Turning around challenging classrooms

Every year teachers encounter a wide variety of challenges in their classrooms. Sources of these challenges might come from a new set of children with their own unique needs, a new teaching assignment or a change in administration.

As I start my 16th year of teaching, it is my experience that teachers who are highly reflective and place a premium on professional development stand the best chance for surviving and thriving challenging classrooms.

Here are 3 things highly reflective teachers understand:

1. Blaming the kids will ensure that nothing changes. Teaching would be easy if weren't for the students. It's easy to blame the kids. It's easy because it means we don't have to reflect inward - rather we just have to look outward. Challenging one's own practices can be tough, but if you stop and think about each of the statements above, both logic and research will show that these are classroom problems, not simply student problems.

2. Question the 'how' and the 'why'. Many professional development conferences provide teachers with opportunity to ask questions such as “How do I mark better?” or “How do I get my students to do their homework?” At first glance these look like challenging and provocative questions, but they are still questions that promote more of the same. Far more powerful questions are “Why do I mark?” or “Why do I assign homework?” Investigating the motives for our actions, rather than merely examining our methods of implementation, is a better use of our time, particularly if the subject in question is a belief or habit that we’ve come to accept as a given truth.

3. If the teacher is bored or unhappy, the students are more so. For too many people, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: you will pretend to teach and we will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy. Teaching and learning should not be a chore that everyone can't wait to be done.

Turning around challenging classrooms and changing school through reflection and professional development is not easy but it's worth it. Below are links to all of the rethinking and reflecting that I have done over the last 16 years:

Rethink Discipline

Rethink Assessment

Rethink Homework

Rethink Standardization

Rethink Accountability

Rethink Lesson Planning

3 big ideas about teacher workload

Andrea Sands wrote a great piece in the Edmonton Journal about Alberta teachers who are taking part in a massive workload study. (I've written about teacher workload here).

As a classroom teacher, I have 15 years of experience actually teaching in public schools. I don't just write and talk about teaching -- I'm actually teaching. I don't just have something to say, I'm doing the work and I have something to say about it.

During my interview with Andrea, I tried to emphasize that it is not simply the quantity of my work that is problematic -- the problems I face in my classroom can be best found in the complexity of teaching. Simply put, I am expected to teach too many children who have too many needs.

Let me explain.

This is my 15th year of teaching.

I've mostly taught middle school, but I've also taught some special education.

At home, I am a father where I have a class size of two: Kayley is 7 and Sawyer is 2. While Kayley wants to play a farming board game where we plant, harvest and sell crops for cash that involves adding and multiplying, Sawyer wants to run around and throw the game pieces. You can imagine how different their needs are.

At school, I teach 126 students every day. I have thirty-three grade 6 students that I teach language arts and social studies, and thirty-three grade 8 students that I teach social studies. I see the grade 6s twice a day and the grade 8s once a day. Each class is forty-nine minutes.

At home I get pulled in 2 different directions while at school there are over 30 different students every 49 minutes, 6 times a day.

To be clear, these are not 126 similar children.

Some of these children:

• are living in poverty
• are abused and neglected
• have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• are reluctant learners
• are learning English as a second language
• are behaviourally challenged
• suffer from mental health issues
• come to school a couple times a month, or not at all
• are academically challenged
• are immature
• are not loved
• are uninspired

And yet some of these children:

• love school
• love to read
• are loved
• are curious
• are inspired
• attend regularly

Too many of my students draw from the first list -- not enough are described by the second. While all of my students are in middle school, some would fit well in elementary and some are ready for high school.

Individually, I feel confident and competent working with children from either list, but when faced with 30+ every class and 126 of them everyday, I am overwhelmed. 

Here are 3 big ideas I would like people to understand about teacher workload:

1. I meet all my students' needs only if some children don't show up. Many Albertans work hard, and some may work more hours in a week than teachers. My issue is not that I average 45 to 50 hours a week. My issue is that I'm expected to teach too many students with too many needs. My expectations for my students are only surpassed by the expectations I have for myself. Everyday I go to work hoping to get to every child only to go home knowing that I can't. Alberta parents should be upset about this as much as Alberta teachers are.

2. My working conditions are my students' learning conditions. Too many people want to frame this teacher workload discussion around how much teachers get paid and how much time they get off. I'm not asking for more pay or time off, although these are important, I am saying that because of the current deteriorating conditions in Alberta schools, quality and quantity of student learning is suffering. When we play politics with education by framing this as a labour debate (instead of an education debate), children lose. 

3. Teachers are so busy teaching they don't have time and effort to learn how to be better teachers. School has looked, tasted, smelled and felt like school for too long. In order for things to improve, things have to change, and sustainable change needs to be led by teachers who are supported through inspiring professional development. I know too many teachers who are so overwhelmed by their teaching assignment that they don't have the time or effort to learn how to change and improve their teaching.

