Getting Past the Slump

The digital landscape is relentlessly shifting: with the next new thing just around the corner, yesterday’s favourites die young if they don’t stay up-to-the-minute, innovative, fresh, and “old” things, like Facebook, survive by reinventing themselves continually.  A steady barrage of change is forced on users.  We scarcely have time to wonder if it’s a good thing.

Perhaps today’s technology is merely a perfect expression of what Carl Honoré calls our “quick fix” obsession in this “fast-forward, on-demand, just ‘add-water’ culture":  we want hard things to be easy, which is, of course, the purpose of technology. The easy part of anything is the honeymoon, the beginning, the discovery.   Back up.  The very easiest is not starting anything at all – or to distract ourselves (often with busyness) from doing anything.  Then the honeymoon.  And then the next easiest thing, once the honeymoon is over (and it always ends) is to change things – or, better yet – to think about changing them:  redecorate, move, start something else, write reports, hold meetings, create charts, gather data, hold more meetings, write recommendations.  Of course, changing doesn't change anything or, at least, nothing important.  Sticking with things does that (which is very different from doing nothing), sticking with them past the post-honeymoon slump when you've run out of ideas or energy or resources for changing or planning to change, and you have to either quit (easiest) or roll up your sleeves to do the necessary work for growth.  Because growth is only possible when we don’t change, when, over time, by sticking with things, we nurture meaningful relationships, build our business, develop expertise.

Last week I spent several hours migrating blogs out of Posterous, a blogging platform that is closing down after not yet five years.  The blogs supported district programs that have been “closed down” as new programs (the next up-to-the-minute, innovative, fresh things) are funded.  The migration has been a slow process, not technically (there’s an app for that, of course), but because I'm rereading and reflecting on what we almost learned.  In our “Technology Explorers” blog – a community blog to document our discoveries as we experimented with classroom technology to augment and deepen, rather than change, our practice - I found a post entitled The Six Stages of Technology Learning.  It described what we learned about getting past our initial suspicion of technology as “one more thing” and the later, inevitable “slump” when our enthusiasm for the new tools wore off.   I wonder what we might have learned this year if we had stuck with it.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about how we can grow in education despite change, how we can build despite constantly tearing things down, how we can develop expertise despite constant demands to learn something different.  I keep wondering how we can get past the slump to dig deeper, persevere and learn from our mistakes rather than beginning again, chasing different enthusiasms, re-branding, reinventing, and shuffling the deck chairs.  And it seems that it’s only possible if we focus on what doesn't change, if we remember that people matter first.  Everything else (including technology, perhaps especially technology) is window-dressing.  Without the commitment of people to act together, things can change, but nothing will grow.

Listening to the Wise Ones (or the Tortoise and the Hare Retold)

Carl Honoré  realized he had a problem when he almost bought a book of one-minute bedtime stories to speed up his night-time reading with his son.  His book Slow came out of his subsequent research into our cult of speed and its antidotes: things like Slow Food and Slow Medicine and Unhurried Children.  His latest book is called The Slow Fix.  He argues that we have created a “just add water” culture to “fix” even our deepest and most complex issues: take a pill for everything, lose 10 pounds in three days, take steroids to bulk up, click “like” on the Facebook page to protest. In education, fill in the blank with the latest trend: just - use project-based learning, teach students to self-regulate, personalize their learning, flip your classroom – and you will have success for all.

Honoré writes, “Even when lives and large sums of money are at stake, when everything from our health and relationships to our work and the environments is suffering, even when bombarded by evidence that the road to calamity is paved with Band-Aid solutions, we still gravitate toward the quick fix, like moths to a flame.”

I spoke with my mother yesterday.  “Shelley,” she said, “I am finally a wise woman.”  I was thrilled – after all, it means I now have my own personal wise woman to consult – wisdom on speed-dial.

“What makes you wise?” I asked.  

“I’ve reached an age,” she said, “when I’ve seen everything before.”

When I first started teaching I was filled with Ideas. I hurried and organized and implemented and preached (I really hate to admit that).  I remember now the teachers at the back of the room with their arms crossed, rolling their eyes at my enthusiasm.  Don’t worry about them, I was told.  They’re just resistant to change.  Now I realize they were the wise ones.  They’d seen it all before.

