Web 2.0 Challenge – Face the Future

Web 2.0 Facing the Future

Learning and Motivation in the 21st Century

Teaching vs. Learning

There is a difference between teaching and learning. Every teacher knows that, in some situations and on some days, you can teach your heart out and no learning occurs. Those who pay attention know that anyone can learn with no teacher present. This is especially true with teens and technology. In fact, an attempt to teach them is sometimes met with, “Just let me figure it out.” Of course, this does not mean that teaching and learning are mutually exclusive. Only that they are not necessarily consecutive.

So, then, if teaching and learning are not the same thing, then which one of them do we absolutely want to occur in school? This question is complicated by the clear fact that not all teaching, or, indeed, all teachers, are created alike. I’ve often heard teachers complain that they really try to teach their students the content, but they just won’t learn. So the big question is: If I’m teaching and my students are not learning, or not learning as well as I would like or expect, what am I going to do differently?

Here’s a companion question: Do I need to tweak my teaching a little, or do I need to approach the task of helping my students learn in a radically different way? I started teaching 18 years ago with the idea that I would lecture and my students would listen and take notes. Then I would assign an essay and they would write intelligibly on the topic I assigned. I look back on those assumptions and laugh.

As I learned more about my students and watched the way they learn, I began to give up my cherished notion that I would hold forth and they would meekly soak in my erudition. Didn’t happen that way. I was astonished to learn that students think lecture is boring. Really? Even when I’m talking about a subject I love, like Arthurian Legend? Yea, they don’t learn much if they are nodding off while I’m talking.

So, then, I’m teaching but nobody’s learning. How can I change that? I recently heard a teacher argue that students should listen respectfully, and they should do their worksheets, and they should want to learn. Yes, and I should have been born rich and good-looking, but I have to deal with what is, not with what should be. If my goal is to help students really learn–learn so that they retain and can make use of the knowledge, then I have to facilitate their learning in a way that kids can engage with in A.D. 2011.

Actually, although kids may have been a little more compliant in the 1950′s, I don’t think they ever have learned much differently than they do today. We just created a didactic method that favored teachers rather than students and we’ve been using it for a very long time, even though it hasn’t served us well.

So here’s how my teaching changed. I started viewing every assignment as a project, and every project as an avenue to teaching more than one knowledge or skill set. Rather than students learning one objective today, demonstrating “mastery” of that one with a worksheet or quiz, my students now work on projects that last 1-3 weeks and often have several steps. So I’m doing project-based learning in the English class. It works much the same way it does in an Ag class: I show my students the project, often using a past student’s work as an example. Then I give an assignment for the project with a rubric built in and in which steps are given that will yield a final product.

The key to this approach, of course, is designing the project so that completion, according to instructions and under my direction, will result the students developing knowledge and skills I want them to learn. I also do my best to design these projects so that they both teach the TEKS (standards for my course) and give real-world skills.

For instance, for many years, I assigned a process essay as many writing teachers do. However, when I asked myself if my students were likely to ever use this skill again, I had to honestly say that, for the overwhelming majority, the answer is “no.” However, it is likely that some or even most, may need to show someone off-site how to do something some day. So now my students create a tutorial. Each one has a different topic, and they are given a start and ending point. One might compose a tutorial on building a Prezi (check it out www.prezi.com), another might do his on editing a video in Real Player. Check the example included here. Tutorial-Excel

They are still writing an essay, down the right side. They are learning to work with graphics in a productive way. They learn to use MS Publisher to create a truly helpful document. They devise a project of which they are justly proud. Most of these tutorials will actually be used later in the class to teach programs or websites we will use for other projects. What did I do? I just gave them the assignment and showed them how it works, then facilitated when there were questions. They actually did the learning on their own.

And here’s the kicker–they liked it. They even argued with me that this project was easier than writing an essay. It wasn’t. It was certainly more work than a process essay, and yet my students thought it was easy. Why? Because they were learning something for which they could see a future, and they were fully hands-on with every step of the process. And I can guarantee that they will remember the skills and knowledge next year and be able to teach someone else how to do it.

In other words, learning actually occurred. Not much teaching, but lots of learning.

Real Excellence in Education

Teachers are the key to quality education!
Sounds like the speech you get at the beginning of each school year from the superintendent, or maybe a politician’s speech to an education organization. Actually, though, this tired phrase is true. Teachers really are the key. If the teacher does his/her job well, real learning will occur in the class room. But this assumes that the teacher is creative, innovative, enthusiastic, making use of the best tools, committed to excellence, cares about the success of students, is unwilling to accept poor performance from any student, and is willing to change when the methods he or she is using are not working–then real learning will occur in the class room.
Some teachers are like that: Truly excellent at their work. Willing to learn and grow. Seeking out change that will accelerate learning. Giving themselves without reservation to the success of their students. Unwilling to accept failure from themselves or their students.
Some are otherwise: Stuck in printed text and paper quiz mode. Strenuously objecting to change. Stuck in the 1850s. Always blaming students when learning does not happen in their classes. Shrugging their shoulders when students fail (and they can pass the grading period and still fail at learning). Looking for any opportunity to avoid the serious task of educating a generation to be better, smarter, more prepared. Loving neither the subject they teach nor the students for whom they are responsible.
I somehow doubt that any of the second group will be reading this blog, but if it happens and you are unwilling to become one of the teachers in the first group, please resign your job at the end of this school year and go find something to do that doesn’t affect the future of our nation.

There is much we could complain about as teachers. The students, the parents, the administration, the system, the state agency we answer to, the excessive standardized testing, classroom disruption and/or interruption, the general state of youth in America. I’m sure you can add some to the list. But complaining accomplishes nothing. We do it to excuse our failures and make ourselves feel we have done enough. Hey, we put it out there–it’s up to the kids to learn, right?

We already know that national standards and federal agencies can’t solve the problems of American education. More money and increased teacher salaries would be nice, but increased state and federal funds have not saved us nor made our students better learners. More high-stakes testing evidently doesn’t help, either. It only diminishes the number of hours we have for learning. And students are not going to suddenly get better, become more attentive, stop acting like kids. Even the addition of billions of dollars worth of technology has not made a real and quantifiable difference. So the only thing teachers can really change is ourselves.

How? Think about a few challenging questions: When is the last time you actually read an article about how to improve your teaching? If students are not learning as you would wish in your classes, what will you do that is drastically different to change that? Are you willing to give the kind of time out of the classroom to learning that you expect your students to give to your assignments? Are you willing to explore and try technologies that will fundamentally change the way learning occurs in your class? And here’s a big one–Are you up for designing lessons and projects in a way that allows students to take charge of their learning, to give up control in favor of growing true life-long learners, to work side-by-side with kids to create a new and more effective environment for learning?

I recently commented on a social networking site that teachers could help their students learn at a much higher level than the standardized testing requires. One reply told me that my idea was not realistic in some situations. I don’t believe that. Of course, if you are teaching special ed, you may encounter some limitations, but even sped students can learn at a higher level than many teachers believe they can.

I encourage you to be better. Never accept the norm. And, as Churchill said, “Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” Our enemy is our own mediocrity. Never give in.

Our students must become . . .

Our students must become the innovators, the designers, the forward-thinkers, the business and community leaders, the creative teachers, the moral compass of the future.  We, as teachers and school administrators have them for 7-10 hours every day.  Are we preparing them to be what they must become to lead the future?  Are we only doing the required lesson in the same way we’ve always done it?  Or are we creating a learning environment that is radically different than the one past generations slogged through to get a high school diploma?  What needs to change for our students–and how are we going to make those global changes in the way kids learn?