Coaching Tech Integration in Elementary Schools- Second Year

Dr. Laurie Friedrich (newly minted) and I are back to Rousseau elementary coaching teachers in technology integration. This is one of the most productive ways we can explore working with teachers.

In many ways it is the ultimate low stakes environment. We use our own time and teachers have volunteered their plan time. We pose no demands we just ask, encourage, and explore dimensions of technology integration as we go.

As we work with each grade level team we fit our suggestions and ideas to the style of the team. Each team is different in their goals, the way they interact and where they are on technology integration. What is clear is that now in our second year each team has ideas and internal leadership. They are building on the work done last year and cautiously expanding their integration. The biggest obstacle right now is lack of access to devices that students can actually use individually or in small groups.

I am most excited about the potential for integration in the Arts as it will play out in the Music and Visual Arts rooms. There much promise there, but it is a promise that can be realized only with enough devices so students have access.

As we move forward the low stakes coaching model seems to be a success. Though I might add that the gentle but solid support by administration is an important component as well. In the next few weeks we will start an expanded model in some new schools and so test the boundaries of such a model.

Six Ideas for EdCamp

So Enjoyed myself immensely at EdCampOmaha. At the same time my brain could not stop thinking about ways we could make it better. These are ideas and not critiques nor do I think I have a monopoly over these ideas in fact I will not be surprised if I learned that some have already been tried and may have even failed. I will not be able to sleep if I did not share them so here goes.
1. Newbie sessions. I noticed that most of the presenters/ session orgizers were veterans. There is nothing wrong with that but I wonder if allocating a room or a time slot that has to be reserved for first time session leaders will encourage others to dare and cross the threshold from attendee to session leader.
2. Requests online. Google employees have an online discussion page with voting to suggest topics for their weekly meetings. We can use a similar approach in which everyone interested in coming can suggest topics or vote on existing ones. This way people can have an idea of what attendees have on their mind.
3. Planning session. How about giving some morning time to plan joint sessions by people who have never before worked together and give those sessions their own time slot/ room. This can encourage new and wonderful sessions.
4. Going to scale- I would just love a district that does a professional development day like that. Ah to dream.
5. Un-poster session- most of the conferences I go to have poster sessions. These are some of my favorite since you can stop at one idea and have a long discussion. In an un-poster session paper and markers are provided and many presenters draw/ write a few key ideas from their practice or experience. Everyone else walks around and interacts.
6. EdCamp is right now mostly about technology (though @mrbalcom gamification session was decidedly low tech). Could we think of ways to bring in art, music or engineering?

Now that I shared I would like to repeat that I loved EdCamp and would come again no matter what the format. Keep it going...

Room to Play

I wanted to write about so many things this week. It was so hard to decide that it stopped me from actually sitting down and committing to a topic. As I reflected on everything it became clear that the theme linking everything is finding room to play.

If we want to try new practices in education, be it mobile technology, problem-based learning, or a focus on nature, we must above all provide room to play. I know play is a word that many do not want to associate with schools but yes play. The school, teachers, and students all need an environment where it is OK to take the time, take a few wrong turns and wonder.

Here is an example: We are currently working with an elementary school in Chengdu in Sichuan Province China. We are working with teachers, parents and administration to individualize instruction through mobile devices (Tablets- mostly iPads). This group of first graders have created their first ever videos explaining their understanding of math problems. How did we create this room to play? We brought together parents, teachers and administration to commit to this vision. So much so that in a country as obsessed with national tests as China we got a waiver on student assessments to give teachers and students time to develop and answer the challenge. Here in the US it seems at times that we want to have our cake and eat it too. Everybody is fine with 21st century skills as long as everything else will happen as well. Imagine a teacher's desk with unit, district, semester and state assessment and hundreds of standards per year. Now imagine trying to make room for something as fluid and time consuming as technology integration (real, deep, instruction altering) or problem based learning. If you put that on the desk something is bound to fall...

The same thing is happening in my class as I try to implement democratic practices. The order and pacing have to shift to make room for new ways of teaching and learning as I create new lessons and rethink the way I deliver instruction so the practices become more than just a facade. Luckily in higher education we do have some room to maneuver, although, that may be changing as well.