In our cars, we have instruments that tell us when our fuel is low and engine temperature is high. 

In education, we have teachers who have their fingers on the pulse of their classrooms.

We ignore our car's instruments and teachers at our own peril. It should be no surprise that those who are comfortable with the way things are become angered by those who wish to influence change. Labelling these gauges as whiny allows us to criticize, distort or dismiss inconvenient information in favour of our existing beliefs while ensuring that things get worse for our children.

Here is what Education Hell looks like

Chicago is getting ready for a standardized test called the ISAT. Here's a 1 minute video of an Inservice session to help teachers prep for "The Vocabulary Matrix".



I have four quick points:

1. Roller coaster of emotions. I experienced a roller coaster of emotions as I watched this apocalyptic video. First, I was in shock. I couldn't believe this was happening. Second, I was angry. I couldn't imagine sitting in that classroom chanting without speaking up or walking out. Third, I was profoundly sad. If this is the nature of education reform and the future of our schools then I want nothing to do with it. Lastly, I am energized and hopeful. The only thing that cancerous education policies and practices need to survive is for good teachers to say and do nothing. Silence is not only assent to these soul-sucking test and punish practices -- silence is also betrayal to our democracy, public education and ultimately our children. This is why I'm attending the Network for Public Education Conference this weekend in Austin, Texas.

2. This is not Professional Development. This is at best a very poor inservice. Professional development is for professionals to determine their own growth and learning. This is precisely why teachers need a powerful Union that has a strong Professional Association focus to make sure that teachers have control over their own professional learning.

3. Teaching or testing? Teaching to the test and excessive test preparation invalidates inferences that can be drawn from the scores – yet they are the inevitable response to pressure to produce good test scores. Classroom time is devoured by not only the tests themselves but also practice tests, pre- and post-tests, field tests for the tests, benchmark tests, teacher tests, district tests, and state or provincial tests. Because testing is not teaching, this ultimately leads to a loss of opportunities for students to have a broad range of educational experiences, and the first things to go usually end up being the arts and physical activity – which do not lend themselves to be easily tested.

4. This is not how to teach children to read. Things are at their worst when we associate learning to read with taking a test. If you want to see what learning to read looks like, check out this post.

One last bonus horror: Is this being done to the teachers to encourage them to return to their classrooms and do exactly this to their students?

Who should control teachers' professional learning?

The Calgary Board of Education (CBE) announced today that they do not support the proposed agreement between the Government of Alberta and Alberta Teachers Association.

There are lots of reasons to support this deal, and there are lots of reasons to critique it. Like all complex problems, the solutions are equally complex. This post isn't about the proposed agreement. Instead, let's take a moment and focus on one of the concerns from the CBE. They state:

We are concerned that the proposed agreement gives individual teachers exclusive control over their professional learning.

There's so much wrong with this that quite frankly it's hard to know where to start. But here goes:

• There is a big difference between professional development and in-servicing. School Boards can still have their own focus and priorities via inservices. However, in-servicing is not professional learning. Professionals determine their own growth and efficacy. 

• The heart of local autonomy is with the child, and the best decisions for the child are made by the child in collaboration with a safe and caring adult who actually spends time with them. Those adults are not trustees and they are not administrators -- they are the classroom teachers.

• The problem with employing teachers to empower students to own their learning is that teachers might want the same treatment.

• Teachers need to be trusted and treated as autonomous professionals.

• If School Boards are concerned about individual teachers having exclusive control over their professional development, they are going to hate the Edcamp model of professional development where teachers teach teachers. Calgary is hosting #edcampyyc and Red Deer has #redcamp13 and they are exclusively ran by teachers for teachers.

• For too many teachers, the P in PLC doesn't seem to stand for Professional or Personal. Too many Professional Learning Communities (PLC) operate in a manner that places standardization as their primary function. Some PLCs meet for no other reason than to arrive at a "consensus" for how all the teachers will instruct and assess their students. A kind of pseudo-democracy driven by majority rules is enforced to justify a consistent (read: standardized), one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning.

• Because accountability starts and ends with standardized test scores, some School Boards reduce professional development to "test scores are low, make them go up." This is problematic because test scores should never drive professional development.

• I summarize my worse learning experiences as top-down, externally mandated, out-of-context, irrelevant to me and little to no purpose events that I am expected to play a passive role. I own my learning. Who owns yours?

• Who owns a teacher's professional development? And under what circumstances would the answer to the above question ever be someone other than the teacher? To avoid cultures of compliance, teachers need autonomy.

