We lost a student this summer. He was tragically shot from the back seat while driving his car. The shooter claims that it was an accident and the one other passenger supports his story. Friends and family don’t believe it and the truth will probably never be known. This happened just days before Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson. It has been heavy on my heart this year, but felt too personal to blog about. This holiday season has really hit me with how many of my students and their families are suffering, rather than celebrating. It would have been his 18th birthday last week. We had a moment of silence and shared some good memories of him. Many of his friends have really struggled this year to deal with his death. I teach them in a senior math class. There have been days when they break down and can’t work at all. At first I got frustrated by how often that it started occurring. Then I realized that the students needed help. We got them some counseling and they are starting to deal with it in a healthy way. I haven’t really been able to help these students much. But I am there for them, listen to them, and show up to everything that they do to remember him. I care and they notice. They asked me to help make a memorial (out of concrete, of course) for him at the school. They are afraid that he will be forgotten. We won’t let that happen. There are many other stories from many other students who are hurting this year. I can’t fix them, but I care and love them.

Disclaimer: This is my path. As I talk about old dreams and how they no longer matter to me, I am not critiquing the people who choose these paths, but rather hoping people see less glamorous roles as important too. Photo Credit: Reese Chance Photos via Compfight cc I had an interesting conversation this week on Twitter with Josh Stumpenhorst, Michael Doyle, and some others on the topic of whether or not you need to leave the classroom to have a great amount of influence. It brought to mind my focus in my teaching career right now. I used to be a middle school technology teacher and all I wanted was to get out of the classroom and become an ed tech coach. I really wanted to teach teachers how to integrate technology in their classrooms. Instead I ended up at my current, amazing PBL school teaching social studies and math. I also get the opportunity to lead workshops on PBL. What I know now is that I want to stay in the classroom. There are many types of influence for educators from social media to presenting at conferences around the country and world. I used to think that I wanted to be the one traveling around giving keynotes. I used to think that bigger was better and I wanted to be a leader in changing education in this country from a stage. Now I see influence differently. I see it as concentric circles. For me it all starts at the center where my heart and soul is: in my classroom. My number one priority is to create great learning opportunities for my students in my class. They are the ones that I have the greatest influence on. I especially want them to learn to think critically from multiple viewpoints, dissect bias in sources, and have a sense of empathy. I make this happen through PBL that is student-centered with tons of student voice. From projects that my students do in my class, influence ripples out to the rest of the circles. I have a strong voice in my school to encourage other teachers to use PBL effectively. Our projects lead to community connections that influence both parents and partners by showing them that school can be done in a better way. I share my projects with the local media helping shape a positive story of education locally. I have had student teachers to influence the next generation of teachers in student centered, inquiry learning. The next circle is social media. I blog and tweet to share what my students are doing. I participate in amazing communities such as #miched and #sschat. This leads to sharing my students’ work at conferences. I have never been a keynote but I have had many, many amazing conversations with educators over the years where we have learned together. The collective power of a group such as #miched is leading to other opportunities. Many #miched participants including some of my colleagues from school are currently meeting regularly with the Michigan Department of Education. Influence is moving to the political level and I don’t have to be in the room to be a part of it. I am part of the community. My next circle is PBL workshops. I lead three day workshops on how to transform your teaching to student-centered PBL. This is my favorite PD ever because rather than leaving inspired by a passionate keynote and some fun new web tools, I am able to shift teachers’ pedagogy. That is what really matters to me. I know that every time I lead a workshop that I can permanently shift teacher practice. It also means that I stay in the classroom so that my workshops are based on proven concepts that I am doing. It again goes back to the center circle as I inspire teachers with the great things my students are doing. My final circle is national. I do care about the federal education policy in this country. I am not connected in any way to political leaders, but I am in a school that is part of the New Tech Network. Through the size of this group of PBL schools, their leadership is able to act as a publicist for my students’ work and a lobbyist for student centered education. They have the connections that I will never have. My students give them the stories to tell about how education could be better. In summary, I influence my kids, first and foremost. By allowing them freedom to do meaningful work in PBL, my students give me stories to tell to broader audiences: parents, colleagues, community, media, and politicians. First I influence locally, but then it spreads way beyond our schools’ walls. If I am advocating for anything, it is for more teachers to stay in the classroom. We need good administrators, ed tech leaders, and conference presenters, but sometimes I feel like position becomes more important than real influence. I believe that teachers can be powerful influencers because they should have the best stories because they work with kids everyday. That being said my challenge for you is how are you an influence? My circles are very intentional, not accidents. I can not pursue every opportunity that comes along. I choose the paths that are meaningful to me. I think everyone should have their own, unique set of circles and like ripples in a pond we will all collide.

