OSG Room in the St. Andrew’s Priory Library on Flickr.
St. Andrew’s Priory School in Honolulu has 12 girls enrolled in OSG courses this year. To support them, the school set up a special study room in the school’s library for OSG students (and even put our logo on the room!). Great support (and fantastic kids and administrators) at the school.
AP Government Chats SOTU on Flickr.
After the State of the Union Address, the AP Government class at OSG got together for a realtime chat.
In the past few weeks, I have been working on a number of presentations coming up for NBOA, NAIS, CAIS, ASB: Unplugged, and NCGE, and have been “booked” to speak at a number of conferences and workshops for this spring and summer. Working on the presentations got me thinking again about a post that Alex Inman had on his blog about “Plunk” PD:
We’ve all seen this. An administrator or teacher of influence sees a great session at a conference and says to themselves, “That is exactly the message that our school needs to hear! We totally need to do [that] or move in [that] direction!” Now, when the administrator or teacher of influence is thinking that, he or she almost certainly has several specific people in mind. They know those teachers who just don’t “get it.” They just don’t move in their teaching the way they should. “That speaker was so articulate,” they think, “if they just heard this message, this way, from this speaker, we’d be on the fast track to success!” They book the speaker. Everyone gathers during a professional day and the person who brought in the speaker sits proudly in the back of the room waiting for the magical transformation to occur.
Alex goes on to talk about how that “magical transformation” does not normally occur, but instead often helps to retrench the teacher who the message was supposed to reach. Thus, by “plunking” the speaker in front of the faculty, the administrators who have brought the speaker in have perhaps moved the needle a bit in their favor, but also have not impacted meaningful and lasting change simply by having the speaker there. As Alex concludes:
We all know that professional growth is a process. We should treat it like a focused and thoughtful process. Our teacher’s time is precious. We should avoid “plunking” someone in front of them. Make all of your PD for teachers part of something larger. Make sure they understand that larger goal. Be certain that you are meeting your teachers where they are. If not, you are wasting money, but worse, you are wasting time.
I think that Alex has a number of great points about the power (and lack thereof) that speakers have in the professional development at our schools. It seems to me that he may be foreshadowing a change in professional development that we have been seeing in the classrooms (and that many who read this posting have been advocating for): the change from a “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” pedagogical approach.
As anyone who teaches in a “guide on the side” manner knows, there is always some need for expert opinions, data, and facts. If this model is used for professional development, the opinions, data, and facts will come from the speaker, the summer reading book, the podcast, or the webinar.
However, as the “guide on the side” teacher also knows, even more important is the time for reflection, discussion, practice, trial, failure, and success. This is where we often fall short in our professional development at independent schools, as Alex notes his his posting.
I think that this is why we have found success at OSG with our professional model, too. Each of our classes has two weeks to dive into the world of expert opinion, data, and facts, followed by time for reflection and discussion on the material presented. But then in the last two weeks, it is followed by insistence that the teachers put the theory and materials into practice and then critique their “classmates” on their work.
This approach has worked well. More than 95% of participants this past year rated the course highly. And, when there were criticisms of the course, most often they were from teachers who wished that the information was simply presented to them and that they didn’t have to interact as much with peers— sound familiar: “Can’t you just tell me what I need to know for the test?”
I also think that there are some questions that administrators at our independent schools can ask themselves if they want to move to their school’s professional development model from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” (modeling the type of teaching that we would like to see in our classrooms):
In the end, I think it gets to a simple question: “Our classrooms are changing… shouldn’t our classrooms for our teachers change, too?”
A Multivariable Calculus student sent this picture along to her teacher… She was trying to visualize a graph and so created a three dimensional version out of an apple. Ingenious! And, probably not what one might expect an online student to do.
The new annual review of online learning at the college level has just come out from the Sloan Consortium. They report that:
The report shows that independent schools not engaging in online learning need to ask themselves two key questions:
OSG Accreditation on Flickr.
OSG Accreditation is official.
When I visit schools, I am often asked by faculty how the Online School for Girls can possibly create the type of classroom environments that they do in great independent schools around the country. I typically answer by talking about the high academic standards, the care that our teachers show for their students, and the ability of our faculty to get their students excited about their subjects.
I also concede that there are things that are more difficult to do online: offer on-the-spot feedback for students, or reading the student’s mood or feelings on a particular day. However, I also ask that they concede that there are things better done online: connecting students around the country and world with similar interests, requiring that every student have an equal voice in the classroom, and preparing the girls for the types of online interactions that they will have in college and as 21st century citizens. To illustrate the point, I’ve told this story recently, that I want to share with you:
Last month, I had the pleasure of listening to a student panel on online education at the School of the Holy Child in Rye, New York. The students were from that school and took online courses offered through the Online School for Girls. One of the student’s comments have stuck with me since. She was a poised, articulate student (the type of student any of our schools would be proud to call their own) who had taken Chinese at Holy Child for the previous three years, and wanted to attempt another Asian language before heading off to college, and so enrolled in the Japanese I course this fall through OSG. She spoke glowingly about her course and her teacher, Sensei Tojo, and about the love of the language that she was developing this year. But, what astounded me was when she told the audience of educators that her… Japanese course had helped her further develop her Chinese speaking skills.
The Japanese I course through OSG has thirteen students from a number of schools around the country, with the largest cohort being from Hockaday School in Dallas, Texas. Some of those students are Chinese-nationals who are boarding students at Hockaday. When the student at the School of the Holy Child in Rye realized this through the group projects that they did in the Japanese course, she began practicing her Chinese with the students in Dallas! Now, the student at Holy Child in New York Skypes with the Chinese students in Dallas regularly to help hone both her Chinese and Japanese skills.
The experience that these girls are having is authentic, practical, beneficial to all, and powerful. An amazing experience, and yet one of many nation-wide and world-wide connections being made.
St. Cecilia Leadership on Flickr.
OSG Director Brad Rathgeber with leadership from St. Cecilia in Nashville, TN.
Last week, we published our latest Whitepaper on online learning: Strategic Directions and Non-Directions That Independent Schools are Taking in Online Learning. We hope that this paper helps schools to understand both how independent schools are currently engaging in online learning and why schools thinking strategically about online learning have a large advantage.
Most of the Whitepaper focuses on the four ways that we see schools engaging (or not) in online education: Skeptics and the “Tried and True;” “Dabblers” and “Lone Wolves;” Pilots with a Plan; and Strategic Actors and Thinkers.
The Whitepaper ends with a rationale for why schools need to engage at a strategic level now:
If prognostications are correct, and half of all courses at the high school level are taught online by 2019, independent schools will have to address online learning at some point in the near future. However, if the current market forces (university and for-profit) for online high school courses grow— and there is no reason right now to believe that they would not— then it will be increasingly hard for independent schools to create online course opportunities to meet the demands of students and their parents while also meeting the mission and principles of their school, as it is hard to imagine a lecture-styled college course or a Computer Based Instruction (CBI) course resonating with most independent school’s missions.
The schools that engage today and actively move toward strategically thinking about online education will have some time both to meet their mission and to strategically use online learning to deliver a great 21st century educational experience for students.
Students at School of Holy Child in Rye, NY describing why they took AP Psychology and Genetics with OSG.
