My Ed Heroes #3 – Bernie Dodge

If you’ve heard of Bernie Dodge, you probably know him as  ”the Webquest guy” and with good reason.   Bernie Dodge is a professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University, and he is the father of the Webquest.  The webquest (often misunderstood, unfortunately) is a model for learning experiences using the internet that are centered around meaningful and engaging tasks.    Though he is thoroughly a techno-geek (and I mean that in the best possible way), what seems to drive his continued work is exploring ways to integrate new technology in the classroom in ways that coax higher level thinking out of the learner and that cultivate the innate desire humans have  to investigate and understand our world.

Although “the Webquest guy” has a much nicer ring to it, I think a better moniker for Bernie is the “the Task guy.” The latter is more expressive of the expanse of work that he has undertaken.  Unfortunately, the word ’task’ tends to have negative connotations, especially when you take a look at variations on the word such as ” this is so tasking” or “she is such a taskmaster” or “staying on task.”  But these negative connotations tend to come from situations where the task is menial and/or boring such as when you are asked to fill out a worksheet by searching a chapter in a book.  In spite of these negative connotations, I think The Task guy is apt because what ultimately defines the quality of learning, whether it uses technology or not, is the task that the student is asked to perform.  And Bernie’s idea of a task is something that is inspired, challenging, and inherently engaging.  It is because his work is about elevating the task that he is, in my mind, The Task Guy.

I’ve been lucky enough to have Bernie as a mentor in several venues.  I’ve heard him speak at conferences but I’ve also taken classes from him at San Diego State.  I’d like to share what I’ve learned from him regarding the notion of ‘task.’

Lessons from Bernie:

Lesson #1:  The Importance of Webquest Tasks:

In a webquest, the task is of utmost importance.  Something I know is particularly vexing to Bernie is when people misunderstand what a webquest is.  The misunderstanding grows out of the conflation of  two ideas:  an internet scavenger hunt that is a collection of websites for a student to poke around in and a webquest that is a roadmap for inquiry centered around a robust task.  Both the internet scavenger hunt and a true webquest ask students to examine websites, but a webquest asks students to use the information and ideas found at these websites to achieve something.  In a webquest, the task determines what it is a student will be doing as they examine sites around the web.  And the task must be authentic, engaging, and require higher order thought.  So if you don’t have a high quality task, you don’t have a webquest.

The success of the webquest task can be gauged by how interested the students are in undertaking the task and how challenging it is (i.e. how much will it require intellectual and creative effort to achieve).  It is because a webquest is about high quality tasks that harness the power of the internet to inform, collaborate, and share that the webquest is a model of instruction that has staying power.

Lesson #2:  The Quality of the Task Depends on the Effect it has on the Cogs of a Student’s Brain

In a presentation Bernie did titled Kids as Deciders, Bernie provides a nice graphic and explanation that illustrated, in simplified terms, the learning process.  Okay, the graphic is a bit Tron-ish, but the idea is great.   Here’s a paraphrase:

You could simplify teaching and learning with a graphic like the one to the left.  The arrow that is stabbing the learner in the eye represents an input.  Inputs (like books, lectures, websites, simulations, movies, etc.) are things that students experience in order to begin to learn about and investigate a strand of learning.  The arrow exiting the students mouth (hopefully not regurgitation but something more meaningful) is the output.  The output is what teachers ask students to produce in order to demonstrate what they have learned.  It could be an exam, a movie, an advertising campaign, a presentation, a concept map, etc.

Ultimately what matters most in teaching and learning is the unseen and invisible  growth, i.e. the flexing of mental muscle, inside the brain of the student.  This is represented in the diagram by the cogs in the head.  How did the gears churn and turn in the student’s mind to process the inputs in order to produce the output?  The churning of the cogs is the learning itself.

So what does this have to do with tasks?  Well, generally the teacher at least in some way determines what output a student will use to demonstrate their learning.  It is the task that the teacher lays before the student that determines how the cogs of the brain will process the information and what the student will produce.

