Un livre à lire...

Patrick Lencioni - THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM

Motion Leadership - The Skinny - Michael Fullen

Dr. Michael Fullan Goes Digital with his new book: Stratosphere

AP courses...

AP surges as tool for schools raising standards

By Justin Pope

AP Education Writer / May 5, 2012   

Not long ago, Advanced Placement exams were mostly for top students looking to challenge themselves and get a head start on college credit. Not anymore.

In the next two weeks, 2 million students will take 3.7 million end-of-year AP exams -- figures well over double those from a decade ago. With no national curriculum, AP has become the de facto gold standard for high school rigor. States and high schools are pushing AP classes and exams as a way to raise standards across the board, in some cases tying AP to bonuses. And the federal government is helping cover the exam fees.

Now, AP's rapid growth is reaching even schools serving some of the most disadvantaged students. These schools are embracing AP as a comprehensive toolkit for toughening coursework, emphasizing college preparation and instilling a "culture of excellence."

If math teacher Jaime Escalante could lead low-income Los Angeles students to AP calculus glory in the story that became the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," why not others?

The problem is, there usually isn't a Hollywood ending.

Last year, 18 percent of U.S. high school graduates passed at least one AP exam (by scoring 3 or higher on a scale of 1 to 5), up from 11 percent a decade ago.

But there also many more students falling short -- way short -- on the exams.

The proportion of all tests taken last year earning the minimal score of 1 increased over that time, from 13 percent to 21 percent. At many schools, virtually no students pass.

For instance, in Indiana -- among the states pushing AP most aggressively, and with results close to the national average -- there were still 21 school districts last year where graduates took AP exams but none passed.

Baltimore's Academy for College & Career Exploration, where 81 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced price lunch programs in 2010, added three AP classes in recent years. Over the past two years, just two of 62 exams taken by its students earned a 3.

Passing an AP exam means demonstrating college-level skill, so a high failure rate isn't necessarily surprising or alarming. Many educators insist the AP coursework preceding those exams is valuable regardless.

Still, they acknowledge the trend raises tough questions: Is pushing poorly prepared students to take college-level classes effective? Or does it just demoralize them and divert time and money better spent elsewhere?

"It's kind of an easy reform -- plunk in an AP course," said University of Northern Colorado scholar Kristin Klopfenstein, who edited a recent collection of studies on the AP program. But without accompanying steps, it's not clear AP does much good, especially for students scoring 1s and 2s. "What I've observed in a lot of cases is AP programs being helicopter-dropped in with the hope that the high standards themselves would generate results."

Perhaps surprisingly, those concerns are shared by the not-for-profit College Board, which runs the AP program and has benefited from its growth (collecting $353 million in revenue from its college readiness programs, including AP exam fees, in 2009).

"Schools that are using AP in a very deliberate way to change the culture, there's something very powerful there," said Senior Vice President Trevor Packer. But as a shortcut to avoid the hard foundational work students need, AP may be a waste -- or worse, a diversion (The test fee is $87, though the College Board discounts that to $53 for low-income students, who with government grants often have no cost at all.).

"The last thing we want is (schools) spending money on test fees if that's all they're spending money on," Packer said.

The AP program dates to the 1950s, but has grown rapidly in recent years to 34 subjects, from art history to Japanese. High-achieving students and parents have driven some of the growth, but mostly it's educators and policymakers. The six states now requiring high schools to offer AP include several that have struggled the most with educational achievement -- Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. (The others are Indiana and Connecticut. A half-dozen additional states require schools to offer either AP or other rigorous classes such as dual-enrollment or International Baccalaureate).

States also encourage AP in other ways. Indiana, for instance, gives schools bonuses for AP performance, and factors AP into the state's accountability formula and performance goals. Florida pays bonuses to teachers for each student earning a qualifying score. Seven states require public colleges to award credit or placement based on AP exam scores. Students, meanwhile, usually get extra weighting on their GPAs and improved chances for admission to selective colleges.

Increasingly common are school districts like East Noble in Kendallville, Ind., where the high school now offers 11 AP classes, up from three a few years ago. The district's pass rate on statewide tests ranks just above the bottom quarter in Indiana, state figures show. Superintendent Ann Linson started pushing AP when she was the high school principal, dropping a requirement that AP enrollees come from the top 25 percent of students.

