EdTechTrek

Is there a difference between a “good” teacher and an “effective” teacher? The LA Times recently covered an english teacher who made a significant impact on a tough group of students in one year. The story is worth reading, but here are a few quotations that struck a chord with me.

This 35 year teacher veteran coming from a prestigious prep school into a tough urban school is described in the following situation:

“Holmes had nothing unusual planned (for a lesson where a student asked to be excused for what she thought was a good reason). He considers every lesson, every minute of class time, to be important, and, at age 66, he often stays up past midnight preparing for the next day’s lessons.”

No one can say that being an effective teacher is easy. No one can say that effectiveness can be routine. No one can be effective in the classroom without a great deal of dedication, passion, conviction, knowledge, and skill.

The article goes on to describe various attributes of this teacher in his last year of classroom instruction and also reports on a number of anecdotes. The article goes on to end with this statement describing his last class teaching:

“There are no fireworks, no speeches, no round of applause. Just this: As he walks out the door and heads to the parking lot, Phil Holmes knows that today he delivered a good lesson. He didn’t waste a second. He made the students think.”

Now I know some would take up issue with the word “delivered” and take the philosophical viewpoint that instruction should not be “delivered” but rather experienced and socially constructed, but those same folks would often sacrifice “effectiveness” for poorly implemented cooperative learning, differentiated learning, on-line learning, project-based learning, technology-mediated learning, social learning, problem-based learning… The list goes on. All of these pedagogical structures have merit. But, the bottom line is measurable results that validate effectiveness as a teacher. Here is a teacher that perhaps takes an unpopular approach to teaching. The article does not even mention all of the technology-based tools that he uses to reach a digital generation. I suspect that he uses few to none. But, he gets results… excellent results. Students care about him and appreciate his skillfulness in the classroom.

How do you define effectiveness? Is technology really a required prerequisite? Or, should we let effectiveness and results speak for what should be required?

Edweek discusses a  June report released by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers that surveyed close to 2,000 K-12 public school educators from across the US. It finds that although there have been increases in technology in schools overall, there are still “significant disparities” when it comes to access to computer tools and networks. It also reportst that while many schools have computers, they are often out of date and unreliable. Here are some more statistics that are reported:

• 83% of educators report having 5 or fewer computers in the classroom; > than half report no more than 2.
• > half surveyed use computers for daily administrative tasks
• about half use them to daily communicate with other educators (communicate what?)
• about 40% use technology to monitor student progress (electronic gradebook?)
• about 37% use technology for research and information gathering
• about 32%  use it to teach lessons
• < a fifth of teachers surveyed use technology daily to post student and class information online or to communicate with parents electronically.
• a majority feel that professional development that they received was most effective for noninstructional tasks (hence, the second bullet point here)
• a majority were “highly optimistic about the impact of technology on their jobs and on their students” and that technology positively impacted student motivation

Yet…

• 89% said they view technology as essential to teaching and learning.

What’s missing here?

• No mention of teacher personal learning networks to share and collaborate
• No mention of teachers using technology to further their own professional development
• No mention of students using computers for learning in powerful ways
• No mention of students using networks for collaborative learning

What I find most curious is that the survey itself is so minimalistic in terms of what technology can bring to the teacher-learner. If focuses on access and administrative tool use, research, and teachnolgy as a teaching tool. It does not see the larger picture of the need for systemic change, the need for lifelong teacher learning and growth, and the full potential of networks and computer technologies. What is sad is that it would appear that we, in general, are failing at such a basic level. Although there are certainly pockets of innovation and change, they are not sweeping in scope. Here is a quotation from the report’s executive summary:

“The findings of this study reveal that although all educators and students in public schools
have some access to computers and the Internet, we have few assurances that they are able to
use technology effectively for teaching and learning.”

Well, that’s certainly less than encouragine, isn’t it.

So, we have schools lacking in current tools, lacking in networked access, lacking in professional development, lacking in vision, lacking in systemic change, and overwhelmed with the incredibly diverse burdents placed upon them. What do we need then? Leaders. We need leaders who are willing to put their necks and reputations on the line district by district, building by building. We need leaders who have a powerful vision of what learning can and should be and who can effectively communicate it to others. We need leaders who can inspire by example. We need leaders who reward risk-taking. We need leaders who understand the learning potential afforded by new tools and learning networks. We need leaders who understand what meaningful learning is and looks like. We need leaders (at all levels, including governmental) who value all forms of assessment - not just formal standardized assessments. We need leaders to support urban schools. We need leaders who understand the value all pedagogies. We need leaders who help their teachers be all that they can be.

We need LEADERSHIP. Without it, we will continue fulfilling this report’s outlook - “The findings of this study reveal that although all educators and students in public schools have some access to computers and the Internet, we have few assurances that they are able to use technology effectively for teaching and learning.”

I am reading the book, Blocks to Robots, by Marina Umaschi Bers, and I must say - the first few chapters do a fantastic job at putting technology into perspective as it applies to not only young learners, but adolescent learners as well. In particular, the second chapter presents to perspectives of how children should learn with and about technology: computer literacy and technological fluency.

