You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference.

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA.

Education is conversation. Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek. We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We’re still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, “This conference stuff is hard!”)

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost

Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools, St. Vrain Valley Public Schools, and Arapahoe High School.

Wireless

BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) – we’ll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) – we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We’re having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here’s your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others

We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation. Put up THIS POSTER everywhere you can (within reason).

Questions?

Feel free to email Karl Fisch, Bud Hunt, Ben Wilkoff or Mike Porter .

What do should we do in the classroom?

One of the biggest takeaways that I have been formulating at the Virtual Schools Symposium is that the hybrid model is not fiction. When students have access outside of class hours (and this is not a given by any means), shouldn’t we be expecting that they be connecting and collaborating during this time?

The more that I work with my new 7th graders (the students who I have only known under the Academy of Discovery Model), the more I realize that productivity is something that comes from having the ability to work at your own pace and schedule. I keep seeing the majority of essays being written at home even though I feel the obligation to give them time in class. I keep seeing my students make more meaning out of the emails and instant messages outside the classroom.

My real question, I guess, is what activity is so well suited to face-to-face contact that it can’t be replicated online? Whatever the answer to that question is, is what I need to be doing in my classroom, every day.

Here are my thoughts on what can’t be replicated online, yet:

• Debate – In its truest form, debate is a refined series of verbal arguments that require many people talking in rapid succession. Although you can do debate in an elluminate session, the passing of the mic is awkward at best and the visual separation of the competing sides is not possible.
• Networking – It is why we still come to conferences. Finding great people that you want to work with and that will challenge you is something that is lacking in the online world. A social network does create a sense of community amongst many people, but it the bonds forged are not immediate. They take time and tending. In face-to-face communication, it is easy to see the worthwhile. It is easy to recognize excellence. That is what classroom time can be: the search and recognition for excellence (in writing, in math, in science, etc.)

What are the things that you think are so essential in the classroom that they can’t be outsourced to a virtual space? (Do they still exist? Will they always exist?) I really want to know.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I hope to see you soon.

VSS Blogroll so far:

• Virtual High School Meanderings
• MrMoses

Technorati Tags: VSS2007

“The people that complain are our best customers, not our worst.” -Jackie Huba

In the keynote for NACOL VSS 2007: Jackie Huba, an advertising consultant and blogger, is talking about creating learning evangelists. Her idea is that word of mouth is all powerful. The students and parents that complain about learning are the ones that may be the biggest evangelists. They are the ones that care enough to put forth ideas. They are the ones who want a better product. For every complaint from them, many more complaints exist (she says 26).

What does this mean for us as teachers on the cutting (sometimes bleeding) edge of education?

Well, I think that we need to be able to pay attention to our critics and frame our ideas in order to make them into evangelists (I would call them advocates). We need to be solving issues of content and access so that our students and parents see that we are listening.

If we are listening to our stakeholders, we need to do something about it. Pushing further and further out into the blogosphere and online learning without listening to what is working and what isn’t will never create the kinds of advocates that we need. So, my next question is: How do we listen well? How do we use what we hear to change, or possibly, keep doing something that is working.

Point #2

“Google Never Forgets.”

If you post something, write something, create something, google will remember. Bad press matters, as does bad research, bad marketing, and bad framing. I want to make sure that I don’t make any missteps with my identity. Is that possible?

Technorati Tags: VSS2007

I was not the only one with this idea, however.

I just so happened to sit next to Kathryn Knox, Ph.D. (Senior Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Colorado Virtual Academy) and we struck up quite the conversation about online learning.

My favorite part of the discussion was when we stumbled upon community as a tenet for a successful online school. She put it this way: “Without community you don’t have a school. You have a program but not a school.” This idea really caught me and it hasn’t let go yet.

Are we trying to create programs that are viable and sustainable, or are we trying to create communities that constantly need tweaking and guidance. The first is easy: Set up the systems, install the software, write the content. The second is terrifyingly hard: engage all stakeholders, listen, change.