"I was really put out by that," she said. "I believe every student should have the ability to be part of a more challenging course." Last year, about 42 percent of East Noble graduates took an AP exam, roughly double the percentage three years before. But the 14 percent of graduates who earned a passing score (close to the state average) was about the same as before. Indiana's statewide goal is 25 percent of graduates earning AP credit.

"If a student pushes themselves at a higher level, even if they receive a C or D, it's going to better prepare them for life after school," Linson said.

Why has AP become a gold standard? One reason is schools can slap the label "honors" on any class, but AP requires outside validation, said David Conley, a University of Oregon professor and CEO of the Educational Policy Improvement Center. To offer official AP courses, teachers and principals must develop a curriculum that the College Board attests meets standards set by college faculty (Conley's group does that validation work for the College Board). Many AP teachers also undergo special training.

Also, Conley says, the seemingly endless battery of state-level tests that have emerged over the last two decades focus on setting a "floor" -- minimum skills for all students. AP lets schools and policymakers talk about raising the "ceiling," elevating students beyond the bare minimum and pushing them toward college.

One other possible factor: For years, Newsweek magazine used a school's number of AP tests per graduate as the sole factor for inclusion on its annual list of "Best American High Schools". (That list's inventor, Jay Mathews, moved it to the Washington Post in 2011. Newsweek developed a new list with a formula where AP factors into three categories totaling 40 percent).

Nationally, 56 percent of AP exams taken by the high school class of 2011 earned a 3 or higher, but there are wide disparities. The mean score is 3.01 for white students and 1.94 for blacks. In New Hampshire, almost three-quarters of exams earn a 3 or higher; in Mississippi, it's under a third. In the District of Columbia, more than half of exams score a 1.

At Detroit's Mumford High School last year, none of 62 AP exams earned higher than a 1. But at the nearby Renaissance magnet high school, a quarter of the 113 AP exams earned a 3 or higher, and the school had the second most black students scoring 3 or higher in literature in the country.

When Kayla Morrow began teaching social studies at Baltimore's Academy for College & Career Exploration five years ago, the school offered no AP courses and barely any honors.

"We were just kind of graduating kids from high school and just pushing them out the door and just hoping something positive would happen," Morrow said. When a grant arrived for Morrow and others to get training and develop AP courses, "pretty much all the teachers were like, `yes, we really need this, we all did this when we were in high school, it's a crime that we don't have this.'"

Last year 36 students took AP exams in three subjects, scoring on average 1.4.

The AP government class Morrow teaches, she says, isn't just harder than regular classes. It's fundamentally different, and -- surprisingly -- less test-driven.

"What AP is really trying to teach you is for a lot of things, there's really not a right and wrong answer. It's, `how do you get to that?'" she said, adding the AP training improved her teaching in regular classes, too.

As for not passing the exams, "students take ownership of that," she said. "They'll work harder for you. In fact, they'll be more appreciative for knowing where they stand."

Sean Martin, who helped start an AP literature program at Heritage High School in Baltimore before moving this year to another school, said some of his AP students read at a seventh-grade level.

"I knew for a lot of them ... it was going to be very difficult to get them even to the level of a 2," he said. Still, he said, simply putting students who want to push themselves together in a class with a goal is valuable.

"We set a higher bar and we could do things a little differently, and really have meaningful class discussions," he said. Classes "take on a different feel when every student in the room is success-oriented."

The two teachers note advanced college credit isn't the only worthy goal: Both have heard former students report their AP preparation helped them place out of remedial college classes, which also saves time and tuition.

Klopfenstein, however, is skeptical. While data show students who do well in AP courses do better in college, it's not clear whether that's because they took AP. And the evidence is weak for any college benefit for students who take AP courses but do poorly on the exams. Schools with many students struggling in AP may need more focus on skill-building.

"If you have kids that are not necessarily being successful in high-school level courses, it seems like a logical fallacy to think what they need is college-level courses," she said. "AP without sufficient supports is worse than no AP at all."

She notes AP carries a cost -- to students, in time they could spend on other things, and to schools, in assigning the strongest teachers to an often small group. In an era of tight budgets, more schools may conclude AP is a luxury they can't afford. Martin says Baltimore's Heritage, where he previously taught, has cut back on AP (Heritage's principal didn't return phone messages seeking comment).

But there's also a cost of not offering AP: students who might benefit but never get the shot. That's why the College Board believes there's still room for AP to grow.