• Many school boards have convinced teachers that professional development simply means do more. For teachers this has come to mean more curriculum, more testing, more classroom management, more hidden curriculum, more personalizing, more better, harder, stronger... No wonder many teachers have come to see professional development as a four letter word. Too many teachers are so busy teaching that they don't have the time or effort to learn how to be a better teacher. 

• Mandate teachers to attend one-size-fits-all, "drive-by" professional development events and you teach them that professional development is something done to them rather than by them. Too many teachers wait for the next externally imposed professional development day that their school board dictates and then complain that their needs weren't met by someone they hardly know. If we want our students to move beyond the idea that learning is something that is provided for us or done to us, then we need to change our attitude towards teacher professional development. 

• You don't make change by simply making those who have less power than you do what ever it is you demand. To believe otherwise is to ignore what research has been telling us for a very long time. The proper question is not, "how can we motivate teachers?" but rather, "how can we create the conditions within which teachers will motivate themselves?"

• As a teacher, do I serve school boards or are they to support me?

Don Braid from the Calgary Herald wrote a fantastic column here. Here is my favorite part:

The CBE’s objections strike me as a perfect reflection of its self-protective, bureaucratic character. 

They aren’t really about students. They’re about systems, control and power, the specialties of the shiny new headquarters on 12th Avenue S.W. 

The CBE fears the teachers will take over “much of the decision-making for student learning.” 

Well, if that means the teachers do the deciding about how kids should be taught, good.
Aren’t they the ones in the classroom? If teachers can’t figure out how to get the job done, no bureaucrat will ever do it for them. 

Next, the board finds it appalling that the agreement gives “individual teachers exclusive control over their professional learning.” 

Excellent teachers, the board argues, “benefit from the support of visionary leaders who see the future of education.” 

Teachers are incapable of vision, apparently. So they need board bureaucrats to tell them what to learn. 

The board goes on: “If individual teachers solely direct what becomes their personal learning, how does a school district advance a common vision for student success?”
The best teachers I ever had (and yours too, I bet) were always right in your face, inspiring you, moving you, challenging you. 

The last thing on anybody’s mind at such moments is a school district’s vision. Great teaching is deeply personal, but very vulnerable to its natural enemies — meetings, visions and systems. 

All this makes the CBE’s final fear bleakly hilarious. The board worries that “the proposed agreement creates excessive and expensive bureaucracy.”
The irritant here is new committees that will hear teacher complaints about workload.

But the real cause of the CBE’s reaction, one suspects, is that overall funding for bureaucracy is going to be cut, thus threatening officials already on the job. 

There may indeed be some weak points in the teachers deal. The CBE, unfortunately, has only revealed its own.

Tips for Better Blogging

Here are some random thoughts I might pass on to a teacher who wanted to start blogging:

• you have to make blogging enjoyable or you won't do it for long. 

• don't worry about being right -- make the purpose of your blog about learning and growing. If you end up changing your mind about something, be open and honest to others and yourself.

• decide how often you want to post. I might suggest starting with one post per week. Remember they don't have to be long. In fact, some of the best blog posts are rich on quality and relatively short of quantity.

• consider using Twitter to share your blog. Here's why.

• try your best to not care about how many visitors your blog gets. It takes a long time to get any kind of traffic. Paying attention to traffic too early and too often is likely to dissuade you from blogging. Remember that you are blogging mostly for yourself -- your learning. Blogging and sharing for others is ubiquitous.

• be sure to link to other people's stuff in your blog and then make them aware that you have linked to them. This is a great way of connecting with others via Twitter or e-mail.

• I would recommend not monetizing your blog. Keep advertisements and the desire to profit as far away from your blog as possible. Blogging is about learning and sharing. Try not to get distracted from these objectives with profits and popularity.

• consider bringing colleagues in on your blogging. Perhaps influence someone else to start their own blog and work together.

• when done well, blogging and tweeting can become one of the most powerful professional development tools because your learning shifts from something done by distant authorities to you to something you create for yourself.

Want to be a better teacher? Blog.

This was written by Dean Shareski who is a Digital Learning Consultant for Prairie South School Division in Saskatchewan, Canada. He also teaches pre-service teachers at the University of Regina. Dean works with teachers and students in understanding the power of the Read/Write Web. Dean tweets here and blogs here. This post first appeared here.

by Dean Shareski

Want to create better teachers? I know how. One word. Blogging.

Now before you roll your eyes or accuse me of oversimplifying the very complex issue of teacher evaluation and monitoring, hear me out.

