More Money for More Time with Professional Development

Time is an ongoing challenge in 21st Century education. Despite all that has changed in schools, we remain tied to a 19th Century agrarian calendar. As as a result, time becomes an opponent in our quest to improve education.

Time may be at its most precious in relation to modern teacher professional development. Our school calendars, established generations ago, often provide scant time for teacher training, sometimes only four or five days.

Yet teacher professional development has never been more crucial as schools seek ways to alter and improve classroom instruction. In pursuit of more time for this activity, we shorten school days, having late starts, early dismissals, sometimes even entire days with no students. However, we do so with extreme reservations because we know one of the Correlates of the Effective Schools Research is to carefully guard student time on task (Lezotte, 1991).

As our local economies and our state tax bases slowly improve in the wake of the devastating recession of 2008 to 2015, we may be on the verge of an opportunity to improve education by creating more time for professional development. Most schools in the United States have been cash-strapped for nine years. As a result, teacher salaries have fallen behind, teachers have suffered, and the teacher shortage has approached critical levels in many instructional areas.

Now is the time to put more money toward teacher pay and include additional days as part of the package. This can be done at a local level by re-prioritizing our budgets, but it should also be a state initiative.

Some state legislators believe that fully funding their state's education formula does little to attract attention to themselves, advance their political clout, or garner votes in the next election. However, tying new dollars for teachers to additional time for professional development could be a stirring idea. We know teacher training has the potential to enhance student achievement. This would be using tax money directly for the purpose of  improving classroom instruction.

This will be an idea most teachers will support. Most teachers have never been afraid to put in additional time, and many are actively seeking ways to improve. Linking additional pay to time for school improvement could be a winning combination.

I urge us all to talk to our legislators about putting more money into education with the intent of purchasing additional days and ultimately improving education in the United States.

Image Credit: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, 1931, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Digital Citizenship, the Newest Curriculum

A decade and a half into the 21^st Century, computers are everywhere. Most people carry in their pockets a smart phone that has more computer power than all of NASA had at its disposal in 1969 when it landed a man on the moon. Today’s mobile devices are more powerful than the desktop computers of the 1990’s.

This is only going to increase. Today we carry our mobile devices in our pockets. Tomorrow we will be wearing them and putting them on each morning as we do our clothing. The education of today’s students must include how to effectively use modern technologies. It is right and appropriate that our schools modernize so that technology is integrated into instruction as it will be in the workplace of the future for our students. 

Schools planning for a digital learning initiative have some parents who naturally express apprehension about whether or not students are responsible enough to care for such powerful and expensive digital learning devices. Certainly responsible behavior often matures with age. However, this is exactly one of the reasons we needed computers in the hands of the kids—that we need to teach them how to use their computers responsibly.

With this new movement of digital learning devices in schools, a new curriculum is emerging. The whole world is now accessible to any student with a digital device, and schools need to teach digital citizenship. All schools need a K-12 curriculum in this area, and teachers need training in how to instruct digital citizenship skills.

October 18 – 24 this year was National Digital Citizenship Week. A growing number of schools each year are engaging in learning activities at all grade levels with lessons designed to teach students the responsible use of technology tools.

I endorse the work of Common Sense Media (www.commonsensemedia.org). They have an appropriate K-12 curriculum with a coordinated scope and sequence and age-appropriate lessons that address digital literacy and citizenship topics. Their curriculum includes professional development materials, student interactives, assessments, and family outreach materials. What is more, their curriculum is free and it is turnkey so schools can use immediately. This is welcome and refreshing news for the many public schools across this nation that have been bludgeoned by repeated budget cuts over the past decade.

Digital literacy and citizenship skills are skills that students can use for the rest of their lives. New devices and systems will come and go, but responsible use of technologies will be timeless. A brave new world is emerging, characterized by anytime, anywhere connections for everyone. This age is coming with new challenges and new trials for our children. However, schools can play an important role in educating students for how to use technology responsibly.

6 Simple Ways Teachers Can Help Promote Their Schools

An African Kikuyu proverb states, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” Unfortunately, our schools have become battlegrounds over political issues. Politicians vow not to fund public schools until they provide a quality education, yet schools have to reduce the quality of their services as they receive inadequate funding each year.

In response, educators feel undervalued. Morale is damaged. School employees begin to feel down on their profession and their local school system. And ultimately it is the students who pay the price.

Positive promotion helps kids. Below are some simple suggestions for sending forth messages about all the good that is taking place in classrooms on a daily basis.

1. First, get the message out, and do it quickly. In this day and age when everyone carries a smart phone that has a still camera, a video camera, and multiple social media connections, news is instantaneous. A message that goes out first has the advantage in swaying public opinion.

There may have been a time when newsbytes needed to be routed up through the channels of communication to the building principal and then to the district office. Nowadays that is lost time and a lost advantage.

2. Second, start with the Parents. The best technique for a good public relations program is a successful classroom teaching experience. Connect with the parents. Returns calls and e-mails promptly. Above all, take time to make connections on positive issues. Make a point of calling each parent at least once each year to talk about something good his/her child has done.

