One of my favorite shows ever was The West Wing. I’ve been binge watching on Amazon and this clip came up recently:
So, how do we figure out how to make schools palaces?
Category Archives: Education
To Everything, There Is A Season
This song from the Byrds is based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, verses from the Christian Old Testament that remind us that there is a time and season for all things in this life.
I was reminded of these verses this weekend: I had gardening to do, finishing up a large section of a shade garden addition to my road side beds. I had been working at the bed in free hours throughout the week, pulling up the weeds in preparation for planting. The forecast for the weekend was not promising as tropical storm Bonnie was threatening a washout. So, early Saturday morning, I headed down with shovel, spade and plants. A few frantic hours of work and the bed was mostly finished.*
And then the rain came. There have a been a few moments of clearing but by now, the bed would have been too wet to do much work.
As I weed and dig and plant, I think about the lessons I’m learning that might be applied to education. One that resonates lately is how, as an independent, mostly at-home worker, I am able to work more in rhythm with the time and season. I don’t have to be at a desk by 8 AM but can start my day in the garden and then may find another hour or two later in the day. Or, I can work for 12 or 14 hours on a rainy day and then spend the next day in the dirt. This flexibility allows me to at least sometimes find that seemingly elusive work/life balance.
Meanwhile, schools have very specific schedules and right now, when it would be wonderful to have the kids outside planting and harvesting, they are in the midst of the testing season. Teachers can’t decide to ditch the testing to head outside or squeeze the testing into a rainy afternoon or let kids take the tests at home in the evening.
It just seems sad…
*I say mostly finished for, as those of you who garden know, it is never really done. There will always be tending.
Quick Reactions to #Satchat
All of these could be longer posts but I need to go outside and battle the weeds some more, so for now, you get a punch list of things I am thinking about after being part of the #satchat Twitter chat:
1. I bristle whenever I hear someone say EVERY and ALWAYS whether it’s about testing or rearranging the room or, even, coding.
2. I believe you can be passionate about your work but also have other interests. Teachers who do not participate in tweet chats are not bad teachers. We shouldn’t make teachers feel guilty about not being passionate enough to devote every waking hour to their work.
3. If we–leaders, coaches, teachers–truly believe that collaboration ala Twitter or other media is an important part of professional learning and growth, we must find time for it in the work day. If there isn’t enough time, then we either get rid of something else OR we lengthen the work day OR we find some way to give credit for it like we do when you take a graduate class.
Speaking With Clarity and Purpose
As I browsed Feedly today, I came across two blog posts about the words we use. Brad Currie pushes back on those who would discourage educators from using buzzwords. Peter DeWitt, meanwhile, names 10 educational words that should be banished. Ironically, I can’t tell you what those words are except that one is technology, because DeWitt’s list is now hidden from me behind the EdWeek paywall.
I come down on the side of letting people speak, and Currie makes an interesting argument around using buzzwords:
Last I checked people have the freedom to say what they want, when they want, and how they want. If educators are committed to taking risks and evolving over time, then they should be allowed to use whatever words, phrases, paragraphs, etc they want.
The important point here is that using buzzwords is acceptable as long as we are using them to move forward. So, if you’re a principal or superintendent who calls yourself a “lead learner” then you should walk the walk of a lead learner.
From what I remember, DeWitt suggests banishing the word “technology” because it continues to make it seem as though technology is an add-on. I don’t disagree, but I think instead of banishing the word, how about asking educators to be more clear about why and how they are using technology. Are they fostering collaboration through the use of Google docs? Or encouraging creativity by integrating a tool like Animoto? We can use the word to foster clarity about the use of technology as it supports pedagogy.
Also, I think DeWitt is overlooking the fact that, for many of our schools, technology is not so ubiquitous that it can become invisible. Sadly, technology use is often still a novelty, something of comment, as teachers sign out carts to bring into their classrooms or line up their classes to head to computer labs.
So, rather than banishing words, let’s take Currie’s approach and allow their use as long as we are more clear about their meanings for us and how they inform our work as educators.
Honestly, I’d Be Happy If You Did Some Googling
In a story for NPR, Zhai Yun Tan asks, “OK, Google, Where Did You Put My Thinking Cap?” The story is worth a read and another blog post, but the question that bothered me was, considering how easy it is to look stuff up, why is it that people continue to post erroneous or misleading information on social media, particularly Facebook?
Earlier this month, I described one example of false information being shared on Facebook: the photo of the supposed orphan longing for her mother.
Today, it’s the McDonald’s Happy Meal that refuses to rot.* Again, I’m not trying to be the Facebook police (OK…maybe I am a little) . The story isn’t wrong as much as misguided and, like the photo of the little girl, it’s meant for a good cause, that of keeping kids away from junk food. The meal did, indeed, not rot. What it really did was dehydrate.
Sadly, what’s missing is the education value of really testing what’s going on here: It’s a perfect science experiment, one that would certainly be engaging to students. That’s exactly what J. Kenzi Lopez-Alt did. Recognizing that drawing conclusions based on one burger and fries was not good science, Lopez-Alt set up an experiment that included creating hypotheses, isolating variables and creating controls, all those steps covered in any set of science standards but not always practiced in the science classroom.
And, while he did not wait for five or ten years (he waited 25 days which was about as long as his wife could take it), he discovered that, under similar conditions, even homemade burgers of a certain size don’t rot. They dry out. Here’s his conclusions as well as his issues with the original post:
Pretty strong evidence in favor of Theory 3: the burger doesn’t rot because it’s small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there’s no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well. It’s not really surprising. Humans have known about this phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef jerky is made?
Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t have a dog in this fight either way. I really couldn’t care less whether or not the McDonald’s burger rotted or didn’t. I don’t often eat their burgers, and will continue to not often eat their burgers. My problem is not with McDonald’s. My problem is with bad science.
If I were a middle school science teacher, this would be my introduction to the scientific method. Partner with the lunch ladies or the home ec teacher and have some fun with food and science!**
Back to the point about Google interfering with our ability to think: it took me one search on “six year old happy meal” to get to the Snopes article and then it was a matter of following the links to find the original research. So, as easy as Google is to use–to the point that it is sapping our critical thinking–is that even too hard to do? Maybe it’s not Google’s fault that we aren’t critical thinkers any more? Maybe we weren’t to begin with? Maybe we just don’t care about good science? Or, as Lopez-Alt comments, “It seems to me that the only thing that can last longer than a McDonald’s hamburger is an internet meme about them.”
*I LOVE that Snopes has this categorized under “Fauxtography.”
**Of course, the kids could just google it and that gets us back to the NPR story that will end up as another blog entry.