First let’s look at an example from a “webquest.”  I put ‘webquest’ in quotes in the previous sentence because the task in this example would barely qualify it as a webquest, if it does at all.  (See below) The task is simply a scavenger hunt for information that will be regurgitated in a PowerPoint and a brochure.  There is no repurposing of the information.  All students have to do  in order to achieve the described task is find the information and perhaps paraphrase it in a PowerPoint and brochure form.  Essentially they will be taking notes on the topic with a PowerPoint and brochure.  This is using the information at a very low level.  The cogs of the brain simply have to locate the information and summarize/paraphrase it.

Poor Webquest Task

Now let’s modify that task.  Let’s say that students will imagine that they are applying for grant money from the Department of the Interior.  The grant money must be used for disaster preparedness for their hometown.  In their presentation they have to define the dangers related to the type of disaster and generate a plan for improving the city’s readiness for that disaster.  This task would require significantly more flexing of mental muscle.  Presumably they can’t just go to Google and find a disaster preparedness plan for their home town.  They have to CREATE it – the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy – by finding out what happens when that natural disaster strikes, how people protect themselves from it, and what readiness plan may already be in place and how it can be improved in order to make their hometown ready.  They are going to need to piece a lot of information together for a particular purpose.  Furthermore, the presentation they create will need to be persuasive in order to make an adequate case for the grant money.  When they are done, the students have created something of value that probably taught them quite a bit about the natural disaster they focused on.

The lesson here is that a good way to evaluate the quality of a task is to think about what would have to go on inside of a student’s mind in order for it to be achieved.  If the mind doesn’t have to re-purpose, evaluate, or create something with the information, it is likely a poorly designed task.

Lessons #3:  Whenever Possible the Task Should Tap Into Wonder and Natural Curiosity

One of Bernie’s latest endeavors is called WonderPoints.   The idea is to try to resurrect that innate intellectual curiosity that we all had as children.  To refresh your memory of what that was like here are a few questions my four-year-old son asked just in the last few weeks:

• “Where does the gas go?”  (in reference to why we were always filling our car with gas)
• “How did I learn words?  Did you teach me?” (since his little sister is just learning to speak)
• “Why is the water windy?”  (in reference to why we felt a breeze on our hike when we got closer to the Chattahoochee River)
• “Why is it called Chattahoochee?” (interesting answer to this one – I won’t tell, but the picture below provides a clue)

As we get older we take a lot more for granted.  The idea of WonderPoints is to get students wondering about their environment by snapping pictures using mobile devices and documenting what wonder the environment inspired in a map.  In order to encourage the wondering, the student is asked to take a fresh look at the environment as if they were a child or alien seeing it for the first time.

Why do I think wondering is important especially with regard to tasks.  Well, I’ll give a story from my past as an answer to that:

I loved high school biology.  It was one of my favorite classes.  Not only was it challenging, but the teacher created experiences that were inquiry-based; where the task was high level and engaging.  I learned a lot about Biology, and the class inspired me to take Biology as my major in college.

BUT…

Biology seemed to be an interesting but lifeless subject.  Somehow I got the impression that biologists had it all figured out.  I loved learning about Pasteur and genetics and ecosystem dynamics, but these topics weren’t taught as if there were gaps in the scientific understanding.  The information was taught as complete not as if there were interesting questions left unanswered in the field.  To get down to it, the class did not inspire me to WONDER about biology or feel that I could be a part of answering biological questions.

My guess is that I’m not the only person in the world who has experienced this.  A class might be taught well and include well designed and engaging tasks but still not make a student feel that they can participate in the generation of new knowledge in the field – i.e. that their questions and investigation might uncover new truths.

The moral of this story – creating tasks that stimulate students to wonder and ask questions inspires students to investigate their own questions and create new knowledge.  This is often a missing element of coursework.

