• Same Content + Different Context = New Meaning
• The Hard Facts of the Teacher Retention Problem
• Back-to-School Product Update
• Ignite! Honored with Teachers' Choice Awards and Tech & Learning Award of Excellence

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Same Content + Different Context = New Meaning

By: Mike Whalen, Principal Instructional Designer

It's no wonder that the Internet has become the main way students today like to learn. We have all had the experience of looking something up online and clicking for more information; clicking a link that takes you to a different, yet related article; following a chain of research far from where you began. We choose to do this, because it is interesting and easy. In their classrooms, teachers can harness that same power of curiosity and ease of connection that students are used to doing at their home computers by building knowledge structures for their students.

Today, the metaphor of the network is omnipresent. When we find relationships between concepts, we connect those data dots, we carve neural pathways, we draw lines on a map, we delineate a path between those relationships. The more often we tread that path, the more we shape the concepts into permanent memory through personal relevancy. Perhaps that personal relevancy is driven by self-interest, intrinsic motivation, or teacher leadership.

Perhaps those connections are between similar terms, like the Confederate Army during the Civil War and the Articles of Confederation during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps those connections are between theory and application, for example the way convection-one of the ways thermal energy can be transferred-is applied to water currents and plate tectonics. Even better, the connections can happen across subject areas, such as applying a mathematical understanding of probability to a life science lesson on Punnett squares.

As Jay Cross states in "Internet Culture" in the April 2009 issue of Chief Learning Officer, "Connections are everything. If your learning plans don't embrace the power of networks, go back to the drawing board. Learning occurs through conversations, collaboration, knowledge transfer and other network phenomena. Learning leaders will seek out ways to increase the throughput of personal network connections". By navigating those connections, learners can shift sensory information from working memory to permanent memory.

For example, at a recent professional development in Fairfax, South Carolina, a science teacher talked through a lesson on the layers of Earth that would begin with a broader understanding of indirect evidence (which is how we know about the layers of Earth) and then a look at historically significant scientist Inge Lehmann (who studied wave patterns created by earthquakes to discover the boundary between Earth's solid inner core and its liquid outer core). This teacher's lesson would conclude with examining models of Earth's layers. She started with an understanding of how science is conducted and ended with the result of those processes, which was the core content of her lesson. By starting her lesson with an understanding of the process of science, she is laying a broad foundation for future lessons, where she is able to repeatedly lead with "Remember what I was saying before about indirect evidence? Well, it's back! This time, we'll see how it applies to a different area of science." She's creating schema in the knowledge structures of her learners that can branch in different directions from the same touch point. As Daniel T. Willingham writes in "Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise": "As you continue to work with the knowledge, you gain expertise; the knowledge is no longer organized around surface forms, but rather is organized around deep structure." In this teacher's lesson, indirect evidence is not trivia; it is a familiar origin leading to different destinations.

Another example of creating content relevancy came from a group of science teachers in Fabens, Texas where a lesson on cell biology moved from energy organelles responsible for photosynthesis in life science to an understanding of chemical reactions in physical science. By having themes move across scientific fields, their students can see how their lessons are all connected.

When ideas keep popping up in seemingly different areas, students quit seeing them as burdensome data to remember for a test, and start to see them as the valuable thinking tools they really are.

Again, as Daniel T. Willingham writes (this time in his article "Why Don't Students Like School?: Because the Mind Is Not Designed for Thinking", American Educator, (Spring 2009): Thinking occurs when you combine information (from the environment and from long-term memory) in new ways." These science teachers were successfully showing their students how connective themes emerge. By repeatedly engaging an idea in different contexts, greater meaning is given to that idea.

By looking for these various connections, teachers are not getting lost on a tangent. By going down these rabbit holes, teachers are connecting threads, showing relevancy, and proving relationships. To return to the Internet metaphor, we can think of the mind as a site map: you can follow a series of links down different paths, relating ideas that may not have seemed initially obvious, and always instantly return home to the source of your connections with a better understanding of how things fit together in the big scheme of things. By returning home and reviewing the paths you've pursued, you're relating the parts to the whole. By designing overarching thematic connections or cross-field linear paths, teachers prove to their students that curricular content is important regardless of paper tests and, indeed, the true test is the relevant application of the content.

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The Hard Facts of the Teacher Retention Problem

By: Jeff Knight, Head Writer

A brand new study published last week gives us a detailed look at how teachers across the country view their professional challenges. The bad news: 40% of the nation's teachers feel disheartened about their jobs.¹ To anyone who has been following the teacher attrition problem, this isn't surprising.

Earlier this year, my colleague Mike Whalen wrote about one possible solution to the teacher attrition crisis: the use of educational technology such as Learner Response Systems and Interactive Whiteboards, used in conjunction with a technology-based curriculum. Increased engagement has the potential to transform the classroom, Mike reasoned, into a place where students are more checked in and teachers experience increased job satisfaction.

