Autonomy's Fault?

A reader writes:

So let me play devil's advocate here. Wasn't it autonomy that got us into this whole NCLB and economic mess. Schools weren't cutting it or couldn't agree on a good way to show that they were doing their job so now there are articulated standards and state mandated tests. Banks did what they wanted and now there are bailouts so they don't fail and talk of better oversight.

When you're traveling out of state where do you stop to get something to eat, the autonomous independently-owned restaurant or a familiar name brand chain? In some cases the independent restaurant might have the better meal, but often we'll sacrifice the risk for the known - not that all chains guarantee the same quality but let's assume a minimum standard of quality as opposed to a range far above and below for the independents.

I don't think it was autonomy that got us into NCLB. I think the failures in public education were partly a result of the 80's practice of 'starving the beast' and partly a case of limited imagination on behalf of all actors involved. I always appreciate the devil's being advocated for, but I find it hard to blame the autonomy of teachers in their classrooms for the historical political in-fighting and failures of conscience between the big players in Washington.

A quick glance at the early history of the Dept of Ed -- [Ed. I made a flub... blogging too fast, too early in the morning and mistakenly wrote NEA, which is interesting in its own right but not what I meant... Amended 3PM, Apr 22, 2009] and the political reactionism of what would become the Reagan campaign/admin demonstrates this in spades. Subsequent failures were predicated by this initial clash of ideology and the extended battle in policy that was waged throughout the era of Dynasty and big hair.

That's not to say that teachers themselves should be let off the hook. That's exactly where the transparency piece fits in.

In terms of current practice, transparency is of utmost importance. Autonomy should be a matter of responsibility that hinges upon it. And for the first time in history, we have the means -- via Web 2.0 -- to involve all actors -- teachers, students, parents, admins, and politicians, as well as the community at large -- in real time connections with the facts of what learning looks like in a 21st century classroom on a second-by-second basis.

Let's encourage that dialogue.

And if we see that it ain't working, let's work together with the community to fix it.

Bubble-tests be damned.

As for the restaurants, I always go local.

Autonomy, Responsibility, and Transparency in the Digital Age

Yesterday's lead post was about autonomy.

Teachers need autonomy to make decisions in teaching style and curriculum choices. Teachers need to choose what types of technology work best and fit most naturally into their classrooms. For example, SharePoint is the bane of my existence and I refuse to use it -- but I have tech-reasoning and not tech-philistinism behind that decision: namely, I make a more effective use of technology in the classroom when using Web 2.0 and open source apps. For others, SharePoint might be the way to go. And that's fine.

But autonomy doesn't mean you get a free-pass to be a tech naysayer. Rather, it hinges on the teacher actively experimenting with technology and then making informed decisions. And I would argue that autonomy produces good teaching. But that autonomy must be informed by the fact that our kids are growing up in a digitally connected world.

So don't you dare pan educational technology if you still don't know the difference between Twitter and a podcast. No dice.

Teachers in the Digital Age have a responsibility to their students to be tech literate and autonomy is only effective when it is tied to responsibility.

And responsibility is tied to consequences.

Now I'm not exactly what you'd call the Grand Inquisitor, so don't think that I'd have an axe ready for any teachers not willing to hop on the digital train. In fact, I think the reason many teachers are anti-tech is precisely because they've only dealt with tech in ways that invoke their fear and survival mechanisms.

They are freaked out.

Rather, if given the great grail of power, what I'd do is encourage teachers themselves to ACTIVATE responsibility by making their classrooms as transparent as possible.

And two mildly-visionary methods the Internet and Web 2.0 offers are webcam broadcasting and live blogging. The best sources I've used so far to engage in this way are Ustream and Cover it Live.

Ustream gives you the opportunity to really make transparent your classroom by actually opening it up to the entire world. It is a Web 2.0 broadcasting service that allows you and a webcam to become your newest local satellite TV station. But, as with most things Web 2.0, you can adjust the service to serve your specific needs as a teacher. So how about this: start by broadcasting all of your sections live to other teachers in your department. In fact, all of the teachers in the department can broadcast live to each other. I guarantee that within a week -- if that long -- you will discover things either about your own teaching or the teaching of others that will change and improve your practice. Ustream offers a live chat feed to each broadcast, so viewers -- such as your department members -- can comment and make sugestions/observations in real time.

Where this really gets radical is in taking it out of the security of the department and streaming directly into the computers of your administration and parents. What Ustream allows you to do is say: "This is what I do in class". And show it.

Are you up for it?

Here are notes taken at a recent talk by Ken Robinson. They were live-blogged by @vvrotny [Twitter tag] using Cover it Live. You can see that what the app offers is real-time instant blogging. A cool feature is that you can open it up as a real-time chat and save the entire thing. So, in terms of classroom transparency, you could allow your students to back-channel (that is, chat on the side) live to a lecture/discussion/lab/project/whatever that you were doing in class and then have a record of it to read later and see what kinds of things are going through their heads as you are working. You could then take the next step and open up your back-channel to colleagues in your department, other teachers, (gasp admins), and even parents to take part live in the discussion about what's happening in class. Live connections like Twitter have only demonstrated that this sort of immediate engagement from across the Web is actually extremely beneficial in terms of discussion and access to external sources of knowledge and experience.

