Week Six - Real World Externship

  Today is the last day of my second Real World Externship through the Iowa Math and Science Education Partnership.  I will say that these two experiences over the last two summers have been as valuable to me as any other opportunity I've participated in with an objective of trying to improve the way I teach.  My perspective on how the world works for many professionals outside the education realm has expanded immensely and I'm not sure I would have ever gotten this exposure if it wasn't for the externship program.  The reality is that not many of our students will be feeding back into the education system, and we do them a disservice when we frame expectation and important skills only from the education arena's perspective.  It's not that I had meaningfully omitted including business-specific skills from my classroom, I just didn't realize how important they were.  Of course some of these priorities have been explained to me in the past, but the value of seeing it all in action, first-hand, should not be understated.

  Science and math, under most circumstances, are not jobs.  They are a context for a certain set of skills that help an individual do a job.  Most jobs dealing with science and math are wrapped up in a business, as are just about any special set of skills we hope to train students on in any class.  I think it is very important that we share this business part of the formula with students more effectively and the externship program has really help me see that this is the case.  I encourage any teacher, administrator, business, community member, policy decider, etc. to try to take advantage of opportunities like this and thank you to those of you who have made current opportunities available for teachers.

Week Six - Financial Literacy

   In my last week at The Principal, I'm getting a chance to work with the IT group for Retirement & Investor Services.  I'm continuing to learn about technological skills that I can put in practice in the classroom.  In some cases, I'll  be reinforcing some of the skills they may be working on in other classes, but I think I'll be asking them to use the tools in new ways as well.  The technology literacy portion of 21st Century Skills is a pretty easy fit for the science classes that I teach.  So was implementing a focus on employability.  While I currently don't have a comprehensive approach to covering the civic and health literacy portions of the 21st Century Skills, these areas do have some easy tie-ins during the course of the year in a science class.  For me, I think finding ways to connect to the key concepts of financial literacy are a bit of a reach.  Part of this may be because we focus almost all of our time learning about the results of science inquiries or how the inquiries where conducted, but almost no time discussing what allowed the experiments to take place in the first place.  This last part has significant financial drivers.

   In the Retirement & Investor Services group, I also gained some perspective on personal finances through the eyes of the business that offers these services.  This added to the perspective gained from working with a Disability Insurance group the previous week.  The company's business considerations are different from the needs of the individuals who purchase their products.  The people who actually sell these products to the individuals also have their own set of considerations.  Ideally, everybody involved gets their needs met, but ultimately, each group will be looking to satisfy their requirements first.  Given each of their positions in the process, the interests seem fair, but I think it's important that we find ways to share these ideas with our students.  This doesn't pertain only to The Principal or retirement considerations in general, but really to any business interaction.  It's another example to share about how important it is to become knowledgeable about your dealings and to learn how to advocate for your own considerations.  These conversations may not have a great fit in a science classroom, but I could see a good conversation about this taking place in an advisory group setting.

Week Five - Economy of Teachers

  During my five weeks at The Principal, I've been surprised by the amount of former teachers that I have come across.  I'd probably say I've met a couple a week and it's been interesting to hear about how they've reached their current career.  As these individuals are striving in this arena, it's easy to see that they possess characteristics that would make them great teachers today.  As I get more and more exposure to the private sector, it's not too hard to imagine what may have drawn them away or what type of life events might have necessitated a career change.  Many of them still have a passion for teaching and have expressed interest in teaching when they retire or want to find more ways of become involved in education.  But it strikes me that these are the types of individuals we want spending the lion's share of their career teaching students and influencing the course of education.  I have a hard time imagining these professionals excepting the static financial or promotional structure of K-12 education and returning to the classroom as a teacher.

   It may be easier to attract these strong candidates for teaching early on.  I think it might be fair to say that teaching is a career choice that students know the most about by the time they start to think about training for their careers.  Not many other careers have that kind of exposure and this might be working to our advantage.  But as these individuals become more and more exposed to different choices, there may be a bit of a "grass is greener" effect taking place and some change course.  I'm lucky to be surrounded by a large number of incredibly hard working, passionate, innovative and knowledgeable educators in my place of work at Carlisle HS and in an organization like IMSEP, but in a way, it's frustrating that the talent pool for teachers seems to be limited to those who aren't worried about big paychecks or titles, those who don't know these things interest them, the altruistic types who are "doing it for kids", or some combination of these.  I'm sure I'm ignorantly simplifying all of this.  I'm just not so sure that K-12 education wouldn't be benefited from a more financially competitive environment with a meaningful advancement structure, similar to what exists in the private sector (grass is greener, right?).  This post could be very unnecessary, as I don't feel this thought process leads to insight that will lead to possible changes to my classroom.  It's just that I'd love to see some of these pros rocking a classroom down the hall.

