The Educational Puzzle

Recent events leading up to today have encouraged me to express my thoughts regarding the learning process in my classroom.  I care deeply about the students I teach and want them to be successful in whatever it is they do with their life.  I want them to explore their imagination, embrace inquiry and pursue their curiosities.  I want them to discover what they are passionate about, know how to work hard and learn how to achieve goals.  Yes, I hold these aspirations for all the nine and ten year old children I teach, the six and seven year old kids I used to teach, and all the students I will teach in the years ahead.  These are characteristics I think many successful people have in common.

In my years of teaching I have found a handful of constants in the educational process.  Two constants in my mind as I write this are the unique nature of learning and the bond between a teacher and students.  In both, there are moments of greatness, acts of compassion, and shining lights of brilliance.  With both there are also times of frustration, exhaustion, and despair.  But stick with me through this thought;  The learning process is unique to the learner, constantly shifting and is shaped by experiences both in and out of school.  It's more or less existential.  (Before you go running away in philosophical disarray, I ask you to continue reading.)  And, as Arne Duncan has been quoted saying several times, "a teacher is the single greatest influence on student achievement."  To be clear, I consider student achievement beyond that of standardized testing scores.  

I have to admit that my interactions with students and families are confined to what many refer to as "school".  I see my students in our building, I see their families here, and rarely does my life beyond my professional commitments extend to experiences outside of the "academic" realm.  I blame this more on the fact that I live in Chicago and teach in a suburb than on my willingness to be involved in the community beyond the school environment.  Growing up in rural Minnesota I am more than familiar with running into my teacher at the grocery store, seeing my principal at church, or having my teacher threaten to call my father because he knows where he works.  This begins to get at my focus.  Each child I teach, comes into my classroom with a world of experiences I will never be able to hear about and sees the world in a relatively unique way.  Life experiences are what shape individual's thoughts, beliefs and values.  Although some of my personal thoughts, beliefs and values may differ (or be the same for that matter), I work to develop relationships that allow me and my students to focus on learning experiences and outcomes.  I also want to help everyone enjoy the process.  After all, at some point learning should be fun.  

Let me borrow the words of Forrest Gump to illustrate more concretely what I'm trying to say.  Teaching is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.  And that is precisely when the puzzle begins.  There are so many different pieces to the puzzle for each child, teacher, principal, administrator and anyone else involved in education.  The final puzzle is like a mythical scene that is unique for everyone involved, we just all hope it looks good enough to frame and hang up on the wall.   I'll refer you to a post from Chris Lehmann about the ethic of care (This is a shorter version from his writings at LeaderTalk.org.) that transcends the content and specific learning objectives to focus on the manner by which students and teacher can be empowered.  The only way a puzzle can come together is by searching through the pile of pieces to find the one that has the right fit and repeating the process until the picture is complete.  But as any real puzzler knows, once one puzzle is finished there's always another waiting.

Higher Level Thinking

This week my school finished administering the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, more commonly referred to as ISATs.  When all the required tests are finished, all fourth graders will have spent 440 minutes reading, writing, crunching some numbers and analyzing pictures, graphs and charts... and yes, using pencils to fill in bubbles.  Say what you will about standardized testing but until something significant happens, public school children will be required to complete these tests.  Here is a rambling of mine from last year prior to ISATs.

The whole testing process has provoked me to think more deeply about what it is that makes learning experiences valuable for children, how to assess them and, furthermore, what makes great teaching.  (All the thinking might be a product of my inability to do kind of real teaching during the 440 minutes of testing.) In a recent article I read about standardized tests, the author tried to play devil's advocate to examples of standardized test questions.  With many of the answers seeming cynical, I took the point to be that just about any question can be interpreted differently by any one person at any time.  I believe there is some truth to that.  Some of the responses really put into perspective the unique nature of thinking and the critical lens I believe all educators should strive to develop in their students.  How do we get children (and adults for that matter) to engage in higher level thinking?  What does that look like in the digital world?

Through further investigation, and a timely Twitter feed, I stumbled up this interpretation of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy.  There can be a very structured design to developing higher level, critical thinking sequences of learning in any classroom.  Digital tools can be used to enhance the learning and materialize student (and teacher) objectives and learning outcomes.  Although the level names aren't identical to Bloom's original taxonomy  the goal is: Students need to be the ultimate driver of their own learning and the pinnacle of their learning process can be evidenced by a tangible creation.  Can we standardize that in a way that is suitable for every child in every school all across the country?  Probably not.

Which leads me to my lasting thought for this post... teachers have an effect on the thinking of their students.  Positive or negative the reality is true.  Teachers spend more time with their students that some parents do in an average school day.  How teachers authenticate learning in their classrooms can be just as unique as the children they teach and no set of standardized tests, curriculum or projects can ever fully capture that.  However, one thing I do believe can be streamlined is thinking and the process by which a teacher engages a student to think on higher levels, inquire with greater depth, and create with better understanding.  Now let's try and standardize that!