It's All About Change: Working Together for Change
Sue Coty & Bob Slentz-Kesler
Githens Middle School
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It's All About Change: Working Together for ChangeSue Coty & Bob Slentz-Kesler |
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Sue Coty must like change. As an elementary teacher turned middle school language arts teacher turned media coordinator, she has embraced change as she has continued to learn and grow professionally. Along the way she has broadened her perspective about what it takes for schools to be successful for students. In this interview, Sue talks about building partnerships among classroom teachers and media coordinators, the media center as an instructional learning center rather than a warehouse, a centers and /or process oriented middle grades classroom, and technology's role in all of this change. Bob Slentz-Kesler, co-media coordinator at Githens Middle School in Durham, shares the belief in the importance of partnering with teachers for change. Sue and Bob share their philosophy and lesson plans for joining with classroom teachers to make certain students learn information and technology skills. |
MIDtech (MT): I'm really interested in your perspective
since you've seen the classroom from both sides now -- both as a teacher and
as a media specialist. But first, a walk down memory lane . . . Tell me about
the first time you ever touched a computer. Do you remember?
Coty: I think it was in 1982 or 1983, and it was a Tandy. It was at a demonstration at Radio Shack.
MT: What did you think?
Coty: I liked the idea. But I was learning about Logo and I didn't like that.
MT: So what do you think made you like it? And when did you fall in love?
Coty: I loved the cleanness of typed-written paper. But I hated all of the work involved. So then I discovered how to do word processing and that I didn't have to buy that erasable bond paper. Remember that erasable paper and all that Wite-Out? Uggghhh!!! And then I started playing with the computer. And I saw what I could do. I just fell in love with it, and I thought that this has got to be powerful!
MT: And did your mind start clicking of ways that you could use it in the classroom?
Coty: Oh, yes. In fact, I got the school to buy Bank Street Writer. And I got them to let me teach the other teachers. The principal even said they had to take an introduction to computers.
MT: You became almost evangelistic, didn't you?
Coty: Oh, yeah. I could see it being made into encyclopedias and dictionaries and . . . It's neat that all of the things that I thought of in the eighties -- I saw come out in the nineties.
MT: That's exciting. So you were on the cutting edge there, weren't you?
Coty: Oh, yeah. For teachers and schools.
MT: You were a language arts teacher at that time, right? How did you use it in the classroom?
Coty: I took them to the computer lab and I taught them how to use Bank Street Writer.
MT: Did you find that it made a big difference in their willingness to write?
Coty: Oh, yes. Put a kid in front of a machine and you always see a big difference.The only thing that holds them back then is the lack of knowing the keyboard.
MT: Are you technologically inclined? Does it come really easy for you? Are you a geek or are you a little klutzy? Did you go fearlessly to it or with some trepidation?
Coty: Oh, a lot of trepidation. I remember sitting at home with my Apple IIe. And I remember at school when they brought the first Macintosh LC2 and they let us check them out over the summer to protect them to keep them from getting stolen. This is when they were brand new, you see. So I took one home and I taught myself. I'm one of those who say, "Now, let's read the manual." And if it takes me five hours to figure it out then I've got it. I've learned over the years that it's like a mechanic who fixes your car. You're only talking about the rattle, and he will try A, B, and C to try and figure it out. So now that's how I approach things. If there is something wrong, I begin troubleshooting. I treat it like a treasure hunt.
MT: A treasure hunt. I like that.
Coty: I'm going to take a grade program home with me this weekend and I'm going to learn how to do it. A lot of people learn from having someone in the front of the room showing them. A lot of people want someone to show them how to do it. I have to sit down with the manual and teach myself.
I think that a lot of people maybe twenty-five and older or maybe even twenty-four and older are scared of machines. They think they might break it. So I had to learn not to be scared of it. [Cris, I think twenty-four is too young for this statement; let's make it forty or older.]
MT: I think that psychological side of technology is interesting.
MT: Would you say that technology
has played an important role in your development as a teacher?
