Category Archives: professional learning

#EduCon, Shawn Achor on happiness and work, Gratitude, and Action

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Typically, during an intensive moment of learning and growth, I try to be expeditious in my reflecting and blogging. Particularly in the last two years of my life, I have practiced to make writing a daily habit of mind and hand. Nevertheless, for whatever reasons, I have been slower to reflect in writing and in pixels about my recent experiences at #EduCon 2.4. I think I needed (and perhaps still need) more time and space to let this fine wine of an experience breathe and bouquet.

What’s more, I just discovered, thanks to a tweet, that Shelley Krause archives the reflections from #EduCon attendees. Now, in addition to my “excuses” above, I think I want to read more of those reflections as I work to weave my thinking into the tapestry of others’ thoughts.

Shelley Krause, @butwait, archives the reflections from #EduCon 2.4
http://bit.ly/educon24archive

Then, this morning, I watched a 12 minute TED talk – “Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work.” While watching, I resolved myself, at the least, to record three gratitudes that I feel from attending #EduCon.

Gratitude #1 from #EduCon 2.4

I felt that I was with “my tribe” and I could hear the speaking of my native tongue. At times, I do feel a stranger in a strange land. Occasionally, as I speak and work for school change and formal educational transformation, I perceive glances that communicate to me that I might as well be speaking a rare dialect from a single island in the Solomon archipelago. At EduCon, however, I felt a sense of “coming home” to folks who spoke my native tongue. We spent no time really on the “why’s” of school evolution…instead we spent our tribal time working through the “how’s” and the “what’s.” Our purpose was, and is, unified, and we workshopped constantly on details of implementation. I felt a sense that all accepted already a deep understanding that traditional schooling is imbalanced, at least a bit, toward adult convenience…when we should be working diligently to blur the lines between “real life” and school – to ensure that students are creators of understanding, not mere consumers of already-processed information.

Many people there were familiar to me, yet I had met only a couple face to face. Through blogging and tweeting – really practices of thinking out loud and learning in public – I built on top of foundations already constructed online. First-time face-to-face meetings were often accompanied by hugs – we felt we knew each other to a considerable degree, and we could start from that comfort of connectedness.

Be clear – we did not always agree. Healthy disagreement and variety of perspective was pervasive. Yet we started on a platform of already-constructed shared values, shared vocabulary, and shared respect. And the sharing was a fundamental attribute of those present – “learn, share, repeat.”

Gratitude #2 from #EduCon 2.4

I appreciated that the conference lived in a school, rather than in a conference center. On Friday evening, a panelist remarked that environment is not a strong determinant of being able to learn. While I understand his intended message – that learners can learn anywhere – I believe strongly that physical environment and surrounding play a huge role in learning. EduCon took place almost entirely at Science Leadership Academy. I think this setting played a huge role in my first gratitude – I feel at home in schools where students and teachers and parents are meandering and pursuing understanding of our world. Moreover, the SLA students essentially ran the show. When I entered the building for the first time, Jeff, a senior, asked if I would prefer a paper or e-copy of the program. When I said I wanted an e-copy, he asked if I wanted PDF or e-pub on iBook. After downloading the iBook version and perusing, I asked Jeff who made this beautiful piece. “We did. The students. It’s been a project of ours.” Jeff was the chief EduConcierge. Cameras and webcasts were peopled by students, and adults seemed to shy away from doing anything that could be lead by a student. Several of the sessions (conversations) were led and facilitated by students. Bravo! Learners were learners, regardless of age, and the school environment made for an intimacy of learning that, I believe, would have been less rich in a conference center.

Gratitude #3 from #EduCon 2.4

I am thankful that the conversations are purposeful, ongoing, and action oriented. These EduCon folks are DOERS. At times, I feel immersed mostly in talk at other professional-development sessions. EduCon was about bringing DOERS together. Most sessions ended with calls to action…”Write down one or two things you will do differently on Monday, next week, next month. Then, tell a table mate. Then, stay accountable to the connections you are making here at EduCon. Go do something.” Web 2.0 tools were employed purposefully and intentionally to propagate the conversations.

