Best. Worksheet. Ever.

Check out this worksheet posted by Steve Bowler. It was assigned by his eight year old daughter's teacher.




Thoughts?

Gary Stager: Strategies for Hands-on Learning

Why I unfollowed hundreds of people thanks to Tony Baldasaro

I was inspired by Tony Baldasaro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People to reclaim my connection with the people I follow on Twitter by unfollowing hundreds of people.

I joined Twitter in June 2009 because Alfie Kohn posted on his website that he had joined. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and promptly gave Twitter up after looking at it for about a month. I didn't necessarily know it at the time, but my problem was that I was not connected to anyone, so lurking got pretty old, pretty fast. 

Then in January 2010, I started this blog, and it made sense to use Twitter to share my latest posts. People started responding and connecting and interacting with me via Twitter, so I stayed interested.

People starting following me. 

I can remember following my first 100 people and making a conscious decision not to follow more than that because I wanted Twitter to remain manageable; however, even 100 people was becoming difficult to keep up with. I quickly realized that I didn't need (or want) to read every single tweet by those I followed.

I remember when I decided to relinquish my self-imposed limit on who I followed when I decided to return the favor to those who followed me by following them. This was a mistake and led to the beginning of the end of my connections with those I followed. Before I knew it, I was following about 1,500 people and I quickly found myself never looking at my Twitter Timeline.

That's when I turned to lists. 

I knew that there really was only a handful of people that I really needed and wanted to stay connected closely with. After looking at the two lists that I use the most, there are actually 40 people on Twitter that I follow on a daily basis. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to read what they were reading. I wanted to think about what they are thinking about. I wanted their insight. I wanted to learn from them. 

Months ago, I found myself going through the list of people I followed on Twitter and recognized that I didn't recognize most of them, so I unfollowed about 1,000 people without saying a word to anyone. I forced myself to ignore how many followers I had so that I could not track how many followers I had lost. This left me with about 400 people I "followed" but still payed little attention to. There were still too many tweets to keep track of.

So when I read Tony Baldasoro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People, I knew that I had to be more authentic about who I followed. I mean, how can I claim to know how to use Twitter when I don't even follow the people I follow. I almost exclusively use Twitter on my iPhone, and I'm tired of my home button being useless.

The first run through my unfollowing people was easy -- if I didn't recognize the avatar, I clicked unfollow. But then I still had like 400 people and I knew it was still too many. I had to make some tough decisions. 

Do I unfollow:

• my friend that I used to play hockey with? 
• my school board trustee? 
• my deputy superintendent? 
• people I followed first but no longer connect with?
• popular people that others may follow closely but I don't?

As of now, I'm following about 230 people, and it's still likely too many, but I'm really having a hard time reducing it more than that. Everyone of those 230 people are people that I actively recognize and am at least loosely familiar with. As I approach 10,000 followers, I am again going to have to try and ignore how many followers I might lose because in the end this is about reconnecting with those who I follow and not about simply adding or retaining those who follow me. After all, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people who really follow me on Twitter is significantly less than 10,000. Never forget that the number of followers you have on Twitter is kind of like the time that used to flash on your VCR.

If you are reading this and you have already checked your Twitter account to see that I have unfollowed you, please don't take it personally.

If you feel the need to unfollow me, I understand. Heck, maybe you could take this opportunity to reconnect with those you follow. Maybe I'm on that list, and maybe I'm not. And if I have to lose some followers so that others can also reclaim and reconnect with those they follow, then I'm more than okay with that.

Please understand that if we are to make social networking about relationships and learning then we all have to make choices about the quality and quantity of people we choose to follow. 

The ideal world for the real world

This was written by Susan Somogyi Wells who is a social worker by trade with almost 20 years experience counselling individuals, couples and families. She currently works as a manager in a not-for-profit counselling agency. Susan's greatest passion, however, is parenting her amazing 9 year old daughter, Elizabeth.

by Susan Somogyi Wells

I was raised with old world values. I behaved well, worked hard and studied, because I was afraid to do otherwise. School for me was hard work, dreaded work, but so I was told, “it builds character.” I hated it! I did only what was required to avoid punishment, until adolescence when I rebelled. When in the real world I soon realized that the control and freedom I desired required the education I despised. 

Like so many young adults, when I attended school of my own accord it was no longer dreaded work. As I freed myself of the chains of pleasing others and avoiding punishment, I began to enjoy school. More importantly, I began to enjoy learning. Once intrinsically motivated, I excelled in school.

After a bachelor’s degree, two Master degrees and many life experiences I am now faced with my most challenging learning experience. How do I raise my daughter so she is intrinsically motivated to behave, to learn, to excel? This plan started when she was still a toddler. I began to evaluate my daily decisions and actions against this value of instilling intrinsic motivation. Thus far, it has worked well for me and my child. She has a passion to learn and to be a good, kind human being. As I relinquished my parental control to the public school system, it became more difficult to live by these values. At times I fear that the system of punishment and reward will lead us away from where we have grown.

