Meeting Students where they are

When I began teaching in 1972, I implicitly asked my students to meet me where I was, usually next to the overhead projector. On behalf of the school district, I loaned each student a history textbook (out of date the minute it came off the presses, and even more out of date on the back end of the multiyear book contract), and I made sure they knew where the library was (containing encyclopedias even more out of date than the textbooks). With the preliminaries out of the way, I flipped the switch on the overhead projector and proceeded to give my students the facts, the scoop, the filmstrips, the videos, the notes, and the (ubiquitous) questions at the end of every section of every chapter of the textbook. I saw my job as the chief information officer (CIO) of the learning process, as did most of my colleagues, no matter what they taught.

Most of the information in those days went in a more-or-less direct line from me to my students, and—as CIO—I made sure they got only the straight skinny; I told them exactly what they needed to know. When the school library was gutted by fire one December, it put a serious crimp in this one-way flow of information, and it wasn't until the library was rebuilt, refurbished, and restocked that our students had access to information beyond what we teachers doled out in 50-minute blocks of time, five days a week. As a history teacher, I was excited that our new library would have a recent set of encyclopedias, a new edition of the Dictionary of American Biography, and a brand-new atlas and globe. The library also purchased a new wooden lectern on which a dictionary the size of a riding lawn-mower was perched for the use of everyone in the building. It had all the latest words and definitions.

That was then, of course; this is now. We are awash in a sea of information, and the sources of all this data compete mightily for our attention. Information winks and blinks and waves its arms at us in [Page xiv]the form of advertising on our computers, and news crawls along the bottom of our television screens lest we miss anything. Information in the form of advertising beats us senseless before the movie starts in the local theater, even though we already paid to see the film. Friends thought long lost resurface on social media sites and inform the world about what they are doing. I can order a book and have it downloaded in seconds; I can read all the information about the book and look at various sections in advance to help me make my decision. I can listen to any baseball game anywhere in the country by subscribing to a service and read every statistic about every ballplayer at the click of a mouse. All the words I could ever want spelled or defined lie only a click or two away.

Any teacher who still believes he is the CIO today is simply mistaken; the information flow for all of us is constant, multidirectional, and still somewhat mind-boggling for Boomers like me. I can remember working at the small desk in my bedroom as a high school student living with my aunt. There were few distractions, although I recall being interrupted by my aunt on occasion as she yelled up the stairs and told me to come down to the kitchen to take a phone call. I actually had to get up, close my books, and go down the stairs and into the kitchen to talk with a friend on the phone. This is, I would guess, the stuff of stand-up comedy today: “Imagine, my grandfather had to go downstairs to take a phone call!” The quiet study area of my youth has been replaced by a work (and play) station loaded with iPads, iPods, iPhones, iTunes, and computer screens displaying multiple images, a limitless number of websites, information scrolling across the bottom, instant messaging, and—on occasion—a Word document that contains a writing assignment due tomorrow or next week.

This constant flow of information from many sources presents a problem for students otherwise trying to concentrate on the assignment. Noting that the Internet lays out for users a “high-speed system for delivering responses and rewards,” Nicholas Carr (2010) points out that this leads us to tarry in this land of instant gratification—perhaps at the expense of other things we need to do:

When I am in “Internet mode” during the day or evening, I find it difficult or impossible to reflect on just one thing for any length of time. [Page xv]There are too many links to explore, blogs to visit, news sources to tap, and messages to read and answer. It is only when I withdraw from the Net completely that I am able to reflect on and ponder individual pieces of information I may have gleaned.

Jon Meacham's new biography of Thomas Jefferson gives me a break from keyboard fatigue; I still enjoy reading history. When I taught U.S. history at the secondary level, I can remember recommending a few books, or perhaps a journal article, to students interested in leaders, movers, and shakers of the ilk of Jefferson. I was their go-to guy for these matters; I was the CIO, after all. Just for fun, I Googled Thomas Jefferson this morning, and got 94,000,000 hits in 0.17 seconds. When students used to ask me for information about Jefferson, I gave them two or three immediate hits (books) and suggested something called interlibrary loan, where they might have to wait a week or so to receive a journal article—if someone didn't already have it checked out. A student interested in Jefferson or anyone or anything else now has 24/7 access to one-click, limitless hits, along with all the links embedded in everything that comes up on the screen. Wikipedia tells me about everything and costs me nothing. Berry & TeacherSolutions 2030 Team (2011) point out that “virtual tools and networking, just coming of age in the early years of the century, have now opened borderless territories for students of all ages, anytime and anywhere” (p. 5). Because students have access to anytime-and-anywhere information, this means the role of teachers as CIO is becoming less and less relevant.

The good news is that this frees teachers up to work with students on their communication skills, along with comprehension and collaboration, in an attempt to sort through and make sense of the information-rich environment in which we all spend a great deal of time. Teachers can facilitate discussions on content-related information, helping them develop skills related to oral language (speaking and listening) that serve to support writing and reading.

