Liberating the Classroom

I had two interesting classroom experiences last week. Both left me with questions and hope for the future of education.

The first experience arrived as students were working on their Learning Targets. As per usual, the students were working independently to meet various standards with periodic electronic/personal interactions with each other or me. Then, a young man (new to my classroom) approached me with a question. I could tell by the tone of his voice, his hushed volume, and his shrinking presence that he wasn't entirely sure if this was a good idea. His request? He wanted to know, since he was up to speed with all of his Learning Target work, if he could read his book. We checked his Learning Record together to verify that he was indeed making acceptable progress, and I sent him off to read with a smile on his face. He read intensely for the next thirty minutes.

Afterward, I found myself wondering how it was that a student reading could be considered a bad thing? True, it makes sense that students have a broad range of content to learn, and not all of it can be addressed by settling in with a good book. However, what a blessing to have a student ask, almost plead, to be allowed to read his book and then be thoroughly and happily engaged for much longer than the typical young adolescent can bear. This bears further reflection.

The next experience was similar, though it didn't involve reading. A small group of students asked me for permission to work for a bit on a petition letter they were preparing for the administrative team. The students were seeking permission to use a sandbox computer "game" called Minecraft that is currently banned at school. Given their progress, and the real life civics experience their request involved, I granted permission. This weekend, I took my own journey into the world of Minecraft. It's actually an excellent game that features simulated environment planning and building. Like most interesting games, Minecraft is really about creating things and solving problems. There's a lot of that in the violence laden games that seem to be very popular right now, making me think that the challenge of problem solving is more of an intrinsic draw than the actual violence and graphics. When you first look at Minecraft, the graphics appear quite poor, intentionally boxy. Yet, there's much more than meets the eye. I found it interesting to use, and I admit to having a good time exploring.

Afterward, I found myself wondering why it is that us educators feel the need to restrict the classroom environment, especially in a 21st century where physical location becomes less and less relevant? We have no problem with extending the classroom environment into the "private" worlds of our students (aka - homework). Do we really need to lock students away from the world when they are in school?

Perhaps there's an opportunity revealed by both of these situations. Perhaps, we as educators should try reducing rather than raising the barriers between school and students' real lives. Perhaps there is a future for students where they can electronically check in on a friend in the middle of class as long as they are not distracting others from their pursuits. Perhaps there is a future where students are not only allowed but encouraged to explore, create, and problem solve using modern media. (Those are the highest levels of learning on the pedagogical scale, by the way). Perhaps in this future students will learn to make choices by, heaven forbid, making choices in a classroom that looks, sounds, and feels more like real life.

I find that future worth considering.

No Teacher Required? WRONG!

From time to time, I hear people jokingly suggest that a teacher isn't really needed in a customized classroom. Often that odd claim is made in a conversation about a teacher being absent.  No sub needed, right? That's way off target! In the customized classroom the teacher is an even more critical component than in the traditional classroom.

One of the benefits of a customized classroom is the opportunity for constant communication between teacher and student. In my classroom, this sometimes takes the form of an oral conversation. However, more frequently, indeed scores of times during any class, the conversations are electronic. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, that form of communication is a major part of students' lives today. Something has to replace this communication during a teacher's absence. Even a substitute is unlikely to be able to fully provide that key ingredient.

True, where appropriate, fully independent learning activities should take place, activities that require no intervention from the teacher at all. Yet, the reason to provide those truly independent activities isn't to put teachers out of work. Rather, the purpose of that strategy is to liberate teachers from unnecessary instructional tasks, making them available for instructional tasks that actually do require their direct or electronic involvement. It takes a real person to do this.

It also takes the actual classroom teacher to do this as most substitutes simply don't have the skills, knowledge, and/or access to accomplish the task. At best, a substitute in the customized classroom is holding the place, keeping the ship afloat (thank goodness!), until the captain returns...and the sooner the better! Substitutes do great work, but there really is no substitute for the classroom teacher in a customized classroom. At a minimum, a substitute is required, and even then, things will likely not go as smoothly with a different leader at the helm. Teachers are just that important, even more so in a customized classroom.

In short, the misguided notion that customized classrooms are fully independent, teacher free zones is simply incorrect.

Interest Customization

There are many ways to customize learning. This year's program includes many of them. Here are a few:

• Leveled readings help students access the middle school content, standards that are based more on what authors and readers do with selections than learning how to read those passages. (Of course, reading pieces at an appropriate level also supports reading development as well.) 

• Target due dates, as opposed to all or nothing deadlines, allow students to learn in their own ebb and flow pattern (we all have our own). These "deadlines without the death" keep students from giving up and are more in tune with the realities of day to day life, especially for young adolescents.