The sessions are termed “conversations,” and it seems expected that the face-to-face time at EduCon will serve to catalyze ONGOING conversations and actions. Meet-ups galore geared towards ways to keep the dialogues, discussions, and DOING alive. Use of existing and developing online connections provide means and motivation to “myelenate” these axons and dendrites of networked action and implementation. The proteins of the innovators’ DNA were double-helixing without pause.

Steve Goldberg encourages us to be resolved to DO after #EduCon
http://educonres2012.wordpress.com/

Liz Davis reflects on #EduCon 2.4 and reminds us to ask, “What if…?”
http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/2012/01/educon-24-reflections-2012.html

More reflection will come from me. Next, I need to read others’ reflections. I was in numerous spaces with people smarter, wiser, and more experienced than I. They helped me level up. They motivated me. I want to keep learning from them and with them. Yes, I will have much more on which to reflect. I have much more to do.

And I am grateful.

Synergy2Learn, #EduCon 2.4, #Synergy8 – Questions are the way points on the path of wisdom

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How are you engaging learners in community-issues problem solving? Is your school contemplating and implementing more project-based learning? Do you find it challenging to dig into high-quality PBL? Do you wish you could share stories (like around a campfire) about how to utilize real-world issues to guide instruction, curriculum, pedagogy, and learning? Wish you were elbow-to-elbow with a tribe engaged in a project about PBL?!

On Saturday, January 28, Jill Gough and Bo Adams will be facilitating a conversation at EduCon 2.4: “Synergy – Questions are the way points on the path of wisdom.” We hope you can join the conversation. We plan to 1) share our stories about Synergy 8, 2) elicit others’ stories about how they engage in deep-level PBL at their schools, and 3) ask and respond to a big “What if…” question – What if we built a network of people who were taking on the challenges of community-issues problem solving with adult learners and student learners alike?

We might even start a blog to help connect us all…Synergy2Learn. Let’s build something together…It’s About Learning and Experiments in Learning by Doing!

“Hey, let’s send Bo a quick video of what we’ve been white-boarding!” #IdeasWorthSpreading

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For years, we have been working in the Junior High to “tear down the walls” that define the typical egg-crate culture of schools. As a faculty PLC, among other techniques, we have used Twitter, peer visits, instructional rounds, lesson study, job-embedded/regular team meetings, “FedEx Days,” and “campfire storytelling.” Every time we share, a connection-point on a virtual spider web gets planted. From these nodes of stickiness, more connections have the potential of being formed.

I am blessed with an amazing faculty and staff of 82 people; I am blessed to be among them, and I am blessed to be one of them. I am blessed to lead and serve with them.

This week, a new blessing occurred. Two Science 6 teachers met during an “off-day” during exam week to do some planning for the new learning challenge they are developing around global climate change. THEY SENT ME A VIDEO SUMMARY OF THEIR MORNING! The video and the email exchange are embedded below (with permission from the teachers).

I was so excited to get this unsolicited piece of campfire storytelling! I could see and hear Alison and Brenda in their actual voice with facial cues. I love the excitement and energy in their dialogue and countenances. I love that they are taking risks and trying new things. I love that they are willing to share.

For some brief moments, they seemed tentative about sharing this beyond just me. They wondered if they should “spiff it up.” I love it “un-spiffed!” Un-spiffed is spontaneous and tool-like. The video does not need to be production-perfect…it is, instead, process-perfect. They used a tool to share in a more personal way, and they helped me learn and share in their moments of planning. What a gift. What a perfect gift.

From: Alison George
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:51
To: Bo Adams
Subject: 6th grade update

Working hard all morning, just wanted to share what we accomplished

From: Bo Adams
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:33
To: Alison George, Brenda Cobler
Subject: Re: 6th grade update

I LOVE THE VIDEO! I LOVE THE VIDEO! Thank you for “including me” in your planning by sharing a short summary of what you’ve been diligently working on! What a gift to be able to see and hear your brainstorming in your actual voice.

May I PLEASE post this to my blog and write about how much I loved receiving such a clip? May I share with Jill for an upcoming faculty-meeting share?

THANK YOU!

From: Alison George
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:48
To: Bo Adams
Subject: Re: 6th grade update

Sure, are you actually considering showing the video in the faculty meeting? (we might want to spiff it up with some actual class footage if so)  We just did this on the fly and didn’t think it would be shown to the entire faculty.

