Education's Real Purpose: Battling the Lies

“The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful...”
Horace1st Century BC

There has been, since the beginning of time, a lie that the majority of the world has fallen victim to: our generation is different than the previous ones. We have battled against our parents, against the larger society, any authority, and against the status quo in trying to distance ourselves from previous generations. Our youth are constantly trying to enforce their perceived need for autonomy, while always being told by powers that be what they should do and when. This generational gap is the reality that we all faced when we were young and many of us with children now realize we still reproduce it in the generations to come. 

Before we step back from the battle, however, let's look at what it looks like on a day to day basis, specifically in our educational institutions. In mandatory schooling models, the concept of the generational gap becomes a cornerstone of our daily lives. Teachers and parents tend to believe that education is important in raising our children to become productive members of society. Though it is hard for me as an educator to say this, I do believe that his is in fact not the case. Mr. Peter Gray, in his great article "A Brief History of Education", explains that education's history is rooted in various reasons, including forced labor, religious instruction, and more recently as a way of levelling each child's place in relations to others (used by the adult world as placement signs for post secondary). Yes, this all seems harsh, but like it or not it is reality. In fact, take all of the reasons above away, and arguably our children may be happier than they are now and still be successful members of society. Many families are beginning to search for schooling options that go against the traditional track of education, looking to more democratic and status-quo-disruptive school frameworks, such as The Sudbury Valley School model, Project Ancora , as well as the Wondering Schools. 

Generational gap, however, is not completely sustained within the educational system. For example, the clashing of various cultures and social styles (First Nations vs. New World; Millennial lifestyle vs more traditional lifestyle; social media vs. traditional media) is arguably the impetus for almost all angst in our world. Even popular music styles go through stages where one generation of music (dark, introspective, grunge movement of the late 90's) seems to be a response to the previous popular musical style (carefree and fun music of the 80's). It must be stated here, however, that this type of responsive change is most likely normal and can perhaps even be positive; change is vital to growth.

So what should education's focus be, then? I believe it's largest purpose should be to battle the lie that there even is a battle. Our children need to understand that this generational battle can be broken, and in fact should be. How? We need them to understand that change is good when tempered with previous knowledge. 

But this is not as easy to do. Right now, our students are currently being inundated with fake news, fake videos, fake pictures, fake stories, etc. They are being told constantly that what they think the world is like is not true. In fact, for many of them nothing is real anymore, and nothing can be proven to be real. Though there may not be any actual growth to the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories, the prevalence of their existence in our society is much more easily seen and they may impact society on a larger scale than they did before, thus creating the belief for our students that more and more people are believing in conspiracies and ultimately feeding the "deep state" lie.

This is the biggest concern to our educational society today, because if our youth cannot believe anything they see or hear as being "truth" then history becomes useless which makes previous learning obsolete or untrustworthy and this which in turn makes education and even our own personal histories useless tools for the younger generation to use to build a better tomorrow. 

In conclusion, then, I believe that the real purpose of education moving forward should be to battle the lie that there is no truth and give them the tools they need to be able to distinguish truth from lies.

Case Study: Creative Scheduling and PBL - A Perfect Pairing In The Making?

A Work In Progress, But Progress Is Being Made

Education has gone through a change in BC, understanding that our focus has been too heavily reliant on outdated educational practices. Though some have struggled to understand the change and how it will impact our students, the push towards revitalizing our educational curriculum was still arguably needed. BC's new Education Plan focuses on 21st Century learning, specifically "a concept-based approach to learning, and a focus on the development of competencies, to foster deeper, more transferable learning". But how to implement this direction in the confines of our current schools has been the main discussion point of educators and parents alike. Many schools and districts have looked at assessment first, realizing that letter grades might not be a viable way of assessing in this new educational era as the main reason for assessment is touted AS learning instead of OF learning. 

When it comes to instruction, educators have taken to incorporating a Project Based Learning (PBL) approach. The rationale is that PBL is one way to help students understand the importance of competencies and their role in learning, something that is key in the new curriculum. Though this is fairly easy to do in younger grade levels, it can be more difficult to implement in upper grades. This is especially difficult at the high school level where courses are still quite compartmentalized and learning separate. It is true that the new curriculum has much cross over within specific subject courses, something that is evident if one were to look at one genre such as Literacy (English Courses). To clarify, here is what you would see: three of the Big Ideas found in every English course from grade 10 to 12 are the same. This fact affects literacy teachings in two ways: first, regardless of which English course you take (First Nations, Spoken Language, New Media), you will see these big ideas incorporated into your course. Secondly, students who are taking different English courses could theoretically work together on a cross curricular assignment and still fulfill the curricular needs of their individual courses. 

