New Beginning

This year I am starting a new job, so I thought it was only appropriate that I'd restart my blog! I have been hired to be the New Tech Coach at Lake Ridge New Tech Middle School in Gary, Indiana. My official title is Secondary Services Provider, but in reality I am an aid to the facilitators that have kicked off our New Tech adventure here at LRNTMS! We have four teams: two 6th grade teams, one 7th grade team, and one 8th grade team.

Our first day was great on many levels. Many facilitators feel like it's their first day on the job, it was obviously my first day, and 1/3 of our student body was coming to us for the first time as 6th graders! I was able to observe students logging into ECHO for the first time, and I know that some of them went as far as to update their profile page. Tomorrow several classes will introduce ECHO further with a Treasure Hunt assignment

The students were excited to be issued new Mac Air's as their computers that they would be using throughout their day. It was a challenge to get them out to the students, and in some ways it was a challenge to get them rounded up at the end of the day. Overall, I think it was a very successful day! I was very proud of our staff and the way that they rolled with the challenges and found solutions!

I am taking classes at Purdue Calumet online, and one day I will put that education to use as an educational administrator. For now, however, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to observe several quality administrators both here at LRNTMS as well as Calumet New Tech. I can only hope to absorb and pick up as much as I can as I move forward! I'm looking forward to helping out our teams as they find their footing and look to raise the bar here this school year!

Waiting for Superman

To understand a person you must first understand where they come from. I enjoyed, and still do to this day, playing video games. I loved the idea of a foe to be vanquished, a problem to be solved. I suppose that, along with my love of athletics, led me to become a coach. It was the influence of educators that I grew up with that led me into the education field.

I'm used to the concept of formulating a plan to solve a problem, to defeat an opponent. Black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. The good guy, the smart guy, the guy in charge with a vision and a plan.

The challenge comes when a problem lives in the grey in between. How amazing it is to watch an event when those that are trying to help actually become a part of the problem! I think this truth has taken hold in the educational system today.

There is no one enemy; no simple fix. From my point of view, here are the issues that hurt us in the educational field and hold the collective whole from moving forward.

1. Fear - Unions have fought for decades to support the plight of the teacher, but along the way we've walled our self into a position where we have become partly to blame. Our rules, the one's that we've put in place, have slown best efforts to move forward. Do we truly believe that there are no bad teachers, and that all teachers should be protected from evaluation or suggestions of best practices? Many of the teachers that I hear speak appear to fear accountability, they fear being held responsible for the performance and growth of the students in their classroom. Many who will read this are educators. Honestly, are you afraid to be held accountable that students that are you in your classroom should show a year of growth in a years time while they are in your classroom? Is it too much to ask that students, no matter where they are at when they enter your room, demonstrate growth because of your guidance? Should you not be evaluated? What other line of work allows an employee to work year after year without evaluation or demonstration of productivity? Because of the "us vs them" mentality we act out of a place of fear, out of perceived enemies hiding behind dark corners. In my 12 years as a teacher it's become obvious that teachers fear change. Can you imagine a group of teachers, complaining of stagnant salaries and rising insurance costs, voting against a proposal that would not only raise their salaries but bring support into their classrooms! They vote against the very thing they rally for out of fear of change, that things might be done different.

It has become obvious to me that unions, especially those in education, are designed to support seniority over performance. Salaries, teaching assignments, summer school positions, tenure; all of these issues are dependent on one simple issue: seniority. We support even those that are found to be ineffective at their jobs through evaluation processes over time. It's amazing when you consider it.

They fear other adults coming into their classroom and telling them how they might improve their craft. The best educators, in my opinion, never stop looking for a better way. Whether it Don Meyer, retired basketball coach with over 900 career wins or someone else the observation will always be that the best in their line of work, whatever it may be are on the forefront of best practices and what the consumer needs in that particular field. The best coaches and teachers that I know are always looking to find a better way, are always learning. We work to serve our communities, and we should work to meet their needs without fail or hesitation.

2. Vision - Many administrators lack vision. I was taught as a student at Valparaiso University to use the Backwards Design Method, or simply put to teach with the end in mind. The concept is simple enough. The educator, when planning a lesson asks themselves "What do I want my students to know when they master this lesson?" What I have seen in my time as an educator is leadership that moves without an overall picture in mind. At my school we are faced with avalanche of acronyms and programs, all designed to improve student performance but often conflicting in nature and working against one another. Rather than allowing a vision to drive us forward and then evaluating all that comes after simply by asking, "Will this help us reach our goal?" Instead, we ram round pegs into square holes and engage our educators to put hours upon hours of valuable time into programs, only to replace that program with something else. Even when you buy into a program, you do so with caution because the pendulum of education will surely sway the other direction leaving you clinging to a method that is now condemned as outdated and ineffective.

These are just a few of the issues that will need to be addressed if we are ever to move forward. It's an interesting question to debate; does poor education drive poverty or does poverty drive poor education?

My Friend Sue

I want to step away from education for a moment to say goodbye to a friend. My friend Sue Gabbert passed away Saturday after a long fight with cancer. If you didn't get a chance to meet Sue, you missed out. Sue was a teacher at Calumet High School, and that's where I first met her. Sue was the kind of person who was selfless, her attention made you feel important simply because it was Sue that was listening to you. She loved to talk, loved to listen. We spent many Wednesdays along with our friend Andy Trevino laughing and enjoying each others company at CHS. She loved talking about her family, her friends, great and cheesy 80's music, and her students. Life brimmed out of Sue everyday that you came in contact with her. Simply said, she was one of the good ones. She is a person that I am glad to have met, am lucky to have known, and wish I had met earlier.

