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Universal truths of the teacher-student relationship

Universal Truths of the Teacher Student Relationship

Teachers are guides along the path of life

Parents are the child’s first teacher. The vast majority of parents love their children, but they often don’t know specifically how to be a teacher. Thus, the child learns from imitation of the parent’s behaviors and responses to the world (social cognitive theory). Forgive the parents, they are doing the best they can.

Each child is a gift from God with the potential to change the world or the world of those around them, either for good or bad. As a teacher, you will tip the balance of their influence one way or the other.

Children want to be the hero of their own life story. You are the wise sage they meet along the way, or you are the antagonist they must overcome, you decide.

All children are learning all the time socially, culturally, physically, cognitively, emotionally. What is learned depends on the interaction of the child, the environment and the guide. For example, learning disabled is a term teachers often apply when children are not cognitively learning what the teacher wants them to learn when we want them to learn it-such as a math problem or a spelling word. However, during those times, the child is actually learning emotionally that you feel they are defective, they are learning socially that they are not the same as others and they are somehow flawed, they are learning culturally that their skills are not valued. Be careful, you are teaching all the time and they are learning all the time. Teaching is not a 9 to 5 job.

The child is in charge of what they learn, when, why and how they learn it. If you do not have a relationship with the child, they will choose not to learn from you. It is always their choice.

Successful teaching and guiding creates students who are able to meet their needs in a positive collaborative compassionate way in all domains of their lives- physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. Most people do not realize until they are much older, that the goal is to be healthy, happy, connected, compassionate humans who can set and attain their own goals. Such unawareness often creates stress that creates disease or dis-ease. Thus, as a teacher and a guide, it is up to us to guide our students to their personal gifts that will help them to reach their fullest potential as self-actualized humans. How do you see your role as a teacher or a guide? What are some universal truths about teaching that I may have left out?

The King, Boatman and Shepherd- Q & A

If you have not already, please visit my post on the King the Boatman and the Shepherd teaching styles posted here earlier- just scroll through the past posts.

Here are some questions I have received from recent conferences I have attended. Hope they help.

Would it be appropriate to conduct a teaching style test when hiring a new teacher.

Absolutely, it would be appropriate. We often do this in interviews when we ask “what if” questions. For example, what if a student comes to you and says they do not want to participate in class today because school is dumb. What might you say to that student? A King (teacher centered) style would respond with something like- “well you can just sit there, but don’t disturb the others and you will get a zero for today’s work.” A Boatman (team centered) style would respond with something like “It sounds like you are not feeling a part of the team, or that you are not invested in this project, can you help me understand why you might be feeling that way so we can share that information with the team and get you on board?” A Shepherd (student centered) style would respond with “what would you rather do and how might I help you?” It is important that any questions that you might use to determine a teachers style would fit the particular needs of your school. There are some standardized questionnaires out there that try to get at teacher style, but I have found that they are developed mostly for screening teachers for traditional school settings. I am happy to share those if you are interested. I have found that most of those do not address questions that would distinguish between a boatman and a shepherd teacher. I would be happy to sit down with you and your team and develop some questions that would be most appropriate for your needs.

Your second question was that you would like recommendations about teaching styles and non verbal communication. I have not found one good text. I have gathered information from many different sources- education, business, psychology, communication etc. and pulled it together into one source for when I present workshops on student communication. I have developed several workshops that will move teachers from one style to another in regard to how they read and respond to student’s verbal and non verbal communications. I would be happy to share that information with you via Skype or Google groups if that works best for you. Because there is such a need, I am currently writing my book on the King, Boatman and Shepherd styles which will be full of great ideas for moving teachers from one style to another.

What are the best ways to change your teaching style to fit the student and the situation?

Well the first step is to be aware of your current teaching style. Awareness depends on knowing that there are different teaching styles that create different types of student teacher relationships. So first, you need to be reflective on 1. How you define the role of the teacher (King-teacher centric, Boatman-team centered, Shepherd-student centered), and 2. Why you define your role in the way that you do. For example how much of your relationship to the role of teacher is attached to political expectations (administrative expectations and culture of the school, how you were taught to teach) and how much of your relationship to the role is related to your personality and your need for control in the relationship.