One figure stands out. Of last year's roughly 3 million high school graduates, the College Board believes that based on prior academic performance, 770,000 had a strong chance of passing an AP exam.

But of those students, nearly two in three didn't have access to an AP course. Among black students, nearly 80 percent who might have passed never took an exam. That adds up to countless missed opportunities for rigorous coursework, and countless potentially saved tuition dollars left on the table.

Packer cites the Baltimore academy as an example of places building up an AP program the right way, using it to inject a culture of high expectations and college focus where it might not otherwise exist.

"In those cases, who am I to say from the College Board `you should not offer AP courses because your kids are getting 1s and 2s'?" he said.

Still, "it all depends on what educators do with the program," he said. "No program is a silver bullet."

--------

Online: AP Report to the Nation http://bit.ly/IpCNBV

Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement

Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement


By Heather Wolpert-Gawron
4/26/12

A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

---

A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?"

1. Working with their peers

"Middle-school students are growing learners who require and want interaction with other people to fully attain their potential."
"Teens find it most interesting and exciting when there is a little bit of talking involved. Discussions help clear the tense atmosphere in a classroom and allow students to participate in their own learning."

2. Working with technology

"I believe that when students participate in "learning by doing" it helps them focus more. Technology helps them to do that. Students will always be extremely excited when using technology."
"We have entered a digital age of video, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and they [have] become more of a daily thing for teens and students. When we use tech, it engages me more and lets me understand the concept more clearly."

3. Connecting the real world to the work we do/project-based learning

"I believe that it all boils down to relationships. Not relationships from teacher to student or relationships from student to student, but rather relations between the text and the outside world. For example, I was in a history class last year and my teacher would always explain what happens in the Medieval World and the Renaissance. And after every lesson, every essay, every assignment, he asked us, "How does this event relate to current times?" It brought me to a greater thinking, a kind of thinking where I can relate the past to the present and how closely they are bonded together."

"If you relate the topic to the students' lives, then it makes the concept easier to grasp."
"Students are most interested when the curriculum applies to more than just the textbook. The book is there -- we can read a book. If we're given projects that expand into other subjects and make us think, it'll help us understand the information."
"What I think engages a student most is interactions with real-life dilemmas and an opportunity to learn how to solve them. Also, projects that are unique and one of a kind that other schools would never think of. Also something challenging and not easy, something to test your strengths as a student and stimulate your brain, so it becomes easier to deal with similar problems when you are grown up and have a job. Something so interesting that you could never ever forget."
"I like to explore beyond the range of what normal textbooks allow us to do through hands-on techniques such as project-based learning. Whenever I do a project, I always seem to remember the material better than if I just read the information straight out of a textbook."
"I, myself, find a deeper connection when I'm able to see what I'm learning about eye-to-eye. It's more memorable and interesting to see all the contours and details of it all. To be able to understand and connect with the moment is what will make students three times more enthusiastic about learning beyond the black and white of the Times New Roman text."

4. Clearly love what you do

"Engaging students can be a challenge, and if you're stuck in a monotone, rambling on and on, that doesn't help...instead of talking like a robot, teachers should speak to us like they're really passionate about teaching. Make sure to give yourself an attitude check. If a teacher acts like this is the last thing they want to be doing, the kids will respond with the same negative energy. If you act like you want to be there, then we will too."
"I also believe that enthusiasm in the classroom really makes a student engaged in classroom discussions. Because even if you have wonderful information, if you don't sound interested, you are not going to get your students' attention. I also believe that excitement and enthusiasm is contagious."
"It isn't necessarily the subject or grades that really engage students but the teacher. When teachers are truly willing to teach students, not only because it is their job, but because they want to educate them, students benefit. It's about passion. That extra effort to show how it will apply to our own future."

5. Get me out of my seat!

"When a student is active they learn in a deeper way than sitting. For example, in my history class, we had a debate on whether SOPA and PIPA were good ideas. My teacher had us stand on either ends of the room to state whether we agree or disagree with the proposition. By doing this, I was able to listen to what all my classmates had to say."

6. Bring in visuals

"I like to see pictures because it makes my understanding on a topic clearer. It gives me an image in my head to visualize."
"I am interested when there are lots of visuals to go with the lesson. Power Points are often nice, but they get boring if there are too many bullet points. Pictures and cartoons usually are the best way to get attention."

