Crap Detection: #ISTE11

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I’m writing this morning from the Blogger’s Cafe at ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia, PA. I’m looking forward to three days of learning and thinking and conversation with lots of smart folks from all over doing interesting work to improve teaching and learning with technology.

But I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t remember that this is also a giant trade show. People here are eager to sell me on plenty of things – their products, or services, or consulting, or that their work is really, really neat.

And that may well be. The products, services, or other stuff may well be important and useful and interesting and engaging and worth spending time and money on.

But not necessarily. And it’s easy to forget that in the middle of the craziness. Folks get excited. I get excited. And I sometimes, willingly or otherwise, suspend my disbelief. And that’s not good for anybody¹.

So as I sit here gearing up for hearing and sharing and listening and talking and writing and exploring so much with so many people, I’m reminding myself in public that I’ll need to have my crap detector fully functional and powered up throughout the conference.

If I run into you and ask you a question or two, know that I’m not asking to discredit you or make you uncomfortable, I’m asking because I owe it to myself and my employer and the students and staff I’m responsible for to make sure that I’m doing my due diligence.

There’s plenty of snake oil here at ISTE. And plenty of good stuff. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t aware of the potential and the good.

But there’s no rule that says the junk has to be clearly labeled. And usually, it’s not. So my crap detector is spooled up, and I’m paying attention². Here’s to a great ISTE 2011.

How are you working to make sure you’re approaching what you see and do with a mind for what’s important? How’re you working to improve your crap detector? Let me know in the comments.

Well, actually, it’s good for the bad salespeople. The ones who want to sell you something that you don’t need, want, or could benefit from. The good salespeople, the ones I enjoy doing business with, are the folks who ensure that I actually need their product or service. I dig good salespeople. Lots. Sales is not evil. [↩]
Or trying to, at least. Keep me honest. [↩]

Wondering Vulnerably in Public

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I had the chance to write this morning with friends and colleagues from the Colorado State University’s 2011 Summer Institute. They were kind enough to let me come speak with them about some of the things I’m wondering about when it comes to writing and technology lately.

Our prompt, at one point, was taken from a comment Claudia left here the other day. She asked:

Do your students know how you, the teacher, write? Can they catch you somewhere in the middle of your own learning process, doubting, wondering, as a vulnerable human far from the know-all/authority in the subject ideal?

Here’s what I wrote in response¹:

I’ve discovered that more and more, I’m wondering in public. I’m wondering on Twitter, or via Evernote, or here on the blog, or in a half dozen other places, and it’s beautiful. It’s messy and scary and contagious and weird – and it’s okay.

I used to be afraid of my words being seen or overseen or misunderstood. Now, certain that they will be all of those things, I am less concerned.

That’s a certain shift – perhaps because of age or maybe overconfidence or just because of comfort with myself – but I’m less concerned about your reaction to my thinking.

No. That’s not right. As a writer and a teacher, I’m very concerned with your reaction to my thinking expressed via my words. But I’m less concerned with that reaction interfering with my ability to understand myself. That is to say – I’m okay with my thinking. And I’m growing more okay if you’re not so okay with it.

Mostly.

So, in writing to learn today, I learned a little bit about myself. That’s good. Thanks, Claudia, for the great prompt.

You can read all the responses from the group, too, if you’d like.

Most of this I wrote earlier. I polished and embellished a little before publishing here. [↩]

Letting (Them) Go

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Richard Elmore:

I wonder, finally, what would happen if we simply opened the doors and let the students go; if we let them walk out of the dim light of the overhead projector into the sunlight; if we let them decide how, or whether, to engage this monolith? Would it be so terrible? Could it be worse than what they are currently experiencing? Would adults look at young people differently if they had to confront their children on the street, rather than locking them away in institutions? Would it force us to say more explicitly what a humane and healthy learning environment might look like? Should discussions of the future of school reform be less about the pet ideas of professional reformers and more about what we’re doing to young people in the institution called school?

via What Would Happen if We Let Them Go? – The Futures of School Reform – Education Week.