The way to change your teaching style to fit the student and the situation is directly related to the above. First you need to understand your current style, second you need to have a clear understanding of the expectations for teachers in your setting- (the political-local, state and federal-expectations, administrative, parent and student expectations), and finally, you need to have completed a thorough reflection of your strengths and weaknesses regarding how you relate to your students. The questions I suggest you ask yourself in reflection of your interactions with your students might be for example

How is what I am asking the student to do helping that student to self-direct their or empower them to take charge of their learning? Empowering happens by asking the student to reflect on, evaluate and direct their own learning-

A king might say- this was my goal (the assignment) and here is how you did on it. (no student empowerment)

A boatman might say- Did we meet our goal and if not what can we do about that? (Student as member of a team empowerment)

A shepherd might say- What was your goal? Did you meet your goal? What might have been a barrier? What might you do to fix that? Etc. (individual student empowerment)

In behavior situations- are you grasping for power or are you teaching the student to self manage/control their own behavior?

A king might say- There will be no cussing in my classroom- you must go to the principals office!

A boatman might say- We all agreed to speak to each other respectfully, is there another way you can make your needs known to the group without cussing, if not, take a time out until you can. Join us when you are ready.

A shepherd might say- I hear what you are saying and I can see you are upset. Can you tell me what you need so that I can help you get that need met in an appropriate way?

What other examples can you think of that can be responded to in different ways depending on the teacher's style?

The Hero's Journey

I am not sure where I got this. I may have borrowed the headings and filled in the gaps on my own, if not, I give credit to whoever. Anyway, make it your own. Make it fit for you. Share it with your friends. I am on my own hero’s journey, as are you. This framework helped me to think about the journey in a way that was relevant to my experience. Read through this. Think about it when you are feeling conflicted about the choices you are making in life and find your own inner strength. You ARE the hero of your own life story!

The Hero’s Journey

A. Departure

1. The Call to Adventure The call to adventure is the point in a person's life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.

2. Refusal of the Call Often when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.

3. Supernatural Aid Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known.

4. The Crossing of the First Threshold This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.

5. The Belly of the Whale The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person's lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. The separation has been made, or is being made, or being fully recognized between the old world and old self and the potential for a new world/self. The experiences that will shape the new world and self will begin shortly, or may be beginning with this experience which is often symbolized by something dark, unknown and frightening. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself.

B. Inititation

1. The Road of Trials The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.

2. The Meeting with the Goddess The meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the "hieros gamos", or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.

3. Woman as the Temptress At one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. For Campbell, however, this step is about the revulsion that the usually male hero may feel about his own fleshy/earthy nature, and the subsequent attachment or projection of that revulsion to women. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.

4. Atonement with the Father In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power. For the transformation to take place, the person as he or she has been must be "killed" so that the new self can come into being. Sometime this killing is literal, and the earthly journey for that character is either over or moves into a different realm.

5. Apotheosis To apotheosize is to deify. When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. This is a god-like state; the person is in heaven and beyond all strife. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.

6. The Ultimate Boon The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.

C. Return

1. Refusal of the Return So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?

2. The Magic Flight Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.

3. Rescue from Without Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn't realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.

4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.

5. Master of the Two Worlds In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.

6. Freedom to Live Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

So what do we as educators need to know and be able to do, in order to help our students be hero's of their own life's journey?

Class schedule

This is how individualized education needs to look!

Leap of Faith

I began my career a rabid idealist and I continue to be idealistic, but have realized that I have to approach my career a different way. I recently resigned my position as a tenured professor because I was working myself to death trying to change the beast while lodged securely in its belly. I will miss my students a great deal! They all want to be teachers. Their enthusiasm and passion continues to inspire me and I hope they will all be following the blog and blogging and tweeting and letting their voices be heard. They are passionate and ready to change the world- go for it!