7. Student choice

"I think having freedom in assignments, project directions, and more choices would engage students...More variety = more space for creativity."
"Giving students choices helps us use our strengths and gives us freedom to make a project the way we want it to. When we do something we like, we're more focused and enjoy school more."
"Another way is to make the curriculum flexible for students who are more/less advanced. There could be a list of project choices and student can pick from that according to their level."

8. Understand your clients -- the kids

"Encourage students to voice their opinions as you may never know what you can learn from your students."
"If the teacher shows us that they are confident in our abilities and has a welcoming and well-spirited personality towards us, we feel more capable of doing the things we couldn't do...What I'm trying to say is students are more engaged when they feel they are in a "partnership" with their teacher."
"Personally, I think that students don't really like to be treated as 'students.' Teachers can learn from us students. They need to ask for our input on how the students feel about a project, a test, etc. Most importantly, teachers need to ask themselves, "How would I feel if I were this student?" See from our point of view and embrace it."
"Students are engaged in learning when they are taught by teachers who really connect with their students and make the whole class feel like one big family. Teachers should understand how the mind of a child or teenager works and should be able to connect with their students because everyone should feel comfortable so that they are encouraged to raise their hands to ask questions or ask for help."
"Teachers should know that within every class they teach, the students are all different."

9. Mix it up!

"I don't like doing only one constant activity...a variety will keep me engaged in the topic. It's not just for work, but also for other things such as food. Eating the same foods constantly makes you not want to eat!"
"Fun experiments in science class...acting out little skits in history...if students are going to remember something, they need visuals, some auditory lessons, and some emotions."
"Also, you can't go wrong with some comedy. Everyone loves a laugh...another thing that engages me would be class or group games. In Language Arts I've played a game of "dodge ball. We throw words at each other, one at a time. If they could get the definition, the person who threw the word would be out...Students remember the ones they got wrong, and of course, the ones they already knew."

10. Be human

"Don't forget to have a little fun yourself."
I'd like to end this post with one more quote, this one from my student, Sharon: "The thing is, every student is engaged differently...but, that is okay. There is always a way to keep a student interested and lively, ready to embark on the journey of education. 'What is that way?' some teachers may ask eagerly. Now, read closely... Are you ready? That way is to ask them. Ask. Them. Get their input on how they learn. It's just as simple as that."
Go on. Try it. Ask

L'entretien d'embauche : comment bien le préparer ?

Change is Good... You Go First

Principales erreurs des candidats en entrevue

Educational Leadership with Dr Douglas Reeves

5 Ways To Build a Culture of Collaboration

5 Ways To Build a Culture of Collaboration with Staff, Teachers and Parents

By Sharon D. Kruse

Kruse is the author of the AASA book Building Strong School Cultures: A Leader’s Guide to Change, published by Corwin Press.

Creating a school culture that ensures positive outcomes for all students requires an “all hands on deck” approach to meeting the needs of the school community. Yet, bringing staff, teachers and parents together to do the work of the school is not easy. Collaboration cannot be coerced nor compelled. Rather, school leaders must help all members of the school community feel a sense of pride and ownership in their work.
The following tips can help you build a culture of collaboration in your school.

• Focus on a clear outcome. The best collaborative projects focus on improving student success and making the school a better place for children to learn. As important as those goals are, words like “success” and “better” lack specificity, making it difficult for people to understand how they can contribute to those goals. Instead, clearly state the desired outcome of a collaborative project, such as “build a new playground,” “develop a tutoring program” or “explore ways for students to participate in service learning.”
• Expand leadership opportunities. While it may seem counterintuitive, asking staff, teachers and parents to take on leadership roles—doing more work rather than less—can have positive results. Expanding leadership opportunities develops a critical mass of school members who have leadership skills. As more members become adept at helping the school achieve its goals, more work can be accomplished. Expanding leadership opportunities also reinforces a core tenet of collaboration: equality among all parties.
• Create meaningful opportunities for work. People are more willing to collaborate on work that has a significant personal meaning for them. Organizing people around projects in which they feel personally invested will create more synergy for the project, energizing faculty, staff and parents and advancing a collaborative culture. Use a short interest inventory to get a sense of what projects are meaningful to members of your school community. List areas for which you have immediate need, such as data collection and analysis, short- or long-term planning, communication, or afterschool programming and ask respondents to indicate their interest in those areas.. Provide several blank spaces for school community members to answer questions such as, “What talents or skills could you share with the school?” and “How would you like to become involved with making our school a success?” Then organize committees around areas of shared interest and provide a charge (or let them develop their own charge) that can focus their collective effort.
• Coordinate efforts. Managing collaborative work is vital to success. You can coordinate and manage efforts in several ways, including online through chat rooms and blogs or at committee meetings during which members regularly report on their progress. Capitalize on work across teams. For example, the fundraising group might share their list of contacts with other committees so community agencies are not asked multiple times to donate money or time to the school.
• Celebrate the work of others. Finally, celebrate your successes! Find ways to publicize your ongoing collaborative work, giving credit to those who have taken on new roles. As projects draw to a close, focus on the ways collaborative work has enhanced the school and the neighborhood. Use your celebrations to recruit new partners and fortify future collaboration. In this way, collaboration becomes rooted in the school’s culture.

