It has been my pleasure to work with Lisa Davis at High Tech High. She is the Director of Community Outreach but I believe any title underestimates her and the importance of her job.

One of the buzzwords in education is relevancy or real world connection. Many schools do this by talking about "when you get a job or get older you will need __________" but, real world education means right now not in 5-10 years! Through Lisa we have received grants, internships, and collaboration partners within our community. She made it possible for our students to learn from experts, work with professional equipment, and experience first hand what it means to follow your passions and dreams.

Lisa engages with our students, teachers, and staff to find out their passions and ideas for future projects. She then connects us to the community and helps us obtain resources. She is a wonderful sounding board to help refine and implement new endeavors. I cannot count the number of times we have talked about various ideas that would not have come to fruition without her help.

While I think education would be significantly improved if a position like this was available (and if she could be cloned) in all schools, it isn't likely to happen. It's a shame because she is invaluable to our schools operation.

Lucky for all of us, Lisa has decided to take the plunge and begin blogging about her thoughts, experiences, and the community connections she has helped foster. Her blog is at MindCollisions.org which stems from the belief that if people are paired with the right resources and collaborative partners, it is like a catalyst in a chemical reaction speeding up the innovation and creative process.

She is also on Twitter @mindcollisions and is hoping to pioneer the hashtags #youthengagement and #mindcollisions because of her passion for service learning (as well as the wikipedia link) and the incredible things that happen when students are connected to their world.


What you can expect to learn from Lisa, is the practical side of connecting students with the community and with each other through examples and evidence. You might also get a chance to hear her passion and pedagogy for how students can learn in the 21st century. Patrick, I, and many other educators have benefited from her and I am so happy that you can as well.

Student Led Conferences Facilitates Communication and Student Empowerment

At least once a year all over the country, parents come into their child's school and sit down for a meeting with the teacher. Often this is focused around grades and behavior and students cringe at the thought of parents and teachers meeting and talking about them. Even those students who are doing well in everything, still hope that their parents will be pleased with what they have done.

Parent and teacher communication is really important and should occur when there is a need to tell a parent about concerns and successes within the class. However, I have always found it awkward to talk about the student in the 3rd person when they are sitting right there. The time provided usually does not allow me to go into any sort of depth. I am grateful that at my school we have implemented Student Led Conferences which I believe goes a long way in facilitating parent/student relationship while focusing on goals and success.

Twice a year for about a week or so we ask our parents to come in for about 20 minutes each. They come in and sit down with their student. The student gets out their work and shows the evidence for what they have done so far this year. They talk about what has worked well in the past and what they have/are struggling with. The student has goals on what they hope to achieve over the year and is well aware of what needs to be done to help them reach their goals. Because each student is having an one-on-one conversation, we can have as many going on at once as we have space for.

We the teachers, purposefully avoid being drawn into the conversations because this is supposed to be a chance for students to take control of their own learning. We provide a sign up sheet if the parents would like to have a follow up conversation. This is difficult for everyone involved especially their first time because we are so trained in the typical parent/teacher roles at a conference.

While there are occasionally meltdowns or frustrations, we coach our students beforehand to take charge of the conversation. Similar to a job interview, we encourage them to talk about what has not gone well in the past (emphasis past) and how they are going to work to overcome those challenges in the future. Parents love seeing what students have created and hearing them talk about the work they are doing.

There really is no reason why you shouldn't do student led conferences. They allow a more deep conversation, are more efficient, and encourage parent support within the classroom. Concerns you have can be overcome once you see how much more confident, self-motivated, and empowered your students are afterwards.

Habits of the Heart and Mind and Why They Matter

Culture is an important part of education. If you say that your school does not have a culture, then you should look carefully at how people act when they are at your school. How do students and teachers interact? Do you notice a difference in how people act towards each other when you go from one school to another. You do have a culture, but is it the culture that you want?

I have mentioned before some simple things you can do to enhance the culture in your classroom. Yet all of these ideas flow from our school culture which we take very seriously.

Where does our culture come from? How was it formed? When our school was developed, there was a discussion about what was important for us to see in each other, in our students, and in our interactions. We were inspired by the Habits of Mind from Debbie Meier's Coalition of Essential Schools and how they were able to work with students in creating a positive and supportive place for them.