A little history of my path. Throughout my career I have had the pleasure of being able to work with some of the hardest and most wonderful children in k-12, many who were labeled with disabilities, many who were labeled as trouble makers and lost causes, most who were given up on by the system. Those children taught me the best lessons of teaching. The biggest lesson being that it was not a failure of the student that brought these students to me, but a failure of the system. I felt I had a obligation to those students to go further in my education so that I could change the system and protect other wonderful humans from feeling the pain that comes with the crush of trying to fit a round perfect child into a hard edged square we call "traditional education". The system as it is currently operating and has been operating for over 100 years is broken, and to save itself, it points the blame at the children rather than shining the light inside itself. So now, we have a national crisis, that we share with the other industrialized countries who are competing using standardized test scores, to show who has the best system. The problem is we are literally killing the children as a result. The United States, Korea, China, even Finland, all have rising suicide rates for school aged children. In the US, we are drugging our children at younger and younger ages to numb them from the inevitable pain they will experience when we disempower them by rewiring them away from the natural developmental process of learning their bodies and minds are made for and require them to complete tasks in time cycles that are foreign to their developmental needs. Thus, rather than learning they are capable, creative, contributing individuals and that their time here is important to the ebb and flow of life on this planet, we teach them the opposite. We teach them their worth will be measured against politically contrived standards of learning in a system that is built on one learning theory, behaviorism a system of rewards and punishment, that even Skinner said could change behavior but learning was much deeper and needed a different approach to develop. The students will learn that the organic, natural, biological and social way they learn along with the talents and questions they have are not on the test and therefore, not worthy of their time for the next twelve years of their lives. They will come out compliant and deflated, if they choose to live that long.

Thus, I gave my final lecture to my students today.

1. Children are natural learning machines. They come out of the womb learning. They open their eyes and they start soaking it all in. We know this from the research on the brain, the body, and from observing children learn. First the child starts learning physically, through their senses, physically sensorily exploring their environment and gathering information. Then their emotional learning begins, they learn love, feel empathy, joy, happiness, sadness, frustration. They learn to organize the information socially, as they watch how others deal with those emotions and find what works for them. They start to question the world around them and the people in it. They start organizing the information they gather and test it for validity and relevance in their lives. They are doing this all the time, it is as natural as breathing. So look at what you are doing. You are teaching all the time. The way you organize your environment either opens up questioning and learning or it shuts it down.

2. Trust the children. Even the kid who is coming in and testing you and wreaking havoc is giving you a message. The message is that the information they are gathering from this environment is dis-congruent with what they know about themselves and their path. Help them learn to critically examine their assumptions and to question their interactions with the environment. Tickle out their goals and ask them how you might be able to help them meet those goals. Help them learn to navigate the environment and be self determined in their approach to life.

3. Provide your students opportunities for learning through all of their senses all at once. Help them have the visceral experience of learning. They are learning all of the time. Provide opportunities for them to move, feel, think, smell, love, imagine. Don't get in their way. Follow them.

4.Wait for the questions. Create an environment that encourages questions. When kids start asking questions, that is when they are powering up to learn. You want to encourage powering up. Teach them to question and power up. Model questioning.

5. Help your students understand how they learn and what they are learning- physically, socially, emotionally, and cognitively. Help them understand how everything they are learning is connected. Cognitively, show your students how to label and store the information they are gathering by examining similarities, differences, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating the information. Help your students sort their emotions by helping them understand that laughing when someone is hurt is not funny, that laughter is associated with joy and that smiles are contagious. Teach your students to build positive social networks that will help them to meet their life goals. Show them how to find appropriate role models, how to find experts in their field of interest, how to be a role model for others.

6. Help your students understand their relationship to their inner selves. Help them understand who they are and that they are perfect the way they are. They are perfect, and even if you don't think so, you can't redo them. As a teacher, you serve them. We can either support our students in understanding how they connect to this world they live in, how with their special talents they can contribute the world in the short amount of time they are here. We should teach our students how to negotiate, collaborate, engage with the world. As a teacher, we need to acknowledge the world would be different without each and every one of our students and it is an honor to know them while we are here together. Our students need to know they are enough the way they are. It is our job to teach them embrace themselves. We are born with what we need for the time we live in and the environment we live in. Never label a student a "disabled" learner or even the more politically correct, learner with disabilites, or learning disabled. I would never label anyone anything except amazing or wonderful.

7. Teach your students how to communicate- with each other, with adults, with strangers, with people they like and people they don't like. Teach them how to get their voices heard in productive ways. Teach them about the power of words and body language. Teach your students the difference between violence and non violence. Those are the tools they will need to make a difference in the world they live in and affect change for the future.

