Autonomous Learning

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This week I was inspired by an amazing TED Talk, given by the educator Sugata Mitra, whose work harnesses the power of children's curiosity and ingenuity to create powerful learning. By sparking children's interest, giving them freedom and encouragement to wonder, his students have achieved astronomical learning. Mitra has challenged me to think long and hard about how much learning autonomy I give. 
 

This week, my personal teacher challenge is to infuse all of my work with moments and space for student autonomy. Over the span of three decades, I've taught thousands of students. One thing they all have in common is that I am no longer their teacher, but if I’ve done my job right, they are still learning. Powerful teaching sparks curiosity and imparts the tools and encouragement for perpetual learning.

So I’ve undertaken a perpetual-learning-experiment by embedding curiosity, tools, time, and encouragement for autonomy in my brand new unit on the judiciary. On day one, students are encouraged to ask questions that they are curious about; as we move forward, I channel their curiosity with tools, practices, and sources; and as they work towards their question, I praise them as they wonder towards autonomy. See for yourself.
 

Here’s three essential steps towards autonomous learning

1.   Spark Interest – Ask big, wonderful, surprising questions as models for their own curiosity: I wonder how different our country would be if we didn’t have a Supreme Court?

2.   Give Freedom – Muster any resources to help students pursue their questions.

3.   Encourage – Nudge students towards valuable sources and tools with lots of praise. 

I got an email yesterday. “Hey, Mister Milner! I just read this great article that’s really helping me understand this tragic migrant crisis. I thought your students might get something out of it!” Student becomes teacher, teacher becomes student; the cycle of learning continues. And as I think back, I realize that there was a teacher, all those many years ago who taught me to teach myself. Thanks, Mrs. Brown.   

Action Learning

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For tennis fans like me, this is a very exciting time of the year. Imagine you are at the US Open. All the best players in the world are there: Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and my favorite, Gael Monfils. The eager crowd roars when it’s time for the matches to start, but instead of taking the court to play, all the players are marched down to a basement room, seated at desks, and told to answer multiple-choice questions about tennis like: How do you score a tennis match? What’s the difference between a forehand and a backhand? What woman has won the most grand slams in tennis history?

 
Wouldn’t that be exciting! Wouldn’t people just line up to watch the test? Imagine the ratings! “And Nadal has just taken to the desk. Look at him write, look at him write! He’s a lefty and he’s just tearing through that test. I love how he knocks down those multiple choice questions! Just look at his powers of deduction, see how he eliminates, and marks through incorrect answers! You’ll never see a finer clay court test taker!”
 
The last time I took a pen and paper test was about two decades ago; I am judged almost solely by what I do, schools, however, seem to care only about what we know. It’s hard to care about how much someone knows, when Google always knows more! And why should knowing about a thing be more important than doing a thing?
 
Mostly, the outcome, the goal, the end result of school is knowing, not doing. This is not to say that knowing is bad. Knowledge is the first step to doing, but it’s just a step, and about 99% of the time it’s where we stop. We don’t judge athletes, or artists, lawyers, mechanics, or deliver truck drivers by what they know, but rather by what they do. Why then do schools measure only what we know, and never what we do?
 
This week, my personal teacher challenge is to focus on the outcome of my lessons. As I prepare each and every class, I’ll relentlessly ask myself: “what can my students do with their knowledge?” Which is hard, because it’s easier and faster and we’re certainly more accustomed to measuring knowledge instead of action. But I didn’t go into teaching because it’s easy, or to save time, or to just do what’s always been done. I went in to teaching for the money! I went into teaching to do big things! So let’s work together to reach the peak of education by moving from knowledge to understanding to action: Eduaction!

Let me be specific. It’s election season (it has been for years!) It’s important for citizens to know about the candidates, campaigns, and elections; but only insofar is it leads to their voting or taking part in some sort of civic action. So I’ve come up with a couple of examples from my current teaching practice to illustrate action learning.

1. Knowing - good

What date do presidential elections take place?
How old do you have to be to become president?
Who are the top presidential candidates this year?

1. Understanding - better

What is a consequence of the American political campaign process?
Why don’t we allow minors to vote for president?
What is the effect of money on the U.S. presidential election process?
What impact will Donald Trump’s hair have on voter turnout?

1. Doing - best

Using your knowledge of the US political process, presidential campaigns, elections, and the presidential candidates, make a flyer to post in the hallway or a post for facebook explaining why people should support and vote for the candidate of your choice.
 
 
Using your knowledge of the US political process, presidential campaigns, elections, and the presidential candidates, make a physical or virtual voters guide listing the top candidates positions on issues of importance to you and your peers.
 