The same holds for arts integration or more to the point learning in and through the arts. For such learning to be successful we must make room to be creative, to try, to fail, to try again. If we want our students to learn persistence we must give them room to fall, dust themselves off and get up again in authentic ways.

A Thanksgiving post on Complexity

Sometimes I need to remind myself that technology integration does not mean just using a movie or a device as a replacement. It does not mean just using a document camera or power point. In the same way I need to remind myself that arts integration is not about coloring the right shades inside the lines or making your basic five finger turkey outline.

What integration is, is a thoughtful, well planned exploration of the ways an integrated process and product represent a more complex (sometimes efficient) way to teach to the standards that all of our children need- creativity, collaboration, and a complex understanding of the world around them.

Complexity this time of year is the ability to celebrate Thanksgiving while recognizing that for Native Americans it is not a day of joy. Just like I can celebrate Israel's independence day while recognizing the Palestinian Naqba is valid.

Personally I want to give thanks to all the teachers past present and future who work everyday to make education meaningful! Keep up the good complex work!

Five Wrong Paths Down Technology Integration Road

I believe we stand at the dawn of a great change in education. Technology is forcing schools to change as it does society at large. The direction of change, however, is not always clear and looking around I see plenty of examples for paths we should not be taking.

1. Buy Devices- This is an if you build it they will come argument. True new devices will push some teachers to try them out. But, it usually starts and ends with a massive investment in equipment followed by very little professional development and opportunities to experiment. Devices are great but they are just tools, teachers and students need to be shown how to use them well.

2. Teacher Devices Only- For financial and other reasons some schools see teacher devices and professional development as the end game. They champion a laptop/iPad/smartboard in for every teacher or in every classroom. These are inherently teaching devices and will increase student achievement marginally if at all- the real gains and 21st century learning will be achieved only if we put instruments in students hands.

3. Lets wait until they master basic skills- This is an old argument that has been used in many ways to stand in the way of making sure that all students learn high level thinking. In technology integration it usually means that students who have lower achievement are robbed of opportunities to explore other modalities and ideas. In this we may be limiting the futures of our most needy students. Just last week I heard a teacher say that her third graders were going to do research without computers because they have not learned how yet! It is our job to teach them and administrators jobs to make sure there is space for that.

4. The disabled device- Most teachers I meet have device/s from their district that they cannot update, download to or in one case even change the background on. In that way iPads go for a year before they are updated (making some apps useless) and prevent teacher from downloading great (mostly free) apps.  In some ways it is a curious argument. We trust teachers with the lives and well being of 20 seven-year olds but do not believe they are responsible enough to use their computer/iPad wisely. The same goes for student use. While I do not advocate allowing students full access to every device, if you do provide individual devices you must open it up, as recent examples from LAUSD show.

5. The canned curriculum- At the heart of 21st century learning is user choice motivation and creativity. In some districts, however, technology is leveraging curriculum company software to deliver a "one size fits all" curriculum. Paradoxically what started as an opportunity for teacher leadership and professional decision making is turning into a regimen of assessments, activities and monitoring that limits teacher decision making. If the curriculum companies with districts created a dashboard driven structure in which teachers can create their own sequence to a core curricular path, that would be great, but that is not what is going on on the ground. This is perhaps the most dangerous road to take as it may very well help de-professionalize the teaching profession further.

At the heart of my argument is that technology is opening new paths to leaning, adding a diversity of possible paths. Let's not use it to close down options. And if we choose to go down the road (I do not think we have a real option about that) we need to make sure that it is used by students and supported by top notch PD that helps teachers experiment and learn not follow a predetermined path.

Art and Sensory Overload- A Floridian Note

This past week I visited Florida with my kids. One day we chose to go to Young at Art an active arts experience in Davie Fl. It was a great facility with a lot of materials, styles and sensory inputs to explore. The place offered a plethora of art ideas from digital media, to architecture, plastic arts and visual arts. It also included music (mostly through percussion) and drama.

I was really looking forward to sharing this experience with my kids, but the place actually made it difficult to do that. What welcomed us was a wave of sights sounds and materials that overwhelmed not just my older than the mean senses but my kids (7,9, and 16) and their cousins (4,6,8). Every time I tried to stay at one point to explore in depth and create the eye of the child I was with at the time was immediately drawn to a different sound or sight beyond what we were doing. In a way the place was an invitation to not attend to anything but instead just move through the space constantly stimulated but never truly attending to any one thing.

