professional learning

Gondolas, Gratitude, and Generative AI: A Week to Remember in British Columbia

Posted by shareski on in ALP, gratitude, joy, Leadership, professional learning, professionallearning

I just wrapped up one of the best and most fulfilling weeks of work I’ve ever had, this time in British Columbia. My colleague Adam Garry and I went full throttle, spending full days in 10 different districts, helping them build their understanding of Generative AI. After an incredible start to the week—three days that I’ve already raved about—I capped it off with the West Vancouver School District. I’ve worked with this district for over a dozen years, building fantastic relationships along the way. The district’s culture speaks for itself, with its incredible stability and very little turnover. In a room of 60-70 school and district leaders, I knew so many by name and had the privilege of watching them evolve in their leadership roles over the years.

Chris Kennedy invited me to kick off their year by leading a day focused on the risks and possibilities of #genai. I’ll admit, I had my worries. This was their first day back—usually reserved for the lighter stuff—and here I was, rolling in with what could be considered some pretty heavy and heady content. I also wondered if these folks, who have seen me present more times than I can count, might be craving a fresh face. So yes, I had my concerns.

But I’ll tell you this: starting a PL session by taking a gondola ride up Grouse Mountain is not a bad way to ease into the day. For a prairie boy like me, the setting was nothing short of magical. We kicked off with some lighthearted fun, poking at my friend Chris Kennedy, who graciously let me use him to demo a deep fake. While no one fell for it (obviously), they appreciated the effort. And in true me-fashion, I spent far too long creating a 30-second video—but let’s be honest, I wouldn’t change a thing. One participant told me the day flew by, which is always a good sign.

To top it all off, they showered me with more swag than I deserved. (Side note: Chris Kennedy doesn’t like being outdone, and I’ve been known to boast about the awesome swag other districts give me, so I think this was his way of making sure West Van stays in the game.)

We ended the day with a fantastic dinner on a patio, and what truly took me by surprise was how many people took the time to come up to me, not just to say thank you, but to share specific moments and ideas from the day that resonated with them. They didn’t have to do that, but they did—and it overwhelmed me with gratitude. I’ve delivered thousands of presentations in my career, but this one stands out as one of the most satisfying. As I soaked in their kind words, it hit me that this wasn’t just a one-off expression of thanks. This district’s success comes from the way they live gratitude every day. Their students and staff experience it regularly—it’s part of what makes them want to come to work, and why they enjoy being in each other’s company.

I hesitate to use the word “family” because it gets thrown around too often, but this place really does feel special. From the Trustees to the Superintendent, from District Leadership to the School Leaders and Teachers—they care about each other and, more importantly, they care for each other.

A few themes have stayed with me throughout my career, with joy and community being right at the top. This day was a perfect example of both. I’d like to think I contributed to that, but I definitely know I received it.

Are We Ready to Learn Again?

Posted by Dean Shareski on in ALP, facebook, linkedin, professional learning, professionallearning

We’ve seen a major focus on Social Emotional Learning in the past few years. Certainly, the pandemic made it a universal priority for schools. Overall, this has been a good thing and one I’ve advocated for a long time. Our mission is not simply to develop knowledge and skills but also citizens who have a sense of well-being and dare I say, happiness. That said, I’ve noticed a trend that is separating SEL and learning and making it appear at times that the two are mutually exclusive. While no one would ever voice that idea, I think that the ways in which the pandemic has affected people differently are revealing themselves in the lack of readiness for many to really engage in deep and meaningful learning.

It’s difficult to say which comes first: “deep learning” or “wellness”. If I’m forced to make this a binary decision, I’ll likely opt for wellness first, and deep learning second. But that’s just it. I don’t think it is a binary thing. In fact, I think in many cases deep and engaging learning leads to wellness and vice versa. They are complementary. I will say that early on in the pandemic it was clear that the general level of wellness in our schools and the world was so low that it was necessary to put our efforts into the health and well-being of our learners (students, teachers and leadership). We were indeed impoverished and the degree to which schools and leaders took on this challenge was quite spectacular and educators proved they could really do hard things.

But the wellness issue has not been solved and likely won’t ever be solved. And yet what I’ve noticed is a wide range of readiness for individuals and communities to re-engage in deep learning. I know many leaders are working to make this once again the focus of their culture while others remain in neutral because they may be lacking a critical mass of influencers to get back to their purpose. As I talk to various leaders and educators I get these mixed and competing messages regularly. But returning to my previous point that well-being and deep learning are complementary, I’m looking to bring these two ideas together to design professional learning and culture for all learners.

