I just finished a session at ISTE 2010 by Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann on Twitter) on Thoughtful School Reform. Besides turning a lot of my assumptions upside down (which happens every time I hear anything he says) and having far more to process than I could possible fit into one blog post (so I won’t try), I walked away with an interesting question. It was not something he addressed directly, but it was embedded in many of the points we discussed in the session:

“Who are the learners in your school?”

What answers would you get if you asked this question tomorrow? I suspect that in many cases, if the askee didn’t just look at you like you’d lost your mind, they’d say, “Uh, duh, the students?”

If that’s the only answer you get, though, there’s a lot of work to do. Everyone in a school needs to be a learner, needs to think like a learner, and needs to be treated like a learner. Teachers, volunteers, parents, aides, facilities staff, bus drivers, and administrators all need to understand that they are part of a learning community. Everyone still has something to learn, everyone has something to teach.

We make an effort in our family to eat dinner together as often as we can. Even if it’s only a brief time, we are deliberate about making it happen. Dinner often interrupts stuff the kids are more interested in, like playing outside, surfing the Web, reading, and so on. Our youngest son typically will pick at his food, eat a few bites, and say, “I’m full.” While, we’re not looking to get our kids in the habit of eating when they’re not hungry, we’re also responsible for making sure he’s not malnourished. So we’d tell him, “You can’t possibly be full yet. You need to eat a little more before you can leave the table.”

What was funny, and now a family joke, is that it didn’t take long for him to catch on, and instead of telling us when he was done, he started asking, “Can I be full yet?”

I don’t believe there is a single person involved in any school who has the right to ask “Can I be full yet?” The answer should always be no.

I’m thinking that this would be a great interview question. The answer would tell you a lot not only about the perspective of the applicant, but also how they are likely to work with their colleagues and parents.

I’m curious too about your thoughts: What are the implications and consequences of asking (and answering) this question? I’d also be interested in finding out about people that actually do ask this, and what kinds of answers you get. What are you going to do tomorrow to start changing what answer people give?

While working on my model classroom presentation for this afternoon, I discovered a metaphor that helped me crystallize one of the things that makes learning today radically different than it was when I was in elementary school, and gave me a better grasp on how and why teaching and schools need to be different.

In the 1970s, writing a report was like buying fast food. I remember writing reports on many topics in elementary school: Morse code and Iraq are two that specifically leap to mind. (When we were selecting our countries to report on, I picked Iraq because I thought it was cool that the name ended with a Q. Yeah, I know.) I selected my topic, went to the library, found a book, read it (or more likely, skimmed it), then sat down to write my own version. Report writing really wasn’t research then, it was more like retelling. Like fast food value meals, someone else had really done all the work of taking the information ingredients, processing them, and putting them together into styrofoam containers and paper cartons. All I had to do was pick meal #2 and consume it.

School today is still set up for our kids to be fast food knowledge consumers. State and federal governments have already done the work of selecting what kinds of things are on the menu. School districts and textbook publishers have already chosen the ingredients, developed the recipes, and prepared the food, ready to deliver to the students. And just like fast food, it all looks and tastes pretty much the same everywhere. A Whopper in Denver is identical to one in Philadelphia.

Simply being a consumer is no longer sufficient. In the seventies, kids (and most adults for that matter) couldn’t access information directly. We only had limited sources, and all of them had been preprocessed for us by others. Today, on the Internet, we can tap directly into the raw data. The problem is, many of us still just consume it the same way we used to. We’re getting fresh produce and meat, but we are eating it raw.

We must teach kids not how to pick a good value meal, but what do do with the ingredients they have. We have to teach them how to create their own meals. We’ll begin by following recipes, but we have to also teach them the principles behind the recipes, the thinking that went into creating them, and eventually how to develop their own recipes. They need to know how to select quality ingredients, and which ones go together well. They need to develop their palates so they can experience the enormous variety of ideas and relationships that exist in the world. This will involve skills like critical thinking and problem solving.

Even this isn’t enough, though. I believe we need to get kids out of the grocery stores and into the fields. Teach them not just to select the right foods, but to grow them. We need to give kids the seeds, the tools, and the techniques for becoming their own knowledge farmers, to create knowledge and share it with the world.

And of course, all of this means that teachers have to get out of their own value meals and learn how to shop, how to cook, and how to farm. I suspect that at least for a while we’ll all be learning these things just half a step ahead of the kids, but that’s okay. What matters is that we recognize that there’s a world of cuisine outside of the food court and that we’re willing to live there.

