October in Review: A Photo Blog!

October is a month of fall foliage, first quarter grades, Friday night lights, and Fright Night Fun!  I've been busy traveling the state, meeting with politicians and business leaders, visiting university education programs, and observing outstanding schools that are meeting the needs of their students.  Below are some highlights:

"Fall Foliage" and the Beautiful Sights of North Carolina:

A Short Stop in Edenton with My Mom (She Traveled
with Me as I visited Three Universities in Three Days)

A Visit to the Battleship while in Wilmington

The Beautiful Education Building at UNC-Wilmington

   

    A Snapshot of the Charming Small Town of Forest City while Stopped in Traffic

 "First Quarter Grades"and Education Programs:

Jo Ann Norris at the EPFP (Education Policy Fellowship Program) Graduation

Academic Incentive Program at Chase High School, Rutherford County 

Character Education at Cherokee Central Schools

AdvancED Accreditation
Conference

A Panel on Education at the Public Schools Forum

With an Outstanding Team at Elizabeth City State University
to Share the Benefits of Study Abroad

Talking with Teacher Cadets at ECU
and UNCW

"Friday Night Lights" and "Fright Night Fun":

The Beautiful Turf Football Field
at Cherokee Central High School

"Dem Bones" Display at Cherokee Central Schools
(First Graders Illustrated Their Skeletal Systems with Q-Tips)

New Friends, New Faces, and Great Educators:

Jill Francis, Region 8 Teacher of the Year, Chase High School

Yona Wade and Deb Forrest at Cherokee Central Schools

As the World Gets Smaller, Our Education Must Get Bigger

Global education.  It seems like everyone is tossing around this phrase today.  You see it in the media, you hear it among educators, and it is a common topic among business leaders who want to see the workforce in America grow and develop to compete internationally.  On many levels, it seems like a no brainer.  We want to educate our students and we want them to compete globally, but a true global education is much, much more than this.         

While speaking with university students over the past couple of weeks, I have focused primarily on the importance of global education for our students.  I shared the benefits of my study abroad experience at the University of Glasgow with students at Elizabeth City State University.  I shared the three P’s that a successful study abroad experience, like mine in Glasgow, should have: new people, cultural places, and a passion for learning.  I also gave speeches on global education at East Carolina University and Western Carolina University.  While on their campuses, I focused on my personal view of a global education as one that not only teaches students more about other cultures, but also includes important twenty-first century skills that promote collaboration and communication across divergent backgrounds, creativity in problem solving, and effectively integrates technology as a means to learn more and not just an intended outcome.  I’ve also had the opportunity to witness some creative technology and collaboration at Chase High School in Rutherford County with their one to one initiative.

Seeing college students who are excited about global education and high school students who are working on developing their global education skills makes me optimistic about the future of education in North Carolina and in the United States.  Yet, evidence shows us that we will still have a long way to go before we are fully preparing our students for a well-rounded global education.  If you look at the most recent reports from the World Savvy Global Competence Survey below, it is clear that many United States citizens ages 18-24 could not correctly identify important information that not only shows an understanding of the world, but also shows a basic understanding of some of the major issues the United States faces today.  Upon first glance, some of these questions may seem challenging, but in reality, if our students are well prepared, they should know the answers.  For instance, shouldn’t US students know the elected leader of our biggest ally, the United Kingdom, and who our biggest trading partner is?  If we want students to be prepared to work in an increasingly global world, shouldn’t they at least know, even if they cannot speak it, that Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language?  Furthermore, shouldn’t we know where the countries that house many of our troops are located on a map, especially the location of Afghanistan, the only country where 63,000 soldiers are still deployed in a combat zone?

When these same students were polled, they overwhelmingly, 80% of them, believe that the world is becoming more global in nature, yet only 12% of them felt prepared by their education to understand global issues.  Sixty percent of them, more than half, believe that they would be better prepared for the world if they understood global issues better.  Students who discuss world events in their classes are more likely to vote, to volunteer, and to seek information about world events.  I would like to see this impact even higher.  Think about the number of people who vote and do not have a strong understanding of the world and how our actions impact the bigger picture.  You cannot solve the world’s problems if you do not understand the world’s problems.  You cannot help make the world and our country a safer, better, and more sustaining place if you do not understand what needs to change in the world—both outside your front door and across the boundaries that exist between countries.  

 

 

All of this means that we are no longer preparing for a global tomorrow, we are in a global today.  We have to teach our students how to interact compassionately and sympathetically with others, we have to teach them how to collaborate, and we have to teach them how to work toward a common goal to address the major problems that they will face.  As our world becomes smaller, we must make our education focus much bigger.  To do this, we must make our lessons relevant to our students.  Some tangible ways to do this is to have our students write patents, hypothesize, test, and publish findings by speaking to political leaders and addressing businesses.  Many STEM schools are doing just this by focusing their curriculum around the Fourteen World Challenges established by the National Academy of Engineering (see my post on STEM education here).  Students engage in lessons that strive to offer solutions to the major challenges our world faces, including clean water shortages and food sustainability, the energy crisis, urbanization, healthcare, personalized learning, and security issues with cyberspace.  The opportunities for instruction and problem solving are limitless, and by focusing on real issues, students are invested in making the world a better place. 

