What I did: Technology Coordinator / English Teacher / Girls Basketball Coach / Ultimate Coach at the Beacon School, a fantastic progressive public high school in Manhattan.
Email: chris [at] practicaltheory [dot] org.
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Comments
Christian Long about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 22:27
Just finished my
3rd-week-back with my
students...and can't say
enough about be swept up
in the [...]
about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 07:06
Yes, though it is nice
during the summer to have
some peace and quiet to
get things accomplished
[...]
Brendabn Murphy about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 05:32
In my seven years of
teaching (two different
districts, two different
schools) I've had 5 [...]
We felt something similar
to what you felt
yesterday. Our high
school is undergoing
major [...]
Mark Ahlness about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Thu, 04.09.2008 22:37
Musical administrators
(as in musical chairs) in
school districts is one
of the biggest
impediments [...]
As many folks know, we are hosting EduCon again this year. We had a fantastic time last year, and for many of us at SLA -- students and faculty alike -- it was one of the highlights of our year.
EduCon only happens when a community of educators come together to make it something special. With that in mind, we are announcing our Call for Conversations for EduCon 2.1 -- January 23rd - 25th at Science Leadership Academy.
About EduCon 2.1:
EduCon 2.1 is both a conversation and a conference.
And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas -- from the very practical to the big dreams.
The Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.1
Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen
Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.
Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
Learning can -- and must -- be networked.
We want people to share ideas, lead conversations, challenge each other and have conversations that can further our dreams of what schools can and should be. We want sessions that move past the traditional presentation style of conferences to create interactive and engaging moments of learning for all involved.
[This was a request to post that was too good to pass up. This an amazing thing that David Eggers is doing with his TED Prize, and I hope they get tens of thousands of entries. With all the teacher and school-bashing we are hearing these days, it's wonderful to see TED and David Eggers teaming up to tell great stories. And it's also fun because we watched the David Eggers TEDTalk to launch SLA's faculty workshop this summer. Oh yeah... and I'm incredibly flattered that someone from TED reads my blog!]
This is Natasha Dantzig for the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference.
I know you're a big supporter of TED (I really like your blog), and I'm writing to let you know that organizers of the TED Prize have announced an open challenge in support of author and philanthropist Dave Eggers and his 2008 TED Prize wish to collect 1,000 stories of private citizens engaged in their local public schools. Each year, three individuals are granted the TED Prize, which provides winners with a wish to change the world, $100,000 in seed money, and the support of the TED community in making the wish come true.
As an extension of Eggers initial wish, the open challenge asks individuals to design and implement new projects for local public school students. The three winning entries will receive a pass to the sold out TED2009 Conference to be held in Long Beach, California on February 4-7, 2009. Additionally, Eggers asks local citizens to support 826 National, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing at six locations across USA. Eggers co-founded the original 826 chapter, 826 Valencia, a nonprofit tutoring center and writing school for children, in 2002.
Entries are open to the public and may be submitted by visiting onceuponaschool.org and will be judged by a panel of educators, entrepreneurs, and creatives from the TED Community. Projects will be evaluated on the following criteria:
• Innovation: Was a new model used? Is the approach creative? Were the students provided with access to something new?
• Collaboration: How well did the project leaders work with the teacher/school? Did the project address a specific challenge or need of the students?
• Impact: What changed in the life of the students, teacher, and school? Was the community affected? Did the work inspire other private citizens to get involved?
I've been in Philadelphia for three years, and the School District has had three different leaders. There is not a single cabinet level position that is held by the same person that was holding it when I start. The district has absorbed over a quarter billion dollards of cuts in that time. One of the ancillary issues around that is that is that much of what people talk about is, not surprisingly, the palace intrigue and the latest personnel and structural changes, rather than talking about the big ideas around education reform, rather than talking about how we can transform our schools to reflect the world we live in today.
This summer was no exception to that rule as people wondered who was going be where, and what positions would and wouldn't survive the latest changes. And, in the end, it's too easy for people to be distracted by the intrigue and lose track of what matters -- what it means to teach and learn in our schools.
And even if we don't get distracted by that, we can drift too far from the practical to the theoretical, and we can worry and wonder about a thousand things.
