Learning to Listen

A row of tanks rolled by in the distance, and two planes flew in the sky above her, although she didn't see any bombs falling from them. Parvana didn't pay them any attention. Tanks were normal. Bombs were normal. Why couldn't eating be normal? They had salvaged what they could after the house was bombed. There was a bit of rice spilled on the ground. They picked it out of the dirt grain by grain. There wasn't enough water to cook the rice, and no cook-pot, so the children had to chew the rice kernels raw.

The above passage comes from Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis, a novel that I decided to read with my grade seven students this term. It was not an easy decision to make. The novel is about about a 12-year-old girl who sets off to search for her missing mother and siblings in Taliban-era Afghanistan. Needless to say, Parvana's Journey is a grim story. The cruelty of war is always in the background and it often violently encroaches upon the innocent lives of the young protagonists. Even at the very end, when some of the challenges are overcome, Deborah Ellis insists on an ending that is provisional at best. She suggests that children cannot easily escape the grasp of violence, hopelessness, and suffering that surrounds them.

Why did I decide to have my students read this novel?

• Children today hear about war and violence all the time and yet, when we take the time to listen to how much they know, it turns out that their knowledge is fragmented. I'm hoping to give them opportunities to change that.

• I believe that it's important to help raise awareness of what is happening right now around the world. Those of us who live in the affluent and sheltered North American suburbia need to be aware of what life is like elsewhere.

• The media coverage of military conflicts around the world that my students are most likely to watch (the six o'clock newscast, for example) is often superficial. It reduces complex situations to laughably simplistic accounts. Children need to know that there is complexity behind these seemingly straightforward reports. I want to give my students opportunities to discover the human dimensions of these stories.

• I also want to give them opportunities to learn how media texts are constructed, especially texts about controversial issues.

A couple of weeks ago, when I first decided to use this novel, I found myself thinking "How do I structure this unit? How do I present these difficult topics to my students?" Seemingly, they are very innocent questions. I soon realized, however, that they weren't really that innocent.

Do they not suggest that I want to present my students with a pre-defined unit? Do they not suggest that I see myself as the only architect of what we are about to study? Do they not show that I perceive myself as a content expert looking for the best way to peddle that content? I think they do.

It's fascinating to me that after three years of blogging with my students, my first instinct quite often is still to pre-package the content for them, especially if the content is new. As soon as I finished reading this novel a couple of months ago, my first instinct was to structure, organize, and plan. I also caught myself using the word "unit" as if the experience of reading and discussing literature could ever be that neatly packaged. What's worse, I attempted to carefully pre-package it for my students. For some mysterious reason, this kind of practice is deeply ingrained and I often find it difficult to abandon it. Is it because I hear these terms everyday from many of my colleagues? Is it because teaching is often reduced to neatly organized subjects and schedules?

Whatever the reason, I have decided to adopt a different strategy. After years of teaching and learning within a class blogosphere, I have learned to observe myself as a teacher, I have learned to reflect on my practice. So, when I realized that my first instinct was to pre-package learning for my students, I knew that I needed to stop and re-think my initial ideas. Instead of trying to figure out how to structure this term, I have decided to open it up to my students. I am not going to plan expectations and outcomes. I am not going to carefully organize all the learning that is about to take place. If I do, chances are there won't be too much learning in my classroom this spring. Instead of planning every activity and structuring every lesson, I want to focus on ensuring that my classroom is filled with opportunities for engagement. I want us to have conversations. I want my students to use this novel as a springboard that can lead to topics that they can truly engage with.

On my desk right now is a large pad of paper. In the centre, I wrote: "How Do I Begin?" The most important part of this process, it seems to me, is learning how to pique their interest, how to motivate them to keep reading and learning, and how to ensure that our discussions of Parvana's Journey emerge from student interactions with and about this text, and are not given to them as a pre-packaged set of handouts.

I don't know yet exactly how to begin, but I know that I will use the first couple of lessons to listen.

• I want to listen to them as they discuss the cover

• I want to listen to their first reactions when they come into the classroom having read the first few chapters.

