www.tonybaldasaro.com

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As a junior in high school, I was finally able to enroll in the photography class. Offered only every other year, this was the only time the course was available to me (it was not open to freshman), and since there was only one section, the period three class was my only shot.

So, when my guidance counselor pulled me into his office on the second day of school to tell me I had to drop photography to take a more college-friendly Spanish class, I knew my opportunity was lost. This was in 1988, five years before Mosaic was introduced to the world, seven years before Netscape made the World Wide Web available to the masses, and a decade before virtual schooling was an option. Unless I could find a private mentorship, my only access to formally learning photography was period three during my junior year of high school and, since I had to take Spanish, that was no longer an option for me.

A New Ingredient

Today, not much has changed in the brick and mortar environment. Most students still push through a seven- or eight-period day, 45-day quarter and 180-day school year. Unfortunately, mandates, physical plant limitations, local political pressures and institutional traditions have limited even the best intentions of rethinking the traditional school calendar and schedule.

This is why the flexibility found in virtual schooling environments should be so attractive to educators, students and parents alike. Not bound by the constraints of physical space or out-of-date school calendars, virtual schools can provide opportunities for students to take courses at a time and place that meets their needs. In my case, I could have taken my photography course on my own time and still completed that Spanish course during third period of my junior year.

Yet the brick and mortar environment still looks at virtual schools with contempt. The rigor of virtual coursework is often questioned, the reliability of the space is sometimes not trusted, and all too often virtual options are looked on as competitors to local schools. And in some cases, those reputations are well deserved. Too often, independent virtual schools might be no more than diploma mills openly competing against local schools.

From Rivalry to Partnership

As virtual schools mature and become a more accepted option for students, however, it’s time for the partnerships between the two to mature as well. Instead of competing, virtual schools need to partner with local schools and allow individual students to create what Staker and Horn call a “self blend model.”

And instead of automatically eschewing virtual schools as low-level, easy-way-out for their students, brick and mortar schools need to investigate how virtual options may provide multiple pathways for their students to earn credits, recover learning, explore an interest or follow a passion, all while taking control of their education through a variety of modalities.

Instead of viewing the relationship between virtual and brick and mortar schools as an “us or them” rivalry, it’s time to start viewing it as an “us and them” partnership. It’s time for state legislatures to develop funding models that support blended enrollment options for students seeking the flexibility of virtual schools as a way to supplement their brick and mortar schooling.

We now live, teach and learn in an age when time and place no longer have to be limiting factors. We’ve reached a point where multiple pathways are, should and can be available to any student, anywhere at any time. When I was hoping to take my photography class, there were no other options. I was forced to make choice, a choice that no student should have to make today. It’s time for schools to unite and break the barriers of time, place and tradition so that each student can be empowered to develop his or her own learning path, a path which can include a blended mix of brick and mortar, virtual, experiential and personal learning options.

But there are a couple of problems with this thinking.  First, when kids see categories such as these on the rubric they stop focusing on the quality of the content and start focusing on how pretty their project is.  Further, if they don’t get the grade they want, their argument isn’t content related, it instead is about how hard they worked and while that is admirable, it doesn’t guarantee learning.

Second, when we have to mandate effort and creativity by including it in our rubrics, we aren’t developing assessments that are inherently worthy of effort and creativity.  Assessments that  are relevant and engage kids in meaningful learning don’t have to coerce them into effort.

When we build meaningful, rigorous and engaging assessments, effort and creativity take care of themselves.  All too often we forget that kids have the remarkable ability to meet our expectations, even when we don’t coerce it out of them.

Pathways are important, and the more pathways that we (as an industry) can provide kids the better.  That is why we partner with local high schools with students who are crafting a blended approach, some face to face, some virtual coursework.  In fact, as a parent, I find the blended approach most attractive.  I can see a time when my children are taking virtual courses not offered at their high school, so they can avoid scheduling conflicts, as a summer school option, or as a way to advance an interest or passion.  This is why this recent article was so upsetting to me.  And I was so was hopeful with this line early in the piece,

 [The blended learning] model shifts the classroom teacher’s focus away from more traditional curricular and administrative tasks in the direction of working…

until it ended with this,

with data and providing more individualized support to students.

And later:

In a blended learning program, the teacher should be prepared to:

• assess, analyze and aggregate data
• use data as an integral part of the planning process for each individual student, groups of students and the whole class
• use benchmark tests and other assessments to direct instruction at different levels (individual, group, class)

Not one mention of building relationships with students.

Not one.

Anywhere in the article.

Chris Lehmann wrote this morning how important the relationships are that he builds with his students and how difficult that is for him, even in a brick and mortar environment.  That’s partly because of the demands of being a school principal, but also because it’s hard to build meaningful relationships with students when there are hundreds of them buzzing around the building each day.  Chris does a remarkable job of doing this, but I think he would tell you that A. he works incredibly hard and purposeful at doing so and B. it would be much harder at a school of 2,000 students.

Yet, in a virtual setting teachers have the ability to build meaningful one-on-one relationships with each student and their families*.  Sure its built differently, using connective technologies in lieu of face to face (which may not suit everyone) and often at night and on weekends, but those relationships are critical to creating learning environment for students.  If virtual and/or blended learning is all about data, I want nothing to do with it.  In fact, I would suggest that there are algorithms written that could probably move the needle on tests scores better than I could…

But you can’t build a relationship with an algorithm.

