Philosophy

The Gardener or the Greenskeeper

Sep 02

“Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” -Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury

I’ve found myself lingering on this passage of late. Running it over and over in my mind. Poking at it to see how it moves as I hold it in the hands of who I am. And I wonder at what I’ve found. Both with the passage and with myself. Because I wonder what it is that I am. The gardener or the greenskeeper.

Most of us put our foot forth into the ring of education to make a difference. We want to spend the time we must away from our houses, our spouses, our children, doing something that will have meaning. We want to shape the world around us. To leave something others will see well after our hands have left the clay we are fashioning. And yet, I wonder, if I do enough to be the gardener. Or if I’ve risked becoming the greenskeeper.

We enter the profession full of spark and want and parched with a thirst that we believe will never be quenched. We step through the door on that birth of our career with thoughts that we will change the world. Or many tiny worlds. That we will be the gifted gardener who plants brilliance that blooms forth with shocking, stunning beauty that the world can’t help but marvel over. I certainly did.

But then the years mount. And difficulty and challenge sow the seeds of weeds that threaten to choke down that which we pour ourselves into day after day. And we begin to wonder if we’re planting anything at all. Or we stop planting entirely. We start cutting. And trimming. And instead of gardening, we only prune. True, we still find satisfaction in keeping the garden manicured, but still, we only maintain. We stop our starting. And risk becoming the lawn-cutter who “might just as well not have been there at all.”

I don’t assume this is your story. And it’s far too early to declare it’s mine. But it’s the right time to ask which you’re becoming. Which I’m becoming. And to resolve.

To be the gardener.

Thanks to Stuck in Customs for the use of the Flickr image.

Another Beginning

Jul 05

Life is unexpected. Just when you think you’ve crested a hill and can look long at the path stretching before you, opportunity arises and you find yourself taking a road unanticipated. I won’t say I’ve taken the one less traveled by, but I have taken another.

Today, I officially began my job as the Director of Technology and Communications in Oak Lawn-Hometown District 123. It is a role about which I am incredibly excited. Because there’s great opportunity here. And I earnestly believe I can seize it.

I’d like to say I’m beginning this position with a long list of answers sitting at the ready for implementation. But that would be a dishonesty. Because at this point, I have more questions than answers. I’m hoping, however, that the right questions can prove more powerful than me thinking I have the right answers. I’m hoping such for what it could mean for our students, our staff, and our community. And what it could mean for learning.

It seems to me as I’ve observed the advent of modern technology increasing in utilization in education, there has grown a rift between those in the Director of Technology role and many of the others in an educational institution. Somehow the two sides seem to be at odds. Neither understands the other. As it is most often manifested, the one side is prone to thinking in terms of restricting what takes place in the technological environment, while the other side believes those running the technological environment know very little about education. I know I’m speaking in broad generalities, but it is what I have observed in many places.

I don’t want that to be my case.

I was a classroom teacher for eight years before I left one of the most incredibly rewarding professions in the hopes of making a difference on a broader scale. However, I learned quickly that there is little more rewarding than directly investing in the lives of students in a classroom each day. It is simply an amazing endeavor. I left that not to take a position where my actions matter little to the experience of students and those who are working so hard to help them learn how to learn. I left teaching with the hope that I could make a difference in a different way.

It is now, standing once again on the edge of great new change, that I begin with questions. I’m hoping these are the right ones. Or at least the ones that will lead me to the right ones. And the right ones are those that will make a difference in the lives of the students, staff members, and community where I have the privilege to serve.

As is always the case, your input and help in crafting and molding both these questions and my potential to make a difference is extremely important to me. Here is my beginning.

1. How is what we’re doing with technology making a difference for learning?

2. How can we support teachers and do everything we can to help them help their students learn?

3. How can we support teachers as they continue to learn?

3. Does the environment we create build trust?

4. How can we communicate more effectively and better meet the needs of our community?

5. Are we reliable?

6. Are we making a positive difference?

I hope these questions guide the work that I have ahead. And I hope I keep questioning the questions. And I know I will keep learning.