So this video by a teacher and school in the New Tech Network went viral this week. I can’t help but make some criticisms. Where is the content in this? How does this relate to the Common Core Standards? What are students learning? How is this preparing kids for college and careers? How is this activity helping students on their test scores? Actually I realize that it is a theatre teacher and he is doing his job here (although shouldn’t we cut arts and humanities classes and spend more time propping up math and ELA skills). So why, if this does not meet all of the things that teachers are constantly being told we must do has this video gone viral? Because this video is about connecting with students, sharing passions with students, being weird with students, and having fun. It is about relationships with kids. The only videos about standards and testing that would go viral would be people critiquing them. I guarantee that Scott Pankey’s students love him and I would gladly have my children in his class. So I say congrats to him and A. Maceo Smith New Tech High for showing the world what learning really can and should be!

At NovaNow last weekend I was part of an interesting discussion on assessment. Someone brought up the fact that she did not know what was going to be on the standardized state tests. A friend of mine in the room was very surprised that any teachers did not know what was on the tests (I believe because it was her primary job to make sure that teachers in her district were prepared for them). I raised my hand and said that I had no idea what was on the state test. I think that I surprised my friend. I teach American History. The truth is that I do know that there are 40 multiple choice questions covering three years of social studies: World, American, Government, and Economics. So there are roughly 15 questions on my entire year of class. The larger truth is that I just don’t care about the tests. In our class we look at the over arching themes of history: growth of democracy, especially for women and the Civil Rights Movement; America’s role in the world through the various wars and foreign policy; economic trends including the Great Depression, the prosperous fifties, stagflation, and current trends. We look at how America has grown as a country and how it has stayed the same. We look at all of these things and compare them to current events and policies. But the state tests, ah the tests. They are like Trivia Crack. I swear that they were written by some history professors who ask the students about some minuscule fact or date. I feel like they are trying to trick students and make sure that I "cover" everything and don’t miss any details. The emphasis is on trivial facts of history that can easily be looked up in a million places. I prefer to teach students how to think critically, see an event from multiple viewpoints, use the past to evaluate current trends and decisions, and to see the overarching trends of how America got to be what it is today. Those ideas are hard to turn into Trivia Crack questions. Until the state tests assess those kinds of things I just can’t worry about them. I refuse to sacrifice time spent challenging my kids to consider history deeply to force them to memorize facts. Don’t get me wrong I love to play Trivia Crack and am pretty good at it. History is my best category with 82% correct. But I would hate to have myself evaluated by that score. Trivia is fun, but it is not what a history class should be about. History is meant to be studied in context to teach about our values and progress (or lack of it). I guess what it comes down to is we can stress out about how our students will do on the tests and adjust our methods to things that we know are not beneficial to kids or we can teach kids the right way and chose not to worry about them. I have made my choice how about you?  

Don’t hear PLN used so much any more. I remember the fun arguments about it but anyway most of the key people that I learn with now have a F2F component to our relationship. That is one of my favorite things about the #MichED community is that I get to physically meet and hang out with them a few times a year. It makes the relationships and growing together stronger. But my main source of support and growth comes from my colleagues who I can discuss education nuances with daily. So I want to give a shout out to two of them who push my thinking but also could push yours too because they blog. The first is Trevor Muir who I have referenced in other posts because he is an excellent public speaker. He writes at Shift Paradigm (er) (ing). Trevor’s strength is in caring and relating to students. He gets to know them as humans and connects and grows them as people. He also teaches social studies so we share content interests. The style of his writing is stories (like this one for example) so if you want to be inspired subscribe to his blog. No really you should right now!   by Makenzie Hutchings The second in Nate Langel who sent me a tweet to a post he wrote last night. So apparently he started a blog a few weeks ago and neglected to tell me! His blog is Quantum Enlanglement. Nate is an energetic science teacher who likes to push kids to passionate learning. He is not afraid to question the thing that we call school and to ask whether or not what we are doing is actually about learning. He will challenge what you think about how school should be. Go subscribe now! As much as I enjoy my online relationships, these are two of my daily colleagues who push my thinking all of the time. I am excited that they can push yours too! And don’t just read their current post. Go back and read it all. It’s worth your time.

