Thursday, July 31, 2014

Coaching - the strategies

Probably the most important factor in successful coaching is communication.  Below are 6 strategies to help coaches communicate effectively, all taken from Chapter 4 of Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching:
1.  Understand the communication process - respect, equality and openness are good starting points for learning conversations.
2.  Employ authentic listening - be attentive and learn to distinguish between experiencing and evaluating during coaching conversations.  When we experience a conversation we focus our attention on simply hearing exactly what the other person is saying and leave aside our personal biases and judgements.  The goal of empathetic listening is to silence ourselves and attend to others.  There are a number of listening strategies:
Develop inner silence - silence thoughts that lead us to judge rather than experience the comments of others
Listen for what contradicts your assumptions
Clarify - check to make sure you understand what teachers are saying by paraphrasing
Communicate understanding - good listeners ask questions, clarify and communicate that they have understood what is being said.  When we communicate that we understand it encourages the speaker to keep talking
Practice every day - we become better listeners the more we practice
Listen for feelings (frustration, fear, pride etc) and acknowledge these feelings
3.  Understand your audience - learn how to present information so that it can be understood easily by teachers.  Coaches who are effective communicators structure every message so that it can be accurately perceived by their audience.
4.  Recognize and overcome interference - when working with teachers employ strategies that help get through the interference that keeps them from hearing what we have to say and that get in the way of the transparent sharing of ideas.  In some cases the interference comes from within ourselves so we need to be aware of how our own preconceptions might be blocking communication.
5.  Interpret non-verbal communication -  be aware that when we communicate much of what takes place happens below the surface.  Watch for nonverbal cues, rad body language, look for eye contact and pay attention to how we feel as we talk with others.  Facial expressions are often very fast (less than one-fifth of a second), but by watching facial expressions carefully coaches can learn a lot about rapport and can improve their ability to communicate clearly.
6.  Build relationships through emotional connections - be attentive to teachers' thoughts, emotions and concerns in order to recognize emotional bids for connection and respond in ways that enrich their emotional connection with others.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Coaching - the principles

In Jim Knight's book Instructional Coaching, there are 7 principles that underlie how coaches work with teachers.  These are as follows:

Equality - Instructional coaches and teachers are equal partners
This is different from traditional staff development where teachers often participate in whole school training that they did not choose with a trainer who does most of the talking.  This approach assumes that all teachers need to implement a new strategy and if a teacher points out why it may be difficult to implement the teacher is often not listened to or treated as a trouble maker.  Instructional coaching changes all this because it is founded on the principle of equality.  This does not mean that coaches and teachers have equal knowledge on every topic but that the teachers' opinions are as important as the coaches'.  Coaches need to ensure that teachers feel that they are valued and that their opinions matter.

Choice - Teachers should have choice regarding what and how they learn
Because coaches and teachers are equal partners, teachers need to have a say in what they do and do not do.  In fact traditional PD often fails simply because teachers often have to attend compulsory trainings that may not meet their needs and they don't have a choice about what they learn.  Jim Knight argues that "taking away teachers' right to say no is one way schools take away teachers' professionalism ... what makes someone a professional is her or his ability to choose correctly  When we take away choice, we reduce people to being less than professionals."  However in some cases training is legally mandated - in these situations coaches can still offer teachers choices about how they might adapt the instruction, how they want the learning to be structured, what kind of support they prefer and so on.

Voice - Professional learning should empower and respect the voices of teachers
Coaches should value the opinions of all the teachers they collaborate with - even those who disagree with them.  Knight writes that "when coaches listen to and value teachers' voices, they do a lot more than learn.  Coaches who temporarily set aside their own opinions for the sole purpose of really hearing what their colleagues have to say are powerfully demonstrating that they truly value their colleagues' perspectives ... When a coach empathetically listens, the coach communicates that the other person's life is important and meaningful."  Many teachers find it hard to make the time to reflect, but a coach can create the time for this to happen.

