The Embedded Practitioner

My first entry on this blog, posted on February 22, 2005, marked the beginning of my doctoral research on blogging communities. I was interested in what happens when a group of grade eight students is given a place where they can engage as writers and move away from the "schooliness" of traditional class work. When I started, I really did not know what to expect. I had high hopes, but no preconceived notions or expectations. And now, three years later, the research is done, and I am very happy to report that I have successfully defended my PhD thesis. It was a fascinating journey. I learned a lot about writing in online environments, about student interactions online, and about fostering student engagement in online spaces. However, one of the most personally relevant findings of my research was the impact that it had on me - the teacher-researcher.

During my defense, I focused on all the key findings of my research, but paid particular attention to my conclusions on teacher professional development. My research taught me a lot about the role of the teacher in an online class community of writers. At my defense, I used this painting by Caravaggio, the Italian Baroque master, to elaborate on what my research findings suggest about teacher professional development:

Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ

Before I explain why I chose this painting, let me first elaborate on Caravaggio as he himself is an important figure to consider, an important role model for 21st century teachers. Caravaggio's work was revolutionary. He was an innovator in his time who rejected established conventions. Instead of painting epic scenes with masses of people and religious symbolism (as was the established norm), he chose to focus on the personal struggles and experiences of his subjects. He chose to highlight the individual. The subjects he chose were mere mortals, representatives of the working class - the poor, humble, ordinary people of his time. The faith he depicted in his work was the faith of the simple, uneducated masses, not the faith of the grand Biblical narratives. Caravaggio focused on what he saw around him. His paintings feature wrinkled, aged faces, torn clothing, and unadorned, simple, often neglected interiors. Truth, in other words, truth as he saw it around him on a daily basis, was more important to him than conventions.

So, what does all of this have to do with teaching in the 21st century?

That painting by Caravaggio has became for me a metaphor that I like to use to explain the role of the teacher in a blogging community. Since I'm using it as a metaphor, I am interested only in its visual appeal - the placing of the subjects, the light that penetrates the scene, and the fact that the man carrying the lantern on the right side of the painting, the one who looks with interest over the heads of the two Roman soldiers, has been identified as Caravaggio's self-portrait. (Caravaggio is well-known for inserting his self-portrait, inserting himself, so to speak, into his paintings.). I believe that, much like Caravaggio in this painting, a teacher in a blogging community should enter the context that gives rise to his or her work. Caravaggio portrays himself as one of the characters. He becomes implicated in his painting. He is both subject and artist ... and that is why I think this painting is so relevant to my research and can help convey the redefined character of teacher presence in online communities. It makes visible some key implications of my study in the field of teacher professional development.

What this painting says to me is that we can gain a better understanding of our classrooms-as-communities if we immerse ourselves in them. In the manner of Caravaggio, teachers should weave their readerly, personal voices into the fabric of classrooms-as-communities. What my experiences illustrate, and what the painting metaphorically emphasizes, is that teacher professional development in the 21st century requires that we look closely at how to most effectively embed ourselves in our practice and in the experiences and interactions of our students. Professional development in the networked world requires that we look closely not only at what we do as educators but also at how we are embedded in educational contexts. Much like Caravaggio, we have to narrate ourselves into existence through participation in our classrooms in a way that is non-authoritarian, readerly, and conversational.

Much like Caravaggio in this painting, we need to be present in our classrooms as providers of light. Our guidance is needed and important. But, too often, our guidance becomes authoritarian and fails to take into account the voices of our students. We don't often peer questioningly over the shoulders of our students. Instead, we impose the content and pre-define the learning trajectories for our students. Why don't we take the time to just listen and observe once in a while? Those of us who give our students the freedom to define themselves through their work in classroom communities know how much we can learn by listening and observing. We should not be afraid to step down from behind the lectern and move to the edge of the community, where we can redefine our presence as that of a participant, as one of the voices, not as the voice that dominates, demands, and evaluates. What Caravaggio's painting reminds me of is that I can be just as helpful as a facilitator if I engage from the sidelines and do not dominate the community as its focal point. Let student voices remain in the centre, let them be the focal point of the community where they interact, engage, and learn.

This reconfigured approach requires a difficult shift in our understanding of classroom practice. It requires that we accept a new dethroned position and become embedded practitioners - embedded in the classroom interactions as readers and participants, not evaluators and overseers.

That brings me to another important point: What's Next?

