Why Collaboration Matters: A Call to Action (Reflections on the 6 Cs - Part Two)

Last September, OESIS launched its XP Pathways initiative to help educators apply ideas from OESIS network resources to their classrooms. OESIS Network Leaders are continuing to work on curating content by selecting videos & resources that can aid the OESIS user in learning more about specific competencies, such as Critical Thinking, or in this case, Collaboration. With this in mind, I wanted to share a blog post I published on the OESIS website about the value of collaboration. What follows is a Call to Collaborate (if you don't have time to read, at least skip to the bottom for the call to action).

Why Collaboration in Schools is so Important​

1. Knowledge is a collaborative enterprise
Descartes once offered the analogy of the architect to make the case that an individualist enterprise yields better results than working on a project collectively (Discourse on Method, Part Two). It was a radical notion that made perfect sense in a world where few were educated, but I wonder if today’s scientists would agree, considering that most advancements are the result of a community of engaged thinkers and learners working together (which is probably true of contemporary architecture as well). Although we could characterize the last century of education as a Cartesian one (Individualism over Collectivism; Reason over Emotion; Mind over Body), perhaps we’ve come full circle on how we value collaborative enterprises. We know we need to prepare learners for a world that is connected, where experts are abundant and have much to share with each other, and students need the skills and experiences necessary to thrive in such collaborative environments, and this is true for teachers as well.

2. Collaboration inspires lifelong learning
I entered my first classroom as an independent school instructor 14 years ago. Fresh out of graduate school, my eagerness was obvious: I couldn’t wait to spread my love for literature, and surely my passion would be contagious, right? With a sense of Cartesian heroism, I selected my reading lists, prepared lectures & frameworks for class discussions (based on years of training in my content area), and proceeded to teach in the likeness of my graduate professors who helped shape in me a sense of individual competency and expertise. What was I thinking? As if secondary education is about the transmission of knowledge from expert to amateur (hint: it’s about so much more!). You might be able to guess what happened next: to put it mildly, my spirits were crestfallen. Why weren’t my students as fascinated as I was by this undeniably valuable content? Why were they so disinterested and passive? The content was fantastic, by the way, but my pedagogy was limited, to say the least.

Frankenstein Student Conference, 2017

Fast forward a few years, I started to understand more about student centered learning, realizing the importance of designing curriculum where skills were at the forefront. I attended a conference and heard Pat Bassett, NAIS President at the time, speak about the importance of the 6 Cs, and by this time, I had made a resolution: I was going to focus on the idea of making learning more collaborative in my classes. That was the ‘C’ I was going to focus on. My idea, however, was still a traditional one: I was going to host a paper conference for high school students from various campuses, which was less of an ongoing collaborative practice and more of an event that would serve as a wonderful memory for all involved. The real turning point for me was an email I received while preparing for this upcoming project. Joel Garza, Upper School English Chair at Greenhill School, suggested we have our students start collaborating right then (the conference was months away). The email startled me: How would we collaborate? I’m not very savvy with all this digital technology. But I realized something. My demands for students to collaborate meant they had to get out of their comfort zones, and that’s what Joel was demanding of me, meaning I had no choice. I had to say yes. Our classes blogged together and visited each other’s campuses. Students traded podcasts and answered each other’s inquiries, and they began to do so for reasons well beyond a single grade. It was transformative, but it only worked as well as it did because we as teachers were transparent about our collaborative efforts as well. Since then I have grown exponentially as a teacher, in ways beyond the single competency of collaboration. However, it was “the first C” that started it all. The call to collaborate got me out of my comfort zone, which was frightening, but because of this, I discovered the joys of being stretched by others to accomplish something that could never have been done by a single person. 

The inter-institutional paper conference was a huge success, by the way. In fact, it's become a tradition of sorts in the DFW area. This year marks our 7th iteration as The Hockaday School prepares to host students from around the area for the 2019 Sandra Cisneros Colloquium, this Wednesday, February 13th.

