Unanswerable Questions

"If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable."

- Michael Crichton, from the Intro in his last book Micro*

One of my favorite things I used to make time for when I taught 2nd grade was the question box- an old shoebox with the words "Question Box" slapped on with sentence strip paper and a pile of pencils and pieces of scrap paper next to it (I know...fancy stuff).  I seem to remember coming up with this idea as a way for students to practice writing questions with proper punctuation at the end, but it turned into so much more.

Students could write and contribute questions to the box anytime they had a free moment.  It turned into one of the most popular things to do as kids stuffed question after question into this little box.  Every time we had a free couple of moments (usually at the end of the day when we were packed up and ready to go) I'd pop open the box and answer as many questions as I could (using the only computer in the classroom)...

"How old is Mr. Johnson?"  (27ish...at the time...)
"What is the biggest planet?"  (Jupiter)
"How much does the Statue of Liberty weigh?"  (about 225 tons or around 56 elephants)

I'd say these kinds of questions made up about half of what we tackled.  But then there was the other half....the FAR more interesting half with questions like...
"How many stars are in the universe?"
"Where does God live?  Why doesn't he fall through the clouds?"

and my all-time favorite question I'll never forget from a little girl named Frances:
"Does a fly have a soul?"

These kinds of questions were my absolute favorite- we would sit together, a bunch of 7-yr-olds and I, philosophizing about questions that some of the greatest minds in the history of the world have no answer for!  And let me tell you, if you give even 2nd graders a chance to openly ask and think about questions like these, you will be completely floored at just how intelligent and articulate these little folks can be!

So I guess the message here is- be open to the unanswerable questions, no matter who you teach.  Even better- actively make time for them.  I fear that the last 12 years of standardized testing push has made our classrooms and students more focused on the "right" answers than ever.  Push back against this idea, don't be afraid to tell your students that not only do YOU not know the answer to a question but NO ONE does....and that's ok.

Keep that sense of wonder alive!


*Unfortunately, this is the only interesting part of this book- it's the first book I've scrapped reading in a long time- I do not recommend!

What should school look like in 2020?

These were questions posed by the MOOC I'm working through right now:

What are the most important ways we need to update K-12 education by 2020?

• I believe we're barreling toward a very interesting butting of heads in education- the widespread push for students to have more opportunities for personalized learning, to be more creative problem solvers, to think outside the box (or build a new one).....vs. how we are currently assessing students in very standardized, broad ways that do not reflect the very things we say we want from them.  It is going to be incredibly interesting to see how this all plays out in the next 7 years.  I personally believe we are (finally) heading toward a moment where people understand that personalized, digitally infused creative work is where it's at- and a standardized test does more harm than good in the cause of creating creative, flexible, problem solving students.
• I think the entire notion of schooling needs to be updated.  The world is a different place, where one has a world of information at their fingertips.  When access to content and information is so ubiquitous, the very foundation of schools and "teaching" has to be fundamentally shifted.  It's no longer about imparting knowledge.  It's about facilitating learning, creating an environment for growth, and teachers as expert guides and mentors throughout the process.
• Another update I believe needs to happen is a shift away from content focus and toward a focus on process.  In other words, we need to stop worrying about all of the bits and pieces of content we've been trying to shove into kids heads- instead let's focus on the learning process.  I once argued that content is king and now I think I've changed on this.  Now I think process is king.  I've pondered this before...

So....what do some of these things mean for digital learning?

When K-12 education  is updated  to fully incorporate digital learning:

• What will be different for students?

Students will be collaborators, creators, and especially publishers.  Every student, K-12, should have a digital portfolio where they select artifacts of learning that show their growth.  When a student enters the district, it becomes part of their process....here's your login, here's your locker, here's your portfolio space.  And these spaces should be public- open for the world to view.  I've argued this many times in the past, but our students are graduating into a world that will be looking up their digital footprint to make decisions and judgments about them.  It's our duty as educators to prepare them for this world and help them to maintain a positive, powerful footprint that shows off their creativity, passion, and personality.