However, there are not many Big Ideas that cross over from one domain into the other. Therefore, students are still compartmentalized within their subjects, though with many more choices given to them inside of those subject areas to pursue. In a previous posting, I mentioned something that I have learned in my 26 years of teaching: if you want to change what happens in an environment, you have to change the environment. If I change the environment itself, what is in it will be forced to change. In Chip and Dan Heath's s book Switch, the author's says it this way: "What looks like a people problem is often a situational problem". So how do we change the environment at the High School level to break down the compartmentalization of subjects and allow for PBL to be effectively implemented? 

Let me offer one way that my school (Kamloops Christian School) is working on. 

Use Limitations as Strengths

One of the problems my school (and other K-12 or smaller high schools in BC) has faced is the problems that come from limited numbers of students at the high school level and the direct affect this places on the school's ability to offer courses. This is all due to finances: the amount of teachers hired is based on the number students in the classes. For example, if you only have 20-28 students in a specific grade, you probably only have one teacher hired for that grade level. However, at a high school, this problem is exasperated due to the fact that a school is mandated to offer numerous courses at every grade level to fulfill graduation needs. If we look at Science only, for example, high schools will offer numerous science courses to their students so that the students can check off needed courses for graduation and/or post secondary (ex: Science 8-10, and electives such as Biology, Environmental Science, Chemistry, etc.). Having one science teacher to teach all of these courses at every grade level means this teacher is very busy! In fact, this is a recipe for teacher burnout.

The solution, though simplistic in hindsight, took some time to design. What if we combined various courses? Now, this is almost always done in very small schools (ex: one room schoolhouses), but is usually left off of the planning stages for high schools that have at least one teacher per subject area. Though this might sound like an easy solution, there is an issue to note: time and course content will become a factor. If we were in a one room schoolhouse, we could put a few courses and student grade levels together once in a while (when it fits), but then we would always have the freedom of going back to splitting the courses up into their various subjects and grade levels when content required it. As well, in the schoolhouse scenario (or homeschooling scenarios where this type of teaching is one of the attractions), you will also have limited number of students, whereas in a bigger high school, you could be looking at 40 - 60 students for two courses. Therefore, cross subject and/or cross grade courses put together for the full year or semester becomes very challenging for the teacher: in essence, they are teaching two or three full courses at once. As mentioned above, this can be done within similar subject areas, but it is when you cross subject areas, it becomes a big challenge.

However, one big factor changed the game (in essence, it was the game changer): there are no mandated hourly amounts per course offerings anymore in BC. Though the total amount of instructional days per year is mandated for schools in BC, there are no specific instructional hourly amounts per course anymore (it used to be a minimum of 50 instructional hours for a 2 credit course and 100 for a 4 credit course). So, laying this all out on a table, we have the following pieces to play with: 

• No total instructional hours per course
• Limited number of teachers per subject area (one teacher per subject area, let's say)
• Limited number of students (one class per grade level, let's say)
• Mandated courses per grade and subject level
• Minimum number of instructional days per year

Is it possible, then, to take these pieces above and combine various courses? the answer is no... if you stick to the standard day calendar. It is the calendar that is the environment which creates the problem in this instance. So, how do we change the environment?

Let's take a look at a standard school calendar. I will use one from my school a few years ago as the example:

As you can see, we had a five block semester rotation schedule with courses lasting around 60 minutes on average. If we wanted to cross a few courses together in this calendar, it would be impossible, or near so. Furthermore, can you do authentic PBL in a 60 minute a day block? It is possible, but not ideal perhaps. Also, we would be forced to only put courses together that were already running at the same time in their respective blocks. Also, what about prep blocks off for teachers (7 out of 8 blocks of teaching is the standard full time teaching load for teachers in BC) - putting that together with room allocations and mandated courses needed by students in specific grade levels makes scheduling the bane of many school administrators and makes thinking about working within the confines of such a schedule... scary. 

Many small blocks with separate subjects does not help us to either bring students to that "deeper" learning that the new curriculum focuses on. The solution? Change the environment. We decided to do the following:

1. Make our schedule a four block schedule (longer blocks of time per course)
2. Take two courses per grade level out of the standard schedule and plan to teach them together.