At our school the Habits of the Heart and Mind are:
Refinement
Evidence
Mindfulness
Perspective
Perseverance
Cooperation
Compassion

or as one of our teachers puts it REMPPCC (pronounced REM P squared C squared)

These are what we ask everyone at our school to seek to cultivate within themselves and reach their full potential as a student but also as a human being.

Refinement - If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well (and over again if necessary). This is so contrary to a system that has so much information to cover and so little time to do it. Yet, the benefits of not accepting anything less than Beautiful Work makes all the difference.
Evidence - Can I back up what I am saying? Can I prove that I am learning and apply it?
Mindfulness - It is impossible to harm or do wrong when one is mindful. To be thinking about ones actions and the consequences or results of those actions is invaluable. Our society needs mindful leaders and citizens.
Perspective - Going beyond one's self and seeing a conflict, problem, or issue from multiple points of view. It is easier to compromise and reach agreement when we understand where others are coming from.
Perseverance - Randy Pausch in his last lecture said , "Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something." The best stuff is worth working hard for.
Cooperation - Best exemplified in Dr. Woodie Flowers' Gracious Professionalism Ethos. We can work together for mutual benefit even in that which we are competing.
Compassion - To share in one's struggles and help them out can be the most rewarding thing one ever does. If you have the ability to help, then please do so.


Each school or organization may need to come up with additional or other ones, these are not set in stone but they give all of us a framework for discussions about what kind of person we hope to be and help others become when they enter our school. Perhaps at your next professional development or staff meeting, you could consider discussing what is core to your culture or what you would like to be, and then see how you can weave that into everything you do in a meaningful authentic way.

Middle and High School Culture - Simple Things You Can Do to Enhance It

These are some of the things I do daily/weekly/yearly to help foster a positive classroom culture.

Greeting Circle: I have my colleague Patrick to thank for this but on the first day of the week, we sit in a circle and we take turns answering a question about themselves. Some great examples of this are, "what super power do you wish you had?", "what word do you wish could be deleted from the English Language," or "if you were given one million dollars but had to give it away what would you do," (more great circle starters can be found in books like The Book of Questions).
In order to be effective (not take up a whole class period) you want to phrase the questions so they can be answered quickly in a sentence or less. There are also 5 rules of greeting circle that keep it respectful and sacred:

1. No talking when others are talking.
2. Do not comment on what others have said (even laughing is considered commenting)
3. Share seriously so others feel comfortable sharing seriously.
4. Use your Jamba Juice voice. I managed a Jamba Juice at one time and part of the training was helping new team members be loud enough to be heard by anyone.
5. You may pass once but we will come back to you.

             Some weeks the conversation is silly and lighthearted, some weeks it is somber and deeply reflective. But it is always powerful and a good use of time. The first couple of times it may take a little longer but if you are hard and fast on the rules it should take no more than 10 minutes.

Chair Ceremony: I have a very nice chair that the school purchased for me but just does not work for my back. The students were always asking if they could use it so I devised a little ceremony on Fridays that incorporated this as well as contributing to our culture. The first week I announce that someone in this class has really helped make this class a better place for people, then I will say a couple of examples. That student then receives the chair to sit in for the entire week. The next week that student will perform the same ceremony and pass it on to a new student. A couple of key points are:

• This is for culture not necessarily academics so it is not about best test score etc.
• If you don't want to give up your chair feel free to use something else that is awesome.
• After the official chair ceremony, I ask the students to honor others who have contributed to the class/school culture and made their week better. Often I have to pause for a minute while they reflect. I ask them to keep the ceremony sacred and not simply give shout-outs to their friends and they must say something more specific than "he is nice".
• This ceremony takes about 10 minutes tops once a week, but with News and media bombarding us with all the negative things in our world, I think it is worth it to highlight the good that people are doing.

Content Conversations or Geek Time: Geek has typically been applied to technology fanatics but it is actually a more general term applying to anyone who is exceptionally good or interested in a certain topic. So there are Football Geeks, Spanish Literature Geeks, Computer Geeks, and the list goes on forever. If you just became aware by reading that last sentence that you are a geek, welcome to an awesome club. 

