Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Change

  • Guidance through the shift

    Watch this video and ask yourself: Do I know this teacher? Am I this teacher?

    And then ask: How can I guide or be guided through the shift towards improved student-learning?

    In the video I say that the answer is simple – just shift a la ‘just do it’ mentality but in reality the shift is not as simple as all that. If it were, I’d like to think we would all naturally make shifts as they are needed.

    No teacher wants their students to fail, to be bored, to drift away. So something is keeping us doing things that are not working for most of the people in our care. We tend to point towards outside factors – students getting younger (in Adult Ed in Quebec we are getting more and more students between 16 and 24 ever since they (re)started a new streaming type of programming in the high schools), too much technology, larger class sizes, too much administrivia, lack of instructional material, multi-level classes… – over which we have little to no control and get angry about it. I love how Sheryl writes: What makes you most angry about education? Guess what? That isn’t the problem. in Break Down, Rebuild, Start Fresh. She advocates for focusing on those things over which we do have control and sharing our successes with others.

    We. We have control over the climate in our classrooms.

    We can choose to remain angry or complacent and teach the way we have always been teaching and then becoming even more angry or complacent as it continues to not work for the majority of our students and for us.

    We can choose to make a shift and then to seek out the guidance we may need to help us in that choice.

    We can choose happiness and success over anger and complacency. Really. We can.

    Have you started this shift in your own practice? How?

    Have you guided someone through a shift? How?

  • A morning with Marc Prensky: idea bits

    We had the opportunity to chat with Marc Prensky at a Quebec convention for adult educators (AQIFGA). Here are some thoughts and comments from the morning.

    —-

    “If the answer is findable on google then it’s not a good question.” Marc Prensky

    The idea of embedding curriculum within student interests and relevancy –> something I try to do no matter what / who I teach.

    From Marc Prensky: Evaluations allow us to conveniently rank people – where is the need to do that?

    My question…
    In adult Ed, by the age of 21 you can go on to university based on interest, drive, life experience. You can go into vocational programs at the age of 18 with GDT + 1 or 2 other functional pre-reqs. Why are we making learners jump through these evaluatory hoops before then?

    From MP: It’s easy to criticize but there are no alternatives…

    From me: (I like the notion of mature student interview and intent interview as a possible alternative… Something to look at)

    From Marc Prensky: What do teachers control? : We allow time to be the decider of what we teach (for example, snow days can cut whole sections out of courses…) but really, as teachers, WE can determine what is important in our curriculum to teach.

    From me + Marc Prensky: Imagine if teachers all strived to be a teacher of passion.

    From Marc Prensky: “Cellophane kids” – kids who teachers look right through because they are only concerned about the curriculum and the tests, not the kids.

    From me: A few adult learners were present – excellent. They expressed how they feel about the way exams work, how technology helps them learn. Important conversation to have. I suggest we consult with our students on a regular basis to make sure we are teaching them the way they deserve.

    Marc is trying to find alternative ways to tell teachers to relinquish control – if you tell someone they have to give up control, who would want to? Let’s go about it differently.

    From a teacher + MP: Classroom teachers will still have a lot of control, it just looks different –> let’s say this to as many people as possible. The only person a teacher will believe is another teacher. So teachers need to share these nuggets.

    From Marc Prensky: School ought to be about becoming not learning. Learning can help us to become, but shouldn’t be the main point.

    From Marc Prensky: When it comes to how to get students using social media in the classroom in a focused way, the first place to get practical suggestions from is the students.

    From me: We need to talk to our students. We need to listen to our students. Start with what they do, not with what we do. Confronting the notion of cellophane kids.

    From a student : Teachers have to understand how we deal with life so they can learn how to teach us.

    From a teacher : We may think they are fooling around on YouTube but really they are learning in ways we don’t know. Or maybe they are taking a break. Or maybe they are showing us that we aren’t reaching them. Or maybe they are showing us they need more/less structure.

  • What do you believe? And does it matter?

    If you don’t know who Mary Hynes is and have never listened to (and nodded with, yelled at, cried to, and questioned) Tapestry, CBC’s weekly radio show and podcast on spirituality, myth, faith, our connections then hop to it. It is inspiring and regularly leads me to question my own beliefs.

