Adams, William
Cavaletti, Anthony
Duch, Phuc
@rickwormeli (Twitter)
rwormeli@cox.net
The best teachers of my own children have
been the ones who respect the school’s
system, but parted from it as necessary in
order to teach my child.
Our greatest
Compass Rose:
Doubt
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is braver five minutes longer.”
- Emerson
“Courage is not the absence of
fear. It’s the judgment that something
else is more important than that fear.”
-- Ambrose Redmoon, rock band manager
in the 1960’s. Oh yeah, he was a quadriplegic as well.
What do we judge as so important,
it trumps our fear of rejection, failure,
and questioning from colleagues,
parents, administration?
Courage is 90%
mindset, only 10%
craft and mechanics
of pulling it off.
Our job is not to make up anybody’s
mind, but to open minds and to make
the agony of decision-making so
intense you can escape only by
thinking.” - Fred Friendly, broadcaster
”All thinking begins with wonder.”
-- Socrates
“4/5 of my students
keep failing their
tests!”
‘Forged by the operating tenets
with which we perceive the world
and conduct our actions.
Effective educators regularly assess
these principles for validity and
revise them in light of new
evidence/perspective.
Mindset
In teaching and leadership, we seek
integrity: Our actions reflect our
principles. Put another way: We
minimize our hypocrisies.
Ask what a respected
colleague or leader would
do.
Build teacher autonomy.
When teachers retain autonomy to make lesson changes they
find effective, they take responsibility for the outcomes. They
commit to a lesson’s success more personally, analyzing their
actions and revising thoughtfully.
What Were We Thinking?
• Everyone in the same subject in this grade
level is on the same page on the same day of
the week
• Plan accordingly because there is no more
paper supply after January
• The master schedule cannot be changed to
accommodate a compelling guest speaker.
• Students cannot re-do final exams.
• Sacrifice good pedagogy because people
who are untrained are telling you what to do.
What Were We Thinking?
• We can’t incorporate a new “app” in our lessons
because it promotes the use of personal technology
that school hasn’t sanctioned.
• Our new students are three grade levels below grade
level proficiencies but they have to do well on the
final exam anyway.
• We can’t take that field trip with the class because
that would be too much time away from preparing for
the annual state or provincial exam.
• “Stop being so creative,” a colleague comments.
“You’re making me look bad.”
Consider how personal
technology is changing
the way our students do
things.
We’ve entered a 24-7
work cycle. Official
homework as we know
it will soon fade.
Information Age is old school. We’re in the High Concept
Age, and we have the tech to pursue it:
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Twitter and other social media
Daily newspapers downloaded for analysis
Museum school partnerships and Virtual Tours
QR codes attached to classroom activities
Student-designed apps
Khan Academy and similar on-line tutorials
Graduation in four states now requires one course taken
completely on-line
Google Docs
Google Glass/Eyes – wearables, implantables,
augments
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MOOCS – Massive Open On-line Course
Crowd-Sourcing
MIT Open Courseware
TED talks and ed.Ted.com
Screencasts (ex. Camtasia Studio)
Voicethread
Moodle
PBL’s
Prezi
iMovie
Edmodo
Just because we can’t fathom the logistics
doesn’t mean we abandon the principle.
#1 Most Common Characteristic among
the state Teachers of the year:
They broke the rules.
Thanks, Gordon
Dryden, for
yesterday’s
promotion!
It’s not
an answer
chase.
It’s a question journey.
“We went to school. We were not taught how to think; we
were taught to reproduce what past thinkers thought….
…Instead of being taught to look
for possibilities, we
were taught to exclude them.
It’s as if we entered
school as a question mark…
…and graduated
as a period.”
-- Michael Michalko,
Creative Thinkering,
2011, p. 3
“Do they know how
to ask good
questions?”
-- Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement
Gap, 2008
What should a
lawyer never do
in a court trial?
Ask a question to which
he doesn’t already
know the answer.
Get students to ask more
questions than we do
Sample Acts of Courage for Teachers that Can Be
Facilitated by Teacher Leaders
• Ask the larger questions of what we do
• Manifest expertise
• Retain autonomy: Pacing guides, not mandates;
teach out of sequence as warranted
• Require all students, teachers, administrators get
residential, outdoor education experiences of a
week or more
• Teach the way students best learn, not the way we
best learn (Students use that secret code…)
As leaders, we all have our own
philosophy/pedagogy that we believe. To
what degree will we allow our teachers to
hold beliefs and conduct practices
different from our own?
“Most of the time I’m a
leader, but sometimes I
have to be the boss.”
-- quote from a
highly accomplished
middle level principal
Our future depends
on this one here.
Could you teach the differences between architecture
in the Middle Ages and architecture in the
Renaissance period in such a classroom?
How about the principles of algebra here?
Writer and educator, Margaret
Wheatley, is correct:
“We can’t be creative unless
we’re willing to be confused.”
Cultivate Teacher Creativity.
Seriously, it’s just as vital as content expertise,
professional behavior, and maintaining proper records.
Do teachers have the creativity to solve their own
problems?
• My whole lesson today is based on accessing those three
Websites, but the school’s Internet is down, so what can we
do instead?
• Small groups are not working in my class, yet I know they’re
important for many students’ learning. How do I get these
students to stay focused on their group tasks?
• I’ve backed myself into a corner explaining an advanced
science concept, and it’s not making sense to me, let alone to
my students. What should I do?
• Angelica is far beyond where I’m comfortable teaching, but
we have two more weeks in this unit for the rest of the class.