3. Modeling: Collaborative teaching leads to collaborative learning
When I first encouraged students to embrace the idea of collaborative group work, I usually concluded such endeavors feeling frustrated. Students always found a way to “divide the labor” and simply complete the minimum tasks required for his or her portion of the project. It wasn’t authentic, but more importantly, I wasn’t appreciating what they had to go through. When reflecting on our collaborative experiences, Joel Garza offered an insight that sometimes we gloss over too quickly when encouraging people to put themselves out there: “Standing in the way of successful collaboration, in my experience, is a tremendous amount of ungrounded fear and anxiety that we don’t even want to name” (“A Tale of Three Classrooms” K12 Online Conference 2014). It’s so true, and it’s what makes things so challenging. Teachers, like everyone else, fear the idea of failing publicly as well as the idea of not being in control. Collaboration, however, requires us to embrace these possible outcomes. When I began to model for students successful collaborative practices, not only did they begin to collaborate more authentically, I too became a more empathetic teacher. I knew what was being demanded of them, but more importantly I felt it as well.

Teaching methods model for students the kinds of behaviors and habits we want to see them practice. What does Cartesian individualism, for instance, model for students as a method for teaching, lesson preparation, etc.? One might suggest that it inspires students to be confident individuals as well. I would caution, however, that it could serve the opposite end, namely communicating to them that there is an individual expert in the room, thereby encouraging the learner to be a passive recipient of the expert’s construction of the content. This is the same passivity I confronted in my early years of teaching. To me such modeling runs contrary to the kind of skills we want to cultivate in students to prepare them as leaders in the collaborative communities of their future careers. Students need to see us collaborate with peers so that they understand we don’t have all the answers, so they realize that to be successful one must network with others and participate in a community of lifelong learners. This is how we make space for them to become individuals in our classrooms. I would argue that it is only by way of collaboration that we discover our confidence as individuals. The binaries are not exclusive.
​

A CALL TO COLLABORATE

For those who might be interested, I'm looking for teachers and students who want to collaborate with my classes. Currently, I teach 4 sections of 10th grade literature. From Feb. 20th to Mar. 8th, we'll be reading 4 dystopian short stories that confront the question of technology (either directly or more subtly):

1. E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (Feb. 20th-26th)
2. Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" (Feb. 25th-28th)
3. Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" (Feb. 27th-Mar. 4th)
4. Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match." (Mar. 4th-8th)

Go here to read more details about the unit, but the basic idea is to get students from different campuses to read the 4 stories collaboratively using Hypothes.is - a platform that lets readers annotate collectively any text that can be found online.

If interested, leave a comment or reach out to me via Twitter (@jcolley8) or email (jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org), and I'll send you a link to our hypothes.is reading group. I'd love to evolve this idea more, so I'm also open to suggestions. After all, for students to collaborate effectively and successfully, they need to see teachers do it as well, so email me and help me make this project even better.

Rethinking Class Participation using Hypothes.is Annotations - A Guest Post by Joel Garza

I called roll for the first time twenty-four years ago. For the past eleven years, I've taught high school English at Greenhill school in Addison. We're an independent school. Our learning management system is Canvas. We've got students who take Global Online Academy courses. Our students are tech-savvy. I'm not emailing you about tech. I'm emailing you about relationships, relationships that Hypothes.is, an online free annotation platform, helps me develop.

I entered teaching because of relationships. I wanted to honor several teachers that I knew—if I’m honest, my becoming a teacher was an act of discipleship. I wanted to continue the conversations that they had started with me that excited me. I wanted to spread that good news. 

The setting of these relationships was always very simple--most of the time we were in some shabby room.

But we were all looking at each other, we were all trying to figure out the same text, we were all trying to answer questions that had been asked for centuries. You know, Socratic seminar stuff. I love it. Those conversations, that format of learning taught me the value of daily engagement. I was taught that participation was necessary, not only to shape my understanding but also to shape my classmates’ understanding.

In every department where I studied and taught, daily engagement was worth a grade, usually a huge part of the grade.

Years later, I recognized that calling that part of the course “participation” might, in effect, create a bias against certain kids.

It's not that these kids don't have anything to say. It's just that they aren't at their most comfortable speaking up like that every day. Last trimester, I tried to find out how many students were like this. So I conducted an unofficial survey. I told students, “Introverts are energized by private solitary moments; extroverts are energized by public social moments. Which one are you?”

I discovered that there are a lot of students who are not energized by the Socratic seminar. There's a lot who would benefit sometimes from some other entrance to the conversation. Enter Hypothes.is.

By means of Hypothes.is, I've got another entrance for these students, and I've got another word besides “participation”, another way of evaluating them. I keep my antenna up for their “tenacity”—How are they grabbing hold of the material? Twitter hashtags, e-mails to the entire class, or in the case that I'm about to walk through for you here, Hypothes.is annotations.