Coty: Oh, yes.
MT: In what way?
Coty: It made it so that I could become more of a teacher of writing. Because I had been a language arts teacher since 1981 and I used to teach the lower level kids what was called the basic skills group. Then they were homogeneously grouped. Today they say it's heterogeneously grouped but it's really homogeneously. The computer lab and Nancie Atwell's book . . . Nancie Atwell's book came out in '88 or maybe '87 but I read it in '88. Also that was the year when the school got the computer lab. That was when I decided that I could become a writing teacher.
MT: That's exciting. That's one thing I'm really interested in how your concept of sort of the social context of the classroom, how teachers work with students, how students work with other students, how that affects your use of technology, to think about that, but then in reverse, how does technology affect the social context? I mean, it's not like just introducing technology and it changes everything. How did technology fit into the big picture of how you teach writing?
Coty: Because before it was all of those hand-written papers and those things that are so hard to read, all of their difficult to read handwriting and it's hard on the kids. Kids who had trouble writing, even the way they hold their pencils. Their hands get tired and they don't have the love of the words to carry them through the drafts that it takes to get to publication. So I can remember that they got the Macintoshes and I said, "Let me have the old Apple IIes in my classroom." And I had electricians to come over and put up wire strips along the wall. I got tables and I set up eight Apple IIes. And printers. Old Epson printers.
MT: You had a little publishing center going on.
Coty: Yes, and I had Fredwriter. I could have groups doing different things. I could have two kids working together. The boy who couldn't type would pair with someone who could. Or the boy who couldn't write his draft told his story to the girl who had a computer at home and she would type it up. So once I got the computers in my classroom I felt like, "Ah, we can do more writing." It changed how I taught because I made it a tool that helped me.
MT: So it led to more collaboration between students?
Coty: Yes, it put them together on a lot of other stages in the process. Some of them liked to draw and so they did that for brainstorming. And they would conference together to try and get ideas. So it brought them together in their drafts, in their conferences, and in their final copies. Also the teacher's willingness to let them do it together is necessary. The teacher has to be willing to let the noise level go up in the classroom.
MT: And that's probably where Atwell had a big influence on you, too.
Coty: Oh, yes. Atwell changed how I taught -- how I taught both reading and writing.
MT: What would you say has been your most successful technology-supported project?
Coty: I think mine was when I had those computers in my classroom. And they were just part of the classroom. They were used all day long. Even kids would come back during lunch. Just think, Apple IIes . . . and Fred writer. That was pretty exciting stuff three and a half years ago.
MT: You made the most out of it, right?
Coty: Yes, to me it's all about change learning how to use it to change the way that I taught -- which to me at that time was to begin to teach writing as a process.
MT: That's one of the things I had
hoped you would talk about how Atwell and technology reinforced
each other. How about that now that you're a media specialist
and you've moved from someone who is using technology from within
those four walls to someone who is helping teachers within those
four walls with technology. You've sort of got a broader perspective.
What's your vision , like in the 80s you were ahead of your time
as far as what would come. What's your vision now of what could
be happening what more could be happening?
Coty: Technology is not the teacher's friend. It is not very friendly. In this school, and this is a school of maybe 75 teachers, I would say that there are about five and I'm not counting the media people now, five people who think of technology as their friend and a teaching tool. If I thought about it long enough I could tell you the percentage from there up with the bottom level being the teacher who is petrified.
MT: So, it's almost like a continuum?
Coty: Yes, it's a continuum and it's not controlled by the technology, it's not so much the technology as it is trying to help teachers to learn about it.
MT: What do you see could be happening if we could help teachers make that leap?
Coty: The math teachers instead of doing it all with paper and pencil and with drawing those graphs . . . Even if they had only five computers in their classroom, they could change how they teach. Instead of when they are counting their M&Ms and making graphs and everything, why not put them on the spreadsheet and turn it into a pie graph of some other graph. You could do the same thing with science.
MT: Oh, yeah, Excel is such a simple program to use. Do you use that?