I began teaching in 1988. It was a tough job and thinking about getting better was superseded by survival instincts. Early on in my career, there were several documents that the province produced in support of improved professional development. I didn't pay much attention to these but one phrase I saw in those documents some 20 years ago stuck with me. Reflective Practitioner. I sort of understood the concept but other than simply thinking about what you did in the classroom, I wasn't at all sure what to do with this term.

When I discovered blogs almost five years ago, I soon figured out what that term meant. Since that occasion I have sat down to write close to 1,000 pieces of reflection. While not all would be considered deep, most take me anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours to craft. It may not always look like it, these are generally borne out of the times I spent observing, thinking and working in classrooms. The reflective writing has been valuable but definitely the nearly 4,000 comments have been even more of a learning experience. This is the single best professional development experience I've had.

Dan Meyer, a Mathematics teacher in California writes:

... blogging was the cheapest, most risk-free investment I could have made of my personal time into my job. You start by writing down things that are interesting to you, practices you don't want to forget. And then you start trying new things just so you can blog about them later, picking them apart, and dialoging over them with strangers. Periods of stagnancy in your blogging start to correspond to periods of stagnancy in your teaching. You start to muse on your job when you're stuck in traffic, in line for groceries, that sort of thing. That transformation has been nothing but good for me and it all began on a free Blogspot blog.

Thousands of other blogging educators could echo similar words. In fact, I've yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it's been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement. I've no "data" to prove this but I'm willing to bet my golf clubs that teachers who blog are our best teachers. If you look at the promise of Professional Learning Communities that our schools have invested thousands, more likely millions to achieve, blogs accomplish much of the same things. The basic idea of the PLC is to have teachers share practice/data and work in teams to make improvements. A good blog does this and more. While the data may not be school specific, great bloggers know how to share data and experience that is both relevant and universal so any reader can contribute and create discussion.

There's a natural transparency that emerges. The teachers who blog as professionals in this reflective manner in my district invite anyone to look into their classrooms and you can get a picture of what happens on a daily basis. This goes a long way in addressing accountability concerns.

Teachers have for years had to fill in a plethora of reports and forms which in essence are accountability papers. For the most part they are of no use to teachers and in most cases aren't very valuable for administration either. Busy work.

So here's my plan. Hire a teacher, give them a blog. Get them to subscribe to at least five other teachers in the district as well as five other great teachers from around the globe. Have their principal and a few central office people to subscribe to the blog and five other teachers as well. Require them to write at least once a week on their practice. Get conversations going right from the get go. Watch teachers get better.

Try that. If it doesn't work after a year, you get my golf clubs.

PS. The only people allowed to criticize or challenge this idea are people who have blogged for at least one year and written at least 50 posts. The rest of you can ask questions but you can't dismiss it.

Autonomous Professional Development

Dylan Wiliam briefly describes why one-size-fits all professional development is foolish and why teachers need to be trusted and treated as autonomous professionals.

Process of Inquiry

This was written by my friend and colleague Larry Hartel who is principal of Glendale Middle School in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. Larry blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Larry Hartel

“Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand” is the foundation for why inquiry based learning is so important. Inquiry based learning involves seeking truth, information, or knowledge by questioning.

What is the process for inquiry? This question may in fact not be a straight forward answer. As I will share there are a few common features of all plans and a variety of models being used in school.

Inquiry involves the human senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. Infants make connections to the world by inquiring. They observe faces that come near, they grasp objects, they put things in their mouths, and they turn toward voices. It is natural. Although it is most often associated with science, inquiry-based learning is used to engage students of all ages, in all subject areas, to learn by exploration and discovery.

Memorizing and regurgitating information and facts is not a critical skill in the world today. Facts change and will change rapidly and information is available anywhere, 24/7. Inquiry based learning allows students to learn how to build their own understanding of a problem and thus produce deeper connections. Because the connection to the learning is deeper the chances are that the student will remember the concept and then be able to apply the understanding to new situations as they arise.


There are a wide variety of models for what “Inquiry” looks like in the classroom. It seems that most have five things in common, questioning, planning and predicting, investigating, recording and reporting and reflecting.

Here is an example from the Inquiry Page.

This diagram based on John Dewey’s model uses a spiral path of asking good questions, Investigating solutions, creating new knowledge, discussing and sharing our discoveries and experiences and then reflecting on the new-found knowledge.

There are many models for inquiry learning. Great inquiry learning will never be linear. Inquiry by its very nature is all about insights and making connections. The learner will revisit steps along the process and scaffold as they build the learning.

This model from Inquirylearn.com has similar steps to the process that Dewey uses. The observation that they make that I find interesting is:

“If the question, investigation, and outcome(s) are truly meaningful to the learner, she or he will apply this newly-acquired knowledge in her or his own life by sharing knowledge and by taking concrete action in the world.”


