We came across the photo in an old album and it triggered a cascade of memories for my 91-year-old mother. Ada  had Tuberculosis. She lived with my grandparents for some time, when my mother was a child, and is remembered as a wonderful aunt. My mom adored her.

When Ada died, nobody told my mother. She vividly remembers being sent to a neighbour’s house while the adult family attended the funeral. Not that she was informed that there was a funeral. My grandmother told her that Ada had gone away to England.

My mom was old enough to understand that her beloved young auntie, who had been ill for a long while,  had died.

Although it happened eighty years ago, my mom has never forgotten that her mother didn’t tell her the truth…

Some of my favorite posts contain examples of great practice, thoughtfully written, that make you wish you were there. I enjoy open, honest posts about dilemmas and failures and what was learned from each experience. I like posts written in the writer’s authentic voice, without self promotion or pretentious language.

How can I encourage those teachers at my school, who haven’t yet opened this book, to read (and maybe write!) blogs regularly, to see what teachers are doing globally, further their awareness of what’s possible, engage with new ideas and see their existing beliefs validated, questioned, or shared by teachers around the world?

Here’s my plan for a series of short, supported sessions for those teachers in the new year. Let me know what you think…

10 steps to get teachers into blogs…

1. Read.
Start by sharing a print-out of a powerful blog post.

2. Discuss.
Print off a number of posts on a similar topic. Discuss the different perspectives.

3. Connect.
Bring your device. Each one gets a link to a different blog. Read and share highlights.

4. Navigate.
Find your way around blogs. Follow links. Go to other places..

5. Subscribe.
Set up a reader with recommended blogs. Learn how to subscribe to feeds.

6. Communicate.
Talk about something interesting you discovered via your reader. Share a newly discovered blog.

7. Participate.
Join the blogging conversation. Start by writing a combined comment. Choose a post and write your own comment.

8. Collaborate.
Work together on a collaborative post for our teacher-blog (to date most posts have been written by me, and not widely read!)

9. Create.
Each teacher creates a post sharing an idea from a blog they read, how it influenced their thinking, or a picture of practice from their class.

10. Reflect.
I used to think… Now I think…

Might it work? Am I missing anything?

We get talking about her own school days. She remembers walking to school, carrying her books in a suitcase, and meeting her friends Bertha and Joy. They sat in double desks with ink wells, facing the blackboard.

Mom recalls not enjoying school much and when I ask why, she tells me that nobody did! The teachers usually shouted although not specifically at her.  She remembers her teacher dictating spelling words. The girl beside her was ‘clever’ and wrote quickly, but she could not, of course, copy her answers. She recalls the teacher going round the class calling on each individual to respond and feeling relieved if she knew the answer.  She talks about her surprise when the 6th grade teacher once said something nice about her in front of the whole class  (‘I thought she didn’t like me’) and I love the fact that this special moment can still bring a smile to her face after eighty years. There’s a lesson there for teachers today…

A quick internet search brings up the history of the school and my mom  is amazed that I am able to find information, names and photographs from the 1920s. The site has a photo of Miss Meyer the headmistress at the time, and I’m told the children were afraid of her. I read that there was a hostel for girls who boarded at school during term time. My mom remembers she once forgot something in her classroom on a weekend and went, fearfully, to knock on the door at the hostel to ask if she could go into the school and retrieve the item.

I probe for more memories but, for now, that’s all I can get.

We don’t have ink wells any more, but it strikes me that in many schools, things haven’t changed all that much. Hopefully school is no longer a place for fear… of teachers, of failure, of humiliation or of punishment. I wonder how learning can occur under those conditions?

This is a moving guest post by Clive for my series on learning in different contexts.  It first appeared at his blog, Clive Sir, a month ago and he agreed to let me post it whenever I liked. As I’m still away from home and not writing posts, it seems like a good time to share it…

I had a chat with someone the other day, talking about teaching styles. It brought back memories of my time in India, circumstances when my student-centric approach broke down.