But the great thing is that there's an antidote to all that talk. And that antidote happened today. The kids came back. They came back with all their energy and excitement and passion and life. And today, after the laptops went out and the schedules were filled out, we were reminded of what matters most -- the kids we teach.
SLA flat out crackled with life today. Kids were happy to be back, not just to see their friends but to see their teachers, to see their school. And I spent the afternoon walking in and out of classes, watching the process of building classroom communities resume and restart as teachers and students got down to the work of the school year.
And the building just felt right. We had our kids back.
That's the best lesson we relearn every September.
I got my 07-08 Geometry results back yesterday and they were not acceptable. Too many kids listing along at Basic levels, not enough kids rising to Proficiency. My question to so many commenters here: what would you have me do with that data?
As a principal who is both against standardized assessments and also very much measured by them, here's what I'd do:
First, let's work under the assumption that I've watched you teach, and I feel that you are a good teacher.
I would take the scores and compare them to grades. I believe that the multiple data points that go into making up a grade give us a richer sense a student's learning. So the first question is this -- Is there a correlation between student grades and scores? If there is -- or if there isn't -- what does that tell us?
The next thing I'd do is ask you for your assessment: Most importantly, what is your assessment of how the students learned Geometry? How does that line up with what the scores suggest? What surprised you? What was what you expected?
If -- as I would think -- you were surprised by the scores and you honestly feel like there was deeper learning than the scores suggest, then the question is this: Is there a disconnect between the way you're teaching the skills or the process or just the language and the way the state test assesses the learning? This raises several more questions:
What are the assessments that you did in your classroom that would lead us to believe that the learning was more successful than the tests suggest?
If we believe that your methods are successful, what do we do about the tests? Given that they are the coin of the realm, we cannot ignore them, so are there modifications we need to make? Can we make them without harming the learning you see going on?
There is something going on in your class if your sense -- based on the work you see every day -- is that the scores really are not reflective of what they've learned. Is there something going on with the multiple opportunity style of assessment that you're doing such that on a one-shot test the kids aren't able to replicate their learning? Do you need to just take two weeks before the test to do some explicit teaching on how the way they've learned can translate to a test? Do you need to give them more opportunities during the year to take tests that mimic the structure of the state test?
Much of test taking is about the skill of making sure your knowledge and skills translate well on the test. The hard part, I really believe, is making sure that the learning you see every day in your class is measured on the tests, especially if you don't teach in a pedagogical fashion that is in line with the state assessment. And I really do believe it's important to tell us that the tests tell us something, but they don't come close to telling us everything.
Anyway, that's what I'd do.
[Update: Gary Stager takes a whack at answering Dan as well, and his answer is brilliant and paradigm-shifting and highlights why he's one of the best thinkers we've got.]
Go read Gary Stager's article "School Wars" in GOOD Magazine?
Here's a sample:
The tragedy of No Child Left Behind, and the private and public efforts to undo its damage, is that not every child is given the chance to achieve her full potential in a caring, creative, dynamic, and intellectually rich environment. And in the absence of ongoing classroom innovation and grassroots advocacy, NCLB has taken over.
These days, anyone who attended school is an expert in education and everybody has a plan to “fix” the public schools—the philanthropist, the businessman, the bureaucrat, the politician. For ages, business leaders and politicians have wanted to privatize the entire system and let the marketplace sort things out—as it did with Enron, Chinese pet food, or oil prices. Now, they’re taking control of schools through philanthropy. Parents of means, meanwhile, are opting out in record numbers, sending their children to private schools, or charter schools, or are homeschooling them. Indeed, as the federal government has steadily eroded public support for the public school system, through propaganda and failed policies, children are the collateral victims. The winners of the school wars remain uncertain; the losers can be found in almost any classroom.
[O.k. -- this too is an insanely geeky post. I promise, I'll write about education theory or EduCon or something like that soon. But for now, I've got my geek on.]
This is a very simple block in Moodle -- my first custom-designed Moodle block -- that makes it very easy to put a link on a Moodle course directly to the related DrupalEd course/group. As with before, this uses the Moodle variable "Shortname" and corresponds that with the "URL Alias" in Drupal. Those have to correspond or this doesn't work.
