I recently attended the Virtual School Symposium hosted by iNACOL (the International Association for K-12 Online Learning). It was a good conference, and I came away with a new sense of the direction online learning will be taking as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

One session I attended really had some things to think about. It was conducted by folks from Transition High School in Milwaukee. The session was about disruptive learning, and this school is truly following the disruptive learning philosophy. Created as a place for students who have previously been incarcerated or have otherwise been in “trouble”, this high school has had to develop true education reform.

There are many great things going on at Transition High School. At first glance, an educator might say “okay, great, but how does that apply to my school?”

To answer that question, I’m going to talk about the school’s “restoration of consciousness” theme. The programs that surround this theme include a three-strand approach.

First, there is the “cypher” portion, which educates the students in that school about some of the stereotypes and cultural issues that may affect their own perception of their roles in society.

Next, is the “experiential” portion, which gives students an opportunity to experience things like camping, rock-climbing, and skiing – things they have never experienced before. These experiences serve to show students what truly living is all about, and in the process, they learn more about themselves and their own capacity to problem-solve and face challenges.

Last, there is a “community” component, where students do community service work and develop community partnerships that further enhance their understanding of what their role in society might be.

Yes, these programs have been developed for students who otherwise normally fall through the cracks. Nationwide statistics say that an extremely high number of these students will be dropouts. Transition High School students graduate 64% of the time, and many of them choose to pursue higher education.

However, I believe this type of program has a place in “traditional” school settings, as well. As a high school teacher, I see students in my classroom who have, over the years, had their sense of awareness removed from them. They have forgotten why they want to learn, why they need to learn, how to set goals and what it really takes to achieve those goals. In an earlier post on this blog (Teaching Truth #11: Is it our fault?), I speculated that high school students:

“… leave their strengths behind and since they aren’t any good at those things we are forcing them to do, they lose interest and become mediocre at success.”

It’s time we restore consciousness – not just to our students, but to ourselves.

We can do this by focusing more on the student as a whole, rather than limiting our impact to our 45 to 90 minutes with them each day. Developing a school-wide program, tailored to meet the needs of the students in your community, can be the first step toward a global restoration of consciousness.

Take a look at the last post I entered here and you’ll get a bit of a feel for how I’ve been doing with my return to the classroom. No, I’m not saying that it is difficult, I’m just saying that getting back into the swing of the planning for, delivery to, and assessment of my students has been a bit time-consuming. I’m really enjoying it, though, and finding that the time away from teh classroom probably helped me to regroup and start fresh.

That is not to say that I feel like a first year teacher again (thankfully!). I still feel like I have a few years behind me, but I also feel like I have a new perspective.

October brings with it all kinds of fun things to consider. Fall is underway, with the leaves all changing colors and the cold wind starting to howl. We’ve all got approximately 9 weeks of school done and are beginning to have thoughts like – “wow, this year is flying by” or “awesome! only a few more weeks until Thanksgiving!”. New teachers, however, might be thinking a few other things as well ….

Dr. Mark Littleton and Dr. Pam Littleton did a study awhile back on “The Evolution of a Teacher“.  According to their study, new teachers in October are disillusioned. They are wondering why they wanted to teach in the first place. They are wondering if they will be able to make it through their first year. They are considering not ever teaching again if they do manage to make it through this year. Following is a graph of their findings:

I’ve been thinking about what our responsibility as seasoned educators is to these new teachers. With nothing to back it up except observation, I’ve developed the following graph of the level of support offered to new teachers during their first year:

Look a lot like the original graph? Yes, and even though I’ve taken the liberty to add a little humor into the labels, it actually rings true. Seasoned teachers know what to expect throughout the year. When we start the school year, we make sure we know who the new teachers are, offer them words of advice, maybe give them a few lesson plans, and promise that we’ve got their backs. As the year rolls on, however, we begin to get wrapped up in the running of our own classrooms. At the same time, the new teachers are feeling overwhelmed and often are not seen coming out of their room for weeks at a time. It is when we don’t see them that they are in trouble and they need help.

It is the responsibility of veteran educators to support them through this time, which will last until around April (after all the standardized tests have been administered), when they will begin to feel a new energy and hope for a future in teaching. We must first of all let them know that these feelings they are having are normal and that all new teachers face them. We must then support them through the rest of the disillusionment phase by encouraging them, offering them advice when they ask for it, giving them lesson plans and ideas, and inviting them to observe our classrooms.