I really need to keep looking at the Academy of Discovery to make sure that I am not just creating a program, I am creating a community.

Technorati Tags: VSS2007

But…

More and more I am coming to realize that most people are not looking for this. They do not want a searchable database of thousands of Web 2.0 offerings. Instead, they want a well organized document that makes the connections from technology to pedagogy for them. Most teachers are not trying to find a new way of mashing up two web pages so that it gives off a split screen effect (if anyone knows of something, let me know). Most teachers would say that is pretty geeky. And each and every one of them would be right.

I have made peace with my idiosyncratic geek status in the education world. I don’t want to be defined by it, but I am still proud of it. I think it is about time that I stop trying to make others like me, though.

Our model of success should not be to see how many people we can get to be WebHeads. Our model should start somewhere more along the lines of Step by Step: Building a 2.0 Classroom. Or prehaps, as simple as a series of documents. Something that could exist as paper, that could still have value in the analog world.

So, about a month ago I started working on such a document. The document is supposed to be an introduction to the essential tools and resources needed for creating an authentic learning environment online. It is not perfect, and it is not finished. When I started sharing the early version on Starting from Scratch, quite a few people contacted me wanting to know if they could use it. Please use it, upload it, change it, but keep me a part of the conversation.

• What should be there that isn’t?
• What can be eliminated as inessential?
• Can this document be used for other purposes?
• How can it be refined?
• What is the next step for teachers when they have the document?
• Is it enough to get people started?

If you missed the link to the document above: 101-resources-ver-2.pdf

Please let me know what you think.

Well, the time has come for a new K12 Online conference, and I am happy to report that my daughter reached her first birthday without any major catastrophe (although she is still keeping me up at sometimes). This time, though, I am not merely listening in on the conversation. This time, I am a presenter in the Obstacles to Opportunities strand. It is my greatest hope that the work I have done for this conference will be seen in the same light by other new fathers who are trying to find a way to both cradle their baby’s head correctly and balance an iPod on their pajama leg.

So, if you are interested in the presentation check it out here. 

You may find the supporting documents even more intriguing, though:

1. Starting From Scratch Companion
   
2. Authentic Learning: Metaphor and Vision
3. 101 Resources and Tools for Authentic Learning

My Cross pen is always, always by my side. Slipping it over the edge of my pocket feels grand. It is that extra insurance for everything I do. I will never be without an idea because the idea instrument exists. It is connected to me.

I will use it on mundane homework, the calculus equations that fit so perfectly on the page. But, its real work, the strokes it was meant to make are the ones in my titled notebooks.

I sit in the cubicles that look like a swastika, only because they are the quietest place I can find. I pen the prose that only my best friends will see. This pen is for me, just like the time. I own it, forgetting all other writing implements, all other worries.

I am a cross pen moving the page to meet my needs. I am the world of ideas, stroking ego and creating the colossal theories that outline my outlook, my personality.

The first of the 10 prerequisites for The Ripe Environment is “Educators and learners must have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.” This need for input and feedback equates to a continual longing for connection. Our ideas must be connected to other’s for them to have value. They must be experienced by someone out there somewhere who is intrigued, disgusted, embarrassed, or in some other way affected.

Connection is different in The Ripe Environment, though. It is no longer sufficient to meet someone and shake his or her hand. This is not a connection; it is merely a coincidence that both of you happen to be in the same room. A connection is something that is felt when ideas/personalities/beliefs meet one another and are challenged, bettered, or assimilated. Two people can be talking about the similar ideas or completely opposite opinions, but until a link is made between the two, neither are aware of the similarities and differences. That means, that there is no value held within either. And truly, connection is all about creating value for the the two people doing the connecting.

