I'm No Bo: On Striving, Humility, and Democracy

By now Bo Pelini and his rants are public knowledge. The thing that struck me the most about his complaints was the idea that he did not know the expectations every year. I just happen to work for the same institution. I get paid much less and interview a lot less. I am not sure how I would fair under public scrutiny but I do know something about being judged annually by "higher ups".

I often do not agree with my "higher ups" but I do know that we have a shared goal of improving the lives of Nebraskans starting with our students and expanding beyond it. So while we may not agree on the how we can agree on the what and judge our efforts based on outcomes. The bottom line is that every year I need to strive to be better. After reflecting on what I need to improve I make a plan to pay attention and improve a few aspects of my work, be it teaching, research, or service. I do not need someone to tell me that I am not perfect (though many are happy to point it out) I know what I do well and what I do not.

In the last three semesters I have worked hard on building a classroom community through integrating democratic practices. The idea was to present a learning environment that would model a possible educational model that is different from the one my pre-service teachers see enacted in schools. Every semester I have been just a bit better about building a classroom community allowing students to participate in decision making including classroom rules, grading and participation.

Am I there? NO. My students are still struggling to see how these practices can be translated into classroom practice BUT I can say without any doubt that I am a better teacher than I ever was. I can say that my students know more of what they need to teach reading and writing in the 21st century. The community we built in the classroom was built on shared goals, shared responsibility and an understanding that we are in this together. So if I had to have a goodbye speech to my students it would be about their potential to change the world not how the world is against them (or me).

Teacher Change and Technology Integration

Too many ideas are running through my head this morning I will try however to stay coherent.

This week we had a visiting group of teacher educators from India. The always energetic Del Harnisch  invited and hosted the group. I met with the four teacher educators to share the work we have done on technology integration and used a new set of results that you can view here. One of the major questions that followed was the one I get the most. How do you help change the way practicing teachers (who work with our preservice teachers)? 

The answer is incredibly unsatisfying: multiple exposures, with small groups at a time, and with attention to differentiated needs. For example we have been working with one Elementary school on iPad integration. As we planned our sessions we asked to work with 1-2 grade levels at a time making sure that the staff to teacher ration was low. This ensures that even the most frustrated member of the group gets the attention they need. We all preach differentiated instruction to students attentive to their needs but forget the same principles when we work with adults. The results of multiple visits and individual attention are undeniable. Just yesterday one of the teachers told me that the iPad provided a breakthrough with an autistic student. The student refuses to engage in school. Being a thoughtful educator she kept looking for ideas, after our training she used Educreations to create a math lesson. The student watched the lesson and then recorded his own understanding to demonstrate mastery. It is a small step, or is it? One student and one teacher found a meaningful way to use technology, this for me is the only way to move forward, until the critical mass of teachers using technology will simply overwhelm the tendency to replicate past practices.

Little Priest Tribal College

Monday and Tuesday Laurie and I traveled to Little Priest College to teach a class on iPad integration to  preservice educators in the Indigenous Roots program. The story was the same seven teachers were at different levels of comfort with technology but at the end of the three days they all created educational materials for use in their classroom. I cannot wait to see what they use next. 

I know we want a revolution but, change will most likely happen after multiple exposures with small groups with attention to differentiated needs.

The Future of Teacher Education

In the last few weeks the videos describing the demise of higher education institutions has been making the rounds on my discussion boards. If you haven't seen it take a peek at EPIC 2020. Obviously I do not take this projection literally. It is one of many possible turns we can take. It does point to a problem that has been well identified. It seems that many perhaps most of the colleges and universities have adopted a wait and see attitude. Let's see how it turns out attitude that watches the few pioneers or the leading institutions and then turns to act.

This attitude served institutions well over the last 100+ years. Higher education seems to be averse to risk and very slow to react and move in new directions. The question that EPIC 2020 asks is relevant though. It is relevant because the pace of change has accelerated so much that the wait and see attitude may very well have some devastating outcomes.

If you have read my blog in the past you probably know that I believe that in teacher education we must move to mobile, social, and flipped learning. I have yet to have serious institutional backing. I would argue that universities should use multiple pilot projects to find out what works and constantly explore the boundaries of what's possible.

When I think of teacher education I am referring to both pre-service and in-service. I believe that we can create large scale classes that can serve many practicing teachers in schools around the country (the world?). Thinking about this brought me back to the work the exceptional Dave Brooks have been doing at UNL more than a decade ago. In many ways the learning paths in massive courses have been outlined in the work he did then and is still doing.

This topic with some ideas about mobile learning may very well be the topics that guide my work this fall. Welcoming thoughts and partnerships.