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original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laureenp/4983461865/

Learning Spaces

At the beginning of this school year, teachers and students returned to school to find a beautifully renovated entrance area and office. Walls were painted with the school logo, thoughts about learning in both English and Hebrew and a beautiful mural. Everything felt spacious, open and new. The amazing thing was how the new space made me (and apparently a lot of people) feel.

In my classroom, the room formerly known as the computer lab, we also made changes this year, and that space also felt fresh and new. Spaces become stale when the same posters go on the walls year after year. The physical environment impacts how we feel, how we interact and how we learn.

Sam Gliksman, in "Learning Space Designs & Their Impact on Education" writes:

We go to great lengths and expense to provide technology to our schools - hopefully in part because we see it as a means of empowering students to research, explore, experience, collaborate and more. Does your physical learning environment support that vision? How does it impact the process and flow of learning taking place?

Learning spaces should reflect our highest ideals about learning. In our classroom, which is now a shared space, we've given serious consideration to how the physical environment reflects our beliefs about learning. The ultimate vision for the use of technology in our school is, in the words of Chris Lehmann, for the tools to be "like oxygen: ubiquitous, invisible and necessary." Of course, we are not living this ideal, but the theory acts as a guide as we make decisions and try, always, to move forward.

Changes in Spaces, Structures and Schedules

• We dismantled the computer lab and distributed the old desktop computers to the    classrooms
• No longer do K-5 students have "technology" once a week as a "resource class." 
• We have begun re-purposing the space as a hub for our mobile technologies. 
• We've changed the name of the space from "computer lab" to "blogger's cafe."  
• We grouped the tables to enable working together.
• We tried to cover tables with brightly-colored map tablecloths to inspire thoughts of global connectedness, but we found the tablecloths were too slippery so we need to go back to the drawing board on this one.
• We also put up a green screen for video production, however, it got very little use this year. 

We have also started working with a rubric to help guide us in making strategic upgrades. One of the  domains of the rubric is "learning environment" which includes the whole environment including, but not limited to, the physical space. 

The criteria for learning environment are:

• physical space conducive to learning
• resources meet learning needs
• learning is engaging
• students are self-directed
• relationships/learning community

For a teacher looking to self-assess, the physical environment is an easy place to start. It is easy to look around your classroom through the lens of the rubric and see where simple changes can be made. Sometimes making external changes first, can also change the way we think about things. 

For example, a lower-level descriptor reads: "Walls are adorned with commercially produced products and posters." 

The next step up is walls that "serve as a showcase for displaying exemplary student work." 

At the highest level "walls serve as a canvas for documenting collective knowledge and learning processes."

It is easy to see how movement in just that level of the rubric could significantly change the way that students are involved in building the classroom learning community.

New multi-use space

The Quest for Quality

As this school year winds down, I'm reflecting on the big picture with thoughts of next year. One issue that I would like to bring to the level of discussion is the issue of quality student work. What constitutes quality for each individual student? How do we inspire it? How do we help students internalize it?

As a total aside: If you've read the classic "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (which I admit was a LONG time ago for me) it is largely about the quest to define the elusive nature of  what is "good" or "quality." In fact, the character Phaedrus, a teacher, becomes so obsessed with the question of quality that it drives him insane. :-)

In old-style school assignments- worksheets and tests- quality is not an issue. There is a right answer; either you have it or you don't. I think that, in many ways, this is one of the hardest things for teachers to let go. This type of feedback (percentage of correct answers) feels objective and secure, whereas assessing work that is meaningful, personal, creative and ongoing is more subjective and brings up uncertainty about the "grade"  (a concept which still carries much importance in our school and most others). 

Because I have been working with students on technology-rich projects, I have struggled with this concept for a long time, and I have some ideas, but no real answers. I love that I don't have to give a grade. It makes everything easier. However, some students need the motivation of a grade in order to perform. 