And if you are into learning how to make custom blocks in Moodle, this page of Block Documentation on the Moodle.org site was incredibly helpful and important, and I really just used their template.
In <site>/moodle/blocks, create a directory called drupal_link. Then create a file block_drupal_link.php -- here is that code:
<?php
// DrupalEd Linking
// Chris Lehmann -- 8.18.08
// This assumes that you have stored the moodle shortname in
// the URL Path settings in DrupalEd.
class block_drupal_link extends block_base {
function init() {
$this->title = get_string('Drupal Link', 'block_drupal_link');
$this->version = 2008081800;
}
function get_content() {
global $CFG, $COURSE;
if ($this->content !== NULL) {
return $this->content;
}
function config_save($data) {
// Default behavior: save all variables as $CFG properties
foreach ($data as $name => $value) {
set_config($name, $value);
}
return true;
}
}
?>
Then, create a file called config_global.html -- this is what will allow you to have global settings for the block. The global setting we create here is the root of the drupaled site, so that it's the same for all courses. (You could make this editable, course by course, but I didn't want to because we only have one drupal site.) Here's that code:
Once you do this, you may need to go to main moodle admin page for moodle to recognize the block, but otherwise, you should see the block in the Administration -> Blocks page. Edit the Settings with the root of your DrupalEd install (include the trailing slash), and you should be able to just add the block to any course and have the link show up. It will show up as the name of the course, rather than the URL. I thought that looked prettier.
Also... one silly issue that I'm wondering about. For some reason, the Block name is enclosed in [[ ]] brackets. I don't know why. Any ideas?
[Be aware -- this is by FAR the geekiest post I've written in a long, long time.]
Thought I'd share this for anyone who is trying to use both Moodle and Drupal. We just figured out a quick way to create a link on a DrupalEd Group page to a corresponding Moodle course.
First, give every DrupalEd course an automatic alias that is the same as your Moodle short-course name. (Yes, right now, we have to do that by hand. That needs to change eventually.)
Then, in Content Management -> Content Types -> Course -- create a new field called field_moodle_link (or something like that) and select Field Type -- Computed and create the field.
In the next page that pops up, fill in the Label with whatever you want the label to be on the Drupal Group page. Then I chose "Required" under data settings, but I'm not 100% sure that's necessary. And under Computed Code, enter this:
Once it's saved, click "Manage Fields" and make sure that your new field has a lower numerical value than the Highlighted Content Field, so that it's at the top of the Drupal page.
What I'd like to do eventually, is figure out how to make that link appear in the Group Details block, but I haven't figured out how to edit that. Anyone who knows, I'd love to know.
In the meantime, drop me a note if you find this useful... or make it better.
(And now, off to figure out Moodle blocks. And yes, I'm still a principal, why do you ask?)
I've really enjoying playing with Drupal the past few weeks. We've done a site redesign at SLA, and now our DrupalEd install is our front page. I've learned a ton about Drupal, and while it does have a steeper learning curve than a lot of other systems, it is insanely flexible and powerful.
I've learned how to configure menus, ported the homework checker from Moodle (the first piece of real interactivity between Moodle and Drupal at SLA), configured a Upcoming Events calendar so that we can have that as a sidebar on the side of our page, posted our Student Handbook in wiki-style format, created a private faculty handbook wiki that we will continue to build together over time, and generally tweaked the site so that it closer and closer to what I want our web site to be. (And as soon as we have a student who is willing to take a stab at designing a sleek custom theme, we'll redesign the look, too.)
As we continue our work with SchoolTool, and as both SchoolTool and I play with interoperability between SchoolTool, Moodle and Drupal, we will move closer and closer to the Killer App that I've been dreaming about. I've no doubt now that Drupal is the absolute right pick as the content management system for that app.
(oh... and just a huge shout-out to Bill Fitzgerald of FunnyMonkey. He is as patient and available mentor as a person could want with Drupal. If you need a consultant or you have specific needs for a DrupalEd install, hire him. He is a teacher first which means that a) he can teach how to use this stuff, and b) his solutions make sense for schools and the classroom. Without the changes in Drupal that he has made by creating DrupalEd, there's no way I would have seen the power of Drupal in schools. And without his patient mentoring, there's no way we would have been ready to move Drupal to be the front of our website. Thank you, Bill!)