Dialogue - Professional learning should enable authentic dialogue
Listening empathetically and encouraging everyone to speak their minds can encourage dialogue.  Dialogue brings people together as equals so that they can share ideas, create new knowledge and learn.  It is not the same as discussion, where individuals usually advocate their point of view in competitive conversations that contain little reflection.

Reflection - An integral part of professional learning
Bearing in mind all the above points, teachers are free to speak their own minds and make their own choices.  Tech coaches don't tell teachers what to believe but provide them with the information they need to make their own decisions and so encourage them to be reflective thinkers and decision makers.  Reflective practitioners often think about how ideas can be used in the future, and so during instructional coaching teachers should be empowered to think abut how ideas might be shaped, adapted or reconstructed to fit with their way of teaching and with the needs of their students.

Praxis - Teachers should apply their learning to their real life practice as they are learning
Reflective action relies on teachers being able to think about how to shape ideas to their real life practices.  Praxis is established when teachers have the chance to explore and reshape new approaches so that they can work in their classroom.

Reciprocity - Coaches should expect to get as much as they give
The above principles have ensured that teachers have a voice, through dialogue, and that they are able to reflect.  Instructional coaches, by honoring these principles, demonstrate that they have faith in teachers abilities to find new applications for their content.  At the same time coaches are also learning from the teachers.

In chapter 3 of Instructional Coaching Jim Knight shows that at the heart of the coach-teacher relationship there is a deep respect for the professionalism of teaching.  It is important that coaches are seen as colleagues that teachers can trust so that they can make a difference in the way that teachers and students learn in schools.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Coaching - the what

The path to organizational change is through individual change .... change happens one person at a time - Charles Bishop Jr.
Having considered why coaching leads to a more positive impact on student learning in the last post, this post is going to look at what coaches actually do.  Everything I've learned about coaching emphasizes the importance of meeting people where they are - which will involve one-on-one meetings.  Coaches start by listening and respecting the teachers with whom they are working and by communicating their willingness to help.

Jim Knight writes about finding the right starting point, an issues many new coaches are anxious about. He describes a good place to start as looking at the "Big Four":
  • Behaviour:  teachers need to create a safe, productive learning community for all students
  • Content knowledge:  teachers need to have a deep understanding of the content they are teaching and coaches must know how to access the standards and help teachers turn these into lesson plans.
  • Direct instruction:  coaches can share instructional practices with teachers so they are better prepared to ensure students master the content they encounter.
  • Formative assessment:  teachers need to know whether students are learning the content 
After considering how coaches can support the "Big Four", Knight emphasizes the importance of building an emotional connection with teachers and encouraging them to implement new ideas.  He writes: "coaches are most effective when they act as critical friends simultaneously providing support and empowering teachers to see areas where they can improve."  He outlines the following as being particularly effective for coaches to accelerate teacher learning:
  • Collaboration - through collaboration the coach makes it possible for teachers to engage in reflective dialogue about teaching, and to work together as partners to co-create.
  • Modeling - coaches can go into classrooms to model how to employ the particular best practice that teachers are learning about.
  • Observing and providing feedback - coaches watch teachers and discuss their observations, allowing the teachers to make their own sense of the data.
  • Support - making it as easy as possible for teachers to implement a new practice.
There are various principles behind instructional coaching and these will be the subject of my next blog post.

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Coaching - the why (one shot PD -v- ongoing PD)