Coty: We still use Clarisworks. You see all of those kinds of things. The PE teacher, you could have them keep track of who does so many push-ups, all of those contests that they do. You could bring them down here and have them do that.
MT: Yes, that would be motivating. I could see that for myself with my exercise routine and results seen a graph to show weight lost and muscles gained. That's a great idea.
Coty: If only teachers didn't feel that they had to do the same things to everybody all at the same time. But you've got to understand that this is where I am different from a lot of people. I taught elementary school.
MT: That does make a difference.
Coty: I taught elementary school for seven years. And once you've been in elementary schools and you've had to do things with centers and stations to have four or five things going on at the same time. Then there is a big difference.
MT: How about in terms of your work
as a media specialist, are there some projects that you are trying?
Coty: Since Bob and I have decided that it's hard to get teachers to come in on their own, and that we can't expect them to come to a class on how to use computers for things like SuperTom or for going on the World Wide Web. So what we have done is to create our own class. He has gone to one eighth grade teacher and taught the first class and then that eighth grade teacher taught the next three classes. So we make two packets, one for us and one for teachers. This week I have taught it to three of the four seventh grade teachers in the advanced classes and the other one is just a little bit farther behind. I teach in the classroom and then I bring them down to the lab. And we go step by step. Are you familiar with SuperTom?
MT: No.
Coty: It's InfoTrack is what it is. We pay $1700 for it. It's like all of the Knightridder newspapers and it's encyclopedias and it's three or four hundred periodicals. It's like Dialogue, but it's for kids. For junior and senior high school kids. Information Access is the name of the company. It comes out of California.
MT: I'm sure teachers will be happy to hear about that if they're not already familiar with it.
Coty: So right now our focus is that we've decided that we have to teach the students, and I've decided that I love it.
MT: So would you call it information and technology skills?
Coty: Yes, the two together. The teachers can't do it all on their own. One of my goals for the media center is that I want it to be an instructional learning center rather than a warehouse. So in order to be an instructional learning center we have to go out to the school and teach the classes in information and technology skills. Teachers like that.
MT: And the teachers are learning at the same time.
Coty: So that's my goal right now to teach the kids. If we could only get them in here. . . I want them to use the technology but I've discovered that I can't get them in here with just books. If I can get them in here with technology then I can slide in the books if I have them ready.
MT: I like that metaphor, the media center is an instructional learning center rather than a warehouse. Are there any down sides to using technology? You know, we always tend to look at the bright side.
Coty: I think that some people think that technology can solve all the problems, especially in education. I don't think that technology by itself can solve the problems. I think that it is just a tool the way everything else is. So a down side to technology is that people will think that it will solve the problems and then they will think five years now the road, "Well, why are those kids test scores still so low and we gave you all that money for technology?" And it's because people think that that's going to do it and that isn't the answer. The answer is in the teachers and how the teachers teach.
MT: We've already talked about this, but do you have any other advice for teachers who are just beginning?
Coty: I would tell them to make friends with the media center because in a lot of schools the media center is a warehouse. And if you make friends with the media center, it is going to be able to give you a lot of the things that you'll need to get started, the material things. So make friends.
MT: Don't be a stranger to the media
center, right? How about your top five websites?
Coty: I really tend to go by what the teachers' needs are here at school. I've noticed that about myself that I don't go out on the web just for myself. I go out when people have a need. If you asked me about which search engine I personally like the best, I could answer that right off the bat?
MT: Which one do you like?
Coty: Hot Bot. (www.hotbot.com) Another good source that I like is something called, Too Cool For Grownups (http://www.tcfg.com) Have you seen it? I'll give you an issue. The man who does it lives in Chapel Hill.
MT: I think I did hear about that and the guy described it as the "Weekly Reader" for this generation of kids.
Coty: It comes out once every two months.
MT: It's for kids?
Coty: Yes, for kids. Have you seen one?
MT: No, I'd love to see one. Is it on the Web, too?
