers to develop lessons that actively engage all students.  This can be accomplished in many different ways, but I firmly believe that the teachers who make the content meaningful and relevant to students never have a problem with engagement.   The learning environment should include examples of student work, consistent enforcement of rules, and excessive positive reinforcement.  Innovation is something that has become a more prevalent focus in my school.  To accomplish this, I want and need teachers that are not afraid of taking risks and failing once in a while.  What I don’t want is the same lessons and instructional techniques being used year in and year out.  It is imperative that teachers need to be accepting of new ideas and that they implement strategies that are either research-based or have been successful elsewhere.

Instilling a desire in our students to become life-long learners is not only a main objective of every educator’s job, but also something that has to be consistently modeled.  Teachers should actively pursue opportunities for growth without administrators getting on their case.  Consistent improvement is the only way teachers can stay abreast of all of the many changes in instructional techniques, educational technology, and ways in which students learn.  The concept of growing on the weekends and during the summer should also be embraced.  Routinely using the excuse “I don’t have time to do that” is unacceptable in my eyes.  As educators, we must make the time to get better because our students and their future depend on it.

Finally, I want teachers who will demonstrate and embrace a capacity to lead.  I am all about collaboration and making shared decisions that will benefit all students.  The success of initiatives such as Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) are dependent on teacher leaders acting as facilitators who ensure that all the work being done focuses on student achievement.  Teacher leaders are also essential in terms of developing meaningful in-house professional development, modeling professionalism, and assisting administrators to create and sustain vibrant learning cultures.  They act as agents of change and empower other teachers to embrace this movement. Administrators need teacher leaders in order to support and sustain innovative practices. 

In summary, as an administrator I want teachers who love their job and come to school every day willing and eager to make a difference in the life of a child.  I want teachers who are passionate, enthusiastic, routinely refine their teaching strategies based on research, and are willing to put the time in to better their craft.  I want teachers that will work with me to become better leaders, mentors, and colleagues.

Eric Sheninger is in his fourth year as Principal of New Milford High School. His school is located in New Milford, NJ, which is a suburb of New York City. New Milford has approximately 700 students in grades 9-12.

Image credit: Australian teachers at ISTE Leadership Symposium

I want to thank Scott for asking me to do this and I want to curse him a little for making me go last. This is not an easy crew to follow.

I couldn’t get my head around what “administrators” in general ask of teachers, so I chose to focus on what I ask of Science Leadership Academy teachers. For the record, I think SLA teachers are, as a group, about the hardest working group of people I could ever imagine, and I think that is more because of the collegial atmosphere than anything I could ever do. So “work hard” isn’t making the list. So without further ado.

Top Ten Things I Ask of SLA Teachers.

10. Take care of yourself. Teaching is a marathon, not a sprint, and SLA teachers do put themselves out there early and often. I want my teachers to take time for themselves every day. I want SLA teachers to take trips, go to conferences, spend time with family and spend time with each other when they don’t talk about school.

9. Understand that your class is but one of five or six or seven classes that kids have. Understand that school is one of many things in a teenager’s life. And while what goes on in your class is important, I ask that teachers remember that, at any given moment in time, there are pressures on their kids’ lives that makes what goes on in our classes seem powerfully inconsequential.

8. Never be afraid to bring an idea or a critique or a thought to me. Never be afraid to tell me what you think.

7. Be as transparent as possible. That means giving students opportunities to publish their work to the world. That means opening your door to colleagues, to parents, to visitors. That means never playing “gotcha” with the kids with your expectations.

6. Remember that benevolent dictatorship may make for an orderly class, but it rarely helps kids become better people. Giving kids opportunities to feel ownership of the classroom is important because, in the end, you can get what you want or you can get much more.

5. Remember that inquiry isn’t just for kids. If we want our kids to always push themselves to question more, dig deeper, figure it out for themselves, we must be willing to do that too.

4. Take ownership of major pieces of the school outside your classroom. SLA works because everyone takes on pieces of it. Run a club, chair a committee, write a grant, do the thing you always wanted to do in a school but never thought the structure of school could support.