The witching hour is upon them – give them garlic to fend off the attack!

I’ve been asked several times in the last few weeks about the value of building relationships with students. For some people, the words “relationships with students” bring to mind other words like Letourneau, but what I’m talking about are the appropriate relationships that must be built in order to instill trust, respect, and safety in the classroom.

Teaching isn’t just about delivering instruction. It is about providing students with an opportunity to learn more about themselves and the world around them. Developing an atmosphere conducive to this type of exploration requires that the teacher establish relationships with his/her students. We cannot simply be dictators or king/queen of our little 15-40 seat kingdom. We must be facilitators of learning. We must give students a reason to WANT to succeed and that is where the relationships come in.

As I’m wrapping up my first year teaching online, I”m reflecting on the differences between my online and face-to-face classrooms. I’m asking myself – are my online students ending their school year knowing that I truly cared about their successes and failures? Did they feel respected? Did they respect me? These are things that are a little tough to gauge in an online setting, although it can be done. However, in the face-to-face classroom, it should be easy to see whether you’ve effectively built relationships with your students.

If you constantly struggle with classroom chatter, disrespectful behavior, and downright rebellion against class rules, then you probably haven’t established the right kind of relationships. If you realize that you never really sat down and talked about anything besides the content of your course with your students, then you probably didn’t establish good relationships. If the first thing you did at the start of the year is have the students complete form after form and sit through long lectures telling them the procedures and expectations for the year, then you probably started off on the wrong foot.

Don’t get me wrong – there is definitely a need for procedures, guidelines (I dislike calling them rules), and perhaps even forms if your district or school requires them, but there are better ways to get all of the above working in your classroom than packing it all in on the first day of school. What if, on the first day of school, you sat down on your desk and just had a chat with your students? Waste of a class period? No. What you’ve accomplished after that class period is not only the start of an appropriate relationship with your students, but you’ve also begun to get  a feel for the interests, learning styles, and personalities in your class. Now you can meaningfully assign groups for that first project of the year. From the students’ perspectives, you’ve begun to show them that you aren’t just about the teaching, you have a genuine interest in them. Sadly, you may be one of the only adults in their lives not related to them who has shown that interest.

One of the 40 developmental assets for children is having adults in their lives who are not related to them, but still care about them. Is it appropriate for a teacher to be the “other adult”? I think so. As you reflect on this year, think about the relationships. Did you have students who excitedly told you about things they noticed on television that was relevant to something they learned in your classroom? Did they proudly tell you about their successes in sports, band, or other extracurricular activities? Do you have students who return to your classroom or contact you in other ways after they’ve grown up to let you know how they are doing? All of these are indicators that you did what you probably became a teacher for – you made a difference in someone’s life.

To borrow and mangle a line from an old movie – If they get the message that you care about them, they will learn. Caring about them doesn’t mean that you are a pushover and will let them get away with anything and do nothing. Caring about them means a relationship of trust, responsibility, and meaningful, realistic expectations.

I started off my morning reading an article about a really cool new school in Coppell, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News. This school calls itself a project-based school. Students are given freedom to explore and create their own learning opportunities. The school is 1:1 and students are free to use portable electronic devices in their learning.

Taught by educators who have been teaching in “traditional” settings for years, these students are guided and their efforts are facilitated, but they are not lectured. Gone are worksheets and “filler” assignments. I read this article and was so happy to hear that a local school district had taken that deep of a plunge and I’m excited to see how things turn out. But then I saw a sentence that really caught my eye:

“Still, some educators are wary of anything trendy and fear giving kids so much freedom to learn on their own. “

I kept reading that sentence and wondering about the word fear. Have we really come to a place where educators have such a need for control that they fear giving students an opportunity to educate themselves? I found it ironic that this article came across my desk this morning because just yesterday I began formulating an idea for a presentation about educational reform and it involved this very thing.

My idea is this – if we make two mind trips – one back in time and one into nature, we will discover the key to the way learning should be.

