Category: 21st Century Learning

This is one of those weeks where it is difficult to decide who I am writing to and what I should be writing about.  It is a good problem to have because there are so many exciting things happening!  We just finished an amazing Preplanning Week highlighted by a Lower School “Meet the Teacher” on Thursday and today’s Middle School Orientation.

Here we all our decked out in our brand new MJGDS Marlins gear…Go Marlins!

And thanks to our super-fast, movie-making-maven, Marketing & Admissions Director Talie Zaifert, we have this awesome welcome back to school video:

So…with all of this excitement and with the first day of school coming on Monday…I just couldn’t wait to share the extraordinarily exciting news of a groundbreaking new conference in Jewish education that will take place at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School this year.  In cooperation with the Schechter Day School Network and with a generous grant and support from The AVI CHAI Foundation, we will bring to you this spring (“Save the Date” coming soon!) an amazing conference dedicated to 21st century learning in Jewish day school education…

Introducing: edJEWcon

Great thanks to our 21st century learning team, particularly Silvia Tolisano and Andrea Hernandez, in putting together the proposal for what we are hoping will become a paradigm-shifting experiment in professional development with the power to bring more and more Jewish day schools, beginning with the Schechter Network, down the 21st century learning path we try to blaze here at our school.

Idea

We are envisioning a conference based on 21st century professional development where attendees can experience a Jewish day school in transition to becoming a dynamic 21st century learning environment.  We are sharing a vision of teaching and learning that transcends physical boundaries and connects across geographic borders and time zones. We acknowledge that Jewish day schools need to chart a new course, not only by adopting and adapting a secular educational movement, (The Partnership for 21st Century Learning  http://www.p21.org/),  but positioning Schechter Network schools, in particular,  at the forefront of an exciting  paradigm shift in education.

This first year pilot will create a template of a 21st century conference with the flexibility to grow beyond it and expand with the ultimate goal of becoming a premier destination for all forward-looking Jewish education stakeholders.

21st Century Professional Development

Professional development in the 21st century is rooted in the belief that educators need to experience the same skills, tools and teaching strategies that they are expected to develop and implement in their own classroom practice.  The Partnership for 21st Century Learning points out that we need to give teachers and administrators opportunities and the tools to “identify what activities they can replace/de-emphasize”.  21st century professional development takes advantage of a virtual learning network that is available anytime and anywhere.  New literacies of the 21st century, such as information, network, media and global literacies, demand that educators be fluent in communicating, collaborating and connecting through face-to-face, virtual and blended communities of global educators. Veteran educators who embrace this change are energized when they acquire these new skills and competencies; they engage their students with new media and technologies, incorporated into their deep and vast experience in the classroom. 

What will make this conference distinctive and unique

1. A conference planned to meet the needs of Jewishly observant educators and the calendar of Jewish day schools
2. Specifically tailored to individual cross-disciplinary school teams in Jewish day schools with hands-on applications
3. The first conference to present a vision for 21st Century Jewish Day School Education and a roadmap to reach this desired desintation

 Proposed Tracks

• Administrators – how to lead a cultural change in your school
• Technology & Curriculum Coordinators – what innovation could look like and how to drive it
• Admissions and Marketing Directors – how to convey a compelling message to current & prospective parents who want their children to have the best of 21st century education;
• Lay Leaders – how to understand and generate excitement about a unique approach to teaching and learning throughout the community;
• Classroom Teachers – how to increase your students’ motivation and engagement in learning…and yours!

Implementation

The participatory nature of the conference will combine hands-on training, using 21st century tools, with an experiential component.  The conference will include expert presentations, hands-on training and direct experiences in new practices.   Using Alan November’s model of the Digital Learning Farm we will use authentic, meaningful roles and contributions to our learning community  as a means to empower all learners.

The conference website (http://www.edjewcon.org) will be a collaborative environment for reflection and sharing as well as the hub for live social media feeds. Participants will be responsible for contributing to the site during the conference by sharing and reflecting on their learning.  21st century learning is participatory learning.  Through collaboration, participants create a long term hub for dissemination, reflections, resource sharing with and for other Jewish educators and administrators.

Outcomes

Create a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for 21st Century Schechter Schools.

Each school will leave edJEWcon with its customizable road map for becoming a  21st century learning school.  Depending on the school (and the members of the team able to participate), the pathways and timing of each journey will differ, but the destination remains the same.  Heads of School will meet with Heads of School; Admissions Directors with Admissions Directors; Curriculum  Supervisors with Curriculum Supervisors; etc.