When staff, teachers and parents work together, schools can be happier, healthier places where shared goals are reached and everyone feels a sense of belonging.
Learn MoreFor more on this topic, read Building Strong School Cultures: A Leader’s Guide to Change by Sharon Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis, published by Corwin Press (2009).
About the AuthorSharon D. Kruse is a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership at the University of Akron. During the past two decades, she has studied school leadership and successful school improvement practices as a researcher and as a consultant for schools and school districts. E-mail: skruse@uakron.edu.

A guide to effective communcation

Learn a Second "Foreign" Language

7 Reasons to Learn a Foreign Language

 

Foreign languages open doors to opportunities - whether you're in a distant land, hoping to broaden your mind, or even looking for a date. Studies show those who know a foreign language earn more and are happier than those who don't.

Learning a foreign language is naturally a process that require effort and time, much or not, depending on the capability of an individual. Current technology makes learning a second language more flexible and easier. You can learn at anywhere you like, in your car while trapped in traffic jam, while waiting for commuter to arrive or fishing at Lake Garden, by means of many types of medium such as cassette, CD and the Internet, such as at www.malaylanguage.mypositivemoney.com where you will find a good resource of foreign language. Below a just a few reasons why you should learn another language:

1. Most significant yet simple reason - Eliminate the language barrier that you may face, easier for you to deal with other people when you go traveling or having work at other country. Majority of native people probably do not know to speak English fluently or do not know to speak English at all, so knowing some key phrases will help you a lot. Moreover, you will want to know what people around you are talking about while you shopping, waiting for taxi, or having dinner at a restaurant.

2. Local people tend to be friendlier with you since you speak same language with them. You also can get friend easily, which in return can help you greatly in dealing with certain troubles that you may encounter, and you might be do not know how to deal with, such as problem related with customary law. Locals also will believe you more than people who cannot speak their language, doesn’t it very important when you are in travel?

3. Knowing a foreign language really help when you are lost in a remote area where hardly you can find people who can speak English except local language.

4. Giving you chances to understand the exotic local traditions and way of living easier and deeper. This priceless experience is absolutely an opportunity not be missed for anyone who love to travel. You can share beautiful moment having fun with locals in occasion and understand the meaning behind it, which in the same time, give you knowledge.

5. Improve your memory skill resulting from activity of reading, learning and memorizing. Open up your mind to be more acceptable to other people’s differences. Your thinking will be more maturely and sensibly.

6. This is reality, guys: According to Kwintessential, people who learn a foreign language are wealthier, happier and are regarded sexier than those who can speak only English.

7. From a survey conducted in Britain involving 270 dating agencies, the result shows that people who speak or learn a foreign language are more attractive, intelligent and sexier to the opposite sex.

Hopefully some of the reasons above will give you some ideas on how important to learn additional language. Continuous learning for life leads to success and wisdom.

Extended school day!

What new research on extended school day says

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Jodi Grant, executive director of the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that all children have access to affordable, quality afterschool programs.

By Jodi Grant
Two new studies are flashing warning signs about the move to extend the school day. The Department of Education has made extended learning time a centerpiece of its reform efforts. This could have been a breakthrough moment for our nation’s education system, encouraging community partnerships to expand learning in ways that help students succeed and bring new resources into our schools. As decades of research on afterschool and summer learning programs show, community partners and innovative teaching approaches can help engage and excite students in learning, boosting achievement.
But the extended day approach being implemented in many schools as a result of the department’s push to increase instructional time falls short. It largely ignores the deep body of research on what makes effective expanded learning. Instead, too many schools are merely adding another hour or so of regular class time onto the school day. Not surprisingly, two very recent studies suggest we might not accomplish much with this approach to improving schools.
The first study is from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. GAO surveyed states about their experience with implementation of the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. Researchers found that 26 states said they didn’t think they would be able to sustain the program’s extended learning time reforms after their federal grants expired, because they were too expensive. Just 10 said they thought they could keep it going.
GAO also found that SIG schools are challenged by the planning required to implement increased learning time well. SIG schools find it to be a complex and time consuming planning process and one that often is not embraced by stakeholders, including parents. So it’s expensive, challenging and may not be sustainable.
A second report, this one from the nonprofit think tank Education Sector, finds that schools’ results from extending their day depend to a great degree on how they implement the extension. The key to success, the study finds, is taking the opportunity to look at how time is used overall, as part of comprehensive reform. In other words, simply extending the school day and offering more of the same can’t be relied upon to do the trick.
The need for significant planning, combined with the need to position increased learning time as part of comprehensive reform, calls into question the use of three- to five-year discretionary grant programs like SIG and 21^st CCLC to implement a longer school day. Fortunately, there are alternatives to increasing learning time for all students that are easier to implement, less costly and therefore more likely to be sustained – and they have shown strong results.
The Ed Sector report highlights several successful extended learning efforts that go beyond adding more time to the classroom, including The After-school Corporation (TASC) model in New York, Citizen Schools in Boston, and the Providence After School Alliance model in Rhode Island. These models share a common foundation: strong afterschool programs, built around hands-on, experiential learning, and involving community partners. The approach builds on the regular school day, but with learning methods that engage students in different ways.
Many afterschool, before school and summer programs that offer this kind of experiential learning are supported – or were supported in their critical early years – by funds from 21^st Century Community Learning Centers, the chief federal funding stream for afterschool programs. That funding stream is in grave jeopardy right now, with the Department of Education encouraging states to divert afterschool those funds to programs to extend the school day.
So it would be wise, at this juncture, to step back and think for a moment. What’s made expanded learning so successful over the years? What role have community partners played in supporting learning and helping sustain expanded learning? As the reams of research show, afterschool and summer programs give kids a chance to learn differently: to explore academic subjects in a more informal, hands on setting, to take on team and leadership roles, to learn from a variety of community experts on everything from video production to robotics. Policymakers would do well to heed these lessons as they focus on improving the nation’s schools. It’s important to look before you leap when our children’s education, and their future, hangs in the balance.

Tips for Planning Interdisciplinary Units in Middle School

By Sarah Henchey

During my fifth year of teaching, my principal asked me to move from the 8th grade to the 6th grade. I suddenly became more aware of the range of students within a middle school: Some students still had baby teeth and believed in Santa while, one floor away, others were dangerously close to driving and shaving.

I soon realized that 6th graders needed more repetition and connectedness in their learning. Fresh from elementary school, where they'd spent most of the day with one teacher, they were not used to a patchwork curriculum in which class changes signified the boundaries between subjects.
I'd learned in my undergraduate coursework about how team-teaching could ease this transition, supporting students' social and emotional needs via interdisciplinary instruction. I just hadn't seen it in practice—until my principal arranged for a group of us to visit a nearby middle school.
The neighboring teachers shared the ups and downs of the process they had gone through to establish their interdisciplinary framework. They had faced challenges—but they were forthright about the impact their units had had on student learning and engagement.
Afterward, our 6th grade teachers committed to trying out one interdisciplinary unit by the end of the year. We stumbled through the planning and execution but learned a lot through our mini-experiment. This year, we vowed to make a more sustained commitment to interdisciplinarity—and we've already seen payoffs in the form of more intensive student engagement and better retention of knowledge.
Here are a few lessons we've learned:
Spread enthusiasm among your colleagues. You can't do this on your own, so think carefully about the "pitch" you'll make to your colleagues. Show them some examples of how collaboration can make a difference: Perhaps you could visit another school, view a video of successful collaboration, or discuss articles like this one. You may want to do some advance thinking about topics that really lend themselves to interdisciplinary teaching.
Consider starting small. Organizing and executing an interdisciplinary unit can be a daunting task. There are many ways to experiment with this concept without committing to a large unit. Consider skills or experiences that correspond with your students' needs. For a few weeks, could your grade focus on analyzing informational texts or strategies for identifying unknown words in context? Is there a broad theme, such as "change" or "relationships," that could be highlighted over the next month?
Set broad time frames. We've found it helpful to focus on incorporating the interdisciplinary focus over a broad period of time, like a nine-week grading period. This allows teachers the chance to thoughtfully weave the shared goals into their content area without feeling restricted by time.
Avoid superficial connections. While interdisciplinary units aim to help students make connections across contents, we want those links to be as purposeful and meaningful as possible. We try to not "force" overlap or expect that all teachers will approach it in the same way. Depending on the unit, one teacher may incorporate the shared content in three class periods while another may spend the majority of his class time focused on the interdisciplinary content.
Communicate early and often. In most schools, teacher planning time is stretched far too thin—but frequent communication is vital to creating an effective interdisciplinary unit. It can be difficult to find common planning time, but we've successfully used tools like Google Docs to communicate and provide updates. This pre-meeting work has allowed for productive use of our valuable face-to-face meeting time.
Celebrate success with students. Our own excitement around a unit directly translates into student engagement and buy-in. We've found ways to celebrate the hard work teachers and students have invested in our learning. For example, after a two-month exploration of Greek and Roman cultural legacies, we held a Classical Antiquities Week. Culminating events included Olympic Games and an evening called, "Party at the Parthenon," where students shared their learning with their families.
Taking simple steps to making connections for students can go a long way in helping them to better understand and synthesize their learning. We're hopeful to continue adding to our integrated units each year, allowing for more connected learning for students. What experiences have you had with interdisciplinary units? What tips would you add to the list above?

