Teaching Is a Craft: It Will Never Be a Science

What if we have got it all wrong as educational professionals, that our enterprise of teaching is not a science, never was a science, and never can be a science? Instead, it is a craft, and we really should see ourselves as crafts-persons, and not as “scientists” tackling the problem of education.

We are still looking for the scientific recipes for teaching and have been searching for over a century now. The same applies to educational leadership, where we have been searching diligently for scientific principles to guide leaders in the field. Instead, in both fields we have had a endless torrent of fads and tactics-of-the-day to try address the same recurring problems and the new problems we face. In the end, we still have not made sure progress in resolving old issues like achievement gaps, student drop outs, and student apathy. Nor have we made any new headway to resolving new issues like increasing student apathy, raging societal inequality, and best-practice technological application. This is due in large part with the paradigms guiding teaching practice and teaching research. We are looking for method A that will definitively bring about result B, only discover each time, method A only sometimes brings about result A. This is because our thinking about environment C and the instructional materials we use aren’t as simple and uninvolved as we thought. Equally true, the students we work with aren’t standardized, which means we can’t really understand them on a macro-level as a hypothetical student; we have to understand them as individuals, as single complex human beings, not manipulable, standardized automatons who respond in predictable ways when certain teaching tactics are applied.

Hence my argument for teacher as a craftsperson…

It is important that educational craftspersons understand that we can’t direct learning, we can only guide conditions that make it possible. Like the metal craftsperson shaping a piece of steel into a sword, she can only create the conditions where this transformation can happen. Often, some equipment or tool issue or environmental issue intervenes unpredictably; it is then the craftsperson shows his true expertise by looking for an then applying an additional tactic. 

In education we rarely engage in these additional steps…we spend too much time in postmortem analysis with assessments scrutinizing what about our tactics failed, when if we had acted like a craftspersons, we would have analyzed the problem in a split second, used our experience, expertise, and knowledge to apply a solution while the learning was in progress. 

Education is not nor never will be like medicine. Educators would perform much more effectively if they viewed their work as a craft rather than as a practice infused with science applying cures to educational ills.

Richard Sennett writes in The Craftsman, “The corporate system that once organized careers is now a maze of fragmented jobs.” I can’t help but think of education slowly moving into this fragmented direction when it comes to teaching jobs. We’ve may have inadvertently imported this view of the teaching work from business and industry, whose management tenets so powerfully undergird educational leadership. Education once viewed teaching as a viable career…now it has become a stepping stone to other work. That’s why there’s the scramble to leave the classroom. The working conditions sustain this scramble along with the installed business-leadership hierarchy in public education now. In a word, the system no longer wants career teachers. Temporary workers are just fine. We don’t have to pay them as much. There is no long-term benefit plans to support like retirement pensions. This is accomplished by simply creating a front-loaded pay scale that pays people on the front end only marginally less than those who stay in the field 15 or 20 years. Education as a field no longer wants to foster teaching as career. It focuses instead on just getting individuals into the jobs shorterm in order bring about the short-term goals, and I would also add short-sighted goals, of test results.

While reading Richard Sennett’s book The Craftsman another thought came to mind. Business and industry are fond of dictating to education what kinds of workers they need, when they are the ones who caused the massive mismatch between the labor force and their own needs. They wanted an unskilled immigrant labor force in the late nineteenth century to the early to mid twentieth century. They did not want an educated workforce because such workers would demand more pay and be more expensive. They still don’t really care about the educational attainment and training of workers; they are looking to add to their bottom lines and push educators to provide the workers that would add to their profits. 

In The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols describes his experience of become an expert in reading Soviet materials. He states:

“Another mark of true experts is their acceptance of evaluation and correction by other experts. Every professional group and expert community has watchdogs, boards, accreditors, and certification authorities whose job is to police its own members and to ensure not only that they live up to the standards of their own specialty, but also that their arts are practiced only by people who actually know what they’re doing.” (p. 35)

In education, because of managerial business ideology and discourse, the expertise of the teacher has been disrupted and destroyed by de-professionalizing practices. Education may never recover from these influences.

Turning Your Classrooms from Places to Control Students to Places to Engage Them in Learning

“For the first time in the history of education, the teacher, the student, and the content do not need to be in the same place at the same time.” Ian Jukes, Windows on the Future

How we handle the details of designing our “learning spaces” ultimately determines what happens in our classrooms. As Jukes points out, for the first time in history students and teachers do not even have to be in the same place when learning. Also, the content is no longer confined to textbooks. Still, our schools’ classrooms are designed for “imparting knowledge” not engaging in authentic learning. I would bet if you look at any recent plan drawn up for a new school, the spaces are still designed for traditional factory model learning. The classrooms are arranged like so many pods with desks sitting in rows with a teacher desk placed at the front of the room with a whiteboard located behind. What many still do not quite understand is  a simple principle of classroom design: How you plan the learning space ultimately determines the kinds of learning that happens in that space. Even the furniture selections can impact the learning that happens.

