In a previous blog entry, I touched on some of the drivers for secondary school transformation.  It is complex work and well underway in various places, but typically one piece at a time.  For system change to provide maximum benefit for kids, we need to align our efforts, learn from each other and gain more familiarity and confidence with new ways to support learning.  Here are a few more of the pieces that help to put the puzzle together:

• Step away from the assembly line secondary timetable/class schedule and the “seat time” foundation of the old teaching/learning dynamic.  Encourage and resource flexible learning time and space, including the expansion of “hybrid” courses.  Recognize that there are many pathways that can be taken to achieve important outcomes through the demonstration of mastery.  Our 18 year olds cross the graduation bridge in June and by September are in a very different learning world. Let’s help that transition;

• Enable graduation program teachers to use time and space more flexibly for large and small groups of students; help them design the learning relationship so it better matches the learning and physiological rhythms of students.  Might there be some 17 year olds and their teachers who would trade their 8a.m. Math 12 class time for three evenings/week?  How about 2 late afternoons and some technology-mediated engagement from home or in study groups?  What if face time for teachers and student cohorts were specifically designed to be value-added rather than sometimes a requirement for attendance/seat time?;

• Make sure that every student knows at the start of any unit of learning what success and excellence look like.  Tech Ed, Home Ec, Fine Arts programs do a great job of that and have done for years. It needs to be standard practice.  Models of quality work and the conversation about why it is good are key steps to mastery and help to create a sense of purpose and ownership;

• Invite the world and its resources into the classroom. What happens when the teacher is joined in the instructional journey by resources courtesy of iTunes U, Discovery Learning, Khan Academy, Ted Talks… and others, both free access and under license?  Some teachers and students end up contributing their resources to digital environments.  Sharing breeds success breeds sharing… and it may result in the teacher being more likely to orchestrate learning rather than managing learners;

• Break down the artificial barriers between groupings of students based on age.  Currently, the child born on New Year’s Eve just before midnight will be assigned to a different school grade than the baby born 10 minutes later.  Every teacher knows that a learner’s uniqueness isn’t based on their birth certificate.  One way we can flex the rigidity of age cohorts is to expand our “school within a school” approach.  Grades 8 and 9 would be a good place to form learning communities and collaborative norms at a time in kids’ lives when value-added relationships are vital to personal growth and development.  Whatever currently ties us to the sanctity of single age/grade groups as the learning cohort needs to be challenged; and,

• Make learning experiences as real as possible.  Let’s do a community inventory to see how we can match our resources (young people looking for relevance) with the community needs.  There are great stories about youth connecting with seniors or with younger children in value-added ways. That represents real-world learning and shouldn’t be limited to those kids who sign up for global citizenship and leadership groups.  A  local inventory helps to define the shape of what the educated citizen looks like and can drive new ways for students to achieve excellence.  Our work experience/career development/community service efforts should be expanded and valued on par with traditional subject-based learning.  Mastery of skill in community, in relationship and in service is foundational to what authentic learning is about.  More about tapping into kids’ energy in a future post.

Watch a great coach in the gym at practice time and you will see masterful teaching.  Deconstruct what she is doing with athletes who are developing skill and love for the game, and the elements of effective lesson planning and activation are presented at least as well as in any instructional methods class or text.  What you see from the time the whistle blows: (more…)

I got a message the other day from someone asking about math learning demonstrated by kids in real life situations as well as in school-based performance.  We have all heard the stories about young employees not being able to make change without the electronic cash register…or kids who can’t recite their multiplication tables as we did in the old days…or students who seem incapable of estimating so they have some idea of quantum, whether it is for payments on their car loan or dividing up the cost of a Friday night pizza.  ”Is it as bad as it seems?” asked my correspondent.  (more…)