This post is in response to John’s thoughts on innovation. I think the real issue with innovation is that it is worshipped by many in edtech land. It is treated as always positive and progress. When someone calls a person, tool, or teaching method "innovative" it is always treated as a compliment and by many, one of the ultimate compliments. In reality innovations happen all the time and sometimes are positive and sometimes are not. Bill Veeck was one of the most innovative people in the history of baseball. He is the one who started all of the "sideshow" entertainment between innings. He made the exploding scoreboard at Comisky Park. He tried things to make baseball more exciting for fans. He also had the WhiteSox wear these hideous shorts, wanted to use orange baseballs, and famously had a little person bat in a game. So not every innovation is great or sticks. In my opinion the huge push for progressive education in reaction to "traditional" schools has pushed the pendulum to worship of innovation. I would argue that it sometimes goes too far. Sometimes the best methods are old like apprenticeships for example. So on the one hand I want to argue for a balance of tradition and innovation. On the other hand I think we need to seriously ask ourselves about the progression of things. Yes, the Astrodome was a cutting edge innovation that turned out to be an awful stadium. But would we have Camdem Yards without the experimenting with stadiums? Yes, Lazer Discs were dumb, but would we have gotten CD’s without them? I have always found Google Glass to be silly, but is it the first step in wearable technology that will become ubiquitous? So while I don’t think that we should worship innovation in schools, I also don’t think that we should wait for everything to be "proven" educationally to try it. We need some educators to push the envelope of what could be, using tools in new ways. But I would probably wait to make a district wide application of innovation until I saw great pedagogical use of the innovative thing in pilot programs.

A couple of #MACUL-maker Space time lapse videos, a reflection video, and Storify of tweets: and A reflection video by @BillVanLooTeach See also Why a MakerSpace for a reflection on its creation and the story of one participant. Storify of #MACUL15-maker Tweets [View the story "MACUL15 Maker Space Tweets" on Storify]

Last summer at a rented house in Evert, Michigan some #michED folks had an "Unplugg’d" weekend. We talked about how to help make the MACUL conference more of a place for people to interact, connect, and reflect rather than just sit and listen to presentations. The idea of a makerspace was thrown out as an inviting way to get people to connect and reflect. Kit Hard, Jeff Bush, and I decided to make it happen. After months of Google Hangout sessions, a trial run at NovaNow, and the addition of Ben Rimes to our wolfpack it came to fruition last Friday. With the help of many volunteers (huge shoutout to our #michED friends) including both teachers and students, we hosted the MACUL MakerSpace. We felt like it was a huge success as attendees spent time "playing," creating, designing, and connecting. My friend Dan Spencer summarized it best: I would like to share one story that exemplifies what happened in the space. My friend Rachelle met Aron, a Hebrew teacher, as he visited the MakerSpace. She explained to him about QR Codes so he could access our resources. Aron started playing with Wikkistix and making Hebrew letters on foam board. I talked to Aron and he explained that he was going to have students who struggled with Hebrew make these letters and then take pictures of them. Then he is going to post them digitally along with a recording of himself pronouncing the letters correctly. He was so excited by the combination of the tactile making with digital curation to help students. Aron ended up staying in the Maker Space all afternoon and kept plugging away until he finished the whole alphabet! Aron was so excited and so passionate about learning while doing! Aron definitely will bring back an exciting change to his students. At the same time Aron was able to process and reflect on his time at MACUL. He also connected with Rachelle and I. We are glad to have met Aron and look forward to learning with him in the future! Never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed that this would be a result of creating a MakerSpace. It is a great example of how people can creatively explore and learn when given the space and opportunity. See this post for more about #MACUL15-maker Space including time lapse videos, a reflection by @BillVanLooTeach on making our sign, and the Storify of Tweets.

