Voices from the iTDi Community 3 – Chuck

Take The First Step  —  Chuck Sandy

Chuck Sandy

Every once in a way you hear someone say something so true that everything inside you shifts a little. Lights go off in your mind. Pieces of things you’ve been thinking about for years suddenly get tied together, and all at once you wind up with a new frame for the window you use to see the world.

This happened to me a few years ago when I heard community activist Bob Stilger say, “every community is full of leaders just waiting to be asked to step forward”. Those words from Bob helped me to reframe and redefine my thinking, the same way that Steven Herder’s now famous statements about collaboration did. When I first heard Steven say, “Anything I can do, we can do better (together)” and “collaboration provides just the right amount of pressure to get things done” similar bright lights went off inside me as a new framework took hold. It is now not too much to say that these statements have come to define how I think about community building, collaboration, and leadership.

With this new framework in place, I started seeing leaders everywhere I looked and began seeing the ways that leadership works within all kinds of different communities. In every community, leaders emerge, helps others grow, then steps back to let others lead. It’s a beautiful thing to see and encourage.

One of the most wonderful things about iTDi is that we put Bob Stilger’s words into practice every single day as we reach out to teachers who are already leaders in their own communities and say, “How about you, ______? Would you _________?”

As a community builder, I have discovered that the best way to complete those two questions is different every time. You complete the first question with a person’s name. You complete the second question in a way that shows you’ve done your homework and already have a good sense of what this person is good at, proud of, or perhaps working on being better at. Then, once you ask,  you encourage just enough, and then you wait while expecting the best.

That’s what I’m doing right now with you, dear reader.  I’m asking  you to take the first step. Help us get to know you by answering the same questions that Sevim, Victor Hugo, Malu, James, and Michael have answered for this issue of Voices From the iTDI Community:

What are you passionate about?

How and why did you become a teacher?

What are you most interested in right now?

What’s the biggest challenge you face as a teacher?

What advice would you give a teacher just starting out a journey of professional development?

Is there any blog or online link you’d like to recommend?

What’s your favorite quotation about teaching or education?

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

By going to http://itdi.pro and answering these questions in the Social Forum, you will begin a relationship with the iTDi community and help us get to know you. As we get a sense of who you are and what you’re best at, proud of, and working on getting better at, we’ll come to understand how best to complete that second question when we reach out and ask you to step forward and lead.

I’m asking you now to take the first step. I’m expecting the best.

Chuck Sandy

iTDi Community Director

Voices from the iTDi Community 2 – Chuck

Take The First Step  —  Chuck Sandy

Chuck Sandy
Chuck Sandy

Every once in a way you hear someone say something so true that everything inside you shifts a little. Lights go off in your mind. Pieces of things you’ve been thinking about for years suddenly get tied together, and all at once you wind up with a new frame for the window you use to see the world.

This happened to me a few years ago when I heard community activist Bob Stilger say, “every community is full of leaders just waiting to be asked to step forward”. Those words from Bob helped me to reframe and redefine my thinking, the same way that Steven Herder’s now famous statements about collaboration did. When I first heard Steven say, “Anything I can do, we can do better (together)” and “collaboration provides just the right amount of pressure to get things done” similar bright lights went off inside me as a new framework took hold. It is now not too much to say that these statements have come to define how I think about community building, collaboration, and leadership.

With this new framework in place, I started seeing leaders everywhere I looked and began seeing the ways that leadership works within all kinds of different communities. In every community, leaders emerge, helps others grow, then steps back to let others lead. It’s a beautiful thing to see and encourage.

One of the most wonderful things about iTDi is that we put Bob Stilger’s words into practice every single day as we reach out to teachers who are already leaders in their own communities and say, “How about you, ______? Would you _________?”

As a community builder, I have discovered that the best way to complete those two questions is different every time. You complete the first question with a person’s name. You complete the second question in a way that shows you’ve done your homework and already have a good sense of what this person is good at, proud of, or perhaps working on being better at. Then, once you ask,  you encourage just enough, and then you wait while expecting the best.

That’s what I’m doing right now with you, dear reader.  I’m asking  you to take the first step. Help us get to know you by answering the same questions that Sevim, Victor Hugo, Malu, James, and Michael have answered for this issue of Voices From the iTDI Community:

What are you passionate about?

How and why did you become a teacher?

What are you most interested in right now?

What’s the biggest challenge you face as a teacher?

What advice would you give a teacher just starting out a journey of professional development?