• I want to listen as they talk about their views on war, violence, and suffering - concepts that they are fortunate enough not to have experienced.

• I want to listen as they talk about burqas or chadors, for example, ... and how they relate them to the familiar world of their everyday lives.

• I want to see what happens when I point out to them one tiny sentence on the back cover - "All royalties from the sale of this book will go to Women for Women, an organization that helps women in Afghanistan."

Then, we'll talk ... about whatever emerges, about what we need to learn, and about how to start. And then, we'll see, we'll see where these conversations take us.

Autobiographical Practices

I spent the last two weeks reading, re-reading, and revising chapter four of my thesis. The version I have now, while certainly not perfect, emphasizes the fact that professional development in this age of networked learning is crucial. When I first narrowed down my focus and started the study, I had no idea that professional development or, specifically, the role of the teacher in a blogging classroom, would play such an important role in the thesis. Once I began, it quickly became obvious that the community my students were building online would have a very big impact on my own role in the classroom and my views on professional development. Needless to say, I've been thinking about professional development a lot lately and the following is an attempt to verbalize some of my (still largely incoherent) thoughts on this matter.

The past five years helped me understand that teacher professional development can no longer rely solely on conferences and scholarly journals. While those two sources can still play an important role in helping us become better educators, it is the power of networks that can be especially beneficial.

However, I am not too enthusiastic about the recent emergence of online communities for educators, such as Classroom 2.0, School 2.0, or Library 2.0. Frankly, much like David Warlick, I really don't get it. I think I'm in favour of building networks, not getting stuck in communities.

I contemplated adding my name to one or more of these communities but it seems to me that they are nothing but containers, systems where the name threatens to define or even pre-define the discussions within. I thought the whole point of what we are experiencing now, educationally speaking, was to get away from boxes, systems, and containers. Now, it seems, we are building more. It is interesting that, instead of building our own networks using rss, for example, instead of charting our own paths as professionals and educators, we prefer to confine ourselves to pre-defined boxes.

However, according to Steve Hargadon, who created Classroom 2.0, professional development today can greatly benefit from social networking. He is right when he says that it is much easier for a novice to join a social community than start his or her own blog. Anyone who has ever tried to encourage a colleague to blog or start a Bloglines account knows that the task can be difficult because the technology, as perceived by the novice, can seem daunting. It makes a lot of sense to encourage someone who is new to this complex world of blogs, wikis, and RSS to first try interacting in a contained and user-friendly space.

And yet, I keep thinking that these social networking sites are essentially classrooms for grown-ups, places where the conversation is likely to be dominated by only a few individuals, and not necessarily those who have the most to communicate. Are they really places where I can learn from others and develop deep understanding of my professional practice? In the words of Christopher Sessums, "does participation in social media networks that support professional development result in better outcomes for educators?"

I think his notion of "Communities for Practice" is a good start. "Can an online community for practice environment," he asks, "be designed to track what and how teachers learn, how they use what they have learned, and to what effect?"

I think that a community for practice would have to be a place that supports deep meaningful reflection. In other words, we need personal places where discussion is not pre-defined by the very name of the community but where every participant can reflect and build upon his or her own practice. (A careful reading of the entries within all these new "2.0" communities shows that most posts revolve around technology, not deep reflections about practice). We need places that can support a culture of teacher-researchers where narrative inquiry is the backbone of our development as educators. We need spaces to create our own narratives because they are both phenomena that emerge from reflection and the method through which we reflect. We need to tell stories and we need places that support that. As Diamond and Mullen remind us, we need to constantly monitor our own practices and "resist easy endings and narrative unity"(1999, p. 49). We need a stronger emphasis on action research. Teachers cannot implement constructs developed by others but need to engage in the process of constantly reflecting upon and redefining our work. (This is not professional development. This is).

