The Schoenblog

It’s been a while. In fact, this is the longest I’ve gone without publishing a blog post in about two and a half years. In the past few weeks, life got busier and I needed to press pause. Every week, my regularly scheduled blog alarm would buzz, but I couldn’t find the time to put my ideas down on paper--that’s something I want to work on in the school year ahead.

Right now, my time has been dedicated to a new challenge at a new job. I’ve also been hard at work on a revamped blog with a new title and more focused content. Then there’s the countless hours of doctoral work this summer and my almost ready draft of chapter two of my dissertation.

All of that is great; I’m working hard, and I’m happy. As my professional worlds continue to grow and evolve, I needed to press pause to regroup, reclaim some balance, and make sure to enjoy my life in and out of schools. All educators know that we need to give so much to our students and schools to do our jobs well; sometimes we need a refresher so we’re not running on empty.

And now, with the relative comforts of a teacher’s summer over, I’m eager for my new challenges as a leader, leader, and writer.

This will likely be the last post for the next few weeks as I continue to make serving my new school my focus and learn to better balance these complex worlds. But look forward to a brand new blog coming soon--September 30 is my personal deadline. I’m looking forward to a new site, improved look, and more focused content (read more about it below!). I hope you will join me on the journey.

From Teacher to Leader

Assistant Principal Schoenbart. I like the sound of that. I couldn’t be more excited to have joined the Darien Public Schools as one of the Assistant Principals at Darien High School.

I loved my time as a classroom teacher and a coach--and already miss my Ossining colleagues and students--but it was time for a change and the next challenge. In my years in the classroom, I experienced tremendous growth as a teacher, thinker, leader, and person, and I couldn’t be more proud of that time. And I'm even more proud of the work with students and colleagues that I know will continue.

And now, I’m ready for the future. In just over a week in my new position, I’ve jumped right in the deep end, every day learning and taking on new challenges. I will be responsible for a third of the students as “their AP,” supervise teachers, and help manage the building needs. I’m also thrilled to have a large role in technology and innovation as we roll out the start of a 1:1 iPad program.

Wherever this year and new role takes me, Assistant Principal Schoenbart is ready to lead, learn, and serve.

Looking forward to a great year ahead at Darien! Excited to lead, learn, and serve.https://t.co/727aHiGt1h pic.twitter.com/o4bOFdQc1c

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) August 17, 2017

From SchoenBlog to #SchoenTell

The title for this blog came from an obvious play on my name, but in creating it, I ignored the obvious choice: #SchoenTell. My students created the #SchoenTell hashtag for our English classes, and for two years I used it throughout my work with students. I liked the separation--that hashtag belonged to the work in my classroom.

But now, with a change in my role, comes a change in purpose. I’ve been working hard on an upgrade to this blog, including a new site on a self-hosted WordPress, a more responsive layout, and updated content, when the realization hit me. Why not bring the #SchoenTell title with me?

My work will always involve students, but I like the idea of retiring #SchoenTell from the classroom and bringing it more prominently into my professional world. It’s just too good not to. I also love the history of it: search it and you find the evolution of my growth as an educator, too.

In the upcoming revamp, The SchoenBlog will become #SchoenTell. The web address will stay the same (in fact, both aschoenbart.com and adamschoenbart.com will take you here). The content might not focus on my own teaching as much, but will still be all about the worlds of technology, education, and leadership.

Coming Soon: Doctor Schoenbart?

Besides the job hunt, I focused a lot of time on my doctoral work this summer, reading thousands of pages of research and dissertations, refocusing my questions and investigation, and writing quite a bit. In the end, I worked out a revised prospectus, a start of chapter one, and an almost readable draft of chapter two.

I had hoped to submit a literature draft by now, but it’s just not there. What I have happily accomplished is that I’ve refined my thinking, selected a concrete and interesting topic, and reframed my entire proposal. I’ve also taken some hundreds of pages of notes from thousands of pages of reading and synthesized them into an almost written thirty-something page literature review. Coming soon.

My work is focused on the changing role of the school principal as a technology leader. Specifically, I’m investigating the relationship between principal self-efficacy and technology leadership. Do principals who are technology leaders have a stronger belief in their ability to perform their job of principals better? How do principals perceive their roles as technology leaders? Do school leaders need to be technology leaders in today's schools?

