Industrial Model to a 21st Century Model

This week I have spent a lot of time researching how we should design and change our current structure of the high school education delivery from the industrial model to a 21^st century model. If you have been reading my blog, you know that this year we went to a one to one iPad program with students. The next step for us to fully utilize this tool for education is to evaluate our current deliver model.

What I envision for our students is more of an open structured campus that will allow students and teachers to meet and work in both small and large group settings in a new more applied curriculum where students need to apply knowledge to real world problems. After reviewing a number of journals, videos, and papers on this topic, I have developed several questions that will need additional research.

1.     Most of the research alludes to project based learning that incorporates inter-disciplinary units. This requires teachers to ask higher thinking, critical thinking, and guiding questions for students to discover their own learning. What types of professional development do we need for teachers to make this transition from delivering content to facilitators of knowledge?

2.     To facilitate the type of educational model necessary, traditional bell schedules and sorting of students is not going to be practical. How do you develop a master schedule that supports learning in this type of environment?

3.     Changing from the traditional model, how do you design a model utilizing a building built in the early part of the 1900’s?

4.     How do you change the expectations of your community, parents, teachers, and leaders to support making the dramatic changing that you envision as the future of education?

I think everyone in education realizes the professional development, professional learning communities, and inclusion of teachers in planning is critical to success of any change. But how do we realistically change the entire industrial education model to a 21^st century model quickly and efficiently?

Reflecting on One to One

As a One to One school, reading and learning all that we could prior to and during implementation, one important factor missing from most research we read was pedagogy. While everyone agrees that pedagogy has to change in a One to One environment, there are may different opinions on how it should change. Project Based Learning, Flipped Classroom, Individualized Instruction, online courses, using Apps in the classroom and the list goes on. These are all wonderful techniques that teachers can use at certain times in the classroom but teachers need time to plan, experiment, and reflect on each of these modalities to see what best fits their teaching and expertise.

As a district, we started a full year prior to student iPad implementation with professional development of our teaching staff. We allowed the staff to use, experiment, and test applications on the iPad for the student and classroom. With that in mind, we did not tend to an important area of need in this preparation, instructional pedagogy. As with any teaching staff, you have some teachers who need additional support for improvement of instruction. I think all teachers can always improve in the teaching and learning process that is what life long learning is all about. As we move forward, our professional development focus will be on instructional planning and pedagogy.

It is obvious which teachers planned, experimented, and reflected on uses of technology in the classroom.  While most of our teachers are using the iPad in class to a high level some, which we did expect, have not embraced the technologies usefulness to enhance instruction. The questions that we raised are did our planning for implementation fail or was our expectation for our professional staff to high? Did we have enough professional development? Or did we fail to cultivate the basic need for our staff, instructional pedagogy?

As we have completed the first set of instructional rounds, we have identified a large number of staff members who as seen as experts in the classroom. During our PLC meetings we will begin to address the needs of some of the staff in pedagogical strategies and planning. Our focus for professional development will be to use the staff that we have seen as exemplar to train and assist other staff members moving forward. 

Digital Classroom Management

This year we have gone to a one to one iPad environment for our high school. We were able to hand out 500 iPads in less then 30 minutes to all of our students with the help of our teachers and IT department. Everyone has been working hard to make this a smooth and trouble free process for our teachers and students. With this in mind, we have had some difficulties one of which has been classroom management. Students have been and are easily distracted with social networking apps and games. But this is nothing new, whether it's been students texting, social networking on their own devices or doodling in their notebooks. For our teaching staff we created a digital classroom management sheet to refresh everyone's classroom management strategies. Here is what we handed out:

Digital Classroom Management Tips

Teachers and students must be organized to have a successful classroom and learning environment. This tenant remains the same whether or not technology is in use. For a digital classroom here are some specific strategies for you to consider. Remember, each teacher will have different strategies that will work for him or her, not everything will work for you. Individual teachers need to find what works for them!