I've started to put together a Haiku course for our new tech coaches, and while doing this I've been thinking about the whys and the what's of coaching.  This post is about the whys.  Last year I was on the R&D task force looking at PD 3.0.  We all agreed that the traditional one-shot forms of PD fail to have much impact on teachers' practices and students' learning.  In fact, in my experience, traditional inservices are often resented by teachers, particularly at the start of a school year when they have so many other pressing concerns to deal with, such as setting up their classrooms.  Lynn Barnes, an instructional coach, sums up this in the following quote (taken from Jim Knight's book Instructional Coaching):
Quick fixes never last and teachers resent them; they resent going to inservices where someone is going to tell them what to do but not help them follow up.  Teachers want someone that's going to be there, that's going to help them for the duration, not a fly-by-night program that's here today gone tomorrow.
Initiatives and interventions -v- implementation
We've all been there - forced to attend PD about a new initiative or program that is the latest buzz in education.  In fact Eric Abrahamson has coined the phrase "initiative overload" to describe the experience of initiative after initiative being introduced with no attention to implementation planning, leaving teachers overwhelmed.  In these situations, it's no wonder that teachers come to start resisting change!  Yet in my experience teachers are engaging in informal PD almost every day.  They are learning from each other during collaborative planning sessions, sharing their lessons plans and engagements, building assessments, designing activities and discussing their ideas about individual students.  Jim Knight claim that "when teachers receive an appropriate amount of support for professional learning, more than 90% of them embrace and implement programs that improve students' experiences in the classroom.

Implementing new initiatives often fails to have the anticipated results because changing the way we do/teach something means we have to change our habits of behavior and create new routines, which is not easy.  (This summer our holiday reading at ASB was The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - a great read for exploring this topic).

Cognitive coaching -v- instructional coaching
This summer I did a cognitive coaching workshop so I've been interested to read what Jim Knight writes about the difference between cognitive coaching and instructional coaching (and to see where they overlap).
Cognitive coaching:  a process for enhancing teachers' professional learning, involving communication and relationship building tools that coaches can employ.  Cognitive coaching works on the assumption that behaviors change after our beliefs change, therefore cognitive coaches work with teachers to mediate their thinking and so enhance their ability to reflect.  Cognitive coaches ask questions and encourage teachers to think about their actions; they listen attentively and use a variety of techniques to build and sustain rapport.
Instructional coaching: helps teachers to incorporate research-based instructional practices and to create plans for realizing their professional goals.  Coaches collaborate with teachers to help them choose and implement interventions to help students learn more effectively.
Both cognitive and instructional coaching: focus on communication skills and the ability to empathize, listen and build relationships and trust.  Both must be skilled at facilitating teachers' reflections about their classroom practices.

Knight writes "a good coach is an excellent teacher and is kind-hearted, respectful, patient, compassionate and honest.  A good coach has high expectations and provides the affirmative and honest feedback that helps people to realize those expectations.  A good coach can see something special in you that you didn't know was there and help you to make that something special become a living part of you."

To sum up, the why of coaching is about ongoing support for teachers, which is more effective than a simple one-off approach to PD.  I'll be writing about what is involved in coaching in the next blog post.

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Monday, July 28, 2014

Building trust

Trust and rapport were discussed during the 3 days of the cognitive coaching course that I did over the summer, and now returning to Mumbai I am picking up again in The Art of Coaching by Elena Aguilar and the chapter I read today is also about trust.   Aguilar refers to building trust as an ongoing process that can take many months.  When you start coaching it's important to gain trust in order to have the coachee become excited about the relationship and what coaching can offer.  It's interesting to note that distrust is not actually an absence of trust, but involves more active negative expectations - distrust can be part of a school culture and even historic negative experiences can contribute to a distrusting institutional memory.

Although coaching books and courses often offer a framework and tools for coaching, what is really essential is emotional intelligence (a book I'm about to start this week is Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence).  In her book, Aguilar outlines 10 steps to building trust:

  1. Plan and prepare:  as a coach you will be more confident when you are well prepared and the coachee will be looking for indicators of the competence, credibility, integrity and character of the coach in order to develop the relationship.
  2. Be cautious about gathering background information:  what you hear before you start coaching can influence your feelings about the coachee and it is essential that you go into the first meeting with as many positive feelings as possible.  Aguilar argues against gathering information in advance as the coachee is the expert on what s/he wants to work on and may be feeling vulnerable.  If you have as little information as possible beforehand, this will prompt you to be more completely focused on the coachee and to be authentically curious about where s/he wants to develop.
  3. Establish and maintain confidentiality:  it's good to discuss this during the first meeting or even beforehand in an email.  While administrators may need to know who the coach is working with and what topics and tasks are being worked on, information shared by the coach should be non-evaluatory.
  4. Listen deeply and with acceptance: to truly understand where the coachee is coming from and where s/he wants to improve.  In the cognitive coaching course active listening involved us paraphrasing what the coachee said to check our own understanding and to let the coachee know that s/he has been heard.
  5. Ask questions:  with the aim of shifting perspective, deepening learning, changing actions and transforming practice.  Clarifying questions are often an invitation for coachees to go deeper into their thinking and can promote powerful reflections.
  6. Connect:  rapport was another area we worked on during the coaching course.  Being able to connect is vital.
  7. Validate:  uncover a coachee's strengths and validate what they do.  Echoing what you have seen and heard shows you are listening carefully and recognizing both the triumphs and struggles the coachee is experiencing - the metaphor given by Aguilar here is a good one.  A coach holds up a mirror to teachers to help them see their strengths reflecting back.  The eventual aim of coaching is to have the client hold up the mirror himself.
  8. Be open about what you do:  make sure there is not a hidden agenda.
  9. Ask for permission to coach:  the coachee should be in control of the process.
  10. Keep commitments - so be careful not to take on too many requests for help.
Are you a coach?  Do you agree with this list?  What would you leave out and what would you add?

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Friday, July 25, 2014

Trust Matters!

One thing we talked about at length in the cognitive coaching course that I took at the start of the summer holidays was trust.  Over and above the fact that trust is absolutely essential in any coaching relationship, we talked about how trust is important throughout a school and that it is everyone's job to develop a climate of trust.  Trust is important in the relationship of us as professionals with parents, in the relationship between teachers and the principal, in the relations teachers have with each other and in the relations teachers have with students.  What I found interesting however is that different sorts of trust are important in each of these relationships.

There are 3 different types of trust in schools:
  • organic trust - which was defined as felt value
  • contractual trust
  • relational trust - what our expectations are of others, and what responsibility we have to others.  Relational trust is founded on our beliefs and our observation of others' behavior.
While I feel there are positive relations built on trust in my current school, I used to work in a place where this was not the case and where fear, mistrust and suspicion were rife.  Even though relations between teachers and students and their families were positive, a lack of trust among the faculty still damages learning for children.  How do we go about judging trustworthiness in schools?   Bill and Ochan Powell discussed how this has 4 main aspects:
  • mutual respect - which can be evidenced by genuine listening
  • competence - the capacity to make learning successful for students
  • personal regard - going beyond our contractual responsibilities
  • integrity - walking the talk
Now here is the interesting thing:  Bill and Ochan explained the importance of a leader giving a window into who s/he is in order for trust to develop, but in addition talked about how we look for different things in a leader when deciding whether he or she is trustworthy (competence, consistency and integrity) than when we decide on the trustworthiness of our teaching colleagues.  When asked about trust among teachers, competency was actually seen as being the least important!  Perhaps this is because many teachers work in isolation, so the competence of a colleague in a different grade or subject has little bearing on their own regard for that colleague?

As far as teachers are concerned, studies by Tschannen-Moran have indicated there are 5 facets of trust that are important to teachers.  In order of importance these are:
  1. Benevolence: caring, goodwill, positive interactions, supporting teachers, expressing appreciation for effort, being fair and guarding confidential information
  2. Honesty: integrity, telling the truth, keeping promises, honoring agreements, being authentic, accepting responsibility, avoiding manipulation, being real
  3. Openness:  communicating openly, sharing information, delegating, shared decision making, sharing power
  4. Reliability:  consistency, being dependable, showing commitment, being dedicated and diligent
  5. Competence:  setting an example, problem solving, conflict resolution, working hard, setting standards, being flexible, handling difficult situations

A school that values trust will be one that is most likely to function as a professional learning community.  In such a school, the school culture will be one that fosters cooperation, collaboration and caring.  

