Thoughts From Edcamp Seacoast

I had the pleasure of making the drive down to Portsmouth, NH yesterday to attend EdCamp Seacoast. This was my first Edcamp, though I've been following the movement for a while, so I was really excited to attend.   While in each session I took notes using Evernote so that I could update them via my laptop or mobile (and boy did I feel out of place without an iPad, it seemed like everyone had one!).

The day's schedule

Here is a run-through of the sessions I attended:

An Open Conversation About Middle School

Chris Sousa helped lead a discussion of what it was like to be a middle school teacher. It was  wide-ranging discussion, with a few common themes. It was nice to hear that everyone seems to be going through the same budget problems right now, but Chris made a great point that more money wasn't necessarily the answer. We need to find ways to help kids that are cheap/free and not just assume their struggles will end if only we had more cash.

Another theme we kept hitting on is that communication is key (sound familiar?), in terms of both advocating for funding and making sure the importance of the middle school model isn't lost. It seems like every year another local middle school is shut down and the kids are sent to whatever other building in the system has more room, and this is a real tragedy.

The last big discussion we had was on school climate. I'm not sure if it was Chris or another one of the veteran teachers who said it, but the advice given was to ignore anyone who is being a "Stick in the mud," because you will never change their mind. Instead, focus on fostering relationships with those who are open to change but maybe feel uneasy. During this session I also was encouraged to revisit last year's peer observations, and add more of a "clinical" focus to them in order for us as a staff to get more out of them. These are all things I took to heart and can't wait to continue working on.

Standards-Based Classrooms

Even though I had nothing prepared (including having no handouts, presentation, or even a dongle for the Mac), I took the plunge and offered to lead a session on standards-based classrooms because I felt that's what I needed to get out of the day. I was surprised that about a dozen other people were there, and we were able to get a conversation going about what this looks like in our classrooms and school districts. Much of the focus was on the Common Core, and it made me realize how lucky we are that our cohort's curriculum has already been aligned for us. I had the chance to plug the Educate program, though I don't expect a check in the mail for the publicity anytime soon.

Communicating change with the community was a huge point I stressed to the group, along with building grassroots support before making the switch. I used what has happened at RSU #2 as an example of how things can go wrong if you aren't deliberate with your implementation and communication.

I think the best part of leading this session was to see that our cohort in Maine is not the only group making this change to our educational system! It's nice to see that you're not alone.

Promethean Board Basics

I have a Promethean board in my room, and I never have received real training on how to use it, so I thought this might be a good session to attend. It was more geared towards those who had no experience with them previously and for the younger grades, but I chose not to leave because I still picked up some helpful pointers, and used the time to figure out how to import old Keynotes into flipcharts.

Open Educational Resources & Game-ifying Your Classroom

This was the final session of the day. The first half of the conversation was about the growing number of free, online resources for students to use in pursuit of higher education. It's truly amazing what can now be learned at places like Coursera and Udacity, and to think it's all free! This isn't all just about our students though, there are also some great opportunities for professional development too.

The second half of the session was devoted to talking about turning your classroom into a game, specifically the idea of awarding students badges for achievements they earn. I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea, mainly because I think we run real risks at narrowing our students' goals and losing the intrinsic motivation for learning. One thing brought up was that the real potential may be in helping students create a 21st-century resume that visually displays what they've done.


A big thank you to the un-staff who helped pull off this amazing event and all of the sponsors who donated! It was a great time and I look forward to the possibility of attending Edcamp Maine in the spring!

Communication is Key

Today was a day of reckoning of sorts in my room.

We had sent home reports a few days ago reporting out on students' progress on the previous seminars, and they had to be brought back and signed or students faced an after-school detention. A majority of students brought them back, but there were a handful of upset kids over the consequences for their actions (or lack there of).

A funny thing happened next. I spoke with a number of parents over the course of the day, and none of them had a problem with their students having to spend a little time after school. After all, the idea of requiring signatures on all of our communication was their idea, having been brainstormed at our curriculum night earlier in the year. I'm sure by the time I get in tomorrow there will be at least one or two who will not be thrilled with these consequences, but I know the reasons will be due to external factors, not necessarily our goal of increased communication.

In a customized learning classroom, communication is even more key than ever before. No longer can teachers or parents lean on computer programs to make sure students are doing everything they need. We have to be sending notes, emailing, and most importantly talking about the progress of every student of they are going to succeed.

After all, if we are truly going to have a system where students learn "at their own pace," we need all hands on deck in helping create intrinsic motivation for learning.

What is Customized Learning?

Here in Maine it seems like every week there is a new district joining the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning, or there is a new article being written about pioneering educators implementing it in their classrooms (I'll address some specifics from this article in a later post). But most people still have no idea what it really means, and there are a lot of misconceptions out there, so I thought explaining customized learning (CL- sometimes called mass-customized learning or MCL, though I feel MCL is an oxymoron) would be a great topic for my first post.

First and foremost, CL recognizes that students learn at different time frames and in different ways. So in a CL environment, students are no longer held accountable in a time-based system like most schools have used for a hundred years. It used to be that, starting at 5 years old, if you showed up, did your work, and didn't cause too much trouble, 13 years later you'd be handed a high school diploma. In our new system, students are held accountable to a set of learning goals aligned with state and national curriculums. Students finish their education when they have mastered all of their required goals, be it at 16 years of age or 19. 

Every great teacher knows that you need to differentiate education in order to best meet your students' needs, and a customized learning environment helps accomplish that goal. We've always known this, but we now believe the technology has finally caught up enough to make everything feasible.

A visionary view of what CL could look like

A classroom in a CL school also recognizes that when students are given a voice in how their education is run and choices throughout the process they tend achieve more because they are more engaged. You will often see students at the beginning of the year helping craft class visions and codes of cooperation, because as every good teacher knows a simple investment in class culture early on pays dividends for the rest of the year.

With these changes in structure of the school and the classroom also comes changes in how students are evaluated. Most schools recognized that this new style of learning based on goals does not lend itself well to a traditional A-F grade, and have adopted what is called "standards-based grading." This is a good thing, and I'll send you to consult Alfie Kohn if you disagree. A CL school may no longer recognize grade levels, and have students working together who before may have been separated. Will Kindergartners be thrown in with eighth-graders? No. But students who are within a year or two of each other and who are working on the same goal may be able to collaborate and learn from each other now.

How all of this is implemented in each school is going to look different, and that's OK. Every school, and every teacher, needs to look at the guiding principles of customized learning and then figure out the best possible way for it to work in their community. What I do know is that teachers will have to collaborate in order to make this work, and they will have to make sure they are constantly holding students accountable to high standards. There also needs to be a constant flow of communication with parents and community members in order to avoid friction. 

Looking back on what I've written, a few words/phrases stand out: Learning, Mastery, Voice & Choice, Differentiation, Goals, Collaboration, Teachers, Parent Communication. Things we've always known to be good for education. We don't lose these things when we move towards customized learning, we give them even greater emphasis! And that is why I think this is real, positive change that we should all be pursuing.