So basically, we took the first block out of our schedule above and made each of the rest of the blocks longer. We then took the following courses out of our weekly schedule completely: 

• Grade 9 (Woodworking and Electrical)
• Grade 10 (Missions (Outreach) and Science 10)
• Grade 11 (English 11 and Socials 11)
• Grade 12 (English 12 and Environmental Science 12)

The above courses were to be taught in one week chunks throughout the year. We chose one week in October, one in December, one in February, a two week span in April, and then a final week in June. The idea was to have the teachers work together to create larger projects and tie-ins between the listed courses. The normally scheduled courses for the "Project Week" were paused. In essence, this created a scenario where two courses were simultaneously taught to a group of students by two teachers. For example, in the Grade 10 course, our Science teacher and our Missions (Outreach) teacher both taught the course together to the 20 grade 10 students.

Good, Bad, Ugly

Let's be honest, anytime a school tries something like this, there will be wins and losses along the way. Here is what we found:
GOOD
This style of teaching allowed for the potential for teachers to collaborate, push boundaries, and create very interesting units. For example, in grade 10 science, aspects such as plate tectonics and energy conservation and transfer were all looked at through the lens of a student humanitarian trip to Guatemala that the grade 10's will be going on. Students explored topics such as "What types of energy and renewable energy would we find in Canada and Guatemala?", "What role does Astronomy play in Science and Guatemalan Belief Systems?", "Plant and Animal life differences between Canada and Guatemala (DNA)", etc. For Grade 9 students, the teachers quickly morphed the course to be ADST 9 (Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies), and taught basic woodworking and electrical skills with culminating projects such as designing and building the stagecraft for a live theatre production. For English 12 and Environmental Science 12, the study of First Nations history, both in written stories as well as in environmental topics, was a natural fit. Things seemed to have a lot of potential!

BAD and UGLY
I would be lying if it was all rosy, though, and by the end of the first week, we could see some challenges that caused us grief. Firstly, teachers struggled to find time to collaborate enough to be able to make the units and courses seem like one thing and not two separate courses. This was exasperated by the fact that some of the teachers in the situation above were part-time teachers and so were not at the school during most of the day. Also, larger projects were much easier to do in hands-on and elective courses such as ADST 9, but were much more challenging to come up with in more academic courses such as English. In fact, English was a big concern as the amount of reading required by the students was too much to be done in week-long courses. Because of these challenges, some of the courses still felt very "siloed" for the students and so the connection we were trying to create was lost. Also, because the Ministry of Education still had an English 12 Provincial Exam in place for this final year, students in Grade 12 felt very stressed about not having English 12 more often than just during the project block weeks. 

QUICK FIX

To address the concerns, we switched the English courses with Career Education courses after two weeks of Project Blocks. Our thought was that project week could become time for the senior students to delve into the Career Education and Capstone graduation requirements. This is now being piloted and subsequent posts to this blog will share how it went. 

Overal

In a recent session with the teachers at this school where the project weeks was the topic, many ideas for making it better were listed, and I felt there was a lot of excitement in the air. We all seemed to believe that this type of scheduling can work to our school's benefit, but that there was still work to be done. As we move through the rest of the year, I will endeavour to update this topic here. If you have any thoughts or ideas, please comment below!

Neuroscience, Education, and Leadership: Be Positive!

Talk It Over... With Yourself

My wife and I have this running joke: she sees me as always seeing sunny clouds and having happy thoughts, while she tends to see thunder and lightning in circumstances. However, the reality is that we both are very positive people, but (and I can only talk for myself now) my happy disposition does not come without work: I have had to work on it for many years. What I have learned over the past many years is the power of being positive (positive outlook, counting my blessings, and understanding that I can learn). 

One of the most important tools I have in aiding me to keep positive is self-talk. Now, this can be disturbing for others who accidentally discover me talking to myself somewhere, but I have to be honest here, I do it, and I have found it useful. The aspect of positive self-talk and its effects on our well-being is actually not new by any means. I have been fortunate enough to be a part of a Higher Order Performance (HOP) program this past year (run by Mr. Corey Sigvaldson) and, as part of that group, we have taken a look at the aspect of neurobiology (how the mind and the body are connected). One of the main teachings of the program is the aspect of GRIT (as explained by Angela Duckworth's book of the same name). In general, grit can be defined as passion and persistence to create long term goals. As I explored this concept, I came to the realization that grit is completely connected to how we learn in general, and how important it is for school administrators to cultivate grit. 