The three types of connections that create the most value are as follows:

• The 1:1
  • Definition: Two people with the same aims. A friend. An adversary. A person who encourages you to do your best work.
  • Examples: A twitter friend. Someone you e-mail/IM regularly that asks you exchange questions and answers with. A collaborative document (i.e., Google Docs)

• The autograph (aka 1:many)
  • Definition: A fan or follower of someone else’s ideas. An inspiration. A person that creates (or attempts to create) a movement.
  • Examples: A twitter follower. A blog that you read or write. A podcast. A comment on a blog post.

• The frame (aka many:many)
  • Definition: A builder upon other’s ideas. A new context for established content. A collaborative network.
  • Examples: A tweet. A Meme. A trackback. A Wiki. A webcast. A social network.

All three of these connections are essential for the culture of collaboration to occur. If we stop at merely 1:1 interaction, collective intelligence is wasted. If, on the other hand, if all we are doing is framing other’s ideas out in the open, there is never any time to develop personal relationships with those that can directly benefit from our ideas and help them to grow.

So, we can blend the three types of connections. A link within a blog is both a 1:1 and a 1:many, as is a comment. Blending personal and public connections is a way of introducing our own contacts to our greater network; it is a way of getting rid of the apprehension that people have about putting themselves “out there.”

For example, a colleague of mine writes great e-mails. They are concise and beautifully written. They are based in both theory and practice. They ask amazing questions and beg me to go deeper with everything I am working on. So, I tell him to start blogging the e-mails, and I ask him if I can podcast about them. What I am doing is introducing his ideas to some of the other people I am connecting to. These are the connections that make sense in The Ripe Environment because they don’t allow any good idea to stay archived in an e-mail folder, never to be heard from again.

My hope is that we start honoring these types of connections for the inspiration and passion that give to our daily lives. We cannot settle for an atmosphere of acquaintanceship in our learning communities. We must strive for an culture of connection.

This post is in draft form. My hope is that it will expand to include better definitions of each type of connection as well as examples. Please feel free to comment to that affect, or if you would prefer a more 1:1 connection, please e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com. I would also like to thank those of you who are already interested in expanding upon this idea (Patrick Higgins, Chris Lehmann, Alec Couros, TechKnow, and Christian Long) . Please write as much about as you can. It is the only way that The Ripe Environment will actually occur.

I am tired of talking about the tools. Many of us have been talking about the tools for a long time now. We have said that using technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive. We want to use technology as a tool, right? But the tools for collaborating and creating are the largest sticking points for others. Teachers get caught up on jargon, on the basic skills of one program or process. They are still so focused on “podcasting” or “dreamweaver” that there is no room for creating the environment in which people will actually want to go beyond the tools, into true learning (you know, what we want our kids to be doing). What, then, is beyond the tools? What should we really be reaching for? The Ripe Environment. The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom.

So, how do we get to The Ripe Environment? Well, I have started to reflect on how I became a constant-learner and contributor to this thing I am more and more reluctant to call School 2.0. I want to replicate this process for others, and showing people my flickr account, my del.icio.us account, my blog, my podcast, my pedagogy, my wiki projects, and my twitter account just doesn’t seem to work very well. What does actually work is making sure that they have the right environment so that they can explore these resources on their own, through their own creation.

I am now proposing the 10 prerequisites for collaboration as a way of creating The Ripe Environment in the classroom, in a school, and in a district. There will be quite a few follow-up posts about this topic, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I have already written before I go too far off the deep end. Please leave a comment or e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com.