Why Educators Should Worry More About Tasks

All of the lessons that Bernie taught me about tasks may seem patently clear you.  But my observations of education indicate that although teachers may understand the need for meaningful tasks, it is the transfer of that knowledge to implementation that tends to breakdown – especially when considering the integration of technology.  Prepare  yourself, I’m climbing up on my soapbox:

The reason education has failed to inspire kids is not a lack of engaging technological tools. These are a passing thrill. How excited are people about the original iPad now that the iPad2 is released? If we are simply enticing students to learn by employing the latest technology, it is a cheap thrill.  To paraphrase Gary Stager (who happens to be My Ed Hero #4 and coming up in my next post) technology just seems to amplify the quality of teaching.  It makes bad teachers worse and good teachers better.  That’s because it is the teaching, and more importantly the task students are asked to do during their time with a teacher that defines the quality of learning.  A meaningful and thoroughly engaging lesson can use nothing more than the minds of the student and the skill of the teacher. You can do a really bad lesson in Google Earth and do an incredible one with traditional paper maps or brain power alone. The task is what matters.

If you think about it, what educational/pedagogical value is inherent to new technologies?  Well, I think that ultimately it boils down to a few things that really make them  have value in the classroom:

• Access – 24/7, anywhere, immediate access
• connecting students with people outside of the bounds of their classroom and promoting collaboration
• connecting students with information and elements of the world not available prior to the new technologies
• allowing for creations that have high production value

For example, What is the educational value of a Prezi?

Prezi will not have enduring importance to education.  Neither will VoiceThreads or iMovie or Flickr.  Google docs is just a fancy word processing program that makes documents more accessible and allows for collaboration.  Most likely these tools will soon be replaced and improved upon.  But quality tasks are what we need our teachers to be able to construct, and this will be of never ending importance to the field.  Students will always need to be able to plan, create, evaluate, persuade, propose, design, etc.  Unfortunately too many teachers get things backward.  We spend too much time raving about the power of a tool and not enough time raving about the power of tasks.

And one more thing, just because I feel this cannot be stated enough.  The reorganization of Bloom’s Taxonomy has caused some problems in the education field because the term ‘Create’ is used too generously.  Creating is now at the top of the taxonomy.  However, some educators believe that if a student “creates a movie” or “creates a PowerPoint” that they have asked their students to think at a higher level, but this is not the case.  Neither of these implies that the student created anything with the information. If you are wanting to design an objective that asks students to create, then take the tool out of the equation.  Are they creating a persuasive presentation?  Are they creating a new solution to a problem?  Are they creating a plan?  If you can take the tool out of the equation and the word ‘create’ still makes sense as part of the objective, then it is deserving of this highest rung of Bloom’s.  But if you are having students “create a movie about the types of volcanoes”  taking movie out of the objective makes it nonsensical to say the students are creating anything.  They are Not creating anything with the information about volcanoes that they research.

I thank Bernie for helping me to focus on what the learner is doing (and in particular what they are doing with the target content of the lesson) because, to me, it is the ultimate test of the quality of instruction.

My Ed Heroes #2 – Benjamin Bloom

Who in the field of education hasn’t heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy?  My guess is that relatively few educators haven’t.  If you’ve heard of the taxonomy and have found it useful in defining the objectives of your teaching, then you are indebted to Benjamin Bloom.

Bloom was a psychologist who is most famous for organizing educational objectives according to their cognitive complexity.  This is, of course, Bloom’s Taxonomy.   Bloom was consumed with investigating thinking and learning.  In fact one of his great hopes was to find a way to replicate the educational results that were achieved through 1 to 1 mastery teaching in the group instructional setting.

Benjamin Bloom is My Ed Hero #2 because the number one pedagogical reform that I would like to see in education is a move toward encouraging students to contend with real-world/authentic problems that elevate their engagement with material to a higher order of thinking on Bloom’s Taxonomy.  The habits of mind that Deborah Meier (My Ed Hero #1) places at the center of curriculum are a perfect example.  Each of the habits of mind requires thinking about information that you are presented with in a more sophisticated and important way than simply remembering and understanding it.  Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy provides a simple framework for creating instructional objectives, measuring outcomes, and evaluating the quality of teaching.

