rants

Still Amusing Ourselves To Death

Posted by Dean Shareski on in facebook, networks, rants, socialnetworks 3 Comments

As much as I love the ability to connect with current practitioners and other smart folks around innovative and interesting ideas in education, we have a wealth of knowledge that lives in the recent and more distant past that is often overlooked. The bombardment of “new” through current media offerings tends to overshadow the truths that have been shared, considered and proven over decades and centuries.

When it comes to understanding media and communications, there are no better thinkers out there than Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan. If you’re reading this and have never heard of these men, I would highly encourage you to seek out their writings.

I just finished re-reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman’s critique of the impact of television on our world.

‘What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.‘

I suppose some might not be able to see the connection between television and the Internet and while there certainly are differences, I found the parallels to be glaring. Without doing a full review here, I simply wanted to focus on one of his major points. He looks specifically at the way TV news is primarily entertainment and journalism is secondary at best.

No matter where you look today, the pace at which news is delivered, the emphasis on sensationalism and the sheer numbers of outlets, has turned important information and conversations into banal and destructive natterings. Postman might have suggested the same thing with television but the Internet, like it is want to do, has amplified this.

Postman didn’t have a problem with TV being a platform for entertainment. He thought it was well suited to make people laugh and be amused. His argument was that it was not a format designed for serious topics that required depth and time.  Although I didn’t have the context I made a similar argument about social media. That post is almost 10 years old. It’s only magnified in truth today. The places (Twitter mostly) I valued as a place to get to know people has turned into a dumping ground for soundbites and flawed opinions. In general, I don’t think people are smarter or more informed and part of the current polarization and divisions in our world are a direct result of social media. Its benefits for me lie in knowing more folks and finding other spaces to do meaningful work.

As someone who embraced social media early on, I was able to see what it could do to benefit our world. I wasn’t oblivious to the downsides but encouraged its use as a way to connect to smart people. Blogging was a way to provide a voice to anyone with an internet connection. I still see it as a potential space for deeper thought, however, long-form blogging, in particular, is not all that popular. If I was smart enough, I might even be able to determine how many folks clicked on this link and how many have made it this far. <insert joke/fact about how my writing isn’t engaging enough> Today I’m much less enthusiastic about the potential of these spaces and Postman’s writing has unfortunately fostered less hope. We are much more interested in amusement than truth. This is not a conscious decision as Postman argues but rather as a result of the nature of these mediums.

“Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”  Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Trying to be a truly informed citizen today is almost impossible. As an educator, this is where we have an enormous challenge. My work and presentations have me dabbling at this and yet being frustrated by the cultural tsunami of trite, bias and untruths bites that flood our feeds.

“Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”  Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Swap “Television” for “Social Media” and I think it’s still true.

At this point I have a couple of personal responses that I’m trying to deploy:

  • Talk less. I’m not likely to engage in any type of political discussion or even important educational conversations on social media.
  • Question everything. No matter what perspective or bias, assume it’s likely false. Hold your opinions until you’ve taken the time to investigate.
  • Utilize the right spaces for the right purposes. Social media, in my view, has always been best to socialize. This space has always been best to think out loud. Face to face extended times with the right people can be fruitful places for deeper discussions.

I’d encourage you to read something with some historical context because as much as we see the current age as so new, smart folks like Postman saw this coming a long time ago.

“To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.”  Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

 

 

When Will We Get Serious about Teacher Stress?

Posted by Dean Shareski on in change, Classrooms, cms, facebook, linkedin, rants 4 Comments

I’m privileged to work with some of the very best educators around the world. I’m continually inspired and in awe of their expertise, energy and commitment to their craft. They are true artists.  I marvel at these artists and the different ways they approach teaching and learning.

Of late, I’ve become acutely aware of one sad commonality among these very good people. Teachers are stressed. One could argue teachers have always been stressed but I’m sensing something new and disturbing. Today’s headline confirms some of my hunches. I’m sure some will read this article and suggest teachers are weak or lazy or manipulative. However, it’s the increase that needs to be noted. Perhaps teachers are taking better care of themselves and thus are taking time to recover rather than bringing their sickness back to the classroom. If that’s the case I see a problem in a job that requires employees to take that much time off.

In Ontario, mental health and well-being is now a mandated goal. While I applaud that move, several educators questioned the strategies suggested that are designed to deal with the stress the system itself created. “Try these mindfulness activities to deal with the crappy things we do to you”

Teacher mental health and well-being is a crisis to cope with stress or anxiety caused by work. As much as teachers are embracing innovation and new opportunities, these changes are happening as paperwork and demands are increasing as well.  Personnel challenges have always been part of any organization and education is no different. I would argue this might even be decreasing as many districts are recognizing the value of relationships both in the classroom and for the adults as well. If you need something to help combat stress, you can buy Delta-8 gummies for sale here. Gummies such as Indacloud Pineapple funta are a great choice to help combat stress with their refreshing flavor and calming properties. Visit an online D8 Super Store to explore various thc products. If you’re specifically looking for grandaddy purple strain vape cartridges, you may order them online at Grizzly Herb’s website.

