Professional site of Sylvia Libow Martinez
“The drop in student engagement for each year students are in school is our monumental, collective national failure.” Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education
Here’s what he’s talking about:
Read more about why the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become.
Sylvia
Great leadership is inclusive leadership, yet the largest stakeholder group in schools is often forgotten: students. Students are 92% of the population at most every school site. To be a leader, you have to lead 100% of the population, not just the 8% who look like you.
Wonder where the future leaders of education will come from? They sit in front of us everyday. Thinking that “school” doesn’t understand who they are. Wondering what their role will be in changing the world. Wishing that someone would give them the opportunity to make a difference.
Students can be leaders of the future by being leaders today. Leadership lessons cannot be learned in a vacuum. Including students in every aspect of school can be done if caring adults make it a priority. Students can learn to teach others, be on real decision-making committees, provide services like tech support, or run for the school board. Students who take on real and important responsibility learn to trust themselves as they show they can be trusted. Empowerment isn’t something you “do” to people; it’s an outcome of being valued, respected, and listened to. Adults can learn to see young people in a new light as essential partners in creating better learning opportunities for all.
Enabling youth voice in K-12 schools isn’t simple. Once empowered, young people might not say or do what you expect. It takes time to teach them how to speak their minds effectively and to work collaboratively. And they keep growing up and leaving, so the effort never ends. Youth voice is about much more than listening to young people, although that’s a start. It’s about long-term commitment to action, because in action, young people find their voice.
I’m not talking about the kind of token youth panel you see at educational conferences, where students who can be counted on to say acceptable things are trotted out for an hour. Everyone nods and feels good about listening to youth voice, and then lunch is served while the kids are conveniently bused back from whence they came.
Ignoring youth leadership potential is a lose-lose situation. We lose their input, convince them we don’t care, and miss the teachable moment. We enable dependence in youth by not allowing them to participate in the process of school decision making. We create alienation and then blame young people for not caring. The curtailing of student press freedom and the blocking of online discussion creates fewer opportunities for young voices to be heard in every avenue and fewer opportunities to practice these skills.
Leaders of today should be worried about where the leaders of tomorrow will learn how to be informed, involved citizens of the world. Those of us who believe that modern technology is a key to changing schools also know that this digital generation has more direct experience with technology than any other group. They could be powerful allies and advocates–if adults make the choice to listen and provide expertise as needed. When students aren’t included in the effort to improve education, we lose more than their technical know-how; we lose the opportunity to shape the leaders of tomorrow.
Sylvia
Cross-posted on GETideas.org’s Featured Thought Leaders Series as part of a webinar. Here is the link to the archive: http://youtu.be/c77ET5-EX9E
And audience comments: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115848119890273950575/posts/WH1Nko4yhNv
Join me on Wednesday, January 9, 2013 for a Google Plus Hangout hosted by GETideas.org. 3PM – 4PM PST.
Link to Google Hangout Event Invitation: http://goo.gl/9PTzK
Where to Watch: Observers can watch and comment on this Google Hangout on Air at GETIdeas.org’s Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115848119890273950575/posts
Cultivating Leadership: Building Capacity for Future Schools Hangout. What are the characteristics of effective 21st-century education leaders? How do systems leader manage change? What is the role of communication when pushing new agendas to a school community?
To explore these issues, GETideas.org is hosting this GooglePlus hangout on Cultivating Leadership: Building Capacity for Future Schools. The hangout features this panel of education experts:
Update: Here is the link to the archive: http://youtu.be/c77ET5-EX9E
And audience comments: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115848119890273950575/posts/WH1Nko4yhNv
Here’s my companion blog post for this event – Where Will Future School Leaders Come From?
I’ll cross post that here tomorrow.
Sylvia
It’s that time of year again! Here are the most popular posts (according to WordPress, anyway) from the blog.
These are a mixed lot – for example, #3, “Happy Birthday Logo!” is about the 40th anniversary of the Logo programming language. As much as I’d like to believe that there is a massive resurgence of interest in children programming in Logo, it’s MUCH more likely that people are searching for birthday clip-art and stumble on this post. It’s also the case that for #6, “Halo 3 shines harsh light on games in education” the mere mention of the immensely popular game “Halo” drives a lot of traffic. There are some interesting statistics in that post comparing the sales figures of Halo to the expectations for educational software, but I’m assuming that’s not the primary draw.
However, the traffic for #2, 4, 8, and 10, are all pretty on target. I believe that these articles do reflect interest in constructivism and a yearning for information about how to make classroom activities more authentic. I can see that the time spent on these articles by the “average” visitor is much higher. Someday I’ll get around to calculating a different popularity metric for my posts, something like page views multiplied by viewing time so that the really popular posts reflect viewer interest, rather than just Google searches gone astray.