Take the student desk as an example (like the illustration above). These desks are still everywhere in our schools. When new schools are built, hundreds of these are ordered and then placed in neat rows in classrooms. But this particular desk is problematic if we are looking to create learning spaces where students collaborate and engage in active learning. These desks are designed to be placed in rows and to actually restrict the movement of the student sitting in it. Have you ever complained about how hard it is to move and get out of these things? But in a factory era school, student movement is discouraged and what better way to do it than by designing a desk that minimizes the movement of students? These desks are perhaps a symbol of what’s amiss about so-called 21st century education today. We still think of learning spaces as ways to control students rather than ways to engage them in real learning.

I have no way of knowing whether those who designed the first student desks in this manner really had the goal of making a desk that restricted movement, but the fact that so many of these still exist in our classrooms is symptomatic of a greater problem: We just can’t let go of the idea that schools are factories whose job is to churn out students who have been declared educated through testing and credentialing. “Get’em through the system like widgets and declare them graduated and educated if they make through the hurdles and tests.” In our classroom learning spaces we still buy furniture whose purposes is to control and attempt to make learning fit into neat orderly boxes, when those of us who’ve been teachers for some time know real learning is messy and not always subject to the controls we place on it. We keep arranging our schools’ classrooms for teacher-directed instruction instead of designing them for student-directed and inquiry learning which we know is how most of our students want to learn. In a word, for all our talk, we are trying to fit 21st century learning into classrooms designed for factory-model education systems.

Obviously, my point is obviously not to get you to throw out all the student desks in your buildings. But, the question is, how can we re-envision our learning spaces to make authentic, engaging learning happen for our students? We can begin by looking at our current classrooms and see how we can transform them from places to control to places to explore and engage learning. This doesn’t really cost us very much either.

6 Practices for Creating a 21st Century Engaging Classroom

“Teachers who are willing to experiment and take risks on behalf of kids are in a much better position, regardless of their age, to meet their students where they are, and my experience is that students appreciate the effort.” Ron Nash, From Seatwork to Feetwork: Engaging Students in Their Own Learning

A new school year is upon us, and the decisions we are making now as educational leaders and classroom teachers will determine whether our students are engaged learners, or are passive learners. In other words, our decisions now will determine whether education is something we do to our students or whether education is something into which we actively engage them. The time for "Planning for Student Engagement" is now.

As you and your teachers ponder questions like:

•  How do I arrange my classroom or classrooms this year?
• What kinds of technologies will I use? 
• What materials will I use?

here are some practices for moving your students from active to passive learning mode in the 2013-2014 school-year.

1. Rearrange your classroom to facilitate collaboration and cooperation, not conformity and standardized learning. How a classroom is arranged communicates to students what they are expected to do. It screams loudly to them if desks are arranged in rows in front of teacher’s desk, “I am the teacher, the imparter of all knowledge and wisdom, and you are my students, the receptacles of all my knowledge.” Take the time before school starts to really ponder your classroom arrangement. If you want student interaction and student-driven learning, you may want to move your teacher desk out into the hall (Just kidding. I know the fire marshal would have a fit). With your classroom arrangement, purposefully create places for collaboration and talk.

2. Change your mindset from “curriculum or content coverage” to a mindset that engages students in in-depth, relevant learning. In a test-driven school culture, it is easier to “cover content” rather than really examine what you are asking students to do and have them actively engage that content. Covering content means just that, and fosters a teaching attitude that says, "Well, I taught it; it's the kids responsibility to learn it." The trouble with that thinking is clear: no, you didn't really teach it. You covered it. Engaging students in content deeply means teaching that asks students to apply that content in some deep and meaningful way. The old factory maxim that puts students in the role of recipients of knowledge rarely is engaging anymore. Take on the mindset of engaging students in learning not covering content standards.

3. Take instructional risks this year. Don’t sacrifice creativity and innovation to obtain orderliness and conformity. Instructional risks, as Ron Nash aptly points out, are really appreciated by students. They are excited when teachers try new ways of teaching and learning, and teachers who try new ways of instruction are excited too. Recharge your classroom and your students by trying instructional methodology and pedagogy you haven’t done before. It will re-energize your teaching and your classrooms.

4. Accept that real student engagement and student learning is most often messy and chaotic. Places where students are actually engage in learning are often noisy places. At first glance, these chaotic and messy classrooms and schools don’t appear to foster true learning, especially if you view them through the lens of 20th century, factory-model education system. Laughter and loud talking are not necessarily a sign of off task behavior. Students who are engaged make a lot of noise. Don’t dampen their excitement by insisting on silence or sitting in seats. Let the messiness of true student engagement begin on the first day. Embrace the chaos and messy nature of student engagement.

5. Choose your tech tools wisely. Choose the tools that get students engaged in the learning you want them to engage in. Using technology because it allows students to engage content in new and novel and effective ways means you look for the tools that fit the kinds of learning you want students to do. Having students “Do PowerPoints” is often not an engaging activity by itself anymore, and having to sit through someone flitting through slides in monologue is even less so. Choose your tech with a eye to risk and to what you want your students to do with that tech.