I wonder, often, about what might happen if we ended compulsory schooling. Glad to know I’m not the only one.

Patri: What we needed as children, children still need.

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Rediscovered these lines from Angelo Patri while in a conversation today. Good to see them again:

What we needed as children was someone to show the way. Someone who knew us and valued us. Someone who would live with us and for us.

What we needed as children, children still need.

The teachers and I, conscious of the dangers that come to an active child from a random seeking to satisfy his desires, tried to make the people whose children were about us realize their responsibility while we ourselves did our share. We knew the children needed the older folk. We knew that we had only limited means of gathering and holding these young people together. All we had was the school and we were fast losing that except as a drill machine running eight hours a day during which time two schools¹ in turn tried to master the prescribed book facts.

Slightly later in that section:

The school, after all, narrowing down to routine, was such a faraway place, far away from the actual lives of people. How could we get close, so close to each other that we would be part of the people and they a part of us, and be “folksy” together?²

Our schools are communities. Or should be. Rich and vibrant and healthy ones. It’s a really good and useful book, as I’ve noted before. Might be time for a reread.

Patri’s school at the time shared its facility with another. [↩]
Both quotes from pages 80-81. [↩]

IT People Are People, Too.

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Saw this at Dean’s place:

It doesn’t take much to take down IT workers, the uphill battle is keeping them motivated and fighting the good fight.

Bill’s comment was a good reminder. It’s easy to cast the Others, especially the ones you don’t know and haven’t met, be they IT or Administration or Parents or Politicians, or Whatever, as The Problem. The Evil.

Some folks even say such things about Teachers.

But that doesn’t mean that they are. And it doesn’t mean that your barbs won’t hurt. Or are fair.

IT folks, and parents, and politicians and teachers and everybody else are, well, people. Worthy of kindness and courtesy.

So let’s be careful (and kind)¹ out there.

Update: Dean made the compelling case that it appeared as though I was calling him out in this post. That was not my intention. My interest was the comment – seems it doesn’t take much to bring anybody down. And we should work to raise people up. Which was my intention here.

As I told him via Twitter – if I’d've wanted to call him out, I would have done so explicitly. I’m sorry that it appeared otherwise. Love to hear your take on this in the comments.

Dare I say “loving?” Oops. Just did. [↩]

A #blog4nwp in Which I Ask for Your Assistance. Urgently.

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Dear Friends¹:

I’m doing something that I don’t normally do – writing a letter. If you know me at all, then you know that I carry a very special appreciation for the work of the National Writing Project. I talk pretty much whenever and where I can about the work of the NWP and what it’s meant to me as a teacher, as a writer, and as a person.

In short, it’s by far the best professional development experience/community/network I’ve ever been involved in.

And, fortunately, it has survived, grown and flourished these last twenty years with support from the federal government – originally, the National Endowment for the Humanities and then the Department of Education². Sometimes, the good guys win.

On March 8th, unfortunately, that federal support ended, at least for the moment, when President Obama signed a continuing resolution that eliminated NWP as well as several other groups’ educational budgets. As of October 1st, 2011, there will be no federally funded National Writing Project. In preparation for that, the NWP laid off 60 percent of its staff last week and announced to local site directors that they will have to reduce their local funding by 25 percent.

And that breaks my heart.

And I need your help to fix this mess.

You are movers and shakers in your respective worlds. People listen to you and seek your counsel. On many occasions, I’ve sought you out for assistance and/or advice. I need your help to help restore funding to the National Writing Project through whatever reasonable, rational and responsible means necessary.

That’s, well, pretty much all I’ve got. I suspect that the usual avenues for these sorts of situations are to do two things:

1. Get the word out about the power of the NWP
2. Ask people with access to money if the NWP could have some.

You may not know much about the project, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit more before I ask you to do at least one of those two things.