• Student selected projects allow learners to show what they know and can do using the method that works best for them.

• Flexible work sessions allow students to tackle the content that will work best for them at that time. 

These are definitely improvements to the traditional classroom model. Yet, I plan to add another piece over time, and it relates to student interest. The two year Personal Research Process has been a good start in engaging students by linking content with their individual interests. Next up will be to add to students reading options. Currently, students benefit from leveled readings, an important customization of the reading classroom. However, I have made little attempt to address students' interests to reading topics.

That's going to change. Instead of a single reading available at a student's level, the student will now have a pool of leveled reading from which to choose. This will add another layer of student choice and most importantly will go a long way to ramping up students desire to read pieces. A student who is interested in cars will be more likely to have a related reading available to him/her. The same will be true for students who are interested in music, science and nature, history, and more.

This will have to start slowly. I'm only one man, and it takes a while to gather resources and make them available to students. However, this should be a positive step forward on the path to greater classroom customization.

PRP - Ramping Up the Enthusiasm

Amidst all the craziness that accompanies the start of a school year, my 8th grade students have begun their Personal Research Projects (PRPs). My assessment so far? "Wow!"

The customized standards-based approach that I have been developing in recent school years has resulted in a clear increase in student engagement. However, I was interested to see how things would go if I opened things up a bit more for students.  Thus, the PRP was born.

The PRP is based on pedagogy I saw in action at a Providence, RI high school called The Met. As part of the school's program of study, students undertook ongoing research projects of their own choosing. Periodically, students presented their learnings to peers, teachers, administrators, and family members. The audience members were more than just listeners. They raised questions of their own, revealing the next steps of the research journey. As time progressed, so did each student's research as the cycle continued to repeat itself. In this way, a simple research question became a long term research program.

My students are still in the early stages, but their enthusiasm for PRPs is through the roof. I've already witnessed multiple cases of students setting aside their other work from my class to do some work on their PRP when they thought nobody was looking.

Also, check out some of these research questions (remember, these came from the students):

• Could Mayan apocalypse predictions prove accurate?
• Is nursing a worthwhile career to pursue?
• Which dogs make good sled dogs and why?
• Will slavery ever vanish from the planet?
• How do people become famous?
• How does someone become a professional athlete?
• What will the features of the Earth be like in the future?

I look forward to working with the students as they explore these questions along with the correlating questions that will arise along the way.

And They're Off...and Crawling

The start of a new school year is always exciting. However, late August and early September can also be a frustrating time of year.

When I last worked with students, everyone knew how to readily access the customized program, and my focus was almost entirely on students and content rather than how to access that content. Of course, I took it all for granted.

When the school year began, I had done much of my summer homework. My program was largely in place, at least enough of it to give me a comfortable lead over my fastest moving students. However, I soon learned that I had not done all that was needed.

• ID/Passwords: As I ease closer to two decades of working with young adolescents, I should remember that memory/organization challenges can be a big part of the young adolescent mix. So, as I welcomed my returning 8th grade students back into the customized program, I shouldn't have been surprised that some of them did not recall (or have recorded) their key IDs and/or passwords to access my delivery systems. Oops. A wise teacher will record such critical info from returning students before they walk out the door for the summer. That way, veteran students can hit the ground running rather than being held up by password resets and calls to the already busy tech crew for assistance. For incoming students, the more tangible and less complicated the ID/Password process can be, the better. This is not the time to be overly concerned about security. (Remember, most of these students may not even be able to access their own account, let alone someone else's.) A simple layer of protection should be adequate during the first few weeks of the school year. This is not the time for upper case, lower case, symbol, sixteen character passwords. Once students have settled in, passwords can be enhanced for greater security.

• Application Testing: If there is one thing that software developers seem to like as much as developing new software, it is updating current software. I ran into this when my students began using a great web-based application called Word Voyage. Things started well as one of the benefits of this application is that the classroom teacher has full access to user IDs and passwords. Yet, the progress began to slow when students encountered tasks that were not part of last year's programming. This all came as a surprise to me as I had not taken the time to review this regularly used application for any changes. Oops. A wise teacher will quickly test out key software for little changes that can act as speed bumps for students as they race to access content. This is especially helpful to bear in mind if new students are entering the mix. They may not have any experience with the software and may need assistance from their teacher. It's hard to help them if you don't know your way around.

There are, of course, other things to keep in mind when wrapping up or starting a school year. However, these two simple tips should save me and my students some valuable time and lower our stress when the next school year begins.