Seeing the Forest AND the Trees: Student Exploration Time

By Darin Anderson

Picture this: You arrive for your first painting lesson from a renowned local artist. Before you lay all the materials you need to begin creating your first masterpiece.

As you settle in with your surroundings, in walks the artist, who begins visiting with each participant about the beauties of art and painting.

You simply cannot wait to get started.

Monsieur Paintbrush walks to the front of the room and begins speaking to the group about the endless possibilities of paints and palettes and prisms of color. He continues into very interesting dialogue about purpose and passion, and you become even more excited to fill your empty canvas with wonder.

However, as the minutes pass by, you notice the instruction, while incredibly valuable and inspiring, has left you no time to do what you came for.

As the artist bids you a find adieu, you leave your still blank canvas and pristinely clean brushes behind, hoping for a chance - next time - to work wonders with them.

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Would you stand for such circumstances? Regardless of whether or not you paid a fee for the class, I'm certain you would be disappointed with the outcome. Why, you never even got to open up the paints!

Imagine the thousands of students who walk in and out of thousands of classrooms each school day with the same emotions - "Sounds cool, but I never even got a chance to try it out!"

Now, imagine yet another situation - similar and just as frustrating to our students:

Monsieur Paintbrush walks to the front of the room and instructs you to follow his lead in painting a red flower. He takes you step by step through the process, even stopping the class to ensure that each participant neither speeds ahead or lags behind. "We all must build the red flower as I do," he says.

Since you are a decent painter who has done his or her share of flowers, bushes, and trees, you begin to become antsy and annoyed at the teacher for not letting you "do your own thing" and paint what you want. But in the interest of staying with the group you decide to just remain silent and paint your red flower.

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While I understand the need for direct instruction and scaffolding in classrooms, I believe that we often go overboard with controlling the scenario in the interest of classroom management and, honestly, making our own lives as teachers easier.

However, many of our students leave classrooms each day without having had the opportunities to explore and design and create and tinker with (insert content/skills here).

Think of the tools we have in our classrooms that are metaphorically represented by the canvas, brushes, and paints in our story:

Computers and laptops

iPads and other tablets

Video cameras

Student Smartphones
3D Printers (perhaps)
CNC Machines (perhaps)

Not to mention these:
Glue
Scissors
Cardboard
Paper
String
Plutonium (according to Dr. Emmett Brown, it should be readily available these days)

But those "standard issue" tools are only the beginning. Think of a computer (or other device) as a box of toys. In and of itself it is a container with little practical use. However, the inside holds the wonders of the world (and I'm not talking about word processing programs).

For example:
+ Google Hangouts or Skype allows staff and students access to content area experts all over the world.
+ 3D programs such as Tinkercad and Thingiverse make design and creation easily accessible for users.
+ Video and audio creation programs allow students to express themselves as never before.
+ 24/7 discussion and collaboration are a snap with Google Drive and a wide variety of social media outlets.

But here I am preaching to the choir. Or am I?

Please take to heart the memes inserted in this post. Ensure that on a daily basis you are having your students explore, create, design, and tinker with content, skills, and - most importantly - their own thoughts and ideas.

Our world - and their - will be the better for it!

Are After-School Programs Doing the Jobs that Schools Won't?

Perhaps you have experienced this story...

Your kid comes home from school, joyously speaking of a wonderfully new activity that will allow her to explore and create and laugh and have fun - all while learning about science and math and engineering and all of the other good stuff that happens in a child's life.

Excited for her new-found interest in academics, you ask her when this school project will begin.

She opens her backpack and produces a large stack of papers, including math worksheets and artistic renderings of beasts and animals of every unimaginable kind. After rifling through the sheets for a few moments, she pulls out a purple flier and excitedly thrusts it out for you to see.

You look at it and your heart begins to sink. Instead of her school - the place in which she spends upwards of 8 hours a day - taking on this new and exciting and engaging project, you find that the United Association of Motherly Knights of Cincinnati are asking you to pony up a $75 "one-time" fee to have your precious daughter spend two nights a week at the local kids' club making, designing, and creating all kinds of science-y and math-y and engineering-y things.

If this is your story, sadly, you are not alone.

Across the country, our students are being relegated to national standardized testing, state-mandated assessments, and a wide variety and voluminous sets of school and classroom work... none of which I have a real problem with (but that is a different story for a different post).

What I am speaking more about is the manner in which many of our school approach the teaching and learning of academic concepts.

While the phrase "death by worksheet" is not the stuff of student lamentations in all schools in our country, there is a fair amount of academic institutions unwilling to make the break away from an antiquated system and move forward into engaging, high interest, and student-driven educational models such as PBL, inquiry-driven instruction, and makerspaces - to name just a few.