Is there any blog or online link you’d like to recommend?

What’s your favorite quotation about teaching or education?

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

By going to http://itdi.pro and answering these questions in the Social Forum, you will begin a relationship with the iTDi community and help us get to know you. As we get a sense of who you are and what you’re best at, proud of, and working on getting better at, we’ll come to understand how best to complete that second question when we reach out and ask you to step forward and lead.

I’m asking you now to take the first step. I’m expecting the best.

Chuck Sandy

iTDi Community Director

Voices from the iTDi Community – Chuck

Chuck Sandy

VOICES FROM THE iTDi COMMUNITY: AN INTRODUCTION

It is my great privilege in this issue of the iTDi blog to begin a summer series introducing some of the voices from our community. Over the next three issues, you’ll read some amazing stories from some amazing people. The stories are amazing because they are true and because they come straight from the heart.  The people are amazing because they have chosen to share something deeply true. These stories are travel narratives, written by teachers on a journey of professional and personal development. In each of these narratives, the writer in one way or another will tell you that professional and personal development are really two sides of the same coin: inseparable. All of the stories share some common elements, yet each one is unique for each story is written in an authentic voice. As you read, you will hear the true voice of education: the voice of a teacher speaking with truth and authenticity from the heart.

To frame these stories I have asked teachers a series of questions that they have answered in their own way. My questions were:

What are you passionate about?
How and why did you become a teacher?
What are you most interested in right now?
What’s the biggest challenge you face as a teacher?
What advice would you give a teacher just starting out a journey of professional development?
Is there any blog or online link you’d like to recommend?
What’s your favorite quotation about teaching or education?
Is there anything else you’d like to say?

In this issue you will read how Annie Tsai in Taiwan, Debbie Tevovich in Argentina, Bruno Andrade in Brazil, Josette Leblanc in Korea, and Kevin Stein in Japan answered these questions. As you read and reflect on what they have shared, take some time to think and reflect on how you would answers the same questions. I would like to invite you to answer the questions as well.

If you would like to share your own story, please visit the iTDi website where you will find these questions listed one by one as topics in the Social Forum under the heading Voices From the iTDi Community. Feel free to answer them all in as much depth as you wish by posting to the Forum. Likewise, feel free to just answer just one or two of the questions. It’s up to you.

You’re also free to just browse, read and reflect, but I do hope you will share your story as well. By adding your own story, you will help build a community: a community of teachers, each with a unique voice, each with a true story, each one a person on a journey of professional and personal development. As I am on the same journey as everyone else in our community, you will find my own answers in the Social Forum as well. Meanwhile, I invite you to read here in this iTDi Blog issue what Annie, Debbie, Bruno, Josette, and Kevin have shared. I am sure you will find their stories as amazing as I have as I put this issue together. It is not only a privilege to share these stories with you. It is also an honor for me to be a member of the iTDi community, in the company of such truly inspirational people: Real teachers, in every sense, on a journey.

Good Things,

Chuck Sandy

iTDi Community Director

Technology in your classes – Chuck Sandy

Chuck Sandy

The Real Revolution

I teach in a classroom in 2012 that’s not all that different from the one my grandmother taught in almost 100 years ago.  She taught her lessons in a one-room schoolhouse equipped with slate boards, not quite enough chalk, and uncomfortable seating. The room I work in has chalkboards, not quite enough chalk, and uncomfortable seating. I do not have to fire up a wood stove in the morning the way she did, but my room is always either too hot or too cold.

My grandmother had a radio to sort of bring the world into the classroom. I have a TV monitor with a DVD player and a projector connected to a sound system. My grandmother told me that she only played the radio in class to provide atmosphere. I do the same thing with the songs I’ve stored on my Apple computer — only less effectively because at least the radio in my grandmother’s classroom provided an ever-changing mix of music punctuated by talk from somewhere far away. I have never played a DVD in class.  I do not have Internet access in my classroom — or if I do, it’s just too complicated to figure out how to connect to it. My grandmother did not need to think about such things.

In both of our rooms, almost 100 years apart, an amazing assortment of people with the usual assortment of issues, ideas, dreams, and goals have gathered to work their way into the future. There is nothing different really in the work she did then and the work I do now.  We are both teachers — which is to say the work she did and the work I do is a combination of dream weaving and storytelling mixed with community building and acts of pure magic.

