All Students Learning

Last week we had the opportunity to celebrate the work in which we have been engaged in Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board to “Transform Learning Everywhere”.  Students, staff and families came to our new HWDSB Education Centre to share their learning, to celebrate this exciting vision, and to provide examples of what happens for students when we think differently about our classrooms, the learning relationships in the classrooms and the learning opportunities provided to students in our schools.  This vision is based on a number of important beliefs:  Learners are able to own their learning.  They are able to work independently and collaboratively to engage real life issues and ideas.  Our learners are creative and innovative if we give them the opportunity to be these things. They are champions of social justice and willing to challenge the status quo if we create the conditions for them to do so.  Our learners do not solve problems in only one way and their ability to identify and assess issues from complex perspectives supports their creativity and their resilience.  They are able to evaluate what they learn, make important connections, and communicate effectively about their learning, which implies that they understand how to reflect upon their learning process.  And finally this vision allows our learners to use technology in ubiquitous ways to change  learning, not simply to support learning.  We believe this change to learning flows from the fact that technology connects us to the global world beyond the classroom, provides different ways for students to communicate and create, and it provides an equitable opportunity for all students to engage, not just those who can afford to do so.  Our Transforming Learning Everywhere vision will put tablets in the hands of every teacher and every student in grades 4 to 8 by 2019 and it will help us make changes to how we view our roles as educators.  These are lofty beliefs, but beliefs that are definitely worth working towards.

Specifically, here are some of the lessons I learned last week at this celebration.  Kindergarten students wrote and illustrated descriptions of their families, recorded these descriptions and provided me with the opportunity to listen to this video record through a telephone receiver attached to their tablet.  High schools students shared with me how they are applying concepts and theories to a real life problem regarding the amount of traffic congestion that exists around their school, using science, math and geography in an interdisciplinary way to create possible solutions.  They told me that they are glad to be in Grade 11 because they are finally able to apply their conceptual and theoretical learning.  My response was to ask how they would have felt if they were able to apply their learning in every year of school.  Needless to say, they were quite excited about this possibility which is becoming a reality in HWDSB.  Throughout the room I listened to students confidently articulating their learning process captured in different ways through their tablet.  I observed parents beaming with pride and teachers who were clearly passionate about their students’ success and their role to create the conditions to make this so.  I experienced the beginning stages of transformation and the excitement that goes along with this transformation.

Dean Shareski from Discovery Education ended our morning by offering some reflections about how much our world has changed over the last few decades. He discussed our responsibility we have as parents and educators to engage this change with our students so our students have the opportunity to excel in the world as it is today and in the world of tomorrow that has not even been created yet!  And when I refer to tomorrow, I literally mean tomorrow since the speed of change is mesmerizing!  The momentum is forming in HWDSB because learning is transforming, and engagement is increasing, always with our students at the centre.

Here is a link to my opening comments at our “Transforming Learning Everywhere” celebration:

The Grade 7 class at Dundas Central wrote to me about why they do not enjoy doing homework.  They offered a few suggestions that could potentially change this reality.

They wondered why homework never included outdoor physical activity in light of the fact that physical health and well-being are so important.  They requested that they could solve real life problems when doing their homework.  They dreamed about doing homework collaboratively, something that might become easier to do as we effectively integrate technology into the learning process.  They wondered about music and art, two subjects that are seldom assigned for homework.

One student suggested that instead of assigning homework in those areas where students struggle to learn and comprehend, leave this to school time; rather, assign work in an area where students are most passionate and interested so that they can deepen their skills in this area.

A common response was “why are our interests not regarded when the teacher is assigning homework, and why does most homework have to include writing?” I would certainly acknowledge that writing is important, but these students do have a point if most of our homework does include writing.  How is this challenging a student who already writes effectively?  How might a teacher intervene when students are struggling with their writing if everyone is expected to engage the same learning task?

They also discussed their interest in doing homework that was project-based learning that spanned a number of days, something that would allow them to go deeper in terms of certain critical questions that they were exploring.

And lastly, some students wondered why there was not one school day where no homework would be assigned, in order for the students to forge positive bonds with their friends, parents and family members or explore other interests.  In other words they are asking me about how we as adults support students to create balance.

The homework debate has been occurring for a long time.  Often this debate does not include the voices of students.  I believe that these wonderful students in Ms. Dunford’s class at Dundas Central Elementary School have provided me with rich insights, and through this post I am sharing their insights with you.

The fact that we assign homework may not be the issue.  What we assign may be the bigger issue.

How might the voices from this school, Dundas Central,  continue to make a big difference for all students.  How do we invite all of our students to reflect on their learning and make suggestions regarding how we might meet their needs?  If we ask, then we are obligated to respond.