In the mean time, after-school programs offered by many local clubs and organizations have stepped in to fill the void of fun and excitement towards learning left by the monotony of funeral rows of desks in classrooms with lots of potential otherwise.

What's worse, many of these programs are funded and facilitated by the school districts themselves.

Kennedy Space Center Education Foundation

In effect, they are telling their constituents, "While we are mostly unwilling to provide students with quality and engaging classroom instruction during the day - our schedule and testing demands simply won't allow it - we are more than happy to offer an after-school program designed to provide your students (well, some students, as we are limited by funding to only 20 kids) with activities specially designed to expose them to STEM & STEAM concepts, all in a fun, yet structured environment."

My beef boils down to this:

If innovative after-school programs (and let's not forget summer school session designed to try something "new and different" for our struggling students) are yielding good results with high praise from kids, parents, and staff, why aren't schools clambering to the front of the line to get on board this train?

To be fair, I am not condemning education in general. While the minority may neglect their duties and responsibilities, most teachers and staff are putting forth a great and noble effort towards the students in their charge.

I am simply saying that we can all do better with the time and resources we have. If it is training we lack, there are no small numbers of "experts" willing to lend time and information. If it is initiative we are without, there are those out there who can lead and inspire us, whether in person or via social media and the like. (When WAS your last Twitter EdChat??) If it is resources we need, there are many who have traveled this path before who are willing to either shine the way or return and walk side-by-side with us.

It is not easy and we will face criticism from those who do not understand, but the majority will see the change for what it is. We talk often about doing what is best for kids. Here is YOUR chance. Get started today.

To quote a very intelligent and inspired leader, T.S. Monson, "Let us always choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong."

Lessons in Education, Featuring Gary Larson: Part VI

By Ed Tech Maniac, Darin Anderson

Gary Larson often used his The Far Side comics to prey upon the inhumanness of animals to make us actual humans laugh. The joke here is not so much the entrance of the border collie to help edge off the uncertainty of the sheep, but rather it is the sheep themselves, unable to piece together enough collective intelligence to make their party a hit.

Throughout time sheep have been marked with the stereotype of being blind, dumb followers, and/or unable to have independent thought. Even though this label is not entirely true, society still uses the species to define anyone who follows the crowd or bows to the whim of any kind of mass grouping. (See Animal Farm...or political rallies...or any show on MTV.)

See, sheep instinctively flock together when predators are near as a means of safety. The rattlesnake has its venom, the porcupine his quills, and the teacher her detention slip. What does the fuzzy white ruminant have?

Students, and even teachers, are typically no different when it comes to sheep-like behavior - at least in certain arenas.

Here are two education examples:

1. A teacher assigns his students to complete a project and then commences to scouring the internet for insight into his upcoming NFL fantasy draft. A worthwhile cause to be sure, but meanwhile his "little flock" is wandering aimlessly through fields of academia without any knowledge of where they are or what they should be doing.

2. Staff members show up to their assigned location for professional development delivered by a consultant from parts unknown. Before long the teachers are confused wanderers, continuously watching the clock in anticipation of lunch at Cafe Rio.

The point of this comic strip is NOT to illustrate the rather unfunny idea that border collies are bred for the specific purpose of herding sheep and chasing cattle. Such thoughts are identical to pointing out that teachers are supposed to teach their students.

No, the key takeaway here is that, left to their own devices, sheep are often incapable of pursuing outside objectives, or sometimes their own desires, without some guidance from competent, trained professionals.

As we approach our work with students, PLCs, or content departments, let us always remember these few NOTs:

• Not all children and adults are capable of going off on their own, rudderless
• Most people do not intentionally sabotage proceedings without having at least some reasoning
• We cannot assume that students or staff know what to do, but are simply not willing to do it
• When asked to do independent work or engage in self-guided inquiry, not all kids and adults will be able to have success just because they are expected to
• Individualized learning is not equal to on-your-own learning
• Do not attempt to build a lasting edifice without first laying a solid foundation and then putting up strong walls

Conversely, here is a list of DOs to keep in the foreground:

• Provide individualized exploration opportunities combined with just-in-time instruction - just beyond the ZPD
• Teach, model, and practice methods of working individually or in collaborative groups
• Guided scaffolding is an irreplaceable aspect of education
• Pre-teaching with constant check-ins is timeless strategy
• Exercise gradual release of responsibility, with constant observation (think of a child learning to ride her bicycle)
• Show patience and understanding, knowing that not all travelers reach their destinations at the same time

Certainly, no teaching will always result in the kinds of outcomes we want. But avoiding these pitfalls and following the path of DOs will help us get our schools where they need to be.

What can a single sheep teach us about #independentlearning? Follow the crowd on over to learn more. #edtech #edchat pic.twitter.com/ksQUG4MlhN

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) August 19, 2015