You are most likely paid to teach a particular curriculum and adhere to very specific standards. Once in a while (I will leave the frequency to you), I encourage you to geek out with your students. The science/math curriculum in particular takes a few years to update itself with all of the new advances and so you might love Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, or a new technology but there is no established time to talk about it in your class. Whether it come up from a conversation, an article that you ask them to read, a YouTube video, please take the time to have a conversation about it. 

Students will feed off of your interest and energy and they might discover an interesting topic that they never knew about. You will form powerful connections with your students. I understand that if you did this too often you would fall behind or gain a potentially negative reputation so you need to be mindful about how you do it but please do it.

Note: If you don't have anything you can geek out about. I encourage you to immediately go to your bookstore/library and find something of interest (just wander around). BBC has incredibly interesting documentaries you can look at. Check out your local paper for groups or meetup.com to connect with others. No one should just go through life without something they are passionate about, and your students want to see you passionate about something.

Puzzles: I love puzzles and I have one up weekly in order to challenge my students. You can have one that is academically challenging as well but I also try to have puzzles that can be figured out and understood by anyone so the class culture is enhanced. This helps students see that math, science, literature is as fun as you consider it to be. You can find a tremendous number of puzzles online (I would suggest you slightly change the wording or your students will find them too), there is also great show on NPR if you get it called A Way With Words which provides a weekly puzzle as well.

Clean Up Procedure: Whether or not you work with power tools like my math/physics students, classrooms can get pretty messy. I discuss the Broken Window Theory with my students to stress how important it is to their learning that we keep our room clean. We spend the last 10 minutes of every class cleaning up my room. If you do not work with tools or computers you could shorten that a bit I suppose but it really makes a difference for students to come into a clean put together classroom. 

My jobs include computers, floor, desks, lab equipment, calculators, notebooks, etc with a description of each. There is also a supervisor who ensures that others do their jobs. The supervisor checks that each job is done and when they believe they are all done, they come to me and tell me that it is done. I excuse the other students and the supervisor will stay and clean up anything that isn't finished. This plus the rotation of the jobs each week ensures that the students do their jobs well and that my room is put back together. The supervisor allows this all to happen without me needing to be involved, which provides me an opportunity to prepare my classroom for the next group of students.

Saying Hello: Seems obvious but you would be amazed at how your relationship with your students will change if you hold the door open for them and greet them each morning by name.

One-on-One Conversations: Student are human beings, they are not just a GPA and every time they do not turn in an assignment or come late, there is a reason. Even if you think the reason is silly, they do not. Rather than acting in a vacuum and creating frustration with your students, seek them out and have a discussion. Some thoughts to consider:

• Don't make it about a specific assignment, make it about the person. Instead of saying, "Why didn't you turn in your  homework," perhaps you can ask them how they are feeling, are they really busy, how is the family, etc. A student who was typically doing well in my class, stopped turning in work. I asked him how things are and he told me a lot about how things are frustrating at home. Our students are human beings just like you with stress, concerns, hopes, and dreams.
• Try and have a conversation with all of your students at some point. All students regardless of their grade or status deserve to be heard and supported. Conversations should initially be a few minutes long so you can have more depth than one word answers.

Class Discussions: I try at least once a semester to have a class discussion about my class and school in general. You can do it sooner if you need to as Anne blogged about here. It can be as meaningful as you are willing to be open to. The conversation should focus on getting their collective opinions and thoughts on how a test went, a policy is working, a news story that impacts them, etc. They are already talking about it outside your class, the question is do you want to be a part of that conversation?

Habits of the Heart and Mind:

At our school our culture stems from our adoption of the Habits originally created at Central Park East Secondary Schools (CPESS) in Harlem by Debbie Meier and her faculty. The Habits are Refinement, Evidence, Mindfulness, Perspective, Perseverance, Cooperation, and Compassion. I will do another post about these in the future.

Isn't this obvious/Why do we need to do this?

You are right, many of these things are what you would do anyway with other people and perhaps you already do it in your classroom. However, many classrooms focus so much on the content and the impending standardized tests that they believe there is no time to acknowledge your student's personhood. I can tell you that your students will be happier and more able to do a great job if they know that you care and you will be able to better serve them if you are aware of what is going on in their lives.

If you have any additional suggestions for what works well in your classroom, please leave a comment!

