Beyond School

[Note: "Talking Story" is an expression we use in Hawaii to set the tone for a conversation. Instead of focusing on solving a problem, coming to a conclusion, or debating an issue, talking story means to share experiences and anecdotes that relate to the issue at hand. I think it's an appropriate expression for web 2.0 too, since this is a place for stories to be shared and new thinking to emerge.]

I work as, what we call here, a Technology Resource Teacher. Essentially, I’m an English teacher who’s been willing to experiment with integrating technology into curriculum, and I’ve been asked to only teach one class so during the rest of the day I can collaborate with other teachers on all things tech. The high school side of my school has a brand new 1:1 program this year, and there are four others who do what I do to help 150 or so faculty (we have 3700 students K-12). What I quickly learned this year is that no matter how many and what kind of workshops we run, how many emails with links and descriptions we send, or who we bring to speak at our curriculum days (these are all amazing resources!), what works best and what people seem to appreciate most is one on one time to work together and talk story about classes, students, curriculum, and where the laptops fit. So I thought I’d do a little of that here in my first guest post.

Two years ago, I hardly knew what a blog was, and, frankly, I didn’t feel the need to spend any more time in front of my computer than absolutely necessary. Then, at the beginning of last school year (06-07), I was assigned to teach an upper level Composition course. Pretty generic title, which really should have read: creative non-fiction essay writing. In an English department of nearly 30 teachers, there was only one other person teaching the course that semester. Our weekly meetings were talking story about writing, student writing, the purpose of writing, authenticity of audience, amongst other Englishy (not schooly) topics. At some point Lisa, my colleague, started to tell me about having her students blog their compositions and journals. She explained the idea of a blogosphere, a network of writers interested more or less in the same topics, reading and commenting on each others’ posts. Then, it was the concept of the blogroll, something called del.icio.us. Organically, the next move seemed to be to try this thing out for myself and my students. Where blogs seemed like they’d fit best was as digital commonplace books; we ask all sophomore to keep an analog version for a quarter to follow and reflect on essential questions and critical thinking exercises. That sounded good, and Watsoncommon began.

I realized a lot of things during the first few months of blogging. Namely, it could easily take over my life. But I welcomed the intellectual insurgency. I didn’t write great stuff, but I had a reason (and an audience of one, maybe two) to pay patient attention to what happened during my day, in my class. I needed material. This went on, and in early 2007, my wife stumbled on a wiki where edubloggers and blogging classes were listing themselves. (Do you remember this one Clay?) Near the top: “B”eyond School, where there was a call for blogging classes to collaborate. I replied.

Creating our own 2-class blogosphere was a noble first effort, and some really interesting conversations emerged here and there. What became apparent after this collaboration was that the web 2.0 tools were more powerful than we knew, yet the challenge was the same as ever: getting students to be active participants in their own education. Clay’s 1001 Flat World Tales writing project on a wiki came next. Being far more teacher-driven, the students had an easier time moving through the project. But Clay, Michelle, and I spent many weekends skyping at respective odd hours and driving the wiki for the kids. Not to mention we had committed ourselves to a grueling 6 week time frame. In the end, we had an annotated and podcasted trail of breadcrumbs, an ebook, some good stories, some engaged students, and a lot of new ideas for the next collaboration. Now, I’m a week deep in 1001 Flat World Tales #2 with Deb Baker’s class in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and I’m getting far more sleep this time around.

Since that semester of enlightenment, it’s been Moodle, Twitter, Diigo, Ning, the list goes on. Not to mention planning and implementing the vision for our 1:1 program. At some point a couple months ago, I found myself coming full-circle, away from the tools, widgets, and gadgets to stories. The story of collaboration, the story of communication, the story of empowerment, the story of sustainability and stewardship, the story of apprenticeship, the stories of learners. And the stories have me asking these questions:

What is an education?

How can we engage the emotions, passions, and original ideas of students more?

How does a large, successful independent school become a culture of technology?

How can we empower students with an understanding of the way they learn and then nurture it daily?

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

[Bill Farren posts his third weekly installment on Education for Well-Being (the full series: my intro “Beyond ‘Did You Know?’ - A Video for Viral Times: ‘Did You Ever Wonder?’“; Bill’s first guest-post, “Education for Well-Being“; Bill’s second guest-post, “The Hidden Curriculum“; and Seoul sophomore Patrick Nam’s outstanding podcast interview with Bill for Project Global Cooling). Bill has vital things to say about education, and I'm happy to read more of them in this post. An overdue hat-tip to Jeffrey Dungan in the Dominican Republic for connecting Bill and me.-- Clay]

I’d like to preface this post with something unrelated (but way more important)–An Irish toast to Clay and his wife: May you both live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live. Congratulations!

Random Acts of Deceleration

Attempts to decelerate the lives of young people seem to be few and far between. When any significant attempt is made, it is so rare and goes against the grain at such a sharp angle, that it makes national headlines. The New York Times wrote an article about the efforts of principal Paul Richards to address the issue of academic stress at his high school. Mr. Richards states that he is trying to “bring the culture to a healthier place.” For this, according to the article, he has been mocked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno. He has received hate mail from all parts.