Curriculum Reflections

Feb 22

*This is a reflection post required for my JHU-ISTE Leadership program.

This reflection is to focus on answering the following questions:
How has your definition of curriculum been shaped by the course readings and discussions? How and why has your definition of curriculum changed?

For reference, our texts for this course were:

Burrello, L. C., Lashley, C., & Beatty, E. E. (2001). Educating all students together: How school leaders create unified systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Glatthorn, A. A. (2004). Developing a quality curriculum. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Glatthorn

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999 or 2004). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Tomlinson

As posted in my first reflection for this course I was certainly pushed on my definition of curriculum over the past eight weeks. When I first started the course, I wasn’t sure that I had an established definition at all. It seemed to me that many different people used many different definitions for the term. Still does. And while I believe I have more clarity on the issue, I’m not sure I’m ready to declare I have a definitive answer. I’m not sure I want to.

The theme of the “written, taught, and tested” curriculum came up time and again in our work. It still seems to me that is too narrow a focus for true curriculum. I’m still of the mind that curriculum remains everything that students end up learning in our institution. The written, taught, and tested is a big part of that to be sure, but it isn’t all of it. Because again, kids learn as much about themselves, us, and learning from the things we chose to omit as from the things we choose to include.

There are many curriculums that are “test prep” focused. That speaks volumes to students about the value of creativity and innovation. Especially when they aren’t allowed such because it would interfere with the test prep scope and sequence. When programs start cutting the arts, that teaches a student more than what they learn in an entire unit of grammar. They learn between the lines. I’m afraid we forget that. We mislead ourselves to think they learn what we direct them to. If you believe that, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken.

And if you aren’t considering the needs of all your students, again, you’re missing an incredibly large part of the point. We’re not in this business to make things. To manufacture items. To manage. We’re here to serve students and help them figure out how they can most effectively learn. And we do that for all our students. Tomlinson’s book certainly provided a great deal of thought on this topic. And I think we’d do well to all remember that not all students run a six minute mile, nor do they learn at the same rate.

In considering how my definition of curriculum has changed over the course of this class, I also recognize Glatthorn’s influence on my thinking. His work provides an excellent framework for considering when working on implementing a new curriculum. Although I can’t say that he directly changed any part of my definition of the term itself, he certainly provided great guidance in setting up a sound system that will help navigate curriculum change.

As this course draws to a close, and I’m considering my final definition of curriculum, I’d probably have to return to a variant of my original definition.

Curriculum is everything we want our students to learn; including the explicit and implicit of what our system fosters for learning.

I’m sure that will continue to evolve, and I’m happy with that. I’m not ready to stop wrestling with the concept quite yet.

What is Curriculum?

Jan 17

I have been in education for ten years, and I haven’t thought enough about that question. I’m now in the second week of the course, “Curriculum Theory” in my JHU-ISTE program, and we’ve started wrestling with some tough questions about curriculum.

The first being the title for this post. What is curriculum?

It seems the answer can’t be cleaved from many political influences in most cases. That’s fascinating- that so many will battle so hard over the very definition of something I find could be rather to entirely simple. The more I delve into the topic, the more I find myself forced to simplicity. In my opinion, curriculum is…

All the stuff our students learn.

That’s it. Simple.

Where it gets exponentially complicated starts with the very first step away from the definition. Who gets to pick the stuff the students learn? Much more difficult and political.

Some say that the curriculum we choose is broken down into three parts; the written, the taught, and the tested. Sure that’s part of it, but curriculum is much more than that. It’s ALL the stuff our students learn. That means both the intended and unintended. When we start picking exactly what the stuff is that the students will learn, we begin formulating a construct that students will engage when learning. Obviously, there will be written curriculum that is to be taught and then tested, but there is much more to it than that. Because it’s the bigger construct of the scope of the curriculum that will likely have the greatest impact on a student.

