Critical Lens

As an early adopter of most technologies, I have also been diligent about protecting myself with the technologies. My devices have passwords and I have kept creative passwords that would at least take hackers a while to find. Working with others in the use and adoption of technology, I find that most people have received the message about such cautions. The disturbing trend I have seen recently as I engage more and more professionals through social media is the lack of critical analysis of content.

One of my goals this year was to build a Personal/Professional Learning Network with peers and educators from around the nation I respected for their leadership. To that end, I created Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts that only have educators posts. Refining those streams down to only educators, I am finding that my peers are as susceptible to false information and as likely to propagate it as the greater population on my other social media profiles. While we talk about talking about netiquette and Internet safety with our students, that message had not been applied to our own usage.

As important as netiquette and Internet safety are, learning to be a careful consumer of the vast content rarely even comes up in discussion. Perhaps those of us who are from a generation prior to the advent of the world wide web and did our college research entirely in books, journals, and microfiche (kiddos the link is a Wikipedia article about it) were trained to expect that anything published went through an editorial process, and due to the expense of publication, those texts that made it to publication had the creative or factual value to be trusted. None of these protections are guaranteed or can even be assumed on the Internet.

Wikipedia is one such example. Anyone can register to become an editor/contributor to the collection. The more accurate your contributions prove, the more power you have as an editor. The requirement to prove oneself is a quality check that Wikipedia has in providing accurate information; however, each article is only going to be vetted by persons with an interest/specialty in that area, so inaccurate information may be added to an article and remain there until someone with that interest/specialty checks it again. I sometimes use it as a quick-reference-guide (like I do the illustrated part of my truck’s user manual), but never as a primary source material.

Memes that circulate on social media sites, by definition are infectious and are created to prey on our sense of humor or fear. So far I have not seen one of the fearmongering memes that proved accurate. Most common of the fear-based are those that give directions on privacy settings or regarding certain content. I have yet to see one of those messages that actually accomplishes what it says. A popular one on Facebook making the rounds for a couple years now directs “me” to change what I can see of “you” so that “your” stuff will be protected from people “you” do not want to see it. Yes, I can change what I see of you, but all that does is limit what I see of you (and if you are posting such a meme, then I have likely already severely limited what I can see of you). It does nothing toward allowing/restricting others access to your content: only you can do that with your own privacy settings. More insidious are memes that open one’s account to hackers. Because most people understand so little about the way such content is created and distributed, too many follow the directions thinking they have done some good.

Even content created by professionals requires vetting. Lately my searches have been filled with links to lessons aligned to the Common Core State Standards. I work in Texas. Our leaders rejected the common core standards, so the volumes of excellent materials being created for them do not match the standards approved (and tested) here. Those suggestions may offer creative ideas for lessons, but they will have to be adjusted to the language in our particular standards. The same guidelines apply to content created by the growing education industry. It may be beautifully designed material, but if it does not fit the standards being measured, it is at best inspiration.

The more I have expanded the contacts I have through the various social media, the more I have had to read carefully the information being posted. Some of it is excellent, research-based, articles or suggested applications of new research. Some of it is simply a rant about what the person likes (or more often dislikes) about a topic. People who know me well, know the passionate rants I sometime make. I believe and I believe strongly much of the time.

My rants are not always worthy of publication or even attention. When I find that is all I get from someone I have been following, I consider whether or not I want to continue following that person. That is the purpose of having a critical lens in viewing all content, regardless of the source. Understanding the perspective and point of the author quickly sifts out the content lacking in value. Part of the purpose of having a PLN is to continue and expand my personal learning. For the last nine months as I have eased into it I have been primarily a consumer of content. Following  a few recent encounters, I understand my responsibility to be a creator of content as well. I look at my calendar and I wonder when I will have time to create as much as I am capable of doing, but I find time to do other things I think are important. Doing my part to contribute to the conversation is only right and I can find time to do that. I just hope I am as good a contributor as I am a consumer.

The PLN I Want

My co-workers do not understand why I do not spend every waking moment of conferences hanging out with them. I spend every day with them. At conferences I get the chance to be with everyone else. Most importantly, I get to learn from everyone else. At the conference most of my learning comes from unexpected places and in unexpected ways.

I knew many of the people I follow on Twitter were going to be at the conference - many of them presenting sessions throughout the days. I also planned to go to the tweetup event the conference had scheduled in hopes of meeting many of them.  Beyond meeting them, I was on the shuttle with most of them and shared a table with many of them. They are as wonderfully real people as they are brilliant educators who are shaping the future of education more profoundly than 90% of the conference presenters. They actively connect educators in ways that a sit-and-get conference never will. The conversations, the stories, the experiences, the visions they have for education cannot be unheard. Sitting at the table listening to them share enhanced my vision of education in a way that I can never function again in some of the ways I have in the past.

Even more profound was the random conversation I had with a gentleman at the bar where I stopped with some other conference goers prior to retiring to my hotel room for the night. He had nothing to do with education (he would have been one of my nightmare students had he gone to my school) yet he built a successful, by any definition, career without the help of any higher education. Because of his success, he was able to walk away from that career and now is doing the things he enjoys doing because he has the means to do them. He refers to himself as a technologist. I refer to myself as an educator (with a bit of tech-geek thrown in). I cannot say how much of an educator he understands himself to be. Throughout our conversation, I realized he knows things about education I do not understand and that I know things I want technology to do for me that programmers do not understand. According to his philosophy of technology all the things I want technology to do are quite possible. I had to wonder if my philosophy of education is flexible enough to accommodate the things he understands. As much as I learned from the professional educators, I was more inspired by the professional technologist. Things are possible in education that even professional educators do not yet imagine.