In our speed-addicted world, it’s little wonder that we have no time for wisdom.  It’s slow.  It’s….old. We want new, young, energized, fast, now, innovation, creation, disruption.  We can’t wait to listen to the old ones at the back of the room and their complaints.  We want enthusiasm!  And so we continue what Honoré calls a kaleidoscope of quick fixes.

Here’s the wise truth that we would hear if we weren't swept up in our various enthusiasms:  teaching and learning (along with all the big issues of our day) is so complex that no single solution, no particular program, no set of strategies will every yield sustainable results.  We have to accept that Slow will get us there faster, that instead of spending ourselves chasing quick fixes and the next new thing (usually an old thing renamed), we must simply work together (that’s the tricky part) in sustainable, joyful ways to meet our common goals.

How, I wonder – and when – will we get started.

Photo by minds-eye via Compfight

How to transform education by NOT transforming people

Business leadership guru Tom Peters, to use his own exclamation-point filled language, is BESOTTED!!  with the idea of “People First!” (the title of his new e-book) – and by people, he doesn't mean the customer; he means the employee.  As he says, “EXCELLENT customer experience depends entirely on EXCELLENT employee experience.”  He applauds the “upside down organization chart” from the department store, Nordstrom’s – their leaders said that front-line staff were at the top of the heap, and “the managers were there simply to prop front liners up and enable them to do the best work imaginable.”  

Imagine.  Imagine schools where the front liners – TEACHERS!!! – were the top of the heap.   

He identifies six steps for leaders-mentors-teachers to put people first instead of “transforming” people – a perfect list for teaching children (but so much easier to do when teacher time is not depleted by being “transformed”).

     Leaders [Teachers, Mentors] Do Not “Transform People”! 
     Instead leaders-mentors-teachers

1. provide a context which is marked by
2. access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which
3. allow people to fully (and safely, mostly) express their innate curiosity and
4. engage in a vigorous discovery voyage (alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by which those people
5. go to create places they (and their mentors-teachers-leaders) had never dreamed existed—and then the leaders-mentors-teachers
6. applaud like hell, stage photo-ops, and ring the church bells 100 times 

The bells in our schools should be constantly RINGING!!  And not just to signal the start and end of the day.

I think we’re fighting a losing game

“He’s not the messiah,” Darren Evans writes, “but for many policy makers he comes close.  John Hattie, possibly the world’s most influential education academic, has the ear of governments everywhere.”  Including BC’s.  It’s hard to argue with Hattie’s findings.  His extensive meta-research concludes that the quality of the teacher is the number one factor in the improvement of an education system and that collaboration is the key factor in improving the quality of that teacher.  That’s like saying fresh fruit and vegetables and plenty of exercise will improve your health.  Of course!  He also has a long list of strategies that have the most effect (the blueberries and kale of education) that are interesting to review, but not, I think, the Holy Grail. It’s not that I disagree with his list or dismiss the usefulness of it; I simply think we too often get distracted by possible short-cuts: we chase after some single strategy or program – or “super-food” - as “the” way. Hattie’s key message, however, is “healthy” - that thoughtful teaching can improve learning, even in the most difficult cases, and that reflecting on our practice together can ensure positive momentum.  This is hardly a revolutionary or even new idea; it’s a sensible one.

However, he and I do disagree on what’s necessary for teaching to improve.  He says, “Too many teachers are constantly thinking that if they had more time, resources and space they could make a difference. For some teachers that could be true, but for most the last thing they need is more. They need different, and that’s what they struggle with. It’s simple: if your teaching practice is not having an effect on your students’ performance, you must change.”  The pathway to “different,” he argues, is for teachers to work more collaboratively and talk about the things that matter.

I'm curious to know how, without more time, resources – and even space – teachers are expected to work together and change practice.  Currently, I teach four blocks of students – with 40 minutes at lunch.  After school I review student work, plan for the next day, gather resources, organize the classroom – and sleep.  Once a week for six weeks, our school has organized one hour collaboration sessions.  We are trying to develop some essential learning outcomes.  In addition, we have department meetings, staff meetings, professional development days, ad hoc meetings after school to confer, co-plan, debrief, reflect. We are continually learning new strategies, trying to gather fresh and relevant materials, and adding to our understanding of new technologies.