3. Third, utilize your district’s messaging system. Maintain the relationships you are developing with your parents by keeping them informed and connected to what is happening in your classroom.

4. Fourth, connect through social media. The world is online. Facebook is now bigger than the largest country on earth. As of 2015, 1.39 billion people log into Facebook each month, and that is more than the entire population of China. Your kids, parents, and community are online. Post all the good work you are already doing.

5. Fifth, use the power of photography. Social media started with text messages of 140 to 160 characters. Yet, a picture is worth a thousand words. Now the new impetus in social media is to attach a visual image to any message to grab greater attention and make it more powerful.

6. Sixth, retweet and share. Think about the power afforded to a school system where 500 employees all share a Facebook post of something positive that is happening in school or retweet a positive message promoting your school. Imagine how exponentially the message could travel. And it is so simple. All a person has to do is recognize that something positive could help your school if more people knew about it. Then simply click on the Share link.

If something as trivial as a silly cat video can go viral, why can’t an important message about the good work of your school at least go out to your community?

Positive promotion helps a school system. And if it helps the school, ultimately it helps the kids. Let us all do our part to promote our individual schools and American education by extension.

Parents Know Better that American Schools are Strong

There is a paradox present in the public perceptions of the schools in the United States. For years I have seen this same result in the annual Gallup poll on American public K-12 education. A paraphrase of one question reads, “Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. today?”

In the latest poll (which is very similar to poll results for each of the last ten years), only 45 percent of those polled expressed some level of satisfaction with the quality of America’s public schools. The majority, or 54 percent, indicated dissatisfaction.

At the same time for each of the last 17 years, people were polled with a similar question, but one with a distinct difference. Parents were asked, “How satisfied are you with the quality of education your oldest child is receiving?”

Overwhelmingly, parents expressed satisfaction with the quality of the local school system their child is attending. A dominant 76 percent of parents said they were either completely satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the educational quality of their child’s K-12 school. Only 18 percent expressed dissatisfaction.

And these results were very similar to the results recorded fifteen years earlier in 2000 and with little deviation throughout the intervening years.

If this polling truly represents the length and breadth of our great nation, then the two numbers should be similar and not polar opposites. Gallup is among the best in the business. I trust their poll numbers. On a school-by-school basis, our American public is pleased with public school quality. The difference in the polling tells me there is a perception problem.

People know their local schools from first-hand experience. However, the only way the average person can know our nation’s schools is by what they read and hear from national news, politicians, and pundits.

Let us cut through the phony criticism. Americans like their schools. They regard the schools as providing quality education to their children.

This is an opportunity to celebrate and demonstrate our optimism for public schools. In business the customer is always right. For America’s schools, their customers support the work they are doing.

Restoring Optimism for Public Education

Public education is in a state of crisis. It is vilified by uninformed media, greedy business people, and opportunistic politicians who decry it as a failed institution and a waste of tax dollars. As a result, political leaders, policy makers, and legislators decide to limit further investment in this otherwise essential public service. 

The result of this condemnation is ongoing underfunding, dwindling resources, discouragement, and a teacher shortage now in drought conditions. Perhaps the greatest casualty of this onslaught is the erosion of public confidence in its schools. This is indeed a sad and unjustified loss.

An essential part of the job of every public educator must be advocacy for the profession. This is hard for many of us. It does not fit in our wheelhouse. We were never trained with any sense that public relations was a key essential among our job skills. As a result, some shrink from this duty. I have heard it said, “I just want to go into my classroom and teach.” Unfortunately, the ostrich approach is one of the limitations we must overcome.

However, we have those champions among us who step forward and lead. Understandably, when an institution is under attack, supporters often respond emotionally to the attacks. This sometimes results in acrimonious replies and accusations laced with vitriol. For all of us who have become disgusted with politicians, we cringe at their affronts and hate-instilling rhetoric.

To build a brighter future for public education, we need to frame our narrative with positive messages. Let us tell our public what is still right about our school, how they are making a difference, and how much more we can accomplish if we have adequate resources. This builds alliances and supporters. People want to be part of a positive and hopeful cause.

Eschew the urge to fight back. We appear small as a result. Confrontation intimidates many. Fill the message with the many wonderful things happening in education today.

If you think about it, this can be really easy. Our work in service to humankind writes a million positive stories every day. The time is now to bring forth all the good there is in our profession. We need to emphasize the benefits to civilization as well as the rewards we reap as career educators.

People want to hear the positive messages. In a world where the nightly news is inundated with stories of sadness, suffering, and sometimes horror, we have the opportunity to be the shining star that guides our culture. People want to hear what is right with the world. So let us all start and end our conversations with all that is good in public education. When we all do this, our public support will return.

So sing it with me: “The sun’ll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar, . . .”

Change in Communication for School Leaders

This is my second installment in a series of blog posts on the changing nature of school administration and school leadership. This post speaks to how expectations for communication have changed.

