What I Learned at ASCD…

Just got back from four days in Houston – A.K.A. The Surface of the Sun!!! – at the ASCD summer conference. If you read my early post, you know the trip down was less than stellar – thanks to no air conditioning on the bus and a heat index of 105. There were some other issues with wifi, etc…that if you follow me on Twitter, you’re more than familiar with (Hilton.Meh.). So…here’s what I learned – some serious, some sarcastic, some silly – from my trip.

1. Air conditioning in Texas in summer is non-negotiable. From the bus to the unit in our room that would turn off every 2 hours (try getting up at 2 and 4 and 6 to turn it back on!) we almost roasted – then you could knock icicles off our noses in the workshops! Someone’s gonna get sick with those extremes! Lesson: All things need BALANCE!

2. Almost every session I went in used the same terminology and definitions for teacher/student experience level regardless of the topic (assessment, differentiation, etc.). Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner, Expert. And they all knew that to reach the next level (whatever that means according to your topic) a Novice must acquire skills, an Apprentice must apply those skills, a Practitioner must assimilate those skills into daily use, and an Expert must adapt them for new conditions. It was refreshing to have a common language and scale to use as a self-evaluative tool and a reference. Lesson: A common vocabulary is ESSENTIAL when aligning curriculum, training teachers, or doing just about any darn thing else.

3. A lot of the sessions I went to talked about feedback – giving rapid, valid feedback to your students so they understand…and they emphasized using that feedback for YOURSELF as a self-evaluative tool. Look at what your kids are doing…how does that reflect on your instruction? What are you nailing? What are you missing? Too often that step is completely left out – we look at what the kids are doing and miss the critical connection between teacher and student. We ignore the cause and effect of our instruction. We do not take responsibility for doing what we want kids to do – learning! We have to constantly reevaluate ourselves using our classroom data to tweak, revamp, start over, improve. NO ONE is so good that they can’t improve. And every student, every class, every day is different…so resting on your laurels will only work for about 5 minutes…then it’s time to reassess and readjust. This is something teachers don’t know how to do, won’t do, etc. And all of the research they’ve projected on those countless screens on countless PowerPoint slides tells us that when the teacher improves his/her skills – the kids improve too! Why wouldn’t we want to get better? If you’re happy with mediocrity – you’re in the wrong profession. Lesson: Instead of just pointing to the students, we have to look at ourselves, our methods, our procedures, our instruction and always be in a state of evaluation, reflection, and IMPROVEMENT! No one is perfect, everyone can AND SHOULD improve.

4. We need to look at what skills and knowledge are implied when looking at our standards. We spend so much time worrying about what we have to “get through” to make it to the end of the year that we don’t pay attention to what implied knowledge or skills are hidden in a standard. Does the standard imply that your student knows how to take notes, use a dictionary, research and evaluate information on the web? If it does, you better make sure you give them the background knowledge they need to be successful on that standard REGARDLESS of whether or not they should “already know this.” Lesson: Meet your kids where they are not where they should be. Look for potential stumbling blocks built into your standards/curriculum through implied skills and knowledge – and then remove those stumbling blocks for your students so you can level the field and give everyone the same chance to be successful.

5. Dr. Robyn Jackson, of Mindsteps and author of Never Work Harder Than Your Students had a fantastic session that made me dig her book out of the incredibly large pile of professional reading I’ve been meaning to get through and start highlighting!  # 4 came from that session. During that 2 hour workshop (not long enough) the first concept that she addressed that struck home with me was the idea of currency – we all deal in our own currency. We have “things” or “capital” that we are willing trade our currency (time, effort, etc.) for. It’s our jobs as teachers to find ways to turn our content into capital that students are willing to trade their currency for. We do this through relevancy, technology, interest-based learning, relationship-building, etc. How much do you think your kids are willing to trade for a lecture and a PowerPoint? About as much as YOU are probably – and that’s not much! Get her book – read about it. Good stuff here. Lesson: If what you have is not valuable to your students, they will not trade currency for it. You have to give your content value that the kids are willing to trade their time and effort for. (And yes…that really IS part of our job!)

6. The second lesson I learned from Dr. Robyn Jackson is the concept of setting the floor. We set goals and often those goals are the ceiling – they are the ultimate pinnacle that we (or our students) will strive for. So in setting the ceiling we tell our students how HIGH we want them to go. But by not setting a floor – we’re saying that there is NO cut off for how LOW they can go. Dr. Jackson reminds us to set the floor – we will ALL score at least a 75%. That lets kids know the minimum acceptable score – and allows them to go beyond it (no ceiling!). Don’t let a zero be your floor…give them a minimum standard and then let them go above and beyond that. Lesson: When setting goals, be sure to set them so that a minimum acceptable performance is clear – do not let them have one target for achievement and NO LIMITS for failure. Set the floor!