I love art/science spaces designed for learning and I agree that we do not need stuffy old museum in which you have to stay quiet and not touch anything. But this option was so far the other side- that it serves to reinforce the idea that this generation of kids needs to be constantly bombarded with new inputs. This isn't true in any way but if we only create such experiences our kids and students will come to expect them. Just like my undergraduate students expect lecture, powerpoint presentations and letter grades. They are not wrong to expect them, it is what they grew up with. These are schemas that are usable even if not the most efficient.

The over-stimulation of spaces (real or digital) designed for kids may create a short attention-span generation, but this development is in direct conflict with the way our brains are designed. We can attend to only a few things at a time and develop deep understanding only given the time to focus on one thing without disruptive sensory inputs.

Technology, Attending, and the Arts

I have three iPads, a laptop (or two) a smart phone and an e-reader. When I work at home I have 2-4 devices open. The evidence has been in for a while we cannot truly attend to more than one thing at a time. In fact, trying to attend to multiple things at once results in n effective execution of both in most cases.

Why am I bringing this up (again)?

One, I left my phone behind when I snuck away to write at my favorite spot, the Village Inn around the corner. I had my laptop only. I ate lunch and got the two most productive focus time hours. I was online but I resisted answering emails.

Two, my undergraduate student all have devices of some sort that I encourage them to use. This, however, sometimes have negative consequences when they are unsuccessfully trying to multi-task listening to class discussion or lecture (they asked for it) while on Pintrest, Facebook, registering for classes, or one of the thousand other things they can do online.

Three, I am reading Getting Things Done, and am surprised to find interesting parallels from the beginning of the mobile era.

So... Technology has its down side. I love it, I use it every day, but it has a dark side. We have to teach ourselves to attend to the world around us. After we find ways to do it ourselves, we must find ways to teach it to our students.

I think one tool to teach students to attend, is through genuine engagement with art. It can be visual art, plastic art, movement or music. In all of these activities success can be found when you are fully attending. The lure for students (and adults) is the unique feeling that feel when you reach Flow. If someone asks why the arts, one possible answer can be that art creation can teach students to experience focus attending fully to a task. These moments of creative joy can serve as an idea of what we can achieve when we are fully present.

Now I will leave the computer and go attend to my children.

Testing Teachers: Arts and Technology Integration

This week I was invited to participate in a state panel examining which test Nebraska should use as one of the criteria for certification. Teacher testing has become very popular across the states with encouragement from the office of education. There is very little evidence that such tests are connected in any way to teacher quality. For example in a recent report Angrist and Guryan (2013) say: "The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality." The tests, however, are apparently here to stay and even Nebraska usually one of the last holdouts on testing has decided to cave in.

Nebraska has chosen to work with ETS and our task at the panels was to review from a selection of tests and make a recommendation about which tests are most appropriate and what should a cutoff score be. One of the more relevant options we considered was the Parxis II with emphasis on pedagogical decision making. As we read through the items (which I cannot disclose) I found that quit a few addressed arts integration through theatre, movement and visual art. It was clear that integration ideas were well integrated (at least into the version of the test I saw). 

Technology was mentioned in two items only. The technologies mentioned were: looms and books on tape... There was nothing that incorporated Internet searches, evaluation of Internet resources, reading on screen, or any of the other skills mentioned in our state standards, the common core standards and professional organizations. Now, I know there is no consensus over what exactly do new teachers need to know, but no technology integration, no reference to digital modes of literacy?

We made sure our concern registered. I worry because tests (even marginally reliable ones) cause some educators to "reverse engineer" their curriculum. We need more about technology integration in our pre-service programs not less. As for the tests, they need to adapt quickly to these changes to stay relevant.

On Being Puzzled

A few weeks ago I found "The Room" from Fireproof Games for my iPad. It is a beautifully executed puzzle game but that is not the main point. I enjoyed playing and marveling at the quality and challenge of the game play. What I didn't expect was the excitement and joy that my two younger sons had helping me advance. Oren (8) and Itai (6) were full members of the team and we all had great ideas moving us forward at different points. Their joy in discovering another clue or opening another section was hard to contain- and they literally broke into a dance when we figured out a particularly hard puzzle.