I can only imagine the legions of people that have been affected by this loss. Sue simply was not a person that you met only to forget moments later. She stayed with you. My favorite memories of her will include bring your child to work days (where I got to see Sue and her daughter Lauren interact) and the Cinco de Mayo party she invited us to. Thank you Sue, God bless and good journey to you.

Tomorrow is a huge step in the direction of the future as June and I officially ask our students to move forward into New Tech. The students will not walk into the class and listen to a lecture; instead of this, they will log into Echo and look at their agenda. They will then go about completing the agenda of the day while I prompt them forward one group at a time. Calumet has a long way to go to reach the potential we have within us. That being said, our roll out on Friday as well as our baby steps on Monday can be seen as movement in the right direction!

With our first full week of the New Tech experience completed at Calumet High School, I thought it was time to recap what we've accomplished and as well as a few of the hurdles we've had to jump over!

There was some frustration involved as school opened up last week as the Science lab lacked the ability to access the internet. June and I instead focused on the culture of New Tech, what the students could expect and how our projects would slowly ramp up in their professionalism. Our first project will be a bridge between what they've done in the past and what will be expected of them in the very new future.

One source of frustration actually turned into a strength about my partnership with June. We spent the summer time working on developing and firm plan in place to be super organized, and yet we spent our first full week ad libbing things and being about 15minutes ahead of the students. It's not that we didn't have a plan in place, it was that we were not able to execute the plans we made for one reason or another. What we found, however, is that June and I can be flexible and rolled with the punches. We teamed up, rescheduled our plans, and moved forward.

Triple Header

I've been so busy here at Indy that I've neglected my blog! We're going into the last day as I wake up this morning, so let's re-cap what's happened!


Wednesday

Things really came into form on Thursday. For people that want to come down to the New Tech teaching training and get a ton of work done, you may get frustrated. I came down here expecting to be pounding out projects, really pushing the envelope to get as much done in one week as we can. I couldn't have been more wrong. The New Tech training staff is entirely interested in shifting our way of thinking, of changing our perspective of the way our classroom is run. For the most part it has worked. I'm pretty fortunate that I've been a PBL teacher on my own for quite some time, and I've already done most of what we do for New Tech to some degree. The differences however, are significant and I see why they are going to change my classroom.

On a more personal note, June 23rd was my wedding anniversary and Kari and the kids came down a surprised me for the evening! They came down to Indy and spent the night with me! We went out to TGIF for dinner and then returned to the hotel for swimming and fun! It was nice to see them, I didn't want them to leave on Thursday!

Thursday

The picture came into even clearer view as we worked on rubrics and norms. Part of changing any working culture is changing the vocabulary that is used, and to a certain degree I've been tracking that this week.

New Tech words list:
push back
authenticity
work ethic rubric
working calendar
agenda
pacing
production
feedback
task

For those you that are reading this, let me sum up New Tech in my words. New Tech is a PBL (problem based learning) program that allows you students to develop their own problem solving and critical thinking skills. The student is confronted with a situation and a driving question. This happens all the time in real life: A problem with no simply answer. The student then needs to develop an answer for this driving question, and along the way the teacher provides scaffolding (homework, discussion, assignments and resources) to cover and master the information. The student is expected to develop a final product of some sort (poster, movie, picture, power point, speech, and more) that answers the initial driving question. Along the way the students will work in groups, sign group projects, write journal entries, and generally hold each other accountable for work to be done. The end work is graded by a state standard's based rubric (answering the question, did the student learn what we intended for them to learn?). The key to all this is that the projects are developed to be interesting, professional, and real world based. We as teacher's will be expected to reach out to the professional public to get real professionals involved. Here are the projects that June and I have so far for the BioHealth class. These are in various forms of completion as of this morning:

Organelles by Monet - The students are expected to learn about cell types, parts, and what the parts do and what keeps them healthy. They will then develop an analogy to teach 6th grade student's about Organelles using the simplified analogy in terms that a middle school student could understand.

Microbes - The student will play the part of restaurant manager. This manager is responsible for creating new norms in their restaurant that determines the regulations that the workers will follow while transporting, storing, and preparing food products. The end product may include posters, power points, and/or a video that a restaurant could show new employees to encourage proper ways to handle and prepare food that follow Indiana Department of Health guidelines.

Baby no Baby - The student will study genetics and act as a Genetic Counselor. They will explore how Genetic Counseling is used to look at hereditary issues and what disorders and prenatal issues can be determined prior to or just after birth. The student will learn about different disorders, how they are checked, and the physical, mental, and social challenges the off spring may have in front of them.

DNA in the Courtroom - The student is working for a Jury Education Committee to educate a jury on how DNA can be used in crime scenes to determine the outcome of a case. They will look at various DNA tests, how accurate they are, how to determine accuracy, and how the jury should look at the results when they are presented.

Cancer - This is still being fleshed out, but this will explore various forms of cancer, what is happening to the body, and current practices to fight cancer in the U.S. and abroad.

Genetically Modified Foods - Students will explore ways that the U.S. is currently modifiying certain foods to develop specific traits. Student's will contemplate the moral, values, and health concerns and benefits of the public being presented with Genetically Modified Foods and these foods being present in our everyday menus.

That's it for now, but those projects alone will take a semester to complete. These projects will take anywhere from 1 - 4 weeks to complete.

Grrrr! I just wrote a big ol nice blog entry only to have it not save properly. Be patient, now I have to get moving for the day!