To start, the first and most important idea is to understand the importance of  being open and honest with ourselves, especially when it comes to our faults (ask anyone who has battled with any addiction how important this first step is). Administrators must remember that the job does not define them (we are not run by the job itself), and that the job does require making hard decisions at times, and true it is the administrator who will have to make those choices. However, we must be cognizant of the fact that hiring, firing, or doing your job should never be taken personally; it is simply part of the job. If we do begin to take it personally, it will begin to create negative feelings about ourselves ("I am not a good person; I am mean I am only focused on money; I am hard to please" ;etc.). Because this task is a part of the job itself, administrators will have to do it repeatedly, and that can begin to reinforce negative self thoughts. Ultimately, this can cause burnout, anger, frustration, and even stress created physical ailments. To combat this trend, starting your day off positively will help to successfully navigate your way through the tough decisions and will give you the physical wherewithal to make it happen when it needs to happen. Important here is the aspect of seeing your job long term; playing the "long game" when it comes to our jobs is an important part of keeping correct perspective. Izzy Hamptonstone, in her book Hockey Confidence, writes that "taking the time to look at a challenge over a longer period of time opens your mind to new ways of seeing solutions" (2016).

If we look at our job with a longer perspective than simply days or weeks at a time, we build the framework for allowing self-talk and positive thinking to change the way we work and tackle problems. How? By giving us time to train our brain; in essence, to learn. In the book The Social Neuroscience of Education, by Louis Cozolino, the author writes that "learning is believed to occur through changes in the connectivity among neurons in response to stimulation. Repeated firing of two adjacent neurons results in metabolic changes in both cells, resulting in an increased efficiency of their joint activation" (2013). Thus, the process for creating newer ways of thinking and acting that last will always be as follows: start it once and then repeat it over and over. This will first create the new neural pathways and then  reinforce them by coating those bonds in Myelin. It is these myelin coated bonds that last. 
Therefore, to go back to the original concept, beginning a process of starting your day off with positive self talk (and perhaps other positive things, such as exercise) can and will aid administrators (or any leader actually) in having the tools, the strength, and the mental hardness, to do the job and do it well.

Constructivist Viewpoint, BCED, and Reality

For those of us who have been looking closely at the new British Columbia Education Plan, the term "constructivism" will pop up once in a while. For those not familiar with the term, Constructivist theory, in basic terms, means that we "construct" our reality through our interactions with reality itself. In essence, this means that different people can have a different view of the same reality and that it is through communication, collaboration, critical thinking, etc., that we will begin to understand other points of view. In the educational field, this view has its beginnings with such prominent thinkers such as Dewey, Piaget, and Vigotsky and, when implemented in a school, classroom, or simply as an overall pedagogical approach, it has the effect of changing the role of the teacher from being the "holder of knowledge" to one that guides students to ask the right questions so that they can "construct" their own knowledge.

Though debates are always part of any change in education, I see constructivism as a positive change and one that better suits 21st Century learning. To clarify, let me give an example: students are to learn about "the urbanization and migration of people" in Grade 6 Social Studies in BC's curriculum. More specifically, students are to look at the impact (long and short) of each of these aspects (both positive and negative) and use standard competency skills to analyze, interpret and understand how this is impacting global economy. A teacher could

1. Assign the student a country or province
2. Tell them where people migrated to, or have them fill in a chart copied from an overhead
3. Explain for the student's their own interpretation of the impact of migration on Canada as a whole or even on the world in general (students take notes)
4. The teacher would then aggregate the notes and ask students to memorize what the textbook companies have said about it (this would be the learning)
5. Assessment would then be asking the student to spit the knowledge they acquired back out on the test at the end of the unit

The above is (or luckily was) a standard SS unit when I grew up. This is not a good unit, in my opinion, as it does not give any ownership of learning to the student. As well, units like this do not allow for transference of that knowledge to other circumstance, such as to other community or country urbanization situations. In fact, as students become more global, they will find (probably on their own through travel or other real-life situations) that other countries and their respective government offices see and do things differently (this is actually one of the Big Ideas for the Grade 6 SS curriculum in fact). To understand "WHY" other Governments and countries do things differently requires Critical Thinking, something the above example unit as it stands does not address. What teachers need to allow is for students to come to their own conclusions about topics, hear various views outside of their own experiences, and be able to analyze those other views against their own. It is only then that our students will be able to learn the importance of collaboration, differing viewpoints, and critical thinking.

