Yesterday, I observed the Algebra I team deliver the lesson “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” They invited me to observe – as principal, as well as a pseudo-member of their team (pseudo only because I do not formally teach the course known as Algebra I). This team has engaged in lesson study before.
When I entered the room, I made an instantaneous decision NOT to observe in the manner I usually do. Typically, I take narrative notes, as I was taught to do in graduate school for educational leadership and supervision. In the moment, I decided to take video notes. Using my Flip camera, I recorded short, approximately-fifteen-second clips of classroom action. After I had three or four clips, I uploaded the videos to my MacBook Pro, and moved the videos into a Keynote slide deck. I titled slides based on the “learning progression” stage of the lesson. Then, I repeated this multi-step process several times. At the end of the class, the Algebra I team had a twenty-three-slide deck of video-embedded resources that they could review for their lesson study concerning “Leaning on a Jet Plane.” The deck was readily available because we share a Dropbox as a team.
Below is a PDF version of the deck – so you will not be able to view the videos. However, this Scribd doc will give you a simplified visual of what we now possess to review as a team – full of video. Now, to continue the fabulous professional practice of Lesson Study!
On July 19, I wrote a blog post entitled, “Be safe and teach them to drive!” A couple of readers added very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. The discussion about cyber safety and digital citizenship is CRITICAL, and there are many voices to consider as we form a united chorus of educators and parents committed to keeping our children safe, while guiding them to learn the positive demands of being responsible and respectful digital citizens.
Embedded in the post is a slide deck from Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org and founder of SafeKids.com. I found the slide deck to be thoughtfully rendered and thought provoking. While I admit that my philosophy aligns with Mr. Magid’s presentation, I do think that we must consider the points of his message no matter what our online philosophy. Doing so helps us better prepare for the critical challenge of keeping our kids safe while teaching them how to drive in a connected world.
Recently, the History Department at my school has circulated the TED talk from Chimamanda Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story.
The talk is a beautiful challenge for us all to remain diligent about learning the complexity of people – not to rely on the shallowness and incompleteness of a single story. In the talk, Adichie makes numerous statements of profound importance, full of thought-provoking resonance. I include two quotes below:
So that is how to create a single story. Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.
The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.
Now, Adichie’s message is richly and deeply human. And I mean not to cheapen the message by reflecting on just one of the applications that is presently poignant for me. However, I believe a number of schools are in danger of committing the “danger of a single story” as it relates to the way in which some view global connectedness for young learners. As I explained in my post, Be Safe and Teach Them to Drive, I believe adamantly in keeping children safe. Nevertheless, I also worry about the power of some single messages – some “single stories” – to demonize the effect of the online community on young learners. Certainly, there are dangers, but there are also amazing opportunities to connect with countless teachers and co-learners. We can make our decisions as schools from a perspective overly dominated by fear, or we can make our decisions as schools from a perspective more evenly dominated by positive possibility. Both demand that we protect children and keep them safe, but they are not at all alike in how the perspectives shape how we step and walk down the path – with anxiety-ridden trepidation or with confident thoughtfulness.
A tapestry of perspectives needs to be woven from a diversity of view points and multiple stories – stories rich in visual detail and purposeful imagery. Guiding our students to become global citizens who understand the danger of a single story demands that we do so.
Synergy 8 is an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized, non-graded, community-issues, problem-solving course for 8th graders at The Westminster Schools. Jill Gough and I co-created the course, and we co-facilitate it, as well. This morning, I posted a summary of our engagement in the “KP Challenge.” Today, we initiated the process of Game Planning – creating game plans to frame and scaffold just about any project work. Ms. Gough and I captured the beginnings of the game plans in a short, one-minute video:
Interestingly, we are using the same “Game Plan” framework with our adult teacher-leaders in our Junior High School PLCs (professional learning communities).[See an example here.]
The Synergy team is utilizing tools that are employed by the pedagogical leaders in our middle school. I find that parallelism so exciting!
Last week in Synergy 8, our team of 26 established and integrated our triad of foundational course-communication tools – Schoology, Posterous, and WordPress. After all, a learnopolis needs an infrastructure for advanced communication. Additionally, we began utilizing and practicing our #1 tool in Synergy – the observation journal. In the upcoming weeks, our team observations will allow us to develop projects of our choosing that address community needs about which we are curious…and about which we care.
This week, on Monday, August 29, we began Synergy with this short piece:
We wanted to use a compelling hook for enlisting the students in a prototypical project. By engaging this project as an “alpha project” for this semester’s Synergy 8 team, we could “learn by doing” within the context of a project – a project started by last year’s Synergy 8 crew. After watching the video, we coached the team through a process of determining methods and action steps for researching the perceived problem of keeping Malone Dining Hall clean. Based on the team’s gamestorming, we focused on four possible methods: 1) direct observation of Malone, 2) interviews with homerooms regarding KP, 3) interviews with Malone staff and director Robert Nash, 4) student body survey.
On Tuesday, we used Poll Everywhere to explore how we might operationalize our teams. Based on the results, we decided to jump into a “spontaneous lesson plan shift.” If we were playing football…we called an audible. We used the results to walk through eight mediated journal prompts created on the fly. We explored graphical analysis and numeracy, and we examined some misconceptions about what the Poll Everywhere data were telling us. The data revealed some teamwork issues, too, and the team members proposed solutions to the issues. We then implemented a solution and retook the Poll Everywhere survey.
Now, the Synergy 8 team is distributed in sub-teams, and we are working to develop the action steps needed to implement our community problem-solving. Before jumping in too deep, though, we paused to read Dan and Chip Heath’s Switch chapter on “Finding the Bright Spots.” We believe there is so much to learn from the example of Dr. Sternin and the Vietnamese-nutrition project. Now we plan to:
1. Enlist the community as partners in the problem-solving process, instead of swooping in and acting like we have all the answers.
2. Study the bright spots of what’s working and strategize how we can do more of that good stuff.
3. Empower the community to sustain the change needed to improve the situation.
Through this alpha project – the KP Challenge – we are addressing a serious community issue, we are bridging the work begun in Synergy 8 2010-11, and we are modeling a project process that can frame future projects that we undertake in Synergy 8. All the while, we are integrating content and skills that are typically distributed and segregated among various “departments.” We are engaged in a scientific process, we are collecting and analyzing data, we are discussing human psychology and sociology, we are drafting persuasive pieces and developing interview questions and protocols.
it's about learning 