Tag Archives: Chris Wejr

You Should Read… (November 25, 2012)

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Plug Us In

I have been off and on writing this “weekly” post but I think that it is important to recognize some of the great content that I am reading out there that may have been missed in tweets and I like trying to culminate some of my favourite content for others to share in one space.  Here are a few things that I thought were great to share:

1.  Teachers Should Change How They Teach Students Today – There constantly seems to be a back-and-forth about changing teaching practices vs. teaching the way that worked for us as students.  In this great article that was a response to a New York Times piece and then offers a comparison to another article discussing students in an Ethiopian village and how they had learned to hack into a device and do some pretty amazing things:

Kids without schooling, without literacy, HACKED the Androids to turn the camera back on . . . without instruction.  That is a breathtaking example of how learning can happen with new technology if we are open to new ways of peer, community-based, shared learning…What the teachers in the NY Times piece need to take from this Ethiopian experiment–what all of us as educators on every level have to take from this experiment–is that, if we do not think learning is something so dreadfully dull that it has to be regulated, assessed, made compulsory, rule bound, divided into disciplines, and in all other ways “measured out in coffee spoons” (as T. S. Eliot would say), then the potential of kids and all of us to learn is enormous.  I have had to unlearn a lot of my own didactic forms of teaching over the years and have had to learn how to practice what I call “structuring possibilities for openness.”   It means biting my tongue, not solving the problem or coming up with the answers, but providing the opportunities in which students can help one another to learn and having faith that, if I stay back, they will in fact learn because, as humans, learning is what we do, it’s how we thrive.

Has learning changed or the opportunities that make it more conducive and engaging?  Just a question I thought of when reading this article.

2.  The Daily Routines of Famous Writers – I just love some of the quotes and thoughts from this article as that many people are exploring blogs and how we can have students engaged in their own writing.  What I get from the article is that there is not “one-size-fits-all” approach to this but we just have to just start:

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

But if we are blogging do students have to write?  Darren Kuropatwa offers a different perspective on what the blogging medium provides and how text is not the only option.  What are some tips that you have to get students and/or teachers to write?

3.  Freedom < —  A Vehicle For Leadership – Kristen Swanson refers to a recent Leadership 2.0 session offered by Chris Wejr and shares thoughts on the differences between “Freedom From” and “Freedom To”:

Chris caught my attention by talking about freedom. While everyone wants freedom, some people want “freedom from” and others want “freedom to.”

In unhealthy, fear-based organizations, people want FREEDOM FROM the rules that exist arbitrarily. They want to escape the entire situation. They seek points, credit, dollars, or some other external reward. A leader in this type of organization must constantly monitor the team’s compliance.

In vibrant, collaborative organizations, people want FREEDOM TO innovate, create new structures, and solve problems. A leader in this type of environment simply needs to nurture the ambitions of the team.

So here is my question on this…can a healthy organization have elements of both?  For example, if a leader provides “freedom from” boring staff meetings so that teachers have the “freedom to” spend more time focused on professional learning, is that not what we want?  Kristen discusses this in her own post but what are your thoughts? Is one more important or is there a correlation?

So Star Wars and Disney have created a partnership and I love this “Disney Song” that was created from the movie.

Enjoy!

Share Great Stories

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cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by Salim Virji

This post is one that I am doing to model the suggestion I made through the Summer Blogging Challenge that I posted recently.  I really believe that we need to model what we ask of others and I also know that is important to share some of the other great ideas and stories being shared by others through social media.

I recently found this great post by Chris Wejr through his Twitter feed about small things that can make a difference and I was absolutely moved by his story.  Chris was extremely comfortable sharing how people connected with his children and went way beyond what they had to do within their normal job expectations:

These guys (the one on the left in particular) could drive on and do their job as they have been directed to do.  Instead they take the 45 seconds to do their job AND make a small effort to make a big difference to my daughters.  Why do they do this?  I am not sure but I would assume that they want to make my daughters smile; in addition, the feeling they get from the waves and smiles from the girls probably brightens their day too.

In my own learning, it is amazing to see when people feel they have a purpose and the flexibility to go above and beyond what is expected of them.  It is through this where people find true satisfaction in what they do, and you always see that the best teachers do this.  I have often said that if the only thing that the teacher does in a school is teach the curriculum, they have let their kids down.  There is so much to teaching than simply sharing content so we have to do our best to empower our students to become learners that lead the way.