6. Pay attention to relationships. Students behave better for teachers that care about them, period. They are more engaged in the learning and are more involved in classroom activities. Teachers who focus on relationships with students "teach students not math, or science, or social studies." Take some time this year to build solid relationships with your students. Doing so creates a climate of safety where risk-taking and mistake-making are acceptable.

As you plan out your school year, there are decisions that will greatly have an affect on whether your classrooms are places of engagement or places of boredom and passive learning. Perhaps these six classroom practices will help you transform your classroom into true 21st century classrooms where student engagement is the rule.

3 Principles for Operating Schools with a Responsive Mindset: Steps Toward Personalizing Education

After being an administrator at a “public school of choice” I can’t help but wonder: “What if we ran our schools as if our parents could choose to remove their children tomorrow if they felt we were delivering the education they wanted for their children? How would we choose to operate? How would this affect policy implementation? How would we change our decisions and decision-making processes?

While I am certainly not convinced that “school choice” or vouchers are the salvation of public education, but there is one thing inherent in the idea of choice that I think warrants consideration. That idea is that schools, when facing competition, are forced to be more responsive to student and parent needs. Public schools in our country are massive bureaucratic institutions that are too often unresponsive to student and parent needs, and more interested in preserving and promoting themselves and the status quo. For example, how many times as school leaders are we forced to use the justification, "Well, it's just board policy." Or, "It's state regulations?"

I sympathize with parents who do not feel that their public schools are meeting the needs of their kids. Whether or not their claims are true, it is still their perception. Many decisions are made, from the legislative level to the classroom, for all kinds of reasons. And, if one questions those decisions, the reaction is "How dare you question my motives!" but the reality is, as educators and school leaders, we should be hyper-vigilant and willing to question all decisions. Decisions that can't be entirely justified to be in the best interests of kids, should be questioned vehemently. As 21st century school leaders we must be willing to scrutinize decisions that are made and be willing to express our opinions when we do not feel those decisions are being made in the interests of our students.

It's too bad public schools can't adopt a customer service model in their approach to educating kids. While schools are not businesses, nor should they be considered so, the disposition of approaching our kids and parents as if what they need and want matter is what I call having a "responsive mindset." Schools with this responsive mindset approach school with a disposition that says, "What if my parents could pull their students out of my school immediately? How would that affect how I make decisions and deliver education to the students in my building?"

For all the reasons and arguments others have made, I realize treating our kids and their parents as “customers” in the business sense is not totally adequate. Still, public schools do owe students and their parents to be responsive. Perhaps if school leaders acted with responsiveness there would be fewer people who advocate for vouchers in the first place.

What would some of these responsive mindset behaviors look like? Here's three that come to mind.

• As school leaders, we never say we are doing something simply because policy says so. While we need policy to guide us, policy should never be something to hide behind. If what we are doing can’t be argued to be in the best interest of kids, perhaps we should not do it period. Arguing that we do it because policy or the law says so makes us look like that policy or law is more important than the child. Being a responsive school leader means always making decisions for the good of kids, not because it is written down in some policy manual. It also means making sure we can meticulously explain our actions and decisions in, not hide behind the law.
• As school leaders, we should make every effort to make the rationale for what we are doing clear to our kids and their parents. Most parents, if we take the time to explain, can understand why we do what we do. They still might not agree, but we must give them the opportunity to have their say. When we make decisions that affect the lives of their kids, we must always keep in mind, even parents who struggle, most often want the best education they can get for their kids. Being a responsive school leader means taking whatever amount of time it takes to explain our decisions, allowing parents the opportunity to explain their disagreement, and being willing to change our decisions if our parents make a good argument for changing our decisions. There's no room for ego in the process for doing what's right for kids.
• As school leaders, we should make decisions as if all our parents could pull their kids out of our schools tomorrow if they so desired. Making decisions in this manner, makes us responsive when it comes to providing an education to kids. If our parents could simply go elsewhere to get an education for their kids, we would perhaps scrutinize our decisions as school leaders a bit more carefully. In a district or school that operates with a responsive mindset, every decision is viewed through a lens of its impact for all kids and for individual kids, and care is given not to delude oneself into thinking that what's being done is best for kids when it clearly is not. I would hope we would never sacrifice a single student for the good of all students, hence arguing that the needs of many outweigh needs of the few, or one, does not give us an excuse to harm the few or one at the expense of the many. Being a responsive school leader means always examining the impact of a decision on every single student.

As school leaders, we can personalize education for all kids by adopting a responsive mindset that truly places students at the center of what we do.

Structuring Classrooms for Exploration, Risk-Taking and Engineering

“But engineering isn’t about perfect solutions; it’s about doing the best you can with limited resources.” Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

As Randy Pausch suggests, engineering isn't about "looking for the one right answer or perfect solution." Engineering is about looking for solutions that work. While our policymakers and politicians talk incessantly about the need for more engineers and scientists, they advocate for a system of education of standardization and accountability that is in some ways direct contradiction to the kinds of tasks and thinking engineers and scientists do.