When I think back to my early days with technology, I recall some similarities to what I’m seeing with well-being. Many tended to see technology and deep learning as two different things. They had a difficult time seeing how technology could be embedded into their traditional classrooms. Technology was a class that required specialized teachers and a designated space to access it. It’s taken years for this mindset to shift and some are still working to resolve this resistance. But for the most part and in theory, we understand and believe how one fosters the other.

So when it comes to developing mentally and physically healthy learners we have to include their intellectual health. The concept of intellectual health is somewhat nebulous and academics is not typically considered a health issue but by thinking about it in terms of health, perhaps we’ll do better in aligning it with our overall purpose of young people prepared to live, thrive and become contributing adults.

My research is anecdotal at best but I would still love to hear your voice around this matter. Speaking either for yourself, your district or colleagues, what is the readiness level of staff to re-engage with personal and professional learning? What obstacles or barriers still remain? What steps or structures have you seen that have supported a return to innovative practices and a desire to grow as a learner?

Two Things Are True

Posted by Dean Shareski on in ALP, facebook, linkedin, professional learning, professionallearning

This is essentially what I’ve been trying to figure out for the past 18 months

The real truth is I’ve been trying to figure that out for the past 20 years, ever since I shifted from teaching children to teaching adults. As much as we try to model the classroom experience to adult learning, I realize that pedagogy and andragogy are different. This is true not only in terms of capacity and perspective but also the environment. Classrooms have the advantage of a daily connection. In lower elementary, it means you’re spending hours each day with each other. You have time to connect and build relationships which we know is essential. We also have learners whose primary job is to go to school to learn. When it comes to professional learning, it’s above and beyond their main job. Even when time during school is given, it’s extra, let alone the time it would take to prepare for a substitute teacher.

Even under normal circumstances, teacher well-being is tenuous. Today many would say we’re in crisis mode. And yet, the vast majority of educators enjoy and value the need for continued growth. After all, the mantra of lifelong learning is best modeled by those sharing it every day with their students. But it remains complicated. With that in mind, here are but a few of the over 100 responses I had to this query.

While responses vary, a few themes are clear. Choice and well designed experiences top the list. This is where things align perfectly with the classroom experience. I know I’ve been working hard to acheive these two elements with varying degrees of success. The other theme that emerges is a flat out call to reposition the role of professional learning

https://twitter.com/MrHaley_Hill/status/1453758288756154368

My response was to agree but also wonder if that means we are in no position to learn. I think about many people’s response to the early days of the pandemic. Some couldn’t read or go deep into any content, others found it a time to learn a new skill or hobby like searching for the best solitaire app. Like grief, we all handle things differently. I realize there are many teachers who cannot move beyond survival and that needs to be acknowledged and honored. At the same time, there are many who are seeking support and in need of specific coaching. Structurally, some districts are not able or willing to create space for teachers to learn.

I don’t disagree with any responses here and this one hits home as much of my work does touch on the ideas of deeper learning. As an organization, ALP has shifted much of our work to designing resources and supports that address urgent needs of educators without having to have them do much more than use our stuff. And yet, as I think about what excites me about professional learning is not the content but the relationships that are forged and the true desire to help people achieve their personal goals. That’s part of well-being.

I still think two things are true. But that’s about all I know.

Online VS In-Person Professional Learning

Posted by Dean Shareski on in facebook, linkedin, onlinelearning, professional learning, professionallearning

I had the privilege of sharing a session last month called “The Future of Professional Learning” based on these previous blog posts. Admittedly I’m still parsing out in my own mind these thoughts and this session was an opportunity to clarify my own thinking but will continue to evolve.

I’m not typically a big graphics guy but created these two images that I believe help to identify what the specific benefits are of both online and in-person professional learning. While some might argue that this is true for all learning, I do believe there are some significant differences between adult/professional learning and learning as it pertains to school and children. First, adults are there most often by choice. While there is still some obligatory professional learning, adults have more choices than most children. If you will like to boost you learning abilities, consider this adderall alternatives which can boost learning. Adderall is a prescription stimulant medication that is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). It helps to increase your capacity to pay attention, stay focused, improve listening skills, and also to control behavioral issues in more problematic cases. In some instances, it is also used to treat sleeping disorders like narcolepsy to help patients stay awake throughout the day. Secondly, adult learning differs from development learning and finally and I think most often overlooked is in most professional learning settings, the opportunity to build and create community is difficult in that we aren’t together daily and in the case of many elementary students for entire days on end. This means relationships, which are the foundation for school learning, will not play the same role. Each of these differences can probably be argued and discussed in terms of their impact and while there are certain individuals who might share unique experiences, they are by in large in need of consideration.

When it comes to online learning, we are certainly more acutely aware of what its benefits and downsides are. Never have educators been so immersed in online learning as this past year so we are all in better positions to consider what makes it work and what indeed are negative elements.

Flexibility: Being able to offer PL at all kinds of times, multiple times and recording sessions created lots of flexibility for learners.