I spent the weekend co-facilitating a workshop on PBL (I am in training in this model). I found the situation to be extraordinary. This was a group of people who will be starting a PBL / STEM school next fall in a large, urban setting. So the workshop was scheduled on the weekend because they all have other jobs currently. The crazy part that I did not know ahead of time was that the participants had never met before and did not know each other. So they showed up on the weekend and jumped into a workshop with strangers who are going to be their future colleagues. I can not exaggerate how great this group of educators was. They bonded and started collaborating the first day. They dreamed big and had great ideas. They were not a bunch of recent college graduates either. Many of them were seasoned educators. Barbara is a sweet educator who loves to encourage others and has 29 years of experience. She said that she has been waiting her whole life to be a part of a school like this. I truly was blown away by the passion for kids and learning in this group. The principal of this new school has been dreaming of starting his own school for years and has spent over two years doing the hard background work for this one to be born. He told me that he was an administrator in the "system" and that it was too difficult to change. He was obstructed by other people all of the time. To him, the only way that he could create the right learning environment for kids without resistant adults interfering was to start a new school from scratch and hiring teachers who wanted to be a part of it. So while they are not re-creating everything about education they are starting new. And I do think that there is something powerful about that. Every school and district has a culture. Changing culture is very, very hard. When you create a new school you get to create your culture from a clean slate. It is not totally clean because it will be based on the experience of the staff, but it will be unique and different than where they came from. For example the Founding Fathers got to create a new government after the United States won independence from England. I would argue that they created an innovative, new system of government, but it was not created in a vacuum. It was based on their experience with British government and the ideals that they saw in Ancient Greece and Rome. The Founding Fathers then fused these ideas together to create a system that was definitely new in the world. I don’t want to say that this is the only way to change schools, but it sure seems faster and more powerful than incremental change from within. I teach in a similar situation as my school started four years ago in the PBL model and every staff member was hired because they wanted to be a part of it. This quote from Urban Teacher resonates with me: I would add that it also takes administration that trusts teachers and treats them as professionals. So the issue that I really want to weigh in on is the question of whether or not we need to blow up schools and start over?

I am a big proponent of PBL as a framework for student centered learning. But more and more I believe that culture is the most important part of a successful school or class. PBL can lead to creating that culture (but it is not an automatic thing!) but the culture is a separate thing. In working with a new school I was able to challenge them with the opportunity that they had to create a culture from scratch. No student would be coming with any realistic pre-conceived notions about what the school will be like. They will be coming excited and curious to find out. The first days of school are critical for establishing the culture of the school every year. But it is more than how the year is launched, because culture is the norms that are actually lived through out the whole year. I have had years that did not go well. Culture was the main reason why. The good news is that culture can always be re-created in a new year or shifted in the middle of the year. We are well over the half way mark of this school year, but it is still not too late to shift culture in your class. Are you happy with your culture? What should you change? What should you keep?

I was in a professional development once and the presenter was identifying students in a video that they were about to show. They identified one student as an African-American boy, another as a girl, and a third student as the other boy. The audience was divided into three groups and each group was assigned the task of evaluating a different student for their presentation style. An African-American woman then asked, "What is the race of the other boy?" The presenter recognized their mistake (of using race to identify one student), how it sounded, and apologized immediately. It turned out that the presenter could not identify the race of the other student (he was Asian). We had a laugh as a group about trying to identify the other boy’s race. What struck me about this interaction was two things. First, how often privilege is invisible and we don’t even realize it. It is so easy to speak without realizing how it sounds to others and the assumptions that we are making. Second, the way this lady pointed it out in a non-threatening way. She made her point without accusing, getting angry, or causing any kind of disruption. She also did not assume that the presenter was racist. Sometimes I see situations like this (especially on social media) escalate to where both sides end up angry with each other and offended. I find this intimidating and makes me not want to talk about race issues with people like this. I hope we can find ways to address issues of race and privilege in civil ways that lead to tolerance, respect, and understanding.

