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• Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  March 3, 2012 10:58 PM Comments Off on Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  The necessary precursor to high levels of student achievement is deep engagement in learning, and the teacher’s own engagement is the key to achieving that. Curriculum counts and technology can help, but it is teachers who inspire students, and enthusiastically engaged teachers do that best. 

  But what engages teachers? Another way to ask that question is, What motivates them? Daniel Pink (and before him Alfie Kohn) has told us that although traditional motivation theory—the carrot and stick approach—is widely accepted as “common sense,” research has shown it to be ineffective except for straightforward tasks that require application of well-understood processes to well-defined problems. Well, that certainly doesn’t describe teaching, which is a complex task that requires creative insight. So much for merit pay and Fraser Institute report cards!

  So what does motivate teachers? Its the same thing that motivates everyone else according to Pink’s summary of the research—autonomy, mastery and purpose. Respect, fair treatment and adequate compensation are necessary but not sufficient. In addition, people want to have reasonable control over what they do, to do it well and to feel that it is meaningful because it contributes to a larger purpose. This creates a virtuous circle of increasing vocation, contribution and fulfillment.

  In the case of teachers,however, there is another powerful factor—the intimate ongoing relationship they have with their students. When that relationship is healthy and when students respond positively to the teacher, the motivation derived from it overwhelms all other factors. Physical facilities and learning resources may be poor, politicians may play football with the system, and the circumstances of students’ lives may be disheartening but if the teacher’s relationship with those students is strong the bond motivates like no other factor. This, of course, can be good or bad—an issue to which I will return in my next post—but the strong connection teachers feel with their students creates a highly reciprocal relationship in terms of motivation.

  But where does this begin? Is student engagement the chicken or the egg? In some ways it doesn’t matter because once the cycle of mutual motivation begins it is self-sustaining, and it is probably the case that it can begin with either the teacher or the student. However, while there is a mutuality in this relationship the teacher is the adult and has the most power and thus bears the primary responsibility for initiating and developing it in constructive ways that serve the school’s purposes.

  So, if the student outcomes that we seek begin with student engagement and teacher engagement is its necessary counterpart then a good place to focus our attention is on the best ways to engage teachers. That’s the key to student engagement—not the whole story, of course, but the key to animating learning and realizing the potential benefits of all the other factors that can contribute. Without it, those factors, as beneficial as they may be, won’t get the job done.

  Previous Post in This Series: Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s The Necessary Order of Things

  Next Post in This Series: Motivation and Mastery – The Problem With Grand Goals

  
  

• Cdn EdWire: “Respecting Differences Clubs” = Gay-Straight Alliances

  February 5, 2012 12:23 AM Comments Off on Cdn EdWire: “Respecting Differences Clubs” = Gay-Straight Alliances

  Gay-straight alliances become Respecting Differences clubs – Toronto Star

  Catholic schools fail to support gay students with their new club policy – Toronto Star
  
  

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• Jumping into Inquiry

  January 31, 2012 6:33 AM Comments Off on Jumping into Inquiry

  

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• We Are An Arts-Based School!

  January 28, 2012 12:38 PM Comments Off on We Are An Arts-Based School!

  I think that an inordinate amount of our hand wringing around the issue of student engagement takes place well after the proverbial horse has left the barn. In fact, in many jurisdictions, a good deal of time and money are being spent contacting teenage students who have chosen to leave the system early, and exploring with them ways that they could come back and earn credits towards their graduation diploma.

  
  

   I have a better idea.

  
  

   Instead of trying to coax students back into a system that, in many cases, has failed them as much as they have failed it, why not concentrate our efforts on making sure that engagement and resonance are part of the way we think about school, program and curriculum design right from the very beginning? If we’re really serious about addressing the engagement dilemma, let’s begin at the earliest stages of a child’s schooling experience and build from there. 

  
  

  Our current obsession with test scores and graduation rates as the real measures of both school and student success will pass. And when we finally wake up to the fact that these statistical sirens have really been false idols, we’re going to have to do some rethinking.

  
  

  I would suggest that when that time comes, we begin to rebuild by carefully observing our children. Look at our youngest children. Watch what they do when they’re given the freedom to choose. Look at how they explore the world, how they express themselves, how they interact with each other at their earliest stages of social development. Most often, when left to their own devices, we’ll find our children singing, dancing, colouring and role playing their way through the world. It’s not because they need a break from the other stuff in their life. It’s because this is their life and these are things that come so very naturally to them.

  
  

   Walk into any daycare or pre-school facility and you’ll know what it looks and sounds like when you allow this understanding of human development to permeate the work that you do. Easels, drums, costumes, puppets, and space (!) are the hallmarks of any good early childhood education program. Spend a day in a kindergarten class and notice which activity centers are the most popular. You’ll probably find that the kitchen/house center, the art center and the music center are more populated than any other. (Some kindergarten teachers reading this may comment that these are the only centers that they have!)

  
  

  And it’s not because these activities give children a break from the demands of real learning. It’s because this is where they do most of their real learning. The finger painting easel allows them to freely explore colour, shape and movement. The house centre gives them the opportunity to work out social relationships and practice some of the conversations that they hear in their own home. It is a place where conflict emerges and gets worked out (most of the time!). Rhythm instruments enable children to connect with something so deeply human that we may have lost sight of its importance in our lives.

  
  

   Yet, something curious and more than a little disturbing happens after the early years of schooling. We package these activities up, call them “the arts” and, in so many cases, push them to the edges of our school communities. We build walls of curriculum around them to legitimize them as “real learning”. And in order to ensure that a teacher assigned to “the arts” doesn’t get off too easy, we demand that they be assessed and evaluated with the same tools and strategies as mathematics, science or language.

  
  

   But in the process, we lose sight of the power of the arts to teach, to connect and to engage. It’s a power that is sitting right in front of us, staring back at us in the faces of our students. It’s a potential that is, quite literally, embodied in every child and young person that walks through our doors everyday. And you know something? It’s also embodied in every adult walks through the those very same doors!

  
  

  So what would happen if we began to honestly and openly explore the role that the arts play in our schools? What would happen if our children had opportunities to sing, dance, act, and draw every single day? What would happen if school plays, dances and glee clubs became part of our school timetables instead of something seen as taking up valuable instructional time? What would happen if all schools were able to fly a banner on their outside wall declaring, “We are an arts-based school”?

  
  

  I really believe that quality arts-based teaching and learning should be the right of every child. For me, the reason is quite simple. By nature, human beings are artistic creatures. The rhythm of music courses through our veins; imagination and creativity are hallmarks of every human invention. We are currently struggling with a vision of school that actively denies this, and we are losing our more and more of our students hearts and minds.

  
  

  With your help, I would like to explore some of these questions more deeply. I would love to hear from teachers, administrators, parents and students who have an opinion on the role of the arts in our schools. You don’t have to agree with me; in fact, contrary opinions are always welcome here. If you have research or media articles to share that might support your viewpoint, tell us about them. If you have been part of an arts-based school initiative, your stories are welcome. If you’re struggling to put arts back on the radar in your district, tell us about that! Write a reply, draw a picture, sing a song. However you choose to respond, your perspective is welcome.

  
  

   

• realfriends: A Student Social Action Project

  January 5, 2012 10:24 PM Comments Off on realfriends: A Student Social Action Project

  It began last October when a Grade 12 student asked if I was on Facebook. I replied with my standard, flippant response: “No, I have real friends.” Apparently, that struck a chord. I didn’t hear it at the time but a few days later, I felt the reverberations.

  One student, Mitch Redden, came back to me and explained, “I was interested when you said that you have “real friends”. I have more than 500 friends on Facebook, but if I had a problem, I wouldn’t discuss it with any of them…. I am surrounded by people my own age here at school, and yet, it’s hard to meet new people because everyone is in their own social clique.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” I asked. And that’s how it all began.

  realfriends is a social action project created by Grade 12 students in my English class. We followed the directions of the Imagineaction program offered by the Canadian Teacher’s Federation. One student convinced his class, who in turn involved 240 students at our school as well as an unknown number of people beyond our school who became interested in this social action initiative. The purpose of realfriends was to create a face-to-face social network that would help change the school climate into a more social space. Quickly, the students acknowledged that social action projects have the potential to expand and that realfriends could influence people (or other communities) beyond our school.

  Interest in socializing is nothing new for teenagers, but these students articulated a worry that people their age may be losing their social skills due to technologically assisted communication. For my generation, technology is understood to be a tool – something to pick up and hold in your hand when it is useful. I see young people using technology in specific ways: to send text messages, Google, listen to music, or update their social network site. But perhaps my lens is outdated, and technology permeates the classroom in less visible ways. For my students’ generation, technology has become an appendage, an environment, or a way of thinking. It is no longer exclusively exterior to the body, but has invaded mental and social processes. For example, students commonly expressed the concern that text messages and social networking sites may be deteriorating young people’s confidence in social settings. This worry is represented in the students’ motto for realfriends: stop cliquing, start connecting.