Here they are:

In order for the environment to be ripe for collaboration, educators and learners must:

1. Have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.
2. See living examples of collaboration (not case studies or projects from a few years ago) that they can become a part of.
3. Have the time to connect more than two dots together. (Rather than connecting: “My students need to know this” with “here is the information” they need to have time to connect “My student needs to know this” with “my students need to evaluate this for validity” with “my students need to know how to use this resource to find the information” with “my students need to create new information for others to use.”)
4. See collaboration as an extension of their natural instincts as a teacher (opening possibilities for learning).
5. Find the backchannels relevant to them (these backchannels must be encouraged and honored as vital sources of learning).
6. Know that their products and ideas are valuable.
7. Understand the marks of successful collaboration. (They have to know what it looks like.)
8. Accept that questions are both for interdependent and independent learning. (All questions are serious points of inquiry in The Ripe Environment.)
9. Believe that personal and professional change can never be institutionalized. (Individuals create change, not schools or districts.)
10. Know that meetings, conferences, and workshops are not the places where the most powerful learning and change takes place.

I will be writing more about each one of these 10 prerequisites, but please let me know what you think about them as stand-alone ideas.

This phenomenon, although real and slightly annoying, is not what I want to concentrate on. I don’t want to plumb the depths of why it is that people around the world will comment on your blog and give you feedback on your work, but it is maddening to just get a coworker to check out a great resource. I’m not interested in figuring out why the parents of your students are less inspired than the parents of other teachers’ students. In fact, I really don’t care that the recognition for doing online presentations and creating learning objects that are widely held as groundbreaking is seen in local circles as an affront to the organization from which you hail.

All hyperbole aside, what I would like to focus on is creating collaborative opportunities in your “own town.” How can we go about making sure that the great types of conversation and feedback described above are going on in the hallways in between classes?

Well, I think I have come up with three things that will help:

1. Wear your passion on your sleeve.
2. Reach out on a consistent basis.
3. Find a way to incorporate what others are doing already into your vision.

I have been e-mailing quite a bit about my podcast on this topic. There are a few teachers out there that are wrestling with the use of technology in their teaching. One such teacher, Jason Hando, said that he worked with a “flat world” project initially without applying all of the technology. After he had worn his passion on his sleeve for a while, he applied some web 2.0 technology in the form of a blog and received positive feedback from his school administration, including his principal.

This is not the only kind of passion that I think we can wear on our sleeve. We can be constantly talking about the great resources that we have found in our feed readers. We can be showing off the authentic products that our students are creating daily. Eventually other teachers will start to ask us how we are doing this. We can let our students and their parents become the advocates for the kind of learning experiences that are abundant in our classrooms. They will start wearing our passion on their sleeves too.

We should also be sending feelers out every once in a while for anyone who is ready to incorporate School 2.0, even to the smallest degree. Hold a class on blogging in the classroom even if you know only 5 people will show up. Send an e-mail tell others what you are doing that you know will only be read and trashed by the majority of your staff. Pull other people into a project that you are working on if they are on the outside looking in at your technology realization. Be the one teacher that “gets it,” but isn’t angry that others don’t.

The last thing that I have found for working collaboration with the people around you into your hectic global collaboration schedule is to honor what the teachers in your school are already doing. I am a big fan of looking at a project that is already in place and just making it 2.0. A great example of this was when my team decided that we were going to go on a field trip to Denver. Most of the other teams in the school were having the kids to a scavenger hunt of key places in the downtown area and answering questions on a sheet of paper, which was to be turned in and never to be heard from again. My way of making this trip into a “2.0″ experience was to use Mapwing so that my students could make interactive tours of downtown which could be looked at by anyone from around the world to find out more about our fine city.

Each teacher on our team was able to contribute their expertise to the project, but we were showing the kids how to collaborate and create in an authentic way. My hope is that more of these types of cross-curriculum projects start to happen organically because we have opened up the door by using what was already in existence.

What do you think? Are there other ways to create collaboration in our own towns and become, if not prophets, at least teachers with advice and experience worth sharing?

Teacher 2.0:

Impassioned secondary teacher wanted to create high-level small-class learning environment in a diverse school dedicated to reflective pedagogy, thoughtful technology integration, and teacher leadership.