According to Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager, authors of the book Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom,

“The past few decades have been a dark time in many schools. Emphasis on high stakes testing, teaching to the test, de-professionalizing teachers, and depending on data rather than teacher expertise has created classrooms that are increasingly devoid of play, rich materials, and time to do projects.”

With classrooms that are bleak and where test scores dictate every move, it is no wonder our schools are rapidly becoming places where no one wants to be. Why can't we reduce a drop out rate that seems to stubbornly persist no matter what we do? Why do our students stare at us with blank expressions from their uniform rows of desks? Why are our so many of our students so disengaged from school and see it the last place they want to be? It is because our schools have become prisons of standardization where creativity and inventiveness are sacrificed for conformity. It is because of an emphasis on comparing student test scores for the purpose of determining school effectiveness and  teacher/principal effectiveness which fosters more test-prep and teaching to the test. These reforms dictated through NCLB and Race to the Top have made our schools “places devoid of play, rich materials and time to do projects” as Martinez and Stager describe it. That's why no one wants to be there.

What is our alternative? How can we create classrooms and schools where learning is the focus again, not just test scores? How can we make our schools into places where our kids want to be and want to learn? How can we have schools that encourage the kinds of tasks and thinking engineers and scientists do? The answer lies in turning our schools into places where students can “make, tinker, engineer” to use the terms of Martinez and Stager.

I am just now beginning my reading  of Martinez and Stager’s book Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, and I am intrigued by what they propose. Martinez and Stager point to all the “amazing tools, materials, and skills that turn us all into makers.” We are all "makers" and "tinkerers" at heart they say, which means we can do as these authors suggest and use "technology to make, repair, or customize the things we need" and "bring engineering, design, and computer science to the masses.” Furthermore, we can create the kinds of learning places where “Children should engage in tinkering and making because they are powerful ways to learn.”

But what would a classroom that emphasizes “making, tinkering, and engineering” look like? Martinez and Stager will no doubt answer that question in their book, but I suspect that some of the characteristics of such a classroom would be like the following.

• Structured for exploration: The physical space would not be structured with a teacher’s desk or podium-presentation equipment at the center. Instead, space would be structured for collaboration, for individual learning, and for student-centered learning activity. A variety of high-tech and low-tech materials and equipment would be available for making, tinkering and inventing.
• Structured for risk-taking: The classroom is purposely designed to allow students to take risks in learning and in trying new ideas. Mistakes are allowed and actually encouraged. Experimentation is the rule, not conformity.
• Structured for inquiry: Students asking their own questions rather than answering predetermined questions provided by a teacher is the norm for classrooms structured for inquiry. Students pose the questions and their learning comes from the exploration and search for answers to those questions.
• Structured for students: The classroom would be structured for students, not teachers, not principals, not policymakers and not politicians. Too much of what we currently do in the classroom is done to satisfy politicians with agendas and leaders with egos. Classrooms structured for students exist for student learning and places them at the center.

One can perhaps argue whether our schools are going through “dark times” as Martinez and Stager suggest. It probably depends on your perspective of standardization and testing. But, it is difficult to deny that some aspects of our standardization-accountability movement are turning schools into places where creativity and invention are devalued in favor of conformity and test-prep, and those who continue to push for more testing and more standardized curriculum need to be aware of what they may be trading in to obtain those things.

Transforming Our Schools by Changing Mindsets Not by Buying More Technology

“Teacher mind frames are the most important enhancer and barrier to students’ learning.” Alan Bain and Mark Weston, The Learning Edge: What Technology Can Do to Educate All Children

Our relentless pursuit for some magical formula that will suddenly transform our schools is a fruitless quest. There are no magical formulas or tools, and there are no heroes who will ride into our schools and school districts and suddenly save the day and turn our schools into magical places of learning and engagement. If transformation is to happen, we need to stop pursuing 1:1 initiatives, new standards, new tests, next generation tests, longer school days, and the other latest and greatest educational gimmicks and get down to the real reasons why we can’t change our schools. Authors Bain and Weston offer some good advice: look to the mindsets of the educators in our schools and districts. That's where the real obstacles lie.

According to Bain and Weston, “Technology will not force its way into classrooms; for decades, teachers and schools have shown remarkable kickback,” and if you walk into any district that has spent thousands or millions on technological toys,  you will see what they are talking about. We look at all out technological toys and we ask ourselves:

• “Why are our teachers not using these interactive boards?” 
• “Why are those iPads sitting idle in the corner of the room?” 
• “Why is it when I visit the classrooms in our school district I see little engagement with technology by the students, and mostly the kinds of teaching and learning that has been going on for the last 100 years or so?” 

I think the answers to these questions are rather simple: we put all this technology in our classrooms and schools, but we forget that many of our teachers simply look for ways to use the technology to help them teach as they always have, rather than look for new ways of teaching with the technology. Their mindset is the obstacle. (Administrators have that mindset too.)

If you really want to know why all that technology sits idle, it's probably because it does not fit the way your teachers teach and the way they have been teaching for the past 100 years or so. Too much of that teaching is still teachers talking, students sitting and listening. In these classrooms, some teachers determine that if the technology won't help them do school like they have been doing it, then they don’t need it. They don’t see the need to change how they are teaching, even though half their class stares up at them in glazed-eye stupor.