As I write this, we are approaching the two-year anniversary since the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. Our nation was anxious for the apprehension of those responsible. As the manhunt built to its crescendo, I followed along simultaneously on television, news apps, and Twitter. On Twitter, I witnessed the emotions shared by individuals from far away and right in Boston. Our combined energies surged as our brave law officers closed the net, and we collectively cheered the outcome.

Afterward, it struck me that this was a new moment in our culture where we not only witnessed the news instantaneously but also, in some very small way, participated in it.

Much has changed in the last 100 years in the public's expectations for news and information. A century ago, news sometimes took weeks to reach its audience. In the 1930's, radio set a new standard for the immediacy of news. Television later competed and hastened the pace. But it was the modern Internet that made news instantaneous.

For years schools were largely oblivious of the need to communicate openly with their public. As the competition for students opened up between districts, schools polished their game. The usual result was a monthly newsletter. Later schools added web pages, but even this has not yet been fully supported.

However, our public is not waiting for us to catch up with modern standards for sharing information. They expect modern web sites with up-to-date news and the ability to find the information they seek. They want instant text messaging for important issues, and they want school information to come through multiple sources.

Most importantly they expect to hear the most important news immediately. Moreover, they want the news explained to them in a way that refers to them personally.

We were all shocked and saddened by the tragic news from Newtown, Connecticut, in December of 2012. But what surprised me afterwards was the way our public wanted our local school to respond to them in some way with assurances of what we were doing to keep their children safe.

This is the modern world. News is instant, and people can interact with it. If a school truly seeks to reach its public, it must share news the way the public expects it.

Change and School Leadership

This is my first installment in a series of blog posts on the changing nature of school administration and school leadership.

Conformity was the job of schools when I started as a school administrator. It was not all that long ago, but it was long enough that much has changed from the work I was trained to do to the work of school administration I now perform. Conformity was what society wanted for our graduates so they could fit into the workforce and society. Conformity was the expectation for schools, that they would fit our public vision for what a school should look like.

I remember my first job as an assistant principal in a large suburban middle school. I was in charge of writing our building's annual accreditation report for the North Central Association. One of my tasks was to count the number of chairs in the school library. Schools were expected to conform with the standard that in a quality school a certain percentage of the student population had to be accommodated within the school library at any given time. Accommodation was defined by the number of chairs in the room. We did not have enough chairs, so I was instructed to find more chairs and count again before I deposited the report in the U.S. mail.

The paradigm of the time was such that a school should look, feel, and act in a certain way, and much of that was quantifiable.

That same year, I succeeded in persuading my head principal that I needed a desktop computer to help me do my job. He was very skeptical but finally relented, and I was one of the first principals in the district to use a computer in the performance of my duties.

That was just one of the many changes to come in the field of school administration.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once warned our nation that our only real fear should be fear itself.

As I reflect on the changing nature of schools, administration, and leadership, it strikes me that the greatest change of all is change itself. We must recognize change when it is occurring. We must explain why schools must change to meet the challenges of a new world. We must be prepared to manage change, and we must be change leaders. Change has replaced conformity as the model for education.

We can no longer seek a conformity model for a school, one that can be measured and quantified. In  fact, it is one of the things holding us back now from providing quality instruction to our students when we look at models from the past rather than seeking a vision for the future.

Change is the world in which we now reside. It is how we adapt to that change that determines how successful we will be.

School and Community Working Together

A business community is most prosperous when it is supported by a strong educational system. The schools train the workforce for the businesses. What's more, a good school helps employers recruit, hire, and retain the best employees.

Likewise, a vibrant business community enhances a school system. Growing businesses bring students to the community. The businesses provide mentoring, internships, and other real-world learning opportunities that schools cannot provide by themselves. Students have jobs to support them while they attend school, and the businesses provide employment opportunities for students upon their graduation.

For these reasons, it is important for schools to work side-by-side with business and industry to enhance the local community.

Traditional education, as we see it in so many school systems, was developed early in the 20th Century. At that time, the primary source of employment in the United States was in manufacturing. So the primary duty of schools was to get students ready to assume their places in the industrial machine of America in the 1900's.

Employees needed to be able to read instructional manuals, take directions, and operate machinery in order to be successful in manufacturing. Schools initially provided instruction in the basic subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Moreover, schools were developed to emulate factories. Students began work on the bell, just like in the workplace. Then students received their component educational strands, moving from one period to the next throughout the day. This was modeled after the modern assembly line for the sake of efficiency.

Later as our towns and cities grew with their growing industry, societal problems emerged. Schools responded by adding social studies and civics to their curriculum. After World War II, the world was experiencing a revolution in scientific learning. America launched a major national initiative to emphasize science as an important subject matter in our schools.

But with the dawning of the 21st Century, our world changed again. We are in the Information Age, and the driving forces are our advancing digital technologies. As a result, the workplace is again changing. Schools need to ensure we are providing our students with the skills they need to successfully support business and industry.