Provide school team members with hands-on experiences of 21st century learning so they can not only return with information, but firsthand experience to share with their schools.  We envision the conference operating fluidly between the tachlis (How do I most effectively blog or Tweet?) and the meta (How might my learning of best practices for blogging or using social media impact the classroom teachers in my school?).

 

I cannot wait to hear your comments and suggestions.  I cannot wait to see what new partners come on board.  I cannot wait to see which schools will look to join us on this grand new adventure in 21st century learning in the Jewish day school.  I cannot wait to see how our school – parents, students,  and faculty – will prepare to host this event.  I cannot wait to see  what our school will learn from you.

This is going to be a big year.

Forty-one posts later…

…I have spent some time rereading the titles of the forty-one blog posts I have written this year and cherry-picked a few to reread so that I would have some sense of how to tie up in a neat bow my adventure in blogging this year.  Rather than regurgitate that which you are welcome to reread yourself, I though I would share an illustrative anecdote that took place last week:

I received an email a few weeks ago from the head of a community day school in the Midwest asking if I would be willing to Skype with her and her technology teacher about how our school began its path towards 21st Century Learning.  I went through some of my prior blog posts, did a little searching on Twitter, reviewed a chapter or two in Curriculum 21 and scheduled the call.  We had a lovely hour-long chat on Skype – during which I had occasion to reference, among other things, blogfolios, digital farms, back-channels, digital immigrants, nings, wikis and GoogleDocs.  It was a very nice call and I look forward to continued collaboration with our new friends.

When it comes to reflecting on my own work and having that reflection made transparent – one raison d’être for having a blog in the first place – my big takeaway from this school year that was, is that prior to July of last summer, I would have been utterly unable to define any of the words highlighted in red let alone speak of them intelligently. The idea that during the course of one school year, I have come from almost utter ignorance to presenting at conferences and fielding requests for consultation is almost preposterous.  And yet here we are…

There is nothing unique about me that allowed for this to happen.  I promise.  It took a village (and a book) to teach me basic skills and the (peer) pressure of trying to live up to the expectations already put in place by the school I had been hired to head.  I kinda had no choice, but to begin blogging and Tweeting or else I’d be left behind my own teachers!

My story is really the story of the last two years of our school writ small.  There was nothing particularly unique about our school that would have led you to conclude that it would one day stake out a leadership position in 21st century education.  We were, and are, a relatively small K-8 Solomon Schechter Day School in the relatively small Jewish community of Jacksonville, Florida.  And yet here we are…

It doesn’t take millions of dollars and it doesn’t take a surfeit of faculty.  It doesn’t require expertise in advance and it doesn’t require knowing the end of the journey before you take the first step.  You don’t need SMART Boards, iPads, and laptops to adopt a 21st century mindset.  It is not about the “stuff” (not that the “stuff” doesn’t help…it does)!

We have tried in our school to stop using “21st Century Technology” as a synonym for “21st Century Learning”.  Technology requires “stuff”; Learning requires “people”.  It isn’t that the technology is unimportant – there are certain minimum thresholds of technology necessary to walk the path.  But most schools can reach that threshold with creative budgeting and fundraising.  Harder than accumulating the stuff is changing the paradigm.  It doesn’t take an endowment to revolutionize your educational philosophy – it takes teachers, administrators, parents and students.  And every school has those.

 

We have exciting plans here at the school for this summer and the year to come.  I look forward to planting those seeds next week.  As I prepare to turn the page on this school year and begin writing the chapter on the next, let me pause to thank those who read this blog and even more those who comment.  I am frequently challenged trying to produce a blog post of sufficient quality each week to be worthy of publication.  I don’t know that I always reach the goal, but I am always grateful for the opportunity.

Let summer begin…

//

I spent an hour yesterday working with our Academic Resource Specialist trying to decide exactly which set of scoring results will make the most amount of sense for the battery of standardized tests our students have now completed.

One hour.

What should be cross-checked with what and which version should be sent to whom?Longitudinal data over how many different data points in which sections from when to when?  Do we err on the side of sharing too much information and run the risk of overwhelming and confusing the parents?  Do we err on the side of sharing too little information and run the risk of appearing to have something to hide?

What exactly is the value of standardized testing and how do we use the information it yields?

It sounds like such a simple question…

My starting point on this issue, like many others, is that all data is good data.  There cannot possibly be any harm to knowing all that there is to know.  It is merely a question of how to best use that data to achieve the fundamental task at hand – to lovingly move a child to reach his or her maximum potential.  To the degree that the data is useful for accomplishing this goal is the degree to which the data is useful at all.