I also think students, as a result of a more personalized environment, will be much more engaged in their learning process.  I hope it's more of a partnership than a dictatorship.  And the more engaged students are, the more likely they are to stay in school and put forth effort into becoming the types of adults we hope to see.

• What will be different for teachers?

I think traditional notions of control will go out the window.  Great teachers already know this, of course- the more choice you give students, the more voice you give students, the more you turn your classroom over to students, the better students will perform.  The interesting thing here is that when every kid comes into class and opens up a laptop or unfolds their iPad, a lot of these changes we're hoping to see pretty much become necessity.  You can't stand up and lecture to a group of students with laptops open.  You can't do business as usual, where your quizzes and tests are based on strictly recall of facts.  It just won't work anymore, and that's a good thing.

Anyway, these are my random thoughts on these questions.  It's exciting to think about 7 years from now and how things will be different for our students and teachers!  

MOOC'in it up

Just throwing it out there that I've started to participate in my very first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).  It is being hosted and organized by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University and is entitled "Digital Learning Transition".  Here's the link.

My new job for Moore County Schools has landed me squarely in the middle of a large shift toward 1:1 and I'm part of the core planning team whose job is to get it right for students.  I'm truly excited to be a part of this and I can't wait to get cracking!!!

This will probably mark a bit of a renaissance on this blog space, which has been long overdue.  I feel like I got burned out on writing for a good two years or so, after putting my book together.  But now I'm getting the itch again and this MOOC will give me plenty to think and reflect about in regards to the directions I personally believe our county should head.

So this post is just a simple shot across the bow!  If you're interested I would love to hear your thoughts as I move through the process.

Even more reasons to push student digital footprints forward

I ran across this article tonight: College admissions using social media to evaluate applicants .

It talks about a Kaplan survey that now shows that 27% of college admissions departments are now checking out applicants online to see if they'd be a good fit.  That number is up from 10% in 2008.

I actually expected that number to be higher by now, especially considering employers are now up over 90% in the same area .  The article above helps explain why there is a discrepancy, though, and it makes sense- colleges receive a lot more applications yearly and their staffing is usually much lower per applicant than a businesses' HR department.

But the trend is obvious in both- our students are graduating into a new world where their digital footprints are being used to screen them for both employment and college admission.  I've talked a lot about this before, but we're simply doing students a disservice if we are not preparing them for this new reality in our schools.  We have to push students toward creating, collaborating, and PUBLISHING in our schools so they can develop a powerful, positive footprint that can give them an edge in whatever future path they choose!

Too much handholding for new teachers?

I'm a part of our county's steering committee that determines how we will roll out professional development, materials, and support for teachers through the transition.  It's been an interesting ride that I've not always agreed with (I tend to agree with Dr. Yong Zhao when he says he would like the common core standards a lot better....if they weren't "common" or "core").

In our last steering committee meeting, our director of curriculum did an excellent job of refocusing the group on the purpose of what we've been doing since the start of last year.  The various content-level teams are working with teachers to create a common set of transfer goals (what skills we want students to have when they leave), learning principles (what we believe about learning), enduring understandings (main concepts/content), and essential questions (provoking questions that lead to explorations of the topic at hand).  These foundations are then put into course maps and sample units that teachers can rely on in their teaching.

The curriculum department basically states that we will work together to create these common items but the actual delivery/instructional methods is something that is completely up to teachers and their PLC's.  When first hearing this I thought it sounded like a good approach.

But then I started wondering.  Our curriculum director relayed a story of his first year of teaching that was very similar to my own- he was handed a textbook and a pacing guide and then left to figure out everything else on his own.  That's exactly what happened to me as a first year kindergarten teacher- I was thrown to the (cute) wolves and had to literally figure out every activity, every objective, every facet of my day as I went. That process fundamentally changed the teacher/educator I would grow to become for the better.  It forced me to be creative.  It forced me to work hard.  It forced me to think deeply as I was planning how each student would accept or reject what we were doing.

