“I believe we need a national PR campaign for skilled labor.” “A big one.” The nation needs younger workers to replace the many tradespeople over 55 who are retiring because “closing the skills gap doesn’t just benefit future tradesmen and the companies desperate to hire them. It benefits people like me, and anyone else who shares my addiction to paved roads, reliable bridges, heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.–Mike Rowe”

During the past two months a group of folks that represent interests from local businesses to education to talk about how we can fill a large pool of open jobs in our community. It seems unfathomable in a country where the unemployment rate is above 8% that so many job opportunities remain unfilled! Our local industries will be looking to fill as many as 200 positions this coming spring and are very worried they might not find enough reliable labor to fill them. Could part of the problem be that we have bought into the belief that all high school students have to be college ready and have over dosed many of our students on “academic” pursuits? When school accountability is discussed, you never hear about measuring the effectiveness of vocational studies. Although it is not the sole mission of a high school to prepare students for post high school vocations, it is our mission to maximize the opportunities our students are exposed to during their studies here. Not exposing them to the trades and other vocational opportunities is certainly not taking into account the over all needs of the taxpayers who fund our schools. Paris Cooperative High School is undertaking several efforts to expose our students to ALL of their possible opportunities with the implementation of our Academy system this spring. We will also be sponsoring a job fair this April 24th in Eveland Gym. We want to be a partner with families and the local community to create multiple opportunities for our students.

How would your daily classroom procedures, interactions, and practices change if every student had a device connected to the Internet in your classroom?  Would what you do daily change?  Would what the students do daily change?  What advantages to this do you see?  What disadvantages do you see?  Discuss.

 • Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
 • Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems
 collaboratively and cross-culturally.
 • Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
 • Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of
 simultaneous information
 • Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
 • Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

Even though we are a school in an economically challenged area, we do have a moderate inventory of computer technology for our students to use.  I think we have done some  things that develop student proficiency in using modern tools of technology.  I have seen use of Schoology, Moodle, Ning, Blogger, Youtube, Twitter,  Turnitin.com, Discovery Education, and the Kahn Academy in different classes during this school year.  Students are exposed to tools that will allow them to be engaged in the NCTE standards but that exposure is limited.  We have yet to really reach out to other learning communities or cultures using the many tools that are available to us.  How can we do this on a more regular basis?  Our students have done some blogging but it has been somewhat limited.  We ask our students to write on a weekly basis but how we better design and share information with communities outside of PCHS?  Are we asking our students to use their ability to manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information in our learning environments?  What does this mean?  I watch my own children do this at home, but is it something they do in school?  Is it a valuable experience for them to have here?  How do we create opportunities for our student to critique and evaluate multimedia texts?  Does the new iText agenda make this easier?  Does it fit into the skills we are asking students to attain and practice?  If so how?  If not, how can we?  Do we discuss the ethics of using modern networking technology with our students?  How can we better do this?  WE NEED TO BE DISCUSSING THESE THINGS…right?

So this whole idea of flipping the classroom seems to be all the rage in some circles.  A school in Detroit is trying to “flip” most of its classes. The flipped classroom in short is where the students are assigned to watch a video demonstration or lecture at home and then come to school to work on the concepts that were shown to them via video at home.  Teachers are then freed from presenting content and can help guide students as they work on what would have been homework in the classroom.  I am not saying that using this model has no value.  Any type of teaching/learning model where the teacher, the students, and their parents have buy in and belief in the value of the practice there is certainly merit.  BUT, is this model really a change from what has been the norm in classrooms for decades?  If the “flip” model is simply taking the presentation part of the lesson and pushing it outside the school day and then having students do what would have been homework during the now freed up class time, it is simply a very small deviation (if at all) from the status quo. A status quo that is not working well for many of our kids today.  The one thing that this flipped classroom model demonstrates very well is that schools are not citadels where knowledge is stored and teachers have the magical keys to release the scarce information to the dutiful student.  If the flipped model is truly the best way for students to learn, then the Kahn Academy just as well take over the industry and we can be done with all this frivolous talk about school reform.

I like what I read on John Bergman’s website, especially in his post titled What I believe About Learning and Teaching. His explanation of the “flipped” classroom is much more eloquent than what I can write…read his.  I believe we need to “flip” educational practices on their proverbial heads.   We can start by doing things very differently….