To be sure we are giving students these skills, we need to look at the research of what businesses need. A researcher Tony Wagner asked business leaders what skills are needed in the modern workplace. In his book The Global Achievement Gap, Dr. Wagner names his Seven Survival Skills as defined by business leaders in their own words. Those seven skills are as follows:

1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination

Therefore, if schools are doing their best to support business and industry, we need to heed the work of people like Tony Wagner. We need to give students the skills they need for the future, not based simply upon what we have done in the past. We call these skills the Seven C’s of 21st Century Skills. They are

• Critical thinking and problem solving,
• Collaboration and leadership,
• Cross-cultural understanding,
• Career learning and self-reliance,
• Communication,
• Computing and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) literacy, and
• Creativity and innovation.

Today's employees need to be highly skilled. They need to be independent thinkers, able to solve problems and innovate. In response, we must change the way we teach students, as well as what we teach. Change does not come easily. We ask for parents and patrons to support us as we seek to adapt and change so that we can do our best possible to support local business and industry and advance the prosperity of the United State of America.

Giving Kids Technology Tools for School

Improved learning is a concern for our nation. Our economic prosperity depends on it, as does our strength as a nation. To improve learning in the 21^st Century, schools—and the public—need to realize that students need the appropriate learning tools for this age.

Technology tools alone will not do it. Schools need to thoughtfully integrate technology in support of teaching and learning at higher levels. Our aim must be improved learning. It is not devices because they are cool, and it is not technology for the sake of technology.

When we talk about technology tools for kids, some people get confused and think we simply want the devices for their bells and whistles. Some think their primary purpose is to motivate modern kids. Still others think that we mean to replace teachers with computers. None of these are true.

We are talking about technology tools for kids because these tools facilitate a new and better type of learning in this age where students become responsible for their own learning. Instead of sitting passively and acquiring the knowledge that is provided to them by the teachers, the students become active learners in the classroom, researching answers, solving problems, and analyzing global issues.

Teachers in these classrooms must assume new roles as well. They must move from the provider of knowledge to the guide that assists students with their own individual learning.

Essentially, what we are talking about is a higher standard of learning for the challenging world of this century. The workplace world has changed, and schools need to change to prepare students for the modern workplace.

For centuries, public schools have emulated the workplace or the office work of their contemporary times. When clerical workers were sharpening their nibs with penknives and dipping their quills in inkwells, schools had those same inkwells on the desk of every student.

When the office workplace was based on paper, students were getting their information from books and writing their assignments in notebooks.

With the dawning of the 21^st Century, humankind entered the information age based upon the ease of access to digital media and the volume of resources available to everyone. Many jobs that have traditionally been blue collar are now requiring a high level of technological skill. Computers are in the office, in the trades, in agriculture, and nearly everywhere.

If modern schools are to properly prepare students for their futures, the schools need to provide the modern learning tools that reflect the contemporary workplace.

Earlier this year, Minnesota Governor Dayton spoke to a difficulty Microsoft is having filling its highly skilled positions. According to Dayton, Microsoft has 2,600 senior programming jobs world-wide that are going unfilled because Microsoft cannot hire people with the skills to do these jobs. Starting salary for these jobs is $105,000 annually.

Despite our nation’s high unemployment rate and the attractive salary the software giant is offering, Microsoft cannot find the people to fill their jobs. There are simply not enough people with these skill sets.

This is the future for some of the most lucrative jobs in our nation. People with advanced technical skills will be in high demand. They will be very employable and able to demand high salaries.

We need to make sure that today’s kids are ready to earn these high salaries.

21st Century Education is Personalized Education

Only half of all school-age children in the nation finished high school back in the 1970’s. Today three-fourths of students graduate.

Still, neither of these numbers are nearly good enough. In today’s world, based upon an information economy, an educated workforce is crucial to the success of our nation. That is one reason why many states have initiatives calling on schools to ensure a one hundred percent graduation rate.

Students generally do not drop out of school because they want to. There are not great opportunities for students who drop out. The incentives are not there. For most students, they drop out because school is not relevant to them and their lives. School is not meeting their needs. So school is not engaging them.

This has been a problem with public schools for generations. For years, public schools were the only game in town. Schools could afford to be arrogant and say things like, “Do it our way, or you won’t get our diploma.” If students had options, they could attend a parochial school or drop out.

The 1980’s began to change the system as open option enrollment came to be. Students had a choice. And suddenly schools had to concern themselves with customer service or lose their students to the neighboring systems. Then in the 1990’s home schooling became more accepted. Also charter schools emerged on the scene. Two more choices became available for the kids.

Now within the last decade, online schools provide yet another option. Although online schools may not offer the social experiences and the student interaction, they have rigorous course work. And many online schools personalize the education for each individual enrolled.

Public schools have been notoriously slow to understand competition and customer service, but now it has become a fundamental which schools can only disregard at their own peril of irrelevance.

The successful schools of the 21st Century will be those who understand customer service. They will understand the need to engage every learner and make every student successful.

For schools who plan to be a relevant and significant within their communities, they need to meet the needs of all their students and strive for that goal of one hundred percent graduation.

Leadership at Its Most Powerful is by Example

I once knew an executive who routinely displayed displeasure and sometimes contempt for his subordinates. Meanwhile he would preach to his team how they needed to improve staff morale. Unfortunately, the lieutenants emulated the leader. His team may have been told what to do, but they did as they were shown.