  For example, students commonly expressed the concern that text messages and social networking sites may be deteriorating young people’s confidence in social settings. This worry is represented in the students’ motto for realfriends: stop cliquing, start connecting.

  realfriends started as a series of socializing activities. Students planned four activities (or steps), expecting that the number of participants would double with each step.  It began with 30 students who were identified by staff to represent a broad range of students in our school. At lunch, the English class facilitated the 30 participants in the first activity – blindfolded speed-friending. At the end of the session, people left without knowing who else had participated. They were given a plastic bracelet embossed with “realfriends” and encouraged to look for others in the school with one of the 30 bracelets. When they saw someone wearing a bracelet, they would know that they could safely initiate a conversation. In fact, they may have already spoken with them during the blindfolded speed-friending. Participants were invited to attend the second step and to bring a friend.

  The activity in the second step was “speed-gaming”. The 60 participants were randomly organized into small groups based on the colour of their realfriends bracelet. The groups moved to various spaces in the school where my students facilitated “ice-breaker” games so that the participants would get to know each other. The third step, with 120 participants, was designed to bring people together through a common cause. The English class chose to endorse the Children’s Wish Foundation, and they met with the participants at lunch to educate them about this charity. The fourth step, involving roughly 240 participants, was a laughing flashmob  (a planned event that was kept secret until it was performed to an unsuspecting public audience). The flashmob was used to get the attention of the school and to bring awareness to the school community about the Children’s Wish Foundation.

  Following these four steps, the English students published a book entitled realfriends: Stop Cliquing, Start Connecting. In this collection of essays, each student responded to a unique inquiry question, such as:

  • What are the dangers for today’s young generation in losing their skills of face-to-face communication due to technology?
  • In what ways does technological dependency limit personal communication skills?
  • How has technology influenced communities?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of technological socialization?
  • What kinds of thinking habits are shaped by using social networking sites?
  • Why should we stop cliquing and start connecting with others?
  • How can we overcome social cliques in high schools?
  • How can teenagers practice more social behaviour?
  • In what ways can social networking change societal behaviour?
  • What is it like to experience realfriends as a facilitator?
  • Will the experience of realfriends encourage people to be less dependent on technology?
  • In what ways has the project of realfriends improved community involvement?

  Students used these individual inquiry questions to think about issues that were critical for their current and future lives. In one chapter, entitled “Avatars Not Included”, Adam describes how he sees the current problem of digital communication:

  Text messaging, instant messaging, tweeting, BBMs, Facebook, chat rooms, forums, blogs, Myspace, comment box, instant updates, instant feed, online gaming, online dating, Skype, Apple’s “facetime,” cell phones, smart phones, flip phones, touch phones, touch screens. These communication channels have all been given the name revolutionary because they possess the power to connect people – no matter the distance. It is impossible to argue the immense capabilities of these devices and services, but every rose has its thorn and the thorn on the social network’s rose is the size of a large stalactite. With new technology, we are drifting away from one another when we should be closer than ever. The more ways we get to communicate electronically, the more we alienate each other when we’re actually in a face-to-face situation. So, what will the next generation look like if this trend continues?

  There is something disquieting about students overtly wanting to talk about how to socialize. Media often taints the reputation of teenage socialization with impressions of strange subcultures, rebellious activity, suspicious behaviour, and secretive peer-communication. In contrast, it has been my experience that young people show willingness, openness, and readiness for teachers to help them develop problem-solving and social skills. Perhaps more than ever before, teachers need to model and facilitate face-to-face communication in classrooms. Perhaps because of a heavy reliance on technology to communicate, teaching how to speak and listen should not be taken lightly in our classrooms.

  Perhaps more than ever before, teachers need to model and facilitate face-to-face communication in classrooms.

  Throughout this experience, I have witnessed how a student-driven social action project can transform our classroom and our school. More importantly, I have witnessed how realfriends transformed my students. Social action projects can help students’ sense of efficacy and teach them that they can solve problems, contribute to positive change, and respond to societal needs. My students have left me thinking about my own face-to-face network and the value of my real friends. More importantly, they have left me thinking about my role – and teachers’ roles in general – in promoting and participating in social action.

  I acknowledge that students have plenty to teach me as well. Why only last week, Mitch was teaching me the word “pwn” when I thought it was a typo in his movie script. (“Pwn”, by the way, is computer-gaming slang – a verb meaning to dominate an opponent.) Students offered ideas about our project that were beyond the realm of my experience or imagination. I was impressed. Sometimes, however, I asked critical questions to challenge their ideas.

  For example, I challenged students to think about equity issues during the planning process of realfriends. One activity they considered was a flashmob at the local hockey rink during a Friday night game. This would have allowed realfriends to breach the school walls and infiltrate into the community. I asked, “How much does it cost to attend the game?” and “How will students who do not have access to transportation get to the game?” More than 80 percent of our students are bussed to school; some are on the bus for an hour and half. As they continued to respond to critical questions about their ideas, the students thought through issues of inclusive language, gender-bias in activities, and about the range of skills that their peers would need in order to participate in realfriends.

  Facilitation of student-driven social action projects is tricky business. While we negotiate what is realistic or even feasible given limited time and resources, it is important to support students’ enthusiasm for making a difference in their world. Despite such challenges, I encourage teachers to find ways of involving students in social action. I am hopeful that social action projects can transform not only how students engage in schools, but also how they understand their roles as citizens who actively contribute to societal change. By the way, Mitch Redden – the boy whose question first inspired the idea of realfriends ­– received the Nova Scotia Premier’s Power of Positive Change Award in June, 2011 for his part in realfriends. As I write this, I wonder who else will take up the work of these students and continue expanding realfriends.

  The story of realfriends can be followed in a two-part documentary, available on the Imagineaction website (www.imagine-action.ca) or at www.stevenvanzoost.com, where you can also read how previous students have been watching realfriends closely – some closing their Facebook accounts, some visiting my current class to make a pitch for realfriends to expand into post-secondary institutions.

  EN BREF – Des élèves d’anglais de 12^e année à Windsor, en Nouvelle-Écosse, ont créé le projet d’action sociale « realfriends » pour engendrer un réseau social face à face contribuant à faire de l’ambiance scolaire un espace plus social. Le goût de socialiser n’est rien de nouveau pour les adolescents, mais ces élèves s’inquiètent que les gens de leur âge perdent des compétences sociales à cause des communications technologiques. Le mot d’ordre de realfriends manifeste cette préoccupation : arrête de cliquer, commence à connecter. Les médias sociaux salissent souvent la réputation des jeunes par des insinuations de sous-cultures étranges, d’activités rebelles, de comportements suspects et de communications cachottières entre pairs. Pourtant, les jeunes font preuve de volonté, d’ouverture et d’empressement à développer la résolution de problèmes et des compétences sociales. En raison de l’utilisation intensive des technologies pour communiquer, il importe plus que jamais que les enseignants montrent et facilitent la communication face à face en classe.

• Education: A Way of Being in the World

  10:16 PM Comments Off on Education: A Way of Being in the World

  A review of Education as Dialogue: Its Prerequisites and its Enemies by Tasos Kazepides McGill-Queens University Press, 2010. ISBN 9780773538061.

  Tasos Kazepides asserts that one cannot understand education “merely by the scientific study of human nature; it can be explicated only by philosophical inquiry” (p. 28) and in order to address educational issues effectively, “we must first address their philosophical dimensions, which have logical priority over other kinds of problems” (p. 1).

  In his opinion, however, most educational administrators and policymakers do not sufficiently consider underlying philosophical issues and consequently fall into “a pernicious form of scientism that has permeated our thinking and has contributed to the unfortunate institutionalization of the concept of education” (p. 29). The end result is confusion between schooling and the process of education itself, confusion that results in a predominantly utilitarian focus within educational institutions. Education, he maintains, “is the development of persons, not the training of soldiers, lawyers, or computer technicians … [It] is not a preparation for anything; its aims are inherent within itself … Being educated is a way of being in the world and a way of living one’s life” (p. 111). Education of this sort, Kazepides argues, is best achieved through dialogue. 

  Essential to an understanding of education as a dialogue is a distinction – which Kazepides claims is almost always ignored – between education and its prerequisites, and “when it is totally ignored it often renders education a useless all-embracing concept more or less synonymous with socialization” (p. 68). He explains the prerequisites of education by referring to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “riverbed propositions”, which constitute the foundation of all our thinking. Drawing heavily on Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, Kazepides argues that these bedrock assumptions are not learned so much as inculcated “by means of examples and by practice, not by intellectual demonstrations, definitions, or sermons. This means that children must be participants in a form of life in order to acquire the prerequisites – not merely spectators or listeners” (p. 81).