General Job Responsibilities for all teachers at our school:

• Collaborate with team, department, and greater teaching community via both synchronous (essential question directed in-person discussion, Google Documents-style collaborative lesson planning, real-time chatting) and asynchronous methods (wikis, non-mass e-mails, Personal Learning Network reading and linking).
• Maintain a reflective teaching blog, podcast, and/or wiki which is focused upon finding solutions for classroom problems, creating more student engagement or acheivement as shown through authentic assessements and teacher anecdotal evidence rather than state-wide assessement scores, or generating new ways to connect to students, teachers, or other members of the education community.
• Read and interact with a Personal Learning Network made up of a few administratively selected educators and a vast majority of personally selected teachers, authors, and students who challenge you to become a better teacher.
• Create your own professional development objectives for the year based upon your passions and your readership of your PLN. The majority of the professional development time throughout the year will be based upon your own objectives.
• Create curriculum that can be shared, edited, and reproduced through creative commons licenses.
• Use non-graded e-portfolios as the exclusive means of assessment and personal student reflection.

Specific Job Responsibilities for the English Language Arts position:

• Create and maintain a digital authentic writing community, in which students are responsible for reflecting upon their own work, linking and commenting on others’ work, and understanding and controlling the direction of their own writing progress/process.
• Conduct project-based learning that asks students to address real-life issues through authentic writing and media creation.
• Use inquiry-based lessons to teach the conceps of textual analysis, considering all types of text (visual, auditory, and performance.)
• Model the creation of touchstone-texts and resources that produce well-balanced viewpoints of our world, and help students to do the same.
• Ensure that each student can question the validity of statements made in writing or in speech by verifying sources constantly.
• Cultivate each student’s unique writer’s voice so that the intentions of their writing meet the impressions of the reader. This process must include constant feedback, grammatical and conventions mini-lessons, and constant question asking as to the purpose of the choices that the student author has made.
• Conduct in-depth digital and conventional discussions on the nature of read and writing, user-selected texts, and thematic issues related to other curriculum.
• Model higher-level thinking skills in writing and verbal remarks to the class and expect the same high-level thinking from students.

I know that I will be adding to both of these lists quite a bit as my thoughts keep coming, but I thought that I would start off with these. Please let me know what you think of they way things truly should be in schools. Oh, and if anyone knows of a job like this out there, please let me know. I would love to be a part of a school that is this perfect. (I know that this doesn’t exist yet, but I suppose I can dream.)

• Words are always applied to the whole object
• Each word has an exclusive meaning.

• Learning meaning is only done by applying a word to new concepts or objects.

• The process of continuous instinctual categorization of words and contextual evidence is responsible for understanding sentences.

• The meaning derived is greater than the sum of its parts.

Book Recommendations:

• The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World

• Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language)

• Not everyone can be a mathematician, but everyone is a linguist in a manner of speaking.
• Linguistic Determinism (Language Shapes Thought) and Linguistic Relativity (We see reality through our native language).
• Is it naive to believe that there is a universal mentalese?
• Does language support or influence thought?
• Language is not a prerequisite for thought.
• Language and culture are inseparable/interchangeable.
• Pinker and Whorf (Determinism/Relativity) are at odds.
• Pre-linguistic children have thoughts but do not have language.
• Thought of language vs. Language of thought.
• Is there some other aspect of language than just thinking and speaking? (The Psychosis of language?)
• Grammatical constructions are not a prerequisite for being able to express a concept.
• Neurolinguistics – Language in the brain.
• Differences between Human and Ape’s brains:
• Frontal Lobes
• Compartments
• One More Book Rec.
• Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought

• How can we use our language so that our students become more metacognitive and reflective?

• Is peer editing actually useful for students or only for teachers?
• How would our teaching practice change if we were to consider all of our students as gifted?
• Iquiry works for all students, no matter the level of giftedness.

