Let’s tackle the last one first.  I didn’t say that I’m unsympathetic to the idea that more writing would happen if there was less grading to do.  Certainly, one reason that writing isn’t happening enough in classrooms now is that there’s a perception that every piece written must be “marked” or “graded” or “bled upon” by a teacher.  That’s completely false and a terrible idea. #

What our students need isn’t so many end comments or suggestions for grammatical or technical correction, but they need to be responded to as writers by readers who are reading their work.  Peter Elbow says this far smarter than I ever could, but we teachers should be doing less evaluating and more responding. #

So, yes.  Teachers are taking too long with papers.  The answer isn’t to stop reading them. It’s to read them differently.  Or to have more teachers reading fewer students’ writing.  And we don’t need to read everything that a student writes.  We certainly don’t need to grade everything a student writes. #

Where I think this gets messy is, as evidenced by Justin’s comment, is the notion that students need more grading from us in order to get better as writers.  They do not.  They need for we teachers to write with them, and to create cultures of inquiry and reflection rather than regurgitation in our classrooms.  They need to be treated as apprentice writers and brought up accordingly. #

Robotic graders are for people too busy to read the work our students are investing in.  That’s not fair to our students. #

Now, to clarify.  I’ve ben in classrooms where existing writing assessment software has been used, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve seen.  My most recent experience with a writing assessment tool was in a middle school classroom in my school district, where a gifted teacher was using the tool as a starting place for her writing courses.  The software did free her up to be in conversation with her students about their writing.  That was just the right way for her and the class to be – the students drafting, the teacher conversing and reading and being with her students. #

The students wrote more and revised more.  In talking with them, they felt a connection to their teacher and that she was concerned for them as writers.  The software was a scaffold, and a place to start. #

I was okay with that.  More than okay.  The teacher made the classroom shine.  The software augmented the teacher.  She could’ve run a similar, maybe not as prolific, writing workshop with her students using only paper and pencil. #

And she read what they wrote.  And encouraged them to share their writing with each other. #

Writing for a machine to read all the time, though, is not really writing.  It’s pretending.  It’s make believe.  And not the good and playful kind.  It’s faking it when there’s not an other someone reading at least some of the work.  We want our students to write well not because they’ll need to do so in some far off future job.  We want them to write well because they have something important to say to the world right now. #

So let me clarify further.  I get how the computers do the “reading” that they do¹.  And I won’t completely knock it.  It’s handy if you need to score a bunch of tests in a hurry. And that’s one kind of writing – writing as proof of knowing.  But it’s writing that assumes unimportance. #

And it’s writing that suggests that the students could build their own robot essay writers to write their essays for them.  In fact, that’s what an awful lot of student “cheating” cases are – they’re crowdsourcing their homework.  Some students do that out of malicious intent.  Others out of ignorance.  But too many students fake their way through essays out of boredom, and out of the knowledge that the teacher’ll be in a hurry and probably not notice. #

You’ve got to notice what your students are doing.  And you’re going to miss some things.  But you can’t miss all of them.  Maybe even most. #

I don’t think a machine grading writing is the end-all of everything I hold dear.  I’m sympathetic to the argument that our students need to write more and perhaps the machines will encourage that.  But the fervor with which I suspect machine grading of writing will be adopted suggests the real problem – we don’t actually want to read and write with our students.  We want to do reading and writing to them.  And that’s wrong. #

1. By the way, Justin’s series on automated essay grading is worth your time if you want to understand the processes and processing involved.

#

photo: Zaid Al Balushi

#

I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop at this year’s ITSC event in Portland that feels to me like an important shift in my work.  The session, which I wrote a description of in a hurry several months ago, but knew could be important, was an attempt to capture some of my thinking about the use of play to build culture.  I’m calling it “Play is Hard Work.”  Here’s how I described it when I hastily wrote that description: #

Play should be the cornerstone of much of what we do with technology for teaching and learning. Heck, play should comprise a considerable chunk of all of our learning time. But what does play look like in a digital environment? How can we create playful spaces around serious topics? And are play and fun the same things?
In this session, we’ll privilege habits over tools and explore play and playfulness with whatever gadgets, gizmos and whatnots we have in our classrooms. #

The dictionary helped.  Some.  Many online dictionaries have more than twenty different definitions of play, but this one, from the Definr definition, is most certainly the closest to what I was trying to get at: #