Basically, the National Writing Project is a professional development organization. In the same way that antibiotics were helpful to modern medicine. They’re powerful. They work with universities and schools to build spaces where teacher expertise is shared and valued. Specifically, they work to promote the ideas that:

1. The best teachers of writing are writers themselves.
2. The best teachers of teachers are teachers themselves.
3. The best way to make a difference in classrooms is to invest in thoughtful reflective inquiry and practice among teachers and their students. Cross pollinate like crazy, and let teachers be teachers.

They’d say it a little bit differently, but I’m thinking that, if you know me at all, as a teacher, as a learner, as a colleague or as a writer, then you know the National Writing Project. I am the professional that I am in no small measure due to my exposure to the NWP, our local affiliate the Colorado State University Writing Project, the influence of the NWP on my teachers and professors, and my interactions with NWP colleagues and friends around the country.

The National Writing Project believes in teachers and their agency at a time when almost no one else does. They believe that students, teachers and administrators should write regularly – to include composition in all kinds of media, from papercraft to circuitboard to movie to audio to video game to good ol’ fashioned paper.

The power of writing and the power of teachers are two things that we need plenty of in this country right now.

So here’s the part where I ask for your help and thank you for sticking around in this letter for as long as you have. If you remember that list a little while back, I need your help to either make noise or find money. So I was hoping that you might be inclined to take some sort of action. I’ll break down a few easy ways you can help:

Advocacy:

Write your Congressperson and tell them of the importance of the National Writing Project. NCTE has an easy to use form.
Call your Congresspeople to follow up. Repeatedly. It’s okay. They work for us. Be polite.
Write publicly about your exposure to and experience with the work of the NWP or your desire to fund work like the NWP’s.
Help NWP teachers find venues to share their expertise and remind them to mention the NWP as they do so. Offer them conference and unconference sessions where they can write with your organization.
Write a #blog4nwp.
Borrow these easy tweets. Post them. Often.

Fundraising:

Make a donation to the NWP
Write your Congressperson, etc.
Investigate hiring your local Writing Project to do some inservice in your area. They work for reasonable rates and you’ll get a high quality, teacher-led and centered experience.
Ask the people you know that work for foundations and corporations if they’re aware of the awesomeness of the National Writing Project. Introduce them. Politely ask for support.
You know that uncle or cousin or whatever that you’ve not spoken to in forever who went to work for that person that is in charge of whatever it was? Drop them a note and let them know about the NWP.

I hope that you’re able to take one or more of these actions to help ensure that the National Writing Project remains a viable force for teaching, learning and writing into the 22nd Century. And hopefully longer. Writing doesn’t go out of style – it just keeps changing.

Writing matters. And the National Writing Project does, too.

All the best to you.

Bud

I’m emailing this to pretty much everyone I’ve ever known. I’m posting it here and everywhere else I can because I don’t yet have everyone’s email address. It’s a big world. Feel free to share this with whomever you’d like. I’d consider it a favor if you would. [↩]
You can read more about the history of the NWP in James Gray’s memoir about its founding, Teachers at the Center. I’m reading it right now – and it’s quite useful. [↩]

An Open Letter to Congressman Cory Gardner – Restore Funding for the National Writing Project

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Dear Representative Gardner:

We’ve not yet met, although I’ve attempted to introduce myself to you several times via Twitter. My name’s Bud Hunt, and you represent me in the House of Representatives. I live in Fort Collins and am proud to share the state of Colorado with you. While I didn’t vote for you, I think you’re a smart guy who has promise.

That said, we need to talk.

See, sir, you’re really, fired up about eliminating waste right now. And that’s good. I’m not a fan of wastefulness in government or anywhere else. The thing is, sir, I don’t believe that you understand some of what you’re cutting.

I get it. You’re new. And want to have a meaningful impact in Congress. And two years, well that’s just not a lot of time. So you’ve got to strike fast and hard and you’re coming out strong for stopping “reckless” spending. Good on you.