  It is upon the foundation of these riverbed prerequisites that education can take place. Education, according to Kazepides, is the further development of the mind through “the logic and the standards of excellence immanent in the various disciplines of thought and action and their respective norms and language games as we practice them today” (p. 33). Clearly, induction into those disciplines requires thought, and Kazepides agrees with Plato that “thinking and discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialogue carried on by the mind itself without a spoken word” (p. 90). If education is understood in this way, then it follows that education, whether it occurs in schools or elsewhere, is best conducted by involving people in dialogue. Kazepides feels that when this is done, education becomes “the most appropriate antidote to our divided, confused, rudderless, and competitive world” (p. 111).

  This, then, is the essence of the extensive, precise, and detailed argument that Kazepides presents. Although it is written lucidly and in plain language, the book requires careful reading because it is such a substantial philosophical romp – particularly for those with no prior appreciation of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which underpins much of it. The effort is, however, worthwhile because the ideas it presents are both illuminating and generative.

  This is not a book for those who want to know more about dialogue and how it can be encouraged because it does not examine this practical question, but it does provide an enlightening and provocative look at the epistemological question of what constitutes an education. It clarifies terms, such as the “aims of education”, that are often used in casual and thus confusing ways, and provides useful insights into the process by which a child “bootstraps” into an understanding of the world and intelligent behaviour within it.

  In the latter chapters Kazepides warns against what he sees as mis-education that is occurring and the enemies of dialogue in our society, which include not only the obvious religious and political culprits but also advertising that “turns every aspect of human culture into a commodity” (p. 138). Particularly in the age of “21st Century Learning”, this book provides a cautionary counterpoint to the instrumentalist drumbeat, a reminder of the best that we can be, and a clearly stated explanation of the challenges that entails.

• Living with Uncertainty

  10:11 PM Comments Off on Living with Uncertainty

  In this month’s lead article, Danielle McLaughlin zeroes in on a handful of children’s stories to illustrate the importance of teaching young minds to grapple with the messiness of critical thinking. Her passionate belief that children – and those who teach them ­– need to be exposed to all sides of an issue, even if that means withholding judgment, reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, from William Sloane Coffin: “The worst thing we can do with a dilemma is to resolve it prematurely because we haven’t the courage to live with uncertainty.”

  Uncertainty is an unintended, but inevitable, by-product of critical thinking. Sometimes critically exploring all sides of a question yields a clear answer. More often, it results in a need to weigh, analyze, and evaluate – exactly the skills we claim to value in what we often see referred to as “uncertain times”. And yet, how many of us are really comfortable with the uncertainty that results when our best critical thinking can’t deliver a clear answer?

  The courage Coffin refers to seems to be in short supply these days, and yet it may be one of the most important qualities we can cultivate in our young people. There are so many things we just don’t know – something it’s hard to keep in mind when Google is at our fingertips – things like how to balance majority and minority rights in a complex, heterogeneous culture, or how to behave as responsible consumers when the economic and environmental priorities clash, or – as McLaughlin points out in her discussion of Huckleberry Finn – how to expose children to the richness of the past without condoning its negative features. Our kids need to confront these dilemmas without feeling pressure to come up with the “right” answers.

  That’s not easy in a fill-in-the-bubble testing culture, where getting it right is what matters most. It’s particularly difficult when adult role models make claims of certainty when none exists and provide pat answers to unanswerable questions. And as much as we may give lip-service to the notion of critical thinking, the kids know that, most of the time, the right answer will get them farther in school than the right questions. Or the hard questions. If we really want to prepare our children to live in uncertain times, we need to help them develop the courage to live with uncertainty while they continue to search for answers to their – and our – dilemmas.

• Dramatic Ways to Engage Every Student

  10:03 PM Comments Off on Dramatic Ways to Engage Every Student

  “Who is that kid?” 

  That comment, made by a Grade 4 teacher after she watched the shyest student in her class shine onstage as the lead in the school play, reflects what many teachers and parents have discovered when they watch children take part in dramatic activities at school. Everyone can think of a child who was transformed in a positive way by the experience, exhibiting greater confidence, passion, or even a completely different personality when onstage. I saw this first-hand in my years of experience with children’s drama, both in and out of school. However, the question that I was led to ask was not about the child’s identity, but about the nature of the experience that I had seen. What was it in that experience that made the child see things differently, that allowed him or her to achieve things that previously felt impossible?

  More importantly for education as a whole, is it possible to take the passion and transformation engendered by drama and infuse it into daily classroom life in a way that improves learning offstage? In seeking the answer to this question, I was led to leave my role as a school principal and pursue doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, while at the same time working with many thousands of students and teachers in the Greater Toronto Area over the course of three years. The results of my research and practice have led to the development of a new theory of learning, one which leverages many of the natural abilities that each one of us has for learning in a variety of modalities. This approach (which I call KEEN Learning) is designed to help students develop a “body of knowledge” that gives them an intuitive understanding of the curriculum that is taught every day in class. But it all began with drama…

  Exploring the Nature of Student Motivation

  Over my teaching career, I was always fascinated by the way some students could show a great deal of accomplishment in certain areas (i.e. skateboarding, computer skills, music, etc.) but could not do the same with daily classroom learning. It was not because they were lazy, as they often spent grueling hours in the mastery in their chosen areas of interest. It had more to do with passion. As a teacher, I struggled without success to help all students achieve this passion in class, but after school at play practice, it would appear unbidden. Why, I wondered? Could it have something to do with what was happening in the brain during certain activities? Why did some students develop passion for classroom learning and others not? What role did learning styles play? 

  When I became a school principal, I was astounded at the number of disengaged students in the schools where I served. Nearly 30 percent of all the students I encountered were disengaged and some of them were clearly destined to become dropouts. Over the years of non-success at school, they became convinced that they could not learn. As one student put it to me in a moment of his own frustration: “Mr. Dixon, I’m stupid – you know it, I know it, and my parents know it…” But that was clearly not the case; he had many areas of accomplishment outside class. And yet, he profoundly believed that he was stupid inside class. Of course, each successive teacher who worked with that student had a progressively harder time changing his mind and engaging him in classroom learning. Frustrated with this problem, I decided to try to answer my questions in my Ph.D. research. 

  At their core, dramatic activities, even when they have nothing to do with performance, have a tremendous ability to foster these connections.

  What I discovered was that the goal of all teaching should be to help students make neural connections – the basis for all learning in the brain. To do that, however, the student has to have engagement and cognition around the material to be learned. At their core, dramatic activities, even when they have nothing to do with performance, have a tremendous ability to foster these connections. This happens because drama uses four modalities that, if used within a classroom context for non-performance purposes, can have a profound effect on student engagement and cognition – especially for boys. Let’s look at each one in turn:

  Kinesthetics (Moving for meaning). Students who struggle in class often have a hard time sitting still. When they are allowed to move, their natural learning style can be used to foster deeper understanding. Recent brain research reveals that the same parts of the brain are often used for both movement and memory. Cognition and retention of classroom material is aided by the “knowing” that kinesthetic learners get by using their bodies to represent that material. They now have a cognitive peg on which to hang their learning. This is naturally leveraged in drama and can be integrated into the classroom if the teacher knows how.

  Endorphinal Release (Playing for mastery). Play allows for individual to have greater control over their environment and take non-threatening risks in exchange for the excitement and stimulation that comes from the play. The enjoyment of play can cause chemical emotional reactions in the brain that affect the learner and cause greater attachment while at the same time causing the brain to work harder in an attempt to gain mastery of the game being played. Brain research indicates that we retain material more efficiently when we have an emotional attachment to it. Drama inspires this passion onstage, but it can also be used to emotionally attach students to science vocabulary!

  Experiential Perspective–taking (Imagining while doing). Those students who learn experientially long to understand by using their whole being. The imagination can be used effectively to allow participants to pretend to be someone else. It is obvious that when a child takes on a role in drama, that young person gains a different perspective and deeper understanding of another person by portraying that character. But why could you not do the same in Math? When a child imaginatively “becomes” the hypotenuse of a right triangle, is that child not given a unique perspective that uses imagination to experience what it means to be such a thing? Even more importantly, the brain now has another set of connections that support the neural circuitry related to triangles. 

  Narrative (Creating a story). We know that learning is most effective when it has meaning for the learner, but we have discovered how difficult it is for the teacher to create meaning for every child from the front of the classroom. In all cultures and at all times in history, human beings have told stories to help them understand. They have taken the form of prose, poetry, music, and, of course, drama. The movie business would be nothing without dramatic stories. Yet, in the classroom, we often forget that. The power of narrative is such that when a teacher allows children – in concert with classmates – to create a story about the curriculum material that makes sense to them, this story has far more resonance with students and is more likely to be retained than anything the teacher could create.

  When these four elements of drama are used in a teaching strategy, not only do students get excited about learning, they gain deeper insights into curriculum material and have the ability to better recall and manipulate the information, concepts, and skills being taught.