As usual, Dan gives us a great piece, and as is often the case, he uses the structure of the video to "bury the lede" on purpose. Dan speaks about how difficult it is to both create these short films and how difficult it is to craft smart, thoughtful, engaging lesson plans. And, in the "aha" moment, he speaks about how easy it would be to take short cuts -- in both lesson planning and film making, and how you have to make that choice every day. And that choice -- whether you choose to go all the way or take shortcuts -- is easier to make with each day you make it.
And I think that Dan has hit on something really important in several respects that extend beyond the individual teacher and the choices s/he makes every day. Here's a few things that he has me wondering:
When we think about the individual teacher, we can certainly argue that if teachers just kept at it, they'd reach that magical tipping point where it gets easier and they wouldn't need to take shortcuts.
But that's not working. We've got way too high a percentage of people leaving teaching in the first five years -- does that mean we can infer that the moment when it becomes sustainable for the typical "at-risk of leaving" young teacher happens after five years?
Given that many, many teachers are not able to sustain the choice that Dan is arguing for -- given that the shortcuts (or leaving, the ultimate short cut) are so enticing for so many teachers -- what's wrong with the system that creates that?
How can we change the system so that more teachers are rewarded for not taking the short cuts?
Dan's video is excellent as far as it goes. But if being a great teacher is only achievable by Herculean effort, we're going to always struggle to create systemic reform. What do we need to do to make it easier for more and more teachers to always make that right choice toward careful crafting of curriculum?
Registration for EduCon 2.1-- January 23 - 25, 2009 @ Science Leadership Academy -- is open at Eventbrite, and the conference wiki -- http://educon21.wikispaces.com -- is expanding.
The Call for Proposals will be out in the next week!
I had the opportunity to be on a panel of education experts speaking to college class. On our panel was an PA Department of Education official, and one of the new topics she spoke about the new graduation competency tests that the state is considering. I've been pretty outspoken on my blog and in my presentations about my opposition to high-stakes graduation tests. That comes into play later.
The topic was "How can Philadelphia improve its public education system?"
What I spoke about was how we need a new vision of our schools. We can talk about all of the issues facing public education, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves first what we want our schools to be. We have to be able to articulate a strong vision of what we want our schools to be or other people are going to tell us what our schools have to be.
Right now, there are too many people who want to put too much of the fault on the people in the system. That's the biggest legacy of NCLB -- the erosion of trust in educators. And that's criminal because we are squandering the good will and hard work of a generation of teachers.
In the 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan used the myth of the "Welfare Queen" as a major part of his campaign. Today, under NCLB, we have created the myth of the lazy teacher who, if only there was something to hold them accountable for the way they teach. The myth of that lazy teacher who could get students to achieve if only they worked harder is just that -- a myth. Are there bad, lazy teachers? Of course, but they are the vast, vast minority. Most teachers went into the profession because they wanted to make a difference. But our system is broken, and if you put good people in bad systems, the system will win more often than not. And as a result, we have lost the ability to negotiate the terms of our own profession.
And that's what our current testing mania is at its root. It's a political tool. It gives politicians a number that they can use to compare schools to each other, and claim that one number can encapsulate all that a student have learned. And these tests now are determining student, teacher and administrator lives, when we know that the tests -- at best -- tell only a small part of a student's -- and a school's -- learning.
We need to tell a new story -- we need to articulate a vision of caring, student-centered schools where students are judged by the work of their own head, heart and hands. We need to talk about how the technological tools at our disposal allow us to fundamentally change the structures of our schools so that we can prepare students for the world they will inherit, but we can't do that as long as our assessment system is firmly placed in the past.
And that's what I told the State Education representative in front of one hundred Drexel students. Were my knees shaking when I said it? You bet. But I felt like I could say it after a 20 minute presentation of a different vision of school where the test no longer made sense.
It's not enough for educators to be against NCLB, we've got to be for something else.
Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the larger community as we can corral all in one manageable place.