If the leader does not do it, there is actually a disincentive for someone in the rank and file to move toward the cutting edge. Whether intentionally or without awareness, a leader's actions (or inactions) are setting the thermostat for the organization. We want the acceptance and appreciation of our leaders, so we emulate them and their actions. This is particularly why we gravitate toward dynamic leaders. They epitomize the courage, determination, and enthusiasm that we would like to see in ourselves.

I understand why many educators are slow to personally embrace modern technologies in their schools and leadership. Schools are people-centric organizations. We are held accountable primarily for how we interact with others and build relationships with students, staff, and community. There are a number of competent and highly regarded school administrators who meet the current expectations of their schools without an extensive skill set in using technologies. And as technology races ahead of us, we wonder if it is truly worth our effort to include this vast territory in our domain.

I have had my personal experiences with these doubts. As a young educator entering the profession, I embraced desktop computing very quickly. I recognized how it could enhance my work, and I have taken pains to remain current in this area. However, after several years in the professional, I saw the emergence of the new social medias, and I did not understand them. Late-night comics made jokes about the banal "tweets" that celebrities issued. Twitter seemed unintelligible, and Facebook seemed prosaic. I did not understand why these were relevant, and I finally concluded that the concept was maybe a generational thing. I decided to let the younger set move ahead with social media and its applications to education.

Then I had a small epiphany. A few years ago, I attended the National Conference on Education hosted by AASA. I joined several sessions focusing on technology, and all the speakers said the same thing: "A leader has to lead by example."

I responded, "Of course! I knew that. Why did I forget that simple principle?" I left the conference with a personal resolution to get back ahead of the technology movement.

I believe my attitude toward technology and all it can do for our students is making a difference in how our staff view the future of education.

All leaders need to remember this simple truth about leadership by example, and we need to recognize that technology is the future for the students we serve. With this simple understanding, our direction is clear.

Be the leader. Set the example.

Every School Needs a Facebook Page

If your school does not yet have a Facebook page, it will soon. And if you do not create it, someone else will do it for you. Will you be controlling your message?

Launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates, Facebook is a social networking service with currently over one billion active users. People everywhere are accessing Facebook. More than half of users are accessing Facebook on a mobile device. Facebook is the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. In April 2010 an estimated 41.6 percent (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Between 20 to 30 percent of Facebook users are "power users" who frequently link, poke, post, and tag themselves and others.

Your students are using it. So are your teachers, staff, parents, and patrons. They are engaging in a conversation about your district right now. It is important that your side of the story gets shared as well.

Schools have been slow to recognize change as it happens on the Internet. Years after "web surfing" became part of our parlance, many schools still did not have a web presence. Still today, more than 20 years after the Internet began to change education, many schools have a very plain, informational web site that does little to promote a positive image.

So too with Facebook, many schools feel it is beneath them to dabble in social networking. We like to think of education as a serious business and hope others will take us seriously as well. So we have little time for social trends or fads that may come and go.

But business and industry are involved. They recognize the serious profit potential this market creates. Politics takes it seriously too. It may have been one of the difference-makers in the last presidential election. Online social networking is something that schools need to take seriously as well.

Schools can use it simply enough. Someone needs to be the manager and take the primary responsibility for the page. But that person does not need to fly solo. Others school team members can be added as managers, content creators, or moderators. Together this team keeps the content relevant and the message positive.

Create content your public will want to read about. Catch kids doing well; compliment staff when they successfully achieve. Link your smartphone to your school Facebook page so you can update it on-the-go. Then snap a photo and/or add a quick comment when you see kids doing things worthy of recognition. Bring attention to the good things in your school. People care about good information flowing from your Facebook page. You will be surprised how quickly your message spreads.

The messages will spread anyway regardless of whether or not you are engaged in it. Be part of the conversation to spread the good word about your school.

Varied Visions of 21st Century Learning

I recently listened to a vendor talk about the role of video in the classrooms of the future.

He described a classroom where the teacher is at the front of the room before students but also captured on video and broadcast to classrooms miles away where the teacher's lecture would be heard by many students beyond the traditional classroom. The video system would allow students to watch and listen, but also to interrupt to ask questions or comment.

The vendor said, "Imagine, a teacher reading Dr. Seuss to students hundreds of miles away!"

First, I want to say that foremost I applaud people and organizations who try to envision classrooms of the future.

However, finding a new vision can be difficult. With no obvious alternatives, we all tend to default to visions of classrooms past. I have been there too. Eager to transform education for the 21st Century using the advantages of modern technology, I planned and even took part in training teachers on how to move their worksheets and quizzes to online web applications. Teachers could continue to instruct their classrooms with traditional methodologies but use technology tools for drills and assessments.

Of course my error is obvious. Education does not have an issue with finding a variety of ways of drilling or testing our kids. The quality of the classroom experience is determined entirely by the quality of the instruction in the classroom.

