To help encourage conversations and dialogue about hopes, intentions, and (re)commitments for the new calendar year, our question for this week is: Please complete this statement: As we start the new year, I hope/intend/commit (or re-commit) to the following … Hopes, Intentions and (Re)Commitments (Week of 1/3/20) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
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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
Happy New Year! I hope that the time away from the routines of school and structure allowed for time to rest, relax, and celebrate (most likely in a different way than in years past) the holiday season. Although I share the words below from Rainer Maria Rilke twice a year (at the start of the calendar year as well as at the outset of each school year), it is certainly an understatement to say that 2020 was ‘full of things that have never been’!
On top of all of the usual dynamics of a vacation, I have also found myself struggling with the representation of the past year as an aggregate. By no means am I underestimating or ignoring the absolute challenges that occurred in 2020 - it is more the fact that what I have been hearing (and I acknowledge that this may be just where my head has been at times) is that all of 2020 was an absolute disaster. Yes, some of this has been ‘tongue in cheek’ and posted on social media and I can see how that has come to reality, in many ways. However, it is the negative slant and deficit mindset that has bogged me down a bit. I do not want to live in the land of naivety or always see with ‘rose colored glasses’, but I believe holding on and operating with a sense of hope and optimism is critical. With this as a background, I shared this episode of The Daily Podcast (New York Times) earlier this week with everyone...
The Year in Good News
(22 minutes)
A few weeks ago, we put a callout on The Daily, asking people to send in their good news from a particularly bleak year. The response was overwhelming. Audio messages poured into our inboxes from around the world, with multiple emails arriving every minute. There was a man who said that he had met Oprah and realized he was an alcoholic, a woman who shared that she had finally found time to finish a scarf after five years and another man who said he had finished his thesis on representations of horsemanship in American cinema. Eventually, we decided to construct the entire show out of these messages. This episode is the result — a Daily holiday card of good news, from our team to you.
I have shared before that we have gained great insight - I know I have about myself - in this past year and I hope that we can carry forth the learning and incorporate it into our new routines and practices. Thinking about the learning we have gained and trying to look forward from 2020 towards 2021, a few thoughts have been bouncing around in my head...
- Definitions and etymology of words, particularly ‘resolve’ and ‘resolution’
- Reflection - what does that look like?
- 2020 vs 2021
- ‘It’s all Connected’...
As noted previously, while trying to embrace the vacation and down time I am learning to embrace what helps me - even if it may look/feel like work for others. One of the ways that helps me to #slowitdown is to listen and learn. I hope to find ways to share this learning in a meaningful way by engaging with others in the new year - and, this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast with Tom Vander Ark (@tvanderark) interviewing David Price (@DavidPriceOBE) did just that for me (and this is how ‘it all connects’, at least in my train of thought!)...
David Price on the Power of Us
(39 minutes)
David Price is an author, educator, consultant, and public speaker based in North Yorkshire, UK. He has written two Amazon best-selling books, the latest titled, The Power of Us: How We Connect, Act, and Innovate Together. David has led innovation in education projects around the world for the past twenty years, following leadership roles in community, adult, further, and higher education.
I listened to this at the beginning of vacation and have been coming back to it over and over again. Throughout listening I found myself scribbling down thoughts and ‘making connections’. At the end Price shares a perspective that ‘the time has found us’ and this holds true for our students as well…
“Our young people now, they could be the greatest generation. They could take these problems that have been mounting for decades and they could change the world. The time has found them.”
These words filled me with hope and provided a foundation for me to look forward with hope, intention and commitment.
With now almost a week into 2021, I am continuing a practice of sharing several ‘end-of-year’ posts/lists, a few ‘big picture posts’ to keep our vision/mission on the forefront of our minds/thoughts, a sampling of responses from our community about ‘learning in 2020’, and some ‘annual shares’ as we begin anew. I hope that these posts and responses will prompt discussion, questions, and dialogue for our community and students throughout this year (as always, I welcome and would love to engage in dialogue, thought, and action with others)...