Lesson Plan Development - Foremost to any classroom management technique is your lesson plan. A good lesson plan that keeps the students involved will reduced classroom problems whether you are using an iPad or not. In your lesson plans, spell out exactly what you expect your students to do with their iPad. Create your own expectations and furthermore make sure any use of the iPad in class is appropriate and not it's own distraction.

Consistency - Isn't that what you're always told about classroom management? It’s the same with iPads, be consistent with rules and how iPads are used! One way to reduce this is to have Q and A posters in your classroom. They are simple posters with instructions for iPad use. Some examples are basic iPad navigation, how to get handouts and how to hand in work, and how to virtual share.  Posters should always address the most asked questions and all you have to do is, calmly and coolly point to the poster on a wall instead of being distracted by answering the same question hundred times. Keeping a cool attitude also impressive students.

Expectations – At the beginning of the year, we tell our students what we expect from them. Good pedagogy require this be done for every class and every lesson, whether or not iPads are involved. As for the iPad, tell them clearly what you expect, such as no idle surfing, no instant messaging, etc.

Classroom arrangement - This is important and goes hand-in-hand with classroom management. Walking around, you have students with iPads, management by walking around is imperative! You want to arrange your room so that you can see all the iPad screen it once. 

Downtime – If students finished their work for the day, or some are done and others are not, let them do their own thing. They can do work for another class use a different app as reward for completing their assignments. If they know you will let them have the extra time to do their own thing at the end of class, they’ll be less likely to get off-task during class. 

Specific management ideas:

1.  Students need to be organized on their iPads.  Create folders for Apps.  You need to model this too!

2.  Have students make shortcuts on their iPads to sites that they go to often in your classroom.  Put these sites in folders labeled specifically for your class.

3.  Students should be creating folders inside of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for different classes. (Need two files first to do this)

4.  You need to evaluate their classroom setting including desk/table arrangements so that they can better see what students are doing with their iPads.

5.  How are you distributing electronic documents now?  You should be able to do this through dropbox, EdModo or through the WebDav.  This has to become routine for the both you and your students.

6.   Are you using survey sites like Socrative.com to get quick feedback from an activity/lesson?  Are they using tools like this to get feedback from the day? You need to do this to keep student on task and off distracting apps!

7.   Are you using Google docs, forms, or other app to get real time questions answered in class to keep your students engaged? It lets you know who is on task and who is not in real time.

8.  Have you changed the way they are teaching since the arrival of the iPad? Know that students have iPads you can’t teach like you did last year!

9.  To see what students have been doing or what Apps they have been in lately, you can do a 4-finger swipe up or double tap a students home button.  This will show the multitasking bar. Maybe you should make it a rule that all Apps need to be closed at the beginning and end of each class.  This way when they go to the next class, the only Apps that are open, are the Apps that you want.

10. Group work is still OK.  Not everyone has to use their iPad at the same time or at all during specific activities.

11.  Have students turn over or put to sleep their iPads when not in use.

12.  You need to get up and move around to see what is going on in their classroom.

13.  Engage students by having them share their work via the projector (VGA Cable, Reflection Application).

Questions to consider as we move forward:

1.    How can I use the built in camera to engage students in creating meaningful work?

2.    How can I use iTunesU to help students learn or reinforce what was taught?  

3.  Can I assign a video to be watched the night before so students can come in with some background on a topic?

4.  What creative ways can I use the iPad for learning? 

5.  How can I make the iPad a tool for creativity?

Turnaround Coach

I recently interviewed for and was offered one of the Turnaround Coach positions by the New Jersey Department of Education in the Regional Achievement Centers. They required each interviewee to write a one-page outline on what experience they have in turning underperforming students and schools into high preforming. You were asked to prioritize two (2) major leverage points of interventions. (Keeping to one page was a very trying task but here it is)

The two leverage points I focused on were School Culture and School Leadership. It is clear from my experience and arrival to the district that the reason the school was underperforming because administrators were spending most of our time dealing with student management and disruptive behaviors. Without a safe, harassment, bullying, and intimidation free environment no learning can or will take place. This leads to a lack of leadership in the following areas; observation, evaluation, curriculum focus, quality meeting time for PLC groups, and lesson plan reviews.