3. Be part of a community of teachers and learners and speak the same language. Kids spend too much time in schools figuring out teachers, and that detracts from the powerful work they can do for themselves, not for us. It is why I ask all teachers at SLA to always incorporate the core values into their planning, why we all use Understanding by Design to plan our units, why we all use the same rubric to grade all our projects. When we speak the same language about the way we teach and learn, kids can get down to the work of learning more quickly.

2. Treat your class as a lens, not a silo. The goal is for our kids to be well-rounded, thoughtful citizens. Remember that if you’re lucky, 10% of the kids in your class will major in your subject. Make sure the other 90% understand how what they are learning with you helps them to be a better person.

1. Remember that we teach students before we teach subjects. I ask that all SLA teachers understand and live the profound difference between the statements, “I teach history,” and “I teach kids history.” Children should never be the implied object of their own education.

And one more – Be kind. Be kind to your students, to your colleagues, even to your principal. Whatever you do, be kind.

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Chris Lehmann is the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, an inquiry-driven, project-based, 1:1 laptop magnet high school in Philadelphia, PA. Named as one of the Ten Most Amazing Schools in the US by Ladies Home Journal, SLA is a partnership between The Franklin Institute and the School District of Philadelphia. Chris blogs at Practical Theory.

Image credit: I’ll give you the world if you love me!

One of my administrative colleagues at my school here in Shanghai is a marathon runner.

I am not.

The mere thought of running for more than my personal requirement of 30 minutes three times a week makes me want to loose more than just a few pounds (if you know what I mean!).

He on the other hand finds great joy in the planning for a marathon. The event itself is a test of a solid training plan and commitment to a goal.

His words to me still ring in my ears; “Andy, marathons are one of the very few things in this world that you cannot fake. If you don’t plan, commit and train, you throw up in front of the world”.

Ouch.

That is not something I want to do for sure!

I need teachers to take on the same mindset and apply it to their teaching and their careers. It comes down to planning, stretching for strength, minding the pace, working as a team member, and listening to a trusted coach.

Planning
I am not talking about lesson planning here. I am talking about life planning.

Like a long distance runner preparing for a race I expect a teacher to plan their career in the same way. I need teachers who can see past the next vacation or school year and consider what they need to do continue to improve, to learn and to reach their ultimate potential throughout the entirety of their career. As new employees come to our school we have a long conversation within the interview process about career goals. Professional stagnation is not an alternative at our school. We ask that people take their goals seriously. We ask that they stay professionally current and focused on goals that can be supported not only by the teacher but also by the organization.

Like a race, a career can only go two ways, forward or backward. There is no standing still. Without some plan, a career and thus teaching skill goes backward.

Stretch for Strength
Like a runner, a good stretch outside of one’s own comfort zone keeps a teacher professionally limber. We all know the person who strives to stay in their comfort zone, They never take risks. Their constant focus is to remain in the middle part of the pack (or the back) but not stand out in last pace. Mediocrity is their norm.

Instead, a quality professional, and great long distance runner knows that they must stretch themselves. Before the race (or the work) they prepare with warm-ups, stretches and deliberate steps. Teachers take care of their professional health by continuation of their learning. They take on new things, learn new skills, and assume new responsibilities. Teachers I want stretch themselves in new areas and new ways. A few years back I was asked to serve on a committee studying instrumental music in our elementary schools. I don’t play an instrument and have no background in music, yet I eagerly accepted the appointment, learned as much as I could about the subject and I believe I learned and contributed to the committee simultaneously. It made me a better principal too!

Mind the Pace
I need teachers to take care of themselves and find balance in their lives. Like a marathon runner, we have to realize that we cannot win the race in the first months of school or even the first years of our career. We must take on things carefully, with intention and with understanding that a stressed and overwhelmed teacher cannot be a good instructor or leader. In those times when the hill is in front of the runner or the inevitable “wall” is hit, a runner will become even more deliberate with their steps, carefully plodding through till the hill is gone or the wall is diminished. The runner will recognize that there may be some discomfort,- even pain- but it will not last forever and such events should not stand in front of our goals. Teachers I want to work with will also power through challenges or hills taking care of themselves and recognizing that the end will be justified by challenges they face as long as their pace is managed.

