Art TEAMS Successes and Lessons in Year 1

 Many teachers have shared that the program is helping them reconnect to teaching, combat burnout, and feel rejuvenated.  In their feedback and reflections, they attribute this to:

● The careful creation of a strong sense of community and trust

● Responsive curriculum design and feeling heard

● Slowness and airiness-a focus on depth rather than breadth, iteration, spiraling curriculum, and being given time for deep thinking and making

● The mantra “Completion is not the goal” (Lucero)

● Movement segments & reconnecting to their bodies as instruments for learning

Movement and reflection: Teacher participants, Team members, and Advisory Board members expressed the necessity of movement and reflection as the key to processing in their learning experiences and communicated a desire to continue movement and reflective practices. One teacher noted, “the movement piece was absolutely essential to connecting all of this together,” while several others shared the impact of having “more time for reflection” and “reflection times” provided opportunities to slow down and process.   

Challenges in project implementation and lessons for moving forward

Keeping teaching artists engaged 

Teaching Artists were engaged during the concentrated summer workshops. During the academic year, their participation dropped off and was considerably more limited. We are working with our artists, board members and the art community to think about ways to productively engage artists throughout the life of the grant.

Recruiting administrators 

In the post-COVID educational environment, it was hard for administrators to commit large chunks of time. As a result, we inverted the relationship and reached out individually to spend time with each administrator in a time they could find. We used our flexibility to compensate for Administrators' rigid schedules.

Grace

After the last two years of teaching during the Pandemic and Racial Reckoning, educators expressed exhaustion, and some were thinking of a career change. The Curriculum we constructed and adjusted took that reality into account, providing choice and “airiness”. As a result, teachers became more motivated and thought less about a career change. The grant had a significant positive impact on well-being and willingness to continue teaching. We will continue to reduce the number of transitions and give more time for the application of content, to expand the amount of time on the task.

What contributions the project has made to research, knowledge, practice, and/or policy. 

The project is in its first year, and we have limited contributions so far:

Conducting a thematic analysis of post-workshop comments, we uncovered four key themes that were identified, including 1) Movement and Reflection, 2) Collaborative Community, 3) Studio Access and Tool Time, and 4) Curricular Revision and Classroom Implementation.  

Movement and Reflection  

Several teacher participants expressed the necessity of both movement and reflection as modes of pausing and processing in their learning experiences and communicated a desire to continue movement and reflective practices. 

Collaborative Community   

Teachers also indicated the benefit of building and maintaining a supportive network through collaboration, specifically through conversation, observing each other’s work, and developing relationships. 

Studio Access and Tool Time  

Teachers shared continued excitement about the development of EMA projects and learning about tools to continue materializing projects. 

Curricular Revision and Classroom Implementation  

Teacher participants revealed a need for increased time with TFU (Teaching for Understanding), classroom implementation, curricular revision, and focusing on subject content. 

Acknowledgments:

Art TEAMs is made possible by the emergent, collaborative interactions between many individuals. A deep gratitude is extended to all who participated in the experience of teaching (and learning) with emerging media and arts, including teachers (Matt Auch-Moedy, Jessica Davis, Maggie Elsner, Sarah Gabelhouse, Kate Gracie, , Sarah Holz, Mark James, Sarah Kroenke, Ryan Margheim, Megan Pitrat, Katie Samson, Melissa Sellers, Amy Spilker, and Jessi Wiltshire,) for embracing ambiguity and vulnerability and expanding into new ways of seeing; administrators (Dr. Lynn Fuller) for holding space and having conversations about new ideas; museum educators (Laura Huntimer) for offering valuable educational resources; teaching artists (Cayleen Greene, Fernando Montejano, Angel Geller, and Isabella Meier) for sharing their creative processes; the advisory board (Megan Elliot, Dr. Jorge Lucero, and Dr. Diana Cornejo-Sanchez) for shepherding the design and development of the program; and the research team (Kimberley D’Adamo, Lorinda Rice, Guy Trainin, HyeonJin Yoon, and Maggie Bertsche, Carrie Bohmer, Mackayla Kelsey, and Gretchen Larsen) for weaving together the many pedagogic and curricular threads of a complex tapestry.  