Standardized tests in schools that do not explicitly teach to the test nor use curriculum specifically created to succeed on the tests – like this one – are very valuable snapshots. Allow me to be overly didactic and emphasize each word…they are valuable – they are; they really do mean something.  And they are snapshots – they are not the entire picture, not by a long shot, of either the child or the school.  Only when contextualized in this way can we avoid the unnecessary anxiety that often bubbles up when results roll in.

Like any snapshot, the standardized test ought to resemble its object.  The teacher and the parent see the results and say to themselves, “Yup, that’s him.”  It is my experience that this is the case more often than not.  Occasionally, however, the snapshot is less clear.  Every now and again, the teacher and the parent – who have been in healthy and frequent communication all the year long – both look at the snapshot and say to themselves, “Who is this kid?”

When that happens and when there is plenty of other rich data – report cards, prior years’ tests, portfolios, assessments, etc. OR teacher’s notes from the testing which reveal anxiety, sleepiness, etc. – it is okay to decide that someone put their thumb on the camera that day (or that part of the test) and discard the snapshot altogether.

Okay, you might say, but besides either telling us what we already know OR deciding that it isn’t telling us anything meaningful, what can we learn?

Good question!

Here is what I expect to learn from standardized testing in our school if our benchmarks and standards are in alignment with the test we have chosen to take:

Individual Students:

Do we see any trends worth noting?  If the overall scores go statistically significantly down in each area year after year that would definitely be an indication that something is amiss (especially if it correlates to grades).  If a specific section goes statistically significantly down year after year, that would be an important sign to pay attention to as well.  Is there a dramatic and unexpected change in any section or overall in this year’s test?

The answers to all of the above would require conversation with teachers, references to prior tests and a thorough investigation of the rest of the data to determine if we have, indeed, discovered something worth knowing and acting upon.

This is why, beginning this year, we will be scheduling individual meetings with parents in our school to personally discuss and unpack any test result that comes back with statistically significant changes (either positive or negative) from prior years’ testing.

The results themselves are not exactly customer friendly.  There are a lot of numbers and statistics to digest, “stanines” and “percentiles” and whatnot.  It is not easy to read and interpret the results without someone who understands them guiding you.  As the educators, we feel it is our responsibility to be those guides.

Individual Classes:

Needless to say (but you just said it!), if an entire class’ scores took a dramatic turn from one year to the next it would be worth paying attention to – especially if history keeps repeating.  To be clear, I do not mean the CLASS AVERAGE.  I do not particularly care how the “class” performs on a standardized test qua “class”.  [Yes, I said “qua” – sometimes I cannot help myself.]  What I mean is, should it be the case that each year in a particular class each student‘s scores go up or down in a statistically significant way – that would be meaningful to know.  Because the only metric we concern ourselves with is an individual student’s growth over time – not how s/he compares with the “class”.

That’s what it means to cast a wide net (admissions) while having floors, but no ceilings (education).

School:

If we were to discover that as a school we consistently perform excellently or poorly in any number of subjects, it would present an opportunity to examine our benchmarks, our pedagogy, and our choice in curriculum.  If, for example, as a Lower School we do not score well in Math historically, it would force us to consider whether or not we have established the right benchmarks for Math, whether or not we teach Math appropriately, and/or whether or not we are using the right Math curriculum.

Or…if we think that utilizing a 21st century learning paradigm is best for teaching and learning then we should, in time, be able to provide evidence from testing that in fact it is.  (It is!)

So…the bubbles have been filled in, but the fun has just begun!  Here at MJGDS, we eagerly anticipate the results to come and to making full use of them to help each student and teacher continue to grow and improve.  We look forward to fruitful conversations. That’s what it means to be a learning organization.

You may put your pencils down now.

Time is a zero-sum game.

Whatever time is available for one thing automatically makes less of it available for something else.  The time I spend consulting with other schools (which is now beginning to happen with some small measure of regularity) is time I am not sitting in my own classrooms.  The time I spend writing grants, planning conference presentations, and dreaming dreams is time I am not collaborating with teachers.  The time I spend Tweeting and blogging is time I am not personally sharing vision and building relationships with parents and students.