Working as a team member
Running, like teaching, is a team sport embedded in an individual activity. Administrators for years have been asking teachers to collaborate and then assigning them to separate classrooms, buildings and schedules. As much as we all hate it, there are realities we have to deal with in the daily operations of a school, but with all that being said, I still want to make sure that the teachers I work with see themselves as part of a larger team and they know that their roles will vary and depend on the topic, timing and situation. Teachers, like long distance runners must see themselves as members of a team. Some runners will be the rabbits; running ahead with a quick pace hoping to lead the way. Others will be the pacer; keeping the team at a decent speed, and minding the time. Yet another may be a leader, guiding and facilitating a good race result. These roles are fluid and changed frequently through a race, just like I would expect my teachers to take on different roles in a school setting.

Listening to a Trusted Coach
I grew up in Oregon. The name Prefontaine was burned into our brains as children there, as our bad boy running star from Coos Bay and the University of Oregon gained great status as he won race after race and whose life came tragically to an early end. Pre was a great talent, with amazing heart and a competitive edge. Most students of the sport would tell you that Pre would not have been a great runner without the guidance of Bill Bowerman. Bowerman recruited and guided this amazing talent, helping him become a world class runner. Prefontaine learned to listen to this coach, and was open to listening to and learning from him. I want teachers who seek mentors and is willing to learn from them. A mentor, by the way, is not necessarily an administrator. By no means is a mentor necessarily an older, wiser colleague or college professor. A mentor is someone who can guide learning and provide advice and support. These mentors come to us in many ways, but at the end of the day, they are there to make sure you make it to the end of the race with success and satisfaction. The teachers I want to work with seek out this deeper level of collaboration and gain great knowledge from that relationship.

Teaching, like long distance running cannot be faked. Oh sure, one can look like a long distance runner for a few minutes on a treadmill. 30 minutes three times a week can build running muscles and a guy can even peel off a few pounds, but put that same runner on a track or in a race and by the midpoint that runner (and thus that teacher) will lose their edge and it is SO OBVIOUS that they cannot continue. Sadly, I believe many schools allow the teacher who is not conditioned to continue in their work- allowing mediocre education to continue instead of allowing them to step off the track and get back into professional shape.

I need teachers who plan their professional track, stretch themselves for professional strength, mind their pace of their work and career and listen to a trusted mentor.

This entry has been cross posted at www.sentimentsoncommonsense.com

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Andrew Torris currently serves at the Deputy Superintendent for the Pudong Campus of Shanghai American School. He has served as a technology leader for most of his 24 years as an educator in the United States, Saudi Arabia and the People’s Republic of China. He has presented at regional conferences on technology topics, taught at the elementary and university level and been a building level and central office level administrator for 15 years. Most recently Mr. Torris used his deep passion for learning and technology to bring to reality the 1:1 laptop program at Shanghai American School. He lead the program development from the drawing board to community acceptance of the program and ultimate implementation involving over 400 teachers and over 2000 students. In addition to his many other duties at Shanghai American School, he also serves at the leader of educational technology. His blog can be found at www.sentimentsoncommonsense.com

My cell phone rang from the passenger seat of my car as I crossed the last intersection before a two-mile stretch of Hydraulic Road leading to Albemarle High School, my high school. A clear blue May sky stretched out above the Blue Ridge Mountains. The time was 7:40 a.m., and I had just dropped off my seven-year-old at school; my thoughts were on the AP and Virginia Standards of Learning testing schedule ahead of us for the day. I reached for the phone, flipped it open, and lifted it to my ear. On the other line was a parent of one of our juniors and a friend of the family. Her voice was anxious.

“Matt, there’s been an accident where Ashland Drive crosses Route 29 North!” she said.“I think it’s a student. I think it’s all right. The traffic is backed up, though.”

