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Archive for the ‘Professional Development’ Category

Dr. Stuart Shanker and Self-Regulation

Posted in Parenting, Professional Development on November 22, 2010| 24 Comments »

Rather than a summary of Day 2 at the BCSSA Fall Conference, I wanted to go into more detail with what I thought was an outstanding presentation, by Dr. Stuart Shanker, in conversation with Surrey Superintendent of Schools, Mike McKay.

The full presentation is available here.

Some of the big ideas from the presentation:

  • trajectories (one’s path) are largely set by the time the child enters school
  • the child’s capacity for social interaction, symbolic thinking, functional language, problem solving and logical thinking, are largely set before they enter school
  • the foundation for this massive development process is the child’s ability to be calmly focussed and alert – their ability for self-regulation
  • a child is born 6-9 months prematurely
  • If you get a kid in Grade 1 it is difficult to “fix” a child

A great deal of the presentation focussed on the stages of alertness and the key to keeping kids at level 4 — calmly focussed and alert.  This was interesting for the adults in the room, as many thought how often they work with children functioning at levels 5 and 6.

Activation

6.  Flooded

5. Hyperalert

4. Calmly focused and alert (optimal learning*)

3. Hypoalert

2. Drowsy

1. Asleep

Inhibition

In Self-Regulation: Calm, Alert, and Learning*, an article published this fall in Canada Education, Dr. Shanker says:

In short, self-regulation serves as a lens for understanding a child, his individual strengths and the areas that need work, and thus as a lens for understanding what we hope to accomplish in our teaching practices.

Dr.  Shanker’s presentation and supporting research emphasized, once again, the need to focus on early childhood education.  If we are going to make a difference, we need to make a difference with our very youngest children.

There are a number of great, supplementary resources on the work of Dr. Shanker, including a short video linked here on brain development.  The slide deck (as referenced above) from the session is also rich with supporting information.

For the interest of everyone in the West Vancouver district reading this blog, both our Board Chair, Mary-Ann Booth, and I are in agreement that we should invite Dr. Shanker to West Vancouver to present.

Thanks to Kelly Spearman, Jennifer Towers, Michelle Wood, Cindy Dekker and Gary Kern who all assisted me with the notes from the presentation

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We Want to Unconference Too!

Posted in Professional Development, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , on November 21, 2010| 9 Comments »

I have already written here about how successful the unconferencing  (“backchanneling” is probably the more accurate term) was at the BCSSA Fall Conference last week, in Victoria.

Here is the definition of backchannel from Wikipedia:

Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of Linguistics to describe listeners’ behaviours during verbal communication, Victor Yngve 1970.

The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker. Occasionally, backchannel provides audience members a chance to fact-check the presentation.

By the end of the conference, over 150 people posted at least once to Twitter with a post tagged #bcssa10 (both from inside and outside the conference); several dozen others also used TodaysMeet to connect (it is hard to be precise since this tool does not require an account), and many more, while not posting, followed along monitoring one or both places.  As I write this post, two days after the conference, posts are still being made tagged to the conference.

Toward the end of the conference, and in e-mails since, I have been asked many variations on the question, how do we replicate this elsewhere?

Here is a collection of thoughts from conference participants, around unconferencing / backchanneling, from this past week:

What the organizers can do:

  • pre-publish the tool(s) being used including the Twitter hashtag (check to be sure the hashtag is not being used by another group)
  • in advance of the conference, use the backchannel as a place to share prereading and help engage those attending, and those who may want to follow the event
  • encourage participants to bring technology and give them permission to participate through social tools
  • identify a moderator (in the classroom, a teacher) to monitor the conversation and help guide it when necessary

What presenters can do:

  • honour the conversations that are taking place virtually – at the BCSSA Conference both Valerie Hannon and Tony Mackay referenced the Twitter and TodaysMeet conversation which gave status to this dialogue
  • encourage groups to post key information to the backchannel during table discussions
  • use the backchannel as a visual in the room during presentations or breaks
  • use the backchannel to help with Q & A sessions
  • have the presenters participate in the tools during breaks
  • use the information on the backchannel to guide the presentation — again, Valerie and Tony did this by taking what was said during the first day to influence what they spoke about on the second day

Other Advice:

  • Pick your tools carefully — if you are doing this with students, consider a tool like TodaysMeet that does not require an account and allows students to hide their full identity and create pseudonyms
  • Start with the goal — there are hundreds of tools available, so consider what it is you want to do and then find a tool to match. If I were to do it again, I would look for 1) a tool that allows threaded conversations 2) a tool that allows collaborative note-taking
  • Model — one of the reasons for adults in education to use the tools is to model their use for students — so be good models with what you say, and how you interact
  • Pick your spots — not every event needs a backchannel

I find following conferences via Twitter to be extremely powerful, and a great way to drop in on events I can’t attend in person.