Our first step is to develop a clear mission and vision for high expectations, to include operating principles, operating rules, operating assumptions, and non-negotiable standards. Ensuring effective school and district leadership with a shared commitment is paramount for successful execution to change. You need to develop of a team of administrators and teachers to cultivate a systemic process, through shared leadership capacity, to create a healthy, safe, and supportive learning environment is crucial for any intentional focus on improving learning.

The next step was to revise the entire code of conduct. It was evident that the current code of conduct was not deterring any inappropriate behaviors in the school. The code of conduct needed to have a progress set of consequences to deter repeat behavior, which must include detention (Ex. 1hr, 3hr, Saturday), in-school suspension, out of school suspension, superintendent hearings, and expulsion.

Following the code of conduct we revise the attendance policy and procedures making absences, lateness to school and class, cutting class and school more consequential. You can have the best teachers in the world, but if a student is not in class, is late to class or is disruptive to the class, no learning can take place. A progressive set of consequences are need including detention (Ex. 1hr, 3hr, Saturday), in-school suspension, taking the parents to court for unexcused absences, and removal of class credit.

The next key step to assist the administration was guidance to implementing the above strategies. To design these changes, the leadership needed to recruit stakeholders from the entire school community, administrators, parents, teachers, and students who are willing to develop a very strict code of conduct and attendance policies and procedures. Once these measures were in place, we focused on administering the changes, using technology, to assist in managing the day-to-day operation of the school.

1.     Student management system to track, attendance by period, discipline, detentions in a mobile platform so it is always at the administrators finger tips

2.     Instillation of security cameras in all common areas, hallways, stairwell, outside every bathroom, gym and cafeteria.

3.     Assistance in administering the code of conduct and attendance policy, it must be consistent, fair and firm.

4.     Develop time management skills, managing a calendar, and managing a typical school day.

5.     Develop a school year schedule for observations, PLC meetings, Walkthroughs, lesson plan review, and other school level meetings.

6.     Eliminate any structures that do not work

7.     Use the design-loop theory on all aspects of the school.

The following steps were taken once the successful transition of the above changes had occurred:

1.     Design curriculum and instruction with the NJCCS and CCCS to assess student work and evaluate teachers

2.     Increase instructional time for reading and mathematics

3.     Substantial investment in professional development for teachers that focus on instructional practices to help students meet academic standards

4.     Comprehensive system to monitor individual student performance and to provide help to struggling students before they fall behind

5.     Parental involvement effort to get students to meet standards

6.     District accountability systems with real consequences for adults

7.     Use of assessments to guide instruction and serve as a healthy part of everyday teaching and learning

Our work is not complete, nor should it ever be, we are continuing to improve each year!

The teaching Profession, We Need Finland's Model

In America, we hear how great the educational system is in Finland. The United States and other countries across the globe have studied what has made Finland educational system one of the best. How they have the best and brightest in the teaching profession, how they have individualized education for each student, how they do not have national or state assessments, and how there society believes in having a great educational system.

In America, we here “they do not have the diversity and large financial separation in students backgrounds as we do”; “ we do not receive the same support from the government and parents as they do”. As well as other statements regarding special need students, English language learners and so forth. I think you need to look at the beginning of their current system to find the answers that America is looking for:

"The Finns had a crisis,” life-long educator, best-selling author, and Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains, "Their economy was failing. Their education system was poor. They knew that to grow their economy, they had to transform their educational system. Starting with the principle that cooperation is a key pillar of success, the Finns revised their educational framework.”

