A Teacher Walks Into A Bar

I don't drink alcohol, nor do I smoke tobacco. (Even though I live in Colorado, I don't smoke anything else, either.) In fact, I've always had antipathy towards both practices. I've fully supported the campaign to make smoking tobacco less socially acceptable, more inconvenient, and more expensive (with taxes that go toward smoking prevention efforts or health care costs). I would support a similar campaign with alcohol, given the tremendous negative behavioral outcomes associated with it's use, as well as the tremendous health care costs it creates. In fact, I would probably even support the reinstatement of Prohibition if it wasn't for the inconvenient fact that it doesn't work. Why am I sharing this information with you? So that we're clear during the rest of this post that I'm not writing this out of some defensive stance because I want to preserve the ability to do something I like, or even others' ability to do something they like.

This past spring our School Board, at the suggestion of district staff, approved a revision to Policy GBEE-R: Staff Use of District Technology. (The date at that link says as of this writing that it was last revised September 27, 2012, but I think that just hasn't been updated yet, since this was revised last spring.) Please take a few minutes to read it. Pay special attention to the portion in Section II: Social Media, under the heading "Guidelines," as this is the part that was recently revised (you'll have to scroll down a bit to find this part). Go ahead, I'll still be here when you get back.

There's a lot to think about here. Item 8 under Guidelines seems interesting:

8. Photographs relating to alcohol or tobacco use may be deemed inappropriate.

Really. Huh. So the district is saying that if a staff member engages in behaviors that are perfectly legal for adults and posts a photograph of it somewhere on their own personal social media, it may be "deemed inappropriate" by the district and

may form the basis for disciplinary action up to and including termination.

Termination. Wow. Thank goodness it's still okay for staff members to post "photographs" (I assume that includes "images", but it's not specific) of themselves smoking marijuana (or crack cocaine). Now, many of our staff members live in neighborhoods where our students live as well. I wonder if it's okay for them to smoke or drink in their backyards where they might be seen by students? To be safe, they should probably only do that within the confines of their own home, and be sure to pull the shades.

I wonder if the district is going to start firing staff members who get pregnant? After all, once a pregnant staff member starts showing, it's pretty darn obvious when they walk in the building that they've been having sex. Surely that could be "deemed inappropriate", especially if they post pictures of their pregnant selves on social media. And, of course, especially if they aren't married. There's even lots of precedence for this, since women teachers used to have to quit when they got pregnant and, before that, when they simply got married. You know, I always thought that the 'P' in 'LPS' stood for 'Public'; I wonder when it turned into 'Puritanical'?

There is a lot of Board Policy, so perhaps I missed it, but so far I haven't found the Policy that tells me what I'm allowed to say to students and parents when I run into them at the grocery store. Or at the Mosque, Temple or Church. Nor have I found the policy that tells me what is appropriate to say on the phone if I call them, what's okay to say in class, or what I'm allowed to write on a student's paper when I give them feedback. Probably just an oversight. In the meantime, just to be sure I'm not in violation of district policy, I think I won't have any communication with students' parents, or with students outside of the classroom. I'm struggling a bit with what to do in the classroom, though, perhaps only show approved movies so that I don't have to talk?

Let's see, what else. Ahh, yes, there's this,

Promotion of professional events must be posted on a previously approved professional social media website.

I'm really not sure what this means. Typically, Board Policy tries to be very specific so, if I read this as written, this seems to say that if I, as a staff member, want to promote some "professional event" of mine on the web, I need to get district approval. So, for example, if I want to advertise the speaking that I've done on occasion, or perhaps I do yard work or painting in the summer, or maybe I tutor students or run some kind of business out of my home selling cosmetics or something, or maybe I run a summer sports camp, apparently if I want to advertise on the web I have to get permission from the district first. I'm really not sure why that's any of their business, but since I can be "terminated" if it's deemed inappropriate, I suppose I must comply.

The above are concerning, but actually are not my major concern with these "guidelines." While these seem to restrict my personal behavior, which is troubling, I'm more concerned with the impact these guidelines will have on learning. For example,

Staff members are discouraged from communicating with students, their parents, and guardians through personal social media platforms/applications or texting. 

