Let's keep going

"Don't tell me what you know, show me how you learned it."

Think about that idea.  I would like to take credit for this as an original quote; but, I will leave it open sourced for the time being.  However, let's get back to pondering this idea.  There are other ways to say it the exact same thing. "Give a person to fish, feed them for a day; show a person to fish feed them for a lifetime," and many more.

I am sure that as you read this you have said something similar.  And of course, there is a story.

All those years spent holding the flashlight while working on a car.  Being the "go-for" in the kitchen.  Holding the knot with one finger as we tied up the newspapers for recycling.  Holding the fishing rod perfectly still; making sure the hook doesn't move when tying on the lure.

Those were my jobs growing up.  Yet I know how to change the oil in the car, cook a decent meal, and tie several different knots for different purposes.  That is so weird.  I learned and I didn't even know I was learning.

I wasn't given a piece of paper that explained the finer points of changing 10W40 in a six cylinder engine utilizing synthetic oil every 3,000 miles.  I held the flashlight, eventually I graduated to unscrewing the filter, and finally I could do the whole process.  The process of utilizing a roux to thicken the sauce was not a detailed lecture given prior to completing the task. I was asked to get the flour and butter, then I was asked to measure equal amounts, finally I was able to put it in a pan to get the right color and consistency.

I learned through watching at first then by doing and failing.

Think about it.    The same is true about education.  How many times have you sat in a classroom bored because you are sitting a listening to a lecture?  It could have been a college class, graduate school, or your most recent observed lesson.

But how many classes did you have where you actually did something?  Pulled hydrogen and oxygen from water using a battery and two test tubes, discovered that same side exterior angles are supplementary by staring at two parallel lines that are crossed by a transversal and proving it using GEOMETRY.  These are awesome ways to learn.

Watch.  Try.  Do.  Struggle.  Fail.  Succeed.  LEARN.  Have you ever been in that lesson where you just can't help but get engaged and you find your hand is going up more often than the students'?

It is time that we look to put an end to the listen and learn.  Most kids get bored with that idea by the time they are four:

Let's give our middle school students a bit more respect then "A cow says moo."  Let's look to show them the genus and species of a cow and how they became an integral part of agriculture that led to a the dawn of civilization.  Don't tell them that, show them how to use books and the internet to research that idea.

This will be the topic or our first Twitter Chat for #bcps_msm

Best Practices for Engaging the Middle School Learner

Questions will be posted to this blog soon and then sent out via Twitter.  This will be a #slowEDchat style chat for this first round.  Five questions will be posted on Twitter.  One question each day.  All responses must use the #bcps_msm tag in order to be recorded.  We will then use the tool Storify to organize all of are responses and share with the world.

Start sharing with your peers.  It is time we look to engage our students to prevent them from leaving us: either mentally checking out of school or physically dropping out.

New Beginnings

This blog came from a simple idea.  A quote from Teddy Roosevelt:

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

This is especially true for students, teachers, parents, and everyone else that has any contact with a school.  You can replace the word "people" with any of the groups mentioned above and it INSTANTLY changes the focus to school.  While this quote holds true for every level of schooling, I feel that it resonates with middle school students most.

There is so much that goes on in middle school.  So many changes that take place with students over these three years.  This time frame is the "critical middle."  Students will determine during this time how they will proceed with their education.  Will they go to college, choose a career, or possibly drop out.  We need to come together to work on keeping students engaged and in school.  We want to see an entire cadre of globally competitive graduates come from our current and future middle school students.

The goal of this new community is to share what we know to become better at what we do.  I have often heard that no teacher is an island.  A teacher shouldn't shut the door, block out the world around them, and teach with blinders on.  Neither should a school.  To have globally competitive graduates, we need to know what various school are doing in order to help each other.  Let's use this to expand our community of learners.

We will use this blog to identify best practices for working with middle school students.  There will be connections to article, sites, and resources.  We will work hard to provide guest articles from various people around our district and beyond.  The hope is to also have interviews with those that have direct impact on the way middle school looks and those that shape policy for middle school students.

This blog will also be a supplement to a new chat for our school district.  For years, I have been itching to get a chat going among administrators and teachers that focuses on best practices in the middle level.  With Twitter becoming such a HUGE aspect of how we communicate and how we can learn, the iron was hot and so the strike has come, and we will now begin to host a chat.

The best part is that we are going to work to make this as interactive as possible.  We will allow our participants to choose how they want to learn.  How often, how long, what topics, etc.

Stay tuned for more information on the new chat #bcps_msm