Some Thoughts on John Dewey

One of the greatest American Philosophers (and educators) was John Dewey.  Although he died over 60 years ago, his thoughts are still relevant to education today.  I have been reading a few of his books lately and a passage from one of those books made a lot of sense to me.   The following passage is from Moral Principals in Education written in 1909:

“To an extent characteristic of no other institution, save that of the state itself, the school has power to modify the social order. And under our political system, it is the right of each individual to have a voice in the making of social policies as, indeed, he has a vote in the determination of political affairs. If this be true, education is primarily a public business, and only secondarily a specialized vocation. The layman, then, will always have his right to some utterance on the operation of the public schools.”

Why is this passage important to me?  First, I truly believe that public education is the most important task of government and that teaching is the most important career one can choose.  This is a bedrock belief of mine.  With that belief there grows a responsibility to act upon that belief.  I approach my job as an educator and my duty as a commissioned officer of the State with zeal to do good for kids and the community.  Is it frustrating at times when people believe that teaching and education is “easy” and that educators do not live in the “real world”…you bet.   I believe there is nothing more “real” then working with students.  But this brings me to my second reason this passage is important.  Education is a public business.  Our public schools are educating individual students.  These students come from their homes and families for six to seven hours a day and it is our responsibility to help them lead a self- directed life.  I think it is obvious that the public should be very interested in what we do.  First of all, parents should be interested in what is happening to their children in school and they should have a forum to express their opinions about the schools.  Secondly, even if a citizen does not have a child in the system, they should be interested about what education is looking like.  After all, today’s students are tomorrow’s community leaders.

Dewey goes on to say that the public should not believe that they have the technical knowledge or know-how to teach students.  Dewey states,

“Upon questions that concern all the manifold details by which children are to be converted into desirable types of men and women, the expert schoolmaster should be authoritative, at least to a degree commensurate with his superior knowledge of this very complex problem.”

Our system of public education has school boards that oversee the curriculum, instruction and management policies of the district.  The school board hires education leaders (like myself) to carry out the policies and to help design and implement a vision for the school district.  This is simple and effective.  I think the results in Penn-Trafford through the years make the point that this system works.  Previous school boards and previous superintendents have worked together well to provide an outstanding education for our community.  I hope to carry on that tradition.  I hope this blog post did not bore you too much!

Two "Nifty" Web Sites

I want to share two web sites that I use and have found to be very informative.  The first is Findings.com.  Findings was started by the author Steven B. Johnson and it is his effort to recreate the intellectual hotbed of 18^th Century coffeehouses.  In the 18^th Century coffee houses served as a meeting place for many famous scientists and philosophers (Benjamin Franklin participated in one during his years in England).  The discussions across disciplines and occupations incubated many ideas and led to significant scientific and social breakthroughs.  Findings attempts to recreate this scene by allowing users to share interesting things they are reading on the web or from their e-readers (Kindles, for example).  The set up reminds me of Twitter except that you are not limited by the amount of information that you can post at once. I have purchased books, and discovered different ways of looking at topics based on my browsing of the web site.  Findings is an example of how the internet can help spark ideas.  Look me up; my “Findings name” is Tom Butler.

The second web site is stumledupon.  This service asks you for your interests and then randomly chooses web sites for you to look at based on your interests.  I currently have about 10 interests.  You can “stumble” by limiting your search to one of your interests, or get information randomly from all of your interests.  I have become fascinated with the different web sites that I have come across because of this service.  I highly recommend it.  Both of these web 2.0 tools will help you learn more about the world we live in.

Working Together

What a great morning!  To be more specific, I just participated in a great meeting (yes, you can have great meetings!) with a great group of educators.  A few weeks ago I was at a meeting with the President and Vice-President of the Teachers Association.  The discussion turned to teacher evaluation.  I asked them what they thought about convening a group of teachers to discuss teacher evaluation.  They thought it was a good idea.  I then asked them to give me names of teachers that would be willing to participate.  They did, and today was our first meeting.  There has been a lot of talk across the State and Nation lately about teacher evaluation.  It seems that everyone has an opinion about the how, what and when of teacher evaluation.  As I listen to all of the differing opinions, I am struck by one thing that is often missing…what do teachers think?  The meeting this morning was a response to that missing link.

First of all, some background about the meeting and why it was convened.  Currently all teacher are evaluated every year.  There are some misconceptions out in the public that teachers are not evaluated; rest assured they are evaluated.   The next thing to keep in mind is that the Pennsylvania Department of Education is creating a form that they want all school districts in the State to use to evaluate teachers.  I am sure the form the State is creating is outstanding, but I want our evaluation of teachers to reflect Penn-Trafford’s interests, values and goals.  I also want the evaluation to be meaningful.  I have contacted PDE and there is a process in place (and I have used it before in other school districts) where a school district can get approval of a local evaluation tool.  Thus, our goal is to create our own teacher evaluation within the next few months.

As we approach the project there are two non-negotiable items that the State is requiring.

