It's been a while

Since I have written here. The school year is closing down and I have been working 40 hours a week with another job, trying to pay off some debt and get my MED in Instructional Technology. Been very busy. I have been reading occasionally, but mainly working, eating, and sleeping. Been so busy, I didn't even attend the MICCA Conference in Baltimore. I usually go each year for the 2 day conference. Oh well, I'll catch it next year.

I've already approached Administration with my plans for next year. My hopes to spend part of my day with a school wide Wiki Project seems to be coming true. Right now, I am using the Wiki for informational purposes, but plan to get students involved next year. I am preparing our returning students for what they will be involved with next year. Most are very excited.

I will hopefully be writing more in the weeks to come. Until next blog...

Help! From the Network

My mother has been an Art teacher for 37 years. She is still teaching Sculpture and Ceramics in a High School setting. She approached me today with a few questions...

1. How can I get my students to listen when I give direction?

2. What type of 21st Century activities can I incorporate in my curriculum?

I relayed to her the importance of being involved in a Network on the internet. She is very interested in using tools such as blogs to refresh her teaching and engage the students. I came up with many ideas. I mentioned the importance of letting the students have a voice in her class. I mentioned that she should have a student ran classroom instead of her always teaching them how to do everything. She liked the idea, but seemed hesitant.

Now, I am asking my network...

Does anyone know of any good blogs or resources my mom could use to answer some of her questions?

THE HOLE: Where's My Rope To Climb Out

I have made many changes with my teaching methods this year. I have approached teaching and learning more as a journey rather than an end product. I have almost completely ended my use of worksheets. I have graded students on participation throughout projects. I'm focusing my efforts on having students become part of the learning process without a focus on the end product. In doing this, I have gone against the socially accepted methods of teaching. I have come to a few conclusions.

1. Parents do not want this change to occur.
- Parents are used to graded worksheets coming home so they can monitor grades on a daily basis. It is easier to have this type of communication. There is no conversation with the teacher. They see a paper with a number recorded at the top. They label their child according to that number. If it gets too low, they might contact the teacher.

2. Children have a hard time with this change.
- Throughout their years of being in school, they have become accustomed to the socially accepted methods of teaching. They are used to this. Entering my class, they have been taken out of their comfort zone. They have to exercise their brain. They have to actually think. It's much easier to fill in the blanks on a worksheet.

3. Administrators do not want this change to occur.
- They see this change going against their ultimate goal... great test scores on the State Tests. Rewarding students with a grade for an end product is the protocol that is the norm. They don't want to answer questions from parents. They want everything to go nice and smooth.

So I am left with a decision to make. Do I continue to try to climb out of this hole that the education system has dug for the past 100 years? Or do I give in to the Parents, Students, and the Administrators?

I am convinced that authentic learning is taking place in my classroom. I see students understanding concepts, questioning ideas and enjoying coming to Science. I am right now trying to find a happy medium in which will make everyone happy. This is the hard part. This is where I am asking for help from the network. If anyone has any powerful ideas, please feel free to comment.

Until next blog...

Photo Credit: Flickr Elliot Stahl's photostream :
Dave Stahl climbing out of Bugger Hole

Proactive Not Reactive

What I see occurring is reaction instead of pro action. We are continually losing engineering/science/math related jobs to the citizens of other countries. We were not proactive in our answers 15 years ago when this started. Are we now reacting to something that is far out of reach?



My district has created a partnership with The Navy Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Maryland. They joined forces with each other in an effort to motivate students to get interested in these fields. We have piloted a few co-teaching lessons with the engineers from NSWC. I did the lesson with a 3rd grade class. After 2 weeks discussing safety features and building egg catchers, we had the partnership lesson Friday. I think the lesson went well. Along with me and the engineer, 2 people from NSWC, a Board member, Administrators, a camera man and the Technology Teacher were all present at this lesson. It was quite a packed Science room on Friday. The hard part of the lesson was trying to relate what we did in class to what the engineer discussed. Relating egg catchers to cockpit ejection seats was not that easy. But it worked.