Since that column ran, Mike and I have conducted many professional development workshops in schools across the country, from high-tech schools in wealthy districts to rural schools where budgets are so tight that construction paper is taped up in the windows in lieu of blinds. What we see in common across these very different contexts is that teachers very much want to engage students, but that they feel they are fighting an uphill battle. They don't have enough time in the day, or enough guidance, or enough support, to accomplish everything that is required of them, and they are frustrated that the very heart of the job-engaging students and inspiring a love of learning-doesn't always get to come first.

How bad is the problem? The numbers tell the sad story: 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years² even as the age distribution advances. In the mid-1990s, the highest concentration of teachers by age was around 47, whereas that number is currently more like 55.³ In Texas, where I live, 40-45% of teachers are age 50 or older, and many states are looking at a situation where over half the profession is age 50 or older.⁴ Who's going to be teaching my 3-year-old when he gets to middle school? If 20% of young teachers aren't staying in the job, and a lot of teachers are approaching retirement age in the next ten years, it's obvious that a solution will have to be found.

And that solution isn't going to be strictly economic. Sure, pay increases of one sort or another will help districts attract and retain teachers, but without improvements in job satisfaction, these troubles will remain.

Improved technology is one answer. In just the way Mike was suggesting, technology like whiteboards and learner response systems (and don't forget standards-based digital media!) have great potential to make classrooms more engaging for students and teachers. Further, technology can ease some of the gradebook/assessment/record-keeping drudgery of the teaching experience. But solving a problem of this scope will require multiple approaches.

Here are some approaches suggested by researchers, curriculum experts, and teachers with first-hand experience:

Mentoring and Collaboration
Too many teachers who leave the field report feeling in over their heads. A chance to collaborate with peers or, better yet, be paired with a mentor, makes a world of difference. Isolation is eliminated, and a culture of professionalism enriches the whole school.5 This can start right away for new teachers with orientation and/or induction programs that help new teachers hit the ground running.

Professional Development
Studies suggest that more and better professional development has an impact on both student achievement and teacher retention. It seems very clear that those two issues are related. The more successful you are in your job, the less likely you are to seek another profession. An analogy one teacher shared with me: a lot of day-in, day-out teaching feels like sailing a ship through stormy seas. Professional development feels like a chance to fine-tune the ship's rudder between storms.

Better classroom conditions
This is the elephant in the room. Many teachers who leave the profession feel unsupported by administration in handling problem situations. When problems arise, teachers need support and help and, not least, clarity. It's worth mentioning, too, that one of the best approaches to classroom problems is prevention. What classroom practices-both in terms of classroom management and instruction-can minimize the difficult situations the arise. How can we get the tuned-out kids to tune in, to participate instead of disrupt? Every other solution we've mentioned above relates directly to this.

At a professional development workshop I taught a few weeks ago, the teachers were talking about the coming retention crisis, and a familiar theme arose. It can't all be about sticks and carrots, they said. In the same way that students perform best when they can develop intrinsic motivation, teachers teach best with intrinsic motivation. How we build that bridge will have a lot to do with whether this crisis worsens or resolves.

1. "State of Mind," Education Week, October 19, 2009.
2. "Unraveling the Teacher Shortage Problem: Teacher Retention is the Key," A Symposium of the NCTAF, 2002.
3. U.S. Department of Education, NCES Schools and Staffing Survey, 2003.
4. Richard Ingersoll, University of Pennsylvania, NCTAF Survey
5. "Mentoring Matters" Jean B. Wiley Teaching Pre-K-8, August/September 2004, V35 #1

Back-to-School Product Update

The latest Ignite! product update is now available! Go to our website and download the newest product features.

State Standards Index: Now you can find lessons that correlate to any state standard you're teaching directly from within our media interface! The first states to be added are: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. More states will be added in future updates!

Implementation Videos: Each Ignite! curriculum comes with preloaded implementation videos to give you classroom implementation strategies. Topics include:

• FIND: Learn how to find the Ignite! media lesson you want through our course taxonomy, index, and correlations.
• TEACH: Learn how to teach with the print components of the curriculum.
• INTEGRATE: Learn how to integrate our curriculum with interactive whiteboards and learner response systems.
• ASSESS: Learn how to assess with the curriculum using our informal, formal/summative, formative, and authentic assessment measures.

More Preloaded Formative Assessment Questions: We've added Ignition Questions to all the media in Math Foundations and Texas History!

Brick and ION customers can download the Back-to-School Product Update by going to www.ignitelearning.com/updates.

Ignite! Honored with Teachers' Choice Awards and Tech & Learning Award of Excellence

Please visit our website, http://www.ignitelearning.com/products/index.html, to learn more about Ignite! Math and Ignite! Science.

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