Perhaps its because we are a virtual school and know that we don’t see our kids daily in our classroom that refocusses our efforts on building relationships.  Maybe its because we know that we have to build relationships with our parents to assure them that we are “real” people, with “real” credentials, being “real” teachers of their children.  Maybe its because we remembered that the most important teachers in our own lives were those who we consider “friends” today.  Maybe its because we know our students are people and we are in the people business and regardless of whether or not we “see them” we care about their success as a student.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, we know that “data” collected via various assessments tools and complicated algorithms are useless without the caring relationship between a teacher and a student.

*this can be done in a brick and mortar institution too, but cultural and administrative demands often run counter to spending the time needed to build the type of meaningful relationship that each student deserves.

image credit:  Virtual Learning Academy Charter  School

Managers…

• maintain the status quo.
• create efficiencies to cut.
• look at change and ask, “why?”
• enjoy positional power.
• build consensus before making decisions.
• rarely receive pushback… and like it that way

Leaders…

• challenge the status quo.
• create efficiencies to promote growth.
• look at change and ask, “what do you need?”
• empower others.
• make decisions then build consensus.
• often receive pushback… and pushes back appropriately.

What am I missing?  Are you a manager or a leader?

And then, later in the day I say Dr. Kevin Thomas talk about cell phones in the k-12 classroom.  His talk was full of great data on the use of cell phones, some of the  misconceptions about texting and the written language (great stuff by the way), and some of the benefits of students and teachers using cell phones to communicate, collaborate, and learn together in the classroom.  (You can read my notes and download his PowerPoint here.)  Throughout his talk, I was wondering why I hadn’t heard of this data before or, for that matter, Dr. Thomas himself.  I mean, this was good stuff and it was his doctoral research that unearthed it, why was all this new?  At the end of the session, Dr. Thomas shared his contact information and there it was.  Or perhaps wasn’t.  Dr. Thomas wasn’t on Twitter.  When pressed by Tom Whitby why, Dr. Thomas said there was only so much time in the day and twitter wasn’t something he could take on.

And then I had a conversation later in the day with an former colleague of mine in Exeter.  He said that he saw me in “that principal’s session” (Eric) and asked if everything he said was true.  I assured him that he was, but privately thought that if my friend was on Twitter, he would already know Eric and he would know that yes, Eric really is that connected.  When I said to him, “So you haven’t figured out this whole ‘Twitter’ thing?” he said, “No”, and just like Dr. Thomas cited time as his limiting factor.

I know that I am now biased toward the connected world within which I now live, but the biggest take away for me from ASCD was that as many strides as I thought were being made in connecting educators through social media and other web 2.0 tools, the heart and soul of our profession still isn’t connected.  Twitter, Delicious, and other web 2.0 tools are still foreign to most and looked at as big wastes of time.  There was no app for the conference, which was probably okay because I saw more highlighters and sticky notes than I did iPads.  Wireless service was spotless all weekend, but I have a feeling that was not because the systems were superior, but because their weren’t enough users to choke the system.  Pen and paper were the dominate way in which most took notes, which is fine I suppose, unless you want to share them easily with others.

Speaking of sharing…
A few weeks ago I grabbed hold of some notes that Wes Fryer took at a conference he was attending.  As you may already know, Wes is famous for taking feverish notes at conferences and publishing them immediately on his blog.  I took a moment to thank him for his work since his notes were timely and helpful. His response to me was essentially, “as long as I am already taking notes, why wouldn’t I share them?  It’s so easy”   So, in coming to Philadelphia this weekend, I decided to channel my inner-Wes and not only take notes as much as possible but, also publish them for others to use (I’m not sure I liked the mechanism for publishing – a link on my blog- but it was quick and easy for this weekend).

I lost count of the tweets and “thanks you’s” from folks across the conference (and on twitter).  I realized right away that people were benefiting from my notes and as the conference went on, more and more were using them.  I was humbled by the number of positive responses that I got.

But, there was a bigger takeaway for me.  As more and more people came to depend on my notes, the more responsibility I felt to take high quality notes (duh).  So, I paid attention more, I was more careful about the language I used, I searched more diligently for websites and videos shared during presentations.  I wanted my notes to be the best representation of the learning that was taking place in that room and, as a result, I became the most focused learner in that room.  I learned more because I knew others needed me to.

While I thank all of you for your kind words relative to my note taking, it turns out you all pushed me to be a better learner.  Thus, I owe each of you a “Thank You”.

And a final note on the Keynote…
Sunday’s keynote speaker was Dr. Atul Gawande, doctor, author, Harvard professor, and overall renaissance man.  He spoke effortlessly about the similarities between medicine, education, and our need for lifelong coaching to properly serve people, all while keeping both professions on equal footing. He wasn’t a doctor talking down to us, he was a fellow professional interested in making our collective work better.  His talk was passionate, simple and elegant.  He was a gifted story teller who seamlessly and effortlessly talked for 60 minutes with just a single 1/4 sheet of paper of notes.   As I thought more about it later in the day, I realized it was the first time in a long time that I had seen a person talk without a single piece of media to help tell the story.   And you know what, he could have talked for another hour and I would have hung on every word as if it was his first.

I guess, I connected with what what he was saying…