I am happy to see these important skills included as critical components of the Common Core State Standards, now in use in all but a handful of states. Classrooms can be places where students can learn and practice empathy in dealing with and talking to classmates during academic conversations. Such conversations “allow students to closely examine, scrutinize, criticize, validate, and shape the ideas being discussed” (Zwiers & Crawford, 2011, p. 15). The pace slows under these circumstances, but students are deeply engaged in their own learning—no matter the subject. This time to reflect, explain, illustrate, analyze, infer, and draw conclusions is [Page xvi]valuable to students who may come to school without the benefits of experiencing substantial periods of face-to-face reflection and conversations at home.

When I was growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, I lived with my grandparents. One of many constants in our neighborhood was dinner, a meal created and consumed at home almost every night (along with breakfast every morning). This meant we sat at the table and talked; we learned to take turns, ask and answer questions, and laugh and interact with family and friends on a regular basis. “Children played together, developing their motor skills as well as learning the social skills needed to develop relationships and interact successfully with the other children in the neighborhood” (Sousa, 2011, p. 18, italics added). Ours was a physically active environment that brought us into contact with peers and adults on a frequent and consistent basis.

Sousa also reminds us that the dietary habits of today's children “are changing as home cooking is becoming a lost art. As a result, children have fewer opportunities to have that important dinnertime talk with the adults who care for them” (p. 18). One role of teachers gaining increased prominence is as the facilitator of process as they work with students to help them develop important speaking and listening skills they may well need in the workplace they will enter some day. Truly active classrooms are places where students communicate and collaborate as they sift through and make sense of the seemingly limitless information at their fingertips. Working interdependently, they can learn to make decisions and solve problems—life, after all, is not a multiple-choice test.

Those among us who have been in education for a relatively long time can identify changes in students with whom we have worked over many years or even decades. The information revolution has put today's digital generation in a different—and constantly shifting—place. As teachers and administrators reflect on these changes, we need to commit to meeting students where they are, and that means classrooms must become more dynamic, active, and engaging places that recognize students want to be part of their own learning—we must let students be students as we encourage them to inquire, reflect independently and interdependently, collaborate in pairs and small groups as they solve problems and complete tasks not necessarily convergent in nature, and learn to communicate orally and in writing.

Today's students are in a different place, a place many veteran teachers are having a hard time coming to grips with, and we as educators must meet our students where they are. This means we must [Page xvii]change the passive nature of classrooms, making students more active—and responsible—learners. We must involve them, engage them, and ask more of them as they shift from passive observers to active participants. We must be creative in finding ways to bring the technologies with which students are completely familiar into the classroom, making those tools partners in the education process.

Where we were not that many years ago is no longer relevant to where our students are today, and we need to acknowledge this reality. As Cheryl Lemke (2010) puts it, “There is no turning back. The Internet has become integral to life in the 21st century—a place for work, play, communication, and learning” (p. 243). The students who walk into our classrooms today are quite different from those who sat at desks in my classrooms through most of my years as a teacher. Teachers and administrators can facilitate progress for students whose role shifts more swiftly than ever from passive to active. Marc Prensky (2010) is right in saying teachers need to be partners in the learning process:

If we as educators are going to meet students where they are, it means schools and districts must provide the kind of professional development that will allow teachers to harness the power of the Internet in support of learning. If teachers are to be partners in learning, they must understand how to maximize the power of new and emerging technologies.

Working on this new edition of The Active Classroom, originally published in 2009, has given me an opportunity to take advantage of my experiences in schools and classrooms at all levels over the past several years. It has also given me the time to delve into and benefit from a great deal of new information from researchers and authors. In her wonderful book To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension, Ellin Oliver Keene (2008) says, “I write to figure out what I think and what I have learned from working with children and their teachers” (p. 129). I have been in hundreds of K–12 classrooms in a coaching capacity since spring 2007, and in hundreds more conducting walk-throughs with building administrators. Teachers have been willing to permit me to work with students on occasion, [Page xviii]enabling me to model many of the communication and collaboration strategies in Chapters 2 and 3. What I have seen, heard, and learned from working with teachers and students over the past several years has provided me with some interesting insights and a great deal of new material for this second edition of the book.

I share with Keene the idea that writing is thinking, and it is satisfying to see the Common Core State Standards place such an emphasis on writing as a key component in the learning process. These standards also make it clear that English teachers at the secondary level are not the only ones who need to implement all the language standards, including writing. Teachers in every subject area can harness the power of writing to help students understand content. The Common Core State Standards for Language Arts are not meant to crowd out content standards; they are intended to support them. With this in mind, I have added a chapter on writing to this second edition.