I thanked her for the information and dialed our school resource officer to see if he had any information on the accident. The word forlorn comes to mind.

“Hi, Matt. I was just about to call you. There’s been a bad accident up here. A panel truck ran a red light and just – well – just t-boned her car.”

I pulled over to the side of the road, “Whose car?”

One of our students, on her way to take an AP exam that morning, was killed. It has been three years since that day, and I still haven’t reconciled. As any principal can tell us, losing a student is heartbreak, devastation with no reprieve.

Before calling in the crisis response team, I called my wife for strength. In the wake of our student’s death that morning, I followed all the steps we take in a crisis situation: notified central office, called an emergency staff meeting, and then waited for the AP testing session to finish before informing all the students in the session what had happened. They were her friends; they had to know first. Just prior to that, I found her brother and walked him to our school resource officer to be driven home. Her parents wanted to be the first to tell him what happened, but the fear in his eyes told me he was guessing hard. He must have read my face.

The day culminated with a live broadcast from our in-house TV production studio to the student body. I shared the story with them, simply confirming for some what happened. That evening the athletic director and I visited her parents at home. She was the third of our 1,700 student family to die tragically in the past four years. I know and feel that any child’s passing is a tragedy; some grip a whole school community.

When I arrived early at school the next morning I was greeted at my office door by the school psychologist. Before he really had a chance to say anything, I started to rattle off actions for the day to take care of students, staff, and parents.

Patiently, he waited for me to finish. We found seats across from one another. Sunlight settled on us through the office windows. He gave pause, looked me in the eye to get my attention, and asked me what I needed. The guilt I felt for his asking me this was overwhelming.

“Well, I think I need to rewind about 24 hours and be up there at the intersection to stop that truck. Otherwise, I don’t need anything.”

He waited for what I said to sink into me and then let me know he was there to help me too, but I’ve never been very good at expressing my own needs. I have never met an educator who really can. We almost always express our needs in terms of student needs.

I challenge any teacher to ask and answer this question without naming something that is meant to help a child: “What do I need?” A teacher is a parent in every sense of the word. When passengers on an airliner, we are all trained to don a dropped, clear-plastic oxygen mask before putting it on our child, but we are all revolted by that thought.

Using a pyramid to represent hierarchy, we have long structured human needs from basic to the most profound as defined by Abraham Maslow. I think there is no coincidence that we have also structured school leadership as a hierarchy as well. I offer a Venn diagram and propose that three communities or sets of needs merge in a school: those of students, teachers (including support staff), and administrators. At the point of merger is the set containing our most vital need, the need to actualize. Each of us needs to become everything we are meant to become, and we need each other to do it.

In a school, needs become communal, and I believe, less hierarchical and more situational. People tend to rely on one another in order to realize their needs. I hesitate to say that we need from one another; rather, we need one another.

As these merging sets of needs grow and distend from lack of satisfaction and clarity of moral purpose, they can tend to squeeze and shrink our central merger of actualization. I think that many teachers today feel the pain of this state. I also think that students have felt this pain for a long time: the pain of deferred needs and dreams. Often, as I illustrated above, administrators are the last to even express a need, let alone a need from someone else at school.

So the question is, “What do administrators need from teachers?” The answer is that administrators need teachers and students. I have never felt that we need something from them. We need them. We need their relationships, their friendships, their dreams and achievements, and their acceptance. There is really no hierarchy with leadership; people construct a hierarchy to manage.

In turn and in merger, we all need each other as we work toward the moral purpose of learning. When we realize our overlapping needs, we lean toward problem solving rather than evils; we merge around creativity rather than fear; and we actualize individually and as a community. We can put ourselves first to save children, and we can put them first to save us. We synergize.

When I think in these terms, I can frame the relationship I had with my departed student: the child I watched running – long red hair trailing her like a comet’s tail – across the soccer field two weeks before her passing. I needed to be the one who shouldered her passing for the school, to console her parents, to honor her, and to be someone on whom the teachers and students could depend. I would give anything to change what happened; I was needed.