While reading Dangerously Irrelevant, I came across this reply to a post about the documentary 2 Million Minutes:

As a senior citizen of a fairly affluent suburb of Boston, I have been shocked at the recent changes taking place in our town’s high school. No homework over vacations; no or little homework over long weekends; no required reading over summers and no publication anywhere of the high school honor roll. However, the super-jocks on all high school sports teams are always written about in the local paper. It’s disgraceful!

Academic achievement has become irrelevant. Our high school principal believes kids already have too much “pressure.” He cites several high school suicides in recent years and blames them on pressure to achieve high grades. [School officials, according to the NYT article, emphasize the suicides were not related to stress.] As a result, our high school has been dumbed down to mediocre, where it will stay until we get rid of our current school committee, superintendent and high school principal - all the while wasting over 50% of the town’s tax revenue on the school system.

Finally, our town’s high school certainly doesn’t appear on U.S. News’ list of the best 100 high schools in the U.S., but 3 towns within 10 miles do, as well as does The Boston Latin School.

(Background: 2 Million Minute’s site asks, “How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student’s choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country’s economic future?”)

In another random act of deceleration, Harvard Dean Harry Lewis made national headlines when he sent out a letter asking students to slow down, have fun, and reflect on what would truly make them happy in life. It’s disconcerting that students considered paragons of what our educational systems have to offer need to be reminded to have fun and to reflect on what might make them happy in life. That the whole purpose of life can be an afterthought needing a reminder, makes one wonder what happened in the 6 million minutes prior to college. I applaud Dean Lewis for his efforts but at the same time wonder about the system and culture that creates a need for such a letter. Our culture seems to have accepted that stress, unhappiness and distaste for learning is the price worth paying for that ill-defined concept called success.

But I don’t believe we have to enter into such an insolvent arrangement. What is now called hard work and higher standards is too often just an indication of how much suffering students are willing to put up with in dealing with boring, schooly, meaningless lessons in very controlling environments. In the process, we are creating a generation of stressed-out, materialistic and miseducated students, to borrow from the title of Denise Pope’s book.

The better bargain involves removing the speed and stress caused by school by removing the schooliness. My observations point to schoolines as a prime source of stress, speed, and wasted learning opportunities. If we were to remove schooliness and replace it with unschooliness, then well-being and learning would quickly improve for students. Life and work would improve markedly for teachers, parents and administrators as well.

I’m afraid though, what schools often suggest as remedies to stress, burnout, disengagement and “playing the system” (cheating), deal mostly, in very schooly ways, with the symptoms and not the underlying causes. Take cheating for example. Most schools see the student as the source of the problem. In an article about the importance of looking at the context in which students act, Alfie Kohn states, “cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on ‘rigor.’” He goes on to say that, “when students perceive that the ultimate goal of learning is to get good grades, they are more likely to see cheating as an acceptable, justifiable behavior”. Most schools, instead of reflecting on what they are doing to cause cheating, throw out a bunch of schooly solutions like using turnitin.com, giving anti-cheating workshops, all the while creating ever more policies and punishments for cheating. Similarly, health texts for students often deal with the issue of stress by correctly suggesting exercise, eating well, and relaxation techniques, but never question the underlying causes of school-related stress. In these obtuse, unreflective environments, stress and speed are bound to thrive.

So, what would happen if we slowed the treadmill down? Would it all unravel? Would students learn less? Would their lives be diminished?

Clearly, it’s an uphill and often thankless struggle to slow down the lives of students today. The belief that faster, harder, and more, produces better learning, will not go away easily. Whether it produces better lives, both in the present and in the future, is seldom asked. Fortunately, as the NYTimes article suggests, small inroads are being made both in the parent community and in the culture at large to improve mental health and school climate.

(I’d like to thank Clay for birthing ¹, elevating, and expanding the idea of schooliness. Once we are aware of it, start to reflect on it, then act to remove it, schools will become more capable instruments of well-being.)

Thanks for reading,

Bill Farren

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1. I think [↩]

More in that quest Doug Belshaw mentioned: how to take student presentations beyond the god-awful Powerpoint or nose-against-the-notecard varieties.

Student Amy made this for our Sentence Style wiki. Projected it on the screen via LCD, and I was spellbound. Watch the creativity, as grammar homework approaches film art.

Have I mentioned I’m amazed? I want to interview this girl about her attitude while she made this. I mean, it’s grammar, for crying out loud. But it seems not to be, in her hands.Maybe she’ll agree to a Skypecast interview. Hope so. [Update: She did. It's here.]

And isn’t this better than reading a textbook section about this pattern? Anybody want to buy Amy’s lesson instead? I’m sure she’d sell it for a fair price.

[Postscript: "But at my back, I always hear / The teacher cynics drawing near....". So: Yes, Amy was front and center, body and voice, to clarify and answer and speak.]

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