 
Using your knowledge of the US political process, presidential campaigns, elections, and the presidential candidates, organize a voter registration drive or a get out the vote campaign at your school.
 
 
Using your knowledge of the US political process, presidential campaigns, elections, and the presidential candidates, hold a mock presidential candidate debate on campus followed by a mock election.
 
 
Action Steps

1. Imagination: imagine action instead of knowledge as the goal of lessons & assignments.
2. Goal Setting: articulate the concrete goal of your action.
3. Actionable Intelligence: formulate an action plan of specific action steps that students will take to achieve their goal.
4. Roadside Assistance: shepherd students through the difficult and time consuming process of action. Action takes time, you will have to set clear and discrete actions, set goals for the action.
5. Evaluation: If we are serious about getting kids to act on knowledge, we must evaluate the results of their actions! Give your students a clear rubric for evaluating their action and hold them to it.
6. Self-Assessment: evaluation of lessons learned and actions for improvement.

 
Next time we’ll walk through a case study for action learning and I’ll share some specific action lessons you can use in your class. For now, every time you plan a lesson, unit, or assessment, ask yourself this simple question: What do I want my students to DO with this knowledge? Once that question animates your work, action will follow. Good luck dreaming! Let me know if I can lead a workshop on making ACTION LEARNING a part of the culture of your school.

Mission Possible

As we begin another school year we owe ourselves the time for self-reflection.

I always ask my students to write about their dreams, fears, hopes, and goals for the year; so this year I’m going to ask myself some essential and reinvigorating questions. Let’s start big. A mission statement is a statement of purpose, a simple way to describe why we do what we do. It should separate out what is important from what is not and help us focus energy on the big stuff. It should be brief: a sentence or two.

Try to distill the reason you teach into a very brief mission statement:

Essential Questions

·      Why are you a teacher?

·      What is the best thing about teaching?

·      What are you nervous about this year?

·      What are you really good at doing as a teacher?

·      What is one thing you could do to be a better teacher?

·      Who was your best student last year, and what quality makes them best?

·      What is your favorite subject/unit/lesson/topic to teach?

·      What advice would you give a first year teacher?

·      What is one specific goal you have this year and how will you achieve it?

The Digital Natives are Restless

¿How many times do you think the average American checks their phone every day? Ten times? Twenty? Forty-eight? You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the average American checks their phone over 150 times a day - just about once every 6 minutes. And did you know that the average student spends over 10 hours a day with some sort of electronic device?

Before you go back to checking your phone, get this: by the time they graduate, our students will have spent more time sitting in front of a screen than in front of a teacher. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like great news to me!
 
Every year, when school starts back up, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how to reach my screen-addled student-zombies.  So what do you do about the  technology and the internet dilemma? Take part in our online poll & answer: How do you use the internet in your classroom?
 
A couple of summers ago I was at a school giving a talk on 21st century schools and technology. The Mesozoic school where I was speaking didn’t have internet. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was in Georgia. Actually, the school had plenty of internet - they just blocked it from teachers and students. I guess they didn’t want any one getting any ideas - or information - in their heads. I was flabbergasted, and I couldn’t exactly lead my workshop on technology without technology. That was when I understood what life must be like for Amish computer science teachers.
 
A school without the internet is like a library without books. Imagine going to a library to check out a book and the librarian says, “Oh no, there’s some dangerous books out there. We don’t want anybody getting their hands on those.”
 
Or you go to the airport. “I’d like a ticket for Miami.” “Miami, oh sorry, there was a crash last summer. Flights are dangerous. We don’t do flights here.”
 
A school’s chief job is educating students, and the internet is the greatest source of information in the history of the world, a tool, so magically amazing that it contains all the questions, answers, and knowledge of humankind at the touch of a button. Imagine having that kind of power at your disposal and deciding not to use it. Shame on them!
 
Of course, there is the other extreme. You may have witnessed this scene before. The classroom is peaceful and quiet. Everyone is online and working furiously at their computer. What could possibly be wrong? You walk to the back of the classroom to see the amazing learning that has been unleashed on the students, and behold a room full of teenagers - all updating their facebook status.
 
So we have a fine line to walk with the tools of technology in our classrooms.  Sometimes I use my students’ ubiquitous devices and reach right through their screens to grab their attention.

 
Starters

Light a spark in your classroom. Challenge, delight, & excite your students with our daily infographic. Project each day's infographic onto your overhead and let the curiosity & exploration begin. You'll see some great new features on our infographics page. There's a tag cloud in the sidebar where you can search for the perfect infographic for whatever topic you're teaching. And now, each new infographic comes with a download button so you can download and print out any of our great infographics and questions to use with your classes whenever and wherever you want.
 