Sarah Henchey teaches middle school language arts in the Orange County (N.C.) Public Schools. She's a National Board-certified teacher who is also credentialed in social studies. Henchey is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network.

Helping students become better problem-finders...

Secret to Better PBL? Focus on Problem-Finding

By Suzie Boss
4/13/12

Suzie Boss (@suzieboss on Twitter) is a journalist and author of Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. She's also a regular blogger on Edutopia.

---

On April 22, a billion people around the world are expected to take part in Earth Day 2012 celebrations. Among the anticipated "billion acts of green" will be scores of events for students and schools, from gardening lessons to eco-fairs to solar cooking demonstrations. It could be an ideal set-up for young people to dive deeply into problem solving and creative thinking -- but only if we trust students to figure out which problems they want to tackle.
That's advice from educator and entrepreneur Ewan McIntosh, who knows a thing or two about engaging students in project-based learning. Last fall, he facilitated an event that drew 10,000 students from five continents to tackle some of the world's biggest problems. Students came together online for the ITU Telecom World Meta Conference. The youth event ran in parallel with a face-to-face gathering of global leaders from telecommunications and technology industries.
Students were challenged to design solutions to tough issues, such as improving access to clean drinking water or extending education to reach all the world's children. Their proposals had to meet a few basic criteria. "We set out success of an idea in terms of being tangible, pragmatic, make-able," McIntosh explained.
What did students dream up? Using the process of design thinking, they developed concepts such as wheelchairs with built-in cell phones to improve life for those with disabilities, a seed exchange to help villagers grow their way out of hunger, water purification built right into a riverbed, and smartphone apps to prevent food spoilage.
Before students could arrive at these ingenious solutions, they first had to fully understand the problems they were attempting to solve. (Read a summary of the event here.)

Problem-Finders

Equipping students to be better problem-finders is something McIntosh is passionate about. In a provocative talk last year at TedxLondon, he outlined the pitfalls of leaving it to adults to define which problems should be solved. "Currently, the world's education systems are crazy about problem-based learning, but they're obsessed with the wrong bit of it," he insists. "While everyone looks at how we could help young people become better problem-solvers, we're not thinking how we could create a generation of problem-finders."
Design thinking provides a better framework for learning that emphasizes defining the problem at the outset. Before diving into solutions, students might first conduct focus groups, do user interviews, or conduct other research to fully understand an issue. That means they develop empathy along with ingenuity as they work through the iterative process of generating ideas, prototyping, testing, getting user feedback, and refining solutions.

Cultural Shift

Through his consulting organization, No Tosh, McIntosh is introducing the Design Thinking School concept to schools across Europe, Asia, and the United States. He's discovering that this way of thinking and learning requires a wholesale shift in education. "Design thinking is not a project that one does on a Wednesday afternoon once the 'serious' learning has taken place. It's a change of culture throughout a school that leads to better learning," he says.
Before schools start making the shift to design thinking, McIntosh encourages them to conduct action research to fully understand the problems they want to address. Essentially, teachers and school leaders use design-thinking methods to figure out what's working in their school and what isn't. Then they're ready to move ahead with generating ideas, prototyping solutions, gathering feedback, and improving on ideas to overcome challenges.

