LeaderTalk

Students, Teachers and Objectification

This is an extension of some thinking I was doing in this entry -- Citizenship, Workforce and the Ethic of Care.

Nel Noddings writes a great deal about the ethic of care -- the idea that our relationships with students should be grounded in "receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness" -- and her work has been important to me in thinking about my relationship with students and in the way we try to craft relationships at SLA.

The sad thing, of course, is that there are many, many caring adults in schools, yet students do not feel cared for. We have to ask ourselves why this is... the vast majority of teachers went into teaching because they care about kids, because they want to be positive influences in the lives of children, and yet -- especially in our high schools -- it doesn't seem to happen. And, of course, for many of our at risk students, when they don't feel cared for, they drop out.

So what causes the disconnect? Why do adults care and yet students don't feel cared for?

That question begs us to examine the structures and systems -- both philosophical and procedural -- that make up our schools and are, seemingly, getting in the way of caring relationships between students and teachers.

So then, some thoughts...

• School Level: We need to create space for adults and students to come together around their shared humanity, not around a subject to be taught. For us, that's Advisory, but that can take many forms. Noddings suggests the idea that students and teachers could take meals together, for example. Just that one change could create upheaval in the way many traditional schools look at their structures.
• Societal Level: We need to create policies that encourage teachers and students to look at each other with humanity -- and that means finding ways to look at all of a students' work, not just a test score. Again, this could look at a school accreditation program similar to Middle States where the entire school is assessed.
• Semantic Level: We need to stop talking about what schools "create," schools don't create the "21st Century Workforce." Doing that encourages us to think about our students as objects -- that education is something that is done to them. We need to change our language so that even the very way we talk about education breaks down that barrier between school and student... between subject and object.

I really think this is one of the major problems we have in schools today -- they don't feel like very caring institutions, and that needs to change at a very foundational level. We need to better leverage the enormous good will that most teachers enter the profession. We need to remember that teachers come into the profession to make children's lives better.

The good news is that despite every structural impediment there is -- and it's damned near complete these days -- students and teachers keep finding ways to connect as real people all over our country. We just need to change the system to make it a little easier, that's all.

Why We Need Vision

I had the opportunity to be on a panel of education experts speaking to college class. On our panel was an PA Department of Education official, and one of the new topics she spoke about the new graduation competency tests that the state is considering. I've been pretty outspoken on my blog and in my presentations about my opposition to high-stakes graduation tests. That comes into play later.

The topic was "How can Philadelphia improve its public education system?"

What I spoke about was how we need a new vision of our schools. We can talk about all of the issues facing public education, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves first what we want our schools to be. We have to be able to articulate a strong vision of what we want our schools to be or other people are going to tell us what our schools have to be.

Right now, there are too many people who want to put too much of the fault on the people in the system. That's the biggest legacy of NCLB -- the erosion of trust in educators. And that's criminal because we are squandering the good will and hard work of a generation of teachers.

In the 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan used the myth of the "Welfare Queen" as a major part of his campaign. Today, under NCLB, we have created the myth of the lazy teacher who, if only there was something to hold them accountable for the way they teach. The myth of that lazy teacher who could get students to achieve if only they worked harder is just that -- a myth. Are there bad, lazy teachers? Of course, but they are the vast, vast minority. Most teachers went into the profession because they wanted to make a difference. But our system is broken, and if you put good people in bad systems, the system will win more often than not. And as a result, we have lost the ability to negotiate the terms of our own profession.

And that's what our current testing mania is at its root. It's a political tool. It gives politicians a number that they can use to compare schools to each other, and claim that one number can encapsulate all that a student have learned. And these tests now are determining student, teacher and administrator lives, when we know that the tests -- at best -- tell only a small part of a student's -- and a school's -- learning.

We need to tell a new story -- we need to articulate a vision of caring, student-centered schools where students are judged by the work of their own head, heart and hands. We need to talk about how the technological tools at our disposal allow us to fundamentally change the structures of our schools so that we can prepare students for the world they will inherit, but we can't do that as long as our assessment system is firmly placed in the past.

And that's what I told the State Education representative in front of one hundred Drexel students. Were my knees shaking when I said it? You bet. But I felt like I could say it after a 20 minute presentation of a different vision of school where the test no longer made sense.

It's not enough for educators to be against NCLB, we've got to be for something else.