• Food
• Japon Spicy Tuna handrolls at the happy hour price.
• My wife’s savved second breakfast of Lucky Charms.
• Ordering Dairy Queen Blizzards with chocolate ice cream.
• People/Pets
• My wife as she picks at her stretch marks.
• Charlie when he sees his red leash.
• Places
• The fear of never breathing again after the SCUBA gear fell out of my mouth.
• Objects

• Kara goes into the kitchin, stepping on the slightly-off new tile floor. She sets herself up for her first breakfast. Try number one at filling her stomach. Out come the rice chex and the two percent milk. Out comes a big spoon to get it all down quickly. She scarfs in front of a tivo’d family feud, sitting on the couch that she sinks into and hates because of it. She waits. She hopes. She knows. It is is all in vain as she heads for the toilet that she knows too well…
• Intentionally use one craft that we discussed and that is present in the “professional writing” and use it in your writing piece.

• What is the author doing in this piece?
• Are these elements of this particular genre?
• Example:
• Memoir Crafts (Murphy the Dog):
• Short/Long sentences fluency
• frames setting first
• aides-voice
• personal/universal

• Getting ready to write
• Writing
• Making a little bit better
• Celebration/Publication (making writing public).

• Grammar in context.
• Guided writing is more effective than free writing.
• Modeling good writing of your own, published writing, and student writing is important.
• Sentence Combining works.
• Use scales for success in writing.
• What is the target for your writing?
• Inquiry in writing is powerful.
• Asking questions as an author or a reader of authors is a virtue.

• Shakespeare Set Free (Writing prompts for each chapter of Shakespeare’s plays).

• Mark Overmeyer will be e-mailing us his classroom process.

• Sculpt
• Take Away
• Add to
• Write about other’s sculptures.
• How is this like the process of revision?

• Quality
• Quantity
• Manner
• And one more that I can’t remember.

• Double Negatives are okay.
• Deletion of verb “to be” and other unnecessary pieces of english.
• Contracting auxiliaries.

The required texts for this course:

Linguistics: An introduction to language by Adrian Akmajian et al.

The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language by Steve Pinker.

Optional Texts for this course:

Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Discourse by Paul Chilton

Thoughts and Utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication by Robyn Carston

Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers by Diane Blakemore et al.

• This is the first class that I have had that requires a book review. It has to be relating to linguistics, but I am not sure how loose the relationship can be. (Can I read Know-It-All?)
• Chomsky (mostly a nativist) was one of the first to argue against B.F. Skinner’s ideas of behaviorism.
• Language Aquisition Theories
• Inside (within the brain) (Chomsky and Pinker)
• Outside (within the environment and interaction)
• A combination of both
• The critical age of langauge aquisition is aprox. 5. If a kid does not have a hold of the language by this age then there is either something wrong with brain activity or the child’s environment.
• Language values:
• Be clear
• Be brief
• Be simple
• (Be relevent)
• Language Attrition: where you forget your native language because you don’t find it useful.

Martin Luther had this idea first, but I’m sure he won’t mind if I borrow it. I kept thinking that progressive education needed a good rally cry, a belief system that we could all debate, discuss, and eventually agree upon. So I decided to start this project. Here are the first 50 theses of progressive education. I have categorized each of my beliefs in order to organize my thoughts and prevent any redundancy. Please write your ideas and additions into the comments for this post.
Change:

1. Teachers should be the change they want to see in their schools.
2. Teachers should constantly reinvent the wheel to make it ride smoother and faster over any type of terrain imaginable.
3. Teachers should never teach the same things the same way twice.
4. Teachers should see tradition for what it is: the hope that things will stay the same forever.