To improve our classrooms for the 21st Century, we need to change our focus from one where the teacher is the star of each classroom. The more actively engaged students are, the more they learn. This is where technology becomes the fulcrum that makes the difference. Students can use modern technologies to research, to break their learning into parts, and to reassemble it into new knowledge. Our students need to be working together in cooperative situations using project-based learning and evaluated by authentic assessments of the work they have done.

When technology is engaged in a manner where it makes a difference in actual instruction, we will see that it offers the leverage we need to make positive change in education.

Educators Must Embrace Change to Fight Obsolescence

My grandfather Arthur was born in 1889. Descending from a long line of blacksmiths, he became a blacksmith too. One of his first jobs as a young man was working as a blacksmith for the Texas Rangers. He became very adept and expert in his vocation and became a farrier too, a blacksmith who watches the gait of the horse then trims the hooves and fashions the shoes to improve the horse's walking and running. An orthopedist for horses, essentially. He was indispensable to the local farmers who relied on horses.

But agriculture evolved and farms were worked with tractors. My grandfather's shop transitioned from smithing to mechanics. He learned how the engines worked on early tractors and automobiles. It was a huge change from working with live animals to working with machines, but it was the nature of his business at the time. And he became indispensable for his mechanical skills.

During my grandfather's lifetime, schools remained largely unchanged. The only option for a student was to attend the local school within whose district he or she resided or drop out of school altogether.

But education is changing rapidly. Online learning is revolutionary. The options for our students are no longer the neighboring districts or the local parochial school. The competition is across the state, across the nation, and around the world. It is estimated that by 2019, half of high school courses will be online.

My grandfather could have ignored or fought the transition to mechanized farming. What would have happened to him if he had? But he adapted and remained successful.

Teachers cannot afford to fight technology and online learning. Those who do could go the way of the blacksmithing profession.

If we have teachers that can be replaced by computers, then we should, and quickly. Fortunately, the teachers I know will always have the capability to be far more valuable than the instruction that can be offered strictly through a machine. What we need our classrooms and courses that are so engaging that they remain relevant and become invaluable. The key is that we all must embrace the change, adapt to the new nature of today's education, and make ourselves indispensable for the educational services we can provide.

With our technology, we are within a year or two of developing a supercomputer that can exceed the computational powers of the human brain. But no computer will ever exceed the power of the human soul.

Finding a New Vision for 21st Century Learning

Educators need to recognize that education is changing . . . schools are changing. We need to find a new model of education for the 21^st Century.

There was a time when schools served the students of their school district. District lines were drawn, and students were required to attend the school within their district. Schools set their expectations, and students had little choice but to meet the expectations of the school. In those days, if schools had competition, it was probably the local parochial school. The other option was for students to simply drop out, and many did.

Then in the 1980’s, schools opened their boundaries due to open enrollment. Competition was suddenly the neighboring districts. Schools had to be as good or better than their neighbors to prosper or even survive.

But here in the  21^st  Century the game has changed again and dramatically. With online learning, our competition is state-wide, it’s nation-wide, it’s world-wide. And to look at the evidence, a person cannot say these online schools are not offering quality. They are. But they are also doing something more. They are custom tailoring the education programs to each individual student. They are using a business model and providing exceptional service to their customers.

To compete in the 21^st Century, schools will need to emulate, and even surpass, this model.

The best schools now are challenging their students with active learning where the students are the center of the classroom. The teacher is no longer the holder of knowledge. Facts today are but a click away. Students today need to become independent learners and critical thinkers. The classroom must then be a place where students research, find their own answers, work together to solve problems, create new knowledge, and teach each other. The role of the teacher is then changed to a facilitator of learning, i.e. a guide, a problem presenter, a questioner, a librarian, and a collaborator.

The best schools are also utilizing technology tools to facilitate this higher order thinking and learning. And please understand that we should not buy technology because it is cool, or because other schools are investing in it. We need to use it because it is necessary to fully implement our vision of  21^st  Century learning.

If you are not yet there, this is the year we all need to find our vision.

The above was part of my address to faculty and staff as part of our back-to-school workshop.

What Superintendents Can Learn From Twitter

Below is an article in the August 1, 2012 issue of School Administrator magazine that I wrote in partnership with my colleague superintendents Pam Moran, David Britten, and Joshua Starr.

Can a message of only 140 characters really affect change in the world? Twitter is doing just that one message at a time.

Twitter is the world’s second most popular social network with 140 million users. Members send microblogs or “tweets” of a maximum of 140 characters. Twitter forwards 340 million of these tweets every day. Educators around the world are using Twitter for conversations on significant educational issues. Joining the confabulation, a growing number of school superintendents are realizing the power of Twitter as a tool within the profession.

Twitter is helping superintendents overcome the isolation of the office. David Britten (@colonelb) of Godfrey-Lee Public Schools in Michigan said he found it lonely at the top. “Along came Twitter and although I didn’t really know how to use it effectively at first, when I began meeting other superintendents like Pam Moran (@pammoran), Dave Doty (@canyonsdave), and John Carver (@johnccarver),” said Britten, “I quickly realized the value of connecting on a nearly real-time basis with my professional peers.”