The book that has helped my thinking the most is "An Ethic of Excellence- Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students" by Ron Berger. I reference this book often and highly recommend it. It is an older book with no mention of educational technology. However, the principles that Berger used in his classroom to inspire students to internalize and strive for quality work, are very applicable to the type of shift that technology is mandating for all classrooms. 

The four principles are:

The overarching support for excellence in the classroom is a school wide culture of excellence. Students need to be helped to develop the habits of mind necessary for producing quality work. Like so many habits, it is not enough for students to be exposed during one school year. Structures need to be in place school wide in order for lasting change, learning and growth to take hold. 

The antithesis of this is the "I'm done" culture where students work in order to be "done." It's an emphasis on coverage and quantity, as opposed to depth and quality. I sometimes feel stuck here, and I've had a lot of individual discussions with teachers about how to overcome this. 

Some questions:

How do we create a school culture of excellence?

What external structures can support students' understanding and internalization of quality work?

How do we help students develop internal motivation to put forth the necessary effort to do high quality work?

Do we give our students enough time to do good work?

Can more integration between subjects and collaboration between teachers facilitate better student work?

A couple of thoughts:

As usual, I have more questions than answers. This is a topic that seems to arise in almost every post-planning/reflective conversation I have with teachers. I have tried several strategies to support student work, but I haven't found that magic bullet that leads to consistent quality. This is one area that I would like to devote to action-research: how I, as a "coach" can be helpful to teachers. 

• Work that matters: How do we make the work meaningful without compromising curricular goals? Remember the Alan November TED Talk and the "digital learning farm?" School can't be a place where we park kids for the day until their real life begins. It is a delicate balance, though, between letting kids do only what they want and finding ways to bring new ideas to life. I have a vision that blogfolios will facilitate more meaningful work by providing a platform for students to publish and share their creations. 
• Examples of excellence: Examples of excellence are key. Searching for and cataloging examples of excellence representing a variety of "products" at different developmental levels is one service that I can offer to teachers. As our students create more works, their excellent work will become part of our collection of examples. This may, potentially serve as a motivational tool. As part of the preparation for an activity, students should actively analyze and evaluate work samples of formats similar to what they might be producing.  
• Public presentation: My vision is for our student blogfolios to provide a platform for public presentation of all work, as well as a document of each student's unique growth.  I am convinced of the importance of this piece; however, I don't think it is as simple as publish it online and get your "authentic audience." Although this is a nice idea in theory, it is harder than tweeting a link with #comments4kids. Students who want interaction, comments or an interested audience, really have to produce something worthy of interest. In the meantime, I think we need to continue to build the infrastructure and facilitate academic connections between students and teachers, students and parents, students and "subject-matter mentors," students and other students, etc. 
• Critique: This is the one that I haven't figured out at all. How do we incorporate meaningful critique into our learning process? Ron Berger had real-world experts regularly provide critique to his students. For example, if they did an architecture project, he had an architect come in to the classroom and provide feedback to students. He also had students help one another in this way. I think this would be an example of where school wide structures could help support the process. For example, if students started with formal critiques in the lower grades, they would become used to this part of the process. I would like to spend more time next year learning about "critique" as part of the formal learning feedback loop. Is anyone interested in working on this with me?
• Rubrics: Rubrics can play a role in giving students guidelines for what is expected. I know that a lot of teachers use rubrics with varying degrees of success. One interesting use of rubrics I witnessed this year was with Stephanie's 4th graders' use of blogging and commenting rubrics to assess their own and others' blog posts and comments. The more detailed and focused the rubric, the more helpful it can potentially be. For example, I knew a teacher who used a rubric for multimedia projects that had, as one of the criteria, that each slide contained original artwork with no white space. It sounds overly detailed, but her students artwork was some of the best I have seen. They took extra care because they didn't want to lose points on the rubric for leaving white space. Helping teachers create and use rubrics to support quality, might be another example of how, as a coach, I can support teachers. 
• Types of work products, reflections, blogfolios: If a student chooses a test or worksheet with a 100% grade as a "best work sample" and their reflection is something to the effect of, "I know this is an example of my best work because I got a good grade" that is assessment of sorts, for us as teachers. If our goal is to foster independence and internal motivation, we have to find other ways of presenting findings about learning than just grades and test scores. This is another huge area of debate. I hear, quite frequently, that teachers feel that they are not preparing students for the future if they do not give tests and grades for every unit of work. I am interested in putting these theories to the test as well. I would love to set up an experiment where we assess students in a variety of ways to find out if and how assessment impacts learning. Any takers?

