To help encourage conversations and dialogue about identifying and sharing what we each need to become better learners, our topic/question for the week is: What support(s) do you need to help you become an expert learner? Share why this/these support(s) will help you along this path. Expert Learners (Week of 3/9-3/13) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
We have had a full (trying to avoid the ‘mantra of busy’) few days as a family this past weekend - shuffling the kids to their various commitments, trying to #slowitdown and breathe, catching up with a dear friend/mentor, and maintaining the ‘day to day’. Katie and I are doing our best to embrace the present and take it all in (easier to say and much harder to do). Although I hate ‘losing’ an hour of sleep with daylight savings, I so appreciate and value the extra light that we gain at this time of year - it lifts my spirits, for sure!
I will be sharing more of the learning in the near and far future with our community - you can see links to a lot of the sessions at this site (MassCue Spring Conference Sched - March 2020) and the hashtag #MALeads20. The focus of this year’s conference was ‘A Personalized Approach to School Change’, and it was an honor to have the opportunity to present and share the work we have been doing at Blake -- utilizing Standards Based Reporting as a more meaningful and personalized system of feedback to develop and foster reflective learners. Shawn Rubin (@ShawnCRubin), Chief Education Officer at The Highlander Institute, gave the keynote with a focus on ‘Achieving Aspiration’. Within his keynote, many ideas were shared - for me, a few stood out…
- Providing a framework for Aspiration (Voice, Focus, Nurture, Improvement, Scale) with both short and long-term hopes
- James Nottingham’s work on guiding students through #TheLearningPit (see image below)
- Diffusion of Innovation Model, particularly the importance of recognizing and then bridging the chasm between Early Adopters and Early Majority (see images below)
“Most schools in most countries place a higher priority on teaching students to follow instructions and rules (becoming A students) than on helping students develop their own ideas, goals, and strategies”
― Mitchel Resnick, Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play
Notes/Mindsets/Take-aways from #MALeads20
** Sessions with Shawn Rubin (@ShawnCRubin), Christine Ravesi-Weinstein (@RavesiWeinstein), Beth Holland (@brholland), and Jed Stefanowicz (@Stefanowicz135)
- We need to rely on the latest science and research to guide our work
- ‘What do we do with our change management strategies that are in direct contrast with our goals and aspirational practices’?
- Understand the messiness that change is
- Our schools have to get better at taking in new ideas, assess, communicating systems, and then trying to scale them
- We need to keep aspirations in mind at all times
- ‘Put a stake in the ground that we want to do it different this time’
- ‘We have to iterate…’
- ‘We need to think about the difference between voice and co-construction in schools’
- We need to define our terms…
- Name our changes and practices
- PDSA - Plan, Do, Study, Act
- Diffusion of Innovation Model
- Innovators - Early Adopters - (Chasm) - Early Majority - Late Majority - Laggards
- ‘It’s not about skill sets - it’s about the willingness, capacity, and openness to change’
- Need to focus on programming for adults…
- Configure your own learning environment
- What support(s) do you need to be an expert learner?
- What helps you to focus?
- If we can’t attend, we can’t focus
- What will allow you to make your thinking concrete?
- What if you did not own the tool(s) that support you as a learner?
- Dichotomy of being Technology Rich and Opportunity Poor
- Personalized Learning
- Approach, not outcome
- Strategy, not policy
- Kids or Curriculum: What’s your focus?
- Profile of the Graduate?
- Are we thinking about the profile of the learner along the way?
- We are 20 years in - 21st Century
- ‘Be a first follower’
Why share all of this? Well, I love learning and believe that it is through a shared culture of learning amongst the adults, students, and families that we will be able to challenge and encourage one another to move and provide structures that will help us reach our own modes of aspiration, vision, and mission. The goal at all times (for students, staff, families, and community), I believe, should be the development of ‘Expert Learners’...
I’ve highlighted a few posts below and a sampling of responses from last week’s Topic/Question with the intention of keeping these thoughts alive in our dialogue to help us steer the narrative towards learning. It may sound trite and obvious, but we often (and I am speaking for myself here, and possibly others) lose sight of that focal point - the goal is fostering learning in our entire community…
Responses from Our Last Topic/Question (Week of 3/2/20): What needs to be in place to help you learn?
- Space
- A fun teacher, a visual lesson that is fun so I keep focused.
- A quiet corner.
- Organization of materials so they are easily accessible to students and I am able to import usage in realistic ways.
- I believe that space, perspective, and time can be helpful.
- A wide variety of resources (people, documents, visuals, information, etc.. so I can get a wide variety of opinions
- A strong interest in the topic and a clear understanding of its relevance. Also, the learning environment needs to be free from distractions.
- Soft pretzels to give me nutrition so I can study up hard and learn lots
- Practice!
- A somewhat quiet learning space.
- I really need to have a quiet place where I’m able to focus with not many distractions.