If we really want to transform teaching and learning in our schools and classrooms, perhaps we need to pause from all the technology buying, installing, and training and focus on the “mindsets” that our teachers and administrators have. We need to stop “automating the 20th century ways of teaching and learning” and pursue whole new ways of teaching and learning.

Blueprint for Moving to 21st Century Student-Centered Schools and Classrooms

“Too many organizations---not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well---still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science.” Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

It’s not just businesses that are still caught in outdated assumptions about performance and motivation. Schools are caught in that same time warp too. Much of how our classrooms and schools are structured and operate are designed to take advantage of extrinsic motivation, and we are finding that in the 21st century, this structure and way of operating no longer works.

But the question is, how can we transform our schools so that they no longer operate under these outdated assumptions about student potential,  student performance, and student motivation? If one were to make a list of how our schools still operate and what these faulty and obsolete assumptions about education and schooling are, that list would look somewhat like this.

• Students are motivated by grades.
• Students are incapable of directing their own learning.
• Classrooms (and schools) must operate under strict control with specific rules and consequences governing student behavior.
• Teachers are the primary dispensers of learning in the classroom.
• Education is something “done to students” rather than something in which they engage.

If these basic assumptions about classroom operations and education are faulty, what would would 21st century assumptions about how classrooms and school operations look like? In other words, what would a classroom or school operating under the principles described in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth  about What Motivates Us look like? Perhaps educator Mark Barnes provides with some answers to that question in his new book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom.

In ROLE Reversal, Barnes describes what he terms a Results Only Learning Environment or ROLE. As the name implies, in a ROLE the focus is entirely on results, or student work. Also, in this environment, the principles of fostering intrinsic motivation described by Pink are implemented fully. According to Barnes, a ROLE basically upends many of the traditional assumptions about education and learning. Here’s some of ways these traditional assumptions are upended.

In a ROLE, or Results Only Learning Environment:

• Grades and grading systems are replaced with a “narrative feedback system” that focuses specifically on student work and improving that work. In Barnes’ result-only classroom, teachers do not use numerical grades to provide feedback because numerical feedback systems fail to provide feedback students need to improve their performance. Instead, students are given extensive, comprehensive, and ongoing narrative feedback on their work. This feedback is specific and can be used by the student for work improvement. In ROLE Reversal, Barnes shows teachers how to provide this kind of feedback.
• Instead of teacher-directed learning activities, students are given broad, long-term projects to complete, and they make the daily decisions on how to complete those projects. The intrinsic motivation model described by Pink demands that autonomy be employed to engage people in the tasks at hand. Under Barnes’ results-only classroom model, students engage in six-week long projects that provide a great deal of choice, or autonomy, on how and what is learned and when. Autonomy is a built-in component of his results-only classroom practice.
• Classroom rules and consequences are jettisoned and the use of opportunities to engage in meaningful work, collaborating with peers, and trust/respect are used instead to manage classroom behavior. Too often, classrooms become more about focusing on the enforcement of rules rather than the learning students are being asked to do. In Barnes’ results-only classroom, behavior is managed through well-designed, engaging, and collaborative learning projects that leave students little time to engage in problem behaviors. Also, the results-only classroom described by Barnes fosters a high-level of respect and trust that makes having rules and consequences less necessary.
• Teachers are no longer the “dispensers of information/learning.” According to Barnes, in a ROLE, teachers become coaches and facilitators of student learning. In the results-only classroom, teachers step away from the front of the classroom and spend more time facilitating student learning and coaching students on their work. Teacher-centered activities like worksheets, quizzes, and homework are jettisoned. Instead, students engage in long-term, meaningful activities that challenge them.
• Education and learning moves from being something done to students to something in which students actively engage in on a daily basis. The 20th century traditional model of education is very much still with us. The heart of that educational philosophy and model sees education as a process by which we subject students to, in order to add value determined by test scores. Under Barnes’ result-only model, education and learning is something students actively engage in every day. They are active participants in their learning.

Mark Barnes, Role Reversal

For the teacher and school leader looking for a model of learning that truly captures Daniel Pink’s principles of intrinsic motivation---autonomy, mastery, and purpose---Barnes’ book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom offers just such a model. Best of all, Barnes results-only classroom offers the kind of classroom in which students achieve at higher levels. I highly recommend Mark Barnes’new book, ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom published by ASCD. This book would make an excellent book study to foster discussions in schools about how we can move toward the student-centered schools and classrooms we so desperately need in the 21st century.