These opportunities also exist beyond just math and science classes.  We can integrate these same problem solving ideas in our liberal arts classes as well.  We can have students read more international literature and informational documents like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.  Students can examine issues in other countries and view speeches given by inspiring survivors of tragedy like Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, or Malala, the young girl who stood up to the Taliban in order to protect the educational rights of all, especially women.  We can give students opportunities to debate major world topics (in English or in their second language), to create advertisements and multimedia projects, to write letters to the editor, to blog about world issues, to create podcasts, to design animation, to film videos, and to find ways to engage in global conversation, even with students in another country.  With the advancement of technology, Google Hangout and Skype, opportunities like these are rapidly becoming more available, and we need to take advantage of these opportunities in order to educate the next generation of thinkers and workers, but more importantly, innovators and problem solvers.

Educators, communities, and business leaders must lead the charge as we shift our pedagogy to a more global focus.  We need to keep moving forward, keep progressing, and keep seeking new answers to problems that face our world.  With shared cultural experiences, knowledge of technological innovations, and a desire to help students grow, we can ensure that global education in the United States stops being called “global education” and simply becomes what we expect education to look like, period. 

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

              As I sit in a room away from home for the fifth night in eight days, my mind wanders and starts to reflect on the year so far.  Outside my window on the campus of Western Carolina University, the wind alternates between gently tossing the yellowing leaves on an oak tree and fiercely shaking them.  This is the height of leaf-gazing season, and there are many different colors and different shapes of leaves outside my window.  As they sway back and forth and I await an upcoming phone conference, I cannot help but think of my travels.  Back in August, I examined the strange nature of my new position as North Carolina Teacher of the Year in the blog post Afortunada.  Now that a couple of months have passed, I have experienced a range of emotions in my new position.  Like the changing leaves that are moved by the wind before me, my year has seemed like a state of constant movement and constant changes.  

Some Beautiful Leaves in the NC Mountains

                The past two months have been a whirlwind (like the Whirlies, my school’s mascot!).  I have been busy speaking at universities and school districts, writing my National Teacher of the Year portfolio, chronicling my year on social media sites, and establishing working relationships with businesses and political leaders. 

Teaching Fellows at Western Carolina University

I find myself alternating between exhaustion and excitement as I travel the state and meet with others to share a teacher’s opinion of the state of public education in North Carolina.  I also try to listen to other teachers and to students in order to share their stories with others.  On top of all these responsibilities are the responsibilities that teachers of high school juniors know all too well—writing college recommendation letters. 

                To be completely honest, at times it is difficult to fit in time to write the high number of letters that were requested of me this year.  Yet, when I have the time to stop my travels and other Teacher of the Year responsibilities for a bit, I find that when I start writing letters about my outstanding students that it feels like coming home.  Before writing letters of recommendation, I always look over students’ resumes and spend some time thinking about the ways they stood out in my classroom.  I try to recall the first time they exceeded their own expectations or my expectations, the moment where I saw them develop their writing skills or start to hone their critical lenses, and the ways that they have impacted my life.  I believe that I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me.  In taking the time to reflect on each student as an individual, I am reminded of why I love teaching.  Like the vibrant, varied leaves outside my window, my students are diverse, beautiful, and constantly changing as they grow into young adults who want to make the world a better place. 

With My IB Students Last Year (Photo by Nancy Sidelinger, Special Section, Greensboro News and Record)

                 I am so proud of my students, and it is when I get back to the heart of teaching, my students, that I find encouragement and a desire to work even harder to make public education in North Carolina grow into the national leader that it can be.  Even though teachers in North Carolina are experiencing low morale right now, we need to keep looking to the heart of the matter—all of our students—to keep why we teach in perspective.  We teach for our students and because of our students.  When times get tough, I encourage teachers to take a moment to think about their students as individuals, to think about the stories that shape each student, and to think about what the future has in store for each one of them.  When we do that, we can always find the inspiration to keep teaching, to keep encouraging, and to keep growing as educators.

Students in Jill Francis's AP Environmental Class at Chase High School, Rutherford County

                     

How Polygons Can Change the World

                As I read from the script the signal cue, “In Guilford County Schools, students are reaching for the stars” and step off the stage, the spectacle begins.  The lights dim in the large auditorium and students slowly start to fill the stage.  Their own creations and tools serve as illuminating apparatuses for their entrance: beakers illumined with a phosphorescent liquid as dry ice glides out and onto the floor, iPads with the school logo beaming into the auditorium, robots that blink in blue and red as the sounds of their gears whirring resonate into the audience, and the stretching wings of a functioning model plane that twinkle as a beacon into the crowd that watches in awe.