From: Bo Adams
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:20
To: Alison George, Brenda Cobler
Subject: Re: 6th grade update

If you don’t want me to use it for mtg or blog, I will honor your wishes, of course. However, PLEASE DO NOT “spiff it up.” I love it as it is! You two used a technology to communicate with me and include me and inform me. You innovated, instead of sending me a bullet-list or a voice mail. You made it Web 2.0! It is beautiful and “perfect” in my opinion!

From: Alison George
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:08
To: Bo Adams
Cc: Brenda Cobler
Subject: Re: 6th grade update

Ok go ahead and use it, we love to be perfect!

New creation: culinary, jazz-fusion luminescence in teaching – PLCs as surgical-musical-chefs

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Working to understand better the functions and processes of PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) – this is a constant pursuit and area of deep investigation and learning for me. I am coming to believe, more and more, that high-functioning PLCs are like some hybrid-cross consisting of the following parts: chefs, surgical teams, and jazz musicians.

The three TED talks below are interesting and intriguing in their own, content-specific right. However, I think all three offer metaphorical meta-lessons about the nature of PLCs – teams of teachers working to learn with each other for the ultimate purpose of enhanced student learning. All three TED talks, when woven together into a common braid, speak to the power of CREATING SOMETHING NEW AS A TEAM. Great PLCs are like the innovative team of chefs at Moto – stretching concept and experimenting for fulfilling and engaging one’s appetite and taste buds (analogous to quenching the thirst for knowledge and wisdom). Great PLCs are like the collaborating surgeons who have discovered that luminescent dyes can be employed to light-up that which needs to be preserved and that which needs to be cut out (analogous to curriculum re-design and systemic formative assessment practices). Great PLCs are like the improvisational harmony of a jazz quartet that measures their successes by their level of responsiveness rather than by any sort of fixed-mindset worrying about mistakes (analogous to the thoughtful development of teamwork and use of RTI – response to intervention). Collectively, the three talks also point to the balance of art and science that seems essential to crafting the alloy which is a team of people working together to CREATE.

The Creation Project

This past semester, the English 7 team of the Junior High PLC developed a student-learning challenge about the nature of creation and creativity. This team of teachers acted in that careful blend of artists and scientists, and they utilized the professional practices of lesson study and instructional rounds to develop a common lesson and common assessment for their classes of English. Instead of simply sitting and being consumers of creation-archetype understanding, the students would become world creators themselves. [This reminds me of a recent post from Jonathan Martin: “Fab Labs and Makerbots: ‘Turning Consumers into Creators’ at our School.” Who knows…this may even partially inspire the next iteration of the world creations described below!]

Below you can find a Scribd document that provides more details about the learning challenge created by this team of teacher-learners. To me, they behaved something like that team of innovative chefs at Moto…that team of integrated-thinking surgeons pioneering the use of luminescent surgery…that team of improvisationally-responsive jazz musicians. This team of teachers is creating together in harmony – they are prototyping a product, as well as a process for using lesson study and instructional rounds to derive a better dish, a more successful surgery, a more beautiful harmony. They are innovating and creating. This stretch will provide potential for a further stretch next time. Their muscles are learning to work this way – a way that has been foreign to egg-crate culture schools for far too long.

“I’m passing along the “nuts and bolts” of our “What in the World?” Creativity Project, which is the product of our collaborative work in the 7th PLT…what a gift!”

What In the World – Creation Project (used with permission)

Peer Visit – Mackey visit from Snyder 11-16-11 (used with permission)

I am working on a blog post about this Creation Project – from the principal’s point of view. I plan to include the actual assignment document, and I am hoping to have a few more artifacts that point to ways that we (teachers, educators, etc.) can work on “teachers working in teams” and “integrated studies.” I think your peer visit serves as a superb artifact of how ideas and lessons can “seep” and “ooze” across disciplinary borders when teachers visit each other’s classrooms. [Brief backstory (from email to teacher requesting permission to use this peer visit)]

Now, we have a teacher of the subject of history interacting with a teacher of the subject of English. What interconnected learning and integrated studies might emerge from this seed? In other areas, we have World Cultures teachers teaming with Science 6 teachers to create a semester learning-challenge on global climate change in various world regions. We have PE and biology teachers crafting ideas of courses devoted to the understanding of the human body from an integrated approach through anatomy and exercise physiology.