I’ll suggest two areas that are perhaps the biggest contributor to teacher stress. First is increased bureaucracy. We’ve overcomplicated education in so many ways and have become obsessed with data collection. This falls directly on the backs of teachers and principals who would love to devote more time to teaching and learning and less time to data-driven initiatives. I can’t tell you how many educators tell me “If I could just teach…” Every new initiative inevitably comes with additional work. Embedded into this, is the curse of accountability. Along with the monumental task of designing innovative, differentiated learning environments for students, there continues an undercurrent of distrust manifested by a never ending paper trail. While many districts are working to alleviate the perception of this bureaucracy, the workload seems pretty universal.

The second contributor is the number of students with extreme behaviour and learning disabilities and the lack of support for teachers. Inclusion is a proud label districts adopt. They take a stance of being advocates for all children and suggest the way to best support every student is to have them spend as much time in classrooms as possible. While this appears to be the compassionate response, in many cases it’s the opposite.

Assuming every child should have the same experience doesn’t speak to differentiation at all. What currently passes for “inclusion” in many cases is a politically driven agenda that is less expensive and is positioned as the more humane and moral approach. Suggesting a student may not belong in a classroom makes you seem selfish and uncaring.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that takes the moral high ground in terms of their implementation of extreme full-inclusion when it’s failing students, staff, and their families at an alarming rate.”

Read more from this mother of an autistic child.

Teachers should expect to work with and support a variety of children and their diverse needs. However, there are children whose extreme challenges and requirements mean that putting them into a regular classroom with 25+ other students is cruel and unfair to the child, the other students and the teacher. There’s no question we have more and more of these students.

This video shows schools making poor decision on how to deal with students with extreme behaviours.

While this is something most progressive educators would view with horror, I’m going to assume that the educators involved here are not evil but have become desperate. The reality is these students are in need of intervention. The intervention plans most schools have in place may be useful for many students but they don’t help all students and they students they aren’t able to help can cause the most damage to themselves and others.

I realize this is a pretty delicate and political topic. I’m not sure I have a solution but certainly, we need better options than assuming the best place for every child is a typical classroom with an educational assistant or aid. For those looking to explore alternative career paths and make a positive impact in the fitness industry, consider checking out the diverse fitness certifications available at https://www.americansportandfitness.com/collections/fitness-certifications.

I believe all children can learn. And all means all. I don’t believe all children can learn in all conditions. I don’t believe all teachers can teach all kids. To assume so is both ignorant and arrogant. Creating those conditions, whatever they are, is the job of public education. To do it properly is not cheap. Right now, lack of funding has created increased challenges for schools and in some cases, districts are placing undue and this generates workplace stress on teachers.They leave feeling drained and guilty of not doing their job. It’s been great to see schools acknowledge that relationships are the key to great learning environments. Yet investing in relationships is much more challenging and taxing than investing in content. Teachers are embracing this shift but it’s come at a cost. The long-term impact of ignoring this issue is going to come at a great cost to districts, schools, teachers and ultimately students.

I’d love some comments on this. First, please share any ways in which your school, district is making intentional efforts to combat teacher stress and if indeed it’s working. Secondly, maybe my two examples aren’t your experience. Perhaps you think they are misplaced or maybe you see something else as being a contributor to teacher stress. Finally, if you feel your job has become less stressful over the years, I would be thrilled to hear your story and learn from you. My guess is you’re a rare bird.

Stop Worry About the Achievement Gap

Posted by Dean Shareski on in assessment, Leadership, rants 3 Comments

“Closing the Achievement Gap” is a term and movement that has been around for a while. Born out of good intentions, it’s essentially a recognition that we need to attend to students with lower grades. Fair enough. And yet I see this obsession flawed in a few ways and it once again is more about adults and accountability than caring for children.

The essence of the problem stems from the inherent flaws of our education system. We tend to focus mostly on students’ weaknesses and spend an exorbitant amount of time and money in attempting to remedy this.

When a student says, “school sucks” it might be for a number of factors but my intuition is that for the majority of them it’s because they spend time working on things they hate and an inverse proportion on things they enjoy.

Scott McLeod and I just release our new book on Different Schools for a Different World. Scott shares a graph from Gallup that offers some insight.

While all three of these results are troubling, it’s’ the last, the one in red that addresses the problem. How can we live with the idea that only 20% of students feel they spend time doing things they are good at? What if in your job you only spent 20% of your day doing things you do best?

In addition, research from Bittrader is clear that we get way more return on investment from focusing on our strengths than weaknesses.