Pam Moran, superintendent of Albermarle County, Virginia, connected with Britten over Twitter and has participated in collaborative project work with him for two years. “Our work together often begins with a tweeted question or a shared resource,” said Moran. “As a result of our twitter professional learning network (PLN), Dave and I first connected about his district’s BYOD (bring-your-own-device) implementation. It wasn’t long before I had a commitment from @colonelb to Skype into our back-to-school leadership team meeting.”

For Britten, Twitter fits his philosophy of transparent leadership by providing him with a vehicle to communicate on the move to staff, students, parents, and his Board of Education. He links Twitter to the district’s web page, his personal blogs, and the district Facebook page, which her personally manages. “One of the immediate benefits of real-time communications is the growing level of trust between my administration and the professional staff,” said Britten.

Joshua Starr (@mcpssuper), superintendent of the 147,000 student district of Montgomery County Maryland, uses Twitter to promote best teaching practices. “If I am visiting a school and see a powerful lesson or an effective teaching strategy, I can take a picture and send out a Tweet,” said Starr. “It takes 30 seconds and not only let’s people know I’m visiting schools, but gives them a glimpse into my educational philosophy and what I value in teaching and learning.”

The depth of Twitter increases as users follow “hashtags,” key words beginning with the pound symbol (#). This makes them easy to search and connect. An on-going dialogue is taking place daily at #suptchat.

Lists also make Twitter more usable. “I follow @DanielLFrazier/supts and it’s a key list for me,” said Moran. “I can click in anytime and find any of several hundred other superintendents in the stream. Some days, I may lurk in watching what my peers post because I just need the reflective space. On other days, I will retweet and add to the conversation, bringing in other people to the conversation.”

Beginning users are cautioned to take it slowly but be persistent. The cacophony of messages can drive people away shortly after they start. Taken as a whole, the messages make little sense at first. But users watch and learn. It takes time to acquire an understanding of the power of the tool.

“Even if a superintendent is not actively tweeting, they should be monitoring Twitter,” said Starr. “There is an important conversation happening about education right now, and much of it is happening on Twitter. By following the right people, you can quickly understand what is going on in the world of education, know what you need to read or, at least, ask your staff to get up to speed.”

Moran describes Twitter as, “a tool for learning, re-energizing, engaging, and searching collaboratively with people from all walks of life and background experience. Twitter helps superintendents sow their seeds of curiosity and reap the benefits of exploring beyond the boundaries of our districts.”

Here’s to meeting you online! Find me @DanielLFrazier.

Where to Go with 1-to-1 Laptop Learning

"It is not about the machines; it is about teaching and learning." I have heard this so often when discussing one-to-one laptop learning, I wonder if it bears repeating. I hope this fact is becoming common knowledge.

Sioux Central School District in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, just completed its second year as a one-to-one laptop learning school for grades 3 through 12. The school has enjoyed great success in grades 6 through 12, so that it upgraded laptops and infrastructure this year for grades 4 and 5 and added laptops to grade 3 as well. With the year ended, I use this blog post to reflect on where we should be heading for the future of our school and its students.

There is another prolific statement I hear when discussing technology for the classroom. When someone asks the questions, "Laptops or tablets?" or "PC or Mac?" I hear the reply, "Well it all depends on what you plan to do with the technology." Although it is an accurate response, it is also a little smug. It leaves unexplained what schools should be doing with the technology

Simply put, our aim should be high-order thinking skills. We want our students to be creators of knowledge, not simply consumers. Using Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, we want our students involved in project-based learning where they are evaluating their sources. We also want them re-teaching, so they are breaking down the information and reassembling it into a new whole.

I get very excited about what is happening in our classrooms when I visit and I see students highly engaged in non-traditional instruction. They are using their laptops, but they are relating personally to each other. They are working in groups, arguing what is relevant and how they should present their findings back to the rest of the class. Now that is a worthy goal for any classroom.

One-to-one laptops are allowing students to learn and retain at higher levels. The difference can be explained using the Learning Pyramid from the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine. The pyramid reveals how content retention is related to the methodology used by the teacher:

Average Retention Rates

5% - Lecture

10% --- Reading

20% - Audio-Visual

30% --- Demonstration

50% --- Group Discussion

75% ------- Practice by Doing

90% ----------- Teaching Others

Laptop learning changes the classroom dynamic from more traditional passive learning, i.e., lecture, reading, and audio-visuals, to the active learning of practice by doing and teaching others.

Public Documents versus Personal Privacy: A Balancing Act

There was a time when school officials, i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators, could easily keep their private correspondence separate from their public communication. Sunshine laws across the nation opened up to public access the documents of governmental institutions. Still an individual could consciously prepare documents for public access while keeping their personal lives and correspondence private.

Documents
Documents by definition have always been printed on paper. Then, whoosh, modern communication technologies rushed in, and a document is now just a doc and may never exist in any other than an electronic format. Still the law of the land applies. A school employee creating a doc on a school computer or tablet device--whether of a professional or personal nature--could have it opened up to public inspection under a public records request.