We had a lad I shall call Aneesh. About ten years old, he was the son of one of the traders down on the beach. The NGO I was working for had encouraged his parents to send Aneesh to school rather than have him work in their shop. For parents it’s never a case of simply finding a public school to take their children. They have often missed so much schooling that the kids fail the admissions tests. Families are then, usually, left to their own devices to seek private education. In families where little importance is attached to education, where the cost of books is significant, and where the child brings in some income, they mostly don’t bother.  My organisation had its own school and provided books, transport, food and clothing, totally free of charge. It paid parents a small fee to compensate for lost income and the children received a small allowance for each day attended, as an incentive. The idea was that they would be brought up to speed over a year or so. The organisation would then fight to get them placed in mainstream publicly-funded school, while continuing to support them by covering all incidental costs. The parents would justify it in terms of doing the organisation a favour: by supplying their children in return for some money the NGO could continue to exist.

Aneesh was a real character. Highly popular with his fellow students, he was always making them laugh. Somehow, miraculously, the organisation got him immediately placed in a local English-medium public school. Maybe because he bluffed his way in or for some other reason, whatever, he got in.

The policy was that all such kids would come back to us for tuition after the school day. Being one of our “tuition kids” had several advantages: we would get to hear how they were doing at school and what they were struggling with, so we could then focus on the weak areas. Coming from poor families, these children were frequently bullied; by giving them the opportunity to talk about it we could try to do something to help, even if it was only to take them back into our day-time school. Finally, home environments were often not conducive to studying or doing homework, maybe because there was no table or space or light, but sometimes because of abusive family members; a few hours in afternoon tuition meant the children got some necessary support.

Anyway, Aneesh struggled badly in all subjects and eventually I was assigned to help him. Language wasn’t a barrier – he and I could communicate quite effectively because his spoken English was good, most likely a result of speaking with tourists in his shop. I concentrated on maths and computing with him and I quickly discovered that he was only surviving because he was copying his neighbours’ work. His friends didn’t mind because he was amusing, always acting the buffoon and mucking about but, in the strict, Victorian-disciplined day school he now found himself, he was no longer getting away with it.

After a week he told me that he was really worried about an imminent computing exam. I had a look at his text-book – it was essentially a learn-by-rote work-book, typical of the way many Indian kids learn.  It was pretty dreadful, expecting kids to simply repeat unexplained words and phrases. I could do better. With only a few days till the exam I decided that the most effective way to get him to grasp the concepts was to work one to one, discussing and explaining the things to be covered, and trying to encourage questioning, thinking and understanding. He actually seemed to improve so I thought he’d stand a chance of doing reasonably well.

Aneesh sat it and got his marks back almost immediately. He was very weepy when he showed them to me. What stared out from the sheet, in big, red letters, was “3/25″. Worse, the teacher had written down the page:

“V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V. Bad.”

I didn’t count them – I was too dismayed. There were probably more. I guess that gives you an idea of the quality of teaching some Indian children encounter.  Teachers are not all like that, of course, but the existence of even one is one too many. Pure punishment. Where were the gentle words of encouragement?

After I had calmed down I thought about it some more. What I hadn’t realised was that firstly, in all likelihood, the teacher didn’t understand his subject. He was lazy and was playing safe by following the work-book to the letter. Secondly, the exam followed exactly the same format: words had to be memorised and quoted verbatim. There was no leeway and any understanding was incidental. It didn’t matter what “input” meant, it just mattered that that was the word to be fitted into the blank.

I blame myself. I should have known. I hadn’t made the connection. If I had spent time getting Annesh to repeat and regurgitate the words then he would have passed the test. Educationally a meaningless test, but that was lost on Aneesh and he was the one who mattered.

My recommendation was that Aneesh should be taken out of that school and brought back to us. He was just too weak and had way too much ground to make up. Management didn’t see it like that, driven by the belief that the public school was an opportunity not to be wasted. Perhaps he was better in other subjects but I doubt it. I questioned my ability to help any of the Tuition Kids because I saw no value in working like that. Aneesh was taken away from me and given to a more conventional teacher. They persisted for a few months until after I left India. I heard through the grapevine that he eventually returned to the NGO’s school where he would have received the nurturing he so needed.