The engineer relied on me to bring the conversation back to the 3rd graders. I think it is hard for a Naval Engineer to come into a 3rd Grade classroom and relate directly with the kids, unless they have had some experience with this. The students seemed interested and had many questions for the Engineer.

Now that some praise is out of the way...
I do have some concerns.

The partnership, like I said before, is a result of the District and the NSWC wanting more students interested in these fields. I just don't understand how they are going to accomplish this. Students are tired of looking at PowerPoints. The PowerPoint Presentation is the most overused application in the school system. Students are tired of being talked at. They want to have a voice. Bringing in an Engineer to talk to the students is not going to get them interested in becoming an engineer. Most of these students cannot see this in their future. It is not real to them.

I believe we need to change the methods of our teaching first. We need to give the students a way to express how they feel. We need to listen to them. We need to talk with them, and not at them. We need to present ourselves as learners also. We need to let them know that their voice is just as powerful as ours. We need a collection of voices to make learning more powerful to everyone. We need to invite schools to be more proactive instead of reactive. Until this changes, I don't see the students changing. Until next blog...

My Goals

Some ideas have been floating around my head lately.

Sometimes I get too comfortable in my Learning Network that resides here online. I feel like everyone is talking about changing the system. Many people are practicing what they preach. Still on my side of the field, I see stagnate policy. I see technology talked about to the point of teachers not wanting to hear it anymore. I see a plethora of smartboards, digital clickers, LCD Projectors and other forms of computerized hardware, but with limited and pointless use. I have decided to take a more formal route to making the change.

I have come to the conclusion that I will begin to document the changes that I would like to see happen on my side of the field. I have narrowed it down to 2 initiatives that I would like to see become policy.

1. One laptop per child

2. 21st Century Literacy Class

I believe that focusing on these two initiatives first, will give our district a step to get to where we should be. Right now, I am debating how I will go about informing and initiating.

My goal is to provide students a link to learning networks and to move forward to a paperless classroom. However, first I believe it is important to educate. We need to provide tools in which the students can use to create their own networks. We need to teach etiquette, editing and usage before the students will have a chance in the digital world.

Right now, I see a great disconnect between the haves and the have nots. I have students that can thrive in a digital world. I also have students that can't use a mouse properly. Even the students that have internet connection at home need a digital education. The power of publishing is still not tapped.

21st Century Literacy will be a course that covers the network aspect of the internet. Right now I see the internet being used as a resource for teachers and students. It's like the publishing and sharing aspect of the internet net is not tapped in my district. I posted about this a while back. I think the units of this course should be as follows...

-Social Networks vs. Learning Networks
-Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants
-Digital Publishing
-Information Editing
-21st Century Communication
-Having your voice heard
-Global Culture

Emphasizing the Process

Opening up my reader, I came across a great post by Carolyn Foote about what we celebrate.

" We celebrate the visible things, like winning teams or competitions, academic test scores, etc. But are we celebrating equally our daily academic successes? Are we celebrating lessons that work, transformative uses of technology tools to deepen understanding, a classroom that has struggled and is now finding its way intellectually?"

She definitely asks some great questions in this post. I added a somewhat wordy comment to her post which is below...


"Great Post. Celebrating the process almost never happens. We always reward and celebrate the final product. This happens as a theme in our society. What I have found to be successful…I explain to students “why” we are doing certain activities. I teach Science to 2-5 graders. Even with their young age, I feel that it is important not only to tell them “why” they are learning what they are learning, but “why” I am teaching the way I am teaching. Getting the students involved in my thought process begins to get them involved in the teaching process. Students begin to feel as if they are teachers also. They have an honest inside perspective as to the questioning aspect of teaching and learning. The process has been emphasized rather than the end product. The students have become more interested in how they learn as well as what they learn. Just as I question ideas, students are open to question ideas. Last week, a 5th grader decided to question “why” we were coming up with ideas to fix the beach erosion problem in Ocean City, MD, if Ocean City had already began fixing the problem. This began a 10 minute discussion with the class. Instead of sounding like a group of 5th graders talking about a topic, they sounded as if they were a group of environmental/geologic engineers discussing land conservation and ethics. It was a powerful 10 minutes. To sum things up…Until teachers make the process important, we will continue to celebrate the end product."

