The Signs are Everywhere (even within our students)

I find it fascinating that once you are consciously aware of something, all of the sudden you start noticing it everywhere.  You start to wonder, “where have I been?” or “is this just coincidence?” 

I’ve adjusted my classroom to manage a more project-based, student-centered, blended learning, (insert whichever 21^st century word here) type of model and every time I sign on to twitter I see someone blogging about how these models are the best, they are the future, etc, etc, etc..

Whether it is a world-renowned author, a high school administrator, or an elementary physical education teacher, great things are happening everywhere, and I am stunned at the fact that I thought I was entering untested waters, only to find that there is research everywhere, and articles of personal experience on countless blogs right on my twitter feed. 

My question the past few weeks has been how do we get students to see that this is the best way for them to learn and grow?  I thought students were mostly clueless, and that they were so trained out of creativity that we had to make them see that paving their own path in their individual educational journey is worthwhile.  That may still be the case, but now that I am looking for answers, I found some crucial evidence that has thrown me off the scent of students being clueless…

On Tuesday of this past week I had a conversation with a group of students about video games.  I prompted this conversation because I was interested in finding out more about the possibilities of creating video games as a class project, but I left out the class project part because if I even dared to enter education into the conversation, I knew I would have lost them at that moment. 

As this group of 4 young men argued back and forth about Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, PS3, Xbox, and everything else gaming, two things struck me:

1.  I’m way out of the loop!  I was never one for the adventure games, but I still knew all sorts of things about the systems.  I’m ancient (only 10 years removed from high school) when it comes to knowledge of the gaming arena.  Some of the things they talked about, I couldn’t even understand.  Here I made fun of people like me within the last decade.  What happened?

2.  A student said, “modding is the greatest thing to ever happen to video games!” 

Allow me to elaborate on point #2.  I’m not even sure if ‘modding’ is spelled right, but through inquiry I discovered that modding is the gaming word for customizing, or modifying a game.  All four students nearly scolded me for not knowing that anyone who knows how to write gaming code can go into the game and change just about anything they want to make it look or play however they want.  These four guys went on to talk about different codes they’ve learned to write and different changes to games they’ve seen and how cool it is that they can personalize things. 

STOP!!! (substitution please… education entering the game replacing video games)

How does this sound:  “modding is the greatest thing to ever happen to education!”

I’ve read countless articles in the past months that have said the new way of educating, the 21^st century education, is and will be about personalizing education for all students to actively learn what they want to learn under the guidance of the teacher. 

What I realized last Tuesday is that our students are aware that personalization is the coolest thing, we just have to find a way to get them to realize that it is OK to personalize their education just how they can personalize their video games.  Teachers must embrace the new wave of education, unlearn the styles that they were taught and have been teaching, and open the doors for the students to see the opportunities in front of them. 

Too often we blame the students and cannot understand why they do not succeed when we challenge them to think for themselves and try something new.  But, take a step back and you’ll see that they are only modeling the behavior that the majority of educators are presenting which is sticking to learned behaviors despite the overwhelming amount of push for the “modding” of our educational system and it’s classrooms. 

Educators, please don’t take this as me blaming my colleagues all across America.  But, take it as my attempt to make you consciously aware of these opportunities so that you see it everywhere you look and find the confidence within you to begin “modding.”

Take care,

Coach Mo

Endings

Last night I attended the first round tournament game of our boy’s basketball team.  It was a fabulous effort by our young men, but unfortunately they came up on the wrong side of the scoreboard in the end. 

As I watched the final seconds tick off of the clock, I began to get that feeling within that I get at the end of every season, a mixture of disappointment, sadness, pride, satisfaction, and curiosity of the future.  Regardless of whether I am a coach, a player, or a spectator, that feeling is always overwhelming because it is the ending of something that you know each and every person that is a part of the experience spent months devoting time and effort into a common passion. 

I’ll never forget my final high school football and basketball games, or my final college basketball game, when I had tears streaming down my face not because we had lost, but because I knew something I cared about so much had come to an end.  I’ll never forget consoling players when I coached both football and basketball at Hayes and telling them that it’s OK to be sad, it shows that you cared so much.  I wasn’t able to be in the locker room after the game last night, but I’d imagine there were tears, because the effort on the court showed that each and every player to take the court cared deeply about their team. 

As I sit here this morning, I think about school.  The last day of school is filled with joy and excitement.  A weight is lifted off of students as they venture off to college, summer jobs, or three months of video games and trips to the pool.  It’s almost the opposite of that final game they cared so much about. 

Now, I would never expect a student to shed tears over the end of school as passionately as they do about their sport, but why are the emotions such polar opposites?

My fondest memories of school are of extra-curriculars such as sports, theater, and television class, and I would imagine many other people have the same memories.  I wish we could find a way to make the classroom experience as memorable.  

I believe the first step is to look at what we offer to students.  Sports, theater, and other opportunities are remembered because of the experiences we had, not because of the content we learned.  We as teachers need to provide an experience for our students.  Experiences that they enjoy, learn from, and want to put their time and effort into succeeding in.  Students view the majority of classes as requirements to graduate.  While they aren’t wrong, until we provide an experience that changes their mindset to view classes as an opportunity for an experience that benefits them as people, they’ll remain stuck in the mindset that they have to show up, put in their time, receive a letter grade, and then get a piece of paper that says they have finished. 

Will they ever tear up over the end of a class?  Likely not.  But, hopefully students will get to a point where they throw their cap up not because they don’t have to do something anymore, but because they are excited to apply their skills to the world for which they have been prepared.  

 

Take care,

Coach Mo

What to do with feedback?

Ever since I read Dan Pink’s book, Drive, I have been fascinated with human motivation.  I had never thought about incentives and carrot-on-a-stick methods the way that Mr. Pink breaks them down.  I was blown away to learn that these things are not only misunderstood, but debilitating to our society in many ways. 

This past October our administrative staff presented us with an opportunity to attend the 21^st century skills conference in downtown Columbus.  The invitation was open to anyone interested, and each department was asked to send a representative.  In the past I have not followed up on these opportunities, but when I saw that Dan Pink was going to be a featured speaker, I knew it was my time to act. 

One thing that I took away from the whole conference, not just from Mr. Pink, was that the act of assigning a grade to an assignment is counter-productive to the learning process.  One speaker put it like this:

-  If you assign a grade to a corrected paper, the student looks solely at the grade and puts the paper away.

-  If you assign a grade and write feedback on a corrected paper, the student just looks at the grade and files it in their bookbag. 

-  If you do not assign a grade to a paper, but provide feedback, the student will then take in the feedback and will grow from the experience because they didn’t get that grade that they have been so trained to view as the end-all. 

It almost made too much sense!  From the moment I heard that statement, I thought nonstop about how I can use this information to improve upon my craft.  To make a long story short, I’ve adjusted my grading method to revolve around giving feedback, and I have attempted to take grading individual assignments out of my classroom.  I want to determine grades on whether or not the student has learned the necessary information, just like homework, tests, and projects are intended to do, but I want to check the students off for their achievements, not assess one product.  I will not go any further on grading because it is still a work in progress and I’ll devote an entire post to grading once I iron out a few more details. 

Back to the feedback.  On Friday I asked my students to evaluate the class and myself as the teacher.  I asked the students to give me an honest and fair evaluation on things such as clarity of instruction, quality of communication, likes and dislikes of the class, and what I can do to help make their experience more enjoyable and satisfying.  It was an overwhelming success as the majority had very positive things to say to go with great suggestions for improvement going forward. 

Here is where I’m struggling:  What do you do with the following two statements that showed up on a few papers?

1.  What YOU want: this was in the form of “it’s hard to tell what you want” or “I don’t know what you want” or “what I dislike so far is that I don’t know what you want.” 

This alarmed me because my first response was to write “YOUR BEST” in really big letters and underline it multiple times.  Then the second time was to write “it doesn’t matter what I want, what do you want?”  Then my third response was to write nothing at all and to look really deeply into that reply and then become really saddened that a student said this. 

I actually did all three.  But, it is the third one that is still with me today, and it is bothering me because it is a problem that is way bigger than just my classroom.  Where have we gone wrong that would cause a student to come to school looking to just please the teacher and not to come to school with a desire to learn with a view of school as a method of self-improvement for their future? 

In short, the direction for the project was to select a topic that relates to your family history (disease/ condition), research it and learn details, then present your findings in a way that educates others on the part of your topic you found most influential.  I understand why students wanted to know what I wanted (it’s what school usually asks), now I need to figure out how to get them to unlearn this mindset to move forward.   

2.  You don’t teach us.  If you have read my previous blogs, or have talked with me recently you know that I have adopted a project-based approach to my class.  Many frustrations led to me believing that having students research individually would be far better than having me limit the students to my knowledge on one individual topic per day.  Instead, I am attempting to be more of a guide to 30 different paths of learning.  It has been exhausting, but very rewarding thus far. 

Anyway, I was somewhat expecting this comment to come from the evaluation.  I haven’t done any “game of school” teaching; No lectures, no power points, no overheads, no worksheets, no outlining the chapter, no vocabulary terms, no tests etc, etc.  I have a vision of what I want to happen in class, and that vision involves students investing in themselves while enjoying each and every day.  I’d be crazy not to expect this type of response, but still, when it came, I was again saddened. 

Students have become so used to coming in, sitting down, looking forward, listening, note taking, and then studying, that anything else is considered “not teaching.”  I am coming to the realization that students do indeed view school as a place and not an activity, and it is unfortunate that they want to show up and have everything given to them.  Students only see opportunities to learn in the traditional methods of school.  They have been trained to recognize the role of a teacher as the direct instructor of information and the role of a student as a passive receptor to information.   How can we open their eyes to see that the world in 2012 contains so many resources that can teach you more quickly and more efficiently than any single source that a teacher limiting them to only their knowledge is limiting their potential?  How can we make them realize that passive receptors rarely develop skill-sets that are needed to be a productive and successful member of a business, corporation, or company five years from now?

This is the unfortunate result of a mindset that we as an educational system have trained kids to have.  I believe that we need to redefine the roles of student and a teacher at all levels.  My challenge to my students this coming week will be to consider the reason they come to school, and reconsider your role as a student and my role as a teacher.  Consider what YOU want, and how YOU can learn, not what I want you to do.  Don’t rely on someone to teach you everything.  Expect teachers to provide you with opportunities, and expect them to be there when you hit a snag.  Do not expect them to solve your problems, but to provide you with the tools and skills to work through them.  Expect them to care about you as a person, and to teach you to be the best person and learner you can be, not to teach you to only know the curriculum.  Embrace the opportunity to invest in yourself and to improve upon your knowledge and skills each and every day.

I appreciate my students for being fair and honest with me.  I got a ton of incredible feedback, and I cannot wait to make some changes in the coming weeks.  I do not think negatively of my students for the statements I have mentioned, I’m actually proud of them for stating their position.  I have brought the statements to attention because they are another indication that change in the system is necessary.  I hope they serve as motivation to teachers everywhere to be bold, try something new, and help to remove the stigma our students have of what student and teacher roles should be.

What are your thoughts?  How should I/ we react to that feedback? 

Take care,

Coach Mo