Turning the Ship

“School sucks.”  Has there ever been a time in modern education where that sentiment wasn’t “a thing?”  (Incidentally, by “modern” I’m roughly biting off some 300 years of history from the industrial revolution to the present, where the structures of schooling as we know it have largely remain unchanged throughout.)  I can’t honestly say for sure.  I haven’t clawed my way through enough history to be certain.  But when I query the most wizened and ancient of people I know, they all assure me that school has sucked for a very long time.  I won’t bother to defend this position with evidentiary support.  If you want to come at me with a “my students don’t think school sucks” counterpunch, I will either…

(a) tell you to keep an eye on those Kindergarten and Grade 1 kids you are referring to and survey them again some time around middle school to see if their attitudes haven’t shifted,

(b) applaud you for discovering the holy elixir of pedagogical effectiveness and insist that if you haven't already, you must start a blog, a lecture series, and perhaps a teacher college, or

(c)  suspect you to be even more delusional and narcissistic than I am (which is considerable).

I would wager that at its 13 million views (and counting) on YouTube, nearly every western educator has viewed Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk on Changing Education Paradigms.  If you’re one of the few who hasn’t seen it (because you aren’t an educator or you’ve been teaching in the remote regions of the Patagonia for the last six years), I suggest giving it a look at your convenience.  Sir Ken states that every nation in the developed world is reforming its education systems. But he says so as though education reform is a relatively novel and recent movement.  Even a cursory review of educational history over the last hundred years reveals that education reform, often with a push toward progressive, “non-traditional” teaching methods, has been a prevalent theme throughout the last century.  John Dewey, a significant contributor to educational and psychological thinking in the early 20^th century, advocated strongly for a greater emphasis on hands-on, experiential education practices in the United States a hundred years ago.  Problem and project-based learning models of today still owe many of their principles and practices to work Dewey did around the turn of the 20^th century.  Talk to any teacher who’s been at the game for a significant length of time, and many will give you an eye roll and a dismissive “mm-hmm” when you ask about the “new” directions education is taking toward inquiry-based learning models and project-oriented pedagogy.  They’ve heard it all before.  And their teachers had heard it all before them, too.

So then, if progressive education models are not new, then why do we seem to be encountering the same rhetoric decade after decade regarding the decline of our educational institutions and the need for change?  Is it because progressive methodologies have just failed to take root over the last hundred years?  Are we just not implementing them properly?  Are they simply ineffective?  Are there factors at play that consistently undermine any potential gains from progressive changes?  Answering those questions adequately is probably far more difficult than can be imagined (a premise that deserves its own blog post at some point).  I suspect that the answers to each one of those questions is “yes” to some degree, all depending on a host of factors that are not only difficult to measure, but difficult to identify which are even worth measuring in the first place.  That, however, is not what this particular post is about.

I have a theory (one that has absolutely no scientific evidence to support it, so take everything from this point onward with a very liberal grain of salt) that systemic educational reform has a couple of very big roadblocks that have been standing in its way for quite a few years.  I’m not so self-indulgent as to think I’ll be making any groundbreaking revelations here.  I just think there haven’t been a lot of readily available solutions for getting around these issues.

The first big barrier is that the people and organizations we typically look to for implementing reform simply have too many moving parts in play and too many stakeholders to answer to.  Provincial (and state) governments are steering massive battleships that just take too long to turn.  And given that elected officials at the head of these ships must ultimately answer to the diverse desires of an electorate, the risks of making large changes are fairly high if the outcomes are not already very certain.

Every teacher during the course of a career will find themselves trying out new strategies or approaches in their classrooms.  Whether thoughtfully or instinctively, we then make adjustments and refinements to those strategies in light of how well they produced the intended effects.  Even the most well planned changes can produce unintended consequences or unanticipated results, but we roll with the punches and learn from any mistakes we make.  Strategies that work are further improved upon with repeated practice, while ineffective approaches are discarded.  Often the only people in a position to critique our changes are students who lack almost every resource necessary to be effective critics.

The experience is entirely different at the jurisdictional level.  The larger the educational body, the greater the number of critical eyes on the process and the more able the critics are to identify its deficiencies.  You don’t just “give it a try” when operating at the scale of provincial education ministries or even school divisions.  Individual teachers don’t typically have media scrutiny, opposition critics, or an electoral cycle to contend with when deciding what changes to implement in a classroom. 