It takes a significant amount of time and energy just to read the Tweets and blog posts from the variety of people I am eager to learn from.  There are so many valuable resources that already exist that I chronically feel behind the conversation as a follower!  It takes even more energy to think constructively about how I want to use Twitter, my blog posts and other social media to contribute to the conversation without simply retweeting for the sake of retweeting or blogging just to blog.  I look at the volume, quality and the variety of the Tweets and cross-platforming of blogs that some of my colleagues put out there and I become astounded (and envious). Who has time to do that?  I sometimes (snarkily) wonder when they have time to actually run their schools or their classrooms what with the Tweeting and the blogging and networking and whatnot.

So…how do we do it all?  How can smaller schools like ours find the time and resources to live up to our most basic responsibilities while still finding the time to publish and share what we do with the larger world?  In a 21st century mindset how do you balance “in-reach” with outreach?

The best answer I can think of is to answer those questions with other questions (this is a Jewish Day School after all): How can’t we?  Or are those even the right questions in the first place?

The truth is that as we have redefined our mission to include the vision of 21st Century/Curriculum 21 education, the values of “transparency”, “collaboration”, “reflective practice” are now becoming part and parcel of how we do business.  In the same way that a fifth grader’s motivation is raised as is the bar for his/her work as a result of knowing that the world is watching, so too is the quality of my reflections.  In the same way that a teacher’s practice is improved by the collective feedback of his/her peers, so too is mine.

I have to retrain myself in the same way we are retraining our teachers in the same way they are training our students…

…21st Century Learning/Curriculum 21 is NOT something extra to do on top of what we already need to do.  It is HOW we do what we do.  It is certainly way easier to say than it is to do.  But to truly embrace the paradigm shift it is what must be done.

And if doing it for the right reasons wasn’t enough…

…it has not gone unnoticed that there is a relationship between the amount of attention focused on us from the larger outside world and the perceived quality of our school from our most primary stakeholders.  For example, we showed our board a clip from Alan November’s TEDxNYED 2011 session in which he specifically referred to a classroom in our school, its teachers and students as the living example of how a 21st century classroom should be run.  Can you imagine how powerful it is for our parents and board members to view this?  Can you imagine how useful this kind of recognition is for attracting donors and grants?

In a further attempt to share our vision for 21st Century Learning with the world, I humbly offer a video put together by Talie Zaifert, our amazing Admissions & Marketing Director, of some greatest hits from a parlor meeting we had for our local community about 21st Century Learning at our school.  The presentation was largely prepared by Silvia Tolisano, one of our 21st Century Learning Specialists, and facilitated by the two of us.  It mixes basic background information along with specifics about our school – prepared for a local audience, but in the spirit of openness, available to all.  We welcome comments and feedback from all…

 

UPDATE – We just got another very powerful shout-out (about six minutes in) from Heidi Hayes Jacobs at the ASCD 2011 Conference:

What a whirlwind the last few weeks have been!

I successfully avoided the blizzard that hit the Northeast weekend before last by skipping out a tad early from the Jewish Educators Assembly 59th Annual Conference.  This conference, for Conservative Jewish educators, was titled  “From Sinai to Cyberspace” and I had an opportunity to present on “21st Century Learning” to my colleagues.  The whole conference was enriching and validating – it is always nice to see the excitement from your colleagues for the work you are doing.  It was a positive experience all around. [Check out the Twitter feed from the conference here!]

I beat the snow and was rewarded by the unique opportunity to watch my Fourth & Fifth Grade students sing with Barry Manilow!  How fantastic is this:

My reward?  The flu!

And at the WORST possible time because I missed our Professional Day!  Thank God we had done the prep work and one of our 21st Century Learning teachers, Andrea Hernandez, stepped in to facilitate a great day of reflection and collaboration for our teachers.  The topic of the day was “Putting Your Cards On The Table”…which if it sounds familiar, was the topic of a prior blog post of mine.  Teachers had their opportunity to reflect and share their personal educational philosophies as a means towards developing a consensus moving forward.  Many teachers utilized our school’s ning as the vehicle for sharing.

The ning is a private, closed conversation, but I wanted to share with you my [edited] comments to the teachers from my “ning blog post” (confused yet!) because it will help you understand why it will have been well worth closing school for a day…

“Shalom Chevre!

I just spent the last hour reading through the blog posts many of you have put up about your own individual teaching philosophies and the comments that have been flowing back and forth.  How wonderful it is to read your words and see your passion for children, for learning, and for this profession we have all chosen to dedicate our lives to!  To say I wish I had been there, is an understatement.  I was devastated to have missed it and indebted to Andrea for taking the lead on what from all accounts was a nourishing and meaningful day of reflection and sharing.

