Embodied learning and things that don’t have names March 26, 2013

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about education.  How we prove that learning has taken place.  Inevitably we talk about standards, measures, awards, grades, success.  Anastasis has given me the freedom to completely redefine education.  There are no limits, except of my own making.  I get to decide how to talk about education.  This would be easy if I was doing all of this in a vacuum, but I’m not.  There are stakeholders who care about how I talk about education.  Parents, teachers, students, higher education.

The problem, I’m discovering, is that when we talk about education, we talk about it too narrowly.  It is possible to be very committed, data driven, tech savvy, “21st century,” and yet be working against the kind of learning that is transformative.  We can have all the right tools, the measures, the awards and test score evidence and still not really see.  We can miss the thing we care most about, because we are so focused on trying to define it.

I’ve been learning about embodied energy, this is the sum of all energy required to produce goods or services.  It is the energy that can’t be seen because it isn’t obvious.  The measures, the awards and test score evidence…they aren’t really the learning.  They are poor representations of learning.  I’m more interested in the embodied learning.  I want to know about all of the little moments, the prior learning, the assumptions that led up to the light bulb moment for a student.

Because novels are more than just words.

Songs are more than just notes

Paintings are more than just color.

When you separate out the words, notes or colors they don’t do anything.  They cease to tell a story. They cease to move us.  It is when the words come together, in very specific orders, that a story is told.  When the notes are intentionally strung together that we get music that resonates with us.  When the colors dance on a canvas that we are moved to emotion.

So, when we talk about education and we look at data points and test scores and numbers, we lose something. The number can’t tell a story.  It can’t show the incredible little moments that led up to learning.  Because there IS embodied learning.  The part that really matters.  The embodied story that tells us that learning was more than just the shallow memorization of surface facts.  That there was a journey that led to the light bulb moment.  The tricky part comes in the stakeholders.  They want the learning to be defined.  But a lot of that embodied learning doesn’t have a name.  It can’t be measured in any scientific, rational, conventional way.

We end up talking about education as if it can fit inside a 20 second sound bite.  We boil it all down to one sheet of paper that tells kids if they measure up or not.  When we reduce everything down to the soundbite, we strip away something vital to who students really are, the journey and learning that takes place.  Students can become completely enslaved to expectations, good grades and accolades and lose their true selves in the process.  Lose the curiosity and wonder of learning.  This isn’t what the world needs.  The world needs people who are fully alive.  Who have passion.  It’s one thing to memorize and have the right answer (and right number on the report card), it is another to be so passionately engaged with learning that curiosities lead you to new learning.

Our job as educators is more than just standards we teach.  We are in the business of helping students know they are more than just a number.  More than just data points.  They are the story, the song, the art that moves and matters.  They are the embodied learning.

Our challenge is to help stakeholders care more about the embodied learning, the things that don’t have names.  The journey that collectively leads to things that matter.  Our challenge is to care most about students that are fully alive in their learning.

It is up to us to make the things that matter, the most important.

 

(Along this line of thinking, I’m attempting a redesign of the “report card” we need a way to better capture the things that can’t be named.)

Teachers as Expendables August 28, 2010

I am currently reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin, of course I read that through the eyes of an educator and apply it to the world I know.  Here are some thoughts I jotted down as I was reading today.

Schools (and I am talking very generally here based on my experiences) need to stop treating teachers and students like they are nonessential.  When you treat people like they are expendable, they will begin to view themselves that way.  When people can sense they aren’t valued, they will start to act that way.

Unfortunately, schools around the country are devaluing both students and teachers on a regular basis.  When the secretary of education recommends that schools make public whether teachers are doing enough to raise students’ test scores, he is sending the message that teachers are expendable.  When students are expected to read at a certain level because they are seven years old, or taught from a standardized curriculum, by our actions, we tell them they aren’t unique or valuable.

We really shouldn’t be surprised, then, at the state of education.  When people feel like they aren’t valued they will see themselves that way.  They won’t rise to the occasion (very often), they won’t wow us with their innovation.  They will do what they must to get by.  This is happening too often in our schools.

Conversely, when you are in a place where you feel valued and important, you will act in a way that is valuable.  You rise to the occasion and work toward success with creativity and innovative ideas.  You become impassioned.

I know that most teachers work hard every day to make sure that each one of their students feels valued.  But when teachers are treated as if they are expendable, it is hard to muster the enthusiasm to help others believe that they are not.  What Arne Duncan doesn’t seem to understand is that the school system has to be a culture of value.  Everyone within a school must believe that they are an important part of the system, that it just wouldn’t be the same without them.  I’m not sure how he thinks that standardized curriculum, standardized testing, and more data is going to accomplish this goal.  I would think that anyone who has ever spent time with children would know that to get the best out of a child, they have to feel valued.  Good grief, I would think anyone who had any business sense at all would know that to get the best out of your employees you make them feel as if their unique gift is what keeps the place running.

I’m not sure that any of us will get the policy makers to wake up and pay attention to the way they are breaking down the education system by allowing teachers and students to feel expendable.  So what do we do? We stop believing that we are expendable (even at the subconscious level).  We start letting our colleagues know that they are valuable and appreciated for their unique gifts.  We start showing our students that despite what government policy might be mandating, that they are indeed valued.

If feel like you are nonessential, you probably are.  Change your view-point and show your administration, policy makers, parents, and students that you are not expendable.  You are valuable.  When you start to own that, others will too.

(Kudos to schools that are making this decision daily as a school. A few that come to mind at the moment are Van Meter and George Couros who holds an Identity Day at his school so everyone can reveal their value.)

Intelligence is bigger than a number July 15, 2010

I’m currently reading (and really enjoying) Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element.  If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it as a summer read.  It is full of insight and thought but is an easy summer read.  I want to share some pieces of the book that are standing out to me and share some of my thoughts and responses as I read it.   Blogging helps me internalize what I am reading and continues the conversation beyond my thoughts and the pages in the book.

• We have come to accept that intelligence comes with a number.  In the age of standardized tests, IQ numbers, and the “vanilla education” we have been lured to believe that intelligence is directly tied to a number.  Robinson points out just how wrong this is.  We have boiled education down to discovering how intelligent students are.  Instead of asking how intelligent are you?, a better question would be: how are you intelligent?

• Current education is born out of existentialism, the idea that knowledge is what can be proved through logical reasoning and evidence.  The problem with existentialism was the question of where to begin this process without taking anything for granted that might be logically questionable.   As a result, Descartes came to the conclusion that the only thing that he could take for granted was his own existence.  “I think, therefore I am.”  The Industrial Revolution was a natural outcome of this kind of enlightenment thinking.  Schooling as we know it was also established at this time, in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Schools were built on the idea that intelligence can be quantified.

• Robinson goes on to describe how the IQ test was created by Binet.  Binet didn’t create the test for the way it came to be used, he sought to help those with learning disabilities get the help they needed.  The use of the test changed in 1916 when Lewis Terman, of Stanford, took Binet’s test and developed the Stanford Binet Test.  Terman was part of the eugenics movement that sought to weed out entire sectors of the population, assuming that criminality, feeble-mindedness, and pauperism were genetic and possible to identify through intelligence testing.  The movement succeeded in lobbying for the passage of involuntary sterilization laws in 30 states.  If you were found to have a particularly low IQ, it was decided that you could not have children.  Obviously, these laws were eventually repealed.

• Carl Bringham is the creator of the SAT test we use as a college entrance exam today.  Bringham also claimed to be a part of the eugenics movement.  5 years after creating the test, Bringham disowned it rejecting eugenics along with it.  Bringham may have disowned the SAT, but colleges and universities didn’t follow suit.   The SAT focuses on two intelligences: linguistic and mathematical.  Elitism in education is still alive and well because we refuse to consider intelligence in a broader sense.  We insist on standardizing education and making it a game of have and have-nots.  We insist on defining it in a limited scope using numbers as our guidelines.  Intelligence isn’t as finite as we have been led to believe.

• Howard Gardner talks about our multiple intelligences.  These intelligences include: linguistic, mathematical, musical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intra-personal.  Currently in education we focus on two of these.  All aspects of human intelligence should be nurtured and celebrated.  To down-play intelligence outside of mathematical and linguistic is to do a disservice to the child and the world.  Everyone has different strengths and aptitudes to offer the world.  I wonder how many of these we are missing out on by forcing everyone to focus on developing only two intelligences?  We are missing out on a rich fabric of humanity.  When we work at out own abilities and nurture out individual strengths, the world becomes a more complete place to be.

• Teachers know that no child is a single intellectual score on a linear scale.  There are complexities there.  Yet we continue to use that score to determine the worth of a student, a teacher, a school.  Even children who score the same in standardized testing are vastly different and unique in their make-up.  They have their own passions, dreams, goals, and interests.  It makes me wonder if what separates the haves from the have-nots is not money at all.  Perhaps the biggest separating force is in the narrow definition of intelligence.  Maybe the difference in options has more to do with a series of tests that determines a child’s future than it does with money.

