John Hendron

Director of Innovation and Strategy

instruction

Balancing Act

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More recently, I’ve heard the term “balance” come up in education circles, and sometimes it rubs me the wrong way. Some balance, I’d argue, is good; other balance could be dangerous.

Balance with Screentime

I took part in a conversation recently with some teachers and one offered this sentiment: “Learning through a screen all the time isn’t what’s best for kids; sometimes they need to learn in a different way, maybe, by building something with their hands.” I found the idea easy to agree with, and even though my work is often tied to learning through screens, I think we learn through experience, not through glass. Balance in this regard is apt, when it comes to any one thing we do directed at learning. Learning should mimic the full range of human capacity for experiencing our world.

Balance with Assessment

A number of folks recently visited us here in Goochland to learn more about our Balanced Assessment Project. This effort, organized originally by Dr. Geyer in 2013, set out to re-engineer how we conduct and do assessment within Goochland. In short, we now use a variety of assessment types to provide a more holistic view of student progress with learning. Balance in this regard reminds me of a balanced plan for more healthy living. A doctor wouldn’t likely recommend heavy, strenuous exercise alone, while we could eat all the junk food we might find. We also might not fully benefit from a super-healthy diet when our activity level is low. Balance in this regard is a healthy diet, moderate, regular exercise, and balancing our day to day activities to include things that help us reduce stress and find happiness.

Balance with Instruction

I actually do not have one specific example here, but this is will illustrate the more dangerous interpretation of balance we might make. I am sure there is a name for what I’m trying to describe. It’s when you take a general concept and apply it to something else, but the comparison isn’t entirely congruent. The example I have is with coding, which is the contemporary term for computer programming. (It also extends to things that are technically not programming, like HTML creation for webpages, but to most folks, the interpretation is the same.) We are currently offering two after school coding clubs at Goochland and Randolph, led by Ms. Parrish. She took this on completely on her own, and I know eventually, she’d like to have the experience available to all three elementary schools. I think what she has done is a dream come true and give her 100% of the credit for the success of these programs. Students come to these weekly sessions excited and energized and the types of learning taking place is deep.

The idea behind a liberal education, which is more apt a description of many undergraduate programs today, centered on having a well-rounded (balanced) exposure to a number of different disciplines of learning. That same idea is certainly echoed in our state standards. We don’t just teach math to kids who seem to like it. We teach it to all of them.

We do sometimes marginalize some subjects/disciplines. Band or chorus. Or, music or art. We do let kids choose with some things in middle and high school, but the “core” is always there.

The one thing that has stayed with my training years ago as a future music teacher was that music, and really all the arts, belonged to humankind, not just kids who seemed to like music, or show an aptitude. I could say the same thing about coding. Coding as an educational method helps the learner develop skills around how to think in logical ways. I’m so happy there’s an opportunity for some kids to develop coding skills through an extra-curricular club (and for parents who are interested, I can point them to a number of excellent online opportunities for learning, too, that are free). But balance in this regard is dangerous.

The same goes for a “balance” between student-centered and teacher-centered instruction. So many of us were taught how to teach (or it was modeled for us as students ourselves) on how to present and rehearse information to/for students. When the sole source of information is the teacher, we are robbing kids of the opportunity to be self-directed learners and human beings. I think if we’re being honest, we are currently balanced in our schools here in the United States. As general practice, we mix up (balance) our instructional delivery methods with different instructional design models. But it’s the student-centered ones that we ought to be considering. The wholesomeness of balance is apt, but not when it’s between spoon-feeding and inquiry.

I want to be honest – I rely upon a lot of teacher-centered methods in my own teaching. But I’ve been getting better. I love to lecture, I love to present ideas. I’ve seen teachers who are so talented at it, too. It’s not that kids cannot learn this way, they can. We all can. But if our vision is focused on something we’re calling deeper learning, with incredible focus on learning from students (which we’re calling engagement), and we’re learning how to better collect and utilize assessment, we need to be careful about the promise of a simple word like “balance.”

Balance Should Require Us to be Reflective

If you’ve made it this far, it’s probably obvious I’m reflective of my own role in the field of education. One way we can really use the term “balance” without it failing us is to make it personal. We’re hopefully not balancing one really good strategy for learning with a bad one, instead, we’re taking the time to stake stock of our tools, our abilities, and our effectiveness and how we are able to balance those. For example, I might love to lecture, but realize it’s not the best way for students to learn. So, I might balance by using my own experience as an entry event to a project where I turn over the learning to students. Or, a “bell-ringer” for an interactive debate in class. Or I balance my assessment strategy by giving students the ability to self-assess their learning on an upcoming assignment. The reality is, learning and teaching is a mixture of both art and science and with extreme limits on resources (among them, time), we are always attempting to balance the experiences we provide students. My ultimate point is to consider what we’re balancing, not to be satisfied alone with the idea that balance is, in itself, a virtue.

Presenting your Learning

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When I recently visited Randolph Elementary School, I visited a lesson “in action” where students were presenting information they had mastered (presumably for review purposes). This is a very strong instructional approach, and I was pleased to see the students had used video to capture their instructions for their peers on how to solve math problems.

student presentation

During the visit highlighted above, a student had made a mistake in the video, and then told everyone about the mistake and the “correct” way to solve the problem. This reflection on the recorded performance was another excellent sign of strong learning.

Earlier this spring, I began looking at our G21 Framework and areas for improvement. One of the things I wanted to “remove” was the necessity of any expert in the room to fill out the planning form. While it made for a nice sleek form, I wanted to put more of what it takes to develop a good project-based experience for students into the form itself. It would make for a more complex form, but hopefully too would provide teachers a scaffold on which to present an awesome learning experience.

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, my new proposal for G21 adopts the Buck Institute for Education model for project-based learning. The format is more complete at helping teachers plan for the project-based experience. One of the things it encourages, too, is student presentation. While I am not certain that every PBL needs a presentation, and there will be times where the resource of time may prevent a formal presentation, it does not dilute the effectiveness of presenting as an instructional activity. Since 2008 when we started G21, we have used “teaching others” and “communication” as two of our core 12 twenty-first century skills. But we need to remember that these skills do not need to wait for a “G21” to be utilized in our designs for instruction.

I look forward to sharing more in my blog throughout the summer about G21 3.0. On August 7, for our Mission Possible: Operation Engagement professional development day, Bea and I will be offering sessions on the new framework. For now all I will say is consider the new format “smaller” but “more potent!”

On Change

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One doesn’t have to go too far away to hear conversations about change, especially in the field of education. Change often comes with new leadership, that’s a given, but change in our field has been actively discussed, really, since Dewey’s writings in the earlier half of the twentieth century. Since I’ve been involved in the field, beginning fifteen years ago, I’ve seen large scale discussions of change too. I’ve heard ideas on teachers covering global awareness, twenty-first century skills, workplace readiness, and producing a tech-savvy graduating class. The inequities across class, race, and wealth also have a place among discussions in the education field, including on how best to eliminate disparities and how to give every student a full opportunity to reach their potential.

I got into this field for a number of reasons, none of which are terribly important. But the reason I’ve grown passionate within the field is the opportunity I’m afforded to make things better. I recently heard a discussion around “paradigm change in the classroom,” and my ears perked. This type of change is what really engages me.

Almost any source will tell you that the role of change agent—if in fact it’s a person or group—is a tough one. People are resistant to change, at least if they’re comfortable in their current state of equalibrium. While my title or my role is often tagged with something to do with technology, I primarily see myself as a change agent. We come in different varieties, but I have tried to focus upon being the patient type, omnipresent to help. I recently came across a phrase which I think summarized my position fairly well: a continuous, gentle push.

If we’re going to talk about a paradigm shift in our classrooms (here, or anywhere, really), we have to have a clear vision of what that means. It’s not enough to run away from a school, screaming “whatever is going on in there now stinks, and we have to change it to something else… anything!” At least not in a district/division like Goochland, which by many measures, is doing a lot of the right things for our kids, both in- and outside the classroom.

Our new strategic plan attempts to define what our priorities for improvement will be over the next 5-6 years. And there’s a lot in there that deals with instruction. If we look into the fine details, there’s got to be something lurking within that deals with a paradigm change in classrooms. I see phrases like “deeper learning,” “engagement,” and “personalization” that might be candidates. I know I’ve used my role on our instructional leadership team, and as an instructional technologist, to advocate for where I think we should be headed. By no mistake, my own thinking has been articulated in our strategic plan, congruently, I might add, by my colleagues who crafted each word in consultation with many stakeholders.

As we articulated together all of the dreamy ideas we had about where our schools should be in six years, a phrase emerged that really captured the essence of this vision for classroom instruction. And by definition, the task ahead is to move toward that vision. That’s the classroom paradigm change or shift before us. I’m confident in the six years ahead we’ll be well on our way.

If I were choosing a label, I’d call it “Personalized Inquiry-based Learning,” and if you need an abbreviation or acronym to remember that, it’d be PIbL. I’m a big fan of project-based approaches for learning, as well as those we might categorize as constructionist (the preferred term by Dr. Seymour Papert, who adapted his own theory after Piaget’s concept of constructivism). The sentiments, at least on the surface, are similar but involve the idea that we learn best through the creation of knowledge. The way this happens? Through experiences. The key then is to design experiences where kids can learn through the process of creation. The classic terminology might be “create lessons where kids can learn.” But lessons are rigid, formally-designed experiences, neatly abstracted like the storyboard for a sitcom. Don’t worry, if the lesson is boring, it will be over in just 28 more minutes. The key to the constructionist approach, I believe, is that we’re asking kids to many times create and sometimes innovate. And to do that, we have to have their engagement in the experience. They have to want to be doing and constructing, it has to be enticing. I could extend this thinking by positing that these experiences should be personalized for our students, so that they can apply their own interests, strengths, and needs for growth into the learning process.

The formal design of inquiry-based instruction does not necessarily follow one model. Our G21 program was designed to introduce to everyone of our teachers and students a method of learning that focused effort on the development of one or more of twelve twenty-first century skills in the production of a product or performance. Roughly speaking, it was a framework for product-created learning experiences. It’s cousin, if you will, is Project-Based Learning. Projects many times involve a product, but can be slightly more complex in planning. Another “relative” in instructional design, problem-based learning forces students to confront a problem, where they apply already acquired and new knowledge to solve the problem, often in the context of a small group. The commonality between all of these frameworks is the role of inquiry, or putting the student in the role of actively questioning what they need to know, applied to a simple problem, or a complex project. The very nature of having to figure something out, like a puzzle for instance, has a somewhat engaging aspect to it. The key, I believe, is supporting this interest that leads to engagement is a school-wide climate that encourages the type of open-ended thinking that so often is required in inquiry-based learning experiences. I know that the climate of standardized testing has done quite the opposite for many students. Some education pundits posit that standardized testing has killed creativity and problem-solving in schools, focusing everyone on finding the right answer from a choice list of four to five.

So, I could ramble on. But my point is this: we’re headed in a direction to try and change what teaching and learning looks like in our county, centered around experiences that personalize learning, with inquiry-based approaches. It does not mean that everything we’ve done is old and will be thrown away. We’ll start with our best exemplars for teaching, and replace others. For some classrooms, the changes might be more radical than in others. It’s safe to say that inquiry and personalization are not foreign to our teachers. What’s important to realize for everyone is that this change will be gradual.

For one, we’re taking the challenge of offering ubiquitous computing opportunities to students slowly at a pace that we can handle technically. We can do a lot of preparation for getting the technology, but in all honesty, we’ve been preparing for this for many years. The real transformation can’t really happen until teachers and students both have ready and regular, reliable access to learning tools and resources.

Technology will help in some ways with student engagement. The research I’ve looked at suggests that many districts see positive correlations to 1:1 programs in the first several years with attendance rates, graduation rates, and a reduction of discipline issues. But engagement is not the whole story.

Technology is, as I describe in our upcoming instructional newsletter, Explorations in Learning, a bicycle for the mind. In the case of our iPad 1:1 program, the omnipresent iPad in kids’s hands means they can look up a fact or answer a factual question any time of the school day. They have a multiplicity of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and online fact books at the ready. It is obvious, then, that technology supports a classroom paradigm grounded in inquiry.

Yet, technology’s greatest contribution to the ideas behind “PIbL” is the economy it provides in creating new knowledge. This was Papert’s point in his book The Children’s Machine, that a computer made the experience of creation, in a digital or virtual realm, so much more economical than some of the same things you could do with real physical objects in the world.

In my visits with schools and district leaders with one-to-one programs, I see those who have loaded their devices with drill and practice games. I’ve seen all sorts of digital textbooks. These resources are clearly grounded in the state standards and have little to do with a new classroom paradigm. We can do that, but I’d like us to aim beyond. I have no doubt that as we continue our program, we will standardize on a learning management system where teachers can present the requisite content. Students will have access to this content and be able to interact with it in ways that go beyond the textbooks and worksheets that still remain a tried and true staple of learning in schools today. But the changes we’d like to see in pedagogy will take time. If we move too fast, the process of change is too uncomfortable. If we move too slowly, we won’t see a return in our investments in expenditures on technology and new resources, not to mention training. But time and time again those who have already gone through ubiquitous computing programs report that staggering the roll-out of technology, and proceeding with constant, ongoing professional development is the key to doing it right.

At the end of the day, someone is liable to ask “Why?” What needs changing, and for what reasons? Why should there be a classroom paradigm change?

I can articulate a few reasons, none of which are particularly new or novel.

  1. Students show less engagement in the school system the longer they’re in school. (Dr. Geyer discusses this in an upcoming article he wrote for Explorations in Learning.)
  2. Both employers and tests for college entrance are moving more towards a model where students have to be able to demonstrate understanding and apply knowledge, not just recall knowledge.
  3. Our charge with technology goes way beyond making sure students can turn things on and cover basic operations. Today, we want kids who often come to us with those skills to be able to solve problems with these tools, responsibly. School is the place to develop skills in communication, collaboration, and inventive thinking with these tools. Workplace readiness metrics tell us these are among the skills in most high deficit by previous high school and college graduated students.
  4. As educators and as citizens in our communities we share a moral imperative to do what’s best for our country’s next generation. In part, this means we apply what we know about school success, lifelong success, the neuroscience behind learning, and what the individual needs and aspirations of our students are to our educational system. This includes bringing equity of opportunity to all students, using data to track progress and course-correct instruction, and divorce ourselves of the education model that was originally conceived to prepare a workforce for the industrial age.

To get where we’re going, I believe we need to:

  1. Share our vision about what our school division can be, at its best. We’ll be formally sharing this with our staff on February 14, in the afternoon with all of our teachers beginning at 1:45 PM;
  2. Work towards developing every one of our employees of their role, our mission, and our vision, as communicated in the plan;
  3. Plan, align, and execute a continuous professional development program that leverages our instructional leaders, including teacher leaders, towards building capacity to improve our ability with instruction, focusing on personalizing it for every student. We believe this improvement will come from inquiry-based approaches.
  4. Provide the tools and resources that support inquiry-based instruction models;
  5. Re-fashion our concept of curriculum to become a rich and organized, digital collection of resources for learning. This will only be possible after we have experience and exposure in our efforts towards deeper learning, as teachers firmly in the role as facilitators.

Thank for you taking the time to read this. No doubt, this is a draft of my current thinking on the ideas behind change. I won’t be doing the work alone, but in concert with our other district leaders who also bring a wealth of experience and ideas to the execution of our strategic plan. The fact that so many of our teachers have already welcomed the change I describe is a testament to my certainty that together, we can succeed at maximizing the potential of every student. Change may be a challenge, but hard fun is the best kind of engagement towards our commitment to education.

Leading into the Future

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ASCD puts out some good stuff, but this article by Larry D. Rosen was lacking in quality.

Entitled Teaching the iGeneration, Rosen first is bemused by the fact that young children can download apps and upgrade computers. It’s not hard, Dr. Rosen. You click a button. Monkey see, monkey do.

So, then we run through some statistics about net use, and these are solid. I consulted some of the same sources in my convocation keynote. But then things turn afoul.

> Nor should teachers feel responsible for finding educational technologies to use in their classrooms. Teachers are required to teach specific content. The point is not to “teach with technology” but to use technology to convey content more powerfully and efficiently.

Here’s where I disagree. True, teachers shouldn’t use technology just to use it. But, we should all feel a responsibility to improve our craft. And technology has a role in the lives of students (and in school). And technology’s purpose goes far beyond conveying content, Dr. Rosen. It should inspire a change in pedagogy. Technology is a tool, and as a tool, it ought to be used to do something in the hands of our students. Solve problems, create something. Not just simply to convey information or content.

He closes with this, which I can appreciate more:

> Now, we need to take advantage of their love of technology to refocus education. In doing so, we’ll not only get students more involved in learning, but also free up classroom time to help them make meaning of the wealth of information that surrounds them.

But the road to this path is long and challenging. It is a responsibility we all share.

Free Your Mind!

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Seeing the big picture is important in learning. While we often focus on the details, if students don’t “see” the bigger picture, sometimes they have a hard time seeing how one concept relates to another.

One tool you can use on the computer to actually “draw” pictures like this is Inspiration. In fact, if you’re an elementary teacher, we’re hosting a course on Inspiration’s little brother, Kidspiration. This software is known for its library of graphics, and best yet, it’s already on student machines for students to build their own graphic organizers.

Another free tool available to teachers is Free Mind. FreeMind mimics its look after the original “mind map” concept. These maps are great to see your course of study in a giant chart, or to simply help you create images for instruction. Think – classifications, duties when students are working in a group, parts of speech, etc.

Plugging into Video

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Using video in the classroom is an excellent way to lead class discussions, and often the best time to use a video as at the beginning of a class.

We currently subscribe to Discovery Streaming which adds new educational videos each month to their stores. But you may also want to try these sources of free, online videos for content to use in your class: