Reflections: NYSMSA Conference

I spent last night and today at the New York State Middle School Association’s annual conference, located this year in the picturesque town of Watkins Glen, NY. Famous for one of the oldest and fastest road course racetracks in the country, this town is the anti-norm for a conference of this stature; While most of these conferences are held in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, or New York, this one got placed in a community of +/- 2000 (and no less than 45 minutes from any major highway or airport, making it even more remarkable.)

Of course the location isn’t what I was supposed to be enlightened with this weekend – it was the content of the presenters and the myriad speakers. So in chronological order, here are some thoughts:

Thursday evening I missed the Wine Tasting Cruise on “Captain Bill’s” chartered boat, but when the boat returned I met up with everyone for a reception at the Harbor Hotel. What a beautiful place! During the hors d’ oeuvres hour I was standing in the lobby with a co-worker talking with my hands (I tend to wave them around an awful lot) and almost knocked a man over – come to find out that he is the new education commissioner in NYS. That would’ve been probably one of the biggest faux pas of my short tenure as a member of the NYSMSA (I’ve been a member for all of a week). So yes, I did “meet” David Steiner – although can’t say I actually spoke with him or shook his hand.

As we ate dinner, David spoke to the group about his nomination to be the NYS Education Commissioner and what some of his visions are. Of course he mentioned NCLB and standardized testing negatively (he knew what we wanted to hear!) while talking about making education meaningful and engaging. He also spoke about a state-wide (or larger scale?) curriculum being developed, since we in NYS have nothing to go by. Sure we have “standards” – but we haven’t got a curriculum guide. He also mentioned the need for a “computer class” curriculum – I almost jumped for joy as I envisioned schools all over the state needing instructional technologists for their local programs. He was a very good speaker, in my opinion, and said quite a few things that I hardly believe to be “the truth”. Even if he does have great ideas, perhaps I’m just too jaded to believe that he can carry some of them out.

By the way, before I move on… he did say that standardized tests and, more specifically, teaching to the test, were not good. But he also said at one point that our state is pushing the USA’s education standards to increase, as our assessment program is one of the best in the country. So… I’m not sure what to believe there…

It’s 7:15AM Friday morning and I’m sitting in a classroom in a foreign school waiting to hear the 6th grade team from my own school talk about their team configuration. It was interesting to see my principal and co-workers describing how amazing their schedule configuration is now so that they can collaborate easily and talk daily. I’m still longing for a chance to work collaboratively with someone in this school who is considered “core”. With that in mind I went on to my next session…

Building and Implementing a Flexible Schedule with Elliot Merenbloom was the next presentation that I attended. I knew his name due to our current school schedule being developed by Elliot a few years ago. This session was probably intended for guidance and administrative people and the attendees didn’t surprise me – I’d say over half of us in attendance had out administrative degrees. Anyhow, he had some good ideas on how to create flexibility in a school schedule to allow for better teaming and intra-team collaboration. Unfortunately all of the ideas that he presented kept the “encore classes” out of the teams – so technology, Family and Consumer Science, Art, Music, and Health are never really included in his flexibility formula. I have a few ideas about how to fix that and hope to float them by my principal before next school year’s schedule is started.

Since the NYSCATE conference happened to overlap this one, the most high-tech presentation that I was able to find was a session named “Virtual Worlds in Education”, facilitated by Catherine Norton-Barker of GST BOCES. I’ve got a bit of familiarity with Second Life, but had never had the chance to see the Virtual Worlds in action. The program itself was developed at Cornell University and was sold to BOCES a year ago to allow for continuing development. It’s somewhat of a Second Life-like program that’s closed (for security) and all about education. It was a good presentation, although I don’t see it as something that I’d invest a lot of classroom time working with. Sure it’s easy to use – but so is HyperStudio. And there’s a reason nobody uses HyperStudio anymore… Add some photo-realistic graphics capabilities, make it easier to integrate with back-end grading databases, and decrease the bandwidth needs and this would be one heck of a program. I might play with it a little bit and see if I change my mind – but right now that’s how I feel.

ePortfolios & Authentic Assessment was by far the most intriguing presentation that I made it to. Cheryl Muller and Nikki Cole from the Bath-Haverling district presented this topic to a room full of music educators (and me). A self-proclaimed “music lover”, I was able to follow the talk quite easily as they spoke about how they assess each student in their band and chorus individually and authentically – skipping the “A for effort” sort of grade that many music teachers give on the report cards. The actual assessment piece was extremely interesting, but even more interesting was their use of the district ePortfolio system. I’ve been a huge supporter of ePortfolios for a long time now, and this was the first time I’ve been able to see Bath’s custom-built solution being used authentically. I’d seen presentations and previews before, but this was the real deal. I have to say, I was not impressed with their system the way I was a few years ago. My belief is that it was coded by a developer for Bath-Haverling specifically and hasn’t been updated since. In the age of Web 2.0 and Ruby on Rails programming, I find it hard to believe that their system hasn’t been significantly upgraded. I’m still a huge supporter of one of these systems, but it’s got to be an open format that’s easily upgradeable and always backwards compatible. Kudos to these ladies for taking a once-arduous task and making it easier and more collaborative using new-ish technologies… They are certainly using the tools that are at their disposal as well as they can be used.

The last presentation that I was able to make it to was put on by the same group of CFA 6th grade teachers who I began the day with – Integrating Arts into the Core Curriculum. Once again I felt a bit disconnected from my co-workers as they work together on this initiative and have never included technology (or music, f/c science, art, or health). But overall it was a good presentation, and I learned a few things abut what’s happening in my building. Essentially the 6th grade team got a grant to work collaboratively with a local artist and a local museum to teach through art. All of our sixth grade students participate by taking pictures, editing them, and having them displayed at the museum for all to see. The process is long and extremely planned – the kids learn “Why they do what they do” through this project.

A few random thoughts:

• A ton of middle school teachers that are my age are getting their administrative degrees. I met at least 10 people who were either working on them or had just finished them up… and there are three, soon to be four teachers in my building with administrative certificates from the state.
• Panera boxed lunches are extremely good.