It’s shocking how little actual research exists about technology leadership; everyone just agrees that we need more of it. I also love the connection between technology leadership, leadership, and self-perceptions. How do we perceive the impact of technology leadership? Also, what does technology leadership even mean? You might be surprised at how many are unsure, and how many more are measuring it through outdated measurements of the dial-up age.

We can do better, and I plan to continue to research, read, and write, both here and in my doctoral work.

Exit Slip

While I write for many reasons, I always come back to reflection. I write to think, reflect, and to grow. Sharing my successes, challenges, and questions with an authentic audience helps me to evolve as an educator and reflective practitioner, and it also keeps me honest. I’m writing this for me, but also for you.

Learn with me. Ask questions. Pose problems. And every once in awhile, ask how the new job is going. Or even better, ask to see my chapter two draft.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you on #SchoenTell in the next few weeks.

Share your new start for this school year. How did you grow or change this summer? What are you excited about in the year ahead? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

What’s next? It’s a question I ask myself constantly in every one of my roles in life. Professionally, I can’t help but to look forward. For me that means looking for the next innovative tools, strategies, and understandings to impact my classroom and coaching, followed by inspirations for writing, presenting, and more.

I like to think of myself as a good multitasker, but I need to do more to prioritize. And sometimes, that means making changes or sacrifices. If you’re an educator or writer, I’m sure you can relate--our jobs are different every single day so we have to be open to change, too, but it’s easy to get lost in that whirlwind of new.

Moving forward, I aim to follow the advice of literary greats like William Faulkner, Alan Ginsberg, and Stephen King, and to kill my darlings. The quote refers to a writer’s need to often remove parts of a piece that they value personally but might not be necessary to the whole. We all have the projects and paragraphs we selfishly love that are difficult to cut but better off saved for another day. If you can remove it without hurting the larger whole, it probably didn’t need to be there in the first place.

Image courtesy of quotefancy.com. “Kill your darlings” is attributed originally either Faulkner or Ginsberg, depending on who you ask.

For me, this phrase means to focus, prioritize, and learn to say no. I love to blog, write, present, research, read, and more, but I also want to be a functional human being, enjoy summer, and succeed as a doctoral student.

This post serves two purposes. First, it’s an update for you, fair reader, to let you know about my plans and ideas for the future. Secondly, it’s a promise. If I put these ideas in writing for a public audience, I now have a written commitment with the world. I hope you will hold me to it.

What’s Next

1. Vacation! I’ll be spending the next week or so on the beach in the Dominican Republic so this will be the only post for few days. Enjoy your week--I know I will!
2. Doctor Schoenbart. For the rest of the month, my first priority will be reading and writing to make progress in drafts of my dissertation. I have my topic, a prospectus draft, and now need to get my ideas on paper. 
3. The SchoenBlog. That may mean less frequent updates to the SchoenBlog for a few weeks. It will likely mean more writing that reflects on my doctoral work, too.
4. The SchoenBlog 2.0. Then, with the start of the school year, I hope to return with a revamped Schoenblog. I have a few new features in mind, with plans for a brand new site with updated content, an e-book, and new layout. 

Today is August 1. That means I have about a month to achieve the goals above. With a few conference dates and other deadlines plus preparing for the new school year, it will be a busy August. I’m excited about the challenges ahead and look forward to what’s next.

“Information is abundant; it’s common. What’s uncommon, and desperately needed in today’s education system, is the innovator’s mindset” (p. 41). This was one of those statements in Couros’ The Innovator’s Mindset that has stuck with me since I put the book down. I’ve often discussed the shift away from content to skills, or content through skills, with my students and teachers, and Couros captures the sentiment so clearly and effectively. When we can find anything online so easily and information is abundant, we need to stop asking Google-able questions and push students towards critical thinking.

This post continues and concludes (for now at least) a look into the #InnovatorsMindset through the lens of educational reform and in contrast to E.D. Hirsh’s Cultural Literacy. To recap from last time, I read both texts for a doctoral paper exploring change and controversy and wrote about them in What vs. How: #InnovatorsMindset and Ed Reform. I explored each author’s take on the skills and content that they thought would make our students ready for their futures.

Image courtesy of DocChewbacca on Flickr.

