Creativity in Schools

As educational professionals we are the people who educate and inspire the next generation and generations to come. One of the most difficult questions I recently was asked is, do you believe that schools are creative enough for today’s students? As someone who believes we need to be very creative for our students, it was interesting reflective question. I have spent a lot of time, energy, and funds to incorporate technology into the curriculum, updating curriculum materials, and trying to develop meaningful professional development for our staff, so the question at first was easy but the more I reflected on the question it was not as clear if I have been as successful.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a professional development conference on the changes and direction of education. The keynote speaker for this conference was Milton Chen. For those of you who do not know who Milton Chen is, he was one of the creators of Sesame Street and Senior Fellow/Executive Director Emeritus at the George Lucas Foundation or better known as Edutopia. Dr. Chen is the author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools. He discusses that the best learning environments are those in which social and emotional learning are the foundation of the curriculum. Obviously, the second piece to his platform is an environment that fosters creativity and the use of technology.

One of the main thoughts and ideas he spoke to is the fact that we need to change our current delivery of education. We need to not allow the school walls to be the boundary of learning. Nor should we as teachers allow ourselves to limit our own creativity to deliver a curriculum with high standards, integrated technology, which caters to students’ creativity. With that said, I believe that technology's usefulness in education has not yet been fully realized as a means to deliver content and improve student performance. You added computers to schools that are still functioning on the old paradigm from the industrial age. Educators must use technology to rewrite how education is delivered and how students can use what they learn creatively in and outside the classroom.

Our children are growing eager to learn and quick to embrace new technology. Outside school technology is fully integrated in their lives, it’s how they listen to music, how they shop, communicate, socially interact, and how they read. As educators we cannot create an environment, the minute they step back into their classrooms, it's like going back in time.

Teachers are also hampered by antiquated rules and policies that do not allow they to create interactive creative classrooms. Educators each have their own strengths, some excel at lecturing, others excel with project based learning, and yet some are better at giving personal attention. Administrators need to create a structure, where teachers work together as a team to provide a better learning environment, and to remove the obsolete rules, procedures and policies that do not allow teachers to create interactive creative rich classrooms.

10 Parent Tips

10 Parent Tips

I read an article in Principal Leadership today that I believe is very valuable and should be used by all school leaders. Here is the document I created for my district.

1. Be involved in your child’s academic program.

• Make sure that your child is challenged and taking courses now that will help meet future goals. Math course selection is vital and the single most important class decision for the ninth-grade year.

2. Get your child involved in a positive activity, but don’t overextend.

• Research says that students who are involved in an activity, club, sport, music, etc., are much more likely to have a positive high school experience and get better grades than students who are not involved.

3. Know your child’s friends.

• Research says that when a teenager is faced with a critical decision, the influence of peers (positive and negative) and parents/families make a difference.

4. Register for Parent Access to Genesis.

• This will enable you to track your child’s attendance, discipline, grades, and communicate directly to your child’s teachers right from you computer or smartphone.

5. Have you and your child attend the freshman barbeque.

• More information to follow

6. Don’t allow your child to get lost in the shuffle.

• Students can get lost or fall through the cracks during the school year. Research says that when a student makes positive connections with adults (teachers, guidance counselor, coacher, etc.), it stops this from happening.

7. Attend Back to School Night and Parent Conferences

8. Remember that all teenagers (including straight “A” students) need proper supervision.

• This supervision includes online and technology supervision. Remember, good kids make mistakes too. Your child should always know that you love them, but make sure he/she knows your expectations. Know where your child is and who they are with at all times.

9. Get to know your child’s teachers and guidance counselor.

• Stay in positive contact with teachers and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Remember that e-mail is a great tool for quick information, but it’s not such a great tool for dealing with more difficult issues. Don’t fight the small battles for your child, keep things in perspective.

10. Get involved in school yourself

• The most successful students I have seen are the ones whose parents are at the school, attending functions, join the PTSO or athletic boosters, or serve on the advisory council or some other group. In a sense, these parents are the ones who are in the know, and they use this information to support their children and the school!

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment is a means to evaluate students learning and metacognition of new instructional material. Classroom assessments when used correctly generate data demonstrating student knowledge and progress in the curriculum. Teaching and learning are reflective practices. One of the lost processes are teachers not thinking about thinking. One of the most important instructional initiatives has been writing across the curriculum. School districts choose this initiative for a good purposes, writing is a demonstration of internal thinking and expression, good writing skills, and as a reflective process for students. As educators, we are always looking for value-added practices that will enhance how to assist our students to learn. 