So I can call students and parents. I can email them. I can talk to them face-to-face at school or if I see them outside of school. I can send them a letter, a postcard or a telegram. But I'm discouraged from "communicating" with students and parents via text or social media. It's strange, previously I've always been encouraged to interact and communicate with students and parents, we typically call that "relationship building." But, for some reason, if I build relationships through texting or social media, it's considered bad. Again, probably just an oversight in Board Policy, I'm sure there will be new policy shortly discouraging those other forms of communication as well. It's a shame, though. Just like Willie Sutton replied when asked why he robbed banks, "Because that's where the money is," I would think we would want to interact with our students in social media spaces (and via texting), since "that's where the students are."

It is somewhat problematic, though. You see, about 75% of the staff members at my school have children in our school district. So I guess I'm not allowed to interact on social media with them or text them any more. And my daughter goes to my school, as do many of her friends, so I guess I'm not allowed to interact on social media or text any of those friends or their parents. Come to think of it, I suppose I'm also "discouraged" from interacting on social media or texting my own daughter. The more I think about this, the harder it gets. I mean, I don't know how many of the folks I connect with on social media or text might have some connection to a student in my school district. I guess to be safe I just have to close all my social media accounts and get rid of my texting plan.

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It's curious. It appears as though my district doesn't trust its teachers on social media or via texting, so why in the world do they trust us with students face-to-face? (While the policy applies to all "staff," it's clearly targeted towards teachers. We are going to be "in-serviced" on this by district personnel during a faculty meeting in a couple of weeks. As far as I know, they do not have similar meetings scheduled with secretaries, custodial staff, kitchen staff, bus drivers, or parent volunteers.)

I don't know, but I believe this policy is going to be presented in terms of "student safety" and "staff protection." While I'm not questioning whether that's the intent of the folks who've created the policy, in the end it's the result, not the intent, that matters. And this policy does nothing to protect students. That's uncastrated male bovine excrement. (Just to be safe, I don't want to swear on my personal blog, as that might be deemed "inappropriate" or reflect poorly on my "professionalism".) This policy will do nothing to stop a "bad" adult from doing something harmful to students. The only thing this policy does is provide coverage to the district if such an unfortunate event should occur.

Much like many of the "rules" we have in place for students, this policy simply prevents the positive uses of social media and texting and does nothing to prevent the negative uses. It prevents the vast majority of staff members who will use these tools well, simply to protect against the very rare misuse of them. Just like punishing the entire class (or entire student body) for the actions of a few, we are unilaterally disempowering our entire staff because of the potential future abuse by the few (or the one).

So what's my solution? Err on the side of open. Remove these revised "guidelines" and rework the policy to focus on learning, on the positive aspects of texting and social media. Let's focus on "Responsible Use Policies," not on discouraging or prohibiting. Let's stop acting out of fear, and instead lead. Let's work with our students, and in the places our students frequent, instead of avoiding them because we're worried about getting sued.

As it's currently written, I could shorten this to the first four words of the second paragraph under guidelines,

Staff members are discouraged.

"A teacher walks into a bar." Kind of sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn't it? But it's not funny.

Update August 4th: Was called in for a "discussion" today about this post. Received further clarification that it's about student and staff safety (I still don't see it, but don't question the good intentions of folks involved). Also received further clarification that for any "private" communication with students that is not verbal face-to-face (email, text, written letter, social media, presumably anything direct to the student online) we are supposed to cc the parents or another responsible adult.

The Textbook Is Not The Curriculum

I thought I'd give a little update on two of my previous posts. Despite overwhelming opposition by the professionals that we pay to teach our students mathematics, our district went ahead and adopted the Agile Mind materials. The rollout this fall has been less than smooth, including many technical issues that have been slow to be addressed (students not being able to login, students not being able to load the materials, some of the materials loading but not others, etc.). We are diligently working through those technical issues and I imagine we will solve them reasonably soon.

But the other concerns the professional mathematics educators expressed regarding the materials are not so easily addressed, and many of them are coming up in the day-to-day use of these materials. The Algebra team at my school (Algebra being the only course where they are required to use the Agile Mind materials at this point, although Geometry and Algebra II will be required in the future) has been extremely frustrated up to this point. Being the dedicated teachers that they are, they aren't giving up, they are still trying their best to make this work, but they have been burdened by the expectation that they must use these materials. (And, as stated previously, Agile Mind seems to be designed to work as a script, not a resource.)