  Dramatic Benefits for the Classroom

  So how does one bring drama into the classroom so that it leverages the neurological power of movement, play, experience, and story in a way that leaves the teacher sane and the curriculum both taught and learned? Aye, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. First of all, the teacher has to see these activities through a different lens. In our society, the word drama conjures up talented “artsy” people delivering performances. But drama’s benefits are too great to be left on the stage. Drama as Praxis means using drama for other purposes that have nothing to do with performing. When approached this way, exercises and activities that were developed for dramatic purposes can be used in any subject area.

  So how does one bring drama into the classroom so that it leverages the neurological power of movement, play, experience, and story in a way that leaves the teacher sane and the curriculum both taught and learned? Aye, there’s the rub.

  That has been the goal in the development of KEEN Learning, where we have tried to take the power of drama off of the stage and refine it down to five simple strategies called KEEN 5X that can be used at any point in a lesson for a variety of purposes:

  • to determine students’ knowledge prior to teaching
  • to process text or written information
  • to retain information taught by the teacher
  • to make connections and inferences
  • to review before a test
  • to consolidate and synthesize learning

  These exercises are also excellent for the authentic assessment and evaluation of students beyond pencil/paper assessments. This approach has proved very effective in engaging those students who most often fail in school: interpersonal, kinesthetic, and visual-spatial learners. Teachers in our KEEN Learning Community find it allows them to accomplish their learning goals in less time and with a greater number of students – and it makes them more effective and happier teachers.

  Even without using KEEN, any teacher can add one or more of the four modalities of Kinesthetics, Endorphinal Release, Experiential Perspective-taking, and Narrative into daily teaching (in any way you can come up with!) to enhance learning and joy in the classroom. Why not give it a try? It’s a great way to help more students to take their place on the stage of educational success, ready to give many repeat performances as lifelong learners.

  If you would like to see video of how these strategies work and download some free examples, you can join our KEEN Learning Community by emailing info@keenforlearning.org

  EN BREF – Le but de tout enseignement doit être d’aider les élèves à établir des connexions neuronales – la base même de l’apprentissage. Pour ce faire, il doit exister un lien et une cognition entre les élèves et la matière à apprendre. Fondamentalement, les activités dramatiques, même si elles n’ont rien à voir avec la prestation, peuvent favoriser ces connexions. En effet, les activités dramatiques mettent en œuvre quatre modalités qui, dans un contexte de classe et sans se rapporter à la prestation, peuvent se répercuter profondément sur l’engagement et la cognition des élèves : bouger avec un sens, jouer pour maîtriser, imaginer tout en faisant et créer une histoire. Le personnel enseignant doit d’abord voir ces activités selon une autre perspective. Dans notre société, l’expression « arts dramatiques » évoque des « artistes » talentueux qui livrent des prestations. Mais les avantages des activités dramatiques sont trop importants pour être laissés sur la scène.

• The King of Denmark and the Naked Mole Rat: Teaching Critical Thinking for Social Justice

  5:47 PM Comments Off on The King of Denmark and the Naked Mole Rat: Teaching Critical Thinking for Social Justice

  The King of Denmark and a Class Divided

  There is a well-loved, but apocryphal story about the King of Denmark. It goes like this: When the Nazis invaded Denmark during the Second World War, they ordered the Danish Jews to don arm bands displaying the yellow star of David. Jews would no longer be permitted to appear in public without these symbols in plain view. The morning following the Nazi invasion, so the story goes, the King of Denmark rode out on his horse through the parks and streets wearing an armband with the yellow star. While this story is not factual, it has created an archetype, a symbol of bravery in the face of injustice. And, in truth, only a small number of Danish Jews ended up in the hands of the Nazis because their non-Jewish friends and neighbours found ingenious ways to protect them, to hide them, and to spirit them out of harm’s way.

  Many people have seen the film of Jane Elliott’s attempt to teach her Grade 3 class about racial discrimination. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, teaching in a small Iowa town populated largely by White people from homogeneous backgrounds, Jane Elliott decided to introduce her students to an experience that she believed would simulate racial discrimination and thereby teach them to become more tolerant people.

  Her blue-eye, brown-eye class division exercise has become legendary. Over the course of a few days, Ms. Elliott alternately privileged and then disadvantaged her students based upon the colour of their eyes. The film, entitled “A Class Divided”, focuses on children who are humiliated by the experience and also on those who exult in their newfound positions of privilege and liberty. While it is painful to watch children suffering the negative effects of exclusion, we must not forget to look at the smiling children who are experiencing the other side of Ms. Elliott’s coin.

  We need to ask why there seems to be a belief that the children in the experiment will only learn from one half of the experience. The unstated hypothesis of the experiment seems to be that they will suddenly be brought to realize the “right answer” to the question we all ask a child who has hurt another: “How would it make you feel if she did that to you?”

  Has that ever actually worked? We know that a large number of bullies have, themselves, been bullied, so why do we persist in the belief that there is only one thing to learn from an experience like the one Jane Elliott created? If we cannot teach children to see a multiplicity of views, we are – none of us – learning from the experience.

  Where is the King of Denmark in this story? Where are the students who refuse to comply with the demand to exclude their former friends or refuse to stand by while others are denied an extra helping of lunch? Why don’t we see Jane Elliott’s “diversity training” in the same light as we see Stanley Milgram’s experiments? When experimental subjects were given orders, which 65 percent of them obeyed, to apply shocks they believed could be lethal, there was an outcry. Yes, we learned that even ordinary and decent people would follow orders to the extreme. We learned what we have always known about how to train soldiers to kill the enemy and how to make the “other” seem inhuman. But did anyone expect that the experimental subjects who applied the shocks would learn to be more compassionate or tolerant? It does not stand to reason. We cannot close our eyes to the observations and the views that may contradict the “nice” or popular way of examining uncomfortable issues.

  The Naked Mole Rat, Freedom of Expression, and Equality Rights

  One of my favourite picture books is by Mo Willems, of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus fame. This charming exploration of freedom of expression is entitled Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed (New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2009). The book’s main character is a naked mole rat named Wilbur, who likes to wear clothes. When the rest of the naked mole rats see him dressed, Wilbur is met by a chorus of “Eew Yuck,” from the others, who inform him, “NAKED MOLE RATS DON’T WEAR CLOTHES.” His response: “Why not?”

  This two-word sentence elicits an outcry from the majority of his community, but also a response from the great leader, Grand-pah, who upon consideration, decides to don clothing, himself. The questions he asks while pondering Wilbur’s “Why not?” amount to a legal and rights-based analysis, suitable for five-year-olds. Does wearing clothes hurt anyone? No. Does everyone like to wear clothes? Also, no. We do not need a head count here to determine fairness. We need to approach the question in another way.

  Democracy does not, in fact, depend solely upon the rule of the majority; it depends upon the understanding that the majority should be subject to questions and that minority values and views will be tolerated where they do not cause significant harm. And “Eew Yuck” is not harm.

  Democracy does not, in fact, depend solely upon the rule of the majority; it depends upon the understanding that the majority should be subject to questions and that minority values and views will be tolerated where they do not cause significant harm.

  Giving the franchise to women, First Nations peoples, prisoners, and others who did not previously have the right to vote; integrating neighbourhoods, industries, schools; joining people of different races or of the same sex in marriage; covering or uncovering our heads and faces in public have all, at one time or another, met with scorn, offense, and strong negative feelings. Nonetheless, principles of equality and freedom have slowly gained the upper hand. This did not happen by silencing either side of the conflicts involved in these issues.

  Here is the hard part – we also need to hear from those who say “Eew Yuck”. As people who care about justice and who also know that we do not and cannot have all the answers, we need to be open to the questions. Did the King of Denmark love the Jewish people? Did the Danes? Not particularly. They just understood that rather than acting upon arbitrary instructions or upon emotions, they needed to act upon first principles.

  But how do we teach principles in an era when our diverse societies are constantly engaging in conflicts of values and points of view? I believe that we teach justice by actively and purposely engaging those whose views differ from our own. We must do this consciously and creatively. We must invite disagreement, but also acknowledge that all points of view are not equally valid or justifiable. But if we find everyone to be in agreement, if we quickly find a consensus, we should acknowledge that someone must be missing. Whose voice is not being heard? We need to actively seek out views that contradict our own, or we may never truly understand our own views. (If you have ever seen a naked mole rat, you may be more convinced than ever, that clothes are a good idea!)

  If we find everyone to be in agreement, if we quickly find a consensus, we should acknowledge that someone must be missing. Whose voice is not being heard? We need to actively seek out views that contradict our own, or we may never truly understand our own views.

  Huckleberry Finn, Freedom of Expression and Equality Rights

  A few years ago, I decided to read aloud to my granddaughters one of my favourite books. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic of American literature and has been taught in schools and universities for generations. It is genuinely funny, and is also an early anti-racist work of art. What could go wrong? I was unable to get past the first few pages before my granddaughters told me they did not want to hear any more. They were not bored; they simply could not stand hearing the word that is used pervasively in the story – and that was used frequently and commonly at the time the novel was written. The “N” word comes from the mouths of nearly all the characters and appears more than 200 times in the text.