4 Immediate Steps Teachers Can Take to Re-engage the Dis-engaged Student

“If tomorrow, every teacher in America spent 20 minutes of class time asking each student what her or his passion was, and then later used that information to understand each student more deeply and differentiate their instruction accordingly, education would take giant positive steps forward overnight.” Marc Prensky, From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning

Sometimes the solutions that have the biggest impact on the most difficult issues our schools face aren't complicated, scientific solutions; they are solutions staring us right in the face. One of those issues with obvious solutions is how to deal with disengaged, disconnected students. Because our education system asks students to “check their interests and passions at the door” widespread student disengagement in our schools is stubborn and persistent. Our education system stubbornly hangs on to the “impersonal, assembly-line-approach” of the 20th century that did not concern itself with students’ interests and passions. Such a system cares not what students think, nor what students care about. That same underlying, obsolete philosophy is the reason why we struggle constantly with students who see what we are doing in school as totally irrelevant. In the 21st century, if we want to reach all students, we should take Prensky’s advice. Let’s pause today, and talk with students about their passions and interests, then use the new understanding to engage them in classroom learning they care about.

The truth is we don’t have to wait for waves of reform and experts on high to have a big impact on student disengagement and disconnection. We can begin to re-engage and reconnect students immediately. In From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning, Marc Prensky offers teachers a list of what he calls “Easy to Do---Big Impact Actions Teachers Can Take to Connect with Students.” This kind of list gives teachers an immediate list of actions to begin the process of re-engaging and reconnecting with students. But to implement these kinds of actions, our schools must set aside their “Just-take-your-medicine-approach-to-education” in which students are told your passions and interests are irrelevant.  At the heart of the "educational medicine philosophy" is the belief that, “Education is done to students; it doesn't matter if they take part or not. It’s for their own good.” With that kind of thinking it is no wonder we can’t get a grip on the drop-out rate and our students see our schools as the most boring places on earth.

What do we do? Is it still acceptable to just accept those disengaged, disconnected students as casualties or collateral damage of an education system that destroys passion, imagination, and creativity? Not if our goal is to bring back the disengaged students and lower drop-out rates and ensure all students are ready for life in the 21st century. We can begin today by doing little things that reconnect our classrooms and schools to students’ passions and interests. Marc Prensky’s list of “Easy to Do---Big Impact Actions to Connect with Students” might be a starting point. But, inspired by Prensky, I would like to offer my own list based on my own 16 years in the classroom teaching everybody’s favorite subject, English language arts. (Said with obvious sarcasm!)

To immediately begin reconnecting with students, teachers can:

• Listen to students more, and do less “professing” and “telling.” The old myth that “students are going to sit on the edge of their seats and eagerly await your words of wisdom and knowledge” was never true.  Begin today by taking an “almost-vow-of-silence” and let students do more talking and sharing of what they think. Of course you are going to have to resist your eager impulses to butt in and share what you think too, but giving students time to share and discuss will go a long way to re-engaging and reconnecting them to your classroom and your content.
• Make it relevant---connect content with current events and the real world. If students come in chattering about the latest happenings in town, the country or the world, find a way to connect that interest to content, but do it subtly. If students know they are being railroaded into learning something, they disconnect faster than I do when getting a phone call from a telemarketer. If you want students to reconnect, you have to bring your content back to the real-world and that means bringing in the things they are passionate and care about.
• Prensky says to reconnect students, we “treat them like learning partners." I agree. Throw out the window the whole idea that you are the “Lord-of-the-Realm-of-Knowledge” and be with students as a fellow learner. The best example of this one comes from my days in the classroom. If I asked students to write an essay, I did it too. There was total surprise when I pulled out my handwritten response to an essay assignment and shared it with them, just before they did theirs. I did caution them though, “Anyone caught stealing my ideas” would be doomed to an endless lecture in their most hated subject, and I would arrange it. Treating students like learning partners means “YOU ARE A LEARNER TOO!" You have to get your hands dirty too. You can re-engage and reconnect with students by treating them as partners in learning, not as empty vessels in which you will pour forth your knowledge.
• Get students using their tools of choice and don’t get hung up on the methodology. If they want to draft their essay on their laptop or iPhone, let them do it. If they want to want write out their first draft in purple ink, let them do it. We all remember those teachers who demanded that we meet painstaking standards such as write only on one side of the paper, in blue or black ink, only on the night of a new moon. In fact, if I were totally honest, when I started teaching I found myself making those same impossible demands. No wonder so many of my students didn't turn in their essays or bothering doing them. I still remember one of my high school English teachers throwing my first draft away because I put my name on the top-left instead of top-right. When I began teaching, you would have thought I would have shown more mercy, but I suppose the adage, "We teach as we were taught" is hard to break. But using these kinds of classroom practices today will push a student to place you and your content in the dead zone for eternity. Letting students choose their tools and tactics will go a long way to re-engaging and reconnecting them to your content and your classroom.

If we want our schools and classrooms to effectively deal with the disconnected, disengaged student, we don’t have to wait for the experts to come up with complicated, research-based solutions. We can tackle the problem of disengaged, disconnected students immediately. We might have to repent and give up the mantra that says, “It’s my job to teach, so if students don’t get it, it’s their fault,” but there are immediate steps we can take transform our classrooms and schools into places where we engage students’ passions and interests, not turn them into Zombies.