To me Bloom’ Taxonomy is the single most important guiding principle in education.  You hear about the taxonomy so much because it is the best structure we have for determining whether a learning task is of high cognitive complexity or not.    What’s disappointing to me though, is that at k-12 schools and institutions of higher learning across the country, instruction is still more often focused on the lower hanging fruit of understanding and remembering.  Bloom’s book introducing the taxonomy was published in 1956.  Despite being a welcome and much discussed guide for designing educational objectives and assessment and despite widespread desire to foster critical thinking, we still, after more than 50 years of having the taxonomy, create instruction as if information was something to dump into students’ brains rather than as something to use in awing and profound ways.

Now there are a lot of guides out there to help teachers consider the taxonomy in their lesson design.  Some of these guides are great and some are fatally flawed.  However, these guides have not proven adequate for promoting widespread higher order instruction.  Why?  I’m not sure.  Could it be:

• they insufficiently communicate how to design lessons that engage the cogs of the brain at a higher level of Bloom’s
• not enough teachers place a high value on developing this type of instruction
• there isn’t enough time built into a teacher’s day to spend developing curriculum that goes beyond the insipid pre-packaged lessons that come with the big bucks districts spend on textbooks
• for some other reason yet to be discovered?

With all of the efforts being spent on education reform, it might be worth taking a moment to investigate why daily lesson plans do not consistently inspire these higher levels of cognition in students.  It is not the case that there aren’t an extraordinary number of teachers that rise to this high standard, because there certainly are.  It is just not as commonplace as one might hope.  But why?  Especially since Bloom’s is common knowledge among educators.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, however, is not perfect.  It’s imperfection lies in how easy it is to misinterpret and misuse.   Using the various guidelines for the taxonomy, a teacher may believe that they are creating a task that requires higher level thinking that doesn’t.  Or equally ineffective, a teacher may create a task that has a  higher level aspect to the task, but the higher order thinking isn’t focused on the concept and ideas that you hope.  Instead, interaction with the concepts remains at a very low level.  Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: The pyramid to the left aligns web 2.0 tools with Bloom’s Taxonomy and was tweeted my way recently.  It seems like a good idea because, in theory, now teachers can select a tool based on the desired cognitive complexity of the task.   Wouldn’t it be great if it were that easy?  Then as long as you are using the tool at the appropriate level of Bloom’s, then you are fostering higher order thinking at that level.

But ultimately it makes no sense.  Each of the items listed in the pyramid are simply tools.  Where would paper fall on the chart?  Nowhere!  Because it is not what tool or implement you are using but how you are using it.  Take Prezi for example.  Based on this chart it is a tool that will have your students working in the highest possible cognitive domain – creating.  But if students are just finding images and information on the web and inserting it into a presentation without much processing, then it is far from being a creative enterprise.  Conversely Flickr is placed at the lowest level as a remembering tool.  But suppose that you have students find pictures on Flickr to illustrate the concept of ‘decay’ or ‘affluence’ or ‘democracy’.  An activity like that would at least be at the analysis level of Bloom’s.

Example 2: I really like this site, so I hate to pick on it.  Someone has made this Bloom’s flip book .  On each page there are descriptions, helpful verbs, and sample activities for each level of Bloom’s.  On the ‘Create’ level it suggests an activity where students create a film about a topic.  What’s interesting about this example is that there is no question that creating a movie will have your students working at a higher level of thinking, but not necessarily about the topic of the movie.  The act of writing a script/creating a storyboard and using movie-making software to edit and organize information so that it effectively communicates and visually stimulates certainly requires thinking at every level of Bloom’s.  The problem is that students can create a beautiful movie and not have to think at a higher level about the content at all.  For example, what if you asked students to make a movie about the types of volcanoes.  Students could simply go online, find out the types of volcanoes, copy a definition/description, download a picture of each, and slap a movie together.  I’ve seen students do exactly that.  In order to have students struggle with the concepts at a higher level, it isn’t what they produce but how the task is framed that matters.  A higher order movie task might ask students to pretend that they work for the department of the interior and create a introductory video for developers who want to build communities near a volcano.   Clearly in this case the students will need to grapple with information related to volcanoes much more significantly.

