I was speaking to a number of staff at my school the other day, and I commented that I was going to go and see one of our students playing sport on the weekend. This staff member expressed surprise at such an action – and also suggested that I might be crossing the line of staff-student professionalism. I’d never considered it like that, before, but these comments did cause me to think about what I was doing – was I acting unprofessionally? Was I endangering my career, and the safety of the student? This idea had never crossed my mind before – and ever since I was a young teacher, I’ve often gone to see students play sport, perform in theatre shows or similar things. I’d certainly never really considered my motivation for doing so; it just seemed something that I should do.

Ultimately, I don’t think what I’m doing crosses any kind of boundaries of appropriateness. At the end of the day, a school is a community – or more correctly, a community of communities. There are the communities of practice of teachers. There are the social communities of students. There are the religious, ethnic, cultural and sporting communities within these groupings.This is an important point because I believe that communities are sustained – primarily- through relationships. Thus, it is important to develop these relationships to their fullest extent. Any relationship – and interestingly, Freire makes this exact point – must use as its starting point an understanding of where each member of that relationship comes from; that is to say, it is not enough for me to perceive student simply as a student, or as a boy or as gifted. Rather, I must do my utmost to understand their own life experiences and stories – I need to know about them as a unique individual if I am to come to understand them at all.

I like this idea; I think it is clearly linked to a movement away from the banking model of education and towards a better understanding of the human principles that at the heart of learning. Therefore, to address the issue that started this line of thought, what I was doing by going to this was twofold; firstly, I was learning more about this student’s background and motivations, as hell as his interests, and secondly, this student was learning more about me. Hence, our relationship (which was already pretty good) takes another step forward, and I am better able to assist him in his learning. Sounds very professional, if you ask me!

I was teaching my Year 8 English class recently, and I had one of those perspective moments; you know, when you look around yourself and suddenly it’s like you are seeing everything through fresh eyes. Anyway, that’s what happened; we were in a computer room, and I had kids working on laptops, other kids sitting in front of the floor watching the projector screen and even a few standing outside the classroom furiously arguing with each other.

Ten years ago, I would have been horrified if I had stumbled onto a room that was as ‘messy’ as that. I would have been looking for students sitting in silence, studiously copying from textbooks while the teacher lectured. Okay, maybe I was never as blinkered at that, but I think I would have been concerned by what I saw.

Anyway, I had this perspective moment, and it kind of filtered out all the garbage about classroom behaviour and learning outcomes and other stuff, and allowed me to focus on the actual learning taking place. And that’s the point: despite the ‘messy’ classroom, there was no doubt that there was learning taking place – for every student in the classroom. Let’s think about what I mean by learning: firstly, there is a requirement for every student to be engaged. Secondly, there is a need for students to be challenged – at whatever level they are currently not working at. Finally, there is also the call for reflection. I honestly believe that reflection is a crucial part of the learning process, and it is something that I actively encourage students to take part in.

Those students working on a computer were actually putting the finishing touches on a task requiring them to analyse what Australian and Japanese school aged children might be proud of; it was a challenging task for these high achievers, requiring a level of logical thought that is right at the top end of Bloom’s taxonomy. Meanwhile middle achievers in my class were engaged (and I use that word deliberately) in watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ which fits really nicely with our area of study.

But more than passively watching the video, the students were actively involved in critiquing Gore’s point of view; in fact they were analysing how they structured his argument – defining each new piece of information as an example, or a thesis, or evidence. It was great. Sure, they might have been sitting on the floor, or not writing in their books, but they were learning – and enjoying it too.

And the two outside? Well, they were in the heat of a discussion about the reality of climate change, and the causes of it.

Messy classrooms: the way of the future?

I was at the Penrith rugby league game last night (Penrith beat the Doggies, go the panthers) and, while I had a great time, a few beers with the brother-in-law, steak sandwich, hurled abuse at the touch judge etc etc, there was one part of the evening that struck me as a little strange.

Basically, one of the main sponsors of the Penrith Panthers (Go the Panthers!) is the Department of Education for NSW. As concerning as it is that the Department needs to sponsor a football team instead of spending the money on training staff, that’s not what concerns me.

What does concern me is the tagline that goes with the recruitment drive; the announcer at the game said it about 5 times – before the game, at half-time and at the end of the game. The tagline went like this: ‘Are you looking for a career that is innovative and creative and means you still have time for sports, friends and family?’ I mean, seriously, you still have time for sports, friends and family!