But you, and many of your colleagues in the House, seem to believe that the National Writing Project is wasteful and reckless spending. For that matter, you also voted to eliminate funding for National Public Radio. Somehow, you’ve decided that those two programs are “wasteful and reckless.” And, Representative Gardner, that’s just not the case.

The National Writing Project has been making a powerful difference for students and teachers for over thirty years. For twenty of those years, the federal government has provided funding to support the important work of helping to ensure that thoughtful teaching and learning of writing is happening in our schools. many of my colleagues have been writing about the work of the NWP in light of the possibility that federal funding will cease and the work of the organization will radically change, if not outright end. You might want to take a minute and read some of the stories. They’ll make you a believer, I suspect.

If those don’t do the trick for you, then perhaps you can just skim the research on the NWP. I’ll give you a one sentence summary – the NWP works. For students. For teachers. It makes a positive difference in American education. Or it did. Until you helped to end its federal funding.

The thing is, Congressman, you pulled the plug on a thoughtful and long term investment in education. Killing an investment that is bearing good fruit is wasteful, sir. Maintaining that investment is prudent. Wise, even.

You, sir, know the importance of writing. You write lots. I recently read an editorial that you published on your Congressional website. In it, you wrote that

a vote against the CR is a vote against cutting wasteful government spending. It’s as simple – and as important – as that.

Excuse me, sir. But it’s not that simple. In your haste to make a difference and rein in “waste,” you’re hurting American students and American education. That’s not acceptable. I’d appreciate it if you’d pay better attention to what you’re doing.

Recently, on my website, I wrote:

I want to live in a country that honors the important work of teaching and learning. I want to live in a country where thoughtfulness about how we teach and learn is an essential piece of that work. I want a government that understands that you can use a little bit of money to make an awful lot of difference. Children who can read and write well are a precious national resource. Groups like the National Writing Project, groups that so thoughtfully help children and teachers to become better writers, deserve federal support.

So, yeah, I support the National Writing Project. I believe in teachers teaching teachers to make a difference for students. You?

Don’t you believe that modest investments in programs that make a positive impact on our children and schools are investments worth maintaining?

I suspect that you believe in American teachers and American students. I suspect that you believe that a strong education is essential to making sure that we have a strong economic foundation for our future. I know that you value writing and its place in students’ learning.

But your vote, and your rhetoric, is anything but simple. It’s wrong of you to suggest that spending federal dollars, dollars matched 100 percent by local matches in each of the 200 sites of the National Writing Project, is wasteful, when those dollars make a significant impact on children. Those dollars, sir, keep good teachers teaching at a time when half of our teachers don’t last beyond five years in the classroom. Those dollars, sir, help children realize their potential as writers and their teachers to realize their potential to have an impact beyond their own classrooms.

That wasn’t wasteful, Congressman. But you either didn’t notice, or weren’t willing to look.

I hope that you erred, sir. And I hope that you’ll stand with others to restore funding for the National Writing Project for the 2011 fiscal year and beyond. I look forward to your public commitment to the work of the National Writing Project and programs like it that responsibly serve as good stewards of one of our most precious natural resources – our children.

I’d be honored to introduce you to children and teachers in our neck of the woods who have been directly impacted by the work of the National Writing Project and our local affiliate, the Colorado State University Writing Project. When you meet with them, you’ll see the value that the work has.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll write with us, and we can overlook your error. We all make mistakes, Congressman. I’m willing to overlook this one, so long as you’re willing to correct it.

I look forward to that, Congressman. Soon.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss the work of the National Writing Project further. I look forward to the opportunity. And I look forward to your response.

All the best,

Bud

Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Because American schools are places of democracy, where we model for our children the best of what we can be. And when we disagree, we sit at the table together and work through the issues. That’s what grownups do. That’s why.