SOS - Save Our Schools With After School Programs Part 3

Let me ask you to put aside any of your concerns with starting a program for a minute and ask you a couple of questions.

1) Are you really passionate about something like art, engineering, theatre, math, a foreign language, programming, etc?

2) Can you devote a couple of hours a week after school?

3) Do you believe that every student has potential to do great things?

If you answered yes to all of these, then I would encourage you to start an after school program! Your kids need you!

You might have doubts (I know I did):

• I am not good enough to run a _______ team or group: 
• You will never be able to keep up with your students desire to learn, all you can do is keep the energy high and support them. I had found this to be true no matter how learned you are, students just have too much imagination and energy.
• The MorTorq robotics team was started by a woman who had no engineering skills but was excited and passionate about working with students.
• This is how the Virtual World emerged in my robotics team. I found this software called Blender that while I knew nothing about, I gave it it to a couple of students who I thought might be interested. A couple of weeks later they had created a video game that the whole school wanted to play. There skills continued to grow until they were making huge virtual worlds and that is how the science festival came about.

• There isn't enough money:
• There are so many organizations and companies who want to give money to innovative and effective programs like yours. Do a Google search on "education grants" or grants for ______ and you will see that the list is huge. Additionally your community will love to support you whether it be a company seeking to create future employees or the pizza place down the street that will let you do a fundraiser, the money is there.
• If you are lucky, you might have someone in your district who rights grants as part of their duties. Were it not for our own Lisa Davis helping us raise funds and support us, it would be impossible to do all that our team does.

So hopefully, you have the courage to start a team, so what do you need to do?

1) Find initial funding: If you are creating a robotics team you are looking at a few hundred dollars, if it is a painting club then it might be significantly less. I would check with your school, district, parents, and community. You never know who you will find that would be willing to help so be sure to ask anyone you can.

• A note: many after school programs have disappeared because they relied to heavily on one source of funding. You should always seek to be self sufficient through donations and saving. This ensures that your program will always be around and not dependent upon other people's decisions.

2) Find support: After school programs can take a toll on your time. No matter how committed you are, it is important that you continue to be able to spend time with family, friends, and your primary teaching duties. While you might think that your program will only take a little time, ask any robotics teacher or Patrick Yurick of the Graphic Novel Project and they will tell you that once your program takes off it can take up as little or as much of your time as you will let it.

• Ask fellow teachers or parents, you will be surprised at how many community members would love to help out. I have seen artists, engineers, college students, politicians, writers, even a Disney Imagineer and LAPD Bomb Squad member come to our rescue. Plus the students love to see outside people with real world expertise come and advise them.

3) Find a project: You may think that passion is enough to fuel a group of students but I can tell you it is otherwise. In my opinion, the sole determinant of the success of an after school program is having something to work toward.

• For my robotics team it is the competitions, for the Graphic Novel Project it is publishing two Graphic Novels a year, for a theatre program it is the productions, for a Japanese club it might be a field trip downtown to order lunch or to the cultural center. Whatever it is, I would encourage you to find something and have it ready to announce to the students on the first day as this will help fuel the program.

4) Let the students be the fuel for the fire: If your goal is to get students excited about a field, discipline, idea then once you have given them the tools let them run with it. They will come in with new ways of doing things and innovate right before your eyes. 

• When a few of my students 2 years ago made a video game in Blender, it took them 6 months. They then showed a couple of my Freshmen how to do it, and one of them ended up recreating the game in a couple of hours. Now the bar was raised and there was a huge new influx of energy into learning and creating.
• However, I do caution you against letting them have complete control over the class. I have seen this happen and it either devolved into just hanging out or the project dragged on (deadlines, deadlines, deadlines). 
• Have fun but keep it professional otherwise people might bring in their friends that just want to hang out as opposed to wanting to help the project. I have been firm about asking people to leave the program in order to protect it from those who just want a place to mess around.

5) Market yourself: Neglect this point at your own peril. I am grateful once again for Eileen Kahn teaching me the importance of marketing. This is not just for fundraising, you may be in a situation where your program is taking up resources (students, room space, materials, funding, etc) from others and if you do not constantly extol the importance of your program then people will not know that it is necessary to keep around.