If we are ever going to shift away from an adult based, content heavy curriculum then what should we expect students to learn in schools? I am talking about a system where students are free to study according to their passions and interests. A system of projects designed by students and teachers together. A system that has no bells, no "classes." The type of school where students drive all aspects of the learning. I am going to argue that there is a core set of skills that all children should learn. I am also going to argue that this list is enough for all children to be successful. Implicit in this list is that all children are going to learn "how to learn" anything they choose to independently. By independently I do not mean in isolation, but without adult direction. That is each student should know how to research and connect with others who are experts to learn anything that they choose to. It is a short list and probably each item deserves a separate post to describe what it is and isn’t. Here is my list of the skills that every student should learn: Reading Students will learn to read all kinds of texts and genres as they are naturally exposed to them through classmates, parents, teachers, and exploring their passions through projects. Writing Students will learn to write all kinds of texts and genres as they are naturally required to through their projects. Speaking Students will learn to share their learning publicly developing important communication skills. Computing Students will learn basic math computations as required by their exploration in projects. "Advanced" math will be learned in context when needed. All students will need an understanding of algebraic thinking and more emphasis should be spent on statistics. Collaborating Students will learn the social skills of working together with others and how to take on different roles in different situations. Problem Solving Students will learn to ask questions with depth. Emphasis will be on analyzing and evaluating results, rather than on the solutions. Critical Thinking Students will learn to look at problems and situations from multiple viewpoints. Students will learn to identify and evaluate bias. Empathy Students will learn to look at problems from multiple viewpoints and understand and relate to competing views. This list represents everything that I think students should know how to do. It is absent of any specific "content" but applies to any subject that adults can make up. It is heavy on the 4C’s but intentionally omits creativity because I don’t believe that we need to teach or assess it. Adults just need to allow space and creativity will happen. It is innate in all humans. What do you think? Anything missing? Unclear? Could this ever be the real national standards in the US or anywhere? Why not?

Recycling When planning a PBL scope and sequence for the year should you repeat projects from previous years or start from scratch? I think there are definitely times when you should repeat projects. The most important reason to repeat a project is when you find a great community partner that you want to build relationships with that person or organization. You can organically grow that project year after year. As you and your community partner better understand each other the opportunities for students to go deeper and do more focused work improves. So I definitely would repeat projects that have strong community partners centered around meaningful work. Another reason to recycle a project is that although your students change yearly your core content does not. It makes sense to reframe and refocus certain projects, but it does not make sense to start over from scratch every year. One way to do this is to adjust the project. We like to mix up entry events, DQ’s, and final products sometimes. Other times we keep them the same. A local, national, or world event can create a different way to frame a project so that it stays relevant, while keeping most of the workshops and assessments the same. The projects that we switch up the most are the ones that seem to fall flat. My most difficult topic is the Spanish American War. It seems small, insignificant, and irrelevant to today. In three years we have tried three different approaches: the first time we had students make Common Craft style videos. The second year we had students debate Manifest Destiny vs. Imperialism as America’s motivation in different countries around the world. This past year we ended up combining the Spanish American War with 9/11 monument project. What didn’t change in all three of these projects is that we had students consider how early American expansion was a continuation of Manifest Destiny. We contrasted the language of Manifest Destiny with our imperialistic actions. We then continued to look at American foreign policy through the rest of the twentieth century through this lens. Each year I feel like it got better, but to be honest I think I will be re-doing it again next year. So I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to approach project planning. Sometimes you repeat and sometimes you start over. But even when you start over you can still use many of the same resources and workshops by just reframing the entry event, purpose, and audience. Note: This was inspired by excellent thoughts from this John Spencer post.  