Collaboration and Community:

5. Teachers should be a part of a supporting network of dedicated fellow teachers who challenge each other to be better.
6. Teachers should accept advice, encouragement, and feedback freely from anyone who has their best interest in mind.
7. Just like teachers should never write off a student, they should also never write off a fellow teacher as incapable of change or merely incapable.
8. Teachers should never assume that their ideas will be adopted or believed even if they have research on their side but they should always try to convince people anyway.
9. Teachers should evangelize what they believe, but never prescribe it as a program for other teachers to follow verbatim. All teachers are different.
10. Teachers should not fear certain subjects of conversation with colleagues; all teachers deserve to be challenged in a way that they can understand and accept.
11. Teachers should never participate in anything in their classrooms, departments, or districts that can’t or won’t be shared with others and perhaps improved upon.
12. Teachers should be honest and open about what they excel at and what they need help with.
13. Teachers should be addictive personalities.
14. Teachers should never have to worry that someone has their back.
15. Teachers should see gossip for what it is: the nearly irremovable wedge driven between teachers to cut off all collaborative possibility.

Curriculum:

16. Teachers should be an integral part of all curriculum decision.
17. Teachers should never merely teach their content; they should teach the usage of their content in new and different situations.
18. Teachers should disarm racial, gender, and class biases in themselves and their classrooms by always speaking honestly about the corrosive effects that these biases can have on every question asked and curricular decision made.
19. Teachers shouldn’t see a difference between teaching to the students and teaching to the test. They should trust their methods to get students to where success lies.
20. Teachers should never give an assignment that they wouldn’t be willing to do themselves.

Teaching/Learning Theory:

21. Teachers should always have a good answer for the question “Why is this important?”
22. Teachers should find their inspiration for lessons in anything they want. There are infinite entrances to learning.
23. Teachers should learn.
24. Teachers should never think for their students.
25. Teachers should know that they have effects farther reaching than this year’s classroom, and should teach accordingly.
26. Teachers should be an expert in what they teach, but not the expert.
27. Teachers should allow a specific entrance to every student for their curriculum, thus creating universal access to learning.
28. Teachers should promote the complex and sometimes ambiguous nature of problem solving and real world application by bringing it into the classroom and showing students how complexity isn’t a vice, but a virtue.
29. Teachers should use theory only as an avenue to creating real lessons and activities that are student-centered instead of using it to create more theory (application instead of abstraction).
30. Teachers should learn from their students all that they can about student learning, teacher practice, and the next generation of life.
31. Teachers should know who their students are, and because of this, know what they need to learn.
32. Teacher should know what is unique about their school/district, and they should use these things to add idiosyncratic interest rather than jumping on a curriculum bandwagon.
33. Teachers should never frame their days by asking, “What can I fill this time with?”
34. Teachers should be ready to influence minds at a moments notice by asking students questions and learning something from the answer.
35. Teachers should anticipate anything but assume nothing.
36. Teachers should find solutions the same way that they find problems, by looking for them.
37. Teachers should preserve their individuality because it is the only way that they can preserve the individuality of their students.
38. Teachers should be prepared for, have an affinity toward, and see the value and beauty in the inherent difficulties in teaching one child, let alone 120.
39. Teachers should use the language of their craft in their classroom, encouraging their students to know the content more intimately, but they should never shirk their responsibility to be an adaptive translator of their content language.
40. Teacher should blend who they are with what they do. Teaching should be an authentic act for the teacher, not just the student.

Professional Development and Administration Support:

41. Teacher should be confident enough in their knowledge and teaching craft to justify any decision to a parent or administrator.
42. Teacher should know that new ideas exist, and should actively search for them in colleagues, both near to and far from them.
43. Teachers should never hide behind educators’ jargon and acronyms to make it appear as though they have a monopoly on knowledge.
44. Teachers shouldn’t be forced to choose “or” instead of “and” when it comes to resource needs in the classroom.
45. Teachers should read widely from both new and old media specific to their own interests in education, rather than read teacher books from someone unconnected to the classroom.
46. Teachers should never form an adversarial relationship with their administration; no sustained curricular or pedagogical decisions can be made only at the classroom level.