The entire education system is built around rewarding the final product. I believe we need to start getting honest with our students. Getting honest involves explaining "why" we are teaching the way we teach. Bring the students into the teaching process so they can own how they learn. The students can then question the process as well as the outcome. If something doesn't work, bring the students knowledge into the equation. Have the students come up with teaching ideas that they think will better enhance their learning. This sounds time consuming, but I think once the students understand their role in the learning and teaching process, real learning will bloom. Students in my science class have become more engaged in each lesson. I invite questions about the process. They dig that they have a voice. Until next blog...

Credits: Carolyn Foote's blog "Not So Distant Future" post What do We Celebrate?

Challenging Class = Challenging Assignment

I have a particular 5th grade class that can't seem to get the "why" part of school. Many of the students are wrapped up in other issues not being school related. Today, about 10 minutes into class, they decided that they were not ready to have our open discussion about our Erosion Projects. I told them to get out a piece of paper. Their faces quickly cringed.
One student said, "What, do we have to write the rules"? I said, "Oh no, I wouldn't waste your valuable time in school doing an activity like that. We are going to do a meaningful writing assignment". The students said... "We"? I continued to explain to them that I will do the assignment along with them.

The assignment...
Answer the Question... Why am I here? I gave them no other direction. They had nothing but questions, in which I didn't answer. For the next 20 minutes we became one class with the goal to think and write about why we were here.

20 minutes later, I had composed a 5 page paper answering the question. I found that I really didn't have enough time to express everything that was on my mind. Many students were amazed that I actually did the assignment sitting right next to them at the table. They had never seen a teacher do this. I was proving a point. I wanted them to realize that we were all there for the same reasons... learning, collaborating, teaching, sharing, questioning, and reflecting.
I know that it will take a few students a little more time to realize "why" we are here. We have nothing but time.

We will be sharing our thoughts the next time they come to class. It should be interesting, and I will write about this again to update. It will interesting to see how many students write about the same topics in which I touched on. Until next blog...

21st Century Skills Class

What a great idea for Middle or High Schools. A class that teaches students what will be needed of them in the 21st Century. This is what we need.
A post by David Warlick made me actually think about these possibilities. I wonder if this possibility has even been considered in my district. It seems as though an investigation will have to be done. If their is a way... I want to be involved. Many ideas are floating around in my head.

I think it would necessary to focus on ways in which the students are already communicating. This would be a great question to ask students that will be taking the course. Their ideas are probably more relevant than ours. There are many possibilities for the structure of such a course. I think the most important idea is that the class should be student directed and teacher moderated.

Some themes below…

Social Networks vs. Learning Networks

Digital Natives vs. Digital Guests

Digital Publishing

Information Editing (this is a big one)

21st Century Communication

Having your digital voice heard

Global Culture

Exploding Walls Project

Mr. Mayo is getting the word out globally with his Exploding Walls Project. His Eighth Graders have put together a video to capture the essence of what web 2.0 is all about... smashing the "old ways of doing things in the classroom". Check it out!

The Student Voice

Woody's Pictures 278, originally uploaded by wdelauder2002.

The project at hand...
Save Ocean City.

Scenario: Ocean City, Maryland is threatened by a force that is unforgiving. The beach is eroding at an alarming rate. The beach is getting smaller by the day. This is a problem that effects the whole community. Many people live in Ocean City year round and many businesses depend on the visitors during the summer to keep their business running. Without the beaches, people will not come during the summer. Houses, hotels and businesses may be washed out to sea if nothing is done.