So that's the first thing that I want you to know about Hypothes.is. It gives students an entrance to the material in a public, trackable, shareable way that benefits the entire room.

So in many cases, I would “prime the pump” of the discussion. I would post questions in advance about particular passages.

Within the first hour of posting these “discussion” questions, though, students responded—before class. They responded in great detail. They added their own questions. 

The next thing I want to share with you is the easy way that Hypothes.is user interface allows me to offer targeted feedback to individual students. Here's a student that in my old way of grading was below average with respect to participation. He was reluctant to speak up even when asked a direct question. By means of Hypothes.is, though, you can see he has probed each reading each day in a single unique way. Before Hypothes.is, I did not hear from him every day—with Hypothes.is, everybody did.

What this allowed me to do also was check to see the kind of annotations that he made. Very often this student would swoop into the reading, drop an annotation, and swoop back out. So I asked him, “For the next reading, please read not only the work, but jump in later so that you can see and read other annotations. I want you to make a comment on a classmate's annotation. I want you to get a conversation started.” 

So by means of Hypothes.is, I was able, first of all, to give this student an entrance, but I was also able to give him a way of engaging his classmates, not just the material.

Another student was very good at understanding the thematic importance of a particular passage.

What I had to ask her was, “Pretty please, ground your observation in a specific literary device next time. I want to make sure that you've got a hold of the stuff in terms specific to poetry, not just in terms specific to you personally.” 

This student had the opposite problem.

You know, she could slice and dice literary devices.  She had clearly been quizzed on them at her previous school. What I needed her to do was to move beyond merely pointing out the literary device to demonstrating how that literary device shaped meaning. So those are the two big takeaways that I had first of all.

Hyptohesi.is grants entrance to the material that a traditional classroom format sometimes does not. Also, Hypothes.is allows instructors to encourage students to take risks.

And they do. 

Please reach out to me if you have any questions, comments, or ideas for a collaboration! 

garzaj@greenhill.org
@joelrgarza

Reflections on OESIS Boston: Humanities without Textbooks & Bringing Poetry to the MakerSpace

Two weeks ago, I attended the OESIS conference in Boston, MA, and I’m still processing all the things I learned over such a short period of time. I had the privilege of sitting on two panels, one on online collaboration and another on student agency, as well as presenting with my colleague, Joel Garza, on some of our previous collaborative projects.

I wanted take a moment to share some notes and observations about a couple sessions I attended that relate to English instruction (Also, for more reflections on OESIS Boston, check out the article just published by Global Online Academy, The Power of Networks: 10 Ways Schools Are Tackling Innovation):

1. Humanities without the Narrative by Deborah Shaul from La Jolla Country Day School

Deborah’s session was about blending a US History curriculum with an American Literature class without using an anchor textbook for the course. When Deborah ditched the textbook, it freed her to approach the content in a less linear fashion, and instead, scope and sequencing were often shaped or influenced by the interests and choices of the students as they immersed themselves in a deeper, more interconnected investigation of American literature and history. As she stressed, by allowing to make more choices as to what primary documents they wanted to research, the teacher and the author of the textbook were no longer the “keeper of the keys” to the narrative. One thing I appreciated about Deborah’s session was her candidness about student and parent responses, which were not always positive. Doing away with the textbook created fear and anxiety for some. They weren’t always sure what to study or how to do so, but I think such push back always happens when we truly turn over agency to students in relation to their learning. Why do some students prefer having a textbook?

(a) It serves as a security blanket because the answers are explicitly provided

(b) Students don’t always trust their own answers nor those of their peers

(c) It’s easier to perform well on a test when one can memorize pre-packaged content

She surveyed her students, asking them how they prefer to learn, and Deborah was a little disappointed to see that many students still prefer lecture/power point formats. However, I think it’s important to step back and ask ourselves: are students conflating “getting good grades” with learning? Perhaps the survey results reflect that kind of confusion that one would expect from the average independent school learner whose main priority is his or her transcript.

If you have more questions, you can reach out to Deborah at @Dshaul3.