But to do something different, really different, demands time, support, guided practice; you can’t simply change in significant ways, in ways that matter, in ways that can be sustained by attending a workshop or two or in six collaboration sessions – or even in school-wide or district initiatives.  The locus of change needs to be the classroom if change is going to go beyond a superficial “pretend” implementation where the posters go up and the new vocabulary is used and a handful of people are excited and put on workshops and everyone else listens politely knowing that this too will pass.  It certainly doesn't matter how much time those outside of classrooms spend on reports, meetings, documents, research and visions; meaningful change will only occur if time is given to the people who are required to change.

And change often demands resources.  I am continually amazed to hear the scorn heaped upon teachers who “depend on a textbook and lectures” for their teaching.  But how else do they ensure that students understand, for example, complex scientific or historical information?  The schools in our district don’t have daily access to technology or bins of “just-right” texts or kits of hands-on materials to support concepts.  How can individuals find the time to create different and differentiated resources?  And even if we work together as a school team, who would manage the resources?  Who will have time?

And space matters.  We do continually ponder teaching differently.  What about co-teaching, we think.  What if two of us taught grade 8 and what if the wall between our rooms was removed.  Imagine if there was a small windowed quiet space to one side for conferences and small group teaching.  But we are limited to the space we have – each in our own classroom – and who teaches what and when is at the whim of scheduling, rather than educational considerations.

I'm convinced there are creative ways to transform education and I agree with John Hattie that the possibility is in the hands of teachers.  But to do that, teachers need to be massively supported.  They can’t be told to just "do different" with the same time, resources and space – and, in fact, in our district, at least, with diminishing resources and an increasingly complex work load.  We continue to provide teachers with support for an industrial model of teaching and ask them to reinvent everything – and to teach each child beautifully.  To quote Lucille Ball, “I think we’re fighting a losing game.”

The Small Things that Make the Big Things Possible

It was close to 5:00, a lovely quiet time of day at school.  I was still there, promising myself that I would get everything done before I left and have a “no-work” night.  I had one thing left to photocopy and made my way down the long hall to the copy room.  Chris was there, doing something with the aging laminator in the corner.  Someone, he said, had jammed it and he was fixing it.  At 5:00. After a long day.  Why? I asked.  If I don’t, he replied, who will?

The answer to his question, of course, is no one.  There is no budget for aging laminators.  In times of fiscal challenges, the “small things” get cut.  We would have to send out laminating to a central location, I suppose, and wait three weeks to get something done.  But Chris managed to fix it (at 5:00 after a long day of teaching) and the next day, I saw one of our teachers busy laminating cards for a game her students had designed to teach each other the course vocabulary.  She didn’t even know about the small thing that made it possible.

Just half an hour before I met Chris in the copy room, I bumped into three of our department heads.  They had just come from a meeting where the “reorganization” of department heads was being discussed.  It’s not surprising: I’ve attended many district meetings that see department heads as “low hanging fruit.”  They just count books, someone always says, as if this is insignificant.  Like Chris fixing the laminator, however, department heads count and order and organize resources because no one else does.  If they don’t, the teachers in their department would not have enough books and materials - and now technology - to teach their courses without calling to borrow resources from other schools or scheduling numerous meetings with a variety of staff to try to find what they need.  Similarly, if department heads don’t organize assessments, develop and share key assignments, check in with and support new teachers, then each teacher must fend for themselves, starting each semester scrambling to reinvent the proverbial wheel.

How, I keep wondering, if teachers are increasingly asked to do all the small things that are necessary for their daily work, will they be able find the time to do the big things: meet the unique needs of the increasingly diverse – and disengaged – students so each one can learn beautifully?