Sounds great doesn't it? However, there is a concern: what if students come to the "wrong" conclusion? Are teachers not supposed to share their wisdom and knowledge with students so that they come up to the right answer? How can we steer them in the right direction if there is no standard end result? Are there no absolute truths in the world anymore? Also, taking any practice out of key areas and procedures can be detrimental to learning: should students never practice such things as math multiplication tables anymore?

These are very valid arguments and they do need to be flushed out - no educator wants to lead students down a path to nowhere, or a path that can lead to an untruth. I do not see this as being too big an issue if done correctly, however as the teacher, who acts as the mentor to their students, does have the responsibility of helping the student "understand" differing positions on topics - there is no untruth in this statement. However, we need to be very careful that we don't put our spin on their reality and that we don't try to put our truths to their possibilities. In essence, we need to make sure that students are allowed to learn and show their knowledge in their own ways (using their current strengths). This is true teaching (mentorship). Let me flush this out a bit more here: though mentorship is too broad to fit into this post, one of the most interesting key components of mentorship revolves around the question of what is the end product of the mentorship? Much research agrees that it is vital for the mentor and mentee to both agree with the final product before they get too deep into the mentorship. One example of this is in a student teacher / field teacher partnership. Hudson, 2014). To clarify, this does mean that for these two there is a "right" and a "wrong" way of doing things. However, it is important that the truth is clearly seen as quantifiable (what worked in the classroom and what did not), and not simply the mentor's ideas of what "will" work and what "will not". Why? Here are a few thoughts (not exhaustive by any means):
In this example, the mentorship between the student teacher and the experienced teacher will not be successful if there was no discussion between them around  “what it means to be a professional for teaching students” (

1. It puts the learning into a real life situation (the classroom)
2. It allows for critical thinking
3. The mentor can even learn something (life-long learning)
4. The student teacher can make the connections in their mind that best suits themselves 

This is the same for our students in K-2 classes: teachers and students must look at realities and learning and agree on what that learning meant (what truth is found from this learning) - but they should do it together. As a tech, I see this model of teaching in terms of being similar to a Web 2.0 (interactive) site and not Web 1.0 (just giving information) site.

Return on Investment in Education

Speaking From Experience

"I learned about me!"

Twenty one years as an educator in the independent sector in BC has taught me many things, one of which is the danger in being insular. Sadly, this seems to be the default standing for independent schools in BC; I speak this from my own experience which might not be shared globally of course, but if this is the standard for a teacher in one school, it is probably the standard for many. However, I know that it can be changed. In fact, for those of us who work in the private sector, I feel it must be if we are to survive.

I was recently reminded of a great truth: Socrates believed that the best thing "for any living thing is life according to the specific excellence that is proper to that thing" (http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/socratic-ignorance.html); in this sense, then, the wisest teachers are those who help students to learn about themselves.

I recently visited a workplace where a student from our school struggled while he in our school, to the point where he actually quit so that he could go to work. This student was not very book smart and did not do well academically (at least, not in our classic academic curriculum).  He was also a little awkward socially, which made it that much more difficult in our traditional classrooms. We (teachers) had a specific "way" that we "thought" he should "go" to be successful - memorize dates and names in history, write essays, do research in a specific way, etc. However, what we didn't, or could not, do was to figure out the way that the student himself was created to learn and what he himself was good at. Right now, this ex-school dropout is the lead employee in a metalwork shop where they make parts for large forestry machinery. In fact, he worked himself up the ranks to being the top employee in the shop. Here is a classic example of a student that did not fit our classic vision of what "smart" is; however, our vision of "smart" is not what education should be about. Instead, we as educators need to work towards figuring out what smarts our students have an nurturing those. 

To do this, I believe that teachers need various pedagogical strategies and varied assessment types as part of our teaching. I also believe that the biggest roadblock to this is, as I mentioned before, insular thinking. To break out of this, educators need to network, see other classrooms, and become immersed in educational research. A great example of a teacher who learned this lesson is Mr. Joseph T. Stafford, who writes in his article "The Importance of Educational Research In the Teaching of History", that "instead of teaching the same content with the same strategies year after year, teachers need to be challenged, to learn new strategies and new content" (Canadian Social Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, Summer 2006). 