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Thursday, July 24, 2014

Creatical Thinking

The word "creatical" is a new one for me.  I read it today in an article written by Jason Ohler:

A blend of critical and creative thinking in a single integrated approach to problem finding and solving that emphasizes students' ability to not only think critical about other people's ideas, but also to produce new, creative ideas of their own.
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Design Thinking meets TPACK

I've been thinking about the part our new tech integration coaches will play next year in converting traditional classroom activities into high tech lesson plans.  In my last post I focused on the importance of starting with the pedagogy to make sure that it's the learning and not the technology that becomes the objective of the lessons.  The PYP is used as a curriculum framework in ASB's elementary school and  at the heart of the PYP is teachers planning collaboratively to design learning engagements for their students.  In a recent article in Learning and Leading with Technology Mark Hofer writes that "perhaps the most fundamental and persistent obstacle to effective tech integration is the complexity of knowledge it requires … it's not enough to simply find and learn how to use an interesting tool or resource.  [Teachers] must also determine the right fit between the tool, the curriculum, and the learning activity.  This kind of integrated knowledge is called technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK)"

I've been thinking about TPACK and the collaborative design of curriculum as evidenced in the PYP, and I'm wondering about how we can use TPACK to redesign some of the units of inquiry for next year.  Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, who developed the TPACK framework, refer to teachers developing their knowledge of all aspects of the TPACK model through "learning by design".  They describe how "teachers can collaboratively design a solution to an instructional challenge then put the solution to the test in the classroom, reflecting on and modifying it based on their experience".  While this sounds similar to the iterating and prototyping parts of design thinking, it also fits well into the planning of PYP units, where reflecting back on the student learning is an important part of the process.

In addition, teachers will need to develop their technological knowledge.  Our new tech integration coaches can help them as they learn how to use new technologies that can be used in the redesigned units of inquiry.  One important thing that I discovered this year is how important it is to create using the same tools that our students use.  During the last year I was able to do an Applied Storytelling course through ASB's Online Academy, which resulted in me making a short video to tell a story of my own.  This definitely gave me a lot of insight into what students go through as they write a script and search for the most appropriate media to combine into a multimedia presentation.  Teachers who try this out themselves first, will certainly come to have more understanding of how to pace the students' projects as well as how to troubleshoot any problems they may encounter, and at the same time will be developing what is often the weakest of the three areas of TPACK knowledge.   As we design some training for our new tech integration coaches, it seems to me that a knowledge of the TPACK framework is definitely going to be useful.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

ICT in the PYP and the ISTE Standards for Coaches

Way back in 2010 I was lucky enough to participate in curriculum writing for the IBO which resulted in a document entitled The Role of ICT in the PYP.  At that time we identified 6 main areas where we felt IT could be used to enhance the PYP:
  • Investigating
  • Organizing information
  • Communicating
  • Collaborating
  • Creating
  • Becoming responsible digital citizens
As I'm looking forward to starting work with our new tech integration coaches in the upcoming school year,  I've been considering these areas alongside the ISTE standards for coaches.  Clearly the job of a tech coach goes way beyond just integrating technology - which could even involve doing the same things as before but just using a computer.  Often this approach will lead to a focus on using technology to find, record and regurgitate facts.  Going beyond technology as a substitute involves using it to go beyond the facts to create new knowledge, and for our new tech coaches the place where they will need to start is with the pedagogy.

Looking at the ISTE standards for coaching, it is clear that the focus is definitely on teaching and learning.  At the recent ISTE conference I attended many sessions on coaching, but several of these involved the sharing of tech tools.  Years ago at a different school I tried this approach too.  I ran various sessions such as Techie Breakies and after school sessions, but reflecting on these now many of these were "just in case" sessions.  I did introduce new tools such as Blogger and Twitter, and I hoped that teachers would use these both for their own professional growth and also that they would make a connection with what students could do in class, but thinking back I feel that I didn't really help teachers to connect these new technologies with the goals that they already had for student learning.  Five years on, I'm hoping our new tech coaches will take a different approach.