#

  #

Play, then, is finding freedom in the face of constraint.  Yes.  That’s getting towards the essence of what I find important in the term¹. #

Those definitions helped, but they weren’t enough.  I wanted to help folks have some experiences like the ones that we are having every week in our school district IT department – but I also wanted to connect what I saw/see happening in that culture to what I want to see happening in school culture in general.  I’d like folks to be more playful in most areas of their work and not work.  I’d like to play more as a parent, as a teacher, as a person. #

And I think other people should be more playful, too. #

But I don’t mean that everything is “fun.”  I think assuming that play must be fun is a bad, and likely dangerous, assumption.  I think you can play with really serious ideas and concepts.  I think you can play with hurt, in an attempt to restore community.  And it took months of reading and wondering and asking for me to find the language I needed to structure the workshop – I needed Michelle to hand me a book that has been her go to for a long time on the subject².  Thankfully, she did. #

I needed some of the language of improv.  My friend Zac has been living this language for a while in his teaching and his theater work, but I didn’t see it until I really started to look. #

At school, or at least at teacher school, I remember that many folks told me that it was essential to build community in my classroom.  But it was always described in such a way that the idea was that you built it, and then you moved on to whatever it was you really wanted to do with your class – teach them English, or science, or whatever. #

I’m more and more certain that you’re never actually done building community.  Community and culture are not just peripheral to teaching and learning – they’re how the teaching and the learning actually happen.  Some call this rhizomatic learning, or connectivism, but whatever you call it, teaching and learning are about building community.  Community of people, of ideas, of experience and activity.  Icky-feeling places, places we’d rather not be, don’t tend to be spaces where much learning happens³.  Maslow comes to mind – we can’t learn until we’re safe.  Playful cultures have to be safe cultures.  And safe cultures can be playful ones. #

And the cultures and communities that you build around classroom cultures matter, too.  That’s something that I’ve been learning as a participant observer in my school district’s IT department.  Over the last two years, we’ve been going through a major culture shift, masterfully facilitated by my boss, Joe McBreen. #

He came to a place where everyone worked really hard and mostly alone.⁴  He recognized that we needed to know each other to be better at our work. #

Through a process of huddles, short weekly meetings centered on us as people and learners together, and not on our work, and creating learning opportunities for our department to be and to learn together, he began to shape our culture into more than it was, and to create for us a need to do our work together.  We are more playful as a unit, and it’s showing it the work we are doing elsewhere. #

That story, and how I tried to create something similar in a room full of strangers, and why that matters, are the subjects of future posts in this series. #

1. Oddly, other definitions contradict that one that I find so essential.  And others still add flavor to the word.  It’s amazing, or troubling, that such a small word has so much baggage.
2. You should buy the book.  It’s a quick read – I read it in an hour – but it gave me the language I needed to talk about play and playfulness.
3. Of course, I think I’ve known this for a long time, but I’m at a place where I’m seeing implications beyond classrooms, and it’s never a bad idea to try to sketch this stuff out.
4. I don’t say this to knock the department as it was – it was good in lots of ways.  There was room to grow, though, which is one reason I went there almost five years ago now.

#

2.  I’m honored to be a participant/facilitator for a session at this conference.  It’s called “Tapping into the Mutiplicity of Composition” and is a panel featuring several teachers who are making interesting things with students in the service of teaching writing and composition.  That should be a fascinating conversation. And, of course, we’ll be writing together.  Never a bad thing to do. #

To support the conversation, we’ve built a couple of Pinterest boards as ways of creating galleries that show some of the texts that students are making in the panelists’ classrooms.  A second board focuses on the testimonies of the panelists as a way of providing some background that might not surface during our conversations.  The agenda for that session is taking shape and will be finally finalized soon.  At a time when so much of the “interesting learning” that is taking place for students is taking place beyond the classroom, and sometimes in spite of it, I wonder about the role of schools moving forward into new learning landscapes.  I hope that schools see the potential in other ways of learning that haven’t been privileged in our classrooms.  I wonder how to bring the fringe learning into those spaces.  I know that the National Writing Project has a role to play in these conversations². #

3.  I’m struggling to write about some of my adventures in building cultures of play and love both in my school district as well as in my classroom.  I hope to get chunks of that thinking out here on the blog over the next few days.  My lens for this conference is basically “How do we promote cultures of learning and playfulness and care and concern for each other?”  Important. #

1. Which isn’t to say that I don’t approach teaching as a learning opportunity – but that sometimes the logistics of facilitation interfere with my ability to process what I’m learning as it’s happening.
2. Disclosure – the NWP has supported my attendance at this event.  I’m grateful for that.