8. Help your students understand their relationship with all living things. Life is the same for all living things- no matter what living thing you are, you are conceived you grow you age, you store information, give off energy, communicate with the world in your own way and then you die. It is the same for all living things. This is especially important for you as teachers to make this clear to your students, especially in the age of technology. The basic cycle of life is the same for all living things. Help your students understand their relationship with the living world. That we can not just ignore the complex ecosystem we live in and spend all of our time in cyberspace, or that ecosystem will be at risk of dying. That the decisions our students make, will determine whether the world they live in and the lives of the other living things in it will continue or will die.

9. Help your students be the stewards of their own life. Help them learn how to be happy, healthy, joyous rather than worried, stressed and anxious. Help them make healthy choices and understand why being a good steward of their bodies will help them to be good stewards of all life around them. If your students are worried and anxious, give them tools they can use to help manage the those feelings. Help kids be the hero of their own life story. Help them learn to organize their environment so that it will be useful to them. You teach them to put away their books so they can find them again, not to please you.

Help them be hero's of their own life stories. Help them tap into their unique talents and skills. They will need those skills to influence the world around them.

10. As a teacher, you must always question, is this about me or is it about the child. It is about the child, always.

Teacher Styles

Here are the slides from my NAEA presentation in Atlanta, March 13, 2014.

Educational Engineers: A new breed

Educational Engineering

What is it and why do I care?

The number of non-profit/for profit organizations, private industry corporations and public and private schools who are looking at building distance delivered educational programs is growing exponentially. Educational Engineers help folks look at their organizational landscape, from the foundation to the blueprint to building the spaces and finally opening the doors to a new 21st Century Learning Environment.

Engineers adapt environments to meet the needs of the users. They build roads and bridges, living spaces, create clean water, send people to the moon. Educational Engineers adapt learning environments to meet the needs of the users. They create spaces for sharing information across space and time. They make spaces for your organization to train everyone individually, no matter where they are located. They incorporate the latest technologies to engage and motivate employees to actively participate in their learning. Educational Engineers make learning spaces, fun, relevant, accessible, and effective.

Why Educational Engineers? Putting together a distance delivered program requires skills most commonly associated with Engineering. Consider the following:

Building a new learning environment for your training program is a project. The process requires a project management plan with key stakeholders. The instructional design team cannot make it happen all alone, although they are key in the process. Equally key players are members of the administration who set your timelines, provide the funding, and assess your success. The technology support personnel will help trouble shoot and get you through firewalls and the end users must be able to access your environment with their current skills, equipment and connections. (Systems Engineer)

Most trainers, instructors, and educators have taken a distance delivered course, but few, less than 10%, report ever designing, creating or teaching a course online. You must have a clear understanding of the professional development needs of your trainers and bring them up to speed with all the tools they have available to them. (Design Engineer)

For a distance delivered program to work, you must have a very clear understanding of the needs and skill levels of the users. Thus, the environment must be intuitive, safe, and somewhat familiar. (Civil Engineer)

Your learning goals will guide your blueprint and thus inform your choice of tools and learning platforms. Once you have your goal well defined, you will know whether you need to build an environment that is synchronous (face to face, real time, in or out of virtual space), asynchronous (independent study in virtual space, accessible to the student 24/7) or blended (a combination of synchronous and asynchronous spaces). (Structural Engineer)

Finally, assessment of the success of the educational environment for meeting the learning needs of your employees is critical. Were the employees engaged, did they persist, and what did they learn? Also you want to know how the training has affected the over all return on investment for your organization. (Systems Engineer)

Educational Engineers are critical to educational transformation. Typically, we depend on our trainers to make decisions that are only a small part of the overall picture. Kind of like a carpenter making decisions on how big the house should be and where the kitchen needs to go. Education is under a transformation given all the new options for learning environments that have opened up with advancements in technology. The transformation requires that we find engineers who are able to build learning environments to meet the needs in today’s global environments.

#Educational Engineering #educational engineers #instructional design #systems change #distance education #online education

Relationships

I just got back from a Leadership and Advocacy Institute. We were a group of teachers and administrators who were learning about how to advocate for educational change in our State. We went through several exercises and field trips designed to help us gain a better understanding of ourselves and our relationship to political system and educational laws governing our schools.

Things I learned:

Most teachers do not feel they have a voice in real change for schools.