I am 3 chapters into The Element but I find myself stopping often and jotting down notes and digging deeper in an attempt to understand why education is in the place that it is.  What do you think? Am I jumping to conclusions too hastily?

On Creating Robots: Standardized Curriculum April 15, 2010

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/genewolf/147722422/

Standardized, scripted curriculum is one of the biggest detriments to education that I can think of.  It doesn’t allow room for authentic learning experiences, students have a difficult time engaging with it, and it treats our students as if they are robots that have just been spit out of a factory wielding the exact same makeup.  It is ludicrous to think that every student will learn material in the exact same way at the exact same time. Children aren’t expected to walk for the first time because a book says they should, or lose their first tooth on command.  Why then, would we expect students to learn on command because the curriculum mandates it?  Children develop at different rates.  They walk when they are developmentally ready to walk, and they lose a tooth when they are developmentally ready to lose that tooth.  Shouldn’t learning be the same?  Shouldn’t we be taking cues from the children themselves?  Standardized curriculum doesn’t allow for this.  Standardized curriculum doesn’t truly allow for the different ways that children learn.  Oh sure, they may have a small section at the end of each chapter that offers ideas for differentiation, but is it true differentiation when we are still forcing the same learning?

We need flexible curriculum.  I dream of a day when schools don’t have to buy one standard curriculum.  I dream of a school where teachers can meet the individual learning needs of each child in their classroom by creating customized curriculum that meets those needs.  I dream of an iTunes like model where teachers can select chapters or books that meet the unique learning needs in the classroom.  Don’t get me wrong, this is not free-for-all education where anything goes.  It is a customizable education, it lets teachers do their jobs to the fullest, calling on their expertise of learning and children.  The need for standards and benchmarks are still there, the difference is that children are seen, not as robots to be plopped out of a factory, but as the individuals that they are.

Standardized curriculum lends itself to the current model of education that we have.  The straight rows of desks, the standardized testing, the grade levels and grades.  In order for a customized curriculum model to truly work, we need to rethink the way that education is done.  My dreaming isn’t finished.

A Vanilla Education March 24, 2010

The focus of schools today really isn’t learning. The focus is standardizing the student population.  What we are left with is an educational system that is vanilla.  Don’t get me wrong, vanilla has its place in the world.  Vanilla makes an excellent base, you can add almost anything to it and it is only enhanced.  But we aren’t really enhancing it with anything are we?  We are stopping at vanilla.  We are standardizing learning until each of our students is popped out the other end looking exactly the same.  This isn’t really what this global, connected society calls for, is it?  What it calls for is innovation and creativity, anything but vanilla.  Yet in our schools, we strip it all away and pass students through making sure that they reach certain standards and pass certain tests.  Where is the individualization, the flavor?

It seems to me, that in this world where everything else can be individualized, education should be individualized as well.  We have managed to customize our cars, our computers, our happy meals, how is it that we haven’t figured out that education needs customization as well?  A few weeks ago while we were driving, I asked my husband if he had a favorite teacher when he was in school.  He gave it some honest thought and couldn’t come up with even one name.  How sad.  He wasn’t a traditional learner.  Sitting and being lectured to and taking tests must have been torture for him.  He is a graphic artist.  He has always been naturally creative, innovative, and artistic.  He loves to know how things work, how they are put together. He sits and reads blogs and tinkers in our garage for hours.  He taught himself how to use Photoshop, he is a learner.  Not one teacher stands out in his mind as a favorite, someone he really clicked with and enjoyed learning from.  I find it hard to believe that there isn’t a teacher out there somewhere who could have been his favorite.  When we were in school, the connections that could be made today weren’t possible.  What if we started customizing education?  What if we connected learners with teachers around the world who really understood them as learners?  What if every teacher was a favorite teacher? With the collaboration tools today, this doesn’t seem a farfetched dream to me. If we had teachers who understood, recognized, and drew out the passions of students, maybe learning wouldn’t be so vanilla.

Standardizing is not the answer in education.  We don’t need a group of people who can do exactly the same thing, the same way.  We need a society that has many talents.  I am afraid that right now we are losing the great talent to standards.  Students don’t feel that they measure up, so they give up and drop out.  It isn’t that they aren’t brilliant and don’t measure up somewhere, they just don’t fit in the standardized school box.  These kids are still getting “Left Behind”.

With the tools we have available to us today, how could we begin to offer customized learning?