#

The DLC will be embedding a teacher research group within the Innovation Academy and its planning in order to see if the work they’re doing, and that students and district staff are enthusiastic about, has something to teach us about how we can make positive change in the classroom. #

During the meeting, two statements really caught my ear and got me thinking about the work ahead. #

The first was a statement, made during the meeting and repeated by several folks in the conversation, that the goal of Innovation Academy was to create an environment that didn’t feel anything like school.  Both our district staff and our business partners felt this was important.  I find that both makes sense to me and is, well, rather odd.  That we’ve a shared understanding of school as something that isn’t conducive to learning is troubling, but I get where they’re coming from. #

The other thing that caught my ear was a mention, in passing, by one of the IBM partners that during last year’s camp, he noticed that the younger students involved in the camp, Kindergarteners, were plenty able to think in creative and nontraditional ways.  That’s not quite how he said it, though.  He actually said that sometimes, the youngest students were the best able to be engaged in the work of the camp². #

If, of course, we are trying to build learning experiences that are not at all like school, then it makes sense that our least schooled students would be the best at them.  Of course, it’s also possible that the Kindergartners at Camp Innovation are students who’ve not yet had their imaginations stamped out by school. #

I’m eager to begin the observational work of documenting what makes the Innovation Academy exciting and engaging for students and staff.  And also I’m looking forward to teacher researchers teasing out if they can fiddle with their classrooms in ways that make school less school-y. #

There is something worth going after in the space between the school-y and the not so school-y.  I hope it’s a piece of the possible future of public schools. #

  #

1. Last year, the project was called Camp Innovation.  Names change.  I like the camp metaphor, but it wasn’t my call.
2. And now academy.

#

Actually, that’s not true. #

Her “problem” is that she has several really good and interesting areas where she might turn her attention and skills as a teacher researcher, but all of them are appealing to her.  She talked through three ideas that sounded fairly fleshed out and interesting, and two or three more that might workout, but are less developed.  I wanted her to tackle all of them.  And I think she did, too.  But she was stuck because, really, she could ultimately only spend the time and energy on one of them. #

I think she mostly needed to say that out loud, and to have me reinforce it.  I look forward to the one she picks. #

It came up in the conversation that she’d noticed that I was stuck lately in my own writing and exploration, as you might have noticed, too, Dear Reader.  It’s been rather quiet here on the blog, and all the other spaces where I’m writing in public lately.  It’s been rather quiet in the spaces where I write for just me, too. #

This fall’s been a busy one, and I’ve had a pretty full plate.  But that’s not really why I’ve been quiet.  See, I’ve been stuck, too. #

Maybe I’ve been distracted by all stuff I’ve been doing to see what it is that was worth doing, or maybe it’s that I’m just tired.  Or maybe it’s just that time of year for me, a time of quiet. #

Or maybe, on my worst days perhaps certainly, I’m losing my way.  Maybe I’m losing hope.  But I try to work through that.  Being without hope, in the long term, isn’t a productive place to be. #

I gave that teacher a little suggestion as we ended our conversation yesterday, and I’m thinking I might take my own advice.  She was having trouble getting started because she didn’t know what project to choose.  I’m stuck because I don’t know where I want to go next, either.  What I suggested to her was that perhaps she might start writing her way through her topics and questions, and that, along the way, she might discover what it was that was worth her doing and seeing through.  I know that’s helped me in the past, and, in fact, is pretty much why I write in spaces like this. #

She responded that she might not know who’d want to read about that, or if what she’d be writing about would be obvious to everyone else¹. #

That pushed me to one more suggestion.  I’m certainly interested in what she’s up to, and I’d like to hear from her when she thinks she’s something to say.  So, I told her, write to me.  Just do it in public.  She’s going to try. #

And that helped.  Both her and me.   I think. #

I forgot for a while.  One of the ways that I’ve always gotten myself unstuck is to try to write with one person in mind.  Writing for one person is better than writing for a universe of people.  Writing for one person might make sense.²
So I’m writing today for just one or two people that might be interested in this update.  And I’m going to try to come to the blog for a while with one or two people in mind and see where that gets me. #

Because, for so many reasons,  I can’t stay stuck for long.  Just can’t.  So maybe this will help. #

It’s certainly worth a try. #

1. In her case, as in most cases, that’s certainly not true. She has things to say that no one else can.  I bet you do, too.
2. When I wrote music, something I wish I were doing more of, and have been thinking about starting again lately, I found that the best songs I had within me were written in the second person. Maybe there’s something to that here, or at least right now.  Or maybe this is a self-indulgent post.  For the moment, to get unstuck, I’m quite content whichever it happens to be.