One great session that I did attend at ISTE was by Les Foltos who wrote about coaching in a recent volume of ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology magazine.  Les writes:
Effective coaches seek a purposeful and immediate link between the goals of an activity and the new technology .... coaches can help teachers first define the tasks they want students to perform, such as communication and collaboration and then use that as the starting point for identifying and using the tech tools that best meet those requirements.
So let's have a look at the areas defined by the ICT in the PYP document, alongside the ISTE coaching standards and see how the two can mesh.  Les Foltos asks several questions that can help us when looking at the PYP's inquiry cycle:

Investigate:  Do students need to gather information to draw conclusions and create knowledge?  Possible tools that tech coaches may like to share could be online survey tools such as Google Forms.

Organize:  Could the task be designed so as to require students to organize, analyze and synthesize the information they have gathered?  Possible tools for this could include wikis, websites such as Google Sites, and various social bookmarking and annotating tools.

Communicate:  Could the activity be designed so as to encourage students to communicate with peers, to gather ideas or suggestions for solutions?  There are teachers around the world who may be designing similar projects and who may welcome the chance to have their students discuss this together.

Collaborate:  Could the task  be designed in order that students can collaborate with others (locally or globally) to solve real-world problems or to get feedback on their solutions?  In this case Skyping with an outside expert could be something suggested by our tech coaches.

Create:  Can summative assessments be designed so that students are able to present their understanding in creative ways and to share their ideas with authentic audiences?  Tech coaches may be able to help teachers and their students to record videos and to create digital stories that can be published and shared with a wider audience.

What is clear to me from reading Les Foltos's article is that tech coaches need to focus on using technology for the tasks that teachers are already familiar with (gathering information, collaborating, presenting their ideas and so on).  What is also becoming clear is that helping teachers to design technology rich activities for students could be at the heart of this role.  My next blog post will consider design thinking and how this fits in with the TPACK model.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2014

A new age of personal empowerment

Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez were visitors to ASB on a number of occasions last year, running Maker sessions with parents and students.  I was interested to read his recent article about the Maker Movement in the May edition of Learning and Leading with Technology.  Gary and Sylvia write about how the rise of civilization was defined by the progress of technology, and claim that the availability of affordable constructive technology and the ability to share online has led to what they describe as a new age of personal empowerment.  New tools such as 3D printers and wearable technology are giving students the power to become inventors - and it's easy to find and share instructions and ideas online.

Makers construct knowledge, and in the classroom making encourages children to learn by doing.  Being able to overcome the problems they encounter on the way helps them develop the confidence to become competent problem solvers.  When I first started teaching back in the 1980s, all the students in my high schools were exposed to subjects such as woodwork, metalwork, cooking and needlework, as well as subjects such as art, music and drama.  At that time in the UK schools were known as "comprehensive" schools, the days of sorting students out into academic or vocational tracks had ended with the abolition of the 11+.  The woodwork and metalwork rooms contained power tools, which students became quite competent in using.  Gary and Sylvia argue that these skills need to come back into schools - but this time into the classrooms as opposed to specialist "fablabs".  They point to the failure of computer labs that students traditionally visited once a week, and instead advocate for every classroom to be a maker-space with materials that encourage students to learn by doing and so produce "adults who are capable of understanding and mastering their increasingly technological world",

From working first hand with Gary, it's clear that he believes that children are competent, even though he claims many schools do not.  He argues that a student who has the ability to Google anything has a different sense of himself or herself as a learner:  one where learning is an active and personal process.  I tend to agree with Gary, that this could be a new age of personal empowerment, but of course working against that possibility is the experience that many students have these days, in standardized and standards-based schools, which work against individuality, creativity and innovation.

This brings me back again to personalized learning:  the recognition that students learn differently and have diverse needs.  Last year I did an online course about personalized learning with Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey where the focus was on students being responsible for their own learning.  Other consultants I've worked with over the past year such as Suzie Boss and Bernajean Porter have constantly stressed the need for student voice and choice.  Personalized learning, therefore, gives students a voice in what they learn, how they learn and how they show their understanding.   Technology can play an important part in this:  delivering instruction, giving immediate feedback and allowing students to show their learning using numerous forms of media.