Art TEAMS is off to a Great Start

 

This week we finally started our Art TEAMS grant with teachers. The project is developing self-driven creative learners who connect disciplines using arts and emerging media as a language to engage and organize knowledge and life experiences.

We will accomplish this by developing, implementing, and evaluating a professional development program for K-12 art educators, generalist teachers, principals, teaching artists, and museum educators.

This week was our first with this great crew of educators. In this professional learning opportunity, we have been careful to design a program that respects the strengths of all the participants and positions everyone as a participant and co-leader. I have to admit that I have not created this much physical representation of learning since my Graduate school days at UCR, nor have I created this much art since my elementary school days. I have found the interactions and the learning powerful, and I believe we are on our way to creating a powerful model that will provide an avenue for innovation. 

Reflecting on this week, my lessons are:

1. We all require protected time to make leaps in our practice and transform our approach. I do know that summer workshops transformation is hard to bring back into the classroom, and thus we will continue to support and work with our team of educators for the next two years.

2. Art is fun even for those with a limited artistic ability (me). You just have to let go and be playful. 

3. Exploring the affordances of materials and discovering their malleability is a truly engaging endeavor.

4. Movement. Movement is magical; in many ways, it is a discovery for me, a discovery that makes me dance with joy. 

Finally, I want to reflect on a moment of pride. In this grant, we insisted on supporting local Nebraska artists. We have found four unique and outstanding artists. I will talk about each of them in a different post but for now suffice to say that I have had a glorious week, and I cannot wait for next week to continue the work.

Teacher websites are so 2010... and what to do about it

I am working with teachers this week on technology integration. I am seeing a real determination to find productive ways to integrate technology and subject matter (TPCK anyone?). Speaking yesterday during our summary I said "Websites are so 2010", as some are working on a website this may have come off wrong BUT I do stand behind my main point. Businesses have already realized it, teachers and schools are still trying to come to grips with it. Having a website is not enough. To be in contact with our students and families, we have to shift from static web pages to interacting  using social media, texting, and email to reach everyone. This way new content whether analog or digital can reach its target audience.

I can see the justified reaction: Teachers are asked to do more than ever and here is one more thing... and: We might get in trouble...

I believe that this are true concerns. On the other hand:
A good communication plan will make sure that parents and students have the most up to date information increasing the rate of homework completion, assessment success, participation in parent conferences and many more activities that require the collaboration of parents and families. Our hardest to reach families may become much more available and attentive if we use communication channels they use anyway. The potential benefits outweigh the risks and costs.

In short, I believe that the days of sending notes home on paper are numbered. For now we probably should still have them as a backup to ensure equity of access, but I am convinced that the rate of engagement would grow significantly with digital, especially, social channels. Districts (and teacher education programs) should help teachers by providing tools, training, and guidelines that would encourage contact while protecting all stakeholders.

P.S. Can we do away with paper planners for students?

FoF (Fear of Facebook)

At NETA I met many great teachers all interested in finding new ways to integrate technology into their instruction. It was great seeing so many familiar faces, especially since five years ago during my first visit I did not know many of the participants.

One of the teachers who stopped by our poster on thursday afternoon confided: "I know I need to use some of this for my students. I have a facebook page but I never post. People get fired over facebook posts." This comment is not new, I actually hear it quite often from teachers who seem paralyzed by the fear of technology. I actually have even discussed it before on this blog. Thei frustration seems to grow as they seem to be afraid but also pushed to integrate technology. They feel between a rock and a hard place- and thus frustrated.

This time I just got curious about the phenomena and whether there really was an epidemic of social media firings. I used Google to try and ferret out exactly how many teachers have been reported being fired because of social media activity in the last year. For all the media and teacher hype I found very few actual cases of full time teachers fired.