The series of small joys at each step solved reminded me very much of Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You". The way video games can reward our brains in small bursts is almost unparalleled. To me this is what a learning game should be like. I try to avoid the term educational as it invokes unpleasant memories of unimaginative drill games. Well it is a learning game...
It teaches to think creatively, look closely, experiment and persist. These are skills that transfer well to any open ended problem that artists and scientists attend to. My play with my boys added another dimension, namely learning to work as a team: we take turns, practice patience, share victories and most importantly never play without the others.

We have since moved to new puzzle games not all of them as visually pleasing but the effects are still the same. They now insist on daily common gameplay and I happily concur. We are creating habits of mind and family bonding. I can only wish that we will find ways to combine this superb game play with content that reaches educational standards.

Teacher Self-Efficacy and Educational Change

Last year my students had iPads in elementary classrooms. The school had a set of iPads that was sitting idle most of the time, yet the teachers were reluctant to integrate them into their instructional units. It was not because they thought they were useless, instead the most common response was: " I do not know how to use them or what to do with them". Now this a response from a few teachers, and our data actually shows that even when there is low level of deployment iPads and iPods are the technologies most easily integrated into the classroom. That said I would like to address the issue of teacher efficacy.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to integrate curriculum using new skill subsets like art and technology seem to hit the same stumbling block. Teachers (and administrators) often do not believe that they know enough to make the change, they do not believe THEY have the capacity. This set of expectations is what Albert Bandura referred to as self-efficacy. The idea that having an expectation of success increases the odds that a person will persist with a task and stay engaged is not new, yet it is powerful. 

Changing expectations is not easy especially in teachers (adults) who have accumulated experience that may point to failure. Teachers come to believe (like many adults) that they cannot draw, play music or sculpt. On the surface they are right- at present state they probably would have limited results. But that is often not what they mean. What they mean is that they lack some innate ability to draw, or sculpt, or use technology. This sense of efficacy about a task limits their ability to explore new ideas and integrate  art, technology or just new ideas like project-based learning. When they do this they deprive their students from exposure to skill sets and new problem solving spaces. 

Students at all levels tend to see their teachers as having a finite and magically acquired knowledge, they seldom see them work through a new skill or solve a new problem. As a result they deprive their students from seeing a model of an individual who is gaining expertise through interaction with a task. Ironically, in this time of accelerated change, our students need thinking and problem solving skills more than at other time in history. We expect that in their life time they would have to repeatedly develop areas of expertise- in a way what Ken Robinson talks about when he discusses creativity.

So what can we do? I see the answer along two lines. the first is giving teachers the knowledge and skill so they would engage with more confidence while they learn to work in conditions of ambiguity. We did this in our ArtsLINC grant with what we called the studio experiment. Teachers were invited to participate in studio experiences with a teaching artist so they can feel confident (efficacious) integrating visual art production in their classroom. It was a great success.

The second is changing efficacy orientation. That is shifting in thinking and deed from the individual to the collective. Collective-efficacy is the notion that as a group we can tackle a task. This is very different because now I can estimate whether a group effort is successful. Data from research I have conducted a few years back showed that when teachers feel that they can tackle teaching reading for all students as a school they have better student outcomes. Not just that but their collective feeling predicted student result better than their personal efficacy.

So, to move ahead with the kind of school change that our students deserve teachers must have opportunities to learn, experiment, and enjoy a sense of collective efficacy that says- together, with our different skill sets, we can do it.

You Think Technology is the Answer to Everything!

My wife and I had a discussion a few days ago about high school requirements in our school district. I highlighted the fact that the requirements include four years of English, more than any other subject. Unlike the current national mood that seems to channel everything to math and science our district has stood firm on Humanities while increasing the requirements in math and science. Off hand I commented that I hoped that some digital literacies were included in these four years. My wife said "You think technology is the answer to everything!" There was quite a bit of emotion in the statement but that may have had more to do with the dishes in the sink...