I have kept some of my old world values. I still believe in hard work and I think it does build character. However, is it not ideal that the drive comes from within? I believe intrinsic motivation is far more sustainable than external punishment or reward. Imagine a world where everyone worked hard because it made them feel proud to do so. Imagine a world where people did the right thing because it reflects who they want to be. Imagine a world where these ideals where the basis of our productivity, rather than reward and punishment.

In my career I have settled for nothing less than this ideal. I am blessed with an employer who does not evaluate my performance based on a grade. My intentions are trusted. My strengths are valued. In my workplace we do not manage our human resources based on rewards and punishment. We have created a culture and environment where employees can excel, based on their own desire to do so.

Although my workplace is not the norm, I believe human resource practices are moving closer to this ideal. So this leads to the question – For which world should we prepare our children? 

I propose that if we prepare our children for the ideal, they will not settle for less than ideal. They will seek out those experiences that reflect their greatest expectations. By their choices and their actions they will also be part of creating this ideal in our society. 

I am concerned that our education system is preparing our children for the “real world” of yesterday rather than the ideal world of tomorrow. I am choosing to prepare my daughter for the best of what our world can be in the future. I don’t want her to settle for the “real world”. I want her to help build an ideal one.

Teachers, Contracts and Change - Time for Courage in Alberta

This was written by Stephen Murgatroyd who is an author, consultant, imaginer - engaged in a wide range of activities around the world. Fun, imaginative, witty... and available for consulting and writing assignments. This post first appeared on his blog here. Murgatroyd tweets here and blogs here.

by Stephen Murgatroyd

Alberta's education system is generally regarded as amongst the best in the English speaking world, at least using international assessment measures such as PISA and TIMMS. While there are significant challenges - equity for First Nations, the challenge of inclusion, funding, securing and retaining teachers - the baseline from which the Province starts is strong and sound.

This is about to be eroded. The Government of Alberta, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) and the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) are engaged in bargaining to secure four years of labour peace to build on the five years of peace which ended in August. The hope has been that a framework agreement would be reached Provincially that all could agree to, within which local bargaining on implementation could take place. These talks started under two previous Ministers (Dave Hancock and Thomas Lukaszuk) and are due to be concluded under Minister Jeff Johnson by 31st October. It’s not likely to happen.

The ATA offer with respect pay, according to street talk, is 0% (2012-13), 0% (2013-14), 1% (2014-15) and 2% (2015-16). Given that inflation is running at app. 2% in 2012 (and assuming no change over the life of the deal, even though inflationary pressures are high, especially with respect to energy costs), then teachers are offering an effective reduction in the buying power of their pay by (app.) 5% over four years as well as enabling the government to budget for a predictable budget. You would think the ASBA and the Government would be leaping tall buildings and popping Champagne, but they are not.

The sticking point is not salary, but what is referred to as "the conditions of practice" or hours and nature of the work.

The ATA see changes in the conditions of practice as an essential condition for the curriculum transformation, social inclusion and pedagogy agenda both they and the Government have been working on collaboratively for some time. Going from 1,326 objectives at Grade 7 to say 150 - 200 with teachers doing more of the curriculum design work locally so as to better engage students requires more quality preparation time. This could be found by reducing the "ministrivia" (admin and paper work driven by the Government) and "administrivia" (admin work driven by the school district) teachers are asked to do and by focusing on quality time for effective preparation and professional development.

The ASBA argument is that all this costs money - more teachers would need to be hired to create system wide capacity for more PD and more preparation time. The Government appears to be supporting the ASBA with the "mantra", coming from Doug Horner, "that there is no new money". Caucus, who seems to have more authority and power than would be normal for a Government at this stage in its mandate, also does not want to “give in” (sic) to teachers. This is the same caucus that supported a 6% over three year raise for nurses.

The ATA has used a demographer, Linda Duxbury from Carelton University, to look at the work-life balance of teachers. It is not a pretty sight. Teachers are working on the basis of 1.5x their contracted hours or more (up to 62 hours a week) to support the learning needs of students and the administrative needs of the system. This is leading to faster departures from teaching as a profession and the more rapid transfer within the system of teachers - all of which is a significant real cost to the system, both financial and emotional. It is more difficult to recruit, retain, develop and sustain a teacher and to enable their appropriate role as professionals in the system.

The response of the Government is cynical. More money will be spent on health care over the next four years since it is politically unacceptable to cut health care. Yet most health care costs are sunk costs, with the exception of costs associated with effective prevention. Educational expenditures are investments in the future of the Province.

There is new money to be found. Alberta's administrative system for the support of education - the number of school boards, the size of the support infrastructure in central offices and in the Department of Education seems profligate relative to value created. The abolition of Grade 3 Provincial Achievement Testing (promised by the Premier and previously agreed to by the House in a free vote) would reduce costs as would the abolition of all provincial achievement tests.

I know Jeff Johnson, our Minister of Education, and I k now him to be a smart and intelligent Minister. I also have met the Premier on more than one occasion and see her as the best hope we have for a new kind of progressive Government in Alberta. But I don’t see courage, leadership or imagination in what is happening now.

