04.05.17

So what's your favorite movie?

My answer has always been the same. Since attending a midnight sneak peek back in the very early 80s with my dad--quite a coup on a school night, I might add--my favorite film of all time remains Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Oh, there are better, more groundbreaking, meaningful, or cinematically important movies. But for my money and popcorn, no film succeeds on its own terms as fully as the whip-cracking, snake-slithering, Nazi-face-melting first Indiana Jones adventure. It is a frame by frame study in pitch perfect pacing.

This is where blended learning comes in.

There's a standout scene about halfway through Raiders, one reputedly improvised by Harrison Ford on set, where Indy is racing through a crowded Cairo marketplace. Marion has been abducted. Our intrepid, sweat-stained, fedora-wearing hero is exhausting every resource at his disposal to locate her among the jostling throngs. Suddenly the crowd parts to reveal a sinister-looking swordsman of  daunting skill. Things just got complicated. And then this happens:

Blended learning is about complexity: station rotations, student agency, playlists, differentiation, personalization. It is, at its best, an effort to design lessons tailored to a variety of needs and an array of learning styles. From a teacher's standpoint, that very complexity sparks the excitement of the blended model.

Yet there are times when simplicity is the best solution. There are times when pragmatism is the best approach. There may even be times when the best way to teach something is to actually teach it. Not always, mind you, because that would make for a backwards classroom...and a boring adventure movie.

But if the students don't know a basic grammar rule, have trouble structuring a thesis statement, or can't seem to grasp the purpose of the problematic semicolon, then maybe direct instruction is the most effective method. Sometimes as blended teachers we must shift our pedagogy to include the simple as well as the complex.

Sometimes, as Indy illustrated, you've just got to shoot the swordsman.



03.06.17

A few weeks ago we had the privilege of hearing author and innovator Catlin Tucker speak on blended learning. An acknowledged leader in the blended movement, Tucker is unique among educational experts in that she's still a practicing teacher. Here, then, are a few things I learned from Tucker--"actionable" points referred to as "takeaways" in educational PD parlance:

* Frequency: Tucker says she does station rotations once or twice a week on her block schedule. She doesn't have a prescribed number of minutes per week for station work. Blended is predicated on flexibility and authenticity. Our structures should reflect those same guiding principles.

* Whole-Group Warm-up Activity: Whole group? The term itself has become something of an indictment in the blended lexicon, a term synonymous with backwards-looking pedagogy and 19th century sweat shop practices. Yet Tucker told me that she recommends starting class with a short vocabulary game or grammar review, something to get the students focused and ready for more personalized learning.

* Station Rotations: Tucker teaches on the block schedule. Extended class periods allow time for her students to rotate through multiple stations in 90 minutes. She said if she were working within a traditional 50 minute class period, her students may only make it through one station per day, but that would be fine. They could rotate through the other stations over the course of three or four days. I wish I had thought of that.

* Screen Weary: Technology is integral, technology is liberating, but kids can get tired of working on screens. Recognizing what she calls "screen weariness," Tucker makes sure to sequence her stations in such a way that students alternate screen work with paper-based activities. It makes sense. She also said kids should learn to interact with each other face-to-face. Even in the most cutting-edge, tech-driven classroom, that makes sense, too.

* Stations: She usually has three or four stations going at once: teacher-led, technology, application, etc. Her students are generally expected to rotate through all stations. She was intrigued by my admittedly tentative approach to differentiation and liked the template I've designed for extension options. I must be doing something right.

Tucker is a teacher's teacher. Her approach to blended is devoid of dogma. It is intentional, strategic, creative, and inspiring. It is student-centered and learner-driven. It is also manageable for that often marginalized member of the learning community: the teacher. But most of all, it has compelled me and others on my PLC to pursue blended learning with renewed enthusiasm, something that will benefit our students as they edge toward increased ownership and autonomy.






   


  

02.06.17

This time I'm varying the station rotation model by using an expended playlist with our three-week Romeo and Juliet drama unit.

Students began by recording a few brief notes on drama conventions (monologue, stage directions, soliloquy, aside, etc.) on the left/input side of their personalized interactive notebooks. They then annotated/summarized the Prologue on the right/output side of their notebooks as a formative assessment to determine small groups.

Tomorrow students will enter the classroom to find the outlines of Romeo and Juliet on the floor. They have stepped into an active crime scene! As CSI detectives divided into investigative squads, small groups will work their way through a varied, multi-modal playlist in an effort to determine who is to blame for the two teenagers' untimely deaths.

This CSI: Verona scenario includes data-driven instruction, student agency, and flexible groups in what it is hoped will be an engaging and meaningful exploration of drama conventions.


 

1.04.17

The first semester of blended learning has proven to be an exhilarating adventure.

I have accomplished much and learned even more. I have stepped away from tried and tired teaching practices. I have entered the rejuvenating new realm of station rotations, student agency, and flexible instructional groups. I cannot thank Tosh and Cheryl enough. Their guidance, encouragement, and liberal amounts of grace are propellant forces that drive our instructional practices at RHS daily.

My students, too, have consistently risen to the challenges hurled their way. They explore, flounder, find their footing, and succeed with minimal direct intervention. They also embrace my classroom experiments with a hardiness and agility that I find, above all else, endearing. By steady degrees, one bold step at a time, I can see them moving to the forefront of 21st century learning.

The English I PLC continues to function as a cohesive, supportive, and creative unit. They are a testament to the power of collaboration. Each member possesses a strength that compliments and completes the whole.

Moving forward, I hope to expand my blended repertoire to include even greater data transparency. I am also eager to foster differentiation through the use of playlists. Continuing to innovate after a semester of almost ceaselessly stimulating experimentation may seem a bit daunting, but I will seize upon the momentum established by my efforts in full confidence that it will carry me and my team forward on this exciting and ever-expanding journey.  