I do not belong to my association, as I am not eligible for membership. But I believe that everyone should have a seat at the table. When we leave people out, that’s not democracy.

Yes, there are plenty of bad examples of those in management and union alike who act poorly. But we don’t outlaw politicians when we don’t like their actions. And we haven’t eliminated corporations from the nation because of a few bad seeds.

So we shouldn’t eliminate the voices of working folks, either. At our best, we’re all pretty darn good. And we should always be trying to be our best. That said, there are checks and balances built into our government for a reason. We’re all better together.¹

There are lots of folks sharing their thoughts on unions today. You might want to check them out. [↩]

Still Nothing New Under the Sun. We Pretend Otherwise.

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Bud Hunt

It’s funny.¹

I’ve been working with some folks to write about the centennial of English Journal, which is this year. One hundred years of writing about teaching and learning language arts. We’ve been focusing on the way that technology has been addressed in past issues of EJ, looking back at articles from the last one hundred years and exploring past brushes of technology and pedagogy. It’s been a fascinating trip back in time.

My hunch going into this work is that we would find many, many similarities between the issues of yesterday and today. I expected that we would always see that the transformational technology was right around the corner, and that things would be better if only we would adopt it. ²

What I also expected, but have been both inspired and disappointed by, is that so many wise teachers from our past saw what we really needed to focus on. They saw that it wasn’t the technology, but the purposes that we put it to, that were what count and what matters in teaching and learning. And their words were praised.

And then forgotten.

And now many of my contemporaries make the same great arguments. Arguments that have been made before. Here’s one:

The tragic lack, as I see the present social order, is that of understanding and intelligent sympathy. Our ignorance makes us indifferent and cruel. We are preoccupied with ourselves.

Sounds like a critique of today, doesn’t it? But it’s not. These words are 78 years old.

Further on in the same piece:

If English instruction can help in the substitution of creative effort for scheming greed, if it can substitute social co-operation for selfish individualism, if it can help in the development of men and women sensitive to human suffering and bent on furthering human happiness – in a word, if it can make beauty a dominant factor in contemporary life – the aim not only of English instruction but of all education will have been accomplished.³

Right then, and right now.

As I think about the challenges of today, and the arguments that are and aren’t occurring in schools and about schooling in these United States, I wonder why we forget these voices that have come before. I worry that they may have figured out much of what we needed to know then and need to do now. But we moved on⁴ without them.

So why aren’t we doing it? What’s holding us back? Will we do things differently, or will someone stumble across our words a hundred years down the road and wonder similar things?

It’s enough to make me mad.⁵

Or kind of sad. [↩]
Be it microfiche, radio, television, word processors, computers, or even typewriters. All are represented as the next great thing in the articles I’ve read. [↩]
Stella S. Center, Past-President, National Council of Teachers of English, from her Presidential Address, “The Responsibility of Teachers of English in Contemporary American Life.” November 24th, 1932. Published in The English Journal, Volume 22, Number 2, February, 1933. (pp.97-108) [↩]
Perhaps not forward, but on. [↩]
But we know what to do with the mad that we feel, don’t we? [↩]

There’s No One Coming. That’s Okay. A #blog4nwp

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Chad Sansing suggested that this weekend would be a good weekend to #blog4nwp, to tell the stories of the work of the National Writing Project and its 200 plus network sites. Okay. Here’s one of mine. You can read others in my writing project archive.

I never had the fortune to meet Jim Gray. But his fingers are all over my work as a professional educator. In 1974, he had this idea – this crazy, wonderful, delightfully simple idea – that perhaps teachers of writing should spend time taking about their teaching together. And perhaps, too, as teachers of writing, they should write themselves, and work together as writers, much as they would ask their students to do. Oh, and perhaps, after they spent time learning together, those same teachers might share their learning with other teachers in after school, before school and during school professional development.