The point:  we can’t reliably expect significant reforms to come from governmental institutions, especially if a particular reform is lacking in objective data to support its efficacy.

This is one of the most significant reasons why I contend that meaningful reform must originate on the ground floor – with individual teachers and schools.  One reason why I like to call this a revolution is because I think that valuable and meaningful change starts with the people, not the politicians.  I think that systemic reform is more likely to take place when the changes are already being adopted non-systemically.  If we can show that something works here, we can make the argument that it will work there.

In spite of the fact that I’m arguing we can’t rely on governments to right the ship, my own provincial ministry has made strides in recent years to do just that.  What encourages me most is the initiatives that I think are producing the most positive results are the ones that are ultimately doing just what I’m advocating for here – empowering teachers and schools to tackle the challenges of reform at a local level.  The High School Redesign project is one example.  Alberta Education hasn’t mandated very much with regards to what redesign should look like in schools taking on the project.  Some are focusing on a particular area (assessment or timetabling), while others are literally tearing it all apart and rethinking how an entire building functions.  Each participant is a little crucible of experimentation, some of which will hopefully generate road maps for other institutions to follow once results start to emerge.  Either way, Alberta Education has given teachers and administrators the opportunity to “give it a try.” 

The Queen has invited – is in fact encouraging – the peasants to revolt.  Who are we to turn down the invitation?

Earlier I suggested that there were a couple of barriers to systemic reform, but have only discussed this one.  I’ll make roadblock number two the subject of my next post.

TL;DR: Teachers have the potential to be the best agents for meaningful educational reform.  We should start some.

Until then, vive la resistance!

What is Building Futures?

In planning out my first handful of Blog posts, this one was originally at the end of the 4 or 5 ideas I had loosely jotted down as topics to write about.  I didn’t initially feel that talking about my own class and my teaching assignment would be necessary when examining some very broad topics in education to start of this Blog series.  Start big, and slowly work toward the details I figured. 

But as I started to write those other pieces, it quickly became apparent that trying to explain why I have a particular view without the context of what I do serving as a backdrop would be occasionally challenging.  So this post is getting an early call-up while the others hang out in the green room a bit longer.  To be fair, I also think that there may be some inherent narcissism at play.

What Is Building Futures?

A quick glance at my About the Author box will tell you that I teach high school science and math and that the class I teach is a little different.  But that five-sentence blurb does nothing to convey how different my classroom is.

Each year we take a group of Grade 10 students from across two or three different high schools, and for 4 of their 5 school days every week they show up at a garage behind a showhome in a residential housing development instead of to their schools.  The garage itself is actually a one-room schoolhouse.  There are lockers along one wall, whiteboards and a projector screen opposite them, and tables and chairs throughout the space.  Rolling shelves store school supplies, a metal lab cart houses a coffee maker, a kettle, and a microwave.  A wireless router tucked in a windowsill provides a blinking LED symphony of data for kids who are all expected to have their own laptops or tablets in tow each day (for those who can’t manage the cost of a device, their school arranges a loaner).

Directly across the alley from the garage are two single-family homes that will start as little more than empty lots in September, and by May will be fully constructed houses ready to be sold as spec homes by a small, local residential builder.  During the course of the construction our intrepid group of 14 to 16 year olds will spend half days in groups of 2 to 4 on these work sites learning how the various components of these houses get assembled to make a finished, livable home.  Part of that learning includes hands-on assembly of those components.  Students will frame walls, hang doors, pull wire, cut drain pipes, screw on drywall, install hardwood, mortar stonework, lay tile, and paint walls.  By the end of their school year, they’ll be able to say they helped to build two houses all the way from hole-in-the-ground to keys-in-the-hand.

So where do I fit in to all of this?  Firstly, I’m responsible for supervising while our students work alongside the tradespeople building the houses.  It’s essentially a year-long field trip, and as with any field trip, supervision is a necessity.  This is especially true when the field trip includes circular saws and compressed air nailers.  However, students are only ever on the jobsite in small groups, as they take turns throughout the week working on the homes.  The rest of the class is typically back in our one-room school garage.  There, I work alongside a humanities teacher to make sure that the rest of their grade 10 curricula get covered over the course of the school year.  One day a week is spent back at one of the schools in a regular classroom.  Science labs, physical education, and anything else that doesn’t work well in a garage gets handled on those days.

