20% Time

Thanks to +A.J. Juliani for his weekly newsletter and insights into 20% time. I am well underway into 20% time with my class of 11th and 12th graders. 20% time was inspired by Sergey Brin's time in Montessori school. It no longer quite exists at Google, but the idea is/ was that Google's workers would spend 1/5th of their time working on their own projects, not the projects assigned to them. In Google's earlier days (according to this infographic) half of Google's products came from 20% time.

It has taken a lot of prep work to get ready. I've brought in 4 speakers to prime the idea pump. I have told the students loudly and clearly that for 20% time they are only responsible for the effort, not the results. Failure is an option because if they don't risk failure they won't aim high. I conferenced with every student after they wrote me their project proposals to help give their ideas some focus.

So that I stay abreast of their work and their successes and pitfalls, I created this log for the project (which I stole from +Colin Angevine's comp sci class.) I will also have the students journal weekly in addition to the nightly log posts.

So far so good, I like very much that I am modeling risk-taking. I like that I've already convinced a few skeptics that this could be really cool and powerful way of thinking about learning. As I told the students, failure is an option. This really might not work. But I'm pleased with the start. We will work on it in earnest for the next three weeks of school. All  students seem to have a good kernel of an idea
and most seem off to a good start.

Teaching with 20% Time

I'm an avid follower of +AJJuliani. I've followed him for about a year. Based largely on his writings, I'm going to try 20% Time in my elective International Relations course. This is my first time teaching this course. Readers of this blog may know a little of my story. After teaching Middle School for 22 years, I then left to teach upper elementary school- 5th grade to be exact. After doing that for two years, I shifted to teaching high school last year. Though an experienced pro, I have had my fair share of new these past four years.

This year, I will be teaching 12th graders for the first time. Nothing is more real in traditional schooling and grading than the upcoming marking period for my students and they know it. They know the game of school and they are close to the final inning. They are going to resent these changes if not handled carefully and they may resent them anyway. I dream that they'll feel relieved and unburdened as I present them the freedom to learn about whatever they want. In actuality, I know that for some this may feel like a chore and burden.

It's a hard thing at times this teaching business, especially hard if you want to do a bit differently. I've read widely about education and pedagogy. Though firmly in the constructivist camp, I've always taught in a traditional school that has a slightly progressive flavor around the edges. (forgive me as I know I'm mixing metaphors all over the place and then whatever that last sentence was) Basically, what I'm getting at is that I've taught enough in the traditional method to know it and at times I've been told I did it well. I once prided on being a very good lecturer. At least that's what my students told me. My point is that when teaching differently from the traditional sage on the stage method that we sometimes feel that we are not teaching.  At least I know I have and that's with a firm philosophy and years of teaching experience behind me.

Good teaching is Mr. Chips. It is Robin WIlliams in Dead Poet's Society. It is Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver and Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. These dynamic teachers are the show! The movie and the class narrative is always about them! I reject this while being seduced by it at the same time.

Today, a brand new teacher at my school with years of experience in the Maker Movement came to me worried about not being seen as a teacher if he didn't teach via direct instruction from the front of the class in a computer science class he will be teaching. I have no easy answers to combatting these feelings. I urged my colleague to continue to do what his Maker training has taught him. I hope he does.

Also, it is worth noting that progressive pedagogy is an easy target for parents. They were raised with grades and homework and standards and RIGOR and they equate all of that stuff with learning and they want it for their kids. Years ago, one boy's parents blamed my lack of giving grades for their son's refusal to do any schoolwork. Of course, this boy wasn't doing any schoolwork in any other teachers' classes either and these teachers all graded him. My teaching was singled out.

I'm not going to cave on 20% time. Juliani tells us to celebrate our failures. I perhaps will be doing just that 5 months from now. To anyone thinking about trying to do this teaching thing a little bit differently, hang in there. I know it isn't easy.

Risk and Failure

We say we admire risk-takers. Maybe that's true, but we do little to cultivate them in schools because we punish failure.  AJ Juliani, one of my favorite bloggers and ed-tech writers, has written some posts celebrating failure. I love, love the idea of doing this. His class mantra is, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn." (I'm stealing that one for my class.)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/amboo213/4020584983

There are so many sayings, cliches, and truisms about learning from failure. A quick google search finds gems such as:

• “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”                                                                                                                         - Coco Chanel   
• “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”                                                                                                           -Robert F. Kennedy                                and this wouldn't be an ed-tech blog without a  Ken Robinson quote: 

• “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” 

Any honest self-assessment of schooling must lead us to the conclusion that we do not encourage risk-taking in schools. Failure is uniformly seen as bad. We either equate failure with lack of effort or we refuse to acknowledge the difference between them. A great teacher of mine, +Russ Walsh, used to talk about this in relation to the downsides of grading student writing. He posited that if we were going to punish kids (take away points/ give lower grades) for misspellings and grammar mistakes then our students were going to write a lot more safe (and boring) stories about big dogs than riskier stories about enormous pterodactyls. By punishing risk-taking and rewarding playing it safe we create kids who are risk-averse. I'd extend this argument to suggest that most school practices create kids who are risk averse. As long as we punish kids for mistakes (and don't say we aren't punishing them) this will remain true. Go ahead, take a risk! But risk a poor grade. It's a game only a rebel or sucker would play.

Next year, I will be teaching 12th graders, most of whom are very used to and very good at the traditional rules of the game and who have been trained to be risk averse and who are desperately worried about getting into college. I plan to incorporate some genius hour/ 20% time in the course. I will want to celebrate spectacular failure. I will want kids to aim high and think big. And when it doesn't work out, I will want them consider how to do it better next time. I hope I can pull it off, but if not I will remind myself that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. 

In the spirit of solidarity, I will also acknowledge and reflect upon my failures publicly with the students. This is going to be a very different kind of high school history course. It is my first time teaching it. 

This will be a big paradigm shift for me as well. I like being successful. I'll let you know how it goes.