Today, I’ll share my analysis from my paper, focusing on what we teach, how we teach it, and the content vs. skills debate. With more reflection, I constantly come back to the understanding that content matters and does provide a context and schema for real understanding, but it matters less and less unless we can do more and more with it. It’s not what we know, but we are able to use it.

UPDATE: Check out George's post, Is a “Growth Mindset” Enough?, which responds to this very post. Thanks, George! 

Unlocking Potential

Couros argues that “We are spending so much time telling our students about what they can’t do that we have lost focus on what we can do” (p. 7), to which Hirsh would counter: “Our children can learn this information only by being taught it” (p. 14). What and how seem to be at odds in this dynamic. Hirsh’s views on the limited potential of students are definitely problematic, writing, “Left to itself, a child will not grow into a thriving creature” (p. 31). Really!?!

While Hirsh wants students to simply memorize 150-pages-or-so of definitive knowledge and ideas, Corous seeks to expand worldviews: “Innovation demands that our students learn the basics, but how we go about teaching them may look different than in years past. The basics are crucial, but they cannot be the only things we teach our students” (p. 163). What we teach our students is crucial to both authors as information is key in both texts.

Information in the Digital Age

We live in a digital and information age where virtually anyone can access anything at anytime. The access to information in 1987, when Hirsh first published, was different. Encyclopedias and dictionaries were impractical tools, Hirsh claims, so information had to be memorized. Otherwise, it was impossible to make meaningful connection and learn; “It is not enough to say that students can look these facts up” (p. 60).

For Couros, “Information is abundant; it’s common. What’s uncommon, and desperately needed in today’s education system, is the innovator’s mindset” (p. 41). With the innovator’s mindset comes skills but “skill . . . requires the rapid deployment of schemata that have already been acquired and do not have to be worked out on the spot” (Hirsh, 1988, p. 63).

Again for Hirsh, it’s about information first and foremost. With limited flexibility, he wants to tell America what to learn, to which Couros would likely respond: “You’ll learn that to truly empower people, there must be a shift from telling to listening” (p. 7). One can’t help but wonder how Hirsh’s views may have evolved in the new reality of technology and access to information.

An excerpt from the article “Cultural Literacy: What Every Educator Needs to Know” (1988) in Educational Leadership, showing a page for Hirsh’s list with commentary from the authors of the article, Estes, Gutman, and Harrison.

Both Couros and Hirsh constantly bring their arguments back to student learning. For Hirsh, it’s about repairing the damage to American education and thereby democratic society. For Couros, it’s about helping students reach their potential and prepare for the future. While Couros embraces change and advocates in positive and collaborative ways, Hirsh seems to fear it and how it might change society. He tries to explain how to allow for some flexibility and evolution to his curriculum but still isolates a concrete and prescribed list. Meanwhile, Couros writes, “If we only teach students the curriculum we have failed them” (p. 223). Knowledge, information, and memorization matter but aren’t the only things that matter in today’s world, or tomorrow’s.

Am I Culturally Literate?

Hirsh wants us all to be culturally literate to repair the achievement gap, economy, and future. Every literate Americans might need to know his entire list, but I certainly didn’t. As a high school graduate, let alone college graduate, teacher, doctoral student, etc. I hope he would consider me literate.

Or maybe not. From the 88 words and phrases on page 205 of Cultural Literacy, I only knew 60 very well, with 68% success. For Hirsh, I barely pass. But for Couros, who quotes Young Zhao saying, “Reading and writing should be the floor, not the ceiling” (p. 163), the knowledge is just one piece of the puzzle.

How do you balance the dynamic between content and skills? Is information enough in today’s classroom? What are your views on the #InnovatorsMindset? Share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

For a summer doctoral class titled Culture, Politics, and Educational Reform, I was assigned a paper on an educational controversy. I was directed to read two books that offer different viewpoints on an issue, and to analyze both arguments through the lens of educational change. I was already reading George Couros’ The Innovator’s Mindset, which advocates for a shift in mindset to innovation and risk-taking in education, and my professor suggested I pair it with E.D. Hirsh’s classic, Cultural Literacy. In it, Hirsh argues that there a specific and concrete list of facts and information that every literate American needs to know.