1. In Smithville Ohio a teacher got fired over a post on Dairy farming. He was let go by the local school board but reinstitated (with back pay) after a short court battle. More here and here
2. Texas teacher from Duncanville resigned over an inflamatory tweet here. It was quite extreme and she resigned.
3. Ashley Payne resigned over facebook pics. See here. The main point was that she has resigned and was not fired (unlike most of the headlines)

There were a few cases of substitute teacher "firing" mostly over posting of student photos.

So is there room to worry?
I would argue that anyone needs to be careful about social media and be a good citizen (not just digital).
But
1. Given 3.4 million K12 public school teachers around the country and with most on Facebook the incidence of firing seems to be extremely small.
2. Teachers should not resign without legal council
3. Read your district guidelines especially about posting photos of students

Consult this page from the NEA

Remember that as a prospective teacher you need to excerice more caution.

Do not let this stop you from participating in thoughtful technology integration your students will be missing out.

Almost There- Reading Rainbow and Beyond

A few weeks back I had a chance to hear Dr. Twila Liggett discuss her work in the development of Reading Rainbow. In a wonderful walk down memory lane she described some of the more significant moments in the shows history. She recalled shows about incarcerated parents and a post 9/11 show with students from PS 234 (video below). These are great examples of public television and what it can do to help kids and parents understand the world around them and open up to new ideas, concepts, and events.

Reading Rainbow has since shifted to the iPad in a great App but I would argue that Reading Rainbow and other shows like it (few I admit) are not the format going forward. In this age of interactive cheap media we no longer have to wait for someone else to make shows for us. Any child, teacher, classroom, and school can create their own video, show, or review without needing big budget or complicated equipment. In fact most of us have everything we need in our pocket (smart phone) or at hand (iPad, laptop with webcam).

Liggett remembered these emotional moments and how wonderful it was to be within the doing. All of us can be producing not just consuming. All students can feel the emotional well being of creating together, having an audience, and performing to a potential global audience.

Sir Ken Robinson talked about the incredible feeling of being in the orchestra. The modern tools allow every child to be the star of their local Reading Rainbow like show. In fact maybe the future of such shows is like the present for TED talks with local TEDx. Yes we have the main event, but each school or locality can create their own show in the image of the original.

Dr. Liggett  did not draw that conclusion. To be fair it wasn't that kind of an event, she was asked to talk about the past and that she did. It is up to us to seize these lessons from those who have led ed media in the past and make sense of them for our times.

Reading RainbowX challenge anyone?

Aurora 1:1 or what I learned this morning

Today we had our 13th TechEDGE conference. We spent the whole day with brave teachers in Aurora Public Schools who are integrating technology in a 1:1 iPad environment and agreed to let us come in and observe.

It was great. It was also the first conference that I have participated in (let alone organize) that happened during regular school time with authentic teaching presented.

Here are my three takeaways, not new, but refreshing to hear from teachers:

1. One to one integration does not mean all tech all the time. Teachers integrated analog and digital across lessons

2. Social media is encouraged. I have heard multiple teachers start with "as you saw in my email" or "please post to twitter with the hashtag...". One teacher declared: "it is my job to model digital citizenship on social media. I let them know if they misbehave online.

3. Teachers need to know that what they are doing is special and of high quality. The school admins said that the conference was a great efficacy boost for their teachers.

Four things we should do using Technology in Education to come to terms with Privilege

By User:Sargoth (Own work) [Public domain]

It is impossible to avoid thinking about Ferguson these days. But I approach the topic with great trepidation. I am not offering solutions nor explanations just some thoughts about what can be different using the affordances of technology and the power of teaching.

1. Let's not let the moment slip away- once in a while a moment emerges that is an opportunity to discuss equity be it poverty, privilege, race or sexual orientation. Katrina was such a moment but soon national attention drifted away and it was no longer attended to. My lesson from Katrina is to discuss it with my students here and now, leverage the event as it unfolds. The beauty of technology here is in the ability to access events, media, and opinion. As future teachers my students need to learn to pay attention, process, and find ways to integrate meaningful learning about social topics as they arise.