I am very interested in how we can take this learning and apply it to our work with students.  How can we use tools like Twitter and TodaysMeet to link students in classrooms, schools, districts and across the world to improve their learning?

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What is BC Talking About?

Posted in Personalized Learning, Professional Development, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2010| 2 Comments »

I feel like I have gone back in time to my days as a columnist at the Richmond News – news to share and deadlines to meet.  This post will try to capture some of the key points from the first day of the British Columbia School Superintendents Association Fall Conference – Personalized Learning in the 21st Century:  From Vision to Action.

I have framed this post (and its title) on a post I did in early September:  What is Ontario Talking About? which was a summary of some of the key ideas coming out of Ontario’s  Building Blocks for Education:  Whole System Reform Conference (I didn’t actually attend the conference but followed the tweets and saw some of the presentation webcasts).

I will leave the speeches from Education Minister, George Abbott, and Premier Gordon Campbell aside, and focus on some of the big ideas from Valerie Hannon and Tony Mckay, and the three case studies they shared.

The opening session made the case for change.  This included a couple of videos that have been well used in staff meetings in recent months, but are worth seeing, if you haven’t seen them yet.

The first was RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms (if you like this video you can find all the RSA Animate videos here)

The second video was 21st Century Education in New Brunswick

There was also an emphasis on the work in Finland.  Like BC, Finland has a very high achieving system.   Valerie spoke about Finland’s Pedagogy for Tomorrow which is based on work she is doing there, and includes:

  • ubiquitous technology, ubiquitous opportunity?
  • collaborative, social-constructivist learning
  • problem-based instruction
  • progressive inquiry, experimental study
  • peer feedback and peer cooperation

The Finland example (click here for more details on their reform) resonates with me in West Vancouver — a strong system not content with itself.  We have an exemplary public school system in West Vancouver, with amazing results, but like Finland, in order to continue to perform at such a high level, we need to be looking at how we are preparing our students for a changing world.

Other examples shared to push our thinking included:

High Tech High, San Diego (Resources here from Edutopia)

Kunskapsskolan, Sweden

These are 23 secondary schools for students between the ages of 12 and 16, and nine, sixth form schools for 16 to 19 year olds, totalling 10,000 students focussing on personalized learning.  A full description is available here.

What these, and other examples did, including ones from New York and England (interesting key themes for Learning Futures Schools), was to nicely set a context for the global conversations taking place.  They are absolutely different contexts, and it is easy to get caught up in how what is happening in X cannot happen in Y.

Given this base of knowledge, it will be interesting to see how we personalize it in our district conversations tomorrow.

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Unconferencing at the BCSSA

Posted in Change, Professional Development, Technology, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2010| 15 Comments »

One notion that stuck with me this morning from Valerie Hannon, a keynote speaker at the BCSSA Fall Conference, was  that education requires disruptive innovation in order to prevent an “institutional bypass.” In another post I will share some of the key points from Valerie and other speakers today, but I want to focus on the conference going on behind the conference and how many of us have bypassed the traditional structure, through disruptive innovation to make meaning at the event.

As I write this post at the end of the first day of the BCSSA Fall Conference, ninety-three different people have tagged posts on Twitter #bcssa10 and tagged close to 1,000 tweets.  At different points today the conference has been a trending topic both in Vancouver and across Canada.  There were more people using Twitter to talk about the future of teaching and learning than to discuss the Canucks or the weather. 

I believe one year ago at this conference there were three  people sharing information on Twitter.  The ninety-three tweeters today included participants in the room, and those who engaged in the conference from many sites around the province and beyond.

In addition to the dialogue on Twitter, there was  a second back-channel conversation happening on TodaysMeet (a great tool for in-class online conversations – no account required).  Several dozen more people used this tool to extend the presentations.