  A number of solutions to this problem have arisen. One such solution is to read a Bowdlerized version of the book recently published (not for the first time), that replaces the word “nigger” with the word “slave.” It also eliminates the word “Injun”, which is also used numbers of times in the text. Do these alterations change meaning and context? Without question.

  Others think a solution is to simply stop teaching or reading the book altogether. After all, there are many other wonderful examples of late 19^th century American literature deserving of our attention. If we use this new version of Huckleberry Finn, or if we stop reading and teaching it, what does this say about our commitment to teaching and engaging with our difficult history, with art, and with critical thinking?

  What do we say to the parent who reports that her child is in a class reading Huckleberry Finn and is now, for the first time, being called “nigger” in the school yard?

  But, what do we say to the parent who reports that her child is in a class reading Huckleberry Finn and is now, for the first time, being called “nigger” in the school yard? Whether we choose to engage with the past (or with the present), whether we choose to avoid conflict by ignoring potential controversy, we inevitably make a choice that leaves someone out. In order to make an informed choice, we need to listen to as many views as we can find. And yet, a choice must still be made.

  Citizenship, Democracy, and Tins of Tomatoes

  Teaching citizenship to young children in many schools has come down to a well-known exercise – the charity fundraising or food bank drive. Many schools teach children to “give back” or to appreciate how lucky they are in comparison to others who do not have the material possessions or security that they are presumed to enjoy. Certain schools enjoin each class in a competition to bring in the most money or the largest number of tins. At the end of the collection period, the class that brings in the most wins a prize, perhaps a pizza lunch or coupons from a fast food restaurant.

  The tacit understanding is that the children in these classes will learn to be good citizens who assist people in need – particularly those who are less fortunate and who live in far-off countries. This seems like a rational and uncontroversial lesson because very few people object to “good works”. And the fundraising drives often involve videos of grateful people in Africa who have had a school built for them or who now have access to clean water because of a new well drilled for them by the funds raised by Canadian children.

  But, rarely are our children shown videos of First Nations people in Manitoba or Ontario who do not have clean and safe water, or decent school facilities. Nor are they shown the excellent living conditions enjoyed by the leaders of the countries in which people have no safe drinking water or schools. As Wilbur asks, “Why not?”

  There are questions we should invite from students who are learning about democracy and citizenship – questions we may not realize we are actually avoiding. When we want our students to be grateful for their good fortune, do we know if some of the children in our classes are asking their families to give them the tins of tomatoes they received that week from the very food bank the school wants them to support? When we gather funds for far-off people, do we ask why their living situations are different from our own – or ask whether there are people in Canada whose lives are similar to the needy or grateful people in the videos?

  Asking hard questions is just that – hard. But if we are truly committed to teaching for social justice, we need to encourage our children to find as many points of view as they can, and to ask questions we may never be able to answer, knowing that education for citizenship lies in the process of thinking critically about the many sides of a question and working toward addressing the inequities this process reveals.

  EN BREF – Poser des questions difficiles est effectivement – difficile. Mais pour enseigner vraiment la justice sociale, nous devons encourager nos enfants à obtenir le plus de points de vue possible et à poser des questions auxquelles nous pourrions ne jamais arriver à répondre, en sachant que l’éducation à la citoyenneté réside dans la réflexion critique au sujet des nombreux aspects d’une question et dans la réduction des iniquités qui sont ainsi dégagées. Si nous constatons que tous s’entendent, si nous arrivons rapidement à un consensus, nous devrions reconnaître que quelqu’un est sûrement absent. Quelle voix n’entendons-nous pas? Nous devons activement chercher des points de vue qui contredisent les nôtres, sinon nous ne pourrions jamais vraiment comprendre nos propres points de vue.

• Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s the Necessary Order of Things

  January 4, 2012 9:07 PM Comments Off on Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s the Necessary Order of Things

  I believe it is commonly understood that companies that focus on immediate profitability usually fade in the long term while those that focus on quality products and services generally flourish. Is it so hard, then, to understand that schools that focus on test scores are missing the boat? (And, of course, there is the matter of customer service – but that’s another blog.)

  Academic outcomes are only surrogate indicators for the ability to learn, which is the primary goal. They have some value in and of themselves, of course, but in a dynamic world where one can never know everything and knowledge is constantly evolving, it is the ability learn that really counts. I can’t remember who it was that said being educated in not a matter of arriving at a destination but of travelling with different eyes, but s/he was right.

  Therefore, we should focus our attention on student learning and let the achievement take care of itself. I suppose that’s just another way of saying, “don’t teach to the test,” which means we need to go further upstream in the educational enterprise in order to achieve success – and that brings us to engagement, the actual headwaters that should concern us. Without engagement, learning suffers and achievement drops.

  Does that mean that once engagement is achieved, learning follows naturally and achievement is assured? To a significant degree I think it does, and thus it is achieving engagement that should be our primary concern when thinking about everything from a lesson plan to the structure of a school system. (I’m talking about student engagement here but, of course, that is unlikely without teacher engagement so that’s yet another blog for another day.)

  However, this Little Bo Peep approach  (leave them alone and they will come home wagging achievement behind them) has its limitations. Passionately engaged students won’t necessarily become competent lifelong learners with a strong foundation of background knowledge and a broad repertoire of skills. Some scaffolding is required to ensure the foundations that will enable them to become independently capable. Students also need some direct instruction so that they master a necessary core of understandings and skills – the Protective Shepherd element, if you like – before they are given increased choice and responsibility.

  Notwithstanding this important caveat, a great deal of good could be done by shifting a significant part of our energy and attention from measuring achievement to stimulating engagement. At the very least it opens up a field of important generative questions that could help to reconsider the yin and yang of teacher-led and student-led action in schools.

  Next Post in This Series: Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  Afterthought – I’m sorry if the suggestion that students are like sheep put you off. Pigs are more intelligent but that get’s dicey too, doesn’t it. Metaphors have so much baggage!

• TedXWilfrid-Bastien

  January 3, 2012 5:07 PM Comments Off on TedXWilfrid-Bastien

  Better than a cup of coffee in the morning is listening to a good TEDx talk. Most people know about TED (www.ted.com), which stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”. Founded in 1984, it provides a platform through which ideas can be shared between communities and inventors, thinkers, scientists, educators and the like. TEDx has since become a huge influence in creating important dialog, inspiring minds, sparking innovation and beyond-the-box thinking everywhere it goes.

  TEDxWilfrid-Bastien, is an independently organized TEDx event – by the people, for the people – to discuss, reflect on and celebrate education. Exclusively dedicated to today’s education, this conference will feature a number of important speakers who will share their innovative ideas in addressing the important question of the transition to a 21^st century pedagogy.

  This rare event is a great honour and as well as a first for the small elementary school Wilfrid-Bastien. It is furthermore the first ever independently organized TEDx event to be held exclusively about canadian education in French!

  TEDxWilfrid-Bastien, will be held on February 29^th, 2012, between 7-10pm at 8420 Boulevard Lacordaire in 
Saint-Léonard, Quebec, Canada. There are only a very limited amount of tickets available, so please hurry and visit http://tedxwilfridbastien.eventbrite.com to buy your ticket(s) today!

  Co-written by Amber Judge

  Note: The video footage of each talk will only be released for viewing on the web when they are translated with subtitles in English.

• Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  January 2, 2012 5:43 PM Comments Off on Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  It has become clear to me that we’re spending way too much time focusing on assessment and evaluation. In fact, conversations about data driven decision-making, authentic assessment practices, design-down planning and testing protocols have now worked their way into the everyday vernacular of teachers and students, and have become such a strong plot line in the narrative of modern-day schooling, to the point where I fear that the very ideas and practices that are supposed to make our children’s education richer and more meaningful are actually having the opposite effect.
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• No equity without inclusion, solidarity…and data!

  December 9, 2011 3:39 PM Comments Off on No equity without inclusion, solidarity…and data!

  Reading the guest blogs on equity over the past two weeks has been a real treat for me, my colleagues at CEA and, we hope, for you.

  What are some of the ‘take aways’ from these diverse yet related perspectives?  Here’s some of what we heard that we need to do:

  • Acknowledge that Canada is one of the few countries that has managed to combine excellence and equity in its school systems, and yet not become complacent;
  • Make equity and inclusion explicit priorities at all levels of the system;
  • Recognize the impact of poverty, racism, historic oppression of First Nations people, and other forms of discrimination that result in stereotyping and low expectations of students, and yet not use these as excuses for not achieving greater equity within education;
  • Provide adequate and equitable funding, an issue that has seriously affected First Nations on reserve schools and low income neighbourhoods with limited access to fundraising dollars;
  • Expect and support leadership within schools  and schools system to lead the charge;
  • Require responsibility and accountability for achieving equity goals. Rhetoric and even policy are not enough.  Do we need explicit timetables for achievement of goals?;
  • Provide research evidence and data to identify problems and to monitor our progress. This includes longitudinal data tracking students over time,  research evidence on what works in schools, as well as an understanding of the context within which students are functioning, e.g. statistics on poverty, inequality, unemployment, etc.;
  • Allow greater flexibility in policies and practices to address inequities and discrimination (e.g. specialized school programs) and to reach all learners (e.g. more creative and effective use of technology); and
  • Support school-community partnerships to achieve greater equity and other educational goals.  Although schools have a critically important role to play, they cannot do it alone.  Schools and community agencies can work together to enhance students’ learning.