Two themes are emerging in what I’m learning here at ISTE 2010. These aren’t new ideas by any stretch, even to me. It’s just that they are being driven home in very powerful and deep ways.

The world is small and flat. Not precisely in the sense that Thomas Friedman meant in his book, but in the sense of connections and relationships. As I said yesterday, I can hardly turn around anywhere without seeing someone I know, or meeting someone I’ve conversed with on Twitter. Today I met Jeff Agamenoni and Sue Waters, from Montana and Australia respectively, and with whom I have chatted many times over the last couple of years. (Sue, of course, reminded me almost immediately that I forgot to bring her the chocolate I promised her. And then I took her seat in the Blogger’s Cafe. Great way to treat someone I’ve just met.)

When our students leave our schools, they are going to land in a world where they need to relate not just with people who live and work near them, but with people around the world. It’s not optional any more. Everyone is your neighbor. Distance is now measured not in miles but by your ability to connect with different channels. The more communication tools you know, the closer you are. Kids are going to have to be able to find people and be found, to build their own digital homes and tell their own digital stories.

Which is the second theme I’m seeing over and over:

Design is an essential skill. Garr Reynolds in his book and blog, Presentation Zen, talks about how often people treat design as an afterthought, as though it’s decoration to be painted on after making the content. But design is much deeper. It is ultimately about effective communication and facilitating connection. If a valuable message is obscured by poor design, the message will lose power, or the recipient will give up before it gets through.

Just as kids have to learn how to connect with the world and manage those connections, they have to learn how to effectively use the principles and tools of design to enhance their communication. The only way we will ever be able to teach those skills is to use them ourselves.

So my first takeaway from the day is that all educators, not just the ones who like that “technology stuff,” have to become connected and become designers. It’s not optional anymore, because we will be putting our kids at a disadvantage if we don’t get there.

So here I am, sitting in the Blogger’s Cafe at the ISTE Conference, a place that until now has existed only in myth and legend. This is, depending on how you count it, either my first or my third ISTE. Two years ago, I attended NECC 2008, but only virtually, through the activities at ISTE Island in Second Life. I met many people there, and blogged about my experience. Last year, I did the same, again meeting new people, building my network of colleagues, and growing my interest in attending in person.

So this, year I’m at ISTE for the third year in a row, but this time in person. And as I tend to do, I didn’t do this halfway: not only am I attending my first ISTE, but I organized a Tweetup earlier this morning, I’m volunteering at the Information Booth in about an hour, and I’m presenting a model lesson on Tuesday.

I have attended professional conferences before, sometimes with other colleagues from my district and sometimes on my own. In some ways, this is much like the annual conference of any other large, international organization: there are thousands of attendees (I overheard one person estimate it at 20,000), a huge exhibitor floor of corporations wanting us to buy their products, a bookstore, keynotes, workshops, and so on.

But I think what defines ISTE for me, and what sets it way apart from the other conferences I’ve been to, is that this is all about connections. I walked into the Denver Convention Center this morning, and ran into Scott Merrick, someone I’ve known for two years online, but never met in person until today. Although I am a little intimidated by the enormity of the site and the number of people here, it was immediately comfortable, because I knew that I already know dozens of people. I’ve run into many of them, and I’m very likely to run into more as the week goes on.

This conference, then, isn’t a one-shot event where I will be immersed in individual learning for a few days and then go back to “reality” where I can only hope to apply a few things that may have been absorbed while the rest evaporate like the fading shreds of an interrupted dream. This conference feels to me much more like an intense concentration of the relationships and conversations that happen on a daily and weekly basis with the network of professional colleagues that I’ve been building over the last two years through Twitter, blogging, and Second Life.

Every moment of my time here so far has involved learning. Even at dinner last night, the conversation turned to some deep philosophical discussions about the nature of learning.

On its surface, ISTE is a technology conference. At its root, though, are not hardware and software and vendors and books. This conference is really about professional educators who care deeply about learning and students and maximizing potential.

Tomorrow I begin attending the formal sessions. I expect to learn more than I can process, and will be blogging about my experiences. I also expect to learn just as much from the informal gatherings, the hallway conversations, the dinner meetups, and the other amazing people I will meet. What I hope to bring back to my district is a renewed enthusiasm for creating an awesome environment in our schools for students to learn and thrive, and ideas about how to introduce my work colleagues to the power of this network I have discovered.

