Map or Map

Posted on April 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

759. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Beth came to visit after working with teachers on a curriculum map. She was understandably frustrated. If you want to understand how far awry we’ve gone in education you need look no further than the curriculum map. The idea behind the map is to ensure that all teachers in each grade level are relatively on the same lesson all the time. The map determines the path of content delivery. The map is at the center. The actual needs of the students are nowhere on the map. In fact the actual student (as opposed to the abstraction of a student) is nowhere to be found. The student is actively not considered. It is a recipe for dulling minds not opening them.

Consider that it has been decades since we understood that grouping children according to age creates an educational disaster. In other words, age is one of the least effective ways of identifying and working with stages of development. Kids develop at different rates and according to a myriad of circumstantial factors so to squeeze them into an age-box called “grade” and pre-map their curriculum path before they walk in the door is obscene.

Mapping the curriculum to make sure every child is on the same lesson on the same page on the same day is yet another extension of the national standardization madness. Gather some actual data and take a small road trip. Visit some schools. You will find that the schools are not standardized. The schools in rural North Dakota don’t resemble the schools in urban Chicago and bear no resemblance to the schools in Beverly Hills, CA. They are not funded in a standardized manner. In fact, the inequity in funding is apparent within single school districts; you need not travel far to gather your data. It will not surprise you to find that the students attending the schools are not standardized. Take a moment and reflect on our national identity. We are the most individualistic nation on the planet, celebrating our cowboy spirit and diversity and yet somehow have been anesthetized into embracing an abstraction like standardization in our public schools. Learning and standardization are antithetical.

A map can be a noun or a verb. We’ve chosen the noun to our own peril. I can give you a map to Boston and you will be able to find your way around. It is useful in locating landmarks but not in learning. If I give you a map and load you on a tour bus and give you the standard tour, you might say you visited Boston but you learned relatively little. The learning was eliminated when you got on the bus. Exposure is not learning. When teachers map a curriculum with no regard to the relationship with their students, the students become incidental. The exercise of mapping the curriculum for the sake of consistency of delivery has everything to do with control and nothing to do with educating. It is exposure. We are kidding ourselves if we think it has anything to do with learning.

The verb, to map, is actually a great metaphor for true learning. Lewis and Clarks Corp of Discovery explored the western territory of the United States. It was unmapped and therefore considered unknown. They stepped into this unknown land with inadequate supplies and engaged with what they encountered. They made big mistakes. They challenged their assumptions. They chanced upon new ways of seeing and would not have survived without alternative perspectives. They made their map as they went. To map is to have a relationship. This is learning.

If learning is the goal then it is impossible to map a curriculum without the students in the room. The true curriculum map can only be created as students explore and discover. The map is created after the fact, not months before the experiences.

Filed under: Education, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Create A New Circle Of Thought

Posted on March 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

746. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am cleaning out old files and rediscovering some small gems. This one is useful for educators and the national non-conversation we continue to have about education. This gem is from the Circle Project years when Patti and I used Vicious and Virtuous circles with our clients as a way of clarifying their challenges. We also used them to clarify our challenges or to prepare for a training/teaching session. This Vicious circle came from our preparation to lead a train-the-trainer session. Imagine the phrases move clockwise around a circle so that the final phrase returns to the first. The challenge, of course, it to discover and change the premise of the vicious circle, transforming it into a virtuous circle:

I Am The Expert, requiring that I have all the answers

And when I must have all the answers, I can never say, “I don’t know.”

And when I can’t say, “I don’t know,” learners and questions become dangerous,

And when questions become dangerous, controlling the learner is my primary intention.
And when I need to control the learner, I train against surprise,

And when I train against surprise, my training becomes transactional,

And when my training becomes Transactional, I relegate the learner to a “passive receiver,”

And when the learner is relegated to being a passive receiver,

I am The Expert, requiring that I have all the answers…

Everything we need to know to revolutionize education: interrupt the loop OR do the opposite. Begin with this phrase and see what new loop you might create:

I refuse to be The Expert, requiring me to help my students find their own answers,

And because they must find their own answers, we begin by saying, “I don’t know.”

And when we can say, “I don’t know,” learners become questioners so there’s a reason to learn,

[the rest is for you to create – or go back and alter my start. Have fun revolutionizing a system badly in need of your new circle of thought!].

Filed under: Education, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Join Them

Posted on February 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

718. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In a spattering of revolutionary fire, teachers in hotspots across this nation are finally refusing to give the standardized tests. Students are refusing to take the tests. The authorities in each case are moving to punish the teachers and students, to get them back into compliance with the rules. These administrators, teachers and students, like most educators across this nation, know that these tests are impediments to learning. They serve the antithesis of what they purport.

Recently, I had a conversation with an administrator frustrated by the stupidity of the testing regime and the culture of control that it produces. She was angry with herself and her teachers for agreeing to participate with something that they all knew to be wrong. She was angry at the waste of time and energy but mostly at the injustice to the students. She said, “It’s killing them and making us absurd.” When I asked her why she continued to support something that she knew to be wrong she said, “We all need a paycheck. Isn’t that sad!” Yes. It is.

