21stcenturyed.com

June, July and August.

If those are three of the reasons you got into education, you may have chosen the wrong profession. Like social workers, doctors and other professions, educators have a serious charge: to help others.

So – sorry. It’s not really about you – it’s about them. The sooner you accept and embrace this truth – and live it out through your professional life – the sooner you’ll make real change in students’ lives.

Online educators, especially, must come to recognize that:

• …learning will not necessarily occur between 8:30 am and 3:30 pm.
• Students won’t always want to learn a topic the way you were trained to teach it – nor do they have to since they now have choices in education.
• What make school easier for you is not necessarily what is best for students. Like bell schedules, synchronous instruction or quiet classrooms.

So get over yourself. It’s not about you. Make the time to call your students and their parents. Stop reinventing the wheel just so you can say you wrote a great lesson. That’s time you could have spent explaining a difficult student to a student who needs you.

I challenge you to take 30 minutes to examine what and how you do things related to your teaching and to identify at least one thing that you could be doing to better meet the student needs.

I was just reading the selected national findings of the recent Speak Up research project by Project Tomorrow which collects feedback from students, parents and teachers and uses that information to spark conversation and look for trends in education.
Early in the report there is a massive disconnect identified: 56% of school principals say their schools are doing a good job of preparing their students for the jobs of the future. Only one-third of the students themselves share this view…and even fewer parents.
I can’t help but think that this is not the only disconnect out there. I know that as a society we have turned changed education from the search for knowledge to the preparation to be a “contributing member of society” and that this translates into “job preparation”. But isn’t there more to education? Shouldn’t there be more than that? What about these disconnects?

• My school thinks it’s a safe place, but I’m scared to death to get off the bus
• I’m taking history because I have to…but I could really care less
• I just want to dance/sing/act/write/create, but all I get to do is listen and watch
• I need 70 minutes to learn this topic..but the bell rings after 45 minutes
• I’m not “bad”…I just can’t possibly sit still in one place all day
• They think I can read, but I can’t

When was the last time your school did a simple survey?
When was the last time your principal talked to a focus group of just failing kids…not to threaten them with being held back, but to find out how she could help them succeed?

Project Tomorrow is asking your students if you’re meeting their needs…are you?

Best Rube Goldberg Ever – Watch more Funny Videos

It’s occurred to me recently that we in the educational community regularly transform one of the most natural activities – learning – into something needlessly complex. Think about the most basic forms of teaching and learning that you can observe;

• Teaching a baby to walk
• Learning your first language
• Lions teaching their cubs to stalk prey
• Creating metals from ore and forging tools

These are just a few example of ridiculously complicated activities and skills that are taught without ever muttering the words and phrases pedagogy, web 2.0 technology, annual yearly progress, or insert your educational buzzword here. No one reports progress to any state agency through tests applied in surreal settings and no one compares one country to the next…yet babies continue to walk and talk, lions continue to eat, and we still find a way to make tools in even the most remote areas of the world.

The next time you or I embark on our next lesson writing session, or strategic planning committee, perhaps we should think about good ol’ Rube. Look for areas where you are getting in your own way – or worse – getting in the way of students. Consider what is absolutely necessary and try that plan out before you start adding on the complexities that we are accustomed to using. If you find your lesson, process, or solution involving steps where a hammer sends a golf-ball down a track to start a domino effect of CDs collapsing against each other, stop what you’re doing and think “WWRGD”: What Would Rube Goldberg Do…then do the opposite.

PS – The irony that I am posting this while I am a self-confessed instructional technology geek does not escape me.