My grandmother’s magic trick was to get the farm kids in her class to believe they could do anything. I do exactly the same thing with kids who are not that different. Her students in 1909 felt invisible and powerless. So do mine in 2012.  My grandmother did her trick with her heart alone. I use my heart as well, but I also have a few magical tools at my disposal to make it all seem dreamlike.

Though our classrooms and students are similar, my grandmother never got to teach a group of students who had the world in their pocket without even knowing it was there. Pearl Sandy, my grandmother, would love that and so in her honor, I help my students unpack and unleash that power.

Recently, we have been working on telling stories in my classroom, making use of the blackboards, some paper, a lot of ideas, and each other. One day, when the room got a little too hot, we headed outdoors and told our stories under a shady tree.

 

All of these activities so far are ones that I’m sure my grandmother did with her students. Here’s where things get very different. I gathered my students together and said “How many of you have a smart phone in your pocket?”  Eighteen out of twenty-four had one that could record video. Six out of eighteen had enough battery and memory left to record videos of their classmates telling stories.

We broke into six groups of four, with one filmmaker in each group. Then we videoed our stories and loaded them onto our private class Facebook page. Next week we’ll critique each other’s work before uploading our stories more publicly in a place where we can share widely and exchange stories with students around the world. That’s magic and it’s the real revolution.

The question is not should we or shouldn’t we use technology. That’s a silly question. The real question is: how can we use the magic available to us to give voice to everyone and get the world connected in real and wonderful ways.

The students in my grandmother’s class are now silent. My students never will be. My students are not isolated in a room in the middle of nowhere. Their voices carry and will be heard everywhere.

I know that Shiho won’t mind me sharing her story with you. It’s a dream. It’s coming true, and it’s getting better every day.

Grandma, this is for you:

Working with difficult students – Chuck Sandy

I Am A Hopemonger.  Are You? Chuck Sandy

Our students arrive at school complete and perfectly human. That is to say, they arrive as people in flux. They are on a journey. Our classroom is a stop along the way. It is a privilege to be with them for the time we have been given together and we must make the most of this opportunity.

Some people will have arrived from a pleasant place. Their journey has left them shining. I love these students. Others will have arrived from some place less pleasant. Their journey’s been more challenging. They’d like to shine but are not sure how.  I love these students, too. A few will have arrived from a place that wasn’t pleasant at all. Their journey has left them tired and discouraged. They, too, would like to shine, but have forgotten how. I love them, as well. Then, there are always people who’ve arrived from an awful place. Their journey’s been so hard they’ve come to believe they can’t shine. I love these students most of all.

It’s my job to make everyone shine and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make that happen. I don’t need to worry about those people who’ve arrived from pleasant places. It’s the ones who’ve come from awful places who are harder to love as they display the destructive strategies they’ve used to get this far. It is how they have survived and they do it perfectly. They are not failures.

My calling is to learn where they came come, what it is they are good at, and who they believe themselves to be. I may have to spend some time on my knees with them. I may even need to hang out with them in the smoking areas, squatting down beside them, but I will do it. I will get them to understand that they have arrived in a good place. I will pace them, build rapport with them, and as I get them to trust me enough, I will model new strategies for them — strategies they can use to replace the ones that are no longer necessary because they have arrived in a good place. None of this is easy, but it is the real work.

The student I love most right now is into dangerous sports, dresses in a style that says I’m scary, and works hard at being an unlovable outsider. Almost all of his teachers have written him off as someone with a bad attitude. They don’t care that he is one of the top BMX riders in Asia. I doubt they know how loyal he is to his crew or about his troubled relationship with his father. I know and I care.

It took a year to find that out, squatting down beside him until I could get him to stand up beside me.

Last semester he was told that because of his bad attitude he wouldn’t be able to join his classmates on a study abroad trip. His first reaction was to drop out of school. I was devastated, but I understood his reasons as he explained them to me. The other day I was so happy to see him on campus. He’s back and when I asked him why, he shrugged and said as he touched my shoulder, “I’ve got friends here. Anyway, how’s your heart? ” Better than ever, I told him.

In his essay Confessions of a Hopemonger, Herbert Kohl writes that “within everyone, no matter how damaged, hostile, or withdrawn, there is some unique constellation of abilities, sensitivities, and aspirations that can be discovered, uncovered, or rescued. The concept of failure has to be eliminated from the mind of the teacher”.  I believe this to be absolutely true.  At the end of the same essay, Kohl confesses: “I am a hopemonger, and I have also been accused of caring too much about students who other teachers have written off. “

I confess. I am a hopemonger, too. Are you?