Administrators play a large role in creating a culture of forward educational thinking and implementation in their schools, by means of nurturing and requiring professional development that is authentic and hands on for their teachers. As well, making sure that they themselves (and I speak for myself here as well) are practicing what they preach and being in the know about what educational research suggests works best to help students learn - in fact, the best administrators will be those who continue to learn about best practices and never think themselves so wise that they need not learn anything else. Let us all truly become lifelong learners. 

If we do that, I believe that, for those parents who chose to pay for education in a private school, we can truly give them the best return for their investment in the education of their children. 

Growth Mindset, Gap Closures, and Gifts

Beyond Ego and Into Education

One of the biggest issues that educators face (myself included) is their own ego; we tend to think that we know what our children should become. As well, we make judgement calls about what students will be like simply by observing how they are now. However, as every parent knows, the way a child is during their schooling years does not often equate to how they become as adults; I myself am a perfect example of this phenomenon. We can therefore ask ourselves this question: why can we not easily predict how a person will mature based on their schooling experiences? 

As I mentioned myself as being an example of this, I should clarify. My schooling years (elementary and high school) were very embarrassing for me to look back on; I was not engaged, was only there to make people laugh (because I was very insecure about myself), was not "smart", "athletic", "rebellious", "nice", nor anything else that would have put me in an "in" crowd of any sort, and thus I feel I was not successful. The only thing I had going for me was that I was musical; but even then I would not listen to other people's opinions or views about musical styles or trends. I was the class clown who had no self esteem and could not care at all about what I would be after graduation. 

In fact, when one of my previous elementary teachers found out that I had graduated from University with a teaching certificate, she was quite aghast and seemed a bit fearful that I would be influencing the next generation of children. Though I still like to make people laugh, I do believe I have changed, and I would attribute my change to one main thing: I got to know myself and began to want to become something that I felt I could become. My journey to learning about myself began with my faith and the acceptance of peers (in youth group mostly). From there, I simply began to realize that I had potential to become something more than what I was.

I also realized that what I was being told by my schools, though true, was only truthful because of the educational system's filtered viewpoint and assessment benchmarks. To the educational system of the day (1980's), smart meant "listen, memorize, repeat". Though I was quite creative, creativity on its own was not assessed (for the most part). I was always very logical, but I did not find numbers interesting, so math was a chore (and I consequently did not do so well). Because I was asked to compete with others in sports (and I was not very athletic), I would joke around and not do well during PE class (which was all about teams, games, and competition). Thus, in either academic, athletic, or classes where creativity should be allowed, I failed in all of them. 

So are we doomed to carry on this way? I do not believe so. In fact, I believe that the curricular changes and assessment pushes of the new BC Curriculum will make a world of difference. As educators, we can now stop trying to place kids where "we" want them to be in their educational standings, and instead allow them to show us what gifts, talents, and abilities "they" have been given. As teachers, we will need to follow a pattern of education that is less traditional and more adaptable. Granted, this is very scary for some teachers ("How can we begin to teach every kid differently?"), but I believe the issue is in the definition of teaching itself. For many, teaching has meant standing in front of a class of 20-30 kids who are all born in the same year and sharing our knowledge of broken up subjects in the same order and at the same time in as creative or non-creative way as we can imagine. For assessment, then, we simply ask them to reiterate what we have "taught" them. I do need to be clear here, though, as this will sound like I am beating down my own profession: what has been is not the teacher's fault. Instead, it is the by-product of being forced to "teach" students hundreds of facts per grade (for proof, add up the CO's of any old IRP, like grade 4 Social Studies, for example: there are 64 distinct points that students should know, and some of them are so specific that they can be defined as being simply trivia knowledge). 

If we can instead have more of a growth mindset to our educational system and style, I believe we can begin to find out what our students are really like; we can begin to empower them, which in turn will allow them to find their talents and gifts, which will in turn begin to show us (educators and parents even) who they really are.

This will not only radically change our educational system, but will also impact a student's own self-worth, in a positive way. A growth mindset in education will effectively close the gap between students who see themselves and "smart" and those who see themselves as not. In fact, I have personally begun to question the concepts of "smart" and "dumb" - these only exist if we create benchmarks based on preconceived ideas of what it means to be smart (and so far, we have thought smart meant memorization - not so smart actually). If students can discover what they are good at and succeed at those things, they will realize that they are smart - those talents and gifts are the way they were created and we as teachers should in no way be presumptuous enough to label some gifts as good or bad. Students should go to school to "learn" about themselves and what they can contribute to the world. If this happens, then it will lower the ability to compare students against each other because they will be working on concepts and ideas for themselves. 