Earth Day Resources

How can you help your students become better problem-finders this Earth Day? For starters, bring them into project planning early so that they have a stake in whatever driving question they are attempting to answer. Help them think critically about the issues that most interest them. How can they make a real difference? How would they define "success"? And how might their efforts be sustained so that good ideas keep going well beyond Earth Day?
Please use the comments to share ideas for the Earth Day projects that your students are helping to design. What problems are they most eager to solve?

Online comments by students...

Do Students Have the Right to Post Negative Comments Online?

 

Flickr: Zawezome

By Corey G. Johnson

Civil rights groups recently intervened in a free-speech controversy at the San Francisco Unified School District after a school suspended three high school seniors and banned them from graduation and prom over comments they made online.
The students were suspended from George Washington High School after a teacher learned about postings on a Tumblr page called “Scumbag Teachers.” Some of the comments allegedly linked to the students included: “Teaches Pink Floyd for 3 Weeks; Makes Final Project Due In 3 Days” and “Nags Student Govt About Being On Task; Lags On Everything.”
The school principal accused the students of cyberbullying. They were suspended from school for three days, banned from prom and told they couldn’t walk with their classmates during graduation. One of the students was kicked off the student council.
The Asian Law Caucus and ACLU of Northern California said they were concerned that the students’ rights were being violated and wrote letters to district officials questioning whether the students and parents were given due process. The district then reinstated the students.
The district’s initial punitive actions prompted student outrage on other Tumblr sites. One student stated:

Find it ironic how Washington led the American Revolution against the British soldiers for freedom from King George, and here you are, sitting in this school trying to control the students the exact same way the king was, by taxing not our goods, but our freedom of speech. Washington himself would be appalled.

Another student wrote:

What kind of school environment do we live in where Tumblr allegedly is treated like a weapon? Where people are now afraid to write and express their feelings and opinions in a Tumblr community in fear that the adults that are supposed to encourage and teach us the meaning of “freedom” and “free expression” are the ones stamping it down and treating it with a double standard.You know what is ironic? In school we are going over 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Alduous [sic] Huxley. Both are dystopian novels which express a fear of a future in which individual opinions are banned and people live in an authoritarian rule stripped of freedom and self-expression. What is so different from those novels and this situation in this school?

The district, the Asian Law Caucus and ACLU of Northern California all declined to name the school and the students involved. California Watch learned the name of the school from online postings and an interview with a student who attends Washington.
Angela Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, said the students’ parents don’t speak English. She said the school didn’t initially provide translators to help the parents understand the school’s decision. And Linda Lye, an attorney with the ACLU, said the Tumblr postings didn’t meet the definition of cyberbullying and weren’t disruptive to the school environment.
“Speech does not become ‘disruptive’ just because a teacher doesn’t like it or finds it offensive,” Lye wrote on the ACLU website. “In fact, criticism of authority figures is exactly the type of speech the Constitution was designed to protect.”
Gentle Blythe, spokeswoman for San Francisco Unified, said the district swiftly reinstated the students once contacted by the civil rights groups. The disciplinary actions have been removed from the students’ records, and they are no longer banned from the prom and graduation.
“We absolutely recognize and value our students’ right to free speech. We also recognize that we need to educate them about responsible speech,” Blythe said in an e-mail to California Watch. “As soon as the district was notified of the school administration’s action, we responded. Part of having authority means recognizing that if you make a mistake you need to correct it.”
Chan said her organization and San Francisco Unified will be working to improve district policies to ensure teachers and administrators are better trained to handle future incidents.
In August 2008, California passed AB 86, one of the first laws in the country to deal directly with cyberbullying. The legislation gives school administrators the authority to discipline students for bullying others offline or online.
Last year, the ACLU intervened at the San Juan Unified School District in Northern California after school administrators at a Citrus Heights-area school suspended a 15-year-old sophomore for cyberbullying. Since then, the organization has responded to at least three separate instances in which different schools have punished students for online writing, Lye said.
This article originally appeared on California Watch.

Popeye's Lessons in Leadership

What make a teacher GREAT!

Humour- Teamwork