Chris Lehmann

Biases
1. Easier than we make it -- just progressive education with 21st century tools
2. Job is not to create the 21st century workforce -- it's to create the 21st century citizen
3. Education is the cornerstone of the American democratic experiement
Dangerous Times
1. stop thinking that
  1. Schools need to be just like busines
  2. Child's success can be boiled down to one test score
  3. All we need to do is create the perfect assessment metric
2. How do we have so many passional dedicated educators, and yet so many problems in our schools?
  1. Union Teacher has become the demon of conservatives
3. The system is broken
  1. You put a good person in a bad system, the system always wins
  2. It's weird that
    1. When our students can do more than ever before
    2. we are measuring their learning in the oldest way possible
4. Data Drive Decision Making
  1. Good data is expensive
  2. Poor data will lead to poor decisions
5. We have somehow lost our own language
  1. No one can hold us as accountable
  2. As we are holding ourselves responsible
6. What are we measuring?
  1. Education?
  2. Training?
7. Our biggest problem
  1. Not the law
  2. Not the tests
  3. It's a lack of vision
  4. It's a lack of humility
    1. We don't know education
    2. Our task is enormous
    3. We're way to a-historical
      1. Shouldn't we all know that the science curriculum is in alphabetical order?
    4. Quote from Angelo Patri -- A School Master of the Great City
      What the school system needs to understand is that it's strength lies, not in the strength of the central organization, but in the strength of the individual school, not in making one school like another, but in making each school a distinct unit. the need of the system is the preservation of its units, so that each school can keep itself alive, wide awake, responsive to its people, easily adaptable, the best of its kind.
    5. "What's good?" is better than "What's new?"
    6. Why do we talk about differentiated instruction but not differentiate schools
      1. Interesting Paradox
        Differentiated instruction
        Pacing Guides
      2. If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play -- John Cleese
8. Technology
  1. Kids have it & they use it well
  2. Abuse?
    1. Yes!
    2. But no more than in schools that ban it.
  3. Toffler quote about Literacy
    1. Sliderule
    2. Were there math teachers who resisted giving them up?
    3. Lehmann resisted giving up the teaching of HTML
    4. What are our sacred cows?
  4. If we teach today's student as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow -- John Dewy
There is no one silver bullet
1. No one thing is going to save education
2. Vision
  1. SLA
    1. Inquiry
    2. Research
    3. Collaboration
    4. Presentation
    5. Reflection
  2. Gates Foundation
    1. Rigor
      1. (undefined)
    2. Relevance
    3. Relationships
  3. Coalition of Essential Schools
    1. Ted Sciser & Debbie Meyers
    2. Learning to use one's mind well
    3. Less is More, Depth over Coverage
    4. Goas apply to all students
    5. Personalization
    6. Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
    7. Demonstration of mastery
    8. A tone of decency and trust
    9. Commitment to the entire school
    10. Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
    11. Democracy and equity
  4. High Tech High
    1. Personalization
    2. Adult World Connection
    3. Common Intellectual Mission
  5. Christian Long's Learning Manifesto
    1. "Playing Small Does Not Serve the World."
    2. What would socrates do?
    3. Nobody cares if you walked up hill both ways barefoot in the snow
    4. Got Passion? If not, i'll tell you what to care about.
    5. My memory is only as big as my heart. Otherwise, I'll stick with Google
    6. Look it Up or Die.
    7. Collaboration ain't about holding hands. it's about going cool places fast.
    8. This will go down on your permanent record.
    9. It ain't about the technology, It's about being inside the story.
    10. Nobody knows the answer. Get comfy with the questions.
  6. SLA
    1. Thoughtful
    2. Wise
    3. Passionate
    4. Kind
3. If you say it, you should be able to point to the systems that do it...
  1. SLA
    1. Teach kids, not subjects
      1. Don't teach English -- I teach kids English!
      2. Words are all we've got
    2. Advisors
    3. Inquiry-driven
      1. Most important things are the questions we ask
    4. School is student-centered
      1. Advisor
      2. Student senior teachers
    5. Teacher-mentored
    6. Community-based
    7. Collaborative
      1. My ideas are better because the interact with yours
    8. Passionate
      1. It has to matter
      2. What if high school wasn't preperation of real life, what if it was real life
    9. Integrated
    10. Meta-Cognitive
    11. Authentic
      1. assessment should be authentic and transparent
4. Projects
  1. There is a difference between
    1. Project-based learning
    2. Doing projects along the way to the test
  2. The work of the child is the most important work that is done -- not the test
  3. If you give a project and you got back thirty of the same thing, then it wasn't a project it was a recipe
We have to give up the idea that we can measure everything that our students learn
Technology
1. Ubiquitous
  1. 1:1
  2. Transparent
  3. You don't talk about the laptops
    1. Unless it's broken
2. Invited not banned
3. When the printing press was invented...
  1. You didn't have a Europe plus books
  2. You had a whole new Europe!
    1. Technology shouldn't be added
    2. It should be transformative
4. Used to...
  1. Research
  2. Collaborate
  3. Create
  4. Present
  5. Network
  6. Evaluate
5. Don't over classify the tools
6. Transparent
  1. Should be publishing their work
  2. Not just their finished best work
What is the role of the teacher in the age of Google?
1. We teach Wisdom