Month: December 2011

Yesterday I talked about characteristics of the current school year that hinder school change.  Today I want to suggest two complimentary possible solutions that could be implemented fairly easily. 
 
As I mentioned yesterday, the key problem is the lack of time between the start of the year and the tractor-beam pull of the holidays beginning early in October.  One way to fix this would be putting more time at the beginning of the year.  Many secondary schools are currently experimenting with early to mid August starting dates in order to line up semesters with the Christmas break.  Though I see some challenges to conducting final exams in the middle of the most mind-numbing time of the year, I will be very interested in seeing whether these schools are able to accomplish more in the extra two to three weeks.  
 
I do know that there are challenges in making a change like this, but I think we don’t face and answer them because there is a dangerous assumption that the school year as we have it now is working.  As I say with many challenges, if we wanted to do it, we would do it.
 
OK, that’s half.  The other half would be adding a few half days on to the traditional 180 and putting the bulk of full day and part day inservice time available into the first month and a half.  If I had only one month to teach a skill, I would make all the instruction time available during that month.  If the school calendar reflected that same sense of urgency, “We’ve got two months to get this done,” schools could build specific tasks into this time and have specific outcomes at the end.
 
By adding both days and time before the holiday malaise, schools could develop faculty on a consistent yearly path.  No more “next year”!
 
As always I welcome your comments. 

Today’s post is rather particular to the world of k-12 school, so those of you who have been so kind to follow so far can take a powder for the next two days if this is not an area of interest to you.
 
For years I have been frustrated by how difficult it is to enact true change within a school community.  I enter the year with good intentions and at least what I consider to be sound plans, but by the end of the year too often I’m finding that nothing or little has been done, and I’m using the language of “next year.” What keeps happening?  Well, as I have experienced this yearly frustration, I’ve come up with a couple of ideas about this silent enemy that kills innovation.
 
The traditional school year begins during the first week of September.  Teachers and administrators return from vacation at the highest level of energy and enthusiasm.  New programs are introduced with the assurance that as soon as the confusion of the opening days has passed, the real work will begin.  
 
However, after the first couple of weeks of September, schools throughout the United States fall into the “Hallogivingmas” holiday season.  Each of the three foundational kid holidays and its “season” become the true focus of every campus.  At the secondary level (where honestly i think these holidays have just as much power) there is the focus on a football season, which is really what the first quarter of the year is about.  Having experienced this season for many years as a teacher and administrator, I can testify to its power…particularly its power to push things off.  It is hard to get anything done in October, more difficult in November, and even calling a meeting after the first week of December is seen as abuse.  We are now to the turning of the calendar year, and our project and innovation has not yet taken shape. 
 
Returning in January does not feel like the return in September, people are tired, grumpy, and looking toward the end of the first semester.  Plus so much of the routine of the school year is set that change means undoing something already in place.  The sameness monster has completely fortified the status quo.  February and March pass very quickly, and by April, the best one can do is start to suggest that we will definitely make these changes next year.
 
As it is unlikely that holidays will become less important or engrossing in our culture (Target wouldn’t allow it), the current organization of the school year, aligned with the agrarian calendar, is a perfect system to resist change.  Speakers often mention that a classroom of today would be completely recognizable to a teacher of a hundred years ago.  Of course this is true, it is built that way!
 
What to do about it?  Well, I have a couple of ideas, but those will wait until tomorrow (see what I just did there?  Two days for one topic.).
 
As always I welcome your comments.

Oooooh Boy! I’m going to go a bit tinfoil hat today.  Let me start by saying that I’m not speaking against the following innovations, rather I’m making “awareness observations.” 
The following story is partially true.
 
I don’t have an iPhone 4s. I have nothing against the product, and I would love to have one, but it didn’t work out that way.  However, several friends of mine do, and they often feel the need to take out the phone and demonstrate its superiority through the use of Siri.
 
For anyone who doesn’t know what Siri is…wait, no one reading this blog doesn’t know what Siri is, so I go on.
 
After seeing a demonstration of search results, speech to text applications, and a couple of the Easter egg clever replies, I had to admit to my friend that it was a pretty amazing app that worked better than I thought it would.
 

“Yes,” said my friend, “I count on her for almost everything now.”
 

Wait.
 

“Her”?
 

I know the app uses a female voice, but I’m certain that my friend doesn’t see it as a person, it just becomes a convenient reference point. At least I hope so.
 

Which leads me to my point today.  In the quest to make interfaces easier, more accessible, and more human, we will be interacting with our machines in very different ways.  While there is no real damage in anthropomophizing our devices (I am typing this on my iPad, Hester), it will be important that we develop in our students and ourselves an overarching consciousness of what is really going on.  When we talk to our friend Siri, we are receiving search engine results that are produced by a company who is using these results to make money.  This is the same as with Google, where search is only the attraction to the main business of advertising, gathering information, and promoting results for money.  In both cases the tool can be useful as long as one remembers the rules, but I wonder with our new search engines “friends” whether we will be more or less conscious of this fact.  Will we question Siri, or will she (ugh, it) become the voice in our heads?
 

As always, I invite your comments, just lean in and speak into my ear.
 
 
 

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Walt Whitman (remembered not by me but by a dear friend)

I decided to start this 24 day blog-o-rama with a reflection on the form itself.  It is now very fashionable for commentators to scoff at the blogging culture (or even more at Twitter, blogging’s little sibling).  Usually these rants revolve around the self-absorption and narcissism of these reporters, and there is a predictable (almost so predictable that it is as mundane as what it criticizes) exasperation with being asked to read about the detritus of another’s life, “Who cares that you just ate a ham sandwich?” (oddly, it is always a ham sandwich, never bologna,  or chicken salad, or tongue).
While facile grist for the comic mill, these comments miss three essential points:

• Using a poor example to condemn a form.  “I am eating a ham sandwich,” is probably trivial and trite (unless it is done as performance art!); however, that does not mean that the form cannot be used to a better use.  One who criticizes the world of art because a six-year-old student insists on coloring houses and trees, is missing the point.  Much of Twitter and quality blogs is not self-referential at all.  Most of it points to the work of others or discusses at some length a problem or possibility.
• It might not be intended for you.  Within Internet communication communities naturally spring up and conversation, particularly on sites like Twitter, creates ties beyond the limits of geography.  I have wonderful conversations in Twitter or in blog comments with educators and non-educators I have never met (except in one case that I will talk about later).  Talking about my life, or even my day, is often an opening to conversation with friends, not a shout to the world.
• It might not be really intended for anyone.  During the 17th Century, Samuel Pepys carefully chronicled the occurrences of his day.  Today his diary is studied for details of daily life, major historical events, and clever, enjoyable prose.  In an interesting twist of venues, you can see regular excerpts from Pepys’ diary by following @samuelpepys on Twitter where the “self-absorbed trivia” of his day blends perfectly with the stream of modern diarists (I wonder if he ever ate ham sandwiches). Sometimes I write just to practice writing and working to put into words the inexpressible. As educators, how can we but encourage and applaud students who take that challenging step of translating the external or internal into words on a page (screen).

Finally, going back to Socrates who once tweeted about unexamined life, “What am I drinking, and why don’t I have a ham sandwich.”  Capturing human life, any human life, is beyond the ability of the greatest poets. It is a noble and life-affirming act to recognize the moment, and writing about it ain’t bad either.

As always, I invite your comments.