Banner or Burner? A Day in the Classroom

   I planned for a Banner Day today.  Yes, that is asking for possible disappointment, but I took some recent lessons learned and threw choice, collaboration and creativity into my classroom blender.  The early returns show average or better results. I expected the sound of trumpets. Maybe a harp.

   Moving on. I did a lot more teacher talk than I planned to in my lead-in to a high-tech, high-touch, right-brain, left-brain lesson. Would a pre-recorded screencastify video have been better? I spoke about embracing complexity. I talked about the future being now and how they would have an authentic audience.  All meant to motivate.  It may catch fire. They may create content that inspires. They may find a mission. A passion.  A burning question.  I just do not know...for now.

 

"March Madness" Padlet of creative options...

    I recently saw George Couros speak at Discovery Education's Powerful Practices conference in San Francisco. He is the author of The Innovator's Mindset. His presentation hit all the buttons.  All of 'em.  There was laughter, handkerchiefs, knowing head nods in that room of educators in San Francisco. His views on innovation, leadership and education never strayed outside of his guiding mantra of "what is best for kids." The challenge is real. The customer has to come to our shop, but they aren't necessarily buying.

burner phone

     A Banner Day is worth shooting for.  I won't always get there, but it will beat a Burner Day every time.  I heard the term "burner phone" recently.  It is a phone used for clandestine, illegal, improper, awkward or just one and done conversations--and then the number is "burned" or the phone is thrown away. Not sure about your date? Use a burner phone number. Selling to strangers on Craigslist? Burner.

    Do you know people who have planned burner lessons, activities, or days?  I do. Me. I think I am not alone.  As Forrest Gump did not say, but should have, "teachin' is hard."

   I am shooting for that Banner Day again tomorrow. It is what we do.

*Cue the harp

Building Community...with Purple Cows and Zoysia Plugs

   How do we build and sustain community?  Reaching out to people who share your vision for creating community is a great start. Allowing them to use their strengths and leverage their talents is a idea and practice that has interested me for a while. The Purple Cow, by Seth Godin is 2009 marketing book that is one of my all-time favorites. My copy will never make the trip to the used book store or the garage sale table.  It is gold...or even better-- purple. Godin writes about marketing and so much more, but in this book he discussed how "sneezers" in an organization pass along "idea viruses." I found a similar theme in Peter Senge's 1994 The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. The zoysia plug metaphor is used to discuss community building. Zoysia grass plugs are planted in a scattered mosaic and then slowly grow together to create a full lawn.  "Zoysia plugs" in a classroom or school are "the informal leaders who know how to 'make things happen.' Find them, wherever they might be and support them however you can" (Senge, et al., 1994, p. 527). 

    Whether they be influencers, sneezers or zoysia plugs; the right people, doing the right things, at the right place and at the right time can work magic in community building.  

  Video:Flipgrid response & sharing stage

  I may have recently found the "right thing" for a community kickstarter. I attended the Silicon Valley Ed Camp "unconference." I learned about a website and app called Flipgrid.  Flipgrid allows the user to ask a question of their team, group or class and the respondents simply click a video record button and respond to the question.  The collected videos are then seen by all on a grid and the typical social media "likes" and comment sections are available to use. You quickly have group input to a question with the ability for the team to see what everyone has said and respond to their ideas easily.  It is visual. It is easy.  It is what people are already doing on their phones when they have leisure time. 

    Who are your "zoysia plugs" and are they getting the fertilizer they need?

Pictured: Zoysia plugs

         

    

How Can We Remember to Forget in our Schools?

  🔀 Working as a teacher is a peculiar work environment.  Almost everyone in the organization is nearby, but isolated from each other as they interact with "clients" for a strictly defined period of time and then those "clients" rush to another employee for another isolated hour.  Thirty-something people with one organizational representative are locked into the learning chambers for an hour.  The employee cannot leave the clients alone.  The clients cannot depart the room without express approval and can be denied departure from the room.  Occasionally a disembodied voice makes an announcement. Small divisions of these employee groups meet to discuss policies and techniques monthly (sometimes more). The entire organization meets once a month with hopes of creating culture, enforcing norms, improving processes and hopefully some inspiration.  The employees will then go back to their locked rooms for the clock, bell and then onslaught of teens who have just been released from 1 of their 6 mandatory learning rooms for the day. 

    New teachers are encouraged to ask for help, but there is a reason so many leave the field.  There is not enough training or support in many schools.  The new teacher just has to hang on.  I actually work at a school that is very focused on student outcomes.  We talk a great deal about supporting new employees.  But, like most of our schools, we have not built a system that gives the enough training and support to the employees that need it the most. We have more coaching and the tide is certainly turning, but incremental change will not do the trick. The new teacher is thinking about ways to survive the observations by the administration and how to overcome their many classroom leadership failures that will occur before they learn to cope and find competence.  

    How can schools effectively improve, reform and perform at the high levels we need? It starts with these "newbies." This should be easy, since every new teacher has "been there, done that" as a customer for years. Yes, it should be so easy, but it definitely is not. Schools hire employees to teach that since age 6 have already spent thousands of hours watching people do the job they have been hired to do.  As much as education attempts to reform, "new insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting" according to Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. The factory system, the rows, the monotony, the grade-focus...why do they persist?

   How can we help teachers remember to forget old habits and make today's best practices common practice?