  To these, I would add the following:

  • Broaden our understanding of equity in policy and practice. Equity is not just about closing gaps in differential  outcomes on test scores or graduation rates, as important as these are for young people’s future prospects.  Equity is also about students’ school experiences which may have a lifelong impact and, equally important, may make the daily lives of some students miserable and devoid of dignity.  As has been observed before, young people are not just adults-in-waiting; their lives and experiences as children are equally valuable and important.
  • Understand that equity and inclusion go hand in hand.  It is encouraging that many provincial government policies focus on equity AND inclusion.  If we understand equity only as closing achievement gaps, we miss addressing the situation of many students, e.g. LGBTQ students who may be keeping up academically but may be experiencing bullying and disrespect on a daily basis, or of children with intellectual disabilities who may be socially excluded and not expected to be intellectually engaged.
  • Recognize that, without solidarity, equity and inclusion will likely not be achieved.  Equity and inclusion are not about ‘us’ and ‘them’; they are about recognizing our common humanity and our common goals.   Solidarity does not imply homogenization or ‘one size fits all’; it means mutual recognition and respect, as well as an end to divisive policies and practices that pit students, parents or teachers against each other in competition for resources, time and attention, and system priorities.
  • Equity also involves narrowing the gap between students’ in school and out of school lived experiences. Students in CEA’s soon to be published research on Youth Confidence in Learning and the Future indicated a low level of ‘fit’ or connection between their in-school and out of school lives and learning;
  • Student engagement is critical to equity and inclusion. CEA’s research on What did you do in school today? found that only 36% per cent of students were intellectually engaged in  their classroom studies.  Given the importance of engagement to learning and to motivation, this is a reality that must be recognized and addressed in all equity strategies.

  Finally, what else is CEA doing in this area?  In recognition of the importance of research and data to achieving  and monitoring equity and inclusion, CEA is commissioning research that looks at issues related to collecting student sub-population data, such as race and sexual orientation.  We are working with Charles Ungerleider and Directions Group on a policy options paper that will be the basis for a series of consultations next spring. We will keep you posted on this and other developments.

  On behalf of CEA, thank you to all of the guest bloggers, commentators and tweeters who have contributed to this important conversation about equity and inclusion.

• PCAP 2010 – Are we asking the right questions?

  December 5, 2011 6:31 PM Comments Off on PCAP 2010 – Are we asking the right questions?

  The Report on the 2010 Pan-Canadian Assessment of Mathematics, Science, and Reading (PCAP) landed on our staffroom table this week. The overall results were very good news, but as is usually the case when these system wide testing results are released, the media sifted through the mounds of data to focus the public’s attention on some bad news. This time around, it was, among other things, the growing performance gap between boys and girls, particularly in reading.

  CEA by no means takes the issue of increasing gender performance gaps lightly, but varying literacy rates and gender issues are hardly new in education, and the public needs to understand that there are many male students who are excelling in their studies and many girls who are not. In his Education Canada article, Failing Boys, Beyond Crisis, Moral Panic, and Limiting Stereotypes, University of Western Ontario’s Wayne Martino explains the dangers associated with constantly reinforcing and exaggerating gender differences.

  As typically happens with the media dissection of the PISA scores, negative headlines send some Ministries of Education searching for someone to blame, such as the case in Quebec with decreased reading scores and in Manitoba with overall lower scores.  But what about the often-heard comment by Math teachers that one of the biggest challenges they face is students having difficulty reading and understanding written problems – yet reading test scores in Quebec were down, but Quebec Math scores ranked amongst the top in Canada?

  As I have stated in the past, we don’t use singular measures or a “test” to diagnose a medical issue. When a person coughs, we don’t jump to the conclusion that the person has a serious lung disease. We insist on multiple tests to ensure a proper diagnosis. In education, however, one test does the trick and shows all the problems and weaknesses. It is long overdue that when it comes to diagnosing challenges, strengths, and weaknesses in education, we move away from the overly simplistic and incorrect “One test says it all” mindset. Parents, educators, and students deserve better than this.

  As Jodene Dunleavy articulated in her Education Canada article, Ranking Our Responses to PISA 2009 :

  “I’d like to put some of the blame for public reaction to PISA scores on the OECD, itself. It’s easy to feel intimidated by the volume of figures and explanations that flow from each assessment. But this alone cannot explain the overwhelming amount of attention paid to a single, league-style table ranking the 65 participating countries on combined reading, mathematic, and scientific literacy scores. Witnessing how results get taken up in the public domain, it is hard not to feel that the PISA country rankings have become the Olympics of the education world.”

  So around our water cooler, many questions about PCAP arose: Are we asking the right questions on these performance assessments of school systems?  PCAP, just like PISA, is measuring how well students are doing in math, reading, and science, but it doesn’t attempt to take approaches to learning, student engagement, and teaching environments into account in comparing provinces.

  It’s encouraging that there is considerable debate in Europe about the need to have PISA measure creativity, but what else should we be measuring? What about measuring student engagement? Equity? And a breakdown by subpopulation groups, not just boy and girls?

  We think more could and should be measured.  Do you think so?

• Parents Please BYOD

  November 25, 2011 8:25 PM Comments Off on Parents Please BYOD

  Right, another acronym you have to remember. On the slim chance the term BYOD has not cropped in your conversations, I’m referring to the use of mobile devices in the classroom thus ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD). I know I said parents BYOD so let me explain.

  

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• Putting the Horse Before the Cart: The Culture of Schooling

  November 18, 2011 4:56 PM Comments Off on Putting the Horse Before the Cart: The Culture of Schooling

  Policymakers conventionally work to effect positive outcomes on the technical aspects of education – i.e., the human capital aspects: what students learn and obtain in skills. I have interacted with hundreds of high school students in the U.S. for the last few years, and my thoughts pertain mainly to the social and cultural functions of schooling. I can’t say definitely that these functions actually “cause” anything because I am first and foremost an ethnographic interviewer – searching for the meanings that students impose on the schooling experience. But these meanings matter; in fact, they might matter more than we know.

  The Price of Inequality

  By all indicators, U.S. society still has a long way to go to rectify the economic and educational disparities that are so highly correlated with skin color, ethnicity, and social status. While inequality has multiple origins, I believe that we must develop educational policies that demonstrate a mindfulness of the massive educational “debt”, to borrow from Gloria Ladson-Billings,[1] that people of colour have inherited from systems of colonization, genocide, and slavery. It is a debt that compounds over the decades as inequality continues to rise, enabling the rich to get richer, the poor to get poorer, and both to be correlated with skin colour and ethnicity.

  This legacy of debt is reflected in both material and educational terms. Only 50 percent of historically disadvantaged U.S. minority groups graduate from high school.[2] The dropout rate for Latinos is more than double the national average. One in five African-American students will fail a grade in elementary or secondary school, compared to one in ten for average students. Only a third or less of African-American, Latino, and Native American students are enrolled in college preparatory classes, compared to half or more of Asian and White students. The average White 13-year-old reads at a higher level and fares better in math than the average Black or Latino 17-year-old.[3]

  Aside from the obvious personal tragedies behind these figures, demographic forecasts predict that Blacks and Latinos will comprise a majority of the U.S. population by the middle of the 21st century. If our schools do not adequately prepare them for higher educational attainment, they may not have the skills necessary to lead this country.

  Unfortunately, the good intentions of reformers to address these concerns have taken us in a dangerous direction, one in which we measure the success of the overwhelming majority of U.S. teachers and students by how well students do on one-shot, fill-in-the bubble tests.

  This test-and-punish trend played out in high drama in Los Angeles, where teachers fought back after being named ineffective in the Los Angeles Times because their latest students’ test results were lower than the previous year’s.

  On the flip side, however, the San Francisco Chronicle featured a story on June Jordan School for Equity, whose students do not place high on achievement tests but succeed in other important ways academically. Although June Jordan students’ test scores place the school in the category of “worse performing”, more than three-quarters of graduating seniors attend college – well above the state average of 50 percent. Of course, high school graduates need to possess strong literacy and numeracy skills, but they also need strong critical and creative thinking skills. The case of a school like June Jordan raises the question: can we produce highly successful children even if they score poorly on standardized tests?

  They don’t really care about us when it comes to school. They just need us to perform well on these tests so that the school can look good, and they [the educators] can keep their jobs.