Or maybe I'm looking at it all wrong...

After I started writing this post, I remembered this blog post, Fail Forward, Move Forward, by Vicki Davis.

John Maxwell in his book Attitude 101 quotes a story from two artists David Bayles and Ted Orland about an art teacher who did an experiment with his grading system.

The ceramics teacher told the left half of the room that they would just be graded on the quantity of what they produced. If they had fifty pounds of pots on the last day, they'd get an "A," forty would get a "B" and so forth.

The right half of the room would be graded on "quality" and "needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A."

An interesting thing happened when it was time to grade.  The HIGHEST QUALITY came from the HIGH QUANTITY side of the room.  The author tells it like this:

"It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than gradiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

I think this makes a lot of sense, intuitively, and supports the idea that we learn through practice. I know that if I take a lot of photographs I am more likely to get one or two that I really like. That which we do the most, we will probably begin to do somewhat (or very) well. However, the context of a task like making pots might be different than a task like writing. Most successful writers describe a long process of creation, filled with drafts, edits and revision. 

What are your thoughts? Is consistent, high-quality work the goal? Or is working through failure and learning as a process the better goal? In either case, how to we recognize or quantify what is "good" and, more importantly, how do we help students recognize it?

edJEWcon- First Reflection

We did it.
We had an idea, a vision. We dreamed it. We made it happen. edJEWcon- a learning conference, similar to Educon at Science Leadership Academy in  Philadelphia, but for Jewish Day Schools (who cannot attend Educon because it falls over Shabbat.)
Here are the words I shared in my introduction to the opening keynote:

We often talk about 21st century learning in terms of the skills needed to be successful in this technological world. One of those important skills is collaboration. edJEWcon is collaboration at its best. This conference began as a conversation between Silvia Tolisano, Jon Mitzmacher and myself. It grew to include Elaine Cohen of Schechter Network and Rachel Abrahams from the AVI CHAI Foundation. We appreciate not only their support, but their ideas, questions and push-back in the beginning stages. 

Rachel encouraged us to "think big" so we did- we dreamed about speakers of the caliber of Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Angela Maiers, as well as the idea of providing "toolkits" to the school teams that would attend. We are so grateful to AVI CHAI for their generous sponsorship of edJEWcon.  

All of you sitting here today, 21 school teams and 14 partners from a variety of Jewish agencies, are our collaborators as well. Without you making the trek to Jacksonville from all over the United States and Canada, there would be no edJEWcon. And of course, the reason we are hosting the conference here is because all of our MJGDS teachers, students and parents are partners on this learning journey.  

The next step is to reach out, through the tools you have received in your toolkits and brought with you, through the blogs on the edJEWcon website, through Twitter and through other digital tools- to document and reflect on what you are learning- to collaborate with each other and to share with others who are not in attendance either at the conference or at a particular session. edJEWcon is collaborative, co-created learning. The whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. 

Collaborative, co-created learning. My big takeaway is almost a full-circle spiral. I "knew" it to begin with, but now I understand it in a new way as I experienced something extraordinary. All leadership is collaborative, co-creation. No one can create anything extraordinary without tapping into the brilliance, hard work and passion of others. There is no creation without people. 

edJEWcon was an idea. 

