Working Toward Excellence

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen

Have you ever been part of something so significant that it almost seems surreal? Have you ever personally seen your vision, your hard work, your passion become a reality?

Well I have. These last two years working on the 21st Century Learning project with the Alabama Best Practice Center funded by a Microsoft Partners in Learning grant have been incredible. Witnessing the culture shift of the teachers in the 40 schools we served across Alabama has been so affirming. It has instilled in me the faith that it is not as some say, too late for public schools, but rather schools can and are making principled changes in keeping with the needs of the 21st Century learner.

My friend and colleague John Norton, educational writer and virtual community champion, and Cathy Gassenheimer, Managing Director of the A+ Education Foundation  and president of the Alabama Best Practice Center and I developed a two year professional development opportunity around the question--

How do education leaders effectively promote the knowledge, skills and sense of urgency for 21st Century teaching and learning among all the teachers in their schools?   

In our two-year pilot project we sought to maximize our available resources by adopting a “champion-building” approach to spreading awareness and interest in Web-based teaching strategies.             

We asked each principal in our 40 participating schools to select a five-teacher team to join our 21st Century Schools professional development community. Each team agreed to share what they learned with their own faculties, including the rationale behind the urgency for change, and the exciting possibilities of technology-infused learning.

Our goal was not to train teachers to use technology (a massive undertaking far beyond our means) but to create “aha” moments among creative, forward-thinking teachers by introducing them to the concepts of “Classroom 2.0”. We hoped they would be intrigued by – and ultimately be champions for - web 2.0  and other social networking tools as a means for engaging students in higher order learning experiences.

Currently, I am in deep analysis of the data we have collected to look at outcomes and measured success of the project. But we also have collected a great deal of anecdotal evidence that this change initiative is one that has potential to scale in changing the culture of schools, the practice of teachers, and the processes we use to educate our children.

Want to see what I mean? We went to the schools in our project looking for evidence that our curriculum and process had made an impact.

Want to be inspired? Take a look at what we found!

http://www.abpc21.org/

Rather have print copies? Here is our newsletter for year 1 & 2 of this project.

Download  the print version of Working Toward  Excellence: Classroom 2.0 in PDF format.            

Download Working Toward Excellence: Educating the Digital Generation in PDF format.

Photo credit: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management/aspects-of-change

Comments

[Kevin Jarrett]

Sheryl, thanks so much for sharing. Talk about a life-changing event. I'm plowing through the site now and making notes furiously. It's a lot to absorb (but like the saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step).

I'm a classroom teacher (as you know) and I would love to discuss this with my district leadership. I need a way to somehow distill what you have here into a coherent, brief proposal representing ideas we could reasonably implement in my district, sans grant money and the talented people like you helping make the initiative work, of course.

Do you have any advice for me?

Meanwhile, I'm tearing into the website...

Thanks!

-kj-

[Una Raimondo]

The Alabama experiment in exactly the way I envision the introduction of web classroom 2.0 practices at my school this year. I embrace the idea that this project moves along the continuum of where teachers are at and does not attempt to overwhelm folks with the abundace of technology out there but rather, in small school communities, in my case two high school programs. I will begin to show the possibilites of the web classroom by introducting concepts and resources via the internet at all collaborative instructional meetings - the first one is this Tuesday, July 31,2007. I
I have found that in the face of the unknown ie. technology infusion in teacher centered classrooms,fear of failure, ( discomfort "playing" in an area where there is no pure expertise except that which the teacher learns in his/her own time and with personal initiative and interest), is the leading cause of failure of schools to move to the next step of student engagement dictated by the collaborative learning of students and teachers. I have often times heard from teachers how their work day ends at the official time dictated by contracts and policy. Web 2.0 classroom practices and their development require a passion for learning beyond the school walls and dictates of employer-employee contracts. Web 2.0 classroom practices will challenge the notion of professionalism amongst teachers - if we are professionals we have to learn and adopt this technology on our own time. We have to spark our own personal interest because it is this that will challenge our own professional growth. We can only move toward excellence when we understand that teaching today has to be dictated by student interests and collabaoration with the world classroom. From one in NY, where ten years ago Alabama was not even a state whose initiatives I followed, I am delighted to note that I will be mirroring very closely the experiments in schools there. Will Keep you posted about initiatives at my school as I chart progress.
UR

[Rick Weinberg]