  I have spent hundreds of hours over the last five years in high schools across the country where I have witnessed how high-stakes testing is eroding the relationships between teachers and school officials, teachers and parents, and even teachers and students. In the words of one 15-year-old African-American student in a relatively high-performing Southern high school, “They don’t really care about us when it comes to school. They just need us to perform well on these tests so that the school can look good, and they [the educators] can keep their jobs.” Indeed, all we seem to care about in the U.S. these days are test-score results and international standings with other countries on particular educational outcomes. Darlene and several of her school mates even told me that they sometimes throw in the towel on these tests, especially when they feel disconnected from the material and when they view the test’s worth as something only to make educators “look good.” We have to go behind the scenes to investigate factors that keep youth committed to and invested in their education.

  Comments like Darlene’s, and the current debates about how we improve the educational landscape of American public schooling, should compel us to think seriously about the direction educational policy is taking us. In many districts, testing strategies take precedence over teaching the content and learning skills that students will need for college and life. Even worse, students who don’t test well often become “collateral damage” in “good” schools, where the objective of maintaining high rankings is such a priority that the schools transfer low performers by “dumping” or sending kids to other, lower performing schools.

  Ironically, the impetus for our current testing fixation is the academic achievement gap between students of different race and class backgrounds. This fixation does not serve them well. We expect poor kids to perform as well as middle-class and affluent kids – but without the same family and neighbourhood supports that we know improve test scores, and without the in-school supports such as current text books, high quality teachers, safe schools, one-on-one tutors, and expensive test-prep programs.

  Emphasizing testing over teaching has put the cart before the horse.

  School Culture

  Policymakers are looking for quick fixes to the racial achievement gap, but for the real fix we need to delve beneath the test scores and deal with the social and cultural functions of schooling. How does a student come to respect his “different” neighbours in the face of fear and apprehension about their culture? And how does a social context of “separateness” affect academic performance?

  In 2007 my research assistants and I conducted a study in two southern and two northeastern high schools, all of which achieved high levels of proficiency and excellence on the mandated report cards required by No Child Left Behind. For half a year we visited these “good” schools almost daily. Though all the schools were considered multiracial, two were majority-White (and wealthier) and two majority-Black and/or Latino. We found that the academic experiences of majority Black and Latino students differed greatly from the experience of their minority counterparts in the majority-White schools. In both majority-White schools, we encountered only one or two African-American and Latino students enrolled in the upper-echelon honours and advanced classes. Strikingly, when I asked teachers at the southern majority-White school to identify high-achieving African-American students among the more than three hundred enrolled, they could mention only two girls.

  Our survey study of 469 students found that the self-esteem of the Black students in this school was the lowest of all of the Black students across the four schools. Along with their Black peers at the northeastern majority-White school, these students were also least likely to report that they sought friends across different social and cultural lines. Meanwhile, their peers of similar socio-economic backgrounds at the majority-Black schools showed significantly higher levels of what I term “cultural flexibility” and higher levels of self-esteem.[4]

  Ethnographically, we observed that, despite attending “desegregated” schools, Black students in the affluent White schools were segregated in terms of both academics and extracurricular activities. That is, their presence in college preparatory courses (known to expand students’ knowledge bases in significantly different ways than regular comprehensive high school courses) and their involvement in cultural activities such as band, orchestra, theatre, and Model United Nations, was much lower than that of their Black peers in majority-Black schools. In brief, we found that Black (and Latino) students in the majority-White schools had little to no engagement in specific educational classes or activities that could potentially broaden their cultural horizons. Their schools’ social organization, coupled with a particular cultural climate, conveyed both implicit and explicit messages about different racial and ethnic groups’ academic and extracurricular turfs.[5]

  “Equity entails… a habit of attention by which citizens are attuned to the balances and imbalances in what citizens are giving up for each other,” writes Danielle Allen.[6] She outlines a conceptual diagram of overlapping networks in which people negotiate losses, gains, and reciprocity without feeling that they are losing their political agency when institutions step in to equilibrate resources and opportunity.

  Realizing this kind of equity will be difficult in U.S. society. Achieving deep understanding of what it takes to recalibrate the system fairly for all citizens is not easy in a society where liberal national values espouse individualism and competition while denying the ways in which historic, exclusionary practices and policies have placed members of particular racial groups in their current economic and academic predicaments. To paraphrase a rhetorical question proffered by Allen: “Can we devise an education that, rather than teaching citizens not to cross social boundaries or to talk to strangers or out-group members, that, instead, teaches them how to interact with them self-confidently and equitably?”[7] I think so. But not easily.

  Achieving deep understanding of what it takes to recalibrate the system fairly for all citizens is not easy in a society where liberal national values espouse individualism and competition while denying the ways in which historic, exclusionary practices and policies have placed members of particular racial groups in their current economic and academic predicaments.

  In addition to a cadre of well-trained teachers bolstered by access to ample learning tools and aids, equity requires a heightened consciousness among educators to “do diversity” with depth: by increasing their own knowledge base to help narrow the divides among and between students and teachers who differ by race, ethnicity, culture, and socio-economic status; by working to ensure that all students have equal opportunities to learn within the school; by maintaining a culture of high expectations for all students; by developing critically conscious and historically accurate pedagogy and curricula; and by preventing new forms of segregation within schools with due vigilance. Regrettably, although some of our nations’ schools have achieved desegregation, few have ever attained social integration.

  Ideologically, thinkers may disagree about the purposes of education. I, for one, continue to believe it is about much more than maintaining society’s economic health. As a social institution, it is a conduit for the transformation of society; for the promotion of vital democratic ideals and practices; for the maintenance of social harmony and balance; and for the building of civic community and capacity. Today, core values embedded in U.S. social and educational policies confirm these are, indeed, shared goals of education. Only focused attention on these areas in discourse, policy, and practice will lead us to the fulfillment of equal opportunity, equity, and the integration of a nation’s peoples.

  EN BREF – Les responsables de politiques cherchent des solutions simples pour combler l’écart de réussite entre les races, mais pour trouver une vraie solution, il faut expliquer cet écart et tenir compte des fonctions sociales et culturelles de l’école. Comment un élève arrive-t-il à respecter les différences devant la peur et l’appréhension face à d’autres cultures? Comment un contexte social de « séparation » se répercute-t-il sur le rendement scolaire? Les éducateurs doivent mieux saisir l’équité pour traiter la diversité en profondeur. Ils doivent enrichir leurs connaissances en vue d’atténuer ce qui divise les élèves ainsi que le personnel enseignant qui diffèrent par leur race, leur ethnicité, leur culture et leur situation socioéconomique; veiller à l’égalité des chances d’apprentissage de tous les élèves à l’école; maintenir des attentes élevées pour tous les élèves; élaborer une pédagogie et des curriculums caractérisés par un esprit critique et une historicité exacte; prévenir diligemment les nouvelles formes de ségrégation à l’école.

  ---

  [1] Gloria Ladson-Billings, “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools,” Educational Researcher 35 (2006): 3-12.

  [2] Christopher Swanson, Graduation Rates: Real Kids, Real Numbers (Washington, D.C.: Education Policy Center, The Urban Institute: 2004).

  [3] Angelina Kewal Ramani, Lauren Gilbertson, Mary Ann Fox, and Stephen Provasnik, “Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities (NCES 2007-039),” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2007).

  [4] Prudence Carter, “Race and Cultural Flexibility among Students in Different Multiracial Schools,” Teachers College Record 112, no. 6 (2010): 1529-1574.

  [5] Karolyn Tyson, William Darity, and Domini Castellino, “It’s Not a Black Thing: Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High Achievement,” American Sociological Review 70 (2005):582-605.

  [6] Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 134.

  [7] Ibid., 165

• All Are Welcome…but then what?

  10:09 AM Comments Off on All Are Welcome…but then what?

  I’m writing this blog on the eve of a very large undertaking on the part of my school district. In a few hours, more than 2800 secondary school teachers will descend upon the Toronto Congress Centre to listen to a robust roster of rather well known speakers, writers and public figures. Gathering under the banner, “All Are Welcome”, participants will have the opportunity to spend their day with the likes of, among others, writer, speaker and passionate arts advocate, Sir Ken Robinson; novelist, Lawrence Hill; adventurer and National Geographic contributor and Massey Lecturer, Wade Davis; Differentiated Instruction expert, Karen Hume and “drama queen”, Kathy Gould Lundy.

  At first, I thought the theme, “All Are Welcome” was a little too light when you considered the major challenges faced by public education these days. But, when I was approached to help capture a video record of the day, I suddenly found myself trying to create a narrative frame for the event. As I sat with the speakers’ bios and tried to find the threads that connected their messages, using the overall theme for the day as a backdrop, I began to realize that the claim that “All Are Welcome” is really just the beginning.