It was a lot of work. 

edJEWcon was a website, a Google form, a Twitter feed, a whole lot of emails. But for all the preparations, edJEWcon was nothing without the people. People who came. People who helped. People who shared and learned and tweeted and connected. People are the magic that breathe life into an idea. 

This dovetails with Angela's inspirational closing keynote, "Using Technology R.I.G.H.T." Using technology isn't about the technology, it's about the people. Social networking- about the people. Teaching and learning- yes, it's about the people. 

There is lots more to reflect upon in detail, including the keynotes, but for now I want to thank all the people (and there were many) who supported and breathed life into edJEWcon- from the very beginning until right now (which is not the end by any means).

Who Moderates Comments on Student Blogs?

"Best Practices" are Always Evolving

One thing that I find amazing about being on "the cutting edge" of technology in education is that there is no road map. How can you have tried and true best practices for things that have only been around for a short time, so short that most people aren't doing them yet?

I think one important reason for our school's success in this area is our willingness to be a learning organization. This is where the importance of reflection plays a big role, as well as the practice of making learning transparent. It is in this spirit that I have been experimenting with discovering best practices for student blogfolios.

I realize that because I have been involved in ed tech for a long time now, I may seem fearless when it comes to the online world. I do tend to err on the side of asking forgiveness instead of permission, and although I am cautious about what I post online, I am not filled with worry- not for myself or my students. When I look back over the last few years, I see that there is an almost constant cycle of reflection happening. It includes discussions with parents and colleagues, as well as the bigger global conversation taking place via blogs, twitter, etc. in which I make efforts to be a participant.

Recently I received an email from a parent who had a concern about having her  child act as moderator for the comments on her blog. Every time I receive a question from a parent, it is an opportunity for me to articulate my reasoning behind the decisions I make. 

"Just wanted some reassurance from you that the school has good spam filters.  My child has been getting comments that are advertisements for products and is deleting them...I'd prefer it if the kids couldn't see the comments on their blogs until they were approved by the teacher."

I had the chance to speak with this parent, and we talked for a while about her concerns. It came out in our discussion that there was only one such spam comment, but nevertheless, the concern remained the same.

Analysis of the Situation:

First of all, we do use a spam filter called Askimet on every student blog. It seems to work quite well, and we have not had many problems with spam comments. In fact, we have had more incidences of the opposite problem, where real comments went into the spam filter. 

In addition, other administrators on the student blog (classroom teachers and myself) also receive comment notifications via email. I have been in the habit of scanning those, although lately I have slacked off a bit, as there have been so many comments. I know that some savvy students have changed some of their moderation settings themselves, as well as changing the admin email from my email to theirs, so I am not receiving emails from each and every comment left on every blog. 

So far this year, with five classes blogging and participation in the Student Blogging Challenge, a quad-blogging project and wide sharing of student blogs, there has only been one inappropriate comment of which I am aware (+ the one spam comment mentioned in the email). This comment was from a student in the blogging challenge. I intercepted the comment before the recipient saw it and deleted it completely from her blog. I then spent approximately 2 weeks tracking the commenter's teacher. I finally got her email and contacted her. I know that I would want to be told if one of my students had left such a comment on another child's blog. Although this student was in China and probably thought that he was anonymous with what he said online (although he left his real name and email), I think it is important that students understand that teachers all over the world are looking out for them.

Should we put students in control?

As administrators of their own blogs, we give students control over many aspects of the blog. With this privilege comes responsibility. With responsibility comes the opportunity to learn. I don't want to take this away from them, but I will, on a case by case basis, if a student demonstrates that they are unworthy of the trust we have placed in them.