    A recent article by the show’s host, however, reminds me that belief ain’t all that.

    How do people know what you believe without action?
    Cliché –> Walking the Talk
    Theory –> Theory in use and espoused theory (Argyris & Schon, 1974)

    I’m going to point fingers at myself for the sake of illustration here. As well to remind me how important it is to act and not merely believe. It’ll be a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

    Belief:
    I say I believe in relationship-based learning.

    It’s on my cv, I recently created and updated some web sites (LinkedIn, about.me, and others) where it was the first thing I wrote down.

    Action:
    A few years ago I used this blog as a venting venue about students and pressed send before thinking about relationship. I did the very opposite of caring for our relationship.

    I have been known to end relationships abruptly. I turn silent, I disappear.

    I can go for long periods without returning phone calls or contacting people.

    I try to listen for/feel the ‘why’ behind a colleague’s or student’s actions and consider my own actions based on that.

    I spend my breaks at work with students: talking, listening, and helping.

    I get to know my students interests, goals, and abilities before designing learning and evaluation situations.

    After uncomfortable, hinky …arguments… with friends or family I don’t talk about it. Time passes, then we drift back to a certain homeostasis.

    I feel hurt and angry when I see teachers do things like yell at students, call them out in front of their peers, apply classroom expectations inconsistently, yet I do not know how to approach the subject with them for fear of creating an adversarial relationship.

    So. Though I advertise that relationship-based learning is fundamental to who I am and what I do, I do not always take care of relationship the way I would like to. But I do think it needs to be taken care of and I work each day to get better at this. It’s hard work. Which lets me know that it is worth working at, thinking about, improving. But as it stands, some of my actions fall in line with that belief while others very pointedly don’t.

    Another So. This morning I wrote a post called ‘I believe..’. Does any of that really matter? They are things that quicken my pulse but unless they are followed through with action, they are merely words. Belief then, is important as much as it provides a context for action but not so much on its own.

  • Moving out towards reform

    In an age of constant reform, a teacher is constantly put in the spotlight. The way that he or she teaches is constantly in question.

    The teachers I know became teachers because of something from deep within – a passion, a desire to help others, to pay something back, to follow in the footsteps of their own teachers, to make positive change – whatever the impetus it comes from deep within themselves.

    The very fact that they are teachers is closely enmeshed with their own sense of self. Teaching, then, is closely tied to our values, even to our sense of what is right and what is wrong.

    And so, when teachers are told that they need to change how they teach they just may feel that their values are being put into question and they will hold on to them like there is no tomorrow. It will become messy, no doubt.

    Think about that as we struggle through curricular reform, technology integration, differentiation, classroom flipping, backwards design, project-based learning…

    (I think that the answer lies somewhere in starting from values and moving out towards reform.)

  • The Changing Face of Economics Class (and advertising)

    **cross-posted at AdultEd.TracyRosen.Com**

    The idea of advertisement is in constant evolution. It is becoming more and more personal. Google’s ads are streamlined to reflect our search queries and sites like facebook do the same thing.

    Test it out. Do a search for something specific on Google. Like a particular kind of shoe or boot. Then log into facebook and lo and behold, the ads will suddenly be geared to just those shoes you were looking for!

    Just the other day, I heard about an app called Aurasma that brings static advertisements to life with your SMART phone. Someone with a SMART phone can not only view these ads but can create their own as well. More and more, companies rely on us for their advertising. If I talk about how much I love my new x, y, or z on facebook or twitter, I am helping out the company by effectively advertising to all of my contacts.

    If advertising is so much more than the print, radio, or tv ads of yore, how do we teach about it?

    I’d say it’s essential to read about how it is changing. And to bring that into our classrooms.

    Adweek.com is a good place, with a lot of content about the latest trends in advertising.

    Facebook’s New, Entirely Social Ads Will Recreate Marketing by E.B. Boyd at Fast Company, a company with, “… a focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics (ethical economics), leadership, and design. Written for, by, and about the most progressive business leaders…”

    AllTop Advertising – a collection of the top read advertising articles from across the Web.

    Another thought. How could these changes be reflected in the assignments we give our Economics students? Do you have any ideas? Do you know of anyone who is already integrating new advertising techniques into their class assignments?