Example 3: Even relying on the verbs that are often listed as correlating to various levels of Bloom’s can lead to mixed results.  The verb ‘decide’ is placed at the evaluation level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  This makes sense because complex decision-making requires significant thought.  Bernie Dodge has an excellent presentation on the topic of Kids As Deciders (btw – he’s coming up as My Ed Heroes #3 tomorrow).  But a teacher could construct an objective using that verb that does not ask students to think at a higher level.  For example:  ”Students will be able to decide whether an image of a volcano is a cinder cone.”  This objective has a verb that is at the evaluation level, but what students are really doing here is at the understanding or applying level.  The new Bloom’s Taxonomy that places creating at the highest level is sure to lead to misinterpretations.  Whenever the objective is create a…movie, presentation, podcast, etc. and specifies the type of production, you have no guarantee that the task will truly meet any level of Bloom’s beyond understanding.  However, if the task is not tool/product specific and uses the verb create, you are more likely to see better results.  Take the volcano movie above.  If instead you simply asked students to create guidelines for developers who would like to build communities near volcanoes and left the format up to the student, then the creation aspect is squarely placed on the content.

To sum up, I think that Bloom’s Taxonomy is of enormous importance.  If educators truly understand it and strive to create lessons that prod their students to more complex levels of cognition, the employment of the taxonomy would be a great success. But this breakthrough has been around so long and we have still not found a way to utilize the taxonomy effectively, and that is a shame.

Resources (buyer beware – not all of the resources listed at these two sites are created equally, but they are a good start):

Educational Origami’s Bloom’s Taxonomy Resources (and Ed Origami’s Wiki Resources) – I love these

Larry Ferlazzo’s’ Best Resources for Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy

My Ed Heroes #1 – Deborah Meier

For my first post in the My Ed Heroes series, I want to reflect on a person who has brought about a budding resurgence of thought about the mission of education.  This individual is of particular importance to me because although I have never met her, Deborah Meier talked me into becoming an educator.

After college I thought I would become a philosophy professor.  Snoozer I know, but walking home from my philosophy courses struggling with the ideas of identity and other metaphysical questions prodded my brain into a place of challenged uneasiness – that sweet spot of intellectual growth.  I liked it.  If only I could keep my brain challenged by these intractable questions…So I packed up and took my desire to explore new intellectual frontiers to the University of California, San Diego to get a Ph.D. in philosophy.  But at the end of my second year of graduate school at UCSD I had this crazy idea to take an education class.

It happened to be taught by Larry Rosenstock, founder of High Tech High. At first the class made me uncomfortable. He had ideas about education that painted a picture of schooling dramatically different than my experience, and OBVIOUSLY the way I was taught is the right way.  Right?  Larry tossed out ideas that seemed utterly bizarre to me at first. He suggested that high school didn’t have to be constrained by periods with each subject tied up neatly into a time slot. Students could do internships or volunteer during school hours.  Students could grapple with challenges and be asked to create something new.  One story that sticks out for me is that at one of his schools in Boston students in shop classes got credit for physics.  Their calibrated and technical creations impressed physics professors and physics professionals.  That’s right, the kids traditionally considered to be beginning their vocational education were doing college level physics.  Now in the grand tradition of believing that school should be taught in exactly the same way that it was when you were a student, I resisted these ideas. But only at first…

One of the things that pushed me over the edge and ultimately inspired me to believe not only that education should approach its mission differently but that I should be a part of it was reading the assigned book The Power of Their Ideas by Deborah Meier.  It is her belief in the ideals of democratic education, also espoused by John Dewey, that make her one of my educational heroes.

If you aren’t familiar with Deborah Meier, she is a progressive educator who founded several small schools in New York and has written a number of books.  She is also on the board of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES).  Her small schools and work at the CES focus on developing the habits of mind that encourage future intellectual and emotional growth as well as equip students with the cognitive abilities and attitudes that will help them to blossom into an informed and conscientious citizen.  Her goal is to grow schools that not only guide students to be conscientious members of our society but that themselves embody democratic ideals in the governance of the school.

Her influence over me (and many many others) can be summed up with one word:  DEMOCRACY.

It’s been so long since I read her book, but there is much that sticks out to me.  The ideal of democracy that she proposes is two-fold.