One of the things we talked about in an R&D meeting last year was what if education was not EC-12 but EC-Life?  Empowering students through personalized learning can be one way of giving students the skills they will need for lifelong learning.  Other things we talked about was rethinking physical schools and school groupings based on age.  If we truly empower students then students could be "done with school" (though obviously not with learning) at any age not just at 18, and for those who are wanting this, we could provide other opportunities such as internships, for those students who feel they need a different experience.  


Do you think we are in a new age of personal empowerment?  How are you empowering your students?  Drop me a comment, I'd love to hear.

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Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Flipped Classroom -v- Flipped Learning

In preparation for my upcoming IB workshop on flipping the classroom, I've been reading everything I can about the benefits of the flip on student learning.  One of the best arguments in favor of making the flip has been an article that appeared in the May edition of ISTE's magazine Learning and Leading with Technology by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams.  I'm summarizing parts of this article here as I think it will provide a useful starting point for our workshop participants.

To start with Bergmann and Sams argue that the flipped classroom is not simply a new fad - teachers have always assigned reading to be done at home, followed by class periods discussing and developing the understanding of the ideas in the reading.  The flipped classroom using video or podcasts is simply an extension of this, so that the media is used as a pre-teaching tool that learners can build on in class (in other words teachers are using an old method but with a new tool that allows them to quickly create and distribute video content in a way that was not possible 10 years ago).

Bergmann and Sams argue that it is not the flipped classroom itself that is the goal, but that this is simply the path that leads to more powerful teaching and learning, which they refer to as flipped learning.  The flipped classroom is one way of getting teachers to flip learning as it moves direct instruction out of the "group learning space" (classroom) into the "individual learning space" (through teacher created videos that students can view individually).  This allows the group space to be "transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter."   Basically flipped learning means that class time is spent on richer and more meaningful learning experiences since direct instruction to a whole group is not the best use of class time, considering the variety of student learning styles.  With the flip, the classroom focus is more on learning (and less on teaching).

Bergmann and Sams write that introducing flipped learning is a first step that teachers can take towards a learning-centred classroom, that the flipped classroom is in fact a "gateway to flipped learning".  Flipping the classroom by itself doesn't change anything - a lecture in class or a lecture watched at home is still a lecture - therefore the goal of flipped learning for teachers is not simply to create and use video but to plan what is the best use of face to face class time once the direct instruction is moved to the individual space.  They argue there are 3 main elements:
  • Relationships:  students who have positive relationships with teachers do better on standardized tests and get better grades.  A better use of time than preparing for standardized tests can be spent connecting meaningfully with students instead, becoming mentors and coaches of students instead of simply being the content experts.  Part of this involves seeing each learner as an individual who needs specific nurturing and guidance.
  • Content:  In the flipped learning model students have the time to explore the things they are curious about when learning the key concepts and content that all students should know.  Flipped learning can allow students to inquire deeper into the content.  Many teachers spend a lot of time helping students to remember and understand, while less time has traditionally been spent on the higher order thinking skills of applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.  Flipped learning can allow more class time to be spent on the higher levels of Blooms's Taxonomy.
  • Curiosity:  Flipped learning can enable students to take their learning further and explore their passions.  Once the lower order thinking skills have been shifted to the individual, then flipped learning gives educators the flexibility to provide time for students to explore their own interests (genius hour, golden time, curiosity projects, 20% time etc.).  Project-based learning can fit well at this point too.
The article also provides insight into how the ISTE standards support flipped learning.  At ASB all teachers have set personal goals based on the NETS-T Standard 2.  Specifically Standard 2 supports the flipped learning model in the following ways:
Standard 2C:  Customize and personalize learning activities to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies and abilities using digital tools and resources.
Standard 2D:  Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform teaching and learning.


My work with the flipped classroom and flipped learning models over the past few months have given me new insight into how to personalize learning and have more student-centred classrooms.  Do you have experience of using the flipped classroom model?  I'd love to hear how are you using class time to flip learning.

Read the full article in Learning and Leading with Technology.

Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have written a book, published by ISTE, entitled Flipped Learning:  Gateway to Student Engagement which can be pre-ordered here.