Great questioning is the key to inquiry. To start the inquiry cycle the question, or questioning is key. Asking the right questions at the right moment in a lesson or activity will turn up the learning, or slow it down. The art of questioning is an area that one needs to explore further to really build a successful inquiry project. Here is a great wiki that I find has some fantastic information on questioning.

So in the true spirit of inquiry we should continue to ask, "what are the questions we need to be asking to become the inquiry based, science and technology school we dream of?"

Boldly going where only a few schools have gone before.

What if your PD looked like this?

This was written by my friend and colleague Chris McCullough. He is a high school teacher in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Chris McCullough

What if your professional development looked like this?



If you've watched the video, I hope you've come to understand a little bit about the power of intrinsic motivation and autonomy. With regards to Teacher Professional Development, this seems to be a new concept. Personally I believe many teachers in North America have forgotten how important it is to maintain the professionalism and art that is teaching.

As teachers, we have to do more than handout worksheets, and get students to fill in the answers. As an example, I recently had a conversation with a colleague who explained that a student of hers was complaining that her Social Studies school work was too hard. "Couldn't we just complete worksheets, you know, the kind where the answers are in each chapter of the textbook?" This is an interesting dilemma for a teacher; the idea that a student would complain that their assignments made them think, create, and problem solve. As Professionals it is important that teaching is much broader than handing out questions. Great teachers engage, discuss, and get their students thinking. Teacher Professional Development should be like this too. The #edcamp model is a great example of how this could work, and I truly hope that teachers throughout Central Alberta will give this kind of learning a try. Teachers love to "talk shop" and this un-conference does just that!

In life, the answer isn't always at the back of the book, and I believe when it comes to teacher Professional Development this is true too. As a profession, we can't be the students who are complaining that they have to think at school. We have to embrace our learning needs, wants, and challenges. We can't let people do this for us. If we do, then we are just technicians, we are less than professionals. Professionals always try to better themselves, so why not try #redcamp. It's local, it's free, and it may just be the kind of Professional Development you're looking for.

For further information, check out this great TED talk by Kristen Swanson.

My three years of blogging and tweeting

For three years, I have made blogging and tweeting the core of my learning. Without a doubt, blogging and tweeting has become the heart and soul of my professional development.

Blogging and tweeting has allowed me to shift my learning from an event done to me to a process that I actively own and engage in almost every single day. My professional development is something I create for myself.

Twitter provides me with an opportunity to share with others that time and distance would normally not allow me to share with. Blogging provides me the opportunity to put my thoughts, questions and beliefs into words.

For the last three years, I've dedicated myself to blogging one piece of content almost everyday. This requires intense reflection.

Once I've shared something with others, they are kind enough to engage me with a comment or a tweet, which allows me to reflect and reconsider my thinking even more. This is invaluable.

In three years, my blog has:

• over 1300 posts
• almost 4000 comments
• over 1 million pageviews

In three years, my Twitter has:

• almost 10,000 followers
• I follow 270 of the coolest people on Twitter
• over 25 000 tweets

Blogging and tweeting has provided me with opportunities to further my learning that without blogging and tweeting wouldn't have likely happened:

• I interact and learn with many people form around the world who share a passion for teaching and learning.
• I co-edited a book on De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization with Paul Thomas.
• I interact and learn with some of my favorite education authors and speakers.
• I read and write more about education in the last 3 years than I did in my previous 10 years of teaching.
• I receive numerous emails from educators and parents who want to engage in a conversation about how we can change school.
• I keynoted a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• My blog acts as a curator for all the cool stuff I learn. My learning is always at my fingertips.
• I receive invitations to write articles for education magazines and to do radio interviews.
• I hosted a series of professional development events on Skype where I presented through a translator for teachers from Estonia.
• I was appointed to the Alberta Teachers' Associations Strategic Planning Committee.

But most of all, I have developed a network of people that I trust and respect. These connections fuel my learning. I can't overstate how important it is to my learning that I have these connections.

While I can see how all of these connections have influenced my learning, I've come to understand that I will never really know what kind of an impact my sharing will have on others. Sharing is funny that way.

And so this concludes my third year of blogging. I'm going to go off-line over the holidays. That means no Twitter and no blogging.

Happy Holidays!

You know what I mean?

The more you say "you know what I mean" the less you know what you mean.

For me blogging has provided me with a medium to deeply synthesize all of the scientific research and anecdotal evidence that I come across.

It's pleasantly frustrating work that all professionals need to engage in so that they can both act and speak competently about their craft.

Dysfunctional PLCs

When I taught middle school, I was a part of what we called "Team 8" which was where all the grade 8 teachers would come together on Monday morning to discuss the coming week and our students' needs. There were usually 4 or 5 of us. I taught half the kids science and language arts while someone else taught the other half. There was usually one math teacher for all 4 classes and two social teachers with two classes each.