I paused and thought "I think technology is the question, not the answer". Her response is probably a testament to what I talk about at home. My mind has been focused on art and technology integration for the better part of a decade now- so I understand my wife's exasperation with the comment. At the same time her comment echoed one made by one of my colleagues recently. In a conversation about technology he said that ultimately we need evidence that the integration of new technologies impact student learning. By that, of course, he meant learning as measured in traditional ways.

I think that both comments come from the same place. The underlying assumption is that technology is part of an educational solution. That it is supposed to solve old problems. I argue that technology can sometimes do it, but it also has a broader application. To be fully integrated we need to teach our students to participate in this digital world. Art is exactly the same, it can often be integrated so it can help achieve in other domains (in our research writing and vocabulary knowledge) but ultimately it helps build well rounded students who thrive in life and not just math.

Digital media, just like the arts, created new ways to express ourselves and to BE. It is omnipresent and have become part of the fabric of our everyday life in a way that transcends the notion of a tool. As a result digital media should part of school curriculum not as a tool but as a mode of learning and being.

Video Game like Thinking

Years ago I remember Sarah and I observed our boys playing when suddenly one of them called 'pause' then proceeded a discussion about the nature of pressing the 'X button'. This was not a video game but rather a game they were playing outside borrowing the rules of video games they were playing at the time.

Fast forward a decade or so. Two weeks ago we were in Breckenridge for a family vacation. We sat for lunch in a small pizza/italian place. It's one of these places with paper and crayons so everyone was busy creating in one form or another. Oren who is 8 was busy creating mazes. Now Oren has been a maze fanatic since he was 5 or so. Usually he creates very elaborate designs that can be challenging. He often uses what appears to be mishaps in drawing (e.g. what appears to be accidentally incomplete lines are actually openings) to make the mazes harder.

This time he hands me a this puzzle with a smug look on his face.

Patiently he explains: S is for start F is for finish. I stare at him blankly, he smiles and encourages: "Just do it Abba". I draw a straight line from S to F and he responds smiling: "yes that's it". Then he proceeds to draw this one:

My first instinct is to see if any of the corners just appear to be connected or have tiny gates in them. No the boxes are all closed. "Can I go around?" I ask suspecting a trick. "No" he answers smiling. I know something is going on but I honestly cannot figure out where he is going with this. "I give up" I finally say. Oren then explains patiently. The thicker lines are doors and when you step on the lower case 'f'

they open. "How am I supposed to know that?" I ask incredulously. He looks at me not sure what I mean: "you try it out. You move until you step on the 'f' and see what happens."

It is common to hear "grown ups" criticize video games and the way they seem to engross kids. Here in a different way you can both see what video game thinking is and its impact on learning and thinking.
Oren created a basic level that demonstrated some of the basic rules. Then he proceeded to the real challenge. He also assumed a level of interactivity that is a part of all such games. The static paper and pencil game rules are too simple interactive/ experimental rules are so much more interesting and challenging- mostly because you have to experiment before you know the solution for sure.

I could go on for a while analyzing what appears to be his thought process but I would like to suggest that this video game thinking is analogous in many ways to learning in new domains, especially science and the arts. Instead of repeating known solution to familiar questions, what scientists and artists seek are new ways to respond to problems. They have to interact with ideas, materials and symbols to solve the problems. Video games fostered the right way opens our children to a new creative and thoughtful world of discovery and creation.

Making Connections through Art

A few days back I was invited to the Kamishibai presentations in the Arts and Literacy workshop class. Monique and Nancy led the class which ran for the fourth time in five years. The presentations were on the last day of the workshop and were as always fun, creative, and thoughtful. One of the groups presented a fractured Goldilocks allegory to their preservice program.

While it was funny and creative what struck most of all was their conclusion. They explained that the arts integration workshop helped them put all the rest of the information together. In that way art didn't just integrate different subject matter but instead it helped them connect theory and practice in a way that didn't just replicate what there was. It allowed them to imagine what might be possible if you imagine.

Monique then introduced me and asked me to say a few words. I naturally wanted to extend their thinking to the ways technology fits in all of this. The point I tried to focus on (on the fly) is that technology has changed the arts equation once again. Once technology gave access to art to all through reproduction, book, and poster making art possible in all homes, consuming art stopped being just for the rich. Now technology has enabled all of us to produce art for an audience.

Music, movies, poetry, and visual art can be created and shared through digital means. It is a revolution in creativity, in art and in consumption.

