Hard Fun

Over my many years in education I have had the pleasure to work with some very special teachers. These teachers had two qualities that can’t really be taught: one was an intrinsic desire to seek out ‘best practice’ and the other quality was the ability to connect with children so they were fully engaged with their learning. I could go on but the point of this entry is to unpack the second quality a little more and drill down to an essential point.

The ability of a teacher to create an ‘on task’ working atmosphere used to be one of the key indicators of good classroom practice. But, as thinking and experienced educators know, ‘on task’ behaviour does not necessarily mean that the students are enjoying or getting any educational benefit out of their school work! They are just on task. A study in Australia called the Fair Go Project concluded that when students are strongly engaged they are successfully involved in tasks of high intellectual quality and have passionate or at least positive feelings about these tasks. No surprise here! Rather than just being ‘on task’ with teachers’ wishes and directions, students need to actually be ‘in task’. That is, to have some substantive engagement.

Some years ago I was talking with a teaching colleague who I valued enormously for his understanding of education and his desire to seek out ‘best practice’. He talked about an article he had read where someone was describing substantive engagement in children’s learning as ‘hard fun’. That was a real ‘a ha’ moment for me. That was so brilliantly summing up what we all know from our own learning experiences. Mostly the thing that drives us to learn is when we are intrinsically drawn to it. Around the same time one of our students came up with the phrase ‘edutainment’. This boy called Theo said the best learning is based on a series of events sneakily intertwined with education. He said “schools need to be a place of education, entertainment, friendship and memories.”

I believe Theo has got it in one. This is not a woolly or flakey approach. There has to be rigour!  The best education is ‘hard fun’---we all learn better when there is a bit of tension and stretch combined with enjoyment. This fits so well with the important concept of ‘learner agency’ where the aim is support children incrementally to take more control over their learning. “ When learners move from being passive recipients to being much more active in the learning process, actively involved in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.” ( Core Education: http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends/ten-trends-2014/learning-agency )

The concept of ‘learner agency’ is huge, complex and powerful in the learning process. Best practice here transforms children’s learning and is central to this idea of ‘hard fun’ but more on this another time.

A Bit of Struggle is a Good Thing

I have been talking to the children about the importance of having some ‘struggle’ in our lives.

I know it is a bit of a cliché but ‘no pain, no gain’. As you know this applies to all of us.

I told them the following story I heard many years ago. I don’t know whether it is true but it hopefully helped illustrate my message.

“A little boy came upon a butterfly struggling to emerge from a chrysalis. He helped it by gently pulling the chrysalis apart. When the butterfly tried to fly, it fell to the ground and died. The strength it needed to develop to emerge from the chrysalis was the same strength it needed to fly. The boy trying to help had inadvertently made the butterfly helpless.  Sometimes we need to struggle to build up our strength to grow and develop so we can cope with what life will throw at us.”

This concept of ‘struggle’ is going to be a bit of a theme this term at Waterloo. It ties in so well with one of our key values---resilience. We are encouraging the children not to give up easily when they come across a challenge at school or in any aspect of their life but to try and overcome it themselves. These challenges will come in many forms from school work to relationship issues. There is no shame in asking for help after giving the challenge a fair go and we are encouraging the children to ask for help once they are ‘stumped’.

In our desire to be good parents and/or teachers we can step in too much and prop up children and create ‘learned helplessness’. We have to allow our children to make mistakes because from these mistakes comes a learning opportunity.

Life can be tough and if we help our children to help themselves, then we are doing them a big favour. The hard thing is to know when to step in and when to insist on more effort. Praise is so important too! Praise for trying and doing one’s personal best. It is destructive to praise mediocrity.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice inside your head that says, I’ll try again tomorrow.” (MA Radmacher)

Inquiry as a Disposition.

Sometime ago I viewed this Sharon Freisen’s talk (online ED talks) and I was convinced that she is right. Inquiry is not something you do but it should pervade school life. It is something ongoing and should be persuasive.

Her work is inspiring and pulls together much of what underpins the inquiry model of learning.

Freisen argues that to keep the spirit of inquiry alive teachers need to challenge themselves to think more deeply about what they are doing and provoke themselves to question so this will cultivate questioning in children. We have to have something worthy that will sustain inquiry so it is not trivialised.

Through the renaissance (da Vinchi  etc) period when the microscope, telescope, printing press etc were invented, everything started by questioning.  We are at that point in history again (new technologies). We can’t say we have done inquiry or we are doing inquiry. We have to go through a transformation shift as the end product of inquiry is the awakening of a new question.

The world is totally connected. We know that the reproduction and taking on knowledge has some merit but a more valid skill today is using information to produce things. So the type of work children need to be asked to do in schools is far deeper/questioned based as we want children to build on other people’s ideas  (including the great thinkers of old) and build on their own ideas to ideally create new knowledge. Part of this is also to challenge established ideas and build new working theories.

So the types of things happening in classrooms should not be sitting to long lectures but coming to engage in deep and meaningful work. E.g archaeological study in their own community, looking at agents of chemical warfare, examining democracy around the world—e.g. is the international community democratic?  Is democracy better than a benevolent dictatorship? (incl. children’s personal Interests/questions)

We need a thinking generation, people who can develop solutions to real problems. To ask questions of things that have gone before not just to recite them. The standards of work which we hold students accountable for needs to be higher than ever—not just a set of individual standards but also what a team may aspire to. We need to somehow create an intrinsic desire to aspire to greater things (builds character), not in a selfish way but with the desire to add to global well being.

The relationship of the teacher is complex—part mentor and guide and part director as well. Teachers need to design work that introduces students to environments that may never have been considered before. The role of the teacher is more complex and demanding than any time in history. The walls of the class room have to be metaphorically and in some ways literally broken down.