Barry Schwartz talks about the limitations of rules and what happens when do not provide the flexibility to people to have the wisdom draw outside the lines:

Rules and incentives may improve the behavior of those who don’t care, though they won’t make them wiser. But in focusing on the people who don’t care—the targets of our rules and incentives—we miss those who do care. We miss those who want to do the right things but lack the practical wisdom to do them well. Rules and incentives won’t teach these people the moral skill and will they need. Even worse, rules can kill skill and incentives can kill will.

What I love about what Chris talks about is that this story that has nothing to do with school yet everything to do with learning is a great way to connect emotionally with people.  Data is important in our work and is something that we need to continue to build upon.  Still data does not move people; stories do.

So a couple of questions and thoughts from this:

How do we cultivate a culture in our schools that has teachers feeling comfortable to go beyond their job, take risks, and be innovative?

How do we create a culture where teachers feel comfortable sharing their amazing stories with a larger audience?  It is important that we share them with our own school communities but I think it is powerful that we share them with a larger audience as well.

Thank you Chris for sharing this great story; we need to do this more.

If you are interested in the Barry Schwartz video on wisdom, check out the Ted Talk below:

You Should Read… (June 17, 2012)

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Only a few more weeks until school is over for many in Canada but the learning will continue throughout the summer, anytime we are open to it.  Here are some links that I found interesting this week:

1.  Amplify the Positive Outliers – Seth Godin, one of the most popular bloggers on the Internet, talks about the importance of building culture by highlighting the work of those that are making a change:

“The tribe is hyper-aware of what’s being celebrated, and when you celebrate those that are moving in the right direction, you create a powerful push in that direction. It’s tempting to spend your time extinguishing bad behaviors, but in fact, spreading the word about the superstars is far more likely to change the culture of your market.”

Cultures are so important in the work that we do at schools, so this leads nicely into the next post.

2.  Starting the Conversation on Rethinking Awards Ceremonies – Chris Wejr, a good friend and principal, often talks about how awards impact our students, and provides this post to help schools start the conversation.  He asks some great questions:

  • Does your year-end awards ceremonies and/or student of the month program align with your school vision, plan and/or goals?
  • What does research say about the use of awards/prizes to motivate (or demotivate) learning?
  • At which age do awards become necessary – 5? 10? 15?  Why?
  • How much of the award is based on culture, language, parents (particularly cultural capital and income) and teachers that the winner has/had and how much is based on the person’s work ethic?

So where is the balance between highlighting the great work that is being done by our outliers, but also building a culture of collaboration?  These two pieces will provide a good starting point for that conversation.

3. The Best Twitter Hashtags for Teachers – Just a simple article to help teachers start using Twitter to do their own learning.  This offers some great connections to Twitter hashtags in the classrooms, but it leaves out two that I follow exclusively which are #ConnectedCA and #CPChat.  Which ones do you follow for your learning?

4.  I love this picture from 22 Words about cheating:

We have to look at what “cheating” means in our schools today.  If collaboration is a skill we are promoting in skills and organizations are begging their employees have, does cheating in our schools today look the same?  Something that I have said to many groups when I have been asked about the concern of using Google to cheat on a test is that if you can look up the answer to test on Google, is the question very good?

Maybe this picture can start some conversations on the topic of cheating and collaboration.

Hope you have a great week!

You Should Read… (February 19, 2012)

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Working a lot with teachers and parents in the past few weeks, it is amazing to see the shift in focus that our students need  to be more connected.  There is a definite shift in the mindset of many.  With that being said, the focus on creativity, innovation, and the skills that are needed for the “21st Century”, many understand that schools need to continue to focus on strong relationships with their students and school community to thrive in our time.  Relationships continue to be the foundation that great schools are built upon.  It is paramount that we continue to focus on that.

Here are some articles that I found pushed my thinking in the last week:

1.  What does teaching creativity look like? – Creativity is a skill that is needed in our world with the “knowledge economy” becoming dominant in our work place.  With so many traditions that are firmly in place in our schools, does this skew our thinking and take away our ability to be creative?  In this short article, the author asks a similar question:

Perhaps the most important entry on Michalko’s list is his last point, that “creativity is paradoxical.” Schools are places where students are supposed to acquire knowledge—but to create, a person must “forget the knowledge.” If you’re not able to leave what you think you know behind, you can’t approach problems with a fresh perspective. Students must also be taught to “desire success but embrace failure,” and to “listen to experts but know how to disregard them.”

 This is a great, short article to share with a staff to open up some questions on how they are fostering a creative environment.