Other times, I like to help my electronically-fatigued students digitally detox by carving out a non-connected safe-space in my classroom.

 
Fishbowl

Fishbowls are lively and intimate classroom debates where students learn to be active listeners. Students love the quiet focus of Fishbowls, and have so much fun debating, they don't ever realize how much they are learning. Teachers love fishbowls because students are forced to learn and think before they speak. In a fishbowl, all the digital noise, clutter, and distraction grinds to a halt as students focus on the lively debate at hand. Despite all the hard work fishbowls require, at the end of the year my students' only complaint is that they didn't get enough of them.

Before you check your phone, just remember, teaching is like having a faucet in your hand. You can turn off all the water and watch your students die of thirst, or you can flood your room and drown your students. Here's a better option. Teach your students to swim, and fill up the pool!

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Get out your phone's calendar. There's a couple of events coming up this fall you won't want to miss.

On October 7, I'll be leading a one-day workshop on Engaging and Empowering Students with the 4 Cs in cosmopolitan Clemmons, NC.
If you want to find out what the four Cs are, you'll have to C me there. Join us for this exciting and reinvigorating day!

I'll also be leading a one-day AP GoPo workshop on election day, November 3, at James River High School in majestic Midlothian, VA. If you want a refresher from our AP summer institute, please join us on election day.

For those of you in Tennessee. I got nothin'. Start driving east!How was your back-to-school professional development? That's what I thought. Next time around, why not bring an exciting day of creative & inspiring Professional Development to your school? Just have your principal contact me at milnerjonathan@gmail.com

And I'd be remiss not to mention the fantabulous units, the uncommon Commonweal labs, and the rambunctious raps about James Madison just a mouse click away. Juicy!

Connect to our Twitter feed for a daily digest of great articles and ideas for your classroom.

Happy Trails!

Jonathan

Born to Teach

Hi, I’m Jonathan. I bring greetings from the great state of North Carolina! Guess what? Did you know that there are more English teachers in China than in America? And did you know that every hour, over 10 billion emails are sent. That’s more than one for every human. And did you know that if all seven plus billion members of the human race stood shoulder to shoulder we could all fit into Los Angeles? And did you know that right now, human knowledge is doubling every 13 months? This is an endlessly surprising world. And the more I’ve learned, the more there is to learn.

So it’s a good thing that I’m a teacher. And I have been a teacher for over twenty years. And my parents are both teachers. I was even born in a school – which is better, I suppose, than going to school in a hospital. I guess you’d say I’m a born educator.

As a kid, I wanted to know everything so I read voraciously. Books, books, books, my childhood home was filled with memoirs, biographies, poems, plays, magazines, newspapers, novels, and more novels. In the family room sat a huge unabridged Webster’s dictionary that was as big as my little brother. I could spend hours lost in that dictionary. When I was ten my parents saved up their money and bought an entire set of the World Book Encyclopedia. I can still remember the weight of those books, the feel of the cool leather in my hands, the white cover glistening with gold leaf lettering over the blue binding around the spine. The M book (#13) was so big, the S (#17) just huge and there was so much C knowledge that the C encyclopedia it had to be divided in two (C-Ch #3 then Ci-Cz #4). I would follow one entry to the next to the next, leapfrogging from Bach to Barcelona to Zanzibar and back to Astrophysics, and when I got the end I realized that it was really only the beginning.

Growing up, learning was ubiquitous. My erudite father would quiz us at dinner: what’s the tallest building in the world? Who invented the radio? What’s the capital of Mozambique? Then my mother, always the teacher, would lob one of her ethical grenades into our conversation. “Boys,” she would drawl in her genteel Georgia accent, “I have a moral dilemma. Our neighbor said that she didn’t want her daughter being taught by a Black teacher. Now what do you think I should have said to her?” Across the dinner table, we devoured the world and discovered the joy of learning. And when my extended family got together we’d argue about politics, religion, and social issues. We learned to listen, to think, and to speak our minds. It was thrilling.

But when I got to school the adventure of learning ended. We squeezed into our small desks and took notes. We memorized the bones in the body, the quadratic equation, the past tense of irregular verbs. The thrill was gone. By the way, the quadratic equation…don’t use it a lot these days. Tibia, fibula? The same. There was a whole lot more memorization than exploration, imagination, or inspiration. About the only thing I can remember from school was watching the second hand slowly circle the clock. As you can imagine, I wasn’t much of a students, but as soon as school let out, there was home where there were always books to read, questions to ask, things to learn.