On first examination, it already seems pretty progressive – hands-on learning, real-life relevance, and an immersive environment.  But those pieces are really only the tip of the iceberg that makes the Building Futures program special.  Here are some other non-trivial differences as compared to a “normal” grade 10 experience:

·      We teachers are with the same class of 30ish kids all year.  5 days a week, 10 months in a row.  That’s a pretty big departure from my previous life in a regular school setting, where I would often see over 100 kids in a day, some for no more than 9 weeks in a term before getting new sets of faces.  It’s not uncommon to encounter high school teachers in our jurisdiction who interact formally with 150 or more different students over the course of a single school year.

·      There are no bells and no scheduling blocks.  Some days Math happens in the morning, others in the afternoon.  Some days we don’t do Math at all.

·      We have a full year to cover all our curricular objectives, not just a semester.

·      The program accepts all levels of student academically.  On first blush, it sounds like the kind of schooling one would only put a vocational student into, one eventually bound to work in the industry the program is aligned with.  In fact, we get all kinds of kids applying – some who just want a different school experience and some looking for some practical life experience whether they’re interested in the trades or not.  Some kids hear that the teaching and learning looks a lot different that what they’re used to, and they’re attracted to the program for that reason alone.

·      The diverse group necessitates that we teach a variety of levels of course material simultaneously.  I deliver an academic science course (Science 10 for you readers familiar with the Alberta system) and a vocational course (Science 14).  The same is true for Math (10C, 10-3, and 10-4), English (10-1 and 10-2), and Social Studies (10-1 and 10-2).  This demands both creativity and flexibility in terms of the ways that lessons, assessments, and projects must be delivered.  The one-room schoolhouse of years gone-by is probably more comparable to what our environment looks like than most modern classrooms.

·      The other teacher who I work with occupies the same space and works with the same set of kids.  That means we have opportunities to be collaborative at an unparalleled level.  We essentially get to team teach every grade 10 course.  The opportunities for cross-curricular connections and projects are totally unparalleled.  And that’s to say nothing of the value of having another professional set of eyes on your practice as a teacher.

·      Our students meet over 40 different “teachers” throughout the year in the form of trades professionals, construction supervisors, sales and marketing staff, service providers, and company owners.  Not only do they get a very real opportunity to discover a variety of professions and learn from the people who work in them, they also get to make connections with those professionals, connections that can lead to summer jobs, apprenticeship placements, work experience, and possibly future careers.

At this point, I feel it’s necessary to give credit where credit is due.  I did not invent this program.  I am, at best, an opportunistic thief.  Two educators in Airdrie, Alberta (Jarrett Hooper and Greg Rankin of George McDougall High) conceived the program over the course of a number of morning commutes together four years ago.  A year after forming a partnership with McKee Homes of Airdrie and completing their inaugural year of Building Futures Airdrie, we picked up the program, in partnership with Kingsmith Homes of Cochrane.  The Airdrie school is currently in its third year, while we are in our second.  To say that those two gentlemen have my admiration and gratitude would be a gross understatement.

It’s certainly not a perfect program nor the model upon which I think all education should be crafted.  We encounter challenges in one form or another daily, and I look forward to writing about some of them here.  Nonetheless, it’s been an educational game-changer in my opinion.  Over the course of the next few blog posts, I hope to make a convincing argument that the crux of what makes Building Futures successful should form the backbone of high school transformations in any building where the path to progressive pedagogy is unclear or resisted.  

TL;DR: I teach in a really cool program that is hands-on, authentic, cross-curricular, collaborative, and worth sharing.

Vive la revolution!

Educational Revolutionary?

I’ve decided that I want to be a revolutionary.  You know… one of those great inspiring speakers who rallies the masses to throw down the tyranny of the establishment – all Les Miserables and whatnot.  Sounds pretty cool, except I have a few problems:

(1)  All the revolutionaries at the end of Les Miserables wind up dead.  I definitely do not want to wind up dead.

