Teachers Learning From Each Other

Last May, I wrote about "Homeschooling, Big Picture Learning and the Met," because I was excited to see some overlap between Big Picture Learning ideas and homeschooling. I wrote, "As public schools begin to offer more interesting educational opportunities for students, homeschoolers may want to take a closer look at their local schools. Perhaps there's some common ground that hasn't been explored, some mutually beneficial ideas we can share with each other.  Hopefully, those of us who feel we've learned a thing or two about education will feel inspired to ask, 'How can we work together to improve the educational alternatives for all the children in our communities?'"

If we were to aggregate all the experiences of home educators, teachers, mentors, coaches, and other types of youth leaders, imagine how much we would learn from each other. We have a wealth of experience from which to draw, but too often doors are closed and people are unwilling to subject themselves to public scrutiny. As a home educator, I certainly understand and respect the desire for privacy. I also recognize the risks of exposing ourselves to criticism—or worse—especially when our methods are unconventional. Yet, as scary as it may be to show others exactly how we do our jobs, I'm beginning to think it's perhaps the best way to illustrate a new way to learn. 

Minnesota New Country School

As a participant in the Deeper Learning MOOC (DLMOOC), I had a wonderful opportunity to take a virtual glimpse inside the Minnesota New Country School (a public charter school serving grades K–12).  It was enlightening for me to see how teachers were offering personalized learning experiences and taking student choices seriously within their school setting.

If you would like to see for yourself, watch "Deeper Learning Through Personalized Learning Plans," one of many Vimeo videos available from TeachingChannel.org.

This on-the-spot glimpse into the Minnesota New Country School shows how teachers and students use personalized learning plans for their projects. What I find especially interesting is how much overlap there is between the Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach and what I would describe as child-led learning, or "unschooling." Specifically:

1. Students are encouraged to choose their own projects, which increases their level of interest and sense of control.
2. Students select an adult advisor with whom they can establish a longterm (more than a single semester or year) connection, which leads to a greater sense of continuity, familiarity, mutual understanding and trust.
3. Students work at their own pace, uninterrupted by bells.
4. Adult mentors assist with planning and record-keeping. 

As you may have noticed if you've been reading this blog, I've always believed in involving kids in decisions about their learning. Even though I wouldn't allow my kids to avoid entire disciplines (math or writing, for example), I could still talk to them about why a particular subject was important enough to merit their consideration. I could also help them find ways to connect topics to their own interests. At a minimum, they could choose the specific topics within a general subject to be explored. They've always had a voice—a say in what they were doing—and a range of choices.

Along with seeing the similarities between child-led homeschooling and project-based learning, I noted some obvious differences:

1. Standards. Teachers in an accredited school must consistently evaluate the work being done by students in terms of mandated standards (state curriculum frameworks, Common Core—or whatever comes next). In contrast, even in "The 8 Strictest States for Homeschooling" (as of 2012), home educated students generally have more freedom to deviate from the norm than their schooled peers. 
2. Documentation. Students in a school prepare extensive formal documentation to demonstrate what they have learned; students in a home setting keep records but tend to rely more on dialog and informal assessments (with formal evaluations typically conducted once a year to satisfy state requirements).
3. Resources. I should probably state the obvious here: I envied the equipment and materials those students had at their school. Although homeschoolers have virtually unlimited access to an astounding variety of craft and science supplies sold by hundreds of vendors, there are still budgetary and practical limits to what makes sense in a home. A school, by comparison, can obtain large or expensive equipment and (potentially dangerous) lab materials. Overall, I think my kids did a great job of cobbling together what they needed for various projects, but how wonderful it would have been to have everything at our fingertips day after day! 

Our experiences don't have to be identical to be worth sharing. By observing the interactions between teachers and students at New Country School with an open mind, I have been able to evaluate what I do as a home educator from a different point of view. I have also gained a more optimistic outlook on how schools are striving to meet the needs of their students. Although a teacher in a classroom may be working with different constraints and resources than I am, I can still learn from watching how he or she teaches. Reciprocally, as I present the experiences I have had as a home educator, I hope I will help someone who is interested in exploring a different approach to teaching.

If you're a teacher, have you been willing to share your work openly with others? Tell me, what has that been like for you? In what ways have you been able to learn from your students and other teachers?