  After all, public schools have a legislative mandate to allow anyone, regardless of gender, socio-economic status, academic ability, or learning style, to take advantage of what is being offered. Physical exclusion is not an option. For me, however, the more powerful challenge is this: Once we allow everyone to enter through our doors, then what? What do we do with them? What is our moral obligation in terms of how we develop our educational programs and opportunities to meet the needs of those that we claim to serve?

  Until very recently, we have approached the students in our systems as a type of monolith. We’ve talked about best practice, standard curriculum, rigorous teaching and learning environments as if all students would respond to and benefit from the same approach. In a sense, our focus in terms of educational practice has really been about what we will do TO our students. But tomorrow’s speakers promise to challenge that teacher-centric, “one-size-fits-all” approach in a large way.

  Sir Ken, in his keynote address, will bring his now-familiar message: schools should be a place where the individual passions of our students are nurtured and supported. Lawrence Hill and others will, no doubt, remind us of the power of our diverse stories. Wade Davis will stir up the need for educators to develop a sense of curiosity and wonder in the natural world. Karen Hume will speak passionately about the need for differentiation in our classrooms and in our programs. Kathy Lundy will ask us to consider how well we really know the students that are placed before us each day. The challenge of “All Are Welcome” is really not about opening the doors of the schoolhouse to anyone who knocks. That vision has already been legislated into reality. No, the real challenge relates to how willing we are to see every student who crosses the threshold as a unique individual, with their own story, their own dream and a right to be educated in a place where the two might somehow connect.

  We’re willing to spend the money to bring these rich and vibrant voices to the stage of the Toronto Congress Center tomorrow. I wonder whether we will be willing to spend the time and effort necessary to carry the messages that we hear back to our schools on Monday morning and beyond.

• ConnectED Canada: Building a National Network for Change

  November 14, 2011 1:26 AM Comments Off on ConnectED Canada: Building a National Network for Change

  I think it’s an exciting time to be involved in the world of education.

  Across our country, school jurisdictions are rolling out plans and policies with the hopes of making school a more engaging place of learning for students.  As our profession makes this foundational shift, I get excited imagining classrooms that are places of vibrant, technology-supported, hands-on learning where all learners are supported and find success.  As I read these various visions I hope that all students are able experience a learning environment buzzing with discussion, activity, and engagement as students invent, share, refine and improve their own and each other’s ideas.

  To support these visions, I think we also need to shift what teacher learning looks like.  Many 21^st Century frameworks for student learning (for example here and here) revolve around skills such as collaboration, networking, creativity, communication and innovation, and I believe teachers need opportunities to learn and grow in similar learning environments.  I believe teachers need opportunities to see compelling images of contemporary teaching and learning being lived out in classrooms with opportunities to share, discuss, collaborate and learn from others.  We need professional development that is built on teacher engagement, networked learning and collective improvement.

  With that in mind, a group of educators from across the country have created ConnectED Canada – an annual gathering of teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders, each coming with a similar goal of making school more relevant and purposeful for students.  The goal of ConnectED Canada is to provide a platform for discussion and idea generation – all situated within a school community striving to live out the best of 21^st Century Teaching and Learning.

  ConnectED Canada is open to teachers, administrators, superintendents, and ministry representatives in additional to students and parents.  We want to bring together engaged professionals from across the country gathering to talk about what’s currently working , what’s emerging and where we might go next.

  The first year of ConnectED Canada is taking place May 25-27^th 2012 at the Calgary Science School, a school of 600 students focused on inquiry-based, technology-supported and outdoor education-enriched learning.  You can see examples of our approach to teaching and learning here on our school blog.

  

  As a staff member at the Science School I am so pleased we are hosting this first event. While we feel we have some great things happening at our school the idea of opening up our classrooms to 300 outsider visitors is both thrilling and nerve-wracking!  As the first day of the three-day event will be a normal day at the school, our teachers welcome the opportunity to share their ideas, questions and struggles with a wider audience. Also, we are eager to provide our students opportunity to share their experiences with a national audience.

  The second and third days of the event will be built around conversations and discussions.  We are currently looking for facilitators willing to host and lead 90 minute discussions.  Topics of discussion can range from technology implementation to policy development to assessment practices – all framed around how we might better the needs of learners in the modern world.

  We hope you’ll consider bringing forth a topic for sharing and discussion – the deadline for proposals in Dec 8^th, 2011. You can submit a proposal here.

  Our hopes for ConnectED Canada are many. We hope this event will give participants a chance to engage in rich and timely discussions about meaningful topics and innovative ideas in education. We hope that participants will initiate new relationships and deepen existing ones. We hope that the student and parent voice will play a significant role in the discussion. We hope participants will experience engaging learning taking place in real classrooms. Overall, we hope that ideas will be shared – and that participants will leave invigorated and excited about the wonderful work that is teaching and learning in the 21^st Century.

  http://www.twitter.com/neilstephenson

• Pssst… Have I got a program for you

  November 11, 2011 1:42 PM Comments Off on Pssst… Have I got a program for you

  I experienced many powerful moments while attending the Arts, Science and the Brain Conference last week in Toronto. The gathering, convened by Artssmarts, sought to engage participants in questions about how learning in the 21st century could be informed and enriched by current understandings of brain science.
  (more…)

• Cdn EdWire – A diverse array of serious education issues play out in the dailies

  November 4, 2011 9:09 PM Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – A diverse array of serious education issues play out in the dailies

  CYBERBULLYING AND TEEN SUICIDE

  The tragedy of teen suicide: can schools stop it? – Toronto Star

  Time to bring controversy, politics into classroom, experts say – Postmedia

  A MOVE TO ABOLISH QUEBEC SCHOOL BOARDS

  School boards dodge budget cutback bullet – The Suburban

  Quebec school boards fear budget-cut proposal – Montreal Gazette

  School boards have to go, says Coalition de l’avenir’s Legault – Laval News

  School boards in the crosshairs – Montreal Gazette
  Keep them? Kill them? For the anglo community, it’s a sensitive issue

  FAILING FIRST NATIONS STUDENTS

  Former PM calls education ‘absolute key’ to improving aboriginal life – Postmedia

  Canada failing First Nations kids with education system, UN told – Postmedia

  Ottawa accused of failing aboriginal children – CBC

  CONFRONTING THE PERSISTENT DROPOUT ISSUE

  Child immigrants over 9 more likely to drop out – CBC

  Anti-dropout program is working, report card shows – Montreal Gazette

  B.C. TEACHER LABOUR UNREST

  In B.C. school wars, the pupils are the losers – Globe and Mail

  Gov’t orders B.C. schools to prepare report cards – CTV

  BCTF gives failing grade to new education plan – CBC

  OTHER NEWS

  Have schools ‘professionalized’ the role of parent? – Toronto Star

  From $3,000 to zero, fees vary wildly for prestigious high-school program – Globe and Mail

  Education Act put on hold – CBC Alberta

  Parents fear sex-crime gap in school safety net – Montreal Gazette
  Pardoned pedophiles can teach; Police say they’re unable to do same checks done for staff at daycares, hockey teams 

  Immersion review not welcomed by everyone – Moncton Times & Transcript

  Parents uneasy with French immersion reforms – CBC NB

  Cheating policy can work, consultant says – CBC Newfoundland

  EDUBLOG HIGHLIGHTS

  How to Stop Good Ideas from Getting Shot Down – Culture of Yes (Chris Kennedy)
  I was listening to Canadian Education Association CEO, Ron Canuel, recently and he referenced John Kotter, a professor at the Harvard Business School. It was a name I knew, but I hadn’t previously been exposed to his work. Canuel shared Kotter’s list of the four strategies people use to help kill good ideas.

  • Fear mongering involves creating infectious anxiety, scaring others into believing a good idea is far too risky to pursue
  • Death by Delay entails stalling an idea with never-ending questions, straw polls, and meetings—until the idea eventually loses momentum and fizzles out
  • Confusion consists of peppering a conversation with a stream of irrelevant facts and convoluted questions, making it near impossible for the innovator to keep the discussion on track
  • Ridicule is a direct attack on the character of the person who proposed the idea, creating indirect doubts about the idea itself (read more)

  Flipping It – Webb of Thoughts (Kyle Webb)
  I’m currently 7 weeks into my student teaching.   Recently, I have drastically changed things in my classroom. My classroom used to look like the classroom I had when I was a high school student. Students would sit in their desks and take notes (maybe) as I stood up front speaking to them or worked through a problem on the board.  A few students would give me their undivided attention and build a decent understanding of the concept.  A few students wouldn’t pay any attention at all and secretly text under their desk or have Facebook pulled up on their tablets.  And most students would pay attention for as long as they could, lost attention for just a moment or two, and  be lost the rest of the lesson.  I would employ all sorts of classroom management strategies to keep my students quiet and paying attention.  Then I would wrap things up, maybe give them a few minutes to try some problems, if I had finished things quicker than planned.  Most of the time, however, I sent them home to try to tackle problems that they should have learned about during class (and some beyond that). The result? (read more)

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