International Makerspaces of Mystery

I've been digging down with makerspaces lately and it was a surprise to me to find out that it was an international trend. This week I did a little reading about the Fryslan Netherlands mobile fab lab or Frysklab for primary and secondary students. It is a particularly interesting project because one of its goals is to bring 21st century skills "to find solutions for local socio-economic challenges".

Obviously in the United States we can use "solutions for local socio-economic challenges" and I am beginning to hope that makerspaces could provide some leveling of the playing field among the haves and the have nots..... or could it? In this political environment where the gaps between the haves and the have nots continues to be in our faces and public money threatens to be diverted to private and even for profit schools, what chance to we have the that the divide wont become greater? 

Student empowerment is at the heart of the educational maker movement and equitable access is part of what we in libraries provide. But we know that equitable access is aspirational. We know some schools are better equipped than others, how do we keep the maker movement alive and thriving despite socio-economic challenges? The mobile makerspace like the Frysklab could be the answer. Makerspace mobile  on the Gulf Coast seems to be trying to provide opportunities to a range of people. A school district in Knoxville, TN with the help of a $50,000. grant seems to have figured out a system of mobile carts which rotate among schools and docking stations which stay at the schools.

I hope that the maker movement will continue to empower students of all socio-economic groups. 

Resources

Sargrad, Scott (2017). An Attack on America's Schools:Trump's Budget Lays Bare His administrations Total Disregard for Public Education. Editorial US News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-05-23/donald-trump-and-betsy-devos-budget-would-destroy-public-schools 

New Media Consortium (2015) New Media Consortium Horizon Report k-12 “http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf 

Johnson M, Witte B, Randolph, J, Smith, R &  Cragwall K (2016) Mobile Makerspaces. School Library Journal. http://www.slj.com/2016/05/technology/mobile-maker-spaces/ 

How did I get here?

All of the reading I have been doing lately about educational theory, curriculum and assessment, and makerspaces has made me evaluate how I came to education in the first place.

I have been a teacher since 1991, except for an eight year "maternity leave". Although  I have been teaching social studies in the same school since 2005, I have been privileged to have worked in a cross section of public and private schools with differing philosophies. I have just left my job as a seventh-grade social studies teacher for a teacher librarian position in the same school -- I left a job I loved for a job I am so excited about and think I will love even more, but it's a job I am not technically qualified for. There is a bit of a librarian shortage or at least a training shortage in Maine and my principal thought I would be a good fit, so here I am!

Within the last two weeks I have really been diving into makerspaces. I know it is a goal of my principal to have one, the idea is a truly exciting one,  and one article in particular brought me back to my stint in a constructivist private school (Kurti, Kurti, & Fleming, 2014). 

Proponents of makerspaces, like the authors, believe that maker-education, or  hands-on learning through building things is the best way to go to inspire student learning. I once had a job in a constructivist private school. It was likely the administration, but the school was kind of a mess.
I believe in constructivist principles, but I also understand that there is a reason why schools need to be staffed with professionals. One of the things that I have appreciated about the makerspace articles that I have read is that although the authors value the inspiration and creativity that comes from a makerspace, they also value the work of a teacher -- not as "sage on the stage" but as collaborative partner in education.

If innovation as the authors believe, comes from trial and error I must be on the cusp of innovation, because my career in education has been trial and error and jumping in with both feet. My first right out of grad school teaching job was at a tony private prep school in Alexandria, VA. To be clear, the school was "tony", I am not, it was a bit of a "fish out of water" scenario. I do have luck getting hired for jobs for which I am not prepared as my next teaching job was in a small, rural Maine town teaching middle school social studies. After a year of there, my dream job opened up, a teaching position in a one room school house on a one by two mile island 21 miles out to sea. It was there that the state caught up to me and my provisional certificate, but a correspondence course (this was 1994 online learning was not what it is today) got me straightened out with Johnny Law. 

As with so many "dream" situations the island isolation and politics soon turned to nightmare and this time I washed up on the shore of another job for which I was unqualified, this time as fifth and sixth grade teacher in a Waldorf school. The school sent me to training over the summer and I learned about educating hearts, heads, and minds through a strict curriculum and the arts. I loved that job! But this time my move was due to marriage. Back to the island I went, this time married to a lobsterman (another job for which I was unprepared but that is a wholly different story).

