Day 30 - A Reflection

Amy Park

And just like that, 30 days have come and gone.  Our first PD challenge is complete and although the process of doing something everyday for 30 days was extremely beneficial, it’s in the reflection that we are truly able to understand and appreciate what we have learned along the way. Analyzing and questioning the events and experiences that have unfolded allows us to decide which things we plan on keeping, modifying, or getting rid of completely as part of our practice and daily lives.

Our first school-related challenge involved video recording our students as they discuss, share, and reflect on their learning/understanding.  This was an extremely relevant and insightful challenge.  Through these short clips, we were able to gather evidence of learning in a non-traditional way.  This served as formative assessment for both the students and us, as their teachers.  By playing back the clips, we were able to identify what students were thinking and why.  We also were able to address any misunderstandings that the students may have had.  Based on these conversations we reflected on how we taught or addressed certain topics and made adjustments as needed.  Using an app called Evernote, we were also able to tag (identify) which students were recorded and the topic they were talking about.  Organizing the clips in this fashion,  serves as a digital record for us to access at a later date.  Also, we have shared the link to the Evernote files with parents, which allow them to see a glimpse of their child as a learner in our class.

Because at any given time we have 50 kids in our class, our next challenge was to keep track of whom we called on during discussions. There was a time when we felt that we were calling upon the same kids over and over again.  By being more cognizant of whom we call on, we were able to involve more students in the conversations.  Although not always easy to track, our heightened awareness brought attention to those kids who sometimes seem to get lost in the shuffle. When more kids participate, the entire class benefits and the sense of community further expands.  As teachers, we want to ensure that all kids feel safe and comfortable sharing their ideas and thinking.  We also wants our students to understand that all ideas are valued and all voices should have the opportunity to be heard. It is often during these class discussions that our students share their most powerful learning.

Our final two challenges were directly related to our physical health.  We are all aware of how important it is to live a balanced life. We have made a consorted effort this year to incorporate active living  in our personal lives, as well as to model this for our students.  The #3kaday challenge helped us to not only become more physically fit, it also served as an opportunity for us to debrief, reflect, and plan collaboratively while we ran.  Our jogs became valued time for us at the end of each day.  The #plankaday challenge was an added bonus to our running.  To be honest, what motivated us to get through 3 minutes of planking was knowing that the @plankpolice would be after us if we didn't! Planking each day also served as a metaphor for this form of PD, in the sense that although we started small (i.e. less than a minute) we saw tremendous improvement by the end of the month - our perseverance, commitment, and pure determination paid off.

As team-teaching partners, it was incredibly valuable to go through this challenge together.  It opened up even more avenues for conversation (and sometimes debate), as well as provided opportunities to reflect on our journey along the way.  We intend to continue filming our students (check out our class website to see some of our videos) and being constantly aware of who we engage in classroom discussions.  Despite a recent fractured hand suffered by Deirdre, we are continuing to log many kilometres on the running trails near our school.  As for planking, well let's put it this way, we have blocked the @plankpolice from our twitter profiles.

A symptom

Deirdre Bailey

A child gets a zero. This is sad statement no matter the story. They're failing. They're fighting the system. They're lazy. They're disengaged. They're "entitled". They "don't care". They're crying for attention.

I have no idea of the specifics surrounding the situation in Edmonton and while I have been reflecting on the possibilities personally, to date I have refrained from participating in the conversation because I have not felt that my evolving opinion is educated enough. But tonight is my tipping point. Not because I now know enough about the specifics, but because I have an overwhelming feeling in my gut that the resulting conversations have been about the wrong things.

CBC talkback has been flooded with callers adamant that children need to be "taught a lesson", to 'fail' (they mean numerically) early in life so they can learn from their mistakes. Facebook has been streaming with everyone's two cents on the "ridiculousness" of a "no-zero" policy and classic political rhetoric advocating that we hold kids 'accountable' by slapping those zeroes on the top of their papers. Family and friends have brought up the "real world" argument. "How will they learn how to keep a job in the real world if they don't learn that you have to do what is expected when you're asked?"

There are a few things that no one has been asking.

What are grades for? What is school for? Why are some of our children 'failing'?

To those arguing that zeroes "teach them a lesson," I would urge you to consider that there is so much more to teaching and learning than quantitative communication. Real learning is intimate personal reflection that comes from lived experience, engagement in practice, and an evolution in thinking. Learning cannot be 'done' to the learner by posting a zero next to their name.

To those arguing that zeroes ensure children 'fail early,' failure is a lack of success. The word implies that something has been attempted. Zeroes are not failed attempts. There was no work here. No effort perhaps, but where then, is the lesson? No work, no pay? No work, no reward? Do we believe that rewards or pay are what should motivate our youth? (see Dan Pink) If so, some of them continue to cry loudly that they do not care for either of these. What's up with those kids? No diploma for them unless they 'play the game?'

On accountability, the definition of which is connected to 'requiring justification, explanation, and responsibility for actions;' is this genuinely possible without conversation? What might that conversation look like? Would a recurring conversation or an impersonal zero be more likely to hold kids accountable for the work they do? And then there is the question again of whether we genuinely believe that our education system should be reduced to indoctrinating the masses into our post-industrial, hierarchical social system.

The real world argument though, is my favourite, because it comes up constantly and often as the trump card. It is the one I have most often struggled with, because everybody's right; our society is rewards based and "jobs won't pay you for work you don't do." But as of recently, I can counter this argument; because I no longer work for the money - I have found my passion and it has changed everything (see Sir Ken Robinson). Often, I work well over 40 hours a week and some days I can't sleep and I am genuinely inspired on a daily basis. You could pay me 10 times as much to work in a different sector, but I wouldn't be nearly as productive because I wouldn't love it. So here's my trump card: if passion is the ultimate motivator, and education could be restructured to better inspire children to find their passion, would zeroes even come into play? I repeat a question asked by Philadelphia school principal Chris Lehmann, "should schools model the world as it is, or as it should be?"

If our goal is to develop creativity, inspire passion, or even raise the standards for rational thought and useful decision making; then our schools fail most of our citizens. At the start of this year, Amy and I had a conversation with our students about what defines 'great work.' These 9 year olds, four year veterans of our present education system, unanimously defined 'great work' as "doing what the teacher asks." At some point in these children's lives, some of them might come to understand that great work is not always necessarily exactly what a teacher asks for. Someone along the way might inspire them to think for themselves and some of them will take a good look at the world and resolve to "do what has to be done" (read: comply) to get through the system, while others will resist. Of those resistors, some might get a zero for work they do not do. If or when they do, the conversation should not be about whether or not they deserve that zero, rather, the conversation should be about whether an education system that dishes these out is one from which we can build the best version of our future.

It is always troublesome to witness how the living, cultivated detail of deepening understandings is inevitably occluded in an overly technical and methodological obsession with quantitative outcomes of the work. Just as children are not flat, anonymous, trainable beings, neither are they measurable entities. While I have no idea of the context for this zero, I fundamentally object to the conversation turning to how grades should serve as anything more than some antiquated form of incentive for better decision-making in future learning endeavours. Real learning needs no compensation, real learning sells itself.