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: When thinking back on 2020, what have you learned about yourself and how have you grown as a learner?
- 2020 has provided perspective on the pace of life. While there are activities and outings that are missed, it has also allowed for a reexamination of what is essential. My hope is that when we reach the "new normal" the hamster wheel does not spin as fast as it once did.
- Small class sizes provide an opportunity for more individualized feedback!
- I think I have learned that I need a little extra help when it comes to focusing.
- I think I have grown as a learner I am able to do both in school and remote learning.
- I have learned to quickly adapt and grow.
- I have learned that math is my best subject but english is my favorite one.
- I am a hard worker
- I think I have learned that there is a lot I can accomplish if I really try. There are also more things I want to learn about.
- I’ve grown because I’ve learned how to calm myself down and to do what best works for me.
- One thing I have learned about myself is not to worry. I have grown as a learner by reading and learning more latin!
Some Year-End Lists and Reflections/Predictions
DECEMBER’S “BEST” LISTS – THERE ARE NOW 2,224 OF THEM!
by Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo)
This list is always my 'first stop' for reflections upon the year. Ferlazzo is a prolific writer, reader, archivist, and blogger of 'all things education' and this link has over 15 lists, from content-specific 'best of' to recommendations to predictions for 2021. I recommend bookmarking this site.
Personal Reflections On My 2020 Professional Experiences | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…
by Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo)
The top 10 Educational Leadership stories of 2020
by Sarah McKibben in ASCD In-Service
The 10 Best Express Articles of 2020
ASCD Express
Education Predictions for an Unpredictable 2021
by Anthony Kim in Education Elements
Education Now: 2020 Highlights | Harvard Graduate School of Education
Across topics ranging from safe school reopening to keeping students motivated, our Education Now series sought to highlight opportunities to reimagine and reshape education.
EdSurge's 2020 Year in Review: The Top 10 K-12 Stories, as Chosen by You
by Stephen Noonoo in EdSurge
The Teaching Profession in 2020 (in Charts)
by Madeline Will in Education Week Teacher
The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2020
by Youki Terada in Edutopia
Calling 2020 a turbulent year would be an understatement. As the pandemic disrupted life across the entire globe, teachers scrambled to transform their physical classrooms into virtual—or even hybrid—ones, and researchers slowly began to collect insights into what works, and what doesn’t, in online learning environments around the world.
Meanwhile, neuroscientists made a convincing case for keeping handwriting in schools, and after the closure of several coal-fired power plants in Chicago, researchers reported a drop in pediatric emergency room visits and fewer absences in schools, reminding us that questions of educational equity do not begin and end at the schoolhouse door.
Top 100 Education Blogs in 2020 for Educators and Teachers
from Feedspot Education Blogs List.
The Best Education blogs from thousands of top Education blogs in our index using search and social metrics. Data will be refreshed once a week. Also check out Educational Podcasts and Educational Videos from Top 100 Educational Youtube Channels.
Some ‘Big Picture’ Posts
“The way we’ve always done it”
by Seth Godin (@sethgodin)
Godin’s brief post pushes us to take a step back to see whether the traditions we have in school are still relevant and reflective of our values, beliefs, and intentions we have for our students and learning community.
It’s impossible to try every option, to explore every alternative and examine how every culture or competitor does things, but…If we don’t even know we’re doing things by rote, when will we be restless enough to try to make them better?
The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful?
by Alfie Kohn (@alkfiekohn)
I have always enjoyed Kohn’s work and learned from his honest and research-based perspective, and this reflection and title of his post is worthy of deep and considerable thought. It speaks to the importance of asking hard questions, holding up mirrors, and checking in to see how our actions reflect our beliefs.
Standardized tests are so poorly constructed that low scores are nothing to be ashamed of — and, just as important, high scores are nothing to be proud of. The fact that an evaluation is numerical and the scoring is done by a computer doesn’t make the result “objective” or scientific. Nor should it privilege those results over a teacher’s first-hand, up-close knowledge of which students are flourishing and which are struggling.