Writing is thinking, and talking is thinking. I learned more about U.S. history my first year of teaching because I was the one who did all the talking in my classroom. I agree with Keene and Zimmerman (2007) that “oral language plays a role in learning to read and write well” (p. 40). Skills needed in reading (summarizing, predicting, and questioning for clarification, for example) can be practiced as students learn to talk and think on their feet in rich conversations with their classmates. Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to talk about what they just read, making real-life connections in a way that helps with comprehension. “If we want students to be articulate about their thinking, they need daily time to practice talking” (Keene & Zimmerman, pp. 40–41). Zwiers and Crawford (2011) maintain they “help students connect thoughts to build ideas that are much bigger and more relevant than snippets of knowledge needed for most tests” (p. 19). In this new edition of the book, I have expanded on this theme; I believe more than ever that students need to become effective at communication and collaboration, and teachers need to provide for plenty of academic conversations and other forms of effective collaboration in the classroom.

In the time since I wrote The Active Classroom, two things have happened to help shift classrooms away from teacher-centered places, where direct instruction predominates, to more learning-centered environments, where students play a much more active role in their own learning. The first is the aforementioned Common Core State Standards, which place an emphasis not only on writing in all content areas but also on comprehension and collaboration as well. The second is the 21st century skills movement, which emphasizes, in addition to content knowledge, “information and communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, interpersonal [Page xix]and self-directional skills, and the skills to utilize 21st century tools, such and information and communication technologies” (Pearlman, 2010, p. 119). Part of the idea here is to put the technology students already use at home to work in schools where electronic devices of all kinds can combine with online learning platforms to take learning beyond the four walls of the classroom.

The 21st century skills movement and the Common Core State Standards have succeeded in making classrooms much more dynamic and student-centered places. As we'll see in Chapter 1 with an exceptional North Carolina science classroom, students know the difference between an engaging and meaningful learning experience and a classroom where they may fight to stay awake—and where the restroom pass is handed from one student to another like a relay baton. For the most part, students like taking an active part in the proceedings, but they can also become accustomed to a passive role over time, and often this habituation puts them in survival mode. The image that often comes to mind is that of 28 kids doggie-paddling in the classroom pool; they probably won't drown, but they aren't going anywhere.

The best teachers I know make it clear on day one that passivity is not an option in their classrooms; the rooms of great teachers are crowded with student interaction, academic conversations, challenging projects, plenty of opportunity for independent and interdependent reflection, gobs of journal writing and quick-writes, oodles of student- and teacher-generated questions, and an increasing number of opportunities to harness for classroom use modern technology of all kinds. This new edition gives me a chance to incorporate some excellent examples of hybrid lessons across subjects.

It is satisfying to watch a great teacher work the room in an elementary, middle, or high school setting. Those of us who work with teachers on a regular basis are under no illusions as to what it took to get the system in those effective classrooms operating at a high level. It is never one thing, of course, that delivers excellent results in a classroom; there are many components that—taken together—create an effective working framework supporting good outcomes. There are actions teachers can take during the opening 10 or so days of school that will give them an edge when it comes to accelerating the academic growth of students throughout the year. In the same way an orchestra conductor or dance choreographer devotes all his or her time and energy to ensuring an outstanding performance in the orchestra hall or theater, teachers must be in constant motion as they ensure today's students are ready for what they will face—and what they will pursue—when they graduate.[Page xx]

Many teachers have, over the years, gotten used to doing most of the work in their classrooms, and their students have for the most part adjusted to a passive system that may not demand much of them. The great teachers I have met at all grade levels over the years since The Active Classroom was first released have one thing in common: Every one of them can identify a decision point when they made a commitment to change the how of what they did. Before they challenged and changed the status quo in their classrooms, these teachers were, most of them tell me, exhausted from doing so much of the work. Some said they thought of leaving the profession for good. Those teachers have something else in common: They no longer talk of retiring. Teachers who want to disrupt the status quo of many years must reach that decision point, and then let their students know their classrooms are going to be very different—and much more active—places to be.

Perhaps the role of the teacher best approximates that of the orchestra conductor. The musicians make the music, but the conductor is in a position to influence the flow of the music, affecting, by her actions, the volume, tempo, and timing. She gives feedback when necessary and acknowledges effort constantly. A symphony is the ultimate collaborative effort. Everyone contributes. Everyone has different strengths and varying levels of skill; in the final analysis, the conductor figures out how to combine it all into a supremely satisfying effort. It is at once the score, the talent, the practice, the discipline, the commitment, the passion, and the ability of the conductor to multitask and influence process that determines the quality of the performance.

The active classroom is a place where the teacher effectively influences the flow of process, and his students do most of the work. The active classroom is a place where students are frequently encouraged to actively reflect on and process information, skillfully practice the art of communication, purposefully move and share, and continually engage in their own learning. Active classrooms are alternately noisy and quiet places. They are usually colorful places, and they are always safe places. It is at once the lesson, the talent, the practice, the discipline, the commitment, the passion, and the ability of the teacher to multitask and influence process that determines the quality of the learning.

The purpose of this book is to help teachers energize students and energize themselves in the process. My belief is that learning should be active, contemplative, dynamic, purposeful, spontaneous, safe, constructivist, brain-compatible, engaging, reflective, and fun for everyone involved in the process, including the person in the best position to choreograph it all … the teacher.