Consider the experiment done in Nebraska in the 1950s on speed reading.

…a study that shows how much your performance skyrockets when you invest in your natural talents. Subjects at the University of Nebraska were given two chances at a speed reading test. Those who were average at speed reading made solid gains (66% increase in words per minute) after getting training and learning new tactics. Yet the magic happened with the above average readers. Those who had a natural strength in speed reading saw an 828% increase in the number of words read per minute.

Ideas like genius hour and passion projects are getting closer to addressing the problem. But even when these are implemented, I fear that the “at risk” students are still being hammered with remedial support in order to close the achievement gap. I’m guessing they make up about 100% of students who don’t think they get to spend time at school doing things they are good at.

So what’s the solution? It’s not easy and I get it, a student that can’t read needs help and should receive it. My argument is we worry too much about those gaps and instead should invest more time in working on their strengths. In addition, the data and obsession we have with these gaps need to be tempered.  Maybe a new measure should include how well we’ve identified student strengths and what efforts have been made to grow them. That shift would represent a fundamental and I dare say monumental change in schools.

I’m Not an Expert, But Neither are You

Posted by Dean Shareski on in rants 2 Comments

I remember the first time I heard Ewan Mcintosh speak. He invited the crowd to be critical of his talk and to feel free to disagree with anything he said. That was the first time I had ever heard a person of authority, in a public setting, invite criticism in such an overt manner. I’ve since used that idea often when I talk.

Jose Vilson writes about why teachers need to see themselves as experts. This cannot be understated. Although while I understand what Jose is saying, my belief is that none of us are experts in the sense that we know it all but rather teachers are no less of an expert, and as Jose says, maybe more than those who don’t work directly with learners. I used to believe the Internet might be used to break down this hierarchy in the way I’d experienced. Through blogging, in particular, I found a space to share ideas and thoughts and positioned them in a way that was not about authority but about community. Today, it seems the vast majority of teachers who call themselves connected, live largely if not exclusively, in spaces like Twitter. They don’t see themselves as experts but rather bask in connecting with others who are proclaimed or self-proclaimed experts. I’ve heard the word “edu-celebrities” tossed around and at times, I have even been categorized as such. I call BS.

I’m no more an expert on education than the woman teaching Kindergarten in rural Arkansas. The only difference is I write and speak about it more than she does. But her ideas and experiences matter just as much.

My early advocacy for sharing was built around Clay Shirky’s belief that the web was a move towards the democratization of information and ideas. The newfound ability to publish instantly to anyone was both a revolutionary idea as well as a liberating one. Before my colleagues were publishing books or speaking at high profile events, we were all just sharing. It made me realize my voice was every bit as important as anyone else’s. I had good ideas, they had good ideas, no one had a monopoly on them and given the complexity of teaching and learning and education, no one had all the answers. It was a community of people trying to do good work.

When people falsely see themselves as more expert than others there is a potential danger. They can take this perceived authority and personify it in unusual ways.  I had a friend in college who really challenged me and we had many great conversations about a variety of things. He went on to become a pastor. Years later I went to hear him speak and he sounded like a caricature of a fire and brimstone preacher and also had a weird undetectable accent. It felt I was being talked down to. I actually gave him a hard time after and asked about it. He said that’s what people expected.  I disagreed but realized he was probably right in that people often expect and sometimes like that approach not just in church but in lots of settings.

I’ve seen this same phenomenon happen in education. Some “experts” in education fall somewhere between a preacher and a used car salesman in the way they present their ideas both online and in person. While not an educator, people like Gary Vaynerchuk are prime examples.  I actually like much of his content. But Gary’s persona is to come across as a futurist, in your face, drop a lot of f bombs almost to intimidate or shock his audience. Minus the f bombs, many educators love this kind of authoritarian approach and wouldn’t think to question the ideas. I see many “edu-celebrities” adopting this style. They write using words like “teachers must” or “teachers should never” and sometimes speak like they’re closing a deal on a time share. They have shifted from our colleagues to a status that makes them untouchable.

While this isn’t my style, I understand why it’s done. People like it. As educators, we’ve been told how badly we’re doing and anyone who presents themselves as having answers is given undue laud. This is our fault as educators. We’ve relinquished our expertise and given it to others. Jose suggests it’s the systems fault. Perhaps to some degree, but I also think those of us who have become “connected educators” also bear some responsibility. There is little questioning and contributing but lots of amens.

When was the last time you critiqued someone you’ve acknowledged as an expert? I’m not suggesting calling out people or getting into some kind of fight but simply a question presented in a civil manner. Heck, have you even privately questioned that person? No one likes to be criticized, myself included, but when done respectfully, it makes us better. We talk about critical thinking all the time but honestly, there are some people agree blindly with everything they see from their defined experts.