Just this last Friday, I took part in a CiL/Twitter/Ustreamed conference up in Massachusetts and I was struck so much by the fact that despite the fact that I was sitting in my kitchen in Maryland on Spring Break, I felt like I was actually taking part in the conference a 9 hour car ride away.

Now how is all of this connected to autonomy? Well, it's via that responsibility thing. Transparent broadcasts make us all to aware of our shortcomings. And therein lies a tale: the best of us try to get better and the worst of us make excuses. Used effectively and honestly, live feeds open up your teaching and will help you grow.

As for the consequences? Well, the Grand Inquisitor is you. And this type of open and transparent teaching makes you EARN your autonomy. Be your own harshest critic. Live up to the challenge of what you might be.

Autonomy

As a teacher in an independent school with three children of my own in public school, I often find myself torn on several of the big issues facing ed policy.

I think of myself as having a wide view given my experiences with schools. I myself am a product of 12 years of Catholic school, mostly in Baltimore. My old high school was one of those old two-hundred year-old affairs sitting in what now is another West Baltimore war-zone. After high school, I did a stint at the commuter arm of the state university before hitting the road and dropping out to become an artist full-time. A few moves and a few adventures later, I was sitting in a classroom in Harvard Yard where I would earn a degree studying the Classics. Turning down the opportunity to become more completely obscured by academia, I made a subsequent move back home with my family, took a job at a big public high school on the volatile East side of Baltimore County and started a grad program at Hopkins. At JHU, I pursued an interest in GT education, observing and studying the Center for Talented Youth as I continued to struggle at finding my voice as a teacher at the big high school. When the opportunity arose to start my own Latin program at a Catholic independent school serving Harford County -- a northern Maryland county comprised in its lower part of Baltimore suburbs and in the upper half of vast tracts of rural horse country -- I jumped at the chance. I've been here ever since.

With my own kids, the decision was how best to give them the education they needed. Neither my wife nor I being of the wealthy variety, we decided to buy the most decrepit old house we could find in the county with the best public school system. And so we are constantly maintaining a house built in the year William Henry Harrison met his untimely demise a full hour's drive away from the school at which I work. When my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, however, I knew that we had made the right choice.

And so, life has offered me the opportunity to experience all kinds of schools from all sorts of different angles. And that brings me to the topic of this post.

In each of those situations -- the Catholic schools in Baltimore, the state university, the Ivy League, ed school and the CTY, the big public high school, the semi-rural independent school, and the Blue Ribbon public elementary -- I've found one common link that separates the good from the bad:

Autonomy.

I can not tell you how important it was to me to get into a situation where I could design my own program. Since coming here to John Carroll, I've expanded a two-year Latin program to a four year program culminating in AP Vergil. I've started an AP Art History course and a program in Digital Audio Production. I've worked it so that there are no pre-requisites to get into the AP Art History course -- so students who otherwise might be denied based on academic record or writing ability can take (and succeed at) a college level course in high school. And, of course, I made all of my courses paperless. NONE of this would have happened without the trust of the administration and the autonomy I've been allowed in the classroom.

I know that this is not the experience of all teachers and I feel very fortunate to be in the situation I'm in. But at the same time, many teachers make presumptions about the differences between top-down and bottom-up systems that just aren't true. The most crucial mistake people make is to think that classroom autonomy makes it 'easier' to teach. While certainly I don't have the pressure of meeting state goals on bubble tests, or following someone else's curriculum, I do face a different sort of pressure: I am completely responsible for what goes on in my classroom. This is not to say that teachers in other situations are not responsible, rather what I am saying is that when things go wrong in my classroom there's no one else to blame. I can't blame the department. Can't blame the administration or the district. Can't blame the test. And I refuse to blame the kids. It's just me.

It's a very Meursault place to be.

But I would not rather be anywhere else.

Is it idealistic to want autonomy in every classroom? Absolutely. And that's exactly why I am advocating it over the suffocating and cynical approach of state-demanded testing and standardization. The last thing I want for my own children is for them to be 'standard'. We need a little idealism around here. I respect teachers as professionals and as visionaries and I'd rather them share their vision than teach my kids the proper way to use a number 2 pencil on a Scantron.

And that's why when I receive bulletins from my kids' school telling me that all next week they'll be 'preparing for testing', I get all shook up.

If there is one thing I would encourage in education, it's not technology for technology's sake. It's not content for content's sake. It's certainly not more testing. It's autonomy. Autonomy for all teachers, public or private. And with that autonomy should come responsibilities. Responsibilities to the students. Because effective teachers aren't teachers who make test scores go up; they are teachers who raise their students up.

So that the students can be autonomous.