I really enjoyed the reading and analysis, and think the combination of the texts offer a really interesting lens for examining today’s world of education. In June, I set out to plan My Summer of Learning, and The Innovator’s Mindset was at the top of the list (full disclosure: I’ve only read Innovator's and half of Teach Like a Pirate so far, and have Hacking Assessment on deck--dissertation reading has taken over!).

The paper presented both author’s arguments, essentially contrasting changes in how we should be learning (Couros) versus what we should be learning (Hirsh). It should be no surprise that I connected more with #InnovatorsMindset; in fact, I found some of Hirsh’s arguments to be laughable and even offensive from a modern perspective. If you are interested in the full paper, read it here, but for this post I will stick to some of the highlights examining these two viewpoints on educational reform. This writing is more scholarly than my usual work--it is excerpted from my coursework, after all, but I think it will still be meaningful to my audience.

#InnovatorsMindset

In The Innovator’s Mindset, Corous uses his own experiences as a teacher, administrator, and lead learner to make an argument for a shift in how we view education. He builds on the concept of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, positing that today’s students need something more; they need the innovator’s mindset: “the belief that the abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed so that they lead to the creation of new and better ideas . . . We must focus on creating something with the knowledge that’s been acquired” (2015, p. 33). Innovation is not about technology, but about new and improved ways of thinking about learning. He describes eight characteristics of the innovator’s mindset as empathetic, problem finders/solvers, risk takers, networked, observant, creators, resilient, reflective.

Couros makes the compelling argument that today’s schools are largely becoming outdated in the wake of worldwide change. Because students’ futures, jobs and careers, post-secondary education, and the world economy all predict such drastic change, our systems need change, too. We cannot keep preparing students for the world of yesterday, or even of today. He writes, “I’m not saying that today’s schools are irrelevant yet . . . We need to change what school looks like for our students so we can create new, relevant opportunities for them--for their future and for today” (p. 5). Education needs to “create the conditions where change is more likely to happen” (p. 8).

What Americans Need to Know

For Hirsh, however, skill is never really an issue. He briefly addresses it throughout Cultural Literacy, but almost half of the text is his master list of what every American needs to know; “To be culturally literature is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world” (p. xiii). His influences come from schema theory, as he argues that knowledge, information, and how we make connections between information is the most powerful factor in improving literacy. Like Couros, Hirsh’s work is a clear product of its time, referencing countless studies about the failing American education system of the 1980’s.

Hirsh’s ideas are a direct contradiction to much of the work that founded American education systems, like that of Dewey and Rousseau. They opposed such a focus on acquiring knowledge. Hirsh argues that Dewey had too much faith in students abilities to develop skills from knowledge (that sounds pretty crazy, right?). Instead, he advocates: “Only by piling up specific, communally shared information can children learn to participate in complex cooperative activities with other members of their community” (xv). He rejects formalistic education theories, which support that any suitable content can help develop skills. Instead, skills must be developed through the memorization of a standardized set of information--names, places, and ideas--and this can help to close achievement gaps and improve American society. He posits that “the decline of literacy and the decline of shared knowledge are closely related, interdependent facts” (p. 7).

Conclusions

It’s difficult to examine these texts through the lens of educational change without the socio-historical frame. These texts both make sense in the times they were written. For Hirsh, a consistent curriculum was lacking (an issue we are still dealing with today) and knowledge reigned supreme.

He looked to information as the key to closing the achievement gap but clearly overlooked and outright ignored the value and development of skills, experience, and context. Some might argue that Couros may over rely on skills--what subject or information should teach resilience, for example?--and his open views to education and curriculum would likely infuriate Hirsh. But in today’s digital age, Hirsh can only be viewed as outdated, and at times offensive. Couros wants to engage and empower teachers and students and learners while Hirsh wants to dictate and limit learning experiences.

Next Time

Next week, I’ll share part 2 of the paper, where I contrast the two texts and their views on information and preparing students for their futures. I know this kind of post is a little different than my usual, but I think the themes of the texts and the lens of educational change are important for us all. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter if you agree.

What are your thoughts on #InnovatorsMindset? How does it compare to Hirsh’s views in Cultural Literacy? How do we balance content and skills in today’s classroom?

