A Personal Message: Please Join Me

Editors Note: I know that I am preaching to the choir since most people that read this are on Twitter already.

In the past week much has been made of the fact that as an Orthodox Jewish Educator living in Memphis TN. that I have over 1,300 followers on Twitter. Yes I am still amazed and humbled by this fact and at times when I am asked why people follow me I have a tough time answering.
However when I am asked why I tweet or what I tweet about the answer is easy. I tell people I mostly tweet about education and leadership and through my exposure on Twitter I have grown as an educator. I have created a group on the EDUPLN web site (edupln.com) for Judaic Studies teachers, I have joined and presented for Connected Principles, and most importantly I have developed an amazing PLN.
The message I have to my fellow educators is join me on this amazing journey. Get a Twitter account, follow other educators, join the EDUPLN,and start a blog. The sky is the limit and the wealth of knowledge out there is amazing. Why reinvent the wheel if it has been done already. I read an article yesterday in which @NMHSPrincipal is mentioned and tells how teachers in his school are sharing and asking for lesson plans via twitter. How cool is that!
There are many great things about Twitter; the sense of collaboration, friendship, and an overall safe environment where taking risks is encouraged. However the greatest thing is a sense of sharing and humility. People are willing to share ideas with others. Too often teachers and administrators seek honor and credit and therefore lack the trait of humility and are unwilling to share. If the 21st Century is the time that we need to focus on people skills and leadership as expressed in the books “Curriculum 21” and “The Leader In Me”, and if the right brain will truly rule with traits like empathy as mentioned in Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind” then we as educators need to model these traits and I believe sharing ideas and working together with others is a great place to start and that is the culture that exists on Twitter.

There are definitely issues with how Social Media should be used but in my honest opinion if the culture created by educators and leaders on Twitter was modeled in our schools we would be well on the way to educating the future leaders of 21st Century.

Bottom Line: Good Teaching is Good Teaching

Last week I read an article by @plugusin titles “Good Teaching Trumps Good Tools”. Which basically said that you could have all the technology in the world but if you are not using it to teach the skills that our students need then you are doing worse than a teacher meeting those skills and needs with less technology. Here is a quote from the article "Effective teachers have discovered is that good tools can make learning more efficient.” The article ends with the following quote “The key to finding tools you can't live without is to think through the kinds of skills your students can't live without.

Here is a link to the article: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/Good-Teaching-Trumps-Good-Tools.aspx

Then today Tom Whitby (@tonwhitby) sent out the following tweet with a link to a video that honestly challenged many of my educational beliefs.

RT@tomwhitby A video to talk about: "Learning Styles Don't Exist"http://bit.ly/ceC4sp #Edchat #EduCon-

The video shows that according to Professor Daniel T Willingham the age old assumption that some students are visual learners vs. auditory, doesn’t really exist the way many teachers have assumed it does.
I think the video definitely gives one cause to think and reflect but that is not the purpose or topic of this post. What struck me was how the video ended.

Here is the final quote “Good teaching is good teaching and teachers do not need to adjust their teaching tot the individual students learning styles.” Professor Daniel T Willingham Dept of Psychology University of Virginia

Well I am not a big fan of coincidences, and the common denominator is that Good teaching is the key and what is really important.

Yes we need to use Technology and other tools like voice threads, blogs and Google docs just to name a few.

But at the end of the day all of these tools don’t replace good teaching. Give me good teaching over good technology any day.

Back To Basics

“Factual knowledge alone is thus no longer the great differentiator between those who succeed and those who do not. Instead the individuals who are emerging as the new "winners" - the new thrivers-of the twenty-first century are those who possess above average creativity, strong analytical skills, a knack for foresight, and surprise surprise good people skills." From Stephen Covey’s book “The Leader in Me

Last week I used this quote as part of another blog post. The other night I attended the #leadfromwithin chat and the chat focused of things like loyalty, honesty, respect, and other important traits leaders should have. I also attended a class given by @gperl about humility.

All of this got me thinking that we need to go back to basics. We need to teach character development and leadership skills with the same emphasis that we teacher other subjects if not more. I often tell my students that when people meet you on the street they won’t ask you or judge you based on how much of subject “X” you learned but rather they will see and judge you based on what kind of person you are. Here is my partial list of some of those amorphous and less tangible things we need to be teaching:
• Honesty
• Humility
• Trust
• Respect
• Loyalty
• Empathy
• Transparency

How do we teach these skills? I believe these skills need to be modeled and taught by example.
I recently heard the following: You can teach your child about honesty and read about it and give examples from the Bible and other sources and of all that teaching will not mean anything if when the next time you go to the movies and you tell your 13 year old child to tell the cashier that he is 11 to get in at the child price.

If we want to prepare our students for the 21st Century we need to go back to basics and teach them, no show them what it means to be a good person.