• Getting rid of the rigid time guidelines we use in schools
• Changing credit associated to seat time to credit associated with demonstration of mastery
• Stop requiring very different students to take and pass all the same requirements
• Giving teachers time to take part in a professional learning community where practices can be honed and collaboration with a global learning community can be used.
• Getting rid of one subject only course requirements and utilizing more project based work that integrates multiple disciplines.
• Bring in resources and experts from the community and beyond to interact with students to supplement daily activities.  There are no excuses to not tap into the capabilities that modern networking affords.
• Have students consider local problems and research and propose solutions using expertise from around the world.  Having students do real work and create real working solutions that contribute to their communities and beyond.

Imagine if we took the resources we are spending today to prove that the current system is working (i.e.  NCLB, testing, accountability, ad nauseum) and used them to train teachers and build experiences in which our student could really learn to manipulate their environments for the good of all……just the thought of it has me “Flippin’ Out!”

Photo courtesy of the San Diego Shooter’s Photostream on Flickr

I once thought that if a child was labeled with a learning disability, special ed meant that the child would get extra help to learn along with their peers. While following [my child's] education and watching others who struggled at [school], I found that’s not the case at all. Special ed meant they took learning away.  If they saw a child struggle with spelling, they took away spelling words. If a child struggled with math, they gave the child a calculator so that the child never learned something as basic and important as math facts. If a child struggled with reading, that child was read to.  Special ed also meant that [my child] would typically be put into disruptive classrooms with low expectations. With [one teacher] and special ed, [my child] was not going to be taught to do math. I continually had to insist that [my child] not be given a calculator until it was necessary. [My child's] learning happened at home. By 5th grade, [my child] had math skills better than most 8th graders. By the time [my child] was in Jr. High, his math and English skills were also better than many high school students who [go to an alternative school.] We found at [the alternative school] that many students had to be taken back to the basics in order to succeed. These kids are not taught to do math without a calculator. Yet when they fall behind and end up seeking a GED, they find they can’t use a calculator on the GED test. Talk about failing the child.

As we move forward and try to reform our schools, we have to keep the programs that serve ALL OF OUR STUDENTS in the forefront of our efforts.  As we supply our programs with technology, we must push our teachers to use technology to enhance the learning for ALL OF OUR STUDENTS.  When we think about design we have to realize the learning environments must accommodate ALL OF OUR STUDENTS.  No Child Left Behind focused our efforts on those students who are close to meeting standards and diffused our efforts with students in special education programs as well as those students who are gifted.  As educators, it is our duty to work to see that ALL OF OUR STUDENTS are better served moving forward.

Yesterday I was watching the news and a story came on about how crowded the amusement resorts were in Orlando, Florida this past week.  The story made the presumption that people were tired of putting off vacations and being frugal because of the  (now easing?) recession and are ready to live a little.  That story was followed by a quick blurb on how stocks were up because of good news on job creation and orders for durable goods.  I actually said aloud to myself, “People just maybe sick of living in the economic and political malaise that we have endured for the past three or so years.” I started thinking to myself that maybe people are willing to quit listening to how bad things are, think for themselves a little and try to quit living in fear of tomorrow.  As I contemplated this I rephrased the previous thought into this: I have to quit listening to how bad things are in my profession!  I need to think for myself a little more and not let the popular media create a cloud to darken my day.  I have to quit living in fear of what is coming next, control the factors that I can, and do the best I can for the students in my charge.  This was a fleeting moment, the thought of writing a blog about my reasoning came and went, and I was on to my next task.  This morning though, as I was browsing though the new titles in my reader I came across and read, Chris Lehmann’s latest post and the same thoughts from yesterday came flooding back to me.  His words crystallized my problem.  I spend way too much time in crisis mode and allow too many things to become a crisis.  I have a hard time shutting down the “Mr. Meister” school persona and just living in the moment and enjoying the wonderful things that go on around me every day, both in and out of school.