2. Let's be critical. Once students start exploring an event they can explore different narratives, consider point of view and learn to be critical. They can use this critical stance to take a look at their immediate environment and then follow up with action.

3. Let's teach technologies allows everyone to tell their story. Social media tools allows multiple stories to come out and prevents any one channel from telling a unified simple story (that is never true). Encourage your students to use social media to increase the impact of stories that matter to them, encourage them to create their own digital stories.

4. Let's act. With our students we need to make a difference in the real world using physical actions. Then let's document the action and make sure that it has a digital echo as well. For example we are building a family literacy program that builds on family strengths rejecting a deficit stance.

Let's not let this opportunity to discuss things that matter deeply slip away!

Scholar 2.0

Yesterday at the American Educational Research Association meeting I went to a session on the role of social media in our work as scholar (check out #AERAcademicSM). The discussants were honest and open about what they did and did not do on social media. This prompted me to think about my social media habits and the choices I make as I manage multiple identities: professional, personal, institutional.

The participants admitted that with time there convergence between the different identities and the management forces you to choose the one major stream. I think the most common identity management were (1) non engagement (for me its tumblr) and (2) using facebook as a family and friends platform distinct from other more professional platforms.

Everyone admitted that social media tools were great for a variety of uses. The first and maybe most important was communicating with various audiences. Communication in social media was bi-directional in many ways not all of them robust (being liked is great but how much substance is behind it?). On the research side online communities can help recruit participants for studies and disseminate results back to them. Working with young children this is not something I do but I can see the potential especially when you are working with marginalized populations that are not easily accessible.

I have been struggling with these concepts myself as this blog has evolved. The blog has started as a blog that shares the results of the work on arts integration. With time the blog has morphed to conform my new interests: teacher education and technology integration. I found myself thinking, I want to write about... but it doesn't really fit the title or the original intent. On the other hand I do not want to manage multiple blogs either. At this point my blog it is just a reflection of my overall professional identity.

I am also attaching a map of my social media presence. Icons are related to the relative volume on the channels but I intend on adding layers with data in the near future. Mind you this does not include our parallel work in Chinese Social Media.

Six Lessons about Textbook Digital Alternatives- from Students Perspective

I've been working without a textbook this semester and discovered that my students do not read/ consume the media I included. My students are preservice teachers and I teach them teaching methods for reading and writing- a key area.

I decided to take Tricia's idea (more about that in a future post) and open the topic for discussion with my students. We set up a circle around the room and established rules for discussion: open, respectful to all, no grade repercussions, everyone has to contribute. I actually found it hard to phrase my concern about media consumption and what I wanted out of the discussion so I used a sort of a think aloud
sharing my goals and hopes for the no books approach but also reminding them that this innovation and it simply might not be optimal practice.

My students reaction was interesting. They made a few points:
1. They really prefer the digital resources. They all said that the variety of resources and the practical application examples are extremely helpful. I include high quality websites (e.g. ReadWriteThink.org, reading rockets) and articles from practitioner journals (e.g. The Reading Teacher).

2. They like classroom example videos the most. This was one of the main reasons I wanted digital resources the peeks at models different than their cooperating teachers can open up new ideas and break the first axiom of pre service teachers that states: When there is a dissonance between method classes and student field experiences the impact of method instructors is positively correlated with pre-service teacher achievement. Classroom videos help bring more evidence to the alternatives I am trying to bring to their attention.

3. They would like more chances to discuss and organize the information in class. The set of materials do not connect like a well organized textbook. Frankly they are not used to making these connections especially when different sources use somewhat different vocabulary. I believe that it is an important skill to learn as a professional but it requires some practice.

4. Sometimes they just "forget", or prioritize differently but that is true of traditional materials as well. We always knew they weren't always reading but with digital resources I have evidence. I do not want to turn the evidence into grading though- mostly because it can be easily "gamed" by opening files without actually engaging students.

5. Some often print out shorter pieces so they can comment. Students have obviously not used digital commenting options for consuming different media. This is something that they need to learn (and we must teach) since they will most likely have to teach this skill to their own students!