1. The time mind trip. I’m taking you back to early Greece. Socrates is sitting with his students. What is he doing? Is he lecturing to them? No. He is only asking them questions. He is so firmly set on asking questions, rather than answering them, that it gets almost frustrating to his students. Guiding questions, however, lead some of his students into discoveries that earn themselves their own places in history. Have you ever heard of a guy named Plato?

2. The nature mind trip. I’m seeing a lioness with her cubs. She’s allowing them to follow her on a mildly dangerous hunt. They watch her as she stalks the prey and skillfully attacks. To the side, the cubs mimic this behavior in their own play. Mother hasn’t said a word. Cubs get it.

What does all this mean? I believe in a world where students can learn for themselves. A world where teachers model the behaviors they wish for students to mimic. A world where science teachers put the equipment and the supplies out on the table and watch students create their own experiments to answer questions (yes, I understand the teacher has to monitor this for safety – that’s the real reason the teacher is there). A world where, at the beginning of a grading period, the teacher hands the students a list of the content that needs to be covered and asks “where do YOU want to start” and “how will YOU learn this?”

What are we afraid of?

Students are lacking in one thing as a result of our need to control their learning – critical and analytical thinking skills. That one thing is crippling them and is what has put us in the position we are today in education. Let’s stop holding them hostage and start giving them their minds back.

I’ve been wanting to start a new blog that would be a personal blog with a professional theme. I am aware of and read several great educational bloggers. I started to think that setting up yet another educator blog would be redundant.

I was recently offered a new position at a university, which, although it won’t take me out of education, it will take me out of the classroom. I’ve decided to take the job and as a result, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching on these last few days in the classroom. Will I ever come back to teaching?

Yesterday, (and I’m sure many females out there will relate to this) I wore my “cruel shoes”. These shoes start off in the morning feeling okay, but by the end of the day, my feet hurt like someone has been holding them in a vice grip while pouring molten nails with shards of glass over them, then grinding them into . . . . well, you get the picture. On the ride home from work (thankfully, David was driving), I tried and tried to leave those shoes on my feet, but a few blocks from home I just couldn’t stand it any longer! I took the shoes off, staring at my toes in disbelief that they didn’t look like misshapen, bloody stumps. When we got home, David laughed that I was walking barefoot in a skirt up to the house. I explained to him that once you take cruel shoes off, there is no putting them on again.

How are these three paragraphs related? Well, as I said, I’ve been soul-searching. I’m really troubled about whether I’ll ever return to a classroom. I’ve found my years of teaching are similar to that day wearing the cruel shoes. There are benefits to wearing those shoes – they look good, sometimes they even feel good, they offer some protection, they complete my look, and they don’t always hurt. The bad thing is, they hurt my feet often and I suffer through my day when I wear them. I tolerate having them on because the benefits are worth it to me for that day. But once I take them off, there is no convincing myself to put them back on, at least not for a few days.

Those shoes are the reason I’m leaving the classroom. No, not those shoes, but the metaphorical ones that represent the things I dislike about teaching. Things like the personal responsibility I feel for many children’s lives, the stress of coming up with the right lesson plans, the agony of having to make everything fit a state-prescribed formula, the worry over whether my students will have what they need to pass state-standardized tests, the disappointment when my students aren’t excited about the things I love. These are things I’ve put up with because of the benefits of teaching – that look on a kid’s face when you just may have instilled the spark in their brains for what will become their profession someday; the thank you from the student you helped prepare for a test so they could graduate three years ago who has come back for a visit; the “good days” when everything you planned works, the kids are engaged and excited, and you go home feeling like a real teacher. But now that I’m taking the shoes off, will I ever put them on again?

 I decided to name my blog “Cruel Shoes” because I want it to be a place where the realities of teaching can be spoken. Oftentimes new and good teachers leave the profession because they’ve become disillusioned. They thought teaching was going to be something it can never be. They became disappointed and didn’t give the rewards time to catch up with the penalties. I’m hoping this blog will be a place where teachers can read the truth and in so doing, learn that they are not alone. A place where seasoned teachers can tell the young ones Yes, it is tough, but it is worth it. 

In reality, after next week, I truly may never walk into a classroom in the capacity of teacher again. In my mind, I will never leave the classroom. As a teacher-at-heart, I will post information here about things that will be helpful to teachers, but I will also speak the truths about that information and about teaching in general. Post a comment here, let’s get this party started!