Tag Archives: reflection

It is about relationships and balance

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I hope I can keep this short and powerful. In the past few days, I have experienced a number of thoughts that weave together for me – all about the interesting intersection of relationships, technology, and learning. Let me see if I can draft a thesis statement:

As a learner in the 21st century, I strive to find balance among face-to-face relationships and virtual-tool connections, and I realize that both can enhance or conflict with the other. I am the fulcrum for my balance, and I will be in a state of dynamic equilibrium, not static equilibrium.

Through 21st century tools (like Twitter, WordPress, Google Reader, etc.), I can co-build a rich network of “pen pals.” Yet, I need to be mindful of not having my nose pointed at a screen at the expense of those humans most closely situated around me currently. It is a balance. Picture a scale adjusting to equilibrium as different weights are added and deleted from each side – the face-to-face side and the virtual-tool side.

For almost all of my life, I have been a runner. [Sorry for jarring shift. I promise this is a connected thread of thought…at least to me.] Since I was 9 years old, I have run most days of my life. At various points in my life, though, I have experienced ebbs and flows…ups and downs. Like a balance adjusting. And it has felt cyclical. Some years, I have trained to the point of being super competitive (in 2007, I was the fourth ranked short-distance triathlete in the state of Georgia). At those times, a middle-distance run for me is about 15 miles at a pretty fast clip. But I teeter close to over doing it. And the time comes at the expense of other life pursuits. This week, I struggled to run a mile. Seriously. I have been neglecting my running life for several months – the longest bout of that I have experienced since third grade when I started running 31 years ago. My son wanted to run a one-mile fun run, so I dusted off the shoes last Monday morning. I walked for 12 minutes and ran for 8 minutes. That was the entire work out. I was sore, sore, sore the next day. I had neglected a good balance of exercise. And I ridiculously thought that starting “training” on Monday would help me for a Saturday event. Thank goodness it was a Kindergarten mile. But I learned a valuable lesson…again.

I am blessed to have a powerful memory of when my running has gone overboard and when it has been neglected entirely. SO, I know from experience that I can get back to longer distances with less soreness, but I have to practice and be consistent. I have trained on that route before, and there is an implementation dip (as Michael Fullan adeptly explains in a number of his books) when I start doing something new, or even relatively new. And I need to be mindful not to do too much, too soon. And I need to stay mindful of not letting running – or whatever the action is – become my single pursuit that runs my life rather than the other way around. I am the fulcrum. I decide when to run – not too little or not too much, but just right. Likewise, I decide when the mobile technology is turned on and turned off – not too little and not too much, but just right. I decide.

Several colleagues have written this week about the delicate balance of social networking and face-to-face relationship-building. I encourage you to read them – I am pasting them in below. The balance is like running. If we want to be healthy, we have to find a balance. If we do too much or too little of one activity, we will get out of balance. When we strive to get that balance back, we will experience some soreness – one way or the other. But the soreness helps us calibrate our efforts. It is formative assessment and feedback about getting that equilibrium just right – in this case, the equilibrium among building a PLN and enhancing professional practice AND sustaining and improving those face-to-face relationships that are essential, critical, and vital.

It’s About Building Relationships | PCHSdirectorBLOG http://davemeister.net/2011/04/16/its-the-relationships-stupid/

Losing humanity? http://lynhilt.com/losinghumanity/

April 15, 2011: Jason Mollica – the3six5 http://the3six5.posterous.com/april-15-2011-jason-mollica

My Principal Doesn’t Need to Blog, Metanoia http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2275

A Fair Comparison https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

10 Minutes to Blog – A Random List of Learnings Today https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

What connections do you find? How’s your balance?

A fair comparison

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Yesterday at lunch, I commented to a faculty member how impressed I was with his/her entree into video production of short lesson clips. Who knows what this kind of visual recording and representation could lead to – some great innovation in the future. Not to mention the postive effect it had for some other learners right then and there, in the moment. This person had made a mark to start (see The Dot, by Peter Reynolds). I was genuinely proud of the efforts and outcomes, and I had seen this person’s excitement earlier. After I named a few specifics, the faculty member said something like, “Thank you. But I can’t do it like [so-n-so] can.” Then, we talked about how so-n-so’s been making short video clips and screencasts for over a year. At that point the conversation turned to our children…about a very related issue.