When Interactive Boards and Tablets Aren’t 21st Century Classroom Tools

I think most educators would agree that interactive boards are not always 21st century classroom tools. In fact, when they are only used to reinforce lecture, worksheets and other 20th century teaching and learning methodology, they are little more than chalkboards with computer chips. The iPad is not necessarily a 21st century classroom tool either, if students are only using it to read e-texts and complete e-worksheets. It is only when students and teachers are engaged using interactive boards, iPads, and other devices, to collaborate, create, and problem-solve that they become 21st century classroom tools.

Too often, anything labeled "technology" is immediately construed to be a 21st century learning device, but that quality never lies in the tool itself, but in how teachers and students engage its use in the service of learning.  Going back to the interactive boards example. How many millions have schools and school districts spent on these devices to simply be able to brag publicly that they now have "an interactive board installed in every classroom?" Because there’s only one in the room it often becomes a device that only the teacher interacts with and uses. This kind of thinking betrays a belief that technological devices are inherently 21st century learning tools, but they are not. It is a maddening thought that a teacher would simply use a very expensive interactive board to only do the same things he used to do with an overhead projector.

In order to keep in mind when technologies are truly 21st century classroom tools, 21st century school leaders should perhaps consider the following as they think about new technologies for their schools or districts:

• If you are buying technology so you can brag about it, you are probably buying it for the wrong reasons. There is nothing magical in the simple presence of an iPad or interactive board in the classroom. Just because it's there does not mean students are engaged in 21st century learning. Being able to boast about the number of iPads, laptops, and interactive boards in your school or district does not mean the claim of being a 21st century school can be made. Rather, it is what students and teachers are doing with the devices that matter the most and the kinds of learning they are engaged in while using them. 
• Don't be afraid to ask the tough question: How is this technology going to fundamentally transform the kinds of teaching and learning in my classrooms or schools? The expectation when it comes to technology purchases should always be that students will be doing 21st century learning tasks, not 20th century learning tasks. These tasks include: collaborating, creating, and problem-solving.
• Be prepared to support teachers when introducing new technologies into your school or district. This means providing them with professional development, additional resources, and time to collaborate with colleagues as they try to integrate the devices into their classrooms. Providing technological devices without support from school leadership might as well be giving teachers a paperweight or doorstop.
• Be wary of sales pitches that focus primarily on what the technology will do rather than what students can do with the technology. Bells and whistles do not make a device into a 21st century learning tool. What is more important is how the device will empower students to engage in collaboration, creation, and problem-solving. It is important to ask, "What kinds of work can students do with the device?" not “What can the device do?” Force salespeople to do more than show features. Ask them to show what kinds of learning students can engage in while using their devices.

As indicated earlier, interactive boards and iPads are not always used as 21st century teaching and learning devices. They can be used to perpetuate 20th century learning or they can get students collaborating, creating, and problem-solving. It is only when there's a fundamental change in what students and teachers are being asked to do with the devices that they can become 21st century learning tools.

8 Must-Have Skills for Spotting Misinformation for 21st Century Students

A 21st century skill that all students need badly is the ability to spot misinformation. As educators, we desperately need to do as Loren Collins states in her book, Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation. We need to "arm our students with baloney-detecting tools to prevent false and unsupported beliefs so that such beliefs can be better contained." In other words, 21st century educators need to equip our students with "baloney-detection" skills.

What do these baloney-detection skills look like? Here's a starter list based on those described by Collins.

1. Be skeptical when people toss around the phrase "it's just common sense." Many individuals use this phrase as if it were sacred and unquestionable. The truth is, many things once accepted as common sense turned out to be flat wrong. Just ask those who said the world was flat. Using this phrase should never protect information from a skeptical examination. We need to teach students to be skeptical, always, when someone employs this phrase in an argument.

2. Be able to employ the scientific method to test information. In an age of misinformation, our students must have the ability to test hypotheses and conclusions they encounter. They need to be able to pose a question, research that question, construct a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, analyze the results, and finally draw conclusions. Their final conclusions should then always be subject to further validation. All of our students need to be able to employ these steps to test information because of the amount of misinformation posing as science all around them in cyberspace.

3. Be able to identify ideological and agenda-driven websites and information. In the age of misinformation, the ease with which individuals can publish information online has created a whole new world where anyone, no matter what their beef, can publish. It is vital that our students maintain a level of skepticism and explore the ideologies and agendas those publishing web sites might have. All information needs to be examined with a skeptical eye toward what that person's beef might be.

4. Be aware of their own confirmation bias and the role it has in being misinformed. We know if we are heavily biased toward confirming our own beliefs, we hinder the ability to dispel ourselves of beliefs that might be false. We, and our students, need to be aware of our tendencies to seek out information that confirms what we believe rather than looking at all the data. With these principles in mind, our students need to be able to detect their own confirmation biases and those of others as they deal with the information torrent.

5. Be aware of those who use anomalies to make their arguments. Individuals who use this tactic, gather up a collection of anomalies and attempt to use the weight of those to argue against a consensus view. This tactic is being heavily used by those spreading misinformation about climate change, and it was also used by those who argued against the ill-effects of smoking. Our students need to be able to recognize when someone is engaged in anomaly hunting as a misinformation tactic and recognize it as a misinformation tactic.