What should we do when we know something is wrong and ill intended? What should we do when finally the few voices, the courageous teachers and students stand up and say, “This is wrong.” If history is correct, most of us will turn away and pretend we heard nothing. History is riddled with stories of people who served atrocious causes and when asked why, said, “I was just following orders,” or, “I didn’t know.” David Neiwert tells the story of a German community adjacent to one of the Nazi death camps. Each morning, the people of the town emerged from their homes to sweep the ash from their stoops and windowsills. They watched each day as trainloads of people entered the camps. They knew that no one ever left the camps. The smoke belched ash onto their homes and heads everyday yet they were horrified when they learned what was going on just a few hundred yards from their community. They claimed to have not known.

They knew. We know. We have known for decades that the forces driving our public education have nothing to do with learning; the testing regime serves the opposite of what it pretends. Finally, some teachers and students are saying, “Enough.” Don’t look away. Join them. They need us to stop pretending that we don’t know..

Filed under: Education, Rants, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Emerge

Posted on February 1, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

694. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Old structures do not like to give way to the new. The old structure, whether it is a personal identity or organizational system, resists change.

When I stepped off the plane Moira only said, “It’s bitter.” She meant the temperature; it was 16 degrees and the wind was blowing. We laughed and she drove me to campus to stay in the Illini Union Hotel on the campus of the University of Illinois. It’s a beautiful campus even with the wind chill making my eyes water. The hotel is actually within the student union, a massive brick and white-pillared structure that shouts, “academia!” It is solid and hallowed with history.

This university like all universities is an institution of education in a time that institutions of education are being pummeled by the waves of change. The internet is revolutionizing access to information and the power of the individual to create, pursue, investigate, and participate. The very role of “teacher” or “professor” is no longer relevant in it’s old definition and the new form is yet to emerge.

I’ve heard conversations questioning the very role of a campus in the face of the new world. There is most certainly a role but what is it? It’s emerging. Tuitions are unmanageable and unrealistic. In many circles the question, “Why not to put the money into a business start up instead college?” is leading the way. Experience is the best teacher and there are great business courses online and much information is free. Why not go into debt with something that has the potential to generate income than something that will strain your income for years to come? It’s a valid argument.

In various places around the country teachers are now refusing to administer the standardized tests. Students are refusing to take them. Finally, we are asking, “Why? What is the point? And what are we trying to do?” After all, what does it mean to learn?
This is the new form starting to emerge. The old is fighting back, ratcheting down and trying to contain and constrain. It is only a matter of time.

The old structure will fight the new, even if the old is irrelevant. Even if its existence impedes growth instead of facilitates it. In this way, organizations are no different than people. The imagination is never welcome in the old house but imaginations have a way of taking over and something new, wondrous, magical, and completely unpredictable always emerges.

Filed under: Education, Emergence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Thank Melissa

Posted on January 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

673. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Avalon disappeared into the mists of time. It is there, or so we are told, but it is out of reach to we mere mortals. In the age of reason the mystery retreated to the other side of the veil. I thought of that as this afternoon we drove through fields shrouded in fog towards a rural elementary school. We were visiting Melissa’s classroom; a place alive with magic and excitement and the vitality that is present wherever true learning is taking place. If magic survives beyond the veil then Melissa’s classroom is a portal to that sacred place.

Tom once told me, “You will know when you are doing important work by the size of the tide that rises against you.” Melissa is doing important work and is standing tall despite the towering wave that crashes over her (and every teacher in the nation) everyday when she asks, “Why are we doing this? What does this test or this shabby curriculum have to do with learning?” She asks and others turn away. She is the voice in the crowd that says, “This emperor has no clothes!” And like the child in the story, the truth-teller is shunned initially, hushed by the adults who are too afraid to say, “We know. We see it, too.”

There are plenty of teachers and administrators and parents and business leaders that see it, too. There are many conversations about fixing things. There are endless strategies and punitive measures to raise standards though no one is certain what standards we are raising (hint: test scores have nothing to do with learning; neither do lists or rankings or any other from of measurement). On the surface we are expert at finger pointing and assigning blame and still the emperor prances naked through the streets.

And beneath it all is Melissa and scores of educators like her that know the system as dictated to them is doing the opposite of what it professes. So, she wades into the muck everyday and ignites imaginations and encourages her students to explore, pursue, experiment and make messes. Her students make choices (they control themselves because she teaches them to be powerful): they are engaged in a quest of discovery. Her students are excited to come to school because what they do is real; unlike most of the adults who should be lobbying for their betterment, they are very clear and vocal about what has merit and what has little or no value.

Filed under: Education, Gratitude, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page
  • buy us a coffee :-) Thank you!

  • visit the studio melange at kerrianddavid.com

  • The Seer available on Amazon.com

  • Lucy & The Waterfox is also available on Amazon.com