Tag Archives: writing

Real!

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At present, I am sitting at the best kept secret in Atlanta, GA – Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee House. While overlooking the Hooch, I am catching up on my RSS blog feeds. I particularly try to stay current with the Westminster faculty bloggers. Well, I had gotten behind.

Yesterday a tweet caught my attention – a new post from a Westminster JH teacher of 8th grade students who are focused in her class to further develop their writing. The post is titled “A Real Audience,” and it can be found here http://superfluousthought.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/a-real-audience/ (sorry, working on iPad WordPress app). Having seen the tweet, I could not wait to read the actual post this morning.

A mystery solved! On Wednesday, I had received an anonymous email about our dress code in the Junior High. I wondered about somebody creating such an account, but the letter was compelling, so I responded to the request for uniforms. Well, now I am thinking that the anonymous plea and persuasion came from this class of crafty writers looking for a real audience.

I came to the coffee house to sit and think about grading, PBL, and integrated studies. I had no idea my thinking would take such a turn with this blog reading and perceived solution to my recent email mystery. But I am thrilled. If my hypothesis is correct and the email came from writers workshop, then that writing is non-graded. But it was heavily assessed. Isn’t that the best! The student’s letter served a purpose beyond writing for a grade from a teacher. The writing was real, for a real audience. Mine is too. This morning, my learning feels even more real!

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?!

Threads of a Braided Cord…and Myelinating my Network

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This morning, I read about 30 blog posts from my feed reader. How blessed I feel to be connected to so many powerful thinkers – working hard to figure things out – via Twitter, Google Reader, WordPress, etc. Are you a school leader? You don’t need a formal title to be such, of course! How’s your PLN? Is your personal learning network full of ever-expanding nodes held together by evolving silks of connectivity? Are you taking risks, reflecting out loud, writing with your students, and getting up after every fall?

In the past 20 years, we have learned so much about the brain…about how synapses that “fire together, wire together.” Since I began tweeting and blogging, I have magnified the sparks that are firing and wiring my brain. And my social network is a professional network that functions similarly to the biology of my brain. I am grateful for my co-learners who are helping me to myelinate my thinking about schools of the future and the future of schools.

Of the 30 blog posts I read this morning, three in particular seemed to weave together for me. To write is to see what we think…and to write requires active reflection…and developing these habits means making errors and mistakes from which we can learn and grow and improve. Here are the three links to the braided cord of my morning’s thinking…my most recent myelination. What’s wiring your brain? Are you practicing writing, reflecting, and getting up after a fall? Who is in your neural network? Who is challenging you and spurring you to grow?

“Everyone’s a writer. NWP taught me that,” from Bud Hunt and the PLP network

“A Lesson in the Importance of Reflection,” from Jeff Delp (@azjd)

“Fall down seven times, get up eight: The power of Japanese resilience,” from Garr Reynolds

NOTE: Some people fear the “opening up” of so many feeds. I often hear, “I have enough to do without adding Twitter and RSS reads to my list.” If you dare, look at what Bill Ferriter and John Burk have written lately about how social networking saves you time. And never be afraid to “prune.” When I get overwhelmed by my feeds, I sometimes click on “mark all as read” and start with a clean slate. What about all that stuff I am missing? I would have missed it permanently if they were never in my feed reading. I – ME – I get to be in control of my reading…it does NOT control me. Take a chance today…try Twitter…start a blog. You will fall down, but you should get back up. Find the threads of a braided cord for your thinking. Provide some threads for others. That’s truly what learning is all about!

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…

Connections! English and Art

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I really don’t have time to be writing a post, just now, at this moment. However, a team of English teachers in the Junior High School  included me on an email distributing a rubric for a current exploration of the god-teacher archetype, and I am blown away! I feel positively compelled to sing their praises.

Why am I blown away?

  • The rubric is designed for facilitating a detailed feedback to student learners.
  • The rubric is designed for providing feedback about the visual attributes of an assessment submission related to some complex understanding of the archetype.
  • The rubric was developed from the 6+1 Writing Traits Rubric, and the connections among the written word and the visual image are astounding – the direct comparison between the two assessment tools is so cool.
  • The developing teachers worked in PLC to advance their response to the critical questions: 1) what should students learn?, and 2) how will we know if they are learning?
  • The developing teachers include English teachers and an art teacher – the paths to developing project-based learning and integrated studies are more and more becoming the visible, rather than hidden, routes to improved instruction and learning. Collaboration is increasingly important to us as we seek to enhance learning at deep levels.
  • The sharing of the instrument was quick and assumed.
  • I understand how intense this type of assessment work can be, so I appreciate the effort that this extended team put into the process.

I could keep writing bullet points all afternoon. I am so appreciative of these teachers – these lead learners – finding ways to innovate, create, repurpose, and design. THANK YOU!