#

Or, as least, it seems to be. #

But it’s a different sort of course than the ones I’ve been teaching in computer labs and hotel ballrooms and virtual meeting rooms and, even on occasion, classrooms these last few years.  Folks come if they want to.  When they want to.  For the reasons they want to.  Or they don’t.  The learning’s mostly in the hands of the learner.  Or it isn’t. #

And I like it.  With some minor concerns. #

To begin with, the conversations spread around the course are fascinating and insightful. I’m learning a great deal from participants about how they value writing and what they do in their classrooms as writers and teachers of writing.  I’m also learning more about the perceptions versus the realities of the Common Core State Standards.  Lots is already being done “because the standards say so” when, in fact, they do not¹. #

But this course carries no credit.  Or sticks.  Or carrots.  The course itself is the thing that either brings folks, or sends them seeking something more in terms of a credential or an attempt at recertification credit.  I’ve joked in the evening live sessions² that I’ll offer “extra credit” for tasks completed.  While I’ve long believed that the exploration of interesting ideas and the creation of an environment designed to help with that exploration and some making of meaning is the job of a teacher, I’m finding that P2PU offers a fascinating space in which to operate.  It’s a space with ethos but little structure.  I’m building as I go.  And wondering, from time to time, if this course meets my general metric for success in all that I do as a teacher – is it useful?  Are people getting what they need from the course? #

So how does one evaluate the effectiveness of such a space, a course with objectives but no requirement for participation?  Well, the squeaky wheel principle, in an online space, is often what gets attention.  Which is problematic in an online space when most of the course participants, participants in name only, are not making the textual equivalent of noise in an online space – they’re not writing in spaces where we can see them. #

Lurking carries no proof.  To know someone’s on the other end of an Internet connection, they’ve got to do something.  Make some noise.  Publish a post.  Write a comment.  Something.³ #

Last night, via Twitter, I said that quiet, in an online space, isn’t proof of anything.  Someone might be listening/reading intently, and taking good notes, or they might have wandered away to something else.  So I’ve sent out some mid-course feedback surveys this week to see what a large percentage of quiet classmates are up to.  Of course, there again, if folks don’t respond, I don’t know that they’re not paying attention.  I just know they’re not writing back. #

I’ve more to say about agency, learning, and why I like the P2PU model, but I’ll save it for a future post. #

How do you track lurking?  Listening?  Do you need to? #

  #

1. That’s one of many reasons I wanted our first course text to be the standards themselves.
2. You’re welcome to join in on those.  Check the syllabus for more information and archives of past sessions.
3. Maybe, next to the “like” button, or the “+1″ there should be a “lurk” button.  Or something.

#

It’s an attempt to create an open infrastructure for badges around the Web. I like the technical pieces that allow anyone to offer any badge to anyone else in a consistent way. It makes sense to build tools that work for everybody, and that are open. I like that. #

And I thought I was something I’d want to explore later, as I’m always looking for ways to help make the professional development I’m doing to make sense to other people. Maybe, I thought, a badge could help¹. I put that idea on a side burner. #

Then yesterday happened, and I’m going to have to pay a great deal of attention to the project. In a hurry. #

That’s because this year’s Digital Media & Learning Competition is all about the badges. #

It was fascinating to listen to the announcement² and to follow along as the tweets came rolling in. It was, and is, also fascinating to consider the possibilities opened up through the use of badges to build portfolios of experiences and skillsets, to show the world what students, of all ages, can learn and do. #

Except. Hang on a second. #

I’m writing this post when I should be working on my thesis. The thesis is the last thing I’ve got to do in order to earn my badge Master’s degree in English Education. But it seems like there’s an awful lot of important questions wrapped inside assumptions in DML’s competition announcement. Felt right to at least try to get them down. #