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Monday, July 7, 2014

Technology: Here, There and Everywhere

At ISTE I reconnected with Bob Greenberg who interviewed me for his Brainwave series of videos.  Below is his video.  Please visit his YouTube channel to view other videos from some of the leading thinkers in education today.



Brainwaves YouTube Channel

Bob writes: The Brainwaves is a video anthology.  Here you will meet the thinkers, dreamers and innovators; some of the brightest minds in education.  This series is meant to inspire and engage the viewer to dig deeper and to learn more.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Coaching Sessions at ISTE

During my days at ISTE I attended a number of sessions on coaching including several poster sessions. Here are my notes based on the various sessions that I attended.



Success Stories from ISTE's Coaching Academy

I was interested to attend this to see if the online courses offered by ISTE might needs the needs of our new tech coaches.  Les Foltos explained how the courses developed key coaching skills:
  • Communication and collaboration
  • Lesson design
  • Technology
The idea is similar to cognitive coaching - to build capacity not by giving the answers but by having the coaches bring out the ideas of those they are coaching.  He talked about the role of coaches in helping peers to move step by step towards improvement and about the importance of pairing technology with active, engaging learning strategies.  The courses focus on analyzing and synthesizing real world problems and sharing findings with others.   He discussed how the strategies don't start with the technology but with the learning goals (communication, collaboration and creativity) and how these can strengthen learning - and then after this coaches should start to talk about how technology can enhance this learning.  He talked about what coaches do being important, but that it is even more important HOW they do it.  Finally he talked about how over time coaches can bring innovation to scale in every classroom in a school.

Personalized Coaching for Teachers:  Creating Time and Resources
Another coaching session I attended was about coaching and Flipped PD.  This session started with a list of the advantages of moving to coaching:
  • Move from being exceptional to world class teacher 
  • The fastest way to grow
  • The most powerful way to nuance. 
  • Allows for deep risk taking
  • Minimizes professional failure
The Flipped PD model that this group discussed was one that pulled teachers out of their classrooms during the school day one day per month (with the same permanent subs covering the teachers' lessons and running a separate guidance curriculum during these sessions).  They discussed the features of their model:
  • Start with a question
  • Require professional autonomy
  • Supportive leadership
  • Fail fast and iterate
  • Personalized PD
  • Time
  • Access to coach
  • Small collaborative groups
  • Individual goal setting
  • Accountability through record keeping
  • Providing digital resources to support learning
  • The group started with grade level teams, but later changed this based on interest or tech skill so that PD was based on what teachers wanted. 
One thing I did like about this model was the way this district documented time with the coaches and what had been worked on.  There was also a focus on setting personal goals that the coaches would support with finding resources.  The documentation forced teachers to reflect on what they were doing and helped to build confidence.

Here is what this group found as the outcomes from their coaching model:
  • Supports mastery learning for teachers
  • Greater job satisfaction
  • Better decisions because of shared expertise and wisdom
  • Increased consensus 
  • Horizontal and vertical conversations around leadership goals
  • Increased trust
I was interested to hear what they said about the fact that there will always be innovators and early adopters, but that personalized PD was the thing that really got the majority of their teachers onboard.
Resources for this session can be found here.

TIME (tools, integration, models, engagement) for Technology Coaches
This was the final session I attended on coaching at ISTE.  This session discussed the role of technology coaches:
  • Co planning
  • Co teaching
  • Modeling a lesson
  • Observing teacher/class
  • PD sessions
  • Resource preparation
  • Teach literacy
  • Tech support/troubleshooting
In addition there were 2 challenges that were discussed:

Coaching challenge #1 -Track your time

  • Set a goal as to how you want to spend your time
  • Review time log in relation to your goal
  • Have coaches submit this spreadsheet weekly
  • Tool suggested for scheduling of meetings:  Doodle
Coaching challenge #2 - how much time do you give for reflection?


  • Important to build this in.

Resources for this session can be found here.

Photo Credit: Holtsman via Compfight cc