While the conference has looked very similar to the conferences I have become accustomed to since I first attended this event about a decade ago, I think we have found a way, using Valerie Hannon’s notion, to bypass the traditional conference structure.  The presentations were largely stand-and-deliver lectures, but those of us who learn by engaging with others had an amazingly rich un-conference experience. 

Thinking about the change in just one year with how we engage in professional learning, I wonder what these type of events will look like over the next few years.

Some other wins with the un-conferencing:

  • We have exposed dozens of educators in a variety of roles to the power of Twitter as a professional tool
  • We have been able to share our learning with colleagues in our districts who were not able to join us
  • We have collaboratively compiled notes to use after the conference
  • We have modelled cross-role and cross-district learning

We often talk about the need to “go where the kids are”.  Our efforts in engaging in social media to support our learning, is part of this journey.

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Previewing the BCSSA Conference – Updated

Posted in Change, Personalized Learning, Professional Development, tagged , , , , on November 15, 2010| 3 Comments »

There is much anticipation leading up to this week’s British Columbia School Superintendents Association Fall Conference – Personalized Learning in the 21st Century:  From Vision to Action.

The conference features many internationally known experts, who have been widely quoted over the year, as the province has been investigating 21st century skills and personalized learning.  Also included in the program are Premier Gordon Campbell; Minister of Education, George Abbott, and Deputy Minister of Education, James Gorman.

The topic is directly in line with so many of the conversations we are having in West Vancouver.  We will have a team of close to 25 at the event, including trustees, administrators and teachers.  The event has sold out at over 700 participants – clearly, similar conversations are happening in many places across the province.

In advance of the event, conference organizers have shared a number of resources for participant consideration, and they are available here on the BCELC website (this site is full of links to resources connected to personalized learning).

One article conference organizers have suggested is What’s Next?  21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning by Charles Leadbeater.  It is a very interesting read with lots of ideas to mark for further discussion.

One quote that stood out for me, when describing centres of innovation, was:

The school leadership provided an igniting sense of purpose to propel innovation and encourage managed risk taking to develop new approaches . . . That kind of ‘igniting purpose’ is vital when innovation is such a highly collaborative, cumulative endeavour, which relies on mobilising and motivating staff, pupils, parents, partner agencies, other schools. Collaborative innovation relies on the participants having a strong shared sense of purpose.

This is absolutely in line with what we have seen in our district around a series of initiatives, including the Primary Years Program and Middle Years Program IB implentations.  I am so impressed by the “shared sense of purpose” from students, parents, staff and community.

In addition, the 76-page report is a series of resources including presentation slides from Charles Leadbeater that support his findings.

My own suggestions for background material leading into the conference include:

A short video from Tony McKay that gives insight to his work

Another short (3 minute) video worth watching is linked here, from Dr. Stuart Shanker, discussing brain development;  additional backgrounder material, The Innovation Unit site, gives a good sense of Valerie Hannon’s work.

From my blog archives, I  have previously blogged on Teaching, Learning, Technology and Personalization and What is Personalized Learning?

For those attending, or following the conference from a distance, there are a couple of ways to participate.  Engage on Twitter by posting comments tagged #bcssa10, and use this same hashtag to follow the conversation.  If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can engage at TodaysMeet (no account sign-up required) at:  http://todaysmeet.com/bcssa10.

I will try to update this blog with daily summaries as well.

UPDATED – Videos from Conference Organizers

The following videos have been shared by conference organizers to help prepare participants:

Rod Allen, Superintendent of Achievement on how to prepare

Valerie Hannon and John Gaiptman discuss the learning agenda in BritishColumbia

Tony McKay on how a team should be prepared to bring some key information with them

Valerie Hannon on what can we expect when we attend the conference in November

Tony McKay, Steve Cardwell and Keven Elder on the goals of the BCSSA November Conference

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Supporting Our Support Staff

Posted in Professional Development, SD45, tagged , , on October 22, 2010| 1 Comment »

Professional development is often a mystery for those outside of education.  Today is a province-wide professional development day, often referred to as the PSA Day – as many teachers attend their Provincial Specialist Associations conferences.  Here is a list of some of the many opportunities.

The day is for more than just the teachers in our system.  My day today is working with all of our Administrative Assistants, Teaching Assistants, Special Education Assistants and others who collectively are part of the West Vancouver Municipal Employees Association in West Vancouver.