My research has led me to some important and timely questions about teacher professional development - questions that I hope to be able to work on in the near future:

1. How do we prepare teachers to teach 21st century learners whose lives are based on rich interactions in multiple online environments?
2. How do we help new teachers move away from what Marshall McLuhan once called the "imposing of stencils" and adopt a practice of probing and exploration?
3. How do we help new teachers acquire the courage to transform their classrooms into communities of learners and transform themselves into participants who can embed themselves in those communities?

My study and experience provide some answers, some of which I addressed on this blog in the past, but they are just starting points that will need further attention and elaboration. I believe that this process begins with opening ourselves up to the language of possibility and recognizing teachers whose work in the classroom can help us redefine not only our own classroom presence but also our notions of professional development. We need what Paulo Freire calls "curiosity as endless questioning." He describes it as

movement toward the revelation of something that is hidden, as a question verbalized or not, as search for clarity, as a moment of attention, suggestion, and vigilance ... there could be no creativity without the curiosity that moves us and sets us patiently impatient before a world that we did not make, to add to it something of our own making (Freire, 1998, pp.37-38).

In other words,

[...] there is no such thing as teaching without research and research without teaching. One inhabits the body of the other. As I teach, I continue to search and re-search. I teach because I search, because I question, and because I submit myself to questioning. I research because I notice things, take cognizance of them. And in so doing, I intervene. And intervening, I educate and educate myself. I do research so as to know what I do not yet know and to communicate and proclaim what I discover (Freire, 1998, pp.35).

Coda

Recently, Al Upton, an award-winning teacher from Adelaide, Australia whose work I've admired for a very long time, was forced to close his classroom community that has proven over the years to be of immense benefit to his students. He was forced to disable the classroom community by the Department of Education and Children’s Services in South Australia despite the fact that he used it to teach his students about online safety and received parental permission to carry out his project. The Department of Education is worried that some material on his class blog may put the students at risk of being identified by outsiders.

Al and I never met and we never corresponded, but I've been following his work for years and have always found it innovative and inspiring. In my opinion, Al is an embedded practitioner, someone who listens, observes, and is constantly searching for and researching new ways to improve himself and bring greater educational value to his classroom practice. I hope that he will soon regain his freedom to bring the world into his classroom and the classroom out into the world.

Works Cited:

Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom. Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Rowman & Littlefield, New York.

How to Grow a Blog

Last month, in preparation for my K12Online Conference presentation, I re-read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Good Business. Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. In it, he states that the experience of flow - when the person is totally immersed in an activity and genuinely enjoying the moment - comes from "the steps one takes toward attaining a goal, not from actually reaching it." He adds that:

People often miss the opportunity to enjoy what they do because they focus all their attention on the outcome, rather than savoring the steps along the way. Where does the pleasure in singing come from - finishing the song, or producing each note or phrase? ... To be overly concerned with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance. If a tennis player thinks only of winning the match, she won't be able to respond to her opponent's powerful serve ... our primary concern here is not with what constitutes a successful performance, but with the quality of experience during performance. If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination.

In education, however, the product - the grade, the final draft, the test mark - still often takes precedence over the process of learning - the sense of personal journey without which the final destination is meaningless. What is even worse is that many of our students are very comfortable with that idea. To them, school is often about "playing the game." They follow along, raise hands, submit assignments, study for tests. Of course, there is nothing wrong with these activities as long as they do not impede their progress as independent thinkers, researchers, and writers. Unfortunately, most of the time, "playing the game" means following the rules that we've set up for the students. We bring in the hoops, and the students jump through them. It's an easy process for everyone involved.

In my classroom - a predominantly blogging classroom - things have to be different. I believe that it is my role as an educator to ensure that my students are given opportunities to grow as individuals, and are not treated as mere pupils who passively receive information. As a result, the traditional approach to teaching and learning, to assessment and evaluation, has to be modified. It is a difficult process for both the students and the teacher. It is a process in which the classroom becomes more of a studio where learners engage with concepts that they find interesting and personally relevant. It becomes a place where they are given opportunities to create their own networks and become experts in their chosen fields.

In order to create that classroom, however, I need to continue to tweak my classroom practice. The students need a different, more conversational, expressive, and individualized kind of support. They also need to be gradually eased into their new roles of independent researchers.