I was horrified when I heard it, to be honest. Immediately, I started thinking: is this the best way to encourage people to become teachers? And are people who are interested by this ‘time for sports, friends and family’ likely to be our best teachers? Would you entrust your children to someone who’s just teaching to fill in time before he or she can go play football?

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the importance of work-life balance and I think that teachers come in two sorts: those who have it and those who don’t. But I don’t think anyone should become a teacher solely because it offers opportunities for a good work-life balance. To me, teaching is a vocation, not a job you do because you need to earn money somehow. The responsibility that you, as a teacher have, for the nurturing and development of young minds is far too important to be done by someone who doesn’t really care about it.

You’ve got to hand it to Apple – whatever else you say about them, they know how to put on a good show! I recently attended ITSC2010 (that’s the innovative technology in schools conference) at Kambala Girl’s School, Rose Bay, in my capacity as an Apple Distinguished Educator. I was there (along with the Apple staff) to help facilitate the learning and exploration that took place.

I say exploration because that was the emphasis for this conference – unlike other conferences (and, I believe, previous ITSCS), the focus was less on learning to play with iPhoto or Garageband or anything else, and more on considering what learning in a classroom in 2010 should look like, as opposed to what it does look like.

Apple came to play, though: for example, they handed out 150+ macbooks and ipod touches at the conference, set up a server hosting a wikipage and basically suggested to the delegates: imagine, if we can do this much in 2 days, what could you do in a year?

I had a number of interesting discussions with teachers: some are miles ahead already – James Humberstone and Bruce Fuda, in particular (fellow ADEs) were simply fantastic – the quality of some of the work they were doing just amazed me. On the other end of the spectrum, there were people there – ICT coordinators, principals, school leaders who were still wrestling with the concept of what a wiki is or how it could be used in a classroom. Often, these people had already moved towards 1:1 laptop programs, as well.

This is particularly concerning, because all the evidence points towards the fact that laptop programs only unlock the benefits for students if they are considered as a means – not an end. And not a complete solution, either. Personally, too many educators (and principals) are caught up in a game where it’s a race to see who’s got the most machines per student. Crazy stuff when it leads to poorly designed learning, and poorly supported technology.

No, much better to start of small, and develop an idea of pedagogy that supports teaching and learning with the laptops. In this example, a wiki page kind of becomes a students digital exercise book – but so much more powerful, because students can have realtime feedback, and also finally have a place to store the videos, keynotes, films, podcasts etc etc that they make, as well as the more common written work.

ITSC2010 was all about moving towards this concept; although there are a lot of schools that are miles down that path, I think there are even more schools that are being left behind – I heard some truly horrifying stories about what’s allowed on the DET-issued laptops.

Long way to go to bridge this digital divide.

Reading about the tragic suicide of a student in Massachusetts due to bullying – I believe both cyber and in person. Horrific. You can read the whole article here, but the interesting part is that 9 of the people associated have been charged with felony crimes – which means, I think, they could end up being sent to gaol or juvenile detention.

Apparently, Massachusetts and most other states in the US have anti-bullying laws of some description, but this is seen as a big step forward, in that this is actually going to go to court, and a lot of people have been charged.

The issue of bullying is a tricky one in schools; I’ve never worked in a school where bullying hasn’t existed, and I don’t really believe anyone who says that bullying doesn’t exist. In fact, in some of the schools I’ve worked in (and there are 5 different schools, now) the worst bullies have been members of staff – towards other staff members and students, who try to cloak their despicable behaviour under the guise of professionalism. I can’t abide gossiping, regardless of how professional you may claim to be while doing it. To me, it’s just bullying in disguise.

Anyway, what’s important in schools is the methods for dealing with bullying; in the example outlined above, apparently staff were aware of bullying but failed to act upon it. That rings all kinds of alarm bells for me. It’s interesting comparing that article with this one (also from the New York Times.) This article explains the rise of a phenomenon called recess coaches – people who deal specifically with working with young people during recess time – by teaching them how to play hopscotch and play together. Crazy stuff, right?

Well, perhaps not. According to David Elkind, who is a professor at Tufts university, we have lost what is called the ‘culture of childhood’, in part because we spend, as children, so much time alone. This culture is important, argues Elkind. He writes:

For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They learned to settle their own quarrels, to make and break their own rules, and to respect the rights of others. They learned that friends could be mean as well as kind, and that life was not always fair.

Now that most children no longer participate in this free-form experience — play dates arranged by parents are no substitute — their peer socialization has suffered. One tangible result of this lack of socialization is the increase in bullying, teasing and discrimination that we see in all too many of our schools.

Scary stuff, I reckon.