Most legislators need more information from administrators, teachers and parents to make informed decisions about our schools.

We identified the number one need for our students is a sense of relationship with another adult, most likely a teacher- but were not sure how to legislate such a thing.

More later...

#Teacher student relationships

"If learning is a journey, why do we have to sit here all day?"

Student

What Game Developers Know

Last night I was watching the latest news about E3 on G4 (the TV channel for gamers). E3, for those who are unaware, is a giant trade show for all things video game related! I have actually been to E3 in person and it is amazing. E3 and ComicCon are the number one destinations for any Geek. If you are a teacher, you should put it on your list of must see events as well. The game developers know a lot about creating learning environments that we as educators need to know. Game developers already know about educational engineering. There are several things we can learn from their experience.

First, the virtual environments rolled out this year were unbelieveably realistic. The avatars looked and behaved like real people, the cities and objects were amazing in their detail. The environment responded to the player in the same way real life does. For example, in one game, the new Hitman, if you chose to kill someone in on a crowded street or plaza, the "people" who see you do it will panic and the panic will spread slowly and realistically throughout the crowd, changing your options as a player. Realism is critical to game play. It connects to the player's emotional center which is critical for learning on several levels. Emotion is critical to motivation, engagement and memory. Realism makes the story line more believable, increases emotional attachment to the outcome makes the experience relevant. Relevance is critical to building specific skills that are needed to survive in the environment.

The second thing that struck me was in the directors and producers descriptions of these new games. As they were describing the thought and strategy that went into creating the new games, the common variable was user input and feedback. All of of the razzle dazzle, challenge, choice of action, complexity of the weapons, physics, storyline, environment and game play experience was driven by the folks who would be spending time in the environment. While that may sound intuitive, apparently it is not for educators. It amazes me that educators have a culture of not asking our users how they would like the environment constructed and what they would like to be able to accomplish in the environment. I don't mean that we have to have Lucas Arts teams of 500 programers to build elaborate virtual environments to teach each subject- but that is coming.

What I mean is that we need to ask ourselves, what can we do now to start to include the learners voice in the creation of the educational environment we are asking them to spend 8 hours a day in. I really believe if we ask those questions and start listening to the students, education will be transformed.

Some assumptions that the game developers have about their audience that teachers do not:

1. If the environment is challenging, the player will want to stay there and persist. Challenging does not equal unsafe. I am rewarded for taking risks because I am not punished if I fail. A test is a skill check, not a challenge.

2. If the environment is relevant and realistic, the player will do what they need to do to meet the challenge.

3. If the player is active, they are engaged. Therefore, the environment is created to keep them active, often by creating a story and making the player the hero of the story.

4. If the player can engage with other players, they will be more engaged and persistant in the environment. Collaboration is critical for finding necessary information to succeed.

5. If the player feels manipulated by the environment, they are bored and disengaged. An example of being manipulated by the environment is lack of choices, limited obvious choices, irrelevant choices.

6. The player knows failure is a learning experience. Once the experience is learned it is critical that you use that experience to be successful the next time you try the challenge. Again, it is safe to take those risks.

The player knows what they need/want to see in the environment. Listen to them! Give them a challenge, a realistic, relevant environment and make them the hero of their own destiny. Then they can learn anything!

Share how you might engineer your environment to be a bit more engaging!

#Learning environments #video games and learning environments #educational engineers #student voices

A Path Not Taken?

Last night I had a very interesting visit with one of my daughter's friends. He is a young man of incredible talent. He is a world class photographer (but he doesn't know it yet) and he is an equestrian endurance racer. He is starting his junior year in high school. He has a 3.6 gpa, made a 28 on the ACT and is thinking about his future. I asked him what he wanted to do after high school. He suggested he might go to a local community college or maybe get his EMT certification so he could get a "job" that paid good money. All very realistic and traditionally appropriate goals, no problem. Until, I started peeling the onion. "So", I asked, "What is your passion?" Photography and riding bubbled right out. "I guess I am pretty good at riding," he adds, "I have been approached to join the US Olympic Team for endurance riding." I had no idea! "So what are you thinking about that?" Long story short, he wasn't sure. He is struggling with either completing a formal education through college and "finishing his education" or walking through this door that his talents and his passion have opened for him. I asked him how he felt about school. Hates it. Found it easy and not in the least challenging. He can't stand the thought of completing another assignment. He is struggling because the national education agenda is to get as many people as possible to "finish their education". In fact, that is how we are measuring the success and strength of our workforce. However, we have a very limited and constraining view of "education."

