After a two year hiatus, I have
decided to start blogging again (WIN!). I have found in the past that I
sometimes struggled to find my voice, but my most recent visit to EDUCON 2.6 in
Philadelphia, and some slight arm twisting by Bill Ferriter (@plugusin), has
renewed my will to share my humble opinions with the World Wide Web.
And he is absolutely right. EDUCON is about the collective intelligence of passionate educators from across the globe who come together because a group of students, some parents, and a dedicated Principal named Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) invited them to. Take a moment to hear Chris talk about his vision of education in this short video, and you will instantly understand why SLA (Science Learning Academy) is such a special school with him at the helm.
What makes EDUCON such a special
conference though isn't the all star cast of attendees (I was a little star
struck when I saw Will Richardson (@Willrich45) walk
in as a participant and not the main Keynote Speaker). It is the SLA
students that make this conference/school so intriguing.
First at the top
of the list is Amy, a sophomore at SLA who gave me an initial tour of the
school. Amy was polite, self-aware, and friendly. She was very
positive when speaking of her teachers and her peers, and was very excited
about showing us around. You could tell that Amy was proud to be a
student at SLA, and she loved being at school and learning about different
subjects even though they weren't always easy.
SLA is about
developing a culture and fostering dispositions. I was trying to
understand what some of the sanctions where when students would skip class or
arrive late to their next period (since SLA has no bells, I figured this
happened a lot), and most students didn't understand what I meant. One
student even told me:
"Skip
class?! Why would I do that? That's just disrespectful... and besides... I like
my classes."
Can someone please pinch me.
This demeanour seemed to be contagious, since all students I was able to
speak with seemed to genuinely love their classes and their school experience
at SLA. Just look at this High Quality Compliment wall that was up on the
second floor. Students were invited to leave compliments for other
classmates and/or build on compliments that were already up. Imagine
starting your day with a new compliment. Imagine how much more you want
to be part of an institution that positively reinforces the person you are
becoming.
When I was a
classroom teacher, I felt as though I was pretty wise for giving a general
theme to each of my courses. For example, the theme to my grade 11
English course was the nature of man. Whether or not the Math class down
the hall spoke about the nature of man to students was of little concern to me.
At SLA, they have assigned big ideas for each grade level. These
big ideas guide each of the projects that the students must complete throughout
the semester. Because of this, teachers at SLA don't need to seek out
interdisciplinary relations; the students can make these connections for
themselves.
After the tour of
the school, conference attendees were invited to a panel discussion at the
Franklin Institute on Openness and Transparency in the digital age. The
Panel featured people of interest such as Kin Lane (@kinlane) and
Jamie Casap (@jcasap). The
discussion started with an acute focus on MOOCs, but was able to move on to
more conceptual themes such as what it means to be transparent and open in the
digital age. The panel was quite fruitful and the Twitter backchannel was
trending in less than 5 minutes. Needless to say, the panel set the tone
for a very promising conference.
The opening
Keynote for day one was Richard Culata (@rec54) who is Acting Director of the Office of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education. His message can be summed up by a statement he made near the end of his
allocution:
"Nothing makes me angrier than seeing teachers create problem sets rather than using problems that are already out there."
The different
sessions I attended throughout the weekend were all about Design Thinking and
prototyping. All of the sessions were dynamic and invited a lot of
participation. Nevertheless, it was the culture of SLA that stole the
show at EDUCON. Nothing blew me away more than to speak with the
teachers, students, and parents who made this school a living organism of
learning.
At the start of
the weekend I had an aside with Christian Long (@christianlong), one
of the speakers and vice-president of The Third Teacher +. Christian was explaining to
me the importance trying to have a bigger impact on my District. Without
criticism, he communicated that I might be selling myself short on my
initiatives, since I didn't believe I could tackle the real issues at hand.
I kept coming back to small scale initiatives, when he believed what I
REALLY wanted to do had a deeper meaning and a broader scope.
Coming back to
work on Monday morning I caught a Twitter post that Christian shared with his
followers:
This post got me
thinking about our conversation on the Friday before EDUCON. Throughout
the day I reflected back on my experience in preparation to writing this Blog
post. I thought about how the conference lacked a bit of structure and
was at times unapologetically messy - although no one seemed to mind and
everything followed the schedule well enough. I thought about how the
school looked a bit tattered and plain - But the students were happy and
learning was obviously prevalent. I thought for a split second about how my
District might be able to organize something like EDUCON, and how the students
from my District could be just as enthused by their learning experience as the
students from SLA seemed to be.
That's when I got it. That's when the fire in me was lit (had to sneak Promethean in there).
EDUCON isn't a
conference - It's a mindset. EDUCON is an eternal prototype of people
coming together to improve rather than preach - to celebrate rather than point
fingers - to learn rather than educate.
EDUCON isn't over
because the weekend came to an end. For this first time attendee, EDUCON
is just beginning.