Access to Experts: Not having to fly people in, meant that in many cases, learners were able to connect with a greater number of experts from a greater number of places than ever before.

Diverse Community: Participants were also able to connect with others they might not normally connect with because geography and expense were not as relevant. The ability to hear from voices you don’t normally hear from was a real possibility.

Affordable: Perhaps the most obvious advantage was the way in which we could still offer PL but at significant and in some case no cost.

Efficient: Eliminated travel, even at the local level means a meeting could start and end in an hour and you could return to other work and activities with no downtime.

Change of Environment: In-person learning usually means going somewhere you don’t normally spend time in. Even in a staff room or school library, that represents a change of location. In the same way we are currently talking more about learning spaces than ever before, meeting and learning in spaces designed for optimal engagement and participation matters.

Informal Conversations: Ask people their favourite part of a conference or workshop and they’ll often refer to the hallway conversations or coffee time with people. While not often built with intention, these elements of face to face learning are critical.

Fewer distractions: Unless you’re superhuman, checking in and out of online learning is almost the norm. This is not to say you can’t do the same in person, but it’s more difficult. In addition, the fact you have made an effort to be somewhere, typically makes you more accountable. Not always, but more so that in online settings.

Sensory Additions: This is harder to identify and quantify but online learning is limited to sight and sound. But the smell of the room, the taste of bad coffee and the feel of chart paper are elements of in-person learning that not only enhance your experience but are part of the community experience as well. See my Twitter thread.

As we think about how to choose the best and most optimal learning in the future, I think we ought to consider deeply the type of learning we want and what approach is most appropriate. Both are viable.

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The Future of Professional Learning Part 1

Posted by Dean Shareski on in facebook, linkedin, professional learning 2 Comments

While the pandemic is raising lots of questions about the future of schools and education and rightfully so, there isn’t much talk about the future of professional learning.

While virtual conferences and webinars have been around for a while, they only reached a small percentage of educators. Much like the early days of using technology in schools, the idea of virtual conferences and webinars was seen as pretty innovative. I recall presenting for Discovery Education’s Virtcon back in 2010 before I even worked for them. One of my personal watershed moments was listening to a keynote from David Weinberger back in 2005 and I recall thinking how wonderful it was that I was experiencing the same learning thousands of miles away as those sitting in the convention center in Philadephia. Today these events are commonplace. The beginning of the pandemic saw a deluge of online events and conferences as many scrambled to either replace scheduled in-person events or take advantage of people working remotely to offer learning directly related to remote teaching and learning.

9 months in and remote learning for students is still being met with mixed reviews and mostly leaning to the negative. No doubt this speaks to not simply the difficulty for schools and teachers to suddenly be proficient in what it makes to teach and learn in virtual settings but also because students need the belonging and more intimate relationships that are not adequate for many in online spaces.

I do think that virtual PD has had better success. Partly because it’s not as dependent on relationships and there are more options than face-to-face. That said, I’ve seen this kind of sentiment shared numerous times

Conferences and face-to-face professional learning aren’t going anywhere but I do wonder if we’ll be more intentional about what constitutes and justifies a great face-to-face experience and what can be highly effective as a virtual option?

I’ve had the privilege over the past few months leading a group of interested high school leaders from the Metro Vancouver area in a series of conversations about transforming the high school experience. We had anywhere from 120 to 200 participants for each session and these 2-hour sessions were largely putting them into small groups to discuss various issues they all were facing which might lead to something transformative for the future. Thinking about the idea of bringing all these people together would mean months of planning and preparation and huge costs both in dollars and time. The fact they could hop on for 2 hours and be fully engaged without driving anywhere is a pretty big benefit. I know most PD providers, including myself. are doing things virtually at a significantly reduced rate as well. There is no way we would have had this many opportunities to meet. Because the time was limited, it allowed people to commit and the richness of their conversations was very evident.

Once travel and gatherings are back to normal, I imagine there will be a craving to return to face to face events just like there will be a return to students in schools. I know many are exploring just exactly what schools might do differently to allow for more autonomy and take advantage of the benefits and affordances of technology and more specifically how it can empower learners. A similar but less urgent discussion will occur with regards to professional learning but not likely with the same intensity. I believe my own work with feature more virtual options both because it’s been experienced by a greater number of educators in the past 9 months but also because when done correctly, provides great benefits. Face-to-face gatherings I hope will be much more thought out and cherished. If people are going to travel or give up full days to learn, it will need to be a lot more than tolerating bad coffee and boring presenters sitting in small desks in poorly light classrooms.

I’ll be following this post up with some thoughts around both virtual and face to face experiences. But in the mean time, I’d love your thoughts on how your own thoughts on this topic may have evolved or changed since March.