- I think it would be so much better if we could bring our backpack to class, I often have to go back to my locker to go get stuff and it takes up time in the classroom, I think it would be better to Just bring your backpack instead.
Low floor, wide walls, high ceiling
by Mitch Resnick (@mres)
As noted within this link, ‘low floor, wide walls’ is the mantra used to guide the design of MIT’s Scratch language. The ‘addition’ of high ceilings is simply ‘spot on’ and I hope to incorporate this mantra into the vernacular of our culture of learning at Blake. The focus on serving ‘ignored audiences’ is critical.
When discussing technologies to support learning and education, my mentor Seymour Papert often emphasized the importance of “low floors” and “high ceilings.” For a technology to be effective, he said, it should provide easy ways for novices to get started (low floor) but also ways for them to work on increasingly sophisticated projects over time (high ceiling). For a more complete picture, we need to add an extra dimension: wide walls. It’s not enough to provide a single path from low floor to high ceiling; we need to provide wide walls so that kids can explore multiple pathways from floor to ceiling.
This gives us a lens through which evaluate tools:
- Low floor: how easy is it to learn?
- Wide walls: how inclusive is it? How many different use-cases does it serve?
- High ceiling: does it scale with growth?
- Lowering the floor — becoming simpler, cheaper, "good enough"
- Widening the walls — serving an ignored audience or market
Preach What You Practice
By Angela Duckworth from The Character Lab**
This brief note by Angela Duckworth shares a synopsis of an experiment that explored what is more important - our actions or our words. The results have great implications for our work - they both matter!
What this research suggests is that we should not only practice what we preach, but also preach what we practice.
Don’t forget that you’re a role model for the young people in your lives. Whether you realize it or not, you’re setting an example for how to show up in the world.
Do match your words to your actions. If you’re dropping off bagels at the teacher appreciation breakfast, mention how important it is to show gratitude. If you’re actively trying to appreciate political perspectives that conflict with your own, talk about the value of intellectual humility. Actions may speak louder than words, but actions and words together send the clearest message of all.
** Character Lab - About Us - Character Lab is a nonprofit organization that connects researchers with educators to create greater knowledge about the conditions that lead to social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being for young people throughout the country.
Seven Reasons to Geek Out on Educational Theory
by John Spencer (@spencerideas)
As one who loves educational theory, the title of Spencer’s post popped out at me - he shares the view that we must ground our work in theory - as it is the educational theory shapes our beliefs, and our beliefs inform our practices. We must stay current, share, and be open to learning.
It’s “just theory,” but knowing this theory at a deeper level has improved my ability to do creative work and to motivate my own students...I began to realize that theory isn’t simply something you study abstractly. It is something you use. Theory provides us with a foundation for practical knowledge and a lens for making sense out of our world.
...here are seven reasons teachers should know educational theory.
1. Theory provides a foundation for practical information.
2. Theory provides nuance.
3. Theory humbles us.
4. Theory reminds us that ideas happen in community.
5. Theory keeps us from mistaking novelty for innovation.
6. Theory gives us a critical lens.
7. Theory gives us evidence for the work we do.
There’s often an anti-theory mentality in K-12 education. I see this when a pre-service teacher works with a cooperating teacher who says, “College classes give you a bunch of theory but this is where you’ll actually learn how to teach.” There are other variations of this, including, “That might work in theory but a real classroom is different.”...As educators, we are more empowered when we understand educational theory. It takes extra time and it requires a good deal of mental energy. However, it is absolutely worth it.
What teenage brains can teach us about thinking creatively
by Steven Johnson in The Washington Post
Johnson’s post highlights the recent science that we have learned about the teen brain, emphasizing the great opportunities that our students have while acknowledging the challenges and risks within. It is a great read for all who interact with teens and adolescents.
For years, conventional wisdom regarded teens as little more than hormonal waterspouts, swirling from one mishap to another. Then, advancements in neuroscience helped broaden our understanding of teen behavior. The public learned more about research into the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which regulates planning and decision-making and doesn’t mature until about age 25. This went a long way toward explaining adolescents’ often-impulsive behavior — but left adults more focused on the teenage brain’s role in risk-taking rather than its role in learning and creating.
It’s true that the “emotional” and “rational” parts of teens’ brains develop at different paces. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, researchers say, and fixating on the negatives overlooks the very opportunities that can help teens learn and grow. The “fearlessness” that concerns adults, said Adriana Galván, director of UCLA’s Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, is “exactly what makes adolescents thrive in the space of creativity and enacting social change.”
The teenage brain’s characteristics, including its propensity for taking risks, are what prepare teenagers for adulthood — and what lend them a sort of superpower in learning, skill acquisition and creativity. Teenage brains are at a unique neurological stage. They retain much of the adaptability of childhood, building up new connections and pruning away unused ones. But they’re also starting to gain the adult ability to think abstractly, envision the future and make social connections, Galván said.
In keeping with the theme of highlighting words each week in honor of Women's History Month, these are ones that speak to the processes of learning and iteration...
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat