Catching a snippet of President Obama’s news conference last night reminded me of how important and far-reaching access to health care really is. Teaching “At Risk” students that tend not to get consistent health care I see the impact it makes on their education. Students that don’t see well for example. We do our best to notice them and refer them to the nurse, but even if she notes poor eyesight and she sends a note AND calls the parents they often follow through slowly because of lack of money and knowledge of who to contact. Same with the condition of many of my students’ teeth and staying on any medications that a doctor prescribes … even basic nutrition and being encouraged to be active and go out and play and “.. let’s sign you up for sports or dance or music lessons.” It not just the money. It’s about families that don’t have experience keeping track of these things because they have no experience with them from when they were kids … no memories of mom on them to wear their glasses or eat the right things … you get the point.

We often get a local group to provide glasses for a student for example, but often within days the glasses are lost or broken or constantly forgotten at home. When the parents have no experience of keeping track of these items (nor did their parents or grandparents) … following through on meds, getting kids to the dentist regularly isn’t automatic … just having access doesn’t guarantee basic understanding of the value, importance, knowledge and organization involved in keeping up and keeping track of appointments, schedules and tricks to remember to take your glasses to school.

Most of us have had these things ingrained in us from an early age … but in families of poverty its another layer that insulates them from learning.

Learning is messy!

Tags: HealthCare

This comes up occasionally in Twitter discussions and elsewhere and I’ve finally decided to bring my perspective to the discussion. Why should you care who follows you on Twitter? When this question arises some take the, “It has absolutely no consequence, who cares!?” attitude while some of us are a bit more pensive. I remember having a short discussion about it with David Warlick when we were in Shanghai. He had obviously never thought about it, or at least not much, and his attitude was that he has absolutely no time to consider that and doesn’t want to have to. And he probably doesn’t have to. And you might not have to either.

So who does then? Teachers. Especially elementary teachers or anyone working with young children probably. Why? Guilt by association – because you can make a choice about blocking someone.

Case in point (and I could share many examples). Prostitution is legal in some counties in the state of Nevada where I live. Often people get followed on Twitter by people because they see you are local. So a few months back a “cat house” in the next county started following me. I let it go for a few days, but then after some thought blocked them. I block any porno or close to porno followers. I know this seems like a stretch, not a probable outcome, but in Twitter anyone can check out who is following me. What if a parent, grandparent, community activist, possible employer … you fill in the blank, checked out my followers and saw this porno site following me? Why didn’t I block them? Does that somehow show tacit approval of what they are about? (BTW how about a Nazi group or racist group or child sex site? Put whatever person or group that is most abhorrent to you in the blank). Since I can block them and I didn’t … could that be used against me in court? Does that reflect on me getting a job – like what I put or who I associate with on FaceBook could?

If you think I’m out of my mind consider this. As a male elementary teacher I have been advised numerous times, starting in college, about touching kids. Everything from being careful about doing it to downright being told pointblank by a school district assistant superintendent that that will just not happen. “You (or any other male teacher) will not touch students in any way, not a pat on the back, not a hand on their shoulder.” And over the years I’ve heard it in meetings from principals to policemen.

There’s lots of stigma placed by society on certain professions, rightly or wrongly so. I love my job and I’m just not going to take this chance.

BTW – I doubt I’ve been perfect at blocking, so should I go through my 1,000 or so followers and check again? It’s a messy question.

Learning is messy!

Tags: Twitter, Guilt by association,

When I was in elementary school as a student, research reports were assigned very infrequently (because they were such a pain for all involved) and as often as not it was assumed students had research skills. It was not usually a correct assumption.
Used to be students researched using library books and textbooks, maybe a National Geographic or other magazines, and much of the time was used finding information and much less making sense out of what little information there was. Students were restricted in their topic choices because otherwise all the books on that topic were gone. Topics were also filtered through which letters of the alphabet they started with so that there would be enough encyclopedias available. So much time was taken just trying to find relevant information, and switching topics, that not enough time was spent learning how to deal with the information well and coherently. And like many of the Powerpoint presentations I’ve seen students give over the years, if you start asking questions it usually becomes apparent that not much was learned.

Research projects were almost always huge projects that we were given weeks to do. Therefore research was not practiced much … maybe a couple of times a year, if that. And yet looking for information and writing about it well is such an important skill, and in general I believe students are weak to very weak at it.

Experiencing 1:1 the last 3 years, one of my big takeaways has been that I was able to spend more time with my students on WHAT TO DO with the information they were finding and deciding which information was important and what it meant. Why? because having access to information is generally just not a problem. You don’t have to filter topics via the alphabet when students have the internet. Looking back with 20-20 hindsight I only wish I had learned that lesson earlier on, I think we could have gotten even better at putting things “in your own words” and being  discerning about the information we were looking at and deciding whether or not they should even be using this web page or book. Doing many short pieces gives students more of the practice they need and provides numerous teaching/learning opportunities. In addition students are reading and processing lots of non-fiction which is another bonus.

This is one way in which my teaching has been influenced by having access to 1:1 laptops.  Our “Reading to Learn” mini projects this year were an offshoot of this experience. As I mentioned in my post about Reading to Learn, my experience with at risk students is that they often have so little background and schema for things that there just isn’t much they get excited about. Learning about spiders and volcanoes and more on their own really primed the pump and I saw students finally get excited about the prospect of researching something they wanted to know more about. They were reading to learn on their own. As simple a concept and project as this is, I see it as one of the most powerful. Students reading, learning and writing about that learning well. As I get to work with a new batch of 4th graders this fall, this will be an area of focus right away.

Learning is messy!

I received the following email today. Thought it might be a good way to voice your vision of education:

So here is your big chance – check out the website.

Tags: CNNEducation

NOTE: This post is really from a comment I left on my own post over at “In Practice“.

Think of all the learning time being lost by those students already on leave because of the H1N1 flu issue. What if this did become more widespread and we did have many students out of school for a week or more? My school district has already informed us that if even 1 student is diagnosed at our school with H1N1 then they would close that school for 5 to 7 days AND those days don’t have to be made up at the end of the school year. That’s a lot of lost learning time AND lots of free time on the hands of kids that may lead to other issues.

My students are at a bit of a disadvantage over others simply because not all of them are connected at home, but if I had time I could probably make this work for 60 to 80% of them if they were sent home due to a flu outbreak or other reason in the future. My wife’s students are 100% online at home, so think of this in terms of whatever your situation might be.

What could I make work? I could make school happen for my students from home. How?

Well first all my students blog, so I could leave them assignments on our class blog for them to research, write about and then submit to me to check and even comment back to them about. In fact just using their blog I could carry on a conversation about their work on almost any topic. I could even post math problems for them to do, science, social studies … really almost any subject. I could post photos on our Flickr account (and elsewhere), videos for them to watch, links to web pages of all kinds on any subject for them to read or interact with and then report to me about their learning in a way where I can interact with them about it. Oh, and they could do the same, posting video or photos they’ve taken (maybe just with their or a parents cell phone), to demonstrate learning or to build content to present online to the rest of us. And “US” doesn’t just have to be our class, others could join in or at least view and comment on our work.

I could even provide a field trip or guest speaker from anywhere in the world via Ustream or Mogulus and they could interact about it in the chat – ask questions, and then write about it afterwards and even have discussions.

Using Google Docs I could even enter a document with a student or even a group of students to work on or ask questions about or get feedback about.

Also we could collaborate on any of the above activities along with other students anywhere in the world.

Using the links we already have on our class wiki page I can have them visit different free online math, language, science, social studies activities and more … and add new ones as needed.

All for free, using tools students already know how to use. And understand, we could do this easily – including collaborating with other students because we already do this, we already have the contacts and network with other students and teachers set-up. We already blog and use Google Docs and Skype and wikis and more with students all over the world. We are ready to go.

Now I have just scratched the surface here, applications like Ning,  Moodle, Elluminate and so many more could further facilitate what I described above.

So time spent at home instead of school could be just about as productive as being in school – I assume I’d still be getting paid even if school has been closed for the flu (or other reason), students have something productive to do, aren’t spreading germs, do you see a downside? – I’m not.

I hope others will further elaborate how they see this working  as comments. I really held back on ALL that is possible here so have at it!

Too bad school couldn’t be more like this all the time!

Learning is messy!

Tags: N1H1school

This whole economic crisis and change in government since the election has me thinking about education’s slow progress.

Businesses are having to deal with change, and are being demanded on to make change quickly for the good of the economy and the well being of our country. Businesses, especially the ones most effected by the economic crisis can’t change fast enough …  and we better notice that change! … it better be REAL change! How can we get society to think that way about education?

Not only do schools have the same disdain for change as any other body, but deep down our customers don’t want us to change much because their advantage, or their kids advantage is lost otherwise, they think, because if they don’t understand the system explicitly, they can’t game the system for their child as easily and they don’t feel as “in control” of  their child’s education. Which is understandable enough, but ultimately it damns our schools with change that happens excruciatingly slow, much too slow, to keep up with the realities of the world. Then we all wonder why our schools aren’t better. Better at being places of learning for all students. Better at motivating. Better at being places students want to be more of the time.

Just a few Sunday morning thoughts.

Learning is messy!

Tags: ChangeEducation

Note this is a crosspost from the In Practice Blog.

David Warlick and others have jumped on Arne Duncan (who probably should be jumped on about a few things) about his statement that students should spend more time in school. David disagrees vehemently, and the points he makes are good, but I think he leaves out some important considerations involving “At Risk” students and elementary students in general.

Extra time IS a bad idea, a really bad idea,  if it is just more time and intensity of what is being done now. (David’s main point)

As I’ve said over and over,  the lack of experience with sports, the arts (including dance, drama and music), scouting and other outdoor education, attending camp, and the like have major detrimental effects on the overall education of students of poverty.

So if the extra time Duncan refers to is spent on these areas (and a few others) then I believe he is on the right track and I would support him.

After-school activities like sports and arts programs started to be whittled away from budgets 30 years ago (and cut almost completely from elementary school). The upshot is that parents have had to spend more money and time enrolling their kids in these programs elsewhere … guess whose kids DON’T get enrolled and aren’t driven all over town to practices and  special clinics and tournaments? And think about all the wasted gas and time and extra air pollution caused by all those miles when kids could have just stayed after-school, and participated there.

Students in our primary grades are well schooled in phonics, word attack skills and other required reading skills. However when they reach upper elementary and are required to be independent readers they are so lacking in schema that reading is boring and they struggle to engage with it and fall behind again … worse they learn reading is not relevant to them.

My students go home right after school each day and because they live in an area of poverty and high crime they spend little or no time outside even playing games like tag and dodge ball … so sportsmanship and being a member of a team and an emphasis on physical fitness are not in their experience.

The kinds of “language intense” activities technology has allowed my students to participate in that are highly engaging (usually), is one huge step in the right direction. Since our schools tend to be severely segregated still by socio-economics, technology is one way to get kids exposed and collaborating with students from other experiences across the city, state, country and world.

At Risk students come to us woefully behind in language, math and learning skills the moment they hit kindergarten. We often hear the “2,000 hours” statistic … students require about 2,000 hours of quality language experience BEFORE kindergarten to be successful readers. Activities such as being read to, storytelling about family history, experiences and just … well.. stories .. and having conversations about how things work and why they are and a base vocabulary. The problem is making up that 2,000 hours AFTER a student hits kindergarten. Our current system assumes those hours are in place and so doesn’t leave any room to make them up in the regular school day, especially the way it is structured now. Spend more time on these endeavors, especially in K – 2 years and I’m for that extra time again.

If this “extra-time” in school included more time and funding for field trips and field trips that come to you … like when someone brings their collection of snakes or a science show or activity in your auditorium,  and art experiences and a strong PE program starting in Kindergarten, well then I’m for it again, because for my students I don’t know where else they would or could get those experiences. The elementary schools tend to be neighborhood schools more than middle or high schools are so transportation is much less an issue.

If the extra time included regular science and social studies and art classes, since for years now I “break the rules” to teach those subjects outside of embedding them in Reading (which is OK if you are integrating, but not good if that IS your science and social studies program), I’m for it too.

Extra time in and at school? If done well … sign me up!!!

Learning is messy!

Tags: ArneDuncan, David Warlick

These are the finalists to become superintendent of schools in my school district.

●   Lawrence W. Fryer, Jr., currently Chief Operating Officer, Prince George’s County Public Schools, Maryland, previously Senior Managing Consultant, IBM Global Business Services.

●   Edmond T. Heatley,  currently Superintendent of Schools, Chino Valley Unified School District, Chino, CA, previously Associate Superintendent (Personnel) Oceanside Unified School District, Oceanside, CA

●   Matthew H. Malone, currently Superintendent of Schools, Swampscott Public Schools, Swampscott, MA, previously Special Assistant to the Superintendent, San Diego City Schools, San Diego, CA.

●   Vincent Matthews, currently State Administrator/Superintendent, Oakland Unified School District, Oakland, CA, previously Chief of Staff, Oakland Unified School District, Oakland, CA.

●   Hector Montenegro, currently education consultant, Arlington, TX, previously Superintendent, Arlington Independent School District, Arlington, TX and Superintendent, Yselta Independent School District, El Paso, TX

●   Kimberly D. Olson, currently Chief Human Development Officer, Dallas Independent School District, Dallas TX, previously Colonel, United States Air Force, Washington D.C.

I hope whomever is chosen … they like messy learning!

Tonight (Wednesday, about 5:15 Pacific standard time) about half my class will be able to make it to and be involved in Technology Cafe 2009, which is being held in the Red Mountain Building on the campus of Truckee Meadows Community College here in Reno, Nevada. Students and teachers in K – 16 will be showcasing how they use technology to support their learning. My class will be blogging, Skyping, making wiki pages and more … others will be demonstrating Second Life, podcasting and many other ed tech pieces.

I am going to try to Ustream out at least our 2 Skype sessions. They are part of the “Around The World in 80 Schools” project. We will be video-conferencing with teachers and students in Beijing, China and Bangkok, Thailand. I will try to post the Ustream link here and on Twitter … after we get there and see what the network will support.

Learning is messy!

Tags: Skype, video-conference, tech cafe 2009