Sitting on top of the blog bubble

9:10 a.m. - Everyone in the gym can feel the excitement building.  Students quickly shuffle back and forth from side to side.  Suddenly everyone seems to move fluently with the sound of the basketball dribbling down the court - everyone except me, I do not move fluenty.  In comes a student half my size - here's my chance, I go for the block but he fakes to my right.  Luckily I stopped his elbow with my jaw.  So here is the premise for this upcoming blog post...call it building background information.  

Actually, this post has nothing to do with basketball.  I am just thinking ahead and using the elbow to the jaw as a potential scapegoat in case people greatly disagree with me.  What I do want to discuss comes from an experience I was part of a few months ago - E-journalism.  As I have already mentioned, it was an eye opening experience.  Students from different schools working together in a projects based environment with multiple teachers as guides.  This, I thought to myself, is what education should feel like all of the time.  However, something was "off".  Not everything was 100%.  We were covering a conference held for teachers about how to use technology to enhace student learning.  Although I had an idea of why I had an "off" feeling it wasn't until I watched the video featured in my last blog that I realized what was missing - the students.  Well, that's not true.  The students were there.  They were covering the conference.  David Warlick came and talked to the students.  He even hosted a panel discussion with the students.  So why do I say the students were missing?  Read on.

I didn't see any students being part of the other presentations.  Our E-journalism team showed videos during lunch, but we had mixed emotions about the response.  Overall, we felt like teachers in a disengaged class - many people seemed to not be paying attention.  Why do we do this?  Why do we as teachers hold conferences that are really about our students, yet not include our students?  Shouldn't we be listening to them?  Are we the experts?  Are they?  Do they know what they want?  Do we know what they need?  I don't know.  But we sure have a lot of "experts" and most of them are not students.  

Even now I am still having difficulty processing my thoughts.  All I know is that our students were covering a conference that was all about them, about teaching them and connecting with them.  A lot of people at the conference were our "tech" and "collaboration gurus".  You would think that it would be easy for our students to get immersed.  And it was.  And it wasn't.  Like I said, David Warlick came up and talked to our students.  He talked to them for quite some time.  And it was an interesting conversation.  Donna DesRoches was part of our team, and an organizer - but she found time to come up and "visit'.  Gary Ball showed up, so did Ryan Hackl.  Mark Kowalski came and helped us with our Mac problems.  But that was it.  Well, not exactly.  Students set up intereviews with keynotes...so they spent some time with those people as well.  And now I'm no longer sure.  Maybe there was more engagement than I thought.  

I guess it's kind of like my ideas about blogging.  I love blogging, but it's hard.  I mean, why do we really blog?  To converse with others.  To bounce ideas, to collaborate, etc...  But I am finding that it is time consuming.  I love reading other people's blogs.  And commenting.  I love when other people read my blogs.  And comment.  But does it benefit our students?  I think so...most of the time.  We are sharing ideas, and defining them, and redefining them.

But I think that there is a blog "bubble" and this is the part that is hard.  In this blog bubble are the more prominent bloggers.  We know who they are.  They are amazing.  And all of us secretely want to become part of that blog bubble.  But are we running the risk of losing our way?  And what I mean by that is: is anyone else worried that it might not always be about the students, and about education - but rather about us?  Are we focused too much on being in that bubble?

Shop Class 101

So I had more to write about on my last blog but...well, frankly, you are more likely to read two shorter blogs than one long one, so I guess I got you good sucker! Anyway, collaboration...it is exciting. And I don't mean like sit around the table every now and then or drive in your car pool and talk about students collaboration...I mean like authentic, learning centered, high energy, task oriented collaboration. And I must admit...I am a bit selfish. Yes, this ejournalism project was a wonderful experience for "our" students (meaning all students involved, we became a team and those students involved became our students...see last blog for more). They were given an opportunity to connect with students from other school cultures, which was huge. But it was also a wonderful experience for me, as a teacher. I really enjoyed working with teachers that I do not normally work with. And sure, it helped that these teachers just happened to be energetic, enthusiastice and great at what they do. But equally as important was why we were working together. We had a reason to work together, and that reason was to ensure student success. And then it hit me, why don't we do this more often?

I don't just mean why don't we do projects like this more often, I mean why, as teachers, don't we work together more often for a reason? And this lead to a couple of discussions with a couple of my colleagues earlier today. There is no reason that we cannot get together and solve problems. Let's take rural education for example. It's no secret that rural schools lack resources. It would be nice to have a shop in every rural school in Saskatchewan, but let's face it...it's probably not going to happen. Now, we can sit and complain about this and tell the division office that they need to give us a shop...or, we can get together with other rural schools and the division office and figure out how we can our give students "shop" skills. As my colleague and I were discussing this we started talking about what the outcomes would be - perhaps building shops in central and accessible locations; hey, we could even tier students - those who knew they wanted to enter the trades upon graduation could receive intensive programming and those that just wanted to dabble could recieve less extensive training. Boom, two teachers, standing in a hallway for 5 minutes had already started trying to figure out how we could solve this problem. Imagine what 20 or 50 teachers could accomplish. How long would it actually take to come up with real solutions? I think you know the answer. Then why aren't we doing it?

I guess sometimes it is just easier to complain and do nothing. And in the past I have been a culprit of this, but from now on I am going to try to be less of a culprit. And in the future I will probably be a culprit of this...but I will be conscience of it and hopefully wake the hell up. I have sat with other teachers and said things like "well, we have an attendance problem", or "other schools don't have our problems", or "our school is different". Well, let's be honest and call it like it is, this is all bullshit. It is just a way to complain, pass the buck, and not do anything about it. I was looking for someone else to solve problems that I did not know the answer to, and it's okay to not know the answer, but it is not okay to do nothing about it. We need to start realizing it is our responsibility to work together to solve any problems we may have. Take an issue I have hear a lot about: the division is supposedly cutting 1 teaching position per school for next year. Now, if we believe that this is not a good thing, we need to get together and discuss it...and come up with solutions. And let's realize something: an "us" vs. "them" mentality is harmful...we know this. The "division" is not against student learning. The "division" is not different from "us". We are all educators; we are all here to make sure all students learn and succeed. I guess I just realized that although I am a relatively new teacher, I had already slipped into a rut of thinking that certain problems were beyond my control...but in reality - they are not. All we need to do is collaborate in a meaningful way. Sure, there are things that we cannot change...but let's focus on the things we can.

Get on the bus!

I recently attended the Emerging Learning conference in Saskatoon. I went as part of a division created Ejournalism team that had students cover the who's who and what's what of the conference. While I was able to sit in on some sessions (Yay David Warlick), my emerging learning came from being part of a truly collaborative environment

19 students, 6 teachers, 1 Learning Consultant, and a whole lot of collaboration. Wow, what an experience. So, here's what it looked like. Students were given tasks of covering sessions (taking notes, pictures, and video), writing blogs that conveyed their interpretaions of those sessions, making videos, making slideshows, giving presentations, conducting interviews, and much much more. I was amazed at the collaborative and learning centered environment that emerged. Students were given and task and whoosh...gone - they went and did it. And they did it very well. A student had a problem and whoosh...another student went over and helped. A student had some free time and whoosh...they were over asking what else they could do to help. 1 student went down the water slide and whoosh...all of the other students followed.

Now we could say that these particular students were amazing, and believe me...they were - and believe me...we said it. But was that it - was it enough to simply say that these students were amazing? And the answer my friends, is no. Something else was taking place; and it was somewhere between downing my last cup of luke warm coffee and watching students text and facebook their friends about what they were doing and telling them to "check our our website...NOW!" that I realized what that something was. I was witnessing in real life, the shift in education that we are all looking for. Students did not get in trouble for "playing with their technology". They did not get told to "sit down and do their work" when they were up and moving around. And perhaps this is because they were working. Because they were focused and driven and involved and engaged and interested and, well...learning. Or perhaps it was because they were involved in a task oriented, team driven, collaborative, supportive, and open environment. And perhaps it was because yes, they were given tasks and jobs to do...but they were also told to have fun.

There are several things that I cannot stop thinking about. First and foremost, is our students. And when I say our students I do not just mean our students at Cando. I mean our students...as in we are teachers and these are our students. Yes, we need to take ownership of our students in our classrooms, but we also need to take ownership of all students in our school...and maybe, just maybe we need to take ownership of students.

Maybe I am not explaining myself "good enough" (that's for you Ruth!). The students involved in this project did not know each other. Most of the teachers involved in this project did not know each other. Yet we came together and created a wonderful educational utopia like environment of learning and collaboration. The question: why was this project so successful? The answer: because we worked collaboratively and made student learning our main priority. So to you PLC nay sayers...in your face! But seriously, isn't this why we became teachers? To feel like we are a part of something great? To feel like we are truly making a difference in student's lives? And to feel, well, to feel excited about learning...and to share that enthusiasm with others? If not, I feel sorry for you...because we are finally "getting it". We, as an educational system, are finally catching up to society. Yes our schools are out of date. Yes we need to be more relevant in terms of what young people's lives are really like and reflect what is really important to young people. But we are getting there. To use Anthony Muhammad's analogy...we have started the bus. Are you on it?