Dear Scott,

I haven’t really answered your question, “What do administrators need from teachers?” Instead, I’ve deferred to a colleague who has a most unique perspective. I’d like to share some background about him- before you read his story and response to your question. By the way, I’ve always liked to color outside the lines of work so you are getting something you didn’t ask for- two blogs in one day!

Dr. Matt Haas currently serves as secondary director for Albemarle County Public Schools. Until two years ago, he led a high school of around 1700 students. This past spring Matt came into my office, sat down at my stained and worn country-kitchen worktable. Looking me in the eye, he said, “I need to ask you something.”

He looked a bit nervous, not a usual state for Matt, and my thoughts immediately turned to a concern that perhaps something was really not going well for him. Instead, the question he asked shocked me, compelled me, and indeed moved me.

I was forced to sit, silent for a moment, to contemplate a response to a question I had never been asked by a central office instructional leader. “May I teach a class in a high school next year?”

My first thought, I confess, was how would Matt ever be able to do his job as an administrator. Then, words floated back to me from my first administrative mentor, “Pam, if teachers come into your office with a new idea they want to try out, give them a chance. Even if you believe it won’t work, do NOT say no. Figure out how to make it work. As soon as you start saying no, you will close down the potential for growth and creativity forever more in your school.”

I took a deep breath, pushed away the list of Matt “to dos” for the next year, and said, “yes.” Then, I asked him, “why?” His response came without hesitation, “The last time I taught a class was in the 20th century. I think I need to experience teaching in the 21st.”

This year, Matt holds down his day job as Secondary Director and teaches a heterogeneous group of 30 ninth grade English/Language Arts learners. These two jobs now often keep him up after midnight. He writes in his journal about his experiences and I hope he’ll eventually blog for the education world. He’s tried out Poll Everywhere as a personal response system and found that almost all his students have cell phones. He’s using Edmodo with the class.

Tech learning curve? It’s been a bit of a problem, but he says his kids can teach him just about anything he wants to do with tech apps. He’s asked for a document camera so he can share printed work more easily to facilitate group conversations. He’s also shared his frustrations with me about the same tech challenges faced by colleagues in the classrooms around him- time to learn new skills, infrastructure, tech access, etc.

Most importantly, Matt’s found out what happens to kids in his class who don’t have dictionaries in their home- let alone tech devices and proximity to Internet access. Despite their learning struggles, he worries every day about these learners because he sees such potential in them. He shared that they take to tech-accelerated work like “ducks to water” and he knows he’s opening critical learning pathways for them.

He’s figuring out how to support them with extra access options at school and is securing devices they can check out for home use. However, he also experiences angst because these learners without Internet access can’t get 24/7 chances to collaborate and network with peers who have home devices. He worries about every one of his learners, but he’s especially concerned about those who are blocked from participating in the full range of learning options available to kids who simply are born into middle class homes with college-educated parents. So, when he uses Poll Everywhere, he’s figured out how kids without cell phones can log responses from his phone. He shared with me recently that one such student took her own iPhoto and turned it into his phone wallpaper. He laughed about that. Then, our conversation turned poignant about this student who doesn’t have a cell phone and the constraints upon her learning.

I originally thought that Matt and I would co-write this piece drawing upon his experiences this year as he puts his feet simultaneously in the two worlds of teaching and administration. Then, when he sent me his initial draft, I felt I could add nothing to what he wrote- no questions, no pithy insights, no perspectives. I think he nailed it. I’m learning from his experiences this year and believe I will be a better superintendent for saying “yes” to him. I’m learning what it means to be a lifelong learner from Matt. He looks for and finds learners’ strengths rather than dwelling on their deficits. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to make a difference.

My answer to you, Scott, is simple. What I need are more educators who commit, feel, care, think and problem-solve like Matt. Give our children schools full of “Matts” and I believe we can change the industrial hierarchical model of teaching, learning and administration.

Regards,

Pam