• Some ways of easily marketing yourself are youtube videos, a website, yearbook photos, Facebook/Myspace, appearances before the city council/school board, appearances at school events, newspaper blurbs, referring to it in your classroom, posters, etc.
• I cannot stress enough the importance of doing this. You may never know when it will be important to have the community on your side.

Finally, a message to the community:

Please, please, please seek out a way you can help out in your schools. Whether an after school program or otherwise you will make an impact that will extend beyond what you can imagine. If you are able to donate money, or have an expert in a certain field, can provide space, or materials, you will make a powerful change in student's lives. 

After school is the most powerful use of your resources. With little or no overhead, your donation goes directly toward the passion of a student that they may not even know they had. The ripple effect into the community will be incredible and I thank you for your time and involvement in one of the most important things you can do.

SOS - Save Our Schools With After School Programs Part 2

So after being a casualty of the California budget crisis I found myself at a new school. I knew that I had to start a Robotics team, but I was a bit concerned whether or not I had the time, the abilities to manage a team, or if there would be enough student interest.

As if a sign from the gods that this endeavor was blessed, I was approached by Ray Trinidad (more on this remarkable man in a bit) who had heard of my interest in starting a team. He said that the students had created a petition to start a team from over 20 kids and he wanted to hear more about robotics!

Well, now that the student interest was taken care of, Ray and I spoke for a while about the incredible things I had seen robotics do for students, especially when it seems like the odds are stacked against them. Ray has worked with all types of students for years, so it was an easy sale. Whether working as a leader of schools or partnering with "at-risk" students in Los Angeles Unified School District, Ray has been a champion for after school programs and helping students to find meaningful and safe places to work, play, and be happy.

Yet, it seemed that there might be some bumps in the road. The California budget had still not resolved itself and our district had frozen any new ventures such as this one. So what does Ray do? He whips out his personal credit card and purchases the materials we need! By mid-January of 2009 our team was ready to go. We decided to go with the VEX Robotics platform because of its cost but also because it is extremely preparatory for Engineering careers.

Students poured into this program and began building and learning. As far as my time concerns, after the students learned the basics from me, they went home and learned more and soon only needed me to help them troubleshoot or refine. However, there was another time constraint. Since our team registered so late, there was only one more competition for the year and it was in one month!

I told the students don't worry just do your best. We are rookies and everyone will support us no matter how we do. My team consisted of a lot of students from my class who had been enticed by my numerous geeky references to it. Let me give you a quick rundown of a couple of these students so you can follow their journey. I will only use their initials as to keep their identities private.

V. - A gifted student who was often bored in class because of the lack of anyone's ability to challenge him enough. He became my lead programmer (he became many other things as well).

Am. - Highly motivated and talented student who was unsure of what career she would pursue. Her attention to detail and leadership qualities landed her the Robotics President position.

An. - Very talented artist, while quiet and withdrawn from class. Her desire to "not be beaten by the boys" and video game talents made her an easy choice for the robot driver.

There are plenty more students that I could lavish praises on but I will hold off for time's sake.

Back to March 2009, we went to our first competition, excited and ready to go. From Eileen's MorTorq robotics team, we had learned that marketing yourself as a team is just as important as playing the game. My students had prepared and coached each other to speak to the judges and other teams about their school and their journey.

Meanwhile, the driver of our robot, lived up to her pledge not to be beaten as "The Bear Claw" as it was named quickly climbed up the rankings. Everyone was blown away by the newest team especially the first place team who asked us to be in an alliance with them!

In the end, we received a Judges award for being so eloquent in talking about our team and we won the entire competition! Our minds we reeling as we were now qualified for World Championship.

To summarize our last couple of years, we went to World Championship that year, as well as this year. We were also selected to go the the USA Science and Engineering festival this October for our virtual world. How does a robotics team go on to create a virtual world? You will need to check out the final post in this series to find out how to make after school programs truly effective and life changing.

Open Source and Education

I use the term Open Source when many of you might not know what it is referring to. So here are my thoughts on the matter.

What does open source mean? Software is a language for communicating between a human and computer. Computers and humans cannot use any of the languages we are used to like English, Spanish, or Japanese. Therefore we use programming code or source code to speak to computers and run programs. In a traditional business model, if I have code for very popular software, it behooves me to keep it locked up and proprietary so only I or my shareholders can profit from it. However, open sourced software is that which can be downloaded and run for no financial cost to the user. What further separates this from what is known as “freeware” is that the source code itself is also made public for others to use, improve, or modify for their own purposes.