I would argue that it’s only possible if someone takes care of the myriad of small things.  Teaching has always been complex; today, with very little argument from anyone, I can say it is even more complex.  It’s easy to say – especially for those no longer in a classroom, especially those who have not been in the classroom recently – this is a small thing to cut.  A bit of library support.  District Resources.  Courier time.  Career Services.  Resource teachers.  Clerical time.  EA support.  Learning assistance. Counseling time. Administrator time.  Department head time.   We go along with it.  After all, it’s hard to appreciate the power of small things until they are gone.  We don’t even think about how the reduced courier will affect us until we are driving somewhere – again – to pick up something or drop off something.  At some point, as all the small things land on a teacher’s desk, we begin to realize that none of the big things are possible anymore.  We’re not even sure why – it’s hard to pinpoint small things and, anyway, it seems unreasonable, even ridiculous, to complain about them – but we do wonder why we are tired, frustrated and discouraged.

Imagine how different our schools would be if someone thought that the business of teaching was so important that all the small things were taken care of for us.  Imagine if every budget decision was framed in this question – will this support our teachers?  Imagine if the time, energy and resources spent on initiatives to fix teachers, make teachers accountable, change teacher practice were used to support teachers instead.

Imagine the big things that would be possible.

Excavating the Heroic Work of Teachers

My Communications 11/12 students and I are pondering the differences between a hero and a celebrity.  They identified selflessness as a heroic trait immediately, and selfishness in a celebrity.  They said that heroes are humble, since they are focused outward on their cause, rather than “showboating.”   Heroes, they said, do something rather than simply be something.

The trouble with heroes, I am beginning to realize, is that their work is too often unnoticed against the “showboating” of self-promoters.  When I polled my students, 100% had heard of the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton; a handful had heard of Rick Hansen, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela.  In the deluge of new media, heroes, it seems, need media specialists to get their word out. 

It is certainly true that teachers need someone to tell their stories.  Their heroic work is increasingly buried beneath the voices of those who “become something” by writing books, speaking, or joining the growing bureaucracy of education.  These voices, of course, call for change and zealously expound upon their theories to solve all problems.  By and large, their answer is this:  teachers are “old school” and need to embrace new methods, new technologies, 21st century tools and attitudes.  Most teachers would agree that change is needed, although they might quibble about what needs to change.  However, they are too busy trying to develop their practice to talk about it.  After all, while we freely spend money for politicians, researchers and administrators to debate change, teachers still have 30 very diverse children in a small classroom and in my district, at least, with little or no technology; they are still expected to teach prescribed learning outcomes and prepare students to successfully complete provincial exams.  And they must mark, make calls home, and prepare any “new school” lessons in small bits of time during the day or, more commonly, in the evening and on weekends.   They have neither the time nor the inclination – they are usually of a humble heroic mindset – to showboat.   They are too busy doing something.

But, oh, the amazing work that is lost in the noise for change.  Consider the teacher next door to me.  In one of her blocks, Debbie Keenleyside teaches a group of our neediest grade 8 students for 80 minutes each day, students who struggle with reading, writing, and the “schoolish” things necessary in our current system – sitting in a desk, waiting to speak, completing (even starting) required tasks, working with others, civil behaviour.   Her goal is to accelerate the progress of these students so they can have success in high school.  It is a daunting – a Herculean – task.

A few days ago, Debbie came into my classroom to ask if they were bothering us with the hammering.  We all quieted to listen; you could indeed hear a steady tap, tap, tap through the walls, but only when we were silent.  I was curious, of course.  What were they doing?

It turns out they were excavating bodies.  They were studying Pompeii and Debbie immersed them in that world – showing them clips from the BBC documentary “Pompeii’s Last Day” and then recreating the eruption of Vesuvius in their classroom.  She brought in buckets of dirt to make a lava mud flow; students blew up balloon “bodies” that they buried and then popped to show decomposition.  Next, they became archeologists, pouring plaster into the mud to reveal the remains.  Debbie had mixed in bits of tile and coins (she flattened pennies to make them seem ancient).  On the day she checked in with me, students were busy with hammers, carefully excavating their bodies and finding the debris of this lost civilization. 