Your Job: Your team of geologists have been hired by Ocean City to fix the problem. The team with the best solution will be hired to complete the job.

This week, we just completed 2 discussion sessions with the fifth grade. Sharing of ideas, questioning the process, and explaining the rationale behind their thoughts. Many ideas were thrown on the table. Questions were thought provoking and students were rich with suggestions. The students became alive with confidence in their creative ideas.

The troubling issue...
These students are not used to sharing their voice. It takes many months of explaining to them that their voice counts when it comes to school. When they leave science, they are back to the old worksheet grind. What a shame. These students have so many relative ideas to share with the world. We need to let go of the teaching leash that is connected to the students. One fact that I have learned in my short tenure of teaching... Students will give you what you expect from them. Expect creativity and you will get it. Expect the minimum and you will get it. Until next blog...

SLA = Something Special

Imagine a school were students actually have a voice. Imagine a school where students love to come to take part in something special. The day to day operations are ran by the students. Important decisions can be made by the students. The school is a community, not just a place where the students come from 8 to 4 Monday through Friday. Collaboration between staff and student is done on a daily basis by any means possible. If one student is falling behind, they are picked up by the community, for the community. Teachers are more like mentors and moderators rather than facilitators and instructors. Ideas are introduced and discussed, then questioned and debated. Assignments are open ended for the students to decide what form the final outcome will take. Outcomes are not graded or scrutinized, but questioned for purpose and relativity. Students have full access to learning and social networks. These networks are collaborative and reach globally. Students start to have a sense of purpose in the world. They realize that they can make a difference… in fact, they already have. They are a part of something special, and it shows in their faces.

I just visited this school... The SLA (Science Leadership Academy) in Philadelphia, PA. What a wonderful opportunity for about 200 individuals that went to EduCon 2.0 this weekend. I just spent the 4 hour drive home reflecting and regurgitating (in my head) everything that I heard and witnessed this weekend. Now, I have the ultimate task of getting the word out in my own neck of the woods. I already have a plan... I think.

Will Richardson, Chris Lehmann and Gary Stager discuss life

Putting faces to names and voices to Tweets was all overwhelming and refreshing at the same time. Many ideas and keyboard strokes have faces and voices now and many more connections were made.

Student UStreaming a session at EduCon 2.0

A variety of people attended EduCon 2.0. I am sure that when today's last session was over, everyone took with them something different. I know what I took away from this conference... HOPE. I have hope that this can be achieved, that the student voice can be heard as an equal in the educational system. I would like to thank Chris Lehmann and the students of SLA for an experience that I will always remember. Thank you for opening the SLA doors this weekend. I hope to hear more from you in the future.

W.E. Revolution Part 2

Woody's Pictures 260, originally uploaded by wdelauder2002.

The revolution is working without many hiccups. I know that many teachers across the world use limited worksheets. However, I am trying to prove a point. Students and Teachers make more meaningful connections to the world by "doing" more meaningful assignments.

3rd grade assignment. Create an accurate map of the United States that will be used to show landforms and bodies of water. Once the maps are created, they will have a totally student created topographical map of the United States. Other additions to the map will be student driven... fault lines, tectonic plates.

Students have become perceptive to the changes I am making. I discussed everything with each class. I talked to them about the importance of making meaningful connections to the curriculum. I discussed with them that the products we will be creating will be completed by them alone. They will have stake in the final product. Most information will be presented online using programs such as Google Earth and Wikipedia.

I explained to the students that these changes are not going to make their school day easier, but will allow them to actually learn and retain the knowledge easier. Most students are all grins. Most students love a challenge. I say "most students" because there are always a few students that take a little longer to jump on board at no fault of their own.