Technology, Art, and Social Justice- The Face of Integration

Photo from Akhila's Blog

I usually focus of the problems of integration teacher quality etc. But at the heart of what we do as educators we should always ask ourselves- who are we leaving behind? This is especially important in the digital age. Our ability to focus on channels, devices, and technologies can obscure the fact that not everyone has critical access to technology, media, and the arts. Not seeing our audience obscures the fact that it is too often just like us!

I am using the term critical access in the same way the Bob Calfee used critical literacy two decades ago. The idea is that physical access to devices and networks is not enough. Instead we have to think about ways to encourage the development of media skills and the participation that comes with them.
The ever present focus on "basic skills" for all students (see world literacy summit video) practically guarantee that both nationally and internationally students who are behind will find themselves progressively lagging. What are we doing to make sure that all students are getting critical access to technology? That they have the skills to engage with media? I believe that the solution is making sure that all schools provide critical access and that we do not assume that students, just because they were born in what we think of as the digital age, posses critical access to technology, media, and the arts. 


My cousin Amit Trainin is an illustrator, graphic designer and currently the head of the visual Arts Dept. at Minshar Art School. Seeing the recent graduate exhibition strengthened in me the notion that arts, media and technology are intertwined and are at the very core of our everyday life. People can choose to live outside the digital, artistic world but they can do so only if they first have critical access that allows them to make such a choice.

So when I focus on technology and the arts I put an emphasis on access, not just to the physical (though it is necessary) but also the skills that lead to Critical Access. As teachers it is what we all must do!

One Skill for Teachers

This week I promised my students that I will do as I asked them. Come-up with something I have not done before. True to my promise and to my own thinking about use flipped classrooms I came up with a within class activity focused on making a short instructional video. I presented some options using the iPad including using the front facing camera, the ShowMe app and a few other great options. The assignment was simple. Think of the most important strategy you taught your student this summer, design a short video reminder of it and shoot it in one take (two at the most). No editing, low expectations.

The response was stunned silence followed by "do we really have to?'s". I was a bit surprised, almost every teacher in the group said "I do  not like my voice". I get a similar reaction when I ask everyone to draw. Every student hesitates, apologizes and does her best to find a way to avoid the task. Making movies was along the same lines.

Part of it is the fear of the complete product that will be there to be judged without our ability to mediate. The other part is the fact that we fail to meet our expectations to be Bogart or Knightly. It took me a while to adjust to viewing myself on the techedge01 videos for iPad in the classroom. It was jarring at first but after a short time I got over myself and moved on. I have come to realize that I am not and will not be Bogart. I can tell you that I am too stiff, wordy and academic but I am getting better.

Video in my eyes is too good a tool to avoid using for instruction, especially when we need to individualize instruction for students at very different levels. My students reaction opened my eyes to this barrier of discomfort about performance. Maybe we all need to dabble in performance arts to let go? or just get used to making videos for instruction.

My conclusions force everyone in teacher education programs to make short videos enough to desensitize them. This way when they teach the option to supplement, support or even flip using videos will be just a few simple steps.

On Inspiration

It is the end of the year in our school district so my children came home with all that was left in their class. Oren who is in second grade came back with his writing notebook. It turns out he has been prolific and wrote among other creations a 13 chapter story. I give full credit to his fantastic language arts teacher Todd. What I found curious among his story is his take on Khoya. Khoya is a digital book on the iPad made somewhat famous through a TED presentation. The book itself delightfully integrates visual, musical and text elements while taking advantage of interactivity (see review and demo here). Oren has created his fan fiction- version of the story with borrowed vocabulary, storyline, and characters. Yet the story had a lot of him as well. I relearned what I already knew and we keep hearing from research. Reading with and to your students and children is crucial, it expands their vocabulary and world of ideas- it makes them creative and gives them a foundation from which to soar.

