How activity focused are we?

I just finished developing a project based lesson for a group of teachers to use as an example. My brain hurts.

I decided to take a break when I finished and do some mundane, zero-thinking tasks and then come back to the lesson to review before finishing it up. While I was reflecting on the lesson, a few realizations hit me like a ton of bricks.

First, I was thinking how good it was for me to stay in the practice of creating lessons like this. I've been telling teachers for a long time that PBL is the way to go. For our students, it can make the difference between learning to remember and learning to get by. The process of developing one start to finish (without anyone to collaborate with - my own fault) is not an easy task. Do I think it's worth it? Absolutely. I've seen it first hand with my own students.

Yes, it is time consuming, but again, I will say that I do think this time spent developing PBL units is worth it. It's a pay off in the long run, and if we were to take the amount of time I'd plan in two weeks and add it all up, it would probably be the same amount. I like to use the phrase "uncovering information, ideas, and innovation" rather than "covering curriculum" when describing a true PBL unit.

Another thing I realized is how important it is for us to develop our own units rather than finding existing ones to use. When we're first starting out, I do think it's OK to try one someone else has made first just to get our feet wet. Some great PBL units can be found here, on the resources from the Buck Institute. I've said before, it's easier to follow a recipe when you're learning to cook. Once you get comfortable in the kitchen, you can begin putting your own twist on things.

But here's the biggest reason we should look at developing our own lessons. My process of developing a true PBL lesson reminded me of a time that my science curriculum consisted of science kits rather than science textbooks. The science kits were good. I liked that my students were using hands on projects and reflecting on their learning with blogs. What I didn't realize at the time is that those science kits were developed around the idea of an overarching concept, like motion, design, growth, change. Instead, I said we were working on the "car kit," or the "plant kit."

I had become stuck on the activities that are part of the learning process. And so my teaching became isolated to the events of making a car that would move, planting plants that would grow, and finding what phase the moon was in, rather than recognizing how movement is in effect all around us, how growth is present in our lives, and what cycles we are part of.

This was another piece about teaching with fidelity to me, a self-reflective piece of fidelity. In all that I do and all that I teach, I need to reflect back and see how I'm framing the learning around concepts rather than the activities that are a part of it. The conceptual framing is the glue that puts the entire unit together.

If we design our learning around a conceptual theme (such as with true PBL), we can go deeper in our instruction. Knowledge gained will not be isolated to one particular event, but built around a mature understanding of the impacts and results of that knowledge. When we design lessons like this, we avoid the activity trap. Just activity is not engagement, it's busy-ness.  And unfortunately, this is how I approached my science kits.

So what have I learned from this, especially if I'm saying that it's a fidelity piece? One thing is to look critically at what we're teaching to find that conceptual theme. If when talking about our most exciting lessons, we focus on the process or the tasks the students are involved in, then it's activity focused. That doesn't mean that the concept is nonexistent, it just means that we, as the teachers, are looking more at what our kids are doing rather than what level their understanding is. That's what I mean when I say it's a process of covering, rather than uncovering, curriculum. I so wish I'd had this "aha!" moment years ago when I was introduced to the science kits I would use in my classroom.

I hope this also models how important the reflection process is. Unfortunately, I can't go back to my students and reteach those lessons to frame them around concepts instead of activities. I can, however, through this experience, recognize if I catch myself doing that again. And at the same time, serve as an example to take learning deeper.

Because "just activities" are not enough.

Teaching with Fidelity - p365

A great friend of mine recently sent me a message asking me if I'd like to participate in a new diet challenge. It was promised to be a "diet hack that actually works." Here's how it goes. Get your friends together to form a network of healthy eaters. Take a picture of everything you eat throughout the day and share with your network.

I suppose the idea is that you'll think twice about eating that large slice of double layer chocolate cake if you are not only recording the calories, but also admitting to your friends that you ate it. From what I know about dieting, they say you'll do better if you join a network of others that are eating healthy, exercising, and providing encouragement to each other. This diet "hack" has combined the network idea with p365, another program of discipline, in which photographers take a picture everyday and upload to a designated website or share on their social networking sites with the hashtag #p365.

This got me thinking - if using p365 with our eating habits was supposed to make us eat better, could we use the p365 idea in our classrooms to help us teach better? One of the most valuable experiences I have had as a teacher was setting up the camera in my classroom to record a lesson, then viewing and reflecting later. It served as a gauge for how well I was differentiating, engaging students, and monitoring both the behaviors of my students and myself.

