Sharing Our Learning

At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, I presented some information to our board of trustees and discussed the importance of “digital footprint”.  I was not just speaking about this from the viewpoint of individuals, but also from the idea of schools and organizations building upon their digital footprint.  Needless to say, as organization, there was not much out there about our schools and we wanted to focus on building our presence as a “learning organization”.

I have seen many administrators talk about the idea of “branding”, and I understand that in many places this is important when schools may be competing for students more so than we are in our own school division.  Our focus was not the idea of “branding” necessarily, but the idea of learning, connecting and showing our work in continuously growing as a learning organization.  You may have a principal or a teacher that has a large enough Twitter following that when you do a search for the organization, one of the top results is not necessarily the school, but the person with the enormous web presence.  To me, schools are not about one specific individual, but are about our kids and all of our learners.

With that being said, one focus for us was to share the stories of our school division and schools within Parkland and what they are learning through our 184 Days of Learning Project.  As I was very purposeful in tagging each post with the school name, it was interesting to do a google search of one of the schools (Muir Lake School):

When looking up the term “Muir Lake School”, the top post shared was the school website, but it was also interesting to see that the blog and twitter account were now also visible as well.  It was not only those sites, but it was also posts from the 184 blog that stood out as well.  Posts from both teachers and students were showing up in the results and I could not think of a better way to develop the digital footprint of a school; through the voice of students and teachers.

Isn’t this the type of “branding” we want?  Organizations spend millions of dollars on their web presence, where our division focused on using open source software this year  and web 2.0 sites such as Twitter and Facebook that had a minimal cost to get our community to tell the stories and share the learning of our schools.

The best advocates for schools is always the students.  Giving them opportunities to help create your digital identity is a no brainer.

This is a cross post from my own blog.

I have been a big advocate of blogging for teachers, but not until I started doing it myself.  Personally, I realized that the time I take to sit down and reflect on what I do, what I read, or what I observe has really helped my own path as an educator and an administrator.  Sometimes, for my own clarification, I go back and read my own blog to look at what I have done and how I can continuously work on it to improve. This transparent way of learning is something that I believe can not only improve the teaching profession as a whole (for example, take a look at the conversation on this Pernille Ripp post from today), but is something that could really improve learning for our students.

Dean Shareski talked about this in his article entitled, “How to Make Better Teachers“, and the one word he used for his answer was “blogging”.  Dean pushes this concept and shares how blogging mirrors some of the same objectives of Professional Learning Communities:

I’ve yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it’s been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement. I’ve no “data” to prove this but I’m willing to bet my golf clubs that teachers who blog are our best teachers. If you look at the promise of Professional Learning Communities that our schools have invested thousands, more likely millions to achieve, blogs accomplish much of the same things. The basic idea of the PLC is to have teachers share practice/data and work in teams to make improvements. A good blog does this and more.

Taking Dean’s advice on giving teachers a blog, I encouraged our new teachers to the division to start blogging and several of them showed up at my office asking me to set them up immediately.  The reason I am even writing this post is by watching some of our Parkland School Division teachers jumping into the practice of blogging, with one new teacher writing a fantastic post on her own learning with one of division’s initiatives.  Kendra shared what she was learning not only with her students and parents, but with the entire world.  We often talk about going to professional development and what are we going to do on Monday to improve practice.  She didn’t even wait until she returned before she started implementing the practice and starting asking questions of her students, while sharing her own learning:

(Discussing the Dalton Sherman video) What powerful message did you think of?  Some of the powerful messages that we came up with include:

1.  We need to believe in each of our individual students and our class as a whole.
2. We need to believe in ourselves and our abilities, and believe that our students needs us.
3.  We need to believe in our colleagues and they need to believe in us.

What an amazing way to share our initiatives in the school division while also deepening her own learning.

After reading that post, an older post of Kendra’s popped up in my reader where she did research on a topic suggested by her “star student”.  The student has an interest in Pokemon and Kendra quoted the student in her blog post:

One of my favourite things is Pokemon. My favourite Pokemon is Mesprit because he is one of the keys to finding Dialiga. My brother gives me Pokemon cards. One of the coolest Pokemons is Lugia. I go crazy for Pokemon.

She then goes on to detail the research process that she went through to learn about the student’s interest which I found absolutely brilliant for a couple of reasons.  Here, the teacher is modelling the learning process for her students, while also building a relationship with the student through transparently showing interest in a topic of the child’s choice.  I guarantee that Pokemon is nowhere in the curriculum, but what this teacher did goes way beyond that.

What amazed me about this whole process was that this is coming from a  new teacher (I know she is new to our division but not sure about teaching) who has only just started blogging.  I did not have the time to go over in any detail with teachers why they should blog, I just gave them the platform to do so.  Whether you have been teaching one year, or 30, there is so much we can learn from everyone.

Although Dean’s post was entitled, “How to Make Better Teachers“, from what I am seeing, it could have been easily entitled, “How to Make Better Schools”.  There is so much we can learn from one another.  We need to continuously work to create the culture and environment where sharing is the norm and learning is transparent.

This morning, I had the opportunity to visit Greystone Centennial Middle School and watch a few classes in action, while also meeting with Principal Carolyn Cameron. It was a great opportunity to see some of the amazing things that are happening in the school, while also reflecting on some of my own learning. Last night I read a wonderful article entitled, “Is Your School A Comfortable Place to Learn“, and with that post in my mind, I looked with a critical eye at the environment that students were in. When I have looked at many classroom or school environments, I am not sure if I would be an effective learner in that space, and this was reiterated in the article:

Essentially, Nair says that if adults demand comfort, why shouldn’t we demand the same for our students? Why subject them to dull schools with hard chairs, bad air, anonymous loud spaces, and enormous meeting rooms? Why not make the schools cheery, clean, quiet (environmentally speaking, not library quiet) with comfortable places to meet on the outside as well?