Yong Zhao wrote an incredible, research based piece arguing the way that schools should be. It is a lengthy piece but you should read it in its entirety right now! No really, go do it. Now that you have finished I want to respond to his recommendations at the end with some questions. I want to make it clear that my questions do not come from a perspective of disagreement, but rather that I find his writing to be a strong theoretical argument that I agree with. My questions come as a practicing teacher wondering how to implement his recommendations and from the challenges that I see in my classroom. Although I am a skeptical person, these questions are in the spirit of how to make this shift happen on the ground level. My main question is how do we structure this kind of learning environment? I am going to explore this from two perspectives. First from an elementary point of view and next from middle and high school. If we start students out in a school that is entirely student driven than I think it could work naturally. Students would never be "poisoned" by motivation killing things like forced AR reading logs, boring worksheets, and other adult proscribed manipulation. I do believe that humans are naturally curious and enjoy learning things that they choose to learn. I truly can see this approach working and I believe that it has been done in systems such as Montessori and Reggio Emilia schools. Developmentally students change in middle and high school and I have harder questions about Yao’s approach there. First of all, if students were in this kind of environment their whole lives and never experienced "traditional," controlled schooling than maybe it would keep working for all students. I never seen this in action, so I don’t know. Part of being a teenager is finding one’s identity and I wonder if "fighting" against schooling would happen for some children no matter what the environment? In my PBL school we have lots of voice and choice (but not the level of freedom that Zhao recommends of no classes or curriculum. We still teach to the standards). I see some students thrive when given the chance to explore their passions in class. I see other students whose default choice is to hang out and not do much when given the opportunity. They would rather play games, watch videos, or text/talk to their friends. How do we handle this in Zhao’s recommendations? Do we allow students to "detox" from being forced to learn for a period of time? (this question deserves its own post). Is this a result of years of boredom in schooling that had no purpose to them personally? How do we shift students from a traditional, adult controlled model to a student centered one? How do we deal with students with little motivation? How do we deal with students who have personal and family issues that are much more important and often overwhelming to them than anything at school? I would love to see a follow up to this theory piece dealing with how we should structure, if at all, student centered learning and how to successfully shift classrooms to it.  

Photo Credit: Bryn Pinzgauer via Compfight cc Everyone knows that ELA and math are the focus of standardized testing so hence the focus of the majority of schools in this country. Reading, writing, expressing oneself well, computing, and using logic are all extremely important skills that every student needs to acquire to be successful in life. We definitely need to make sure students are mastering these skills. But that last word is very important. ELA and math classes and standards are built around skills. The content of these classes are almost exclusively skills that can be applied in many different contexts. Curriculum should not be built on skills but on content that is relevant to students because it is authentic, motivating, or personal. That is why I thing schools should focus their curriculum on science and social studies. These classes hold the interesting ideas, problems, and concepts where the ELA and math skills can be developed. Any good science will lead to experiments that require logical thinking and mathematical computation. Social studies requires extensive reading, writing, and analyzing skills. To be honest ELA skills should be integrated into every class. That is why we see movements like reading and writing across the curriculum. To be clear I am not saying that there is nothing of value or interest in math or ELA as they stand alone. But I fear in isolation these classes only appeal to students who love literature, writing, or algorithms. I think there is a danger to our silos of curriculum that focus on ELA and math test prep that is boring and irrelevant. If we want all students to be motivated to develop ELA and math skills we would do well to design curriculum around science and social studies issues into interesting PBL projects. Then we will give students authentic reasons to use the ELA and math skills. We might be amazed at how students would grow when given the chance to do "real" work right now, instead of some day when they are old enough.

My teaching partner is changing careers and leaving education. So there is an opening at my school for 10th grade ELA (must be ELA certified in Michigan or equivalent) in an integrated American Studies block. The bad news is that you will be my partner The good news is that I teach in an incredible PBL school that is fun to work at. So if you want to teach in an out of the box, PBL school that is student centered, check it out! Job Posting link  

My pastor was talking about exploring your passion today and played this viral video-a tribute by passionate fans asking Foo Fighters to come to their little town in Italy. I have been wondering how I want to start off this year and this made it all click for me. The first day in class I am going to share some videos of young people doing amazing things that they are passionate about. I haven’t figured out which ones yet, but definitely want young people doing things for the good of others. If you have a great suggestion I would love to hear it in the comments. Then I will share with the students about the best project that we are going to do this year: I want to tell you guys about the best project that you are going to do this year. It is going to be so incredible and life changing for the audience. It will change your lives too as you make sacrifices and make a differences for others. I can’t tell you very many details about it today though. It is kinda a secret. Not so much a secret from you, but from me.  You see, the thing is, I can’t tell you more about it because I don’t know anything else about it yet. Last year you did some incredible projects like design tools to help refugees and made documentaries to honor WWII veterans. You were in your first year of PBL and those projects were designed by your teachers. You are no longer freshmen. This year the best project will be when you take over this class and decide to do something amazing. The teachers are not going to come up with the purpose, product, and audience. You are. This is your year to take charge of your learning and to do something to change the world. The "real world" is not some future place but is our classroom and you will change it starting now. We will spend a lot of time the rest of the first week building culture in our class and establishing the need to be a critical analyzer of bias. I know the culture that I want to build with students, but this first day is all about setting up proper expectations. My expectation of my students is that they will be passionate and want to be active citizens who make a difference in the world. Once students understand this then I can’t wait to be amazed by what they decide to do!  