So we're getting ready to start doing some real heavy lifting on EduCon 2.1. The dates are announced -- January 23 - 25 at SLA again. We're going to be opening up reservations in the next month, and we will be capping the conference at 500, so that we can keep it small and keep it (primarily) at SLA, although we may be looking for a local place to do the big morning sessions. Also, given the funding cuts at the School District of Philadelphia, we are going to be charging $150 for the conference and using the overage to support SLA's program. One thing that was true last year and will be true this year -- no conference people made any money from EduCon. All of us volunteer the time to make the conference happen. If we're going to ask people to pay more, I want to make sure that's really understood... any leftover money would support SLA, not pay conference planners.
So here are some open ended thoughts and questions for everyone... if you attended or if you watched virtually, or if you just read about it...
What worked? What did you like about the conference?
What didn't work about EduCon last year? Or what could have been better, even if it did work?
Could we / should we structured the Friday "Open School" day better or is it better to leave it as an open day?
Here are some things we're thinking about doing for this year:
Work with the local museums and such to try to get discounts for EduCon attendees on Friday, so that people can come, see SLA, but then also have stuff to do in the afternoon.
And this I'm really excited about... try to get five or six speakers from outside the education world to speak on a Friday night TEDucation Talk -- 15 minutes each on their ideas on the future of education with a reception to follow. I think that'd be really fun.
Get more of a push for K-8 sessions as well as 9-12 sessions, so that the K-8 folks who come have more to do. (We'll need more presenters in general... *AHEM*)
Use the SLA Cafe as a Poster Session for teachers and students to present work.
And here's the really big question that I don't know the right answer to:
Do we turn SLA's Drama Studio into an exhibit hall? We've been approached by one or two companies who have asked to be involved. Here's the issue -- SLA is no longer getting laptop funding from the School District, which means we're on our own to raise money for 145 laptops every year. Grants and foundations are one avenue, but it's not inconceivable that EduCon could help us get a lot of the way there every year while providing what will hopefully be a really good service to the education reform / edu-tech community every year. I liked being vendor neutral, but I also can't ignore the financial realities that SLA faces. Having an exhibit hall could mean that we raise the money for the 2009-10 laptops through EduCon.
I feel very comfortable saying that the conference sessions will be vendor neutral. The sessions are about ideas and theory and practical application. If someone wants to run a podcasting session, it better be about more than how to use a product. We can set up a demo station room for people to learn how-tos, but the heart of the conference last year, in my opinion, were the incredible sessions, that's not going to change.
I really do want feedback on this issue... I don't know what the right answer there is. I know that I am as vocal a person as there is about being wary of the "Education-Industrial Complex," but I also know that there are a lot of good organizations out there who want to speak to the people who come to EduCon. And I also know that the educational technology reform movement is inextricably tied to companies that sell stuff. By letting companies see EduCon, by letting them talk to the folks who I believe are at the forefront of this movement, do we affect their practice as well? If we are transparent about the process, if we are careful in letting people know who is coming from where, etc... is that a good thing to bring to EduCon?
I’ve been grappling with this question because the question itself is so vast that to answer it in a blog post seems somehow impossible.
The simple answer is that good technology educational leadership is no different than good educational leadership; that the choices we make with technology education should be deliberate, thoughtful and in line with the overall educational goals of our organization.
Registration for EduCon 2.1-- January 23 - 25, 2009 @ Science Leadership Academy -- is open at Eventbrite, and the conference wiki -- http://educon21.wikispaces.com -- is expanding. 
Comments
Fri, 05.09.2008 22:27
Just finished my
3rd-week-back with my
students...and can't say
enough about be swept up
in the [...]
about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 07:06
Yes, though it is nice
during the summer to have
some peace and quiet to
get things accomplished
[...]
Brendabn Murphy about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 05:32
In my seven years of
teaching (two different
districts, two different
schools) I've had 5 [...]
Patrick Higgins about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Fri, 05.09.2008 03:22
Chris,
We felt something similar
to what you felt
yesterday. Our high
school is undergoing
major [...]
Mark Ahlness about Ending the Summer of Our Discontent
Thu, 04.09.2008 22:37
Musical administrators
(as in musical chairs) in
school districts is one
of the biggest
impediments [...]