We have all heard statements like this about the American school system, so what is the difference between America and Finland? They started to ask questions like:

o   What kind of economy will we have for the next 100 years? How will we have a workforce to meet these needs?

o   What skills will our people need to be globally competitive? How do we make sure everyone is educated at high levels to meet this demand?

o   What barriers exist that will prevent us from reaching our goals of having the best workforce in the world?

o    

Finland did huge amounts of research, studies and hypotheses as to what, how, and when could they transform their educational system and what they needed to do to make it happen. The Finns began with questions like these and developed an educational system to meet the criteria such as:

o   Equitable for all students regardless of economic or ethnic background

o   Accessible to all students no matter where they live

o   Flexible to meet the needs of students on each individual’s level

o   Create a populace of people who are life long learners who can meet the needs of an ever-changing global society

And we too have heard that we need to meet these criteria for our own students. So why are our schools still having difficultly meeting these requirements? The key is in the last guiding question that the Finns had, what barriers exist that will prevent us from reaching our goals of having the best and most prepared workforce in the world?

The issue at hand was teacher quality. The Finns set out to make the teaching profession one of the most highly regarded professions in their country.

"I saw teachers in Finland that were better than 90 percent of the teachers I see in America," says Wagner. “There were many things that led to Finland topping the international education league tables (10 years and counting). A key driver: a tremendous investment in teaching made it the most sought-after profession in Finland.”

Today in America, the teaching profession is criticized at every turn from parents, teachers, and most of all politicians. We hear every politician make states like how tenure is a terrible and how teachers abused the system. How the health benefits, pensions and pay are exorbitant for what teachers are doing in the classroom. Taxes are too high for the general public, which teachers are too, for teachers to have such generous benefits.

If we are going to compete on a global level with countries like Finland, Singapore, China, and India we need to stop our current political methodology of criticizing teacher to one that holds teachers in the highest regard. We need to make the benefits, salaries and pensions that entices our best and brightest become teachers instead of other professions.

Our obsession with standardized testing has to stop. The Finn’s realized the main problem with standardized testing was the quality of tests.

“The increasing amount of what students learn cognitively today, let alone what they will learn tomorrow, is due to out-of-school influences, not the teacher or school. Most standardized tests focus on core subjects and knowledge ands as soon as you have invested in them, you want to also use them for all sorts of purposes for which they were not meant to be used, like determining the quality of schools and comparing them to each other, or measuring the effectiveness of teachers.”

Here again we have another issue in America, measuring teacher effectiveness. From a national level educators have heard the call for new teacher evaluation systems and more standardized tests. If we want a system as good as Finland, why are we continuing to move towards more standardized tests and using them to compare teacher effectiveness? We all know that moving towards standardized testing will undermine achievement and the goal of delivering life long learners who will be able to meet the demand of a global economy.

America’s global competitiveness will require students to develop competencies for life and work. Our educational system must be equitable, accessible, and flexible for all students not just those who can afford good schools. Cooperation, not competition, as well as a tremendous investment in teaching quality (and in our teachers) is essential for all school systems to meet these needs for a new American education system.

"Where anything is growing, one former is worth a thousand re-formers. Horace Mann

The Bound Brook Board of Education is excited to announce in the 2012-2013 school year, Bound Brook High School students will participate in a one to one iPad program. Many of those who follow education have heard about all the educational changes: Common Core Curriculum Standards, individualized education, integration of technology, and the ongoing economic budget challenges. These challenges have made educators think outside the box for new ways to educate the next population of students, to integrate diverse sources of information and to create new understandings and innovations in education.

The Bound Brook School District realizes this new generation of students, the Millennials, are highly connected social and digital natives. The Millennials are the first generation of students who are naturally drawn to tweeting and texting, websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia. Rather for them, these are not astonishing innovations of the digital era, but are everyday functions of their social lives and their search for understanding. If we are going to engage this population of 21st Century students in an exciting, challenging, vivid, and more rigorous manner, we need to change schools from boring places to total interactive places. As John Dewey stated in 1899, Schools inability to utilize the experiences students have outside of school inside of school, and to apply what is learned in school to daily life, is the great waste that comes from schools today.

To make this transition, the Bound Brook School District has developed a plan to change our teaching and learning process. The need to have information at the fingertips of students today is crucial to engage this generation. As stated by Dr. Gallagher, Principal of Bound Brook High School, We need to change our thinking about technology as a tool; rather it is a means to extend learning and access to education 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

For more information about this exciting program, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniel Gallagher, principal of Bound Brook High School at dgallagher@bbrook.org.