Gifted education has been around for over a century. Researchers have studied what it means to be gifted, and what are the best methods for educating the gifted. It has been an uphill journey for many reasons. A great number of people believe that there is no need to provide gifted education, that it is elitist and unfair, and that gifted kids will do fine anyway, so why waste energy and resources on special programs for them?

It is not my purpose today to engage in this debate. But I keep coming back to a comment that was made to me recently in connection with a project I’m doing at work. My district is in the midst of a comprehensive review and analysis of our gifted program. As part of that review, we have created a new vision and mission statement for the gifted program. (For the curious among you, it is posted here)

I shared the draft of that document with my administration, then unveiled it publicly for the first time at a school board meeting. In among the many positive and encouraging responses, a few people commented that, while the statements were nice, aren’t these things we should be doing with every student?

This echoes similar sentiments I’ve heard for as long as I’ve been teaching. Of course the answer is yes; though the emphasis for the general education curriculum and program will be on different kinds of things, the “stuff” that for so long was the core of gifted education has become part of the mainstream 21st century emphasis.

It got me thinking about what gifted education should look like in today’s schools. Is it still necessary in an age when high level thinking and problem solving, collaboration, technology, differentiation, and inclusion are growing in their importance and reach in our schools? I believe it is, but my thoughts are continuing to evolve about what it should do and how.

So what should gifted education be in the 21st century? I don’t know. Yet. But I’ve invited a collection of people who have had a tremendous influence on my learning and thinking to help me answer that question. Over the next several weeks, eleven people who I consider colleagues and friends will be guests on this blog, wrestling with that very question. I am looking forward to reading what they have to say. I hope you are too.

Posts in this series:

Empowering the Future, by Mary Beth Hertz
What Does It Mean to Be Gifted Now? by Tony Baldasero
The Future of Gifted Education, by Jerry Blumengarten

Earlier today, Tony Baldasero posted this:

As his posts tend to do, it got me thinking about what I’ve learned from the show, not about history, but about teaching and learning.

For those readers who haven’t seen Pawn Stars, it’s a reality show about a pawn shop in Las Vegas. In each episode, customers bring in various objects they want to pawn or sell. The shop owners have to appraise the value, negotiate, and sometimes spot the fakes among the real items.

At first blush it seems like an odd fit for the History Channel. But the items that people bring in are such things as antique firearms, historical documents, sports memorabilia, even Jimmy Hoffa’s photo album (in the Backroom Brawl episode). As the series star and store owner Rick Harrison says, “Everything has a story.”

The stars of the show are a collection of not-so-sophisticated guys who are more likely to trade an item for a new tattoo than to appreciate the cultural significance of a native artifact.

But there is no denying that these guys know their stuff. Rick, his dad (the “Old Man”), and his son “Hoss” all have a depth of knowledge about history and antique objects that never ceases to fascinate me. In one episode, a customer walked into the shop with what looked like a rusty hunk of metal, and Rick immediately identified it as a set of 19th century Froggatt Plug 8 handcuffs.

A few semi-random thoughts that came to mind as I considered the show:

1. Learning is not the same as academics. Rick Harrison dropped out of high school in tenth grade, but he probably knows more about history than most college graduates. Rick has obviously learned an incredible amount in the years he has been in business. He works in a particularly unforgiving field, too—if he’s wrong about an object or its origin and pays more than it’s worth, no one is going to buy it from him out of pity. He’s out of luck. The only way to be a success in his business in the long term is to know what you’re doing.
2. You can’t know it all. Despite the extensive knowledge and expertise of the pawn shop staff, they don’t pretend to know everything. When an item comes in that Rick questions, he calls in a specialist. He has a collection of experts who he asks to examine items and verify their authenticity. He’s not afraid to tell a customer, “I have no idea if this is real or what it might be worth.”
3. There is no “proper” expression of an intellectual gift. Some might say that the Harrison family’s talent is “wasted” in such a low class operation as the pawn business. But who are we to judge the value that this shop and its owners contribute to the community or society? Who or what determines if someone is a success, or is achieving at his or her potential? Rick seems to love what he does, and he is good at his chosen profession. If we have a student who is a talented writer, who’s to say that we have to guide that writer to producing “great literature?” What if his or her passion is to write slapstick cartoons? Isn’t South Park just as valid an expression of writing talent as Mansfield Park?

I believe we spend a lot of time in education trying to cram students into the molds we have predetermined are best for them. While we do have an obligation to take raw talent and shape it, perhaps we need to look at it the way Michelangelo looked at sculpture:

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Our job is to discover the potential that is already inside the student and help them realize it, not to maneuver the student into becoming what we believe they should become.