Coty: Yes, it's on the Web. And I also like Classroom Connect (http://www.classroom.net). Not as much as Too Cool for Grown-ups though. And I love SuperTom, that's a website for us. We cut way down on the number of periodicals that we bought and got this instead.
MT: How about your dream technology
project, if Bill Gates were funding it? What would you like to
do at this school?
Coty: I would want another computer lab and I would want five computers per classroom, all networked and I would want a CD Rom Tower and some things on the network but I would still want them to come down to the media center.
MT: So it would be a hub, right? A happening place.
Coty: Yes, so it would be a hub. I would want the money to keep it open at night.
MT: Do you think folks in the community would use it?
Coty: Yes, if the machines were up to date and they were here and we could pay to have the school open at night. I think that a whole lot of people would. And then the City Council would allocate money to keep it open.
MT: What a great community resource that would be!
Coty: Yes, and it wouldn't be just for the rich kids.
MT: Do you think equity in terms of computers is a real problem in schools?
Coty: I sure do. Just yesterday in a class I saw it, there were four kids in a class who knew a lot already because they had computers at home and nobody else had a computer at home. Nobody else knew as much about what to do with them.
MT: It's the same old story, right?
Coty: Yes, the same old story.
MT: That's a real interest of mine, too. The danger of technology simply repeating the problems of inequity of the past.
MT: Any other ideas about collaboration
between teachers and media specialists?
Coty: Yes, I'd like to see more of a partnership between media coordinators and teachers. Teachers don't always know about or don't see the need for the media coordinator as a partner. They don't know that my skills can help them. Technology is in there, too, you see. They see a partnership as more work and what they don't see is that they are investing time in informational skills or technology skills that will help their kids later on. They see it as only taking up their time and they have to get ready for the test. Change is hard for people. It's hard to change people's perception of a library, they think that we are a warehouse instead of being an instructional learning center. And we do have an administrator who is supporting us as we try to create a partnership. Media coordinators have sometimes tried and felt rejected. I don't think that kids going through college to become teachers are taught anything about working with the media coordinator. I don't think that they are. Maybe I'm wrong.
MT: I think that that's a very good point in terms of the whole collaboration question.
Coty: That's why Rebecca's [student interviewed, see Students' Responses] seventh grade language arts teacher from last year is serving this year as an advising teacher in the middle school language arts department at Carolina. She and I worked real closely together. She has asked me to come over there on November 10th and talk to the seniors that she has in this class.
MT: Very good.
Coty: That's why I'm jumping at that. I don't think kids in college have a taste of what a media coordinator could and should do for them. We have three brand new middle school teachers, I call them newbies. My personal goal this year is to keep them alive and well and to teach them about what I do and how I can help them.
And a goal is to work on building that partnership because of all the good things it does for the students. Media coordinators have knowledge and skills about information that is used to process information, locate it, access it, all of those kinds of things. In order to be a librarian you have to know a little about a whole lot of things. Teachers have in depth content knowledge.
MT: Sort of complementary bodies of knowledge there, right?
Coty: Right, and I was thinking about how to make it happen. It ought to be in educational literature. There ought to be workshops about this, this partnership. People need to have an open mind and be ready for change to be ready to share their learning.
MT: Do you think that being practically a brand-new media specialist and being so fresh right out of the classroom has enabled you to see that you've got to get these dynamics going both ways that you have got to go out to them?
Coty: Yes, definitely.
MT: I think that that is a valuable model of the media specialist going into the classrooms? That's pretty rare, isn't it?
Coty: Yes. This school used to be large enough that it earned the right to have two full-time media specialists. It's larger now and we have two media specialists, but we have lost the clerk. In other words if I were by my self I would not say, "Go out to the classrooms." I would barely be holding my head above water.
Bob Slentz-Kesler, Sue's partner in the media center, joins Sue and the MT.
MT: Bob, what's your vision of how the media specialist can support teachers in the classroom as you guys explore technology?