We need to be constantly engaged in reflective thought because it provides us with opportunities to generate connections between theory and practice, come to a deeper understanding of our beliefs and previous experiences, adopt new perspectives, and learn how to use reflection as a problem-solving process that involves weighing competing viewpoints (Risko at al, 2002). Teachers need direction that comes from within and is based on serious personal reflection that can acknowledge previous experience and practice and help us travel beyond our current places of professional complacency.

So, much like Christopher, I am interested in how much learning takes place in these online communities. Sure, one could argue that by participating in a community I will learn about the potential educational applications of wikis. One could also argue, much like Steve Hargadon does, that these communities will help me gradually learn about all the tools that I may sooner or later decide to use. I think the question I should really be asking myself, however, is whether or not I need to use these tools and, if so, am I ready to implement this technology in my own classroom. Without a close engagement with my practice, without a close analysis of who I am as an educator, I am going to find it rather difficult to understand how this new tool can enrich my practice. I will also need to reflect on its presence once I start using it. Can a community of teachers help me accomplish that? Do they want to listen to my experiences and reflections? Are they interested in supporting my journey of professional development? Should I try to enlist their support?

Probably not, and that's why I believe in mentoring. I do not need 700 educators to help me understand what is happening in my classroom. I need two or three solid mentors or partners who can help me reflect. I need someone who will find the time to look carefully at the artifacts that I have accumulated - videotaped lessons, field notes, blog entries, curricula I've created - and help me engage in action research. I need someone who can help me weave the many strands of my practice into a path that will lead me towards new goals and help chart new courses and avoid complacency. That's why I believe that I need my own place where I can collect all of these artifacts and engage in whatever thought processes I need in order to become better at what I do and in order to better understand the students who enter my classroom every day.

Let's take a look at a vision suggested by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller in 2004. They argue that an electronic portfolio can be "a platform for learning reflection" where "the learner builds and maintains a digital repository of artefacts, which they can use to demonstrate competence and reflect on their learning. Having access to their records, digital repository, feedback and reflection students can achieve a greater understanding of their individual growth, career planning, and CV building." Tosh and Werdmuller did not devise this approach specifically for teacher professional development, but I think it would be interesting to use it for that purpose. Of course, it would be a challenge because most of us find it difficult to look at ourselves as learners. Perhaps that's why we tend to enter communities of practice where we can practice what we already know and not aspire to reflect on how we know and what we do. Communities for practice, on the other hand, could be places where we engage with all the elements of our teacher lives, all our artifacts, and where we are supported in that process by a handful of mentors.

Giving education new names (or numbers) is not going to change schools. Teachers can change schools. I think we need to begin by learning to understand who we are and what we do. We need more autobiographical practices.

In other words, according to C.T.Patrick Diamond, teacher education should focus on "struggling towards a personally negotiated coherence and charting its eventual redirection." This is because a teaching life consists of

a creativity cycle, a continuous progression of provisional supposition and experiment, exploration and explication, surmise and closure, looseness and tightness, of learning and re-learning, of incumbent and challenging hypotheses. Such a life consists of successive formation and transformation, composition and decomposition, of dominant and tonic.(Diamond, 1991, p.123).

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References:

Diamond, P.C.T. (1991). Teacher education as transformation. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Diamond, C., & Mullen, C. (1999). The postmodern educator. Frankfurt Am Main: P. Lang.

Risko, V.J. et al. (2002). Preparing teachers for reflective practice: Intentions, contradictions, and possibilities. Language Arts. 80(2).

Towards Passion-Based Conversations

"The trouble with traditional education was not that educators took upon themselves the responsibility of providing an environment. The trouble was that they did not consider the other factor in creating an experience; namely, the powers and purposes of those taught." - John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938.

"Can a Student Get Up and Leave?"

In September 2006, I found myself, along with a group of inspiring educators on Waiheke Island, just north of Auckland, New Zealand. One morning, after a breakfast on a sun-drenched patio of the Hekerua Lodge, we started discussing what is now often referred to as School 2.0. We talked about the use of cell phones and video games. We talked about giving every student the freedom to learn with any tool or technology that he or she is most comfortable with.