2.  Autonomy in Teaching Training – My good friend, Chris Wejr, challenges the “status quo” in the way that teacher training programs are preparing new educators for a rapidly changing world and classroom.  I have heard this conversation often, yet it is interesting to not only read this post but the comments that follow as well.  Chris ends the post with the following:

Our pre-service teaching programs seem to be over in the blink of an eye (in BC, they are often only 16-20 weeks).  This is a critical time as this is often the only experience they will have prior to applying for teaching positions.  Providing more autonomy for our future teachers is key to their development so I hope you can add your thoughts to this conversation to see if we can help move our programs forward.

Chris has some great thoughts…how can we better prepare our new teachers to implement the strategies needed to be successful coming into this challenging profession?  I encourage you to add to the conversation on Chris’ blog post.

3.  Important Conversations – Some of the practices that I (as well as many other teachers) have implemented over the past few years we now know are not beneficial to learning.  The idea of taking away grades for being late does not show the true understanding a child has over the content of the class, yet it is essential to ensure students are good citizens and respectful of our school environment.  The picture in this blog post is a great conversation starter for staff, students, and parents.   More importantly though then the message, is the conversation.  How do we continue to bring parents in on the learning of school to help enhance the work we are doing together with children?  How do we continue to inform and discuss with them continuously evolving teaching and learning practices?  I think of this Marc Prensky quote when reading the aforementioned article:

“Involve your students’ parents as much as you can. Try thinking of them as your students as well, that is, as people you are educating.”  Marc Prensky

When parents and schools work together, you double the chance of success for each child.

I hope that all of you have an amazing week and I thank everyone for continuing to share and write amazing content that will help all of us continuously learn!

As I end this blog post, I have been caught up in all the “Linsanity” (as most were) and this was probably one of the most inspiring moments that I saw from the last week…enjoy!

You Should Read (September 25, 2011)

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cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by gcouros

 I would love to share with anyone who reads this blog some interesting articles that I read this week.  Please feel free to comment and share any of these posts as you see fit.  There is so much great stuff that I see in a week that it is tremendously tough to pick three so you can look at any link that I have archived under my Diigo links for this weekly post.

1. Up hill both ways in a snow storm – My good friend Cale Birk, wrote essentially a rebuttal to the “Inside the Entitlement Generation” post that was essentially a ” scathing account of the younger generation of today.”  Ultimately Cale decides to take the “optimist” approach and look for the good things that are in our youth today and I would 100% agree with him:

In my opinion, our students of today are as intelligent and motivated as students at this age have ever been.  I would also say that students are much more well-rounded than I ever was–they are more socially responsible, more globally aware, and more tolerant than any generation before them.  When graduates cross our stage at commencements, I absolutely marvel at how involved they are in their academics, the arts, athletics, the school, and community issues.  I wish I went through high school with the same verve and alacrity that our students do.

This article discusses the importance in believing in our students, and in reality, we can look at them as “entitled” but what does that help?  Chris Wejr also wrote a post on the same topic, and to me, these are the kind of educators that we need in schools.  I know both Cale and Chris personally and they are very real about the work and challenges that we have to do, but they both approach education in the way that it is the positive relationships that we have with our students that makes the biggest impact on the work that we do.  I encourage you to read all of the articles linked in this post.

2. 10 Reasons to Trash Word for Google Docs – Jeff Utecht, an educator located in Bangkok, has a great blog that I have only come across recently (although I read it for a long time that first night!), and in it, he shares how he feels the use of Google Docs is advantageous over Word.  Personally, I have not used Word for a long time as I find Google Docs much easier, and I am glad that this suite of tools is available to all of our students and staff in Parkland School Division as it really serves the work that we are trying to do with students.  Here is an excerpt from his post:

10. Because it’s the future
We’re headed into a fully web-based world. Even Microsoft is working to make Word fully online in a few years…see I told you they were old school. Get a jump on the future and get use to working on the web now so you’re not playing catch up later.

The one major reason that Jeff did leave out (although it is implied continuously) is that it is just faster.  If you have a stable Internet connection, Google Docs just makes it easier to do things in the classroom.  We could all use more time right?

3. Cybersafety: Do fear and exaggeration increase risk? – Sylvia Martinez shares an excellent presentation  about some of the misconceptions that are out in the public regarding Internet safety and cyberbullying which actually lead to more of the behaviour.  Yes, there are some threats, but are they as bad as they are made out in the media?  Here is what Sylvia writes about the presentation:

Be sure to view this slideshow all the way to the end, where Larry gives examples of “positive norming” as an alternative to fear-based messages about cybersafety and cyberbullying. Positive norming is when facts are presented about what most people do – and most people do not bully or engage in risky online behavior. Focusing on behavior that is NOT the norm makes it seem like it’s more prevalent than it actually is.

Please take a look at the presentation and feel free to use it as you see fit:

Do fear and exaggeration increase risk?