I understand the cognitive dissonance that might lead someone to divorce the output from the input, the impulse to treat whatever the machine spits out as if it were somehow imbued with significance regardless of the dubious process on which it’s based. But however understandable that impulse is, we have a duty to resist it, at least when it can do real harm. For example, we should think twice about citing education studies in which standardized test results are used as markers for achievement — even when a study seems to justify practices we like or to indict those we oppose.
...these tests measure what matters least about learning. Research has found a statistically significant negative correlation between deep thinking and high scores on several such tests...every time a study that relies on test scores as the primary dependent variable is published or cited, those tests gain further legitimacy.
If we’re not keen on bolstering their reputation and perpetuating their use, we would want to avoid relying on them. If we treat these scores as if they were meaningful — which, of course, is also the implication of cheering when they make our schools look good — we help to confer respectability on them and thereby contribute to dooming more students to their damaging effects.
For anyone who’s unfamiliar with what I’ve reported here about the inherent unreliability of standardized tests, allow me to suggest dipping into some additional resources on the topic — as well as the considerable literature on more informative and less destructive alternatives for evaluating teaching and learning. (Anyone who claims that standardized tests are necessary for those purposes is just revealing his or her ignorance of the whole field of authentic assessment.)
How to Be an Antiracist Educator: An Interview With Ibram X. Kendi
by Rebecca Koenig in EdSurge
There is a lot within this interview to reflect upon - Kendi’s work and leadership in the realm of anti-racist education is critical and important. His open and vulnerable approach is refreshing and encouraging.
“I think it’s a national crime year in and year out that we are not investing in our children and investing in the people who are taking care of our children,” he said.
I think we should understand, as great educators do, that every place is a classroom. And how do we prepare our students to enter into different classrooms and learn to be better people?
...I don’t consider intelligence [or] assess one’s intelligence based on how much a person knows. I assess one’s intelligence based on how much one has a desire to know. And so at the basis, we should be building learning environments that encourage students to want to know, that encourages critical thinking, that encourages students to realize when there is a problem of inequality, that it’s not because there’s something wrong or inferior about a group of people, but that there’s something wrong and inferior about our society. That there’s something bad about our policies, our conditions. And then that causes the mind to think, “Well, what are those problems?” as opposed to disparage other groups of people.
I think people are not taught to be vulnerable. We’re not taught to really reflect and challenge and admit the times in which we’re being racist so we can strive to be antiracist. We’re taught to deny it. And so I think part of the teaching, part of the education, is serving as that model of vulnerability, of self-criticism, that I think is incredibly important for educators to do.
What Covid-19 Revealed About Schools and Education - Make Schools More Human
by Jal Mehta (@jal_mehta) in The New York Times
Mehta’s perspective on education has always resonated with me, as he has a keen insight on what it is that our students need and the role that school culture plays in supporting a meaningful learning environment. Within this post, Mehta shares lessons learned from education during COVID-19 and encourages all of us to have honest and open discussions about what we truly want for our students.
In higher poverty communities, older students are working to help make ends meet or have simply disappeared from the school rolls. What parents have seen streamed into their living rooms often reflects uninspired curriculums and pedagogy. Students think much of what they are learning is irrelevant and disconnected from their identities and the world around them. These are not new problems — they are just newly visible because of the pandemic, and in some cases exacerbated by it...It’s looking as though all schools should be able to open fully in the fall. The pandemic — and the pause in institutionalized schooling — has helped us to see what should change when that happens.
The first lesson that the pandemic has revealed is the limits of one-size-fits-all schooling...When we reopen schools, could we do so in a way that creates different kinds of opportunities for all kinds of students — introverts and extroverts, fast processors and reflective thinkers?
A second lesson is the necessity of making schools more human. One of the best outcomes of the pandemic is that it forced schools to get off their treadmill and actually talk to students and parents — understand their life circumstances and how those intersected with school expectations...we don’t remember that the fundamental job is to partner with families to raise successful human beings...The pandemic is helping many of us to think about our students in a fuller and more holistic way; we should remember that when the crisis ends...Classrooms that are thriving during the pandemic are the ones where teachers have built strong relationships and warm communities, whereas those that focus on compliance are really struggling without the compulsion that physical school provides.