One way is formative assessments to be used as a reflection of what students have learned, what they need to learn, and more importantly asking the students to be co-collaborators in helping guide classroom instruction. For this to work effectively in the classroom, teachers have to give timely feedback to students and create an environment of understanding and without fear of repercussions and criticism. Formative assessments are not assessments for grades, but for feedback that is designed as part of the lesson planning process. Excellent lesson planning that incorporates the design loop theories are the best to measure student learning and progress in mastering the curriculum.

Administrators should have teachers trained and use formative assessments in the classroom to guide instruction. School leaders should use the data to develop professional development to address needs identified through these assessments. It also can serve as an evaluation tool when assessing the performance of students on standardized assessments, as well as curriculum revisions. Overall, the uses for formative assessments are great. When used properly they can create a classroom culture of learning that student, parents, teachers, and administrators find very rewarding.

Formative assessment really has three functions if used properly:

1. Formative assessment is a form of metacognition assessment to identify what students know and still need to learn.

2. Teachers should adjust instruction for students based on the feedback from the assessments.

3. The data from the assessments should be used to complement the data from standards-based assessments, this also can be used to evaluate teachers.

Community Education

This is the time of the year that we prepare for next years budget. Numerous discussions normally take place during the development of a budget, such as, program improvements, facility needs, curriculum development, and professional development. Unfortunately, the last few years all of our budget discussions have been about staffing reductions, program reductions, and elimination of administrative services. With our current budget short falls any program improvements must be met with program reductions. While this makes sense in these economical times, the problem is some of the program improvements that I would like to discuss would not have cost the district budgetary funds. 

The one program improvement that I desperately wished to discuss was to start a community education program. In this proposal the initial cost of the program would have been raised by private funds donated from local businesses. We had several commitments for corporations for the start of this program. This would have allowed us to offer specific courses that may have had a small cost associated with course materials for those individuals interested in signing up for a course. The model that we were looking to use has been very successful in several neighboring communities.

The need for our district to have a community education program is great, we have a low socioeconomic section in the community that requires cost effective education. This we assist the school in educating these parents to better assist their children academically at home as well as build a connectedness to a population that has not been active in the school community. This is paramount to our district as voter turnout for budget adoption is low, which in the last fifteen years the district has not been able to successfully pass a budget.

In these economic times we as educators need to start thinking outside the normal budgetary revenue streams to develop programs that can enhance our communities. We need to constantly add value to what we do as educators for our communities. Programs staffed by our teachers allows for opportunities for parents, community members, and senior citizens to be a part of our schools. This is a win-win situation for everyone in the community, teachers, parents, students, and citizens. Teachers can tech specific courses that they are particularly interested in and can be paid based upon enrollment and course taught. We have several very talented teachers with specific expertise in digital photography, arts, CPR and AED training, math, science, engineering, bio-medical, and general education. 

With the needs of our students and community members the interest in a program was tremendous! The school district could have for the first time in over two decades had serious community involvement in the schools and service to the community. Unfortunately, our short sightedness is not allowing us to connect with our community. 

Deficit Thinking

The world that we are living is changing at an astonishing rate, far distinctive then at any other time in history. The explosion of technology and the Internet has flattened the world like never before. Economics, employment, and social interacts have moved from the borders of towns and countries to anywhere in the world. Being in education for the last twenty years, I have seen drastic changes in how this sudden increase in technology has affected people and the learning process. For the first time we have children in schools who are totally digital natives being taught by teachers who have not embraced the use of technology as a way of delivering content and project based learning. To further the learning gap is the need for this generation to be connected socially at all times. Educators today should embrace and use social networks to advance the learning process of our children and students.

Most teachers today view their students through a deficit lens. When teachers say students are not motivated, unprepared for the academic rigor, students are at-risk, or live in a high minority or low-income community we do the best we can. This is deficit thinking, is when a person views another person or situation in a deficit nature without really knowing the student or situation. They use this deficit thinking to justify the means of low academic achievement or the reasons as to why they cannot do more activities in the classroom. We also see this deficit thinking with teachers about technology, social networking, and change in general. Teachers have a strong need to be in control of students, why? They control the workload, the acceptable academic products, and acceptable classroom behavior. 

With the increased numbers of minority students attending primary and secondary schools for a longer period of time, a defined achievement gap rise between whites and minority students. Technology access will be a defining factor for low-income students. This to will lead to an increase in deficit thinking paradigms in education. We need to develop professional development activities to help teacher over come the deficit thinking paradigms that they bring to the class to increase student achievement.