Ask your students!

Letter to an imaginary educator…

Dear Anon,

As an educational leader, do you think your decisions should be based on beliefs about how learning best takes place?

Here are my school’s articulated learning principles:

I have a few questions for you to consider:

What are your beliefs about learning? Do they coincide with ours?

Did you know that a curriculum should not be static, but constantly revisited and updated  to be current, relevant and promote authentic learning?

Do you think a curriculum has to be a set of books with prescriptive instructions for teachers?

Are you aware that workbooks do not usually foster meaningful learning?

Do you realize that teachers are capable, thinking human beings and don’t need prescribed programs in order to teach?

Do you know that prescriptive programs tend to stifle creativity and discourage teachers from pursuing new ideas and experimenting with different options?

Have you considered investing the money you currently spend on pre-packaged programs in freeing up teachers to think, learn and construct meaningful learning experiences for their students?

Have you ever asked students about what engages them and how they learn best?

Have you spent much time in a student centred classroom seeing how inquiry fosters a love of learning ?

Have you entertained the possibility that administrative matters can be dealt with via email and conversations in meetings should be about teaching and learning?

Have you considered that people with experience and a track record in successful teaching and learning might have something worthwhile to contribute?

Did you notice that education has changed and is constantly changing and that classrooms should not look the same as they did five, ten, or fifteen years ago?

Watch this video,  it might help…

Do you believe all educators should be learners first and foremost?

Do you lead by example?

Kind Regards,

Edna

There are groups of kids everywhere, sprawled on the floor, huddled on the steps, sitting around tables, even standing on chairs so that they can film from above! They are collaborating on inquiries, creating presentations, making movies and expressing their learning in all kinds of creative ways. It’s active and social, noisy and messy… as learning should be. 

School has changed…

1. We used to imprison the learning inside the classrooms… Now the whole school is our learning environment.

2. We used to find information in books and on the internet… Now we also interact globally via Skype with primary sources.

3. We used to control everything… Now students take ownership of their learning.

4. We used to think ‘computer’ was a lesson in the lab… Now technology is an integral part of learning across the curriculum.

5. We used to collect students’ work, to read and mark it… Now they create content for an authentic global audience.

6. We used to strive for quiet in the classroom… Now the school is filled with vibrant and noisy engagement in learning.

7. We used to teach everything we wanted students to know… Now we know learning can take place through student centred inquiry.

8. We used to set tests to check mastery of a topic… Now learning is often assessed through what students create.

9. We used to plan differentiated tasks, depending on ability… Now digital tools provide opportunities for natural differentiation.

10. We used to have an award ceremony for the graduating Year 6 students… Now every child will be acknowledged at graduation.

Not every point is uniformly evident across the school irrespective of teacher, class and time (yet), but most are well on the way. Learning in our school has changed enormously… and is constantly changing. Is yours?

The posts I have chosen are not necessarily my most popular posts, but I write as much for myself as for anyone else, so here are eleven of my favourite posts from 2011…

1.  10 things to do on the first day of school  (January)

2.  How do teachers learn? (February)

3.  Open the gate… (Things have changed!) (April)

4.  Does your school..? (June)

5.  A school in Pune  (July)

6. Embracing technology (August)

7.  Play House  (August)

8.  Ignite, Engage, Inspire  (September)

9. What do you mean? (October)

10. Thoughts from my own inquiry (October)

11. Where do great ideas come from? (December)

Here’s a post at their class blog last time:

In class we looked at Maimonedes eight levels of charity. The highest level is giving someone a loan or finding them a job, so that they can support themselves and won’t need charity at all. We explored the Kiva.org website and lent money to people in developing countries. This is called micro-lending because it is only a relatively small amount of money.

You can see students’ reflections on why they chose their loans how they made their decisions here on their blog.