As a result of the technical problems with Agile Mind, I have had a fair amount of interaction with the Algebra teachers around Agile Mind (full disclosure: I'm not teaching Algebra this year so am not experiencing this myself), and I've mentioned several times that they don't have to use these materials. Like any textbook or other approved materials, it is simply a resource for them to use. The only expectation of them is to help students learn the mathematics curriculum as decided by the Board of Education, and they can use their professional judgement on how best to do that. Every time I've brought this up they look at me and say, essentially, they been told they must use these materials. (Apparently it was even mentioned that the district can "track" how often students log in, and therefore how often teachers are using the materials, although it's somewhat unclear as to which half of this the emphasis was being placed on.)

Which brings me to why I'm writing this post. I have a daughter who is in ninth grade and is taking Algebra at Arapahoe, so therefore is using the Agile Mind materials. She recently brought home a letter from the district saying that all the students would be surveyed three times throughout the course of the year to help determine the impact on mathematics instruction and achievement of the use of the Agile Mind materials. The purpose of the letter was to allow us to opt-out of the survey if we wished, per School Board policy.

Normally we wouldn't have any issue with our daughter taking a survey such as this but, for the first time, we are choosing to opt her out. It's not just because of the 45 minutes of mathematics learning she will miss out on while they are taking this survey, although that's certainly part of it. But it's because of the letter itself, and how it reflects on the above discussion and my previous blog posts. Here's the full text of the letter.

Do you notice anything about this letter? Here's what I noticed. It refers to the Agile Mind Curriculum in the header and three separate times in the the first paragraph. It's not a curriculum, it's materials that have been adopted to support the curriculum. This may indeed just be a slip of the keyboard (although four times in one paragraph is a whole lot of slippin'), but the problem is that - whether it's a slip or not - that is exactly how it's being implemented by the district. It's being treated as a curriculum, not in support of the curriculum. Not only is this exactly what the professional teachers of mathematics feared back in the spring when we were discussing this, it is in direct violation of the curriculum adoption process in our school district.

I've stated before that I think the materials adoption process in our district is deeply flawed, but at least it was a process that was more-or-less followed, even though the results of that process were not ideal. But clearly the process for curriculum adoption was not followed, and so for the district to now be referring to this as the Agile Mind Curriculum in a formal communication home to parents is stunning.

So, as a professional educator, as someone who has a fair amount of experience teaching students mathematics, as someone who is fairly well connected to the on-going discussions around learning and what's best for our students, as a staff member in Littleton Public Schools and at Arapahoe High School, and as a citizen and taxpayer, I have a question. But let's ignore all those roles and I'm just going to ask this question from one perspective:

As a parent of a ninth grader enrolled in Algebra at Arapahoe High School in Littleton Public Schools, I'd like to know what the LPS School Board is going to do about this?

Board of Education Social Media/Networking Discussion

On Thursday, March 10, 2011, sometime between 7-8:30 pm Mountain Time (depends on how the agenda goes), we will be having a discussion with our Board of Education surrounding Social Media/Social Networking and K-12 schools. Details are still to be ironed out, but we expect to host a web page with the presentation and a CoverItLive live blog session embedded side-by-side, and also plan to have a live stream that can be opened separately.

Update 3-7-11: Here's the page with the Cover-It-Live and the Prezi.

Some of the questions/issues we’re likely to address are:

What is social media/networking? How is it different? Why is it important?

What is the social value of social media/networking?

What are the realities and what are the myths? What are the risks and what are the benefits?

What are the organizational, communication, and learning power of these services?

How can these be used for learning and collaboration, not just echo-chamber and group think?

What is their role in K-12 education? (Note: I’m in high school, so that’s my focus, and I imagine most of the focus in this discussion will be age 13 and up, but thoughts on younger ages are welcome as well.)

What should Board policy look like surrounding social media/networking? Should there be policy? If so, should it be just for this, or should it fall under our current code of conduct and we don’t need a separate policy?

What should our Internet filter policy be for this? What about students that use their phones/own connection to the Internet while at school and therefore aren’t restricted by our filter?

We’ll use the hashtag #BoardChat

Proposed Prezi Presentation (First Draft 2-20-11, feedback to Dan Maas).

Please leave any thoughts you have about the above items – or additional related items not listed -in this Google Doc. Thanks in advance.

Looking for Virtual School Board Members - Are You Interested?

Anne Smith and Maura Moritz are having their ninth graders choose a book, read it, and then discuss it in small groups. That’s not all that different than what has been going on in Language Arts classrooms for quite a while, but they’re extending the idea just a little bit. The students chose books that are somewhat controversial (1984, The Fountainhead, I Robot, Little Brother, Anthem, I Am the Cheese) and have either been challenged or banned by school districts around the country (to be clear, not necessarily our school district). The students will read and discuss the books and then have to prepare a presentation for the school board arguing either in favor of approving the book for use or defending blocking its use. They’ll follow our district’s process for book approvals (pdf). In Anne’s case they are also using a Google Site with integrated Google Groups to help organize their thinking and collaboratively plan their presentations.