1.  Education should prepare students to be active participants in our democratic system – Toward this goal, Deborah Meier focuses on Habits of Mind as a core element of her curriculum rather than stressing the retention of discrete facts.  Ultimately it is the ability to think, analyze, and comprehend that are what lead to educated and responsible citizens rather than whether they can factor quadratic equations.  The original habits of mind are below:

• Evidence: How do we know what’s true and false? What evidence counts? How sure can we be? What makes it credible to us? This includes using the scientific method and more.
• Viewpoint: How else might this look if we stepped into other shoes? If we were looking at it from a different direction? If we had a different history or expectations? This requires the exercise if informed “empathy” and imagination. It required flexibility of mind.
• Connections/Cause and Effect: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before? What are the possible consequences?
• Conjecture: Could it have been otherwise? Supposing that? What if ? This habit requires use of imagination as well as knowledge of alternative possibilities. It includes the habits described above.
• Relevance: Does it matter? Who cares?

2.  Schools should be models of democratic decision-making - The idea here is that schools should be collaborative enterprises where grown ups are allies not enemies. Parents, teachers, and students can democratically make decisions related to the operation of the school.    There was no dictator calling all of the shots.  One of the goals of a school of this sort is to gain the trust of students by valuing their ideas and opinions.  Students aren’t incarcerated in a place not their own for a required number of years.

I use the word incarceration cautiously, but it is an inescapable (f)act — aside from a draft army, it’s the only institution that takes away our freedom even though we’ve done nothing wrong.  – Deborah Meier from How Democratic Are Our Schools?

So I got talked into teaching by Deborah Meier.  It turns out that graduate school didn’t prod my brain into that state of discomfort that inspired me to think…it was educational transformation that got those gears cranking.  The unfortunate reality is that most schools achieve neither of the aims listed above.  The real-world of education is what I faced when I first put on my teachers shoes and walked into a classroom.  Too many schools suffer from the contagion of standardized testing delirium and other maladies that plague our schools.  Despite widespread call for change and slow but steady reforms, it may be awhile before schools are transformed, but I’m in it for the long haul.

Why do Deborah Meier’s ideas have staying power? 

• We live in a time where people understand that you can’t truly provide objective news coverage free of bias,but the response to that has led to a wholesale rejection of the idea that you should at least try.  So “News” stations and talk radio have worked hard to convince viewers/listeners not by the strength of the evidence/causal connection but through repetition, fear, and out right misdirection and lying.  So I think that educating students to be able to analyze what they are hearing and seeing (no matter who is the source) should be a key element of the educational charter.  If students graduate from their schooling unable to question and critique and can easily be swayed by the most emotional or fear-based exhortation, then our democracy is in trouble.  Democracies thrive on the marketplace of ideas where arguments are examined on their merits.  They fail when the electorate is easily swayed and bullied and when some ideas are vilified and aren’t even allowed to be presented.  I think all educators should consider the extent to which their curriculum truly does encourage higher order thinking and more importantly what real-world value the transformation that they are hoping to inspire in students will have.
• Secondly, in the spirit of democratic discourse, there is an ongoing discussion in the marketplace of ideas about the future of education.  This debate concerns every facet of the profession from what good teaching looks like, what should be taught, how should teachers be compensated, etc.  One struggle that I have had is that I am torn between two approaches that I can take to this ongoing wrangling about education.  Option 1 – I tell myself that I can sit it out.  No one will listen to what I have to say anyway.  There are so many voices already out there.  They can take care of this.  I can just focus on the small sphere of influence that I have and do the best I can.  Option 2 – I can add my voice to the marketplace of ideas.  I have just as much right to be heard as someone like Bill Gates.  In fact I probably have more of a right to be heard because I have years of experience and dedicated my intellectual study to education.  More importantly there are other voices that have more experience and study than me that should be heard.  Take Gary Stager’s insightful commentary on the meddling of Bill Gates.  I know Bill Gates’ heart is in the right place in wanting to improve education but he is not an expert.  Yet he has the ear of the presidency and the media.   I don’t want the decision-making concerning education to be done over our  heads by an oligarchy of the rich and powerful, the politically motivated, the traditionally entrenched, and the ignorant and uninformed voices that are the loudest and most well-funded.  The habits of mind that Deborah Meier promotes allows people to question dubious claims of cause and effect based on a need for evidence and an understanding of the viewpoint of the individual making the claim (i.e. that unions are the cause of the budget shortfall in Wisconsin – okay, sorry I had to work that in).  Never has it been more important that we not just instill democratic ideals in the children that we teach but that we model the employment of the skills we have developed to influence the debate to the best of our ability.   We as educators will disagree with each other and have to duke out our discussions with the power of our ideas, but we need to join the fight.   Obviously I’m choosing option 2, so like it our not get ready to hear my voice, and I hope that I hear yours.  In fact I hope we disagree (at least a little bit) because that’s more fun anyway.