View more presentations from Larry Magid

When Ideas Go Viral

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Ideas never run out

Last June, our school hosted an event called “Identity Day“, which was started by my Assistant Principal, and had our students share some amazing stories from the day. I obviously wrote about the day, and was honoured to have the opportunity to present about it at the Reform Symposium in the summer of 2010.

What has happened has been amazing. Watching schools in Texas, North Carolina, British Columbia, Ontario, Chicago, Brazil, and many others do their own versions of this idea has had a major impact on my own mindset towards sharing.  Also, by watching people create fantastic resources that we can all use to better this event, has shown the power of educators when they work together.

Aviva Dunsinger really hit the nail on the head when she wrote the following:

“Identity Day wasn’t about Success Criteria or test scores. It was a celebration of us. There wasn’t one right answer or one way of completing the project. Staff and students allowed themselves to be creative, and the results were amazing!”

Chris Wejr also saw the impact of Identity Day on building stronger community:

It is so difficult to put the day in words; you had to be in our school to truly get a sense of the pride and excitement in our students. Our school was full of parents, community members and students all genuinely interested in each other. I learned more about our students in one day than I do in an entire year!

When Dean Shareski talked about Identity Day in his fantastic keynote, “The Moral Imperative“, he discussed how as educators we need to share as a way to further education for our students and create this type of impact. Watching others take this idea, build upon student passions in their school, and adapt it based on the needs of their own students, it has only deepened my own belief that as educators, we need to continue to share.

The idea of Identity Day is simple, but its impact can be very powerful. My hope is that by sharing this example of how a simple idea can be shared, grown, and adapted to meet the needs of different school communities, more people will begin to share the powerful things that they are doing in their own classrooms.

We are all here for our kids.  We need to continue to share our ideas to create the best environments possible.

Honouring All Students

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cc licensed flickr photo shared by ILRI

Recently, an article in the Vancouver Sun discussing Chris Wejr’s post on the “Death of an Awards Ceremony” has been receiving some very interesting comments from all different types of stakeholders.  As one of my own blog posts was linked (The Impact of Awards), I felt it necessary to comment.  I would strongly suggest that you look at the other comments as healthy debate helps us move forward in education, but I wanted to share what I wrote:

Some very interesting comments here and it is interesting how some of them turned into political statements.

There are two different categories of students here from the conversations.  The kids that win the awards and the kids that don’t.

We all know that being up for an award and losing ends up to a humiliating or sad circumstance for those kids.  I know many adults who are parents that still are upset they were continuously compared to their own friends and siblings but never quite measured up.  If people are taking this into their adulthood and still upset, is it an effective practice for them?

On the other hand though, we have the students that win the awards.  Research has shown that students winning awards often takes their focus off the important learning that happens in the classroom and has students focus on simply getting the award and “checking off the list” as opposed to deep thinking.  Again and again, research has shown that awards are detrimental to critical thinking activities. (Watch this Dan Pink video: www.ted.com/…/dan_pink_on_motivation.html )

With that being said, as a school administrator, if I know that it does not benefit either set of students, how could I go forward with these initiatives?  Many people believe that it is being soft or taking something off of an educators plate, but it is actually harder to create lessons that students are engaged in as opposed to having students do something to get a reward.

I also was curious towards the trustee that stated it was nice for them to give out awards to the kids.  The fact is, this is not about us, it is about the students we serve.

Schools are not about awarding the best and brightest, but developing the best and brightest.  Awards take away from this.  We can not let our own bias of our own school experience or beliefs get in the way of what research has told us about effective pedagogy.

It is my obligation to do my best to continuously recognize and honour the strengths of all our students as often as possible, not just once a year.  It is more work, but better work for all of our kids.

It’s Not That Bad

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cc licensed flickr photo shared by skippyjon

I have been reading a lot of blogs over the break and it seems that education is in terrible shape and it is a little too “Debbie Downer” for me.  Although education is not perfect, neither is anyone of us.  There are things that I would LOVE to change about myself but I know that focusing constantly on what is wrong does not really help to make it right.  I believe in strengths based leadership and the more we focus on the positives, the better we become.  Coming into a new school last year and seeing areas for growth, I decided to focus on our strengths first, and empowering our staff to take leadership.  Luckily I am blessed with an amazing staff that works together and believes in the same thing I do; do what is best for kids.

Here are some really good examples of things happening with educators right now:

I could go on and on, but the reality is education needs to change.  The other reality though is that it is changing.  It might not be in the quick and widespread manner that we would like, and it might be happening only in small pockets, but it is happening.  Share those stories and I think it will happen even faster.