Spam is an unfortunate fact of digital life. We must be able to recognize it and know how to deal appropriately with it (ignore, delete, never click on a link). Too many adults do not possess this awareness, and the consequences range from annoying to serious. In my conversation with the concerned parent, I learned that her child recognized the comment as spam and knew exactly what to do with it. The child explained to her mom that I had taught them to recognize spam and what to do (yay!). This reinforces, for me, the correctness of the decision to empower students with responsibility while carefully overseeing and guiding them. Parry Aftab, an expert in internet safety for teens, has a saying I really like: "The best filter is the one between their ears." The world of online interaction is not going away. I want our students to learn digital citizenship under our guidance. 

If we are going to allow students online, we are exposing them to potential risks. We do everything we can to minimize those risks, but there is no filter that is totally foolproof. I compare it to letting your child ride in a car. There are dangers to riding in a car, yet the benefits outweigh the risks, so we do what we can to make the experience as safe as possible, and we focus on the benefit that is gained.

What do you think? Should students have administrative control over their blogs? Why or why not? 

Using iPads to Create eBooks With 2nd Grade

I just shared the below on our school's 21st Century Learning blog. Being my first time using the iPads to create an eBook with students, I found that the learning curve was high for me. I think we started this project in November or December, and today, February 28th, I have finally "published" the eBook in a format that parents can access on their own iPads. 
Some of the issues were not learning-curve related, but were the usual school stuff: waiting for a sick student to return to school, scheduling problems, etc. 
The bulk of the issues were more related to management than actually using the iPads. The part where the students used Book Creator for iPad was very straightforward and quite easy. It was management and organization, as well as the post-production that posed a challenge for me. I definitely became fluent with the process of taking screen shots and editing them on the iPad. The most challenging part was converting the ePub file to pdf for sharing on issue. In the end, once I found out how to do it (using Preview), this wasn't difficult either. 
Was it worth it? I definitely learned enough to do it better next time. I hope that the kids are still excited about the book and that the parents will read it with them on their iPads. 

In the course of our iPad explorations in 2nd grade, some students made the choice to read ebooks that were in the iPad library. One of those books was the butterfly book, written by the first graders. Second graders loved reading the text and looking at the illustrations and photos in this beautiful book. They were also inspired to create an ebook of their own.

Julia, who loves looking at the daily agenda, suggested that it would be fun to write a book about a day in 2nd grade. After discussions with the class, we settled on the plan to collaboratively create a book detailing, "A Week in 2nd Grade." The first step was a collaborative brainstorming session to decide the most important and interesting things to include in the book. It was decided that each student would be responsible for writing and illustrating (via a photo taken with the iPad) one page. After deciding what to include and assigning pages, students used a graphic organizer as a pre-write to brainstorm ideas for their topic.
 
The next step in the process was to write a paragraph using paper and pencil. Finally, students were ready to use the Book Creator app on the iPad to create their page. As students worked on various stages of the writing process, teachers met one-on-one with the students to help them edit their writing. Because this process was quite long, not every piece of writing was perfectly edited. We felt that it was important to actually finish the project and publish the book and teachers did not edit student work without the student's participation. The writing you see, therefore, is authentic 2nd grade work and may contain some errors in spelling or grammar. If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the ePub file  and directly drop it into your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you are able to read our ebook . If you are reading this post on your iPad, simply click on the ePub file and choose to open in iBook.

Open publication - Free publishing - More 2ndgrade

Hitting Publish (Once a Week)

For someone who spends massive amounts of energy working on and advocating for student blogging, I rarely blog myself these days. There are, of course, many reasons for that, but it is something that must be remedied. As part of our faculty's "accountability initiative" I have set for myself the goal to write and publish at least one blog post each week.

Normally, it takes me quite a while to organize my thoughts enough to hit publish. Many posts sit in draft, many more stay in my mind. So I am going to do what I ask the students to do, and that is just write. I'm starting out with low expectations- once a week, sit down at the computer, write, publish. Get it out there, let it go and move on. I'm using the Seth Godin/Karl Fisch model "Just write poorly. In public. Every Day" (except my writing is hopefully not that poor...and once a week is the best I can do right now.)