And of course, two of my Khan Academy posts made the top ten. The debate about Khan Academy is still going on strong, and has made it into the mainstream of American mass media. Although it’s nice when an educational topic does make it into the mainstream, it’s not so good when it reinforces the blandest and least interesting teaching myths. Oh well, I suppose we could all be reading more about the Kardashians!
Sylvia
Larry Ferlazzo writes a column “Classroom Q&A” for Teacher Magazine (part of the Ed Week family of publications) on teaching and technology. A few months ago he asked for my response to a question: How do teachers make informed decisions in relation to a balanced use of technology in the classroom?
This is a really interesting question for two reasons:
1. Because it transcends the “what” to tackle the “why”. Teachers have to balance a lot to create the best learning environment for their students and it’s not always clear how to do that. Especially with technology, it seems that any choice you make will be obsolete too soon as product after product and app after app appear, with new exciting announcements made every day.
2. Because it presumes that teachers CAN and SHOULD make these decisions. Too often, technology decisions are made by people who aren’t in the classroom without consulting teachers. Teachers and students are the stakeholders in this equation, and should be involved in choosing appropriate technology.
Be sure to read the responses Larry collected in this multi-part article. Besides my response, Tina Barseghian, the editor of MindShift, and Scott McLeod, an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky weigh in.
Here’s my contribution:
The best way to use tech in the classroom is when the technology primarily supports the process of student learning, not the product. Sure, it’s easy to get excited when we find tools that make things easier, but we have to be careful about what’s getting automated. Tools that support deep student creativity may take more time to learn, but in the end, give students access to powerful, creative experiences. The learning that takes place on the journey is the real outcome, and a “push-button” tool deprives the child of that experience.
Just like the writing process depends on giving students time to edit and re-write, technology should enhance a student’s ability to dive into the process of thinking deeply about their own work. Editing, reflecting, tweaking, refining, and even starting from scratch are crucial elements of the learning process – saving time is not. Technology that gives students multiple ways to approach their own work means that students can develop fluency and ownership of their learning.
And if you are thinking, “Who has time to teach my students something complicated?” – I will suggest to you that complexity is different than depth. Sure there are tools that are not age-appropriate or just plain overkill. But educators often overestimate the extra time it takes to learn a new tool. Don’t try to front-load too much information about the tool to the students. Instead, introduce a small project for the students, give them the tool and let them work. Allow collaboration between students to share new discoveries. Encourage home-grown student experts who can answer other students’ questions. Time spent becoming fluent with a tool that has depth is time well-spent.
Sylvia
From danah boyd –
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to announce the publication of eight new of papers in The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (danah boyd, John Palfrey, and Dena Sacco, editors) as part of its collaboration with the Born This Way Foundation (BTWF), and generously supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series is comprised of short papers that are intended to help synthesize research and provide research-grounded insight to the variety of stakeholders working on issues related to youth empowerment and action towards creating a kinder, braver world.
The eight new papers focus on The Role of Youth Organizations and Youth Movements for Social Change, and were selected among submissions from a call for papers that the Berkman Center put out in June 2012. They include:
I can’t imagine a better time for this to appear.
Sylvia
From A Platform for Good (PfG)-
For parents, we’ve created “holiday wrappers.” These are small, personalized online safety cards for parents to include with their kid’s technology gift. We have five different items (smartphone, tablet, game system, cell phone, computer) for parents to choose from, print out and write in their own guidelines to fit their child’s age and house rules. To emphasize a key PfG concept –that safety requires a partnership and conversation with your kids — the cards don’t just set rules for the kids to follow. They also provide a set of promises parents have to abide by (e.g., not overreacting, being willing to learn new things)! Get your holiday wrappers here!
For teens, we’ve created printable (or downloadable) coupons that teenagers can give to their parents. The coupons entitle parents to 2 hours of tech training (such as how to use social media, how to set up the features on a cell phone, even 2 hours of tech-free time). Get your holiday coupons here!
CMU is looking for teachers to partner with for research on educational games. Read more about the ENGAGE project here and sign up.
Try the games (I have to say I did not play these games because they require a download of a Unity web player and I was too lazy to do it!)
Play RumbleBlocks! at rumbleblocks.etc.cmu.edu
Play Beanstalk! at beanstalk.etc.cmu.edu
Sylvia
The National Research Council has just published goals for U.S. STEM education. Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education gives 14 key indicators for measuring improvements to STEM education and suggests that tracking these indicators will require asking federal and state collection agencies to focus not just on schools (personnel, enrollment) but on schooling (pedagogy, knowledge acquisition).
The report’s authors build on an earlier report, “A Framework for K-12 Science Education,” and point out that with increased focus on U.S. competitiveness and revisions to the Common Core State Standards, the time is right to redouble our attention to making sure STEM is done right, not just reshuffled to match new standards.
Hat tip to the NCWIT blog for this!
Sylvia