I played the devil's advocate and argued that we cannot have classrooms filled with individuals who learn in any way they please. What about students who need structure?, I asked. What about those with ADHD? How can such an environment be conducive to learning? Is it responsible to give nine-year-olds, for example, the freedom to play video games? Isn't it my responsibility as a teacher to engage learners in learning? If we're at school, then those video games or cellphones are likely to be disruptive, aren't they? A classroom is a community, I argued, we need rules.

Sean, Leigh, and Alex argued that in our existing classrooms, teachers often present themselves as authoritarian guides and experts, often limiting the use of tools, such as games or cellphones, that have the potential to help our students learn. Today's classrooms, in other words, are too restrictive and the role of the teacher is based on control, regardless of how passionate and engaging that teacher is.

It was at precisely that moment that Stephen asked,

"In your classroom, can a student get up and leave?"

Of course, he knew the answer. I did too. We all did.

The recent discussion about School 2.0 reminded me of Stephen's question. The point here is that in a traditional classroom, the student cannot leave, at least not without facing pretty grim consequences. Whenever I think of School 2.0, I think of what it would feel like to know that every one of my students, regardless of their age, had the freedom to get up and leave. No consequences.

"A Positive and Constructive Development of Purposes"

I enjoy reading the School 2.0 manifestos. They offer a glimpse into a world where teachers are free to be passionate and engaging, where students really want to learn, and where the restrictive policies of our current world do not exist. Initially, I also wanted to add my thoughts to the School 2.0 Wiki. I decided not to because manifestos alone are not going to help me transform my professional practice so that it is better suited to help today's young learners. I have a lot of respect for all the educators who posted their thoughts, but I also know that this approach is not going to work for me.

I prefer to avoid slogans. They are often mere reactionary measures aimed against the status quo. Overtime, they tend to lose substance. I'm afraid the slogans of School 2.0 will only reinforce yet another "ism" or be perceived as yet another panacea for our contemporary educational woes. Many educators will become convinced of its supposed innate value, but most will be unable to explain how to effectively use this new "2.0" approach in the classroom. Instead, we will continue to hear and read simplistic slogans that trivialize the complexity and challenge of teaching in our new electronically reconfigured environment. Remember what happens to Old Major's beautiful utopian ideals that he explains with such passion and conviction at the beginning of Orwell's Animal Farm? Yes, they become reduced to "Four legs good, two legs bad" - a slogan repeated mindlessly by the dim-witted sheep on the farm. It reminds me of a time not long ago when, walking down a hallway at an educational conference, I overheard one attendee instruct her colleague: "Well, you really need a wiki for your class!" Is this what our complex and challenging times are being reduced to? A wiki for every classroom?

John Dewey reminds us in his preface to Experience and Education that:

any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.

and

the problems are not even recognized, to say nothing of being solved, when it is assumed that it suffices to reject the ideas and practices of the old education and then go to the opposite extreme (Dewey, 1998).

I'm not really interested in stating how my classroom today should be different from the classroom where I was taught twenty-five years ago. I liked that classroom. I liked many of my teachers. They were strict and told me to ask for permission every time I wanted to leave my seat, even if it was only to sharpen my pencil. At the same time, they taught me many valuable and important skills that I used later on to pursue my goals in life. They did not have wikis, or podcasts, or blogs and yet they still managed to help me get to where I wanted to be. The teachers I liked, respected, and learned from possessed one important skill: they knew how to talk to me as an individual.