What I Want to Talk About

I'm giving a keynote in Oregon tomorrow... and I know my role... talk happy about SLA, about pedagogy, be positive...

Especially because this is an technology conference, not a school reform conference, but I don't think I want to do that.

I want to scream at these folks... I want to shake them up. I want to tell them that we have to stop thinking that business has any idea what schools need to be. I want to tell them that our reliance on test scores will kill innovation and creativity. I want to tell them that every time I go to the exhibit floor at a conference and see more tools for monitoring, accountability and security than I see tools for creativity, creation and collaboration, I see us move one more step away from the dream of what I believe our schools can be.

I want to tell them that the Who had it right. The Kids Are Alright. It's the adults that keep screwing up.

I want to tell them that we have to forget so much of what we think school are now -- we have to unlearn so much of current educational thinking. And then I want to tell them everything they have to relearn... I want to tell them that we can't look to the future unless we are willing to learn from the past.

I want to tell them that pedagogy matters. That we have to empower, even if that means giving up the soft comforts of security... of filtering... of mandatory curriculum... of lecture.

I want to tell them how much this matters.

I want to tell them that yes, Bill Gates and all the folks yelling and screaming about the broken American system are a little bit right and a whole lot wrong. I want to tell them that yes, our schools have issues and problems, and they aren't perfect. Sadly, they are a reflection of all of us who work in them, and sadly, we often build our flaws right into them.

But I also want to say that those folks have no idea how to fix our schools. And how dare they think they do.

But I want to ask them this... how is it that so many bright people... caring people... dedicated, idealistic people work in our schools, and yet we still have the problems we have.

I want to ask them how a test score matters when kids come to school hungry?

I want to ask them how a lecture matters when kids cannot see a connection between the work of the classroom and the life they see outside the school.

I want to ask them how, given a seven hour work day, we can possibly hope to do everything currently asked of us in the classroom.

I want to remind them that the average School District of Philadelphia high school teacher sees 165 kids in a day. And I want to ask them how they are supposed to do anything caring, meaningful and real in that time.

I want to tell them that technology solves none of this by itself.

None of it.

Not even a little bit. In fact, the way it's being used now, it's making it worse, as online tests and digital "delivery of instruction" command a larger and larger part of the educational-technology landscape.

And then I want to tell them what we have to do.

I want to tell them that schools can't be all things. We have to give up our notion that we can do everything. We can't teach coverage and creativity. We can't assess depth and breadth as our primary focus and have any kind of sanity. We can't tell kids we want them to think for themselves, take ownership, solve the problems of the 21st century, oh and by the way, first you have to take this test that was made by someone you never met and if you don't pass, forget all that stuff.

I want to tell them that we have to question every single system we have in our schools. I want to tell them that everything should be on the table. All of it.

And then, after I say all that, I can talk about SLA. That's less scary, I think.

The Laws Of Simplicity

Recently, I read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, former MIT Media Lab guru and current President of RISD.

It's a good, quick read that expands upon his 10 Laws of Simplicity. They are:

1. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. More emotions are better than less.
8. In simplicity we trust.
9. Some things can never be made simple.
10. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

None of these ideas, taken separately, are rocket science, but when put together, they have a lot to tell us. If we were to simplify the entire book down to one sentence, I'd say it's this:

Life is complex; simplify everything you can so that you can devote yourself to the things that are most complex.

Think about that concept applied to our schools... how many of the processes that we as administrators go through are much more complex than they have to be, usually because of fear of a lawsuit or because a process that was once simple has gone through one or two too many committees and now bears no resemblance to what it was once supposed to be.

Schools are some of the most complex institutions in our society. We should be spending our time on the things that matter most -- helping students navigate our world... working with teachers as they work on their craft... and yet, so many principals spend their time figuring out who they vendors they have to use are or making sure that payroll is in the proper format... or dealing with any number of budgetary issues that are harder than they have to be.

We need to examine every process in our schools and ask ourselves, "What do we really need? What do we have to do? What is just a CYA process that we could solve in other ways?"

Every one of Maeda's laws could and should be applied to education. What process in your school would you simplify?

Lessons Learned When We Come Together

A little over a week ago, 250 educators from all over North America came to Science Leadership Academy for EduCon 2.0. The name of the conference itself was a play on words, as we wanted the conference to be about the conversations that people could have, not the presentations we usually see at conventions.