I've talked with a lot of GREAT teachers with similar first year stories.  So I've begun to wonder- where is the line with supporting new teachers?  How much should we hold their hands, give them all the materials, give them the questions they should be asking, etc.?  Do we run the risk of stunting a good teacher's growth into a great teacher by holding their hand too much?  Is the common "safety net" we're casting to make sure poor teachers achieve at least a base level of competency also dragging our potentially great teachers back to the middle?  Is there a way to support poor/average teachers to become better without hindering the good ones from becoming great?

I don't know the answers to these wonderings.  It just struck me that one of the primary goals in education is to create students that are confident, independent problem solvers. We try to foster independent problem solvers that can define, approach, and attempt to solve whatever problem or obstacle they find in their way.  And handing teachers a common set of expected materials/requirements/sample units seems to do the very opposite of what we want to be doing with students.

While I think new teachers need all kinds of support, I wonder if one of the best ways we could help is to do what we often need to remind ourselves to do with students....."be less helpful."

Size of the Minecraft World

I came across this really awesome new version of the Scale of the Universe objects.  I always love these things and they're great to show to students to start all kinds of conversations.

But I simply love that they put the size of the Minecraft world in this one.  If you're in a school with kids (mostly boys, interestingly enough) aged 3rd grade and up, you probably have some Minecraft players.  Whether you know it or not!

So maybe armies of kids out there building a world larger than Neptune should be able to do more of this kind of stuff in school, right?

Impact- Breadth and Depth

As educators, we all got into this game to have a positive impact on kids.  Lately I've been thinking about what is the best way to maximize my own impact on kids.  Maybe someone else out there is thinking the same thing, or maybe the way I've been thinking about this will resonate with someone.  Who knows and here goes.


When thinking about the kinds of impact we can have my mind categorizes them in two ways:  


Breadth of Impact - Things we do that reach a wide range of students.  For myself, this includes writing my book, creating TeacherTechVids and putting it out there for free, speaking/presenting, and my current job- as tech facilitator at a middle school.  These kinds of impacts are by their nature more shallow, as they don't include a personal, long-lasting connection or relationship with students.  The draw here, of course, is having a positive impact on a lot of learners, known and unknown.


Depth of Impact - Things we do that reach a small range of students, such as within our classrooms, as a leader of a club, or other personal student connections made throughout a building.  For myself, this includes my 6 years as a classroom teacher (2 in kindergarten, 4 in 2nd grade) and some of the work I do with kids now, leading clubs and trying to make as many deep, personal connections as possible.  These kinds of impacts are the ones that last a lifetime, the ones that kids can look back on later and point to as something that changed their lives.  They are deeply personal.


There is obviously room for both types of impact in our education system.  I've come to believe, though, that all of us in the education system, from top to bottom, need to strive for a balance between the two.  

If you reflect on your career  or present position and see that you are operating almost entirely on the breadth side of things, you should be thinking about ways to cross over into ways you can have a more personal, deep impact on students under your purview.  If you are an administrator, actively find ways to make this happen- whether it's hanging out with some of the more troublesome kids after school, leading a club, or even going back into the classroom for a period of time.  If you are a policymaker, get yourself into a real classroom, with real students, and spend some real time with them in order to better their lives in some way.


If you reflect on your career or present position and see that you're leaning heavily to the depth of impact side of the equation, you should be seeking out ways to have a broader impact on students outside your classroom walls.  Think about connecting with other educators through Twitter or blogs.  Think about connecting your classroom to others around the world through services such as ePals.com.  Think about publishing your own blog and sharing the great stuff you are doing (you never know what other teacher will see your ideas and try them out with their students, to great success). 


For myself, in the past 4 years I have strayed too far away from the Depth of Impact side.  As difficult as it can be with my current job responsibilities (I'm mired in technical difficulties and troubleshooting all too often now), I need to actively find ways to personally connect with students in my building.  And if that doesn't work, maybe I'll go teach 2nd grade again (which would be AWESOME).  I feel the yearning for those deep connections and I plan on being aware of it at all times this school year (and beyond).