And just what is topical with these employees?  The common thread of almost all the sessions is technology.  Sessions will focus on  Kurzweil, our inside45 portal, Report Central, BCeSIS, and tips and tricks with Office, including Word, Excel and Publisher.

I have the opportunity to present an opening keynote,  Going Where the Kids Are – At Work and Home (click on the title to open the wiki presentation).  It is a combination of several talks I have given over the last couple of years on the amazing changes in our personal lives, and how our school system is beginning to embrace these technologies that are so pervasive outside of school.

It should be an excellent day.

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Professional Learning . . . The West Van Way

Posted in Professional Development, SD45, tagged , , , , on September 27, 2010| 3 Comments »

Today is our first meeting of the year with school professional development representatives from all West Vancouver schools.  This group of volunteer teachers meet on a regular basis to share their successes and challenges and help to evolve our very impressive model.  This group is chaired by the West Vancouver Teachers Association (WVTA), Professional Development Co-Chairs, Karen Harmatuk and Sue Elliot.

Here is a one page overview of the Professional Development model in West Vancouver (scroll on the right to see the entire document):

Our Professional Development Model, or the “Collaborative Model” as it is often described, helps guide all of our work in the district.  Our core values genuinely guide the work:

•1. Our primary learning focus is on improving student learning

•2. We work collaboratively on district, school and team goals because teaching is too difficult to do alone

•3. Our work is supported by current research

The model is built around our students and improving student learning.  It also makes it very clear the best learning is collaborative.  I was reminded of the power of collaboration this past week as “Learning Teams” from Pauline Johnson, West Bay, Cypress Park, Irwin Park and Ridgeview spent a morning together looking at digital literacy.

Our professional learning model in West Vancouver is really quite simple, but important to always come back to as a guide.  As district, school, or individual professional development grows, it is important to ensure these three strands are continually supported.

Every year we look at “how we can strengthen the collaborative model.”  The model is messy – but, so is good learning.  With all the talk about personalized learning for students, that is really at the heart of what we are trying to do with the adults learning in our district.  It doesn’t mean that every staff member has an individual, unique plan, but rather they have a personalized plan that blends together district, school and individual needs.

For all of our educators, it starts with our professional growth program.  The description from 15 years ago, and the purpose of teacher growth plans, is still very relevant today:

The purpose of the Professional Growth Program is to support the professional growth of teachers for the continuous development of instructional practices in order to enhance student learning in West Vancouver.

Like all the work we do either as individuals, collaborative learning teams, schools, or as a district, at its core is the improvement of our students’ learning.

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What is Ontario Talking About?

Posted in Change, Personalized Learning, Professional Development, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

As we look at increasing “personalized learning” in British Columbia, we have been encouraged to look over the fence and see what are neighbours are doing.  It is not a local, provincial, or even national trend to evolve schools to better embrace “21st century skills“, the movement is happening around the world.

For the past two days, Ontario has hosted Building Blocks for Education:  Whole System Reform and featured big thinkers from around the world including Michael Fullan, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Timo Lankinen the Director General of the Finish National Board of Education.   The conference is connected to the  Ontario government’s education plan:  Reach Every Student – Energizing Ontario Education.

With thanks to those tweeting from the Conference, and some late-night viewing of the keynotes that were webcast, here are some of the more interesting insights I found looking over the fence:

Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence, Singapore:

  • the first building block to success is the principals
  • the role of politicians is sometimes to get out of the way
  • 20% of Singapore’s government spending goes to education
  • recognized that performance art can help promote 21st century skills

Timo Lankinen – Director General, Finish National Board of Education:

  • In Finland grade 1’s spend only 3 hours in school a day
  • Focus is moving from literacy and numeracy to arts and physical activity
  • Teachers salaries are not higher, but it is a very valued profession
  • 21st century skills are a key part of Finland’s success
  • All teachers in Finland hold a Master’s Degree

Michael Fullan, Special Advisor to the Premier of Ontario:

  • Transparency is here to stay
  • Relevant and personalized curriculum is helping grad rates
  • Role of central government in education is strategy, manage evaluation, explain to taxpayers what is happening
  • clamour for autonomy occurs with bad policies and bad leadership
  • not acceptable in definition of professional teacher or principal to say “leave me alone” – it is a balance between autonomy and integration

Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education:

  • “the fight for education is a daily fight for social justice”
  • Department of Education needs to be an engine of innovation and not a compliance office
  • Interesting – 2000 high schools produce 1/2 of US dropouts – call them “dropout factories”
  • US is in the midst of a quiet revolution in school reform
  • Courage not resources will transform education in the U.S.
  • In the U.S. the kids that need the most help get the least

Andreas Schleicher, Special Advisor on Education Policy, Directorate for Education, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD):

  • once you remove the influence of social background, public schools do better than private schools
  • use statistical neighbours and interrogate data
  • technology enables non-linear learning
  • best systems attract great teachers and give access to best practices and quality
  • schools need to focus on the things that our kids will really need to know – learning how to learn and collaborating with others

There is some reassurance in knowing so many jurisdictions are having the same conversation. Many of our conversations in West Vancouver and the directions we are moving sound similar to those being implemented around the world.  The challenge, though, when we look at Finland, or when others look at us, is to take the ideas and apply them to what can be very different local contexts.

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Leaving Politics at the Door

Posted in Professional Development, tagged , , on September 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I have just finished participating in the two-day fall retreat for Learning Forward BC.  And just what is Learning Forward BC?

Learning Forward

It is the rebranding of an organization that is well-known to many educators.

Learning Forward is the new name of the National Staff Development Council.  We are an international association of learning educators committed to one purpose in K-12 education:  Every educator engages in professional learning every day so every student achieves.

What struck me as different from this group from the many different formal and informal networks I often meet with around professional development is that at its core was the group’s commitment to being apolitical.  In the  room were educators who spend their days as classroom teachers, school administrators, district staff, university staff and ministry officials.

A lot of the discussion focussed on what place Learning Forward BC has in the current provincial landscape.  What attracted me to the group, and the place I think it has is as an organization where people “leave politics at the door.”

I don’t have experience outside the province, but  many people who have had experiences in other places in Canada, and around the world, often note that politics and education are intertwined in ways in B.C. unique from many other jurisdictions.  Too often we spend so much time focussed on our roles in the system, that we don’t get down to the work of moving learning forward.

This was my first true taste as a board member for Learning Forward BC – but if it can play a role in providing venues for conversations free of our titles and roles, it could be time well spent.

Look for more information about Learning Forward BC coming this fall.

To connect with the Learning Forward parent body, you can do so on Facebook or Twitter.

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The Price of Privilege

Posted in Parenting, Professional Development, SD45, tagged , , on September 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We have had some different book clubs operating in our District over the last several years.  Most notably, outgoing Superintendent Geoff Jopson has often referenced and shared ideas that come out of Jim Collins’ Good to Great.

This year we have bought a book for all our administrators in the district, as well as for school Parent Advisory Council Chairs and District Parent Advisory Council Reps.  Based on a recommendation of a Rockridge Secondary School counsellor and the school’s principal Marne Owen, we are all reading The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine.  The 2006 book explores how “numerous studies have shown that bright, charming, seemingly confident and socially skilled teenagers from affluent, loving families are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, substance abuse and anxiety disorders.”

There is plenty to discuss from the book, including:

It is easy to see how always tying shoelaces for a toddler would be impairing her autonomy. No parent wants to still be tying shoelaces for a 10-year-old. The rationale behind “staying out of it” is less clear with the teenager (often the stakes seem higher — academics, peer choices, drugs, sex), and parents are far more likely to chime in: “You can talk to your friend after the test. It’s important to keep up your grades.” The fact that the stakes are higher is all the more reason to provide teenagers with as many opportunities as possible to make their own decisions and learn from the consequences. Just as it was critical for the toddler to fumble with her shoelaces before mastering the art of shoelace tying, so is it critical for the adolescent to fumble with difficult tasks and choices in order to master the art of making independent, healthy, moral decisions that can be called upon in the absence of parents’ directives. We all want our children to put their best foot forward. But in childhood and adolescence, sometimes the best foot is the one that is stumbled on, providing an opportunity for the child to learn how to regain balance, and right himself.

It will be interesting to see how the book connects with the schools and parents in West Vancouver.  At first glance Levine’s work seems to be built on a community not dissimilar to ours.

It is a powerful read full of lots of practical advice.  Hopefully the book will lead to some important conversations in our district.

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