Teachers love to establish protocols at the beginning of the year and in general it is a good practice. We need structure in schools but I feel like there is often an overemphasis on rules that is based on administrators trying to control teachers or teachers trying to control students (same exact phenomenon really). I have spoken out against standardization and structure at times, but it has a time and place. For example when I drive my car I am very happy that we have rules about driving: which side of the road, how to signal and make turns, and slow drivers in the left lane!!!!! Without these protocols I would probably be dead. Protocols around safety make sense and are imperative. In the classroom we need protocols to establish safety for our students and this is especially important for their emotional safety. The counter example is a chef. There are protocols for proper cooking techniques. There is a science to how to prepare food properly so that it is safe and delicious. My wife and I often watch Chopped. The format of the show is that it is a competition where contestants are giving 4-5 mystery ingredients that they need to turn into appetizers, main courses, and desserts. The chefs on the show never make the same dishes because cooking is also an art. If they do the science wrong, then the dish can be a disaster. But if they do the science right, but don’t personalize it into a unique dish then the food can be bland and boring. Teaching is like being a chef. It is an art and a science. There is a science and a structure behind good teaching (PBL is my favorite structure :). I do not believe that teachers should just show up and "wing it" everyday. On the other hand, if we truly believe in student voice and choice then we need to have some flexibility in our classrooms. Protocols and rules need to be able to change and adapt to the students’ needs in our rooms. If you haven’t started school yet, then you have no relationships to build protocols on. Too much structure and protocols can stifle creativity and learning. I love comparing the African proverb with the Picasso quote at the top. Breaking protocols for no purpose makes no sense. But when you really understand what you are trying to accomplish then you will start to recognize when protocols are getting in the way. My thermometer is to ask myself if the protocol limits student learning through voice and choice. If yes, then I need to consider other ways to structure learning. Final thought: build protocols with your staff or students. Don’t force structure on them!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armando_Galarraga_pitching_2010_cropped.jpg I had the privilege of joining Michigan Educator Voice Fellowship and attending their convening last week. I wasn’t 100% sure what I was getting into, but I really enjoyed the two days. As it turns out the purpose of this organization is to support teacher leaders and to amplify their voices. Pretty cool! The best part was meeting and connecting with other leaders from across the state of Michigan. My favorite part of the convening was a session on creating pitches to use when talking to state legislators. Creating a short, powerful pitch is not something that they teach you in pre-service education or anywhere in education that I have seen. I loved the emphasis on stories that connect people to your message. I struggled a bit with the initial hook part, but after seeing an example from Melody Arabo it quickly came to me. We practiced our pitches taking them from two minutes down to fifteen seconds. As I reflect on the importance of a good pitch, I see it as a vital skill that teachers should use all of the time. We should be "pitching" the new projects to students with great entry events tied to a story. We should use pitches to parents to help them understand how our classes are different from the school they went to and why. Having a pitch to share a new idea with colleagues, administrators, and school boards could be very effective to gain consensus. We should be able to pitch our class projects to local business and community partners to motivate their involvement and support. Sometimes educators feel they need to be humble and servant like and pitching feels dirty to them. The truth is that teachers need to stand up and speak out for what is best in the classroom and for their kids. Pitching shouldn’t be about promoting yourself but about promoting your students’ work and about the best kind of schools that we can create. When considered in that light, one can be humble and pitch important ideas at the same time. I would go for far as to say that we have an obligation to start pitching positive stories about education to change the negative stereotypes in this country.

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One interesting way to engage students is to put together a PowerPoint presentation that can be shared via social media, and which gives the opportunity to create a response presentation, and which includes a mystery / adventure story line. In this case, which was for a basics of petroleum geology course, I created a six-slide PowerPoint presentation which I shared using Slideshare.  The story

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