Being in a constant state of crisis is so counterproductive.  How many opportunities do I miss to have positive interactions with staff and students while worrying about the current “big” issue.  The “real” problems are going to find me whether I have worried about them or not.  Good problem solvers solve problems. They don’t let problems define what they do or who they are.  They don’t let themselves become part of the problem because the daily routines keep them from focusing the important vision and mission of the school.  I need to consistently discipline myself to stay out crisis mode…except of course, when there is a crisis.  The fact that current popular education reformers have no clue what they are talking about does not make everyday a crisis for me…they are not my problem to solve.  My job is to educate my school community about what is in the best interests of our kids.  I have to communicate with the stakeholders that I serve and consistently link our school actions to the mission we have built for ourselves.

My daily mantra will include the following somehow:

• The vision or direction needs to be the priority.
• Do something today to inform stakeholders about learning activities and accomplishments in our school
• Problems happen.  Take the direct steps to ameliorate the situation and let it go.  Is it going to matter five days from now?  Five hours from now?  Five minutes?  Make sure the response matches the situation.
• Talk with students everyday
• Talk with at least one teacher about instruction every day
• Exercise
• Play more golf….(a guy has to have goals right?)
• Start racing again
• Try not to be such a Troll Dad (my kids know what that means)

Ask yourself what are the aspects of your day that are really memorable? When you reflect about the past year on a personal level, what are the things that stand out? Take few moments right now and think about the things that really stand out, the great memories you have in your lifetime. What do they have in common? Emotions! Winning a championship, participating in a play, getting married, witnessing the birth of a child, spending time with loved ones, these are the events bring back memories charged with emotion. Memories of the people and the relationships we had with those people are what truly make an event meaningful. Do you remember the first great grade you earned on a test or do you remember how people reacted to it? You especially remember the reactions of those people about which you cared about and wanted them to think positively about you. Bad memories are made of emotions too. Being left out, feeling unwanted, not being noticed, having your flaws endlessly put on display. Emotions have a way of etching events into our memories so strongly that we cannot forget them even if we try…(and in the case of severe trauma, the opposite, we can’t remember even if we try).

You may now ask yourself where I am going with this….my point is that a truly effective educator builds strong, positive, professional relationships with students. An environment of shared respect and genuine caring will help foster a strong learning experience. As I think back on my education certain memories remain strong and most of them involve how teachers helped me feel worthy of their time. The most effective teachers I can remember combined high expectations with a “we can do it” attitude and a real rapport with their class. Teachers like Mrs. Eicher and her game of scrabble, Mrs. Gardner and a great Spanish class, Mr. Pigg and his cousins in a blanket, Mr. Tyndle and his undying love of science, and Dr. Bev Findley and her unequalled enthusiasm every day  are the ones that made great learning experiences and memories for me. What kind of memories are you creating for your students?

Staff, The other day I was asked to present at one of the local service clubs about our proposed academy program for next year. When I was finished, I asked if there were any questions or comments. A parent stood (I was thinking oh no….here we go) and said, “Mr. Meister, I just want to say (and she paused for effect) that I am so pleased with how your teachers are so open and willing to help us!” “I have received more phone calls this year from your staff than I ever have and they have either been complimentary toward our (student) or very helpful.” “At open house, everyone was so friendly and all the teachers took the time to have a personal conversation with us.” “Staff was out in the hallways, smiling and very helpful while we tried to find our way around.” “We really appreciate what your staff has done to keep us informed and make us feel welcome.” “We also love the lessons and grades online.”

Needless to say, I was very proud to have this said in front of a large audience of community leaders and several of our Board members! We can win over students and their parents one conversation at a time. THANK YOU! and keep up the EXCELLENT work! Communication is so important!

Dave

We are currently in a holding pattern with this project waiting on the funding from the state to be released.  Detailed design will not begin until that money is release as the two Boards of Education have promised their constituents they would not sell bonds and raise taxes until the states portion of the cost is guaranteed.  Although we cannot begin the detailed planning, we can begin to think about the new building and the learning spaces it will contain.  There are so many decisions to made about the new learning environments.  A new building will help shape the experiences of our students for many years to come and no decision can be made in haste.  The past two weeks we have been viewing learning spaces the exist in our area.  Several videos have been made to detail what has been seen. Four of them are posted below: (all pictures and video taken with iPad II edited with iMovie)

Thank you to the officials of these schools for taking their valuable time to show us their facilities!