New Tech or Old Method

A quote of the day: 

Even the study's author, Robert Marzano, noted that 23 percent of the teachers reported higher test scores without the whiteboard, and some reported lower scores using it. "It looks like whiteboards can be used in a way that can lull teachers into not using what we consider good instructional strategies," Marzano said in an interview.

This is from an article on the use of interactive whiteboards in the Washington Post.

I have been and still am very supportive of interactive technologies, but this is a good point to reinforce with teachers.  For more in depth discussion, I found this at "The Tempered Radical"

A troubling question

Said goodbye to a lot of fine people today.   Didn't do a very good job of it.   I certainly hope they understand my heartfelt appreciation and best wishes for their future.  I also hope they know it extends to their community's future as well.

During the graduation weekend I received many well wishers who very kindly wished me well in my new gig.  My thankful response was that it is hard to leave, sometimes I caught myself expressing my interest in "bigger/better" challenges.  Then on second thought, there is no correlation between bigger schools and better schools.  Lots of politicians will tell you otherwise, mostly out of a selfish desire to capture the financial savings in the economies of scale.  It is true, you can educate more students more efficiently in a larger school site.  But you also give up a lot in the search for efficiency.  Those of us who have lived it our whole live know the values of small, rural schools.

My move to North Fayette Schools is to a community more like LS than different.  West Union is an agricultural center, an hour's drive from a metropolitan area (Waterloo/Cedar Falls), strong family and church support of  the children of the community. Their school also suffers from declining enrollment.  It is a county seat which includes the typical town square with associated businesses and about twice as many students as LS.

The troubling question for me was posed during that graduation weekend and applies to both communities.  How do we draw more families to live in or stay in our small communities so as not to lose our school?  Sure I have ideas, nothing earth shattering, so I am hoping a few of you who may occasionally review this blog can provide some insight.   The fear is if we lose our school, then our community dies.  Isn't it more appropriate to say that if our school is dying, thats a symptom of the communities decline than a cause of it?

So!  What do you say?  To me there is the common three choices that different communities work on in different proportions.   First are the jobs - economic development chases jobs with incentives and TIF financing for business owners.  Second would be the housing and services provided. What is the governments role in providing essentials, developing housing starts and key service industries like retail,  health care, and education?  And third are the amenities that our bigger neighbors can more easily afford.  What is the balance between taxation and the need for parks, entertainment venues and events supported by public infrastructure?

Maybe none of this is the government's role.  The free market should respond to needs and create appropriate opportunities.  The problem is the free market does not favor small towns.  So what could we do?  What should we do?  What would you support to save our communities?

I'll be back with some potential ideas in a few days,  But first, what do community members think?  make your comments and I'll share your ideas with others, especially the governing and business leaders in our community.

Another Great Day

Our second Community Service Day today not only went off without a hitch, but it also reaffirmed that the students of Lynnville-Sully are well armed with a powerful sense of responsibility.  Responsibility to their school, their community and their families that is demonstrated by the instinctive response to the call to serve.  Regardless of the task that needs completed, LS students are willing to work hard and meet the responsibilities they are given.

The hopes and dreams of hosting community service time for students is that they see and learn to enjoy opportunities to serve.   If we build the instincts to enjoy the rewards of volunteerism, we hope to create citizens who continue to volunteer in their community throughout their adult life.  Our communities rely on volunteer firefighters, youth sports coaches, church leaders, city council and school board members to provide leadership and services that contribute greatly to our quality of life.  We also depend on civic organizations like the Lions, athletic boosters, academic boosters, businessmen's associations, and other numerous clubs or associations to enhance our lives.  Ultimately we as a community do not survive without the contributions of volunteers.

The staff of Lynnville-Sully did a fantastic job of organizing volunteer opportunities.  They also modeled strong volunteerism by working along side all the students.  In the end our 470 students and 50 staff members had both a local and a global impact.  Groups were out cleaning parks,  ball diamonds, ditches, the historical society, school facilities and lawns of senior citizens.  They painted, planted, shoveled, and entertained all around our communities.

Most dramatically though, they reached out to the victims of the Haitian earthquake.  Through an organization known as Meals from the Heartland, and your extremely generous donations the LS students bagged and boxed 52,000 meals to send to Haiti.  52,000 Haitians will enjoy a nutritious meal, this represents 100 meals for every person in our school community.   That required nearly $7000 of donations to pay for dried vegetables, protein powder, rice and vitamins from Lynnville-Sully patrons.  Meals from the Heartland provided the equipment and system to package these meals, and the students and staff manned 10 work stations for nearly 4 hours.  All this for fellow human beings we'll never know.  For a people who've witnessed 4% of their county's population perish in a natural disaster.  This is good work that our students have done.  Ultimately, its also good lessons that a few hundred students in Iowa can have a global impact with a few hours of volunteerism.

Thanks Lynnville-Sully, for all you do to improve our world, both locally and globally.

Congratulations LS HAWKS!

The LS Hawks have reached the state semi-final basketball game!  They will play Calamus-Wheatland Thursday at 12:15 p.m. in Wells Fargo Arena.

Because of this game and the huge crowd of Hawk fans we expect will travel to "The Well" we will NOT have school on Thursday.  This day will be made up Friday, June 4. 