What might he accomplish if he did follow his dream? Think of Michael Phelps, and other Olympians who have encouraged young Americans to set and meet goals that may have seemed out of reach before.

As an educator, what is troubling to me is that we are not teaching or preparing students to follow their own path in life. The reason is in part because of "educational accountability." In fact, this boy would go into the drop out count for the AYP statistics for our school district and negatively affect State statistics if he were to join the Olympic team before he graduates. Thus the schools are compelled to do everything they can do to keep him on the traditional path, even though that might not be what is right for him.

Now it does not have to be that way. We, educators, have to stop thinking about schooling as being inside a building for a set amount of time, studying a particular curriculum. We need to be thinking about schooling in a broader sense, such as meeting life goals, becoming better "humans", contributing to a goal that is larger than ourselves, for example. Should this boy decide to take the door that is open before him, he will inevitably individualize his studies by learning of and telling stories of the countries he travels while serving the US as a member of the Olympic team. He will have access to open classes from MIT, Stanford, Oxford and other schools to check in and find information on topics that interest him when he needs the information. Traditional schools are very threatened by the fact that what they are doing, which is what they were built to do and have been doing for over 100 years, is not working for a large majority of students.

Traditional schools are the wrong learning environment for this generation- completely wrong, but apparently it is the only learning environment we are teaching educators to build. A Spence report on high school dropouts published several years ago, showed that the majority (80%) of high school dropouts were passing at the time they left. Success in high school is not hard, it is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because it does not teach students how to learn in a very complex global world with tools and spaces the students currently do not (due to bans and firewalls) encounter in school. We cannot "reform" education, until we can teach educators to use different learning environments. We cannot learn to use different learning environments when we are still pouring tax money in to building brick and mortar schools for traditional educational practices. We cannot expect teachers to change if we continue to train them to teach in traditional schools with traditional tools.

There is only one College of Education in the US that I currently know of, that provides their education majors the opportunity to complete an internship with state certified online teachers who are currently teaching at the K-12 level in their state. Again, we have to move teachers from being "teachers- one who instructs, one whose occupation is to instruct" Merriam Webster dictionary, to "educational engineers-one who works with the student to design and create relevant learning environments and allows the students to learn within that environment, offering guidance and remodel when necessary to remove barriers" Liz Simpson

#educational reform #technology in education #individualized education #educational engineers

Where have all the super heros gone?

I went to the hardware store yesterday. Our hardware store is a small town mom and pop store. A little five year old boy was running around with make shift cape tied around his neck. He walked up and was looking at me. I looked down and asked "Are you a super hero?" He said, "No, I am just a little boy with my blanket tied around my neck."

I was shocked, and disappointed. Where are all the super heroes? When my daughter was little, she would come out in her petticoat, Sunday shoes, my slip on her head and declare to any and all- " I am the queen of Everything!" We all believed her! No one in the house, or town for that matter, failed to do her bidding. Even the dog got out of her way lest she cast a spell and change him into a cat, which she occasionally threatened to do. My son was always either Batman or the Green Power Ranger. We called him BatBoy for short, or Wildman. He would wear his cape everywhere. No one knew his true identity. He would run at full speed and look back to be sure his cape was "flying" in the wind. Always on the lookout for bad guys and people who needed saving.

Back at the store, the little boy asked me, "What is your name?" I started to say, "Zelda, mother of the Queen of Everything and BatBoy!" but I stopped and asked "What is your name?" He said "John David Pederson Jones", so I said my name was Liz. He looked at me and turned and trotted down the tool aisle. I turned and walked in to a bleak overcast Spring afternoon, and wondered where all of the super heroes have gone.

This is a nice little infographic on how video games interact with the brain to affect learning.

Leveling the Playing Field

I am teaching a university senior level honor's class examining video games as learning environments. We are looking at all sorts of video games from commercial to serious games. We have talked about game genres, and learning theories, video game violence and addiction. This first three weeks we have been trying to wrap our arms around how video games are viewed by the industry, the consumer, parents and teachers. At the end of what we set up as "level" one of our class, the students were to write a reflective paper on what they learned and how the use of games and game elements might be able to reform traditional education. I found the following post by one of my students who is not a gamer- one of four- in the class particularly interesting.