When I taught grade 6 exclusively, I taught half of the grade 6s all their core subjects while my grade-level partner taught the other half. We were a two-man team that met daily to discuss our students and our teaching.

Now I teach at a children's psychiatric assessment unit where I'm the only teacher. I work with a multi-disciplinary team of nurses, doctors, recreation therapists, phycologists and social workers. I am in daily contact with my team to discuss our students' special needs.

As I enter my 12th year of teaching, these are the three teaching environments that I have had the pleasure of working in, and in each case I have had the opportunity to be a part of a work environment filled with professionals who were committed to help children. In each environment, efforts were made to help nurture a culture of collaboration. We were there to support each other.

But I have come to see a disturbing trend among some teachers' work environments. I've come to hear how some teachers feel like prisoners to their Professional Learning Communities.

Here's what I mean:

I have always been fortunate enough to be a part of a team where we respected each other enough to know that our instructional and assessment practices would differ based on our individual students' needs. But not all teachers are afforded this professional autonomy. In fact, for too many teachers the P in PLC doesn't seem to stand for Professional or Personal.

Some PLCs, grade level teams or subject departments operate in a manner that places standardization as their primary function. Some PLCs meet for no other reason than to arrive at a "consensus" for how all the teachers will instruct and assess their students. A kind of pseudo-democracy driven by majority rules is enforced to justify a consistent (read: standardized), one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning.

Some claim that the strength of this approach is to decrease the likelihood that a student or parent might complain about one teacher or favor another. Such complaints can be easily tossed aside because it is assumed that two different students with two different teachers are receiving an identical experience. Complaints simply aren't registered because the PLC makes each teacher interchangeable. In this scenario, fair and equal become the same thing.

But this is a farce.

We all know that each student's classroom experiences often hinge on their teacher's pedagogical beliefs. Even if two teachers are mandated to use the same course outline, grading scheme, disciplinary policy, seating arrangement, textbook and final exam, these two teachers will likely still offer two different learning experiences for their students.

This is unavoidably true because these two teachers will teach different students.

I'm all for teachers coming together to collaborate in an effort to improve, but that's not the same as having teachers come together to vote on their instructional and assessment practices. The idea that a teacher could some how meet each of their individual students' needs by voting with a committee of teachers, who may not even teach the same students, is a relic of the factory model of school.

In this system, the children are treated as if they were interchangeable widgets -- cogs in a machine where the machine's needs trump the needs of the learners' needs.

There's a lot wrong with a PLC that standardizes teaching and learning, but perhaps at the heart of the problem is a misguided belief that in order to provide an excellent education for all children, all children must get the same education. Ultimately, these dysfunctional PLCs fail because we know that we can't meet the needs of all learners by pretending all learners have the same needs.

Everything works

Punish a child to teach him a lesson and he'll learn that you can use power over those weaker than you to get what you want.

Reward students for high testsandgrades or punish them for low testsandgrades and you teach children that testsandgrades, not learning, are the point of school.

Use multiple choice tests as your primary form of assessment and you teach children that in the real world you don't have to generate your own response to solve problems.

Frame learning as a competition and you force children to see their peers as obstacles to their own success.

Assign boatloads of nightly homework to children and you encourage them to see learning as this thing they just need to get done before they can return to their regularly scheduled lives.

Praise administrators for their district or school's standardized test scores and you push them to place pressure on their teachers to attain higher scores by whatever means available.

Mandate teachers to attend one-size-fits-all, "drive-by" professional development sessions and you teach them that professional development is something done to them rather than by them.

Catch children being good and you encourage them to be good so they get caught.

Everything "works". The question is: works to do what?

Finland and Professional Development

In Finland, they spend six times more every year on teacher professional development than on student assessment and testing.

In his book Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg writes:

The Finnish state budget allocates normally about 30 million U.S. dollars each year to professional development of teachers and school principals through various forms of university courses and in-service training (compared with 5 million U.S. dollars for student assessment and testing!). The main purpose of this investment in human development is to ensure equal access to further training, particularly for teachers working in more disadvantaged schools. This professional development support is contracted to service providers on a competitive basis. The government initially determines to the focus of the desired training, based on current national educational-developments needs. Local education authorities that own the schools and also employ all the teachers make an investment of similar scale in professional development of their education personnel each year. The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with municipalities, plans to double public funding for teacher professional development by 2016.

ConnectED Canada

ConnectED Canada will be a gathering of teachers, students, and parents designed to share innovative practices that are happening all around Canada. Rather than traditional presentations, this conference is built around conversations on how we can continue to move forward as educators. 

