Football - losing hope . . .

Not a good weekend of football for any of my teams. The Bears, Huskies, Cougars, and Seahawks all lost. Not only did they lose, but none of them were able to even make it close. I'm rapidly losing hope with all but the Bears. They played a very good team in Federal Way as did the Seahawks in getting trounced by the Giants. The college teams can't say the same, losing to two Pac 10 teams that should have been beatable or at least ones that could be scored against.

If the Huskies don't change soon the stadium might look like this on game day.

An affirming video . . .

Chris Lehman made this presentation on Ignite Philly. It is an interesting format, you get five minutes -- you prepare twenty slides, and you get fifteen seconds a slide. I have never met Chris and he doesn't know about our Classroom 10 initiative, but this video should be on our web page because it captures the essence of the focus of our work. If you have five minutes and are interested in school reform, this short video is both thought provoking and affirming.

Social studies curriculum institute . . .

Our social studies curriculum writing institute began today. I was able to attend for a couple of hours this morning and was given an opportunity to share some of my thinking on the importance of sustainability and engaging our young people in this work. We have a wonderful opportunity to bring Classroom 10 learning alive with this content, to bring authenticity to classroom work, and to provide opportunities for problem solving and creative thinking to flourish.


The institute brings together teachers from our system with support from our Teaching and Learning Department, Gilda Wheeler from OSPI, and Kayleen Pritchard from PEI. This morning Gilda shared information on what sustainability is to create a common understanding of this fairly new and critical concept. Both Gilda and Kayleen will continue to support our work during the continuing institute days and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience with them. We are fortunate to have these resources and we are fortunate to have teachers that are committed to writing the units and supporting the work of their colleagues.


Nancy and Kristen have created this writing model as an adaptive solution to bringing the curriculum into our classrooms on an accelerated time line. It is a new model that will require further adaptations as the teachers and others continue this work. I am excited about the potential as is Gilda who sees it as a model that she may be able to use across the state. She complemented our T&L Department and our teachers for being on the cutting edge of not only sustainability curriculum, but other curriculum work we have done.


I shared two books that I may have shared in earlier posts, but will share with you again on sustainability and the importance of changing our behavior while we can. If we don't, the world that these young people will inherit will be significantly different than the one we live in today. The first is Peter Senge's, The Necessary Revolution. The second is Thomas Friedman's, Hot, Flat, and Crowded a follow up to his The World Is Flat. Both books, in different ways, create a picture of current reality and what will happen if we cannot create a vision of a better place that influences our behavior and releases our creativity. Today's youth will become significant contributors to the creative solutions that are required in the revolution that each author says is required.



It would be great to hear from anyone that attended today's institute. If you are reading, please take a moment to post a comment.

Curriculum development . . .

A couple people gave me some feedback about my thoughts related to unit development. They both disagreed with my basic premise and believe that teachers enjoy and should be engaged in lesson creation. It was fun to actually experience sharing of comments.

I don't know that two comments have changed my thinking, but they have confirmed for me that finding a balance will be important as we continue our unit development work. I am convinced that for new staff these units are critical and that for all staff they provide examples of what Classroom 10 looks and sounds like. But, over time we must allow teachers to personalize this curriculum and adapt lessons to make them their own. The unit outcomes, thinking skills, and habits of mind are not negotiable, but the vehicles used to provide opportunities to learn can and should be over time.

It will be interesting to see how we monitor and adjust our thinking and behaviors over time.

Teachers want to teach . . .

One of my favorite blogs is Scott McLeod's Dangerously Irrelevant because he talks a lot about leadership and purpose, two topics of interest to me. In a recent post he references three questions from Rodney Trice. They are:

• How do you intend to bring the global community into your classroom?
• How will you prepare students for a future that is relatively unknown?
• How you will eliminate the racial predictability of achievement outcomes in your classroom?

The first two questions raise concerns for me because Scott goes on to say - We should be asking teachers and principals that question more often (and just that directly). Yes, we should, but is it the responsibility of teachers and principals at the building level to identify what students need to learn and how to make this happen in classrooms? Do teachers have the time, knowledge, and skill to create the units and lessons that are aligned with state standards, that are process and skill focused, that provide problem solving opportunities, that include collaborative projects, that provide for information literacy and technology fluency learning opportunities, that . . .?

More simply, do teachers want to write curriculum or do they want to focus on teaching? In our district we have been at both extremes of this continuum and I have come to believe that it is best for teachers and students if the primary responsibility for this is in the district's Teaching and Learning Department. I have also come to understand how difficult this work is, how fortunate we are to have Nancy, and that teachers must be directly involved in the development and review of this work.

I believe that teachers want to teach and not have to always be responsible for determining what content and skills will I cover tomorrow, next week, and next month. Over the course of a year this takes tremendous energy and time and does not result in consistency between classrooms and buildings.

It was interesting to follow the recent Bellevue strike where autonomy over lessons was one of the issues. I don't have much detail about this, but I know it has led to conversations in our system about the model we are using. Do are teachers have similar concerns?

Do you agree or disagree with my belief that teachers do not want to be curriculum writers, they want to focus on teaching?

Improving the capacity to support . . .

Well, it was a good football weekend, the Bears beat Kentwood on Thursday and the Seahawks got a win today. I was actually able to leave a little early from the game without fear of the outcome while walking to the car. That is not always the case. The Cougars also got their first win yesterday so that only leaves the Huskies to make it the perfect football weekend. I think I'll enjoy this one for a little while, because I may have to wait awhile for that outcome.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's opportunity to complete planning for our first teaching and learning meeting with our administrative team, the Educational Leadership Team or ELT. Our focus is on improving our individual and collective capacity to influence the Classroom 10 journey for an individual teacher and for a group of teachers. Much of this work for the year will be in math as we search for the strategies that support teacher understanding and capacity to create learning environments focused on process, Habits of Mind, thinking skills, and our Outcomes and Indicators.

We are asking each administrator to video a planning or feedback conference with a teacher for sharing with the ELT. Prior to sharing the video the administrator will share his/her personal goal for improving their ability to support teacher growth over time. The intent is to provide feedback to support individual and group reflection on the strategies that work for us in Tahoma. I'm sure this will bring its fair share of anxiety because we haven't done a video where the focus is on the administrator not the teacher. It only seems fair since that is what we are asking of teachers, to make their work transparent, to share with others, and to make the shift to Classroom 10.

In a sense, we are doing what winning coaches do; improving our coaching and consulting skills to support the work of each of us and all of us. It is going to be energizing and informative as we use interdependence to support a worthy learning goal.

Post 100!

This is my 100th post - it seems like I should celebrate this milestone with something extra special, but I would simply like to say thank you for reading and occasionally responding with a comment. Ethan, thanks for making me reflect on how what I say is related to the work we are doing in Tahoma. Your reading and comments are especially appreciated.

When I started last year I don't know that I believed I would sustain this long and though I don't post often, with this many over the course of about thirteen months. As I have shared before, however, I have come to enjoy and look forward to the opportunity to share. It makes me think systemically as I reflect on what might be of importance to people in our system. Like all bloggers, comments are like finding treasure because they validate the intent of the blog, creating conversations, and because they make me think. I will truly become a blogger when I can say something that results in multiple people building off of other's comments. That will be a celebration.

Some of you may know that we are creating a Classroom 10 video to capture for our community our 21st Century learning journey. I am excited about this new venture for our system and encouraged by the commitment that many are bringing to it. I have also been spending time on moving forward and You Tube looking at videos for ideas. I ran across this one on Scott McLeod's blog (a real successful blogger) and thought you might enjoy it.