Week Five - Motto

   While walking back from a meeting today, I randomly read a piece of paper that had been posted at an employee's office.  I really liked its message for myself and my students and will probably post it in my classroom in some fashion.  I thought it was interesting that the employee had one facing herself at her desk and another copy facing those that walk by.  I did an Internet search and wasn't able to find a source to credit, but here it is:

MOTTO

I am responsible for taking action,

asking questions, getting answers, and

making decisions.  I won't wait for

someone to tell me.  If I need to know, I

am responsible for asking.  I have no

right to be offended that I didn't get

the information sooner.  If I'm doing

something others should know about, I am

responsible for telling them.

Week Four - Roles

   During week four, I've been able to put together some of the rough details for a project-based unit I'm developing for this school year.  I feel like I've got pretty good idea of how individuals fill specific roles during a project at The Principal.  Now I'm looking forward to using those roles as guides for students.  I think one of the hardest things for students to do is to realistically picture themselves in a job or role.  By defining and assigning roles in a similar way to how they are divided up in a real-world scenario, I think students can have a better understanding of how responsibilities are divided.  If we also start to use the titles that are used in business, they can also try to imagine themselves doing these jobs, giving them a chance to evaluate a career choice in at least a small way.

   In one of the meetings this week, I had a chance to bounce my role possibilities off the group I was with.  One of the cool ideas that came out of the discussion was a suggestion for having individuals who act in similar roles visit the class.  This was interesting because when we have guest speakers in class, they typically are there because of how they can add to the content of unit.  A guest speaker to share information about a specific role or answer questions from students about struggles they are having in their roles is a little different approach for me.  I imagine these visits would have a greater impact sometime into the project timeline to give the students a chance to identify some difficulties, but early enough so they can use the suggestions.  The group also discussed how the work of each individual reflected on the group as a whole.  Tasks that are assigned to an individual are signed off on by the group and they collaborate to create the best end result possible.  If the end result isn't great, they are all accountable.  I'll be sharing this expectation with my students.

Here are a few of the role titles I'm thinking about using and will be working on translating the real-world responsibilities to the responsibilities of my students:
-Team Lead
-Project Manager or Business Analyst
-Data Analyst
-Resource Supplier
-Quality Assurance

Week Four - Problem Solving and Persistence

  In my fourth week at The Principal, I had a chance to work with business analysts who work on technology projects in the specialty benefits division.  In many ways, the role of a business analyst is like the role of project manager that I had a chance to observe the previous week.  Individuals in this role start a task with the resposibility of receiving a request, sometimes specific and other times not, and forming a plan for the task based on requirements that they are resposible for developing.  To see these projects from start to completion, the participants need to be strong critical thinkers to be able to effectively adjust to the changes that may occur during a project's life cycle.  This is a continual process that is required for the group that is accountable for delivering a useful product.

   In my classroom, projects are scripted and I feel like I need to put my students in situations that are less defined.  On several occasions, individuals at The Principal have expressed the effectiveness of individuals who are not frozen by ambiguity and can gather information effectively to determine direction for a project.  I feel like I need to provide more opportunities for students to work on these skills, especially in a group setting.  Maybe this means I have students be more involved in the requirements of a project and the creating of a project's rubric.  It might mean that I have scripted events in the timeline of the project that I don't share with the students and they have to adjust to them.  Or probably even better, ask my students to accomplish challenging tasks that have their own inheret difficulties and let them problem solve with little interference from teachers and parents.  It's pretty easy for us to "lend a hand", especially when trying to fit projects in with other time demands, but if we do this too often, it's hard for students to develop their own problem solving mechanisms and they will rely on us to solve their problems for them.

Week Three - Technology Debt

  Technology debt was a term that I heard during a department meeting this week and it intrigued me.  Due to the recent financial difficulties, certain technology upgrades were skipped to help with the budget.  Now as things are improving financially, there is a debt owed to technological improvements that needs to be addressed.  I've had a chance to see this payback in action in many ways.  There seem to be quite a few projects related to software upgrades or purchases and then the needed training for these additions.  There are also improvements being made on the hardware side, including laptop upgrades, improvements to audio/visual equipment and probably many others that I wasn't involved in.  The presenter at the department meeting talked about how Principal is usually a fast follower in terms of technology adoption, but tried to avoid the risks associated with being on the cutting edge or "bleeding edge" as it was stated.  Not only do the improvements aid in efficiency, they also can help a business gain credibility with clients.

  I think technology debt is something that is often overlooked in many areas in education.  From what I've seen in my experience so far, an individual's experience and aptitude in dealing with technology is directly related to their effectiveness as an employee.  If we are training our students on technology that is being phased out in business, we are losing at least some of the potential impact of that training.  If education is to parallel what I'm seeing this summer, a significant part of each unit should include the collection, manipulation, analysis, graphing and reporting of information using software like Microsoft Excel.  It's amazing to see how versatile this program is and the more exposure we give to students on how to use it and how it can be used will help prepare them for a required skill for many businesses.  This was an observation I made last summer when working for Kemin Industries and it has been reinforced further.  I need to make improvements to the way I teach to get closer to this reality.