Today there’s lots of things I love to do and I’m always running out of time every day to try to fit it all in. I love, love, love to travel and I always have, but when I was a kid we didn’t travel much. My dad was a lover of the great indoors so we stayed home most of the time and I learned to travel through books.

I also love listening to music. I’ve got a very broad palate when it comes to music but these days at the very top of my playlist is Brazilian music (oh, Caetano Veloso), Jazz (John Coltrane and Nina Simone are both from North Carolina!), Chopin’s preludes (majestic!), rock and roll (I love you: Arcade Fire), and, of course, the Beatles (they are their own category). I spent my best college days skipping class, listening to rock and roll records, and playing in a rock and roll band. I still like to go hear a good concert and I spend most of my disposable income buying music (my students don’t know what “buying” music even means). I walk to work every morning, miniscule speakers jangling in my ears, a spring in my step, rocking off to school.

And of course, I still love to read. Poems, plays, the newspaper, magazines, short stories, non-fiction, and most of all novels. And as much as I like to read, I love to write even more. So books remain a huge part of my life.

Now let me introduce you to a couple of the most important people in my life. I am but a planet in their orbit. My wife, Cary, and I moved back to our hometown a decade and a half ago. When we couldn’t find a bakery we liked, Cary, who turns wishes into action, started one. The bakery began with Cary baking pumpkin bread and cookies out of our kitchen, and has grown into a thriving bedrock of the local food scene. And here’s something important Cary has taught me: small things, done well turn into big things. There’s almost nothing Cary can’t do and our bakery is full of her magical creations. She’s a wonderful baker, an accomplished photographer (her gorgeous prints adorn the bakery walls), and a fabulous woodworker (the beautiful tables are built by her hand). Being a teacher is a creative act. Your classroom is your own little universe that you populate with your passions. Your lessons are your own little stage plays. Make your classroom into a place you love. Fill it with the things that animate you. People gravitate towards purposeful people. And even if your students aren’t passionate about what you are, you’ll inspire them to work hard at the things they like.

My son Owen is really good at tennis, because he loves tennis, which makes really great at tennis, which makes him like it even more. He’s obsessed and plays hours and hours on end. He’s only been playing two years, and he’s become a very accomplished player. I’ve already had to take tennis lessons myself to delay his inevitable tennis superiority. It didn’t work. One day, Owen’s tennis coach said a really smart thing, “Kids love being good at something.” And Owen has taught me a really important lesson: when someone finds the thing they truly love, there’s very little that will stop them from doing that. Help your students find what they love. Connect it to your class. Ride it like a unicorn. 

Oh, and here’s what I’ve learned form watching Owen play tennis. There’s a very simple little trick that Owen’s used to get really good at tennis. Shhhh, it’s a secret. Don’t tell anybody: he practices all the time. File that one away.

So I’ve been a public school teacher now for over 20 years. That’s 140 in dog years. That’s a lot of teaching. By my reckoning I’ve taught about 1500 students. I’ve also taught hundreds of teachers. So I teach. And I teach teachers to teach. But I never teach teachers to teach teachers. That would just be a bit too complicated.

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I love teaching and I’ve learned a few lessons from my 20 plus years in the classroom.

1.     Explore. Our classrooms should be as exciting as the world! Show your students how much there is to explorer.

2.     Engage. Hook them with life’s splendor. Find that startling, wondrous, ironic, thrilling, majestic thing to catch their attention.

3.     Empower. Show them the power they have within themselves. Remind them often. Repeat. Then let them show you their power.

4.     Expect. Our expectations have the power to shape the world around us. Look for the best. Expect the best. Demand the best. You’ll probably get what you ask for, why not ask for their best?

5.     Passion. When someone finds the thing they truly love, there’s very little that will stop them from doing that. Help your students find what they love. Connect it to your class. Ride it like a unicorn. 

6.     Size up. Small things, done well turn into big things.

7.     Matter. Make it matter. Connect, connect, connect. If it doesn’t matter, its’s not worth doing.

8.     Do. Don’t say it when you can show it. Don’t show it when you can do it. Do.

9.     Mastery. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it sure doesn’t hurt and it can get you close. Practice, practice, practice.

10.  Autonomy. Disappear. Teach them to learn and then step away. Make yourself invisible. Erase yourself. According to the Zen saying, when the student is ready the master appears. But I think it’s as important to know that, when the student is ready, the master disappears. They’ve got an average of 62 more years without you.

I’m sharing the wonderful experiences and powerful lessons I’ve learned while teaching. Won’t you join me?