At the beginning of the year, I always talk to my students about "growing" their own blog. It is a challenging concept because, when they are first introduced to blogging, they are all under the impression that everything they write will be graded and that their blog is just an electronic version of their notebook or journal. So, when at the beginning of the year, I start talking about blogging and the steps that the students need to take to "grow" their own blog, they are always a bit confused and surprised - my words suggest a lot of freedom, and freedom, as we all know, is not something that students associate with school.

For two years, I struggled to verbally explain the concept to them, with varying results. This year, however, I had a visual tool.

I created it this past summer and could not wait to use it in class. When I finally used it last month, the results were encouraging. The students looked at it and, when I said "I'd like you to think about how you are going to grow your own blog," they knew exactly what I meant.

The diagram I created is intended to help them visualize their progress over the course of a school year. It assumes that blogging is not about posting an entry in response to a homework assignment but about engaging in writing that is personally relevant. The diagram helps students define their goals and ways of reaching them. It helps them realize that blogging is not about posting well thought-out entries, and that each entry does not need to present a definitive and complete view on a given topic. Rather, it helps them see that blogging is about engaging with ideas.

Blogs are perfect tools to encourage and assist students in cognitive engagement. Blogging is a process, a conversation. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, my students tend to see each blog entry as the equivalent of a well-composed paragraph response or even an essay. I admit, there is nothing wrong with producing well-written and well organized entries as long as the entry is not an end in itself, as long as the process of intellectual engagement does not end once the piece is posted. I want my students to understand that bloggers blog because they are on a journey, a quest, and that every entry is an opportunity to continue that journey.

So, when they see this handout, this planning sheet, the students realize that the academic year ahead of them is an opportunity to produce a body of work, to stay engaged, to use their time productively doing things they’re interested in as opposed to completing assignments for their teacher.

This planning sheet, called How to Grow a Blog, consists of three parts.

The first part refers to the blooming flower - the goal of any gardener or a serious blogger. This is the long-term goal. When I explain this first part, I say to my students that they should think about what they want their blog to represent at the end of the year. I tell them that they need a personal goal. I say that once they start blogging, they will continue to add to their blog thus creating a body of work. "What," I ask them, "do you want to see there right before you graduate? What do you want the visitors to your blog to think when they see it in June? What do you want to accomplish?"

Keep in mind, this is not easy. Generally speaking, the only time students in grade eight think about long-term goals is when they worry about grades or getting into the high school programme of their choice. Engagement with ideas lasts only until the assigned deadline. Once the assignment is handed in, the engagement ends. Blogging is very different, of course, and the diagram helps them realize that.

Once they choose a personal goal, a topic that they want to pursue, I ask the students to fill in the bottom part, called "The Right Habitat." Here, the students have to think about the steps they need to take in order to create the right environment for their blogs.

This part asks them to think about the root system for their blog. Where are the nutrients going to come from? Where will I find nourishment as a thinker and researcher? This is an opportunity to consider the fact that in order to learn and engage with ideas, one needs a habitat that will support it, and that the best way to build just such a habitat is to find other people and resources that one can converse with. In other words, I want the students to learn that blogging is about initiating and sustaining conversations. So, I ask them, "Now that you know what you would like to research or document on your blog, where is the inspiration going to come from, where are your ideas going to come from? What kinds of resources are you going to include in your habitat to help you grow your blog and extend your thinking?"

So, having chosen their goals, the students look for online resources that will help them learn more about their chosen topics. This is a perfect opportunity for me to make it very clear that blogs are about learning. Once they choose their topics, I always ask them how much they already know about the topic. The answers vary, of course, but fairly quickly the students realize that they do not know much about the chosen topic, even if it is something they are very passionate about. And so, a discussion about blogging turns into a discussion about learning. "Where will you go online to learn more about your chosen topic?" I ask them, "Who will you interact with and learn from?" This is how they begin to build their networks.

Finally, I give them time to consider habits and commitments - that's what the stem represents in my diagram. I want them to think about the kinds of habits that, in their opinion, will be necessary to accomplish their goals. If the goal is to produce a body of work on globalization, for example, then they need to ask themselves what is required of them, on a daily and weekly basis, to achieve that goal. This is a difficult part for them to fill out because it requires a certain degree of self-knowledge. If they want their blogs to bloom, then they must think about the steps they need to take every day to ensure that they are on track. They must also know themselves and decide on the steps they need to take to develop good habits.