I take to the ning blog not to share my vision or philosophy of education because I have done so already on my professional blog.  I take to the ning blog for the purpose of connecting some dots…

We have worked hard together these few months together, so hard, and it is both appreciated and making a real difference in the lives of our students and school.

Dot #1: Benchmarks & Standards

Our most tangible achievement has been the first drafting of “Benchmarks & Standards”. This is what we believe our children ought to learn/know/be able to do by the end of each year.  Next steps?  Pulling out strands (Mathematics, Science, etc.) and ensuring they truly flow vertically from Grades K-8.

Dot #2: Educational Philosophy

Beginning with our school’s mission statement, my initial blog post, and now with all your entries and comments, a consensus of sorts is forming.  We believe in differentiated instruction.  We believe in individualized attention.  We believe in “A Floor, But No Ceiling”.  We believe in the dignity of children.  We believe in the dignity of teachers.  We believe in building bridges with parents to form partnerships.  We believe in depth over breadth.  We believe a Jewish Day School can offer a rigorous, private school secular education through a 21st century mindset while still providing the highest-quality Jewish education available – all during one very action-packed school day!

Dot #3: TEXTBOOKS & CURRICULAR MATERIALS

Let’s connect some dots…

…we now know what we want to teach and we know how we (ideally) want to teach.  We now have to decide which materials and books are the best ones to do this.  Recognizing that no textbook is perfect and that ANY substantive change in curriculum is likely to REQUIRE teacher training, this is the time to have that conversation, do some research, and make…decisions.

The cards truly are on the table…and now they are waiting for you to pick them up and play a hand.

Kol tuv, Jon”

And so the next couple of months will continue our exciting adventure as we make sure that the books and materials we use in our school are the right ones to teach what we say we are teaching in the way we say we believe children learn best.

And we could all probably use an eighth day of the week to get it done!

I’m off to Los Angeles on Sunday for the North American Jewish Day School Conference. The topic for the conference is “The High Performance, High-Tech Jewish Day School of the (Very Near) Future” and I am thrilled that I will again have an opportunity to present on “21st Century Learning” and some of the exciting things we are doing here in our school.  As always, I will do my best to tweet from the conference.  I am taking fistfuls of echinacea so that when I get home from this conference, I’ll be right back at it!

 

 

There they are…these are some actual members of our current Class of 2023.  All the talk and rhetoric about what we could be, what we ought to be – it is all for these children. They are not an educational theory to be debated; they are flesh and blood children to be educated.  What we do now matters not in the abstract realm of philosophy, but in the practical realm of whether these girls and boys will be prepared for success in the 21st century in all the ways academic, social and Jewish that can be defined.  They – and all of the children in our school – are what it is really about.  They are the reminder and the inspiration; the goal and the promise.

January this year brings us a wonderful confluence of events – the publication and mailing of enrollment materials for the 2011-2012 academic year and the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat – a holiday celebrating, among many things, the planting of seeds and the harvesting of fruits.  I always marvel when the rhythm of Jewish living intersects with the rhythm of school life – it never fails to create meaningful and new connections.

And so the time has come to see how well we have sown the the seeds of confidence and competence; love and caring; rigor and renewal; energy and enthusiasm – have we begun to deliver on the rightfully lofty academic, spiritual, emotional and social expectations our children and parents have for us?

Those who study the phenomenology (I hear I am supposed to include at least one word per blogpost that requires being looked up.  I linked it for you this time.  This time.) of religion often refer to Kierkegaard‘s (OK, I may be showing off now) so-called “leap of faith” describing what is necessary for someone to become a believer.  The “leap of faith” is predicated on the notion that one cannot really know (at least in scientific terms) religious truth and so in the end it is a matter of faith.

As enrollment packets find their ways into parents’ hands all across America, all of us involved in the sacred and holy task of educating children look to this time of year and hope we have nurtured the seeds we have sown with success.  We are not looking for parents to make a leap of faith and enroll their children in our schools.  We are looking for parents to make a leap of fact and enroll their children in our schools – confident that our school is the right place for their children to receive the education they want and deserve.

The seeds were planted during the summer.  They were watered and nurtured during the fall and into the winter.  As winter moves on (even in Florida!) and slowly moves towards spring, the faculty, staff , lay leaders, donors, supporters and administration of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School look forward to a rich and satisfying harvest.

We look forward to many, many leaps of fact.

[Want more facts?  Check out this podcast with Alan November, interviewing our teachers and students!]

http://novemberlearning.com/students-as-contributors-a-podcast-with-silvia-tolisano