What I mean is, if we set up a curriculum that focuses on finite, rote recitation of facts as a major outcome, we will intend to have students complete our institution’s educational scope and sequence with a specific knowledge base we’ve predetermined. However, what we most likely will not intend for students to learn is how to game our system. This is happening quite often in educational institutions who most value specific, information-based learning outcomes as students figure out how to work the system, or “Do School” as Denise Clark Pope suggests, and their final proficiency may say much more about how they learned to exploit than how they learned to learn what was intended.

Things continue to grow more complicated when we take another step back and look at some of the umbrella questions surrounding curriculum and its inception.

For example, the question was posed in our class last week, “Whose values should be reflected in the content and processes of curriculum?” That question, frankly, is kicking my tail. I’ve thought on it quite a bit, and I still don’t have a good answer for it. I’d like to say mine, but mine probably isn’t yours, so why do I get to decide it’s mine and not yours? I might say the learners, but what if collectively, they decide they don’t much value education in general? Where does that leave us? I could take the cheap way out and say society, but who in the world can say exactly what the values of society are? Like I said, it’s kicking my tail.

Another step back.

Look bigger than just the curriculum. Look at schooling in general. What exactly is the purpose of school? I’ve written about this before, and I still believe in what I wrote in that post. It is all about learning. That is the purpose. However, if learning is the goal, what is the conduit? That, I would have to say, is democracy.

This gets us nowhere easier than previous topics. As Deborah Meier has stated before, democracy is an incredibly difficult process to understand. There are fewer more important revolutions in the history of mankind than the information revolution. That knowledge and learning and information moved from the privileged few to the masses means more for the progress of citizenry than perhaps any other reform. However, learning in a democracy means dealing with difficult issues. The tyranny of the majority. The repression of the minority opinion. The absolute need for empathy. These are not always addressed in the democratic learning institutions where our students are learning.

If we teach in a democratic institution, then what exactly should be taught? What subjects should students learn? Yet another question to which I don’t have the answer. I’d like to say students should learn what is of interest to them, but that if rife with complication. I know if I had been given the opportunity to pick that which I would learn when I was in middle school, none of the subjects would have had any academic value. I can assure you this, though, they would have been interesting.

Should we continue on with the just in case model; giving students a bit of everything just in case they might need it some day? Should we move to the just in time model that delivers knowledge and learning right in the time when it is needed? Do either really offer a true solution?

I can absolutely see the need for students to learn how to communicate dynamically, and it is likely there is a certain level of mathematics and science that is needed to succeed in our world, but other than that, what should we teach? Citizenship, vocational skill, world languages, finance? What about specific classes in project management, collaboration (the real kind, not just cooperative learning), critical thinking, etc.?

Obviously the more I write, the less I seem to know.

One last point before I bring this rambling, stumbling wreck of a post to a close.

What about me? What do I do that makes a difference in the lives of learners today? That, is a very valid question. I’m the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a K-12 district in Illinois. I have held this position for two years now. I’d like to say that in that time, I’ve managed to facilitate great change in the way students interface with learning through technology. For a host of reasons, I simply can’t say that with truth. I face the same challenges many of my colleagues face in this profession. I try to jump many of the same hurdles. I’ve found there are reasons why I never went out for track in school.

I do believe we can engage our students in new and emerging ways. I also believe there’s much we can be doing to better some of the old ways. I will not stop fighting for what I believe is best for our students. And that is, simply, learning. I try to ground the work I do in that bedrock. Many days I fail. That doesn’t mean I will give up the trying. As long as I’m in this position, and as long as I’m affiliated with the work of educating students, I will continue to fight for their learning.

Obviously, this is some kind of fragmented post. But these are the things I’m wrestling with. If you have any thoughts on one, a few, or all of the topics raised, I would greatly appreciate your sage wisdom. Or even more questions. Those seem to be what I can handle best at present.