I submitted an application to facilitate a discussion. Here is my proposal:

Affiliation: 

Alberta Teachers' Association

Title of the Conversation: 

Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.

Short Description: 

Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. Because grading can only ever be experienced as reward or punishment, they have to go, and that’s okay because anecdotal evidence and scientific research have shown us that the best educators never need tests to collect information nor grades to share it.

Extended Description:

Are you tired of students asking you: "What's this question out of?" or "Is this for marks?" Ever been frustrated with students who see every learning experience you provide for them as just another chore? Have you experienced disappointment with students who continually avoid challenges and choose the lazy way out of learning? Have you felt discouraged with grade grabbing students who are unhappy even when they get 99% or students who couldn’t care less about receiving a failing grade? 

Reflecting upon one's beliefs can be a very productive use of time, and I can think of no better time to do so than when we have come to mindlessly accept something as a given truth. When questions are no longer answered because questions are no longer being asked, it's time to pause and reflect. It’s time we stopped simply asking how we can grade better and start asking why we are grading at all. 

Assessment and measurement are not the same thing. By definition, measuring is any attempt to reduce learning to a symbol on a fixed measurement scale, whereas the latin root for assessment is assidere which means ‘to sit beside’. Anecdotal evidence and scientific research is telling us that we waste far too much time ‘perfecting’ measurement while ignoring assessment. 

Ultimately, grading conceals far more than it reveals. It’s time to abandon our mania for reducing everything to numbers and subscribe to something far more authentic and supportive of real learning.

Test scores are low, make them go up

“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below.”

~ John Dryden

Some people make the case that good teaching and real learning are the best ways to achieve high test scores. The argument goes something like this: Help your students become thinkers and learners and the scores will take care of themselves.

Let's for the moment ignore the evidence that suggests this might not be true. 

There is a growing body of evidence that shows you can improve test scores without improving learning. Some of these strategies range from illegal cheating such as changing students answers -- to legalized cheating, otherwise known as teaching to the test. 

Cheating has always been frowned upon, and at one time so was teaching to the test, but in response to the ever increasing demands for higher and higher test scores, teaching to the test has gone from something even the test-makers vehemently opposed to something that is encouraged as best practice. And when the pressure to raise scores threaten the very existence of schools and the employment of educators, system-wide forms of cheating are encouraged from as high up as administrators and superintendents.

In reaction to this systemic pressure, many educators now experience professional development as nothing more than "test scores are low, make them go up."

Anyone who has played the game of school as a student knows that there are ingenius ways to achieve high grades without learning too much and there are also ways to learn a lot and still earn low grades.

Here's what I mean. Here are two students:

One student has a teacher that artfully guides them to play an active role in constructing and discovering a love for learning; the other has a teacher that focuses on scripted test preparation and direct instruction that has this student play a passive role in reproducing right answers on tests. The former experiences school as something done by them -- the latter as something done to them.

Here are their testsandgrades data:

So which student is which? Which one sees learning as a means to an end and which sees it as an end in and of itself? Which one has a teacher that artfully guides them and which has a teacher that does test prep?

The information provided about Liam and Samantha is as common-place as it is limited, which means we can't possibly know which student is which based on the (lack of) information provided --and when I say we need more information, I don't mean we need more testsandgrades.

The ultimate point here is that inferences made from testsandgrades can be undermined leaving the successful and superficial students indistinguishable. The reductionist data gleamed from testsandgrades is by definition necessarily incomplete -- making the use of this limited and narrow kinds of data to make any kind of decisions or judgements about a student at best unhelpful and at worst harmful.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this whole debacle that I call chasing "testsandgrades and calling it learning" is that there is a whole generation of beginning teachers who have known no other education than one that makes testsandgrades both the means and end to learning. The distinction many people make between real learning and testsandgrades makes no sense to them because they have been taught from the beginning that testsandgrades are good teaching and learning; they simply do not have any other model to draw from.

The mantra of test scores are low make them go up and the cult following we have in our culture of education for testsandgrades may prove to do more long-lasting harm to our education systems than we can fathom.