A third critical issue is that we cannot set the needs of students against the needs of adults...the success of their students is intimately connected to the success of teachers. They make good on that understanding by paying for teachers’ preparation, compensating them fairly, and respecting the importance and complexity of their work...Coming up with ways to build trust and find solutions that are good for both students and adults is one of the meta-lessons of the pandemic.
Fourth, there is the question of how to catch students up on what they missed during the pandemic...The right choice here is to get very specific on what needs to be made up and what does not; teams of teachers and administrators could work together to decide what is essential to keep and what can be pared...Such an approach would responsibly prepare students for the future, without exacerbating many of the conditions that turn students off from school.
...we are realizing what we should have known all along: that you can’t widget your way to powerful learning, that relationships are critical for learning, that students’ interests need to be stimulated and their selves need to be recognized.
We need to talk about what we are trying to accomplish — not just about what knowledge we want our young people to possess, but what sorts of skills, capacities and qualities we want them to develop. And then, and only then, about what sorts of teaching, learning and policy structures would support the cultivation of those qualities.
There has been considerable attention to the health crisis, and some to the economic crisis. But there hasn’t been a serious commitment to the corresponding educational crisis. We need to rebuild and reimagine schools. We now have a chance to do both.
My Annual Shares
5 Media Resolutions Every Family Should Make in 2019
by Caroline Knorr in Common Sense Media
Although written two years ago, Knorr’s advice for how families can try and make sense of the benefits and challenges that we all encounter and embrace with media are worthy of reflection. Common Sense Media is a phenomenal resource and these resolutions hold meaning for educators and families alike - as we do each year, Katie and I will be reflecting upon them for our own household.
What do you remember from 2018? Did you share pics of your kid on Facebook? Did you sneak a peek at their texts with their friends? Did you yell at them to get off their devices? Did you watch a movie that made you both laugh (or cry)? Did they send you a text that filled your heart and reminded you of why you had kids in the first place? So much of our daily lives revolves around media and tech that we barely notice it anymore. But we should. Why? Because these moments are the stuff of life. And the way we use technology really matters.
The start of a new year is a perfect time to reflect on the role you want media and tech to play in your family's lives. After all, media and tech are just the enablers. Learning, connecting, growing -- even setting a positive example for your kids -- are where the real magic happens.
Help your kids become more aware of their own online time and help them take control of their use, too. You don't have to shut everything down. But really focus on what you're doing, when you're doing it, and why. The way you use media and tech has a huge influence on your kids, and you can be a great role model for using them mindfully.
To My 13-Year-Old, An iPhone Contract From Your Mom, With Love and To My 13-Year-Old, An iPhone Contract From Your Mom, With Love
by Janell Burley Hoffman in The Huffington Post
I share these posts each year and find that they resonate each time I come back to them. #18 is wonderful - 'You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You and I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together.' As with many posts that hold meaning, we could substitute many 'gifts/possessions' for the 'iPhone' and the essence will ring true.
Each new year brings forth the promise of ‘new’ - hope, excitement, worries, challenges, successes, and many more emotions and realities. I believe it is important that we name, acknowledge, and embrace them (as hard as it is to do - speaking from the ‘I’, for sure!) with intention, commitment, and hope - with a full understanding and awareness that we may not solve them. Rather, our resolve will come forth and to fruition in the willingness to dive in collectively to grow, learn, and improve - that is at the heart of our mission and at the heart of our work...
Each and every school day will bring tens of thousands of reasons to celebrate in schools across the country. - Bill Ivey
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What if we realized the best way to ensure an effective educational system is not by standardizing our curricula and tests but by standardizing the opportunities available to all students? - Ibram X. Kendi
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat
#willfulhope #willfulaction #longasIcanseethelight