So I’ll leave you with a couple of questions.

  1. Do you see yourself as an expert? If so, how are you sharing your “expertise”?
  2. When is the last time you critiqued an idea someone shared?

I invite you to critique me. I’m not an expert, any more than you are.

Sharing, Bragging, Selling and Self Promoting

Posted by Dean Shareski on in rants, Uncategorized 1 Comment

When I published my first blog post over ten years ago, it was clear to me that the possibility to share and share online, had the potential for something special. This new-found ability to share at a global level has provided teachers access to content and ideas never before available and connected teachers to people who have helped to transform classrooms around the world.

I created this video five years ago that remains an important part of my philosophy and message.

Ever since I began teaching over 25 years ago, I’ve had many conversations with teachers about their reluctantly to share for fear they might be seen as braggarts. One of the benefits of sharing online was it allowed teachers working in toxic or distrustful environments to share and not worry what the colleague across the hall might think. In many ways, it was and remains a revolution that has reinvigorated many careers. Even teachers in good environments found a way to expand their networks and discover new ideas to improve learning. Online spaces like blogs and social media have been platforms for people to post ideas, lessons, tutorials and other successes.

So what’s the problem?

Maybe there isn’t one but what is emerging of late is the hidden and sometimes not so hidden nature of sharing. When I posted that video, all the examples and all my experiences had been with people just saying, “here’s what I’ve/we’ve done, maybe you find some of this useful.”  For most of us, the biggest joy we get from sharing is knowing that someone else found it valuable. There’s nothing wrong with hoping for some acknowledgement. That’s what makes the sharing economy work. Thank yous and reciprocity are essential if we want sharing to remain part of the culture. That said, as advised by ライブカジノ ブラックジャック, the unwritten rule is you never ask or expect it. When you share to be acknowledged or praised or get something in return it makes sharing something ugly.

The idea of self-promoting is fairly easy to recognize. Does the person share solely about their accomplishments or do they share about student success or ideas from which they’ve benefited? That’s not to say one can never talk about their own achievements, but the tone shouldn’t be “look what I’ve done” but “I’m learning, here’s how I learned it, here’s how you can learn it too.” Sharing in online spaces lack the context for many to break down. However, over time, you can tell whether someone is self-promoting or sharing. Even then, it’s a blurred line that often is a matter of interpretation.

The tension between those in public education and those in some type of for-profit education entity, has always been challenging. Educators generally see themselves in a more philanthropic light, and rightfully so when it comes to sharing what they’re doing. They aren’t seeking remuneration. But right along side those educators are others who now rely on selling their ideas because it’s their livelihood. They are sharing for very different reasons. In between are those that are looking to advance their careers or supplement their income with educational products and services. What’s sometimes confusing or frustrating is trying to decide the motives and purposes of these different purposes as it relates to sharing. What’s the difference between the teacher sharing because they’re excited about a success and wants you to read their blog and the author that wants you to buy her book? Does it matter if they repeatedly share the same content with tweets and facebook posts? It seems at that point they aren’t just sharing but they want something from you. Maybe that’s obvious and maybe that’s okay.

Sharing in its purest form is a moral imperative. It’s my belief that since others have shared with you, it’s your obligation to share with others. That sharing needs to remain essentially free. Sharing needs to be acknowledged but that shouldn’t determine whether or not you share.

Selling of ideas is also an important idea. No one teaches for free and those who have chosen to earn a living in education outside of public service still have a place. My question is how do these two notions, sharing and selling co-exist? Right now they exist in the same space and context.

I’m someone who currently works for a private corporation. I also occasionally speak and get paid. I wrote a book. Those are things that people pay for. I’m not sure those are the things that are part of the purest form of sharing and yet I don’t apologize for them. That said, I rarely use a space like twitter to promote that side of my work.  To do so, in my opinion, would be selling. Selling isn’t bad, I just don’t want to confuse people more than they already are. For me, it feels like a salesman in a bar who sits down under the pretense of a social conversation and then starts asking you if you have term or whole life insurance.

Maybe the question to ask would be “Why am I sharing this?”

If the answer is: to get retweets, likes, acknowledgment, praise or money, perhaps you’re not sharing. Maybe you’re just bragging or self-promoting or just selling. I’ve always taken issue with those who retweet a compliment. I’m not talking about the occassional retweet because you’re proud someone recognized your work, I’m talking about a habitual trend. When I look at someone’s twitter feed and it’s full of retweets of compliments about their writing or presentation, that’s selling. Again, not that those are always bad, but I’m not sure that’s what sharing online should be. Like every blog I write, I could be wrong and welcome those who can push my thinking, clarify my thoughts or better yet, add their own.

Like every blog I write, I could be wrong and welcome those who can push my thinking, clarify my thoughts or better yet, add their own.