This post is part 2 in my series #GAFE Impact Report, sharing data and analysis about student and teacher perceptions of the impact of Google Apps for Education. The results come from a 2014 survey I designed, implemented, and analyzed in my school. Be sure to check out Part 1: Overview & Infographic. Though limited to my school, I believe these results to be informative and representative of many schools in the early stages of GAFE integration. Please share your thoughts and feedback on these posts, the survey, or the findings in the comments or on Twitter.

Once the inspiration for this study hit, I knew what I needed to do. Ideas, questions, and complications circled through my mind for a few days. I listed my ideas, tried to put them in order, and to figure out what I was really looking for. Who did I want to survey? How? Where? Why? What was I going to do with the data? I had some answers to these questions and more ideas than I knew what to do with. Little did I know it at the time, but a lot of this process was what led me to my current doctoral studies. With the #GAFE Impact Report, I learned a lot of survey design, methodology, and data analysis, which helped focus my interests back towards further studies.

Luckily, I had some friends at work to bounce ideas off of and quickly made some decisions. I would create Google forms for all teachers and students. Students were easy; I could ask my English teacher colleagues to assign the survey, either in class or for homework. I decided to collect usernames in my domain so I could ensure unique responses from each students and let teachers know when their students had all completed it--although their responses remained private. For the teachers, I e-mailed a different Google form with a plea for their help. I explained my goals and purpose and asked that they complete the form over a two-week window. I then followed up in person with some departments, and after a lot of leg work had overall success. Although my administration okayed my work, it was important that I ask for honest feedback and data as a colleague and not as a forced or mandated survey from a supervisor.

The surveys took a while to design and finalize, and I’m pretty happy with the questions I asked, even now. By Thanksgiving or so, I was ready to roll out my baby.

Survey Design

Thankfully, my friend and mentor Tina has her PhD. She had the knowledge, experience, and insight into survey design, methodology, and motivating busy teachers to respond, which I sorely lacked. I didn’t need a doctoral-level project here, but I wanted to make sure that my study was fair, purposeful, and meaningful. She helped me decide on a mixed-methods approach, including both quantitative and quantitative questions.

The quantitative questions provided the hard data and were required. The qualitative ones asked for supporting responses, and some were optional. I wanted to make the survey easy for responders, with the hopes that this would give me more in depth responses. And it mostly worked. There were some topics, like the value of electronic feedback, that were important to me, but ultimately proved to be too much. I wanted to survey to be clear and focused, so I tried to connect everything back to the impact of Google Apps on Teaching and Learning.

Students

The students survey asked about when, how, and why they used GAFE, and about its impact on teaching, learning, engagement, etc. It took most students about 20 minutes to complete.

Find the student survey here.

Teachers

The teacher survey asked almost all of the same questions for the teacher's perspective but had an extra layer. All students at OHS had used Google to some degree, so all of their responses were valuable. But for teachers who had never really used GAFE in their teaching, some of the questions were designed to fail--or at least collect vague or incomplete data. I can’t expect a clear understanding of the impact of GAFE if a teacher hasn’t used it in his or her teaching.

Instead, I used the page branching feature in Google Forms to differentiate the questions. The first page is the same for all teachers and ends with the question: How often have you been able to use GAFE in your classroom this year? Teachers who answered always, often, or sometimes continued with an evaluation of its impact. Those who replied rarely or never followed with questions about why they hadn’t used it and what they would need to use it more.

Find the teacher survey here.

What impact does #GAFE have on teaching and learning?

Last year, this was the question on my mind. I had just left GAFE Summit NY, one of my first conferences, and was awed at how much everyone was talking about the positive impact of Google Apps for Education (GAFE), Chromebooks, and technology. I attended great sessions, watched my Director of Technology discuss our district’s Chromebook rollout and professional development models, and I even presented about how GAFE has changed my teaching and my students’ learning. But I left wondering about the real impact, which at the time meant numbers for me.

The Plan

Last week, the US Department of Education released the new National Educational Technology Plan (#NETP16). It’s been a hot topic this week but was especially meaningful for me, as I spent most of my first semester in a doctoral policy class examining the 2010 plan (NETP10). In this class, I researched the policy, it’s history, and its impact, evaluating quality through equity, efficiency, political feasibility and effectiveness. My policy brief was due last Thursday, in my last night of class, and just a day before the new plan was released.