Reflection - Grant Lichtman 'What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skill'
MindLab Week 2
Flipped learning task
I had seen this video previously and follow Grant on twitter (@GrantLichtman) but hadn't really taken the time to reflect on the message. I watched a lot of TED talks whilst doing my stationary bike rehab after my hip surgery this year and so it came to a point where I'd get half way through a video and then suddenly remember that I had already seen it - evidently not much of it was staying put in my brain!
Grant Lichtman conducted a study in the USA where he took a road trip across the country, visited over 60 schools and tried to establish what schools were actually doing to teach 21st Century skills to students and how they were successful or not. I think it is fair to say that the main message he got from schools was that, 'change is hard'. It is hard. Most humans are creatures of habit. We enjoy knowing what to expect and what is likely to happen; some people genuinely do like the predictable nature that comes with doing the same thing time and time again. I love a Henry Ford quote and he once said that, 'if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got'. People have been talking and talking about the need for a revolution in education. Robert Dewey was talking about it 100 years ago and yet not much has changed. This awesome video titled, This will Revolutionize Education outlines just how many different strategies and tools have been suggested over the year, yet not many of them have actually changed much at all inside a majority of our schools.
I have tried a range of different teaching styles, technologies, apps and tools but often tend to jump from one thing to the next. This is the first time I have stayed in a school for longer than a year so I have never really seen the true impact of anything I have initiated and feel that what evidence I have collated is lacking in validity, rather anecdotal and I really hope that MindLab will help me to be more focused and really narrow down what areas of my practice needs work and how I can use my developing knowledge of digital and collaborative learning and leadership to do that.
Grant Lichtman suggests that although everyone implies that change is hard, in fact a lot of the time it is just that we find change uncomfortable. It takes a while for us to get used to and that doesn't sit right with us so we often revert to type. If we are stressed, under a mountain of reports or at work after dealing with something exhausting at home the previous evening then we often return to the familiar. I know that this is me on occasion. I reassure myself that the students will be OK with a lesson out of the text book or I can get away without planning but deep down it makes me feel like I'm not giving them my best, or anything close.
Our students are being prepared for an industrial age that no longer exists. At my school a majority of classrooms have the students sitting in rows, for 6 x 50 minute periods where they have to switch between their maths hat and their Spanish hat and then to their science hat - never making the connections that need to be made. Students are entering a world for which they aren't prepared. The curriculum is so tight that teachers are pulling their hair out just to get through the content. I find myself listening to conversations from different departments about them lacking in time and being put under the constraints of the subject and the syllabus. I tried to do a project about different energy drinks and the effects they had, their suitability for sport etc to engage the students on the topic of ergogenic aids, only to be several lessons 'behind' on the schemes of work which panicked both me and my students. It was fun, they said, but couldn't I just have told them the information in the first place?
Lichtman puts these barriers into three groups.
Lastly Lichtman outlines how schools can be better prepared. What we need to do to really teach these 21st Century skills we have talked about for so long, that aren't really purely 21st century skills at all but rather just the skills that students will need for their future. The diagram shows what schools and it's teachers should aim for in order to fully prepare their learners. I'm not sure exactly where my school fits in with this, I think there are some movers and shakers on the right lines - particularly those of us who are on the MindLab course, but as always when change is afoot, there are those firmly digging in their heels who may need to be dragged along!
Flipped learning task
I had seen this video previously and follow Grant on twitter (@GrantLichtman) but hadn't really taken the time to reflect on the message. I watched a lot of TED talks whilst doing my stationary bike rehab after my hip surgery this year and so it came to a point where I'd get half way through a video and then suddenly remember that I had already seen it - evidently not much of it was staying put in my brain!
Grant Lichtman conducted a study in the USA where he took a road trip across the country, visited over 60 schools and tried to establish what schools were actually doing to teach 21st Century skills to students and how they were successful or not. I think it is fair to say that the main message he got from schools was that, 'change is hard'. It is hard. Most humans are creatures of habit. We enjoy knowing what to expect and what is likely to happen; some people genuinely do like the predictable nature that comes with doing the same thing time and time again. I love a Henry Ford quote and he once said that, 'if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got'. People have been talking and talking about the need for a revolution in education. Robert Dewey was talking about it 100 years ago and yet not much has changed. This awesome video titled, This will Revolutionize Education outlines just how many different strategies and tools have been suggested over the year, yet not many of them have actually changed much at all inside a majority of our schools.
Grant Lichtman suggests that although everyone implies that change is hard, in fact a lot of the time it is just that we find change uncomfortable. It takes a while for us to get used to and that doesn't sit right with us so we often revert to type. If we are stressed, under a mountain of reports or at work after dealing with something exhausting at home the previous evening then we often return to the familiar. I know that this is me on occasion. I reassure myself that the students will be OK with a lesson out of the text book or I can get away without planning but deep down it makes me feel like I'm not giving them my best, or anything close.
Our students are being prepared for an industrial age that no longer exists. At my school a majority of classrooms have the students sitting in rows, for 6 x 50 minute periods where they have to switch between their maths hat and their Spanish hat and then to their science hat - never making the connections that need to be made. Students are entering a world for which they aren't prepared. The curriculum is so tight that teachers are pulling their hair out just to get through the content. I find myself listening to conversations from different departments about them lacking in time and being put under the constraints of the subject and the syllabus. I tried to do a project about different energy drinks and the effects they had, their suitability for sport etc to engage the students on the topic of ergogenic aids, only to be several lessons 'behind' on the schemes of work which panicked both me and my students. It was fun, they said, but couldn't I just have told them the information in the first place?
Lichtman puts these barriers into three groups.
Anchors - subjects,
space, time
Dams - Universities,
UCAS etc
Silos - classroom,
dept, school, communities
We need to try and break free of these barriers and restrictions and free up teachers to connect globally with others. In many schools Lichtman found that a problem in one school had already been solved just down the road, or across the state. If we worked together we might be more productive - working smarter, not harder. this video created via collaboration by P21 (formerly Partnership for 21st Century Skills) and FableVision, is a story about what is possible when communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity transform learning opportunities for all kids. It's awesome. I think I'm going to show it to my students when we look at collaboration, it really highlights the benefits of truly working together. Many schools across NZ are working in clusters, or communities of learning but at a private school we aren't a part of that. I don't know if that's through choice or if only public schools are allowed to be a part of that (making a mental note to look into that) but it's a positive step for NZ education which seems to be moving in the right direction. I hope that we can look for others to collaborate with, to make changes for the better and see just what those around us are already doing.
Lastly Lichtman outlines how schools can be better prepared. What we need to do to really teach these 21st Century skills we have talked about for so long, that aren't really purely 21st century skills at all but rather just the skills that students will need for their future. The diagram shows what schools and it's teachers should aim for in order to fully prepare their learners. I'm not sure exactly where my school fits in with this, I think there are some movers and shakers on the right lines - particularly those of us who are on the MindLab course, but as always when change is afoot, there are those firmly digging in their heels who may need to be dragged along!
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