The Twitter stream of commentary, a piece of which was captured earlier by Audrey, was chock full o’ questions and concerns. Alex and plenty of other folks have all written thoughtfully about the announcement. It was clear to me, as I watched the announcement follow up panel, that the group, as a whole, didn’t have a consistent idea about what badges were/are/for/might do. I heard each of these possibilities: #

Badges as credentialing #

Badges, I heard, might be used as a way of denoting that someone has a particular skillset in a field in which there might not be a current credentialling method. Makes sense, and is the most straight forward use of a badge. Think Boy Scouts. Girl Scouts. Medal of Honor. #

Badges as awarding credit #

This one seems mostly similar to the previous function of credentialling, but it’s not. Quite. Earning a badge that counts as credit would require that a credit-granting institution³ would accept the badge in lieu of another requirement. Put enough badges together, and you get a really advanced badge. Or a diploma. Or a degree. So, not only can you do something in the eyes of an institution, but will another institution believe them and let you take a pass on their test of competency? #

Badges as a way of honoring non-school learning #

I’ve written before about how I find some of the most interesting learning taking place on the edge of school and home, in semi-school spaces. After school clubs. Fringe projects. And I want that learning to “count,” in the sense that I don’t think that teachers should have to fight so hard for those types of learning experiences. But I wonder if the best way to honor that learning is to make sure it stays out of school. If, as I heard a panelist say during the announcement, school is so ineffective and terrible at learning, then shouldn’t we try to fix school? Might we want to move some of the good semi-school learning into the classroom?⁴ #

If badges are an attempt to rebuild school, well, that might be a fascinating idea. Or a terrible one. #

Badges as motivation #

Students will be more inclined to go after a particular type of learning, I heard, if there were a motivator to push or pull the student along.⁵ That’s a dangerous reason to even consider a badge, I think, as I know enough about motivation to know that, as soon as the badges go away, the learning stops. Not good. Uh uh. Don’t pursue this one. #

Badges as assessment #

Actually, the badges wouldn’t be the assessments – just proof of their successful completion. And that’s where this starts to get tricky for me. For one thing, I don’t think enough folks understand that a badge involves assessment of one sort or another. And it’s the assessments and experiences that we want to fiddle with in school. #

Badges as curriculum design #

If badges can count as far as credit in traditional schools and universities, then badge program designers are now curriculum designers. What I didn’t hear at the announcement, but hope to hear about soon, is how folks might think about the Common Core SS, the current consortia developing the next generation of school assessments, and their thinking about badges. #

Those were the purposes I heard in the time I was listening. And that’s complex stuff. #

Other folks, I’m sure, who are smarter and more articulate than I am, will soon start talking about this work and what it means for power relationships between traditional schooling and other institutions.⁶ But what I’m not hearing people talk about, or suggest that they understand, is what it is that it means to “count.” I mean count in two senses of the word – both the mathematical meaning of seeing how many of something that you have, but also the way a student asks when they’re handed an assignment – will this count? Does it matter? #

And, at school, we’ve done a bad thing by tying “counting” or “mattering” to “grading.” #

If all badges do is fiddle with the object that students are taught to worship, rather than working to eliminate idol worship altogether, then there’s not much sense in exploring them. #

If badges transform all grades that matter into “pass/fail” situations, well, that might be something. To match what students can do with their academic credentials as measured by actual performance tasks would be a good thing⁷. #

But, if the DML competition encourages thinking and writing and exploration and action around ideas like the idea that any accountability system, or accreditation system, is ultimately a subjective system, made by people, however we design it, then I say, let’s rock. But let’s do so carefully. #

Badges are not magical. They do not cure cancer. They are unable to stop large (or small) scale forest fires. Badges, particularly digital ones, cannot be eaten. The digital kind can’t even be burned for fuel. Badges do not make children smarter, or hard work less difficult. #

But they’re certainly worth talking about, if they might lead to productive change. And, if they’re going to make a grand entrance in teaching and learning, at school and in the community, then I hope to goodness that teachers are paying attention. #

1. Give us a way to show scope and sequence, or perhaps a “brand” for our teachers in a way that would be postiive. I wasn’t sure, and still am not.
2. I only caught the second half, but I think that was the really fascinating bit.
3. school, university, etc.
4. Or, can that learning only happen on the fringes? If that’s the case, then I want more fringe.
5. Cathy explains that idea further here, in point four of a definition of badges.
6. As I was about to post this, I ran across this post from Alex. And while I don’t have a place to stick this quotation properly in the text, I wanted to save it and share it with you, so here it is: What I believe we must resist is mistaking real motivation and meaningful learning for increasing our value as a human commodity in the marketplace. I’m fairly sure that education doesn’t make us “better” humans. I don’t even think learning can make us “more” human (whatever that might be), though it could expand our experience in interesting ways. The one thing we have to prevent is schooling making us feelless human.
7. Parents and plenty of other people would have trouble, for a time, as ranking their children to other people’s children might be more difficult, but that would pass.