Win or lose Thursday,, the Hawks will play either at 10:00 a.m. Friday or in the 6:00 p.m. championship game.  Watch school announcements later today for information about potential pep buses for Thursday and tentative plans for either of Friday's games.

Good Luck Hawks, lets have a big crowd Thursday to cheer the team onto the championship game!

Online Learning

If you check some of the links I've included in the previous post you'll find links to blog posts by Evan Abbey of AEA11. Evan has most recently been appointed the AEA's statewide project manager for online learning. Online Learning is becoming a very effective is being defined through research. The convenience and efficiency of offering virtual courses to college students has created whole new universities. Even our most familiar and hallowed state universities, Iowa and Iowa State, have opened departments of online instruction. Ask a college student about the number of courses that require participation of some form of online interaction.

Students need this style of learning in high school to be effective college students and we need to get good at it to continue offering a wide and challanging curriculum!

Some thoughts on the Iowa Core

Believe it or not in one month Spring will be here.  Maybe not spring as we know it (green grass, dry streets, WARM sunshine!) but spring at least as its defined by the tilting axis of our planet Earth.  Typical activities in my cave during this time of year often centers around budgeting, contracts, insurance rates and standardized test scores.  However we have new deadlines and expectations coming up next year that we need to keep in view.

It's the Iowa Core Curriculum Implementation Plan which is due on July 1 that brings me to the topic of this blog.  The Iowa Core is not only a list of essential concepts and skills which we will be held accountable for teaching, but it's also a method of teaching that could  drastically alter many lesson plans across our state.  The Department of Education is sponsoring a workshop for Iowa Core Leadership teams in June entitled Characteristics of Effective Instruction which will emphasize 5 characteristics that will improve student achievement while it also narrows our curriculum.  How can Narrowing the Curriculum improve student acheivement?  As described by the Iowa DE:

Research shows that high expectations are a critical ingredient in improving student performance and ensuring student success beyond high school. The Iowa Core Curriculum provides a guide to delivering challenging and meaningful content to students that prepares them for success in life.The Iowa Core Curriculum identifies essential concepts and skills for kindergarten through 12th grade in literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, and 21st Century Skills. It also includes direction for teachers regarding effective instruction and assessment. It takes learning to a deeper level by moving students beyond superficial knowledge to deep conceptual and procedural knowledge. It also enhances student engagement by emphasizing interesting, robust, and relevant learning experiences.

These Characteristics of Effective Instruction must become a centerpiece of any curriculum development.  To teach with these characteristics it will be necessary to Narrow the Curriuculum or else we'll always get what we've always got.  What we've always done is the industrial age model of a school which emphasizes passing knowledge down to the next generation.  Memorizing basic knowledge is relatively useless for the information age in which we live.  Teaching to higher order thinking skills and applying these skills to real life situations is the goal of the Iowa Core.  In order to do that we have to admit that we need to teach less basic knowledge and more essential thinking skills.

As teachers wrap up their Iowa Core alignment documents they'll be asked to identify which benchmarks and indicators are truly essential to student success.  Once we can focus on these essential learnings, then we can acheive what the Iowa Core Curriculum is intended to achieve. 

Evan Abbey makes a good statement when discussing a narrowed curriculum;

Be OK with skipping concepts - There is a fear amongst teachers (at least there was for me) that "if I don't teach them this, they'll never get it in life". Hogwash. The fact is, people glean the information they need outside of school all the time (in fact, many have to relearn the concepts they supposedly learned in K-12). Perhaps more important is helping students be resourceful enough to develop the concepts on their own when asked to.

Since most of us carry cell phones more powerful than the first generation of personal computers (remember really "floppy" disks?) the fear of not covering material should be replaced with the fear of not teaching students how to use the knowledge they can access instantaneously.  As an education prof told me about 30 years ago, "If you're just going to cover material you might as well throw dirt on it."  Hopefully, when you see the lists of essential concepts and skills that Lynnville-Sully develops, you'll recognize a narrow and deep curriculum with higher order thinking skills (21st Centruy Skills) for all students.

Late Start Tuesday correction

This notice was for the 16th, in the posting the dates were wrong.  My apologies to everyone who counts on this site for weather announcements this morning.  Apparently I did not get this updated correctly when I changed it. 

For your information, if you're nterested we do post school announcements to IowaSchool Alerts which will send an email to your address or cell phone so that you do not have to go looking for a school update.  Its been a very busy winter and if we follow the Farmer's Almanac there is plenty more yet to come.

I want to thank everyone who provided feedback on our snow day make up survey.  As a result of your suggestions were are planning on making up last week's snow day on Thursday, April 1st (Easter Break).  We will use Friday June 4 as the next snow make up day.  Because so many of you inquired about Monday April 5th, we will also add that to our list of potential make up dates.  We will not add school on Good Friday or a Saturday.

The next most popular response was the extended school day.  If neccessary, we are working on a schedule that would allow us to make up 1 to 3 days with 30 minute extensions to the day.  Right now I believe coming to school 30 minutes earlier would be better than extending the day to 4:00 due to after school activities.  If this is necessary we won't begin it until mid-April when there is plenty of daylight for morning bus routes to begin at 6:30.

Duane Willhite