What will I do with her that honors her readiness level?
• I’m supposed to differentiate for some of my
students, but I don’t see any time to do it.
• My school’s current electronic gradebook system
doesn’t allow me to post anything but normreferenced scores, and I want to be more criterionreferenced in my grades. What can I do?
• Because I’m a veteran teacher, I’ve been asked to be
the rotating teacher using a cart and moving from
classroom to classroom each period so the new
teacher can have his own room and not have so
much to deal with his first year. How will I handle
this?
(Sampling from Innocentive.com, page 1, downloaded June 24, 2012)
 Seeking Orthogonally Functionalized Cyclobutanes
 Navigating the Inside of an Egg Without Damaging It
 Cleveland Clinic: Method to Reconnect Two Tissues Without
Using Sutures
 Seeking 1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-3-amides
 Synthetic Route to a Benzazepinone
 My Air, My Health: An HHS/EPA Challenge
 Mechanistic Proposals for a Vanadium-Catalyzed Addition of
NMO to Imidazopyridazines
 Seeking Highest and Best Commercial Application for
Breakthrough Innovation in Building Technology/Structural
Optimization
 Desafio da Educação: Como atrair pessoas talentosas para se
tornar professor na rede pública brasileira
“The problem solvers...were most effective when working
at the margins of their fields….While these people were close
enough to understand the challenges, they weren’t so close that
their knowledge held them back and cause them to run into the
same stumbling blocks as the corporate scientists.” (p. 121,
Lehrer)
Check out InnoCentive at
www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/browse
What would this look like in education?
Consider: Immigrants invent patents at
double the rate of non-immigrants.”
(p. 240, Lehrer)
Combination and
Re-Combinination
• Hall duty and Teacher Advisory
Math Properties
• Service
Learning and Students in danger of
dropping out
FurnitureGolf and lesson sequence
• Miniature
• Students’ cafeteria behavior and architecture
• Unmotivated faculty and farming,
astronomy,
Miniature
golf
marble tabletops.
• Parental involvement and architecture
medicine
Grades are
communication.
compensation.
F.A.I.L.
First Attempt in Learning
Re-Do’s &
Re-Takes with students
and their teachers:
Are They Okay?
More than “okay!”
After 10,000 tries,
here’s a working
light bulb. ‘Any
questions?
Thomas Edison
A Perspective that Changes our Thinking:
“A ‘D’ is a coward’s ‘F.’ The student
failed, but you didn’t have enough
guts to tell him.”
-- Doug Reeves
If we do not allow students to re-do work, we
deny the growth mindset so vital to student
maturation, and we are declaring to the student:
• This assignment had no legitimate
educational value.
• It’s okay if you don’t do this work.
• It’s okay if you don’t learn this content
or skill.
None of these is acceptable to the highly
accomplished, professional educator.
We don’t let a
student’s
immaturity
dictate his
learning and
thereby his
destiny.
Do not wave from the rim of the pit the child has dug for himself.
Instead, jump in and walk with him.
Recovering in full from a failure teaches more than
being labeled for failure ever could teach.
It’s a false assumption that giving a student an “F” or
wagging an admonishing finger from afar builds moral
fiber, self-discipline, competence, and integrity.
‘Bold Actions that are Possible
When We are Brave Together:
• Remove Honor Roll. It has little to do with students’
academic achievement and personal maturation.
• End averaging of grades.
• Build and use full ropes initiatives courses on
school property.
• Put vocational training back into middle schools.
• Be open to students skipping grade levels.
• Train all teachers in gifted education so as to meet
advanced needs, at least to some degree, in
regular education classrooms, if necessary.
• Conduct Principal Coffee’s with parents/community.
• Ask teachers to demonstrate proof of their expertise
in the development nature of the students they
serve in their lesson plans.
• Turn middle schools into true middle schools, not
junior versions of high school, a.k.a. junior high.
• Start all secondary levels at 9:30 in the morning or
later.
• Denying students the tools of their daily reality
hastens our irrelevance and negates all claims
we’re preparing students for the working world.
Invite students to use personal technologies in the
classroom and teach them to use them ethically.
• Encourage teachers to change the novel declared
for the grade level if the current one doesn’t work.
• Ask teachers to open their practice to the close
scrutiny of respected colleagues.
• Help struggling teachers instead of dismissing
them, and when they don’t respond at first or
second, help them even more.
• Ask teachers to teach in the way students best
learn, regardless of whether or not it’s the way they
best learn. Let’s do the same with teachers and
their professional development.
• In a world in which everything can be looked up,
emphasize the power of memorization.
• Speak up about schools at community events.
• Adjust the school’s master schedule to support
best practices; don’t sacrifice best practices to
support the master schedule.
• Revise our thinking in light of new evidence –
be open to correction from parents,
colleagues, and students.
• Participate in the national/international
conversations of your field.
• Ask teachers to put previous curriculum on
subsequent tests, even months later, and
record the marks, higher or lower, accordingly.
• Conduct impact surveys about professional
development experiences you facilitate.
• Accept a leadership position in a low
performing school.
• Accept a leadership position in a high
performing school.
• Denounce value-added evaluations of
teachers, including the use of students’ test
scores as highly influential measures of
teacher quality.
• Make it the policy that we cannot take students
out of P.E., fine/performing arts, and tech
classes to double-up on their math or reading
remediation for exams.
What goes unachieved in
students because we chose
to be politically safe?
Closing Video Mocku-mentary