"No one is a native to video games; no one was born in the virtual world. When a gamer begins the gaming experience, he/she gets to determine which level they want to start the game in, what to look like, and what will be their basic mission. Children do not start school as an equal, the way that one starts a game on the same level as all the other new comers. In schools social inequalities are developed quickly. It is not a safe, collaborative environment but rather one in which everyone just wants to get through the struggle as quickly and easily as possible and they do not have time to check that their actions are in the best interested of those around them.

Participation in a game is voluntary. We are all in a game together because we want to be, players are more likely to be amicable towards others. You want them to engage in the play and share the happiness. These social interactions make the game more enjoyable for everyone involved. You are all working toward a common goal and depending on how you chose to play the game; the other players are your allies and your resources. Even in game modes where you are playing against your companion, you are grateful that your companion has agreed to play with you because without that involvement, the game wouldn’t take place. In single player modes the virtual avatars have meaning and a place within the game, they can help you or hurt you and it is up to you to find out which. You don’t just go around killing all of the avatars indiscriminately because getting to know your social environment, and your role within it, is important to your success.

In a game, if you don’t play nice, you don’t get to play with the others. In school, if you don’t play nice and it goes unseen by the teacher, you have harmed a fellow student and yet essentially your life progresses as usual. In theory, this kind of behavior should have social repercussions if not disciplinary ones but all too often the bullies are the “popular kids.” This concept of the popular kids is not found in video games because everyone has the opportunity to be the leader. Gamers have the power to shape shift and adapt new roles according to the situation. There is no bulling in video games. Even in violent video games everyone acts according to their mission, not out of spite for their fellow player.

This cooperative and collaborative social environment within video games is what makes video games a useful tool within schools. If students could view school more like a game in which the social environment does not include acting spitefully toward those around you, school would be a much better environment for the students. In order to this transformation however, school has to be a place where students want to be, it has to feel more voluntary than controlled. When students are forced to sit and be lectured to so that they can reach certain mandatory standards, behavioral problems arise and often this has repercussions within peer groups. Only when schools adapt a system in which students can be engaged and creative, and have a say in what happens around them, will students return the favor by behaving more amicably toward their peers. "

This paper makes the point, and I agree, that the game of school, the way it is traditionally played, is inherently violent. It does not encourage collaboration over relevant issues, cooperation is only rewarded under the guise of behavior management, such as if you cooperate with the teacher, she will not need to manage your behavior. The students have no choice over if they want play or not, thus some play "School Underground: Need for freedom." Creativity is messy and takes time. It is very hard to measure, thus it is discouraged. We can do better at building learning environments. We have to not focus on the tools, we have to first determine what we would like the culture of the learning environment to look like, then pick the tools to help us support that culture. As long as we keep the traditional learning environments, we will have bullies in the form of both teachers and students.

#video games #learning environments #collaboration #cooperation

We have to change the game of school. Jim Gee does a great job outlining 10 things that educators need to learn from video game designers. In number 4 of his list he clearly states that we have to redefine teachers as, in my words, educational engineers. Gee states:

"REDEFINE TEACHERS AS LEARNING DESIGNERS. Game designers create well-designed experiences and social interactions. Teachers are designers of learning, and can create experiences tailored to suit their outcome. If we “re-professionalize” teachers as designers, they can create their own scripts for what they want students to learn. This type of learning is based on good teaching, not curriculum per se."

See my earlier blog on Educational Engineers.

The Path

You are an intersection the student’s path through life. Your brief encounter with the student’s will greatly influence how the student’s life plays out. How you create the learning environment will provide the tools to prepare the child to create and participate in their own life story.

· You influence whether the students see themselves as strong and capable or weak and defective.

· You influence whether the students see themselves as part of a group or as an outcast.

· You give the students a voice, or you silence them.

· You will have one brief encounter with each student, be it a semester or a year.

Each student will see you as “my teacher.” They see only you; they believe you can see only them. Your understanding of your student’s path and your relationship to that path, deeply influences how you construct the learning environment.

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