Book 6: Let’s get students to stop renting and own their learning . . .

Matt Miller wrote in Ditch That Textbook “How do we get students to stop renting and own their learning?”

I am encouraged by all that I’ve read this summer.  Every book is scribbled over, corners of pages turned down, smileys, amens, highlights.  My next task is to go back and type up all of those notes especially the ones directly pertaining to what I hope to accomplish in my classroom.

Alan November’s Who Owns the Learning? is no different.  I picked up his book (and then Daniel Pink’s Drive) because I kept seeing it referenced in Burgess, Miller, Juliani, Wettrick, etc.  As my husband likes to say, I am not disappoint.  November delivers a short, but fully loaded manifesto of sorts.  Let’s get back to the way things were but with the new technology in mind.

He calls it “the Digital Learning Farm”.  Children used to be contributors.  They weren’t waiting for life, it just was life.  They helped around the farm, older kids helped younger kids in the one room school houses, kids contributed.  Somewhere we lost this.  I can remember somewhere either in college or right after college my mother admonishing me to not wait to start my life.  She was referring to a husband, but looking back, I think I was just a product of my education – do the school thing, do the college thing . . . then get the job thing and the spouse thing and the kid things . . . .

Last year was my first year to not be in a fully bilingual classroom.  Eager, excited – my silly word plays would not fall on unknowing ears.  I wish I knew  and had prepared last summer the way I am preparing this summer.  Let me try to briefly explain.

During my time in the inner city, I had some very brilliant students.  I don’t think my students this past year were any more brilliant, but they were different.  They had more book knowledge.  I would say my inner city students had gritty, city, street knowledge, but not always book knowledge.  Thinking as a bilingual teacher and this lack of book knowledge, I was eager to put into practice all the literacy tools and tricks I had read about during my masters.  I quickly found out these were not as much needed with middle/upper class students who had book knowledge.  I struggled with  balancing the high and low, the native and the Language Learners, providing background knowledge to some and challenging others beyond the content.

I realized in reading November’s book how little I actually have known about the possibilities.  Knowing the importance of teaching students to research, I researched ideas last year, but found nothing quite as expansive and helpful as November’s chapter on The Student as Researcher.  I wanted to incorporate Skype sessions with experts or people in other locations (like England when we were studying the American Revolution).  I wish I had read November’s chapter on The Student as Global Communicator and Contributor.

What about those students who are so far ahead that I kept trying to challenge?  I was that student who learned to tune in just enough to be the teachers pet but not so much as to drive myself crazy.  I had a nice, big imagination.  I know I failed some of my students this year in driving them to their happy imagination places.  I wish I had had the tools from The Student as Tutorial Designer to allow those students the opportunity to be contributors!

November does not encourage the use of technology for technology’s sake (same as the other authors).  It is about critical thinking, collaboration, etc. – the 21st century skills our students need.  One of my favorite quotes among many is found on page 51, “You cannot assume that because your students seem comfortable around digital devices, they are knowledgeable about critical thinking.”  It’s the idea that we cannot allow technology to do our thinking – we are not mindless consumers of information.

So I’ve been brainstorming.  I’ve been asking those Dave Burgess questions to spark creativity.  I’ve been thinking about Juliani and Wettrick’s ideas on Genius Hour and Miller’s ideas on ditching the textbook and thinking how these things all go together and how I will incorporate these ideas so I reach my goal of creating creative, independent, critical thinkers.  I have the time now.  Unfortunately, I know during the school year, the time needed for brainstorming will be in short supply (Watch John Cleese talk about the importance of time for creativity here.)

Some of my ideas so far:

• The idea of the global communicator and collaborator fits into what I had planned to do with my Friday Genius Hour time – Wettrick suggests having students find an expert for their projects!  This is perfect!
• I also want to find my own experts – maybe once a month or with the onset of each new unit.  I’m thankful for Twitter and Facebook and Google+ in this regard.
• I want to start with a weekly scribe.  Week One we will be setting up our Science notebooks, I’m thinking that we can post pictures of our work and have a student in each period write about the experience and the importance of Science Notebooks.
• This will play neatly into my idea for student researcher – -I want to start week one.  Our district really has some amazing plans, but they also encourage us to branch out.  There is a pre-fab PowerPoint on Science notebooks – but what if instead I had some student researchers looking for examples of famous Scientists’ notebooks to show to the class.  What if I spend a little time creating the right questions to get students considering why we want to keep notebooks?  This is all part of the PowerPoint, but how much more powerful when students are discovering it on their own.  Then back to the student scribes who can include this in their summary.
• Last year – speaking of leaving a legacy – I created a weebly page for my students.  We ended the year with a month long project studying the decades of the 20th century.  Groups of students picked a decade, researched it, created artifacts, made videos, and then shared it all with their parents and the rest of the school.  I want to do this next year but with all of our projects along the way – like Michael and Garth’s student created textbook from chapter 6 – http://davisdecadesfair2015.weebly.com/

I have more and write it down mostly for my own benefit, but also because I hope to share it with my small but growing PLN and get feedback, encouragement, constructive criticism.  So your turn?  Will you share with me what you’ve done and what you plan to do?