11.26.16

Washed-out faces smiled up at me from the past: crew cuts on the boys, bobbed or curled hair on the girls, bib overalls and flower-print dresses and plain white t-shits, my father a skinny ten-year-old grinning obediently among them.
I sat at my parents' kitchen table. I held a red vinyl folder. It was a photo album assembled for an elementary class reunion. The front cover read "Lott, TX, 1956-57" written in swooping black marker.
A page was dedicated to every student. Below each flashbulb-blanched snapshot, composed in studiously slanted cursive, was a photocopied account of the pupil's life, a writing assignment somehow salvaged by a self-appointed historian or else saved decades into retirement by their teacher. It was Thanksgiving break. I had no lessons to plan, no essays to grade. And so I examined all twenty-six pages like an archeologist with a magnifying glass blowing away chalk dust.
They were rural Central Texas children.
They liked baseball and rock collecting and their mama's chocolate cake and Rin-Tin-Tin on the family television set.
They were the offspring of farmers, carpenters, railroad workers, men who earned a wage with their hands. Their mothers were almost uniformly housewives, proud, scrupulous, matronly.
The children themselves all hoped to grow up to be their parents. To earn a living and to have a life like the one they knew and understood. A simple life, and a good life.
But life in our new century has changed, digitized, on-demand, and in high resolution.
Turning to the last brad-bound page, I was met with a wide shot. A small classroom. Tall windows. Sunlight streamed on wooden floorboards presided over by a young hickory stick of a teacher whose job it was to teach the fundamentals. Rows of boys and girls sat up straight in their desks, looking forward to recess, perhaps, but equally optimistic about the future. It was a future that could be theirs if they only learned to read and write and cipher and, more importantly to their parents, if they were good and listened to their teacher.
Pondering this last gray photograph, I realized something: a paradigm shift, as we like to say in the buzzy jargon of education.
These students were taught to be upright citizens of their community; we now must prepare students to be adaptable citizens of the world.
This is difficult.
This is dynamic.
This is the goal of blended learning.
There is less certainty in today's world. Few children aspire to become their parents. Fewer parents have jobs that their children will be able to inherit. Much has happened since that black-and-white moment was captured on film, much yielded to the inexorable forces of progress. Yet like that prim schoolmarm of the 1950s, our objective as educators is still to prepare young people for the life that awaits them.
That was the goal in Lott, TX, circa 1956.
And that must remain the goal of blended learning in Birdville ISD, circa 2016.

10.31.16

Cycles.
Seasons, systems, celestial rotations.
From large to small and back again, our universe wheels along orbital ellipses that are predictable.
This predictability is not off-putting; it is instead infinitely powerful.
Predictability arises from patterns, and patterns are sustainable. Chaos is not tolerated. When an aberration occurs, the pattern either alters to incorporate it elegantly or moves to reject it utterly.
As in the cosmos, so in the classroom:
Warm-up, min-lesson, work time, debrief--this forms the standard instructional pattern: I do, we do, you do.
So where does this pattern, this lesson cycle, fit in the blended learning model?
It would seem at first glance that, despite its station rotations, there is no lesson cycle when students are working independently at their own pace on differentiated or personalized activities. Or perhaps the patterns still exists, but the august "I" in that equation no longer refers to the classroom teacher. That venerated personal pronoun now indicates an online module or a guiding peer.
This is a struggle for many teachers.
Blended is dynamic. Blended is progressive. But does blended exclude a key elements of the lesson cycle?
Does blended presume that students--not just teenagers, but human learners in general--are equipped to grappled with rigorous, higher-order concepts without explicit and direct instruction, the inaugural stage in the lesson cycle?
I don't believe it does.
I believe that our new instructional model is not just dynamic, but it is also flexible. Blended learning operates within certain prescribed parameters--data-driven instruction, student agency, flexible grouping, station rotations--yet it is agile enough to adapt, to change, to accommodate in order to thrive.
I believe that student performance will shape the trajectory of learning.
If direct instruction in required, then blended will allow for it. If students can learn collaboratively or autonomously, then blended will embrace that too.
Systems are sustainable.
Blended has systems, but those patterns are still evolving, still altering, adapting, accommodating, and subtly, sometimes infinitesimally changing.  
Just like our universe.



     

10.17.16

Today my creative writing classes worked on composing Six Word Memoires as part of our creative nonfiction unit. This had me thinking about drafting six word reflections for our English I blended learning initiative. Here are the results:

Leverage student
agency
by differentiating
instruction.

That's a nice one. But does differentiation truly engender student agency? Maybe this would be more accurate:

Differentiate instruction
by leveraging
student agency.

Given our fast-paced, digitally-driven, consumer-oriented society, here is another one, a more pointed and poignant commentary on technology and digital natives :

Invention is
the mother
of necessity.

I rather like the inversion in that one--indicative, perhaps, of the upended power structure and lesson flipping in our blended classrooms. Students are teachers. Teachers are students. "We have to let go of the idea that in order for students to learn, we have to teach them," to quote a blended expert. Sometimes I agree. Or at least I'm working on it.

Does all reflection have to be done online? Certainly digitally documenting our shared blended journey is valuable and has its place. But I wonder what quiet, solitary thinkers like Emily Dickinson would say... I reflect on blended learning all the time--looking out windows, running in my neighborhood, sitting behind my desk at lunch. So here's a last one, just for me:

I still
have some
untweeted
thoughts...

Success: Students have adapted to station rotation routines.
Challenge: How do you personalize learning for each student each day within the current system?
Goal: To take more risks within the blended model.