Slentz-Kesler: We teach students how to use the Internet, we're starting to do that but I also want the teachers to learn how to teach them as well, so that as the years go on they will become experts, too. I think that a lot of the teachers are benefiting from our teaching the students because we are doing it while the teacher is in the classroom. And some of them don't know it well yet. Some of them, I feel, that if they don't know it, it's not like they are going to let us know that they don't know it. It's almost like they have some sort of a complex and they don't want to admit that they don't know it. So training teachers to train the students is probably the most effective thing we do in the long run.
MT: So you think the best way to go is to actually go to the classrooms and work with kids?
Slentz-Kesler: Yes, yes, [turning to Sue]. Do you?
Coty: Definitely. You're repeating almost word for word what I said.
Slentz-Kesler: I like getting up and going out into the classrooms, too. It also helps the perception of us as media coordinators. We don't just sit down here and wait for everyone to come. We go out into the school.
MT: I think so, too. I think that's sort of a novel idea.
Coty: What would you wish that we could have at this school?
Coty: If Bill Gates gave you lots of money what would you want?
Slentz-Kesler: Faster machines. There's a lot of waiting time. More staff development, I guess. That's partly what we're doing and helping teachers to use it and to teach it. Things change so quickly.
(Vanessa, a first year
teacher walks up.)
Coty: Vanessa, just for my benefit, I want to know how much were you taught at Carolina about the relationship between the classroom teacher and the media coordinator?
Vanessa: Actually Carolina has a pretty good program for that. We went to several media centers in the surrounding schools and we had a media coordinator do book talks with us and told us about how they can plan with the teachers if we just give them a list of the resources that we need, which subjects or whatever. They taught us that the media specialist could be our best friend at times.
Coty: So you did have something?
Vanessa: Yes, we did; we had a lot.
Coty: How about you and technology. And don't talk about you at Carolina. Talk about you here at Githens. It's your first year teaching and . . .
Vanessa: How do I use it or how do I get my kids to use it?
Coty: Both.
Vanessa: I use it all the time. If I had more time after school or if there was another time that we could come in and use it that would be great. I bring my kids to the computer lab. But it's so hard because it's hard to get them down here and then there's not enough computers so you have to balance giving them different jobs. And some kids just don't do it. I wish I had more time personally and with my classroom. Of course, every time that I do, somebody's already signed up for the lab.
Coty: It's a popular place. There's always somebody who has already signed up for it.What is sort of your ideal in terms of how technology might be used in your classroom?
Vanessa: I'd love to have at least five computers in my classroom. I'd love to have more, but with five I could rotate so we could have stations. And I'd love to just have one, I think all teachers should have one and a nice one. Not one that has the memory of . . .
Coty: . . . of a cow?
MT: So that was something that you learned at Carolina that even in the middle school you can use centers and stations and have kids doing different things?
Vanessa: And it doesn't always work.
MT: But at least you have a vision of what could be.
Vanessa: Yes, part of my residency was at McDougle Middle School which is an Apple School of the Century. Every classroom had five to six computers in it and they were all networked across the school.
MT: Wow! Maybe it's a good thing that as a student teacher you can see what can be done and what can be had and so maybe that gives you ideas of what you can do with what little you have.
(Vanessa returns to laminator which has been heating up.)
Slentz-Kesler: I thought of something else to say but it's sort of anti-technology.
MT: That's okay. We're after the truth.
Slentz-Kesler: I wish we would invest as much long-term planning and strategy to getting more teachers and giving more attention to students than on technology.
Coty: The teacher-pupil ratio?
Slentz-Kesler: Yes, I think that it's too high. I think that that should be the first priority in each school system or at least devote as much attention and not just money but all of these meetings and committees that people have to talk about technology and what we're going to do. If that much energy were devoted to the problems of big classes then we'd have an easier time because the computers can't or technology can't fix what's wrong with the student-teacher ratio.
Coty: Bob, you're saying some of the same things that I said.
MT: I can see why you two work so well together. You do think a lot a like.