My younger son, JT, thinks he should be able to do everything my older son, PJ, can do. The younger son is 2 1/2 years younger than the older. PJ has had a lot more practice running, scootering, playing video games, drawing, etc. I wish I could think of a convincing, “sticky” way to explain this to JT. If JT wants to make comparisons, which I wish he would’t, then he should compare himself today to PJ 2 1/2 years ago. We could compare (still wish we wouldn’t) PJ frozen in time at 4 years old, so that JT could make an apples-to-apples comparison. Even that, though, would hold its own margin of error and inaccuracies. They are two different people who have practiced different skills.

My lunch colleague has two children, and their family experience has been similar. The youngest wants to “advance artificially” to the level of the oldest. The less experienced makes an unfair comparison to the more experienced. We can understand that children do this, but why do we adults fall prey to such bad comparison practice? [Especially those of us who have read Mindset!]

If we want to use the inequality between the less and more experienced, we could do so just to mark a current reality and a future vision. We could set a goal of what proficiency and mastery look like at various levels of practice and development. Then we would know what a reasonable and fair target would be for a beginner at a new activity, an intermediate at a practiced activity, an advanced at a long-practiced activity. And there wouldn’t have to be a “100,” because the level of proficency and mastery may improve and grow in such a way that a ceiling cannot be artificially set. The ceiling could be broken just like the floor of the 4:00-minute mile was broken by Dr. Roger Bannister. When he did so, a “new possible” emerged, and a number of runners broke the previously sacred barrier in a matter of weeks and short months.

Maybe the most important thing is just to be in motion – to be trying new things and making the mark of current reality – even if one is a brand-new beginner – and setting a goal based on future vision. The gap between current reality and future vision can be frustrating and/or exciting. The distance one travels in the journey is called learning, I think.

We all start as beginners, and we can all can get better through feedback, support, determination, practice, and persistence. Ignore the voices that say we aren’t good enough yet. Pay more attention to the bright spots – what worked that I can do more of to improve. A strong fortress is built one brick at a time. One well-made brick on top of another. One bright spot on another. One successful attempt after thirteen failures and feeling what that success felt like…then reproducing it. It’s not about comparing ourselves to others. It’s about comparing ourselves to standards of future vision so that we can mark our growth and progress, like a child sometimes marks his growth over the years using a door frame and a pencil. But the first step is making a mark on that wall. Then one must grow to see a change in the height of the mark. And only relative to oneself.

It’s not about measuring apples and oranges. It’s about measuring apples to apples. It’s about learning.

What will be your next endeavor? What will you start from scratch? What do you want to get better at? What models of proficiency and mastery will you use? Will you unfairly compare yourself and get frustrated, or will you use another’s example as a future vision of what is possible with effort and practice? Will you maybe even ask them for help and how they got to their current level? Will you make a mark?

Our kids sure could use our good example. So could our colleagues.

10 minutes to blog – a random list of learnings today

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1. I am grateful for the place and the people that I call “work.” My school allowed me a five week sabbatical to do some important things: 1) further my study of the future of schools and schools of the future, 2) temporarily reduce my typical work week from 75-80 hours to about 35 hours so that I could spend more time with reflection about 21st century learning and, more importantly, my wife and two sons. By doing so, the school sent a powerful message to me and others – you are important to us…your health and happiness and passions for learning are important to our work as a school and a community of people and learners. Many people stepped into the gap for five weeks so that I could take this opportunity and make the most of it. A host of people did more than they even usually do so that I could have this sabbatical. Unboundary hosted me as a 40-year-old intern, and several people welcomed me to their schools (Lovett, Trinity, Bay School, and St. Gregory) for extended visits and observations! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

2. It is an adjustment to return to work and the routine of the usual after a rare and special opportunity to do the unusual. Also, it is virtually impossible to summarize my five week sabbatical in the time and space that many folks want me to do so. I am so thankful for those who have read my blog, posterous, and tweets during my sabbatical…we have been in an ongoing, virtual conversation that enabled some richer face-to-faces today! Thank you readers and commenters and encouragers. And thanks to the fellow sabbatical-experiencer who gave me much good advice today! Invaluable!

3. Saying “welcome back” and seeking out a newly returned person are critically important. I so appreciated the folks who hugged my neck today and, at least, seemed to be glad that I was back. I can get so caught up in my busy-ness that I do not do a consistently good job of this when other people return from an absence – a family medical leave, a conference, a wedding or funeral, etc. – and today I got a taste of how important this human connection is. It feels good to be welcomed back and asked about the time away! I love my faculty, and I need to make sure I show it. This is one important way. Also, I particularly appreciated the folks who simply came to say hello and talk…no work-related question/problem to ask when done with the chit-chat. They just wanted to talk about my time and experience and theirs. I need to do this same for others more often.