Open Source is not a new movement, but a return to the original state of things. When software was first created, it was done in garages, basements, and dining rooms. Friends and colleagues would work together and share code to fit various tasks. In fact it was this paradigm that led to the Internet’s creation, along with many other parts of the modern information age. It would not have been possible without this philosophy of Openness.

Why should we switch to Open Sourced Software? The first and most obvious reason to switch is financial. Open Source software is by definition free. This means that it can be downloaded as often as necessary for educational organizations and students without ever paying one penny to a company. Many of the programs were created for a person or groups’ own personal use and were open sourced because of a belief that software much like biological life will evolve and become better suited to its environment if it is free to do so. 

Secondly, no two classrooms are the same and our software needs are varied as well. However, for much of the information age we have allowed a small group of developers to define what millions of user’s needs are. When typical software has “bugs” we must wait until the company decides to create an update. If our needs are different from those of the store bought product, well that is simply too bad. With Open Source, the software was created by a community of users. This means that artists have worked together to create graphic design programs. Educators have collaborated to make an entire Operating System much like Windows which have many programs which suit the learner. Internet users have worked to create a better, safer Internet browser.

Finally, this is the future of software development and usage. Open Source software means that no one with access to a computer and Internet connection will ever be at a socioeconomic disadvantage as far as software is concerned. Every major program necessary for education and work has an analogous Open Source Program. 

Of course with such a major switch, many questions arise. With an emphasis on software instead of marketing and profit, many excellent Open Source solutions go unnoticed or slandered. The following brief FAQ might clear up some of the outstanding questions that are lingering.

FAQ 1) If everyone can see the code, does that not mean that my information is not as safe or is open to malicious attack?

Response: No, in fact Open Source software has been proven time and time again to be safer and just as secure. The community of programmers and users at large has a common interest of privacy and safety and they ensure that any bugs and security loop holes are quickly fixed. In fact, while a typical company might take months or years to fix a problem, the Open Source community often takes days or weeks. With so many people looking at the code, as opposed to a few at a company, solutions are created more quickly.

FAQ 2) I have heard that ________ is too difficult to learn.

Response: Of course, but there is a learning curve with any new product.  Yet, Open Source products have numerous users of all ages and abilities. Many have found these programs to be even easier to use than traditional programs because they were created intuitively to suit users needs. The installation is incredibly easy and can be done in minutes. It would take as long as it takes for the IT department to install any other Windows/Apple program on many computers.

Additionally, Open Source adds a real world connection that closed source software cannot. Many students or educators who become strongly passionate or supportive of the software may wish to directly contribute themselves. Users can freely support the software they enjoy by programming, creating support documentation, answering questions in the user forums, beta testing, etc. Many of these require as little as noticing something that can be improved and emailing someone.

Teaching students Open Source software is wise for multiple reasons. The students can go home and immediately use it and become more proficient at it. Secondly, using an Open Source software is many times similar to using the proprietary alternative so there is no disadvantage, in fact there are often more options in the Open Sourced program because of such a large group of contributors to the software.

FAQ 3) With no financial incentive, these products will not be around forever.

Response: In these economic times, the same could easily be said for any software. However, the difference is that Open Sourced software is not controlled by one company which could crumble. It is in the hands of a community which it is much more difficult to derail. 

However it is unrealistic to think that these communities do not require any funding to stay afloat. While foundations and trusts have been created to keep the software going, much like other entities in the public domain (NPR, public education) it depends on its users support. With the thousands saved in software costs, surely we can send a strong message of public support for the commons by giving some of those recouped costs to the developers who made it possible.

FAQ 4) This sounds awesome but there is no Open Source equivalent for ________ program…

Response: This is very untrue. The most popular programs have open source counterparts but many obscure ones do as well.

Here are some helpful links:

Free Software for The Classroom

Free Software Foundation - Helped ensure the Free and Open Source philosophy from early on. 

Open Source - An advocate for Open Source with an excellent definition of its meaning.

Sourceforge - A large repository of Open Source software

Alternative To and http://www.osalt.com/ - Search for alternatives to the proprietary software