So what do teachers do? Does this mean we throw away all the benchmarks of learning or testing? Should we just put students in a room and let them do whatever they want, with no direction or purpose other than to make themselves happy? No, that is not what I am suggesting. There are certain things that students need to know and be able to do. But it will become the teacher's job to "help" students to get there in their own way and in their own abilities. Benchmarks have become more adaptable and competency based, and students will need to know these benchmarks and hit them in their own way.  This, I believe, is smart. 

Future Eduction in BC

So, New BCED Plan Means What and How?

Every BC school will be working on creating frameworks and unit plans that incorporate the new BCED Plan in the next few months and my school is no exception. However, how will we do it and how far and fast should we go? As a small school, I do feel that we can move faster than other larger schools in both incorporating and assessing our implementation of the new curriculum, but I also feel the push back and the growing pains. One thing I will say, though, is that there is so much potential for good learning in the new curriculum that it is dizzying. However, there are many teachers who don't like that the new curriculum leaves teachers with many questions as to how to implement it. I will let you in on a little secret about myself here: in my opinion, as the questions are an important part of the curriculum itself (as Erno Rubik said, we have been teaching answers in education for years, but it is questions that are probably more important: See Video), am good with that. In fact, I applaud it.

So what will teachers be needing to do to be ready for this change? First, I don't think they need to completely change everything they do. There is a push for teaching strategies to change so as to be more aligned with the new curriculum and the assessment guidelines given to us by the Ministry of Education (BC), and to this I agree. However, there is a fear amongst teachers, I believe, that suggest that people are saying that we have been doing it all wrong for the past fifty years. Here is the truth: the direction has been wrong and this has been the issue, not the teaching. Some strategies that we have been doing (Socratic Rounds are a good example of this) are still excellent teaching strategies and will fit very well with the new curricular competency focus. However, I believe that there has been a loss in what it means to be an educator, but I won't blame the educators for this either; again, the fault lies with the mandated direction that education was.

In essence, teaching has been about keeping 15-30 kids in line in a classroom while knowledge is shared to them, after which that knowledge is asked to be shown to the teacher (and all of us) via some form of written test (since that was the quickest and easiest way to assess students a the time). This direction existed because of various reasons, including the fact that the teachers and the textbooks were the keeper of the knowledge, and also that the knowledge required to be seen as well-educated was arguably the same for everyone (to prepare students for the jobs of the times). Both of these aspects have now changed. Since the late 1990's, jobs have changed within the span of decades (with newer ones in newer industries being added every few years). This means that you cannot assess preparedness for society or the workplace based on knowing the skills needed for a specific job or industry. Secondly, we live in the digital age where information is easy to find; this means that the teacher and the textbooks are no longer the holders of the knowledge. Thus, to stand in front of a classroom and tell students what they should know about a topic is not a good use of educational time.

Instead, I believe that what teachers will need to do to get ready for the changes is to do what we are asking our students to do: collaborate, think critically, and be socially and personally responsible (for
teachers, this means fulfilling the mandates of a professional educator). Specifically, I believe teachers will now need to learn about how students learn (and understanding that they don't all learn the same way or at the same time), assess skills that are not content based (but instead looking at the skills needed to do any job in any industry), work together to share teaching and assessment strategies (instead of being the "God of the classroom"), and finally take professional development on as a necessity for the job (and not an administratively mandated chore).

This does not take the administrators off the hook by any means, however, as I believe that for teachers to be successful there needs to be an administrative team that is supportive, vibrant, and able to assist in the transition with a plan consisting of focused support. This will take work and a lot of communication (something that is easy to say but harder to do). Also, it will mean risk taking and a critical look at certain framework concepts, such as schedule, staff, course options, and pro-d opportunities. These take time, money, and effort to implement, and also include some hard choices, but I believe it must be done if we are to take our schools into a new direction.

Let me conclude by using  the image of a school bus as a metaphor for the school (thanks Jim Collins): we need to get the right people on the bus, and then get drivers who will drive it in the right direction, keeping an eye out for potholes and detours. This is what education means now, and the what will impact the how (as it has always done).