4. People need to slow down. Years ago, in the tunnel at Westminster, on my way back from lunch, Lauren Martindale (a former student of mine and now a many-years graduate) said, “Mr. Adams, slow down. You always seem like you are in such a hurry. You would be much cooler if you reduced your speed from place to place.” Today, during re-entry, I remembered Lauren’s sage advice to me. Many of us are too hurried – trying to do too much. We should teach less, learn more…moan less, celebrate more…hurry less, enjoy more. My sabbatical helped me get re-balanced – like good car maintenance – and I hope I can maintain that deliberate, careful choice of pace and number of irons in the fire. Choosing the “right” number of things on one’s plate means we can do more (all?) of them with more greatness. The more we try to bite off – the faster we try to get through the tunnel – the more we miss opportunities to really understand some important things in life.

5. My four year old cried last night and tonight that my sabbatical was over. “Daddy’s ‘sabbitical’ is over…I wish he was still on it!” That’s good feedback. The future-oriented feedback that John Hattie explains is the real, critical kind of feedback.

6. I am so blessed to work with those I worked with today. We had an in-service, professional development day today. We structured it as a “FedEx” day with differently structured time for people to get together in self-assigned groups to collaborate on innovative ideas and educational possibilities. In the morning, I worked with my PLC-F (professional learning community facilitators) team to brainstorm some lesson study possibilities around PBL (project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, place-based learning) and current events. It was so fun to work this way and have the gift of time and willing collaborators and creative thinkers. Then, I got to do it again in the afternoon with a team of 6th and 8th grade teachers of students in math (I meant to write it that way – not “teachers of math”). For a few minutes this morning, our whole faculty interacted and engaged with our developing vision statement for learning in this century, and then I had the good fortune to work on two teams who are taking this vision seriously…taking ownership of it…wanting to roll up sleeves and do the work that will narrow the gap between our current reality and our vision. SO EXCITING! Those who took initiative and advantage of today surely got a lot and gave a lot!

7. According to a post from a colleague and blogger I admire greatly, I am a scientist! SEE HERE FOR CHARACTERISTICS THAT I USE IN MY WORK AS AN EDUCATOR!

8. My PLN is a great source of wisdom and encouragement – I received the following email moments ago. It was titled “new lenses,” I think after a blog post I recently completed for edu180atl. I was not supposed to write for 4-8-11, but I would do just about anything for my tribe of fellow educators on Twitter and the blog-osphere. And the idea for the post came from a blogger that I follow and have never met. Being connected is the way to be. Working alone, without a tribe, is not my preferred way to work…and I think not the best way to work for anyone. Have a tribe!

Bo,

As I was channeling my inner-origami artist and simultaneously figuring out how to get a little bit of TED Stage magic, I was thinking of you as you embark on this new beginning. You know how much I LOVE Maxine Greene’s Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times, but this especially resonated as I reread her words this evening:

Sometimes, introduced to a reflective or a learning community, someone will become aware of the dearth of understanding in her/his own domain, of the blocks to knowing and to questioning. Sometimes, a teacher or a relative or a friend may pay heed, as does the singer Shug Avery in The Color Purple (Walker, 1982). She suggests to Miss Celie a way of being without “that old white man” in her head, actually a way of becoming free. Celie writes: “Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?) Not the little wild flowers. Nothing” (p. 25). She, too, made aware of alternatives, can discover that “she feels like a fool” because of what she was never enabled to notice and about which she had never asked.

I love that your sabbatical enabled you to notice the big and the small things. To shed light on all that is possible.

Keep up the fine work, Bo.

9. I started writing about an hour ago. I thought I had NO time to write tonight, but my relatively recent commitment to blogging has caused me to practice writing-to-think and feeling positively compelled to take “just 10 minutes” to get something recorded about today. I am glad that I made the time to write and to think. Also, blogging is just different than the writing I did for years that only I could see – creating the potential that even one reader may comment on a post is a kind of art and potential energy and collective-thinking invitation that I have grown to find invaluable…even if no one comments. (But a comment – of just about any nature – is so great!)