(2)  The tyrannical establishment (for the purposes of this blog, that will loosely be defined as “the Educational Establishment,” most specifically in the province of Alberta, Canada and perhaps more broadly as education across many Western nations.  What is the Educational Establishment?  It’s really just a fancy way of saying “the way education is right now.”  “What part of education?” you may ask.  Pedagogy?  Sure.  Teachers?  Sort of, depends on the teacher.  Policies?  Some of them.  Curriculum?  Certain aspects.  OK, maybe this deserves to be its own number on this list…

                                         (3)     The thing/concept/people that I wish for the revolution to overthrow is/are not entirely clear.)

… really isn’t all that tyrannical.  In fact, for the most part, I think the overwhelming majority of people in education – whether teachers, administrators, divisional staff, school board trustees, or government officials – are pretty decent folks with their hearts in a relatively good place.  Most everyone wants to do the best we can for our kids with the available resources we have for doing so.  In other words, I don’t really have anyone to revolt against, or if I do they certainly aren't tyrannical or self-serving.

(4)  The outcome/goal/destination of said revolution is a little bit vague.  You can’t swing a dead cat in the realm of educational discourse (assuming it’s possible to swing anything in the non-physical space of “educational discourse”) without hitting some manner of recently produced book, article, TedTalk, Tweet, etc. espousing the importance of shifting educational practices toward progressive pedagogy.  Progressive pedagogy is also a pretty nebulous term, but let’s say for now that it roughly means some manner of engaging, hands-on, inquiry-based, project-oriented, anti-rote, anti-memorization, anti-“Drill-and-Kill” set of practices in teaching.  The buzz in educational circles is to encourage a massive shift toward individualized, discovery based, cross-curricular, real-world relevant, problem-solving, collaborative teaching and learning at all levels of K-12 education.  Cool enough.  I’ll make a declaration now that I’m on board with all that.  Except…

I’m not entirely convinced that progressive pedagogy is always the right call at every grade level for every curricular agenda.  I’m all for kids becoming great critical thinkers and fantastic problem solvers.  But you can’t think critically without a basis of knowledge from which to form rational and reasonable judgments.  And you can’t solve problems if you have no tools at your disposal necessary to tackle the problems that need solving.  The knowledge and the tool know-how needed to be the twenty-first century citizens we want our kids to be doesn’t necessarily germinate from a progressive approach.  In fact, behavioral psychology and neuroscience tell us that many fundamental skills are best developed using traditional practices that have reasonable cultural endurance (more on this in later blog posts).

In other words, I don't fully have a revolutionary destination in mind.

(5)  I’m just not all that militant or angry.  Don’t get me wrong… I can get pretty steamed when someone cuts me off in traffic or my hockey team blows a lead late in the game.  But I’m generally not the “Hell No! We Won’t Go!!” sort.  That alone sort of squashes any romantic fantasy of a Jean Valjean-esque crescendo being belted out at the front of an angry, yet harmonious revolutionary ensemble (to say nothing of the fact that I can’t sing in key to save my life). What good is a revolution without a commanding baritone to hold it all together?

To summarize:  I don’t want to die at the end of a musical, I don’t have a distinctly corrupt or evil body of power to revolt against, I’m not totally clear on what I’m revolting for or what things should look like at the end of the revolution, and I’m not exactly selling the “revolutionary” brand all that well in the first place.

So maybe in light of these gaping shortcomings, it’s worth considering an alternate descriptor for the transformations taking place in my own classroom and those of other classrooms as well.  “Revolution” connotes a degree of rebellious angst that probably doesn’t fit the mold of educational reform.  That said, the label of “revolutionary” may be apt in at least one important way:  I’m just a regular Joe teacher in a typically regular Joe high school – an ordinary peasant looking for a way to improve his lot in life.  Most of the great revolutions of history are borne from a movement within a society’s common citizens.  As citizens go, you don’t get much more common than Yours Truly.  So even if the title has at best a very loose fit, I’ve decided to call myself an Educational Revolutionary anyway. 

In this blog, I hope to explore the ways that positive change can come from the ground up.  One teacher changing his practice in one classroom does not a revolution make.  But if one teacher can inspire, inform, or encourage positive change in other classrooms, then a movement (whether revolutionary or otherwise) is under way.  

TL;DR: I'm going to blog about educational reform that starts with Yours Truly.  Some of it may ruffle a feather or two along the way, so just for kicks I'm going to call it a revolution.

Vive la resistance!