Writing for a Purpose—Not for the SAT

My kids are not pleased. My oldest took the SAT in 2005, the year the Writing Section was added. "This writing test is so stupid!" she complained, "Who writes like this in real life?" Her younger sister agreed, as she took the SAT a few years later and was equally frustrated by the arbitrariness of the scoring. My youngest, a senior in high school, just finished taking the SAT last year. He was as annoyed with the writing test as his sisters had been.

So, you can imagine their collective reaction when they heard the recent announcement:

"The SAT Writing Section will no longer be required."

"Seriously?" they asked. "Why did they ever add it in the first place?" 

Good question. Why had it taken nine long years for the College Board to realize that a high-stakes, time-pressured, standardized test is a terrible way to assess writing skills? In what other situation would anyone be asked to prepare a handwritten (no pens or typing allowed), five-paragraph essay in under 25 minutes—with no access to reference materials, no time for review or revisions—and perfect on the first try?  Such a contrived scenario goes against everything I have tried to teach my kids about writing as a way to learn and communicate. 

Ask any writer. Writing isn't about getting points; it's about discovering your voice and articulating your thoughts in a clear, compelling way. A first draft of prose hastily cobbled together might be interesting—it might even be grammatically correct—but it doesn't really tell you much about the writer. Competent writers need to care enough about their writing to persevere during the iterative process of investigation, discovery, drafting and revision. A writer without any mettle probably isn't going to be much of a writer, no matter how impressive her initial draft of a five-paragraph essay might seem. 

When it comes to writing with a purpose and caring enough about your writing to keep working at it, William Zinsser (On Writing Well, Writing to Learn, and others) is an extraordinary mentor. Zinsser truly understands the connection between thinking and writing, and how the two reinforce each other.

"Writing is how we think our way into a discipline, organize our thoughts about it and generate new ideas" (p. 202, Writing to Learn).

By clarifying our thoughts in writing, we come to understand them better. That's why I've recently asked a group of homeschooled high school students to create and maintain their own blogs. Their feelings about the assignment are mixed: some are enthusiastic, others are dreading it. In an effort to encourage and inspire them, I've asked them to examine other blogs of their own choosing to determine what qualities they might like to emulate—or avoid. What purpose would they like their blogs to serve?

I've also provided them with a set of blogging resources—a small collection of videos, articles and brief tutorials to help them get started.

My next step is to work with the students to define the criteria they'll use to evaluate the design and content of their blogs (most likely, we'll create a variation of this Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs by Karen Franker). I'll be asking them to comment on each other's blogs, too.

Yes, I've heard that "Blogging Is Dead" (from Fast Company), so there's a chance these students will abandon their blogs not long after they begin them. And, certainly, one could argue that there are too many bloggers out there already (as Jeff Goins acknowledges in "Bad Writing Is Essential to Good Blogging"—the 100+ comments in response to his post are interesting).  But honestly? I'm not expecting my students to achieve fame or fortune as bloggers.

People blog for many different reasons, often quite personal ones, and my students can decide for themselves what they want to learn about through their writing. They can pick and choose what they want to release to the public. Of one thing I'm sure: their blogs will be a more meaningful assessment of their writing skills than the dreaded SAT Writing Section ever was.

Self-Assessments: "How Am I Doing?"

Every year at the New Hampshire Homeschooling Coalition Spring Workshop, a handful of experienced homeschooling parents, serving as panelists, answer questions about homeschooling. The workshop typically begins with an overview of the NH Home Education law (RSA 193-A). Panelists are then asked about their personal experiences. Why did they choose to homeschool? How did they get started? Where do they find educational resources? How do they connect with other homeschoolers?

At some point in the middle of the workshop, there's one question that's always asked:

"What are your goals and how do you know you’re accomplishing enough?"

While (as a panelist), I realized this question was about educational goals, I couldn't answer without stating the obvious: my highest priority as a parent was my children's well-being. I wanted them to have fond memories of our time together, so I focused on how they learned—I adamantly refused to use a system of rewards and punishments to manipulate, coerce, or shame them into reaching academic milestones. If my kids didn't feel loved and respected and valued for who they were, no amount of accomplishment would ever make up for it.

If I'm honest, though, I have to admit: knowing whether we were accomplishing enough wasn't easy. Most of the time, I went through an informal process of trial and error. When my kids seemed bored, I tried to help them find more challenging work to do. If they were frustrated or stuck, I encouraged them to slow down and take things one step at a time. "Assessment" was generally something that happened dynamically and continuously as I had regular conversations with my children about how they were doing, what interested them, and where they were struggling.