1.     The model must be based on the work of Charlotte Danielson.  I am very familiar with her work and I believe her framework for teacher evaluation is meaningful and useful for teachers and administrators

2.     There must be some way that student and school test scores are reflected in the evaluation tool. 

Beyond these requirements, the teachers in this group want the evaluation to center on great instruction, student learning and professionalism.  After all, teachers are professionals and they want an evaluation tool that reflects their professionalism.

For the activity today, the teachers read the book Enhancing Professional Practice: A framework for teaching by Charlotte Danielson.  Since there were almost 20 teachers and administrators involved in the process, we broke into smaller groups with each smaller group reviewing a different part of the book and then teaching that part of the book to the entire group. After discussing the book the group then reviewed two teacher evaluation models from other school districts that base their evaluation on the Danielson model.  Again, the smaller groups shared with the larger group the “Big Ideas” from each evaluation tool. 

The group worked hard and the conversations that were started focused on how to make a great evaluation tool that will support teacher development and lead to great student learning.  I just want to say how proud I am of this group. They worked hard and exhibited professionalism. For example, as we were preparing the agenda for the next meeting I shared with them that I was running into a roadblock about how to proceed.  I should not have worried.  I told the group that I was struggling with the “next steps” and everyone contributed ideas for our next meeting.  The result is that we will meet in one month and we will Skype in teachers from a school district that is using the Danielson model.  That will give the teachers and administrators on the evaluation team a chance to ask questions of people using a similar evaluation tool.  We also decided that a homework assignment involving a detailed overview of the two plans is in order.   I will keep you posted on the progress of the teacher evaluation team.  I know they will develop an outstanding tool that will be meaningful and reflect what is important about schools…student learning.

Let's Not Be Afraid Of The Work We are Meant To Do

I have returned to this video many times throughout the last few years and I am always inspired by it. Author Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the creative process and how society views those people involved in a creative career.  This is simply fascinating.  Take the time to watch the video.  In particular, her discussion about how the Greeks and Romans viewed “genius” is fascinating.  Specifically her story of poet Ruth Stone is fascinating.  Please take the 20 minutes necessary to watch the video…I believe you will like it.

Conversations

“I have spoken of a thousand points of light,….. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding.”  George H.W. Bush

When President Bush included this phrase in his inaugural address in 2009 he was hoping to convey a sense of shared service for the betterment of society.  Educational institutions and public education in particular are perfectly suited to reach the worthy goal set forth by President Bush.   I want to discuss the thousand points of light that are being lit in the Penn-Trafford School District.  At the classroom level Penn-Trafford has started to see the glimmers of light that will create an innovative educational experience for our students.  We have teachers starting to individualize instruction and curriculum for students; no more is it good enough in these classrooms to teach students in “batches”. There are classrooms where the students are the focus of learning.  Teachers are becoming “guides on the side” and students (“Learners”) are guiding their own instruction.  In one of my favorite quotes, a teacher told me that a lesson that he recently completed with his class was “the best lesson I have ever done”, and this from an experienced teacher who has completed thousands of lessons!  These are all examples of teachers operating on the “edge of the box”. (It is important to note that the teachers are not outside the box where possibilities sometimes fade into a jungle of too many possibilities, but on the edge of the box with one foot firmly in their reality and the other foot searching for the “adjacent possible”.) The important question for school leaders is how can we begin the process of having a thousand points of light shining in our school districts?  The answer is simple…one conversation at a time.

Conversations serve as the light switch for Penn-Trafford’s thousand points of light.  In Penn-Trafford the recent educational conversations have centered on trying to answer two questions: “What is great teaching” and “What is great learning”. These two questions have served as a basis for hundreds of conversations about education throughout the school district.  We have found that conversations can spark the creativity and innovation within our teachers and staff. Although these questions are great points of departure for educational conversations, we also find ourselves in situations where the conversation needs to go deeper into the topic of learning and teaching.  In this case the challenge becomes how to find information relevant from our local situation that will help drive a great conversation.   I have used information gleaned from the “informal” sphere such as community meetings and individual conversations with people.  I have also used information from more “formal” means such as surveys.  Penn-Trafford uses K-12 Insight to help us mine information from all stakeholders to help us learn about the school district. 

Recently the district and K-12 Insight conducted a survey about the use of technology in educational settings.  We surveyed parents, students and teachers to gain information about how they use technology in their lives and how they envision technology being incorporated in education.  Two interesting points from the survey were:

• Most teacher (84%), student (94%), and parent (92%) respondents believe that teaching and learning materials should be available to students at anytime, day or night.
• Most teachers (85%) and parents (89%) indicated that technology provides essential tools for instruction.  Most students (93%) indicated that technology helps them to learn.

We can look at this information in many different ways and use it to drive purchasing and curriculum decisions.  More importantly for me, this information will serve as a way to start conversations about 22^nd Century learning in our school district.  For this reason, this information is invaluable as it will spark hundreds of conversations that will lead to innovation and student learning.