Leading experts from around the world look at this conversation - they don't see it as just about pay or work, they see it as about the transformation of our education system. They see it as enabling major change to happen by creating the right conditions for change to occur. Transformation of our school system along the lines both government and teachers have agreed will not occur by tweaks and twists - courage and change are needed.

So, some free advice:

1. Madam Premier: do what your predecessor did and "make it so". Show courageous leadership and real foresight and agree to the ATA proposal. Simply tell the ASBA (who actually don't represent all school boards and are simply a sample of opinion) that the future is about transformation and that teachers need the quality time they are asking for.

2. Minister Johnson: reduce the number of school boards in Alberta through amalgamation (force the issue) and reduce the size of the Department of Education so as to enable transformation to take place nearer to the student. Accelerate the path for curriculum reform to begin in 2013-14 school year. Abolish immediately all aspects of Grade 3 provincial achievement testing. Use new revenues (see below) to fund a major change in the conditions of practice. Show courage.

3. Minister Horner: Raise provincial taxes. There are a variety of ways of doing this, but it must be obvious to you that you have both a revenue problem (not enough to cope with balancing health care cost growth versus the needs in Alberta for other services) and a cost management problem (profligacy and bureaucracy). Deal with both, but it is not just about costs. The current Results Based Management approach (RBM), while the right thinking, is poorly executed. Keep at RBM, but do it more rigorously and liberate substantial sums from the process. Everyone knows RBM is about reallocation. Take up the suggestion of halting any more expenditure on CO2 capture and storage and use this to fund the teacher deal. Show courage.

4. The Alberta Teachers Association - Engage the people in Alberta in understanding the opportunity that is being missed because of current conditions of practice. Champion the idea that liberating teachers from the drudgery of administrivia and restoring balance to their professional work will have benefits for students, community, employers and Alberta. Don't focus on the stress for teachers of the current situation and don't get sucked into the cost argument. Focus on what Alberta is missing by its current practices. Show courage.

5. Members of the ASBA - tell your representatives to do an analysis of the costs of recruitment of teachers, attrition, stress and health related costs and the impact of demographic changes within and on the profession (including length of stay in the profession) over the next 25 years. Suggest to your colleagues that these costs far outweigh the costs of the change in conditions of practice now proposed by the ATA, both in terms of money, time and impact on quality of learning experiences and learning outcomes. Its time for trustees to be champions for teaching and teachers not their adversaries - without high quality and focused teachers, we will have no world-class education system at all. Show courage.

6. Journalists. The coverage of the bargaining by the ATA, ASBA and the Government has focused on the costs of implementation. Wrong focus. What should be looked at is the costs of not implementing a change in the conditions of practice - on teachers, learning, students and costs - especially given the demographic shift we are in the midst of. We are in a global war for talent and teachers are front line troops in this battle. Show courage - take an in depth look.

I look at my granddaughter, who loves books and is already a critical thinker at just two (why, what, whom, where, how…) and hope that we get this right. Transforming our schools, most's agree, is mission critical for Alberta. Without enabled and empowered teachers we will not make it. Show courage and make it so.

Jeff Johnson and Teacher Workload in Alberta

Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson knows that he has to address Alberta teachers' workload, however, he opposes placing hard caps on work hours.

As an Albertan and a teacher, I agree that teacher workload is something that we can no longer ignore. And like Johnson, I also oppose hard caps on hours.

Teaching is a profession and professionals do not have punch cards. Professionals must be given the authority and support to do their jobs and then they must be trusted to act on that authority. Only then can professionals be held accountable.

Rather than place working hour caps, Johnson has said that he would rather identify and remove unnecessary initiatives imposed on teachers by the province and school boards.

In principle, I can agree with the sentiment of Johnson's suggestions. For too long, Alberta teachers:

• have been treated as mere pawns in top-down mandated, flavour-of-the-month initiatives that come from distant school board or provincial authorities.

• have found themselves on the farside of education reform.

• are rarely asked to speak on their own account.

• are the end-point of education reform - the last to hear, the last to know, the last to speak.

• have experienced school board and provincial initiatives as things done to them rather than with them. 

• have been encouraged to take on new responsibilities without balancing their workload by removing other responsibilities.

If Jeff Johnson wants to address teacher workload, I suggest he start by empowering the teaching profession by:

• end heavy handed, top-down mandates from distant school board authorities and government.

• provide schools and teachers with sustainable funding to address class sizes.

• provide teachers with more time to collaborate and learn together.

• reduce the paper work teachers are required to produce such as Individual Program Plans.

• eliminate grade 3, 6 and 9 provincial achievement tests.

• rethink the scripted nature of the curriculum so that teachers can use it as a guide rather than a command and control rule book.

• rethink school board mandates such as district level standardized instruction and assessment policies such as online grading and reporting.

• work with teachers to make Inspiring Education a reality.

School has looked, tasted, smelled and felt like school for too long. In order for things to improve, things have to change.

It is unsustainable to expect Alberta teachers to take better care of other people's children than their own. 

Technology is only one of the many disruptive forces that are pushing on public education, and Alberta teachers are so busy teaching students that they don't have enough time to learn how to be better teachers. Unless something is done about teacher workload, Alberta's future failures will be paved by our refusal to innovate and improve on our past success.