Learning happens in many ways and it is important for educators to create learning opportunities with this fact in mind. Whether we are speaking about learning in classrooms or in the community, about class work or homework, the voices of our students will always give us something to consider.  If we invite them to contribute their ideas and issues, if we involve them as we create learning opportunities and if we respond to what they say, I believe achievement and engagement will improve.

My questions:

• What support do educators need to effectively share leadership in the classroom with students?
• What challenges or obstacles exist to sharing leadership in ways described in this post?

Thank you to the Grade 7 students in Ms. Dunford’s class.  You have given me plenty to think about!!!!

Please click the Read More link below to view my end of year message for students, staff, parents and community members across HWDSB.

Have a great summer!

We are celebrating Education Week and recognizing Mental Health Week in HWDSB. This week gives us the opportunity to reflect upon what is most important as we provide engaging learning opportunities for our students.

There is so much to celebrate in HWDSB. I visit schools regularly, and I see many examples of our students learning and thriving in classrooms with caring staff who know our students and respond to our students effectively. I experience students working collaboratively with one another, reaching new heights, thinking deeply about new ideas, being creative and inventive, and really learning. Students tell me what they love about school. They tell me about their teachers who care about them. They tell me about their friends who they look forward to seeing each day. They get excited when they succeed at new learning tasks. They are proud to share their work, and they are very willing to communicate what they want to learn and why.

We have been focusing on student voice in HWDSB. “Student Voice” is sometimes an overused term and I worry that it may not change the way we support our students unless we really respond to what our students are telling us. We are changing the learning environments in HWDSB so that students own their learning supported by technology. We are calling this direction “Transforming Learning Everywhere“. This direction will honour our students, their interests and learning styles, respect their talents, and provide appropriate supports in environments that are exciting and engaging, making our students want to come to school every day! If you walk into HWDSB classrooms you will experience this passion, and this energy, something that we celebrate this year in Education Week!!

We are also recognizing Mental Health Week. I believe a quote from the Mental Health Association website says it best . “We all have mental health, just as we all have physical health. Mental Health is more than the absence of mental illness. It is a state of well-being”. We are committed to improving student achievement and well-being in HWDSB and our work in mental health is a major component of this commitment. We work closely with our families and our community partners to enhance our students’ self-esteem, to build resilience, and to ensure that our learning environments are characterized by positive relationships that provide a rich foundation for our students’ well-being.

Celebrating Educating Week provides us with an important opportunity to celebrate our students and our staff and our families and communities with whom we partner. Recognizing Mental Health Week reminds us that we all have a part to play in supporting the well-being of our children. Together we are making a difference for our children!!!

Our Board will be making a decision today (Monday, March 31) about how we will support changes to our learning environment in Hamilton-Wentworth. This vision speaks to creating learning opportunities in every classroom where students take ownership for their learning, both collaboratively and individually, and where teachers support these learning opportunities in different ways. Sometimes a teacher’s role will be that of a facilitator, sometimes as an observer, always as the professional whose expertise provides each student with what he or she needs to think, create, evaluate and communicate in the context of new learning.

This learning environment requires giving students access to different tools. The textbook and the notebook have been the common tools in every classroom for many years. Though there is nothing wrong with these tools in and of themselves, they do not provide our students with access to the world in which we live, in the same way that technology and digital resources can. Because our world is both digital and physical, it is imperative that parents, guardians and schools assist our students to live in both realms. This does not mean that students will always be staring at tablet screens or using the Internet to complete learning tasks; rather, this means that students will have access to our global world at any time through technology because we will provide individual tablets to make this happen.

This work is not about technology in an of itself. Instead, it is about creating new forms of classroom instruction and learning environments. We are working very closely with a smaller number of schools over the next two years to learn how to support teachers to use technology to create, with their students, the type of learning experiences I describe. Our goal is to learn from these schools so that we may then apply this learning to the entire system. This is a major undertaking, but certainly an important one if we are going to achieve one of our Board’s Strategic Directions – Equity Matters. In this way, each student in every classroom has access to technology and digital resources and an opportunity to learn in an environment characterized by inquiry, curiosity, interest and engagement so that they are able to “achieve their full potential,” which is our Board’s vision.

I introduced these concepts at a recent gathering of system leaders. Please take a look at the video below or YouTube link! When we support great teachers to engage students, amazing things happen! This is our goal in HWDSB!

Yesterday I invited 40 high school educators to think about how we might invite students to engage in inquiry based learning. I asked them to consider different ways of delivering credits. We discussed what it means to think in an interdisciplinary way. We discussed opportunities and barriers to thinking about teaching and learning differently.

What inspired me about this meeting was that this group of teachers was willing to think way outside of the box.

We began our discussion with student voice. What are the interests, strengths and passions of our students? From there we moved to the notion of critical questions. How might we create opportunities for students to ask complex questions that they really want to explore…..deeply!