By the way... the idea of tracing the map from the LCD projector was student generated. Yes, 3rd grade students (8 year olds) do have a decision making voice here.

More to come about this assignment, as it will probably take a while to complete.

W.E. Revolution

W.E. Revolution refers to what I like to call the Worksheet Elimination Revolution. This has been a topic brewing in my mind for a while now. Schools seem to use the "Worksheet" to save time and make every ones job easier. There are many problems with the use of the simple worksheet.

The use of worksheets...

1. Uses an unspeakable amount of paper. Most of the paper goes unused and is discarded in the trash or recycled.
2. Creates teachers that begin to rely on a 1-dimensional teaching method. Introduce... teach... have them fill in the blanks.
3. Creates dependent learners. Students depend on the teacher to direct their learning. Discovery and reflection are put on the back-burner.
4. Creates a sense of monotony and boredom amongst most students. Pass out the paper, put your name and date on it, read the directions, answer the questions, fill in the blanks, pass your papers in.
5. Dilutes creativity. Students begin to lose the creative aspect of learning. They start to feel comfortable filling in the blanks. It's easy!
6. Creates a stack of graded worksheets that is taken home and thrown away. Why should the students care about the worksheet? They didn't create it. They don't own it. They have no stake in it except for the grade.
7. Creates teachers that don't want to grade the worksheets and end up throwing some of them away, meaning that students did the work for absolutely no reason.
8. Creates teachers that share worksheets and just use ones others have created. This results in teachers using worksheets that don't truly match what they are currently teaching or can even be at odds with the learning.
(#'s 7 and 8 were added by Jenny)

I could probably continue to write the ill effects of worksheets until Monday morning.
I am not claiming that I don't use worksheets. I do sometimes, when I feel it's necessary. My point is... it is easy to fall into the worksheet rut.
I am making an effort at the present time to completely eliminate the worksheet from the classroom. I feel that our time can be spent doing more meaningful activities. When I say "our time", I mean my time and the students time. The plan for this effort has been a creeping turtle. I have been thinking/planning this type of reform for a while now. I will follow this post up with a few ideas for engaging activities, but for now, until next blog...

Lost with Freedom

I have written many posts on this subject. Offering freedom to students in the classroom tends to lose most students. By losing students, I mean many students completely shut down and refuse to do the critical thinking involved in completing the assignment.

One of the greatest teachers I have had the privilege to work with gave me many ideas to open the minds of students. J. Jones was the Reading Resource Teacher at the school in which I began my teaching career. After listening and borrowing many of her ideas, students began to be more engaged. The students also began walking down the path to being life-long independent learners.

Great Independent Learner Activity: J. Jones (Thank You)
The Free-write or Focused Free-write

I still use this at least once a week with my students in different forms. Being a science teacher, the lessons can be engaging, but soon you find yourself in what I like to call the "Fill in the Blank Rut". I don't like going to that place. This activity has a broad range. I had the 4th graders write a focused free-write as if they were a meteorologist. There are not many rules to this activity. This can be challenging. Students are used to rules.

The rules:
1. They must discuss the terms and ideas that we discussed about weather
2. They can write no more than 1 page.
3. Time limit of 15 minutes

I like giving the students a Maximum amount to write rather than a minimum... another J. Jones idea. This tends to allow their writing to be a little more meaningful and directed.
There are no other rules to mention. They can write any genre as long as they use the point-of-view of a meteorologist.

Reasoning:
I like to give the students a chance to show me how much they are learning on their own terms.
Examples (Titles) of their work...
1. The Rapping Meteorologist
2. The Mystery of the Missing Anemometer
3. The Angry Low Pressure System
4. The Confused Weather Vane

This is a great activity that most students love to do... especially when it's time to share. Some students shut down and say that the activity is too hard. They do eventually come around and grind away at writing with a little coaxing from their friends.