I believe that the most effective part of this diagram is that it gives the students an opportunity to do some long-term planning, which is not an easy task because, as students, they are used to short-term goals, such as finishing tonight’s homework. At the same time, they have to think about the little steps, the daily activities and posts and where they will come from. They need to find the right habitat that will inform their work. They need to think about strategies and habits necessary to both start and continue their journey.

In short, the goal of using this handout is twofold: to help students plan and begin their journey, and to think about the habits they will need for that journey. I want them to understand that the most valuable part of blogging is the process of interacting with ideas and people, not producing finished assignments on assigned topics. This planning sheet helps them define their long-term goals but, at the same time, it also helps them see that blogging is a journey. I have already noticed that this handout and the instructional conversations that it initiates help the students realize that successful learning is not about submitting definitive pieces on assigned topics, but primarily about what Csikszentmihalyi calls "the quality of experience," a sense of meaningful immersion in one's pursuits.

The challenge, of course, is that the students perceive traditional school work as something that is safe, much safer than becoming an independent researcher. They often find comfort in the fact that as long as the questions are answered and the work handed in, they will continue to do well as students. Blogging, on the other hand, is initially a big unknown. There are no deadlines and no clear guidelines. After years of jumping through hoops, students are suddenly faced with a lot of freedom which they often find overwhelming. I've noticed that the planning sheet I developed can provide a solid support mechanism that many young bloggers need at the beginning of this journey. It's a good tool to use in order to start a process of conversational feedback and assessment.

Below, you will find some examples of how my students filled out their How to Grow a Blog planning sheets. Keep in mind that what these sheets represent is the start of their journey as researchers and writers. They provide me with an opportunity to engage students in meaningful conversations that can eventually lead to meaningful and long-term personal engagement on student blogs. Your feedback on this handout and the strategy behind it would be truly appreciated. If you are interested in using or modifying this planning sheet, please feel free to download it. If you do choose to use it, either in its original or modified form, please send me your feedback.

Learning to be Myself

The first two full weeks of school are now behind me. My grade eight students have been given their blogs. They posted their first entries. The class blogging portal is slowly filling up with student voices. Naturally, I look forward to seeing how these voices will interact and intertwine. What I am really concerned about, however, is my own voice. For the past three years, my three successive grade eight classes enjoyed blogging and created successful and engaging blogging communities. Most of the time, this development took place without me. While I certainly encouraged my bloggers, discussed their work in class, and posted comments to involve my students in instructional conversations, I have always been absent as a person. This year, I want things to be different.

This year, I want my personal voice to be present in the community. I will, of course, continue to be present as Mr.Glogowski, the grade eight Language Arts teacher. I will be present in my didactic and supportive role of an educator, of a classroom teacher who guides and explains. At the same time, I want to be present as Konrad Glogowski, the human being who has his own interests and views. I want to be present as an individual, not an individual reduced to one role.

In other words, I want the students to see me as yet another blogger in their community, as someone whose reason for being there is not only to support and instruct but also to learn. To learn from and with my students.

My own blog in our class blogosphere has always been used to post updates, assignments, commentary on student work, and words of encouragement. For years, it was called "The Language Arts Blog," or "Mr. Glogowski's Blog" or something equally official and unimaginative. The name of my blog has always reflected my one-dimensional presence in the community - the voice of a teacher. I don't think my students ever perceived it as a blog - a place where the author shares his thoughts, ideas, or experiences and engages in meaning-making. It was a place that my students would visit regularly to read their latest assignment or download a rubric. I don't think they ever learned anything from my own blog. They learned from the instructional conversations that I engaged with them on their own blogs, but certainly not from my own blog in the class blogosphere. It has always been an uninspiring place, a kind of online bulletin board.

Last year, I started experimenting by posting entries that reflected my own interests. However, I always made sure that they also related to the curriculum. When we read and discussed Animal Farm, for example, I posted some links to articles on totalitarian leaders or on the fragile nature of democracy in developing nations. There needed to be, it seemed to me, a clear link between what we were reading in class and what the students saw on my blog. Everything that I posted on my blog was designed to cultivate an adopted persona and to fit within the confines of the curriculum.

This year, I want to move beyond blogging only about course-related topics. I want my students to see what I am interested in, what makes me mad, what fascinates me, what I write like when I write as someone other than Mr.Glogowski, the Language Arts teacher. In short, I want to be myself and am beginning to take small steps towards this goal.