Godin's premise:

No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. 

Why then, is writer's block endemic? 

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied. 

We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn't, and if we're insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker's block after all this practice?

I've been sharing this post with everyone- teachers, parents, anyone who will listen. It speaks to my core beliefs about learning. And writing. And teaching. 

We learn through practice. In musing about the practice of yoga (and relating it to other learning situations) I wrote this:

In school classrooms, we break the learning into parts. Instead of practicing reading and practicing writing, we try to break reading and writing into pieces and parts, skills and standards. I wonder why we don’t just practice what we want to learn in its entirety by showing up and doing it- just reading and writing every day.

I believe that in order to teach something well, one must actively practice that thing. I have been testing the waters of that idea and have had some interesting discussions on Twitter and elsewhere about the truth or falseness of that assertion. 

Is it possible to coach a sport you used to play and of which you have intimate firsthand knowledge but no longer do yourself? Is it possible to teach something you learned way back in school but no longer engage in as a learner? 

Tough questions with lots of nuance. I believe that the best teachers will be in some way engaged with the process of what they teach as a learner themselves. In other words, maybe the coach no longer plays football himself but is still actively involved in learning about the game. In yoga it is said that the teacher teaches for herself and practices for her students. Teaching is part of the path of the learner. 

When we practice something, we can't be overly concerned with mistakes. We can't worry about criticism or who is watching (or not). We just do it, secure in the knowledge that practice will lead to growth. 

We need to give the students blogs and let them write and publish without fear. Let them write for genuine communication and a real audience. As adults, we need to let go of our fear of mistakes, of students' writing being imperfect. How many times have I heard that if we let students publish writing that has errors in spelling or grammar it will make the school or teacher look bad? Does my yoga teacher look bad when I lose my balance in an asana? 

And, as teachers of writing, we, too, must write.

Coaching the 21st Century Teacher -Notes

These are notes from the NAJDS session I attended yesterday- "Coaching the 21st Century Teacher" with Rabbi Joe Hirsch. I am trying to build fluency with my iPad, so I used the Corkulous app to take notes. Not only do I feel that the practice was good for my iPad fluency, I am happy with the notes that I am able to share, not only here on my blog, but I was able to email the notes to the person sitting next to me, as well as others who were not at the session.
(Click on it for full size view)

Corkulous App

What is Quality (in a Blog Post or Comment)?

Our 5th graders took part in the Student Blogging Challenge this fall. This was a positive way to kick off our blog-folios; it gave students plenty of choice within a structure, as well as providing motivation to comment and be commented upon. Students were also to be assigned a teacher-mentor to comment on their blog regularly. All good, right? Well... sort of...

As is often the case, good intentions and good ideas for teaching/learning don't always result in high quality work.

I observed:

•teacher-mentors (and other adult commenters) whose comments did not model quality in either content or form

•in my role as a teacher-mentor, I visited blogs that had only one or two, poorly-written posts and then seemed to have been abandoned by the student-blogger (which to me says there was no follow through by a teacher or adult mentor/guide who most likely started the "project"

with their students)

I've also observed what I judge to be excellent, thoughtful, high-quality posting and commenting in a developmentally appropriate student voice. I am completely sold on student blog-folio-ing as a practice for many reasons (which I hope to outline in detail in another blog post), but the question is how to identify and inspire excellence.

Blogging is not a "one-off." It's not a worksheet. It's not an assignment. Blogging is a process- one that involves both reading and writing. By definition, a process is a series of actions, changes or functions to achieve a goal or result. If the goal is to run a marathon, would one day of running around the block qualify?Why then do teachers set up student blogs and assign a writing prompt or two- and then abandon the whole thing for other "assignments?" Blogging is game-changing precisely because it is a long-term practice- a blog is a platform for sharing in a variety of formats and can be a chronicle of student development. I'm going to go so far as to say that a non-blogging teacher can not possibly do justice to student blogging. I believe that you can not teach what you do not practice yourself.