What Does This Mean For Education ?

Children at Waterloo School fascinated by a 3D printer.

The below article by Dr Bob Goldman was sent to me recently by a friend. Although it is only one person's viewpoint, it does sit well with what we are experiencing on a day to day basis. Change is exponential now and you can plan for it or just be content to 'rock and roll' with change as it happens.

However, for educationalists and parents (aren't we all the same thing?) we have a responsibility to prepare our children for a world that will clearly be very different. It is an exciting time to be involved in education and I am constantly thinking about this very important challenge. Some of my previous blogs deal with what is required and I am enjoying working with a team of committed life-long learners to help our children embrace and engage with this rapidly changing world.

Nga mihi nui

FUTURE PREDICTIONS:

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people don't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain. Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. By 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous Cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies may become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance Companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electric cars won’t become mainstream until 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: There will be companies that will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breathe into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large number of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they already 3D printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Business Opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed in to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields. Agroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow-produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups that will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100.

Education: The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. Until 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Robert M. Goldman MD, PhD, DO, FAASP
www.DrBobGoldman.com
World Chairman-International Medical Commission
Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board-A4M
Founder & Chairman-International Sports Hall of Fame
Co-Founder & Chairman-World Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
President Emeritus-National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
Chairman-U.S. Sports Academy’s Board of Visitors

FREE Health Longevity info newsletter at: www.WorldHealth.net

The Seed of Love

 Earlier in the week I viewed a short video which I just have to share with you.

Teachers really do matter and to work with these special people who every day have the opportunity to influence lives is extremely rewarding and humbling.

Over my teaching career I have observed many extraordinary teachers. They ‘get’ children and they care deeply for them. These teachers have an innate and sensitive understanding of the many and complex ways of how children learn and they are able to build trust and a connection which allows the child to take risks and show their individual spirit and talents. It becomes an upward spiral of success as the child grows in confidence.

These special teachers spend an inordinate amount of time reading and thinking about things that will inspire and interest their children. They encourage the children to take as much ownership of their learning as they can manage which of course is hugely motivating and empowering. Always seeking best practice, they cut through bureaucracy and keep children at the heart of learning.

I could go on but the point of this entry is to introduce you to this 3-4 minute video which is truly amazing. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2srGloZ673A

Stephen Hawking On The Teacher That Changed His Life | #TeachersMatter

Education Alchemists

Picasso had it right when he said, "Every child is an artist", but he also added, "The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up!" For some, the visual arts have been viewed as an easy alternative to the core curriculum.  What many do not consider is that the visual arts not only offer a rich opportunity to engage children in higher order thinking but are also an opportunity of teaching children to look closely to see their world. To analyse, synthesise and to create a representation that is personal, creative and expressive. The challenge is to give children the confidence to believe in their creative talent and to honour their own and others' work so as to allow their ideas to flow freely and not allow the filters of doubt to enter their head. One only has to observe a 5 year old painting to see a truly untainted take on the world. Art naturally links so well with all aspects of the curriculum, particularly science.
 
It takes very special people to create this type of learning environment. They are the gold of the education world. They are truly education alchemists.

 

I Saw an Angel in the Marble

Michelangelo of course was a genius of gigantic proportions. His work is breath taking from architecture through to his stunning sculpture, drawing and painting.  He was able to see in nature and the world generally what others couldn’t see.

 He famously said, ‘I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free’.  This line is so inspiring across a number of dimensions. It excites me from an education perspective.

 Every day parents and teachers have this same opportunity with children. If you look close enough you can see the unique individuality and fragility of each child. This presents a wonderful and critically important time when we can embrace and nurture this fragile beauty. Handled correctly we can draw out the trust and confidence of the child to show their real selves, their personal voice, their creativity, their soul, their worries, their dreams and in doing so set free their potential as human beings.

 When most children arrive at school they are usually bursting with ideas, creativity, personal voice and personality. Their filters on life are open and free. They are keen to express themselves and are willing to have a go at all sorts of new tasks.

 The sad reality is that in traditional education settings, these same children incrementally close down their filters showing less and less of themselves. They learn quickly that there is often only one right answer the teacher is looking for, there is only one way to interpret a question and that their ideas are best to kept to themselves as they are annoying or wrong.  These messages are learnt in subtle and not so subtle ways. A painting may be judged on the skill set of realistic representation of what the teacher wants rather than the ideas and thoughts behind the child’s work. A child’s writing may be judged on the surface features of neat writing and accurate punctuation as opposed to the ideas and thinking of the content. Many children quickly lose their confidence and view themselves as ‘dumb’ because they don’t meet the teacher’s expectations. Quiet and sensitive children or children who just don’t fit the ‘norm’ of life can melt into social obscurity if the teacher allows the more confident, brash or even bullying types dominate the learning environment.

 On a more macro front, if the leadership of a school demands conformity and ‘straight line’ thinking of their staff this filters down into the classroom and the school culture. People become fearful and slowly but surely creativity and personal voice gets melded into a machine where surface features of policies and procedures are more valued than the head and the heart. Most teachers become fearful, lose confidence to speak up and usually fall into line.

 On a broader front still, this is the challenge of our education system.  NZ needs teachers who are encouraged to be creative, have personal voice and autonomy.  This doesn’t mean we don’t need structure and systems but on all fronts, including the macro national level and within schools themselves we need people who are set free to sincerely connect with each other and the children on a real and powerful level where personal voice,  trust, empowerment, respect, risk taking  and real empathy are celebrated.

 If all people are made to think the same via structure and systems, then nobody is really thinking at all. Can you see what is possible for NZ education as Michelangelo saw in the marble?