After taking an extended maternity leave during which I did finally complete enough online courses to earn my professional teaching certificate,  I was back in the classroom but this time at the other end of the spectrum, as a lower school teacher in a constructivist private school. Gone was the curriculum in its place instinct and inquiry. To be honest, it was kind of a mess. So ironically, the job I loved the most, the Waldorf school, was the situation where I least agreed with the top-down teaching methods and the one I enjoyed the least was the most constructivist. I think it had more to do with the top-down administration at the constructivist school though.

A major family illness necessitated leaving that job but once wellness reigned I decided to go back to public school middle school. I have taught fifth-grade and later seventh-grade language arts and social studies for twelve years and now in the second half of my career have once again been hired to despite my lack of qualifications, this time as a teacher librarian.  I continue to leap before I look, but I am optimistic that my experiences as a teacher in so many situations will help me to be a strong collaborator in my new job. 

References
KURTI, R. S., KURTI, D. L., & FLEMING, L. (2014). The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41(5), 8-11.

Perpetuating the Problem

Are we perpetuating the problem?

In his youtube video "Reframing the Education Revolution K-12" Steve Hargadon compares educational reform movements to the USDA and charges both with perpetuating the problems they are created to fix. (Hargadon,2013) 

As an educator for the past 25 years I don't want to agree with him, but sadly, with some reservation, I do. I didn't go to a teacher prep program, at least not at first. I came at this profession from the back door, but doing so gave me a breadth of experience in different types of schools and philosophies of education public and private that leads me to believe that although Hargadon may be right about the sinister motives of those in power and the results of their misguided and often lobbied for policies, rank and file educators are working hard to work around the problems bad policy and snazzy buzz words create. 

Hargadon argues that although data driven reformers and "progressive"reformers are at odds with each other, both offer a top down approach whereas true revolutionary reform should strive for self-directed learning, presumably with the learner and inquiry leading the charge. I agree, everything I have observed in education over the last 25 years shows that deeper thinking comes from true engagement with engaging questions and researchers agree (Larmer & Mergendoller, 2015) but guiding that inquiry takes caring talented professionals to set up the conditions in which that inquiry can take place (Marzano Research, 2017) . 

Data driven reformers have always been in love with standardized testing because of the easy data it provides. One criticism that I have of many other well-intentioned and affective reform movements that have come down the pike over these past 25 years is that many say they reject the importance of standardized texting while simultaneously touting the effect their movement has to raise test scores. That has always seemed disingenuous to me, and after listening to Hargadon it makes me worry that it is more than disingenuous, it's downright dangerous; it accepts the premise of the test scores as the thing of value .  Haragdon posits that the food pyramid and other recommendations on healthy eating actually lead to bad health because they are overly influenced by food lobbyists. His comparison to education makes me wonder if the government's data-driven reform may be influenced by the lucrative testing companies and when "progressive" reformers tout their affect on test scores they are just playing the test maker's game. 

My school is a high performing district on standardized tests and our admin looks at standardized tests as a necessary evil. Doing well on them continues to keep the state and federal heat off of us and allows us the freedom to do pretty much what we want to do. I had always appreciated this in the past, but now I wonder if maybe we are making a mistake by accepting test-driven education as necessary at all. I want to quit playing by those rules. 

References

Hargadon, Steve (2013) "Reframing the Education Revolution K-12"Youtube video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vPCzebP4zO4

Lergan & Mergendoller (2015) "Gold Standard PLB: Essential Project Design Elements". PBL Blog. Buck Institute for Education. https://www.bie.org/blog/gold_standard_pbl_essential_project_design_elements 

Marzano Research (2017) "Meta-analysis database of instructional strategies " Marzano Research. Retrieved from https://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/database 

Master of None

"Master one part of the job before going on to the next" 

When I read that quote in a discussion of an article dispensing advice to first-year librarians (Cerasale-Messina,2010) I thought "how is that possible?! Doesn't the whole job come rushing at you at once?!" To which my wise classmate pointed out "I agree - all parts of the jobs are coming at us at once - but I know I have to break it down or I'll go nuts. " (Bergen,2017)

Life comes rushing us all at once, our professional and personal obligations overlapping in our consciousnesses and competing for our attention so perhaps taking this new endeavor one piece at a time is my best path. 