So, I am not interested in defining myself in contrast to School 1.0. What I'm really interested in is what I am going to do tomorrow, in class. What are the needs that I'm facing - my own and those of my students. Here and now. What are the problems? Finally, what are the possibilities? It's nice to talk about passion, participation, openness, and inquiry, for example, but what if you're told to teach Macbeth to a group of thirty sixteen-year-olds? What do all these slogans mean then, in practice? What, in other words, am I going to do to make myself relevant in the lives of my students? How can I assist them in learning more and getting closer to where they want to go? We need some tangible ideas and modes of practice based on a solid understanding of how and why our students want to access learning. So, let's not proceed by "reaction against what has been current in education" and adopt instead "a positive and constructive development of purposes, methods, and subject-matter on the foundation of a theory of experience and its educational potentialities" (Dewey, 1998). "To Make Learning Available"

In order to adopt Stephen's proposed approach, which is "to make learning available, in whatever form is desired and appropriate, to assist students as they do what they choose to do," we need to start thinking about ourselves, our presence in our schools and our classrooms. What if our students had the freedom to get up and leave? Would openness, participation, and inquiry keep them in our classrooms? Would a wiki or a podcast? Only if it was their own wiki or their own podcast.

That's why, I believe that education today needs a renewed approach to professional development and a closer look at how we can address "the powers and purposes" of our students. Twenty-five years ago, my teachers knew how to help me succeed. Based on what the world was like back then, they had developed their own practice. Based on what the world is like now, I need to develop my own. I'm not going to fantasize about schools without classrooms, schedules, or carefully compartmentalized subjects. I would love to see that in my lifetime, but I'm choosing to be realistic. Chances are, those things will remain firmly entrenched in our societies for a very long time. What I need now is an understanding of what I need to do tomorrow to ensure that my students can access learning in whatever form and whatever way they find most relevant.

"Passion-Based Conversations"

When I wrote about passion-based learning, I wanted to show that teachers need to redefine themselves as individuals and not automatons that focus on outcomes and expectations. I am passionate about human rights. I spend a lot of my own time reading about human rights and human rights abuses around the world. What I do in my classroom, how I do it, and who I am as a teacher is based to a large extent on my passion for social justice.

So what?

Well, if I have a student in my class who is passionate about Medieval Europe, for example, he will not be too happy in my classroom. My ability to sustain a conversation with him about that topic would be rather limited. But what's stopping me from helping him connect with a teacher and a classroom in Leeds where the topics he cares about are studied and where the teacher is just as passionate about Medieval Europe as I am about human rights? What's stopping that teacher in Leeds from telling some of her students "Get in touch with this teacher in Ontario. You can have a great conversation about Darfur"? What's stopping us? Most teachers would say: assessment and evaluation, state-defined curriculum expectations, reporting, etc.. But let's keep in mind that just because some of our students are building their own networks by communicating with experts from around the world does not mean that in our classrooms we cannot assist them in becoming stronger writers, or help them improve their reading comprehension or research skills. We can still have meaningful conversations about their work. These students can even use their own networks and their conversations with content experts located elsewhere to immeasurably enrich their own classrooms.

We need to start offering what James Shimabukuro calls "flexible schedules and virtual learning opportunities that defy time and space constraints." These opportunities "will be defined by function, purpose, and membership rather than temporal, physical, or geographical boundaries." They will allow us to become advisers "skilled in working with students and motivating them to discover the learning styles and goals that are best suited to their interests." In other words, we need to give students the freedom to access learning. Then, we need to listen and assist.

So, what do I do tomorrow, in my classroom, to assist my students? I think we all need to learn how to have conversations with people who want to learn. How do we effectively assist students in learning and not thrust that learning upon them? I admit that this may sound simplistic to those of us who have been using web 2.0 technologies in our classrooms for some time, but I think we still need to address the fact that many of us are really not engaged in conversations with our students. Many of us are proud of the fact that we create blogging communities, use wikis, or help students connect with their peers from around the world. We are proud that our students seem engaged by these environments. Let's not forget, however, that quite often the students participate because participate they must - they are at school, after all, in somebody's class.

We need to learn how to sustain conversations that are initiated by the students themselves, not conversations that emerge from the official Ministry documents or our own interests and beliefs. I think that passion-based learning will help, but I also know that there is much more that I can do. It seems to me that this new approach will require that we revisit Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Perhaps we could refine the notion of "instructional conversation" (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991) where the teacher is involved in "assisted performance." This approach is not perfect but I think it gives us a good place to start: "To truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to teach" (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991).