Photo Courtesy of Guilford County Schools

                It was at this moment at the Guilford County Schools’ State of Our Schools event that my interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) was solidified.  That night I had the honor of introducing the STEM initiatives in our county before the students made their magical (or should I say scientific?) entrance onto the stage.  Earlier in the afternoon as students practiced how to enter the stage, I had the opportunity to talk to some of the students about what they were doing in their STEM-based schools.  Their answers blew me away.   They were clearly engaged and passionate about what they were learning, but more importantly, they were passionate about using the skills they were gaining in their schools to make a positive impact on the world.  Their STEM-based schools were examining global issues and issuing the charge to their students to find solutions for these issues.  The potential for student growth and engagement was truly awe-inspiring for me.

                I guess I need to issue a disclaimer here.  I am an English teacher and I am a nerd. I almost double majored in English and biology, but dropped the biology major due to the terrifying prospect of taking an advanced calculus class.  I firmly believe that English and the liberal arts are just as important as the more scientific and mathematic fields of study.  It is only when you combine the real-world application of STEM programs with the critical thinking skills necessary to be the next generation of problem solvers that you fully prepare students for the world that exists beyond our public school classrooms.  I guess you could say that I believe in the combined power of the ABCs and the 123s.  I’ve written a great deal about English language arts because that is my area of expertise, but as I get to travel the state and see other classes and programs in action, my interest in STEM schools continues to grow.

 

                In the past month, I attended two different counties to observe two different STEM initiatives.  I went to the ribbon cutting ceremony at Wake NC State STEM Early College and the 3D Systems demonstration in Richmond County.  Wake County and Richmond County are two strikingly different counties based on the types of industry and resources that are traditionally available to them, but in both of these counties, they are making sure that their students have the essential resources to be fully college and career ready. 

 

The Early College in Wake County actively seeks first-generation college students to offer them a rigorous STEM education that will prepare them for their futures.  The school creed, which was boldly proclaimed by the students at the ceremony, restates over and over their belief that they will attend college and they will change the world.  The students take classes both at their STEM high school and on campus at NC State University.  These high school students do amazingly well in their college classes, with students in some upper-level mathematics classes earning some of the highest grades in their classes.  The school also focuses all of its assignments around the National Academy of Engineering’s Fourteen Grand Challenges.  Students engage in lessons that strive to offer solutions to the major challenges our world faces, including clean water shortages, the energy crisis, urbanization, healthcare, personalized learning, and security issues with cyberspace.  The opportunities for instruction and problem solving here are limitless, and by focusing on real issues, students are invested in making the world a better place. 

In Richmond County, I had the opportunity to speak with White House Champion of Change Award Winner Jeff Epps, and see students demonstrate the use of 3D Systems technology in their classes. In a speech to the crowd, Jeff Epps told the audience, “When you start to use 3D Systems, you see everything in the world as a collection of polygons.”  I saw this fascinating paradigm shift among students that day.  I saw students using Xbox Kinects to scan objects and even themselves for insertion into their own student-created video games.  I saw students design their own 3D objects (aircrafts, medical tools, and even whimsical designs like monsters and dolphins, depending on the age of the student) and print them on 3D printers.  I learned that 3D technology is used to create Barbie dolls at Mattel and small appliances at Black and Decker.  I also learned the medical use of these systems.  Take, for instance, the benefits of 3D technology for a dentist who can start out by completing an MRI scan of a patient with missing teeth.  The same scan can be used for a diagnostic evaluation of the needs of the patient, consultative conversations with the patient on the procedure to be performed, creation purposes to design the teeth and bridge needed to complete the procedure, measuring purposes to determine the depth needed to make the implants “stick,” and for surgical practice via a robotic arm for the dentist about to perform the surgery.  The opportunities for increased healthcare here are endless, and as more and more doctors are using 3D printers to create custom prosthetics, this is a developing field for our students who will soon graduate and enter the workforce.

 In all of my experiences with STEM programs in Guilford County, Wake County, and Richmond County, I saw students fully engaged with advanced software and design, many of whom are developing their skills outside of the classroom. In Richmond County, I saw a group of young ladies from Douglas Byrd High School in Fayetteville who traveled to have first-hand experience with 3D software.  They are members of a new afterschool organization at their high school called 3D-GREES, a club that reaches out to young girls to get them interested in STEM occupations.  I will actually visit these young ladies in their school on November 2 to see how their program is developing as they get more resources at their own school!  These same students when asked why they are interested in STEM programs told me consistently, “It was the first time in my life that someone told me that I could do whatever I want to do.”  There is so much power in those words and in providing these opportunities to our students. 

When asked how he gets students who do not normally pursue STEM careers, especially female students, interested in STEM courses, Jeff Epps gave three essential questions he asks students to get them engaged in programs with a real-world focus:  1. What problem do you want to solve?  2.  What do you want to be when you grow up?  3.  Who do you want to help?   Imagine if all of our students thought about these questions daily.  Can you imagine the level of personal engagement, excitement, and potential for good in the world that would happen as a result?  I want our students to be able to examine the world as both a work of art and as a series of “polygons” that they can understand, restructure, and shape into a better future.  I want them to be able to communicate their desires and visions effectively with the skills they gain in liberal arts and fine arts classes.  Think of the ways that we can address the world’s problems head on if we fully equip our students with what they need not only to live in the future, but also to create the future.