I just had my first and presumably only day of training for my new job as teacher librarian at my coastal Maine middle school school and I very much hope that this "slow and steady wins the race" mantra will take hold before I go nuts. I have no idea what or how much I will remember from the day yesterday because I did not sleep much the nights before. 

My day was spent learning the nuts and bolts stuff that I won't get in a library science classroom like how to use our school's requisition software and how to print barcodes,... but the comforting advice of Cerasale-Messina kept echoing in my muddled brain. Will I ever learn all of this nuts and bolts stuff so that it becomes effortless and I can use my mental faculties instead to be the librarian that I want to be? Maybe if I take it one step at a time, but I want to learn it all now!

In order to carve out that one day of training I had to finish all of my seventh-grade teacher responsibilities a day early so that the dynamic retiring librarian and I could gather on the last day of her thirty years at our school.

I met my goal of getting everything that needed to be done, done for the end of the school year: grading and providing meaningful feedback for the ninety-seven final World Tour Blog projects,  chaperoning a rock climbing field trip to Acadia National park, helping plan and execute field day, writing ninety-seven "kind, specific, and helpful" narrative report card comments, packing up my room and making it ready for the next teacher, and oh yeah, teaching. All of these professional responsibilities had to be done in the foreground of a personal life that included my only child's incredibly emotional high school graduation and all the ensuing blended family drama that ensues as well as some hours at the hospital following my spouse's most unexpected "cardiac event". Add to that a weekend gig on a lobster wharf with my garage band and my new professional and academic obligations of reading, writing, and collaborating for two library science classes (one of which meets until 10:30pm EST), and I was a little bit bleary-eyed. 

I need to learn to take this job one thing at a time or risk being overwhelmed with my ignorance. 

So, here I sit on a plane heading to Charlotte and later to Dallas distancing myself physically and emotionally from the last two weeks and telling myself to take a deep breath and when I get back "master one part of the job before going on to the next" (Cerasale-Messina,2010).

References

Cerasale-Messina, Katie. (2010). Surviving your first year: Strategies and tips that will get you through your first year as a library media specialist. LMC, 29( 1), 30.

Bergen, Katrina (2017) Response to Post 2: School Library Management Discussion, https://sjsu.instructure.com/groups/231037/discussion_topics/3241916 

"Critique and Feedback" EL Education Video Retrieved from https://eleducation.org/resources/critique-and-feedback

Quit Freaking Out!

Today was my last day of teaching middle school social studies, a job that I thought was the best job in the world, until our dynamic school librarian decided to retire. Like an optimist, I applied for her job and now I have one summer to figure out how the library really works. As I have been reading to prepare myself for this amazing job, I have to throw myself on my sword and admit to someone somewhere (or everyone everywhere) that one of the things that has surprised me the most (and by "surprised me" I mean made me want to freak out) is how often in the last week I have read the word "database".

I graduated college in 1991 and graduate school in 1992. No one that I knew was talking about databases then. I wrote my papers on my Macintosh and played with hypercard, but databases were not a thing, at least not a thing I knew about. In the last week terror has been struck into my heart as in article after article I read about librarians' successes teaching students and teachers to use databases. Damn! Why don't I know how to use databases?! What are databases? I thought they were something companies used to store phone numbers and other data. They sound almost sinister, like something a dictatorship would use to keep tabs on its people. 

I did what any well-meaning but ignorant-to-the-ways-of-databases person would do in my situation, I Googled "how to use a database for library research" on my MacBook Air. The Google Gods brought me to a helpful article from Prince George's Community College (where ironically I had an internship in 1992), called "Using Research Databases" ("Using Research Databases", 2017).  

"Okay, this is looking familiar" I thought as I scanned the article. This looks very familiar. This looks a lot like MARVEL!, Maine's Virtual Library. I hopped on over to MARVEL!, a resource that I have used with my students for years, and as I am sure you have guessed by now, MARVEL! is a database free to use in any Maine school or library. So my moral to my story today is, quit freaking out! 

References

LibGuides: Research Tutorial: Using Research Databases. (2017, May 30). Retrieved June 16, 2017, from http://pgcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=60038&p=385667