If you aren't a teacher, you might not think about how much additional work this entails – get dirt, hammer pennies, buy balloons, tiles, plaster – and what bravery to move these students out of desks and into groups to work with mud and hammers.   She doesn't use any of the latest buzzwords – inquiry, problem-based learning, authentic tasks – to describe her work.  She simply looks at the students before her and tries hard to make their hearts sing with learning, their eyes shine with aha moments, their minds grow as they experience, connect, build – and to hear them say, “That was amazing.  What will we learn tomorrow?”

How I wish we would focus our attention on those who work so selflessly!  How I hope we will take care not to bury our heroes beneath the demands for change while nothing changes to support teachers in classrooms.  How I worry that without this support - and indeed with diminishing support in times of accelerating challenges - even our most heroic teachers will find it too hard to continue to fight to ensure that each child learns beautifully.  Because it is, after all, the daily extraordinary effort of teachers like Debbie that will change the world.

When will we shut up and listen?

My return to the classroom continues to be difficult.  I knew it would be, of course, but it’s easy to romanticize the past, to remember the marvelous lessons, the spectacular successes, the laughter, the joy.  What you forget is the day-to-day grind of teaching, the daily effort to support, challenge, engage thirty adolescents, to not only keep the peace between them, but to help them find ways to think and work together productively.  You forget the isolation from other adults.  You pass them in the hall.  You snatch a few minutes of conversation at the photocopier.

 'Punch' cartoon, 1894

Every once in a while I remember my former life as a district coordinator.  Mostly I remember the meetings organized to “fix” education – or more specifically, to fix teachers.  I have been, myself, guilty of such hubris. A few days ago, I was reading an article about the Victorians – about the upper class women who worked with the poor, setting aside their embroidery and drawing lessons to visit the less fortunate once a week to lecture them about virtue.  Virtue, of course, is much easier when you have a full belly, when you aren't working night and day, when you haven’t been beaten, degraded, demeaned daily.  It struck me that there are similarities to the endless “professional development” for teachers.  It is true that we ought to improve our practice, implement more varied approaches, connect with student passions, differentiate, individualize, personalize, integrate, innovate, inspire.  But it so much easier to consider when you are not teaching, when your fine ideas are not shredded by the apathy of teenagers, when your attention is not constantly syphoned off to attend to the student throwing a paper airplane, the girl close to tears in the corner, the child who interrupts incessantly with questions, when you have a nice office, long hours to meet and think, and resources to purchase what you need when you need it.  

It isn't that I think we should not make every effort to improve practice, so that each child every day has a full, rich learning experience.  But I have learned that preaching about it won’t help.  Recently I listened to Ernesto Sirolli speak about the causes for the failure of western aid in Africa, and it seemed to me to apply both to the Victorian ladies and our approach to professional development.  He talks about his own failure as an NGO, of the two trillion dollars of aid to Africa over the last many years from developed countries that was not only not helpful, but did damage.   He tells of how often NGOs sweep in to “fix” things, but fail to ask the locals if it will work or to engage them in the projects they are passionate about  – and so failure is inevitable.  If asked, I'm sure the Victorian poor would have preferred to speak about working conditions than virtue.  Teachers, every time I ask, say they need time:  time to think, to plan, to organize, to collaborate.  Instead,  millions of dollars are spent on endless projects and the next new thing.  I begin to worry: have our "good works" as zealous educators (and I have been one) caused more damage than good?

If we really want to help, Sirolli says, we need to set aside our imperialist, colonialist, missionary and patronizing or paternalistic approaches.  We must become, instead, servants to local passion.   And to do that, we must first shut up.  We should never come to a community we want to help, he says, with any ideas.  If we give someone an idea, and they don’t want to do it – how does it help, he asks.  Instead, we listen, not in public meetings, but person to person to find out what is needed.  When they tell us their idea, we help to make it happen. It isn't surprising, when you think about it, that Sirolli's "shut up and listen" approach has been wildly successful.

I wonder what would happen if education leaders shut up and listened, really listened, to teachers.   I wonder what would happen if they found out what teachers need, what they are passionate about – and then moved heaven and earth to make it happen.  I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure, that the transformation that all our missionary zeal has been unable to effect would occur at last.  After all, it is through the daily hard, hard work of teachers that our children have the best chance to learn. Who better to listen to, then, than teachers?  Surely it's time we stop giving them ideas they don't want.