E-mail
E-mail messages are also considered public documents. They are quick and informal, so people can sometimes get careless with what is stated in an e-mail. But educators should remember that every e-mail arrives with a Forward button; it can be forwarded anywhere after it is sent. School e-mail should be restricted to school purposes. Personal party invitations (particularly if the party may involve alcohol) are probably best sent to and from personal e-mail accounts.

One other danger with e-mail being so quick and easy: it can potentially be used to circumvent an open meetings law. Public decisions need to be made in public meetings, not over a few e-mails.

Personal Notes
Now personal notes should remain personal, shouldn't they? Ah, but here is where things get tricky. The hard drives of school computers remain school property. The computing device was issued to the educator to conduct school business, so anything, including letters, notes, and photographs, could be potentially opened to public scrutiny.

Web Browsers
The web browsers of individual employees are also subject to potential public inspection. The public could ask to review the web browser history of an individual. It also can potentially ask for the browser bookmarks an employee has set.

The Trash
Finally, the mundane topic of the trash bin on the computer is important to mention. The fact is that nothing in this digital age ever truly goes away. You can delete your e-mail, but it still remains on a server somewhere. You can erase your hard drive, but probably your files are backed up elsewhere. Or your files can be retrieved with computer forensic techniques. And social media, i.e., postings on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, are beyond your control the moment you hit the enter key.

The Balance
School employees are not automatons for the digital age. They have personal lives. Human interaction and personal relationships remain at the heart of the education profession. Messages should and will recognize the uniqueness of the individuals to whom they were sent. No one has a problem with a personal shopping list being written on a school computer. No one minds that you browsed a vacation destination during your break (as long as it's not some hedonistic, clothing-optional haven). But school employees should try to keep their personal documents on their own personal devices and should send and receive their personal e-mail messages through a third party, e.g. Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail.

It is not 1984 (the book by Orwell, not the year); Big Brother is not watching you. However, each and every public employee, using public funds, is charged with the responsible use of those public resources in their trust. This is good. We all pay taxes and expect our tax dollars to be used appropriately and responsibly.

P.S.
If you have some other legal advice or personal insight on this subject, I would enjoy hearing back from you.

P.S.S.
And now, if we could only get our state and federal legislators to be as open and forthcoming as they expect public employees to be!

The Indispensable Tool for Teaching Writing: Google Docs

English language arts teachers may be the hardest working teachers in America's secondary schools. This is a bold and generalized statement, but it reflects the countless hours that writing teachers spend from their personal and family time on evenings and weekends checking stacks of lengthy term papers in addition to reading ahead in the literature, preparing for upcoming lessons, and coaching speech or sports and directing the school play. I was an English teacher once, but I could not take the hours and the workload, so I retired from teaching English to become an administrator.

Nonetheless, I am almost tempted to return to an English classroom now that new technology tools are making writing instruction so much more powerful and productive. My favorite is Google Documents. Every English and language arts teacher needs the high-tech devices to be able to utilize Google Docs in class.

Writing is a process; however, teachers historically treat it as a product. We assign a writing topic at the beginning of the week. Sometimes we may ask students to submit outlines or note cards along the way. We may discuss in class how the compositions are progressing. But then the final products are submitted on Friday for summary judgment by the teacher. And the teacher judges the product of each student's labor.

Google Docs allows instructors to teach writing as a process. A teacher can set up a Google document for each student in his or her class. Then the teacher has access to the document. The teacher can review it periodically and coach the student through the writing process.

A teacher could follow along and check students as they work through daily writing process assignments like the ones below.

• Monday:          Students will brainstorm possible topics and create word webs.
• Tuesday:          Students will write thesis statements and rough outlines.
• Wednesday:     Students will revise their rough outlines into sentence outlines.
• Thursday:         Students will re-write their sentence outlines into paragraphs.
• Friday:             Students will add concluding paragraphs and polish final drafts of their essays.

Instead of disposing of each step in the process or handing in each to the teacher as a separate assignment, the steps could all remain in the single composition with new material added at the beginning of the doc each day.

By providing time in class daily to work on the writing process, the teacher can review the writing assignments in class, offer suggestions on word usage and syntax, and coach the students on their writing.

Moreover, if the writing assignments are monitored along the way, students will be less able to cheat. It will be harder for students to simply cut and paste an assignment belonging to someone else because teachers will be watching the writing progress. Also, students will be more likely to be on track by the end of the week. It will be hard to claim the dog ate the homework when the teacher knows what was done prior to the due date.

Finally, this is not just for English teachers. Reading and writing instruction is the responsibility of every teacher in the school system. I have heard too many teachers say something like, "I am a history teacher. I am only interested in how the students describe history in their papers. It is not my job to correct spelling, grammar, or word usage." This is a flaw in our system that we have compartmentalized subject areas. It is the job of every teacher to tie all the curricular areas together.

I encourage all teachers to use these tech tools. They have the potential for turning around our criticized educational institutions. Now let us get the technology devices into the hands of our teachers so they can use these tools to teach students.