And that is just the introduction! The impetus for this post is a meme started by Silvia Tolisano asking teachers to identify quality blog posts and comments. Silvia is working on an incredible series of posts for teachers that breaks down and explains the entire process of blogging. Called "Stepping it Up- Learning About Blogs FOR Your Students" this is a MUST-read for any teacher even remotely interested in student blogging.

In part VII of the series, she tackles the elusive issue of quality- identifying it and evaluating it. As part of that post, Silvia provides multiple examples of student posts and comments with a breakdown of what she feels exemplifies quality and what could be improved. The meme was created to challenge other teachers to do the same:

In order to gather more audit samples from a large variety of age groups and authors, I challenge you to publish a blog post with a post or comment audit.

1. Select a blog post or blog comment to audit (Professional or Student)

2. Take a screenshot or copy and past the post or comment into your blog post (be sensitive whether you want to reveal any names or references)

3. Include or link to the rubric you use to assess the quality of post or comment

4. Audit the post or comment by describing your train of thought regarding the level of quality you would assess your chosen post or comment

5. Suggest how you would coach the author of audited post or comment to improve

6. Tag (at least) three educators and challenge them to audit a post or comment

7. Leave a comment with the link to your audit post on Langwitches

Kathleen Morris has very quickly responded to the meme with a superb audit of student comments.

For my own participation in the meme, I must begin with an admission-- I don't currently use a formal tool for assessment. I have used a number of strategies in the attempt to teach students how to recognize and produce high-quality writing. A rubric is a good idea and one I will explore with my co-teachers.

One other thing that I find so valuable about engaging in this process is that it helps give me a barometer of what I can reasonably expect from a student of a particular age. Of course, all students are on their own path of development. That's another piece of the beauty of blogging- by it's nature it documents the growth of the individual in comparison only to him or herself. However, I've noticed that it's very useful for me to have "touchstones" (especially since I work with students of all grade levels. I think I sometimes tend to expect too much from my own students. When I view their work in the light of a larger sample, I am often very pleasantly surprised at how well they are actually doing :-)

This post was written by a 5th grader in response to the student blogging challenge prompt of "favorites." What I like best about this post is the introduction, where the writer explores the whole idea of what "favorites" are. That intro drew me in and made me interested in what else the writer had to say. I also appreciated that she didn't just list her favorites, but included a bit of additional info telling why she likes the things she likes. I felt that she made an attempt to tie her ideas together with the conclusion, by revisiting ideas from the introduction. Overall, I felt that this was a fairly cohesive piece of writing- with a beginning, middle and end.

There are several ways I could see to coach this writer-

Form:

•End sentences with proper punctuation (What are your favorite things?)

•Consider not starting a sentence with "like."

•I see that this student needs some instruction on when to use a comma.

•There is a mistake with matching a singular noun (animal) with a plural (mosquitoes). Those types of grammatical mistakes can often be "heard" by students if you ask them to read the sentence out loud and listen for what doesn't sound right.

Content:

•"I will tell you some of my favorite things...." -I could ask the student if she thinks this line is really necessary.

• Overuse of "smart and cool"- what are some synonyms for these words? What is she really trying to describe with use of the word "cool?"

I'm going to stop my audit here. However, this has been a valuable activity, and I thank you, Silvia, for tagging me. It is enlightening to take the the time to bring internal processes (that I have in my head after so many years of teaching) out into the open and think more deeply about them.

I tag: Shelly Zavon, Deb Kuhr and Stephanie Teitelbaum

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boojee/29777131/

Making Shift Happen- HOW?