When the presentations are ready, the students – for their final exam – will actually make the presentation to selected members of our own school board that we’ve invited to hear the presentations. The school board members will listen to the presentation, ask questions, make them defend their positions, and generally be – well, school board members.

There’s only one problem with this plan. Some of our school board members already have commitments during our final exam times (pesky little things like graduation ceremonies for our sister high schools, for example). Hmm, what to do? I know, invite other folks in to be “school board members.” What other folks, you ask? Well, you, for example. Anyone who’s interested and is available at the times the students will be presenting (more on that in a minute) would serve as a “virtual school board member,” watching and listening to the presentation via ustream (or MeBeam, or Skype, or . . . tool to be determined based on participants) and then providing feedback/asking questions via Skype/MeBeam/whatever (again, tool to be determined based on participants access). (As a side benefit, parents can tune in to watch their student's final exam live.)

Just as regular school board members have not always read the book in question, you do not have to have read the book (although if you have, or if you’re willing to try to read one or more before then, that would be excellent). You would be responsible for generally being prepared to participate as a “serious” school board member (review these two (pdf) documents) to get a feel for our process).

So, if you’re interested in participating, we’d love to have you. You need to send an email to me (karlfisch {at} gmail {dot} com) as soon as possible with the following information: name, location, position, digital footprint information (blog, wiki, twitter, etc.), skype name, and the time(s) you are available (chosen from the list below). Please keep in mind we do have limited spots so – if we happen to get a ton of responses (unlikely this time of year, but you never know) – we may not be able to accept everybody.

Here is the list of times (all times Mountain Daylight Time, UTC/GMT -6) and the books that will be presented during those times (please keep in mind that times are estimates, some groups may go over and some may end early – you’ve done this type of things with students, right?). It would be great if you could sign up for an entire class period, but if you only have time for a partial period, we’ll try to work it out.

Friday, May 15th - Need Participants (last day of classes, 59 minute periods)

Period 2: 8:25-9:24 am
Anthem / I Am the Cheese (approx. 8:25 – 8:45)
I Robot (~8:45 – 9:05)
1984 (~9:05 – 9:24)

Period 3: 9:29-10:30 am
Little Brother (~9:30 – 9:50)
1984 (~ 9:50 – 10:10)
I Robot (~10:10 – 10:30)

Period 4: 10:35- 11:34 am
Little Brother (~10:35 – 10:55)
1984 (~10:55 – 11:15)
I Robot (~11:15 – 11:34)

Period 5: 12:14-1:12 pm
Anthem/ I Am the Cheese (~12:14 – 12:34)
I Robot (~12:34 – 12:53)
Little Brother (~12:53 – 1:12)

Monday, May 18th - Do Not Need Participants, but will ustream 10:35 am – 12:00 pm

Tuesday, May 19th - Do Not Need Participants, but will ustream from 9:00 am – 10:25 am

Wednesday, May 20th - Need Participants (Final Exams, 85 minute exams)

Period 4: 7:25- 8:50 am
1984 (~7:30 – 7:50)
Little Brother (~7:50 – 8:10)
Anthem/I Am the Cheese (~8:10 – 8:30)
I Robot (~8:30 – 8:50)

Period 5: 10:35 am - 12:00 pm
Anthem/I Am the Cheese (~10:40 – 11:00)
Fountainhead (~11:00 – 11:20)
I Robot (~11:20 – 11:40)
1984 (~11:40 – 12:00)

Thanks in advance to those that are willing to participate. Even if you don’t want to formally participate, you’re welcome to watch the ustream if you have time. And, even if we end up with no virtual participants, I still think Anne and Maura have a great activity here.

Think Pink: A Whole New Learning Experience

Maura Moritz and Anne Smith have just begun an interesting project with four sections of their ninth grade honors language arts students (Maura's class blog, Anne's class blog.) The students are reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, discussing it in class, and then writing a thesis driven persuasive essay built around one of Pink’s six senses (Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, or Meaning).