Art Education & the World

This post is a little preachy. I thought about it for awhile and decided to nevertheless publish...
After spending 5 days discussing the 2015 redrafting of the millennium goals with an emphasis on learning I started thinking. Here is an opportunity to have broader say in the way the leading countries impact the development of education in the developing world and we- we go to basics. The tone is similar to my previous post on new literacies and the narrow definition of what students all around the world need.
The discussions around the tables were about reading fluency, phonics and in some circles empowerment and local control. Before we lose our focus and make other nations repeat our tortured paths to education and follow in our footsteps through the power of our funding let's try to learn from the mobile wireless revolution in the developing world.
I've used this metaphor before and I think it still applies. For developing countries to get to where they want to be they do not need to necessarily follow every step that the the developed world went through. In fact, they can and probably should decide on their own priorities and leapfrog to that place.
This is where goals in arts can be really put into place. Encouraging the continuation and expansion of local art forms, atrisanship and culture should have equal footing with decoding and fluency. The integration of rich meaningful experiences will help enhance children's school experiences and prepare them for a full meaningful life. The revolution should be making school relevant and delightful with music, visual art, dance as well as writing and math. The whole world is striving for creative citizens- not for decoders who can perform simple tasks. Technology and creativity can help bridge those differences and increase the diversity in the world of ideas. So my call is simple: lets make room in the new goals for something more than basic education. We should not wait until the "basics" instead it should be part of the basics making education a full experience that can leapfrog whole generations into the 21st century.

Location:Lincoln,United States

An atypical post: Empathy and the act of Artistic Creation

Last week I had two encounters with artists that expressed an empathetic link to exceptional students. Last thursday I went to listen to my son performing as part if the Lincoln High Slam Poetry team. Before they performed we had the pleasure of listening to Chris August Slamming. His most potent poetry seems to have emerged from his interaction with students with disabilities when he was a special education teacher. An example is in this selection that reminds me at times of Taylor Mali. That night I started thinking about ways this experience with students makes us more empathetic in a way that finds its way into an artistic outlet OR maybe it is a shared sensitivity that manifests itself in teaching and caring as well as for creating.

Later in the week I read Kurt Knecht's (a friend and fellow blogger) post about deciding to become a composer. In it he concludes with: "After that morning, I knew two things. I didn’t want to play in places with non-union stagehands, and I wanted to learn how to write music that could make mentally handicapped children clap."

I do not really think that all artists have more empathy. I think there are too many examples to the contrary, but I think that in the act of creating for an audience there is at times a sense of audience (and both my examples are from performance art) that makes us more empathetic. To do that successfully an artist must achieve at least a limited sense of empathy.

The interesting piece in this empathy sense is that empathy is a "pay it forward" idea. I think that when an audience is privy to this empathy they are automatically more empathetic towards the person (think Teebo). In Chris's case it makes his word choice and other choices easier to swallow because he did show us a different side as well. 

I think that the same can hold for kids- performance and artistic creation can foster their sense of empathy as well.

Teaching Art Online

A prospective graduate student came by a few weeks ago. His goal as he stated it is to minimize damage to rural students by providing quality arts instruction online or through distance education in other means. I worry.
I told him that I worried, arts education is a field that requires demonstratin, proximity and more than anything else mentoring. This kind of mentoring is extremely hard to reproduce at a distance. I think that the ability to look at the dancers moves from multiple perspectives, the painters brush strokes or the guitarist hands are crucial elements that cannot be done at a distance. I teach distance courses and Ithink some of


them are great- but not in arts education or arts integration.
My second concern was that by creating online replacements we urge districts that have stuck by their specialists and invested in them to stop. If the quality is there, they might say, why not save a bundle. So what can be done instead?
Here are some ideas:
1. Train classroom teachers in arts integration and enhance their understanding through studio experiences with local artists and museum resources.
2. If online lessons are created integrate them with rich artist in residence programs- mandated not just as an option. The experieneces must be bundled and truly integrated.
3. Educate school boards and administrators about the importance of the arts.

Do not let rural schools do without arts....

Mentoring

Listening to the authors at the Plum Creek festival Gala (thank you Laurie for the invitation) I was struck by the importance of mentorship mostly informal for the development of "talent". The great illustrator Pinkney told the story of how an established artist took interest in him as he was drawing while selling newspapers and invited him to his studio. The two other speakers that spoke at length also discussed individuals who took interest in them and helped guide their development. As I listened I wondered, do motivated "talented" individuals attract such attention and feed on it or is it a phenomenon that can be expanded and if so. Are we giving students the opportunities to forge such relationships that will lead them to new ideas new images of future selves?


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