6. Some find long written pieces (in PDF) hard to follow digitally. (goes back to point 5).

So...
Together we came to some ways we can improve learning using these resources.
       I go over the assigned media in the class session before it is due. I briefly explain emphases and what I expect them to gain and provide some key vocabulary. This has been hard to remember but since then I have done it in 2 out of 3 meetings.
       We established a discussion board for questions about the reading to be posted before beginning of class. Students can either post their own questions or vote to support others questions. I have used this method extensively in my summer classes that I flipped to create "just in time" teaching.  I spend 10-15 minutes at the front end of class responding to questions that emerged from media consumption (for example- "the video showed how to do think alouds with fifth graders, how can you do it in first grade?"). The questions that I do not have time to respond to in class will be answered online through direct responses to posts (potentially too labor intensive) or a short video summarizing ideas.
      I will also try to avoid very long pieces (text or video) and establish a way for my students to evaluate the content and their satisfaction with it (still working on that one). The last piece is helping students find ways to comment on digital resources electronically maybe through a student user group...

Still work to be done.

   

Textbooks Alternatives and Despair

In my search fo better ways to teach I have challenged myself to teach this semester without textbooks. In my four classes I use no textbooks (although I do use two content books). Instead I use a series of freely available resources from professional organizations, libraries, YouTube etc. The idea was to tailor learning to students of the 21st century adapting to their media consumption behaviors. At the same time since all of my students aim to become elementary teachers this serve as a demonstration of a possible future in which education can choose a digital option that is not tied to one of the large curriculum companies.

As such I also imagined my role in the classroom changing from the authority on content to being the person who connects all the pieces to a meaningful schema.

A month in I have some neat mixed media in folders on LMS, I am happy enough with the resources. This is where despair kicks in. I spent a lot of time planning resources and approaches- putting items I think are really exceptional BUT when I try to get discussion going in my class I am met with blank stares. A quick check of student activity online shows that they are not consistently accessing the materials. Heck even materials students create for themselves and others as part of the learning are not really accessed...

This is where despair creeps in. The empty stares and quiz results tell me they are not consuming the media, that they do not know core ideas beyond what was discussed in class.

When I try and analyze why I have a few ideas. The first is that this is a new practice and students have been conditioned to consider online resources as somehow "lesser" or supplementary. Without a textbook class becomes the main event and without students being well versed it serves more like a lecture since they have no clue what I am talking about.
The second is that this is actually like textbooks that students often skip reading. While less dramatic this option is exactly one of the things I am trying to fight against.
The last options is that the materials lack a coherent structure and thus students are lost as they try to engage and they give up.

As I try these new ideas I am modeling to my students how one grapples with innovation and less than stellar outcomes so despair is not really a constructive option. Instead I will start an open discussion in class addressing my students as learners and teachers and hear what they think and suggest. I usually have an open conversation at the end of class when we know each other well, and I get some pretty honest feedback I use to redirect my class. This time it may worth trying to do so earlier, although I am facing the danger of collective negativity, that is the ability of one or two negative (but strong) personalities to influence events.

So, this thursday I will set chairs in a circle and be honest with my students hoping that they can learn from my mistakes... Deep breath.

A Quick Note On Declaring Disruption

Last week we had a Technology conference on campus. The keynote speaker was talking about MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses). I don't mind the discussion of change or the relevance of thinking through options. What I do mind is the declaration of disruption. I believe that we should not declare a disruption before it actually happened. It could very well be that in 10 or 20 years we will look back and be able to point to the MOOC as a disruptive practice. But right now I would argue that it is too soon.
In a way the declaring disruption is analogous in my mind to the media declaring William and Kate's wedding the "Wedding of the Century" just as the century began. Really? are you predicting no other celebrity wedding for almost a 100 years? Of course not. The same goes for disruption. Don't call it until there is some evidence. The point is- change is important, evolve, innovate, try new things- but please call it disruption only after you gain perspective.
Do, don't just PR.