It was three incredible days where many folks who regularly read each other's words online came together face to face to talk about the future of schools, about how we could make our schools better, and about how we can marry the tools at our disposal to progressive pedagogy.

The conference also featured a great deal of student voice. From the SLA students, to twitter-student Arthus to Meg Peters and Chris Jankowski who presented with their parents, students lent their voices to the conversations, making sure that as the adults talked about how schools needed to change, we had their perspectives in the conversation as well.

And I don't know... but maybe we are really overthinking some of the school reform stuff. Maybe the best thing we can do is make our profession transparent... talk about what works -- and what doesn't. Structure some great, honest conversations and then take the time to ask ourselves -- "Now what?"

This may be heresy in the era of corporate-fueled education and the best curriculum money can buy, but I still believe in teachers. I still believe we need to take the time to show our teachers a vision of what's possible and then do everything we can to help them get there. If we could take one message from our weekend conference without an exhibit floor, I'd hope that's what we all take away.

EduCon 2.0 -- Jan 25-27, Philadelphia, PA

My apologies for not spending more time around LeaderTalk... Here's what I've been up to when I haven't been running SLA...

EduCon 2.0 -- January 25-27th, 2008
Science Leadership Academy,
Philadelphia, PA
http://educon20.wikispaces.com

EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference.
And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is a School 2.0 conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we want to come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas -- from the very practical to the big dreams.

That's all from the website. There's also a flyer for the conference if you want to help publicize it at your school.

The genesis of this was EduBloggerCon at NECC 2007... someone said, could we get this kind of group together without NECC, and Will Richardson said, "Chris, you should host something at your school..." and a conference was born.

There will be no exhibit floor, and there will not be one session sponsored by someone selling something. This is really educators talking to educators. We have teachers and superintendents, principals and museum educators, and the structure of the whole conference is set up to allow people time to talk.

Oh yeah, and it's students talking to educators too. We have several panel conversations that include students talking about their experiences.

It's thrilling, exciting, mind-numbing and more than a little scary to be hosting this in three weeks. Bringing this conference to fruition feels a little like what it felt in the ramp up to SLA. For me, it's a chance to give back to the edu-blogger world by creating a space where some of the voices I respect the most come together to talk about reforming our schools.

Come join us.

http://educon20.wikispaces.com

The Two Schools

                This post owes a great debt to to Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There's a long section in Part II where Phaedrus gives his "Two Universities" lecture, and I admit, that that notion has always stuck with me. What this is is an attempt to use that and both apply it to K-12 and hopefully frame some of what is going on in the larger school world today.

Here is the crux of Pirsig's argument about the Two Universities:

That night, for the next day's lecture, he wrote out his defense of what he was doing. This was the Church of Reason lecture, which, in contrast to his usual sketchy lecture notes, was very long and very carefully elaborated.

It began with reference to a newspaper article about a country church building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front entrance. The building had been sold and was being used as a bar. One can guess that some classroom laughter started at this point. The college was well known for drunken partying and the image vaguely fit. The article said a number of people had complained to the church officials about it. It had been a Catholic church, and the priest who had been delegated to respond to the criticism had sounded quite irritated about the whole thing. To him it had revealed an incredible ignorance of what a church really was. Did they think that bricks and boards and glass constituted a church? Or the shape of the roof? Here, posing as piety was an example of the very materialism the church opposed. The building in question was not holy ground. It had been desanctified. That was the end of it. The beer sign resided over a bar, not a church, and those who couldn't tell the difference were simply revealing something about themselves.

Phædrus said the same confusion existed about the University and that was why loss of accreditation was hard to understand. The real University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same education they would if the school didn't lose its accreditation. All that would happen, Phædrus said, would simply be an official recognition of a condition that already existed. It would be similar to excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare that this place was no longer "holy ground." The real University would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and the books and the material manifestation.

It must have been a strange concept to all of the students, and I can imagine him waiting for a long time for it to sink in, and perhaps then waiting for the question, What do you think the real University is?

His notes, in response to this question, state the following:

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.

But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

I don't think that K-12 is the continuing body of reason... I think it is the continuing body of wisdom. Perhaps it is at the university level that we teach reason as our highest value, and maybe that's o.k. To me, the largest goal of K-12 is to teach our students the wisdom they'll need to thrive in the world. Everything else we do stems from that. Math, Literacy, Science... all those things should serve a larger goal of teaching students to be wiser.