7. Bob Marzano had tons to say that was inspiring and the reactions from attendees were depressing. The first point he made in an afternoon session about school reform was that change has to be systemic to be successful. The teacher sitting next to me, who’d played solitaire on her palm during the session, heard this and said – “well, I might as well leave because I am just a teacher and change has to come from admin and they’re not here and not on board.” So she packed up and left. At the first break a fourth of the room left and didn’t come back. (Okay people, if you haven’t read his work and you came in because you know he’s famous…wrong reason to attend a session and a waste of your district’s money). I believe in the power of one person to affect change…but I believe if change is going to REALLY occur at a school/district level that it has to be systemic. It must be wholly supported and EXPECTED by administration. It needs to be modeled, discussed, debriefed, celebrated, etc. Teachers must be trained and supported and HELD ACCOUNTABLE for implementation. Teachers that refuse should be helped to find a new place to work that is better suited to their beliefs and values. No more closing your door and doing it your way. We stand or fall together. If you can’t hang, we’ll help you find another job somewhere better suited to your belief/value systems. This is true of administrators too. There have to be some well-thought out non-negotiables. Lesson: You have to WALK THE TALK. Systemic change or reform will only occur with consistency, support, expectation, and accountability. All for one and one for all.

8. Assessment should not be a snapshot, but a photo album. We need more than just a test to see where kids are, what they understand, how they process. We need to give teachers and students the time to build progress portfolios that track mastery over time. We are slaves to the schedule, the budget, and to time and they reign supreme over the one thing we SAY should be paramount – MASTERY. I understand that this sort of shift will not occur overnight (Marzano says 3-5 years) and that it is an unpopular ideology amongst the schedule makers, bottom line watchers, and pragmatic coin counters. I also understand that what we are doing and the system we are using is not keeping pace with the needs of our students. Lesson: Mastery is a process that needs to be supported by data that has been gathered from multiple assessments over time. Now we need to give people the tools and the time to do it right. The end goal is the same – Mastery – the road is just less traveled but may make all the difference.

9. We must teach our students, teachers, and administrators that it’s okay to be a Novice in something. Identifying where you are on a scale is just finding your location…like your location on a map. Just because YOU ARE HERE – doesn’t mean you can’t move to somewhere else. It is not a judgement or a condemnation…it is a LOCATION. And like any location…you can move from it. Let’s just make sure we’re moving forward or…like “Weezy” we’re movin’ on up! Lesson: Take the judgemental aspect out of admiting where we are – and make it all about finding out out how to move to the next level and providing the tools and support to get us there.

10. On a personal note: The lack of decent wifi (or enough power outlets) was an incredible lesson for me in differentiation. My learning style is that of DIGITAL PROCESSING! I need to twitter, blog, voicethread, google, and embed my experiences in order to process them, make connections, get feedback and commentary, and find value in what I’ve learned. ASCD, for all it’s student-focused ideas and forward thinking in curriculum and teaching, is lightyears behind in differentiating for it’s Digital Processors. I was uncomfortable having to resort to pen and paper rather than to tweet my notes (all of which can be found here). I was frustrated by lack of power, lack of stable wifi, and by having to pay $10.95 a night to access the internet in my room (I really hate hotels that do that – if the Days Inn can give me free wifi – why can’t the Hilton?). But I digress…for all their talk of differentiation, ASCD failed to meet my learning style needs or provide an environment for learning that was relevant to me. Now – I’m an Ed Tech geek, no denying that. I live on my electronics….I’m not ashamed to admit it. I am ALSO exactly like most of the students you will teach. If you can’t hold MY interest and I’m here on purpose…with a desire to learn…because you will not let me process/remix/mash/post/and collaborate in a way that is relevant to my world, my background knowledge, and my learning style needs….HOW do you expect teachers to do it with their students? I realize that this is a rather lengthy diatribe over patchy wifi and an inability to Twitter – but it is so much more than that. It strikes right at the heart of the “Power Down” argument – that we force our kids to take an evolutionary step backwards to learn. It doesn’t work.

Lesson: If  Ed-Techers want to really make a difference and you want to see integration with academic rigor and technology as a true learning tool…you went to the wrong conference this week. NECC was probably phenomenal and I’m profoundly jealous that I couldn’t be there – but I am also grateful. As I sat shoulder to shoulder with more district/university administrators than I’d ever met at any tech conference, I realized that THIS is our battleground. If we want to integrate, THIS is where we must infiltrate! It is necessary and wonderful to meet with like-minded individuals and learn from each other, celebrate successes and become inspired to take those successes and make them happen in our own corners of the world. But the real battle is in conferences like ASCD where curriculum and best practices are being discussed, developed, and disseminated to the movers and shakers, the decision-makers. This is where we have to make our presense felt, to bring our tools and technology, to bring these subjects into the global conversation from the very seat of their power. It’s time to bring curriculum up to speed and for technology to dig in deeper. No more fluff, no more enrichment. If we are going to really teach the Whole Child we need to make our voices heard, demand sytemic changes that embrace technology integration on a deeper level (bye-bye internet recess) and we are going to have to collaboratively work with the leaders in the field to make sure that  we can integrate to educate!

And….

I’m spent.