I must confess that I have been somewhat of an educational snob. I welcome input and knowledge from other educators. I resent business people (legislators) input on education. I could always find a flaw in their thinking with ample educational research to disprove what they claim. The random conversation with a technologist who is as passionate about his craft as I am about mine forced me to rethink who it is that I learn from. Do I only want to have educators with a Master’s degree or higher in my Twitter feed?

If I limit my focus, I am as guilty as the major educational organizations who only focus on best-selling authors for keynote speakers and session presenters. In one position I held  was tasked with bringing in presenters for professional development who addressed a specific program the district had implemented. The more I read resumes, the more I realized how incestuously the connections between the experts was. Common backgrounds appeared in the resume. Common affiliations with universities and professional organizations stood out. I realized that everyone I was considering knew everyone else I was considering. There are vast opportunities outside the educational community for learning about education.

Those thoughts were reinforced the next morning when I shared a table in the overflow area with a school superintendent who teaches a leadership course for his local university. Because the course focuses on leadership, not educational leadership, his students  have included employees of Fortune 500 companies, small business owners, educators, and military personnel. He affirmed my belief that the conversation was richer with the diversity of perspectives. In the next term, only educators have registered for the class and he is concerned about the shifts he has to make in presenting the curriculum. The variety that comes from a mixed classroom shifts the quantity of knowledge the participants bring.

While at a conference, and in my hours online from home, I prefer the company of others with that divergent perspective an un-common experiences to hearing the voices of my co-workers. That does not mean I do not value the input and expertise of my peers. Because of our shared experience we often understand that experience better than anyone else. Even though we are housed in the same building, just as eyewitnesses to a car crash have a different perspective depending on which corner they were standing, so do the staff with whom I work. From the classroom, to the specialist, to adminstration, we see each situation through our own unique lens. Each one brings powerful knowledge to solving the ongoing challenges we face.

As I continue to build my personal learning network, I keep finding valuable new sources that inform me in ways I did not expect. That is the power of a PLN - as much as the collection of experts from whom to glean gems of wisdom- it is an opening of one’s own mind to new ideas. One idea from the conference has so dwelt in my mind that I am determined to see it to fruition though I do not even know the first step to take - but I know people who do! With an open mind and the expertise to help me through, I look forward to fulfilling the dream. That is the kind of PLN I want.

Rope

        

         “The knot at the end of the rope is not for hanging onto but for untying so you can reach just a little bit farther.”  I typed that into the notes function on my phone as I was in the middle of the third crisis in four days with a third close friend. It seemed the lives of everyone around me were falling apart and I did not know how much more I could handle, yet in the middle of each crisis, I found the way to go just a little bit farther and handle the additional challenge lying before us.

         I consider it a blessing that my friends (and my students) trust me enough to come to me whenever life goes awry.

         I find it terrifying that sometimes they tell me months later that something I said to them really stuck with them. (“What did I say?” I wonder, and “Is it something I would stand by today?”)

         The idea of the knot and continued service to others has been on my mind since the week in which I confronted the many crises as the months since then have continued to be filled with illness and deaths of people close to me. Recently, in my Bible study, I revisited the passage in 1 Corinthians that discusses gifts (Chapter 12) and have tried to figure out which one(s) of them applies to me. When my friends face a crisis, although sometimes overwhelmed by the immensity of immediate situation, I draw strength in providing assistance/comfort: instead of being drained, I am energized. To experience such stamina must be some kind of gift though I have a hard time identifying it in Pauline terms.

         In the midst of thinking about all of this, someone, after sharing concerns with me, apologized for making me worry about them. I tried to share with the person that the concern I have as a caregiver is not the same as worry and that it energizes me. At best, the explanation fumbled about the topic. I do not completely understand how it works much less possess enough understanding to explain it to anyone else.

         I am certainly not the only one around with this this gift. I work with a team of people who daily demonstrate their ability to work in the most challenging situations. Actually, everyone I know who successfully works in a Title 1 school maintains this gift. Not one of those people I know considers themselves special; they see the work as a calling and as vital to their lives as breathing. To work in the environment without being able to rejuvenate from negotiating challenging situations is too exhausting to continue the work for many years.

         My frustration never comes from the students with whom I work. Frustration comes from the politicians, media, and community who fail to see the challenges we face because we are dealing with real, vulnerable people. Even some so-called allies in education reform do not recognize that we are dealing with people not products. Those outside education often look for a cookie cutter product walking across the stage despite, very often, having defied the system to create their own path to success.

         Regardless of the perceptions of the politicians, media, and community, I am resolute in my determination to do the best I can do for every student who crosses my path. It is my educator gospel. With the correct degree of compassion and passion I can continue to survive the challenges that come from working with real people. My students, also, will survive outside the classroom.

         Resiliency is not just about me thriving when others share their difficult times with me. Resiliency means that they do are surviving through their hard times. Daily I find something amazing about my students that the rest of the world may find mundane. That is what brings me back to school every day.

         And I keep untying knots.