If you are interested in Deborah Meier she has a continuing exchange with Diane Ravitch called Bridging Differences and she was recently interviewed by Steve Hargadon on the Future of Education Webinar series.

Finding My Voice – A Tribute to My Ed Heroes

The Blonde, the Contrabass & the Microphone #5 from brtsergio's Flickr Photostream (Sergio Bertolini)

On the way to work today, NPR played an interview with Tom Waits in honor of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  According to Waits, most singers when they start out are just doing bad impersonations of the musicians that inspired them.  At some point he realized he had found his voice.

I remember when I first walked into a classroom in the role of teacher.  I was fortunate to have Tammy Wu, who was teacher of the year for San Diego Unified School District that year, as my master teacher.  There is no question that all I did during my time with her was a bad impersonation of her teaching style.  Then when I had my own classroom I continued to do impersonations of every teacher that I had ever known.  I drew on my high school biology teacher and my college logic professor and every other educator that I admired.  But I was simply using mimicry as a survival skill like a cat teaching her kitten to  hunt.  I didn’t really understand why what I was doing worked or didn’t work, I just followed their lead.   Perhaps I had an intuitive understanding of good teaching, but it hadn’t been developed into a robust and informed understanding despite my years of training.  So at that point I wasn’t an artist in the field of education – more of a paint by numbers prodigy.

Because being good at what I do has always been important to me and because what I do is something that I’m passionate about, I evaluate myself and seek to improve, just as all teachers do who are passionate about their art.   But today I believe that I have found my voice as an educator.  It has only come about because of the influence of my many educational heroes.  So in this blog post I want to introduce a series on my blog where I will highlight one of my ed heroes each day for the next two weeks.  I am indebted to them because the ground they broke and the ideas they have shared have been the most meaningful to me in my development as an educational artist.

Now just because I’ve found my voice does not mean that I am a virtuoso, as they are, or that I won’t continue to be influenced by the ed gurus of the world.  I know that I will.  I look forward to it, but I am at a point where I can critically evaluate what the ed gurus have to offer and integrate the best of their offerings into my own style.  I can educate confidently with more an more success and fewer and fewer fails because they have influenced but not determined my style.

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Notes about the series:

Here’s my plan for the blog posts.  I’ve been reflecting on my educational heroes in response to my new role as an instructional technologist in higher education.  My primary role now is to support college faculty in the integration of technology into teaching.  Although I can certainly help with the nuts and bolts of how technology works, I think my true expertise is entrenched in effective teaching where technology plays a supporting role.  Because I want to create as many opportunities for discussion about teaching generally (and because it is always good to be reminded of your values), I decided to draw pictures of all of my educational heroes with a word below them representing their influence over me (sort of Shepard Fairey style but black and white and drawn without talent).  Once they are posted on my office wall I hope that they will act as conversation starters in my work with faculty and constantly keep me poised to be reflective of my practice.

For each of my next few post, I’ll post a picture of one of my ed heroes and reflect on the influence that the featured individual had in education generally and over my thinking particularly.    If anyone reads these posts, though, I’m curious who your ed heroes are.  Who’s ideas and teachings have done the most to sculpt your teaching philosophy and fuel your passions for education?