Once students have the opportunity to name their questions, the role of educators is to figure out how to offer learning opportunities where students may earn credits in creative ways.

This concept is foreign to us as educators because for more than a century the “Carnegie Unit” had dictated how high school credits are offered in secondary schools…… Back in 1909, a group of professors at Carnegie discussed why it was important for secondary schools to mirror the university. What this meant was that high schools needed to prepare students for university by offering courses in very distinct ways. In other words, students would study each subject in an isolated fashion without any understanding of how these subject areas were actually related. Students are scheduled to take so many courses a semester, and each course consists of a certain number of hours, and for the most part, connections are not being made between any of the courses that students are studying.

In Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, we would like to provide opportunities for students that do not mirror the “Carnegie Unit”…..We would like to provide opportunities where groups of students engage in discussion with educators and have the opportunity to ask critical questions, identify what they really want to learn, and then educators determine how they might support students in their learning. This may mean that students are able to earn multiple credits because their questions span multiple disciplines, and educators who possess the expertise to support students in their inquiry, work collaboratively with one another to engage students in an interdisciplinary approach to learning.

The group of educators I met with yesterday were excited to create possibilities for students……..they also named some of the barriers that exist in our culture and practice that mitigate against this type of learning……

I am inspired by these educators and I know that many educators in our system reflect this passion to engage our students. We are on a very important journey in HWDSB to be sure that each of our schools is a great school; that students have expanded opportunities as well as voice in terms of how they learn. We are exploring how digital resources might expand the learning environment. We understand that learning happens in the physical world called the classroom, the experiential world called the community and the virtual world that extends to every corner of the globe.

This group of 40 secondary educators has made a commitment to take a few steps forward in terms of student voice, student questions, collaborative inquiry and a multi-disciplinary approach to credit delivery.

This is one step closer to “all students achieving their full potential”, our board’s mission!

A little over a week ago, the Globe and Mail published an article titled “The One-room Classroom Could Make a Comeback in Hamilton.”

Since the article was published I have received various responses both through email and Twitter, so I decided to write this post to clearly articulate what we hope to accomplish in Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

We have been hearing a lot lately about the need for school to change in order to educate our students effectively. I would argue that this change should happen on the foundation of our past successes in education.  In other words, we need not think of everything we have done historically as no longer relevant.  As we move forward we know that students must take ownership for their learning; engage their classmates so they can learn together, think critically, develop creativity, communicate effectively, and study and solve complex problems.  Further we know that technology may certainly enable these things.

On a related note, the notion of interdisciplinary studies is not a novel concept.  In 2002, the Ontario Ministry of Education published a curriculum document on interdisciplinary studies.  In that document, the Ministry states “Our world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent.  Communication networks exchange information around the globe, creating new forms of collaboration and transforming the nature of work and learning.” Therefore, there is a place for interdisciplinary studies.

And finally, inquiry based learning is something that educators have been discussing for quite some time, and the merits of inquiry-based learning are certainly noted frequently.  Inquiry-based learning always includes a central question or questions, investigation of these questions, and shared ownership of the learning process.  This shared ownership may mean a different relationship between the teacher and his/her class where the teacher sometimes engages in direct instruction, sometimes engages individual students or teams of students as a guide or facilitator and sometimes simply observes as the students lead the learning process.

Inquiry does not lessen the educator’s role; rather it invites the educator to think about how to create learning opportunities driven by the students while never losing site of the “big ideas” of the curriculum expectations.

As I reflected on the importance of 21st-century learning described at the beginning of these reflections, the fact that interdisciplinary studies is not new, and the importance of inquiry in the learning process, I wondered why there seemed to be more barriers than opportunities to create this type of learning environment.  Further, I began to wonder if the system I lead was inadvertently responsible for inhibiting some of this work by communicating expectations to our educators that may be hard to reconcile with the vision I am describing here.  These reflections led me to pose a question to my secondary principals that would allow us not only to talk about necessary changes, but to do something about it.

As described in the Globe and Mail article, I asked the principals to ask for volunteers at their school who would be willing to engage in a creative process to create learning opportunities in each school that were interdisciplinary in nature, focused on inquiry, and committed to creating an environment that allows our students to develop 21st-century learning skills.  This learning opportunity would allow the students to determine a learning focus, and the critical problems they wished to solve.  The students would design this learning opportunity with the support of teachers who would collaborate with one another to guide this learning, to extend the learning as required, and to support students to go beyond the walls of the classroom both experientially and virtually to enhance their experience.  Practically, the students would earn multiple credits as they engaged in this inquiry and the teachers collaborating in this learning would be able to offer these credits because they are bringing their expertise to the process.