We have distributed R&DIY “culinary, jazz-fusion luminescence” developing among our learners – teachers and students. Those are ideas worth spreading. Additionally, those teachers are inspiring me to think about the worlds that I would contribute to making. Hmmm….

“Fallor ergo sum” – St. Augustine, 1200 years prior to Descartes

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Do we structure school in such a way that we truly promote and achieve that intricate balance between: 1) wanting to know and to understand and 2) keeping perspective that we have to be wrong quite a bit in order to gain deep knowledge and understanding?

By the time you are 9 years old, you have already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits, and, second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes. We learn these really bad lessons really well. And a lot of us…deal with them by just becoming perfect little A students…perfectionists…overachievers. – Kathryn Schulz, On being wrong TED Talk, near 7:00 mark, March 2011 (emphasis added)

Is the secret to great success never to be wrong? Of course not! I cannot imagine that even one teacher of children (or adults, for that matter) truly believes that we define “the successful” as those people who always get the right answer, or even as those who tend to get the right answer. Or do we? How do we view our “A students” versus our “C students? Perhaps I have my head in the sand. I don’t think so, though. Yet, I wonder if we people who help to structure the workings of school are ensuring that the fundamental pillars of school reflect this basic principle:

I thought this one thing was going to happen, and then something else happened instead. – Kathryn Schulz quoting Ira Glass of This American Life, On being wrong TED Talk, near 14:00 mark, March 2011

Do we overly penalize learners for their mistakes? Does the traditional, typical school currency – grades – serve best those at the core of the instructional-learning exchange? Do we allow for “returns” to be made after a transaction, or are “all sales final?” Do we allow for enough “do overs,” prototypes, iterative attempts, and second chances? Do we model our classrooms and learning spaces on the real-life tendency for all of us humans to be great mistake makers as we risk to know and to understand our world? Do we facilitate learners growing from “white belts” to “black belts” by awarding them with an average – “a grey belt?” As educators, do we understand the 10,000 hour theory? Are our scope and sequences reflectively cognizant of the 10,000 hour theory? Do we tend to sort and label, or do we tend to recognize that mistakes come with regret that should be embraced if we hope to grow from our errors?

If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or loose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets…the point it to not hate ourselves for having them….We need to learn to love the flawed imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly; it reminds us that we know we can do better. – Kathryn Schulz, Don’t regret regret TED Talk, near 16:00 mark, November 2011

An Intro at the Conclusion

This morning, I had planned to work on my resume. It needs some updating, and I need a job, so I thought this morning would provide me a good opportunity to revise and edit my curriculum vitae. As I awoke from sleep, I even seemed to have some revision ideas on my mind. But then another thing happened instead.

As I sat to enjoy those first sips of morning coffee, I decided to check my Feeddler app – my way of organizing and reading my Google RSS Reader. In the queue was a new TED talk from Kathryn Schulz, the “wrongologist.” I love her work, so I thought I would watch her latest published talk while waking up with my coffee. Then, I would get to “work” on my resume. But then another thing happened instead. I was reminded of this powerful blog post by friend, colleague, and former student Peyten Dobbs. And I remembered the This American Life episode that I listened to during my Saturday afternoon walk with my dog Lucy.

I felt I had important threads dangling loosely in the wind of my thinking. I wondered if writing a bit would help me ground and weave some of those threads together. I puzzled over Peyten’s feelings expressed in her blog post, and I empathized about my own similar feelings from being a perfectionist-bent student of old.

So…do I now have all of these mysteries about grades and being wrong “all figured out?” No. But I am further down the path than I was when I awoke. Do I have revisions completed for my resume? No. If I were to need to “turn in” my resume to a teacher for grading, I fear I would receive an F or an incomplete. Yet, I engaged in some lifelong learning this morning about the nature of being wrong, the nature of regrets, and the structure of schools. I learned. But for that I will receive no formal grade. I may later regret that I don’t have a revised copy of my resume ready on Sunday, December 4. That’s okay. My regrets remind me that I can do better. And I tend to engage in super efforts to learn and grow and get better. Where does that go on my resume?