Sheryl,
I have got to tell you I am impressed. These projects that you helped create are not rocket science and they didn’t have to be. I have got to say I didn’t check them all out. I only checked out the 1940s interviews to the 1970 interviews from Ms. McGuyer’s “Voices from the School House.” I found myself very interested in what the more experienced people had to say. I was most interested in hearing how the students asked their questions. I listened to all the “podcasts” for the 1940’s and 1950’s and they were pretty much what I expected. They were students reading off a script of questions. The questions were very well related to the topic of the history of schooling at Trussville. I was kinda disappointed in the fact that none of the students went off of the script and thought on their own, well, at least on their feet. This again goes back to the lost art of communication. Communication, which I don’t have to tell you, is a dialog between two or more people and not reading off a script where you are having a one-way conversation. Then I got to Davis’s interview. Davis asked questions that were not on a script. He asked questions that I was thinking. These were things I really wanted to know. Davis asked Mac, who is the schools resource officer, how he got to school in the 1970’s. Well, Mac said by bus until his 16th birthday because on his 16th birthday Mac got a car as a present from his parents. Then Davis asked the question I was thinking. It was kinda a high school/middle school question. The question was, “what kind of car was it.” This was not on a script and you could hear Mac light up. It was the kind of question that makes the person you are interviewing feel more comfortable. It is also a question that creates a relationship. And this fits into some things I have said on my blog. It has to do with the age of conceptualization and the article by Daniel Pink you linked to the comments in my post entitled Do You hear that…It is the sound of our jobs going over seas. Here is the Daniel Pink quote from his article entitled “Revenge of the Right Brain.”

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

It was more than just one question Davis asked but he had the ability of “high touch.“ Maybe I’m making too much out of it. But his unscripted questions and the subtleties of conversation that I just don’t seem to hear anymore from students was not lost on Davis. I am going to have to check out more of these projects.

[Pat Ruffing]

Sheryl,
I took a look at the ABPC site and was amazed at the wealth of material and the wonderful success stories there. I am going to keep exploring the site (like KJ) and looking for any strategies I can take away for professional development in my own school, though obviously on a much smaller scale. I haven't come across it yet, but I am wondering if there is a specific description of the role of the "fellows". How much time did they spend with teachers or team leaders? I am looking for some kind of framework or job description for a "technology coach" as part of the faculty. That is the next hat I plan to be wearing in the coming year. (Still wearing the others.)
Thanks for sharing the info.
Pat

[Harman]

Sheryl,

Thanks for sharing this. We at www.WiZiQ.com (pronounced Wiz-IQ) are trying to bring the web 2.0 tools for any teacher in the easiest possible way. Your project and it's acceptance is very encouraging for us. If possible, please look at it and give us your valuable feedback.

Thanks,
Harman

[John Norton]

As Sheryl's friend, co-consultant and co-author on the Alabama work, I thought I'd jump in and respond to a few queries. She was up all night making the final tweaks!

Keith... one place to look for some distillation of the experience is in the 21st Century Teachers article, where we try to be pretty frank about what worked, what didn't, etc. Near the end, there's a list of some emerging best practices that might be helpful in discussions with school and district leaders: http://www.abpc21.org/21stcenturyteachers.html

Pat -- Our Fellows idea, in part, grew out of some experience I had with teachers in residence in a statewide program in South Carolina. We cast a wide net by inviting applications, then interviewed about 30 teachers and chose 10, based on interest, experience, location, grade levels, content areas, etc. etc. We offered a decent annual stipend for two years (they remained in their regular jobs and did this "on the side") and asked them to agree to contribute a minimum number of days/hours. Sheryl accepted the role of Fellow developer and den mother and offered some front-end an ongoing training, both F2F and in the Elluminate environment. We were inventing it as we went along.

Over the two-year period, the Fellows helped in many ways. One very important role was to participate in our online curriculum sessions with the 200 teachers and principals who participated. We put on a mind-boggling 40 online sessions of two hours each during the course of the work -- all in Elluminate -- and the Fellows pitched in to keep the dialogue going, ask smart questions, demo some of their own work, etc. Fellows also advised our advanced teams on their final projects. Where time and distance allowed, they visited participating schools and did trouble-shooting, etc. They presented at statewide ed-tech conferences. They did a LOT of growing themselves, and several of them were selected for larger 21stC leadership roles in their own systems during the time they worked with us.