Learning how to think

Using the ultimate tool available to us is becoming a lost art in our schools. As I go about teaching every day, I am confronted with this epidemic. The majority of the students that I have contact with have lost the ability to think for themselves. Creativity, uniqueness and independence have some how disappeared as fast as the car phone. I don't know if these characteristics and abilities were ever present.

I witness many trends that may cause this in our education system.

1. Teachers spend entirely too much time preparing for lessons with the wrong approach. Instead of spending time thinking of ways in which they can help the students discover ideas on their own, time is spent cutting shapes, copying worksheets and preparing most of the work for the students. The students just need to fill in the blanks.

2. Our school system is still teacher directed, with every move (even what to say) mapped out for every lesson. Some teachers do not fall prey to this monotony, but the majority do out of fear of reprisal from the administration.

3. In the average school day, too much time is spent on wasteful activities... bathroom breaks, discussing rules, needless assemblies, and parties for behavior that should be expected.

4. The use of outdated textbooks and what "they" call LEVELED READERS has become the norm. These books couldn't be more boring. They are all the same size. They all look the same. They have the same ridiculous questions at the end of the story. The students are not interested in any of the topics. How can we expect the students to enjoy reading?

5. The majority of educators still do not use web 2.0 tools in their teaching. The power of Wikipedia alone is overlooked and thought of as not accurate enough to use with our students.

Our students do not have the chance to think. I use the analogy of playing a sport. To be a successful athlete, a person must practice the sport in which they are interested. The practice time put into the sport should, over time, improve the persons ability to play this sport. This is analogous with the sport of thinking. If students do not practice the process of critical thought, how can we expect them to improve their thinking ability?

A Vision of Students Today

What a great video about how 21st Century students spend their time learning. Interestingly, it seems as though they are spending less time watching television. They have figured out that there are more interesting and meaningful means of acquiring information available today.

How can we expect students to continue to validate attending institutions of learning, when they can seem to do all of the learning on their own with tools in which they already are proficient?

SCRATCH me some...

The challenge was to teach SCRATCH to a group of 4th and 5th graders. What happened after an hour of giving the students the basics was amazing. Giving the students the remaining 20 minutes of our meeting to "play" around with the program, they were teaching us.

This was a powerful moment. With the possibilities endless as to what they could accomplish, the students found ways to incorporate their own voices and make seemless moves with their sprite's. The goal is for this group of students to create a collective presentation using this program for an upcoming MESA competition in April '08. The ultimate goal for me is to expose these students to a world of creativity and collaboration to reach a collective goal.

With laptops in hand, headphones and mics on head, and smiles on their faces, these students used their creative minds to explore the program with no boundaries. The feeling after the meeting was one of hope and expectation.

After I become more familiar with the ins and outs, I will begin to incorporate SCRATCH into the Science curriculum. This is a true example of collaboration in our education system. Believe me... these students will teach me everything there is to know about SCRATCH. I am looking forward to learning.

Progress?

When thinking of the conversations that have been taking place for years, I often wonder why progress is too slow in our education system. Reading through my archived articles in the New York Times, I came across an example of what is slowing the progress. Margaret Spellings, our nations secretary of education is blinded by the hype of "Every Child Pushed Along Act".

The first river that needs to be forged is one of complete and ultimate reform. This "Act" is doing what it is intended to do. The children in our education system that need the most help get pushed along to make our National Report Card appear great. I see this happening every day. We can't continue to lie about the success of our education system. The current protocol is not working.

Our task at hand for educators is to TEACH children. We need to find anything and everything that will motivate these individuals to learn how to learn. Right now, we are teaching children to memorize. We are teaching children that the grades they get, reflect what type of person they are. We teach them that the most important reason they are in school is to pass a test in the Spring. We push them along, even if they do not understand the information we are teaching. The results are accumulative. The students are learning how to be helpless. We make decisions for the students, because we don't trust them to make important decisions on their own.