As part of their discussions in class, the students will participate in a fishbowl discussion with live blogging. This is something they’ve done previously (although this is the first time with a non-fiction book), but this time they’ll have some additional participants in their live blogging – including the author. When the students discuss and live blog Chapter 7 (Empathy), Daniel Pink will be live blogging it with them. In addition, after finishing the entire book, the students will participate in a live videoconference with Mr. Pink.

Since Mr. Pink is presumably a very busy guy, he will only be live blogging that one chapter with the students. So we’ve invited a few other folks to live blog the other “Sense” chapters with the students. This includes local folks like our superintendent, our CIO, and two of our school board members, but also includes a variety of folks from around the world that are members of my personal learning network. (Thanks to everyone who agreed to participate. We didn’t want too many and tried to get gender balance and at least some geographic distribution, but of course time zone differences cause some problems there.)

As the students progress through their study of the book and its related concepts, they will also keep a Personal Learning Journal (some will do it online, others will keep it more private). They will:

reflect on the process of reading AWNM, relate the book to your own personal lives through a variety of reactions, reflect on your brain assessments, the AWNM video, as well as try one suggested activity within each Sense’s portfolio (Design, Story Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning). Also, we will ask you to reflect on how each Sense applies to you personally through your classes and life.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, at the end of each "Sense" chapter Mr. Pink includes some suggested activities that help the reader explore and/or develop that sense further. The students will each choose one of those activities for each chapter, complete it, and then reflect upon it.

When it comes time to write their persuasive essay about one of the Senses, the students will complete a "Wikified Research Paper." They will:

publish your paper in a wiki format, allowing you to use links in your argumentative paper to your actual research and go beyond the limits of the usual typed paper. Students could add data, photos, audio and video links, etc.

The students will also use the wiki for the entire writing process.

I, of course, love this idea, and am excited to see how it goes. As always the first time you try something, I expect there will be glitches along the way, but I still anticipate this being a wonderful learning experience for our students. Whether you particularly like Pink’s book and agree with his arguments or not, I think most folks would agree that these are important concepts for today’s learners to think about. This project will allow them to think much more deeply about these ideas and hear a variety of viewpoints from around the globe – I commend Maura and Anne for taking this on. I particularly like how they close their description of the Wikified Research Paper:

Before you submit your paper, think about this. Normally you would turn your paper in to your teacher and your teacher would provide the commentary and grade your paper. This paper is different. You are producing this paper for the world. Is it good enough for the world to read? Did you submit your best work?

AHS Students - Your Opinion Wanted

As I mentioned in my previous post, Dan Maas - the CIO of Littleton Public Schools - has a blog. His latest post is about some initial research around Maine's 1:1 Laptop Initiative which shows that student writing is improving.

While that's worth blogging about in and of itself, what interests me most is the 29 comments (so far), mostly by ninth graders at my school. This was not an assignment, nor were they asked to comment, but their teacher did point the post out to them. The 29th comment is from one of our school board members, who asks for additional input from students, specifically from those that are not in a classroom with regular access to laptops.

I left a comment with a link to some discussions students had last year around this issue, but we have quite a few more students with access to laptops this year - as well as the majority who do not. So, AHS students, this is your chance. Whether you are in any classes that use laptops or not, and whether you think laptops are a good idea or a bad idea (or a little of both), please visit his blog and leave a thoughtful, constructive comment (please remember to use first name and last initial only for your name). This is a chance to have your voice heard, please make it worthwhile, and do your best to make sure it's not the last.

School Board Policy 2.0

I received an email recently from a school board member wondering if I knew of any school districts that had policies related to Web 2.0 tools. Now I know that most districts have policies relating to acceptable use of the Internet and regarding the use of an Internet filter, but that’s not what she was asking about. She wasn’t asking about policies restricting or regulating the use of Web 2.0 tools, she was asking about policies that encouraged their use.

Our board of education would like to move faster and generate more systemic growth and are exploring the possibility of writing a policy that would reflect our commitment to 21st century skills/tech tools . . . [We are] focused on working with our administrators and teachers to design/implement programs that are not "add ons". . . What we really want is to bring more people along more quickly - therefore we are exploring the possibility of writing a policy that will empower and support teachers, but at the same time, clearly state that the board is looking for implementation.

She indicated that they have small groups of teachers that are using tools such as Moodle, podcasts and wikis, and they are slowly spreading the word, but the board is wondering how to foster a more systemic application of 21^st century tools.

I replied that I didn’t know of any districts that had such a policy, but I’d throw it out to the rest of the blogosphere to see if anyone else did. If you know of any, or have any suggestions, please leave a comment and I’ll send it along.