More formally, I could see my kids were making progress when I helped them assemble their annual portfolios at the end of the year. Their portfolios included a written summary of the major milestones in their lives, photos, samples of work, programs from performances, and other evidence of what they'd done during the year. It was always obvious that they had accomplished much, but was it "enough"? How much was enough? That was difficult for me to evaluate without comparing what my kids had done to what other kids the same age were doing.

All of which leads me to these questions: What can an educator reasonably expect from a student? What should students—or lifelong learners—expect from themselves?

Can You "Teach Like a Pirate"? Should You?

I first heard about the "Teach Like a Pirate" approach from DLMOOC classmate, Tim Flanagan (see his Storify about Student Voice and Choice). Curious, I looked for more information online.

I discovered that the idea comes from professional development speaker, Dave Burgess, who has written a book about it: Teach Like a PIRATE. I found one of Dave's seminars, recorded as a TEDx Talk (unfortunately, the sound quality deteriorates at 4:25, but skip ahead to 6:00 and it clears up again):



I have great admiration for anyone who can bring passion and energy to a classroom presentation. I've seen other educators who are entertaining, engaging speakers, and I would happily pay to attend their classes. For example . . .

Professor Linwood Thompson delivers World History lectures  in full costume and character.



Professor Edward Burger adds a touch of humor to his Great Courses lectures (the "Joy of Thinking" is my favorite) and Thinkwell Math instruction, as in the example below.



And then there's the renowned Professor Walter Lewin, famous for his physics lectures.



So . . .  Should YOU Teach Like a Pirate?

No doubt, these teachers are extraordinary. Certainly if you think you would love teaching like a pirate and have simply been afraid to try, don't hold back. As Burgess says, "We need people who are willing to try new things." You could be the next Burgess, Thompson, Burger, or Lewin.

But, what if you don't want to teach like a pirate?

When I see educators (at home or in schools) designing extraordinary projects, putting on shows, and keeping their kids entertained with engaging performances, I feel inspired by them but also discouraged. I can't imagine myself doing the same things. By now, I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't enjoying "teaching like a pirate," especially not as an everyday practice. When I first started homeschooling, though, I second-guessed everything I did.

Unfortunately, it is human nature for us to compare ourselves to others, whether we intend to or not. I think home educators are especially prone to self-doubt. Few of us are trained educators, and all of us confront skeptics who question whether we should be teaching our kids. Understandably, we look to each other for encouragement and advice. 

At parent gatherings, we discuss how to inspire our kids when they seem to lack motivation. I've noticed there's always at least one person who advocates what I call an "entertainment method" of teaching. With the best of intentions, she'll talk about how she "makes learning fun" for her kids by planning elaborate games and projects. She knows how to turn every road trip into an educational experience. As long as she keeps performing, her kids seem to stay interested. I don't mean any of this as a criticism: homeschooling parents with this much energy and enthusiasm are great resources, full of wonderful, creative ideas. 

"Can I do this?" 

However,  I think parents who are new to homeschooling, the ones who come to homeschool gatherings looking beleaguered, are more likely to be asking themselves, "Will I be able to homeschool my kids successfully if I'm not able to do what this other person does?" They need to feel empowered to chart their own course, to know there's more than one way to be an effective educator. 

I also believe that, while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with keeping kids entertained to promote learning, educators don't have to become the entertainment. I've witnessed unnecessarily high levels of stress and burn-out when educators (parents or teachers) fear this is the only way their kids will learn. There's no guarantee that making subjects entertaining, enticing kids to learn, will result in deeper learning—but I'll leave that topic for another time.

If teaching like a pirate doesn't appeal to you, trust your instincts and try something else. Kids respond to role models who are authentic—a compassionate, reserved teacher who believes in her students can be just as successful as one who puts on a good show.

Personalized Learning and Student Choice

"It is frankly difficult to understand how anyone can talk about school reform without immediately addressing the question of how students can be given more say about what goes on in their classes." —Alfie Kohn, "Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide"

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment and ask, "Why talk about school reform at all?" The old school model of "I teach, you learn" works—sort of. During the twelve years or more when students are in school, a large percentage of them manage to learn. If not everything, at least something. Most graduate and eventually get jobs.

It isn't a perfect system, but what is? Why not continue to teach our children in the same way that our parents and grandparents learned?

If this doesn't strike you as absurd, then you may be the type of learner for whom the system was designed. You might like following instructions, knowing what to expect, and having everything planned in advance for you. Perhaps you learn well from books and lectures and are very good at recalling what you have read or heard. Maybe you get high marks on standardized tests. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with learning in this way; in fact, I happen to be one of the people for whom this old-school model works pretty well. It simply isn't optimum for all people, all of the time.