And yet, today, so much of what we are focusing on in our schools is the "Second University," as Phaedrus would say. Yes, we cannot deny that part of the job of our Second School is to sort kids for college. It is only the Second School that cares about whether or not you properly file your fifty-page School Improvement Plan. And yes, we cannot deny that our Second Schools must make AYP, and yes, the Second School cares whether or not you use Holt or McGraw-Hill. But our First School doesn't. Our First School -- our ideal -- doesn't.

At best, the metrics of the Second School apes the goals of our First School ideals. At worst, the Second School distracts us... makes us forget what really is important to us. The mistake of "teaching to the test" is not whether or not it is a good test, it is that it reduces our goal to the Second School, not the First.

The hard part about the First School is that it's ethereal. It defies attempts to strangle it into rules and regulation and replication and simple metrics of who is and isn't achieving. The First School isn't accountable to others, it is responsible to itself, to the very purpose it serves.

But even though it's hard, in fact perhaps because it is, that's why we always have to keep pushing ourselves to find ways to serve that larger goal.

An Accident of Birth

One of the things about being a principal is that all the major issues that affect our students have to, sooner or later, come across your desk. One of the things about being a principal with a lot of students who come from difficult situations (and really, that describes almost all schools these days) is that you see many, many situations that leave you with your head in your hands and frustrated by the limits of what we can do.

But until we resurrect "Boys Town" with some modern equivalent, we have to know that sometimes, the best we can do is create a safe haven in our schools. Sometimes, the best we can do is teach kids that adults can care about them, can be true to their word, and can actually act like adults are supposed to act. Sometimes, we have to do the best we can by our kids by just hugging them every day and trying to give them the skills that will hep them survive their own situations.

Those are the days when I come home and hug my kids just a little tighter. Those are the days that I am ever thankful for the accident of birth that put me into a household with two parents who loved me fiercely, who valued education, and who raised me to believe in myself, but to believe in others as well.

Those are the days when I realize the biggest gift my wife and I can give our sons is to make sure that there is never a moment when they do not know our love. Those are the days I realize that every book we read to them is a gift, that every hour we spend playing with them, every meal we eat together is a gift. And those are the days that I realize that the best thing I can teach them is to value every person, to meet the world with kindness and to have the humility that comes with the recognition of the gifts they have been given through an accident of birth.

So as we struggle with NCLB, and as we deal with trying to motivate classes of 33 students, and on the days we get frustrated by the kids we have a hard time reaching, let's remember how much of the lives of our students we don't see... and how so many of our kids have so much more to struggle through because of nothing more random than an accident of birth.

Gearing up...

This week marks the real end of summer vacation for a lot of administrators all over the country. (Those of us without twelve-month contracts...) July is when you get away for a bit... catch up on reading, catch up on home chores, let your children remember what their administrative parent looks like... and then August comes, and, if you're like me, you think to yourself, "How could I possibly get everything I need to get done before the first day of school?!?"

So as we get closer to September, what are the things you are looking forward to? What are the things that you love to launch into when you step back into your office? What are the things you know you have to get done but tend to leave to the last minute?

For me...
* I love planning the innovations. I love working with the teachers to see how we're going to do things better this year.

I love...
* Working with new teachers coming into SLA and seeing them get excited about our school.
* Working with the roster chair to put the schedule together.
* Getting ready for the Summer Institute with our incoming students.
* Trying to finish the last few texts on my professional summer reading list.

I don't love..
* Making sure the floors are waxed.
* Making sure that everything that we have ordered is in.
* Making sure that we have accurate data on every student.
* Realizing there's no way I will finish every book on my list.

All of this is just one more really clear picture that the stuff I love about my job is being the instructional leader of the school, working with students and teachers to really make the learning something special. That's great, it sounds great, but it does worry me when so much of what I don't like to do is operational. I know I need to enjoy that part of my job more so that it does get done, because whether I like it or not, part of my job is making sure that the school runs well so that the teachers *don't* have to worry about it.

So my question to everyone else is this... what are the things you love and don't love about the ramp up to September and what does that say about your leadership style?