The difference between this practice and what I did in my classroom is that I specifically chose a lesson to record. Often, I even chose the class I wanted to record. So I was reflecting, but it wasn't a completely authentic process. But what if I took a picture of my classroom everyday? What would I gain from that experience? Would there be days that my colleagues were patting me on the back with encouragement? And similar to taking pictures of oneself to document and record weight loss, could I look back over a length of time to see how my students had grown and what they had accomplished?

It occurred to me that using the ideas of this diet hack and p365 in my classroom could really be a benefit and a challenge for teaching with fidelity. From my blogpost a few months ago, I discussed that we should be challenging ourselves to "teach with fidelity," to have high expectations for our students, to personalize instruction, provide challenges, and not allowing failure or second best. We get there through rigorous, relevant challenges, providing authentic feedback, and by developing relationships with our students. But I wonder, would there ever be a time, like my picture of the chocolate double layer cake, that I decided I didn't want to take a picture? What would I figuratively be saying to my students if it was one of those days that I decided to skip the picture?

So, as we begin to prepare our classrooms for the start of school, let's also prepare to share what we're doing. Here's the challenge. Take a picture of your classroom everyday and post to Twitter, Instagram, Vine, or ShutterCal with the hashtag #teach365. Develop a network with other participating teachers to challenge students, to learn, grow, and raise the accountability and fidelity of our teaching practices. Just like in our own lives, our kids can't move forward if we take too many "cheat days." And as a bonus, you'll have a visual representation of the journey your students have taken.

Challenge accepted?

Teaching with Fidelity

Right now I'm analyzing some achievement data, and noticed a discrepancy between what I thought the data would tell me and what it actually did tell me. I started racking my brain to think of why the numbers didn't turn out quite the way I thought they would, and then I remembered the particular year in question was the first year of a new textbook adoption, and as anyone who analyzes data knows (say it with me, everyone) "first year implementations always show a decrease in performance."

I remembered a conversation I had with an administrator that same year, who said that we should see gains in achievement as long as we implement the new program with fidelity.

Now here's where I'm going to get on the soapbox. Seeing the implementation of programs that have attributed to major gains in performance, and as the creator of professional development programs, I absolutely agree. We definitely want the teacher that is guiding and providing instruction to be upholding rigorous demands. We know that's what is right to make a difference in our students' lives.

But, shouldn't we just be teaching with fidelity? Why are we saying that we need to uphold the fidelity of a particular program when maybe more importantly, we need to uphold the fidelity of rigorous instruction? Our world is changing, and with that change brings the need of a creative class, moving away from the agrarian and factory model that most of school has been based on.

Obviously, "teaching with fidelity" has room for interpretation. The definition of fidelity even suggests that by using this phrase, there is an exact formula for teaching, when in fact, we need to consider the needs of our students in order to personalize learning. Fidelity doesn't mean working hard. Teaching with fidelity is about having high expectations for our students, challenging and pushing them, not allowing failure or even second best. It's about changing the lesson plans every year because no two groups of students are the same. It's about personalizing learning for every student, making the curriculum relevant to today's (and tomorrow's world) and making assessments authentic. It's about no two end products looking alike.

Let's make a fidelity scale. It might look like this:

I would say first and foremost, there are many, many more indicators that belong on this scale. School and learning are not about one single thing. The idea of learning encompasses everything from relationships to curriculum to assessment to strategies to delivery. As a teacher, I have thought about all the "things they didn't tell us in college," like the parent meetings, paperwork, curriculum writing, grading, mini counseling sessions, and so on. Similar to this, learning, a legitimate deep understanding, encompasses a collection of essentials that have to come together for one outcome. This outcome is that information is not only retained, but is used to analyze other ideas, considered critically from an alternate point of view, or used as a foundation to build an entirely new idea.

Teaching like this, in the upper end of Bloom's scale, encompassing real and relevant learning opportunities, using multiple resources and teaching students to consider the validity of resources, presenting information to authentic audiences, and creating, is teaching with fidelity. Take a look at the above scale. Additionally, consider how your students are thinking critically, if they're creating original works, and how you are personalizing the education of all your students. Where does your teaching fall on the fidelity scale?

Our world is changing. Information is growing. We have to raise kids up in a different way than we did in the past. Teaching kids to function in reading, writing, and math is no longer the end goal. Teaching them a skill set of persuasion, analysis, synthesis, evaluative decision making, collaborative teamwork, and problem solving is just the beginning for today's generation. We have to teach with fidelity to make a difference for our kids.

Think about it - what does fidelity encompass? How can we, as a whole, change so that we are teaching with fidelity? How can we measure it? This is what we need to consider when we're planning for our next year. This is how we can ensure that our students are truly learning and engaging rather than simply jumping through the hoops of school. This is what we need to do to teach with fidelity.