This effects the students that are the most vulnerable in schools. Until the people that understand the task at hand have positions of power, this will continue.

I am not claiming to know the ultimate solution. I am claiming to be able to recognize the fact that their needs to be a solution, and fast.

The list of students that currently have ADD or some other type of Attention disorder is growing at a staggering rate. Many times I wonder if this problem would still exist if we as teachers could find ways to keep their attention. I know the answer is not constant memorization, boring worksheets, time fillers, and days spent studying for a test to beef up our nations report card.

How creative can you be in 2nd Grade?

This week, I just finished doing a great and simple activity with my 2nd Grade students. We discussed physical properties of objects and how they can be altered/changed. This engagement lesson is the starting point of another lesson in which the students create a paper puppet from an ordinary paper lunch bag.

This is how it goes...

I start by listing physical properties of myself. I ask them to start chiming in. We talk about some physical properties of other items in the room and they begin to catch on. Before you know it, the students can define the term physical properties. They have to be helped a little to get the word "describe" added in there.

Any way, after you talk about physical properties, hand out a quarter sheet of notebook paper. You tell them that they are going to use their creative minds to change the physical properties of this piece of paper. We then discuss the properties as the paper appears now. We purposefully do not discuss the ways in which we can change the physical properties (they would use all of the ideas discussed, that is how they have been trained). I tell them that they can use a pencil, some crayons, and their hands to change the properties of the paper any way they want.

I emphasize that they can CHANGE THE PROPERTIES OF THE PAPER ANY WAY THEY WANT.

When I tell them to begin, almost on cue, I have hands flying up in the air. The students all want to ask me permission to do certain things to their paper. They are deathly afraid to alter the paper any way that would get them in trouble. They need someone to hold their hand through the process. Even though I have told them repeatedly that they could do anything to the paper, they still do not understand that concept. I continue to just say to them "You can change any properties of the paper that you wish". I do not answer their questions.

How I look at this situation...

These students, at the age of 7, have what I like to call learned helplessness. They have been taught and have learned to be completely helpless in this situation. Out of 3 classes of 2nd grade students (95 students), only about 5 or 6 students had the ability to use their complete imaginations and do this assignment with a creative and unique agenda. One student balled up the paper and colored it. When I asked him what properties he changed? he said " I changed the shape, the color, and the texture". Yes, he used these exact words! Only about 4-5 students ripped the paper into pieces. The thought of altering this perfectly good paper seemed almost taboo for these kids.

The final product was eye opening, and I think we actually had some reversal of the learned helplessness. These kids can learn to be self-sufficient learners. This is a concept that needs to be looked at in a beginning of the year professional development course.

The End Result

I have mentioned the need to change the education model that we currently have in place in our schools. I believe that I read in one of Roger Shanks' posts that it has been the same model since 1895, http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/ . Any way, reading David Warlick's Blog today http://davidwarlick.com/2cents, I decided to add my opinion to the mix.

I believe that the end result can be articulated painlessly. I may have to do some explaining. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do think I know what needs to happen. We need to do whatever it takes to create INDEPENDENT LEARNERS. Currently, we have a population of DEPENDENT LEARNERS. By independent learners, I mean, students that can rely on themselves to find and use the vehicles in which they help them gain knowledge on a daily basis. By dependent learners, I mean, students that depend on an outside source to direct them to those vehicles.

My focus in the classroom is on creating a population of independent learners. This sounds easy, but the students are not familiar with this model. When these students come to my classroom they have already been programmed for 5 years to be dependent learners. The teacher tells them what book to use, what homework assignment to complete, what the rules are in the classroom, when to get up, when to sit down, when to go to the bathroom, and sometimes, what they think. There is much work to be done that first month of school.

My focus is on having each student become self-sufficient on every level. As a class, they are dependent on themselves alone. Like a team. Most importantly, they do not rely on me for their answers, but for guidance as to how to come up with the answers.

There will be more to come...