Humility

Entries influencing this post:
Steve Dembo's Twitter-ed messages.
Patrick Higgins: I like this direction.
Ben Wilkoff's The Ripe Environment
David Warlick's It Isn't Easy

Coming off of the National Educational Computing Conference, there's some discussion about how the education bloggers have to be careful of becoming egotistical -- and not become enamored both with our own ideas and our sense of being ahead of the curve. I was an English teacher. I've read Oedipus with kids. So I agree. I think that it's easy for folks right now to fall into a place that creates a sense of impatience because "other folks" haven't grasped onto the need for change.

I think the danger in that is that it could create a syndrome as bad as the "yeah, buts." It could create the "if only's." "If only everyone else understood what I see, then we'd have the schools we need."

That's poison.

Humility is something I think about a lot, probably because of my fear of becoming an arrogant bastard. It's one of my goals every year and every day to try to keep myself grounded and to never get too enamored with my own ideas. This year was actually pretty easy to stay humble because any time I got a little full of myself over what was going on at SLA, I seemed leaving school to go to CHOP to visit Theo in the hospital or waiting for another doctor's report. Nothing is more humbling than seeing your baby in a surgical recovery room or taking him to the ER at 2:00 am.

However, I don't recommend that to anyone as a way to keep yourself grounded. In fact, I feel comfortable saying that there probably is a better way. ;)

With that...

It's easy to get lost in the headiness of new things... starting SLA, for example. But I really feel that egotism is antithetical to a reflective culture, so I really try to work hard to not get carried away with myself. Here are some things I try to do or think about to stay grounded in the work that needs to get done.

1) Take our ideas serious, but don't take ourselves seriously. I'm still the same moron that nearly killed himself in high school because he and his friends thought it would funny to see how cherries we could stuff into our mouths at one time. So while I try to think deeply about issues I care about, I try to be a both passionate speaker and listener, and I try to care deeply about the things I do, I can never quite take myself seriously. That's important.

2) Listen for points of commonality and growth, not contention. Ever been in one of those conversations where you realize that the other person is just listening to you for the moment when they can find something wrong with what you are saying? That person's not learning from you. Let's make sure that in our passion to communicate our ideas for new schools, that we don't become that guy. It's the difference between arguing to learn and arguing to win. You can take it even one step further...

3) When we are in conversations with those we may disagree with or with someone we want to have we see our point, put our own point aside for a while, and listen simply to what they have to say. Ask questions about their point. Ask them to elaborate or clarify and truly listen for understanding. At worst, we have a better understanding of their position, and at best, we gain an understanding of how we have to change or grow our own position.

4) Question ourselves. This is part of my whole "What is the worst consequence of your best idea?" mantra. It's partially so you can plan and mitigate, but it's also so that we never forget that nothing is a panacea, and that no idea comes from us fully formed and perfect.

5) Recognize that we stand on the shoudlers of giants. This is yet another reason why we have to ground our work in the words and works of those who have come before us. Their words should inspire and ground us and make us remember and understand that our voices, our actions, our schools are part of the long experiment of public education in this country.

6) Keep the ideal in mind, and keep examining the real. Be honest and open with yourself about where you are, where you want to be, and how hard the road is to get there. I take what I think is a justifiable sense of pride in where SLA is, but I also know that if this is where we are five years from now, we'll have failed.

7) Ask ourselves "What's good?" as opposed to "What's new?" New is easy, good is hard. Challenging ourselves to ask and answer the hard questions as opposed to the easy ones is a humbling experience as the answers are often a lot more elusive.

8) Don't write posts about how to stay humble without being powerful cognizant and aware that that, in and of itself, is an exercise in hubris. Oh well.

And I do hate the way this post reads because of that last one, and I've debated posting this at all, but because Steve Dembo's challenge to us resonated so deeply, and because the line between passionate and righteous is a dangerous one -- and one I've struggled with, I thought I'd post it.

I also have to end with this... Simon cited one of my favorite quotes in a comment on David's entry: 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

I do think that the educators in my aggregator can change the world. But I think we all have to understand that a) change is slower than we'd want, and b) to change the world, we have to be as close to the ideal versions of ourselves as we can. We have to be passionate and dedicated and smart and inclusive and tireless and humble. We have to be better tomorrow at being who we are than we are today. Our ideas and work can change the world and make a difference, but only if we are willing to constantly change ourselves.

And if the enormity of that task that doesn't humble us, nothing will.