I would like to offer one final note.  Programs like this already exist.  Usually these programs exist in what we call alternative education programs.  I would argue that students should be able to choose this type of learning experience in every school.  Students should also be able to request more blended and virtual learning opportunities as well or they may wish to continue learning in ways that we might consider more traditional.  Regardless, as educators and as a system, it is our job to find ways to expand learning opportunities for students.  We may need to expose them to ways of learning that our students do not believe is possible because after a number of years in school they may have never experienced anything like it.

Change is slow, but there is also urgency here.  Our world is changing fast; therefore, in order for education to be meaningful and valuable, we need to change too.  I am confident that as we make concrete, systemic decisions that change our vision of students, teachers and learning, we will make a profound difference for our students.  We are working on our systemic vision for learning in HWDSB.  Stay tuned for “HWDSB 2018 – A vision for learning.”

Bullying should not happen.

That is why we are making a difference by supporting our students and staff during and after this week’s Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week.

We are listening to what our students tell us, in the interactive Director’s Forums held each year, in the student surveys we conduct, and in the everyday exchanges that occur in our classrooms, hallways, offices and extra-curricular activities.

We know bullying happens much too often. About three in every 10 students are bullied on a regular basis. This is an upsetting reality. It is also a call to action, especially when we know that when bullying occurs there are bystanders nearby about 85 per cent of the time.

This week, our schools are planning a wide range of anti-bullying events. These may involve brightly coloured T-shirts, special presentations, the sharing of ideas through the arts and much more. Visit our schools this week and you may also see new posters on display that students have created.

At a system level, we are planning Positive School Climate sessions for all schools, so that school teams can learn and work together. Teams will focus on developing strategies to strengthen positive relationships in schools which will support our anti-bullying efforts. What ties all of these efforts together is this: we want to find ways to make students more comfortable talking to us about issues like bullying. We know that students may know before adults know when bullying is happening.

This can happen through the building of awareness; it can happen by tackling the stigma that surrounds speaking out, perhaps through a 21^st-century tool like our TipOff mobile app.  Our TipOff app is essentially a way to receive text messages, to gather more information about the tip and to share it with the school to enable Board and school protocols to be implemented. Every sender’s phone number is scrambled to preserve their anonymity.

We need students to talk to us; we need to turn bystanders into problem-solvers. This is about building a positive school climate, and making students, staff, parents and community members aware that they can be positively powerful – because their actions count.

At its heart, it is about providing all students with a safe and welcoming school, so that every student can learn.

I had the opportunity to attend and present at ECOO 13, a conference that brings together passionate educators who want to provide learning opportunities for our students where the focus is on changing the learning environment, supported by technology and digital resources. This change leads to greater opportunities for our students to think, create and engage in relevant learning experiences both collaboratively and individually.

I participated in two panels on that day, each asking a provocative question. The first panel asked about the future of the textbook. The second panel asked, if we believe in the importance of teaching 21^st century learning skills supported by technology, why is it not happening in every classroom? I will share my reflections here.

In terms of the textbook, I shared that a different yet related issue was actually more important from my perspective. I am more concerned about the teaching and learning environment that exists in every one of our schools. I am concerned about the tasks that students are asked to complete. I am wondering about how often students have the opportunity to create a focus for their learning or to create a problem they wish to explore in the context of parameters set by the teachers. This focus or problem provides ample opportunities for our students to meet curriculum expectations, or better yet exceed them!

I believe this type of learning environment is better served by technology and digital resources. Though there is information in textbooks that I am sure is accurate, I worry that the textbook becomes a tool that creates a different kind of learning environment than the one I described above. We have all experienced the task to “read Chapter 5 and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.” Again, there may be nothing wrong with reading a chapter and answering the questions. Yet, might there be more dynamic ways of allowing students to explore a topic, analyze different sources, synthesize available information and critique that information? Instead of simply reading and responding, might our students have the opportunity to take ownership for their learning by drawing on information that may be found in a textbook, but is also supported in other enriching ways?

This takes me to the topic that was discussed in the second panel. We have been talking about the learning environment I have described above for many years. Why is it not happening? We often hear the argument that there are not enough funds. I would suggest that we have the funds, but we need to use our resources differently. In order to use our resources differently, we need to invite teachers to move into this digital, technological world by first supporting them as learners who are creating dynamic learning environments for their students. By supporting teacher learning, and by assisting them to see this relationship between teacher and student differently, I believe that digital conversion and technology will be seen as necessary for instruction. Digital conversions means that we are moving away from paper-based resources in order to embrace more dynamic resources that will allow students to explore their interests and teachers to meet students’ needs more effectively.

By creating a culture where teachers see themselves and are supported as learners, by providing access to digital resources and technology for the purpose of changing the learning environment, and by setting a clear system direction that we are moving into this new world, I will believe that a few years from now we will be walking as opposed to simply talking.