Reflection:

47. Teachers should know what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t work in their classrooms.
48. Teachers should collect anecdotes as data just as often as they collect test scores because more people are convinced when stories are connected to numbers.
49. Teachers should see honest reflection as the main avenue of change in teaching.

Technology:

50. Teachers should see technology as being as integral to learning as pen and paper, an aid to but never substitute for good teaching.

I know that this list needs a lot of work. Please help my far reaching attempt to give modern educational belief a clear and powerful voice.

Our group definition for Equity: Access to opportunity with unlimited guidance and support.

We need to eliminate the gatekeepers at our school. They treat learning as an elitist act. You need to socialize students to intelligence. Gatekeepers are teachers who prevent access to learning because they have a problem with a disposition or a type of intelligence.

You don’t have to be the smartest teacher in the world. You simply have to be resourceful.

In order to make sure that kids are prepared, there must be a discussion among teachers about what the expectations will be throughout the years.

Part of learning is failure.

Exposure alone to rigorous curriculum is going to prepare you later in life, as long as the support is there so that students don’t feel like a failure.

Be a talent scout for kids, especially the ones that don’t look like the typical AP-Student.

Strategies are a lifeline for students to be successful in the rigorous classroom.

We should echo students’ language in order to value their background, we should show how our language translates to theirs.

Learning is not a sprint; it is a marathon.

Rubric for Access and Equity
	Teachers/Administration	Students	Parents
4	Actively promote rigorous classes for all students.	Are enfranchised to make decisions about appropriately rigorous classes	Advocates for an inclusive program and encourages student responsibility
3	Recognize need and working toward greater levels of access for all students	Simply Enjoy the diversity	Recognize value for all
2	Superficially recognize need, but no action taken (lip-service)	Social Expectations	Only concerned with own students
1	Gate-Keepers	Grade-Grubbing or Apathetic	Apathetic or uninformed

Alternate Rubric for Access and Equity
4	3	2	1
Students WANT to enroll in AP courses; there is a waiting list to get in.	Teachers actively recruit students to enroll in AP classes	An open enrollment policy exists but not many students are interested.	Students must all qualify for enrollment in AP classes.
Population of AP classes is diverse	Population is diverse	Population of ap courses is only partially diverse.	Population is elitest
80% of AP students take the AP exam	70% of students take the AP test	60% of students take the AP tests	50% or fewer take test
Resources and support and well established in the building and often used by students	Resources are support are available and developing	Minimal resources and support available to AP students	Little to no support is available for AP students.
AP teachers are given time to collaborate and attend AP training	Professional resources are available in building	Professional Development resources are available but not well-known or used	Teachers research and locate AP info on their own.

In elementary school some parents are helicopter parents, but in high school they turn into black hawk down parents.

What does it mean to be in a rigorous classroom? Does it mean that everyone can get an A or a B? How do we communicate this to students/parents?

In order for a rigorous curriculum to take hold and be sustainable, we must have coordinated support from administration, teachers, parents, and community.

Intelligence is not static. It can be honed and solidified with strategies.

Learning is learning no matter where you are or what you are doing, we only attach elitism when it comes to academics.

You cannot laugh at true learning.

There is no such thing as Pre-AP classes. All classes should provide strategies for students to succeed in a rigorous high school and college classroom.

We need students to have a repertoire of automatic strategies. Students should be able to decide for themselves which one is the most appropriate.

If we don’t use our professional development time wisely (taking it back to the classroom) then we are wasting taxpayer dollars and the time of everyone involved.

Do we need to embarrass our reluctant teachers into signing on to engage in collaboration and academically rigorous classes?

Can we get money to work on weekends toward vertical teams?

I know that as a proficient reader, I have developed my own shorthand and language for coding a text. Is it more helpful to have a set list of codes for reading, or is it better to let students make up their own and create a language similar to the way I did?

If you say: Annotate the text, how many kids would actually do it? What would they think that annotating the text means that they should do?

Never put someone down without showing them the way back up.