Taking the First Step

If you pick up almost any educational journal today or read educational blogs you will inevitably come across the term 21st Century Skills or 21st Century curriculum. Yes these terms have been around for a while and I do find it a bit strange that the popularity of this term has grown some ten years into the 21st Century. What is true is that in today’s society perhaps even more so than 10 years ago things are changed at a much faster rate. The cell phone, computer, or even I-pad you bought today will be outdated in less than a year. This means that we as educators have to address this ever changing world we live in. Heidi Hayes Jacobs in her book Curriculum 21 says the following, “As educators, our challenge is to match the needs of our learners to a world that is changing with great rapidity. Therefore the skills of the 21st century focus on problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, design, and leadership. Perhaps Stephen Covey in his book “The Leader in Me” said it best, “Factual knowledge alone is thus no longer the great differentiator between those who succeed and those who do not. Instead the individuals who are emerging as the new "winners" - the new thrivers-of the twenty-first century are those who possess above average creativity, strong analytical skills, a knack for foresight, and surprise surprise good people skills."

Therefore we need to be looking at and updating what we are teaching. This is true in Judaic Studies as well. Today with the Bar Ilan Cd and a like, students have access to all the Torah and commentaries they need. What we need to be teaching them is how to think, question, and analyze what they have read and learned. We can’t begin to update our curriculum until we clearly state what we are currently doing.

On Monday we took the first major step in moving towards addressing the needs of our 21st Century learners. We established a wiki so that the teachers can put down in detail what they are teaching. This is a major undertaking by the faculty. However the reaction I got was overwhelmingly positive one teacher said, ““This is a great idea and it makes me actually think about what I teach.”
We still have a long journey a head of us but often taking the first is the hardest and today as a faculty we took the first step on a journey that will help prepare our students better for the world that they are entering into.

What Really Matters

Certain events over the last few days have caused me to pause for a second and think about what really matters. The first event was the shooting in Arizona over the weekend and the second a funeral I attended yesterday for a 17 year old boy.
I know for me personally I worry about the economy, what unforeseen expenses I may have, and other what now seem to me as trivial things.

The events of the past few days have given me a perspective of what really matters in my life as a husband, father, friend, and educator.

Here is my list of certain things that really matter
• My faith
• My family
• My friends
• Have I worked up to my potential today
• Did I help others maximize their potential
• Did I have a positive impact on someone’s life
Each one of these things have many different subsets too many to list.

As I tweeted last night we need to care about what really matters and make every day count.

I am fortunate to be in a profession that on a daily basis I have the ability to impact and change the lives of my students. However that comes with a tremendous responsibility as well. Our focus must always be how will this impact my students’ and will this maximize their potential and have a positive impact on them. If Yes then we must Do It!

However what works for one student may not work for another and therefore I think we need to be careful, myself included of not making generalizations about different things. Our barometer or measuring stick should not be is this “thing” good or bad but will this ‘thing” maximize student potential and have a positive effect on my student or students.

“All or Nothing”- I Don’t Think So

Lately there have been a number of tweets about being a Passion driven school vs. a Data driven schools. Maybe I am crazy but I am not sure what the debate or issue is. I think we need to have both. We need students who are passionate about learning and are engaged in learning, and we need to be teaching them things that they are passionate about and will make a difference when they leave school and enter the “real world”. So yes I agree with those that say when was the last time you had to do a worksheet or answer multiple choice questions once you left school.

At the same time the passion that we hope to instill in our students needs to be channeled towards student learning. Whatever skills we want them to be learning, be it critical thinking, questioning, or analyzing, just to name a few, we still need to make sure that they are learning those skills.

So how do we insure that the students are learning the skills we give them in a Passion driven school?
The answer is through Data. Now Data doesn’t mean tests and more tests. Data could be a survey, a student project, an interview or any other way to measure what students have learned.

Education is a balance it isn’t all or nothing. The question is how to reach that balance,what is the percentage of X vs. Y? I don’t know, but what I do know is that you need both X and Y,or in this case you need the passion and the love for learning but you also need the data to let you know that the passion is being translated into student learning.

Reflections

During this time of year many people reflect on the past and look towards future goals. This would be my 50 post on this blog and therefore with reaching that milestone and being the start of 2011, I thought I would reflect a bit on the past and look towards the future.

For me personally 2010 was a year filled with a lot of new and exciting things:
• I starting using Twitter in a very significant way
• I started a blog
• Joined Connected Principals
• Presented for a Elluminate Session for Connected Principals
• Developed a PLN
• Became a member of EDU PLN as well as YU2.0

Now I ask myself what is next what goals can I set for myself for 2011? Goals are important and we need to have them but we also have to careful not to take on too much. There is a famous Yiddish saying that I am often reminded of when life throws you a curve ball and that is, “Man plans and G-D laughs”.

Therefore as I posted yesterday on my posterous blog (akevy613.posterous.com) that my goal for 2011 is Just Do It! Meaning take one or two things that I am passionate about; perhaps assessments, grading, or differentiated instruction and take my ideas and make them into a reality. If I could accomplish that one in goal in the next 12 months I would feel like I really accomplished something and brought about at least on a small scale some real change which had a positive effect on student learning.
As many others have said perhaps the best way for change to take place is when it takes place one school, or perhaps one division or even one grade level at a time.

Wishing you all only success in the New Year
Akevy