2. Discovering Poetry Through Maker-Space Projects by Amy Alsip from The Oakridge School

Amy shared with us a project she did where students made poetry as well as artifacts inspired by their literary creations in the context of a MakerSpace. One through-line I noticed that connects Amy’s project to Deborah’s curricular innovations was the role of student agency in each scenario. Students would enter the MakerSpace, and there were several stations/choices for poetry creation:

(a) Dice Roll haikus

(b) Using book spines to create poetry

(c) Using the name of paint samples to create poetry

(d) “Blackout poetry” using markers and a found text (like a newspaper)

(e) Using scrabble games to construct poetry

And there were a few more stations that escape me now…

Amy Alsip presenting her poetry/maker project at OESIS Boston

Students would then share their 20+ poetry creations with peers to get feedback. Once they had selected their favorite 3-5 poems, each poet would return to the MakerSpace to create an artifact inspired by the poem in question, and once again, they had many options:

(a) Coding

(b) Sowing

(c) 3D Printing

(d) Repurposing found materials

(e) Circuitry Boxes

(f) Legos

Again, I believe there were 1 or 2 more options that I cannot recall now

The whole project culminated in a poetry read-aloud night at the school for the community to attend. Of course, the students got to showcase their fabrications as well. As an English teacher, I like how a project like this reminds us that English classes have always been spaces for making.

If you have more questions, you can reach out to Amy at @amyalsip.

What Does a Flipped English Class Look Like? An Example Using Chaucer

Back when flipping classes became the newest trend in conversations about pedagogy, it always bugged me when people would say that "English teachers already flip their classes." Behind such statements the assumption, I think, was that because English students would get content at home (by reading a novel, for instance) it makes possible opportunities for active learning at school (an example being a lively classroom discussion perhaps). As an English instructor, I've always thought that such an assessment misses the point when it comes to "flipping".

The questions we should be asking when designing a flipped course are as follows:

1. What doesn't have to take place during class time (due to tech tools and connectivity)?

2. What should be taking place during class time (but usually doesn't due to time constraints)?

If reading and writing are the skills that dominate the focus of a given English class, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that those are the 2 things that should be taking place in class (even if they demand a lot of time). If discussions and what I call "setting up the book lectures" don't have to take place in the four walls of the classroom (due to technological resources), perhaps activities such as these can take place a-synchronistically outside of class.

Here's something I did this week, for instance, for a unit covering Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:

Step One: Instead of "setting up" Chaucer in class by lecturing about or discussing together the historical and literary contexts of Chaucer's work, I recorded a podcast (using GarageBand, but if you don't have a mac, check out Audacity, which is free online) that covered in 20 mins. what would have taken at least one entire class period. (You can listen to the podcast by going here).

Step Two: I also created an online discussion thread that prompted students to share insights and thoughts about the podcast they were required to listen to. Every student had to contribute at least once to the discussion, which also was a way for me to monitor that students were listening to the required material. In my case, I utilized the class's portal page to set up the discussion (we use Finalsite at Oakridge), but one could make use of several free, online programs such as Slack.

For almost every unit now, I follow steps 1 & 2.  Students can complete the requirements easily over a weekend, and they're ready to get down to the business of practicing the skills of reading (and writing) together come Monday morning.

Step Three: Students come to class, and first thing, there's highlights from the weekend's online discussion projected on the digital screen for everyone to see. Naturally, it creates conversation at the beginning of class, but quickly, we turn to the text, reading closely together the first lines of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Each person gets a specific task (like determining tone, cataloging imagery, detecting allusions, etc.), and with everyone, I model how to read closely the opening passages on the Knight and the Squire. (This gives me the chance to show the difference between idealizing or satirizing a given character...)

Step Four: Students break into groups, and each group gets a character that's portrayed in the opening Prologue. I project on the screen a URL to a Google Doc that everyone can access and edit, and on that doc are questions to guide each group as they read critically the passages that were assigned to them. (The doc looks something like this).

As groups, students must catalog and cite the concrete details that "stick out" after reading the passage in question. Second, they have to discuss and write down any commentary they infer collectively based on the details they've cited. At this point, they're also determining whether the passage is satire or something else. Their third task is to pretend that they're going to write a paragraph about the character in question. With this in mind, they write collaboratively a topic sentence that makes clear the main idea of the passage. (While all this is going on, I get to hover from group to group, helping where I can but mostly listening to the learning that's taking place among peers)

Step Five: After each group is finished, they have to present their work to the class. Someone reads the passage aloud, followed by a brief presentation of the concrete details and commentary they noted. Lastly, we workshop as a class the topic sentence they've constructed, discussing together its merits as well as where we see room for more development. Everyone participates in this process.

Step Six: Once everyone has shared their work, we return to the Google Doc to complete the final task: namely, to create a Meme that makes clear the most important characteristic or flaw related to the character in question. Of course, this activity gets a lot of laughs, and sometimes we post them online for others to see as well.