There's another problem with doing things the same way we've always done them: it doesn't result in progress. To improve upon an idea, we have to be willing to try something new. Even if we acknowledge that the old model "worked" well enough to provide an adequate education for large numbers of students, no one would describe our current educational system as flawless. There's always room for improvement. No educator deserving of the title would be satisfied with "good enough," so we have to keep asking ourselves: How can we do a better job?

Here's where I agree with Alfie Kohn: one way we can do a better job is by giving students "more say about what goes on in their classes."

I'm familiar with Kohn's books (Punished By Rewards, The Case Against Standardized Testing, The Schools Our Children Deserve) and was pleased to see his article listed among the course materials for Week 4 of DLMOOC. Kohn summarizes the benefits of including students in the decision-making process, such as an improved sense of well-being, better self-discipline, greater academic achievement, avoidance of burnout (student and teacher), and democracy in action. He writes:

"There is nothing new about the idea that students should be able to participate, individually and collectively, in making decisions. This conviction has long played a role in schools designated as progressive, democratic, open, free, experimental, or alternative; in educational philosophies called developmental, constructivist, holistic, or learner-centered; in specific innovations such as whole-language learning, discovery-based science, or authentic assessment; and in the daily practice of teachers whose natural instinct is to treat children with respect."

The theme for Week 4 of the Deeper Learning MOOC has been personalized learning, student voice, and student choice—topics I have written about in several earlier posts (see, for example, Choices: Too Many, Not Enough, or Just Right? and Treating Students as Equal Partners). I'm delighted to have been introduced, through the DLMOOC, to many people who are working hard to create opportunities for students in schools to have a say in what and how they learn. The panelists for this week's discussion were inspiring.



Keven Kroehler, Executive Director for Edvisions Schools, talks about creating a "level playing field" in schools, where the contributions of students and teachers are equally valued and respected. He comments that "students think of things that teachers hadn't thought of," which reminded me of a few situations I faced last year (When Your Students Know More Than You Do, and Lessons Learned). Kevin also emphasized the importance of offering students authentic choices—the ability to make decisions about things that matter to them—rather than false choices, as in, "Which of these two preselected, mandatory activities do you want to do?" Kids know when they are being manipulated.  

Likewise, I appreciated panelist Kathleen Cushman's perspective on student voice. She talked about students being "citizens, not subjects," and described student voice as an "equity issue."She asks teachers to consider: "Whose voice gets listened to? Who gets to speak?" She recommends what I call "The Smorgasbord Approach," exposing students to a variety of things and allowing them to choose what interests them (as I describe in my post on Nurturing Interest-Based Learning). 

Panelist Brandon Wiley, Director of Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), talked about the importance of "recognizing students as key constituents, clients, customers," and giving them "a seat at the table," and I nodded my head in agreement. If students are the "key constituents," then it's inconceivable for them to be left out of the planning, implementation and evaluation of their work. This requires us to change how we think about everything: what students learn, how they learn it, and how they demonstrate their learning.  

I enjoyed hearing the DLMOOC panelists describe their iterative design process (similar to what I blogged about in Kindergarten-Style Planning), and it was interesting to me to see how this approach works in a school setting. Teachers collaborated not only with their students but with other teachers, parents, and members of the community. They developed a student's plan of study incrementally, continually learning and building upon what they discovered as they went along. During each stage of the project (planning, implementing, assessing), all the people with a vested interest were consulted and given opportunities to provide feedback. While this must have complicated the decision-making process, it also helped everyone make new connections, personally and cognitively.

The students who were on the "Lens into the Classroom" Student Panel for Week 4 were engaging, too.


Allowing students to have a say in how they learn is a school reform that has clearly made a big difference in the lives of these students. While this doesn't prove that all students' learning would necessarily be deepened in a High Tech High type of school, it seems likely that it would. Even the students who prefer a more traditional approach would benefit, because they could choose that method for themselves.

When my youngest daughter was fourteen, she said she wanted to attend the public high school in our town. Up until that point, she had always been homeschooled and free to choose what, when and how she learned. Why would she want to give that up? There were a variety of reasons—she wanted to see what school was like; she was interested in meeting more kids her age than she could find in the homeschooling community; she wanted to learn in a classroom setting. Ultimately, what mattered most was that she had a choice. She could return to homeschooling at any time, and she knew that was an option. That made all the difference in how she approached her education. She evaluated her own needs, assessed what the school had to offer, and figured out how to make the best use of her time there.