As you might guess, it was challenging for the Fellows do all that we asked them to do -- or they wanted to do -- while still teaching every day. If we were doing it again, and had the funding, we might opt for a program of 3-4 Fellows who took a leave of absence for a year or two and worked with us full-time, traveling to schools, working daily and weekly in online activities, etc. I've seen that model work very well, but it's expensive, since you basically have to "buy" each teacher's contract (plus fringes) for the duration. But it's powerful!

[Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach]

How exciting! Thanks John for adding to the discussion and bringing clarification to the questions asked about this post.

Kevin- I would say remember that just because you build it online doesn't mean they will come. This kind of project takes dedicated champions. Not just the Fellows, but lots of behind the scenes work by those committed to the change initiative.

You and I can talk via Skype anytime. Just let me know.

----------
Una,

You are so right about teaching in such a time as this requiring so much more from teachers. But we need to remember that these tools are not additive. They are disruptive. It will not be business as usual, but business as unusual. They do not change somethings about our teacher practice, they change most things.

Take incremental, baby steps at first. Get your teachers buy-in and create a sense of urgency. Then have someone available to walk them through what they need to know in "just in time" training moments. As I told Kevin, this kind of reform needs a champion.

As to Alabama being the lead in all this-- isn't it awesome? I think their secret is open minded, forward thinking administrators like you. Keep pushing in NY and keep asking the tough questions.
--------------------------
Hi Rick,

Thanks for your well thought out post. You have to have a starting place. What I have noticed is that teachers at first use blogs with them posting and kids commenting. Then once developmentally they start to "get" the shift they begin to give up control and let kids do the blogging and they do the commenting.

I think you will see the same kind of thing in regard to scripted interviews. Until teachers become comfortable with the changing learning landscape this will be tough. But as they assimilate the new ideas, it will be more about the high touch you mention.

Keep coming back- your ideas stretch me.

---------------------
Pat,

The best place to look at model would be http://bestpracticescenter.org/21stcentury.htm
but keep in mind that was written at the end of year one. Also check out the WTE pdf for year one.
http://www.bestpracticescenter.org/pdfs/wte5-2.pdf

Let me know if you want to chat.
--------
John,

Thanks for your hard work, visionary leadership, and friendship throughout the project. Your ability to conceptualize through the scripted word have brought this project to life, even in my eyes. Having spent so much time, so close, it was quite amazing to see so much evidence in one place as a result of our planning and model.

I realize the role the Alabama Best Practice Center plays is crucial to this work. I also realize that without open minded, forward thinking administrators and most of all teachers none of this would have happened.

It is humbling to see so many educators working hard at unlearning and change, all for the sake of the children we serve.

Go 'Bama! You Rock!

[Kevin Jarrett]

Thanks John! Keith Jarrett is my famous similar-named musical genius friend whom I've never met. :) I get that a lot...

The scope and magnitude of the change your team has engendered in Mississippi is truly staggering, and a testament to the vision and hard work of many, many people throughout the educational food chain. It seems that a 'perfect storm' emerged - the Microsoft grant, recognition of the need for real change at the state BOE level, your team's arrival on the scene...and the results speak for themselves. Question is, how do we help create the 'perfect storm' in our districts?

I think we have to start with a rainshower, and I'm off to start seeding the clouds...

-kj-

[Pat Ruffing]

Thanks, John, for your very detailed explanation. It answered a lot of my questions about the program.

Thanks, Sheryl, for the link to the newsletter. Even though it was a year old there were still some great things to read about in there, and I read it all! I will continue to explore the projects posted as delicious links as well as the ABPC site.

I love Kevin's comment about seeding the clouds. Great analogy!

[Alice Williams]

Sheryl and John,
This work is incredibly inspirational. As a former college instructor of African literature, I was inspired by the "Nothing but Net" project where middle schoolers were able to gain real-world insights and take action around the urgent issue of malaria. I have to admit it was difficult to muster this same passion in many of my students, who saw the problems of Africa as so far away and so overwhelming.

And I think that is the true power of Web 2.0 - to make the world not only more accessible for students physically by also intellectually. Through technology, educators have the ability to now guide students in ways to effect real-world change around issues that may have previously been paralyzing in their gigantic scope. It is exactly this willingness to tackle the big issues that we need to instill in our future leaders.

Thank you John and Sheryl for this gift of work!

Alice