Teachers, he knew, can make a difference. And they don’t need someone else, some “expert” from far away, to do all the heavy lifting. We can help each other to get better. We don’t need saving. Teachers can be agents for thoughtful change. Together.

Not a complicated idea. But I’ve been cribbing it my entire professional career. For good reason. That idea, originally the Bay Area Writing Project and later the National Writing Project, replicated again and again in university and school partnerships around the country, works. Well.

When I was an undergraduate at Colorado State University, Cindy O’Donnell-Allen came to be a professor there. She taught my adolescent literature course, a course where she asked me to read and write in the ways that I might later ask my student to read and write. She wrote with us when we wrote in class. I always liked that.

It was later, when she started the Colorado State University Writing Project, that I learned the story behind why she taught the way she did. And it was during the first summer institute of the CSUWP that I began to realize the kind of teacher I wanted to be. ¹

According to this recollection, Gray was a lover of people and of living. And that passion for life and people was the fire of his teaching. He made community. So does the National Writing Project. So do writers and writing and teachers of writing.

I’ve never met a more thoughtful group of people. Sometimes, it’s downright infuriating. I like to move. NWP teachers like to ask thoughtful questions. Thoughtful questions sometimes slow you down. But when you do eventually act, you act better because of the thoughtful inquiry that informs your action.

My participation in the National Writing Project is what led to the poetry course I taught for students who didn’t believe they had much to say. It led Antonio, the quietest student I’ve ever met, to say and share more of himself that anyone had ever seen. He made us laugh and cry through his poems, and we were never, ever the same.

It led to Paul and Raeven figuring out the point of what they wanted to argue because they had to write and write and write their way through their thinking. Repeatedly. And they were willing to do that because the NWP helped me to understand how to build a classroom environment where it was safe to start over again and again until we got it right.

It led to a class where five students and I explored the idea that blogs might be a place where we could write with and for the world. Their ideas about blogging have been published and republished and shared and reshared and mixed and remixed because the NWP gave me practical ways to respect my students as co-learners.

My participation in the National Writing Project led to the creation of CyberCamp. And the work of the Digital Learning Collaborative. And pretty much every other piece of work I’ve done as an educator that I am proud of has roots in the work of the NWP. In my work, I try to model that teachers have much to learn from each other and that we should always be doing the work that we ask of our students. Always. And, of course, ten minutes of focused writing now and then never, ever hurt.

I can tell you many more stories about the NWP’s influence on my work², but I think you get the idea.

Our federal government, I believe, wants to do right by children and by the country. But they don’t have a handle on what thoughtful teaching looks like. As I watch the Congress gut support for the NWP, along with NPR and other programs, I realize that, as I’ve heard again and again in writing project conversations here, there and everywhere, there’s no one coming to save us. There is no Superman waiting to swoop in and set things right.

It’s up to us to do so. We. Right here. Right now. And you know what?

We are enough.

Teachers can teach teachers, and politicians and anyone else who needs some learning.

That’s the lesson of the National Writing Project, and that’s what I remember and will focus on as I head back to the telephone and the keyboard later tonight to remind my elected representatives of the importance of thoughtful teaching and learning infrastructure in our great nation.

I want to live in a country that honors the important work of teaching and learning. I want to live in a country where thoughtfulness about how we teach and learn is an essential piece of that work. I want a government that understands that you can use a little bit of money to make an awful lot of difference. Children who can read and write well are a precious national resource. Groups like the National Writing Project, groups that so thoughtfully help children and teachers to become better writers, deserve federal support.

So, yeah, I support the National Writing Project. I believe in teachers teaching teachers to make a difference for students. You?

Actually, that’s not quite true – I knew that I would be a teacher of writing who wrote alongside his students. I just didn’t realize how truly exceptional that actually was. The NWP is an exceptional group of teachers. And the door’s always open for others to join the conversation. [↩]
And I’d be happy to if you ask me to. [↩]

Bud the Teacher

Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning

Category Archives: Current Affairs