Giving kids choice doesn't mean deciding what that choice should be. It means we allow kids to figure out who they are and what they need to grow and thrive. A structured classroom with a teacher lecturing in the front isn't necessarily going to prevent deeper learning, but it shouldn't be the only option.

Deeper Learning Goals Require a Supportive Infrastructure

“A life worth living, and work worth doing—that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education'.”—John Holt

It isn't easy to walk the fine line between mentoring and meddling, between offering support and insisting on "helping." Over the years, as I have been experimenting with a curriculum-free approach to education, three things have helped me more than anything else:

1. Permission to make mistakes. I had to give up the notion that I would get it right the first time. I had to be able to admit—to myself and my kids—when I had erred on the side of providing too much guidance (or too little). I had to experience a sinking ship a few times before I could turn things around. 
2. Trust. Patience, faith, trust—whatever it takes to step back and observe instead of interfering when things aren't progressing exactly as one might like them to be. When it comes to helping another person become who they are meant to be, there's so much we can't possibly know. There's a temptation to deal with the uncertainty by trying to control everything, but that seldom succeeds. 
3. Support. I could not have stayed the course if I had not had a community of people who were willing to listen, empathize, and share their own stories with me. 

When my kids were learning according to the expected or traditional timetable, and they chose academic subjects that educators have typically valued (reading, writing, math, science), it was easy for me to trust that everything would work out fine, regardless of the teaching method I used. The hard part was having faith when their interests were unconventional, bordering on obsessive, or proceeding at an unusual pace. I had to ask myself, "How resolved am I, really, to allowing my children to learn according to their own, unique internal plans?" If one of my children was" falling behind," what did that mean? Did I need to be concerned, or could I trust that he or she would eventually "catch up"?

Knowing when to intervene and when to trust the process is difficult but extremely important.

Most of the time, I simply had to learn to trust my kids and myself. It was not particularly helpful when concerned strangers would ask what I was doing, or how I was doing it, or "exactly what my kids were learning from playing all afternoon."If I had been required to report regularly to an oversight committee or school official, the days when it seemed like nothing was being learned (or everything was falling apart!) would have been much harder for me to recover from. I imagine the same might be true for teachers who are trying to encourage deeper learning in their classrooms. 

It takes courage to do something unconventional, and educating children without knowing for sure whether or not you are going to be successful is terrifying, especially when the stakes are so high. No adult wants to be responsible for messing up a child's future, so the pressure to do the job well is immense. Having others you respect say, "It's going to be OK, you are doing fine," or "Here, this is what I did, and it seemed to work," can make all the difference.

What Is Deeper Learning?

I am currently participating in Deeper Learning MOOC (DLMOOC), a free online course that lasts for nine weeks. It will be the second, massively-open online course—or MOOC—for me. The first one was Learning Creative Learning, which I blogged about last year (starting with the post "The Biggest Class I've Ever Attended"). Once again, I am excited to be sharing ideas and learning from others who feel as passionate about education as I do.

The first week has been spent on introductions and setting up subgroups, but online discussions are already getting underway.

So, what exactly is deeper learning? For a definition, I began by referring to the suggested readings for Week 1. According to an infographic on Deeper Learning:

"Deeper Learning ensures that students master core academic content, think critically, solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, direct their own learning, and develop an academic mindset." 

Two phrases contained within that definition—core academic content and academic mindset—require additional explanation, but allow me to return to them later. Scanning the rest of the infographic, I see cute cartoons that represent four types of (presumably, deeper) learning:

1. Learn! Personalized Learning
2. Do! Project-Based Learning
3. Apply! Work-Based Learning
4. Show! Competency-Based Learning

I imagine the exclamation marks after the commands (Learn! Do! Apply! Show!) are intended to convey excitement, but I feel as though I'm being issued directives. I wonder how students will feel if they are told to "Do!" or "Apply!"without being given much choice in the matter?  

Also, while I'd like to think that "personalized learning" means students will be allowed to learn at their own pace and make meaningful decisions regarding what and how they learn, the mention of "core academic content" makes me skeptical. I'm not sure exactly how much personalization will be permitted if learning is core-driven rather than student-driven. No doubt, there's value in learning from projects, real-world experiences, and student demonstrations of competency, but I feel what is most important is for the students to be the ones asking for those activities. If they are mandated by teachers, how might that impact the students' opportunities for deeper learning?