6. Be ware of the use of the logical fallacy of "proof by verbosity." Just because an argument is lengthy and complex does not necessarily mean it is true. Students need to be able to recognize when someone is engaged in this logical fallacy.

7. Be able to notice when someone engages in denialism. Those who engage in this tactic, just deny or reject a widely accepted truth, and they usually offer no solid alternative instead. Those who engage in denialism aren't really interested in determining the truth; they are simply interested in rejecting one. Our students need to recognize denialism as a tactic that tries to deflect away from what has been accepted by consensus.

8. Notice when someone employs fake experts. This is commonly used on the web. Those arguing against climate change or for intelligent design curriculum heavily use this one. In the climate change debate, often those making the arguments are not even qualified as climate scientists. Likewise, organizations like the Discovery Institute employ non-biologists in their arguments against evolutionary theory. Students need the skill of checking the credentials and credibility of the information sources they encounter.


In the 21st century, we as educators have a moral imperative to make sure our students are equipped with proper "baloney-detection tools" so that they can avoid being mislead and misguided in a flood of information.

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American Education's War on Student Engagement: We're Losing Them!

A recent Gallup survey delivered what I would consider much worse news than that our students aren't first place on the latest international assessments. That news simply stated was:

"The longer our students stay in school, the less engaged they become."

In a word, we are boring our students into oblivion. This issue is not something a new set of standards will fix, nor will a "new generation of assessments fix." Engagement is a product of what we are asking our students to learn and how we are asking them to learn. Apparently, the more we keep kids in school, the less they see the point.

Here's some other interesting points from the survey's report.

• Perhaps our overzealous focus on standardized testing in this country is one of the culprits killing student engagement.
• Our school system is not only failing to embrace entrepreneurial talent in our students: we are actually neutralizing that talent.

Instead of chasing after test scores and adopting new standards, perhaps it is time to start honestly looking at those things that are causing students to disengage and simply change them. But I realize that is too simple. I suspect the real culprit is this tight-fisted grip Americans have on keeping schools as they are, because, after all, they worked for me, but that is probably a question for another blog post.

The truth is though, the kids are no longer buying what we're selling, yet we keep selling. It is time to fundamentally do things differently.

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Turning Your Classrooms into 21st Century Learning Spaces

“Where a school is located and how it sets up internal structures determine its possibilities,” writes Heidi Hayes Jacob in the book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. As she argues in this book, we have inherited spaces in our buildings that were designed for learning of another era.

Tearing down and rebuilding our schools is hardly a tasteful option in an era of tight budgets and a total lack of funding. What can we do then? We can start by redesigning our classrooms from places where “knowledge is imparted” to more of place where knowledge is found, discovered in a collaborative manner. We can turn the physical environment into places where authentic learning is the classroom business, not sitting in rows, listening to lectures. This may mean simply getting rid of desks and moving in tables and chairs that are portable and can be rearranged quickly according to the needs of the students and the teachers. It means we can change our physical spaces in our schools into 21st century learning environments without breaking our budgets.

The building we currently occupy was constructed around 1929, so you can imagine its limitations. Yet, each teacher in our building has consciously worked to create learning spaces that capture the philosophy and spirit of our school: collaboration, engagement in authentic learning, and using technology. Here’s a photo of one of our English classrooms.



I know, you can see chairs stacked on the tables. Even 21st century classrooms need vacuuming, but if you look closely,  you see tables arranged along the walls, and on those tables are laptops. Students work seated at the tables and the teacher has room to move about to assist students and monitor what they’re doing. Two tables are placed in the center of the room both for students who bring their own laptops, and for meetings among collaborative groups. It is not your normal English classroom arrangement. In this case, students can turn their chairs to attend to the teacher at the beginning of the class, then turn to their computers when it’s time to engage in whatever their projects ask them to do.

The space is arranged to facilitate, not lecturing, but engagement in using 21st century tools in authentic learning tasks and maximize collaboration. How a classroom is arranged tells a great deal about what happens the most in it.

Let’s look at another classroom.



Tables, tables, tables everywhere. No desks in rows. In fact, we do not have a single old-fashioned desk in the building and that is by design. In the 21st century students need to work collaboratively and having highly portable tables allows for maximum collaboration. This is a science classroom. Students are purposefully seated at tables in this room so that they can work on collaborative science projects. The chairs and tables can be turned and used in multiple configurations, depending on the needs of the class. Out of the picture, is a small lab of desktop computers that students can use, along with their own personal laptops and devices as well.

So, what does this say about our school? Even though we inhabit an older building designed for 20th century pedagogy, we can purposefully redesign our spaces for 21st century learning. But keep in mind, we all know that just changing spaces does not necessarily mean a change in pedagogy. We should know that from the “Open School debacle back in the late 60s and early 70s. Still, purposefully redesigning spaces for 21st century learning in your school does not have to be an expensive undertaking, but you can tell how a school conducts the business of teaching by how its learning spaces are designed.