10. I am very excited to read the next edu180atl post. When will it get here in my reader?!

Flying in a Flock

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A particular line from an email I received recently keeps coming back to my mind and making me reflect (the full email can be found in my post from March 15 – “Dumber or Just Different?“):

We have even seen some of our faculty peers engaging in technological multi-tasking by tweeting each other during presentations (so-called “back-channeling”).

If you are a teacher, educator, or school person, do you believe in note taking? Do you encourage, or expect, or even require that your students take notes? Do you assume that note takers are dutifully engaged and processing the information? Do you think that the notes can be used later to remind and refresh the thinking of the note taker? Do you sometimes ask a student who is not taking notes, “Hey, don’t you think you should be taking notes on this stuff?” Perhaps you even use a stronger prompt to elicit a note-taking response. Have you ever considered that note taking is “multitasking?”

Well, tweeting is just a form of note taking! Dare I write it…”21st Century Note Taking!” However, tweeters leverage technology to enrich their notes and interaction with whatever is the source of discussion on the “so-called ‘back-channel.'” Do you ever wish, or have you ever wished, that you could see someone else’s notes? Just a peek, so that you can calibrate your note taking and discover what the other person thinks is interesting, important, or needs-to-be-remembered. Now you can! Just join the hashtag of the back-channel and explore what other engaged note takers are thinking, asking, responding to, contemplating, etc. Perhaps there are too many people in the room for everyone to have a fair shake at audible-voice air time. No worries. Now more people in the room have a voice. One does not have to concentrate on injecting one’s thoughts into the audible conversation, but of course one can do both – tweet and discuss out loud. In fact, in my experience the two forms of participation complement and expand and encourage each other.

Note takers have always been multi-taskers. Now, many are simply “smarter” about it. The connected note takers realize the value of shared, collective, collaborative notes. WE are smarter than me.

Maybe the tweeters understand the advantages to flying in a flock, rather than flying solo.

Dumber or Just Different?

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This week, a colleague at school circulated the email below to a large number of faculty. The content of the inquiry has caused me to really think about some things. Here are a few of them:

  • Kudos to this educator for soliciting dialogue about an important learning issue! I love that instincts were to create a space for discussion and collaboration.
  • Thanks to this educator (and others who designed the PD day) for identifying a way to use in-service time for self-identified interests and innovations!
  • Could the texts we are asking students to read be part of the issue…rather than the length of the texts?
  • Years and years ago, was a similar message part of a tribal campfire discussion? “Villagers, we are having a harder and harder time getting children to tell stories around the campfire. Their oral memories are terrible! They want to look at these things called books. What should we do?” [please excuse the reductionist, less-than-accurate historical detail here]
  • Don’t people who write long books do so by examining small dollups of thinking? Don’t writers of long texts do so by writing smaller dollups of writing?
  • I read a lot of “sound bites” that I categorize with modern day tools so that I “study” an issue intensely from a number of different, inter-connected perspectives. When we think about a printed, long text, isn’t that exactly what we have access to via the words that the author decided to record – all the synthesized thinking that went into the recording of the text?
  • Why do we educators sometimes assume that just because the “kids don’t do it in school, they must not do it?” I am certain that our students are choosing to read and immerse themselves in some longer, richer texts…not because they are assigned in school, but because they are interesting outside of school.
  • Let’s search for the “both/and solution.” Students – all learners – should be able to do both/and…learn in sound bites and backchannels, as well as in longer, deeper texts, as well as…

Dear Colleagues,

Some of you may have seen Bob Ryshke’s recent posting of Mark Bauerlein’s article on thoughtful reading, “Too Dumb for Complex Texts.”  In a similar vein, I offer you a short blog post called “Are We Really Becoming More Stupid?”  Make sure you read the response, too:

http://www.prelude-team.com/blog/2010/10/05/are-we-really-becoming-more-stupid

The post and the response encapsulate neatly two different arguments about the way we (or some of us?) read today. 

My own experience in class over the last 2-3 years has been that of an increasing student unease with spending time with texts or even passages, and I have been wondering whether it is some way related to a rapidly emerging digital culture that privileges sound-bites, personal opinion (not informed judgement), and multi-tasking.  We have even seen some of our faculty peers engaging in technological multi-tasking by tweeting each other during presentations (so-called “back-channeling”).

I would be very interested in participating in a collaborative discussion with some of you about encouraging our students to read slowly and deeply — to give complex texts enough time to breathe.  The next in-service day looks like the perfect time to do this.  Let me know if you’re interested, and let’s start working on a reading list and/or an agenda for the day.

Finally, I thought of this TED talk…