Turning Turkey Day on It’s Head

What I do not tend to do on Thanksgiving is offer my thanks that a somewhat mythologized event from many centuries ago occurred.  Instead I have always tended to view Thanksgiving the way I believe many Americans have as a time to reflect on what I am thankful for, especially from the past year.  This year, I would like to offer an alternative approach to Thanksgiving thankfulness that turns being thankful around a bit.  This year I am going to reflect on why people should be thankful for me.  Now writing that last sentence was hard, because it sounds like my plan this year is to stroke my ego, but I’d like to explain why I think that considering why others should be thankful for you is quite the opposite of an ego stroke and just might be a good idea.

First, let’s look inside my head when I am performing the traditional act of being thankful on Thanksgiving.  Watch out, my head isn’t always a neat and tidy place, but here we go…

In My Head – Take 1

Hmmm…what am I thankful for this year?  Well, what good things have happened to me?  What has begun to go well or continues to go well?

I’m thankful for my family, of course.  They are always there when I need them.  Plus, I just enjoy being around them.  They make me happy.  I’m thankful that my family and extended family has, for the most part remained safe and happy.  For those family and friends that I have lost this year, I am so thankful for the time that I’ve had with them and for all the reasons that they will be in my memory forever.  I’m thankful that I have a home and enough income to live comfortably.  I’m thankful for all of the good things that I experienced this year…

Okay, now that would likely continue for a long time because I feel very fortunate and have a lot to be thankful for, but do you notice a significant aspect of each of the things I am thankful for?  All of the things that I am considering are actually fairly self-focused.  I am thankful for the things that have an impact on my life.  Sure that’s natural, but ultimately I’m just thinking about my own and my family’s welfare.

Now let me try the alternative.  What happens inside my head if I reflect on why others should be thankful for me?  I’m promise I’m not just going to sing my own praises.  We’re traveling back into my head now, sorry…

In My Head – Take 2

Why should others be thankful for me?  That’s a hard one.   Well, my immediate family should be thankful for me because I always try to make sure they have what they need each day, clean clothes, food, and other things.  But I’m not sure I spend enough time just playing with my children, and I know that’s one of their favorite things.  Sometimes I get too wrapped up in the basics and doing all of the things I think are important.

My extended family doesn’t see me as much as I would like.  So why should they be thankful for me?  Well, mostly I tend to call when I need something or have something I want to talk about.  That’s not really a reason for them to be thankful for me.  Maybe I should call more often.  I think they could be thankful because I do make an effort to visit as often as I can, but given how infrequently I do visit, maybe I should make a greater effort to be connected.  Maybe a reason they should be thankful for me is that I always try to be a positive presence in their life.

How about my community?  Do I contribute enough?  Well, I do some, but I definitely think I could do more…

So here’s what I think is different about being in my head the second time and comment on some of the things that the text may not convey.

1. Take 2 was much more difficult and uncomfortable for me – Thinking about why others are thankful for you may at first sound like a neat way to stroke your ego, but it actually turns out to be a more humbling and reflective experience.  Rather than feeling like I’m so great at the end of the process, I think to myself, I’ve done some things that are good, but have I done enough.
2. Take 2 was, ironically, less self-focused -  In Take 1 I was constantly considering what worked well for me, what has happened to me worth being thankful for.  In the end it is a much more self-focused approach.  On Take 2, I am forced to reflect on how other people experience me.  How have they benefited?  What have I done for them?  So on Take 2, I’m considering the needs of others rather than my own, and depending on how thorough I want to be, I can think about my family, my friends, my community, the world, etc.
3. Take 2 has more potential to make me a better person - By reflecting on why others should be thankful for me, I open the door for considering how I could meet the needs of others better in the future.  Hopefully I will be come a more thoughtful, considerate person through this process.
4. Take 2 has more potential to make other people happy – Since I’m considering the needs of others rather than my own, I am more likely to recognize their needs in the future and, if I’m striving to be a better person, attempt to fulfill their needs.

So this Thanksgiving I recommend turning Turkey Day on it’s head a bit and thinking more about the role your life plays in the lives of others.  Still spend some time being thankful for what you’ve been given, but take some time to think about what you have given in return.