Computer literacy “relies heavily on developing instrumental skills” whereas technological fluency “focuses on enabling individuals to express themselves creatively with technology.” Both are important and compliment each other. But what I appreciated in addition to this was the following statement that brings much needed balance to many on-going discussions today.

“While developing technological fluency is important for understanding the world of bits and atoms around us, it is just as important to provide children with the vision that technology can also be used to make a better world.”

So often this important dimension of ALL educational practice gets lost in our philosophical discussions and rants about which tool, pedagogy, style, approach, perspective, system, etc… is best. One of the primary goals of a democratic education is to contribute to humanity and make the world a better place for all. With this perspective, we need to think long and hard as to the purpose of our students’ PowerPoint on ________________ (you fill in the blank).

But amongst other great points, Bers  presents six assets or characteristics of thriving individuals taken from the work of applied developmental scientists whereby learners not only learn content, but also “to contribute in positive ways to themselves, their communities, and the world.” These six assets are:

1. competence - in intellectual endeavors and the acquisition of computer literacy and technological fluency
2. confidence - in their own learning potential through technology and their own ability to solve technical problems
3. caring - about others expressed by using technology to engage in collaboration and to help each other when needed
4. connection - with peers or adults to use technologies to form face-to-face or virtual communities and social support networks
5. character - to become aware of their own personal values, be respectful of other people’s values, and assume a responsible use of technology
6. contribution - by conceiving positive ways of using technology to make a better learning environment, community, and society.

This set of assets puts to shame any list of skills and proficiencies that have been generated over the years. It contextualizes isolated skills and gives them meaning. Aren’t we all looking for meaning? Do we really need to evaluate students’ ability to right-click or highlight rows, cells, or columns on a spreadsheet? Are we communicating to teachers and students alike that isolated skills make up learning? ISTE has spent countless hours developing, revising, rewriting, and “refreshing” a list of standards. On the NETS page, there it is: “What you and your students need to know to be tech savvy” and “Today’s Students Need Digital Age Skills”. How about a book that contextualizes skills and gives them meaning… gives them purpose.

Learning should be a gateway to better things… a better world. We forget this far too often. I forget this far too often as I get caught up in the “stuff”. Technology brings so many valuable tools to empower the learner. But meaningful learning contexts are still required.

So, what problems face your students and your community locally that they could tackle? Could they prepare a presentation to present to the school board, the town, the city… It makes me think of this video of a young girl presenting some compelling ideas at the UN titled, “The girl that made the UN silent“…. all done without PowerPoint, too

A recent report by the Education Sector and the FDR Group “surveyed 1,010 K–12 public school teachers about their views on the teaching profession, teachers unions, and a host of reforms aimed at improving teacher quality.”

Here is one finding that I think merits serious thought:

Only 26 percent of teachers say that their most recent formal evaluation was useful and effective in helping them to improve their teaching. Seventy-nine percent support strengthening the formal evaluation of probationary teachers. And nearly a third of teachers (32 percent) say that tenured teachers should be evaluated on an annual basis.

I can remember some of my “formal” evaluations. They were typically done by an overburdened administrator who had the monumental task of evaluating every teacher in the building at least twice a year in addition to all of their other responsibilities. Often, those evaluation visits where rescheduled due to unexpected events that arose. And, all of those evaluations where scheduled ahead of time. The result - teachers (myself included) would plan a smashing “song and dance” lesson that included those key elements that we all knew the principal liked and was looking for. Once the evaluation was over, it was back to business as usual. In the evaluation de-briefing (which also had to be scheduled with every teacher), unless there was anything glaringly abhorrent, most constructive criticisms were insignificant at best.

So, it is no surprise to see the low statistic of only 26 percent of teachers reporting that they found their most recent formal evaluation useful and effective. Along the same lines, 32 percent of tenured teachers feel that they should be evaluated on an annual basis. That makes total sense if almost the same percentage feel that those evaluations are not all that beneficial.

So, what to do? Are K-12 administrators perhaps not the best candidates to do faculty evaluations? Are they too busy to really give useful constructive criticism? Is their own teaching craft stale and their own idea pool dry? Can we expect building administrators to really be excellent teachers as well? Perhaps you consider yourself lucky to have an administrator who is still an active practitioner and who is keeping up with teaching innovation. But, my guess is that if you did a PowerPoint, projected a web page, sang a cool song, or did a nifty craft, you would get kudos - assuming your students were well-behaved (notice I didn’t use the term “meaningfully engaged”).

Who said education reform was simple? Are new models of teacher growth and evaluation needed?

“…creativity is not universally valued. Many cultures and communities prefer training students to accept existing structures rather than training them to form new ones; they prefer memorization and copying to research and creative writing. These conflicts are likely to remain controversial.” (B. Schneiderman: Leonardo’s Laptop)

So which students are really most “at risk”? We must be educating ALL students to ask questions, who are curious, who challenge “authority” (ie. Joe Blo’s webpage, Wikipedia, conventional wisdom, bias, …), and who create new ideas and express knowledge and evidenced learning in new ways… ways that are personal, relevant, meaningful, powerful… creative.

Or, we can continue to educate students for a world that no longer exists.

Are these ideas controversial in your world?