It's interesting how things sometimes appear at just the right moment. Grappling with feelings of frustration can be productive. It can prepare the soil of the mind for new seeds to take root and begin to grow. I have been struggling with what sometimes feels like a growing chasm, wondering how to bridge the gap. I am lucky to work in a supportive environment. I have like-mindedpeople to talk to, as well as people to challenge my ideas. When I take time to stop and look back, I see progress. But the road ahead sometimes appears riddled with obstacles and mountains to climb. My expectations, for myself and others, are high and time is of the essence.

I have moved into the role of instructional coach, but the organizational culture that exists doesn't naturally support this role. Not only do I have to learn how to fulfill the responsibilities, I have to figure out how to "sell my services" to those who might use them. I find that, as part of forging a new path, I am often working without a roadmap. So I adapt to what I think is needed or I do what people seem to want. I often find myself falling back into old, familiar roles.

Today, our head of school returned from a conference energized with new ideas about leadership and team-building. He talked excitedly about the need to transform culture. He stated the bold fact that we can't keep calling our team "21st century learning"- that it is, plain and simple, "learning." Changing school culture is complex; it can't be done by just one person, and will not happen in a quick, linear process. But it can and will happen we keep the vision at the forefront of our minds.

"Probably the most important--and most difficult--job of an instructional leader is to change the prevailing culture of a school...A school's culture is a complex pattern of norms, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, ceremonies, traditions and myths that are deeply ingrained in the very core of the organization." - from "The Culture Builder" by Roland S. Barth

From that same article was this E.B. White quote:

"A person must have something to cling to. Without that we are as a pea vine sprawling of a trellis."

What I have been seeking-- something external to support the growth of our school and to use as a roadmap formyself--is a structure to cling to.

Some structures are part of the problem- those that are outdated or restrictive, that don't support the vision for a reflective and collaborative culture. It seems important to commit once you've decided on a particular approach so that the structure can become embedded. However, it's also important, in a reflective learning environment, to be free to adapt or abandon what seems not to be working. How do we know when the structure itself needs more time or when to jump ship and change directions? Finally, the structure can't be so difficult or time-consuming to implement that it becomes the focus of the work.

At this point, I am collecting ideas and tools. One thing I have found that I think holds great potential for our school is this rubric, "Evidence of Learning in the 21st Century Classroom,"which I think, once adapted, can be used as a tool for goal-setting and self-evaluation. Is this a viable structure? What can school leadership to to make this structure work? (One thing I have already done is to post the rubric on our faculty Ning and ask for input from everyone as far as re-writing/adapting to make relevant for our school).

Why the need for an external structure? I think the right structures or systems may serve the following goals:

-model and support

-define priorities

-make values and vision explicit

-data collection

-build a common vocabulary

What else? What am I missing?

Are tools structures?

Can tool implementation support growth? I think the answer to that is yes (sometimes and it depends on the tool and the way it is implemented). School wide implementation of Wordpress MU and Google Apps for Education has created an infrastructure that allows us to do many of the things we want to do.

Can changing structures shift culture?

I ask this because I wonder, not because I think I know. I'm curious. If we only have so much time and we spend that time doing certain things because we've always done them, can changing the way that time is used be part of the process of shift?

One example that comes to mind is the process of having teachers turn in lesson plans. This is a common structure that exists in many, many schools. How does this support the school's vision of learning? Is is a meaningful activity or a hoop to jump through? Would teachers still plan lessons if not for this requirement? What is the follow-up? Are teachers given meaningful feedback on the work? Are they offered alternative ways to reflect upon or share their lessons? I wonder how many principals engage, without much thought, in this process of collecting lesson plans simply because the structure is so embedded in the life of the school and the idea of what the job of principal or instructional leader includes. If we would like teachers to think critically about the things they do in the classroom, we have to model this by questioning how things are done and asking if there is a better way.

What structures do teachers use in their classrooms to support the growth of their students? Can those be modified or adapted for use in professional development settings? What structures do other schools use, and more importantly, what structures work well? What old and well-worn structures are choking educational reform and absolutely must be abolished?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenipsum/2687279551/