There is great excitement when they log in today and see that some of their previous loans had been repaid and there’s even an interview with one recipient saying what the loan has enabled her to do. We’ve topped up the account so that each group can log in and make one more donation before the end of the school year.

The students gather excitedly around computers to explore the site again and choose the recipients of their loans. It’s interesting to see each group approach this differently. One group looks at the world map and chooses a country they would like to ‘invest’ in.  Another is determined to find an individual who needs the loan the most. You can hear the buzz as they discuss and make their decisions.

Then something unexpected happens…

A student calls me over to see why there isn’t enough balance for his group to make their $25 loan. There is a commotion on the other side of the room and it turns out that one student has made a joke of the whole thing and donated the entire $100, leaving no credit for the other groups to complete their loans. The group concerned is laughing and being silly – but only for a moment. They realise what they have done and everything grinds to a halt. The session is over for everyone and what started on a high note has ended acrimoniously.

It is not the end of the world. No-one has actually stolen anything and the money is, after all, still being loaned to a worthy cause. But trust has been broken and worse, there is some denial and much blaming.

Many lessons have been learned today, not only by the students. Most of them have nothing to do with the original intentions of the lesson.

Would you do an activity like this in your class? How would you deal with the unexpected outcome?

1. I think the blog has turned me into a global learner, who loves to share their learning and opinion. The disadvantage is that sometimes the blog deletes your post. The advantages are endless. You can share a video, picture and writing. I think my learning has improved from the blog because it has made me a enthusiastic learner. Its great that anyone in the world can access and comment on OUR blog. I hope to create my own blog sometime in the future. (Emily)

2.  I have learnt a huge amount of information from looking at others’ thinking and asking questions. You can post videos, texts, images, google maps, any embed things and links. One thing that really gave me information about the world was a voice thread that I set up about education around the world and after a few days comments were just flying in. I got comments from nearly every continent. This shows that the blog is wide open which is great. (Leor)

3. I think that the blog is great because we get to be a big community of learners and share with people from around the world and it’s like exchanging learning. We learn from people and people learn from us. The advantages were sharing learning with the class more… and we could have a conversation about learning. (Ieva)

4. By being able to look at other people’s learning and learn from theirs… I am more clear on what I have to do sometimes and I can get ideas from others. I also enjoy the blog because I am able to get feedback on what I do from people all over the world and improve myself to make things perfect. (Cassie)

5. I think that it’s a great tool for learning and communicating! It has many advantages like you can access it from anywhere school, home etc. also people from other countries can comment on our learning and tell us their opinion and we can learn about their country by commenting back and asking about it. We can share our learning with each other, the rest of the school and anyone from any other country. (Alicia)

6.  As a learner I think the blog is great , you can put so much effort into something and not only your friends and family can see it but the world, you can learn so many new facts from the public. The blog is like a room with different people in it. I have created my own blog and I think its great because it’s what I have to say and people all over the world can help me discover more. (Justin)

7.  At the start of the year I wasn’t very sure about using the blog and I wasn’t quite sure how to write a good post. Since then I have learnt all the skills and techniques to make a good post/comment. I am now very confident with using the blog. Looking through all my blog posts it shows how far I have come and towards the end how much better all my blog posts are. (Lexie)

8. It helped me as a thinker because when you look at other people’s posts on sometimes the same thing, they could be very different and it could change your thinking too. Because you realize the other side of what you are thinking. My comments now are very different to the start of the year because now I am thinking as a learner, but before I was more thinking about being a worker at school. This helps a lot because you want to get something out of what you do – that is what a learner does, a worker does it to get it done. (Josh)

9. Using the blog as at tool, has extended my thinking is so many ways. It has helped me communicate with people all around the world and get to know about them a bit better. The advantages of being on the blog, is learning about different people and seeing what other people post on the blog to compare! (Amy)

10. Using the blog as a tool has really helped me with all my learning because people comment from all over the world and are able to see what we are learning about. When they comment we can use that information for our inquiry. The blog has helped me as a learner because you get everyone’s opinion from around the world and you learn a heap. (Jay)