The lesson I describe above works well with block scheduling. One would have to modify or break apart the stages if dealing with shorter class periods. To me, this is what a "flipped" English class would look like: We front-load the need-to-know info and facilitate much of the more open discussion outside of class so that class time can be spent practicing the art of reading and writing for each other in real time. It went well this week, and students appreciated the collaborative approach. Now we're repeating a similar process (minus the podcast) as we read some of the stories (specifically, "Pardoner's Tale" and "Wife of Bath's Tale"). After that, it's Macbeth, which means another podcast (which you can check out here).

OESIS is Rolling Out Its XP Webinar Program and Listservs - A Call to Join the Network

Looking for some good PD opportunities for the upcoming school year? Are you interested in attending a conference or online learning experience that focuses not on the device but on innovative teaching and learning?

If you teach in an independent school and want to network and grow as a professional, you need to attend the Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools (OESIS) for one of their regional gatherings, such as the upcoming OESIS Boston conference on October 15-16. I'll be there this year presenting on topics such as online collaboration and student agency in the classroom.

However, if you can't attend the conference, that's ok because OESIS is introducing in September their new XP webinar program with more than 200 live sessions planned for the 2017-2018 school year. Teachers and schools can now personalize their PD needs by selecting what webinars would suit their interests and desires for growth and innovation. This September, I'll be hosting two OESIS webinars: one on gamification in a humanities class and the other on collaborating online across campuses. Schools and educators can sign up for access to the new OESIS XP webinar program by going here, and educators can submit proposals for future webinars (which includes a $200 honorarium) by going here.

In addition to the webinars, OESIS is also debuting their innovative listservs for the 2017-2018 academic year. Each listserv will be managed by at least one OESIS network leader: for instance, I will be facilitating discussion for the English teacher listserv. The purpose will be to provide a continued channel of communication after OESIS conferences and webinars, but the listserv will also serve as a platform for sharing useful content, resources, and ideas among a network language arts teachers from across the nation. Anyone can try out the listserv this month to see if it's something they'd like to subscribe to for the rest of the year, so I encourage readers to give it a try:

To learn more about (and sign up for) the listservs go here.

To sign up for OESIS XP webinars go here to learn about the various offerings.

To view the webinar schedule for September 2017 go here.

To submit a proposal for a future XP webinar go here.

To learn more about the OESIS Boston conference taking place Oct. 15-16 go here.

Be a Presenter at the LLI Southwest Conference, Hosted by The Oakridge School, February 23-24, 2018

This February, The Oakridge School plans to host its 2nd annual teaching and learning conference in partnership with the Lausanne Learning Institute. The 2018 LLI Southwest Conference offers an opportunity for educators to experience relevant, authentic PD that focuses on topics like design thinking and student centered learning. This year's theme, Making Learning Visible, highlights one of the most unique aspects of the LLI Southwest experience: the opportunity to observe Fishbowl Sessions where teachers administer lessons with real students from The Oakridge School.

This year, I'll be leading the committee that selects and organizes the conference program, a task that's caused me to reflect more deeply about the overall purpose of professional development (especially for teachers). When it comes to PD, instead of asking how I can become a better teacher, I keep returning to the reason we have schools in the first place. Schools provide spaces for learning to be celebrated and made visible for others to see both on our campuses and beyond. Therefore, the real question, for me, is how do I become a better promoter of learning both with my students and with my fellow colleagues.

This is why the fishbowls at LLI Southwest stand out against all other conference experiences: Educators can see learning in action by working together with students in classrooms. Making Learning Visible means, not only talking about best strategies, but actually witnessing the practice together. The feedback from last year's conference echoed these sentiments, and it's why I encourage anyone to make the trek to Texas this winter (...well that, and the warmer weather).

I also want to encourage readers to consider being a presenter for the upcoming event. Last year we had more than 100 presenters, representing 37 schools, from across the nation. Prospective presenters can submit a proposal for leading a 1 hr general session (without students in the room), or they can submit a lesson idea for leading a fishbowl (which is a 45 min lesson followed by a 25 min debrief without the students present). Go to the link to submit your ideas; we'll be accepting proposals until November 17, 2017.

We're excited to announce that Matt Scully and Ryan Welsh, from Providence Day School, will be giving the keynote on Friday, February 24th.  Go here to visit the conference website and learn more about this exciting opportunity. Hopefully we'll see you in Arlington this February.