Why test scores should never drive professional development

Here are but a few reasons why test scores should never be used to drive the professional development of teachers:

• tests were not designed to drive a teacher's teaching or a learner's learning. In other words, we should never treat a test score as synonymous with what was learned or what was taught
• tests can only measure a subset of the goals of education
• test scores do not provide a direct or complete measurement of educational achievement
• tests are incomplete measures, proxies for more comprehensive measures and authentic performance assessments
• tests are generally very small samples of a very large domain of knowledge and skill.
• focusing on test scores tend to reduce teacher professional development to "test scores are low, make them go up"
• a case can be made that measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning, so focusing with laser like precision on what can be measured will by definition encourage teachers to ignore the kinds of things that tests can't assess such as ethics, creativity, sense of humour, empathy, etc
• the need to evaluate students should never determine curriculum content or pedagogy
• focusing on the limited and narrow scope of test scores encourages teachers to confuse valuing what we measure with measuring what we value.
• focusing on test scores encourages teachers to confuse learning and then there happens to be a test with learning because there is a test. We risk making tests the raison d'être for learning.
• focusing on test scores encourages everyone to see assessment as something done to kids rather than by them.
• No one assessment, no matter how elaborate, valid or reliable should be used to make important decisions.

Using test scores to drive or guide a teacher's professional development may lead teachers to know more about raising the scores than raising children.

I own my learning

I summarize my worse learning experiences as top-down, externally mandated, out-of-context, irrelevant to me and little to no purpose events that I am expected to play a passive role.

When learning most resembles spam, it isn't likely to be of any good.

I initially struggled with identifying my best learning experience as a teacher because my first thoughts went to the conferences or conventions that I have attended... but I found that focusing on these events left me wanting.

My best professional development is a process that began when I unplugged myself from the top-down, mandated professional development matrix. It began when I became so disenfranchised with the education system that I began to question everything.

Because of social networking (which for me mostly includes blogging and twittering), I have been able to make time and place all but obsolete.

I am able to engage in two-way dialogue with educators from around the world and access information and research from the sources I trust without a third-party filter. Because I play an active role with this research and dialogue, I am able to engage intensely in reflecting upon my beliefs and practices.

No longer am I dependent on someone else to provide me with the motivation or resources to learn.

I am unplugged.

I own my learning.

Who owns yours?

Dave Martin on Professional Development

My friend Dave Martin is running for Professional Development Chair in his local. Here is a quick glance at his philosophy around teacher professional development. You can follow Dave on Twitter and check out his blog here.

by Dave Martin

I, David Martin, am currently running for the Red Deer Catholic Local’s PD chair. On the day
the elections opened up, I put my name forward and since then, have been asked questions about
my philosophy around PD, my goals of PD, and other various questions. Here is a simple FAQ
about my ideas around PD.


1) What is your philosophy around PD?


I believe we should be focusing on teacher learning and not about teacher professional
development. Some teachers may only associate PD days with the term professional
development, and therefore actually believe PD is an event, a workshop, or a program, rather
than an ongoing daily part of a job. How then do we make deeper daily learning a reality for
teachers? Replacing the concept of professional development with professional learning is a
good start; understanding that professional learning “in context” is the only learning that changes
classroom instruction is a second step. Also, recent research shows that traditional methods of
presenting classroom innovations to teachers in workshops does not generally result in either
changed classroom practice or improved student learning.


2) How do you plan to implement PD in the local?


The planners of PD need to avoid the “one size fits all” approach and remember different
educators have different expectations. Mandated PD in top-down programs sometimes does
not recognize the differences required by the teachers it is mandated to and thus can destroy the
teachers “will to learn”. Andy Hargreaves said, “Most teacher development initiatives, even the
most innovative ones, neglect the emotion of teaching.” We need to understand that classroom
practices will improve, assessment will change, and more learning will occur if we motivate
instead of mandate.


3) What does PD look like?


I believe that true professional learning could range from formal credentialed post-graduate
courses to simply having a conversation with a colleague over a beverage. Teachers, myself
included, have learned many innovated educational ideas solely from “googling”. Recently, I
read: “Guest speakers with PowerPoint presentations are the norm and informal learning time
is viewed with suspicion. Administrators with board or school improvement plans to implement
may insist that PD opportunities meet the latest “edu-babble” criteria;”


My response: If professional learning is truly personal then it cannot be mandated to anyone by
anyone. I will encourage that PD stays in the hands of the teachers.


Vote Dave Martin for PD chair!

Professional Development Mindset

If you had the opportunity to learn from someone, would you take it?

Would you be pleased to find someone more talented than yourself, or would you be defensive?

Would your answer change whether you had one year of teaching under your belt or twenty-five?

Would you be so willing to learn if this person was a colleague down the hall? or someone from another country?

What if you see yourself as an authority figure or master teacher, would you be willing to learn something different or new?

If professional development opportunities are simply an opportunity to reaffirm the beliefs to which you've already established than you ought to just stay home.

But if you can temper doubt, moderate ego and reserve judgement long enough to ask honest, open-minded questions, then there's a chance you might learn something.

The most creative professionals don't waste their time (and others) proving over and over how good they are because they know everyone is better off if they spend their time and effort improving.

We demand this from our students; I would hope we would demand this from ourselves.