#

We read a sample teacher research study that Michelle and I are fond of.  I like the study, a short piece on a teacher wondering about the value of a pullout literacy program in her school, because it emphasizes three things I think are essential to consider, and often re-consider, when ot comes to teacher inquiry specifically and qualitative research generally: #

1. Teacher research is an opportunity to dig into the “I wonders” and the “what ifs” that come up from time to time in your classroom.  But it’s not the same as “what good teachers do every day.”  It’s more intentional and purposeful than that.  And that’s a good thing.
2. Teacher research is contextual.  It comes from you, the researcher.  The classroom you teach in, the students you know, the wonderings you have.  That works two ways – both the questions and your answers to them are contextual.
3. Teacher research involves “data” that doesn’t show up in a quantitive study.  Stuff that doesn’t count because it can’t be counted.  Or, at least, not as easily.  And what matters, or at least what should, when it comes to measurement and paying attention is not either/or but yes and.  Qualitative and quantitative measures are friends.  Honest¹ .

Folks make statements, when we start to fiddle with traditional notions of “data,”² about their stats professors, or n values, or other things that suggest that Math Is THE Way of Knowing The Universe. #

While I find lots to like in science and math, it’s not the only way to go after what’s right and good and true in the world. #

Teachers, of all people, should have a good and always developing sense of this: they should know and understand what it means to measure, and how measurement affects the thing you’re measuring, and how there are ways other than percentages and standard deviations to explore vital areas of life and living and learning. #

If you think that’s wrong, and that cold, hard numbers are the only way to Know Something, well, consider this - #

How do you know you love your spouse?  Your best friend?  Your children?  Your parents? #

Prove it. #

But you only get numbers.  I’ll wait here.  Take your time. #

1. As I write this, I’m in the middle of a mixed-methods study.  The two go nicely together.
2. And the air quotes make appearances usually at this point in the conversation.

#

The DLC, if you didn’t know, is a two-year professional development program we’re in our third year of developing.  Year one is a year for personal and professional learning.  Year two, which we’ll kickoff later this month for a different cohort, is a year of teacher inquiry into what happens for students when we use technology in the classroom. #

Last night, we attempted, with our teacher team leaders, to set the culture for what it means to learn as teachers in community.  We reviewed some of our habits – making sure we have a plan for all of our monthly team meetings, how we use Google Docs to share those plans and to share notes we take when and as we meet, and making sure that we’re separating time for learning¹ from time for collaboration and sharing.   And, yes, that’s messy.  Messy is okay. #

But we spent the bulk of our time last night reading and thinking and talking to each other about a couple of pieces, written by Will Richardson, that explore connected and passion-based learning not just for students, but for teachers, too. #

That led to some good conversation.  I heard Kelly, a first grade teacher, when she asked about how we help connect students to passions that they might not realize they have, and how we can encourage students to explore areas of themselves and the world when they might not have any knowledge about, well, much of anything.  I heard Rebekah, a high school math teacher, when she said that somewhere, students have learned that it’s cool to not like math. #

I hope that folks heard me when I invoked Mr. Rogers, and his definition of teaching, the idea that what teachers do is that they love something, and they love it in front of their students.  Passion, indeed. #

I heard Mollie when she said that it was important for teachers and students to follow their passions, and that, in a time of scripts and pacing, we’d do well to make sure that we’re injecting student interests and differences into our work. #

I heard others, too.  It was a fine culture setting conversation. #

We also talked about the power of reflective writing, and took some time to write together, as we will do during all of our meetings.  While I cannot share their writing with you just now, know that we’ll be hearing more from these teacher leaders and their teams as they begin to dig into their learning this year. #

It was a fine start. #

1. Sometimes, this is training.  Other times, it’s time for reading and conversation.  There are other things this learning might look like, too.  Learning is complicated.

#