I started by giving my blog a different name. The titles I used before were too official, too limiting, too school-like. They were institutional and impersonal. This year, the title of my blog is "...looking at things for a long time." It comes from a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, which, in its entirety, reads: "It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding." I chose it because I feel that it represents who I am as a person and a teacher. I chose it because I believe that the habit Van Gogh recommends in this quote is something that I want my students to develop as well. I want them to be critical, attentive readers and thinkers. I want them to take the time to achieve that "deeper understanding."

I also chose an avatar. I chose the picture of the fern globe suspended above the Civic Square in Wellington, New Zealand that I took last year (almost exactly a year ago) while participating in the FLNW unconference. It represents one of the most inspiring experiences in my life as an educator and researcher. It also, as a globe, represents unity and peace - values that are important to me as a human being and educator.

In addition to using an avatar, I also used the "About Me" feature of my blog to post a paragraph that explains my reasons for choosing the title and the avatar. My students need to know the reasons behind these decisions - they will provide them with an important glimpse into my personality. They will help them see me as more than just their Language Arts teacher.

The "About Me" page of my blog also contains two quotes that represent my views on writing:

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann

"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them." - John Ruskin

I also uploaded my own background image to further personalize my blog. It is no longer just a virtual class bulletin board. It's becoming a place that reflects the values and interests of its owner:

Of course, these visual changes, while important, are not sufficient to transform my blog into a personal online space. Blogs, after all, are defined by writing, and not merely their appearance. So, this morning, I posted my first personal entry. I wrote about an article on the recent protests in Myanmar and commented on the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. I also linked to a call to action video recorded by Jim Carrey. The post has little to do with what we are currently studying in class. I wrote about it because it moved me as a human being. I posted it on my personal blog in the class blogosphere because I want my students to understand who I am as a human being. Why? Mostly because that human being will walk into their classroom tomorrow. If we are to be a community of learners, we need to know each other as individuals, not people who, for six hours every day, play assigned roles.

In other words, I don't believe teachers should engage in self-censorship. If we do, then our students end up interacting with an automaton, an actor performing a role. Our schools, administrators, and classrooms cannot demand that the richness that makes us human be stripped down because the students are only fourteen, for example, and should not read about human rights abuses, or because time in class should be used only to study the curriculum.

Tomorrow, I will post an entry about a book I started reading last week. It is entitled 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. It does not relate to our grade eight curriculum. It does, however, reflect my interest in social justice and I will blog about it every time I finish a chapter or two because that is how I learn, that is how I interact with things that I find important. So, I'm beginning to use my blog to define myself as more than a classroom teacher. Mr. Glogowski, the teacher, is an important part of my life, but it should not exclude other aspects of what makes me who I am.

So, fairly soon, my students will see that I am more than my role as a Language Arts teacher suggests. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in social justice, foreign affairs, and human rights. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in photography and who collects old books and maps. They will get many glimpses into my life. I hope that they will understand that what makes a community is a network of human beings who have the freedom to be who they truly are and whose richness enhances the value of the community they inhabit.

If education is essentially a social process, then the teacher needs to be part of the learning community, not only as its facilitator but also as one of its members. When students are part of a learning community, a blog titled "Mr.Glogowski's Blog" will stick out and suggest that the community is really a school-sanctioned place where Mr. Glogowski presides because he has already learned all there is to know about his subject. I do not know all there is to know. I use Web 2.0 to expand my knowledge and to engage in meaning-making. I want to be connected to the class community as a learner. I want my students to see how I engage in negotiating meaning.

I have taken the steps I described above because I believe that a teacher's blog needs to be a personal space. It needs to be a place where I become visible as an individual and where my experiences - joys, disappointments, struggles, successes, moments of inspiration and epiphany - are shared with the community. It needs to be a place of authentic personal attempts at meaning-making, a place where I engage as Konrad Glogowski and not only as Mr.Glogowski, the content expert.

In her preface to Teaching Community, bell hooks argues that her book "offers practical wisdom about what we do and can continue to do to make the classroom a place that is life-sustaining and mind-expanding, a place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work in partnership." There can be no true partnership in a classroom where the teacher can hide behind an adopted persona while students are encouraged to be individual learners and bloggers. We cannot expect students to engage as individuals, to blog as human beings, to share their experiences, passions, interests, and struggles if, as teachers, we are not willing to do the same.

And so, my inspiration for the coming weeks comes from Teaching to Transgress where bell hooks states:

When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging others to take risks. Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share. When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material. But most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and spirit.