Category: 21st Century Learning

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

A few blogposts ago, I was swooning (and admittedly probably bragging a bit) about our Skype call during Preplanning Week with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, editor of Curriculum 21.  I am pleased that with her permission and with a lot of time and effort from our 21st Century Learning Teacher, Silvia Tolisano, we are able to share with you here an edited version from that call.  I encourage you – whoever you are who may be reading this – to watch it (it is just under 20 minutes).  If you are a parent, student, or supporter of our school, this will be a wonderful peek in behind the curtain of all the “Curriculum 21” and “21st Century Learning Technology” activities we have been so proud to advertise and talk about here.  This is why we believe we are changing the paradigm of what a Jewish Day School should and can be.  These are our hopes and dreams for our children.  This is why we are convinced our graduates will be eminently prepared for their next schools of choice.  This is why we invested in the physical and human resources necessary make it all come alive.  And boy is it alive – but don’t let the blogosphere and twitterati overwhelm the essential point.

That point, of course, is that what this really is about is teaching and learning – what good schools have always been focused on.  So I encourage anyone who is passionate about education and schooling to watch as well.  Schools who are invested in this movement do so not to promote themselves through social media (though we do); we do it because we believe it is how children need and deserve to be educated in a global 21st century world if they are going reach to their maximum potentials.  But enough of me, let Heidi tell you herself…

If you have stuck around this long, you are probably ready for a break, but I did want to pick up the thread of one “a-ha moment” I picked up from the call.  In it she went out of her way to describe how in other cultures (Singapore for example) Math is taught as a “second language”.  This is why those students are often more easily able to articulate critical mathematical thinking skills rather than simply demonstrate computational mastery.  They have been taught how to speak “Math” as a second language and have become literate in “Math”.  Amazing.

She next drew the analogy to “Music,” but my “a-ha” moment was to imagine opening up every subject to this approach.  What if we had to teach each subject in our schools as second languages?  Our students would become as fluent in Math as they were in English; equally as capable of being a patron of the Arts as of the Sciences.  They would speak History, write Music, and think Engineering.  What other metaphor so aptly describes our goal of inculcating in our students the ability to think in the disciplines we value?

In many schools, of course, a second language is being taught and for a Jewish Day School that language is Hebrew.  Here it is not just metaphor – Hebrew is being taught as an actual second language.  But the larger goal is not for them to be merely fluent Hebrew speakers.  In the same way we might describe the ability to read music as a prerequisite to musical literacy, the ability to read (and write and speak) Hebrew is for the Jewish Day School a prerequisite to speak Jewish.  It is not “Hebrew as a second language,” but “Judaism as a second language”.  Viewing our Jewish Studies in the same lens we view General Studies, with equal rigor of both academic expectations and teacher preparations, is part of what it means to be an integrated Jewish Day School.  It is why we have “Jewish Studies” and not “Hebrew”.  The difference is not mere semantics.

I could go on…and I probably will.  But not for here and not for now.  If any of this sparks anything in you (even healthy dissent), please don’t be shy.  I invite you into discussion on this or any of my blogposts.  I enjoy writing them and they are definitely a valuable reflective tool, but I enjoy dialogue about education even more.  If you are presently engaged in this type of work or know of examples, I would love to know.  So feel free and jump in!

What a week!

We are at the tail end of what has been the most exciting and enthusiastic Pre-Planning Weeks I have ever been honored to lead.  We have been studying Curriculum 21 as a school for almost half a year and experimenting with nings, wikis, Google docs, Skyping, etc.  As the new head of school, coming into this so recently, the credit for much of this goes to the visionary lay leaders who brought the program to us and to our primary 21st Century Learning Specialist Silvia Tolisano.  I have been impressed at the level of buy-in from all our teachers (regardless of age or stage!) and we have spent much of our week collaborating and planning for an amazing year.  The highlight for many was a Skype call with Curriculum 21 editor and author Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

I have been inspired by my teachers to jump into 21st century learning as well, with this blog, a twitter account, a Skype account, etc.  Each week I hope my sophistication with all these new vehicles for connection and communication deepens.  So too, do I look forward to being enriched by those kind enough to enter into feedback loops with me.

Part of my desire to keep this blog is precisely to reflect on the relationship between 21st century learning and 5,000 year-0ld traditions.  This week was a good week for this kind of reflective practice.  While studying from the Book of Exodus with my Jewish Studies Faculty, we focused on a curious phrase.  When God prepares to give the Torah to the People of Israel, the people respond by saying “We shall do; we shall understand” (Exodus 24:7).  We will do all that God will ask of us and we will (then) understand.

I am greatly paraphrasing and somewhat loosely interpreting, but it is an acceptable translation and understanding to conclude that one can oftentimes gain understanding through action.  This is as true as keeping kosher as it is as learning addition.  You want to know why it is valuable and important to keep kosher?  Try keeping kosher for a while and see how it might enrich your life.  You want to learn how to add?  Take these manipulatives and play with them.  Then you can learn the formulas.  Jump in.  Get your hands dirty.  Experiment.  Play.

In many ways this formulation from the Bible is one of the earliest advocacies of experiential education – we learn best through doing.  It may not be only way of learning, but it is certainly a valuable tool.

These ideas collided during our week-long study of 21st century learning.  If we as a faculty want to see the power of collaborative working through wikispaces and Google Docs…we need to commit to doing it.  If we want to see how podcasting can impact student learning…we need to podcast.  If we want to see how using interactive whiteboards can lead to a paradigm shift in teacher preparation and student achievement…jump in.  Get your hands dirty.  Experiment.  Play.

Our teachers are ready.  I’m ready.  The parents are certainly more than ready!  The students?  We’ll see them on Monday.

A restful weekend to all…