When looking outside of the classrooms, you see these large common areas, that have an array of seating, for students who prefer different places to learn. It is nice, clean, bright and provides an environment where students could be comfortable in different settings. I think every week when I am at Starbucks that I always prefer sitting at a high table, with a stool, which also gives me the opportunity to stand and read if I need to be. I was always fidgety in class, which did not mean I wasn’t learning, it was more likely that I was uncomfortable. Having a “one size” fits all environment simply does not work. When I was in the classroom, I thought about comfort in a different way. Watching students have hats on, food at their tables, holding mobile devices, the classroom looked a lot different from what I have been accustomed to seeing. I asked one of the teachers about the “hats” which has always been a favourite item on staff meeting agendas, and he shared his own insecurities as a student about his hair in the classroom. I thought a lot about that and how that would negatively affect any students learning. I also thought about how nice it was students were able to eat when they were hungry and not at designated times. From personal experience, if I am sitting in a room with you, and I am hungry, I am not listening to a word you are saying. My mind is in my stomach.

Then I started to look at the mobile devices in the classroom (by the way, all of my notes for this post were written on my iPhone using Evernote). I asked students how many had either an iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, or some type of mobile device and it was basically a 100% within the room. When I asked what the “rules” were for the devices, both teachers in the room basically said that common sense ruled the land. As I am not a big fan of creating policies for everything that could happen in a day at a school, I was so relieved to hear that students were treated on an individual basis. When we create all of these rules, when enforcing them, we become more like police handing out tickets as opposed to teachers working with individual kids. I was quite impressed with how these teachers handled this situation and the kids were so respectful. Treat me with respect, and you are likely to get it back. Seems to be a pretty easy idea.

Now with the mobile devices, I could not honestly say that they were being implemented into the practice of learning as of yet. Many educators have this idea that it is an “all or nothing” idea with these devices, where I really believe that there is a middle step that we have to become comfortable with. Students have to be comfortable having them in their hand before they are going to leverage them for learning. I sat down with one student and asked her if she ever used her iPhone for learning in the classroom and she had said no. I asked her about even the thought of Googling something the teacher was discussing and the idea was not there yet. This actually wasn’t that surprising as, let’s face it, many people do not see an iPod touch for much more than communicating and playing Angry Birds or Zombie games. There has to be a transition. It was nice though that as I was still in the school, Jesse McLean (one of the teachers in the room) sent out a tweet with a visual of a student using his iPhone for learning. There is no way it is going to be used for learning, if it is not even in the classroom in the first place. As I toured a few other classes, I was lucky enough to see a teacher teaching a middle years class (presumably grade 6) the ideas shared in the book Mindset, regarding fixed and growth mindsets. I thought this was absolutely amazing, as there is no way this located anywhere in the Alberta Curriculum, but would definitely be beneficial to all learners. Here is a short summary from a Wikipedia article on the growth mindset:

1. those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving,
2. those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating because they’re informative and are a wake-up call, and
3. people with the growth mindset in sports took charge of the processes that bring success and maintain it.

I really enjoyed my visit at Greystone and seeing some amazing things that are being implemented in the school.  That being said, what I appreciate the most about the school, is that for all of their success, they still know that there is much room to improve and grow.  Is it not easier for our students to embody the growth mindset when the staff and organization embrace that same belief?

Thanks for a great morning!

As students returned to class today, I had an amazing time visiting some schools today and seeing how different schools work.  Visiting (in order) Entwistle, Seba Beach, Tomahawk, and then Wabamun, it was amazing to walk around the buildings and see how the staff and students connected so quickly.  Students were already busy working together discussing their ideas, decorating the school, and just reconnecting with students.  I loved being able to see the principals in each school connect in their own unique way, and it made me extremely proud to be a part of the Parkland Team.

Principal Scott Johnston connecting with staff and celebrating the beginning of the year in his safety vest! (Tomahawk School)

As someone who was recently new to a school as principal, I really looked around the walls of each school and asked myself, “what messages are being sent to students”, in each and every display.  I read this touching post last night about a principal in our division, who had taken the time to clean up something that may have gone unnoticed in a building.  This is something that is quite common in all of our lives.  Recently moving into a new house, one person suggested to me that I need to immediately write down everything I want to change before I get used to it.  As we walk into our schools and look at the walls, we need to think that every year we have new kids in those buildings, and although we may be used to it, everything we do sends some type of message to the students.  Culture and relationships are vital to the success of a building.

As I usually have more questions than answers, I saw this amazing plaque outside of Tomahawk School:

Tomahawk School

Although it is not clear in the pictures, it stated that the school was built in 1908 and it was amazing to know that it just celebrated it 100th anniversary.  What an amazing item to see that literally took my breath away as I stared it.   As I walked away from this, I thought about the balance of moving forward and honouring tradition.

Honouring the past is so important to know where we came from, but it is so important that we also know where our students are heading and what can we do to help them be successful on this path.  I remember going back to my old high school five years after I graduated and being mortified that our basketball pictures were taken down.  Now I think that it is hilarious to think about that because eventually new teams come up, and we need to make space for the kids there now.  The importance of those days don’t leave my memories, but really, the remnants of those artifacts should be long gone from the school.

Take tradition in pedagogy.  There are many things that we do because we have done them before, or they were done to us.  We need to always look at our practices and think about who is it really honouring?  Many will argue (as an example) about how they loved cursive as a child, but the nostalgia of it does not mean it is sound pedagogical practice.  There has to be more to it than “that is what I did when I was a kid.”

With all of that being said, I was so glad to be a part of an amazing day with some incredible schools.  Thanks for sharing your days with me!

Mr. Worthington addressing his students