Choice & Relevance for the Win

This past Sunday was Mother’s Day.  I got to spend an entire almost two hours in the car driving to one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago to pick up brunch and bring it back home.   It was absolutely glorious.   Besides the anticipatory drooling over the amazing spread coming my way, for the first time in almost two months, I was alone, in my car, and I could choose to do whatever I wanted.  

The first half-hour I spent playing music and singing (rather loudly) all of my favorite songs.  As I got closer to the city the music buzz started to wear off, and I began thinking it would be nice to use this time to catch up on some podcasts I hadn’t had time to listen to much since we had been home.  Noticing that the Cult of Pedagogy’s latest podcast was on feedback, a topic that we have been discussing heavily lately, I decided that was definitely the right choice and off I went on a learning journey, actually finishing that episode as well as another one on creating meaningful screencast videos. (1.5 time is amazing for that kind of thing)  

By the time I got home I was absolutely famished (driving in the car for almost an hour smelling your favorite food is totally intoxicating & aggravating at the same time), but filled with pure joy from the inspiration I got from those two episodes.  I couldn’t wait to talk to my instructional team on Monday to share with them the episodes and new ideas they had sparked.  There was a renewed sense of urgency and excitement for my job that I haven’t felt since we’ve been going nonstop for the past 6 weeks.  

This entire experience brought me back to my doctoral research on motivation as well as years of experience working with a variety of different learners.  When given choice and relevance to current work or future goals, the learning becomes meaningful, internalized, and action-oriented.  When it is forced and/or disconnected, learning is superficial and often short-lived.  

Too often in education, this important aspect of learning is neglected or forgotten in favor of a “common understanding.”  The assumption being that if the information is presented to everyone in the exact same way, that their learning path, as well as mastery, will also be the same.  Of course, this perspective completely ignores the fact that human beings come with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, all of which impact the way that knowledge is received, internalized, and acted upon. 

A better, more meaningful approach is to focus on the common vision and/or goals first.  Layer in choice and autonomy in learning next with relevant learning experiences.  Regardless of what the learners choose, the goal of a common understanding will naturally result because the goal is clear and has been developed together.  The learners will be ten times more committed to the work because their background, interests, and experiences have been honored throughout the process.  

Remote learning has created conditions ripe for experimentation as well as innovative learning experiences for both students and staff.  Teachers are regularly seeking out new ways to reach their students while they are learning from home.  Not from a directive to do so, but from the inner drive to help their students to feel connected and succeed.  As administrators, our job is not to tell our educators what to do, but to build with them a clear shared vision of the work so that they are free to tinker, experiment and create.  We need to keep learning alongside them so that as we venture on this new experience together we continue to bring relevance to everything we do.  In doing so, we create the ultimate conditions for learning where everyone can experience that blissful feeling that comes from connecting autonomy with purpose. 

 

What’s Your Classroom’s Reading Culture?

As an admin or coach do you ever have a moment when you wish you could go back into the classroom?  This week it happened to me when I was attending a professional learning experience facilitated by my instructional coach and literacy coach about literacy instruction.

The purpose of the PL was to give teachers an opportunity to reflect on their literacy practices individually, explore some articles and books of their choosing (linked in a hyperdoc), and then have a conversation with their peers about the elements of literacy instruction that they felt had the greatest impact on students.  (Using the “Event-O-Meter” Protocol from the book Unlocking the Power of Classroom Talk)

After having time to think about the way I structured literacy when I was a teacher, there were many things that I did that helped students to grow.  At the beginning of my career, I learned the importance of having a balanced approach to literacy because not all students learn to read in the same way. Because of this, I incorporated independent reading, small group work, word work and writing daily.  I taught students explicit strategies, regularly gave them feedback and helped them to set future reading goals based on this feedback.

As I progressed to the later years in my career, I started incorporating more choice, conversations about reading with peers and reflection.  We did service-learning projects that helped them to learn to about the world and the difference they can make.  Students blogged, created videos about their books and could choose from a wide variety of activities to demonstrate mastery of skills and strategies.  Students often had organizers to complete along the way and were provided with questions to answer to help facilitate deep thinking and discussion.

All of these things definitely made a positive impact on students and their ability to interact with any type of text.  However, after doing some deep reflection and listening to the conversations of my staff, I realized that for most of the years, my reading instruction was all about me and doing what I asked.  Even though I gave choice in activities, I was the one who created the projects to choose from, questions to answer and direction of most conversations.  Students had time to read independently, but it was always with the purpose of answering my questions, practicing skills, creating a project or coming prepared to talk in a group discussion.

I started thinking about the message that my literacy instruction was sending to students and I was pretty sure it was something along the lines of…”the purpose of reading is to read the words, think about the text and complete some sort of task for a grade.”  Many of my students loved learning and loved reading which they probably continue to do today, but I’m guessing that there are other students who stopped reading the minute it was no longer a required school activity. 

 If I ever went back to teaching, my first priority in literacy instruction would be the reading culture of my classroom.  We would start by exploring students’ reading identity which would be more than just their preference of genre or series.  I’d ask questions like…How do they view themselves as a reader and what do they think they want to grow in?  What are their strengths and how can we use them?  (Question from a great blog post by George Couros)  

We would talk about the purpose of reading in our classroom and the many reasons for reading beyond school.  We would discuss what we want our reading culture to be like in our classroom and what our steps and expectations are for achieving that culture.  I’m picturing something like this…

The students of Dr. Podraza’s classroom enjoy reading and will be given opportunities to develop a love of reading daily.  The reasons why we read vary depending on our purpose.  We may be reading to find answers to questions we have, to expose us to new ideas, to prepare to talk with a partner or group, or purely for the enjoyment of it.  When we are reading, we will approach the text in a way that meets the purpose.  As we read new information or a genre, we will look at it with with an open mind and think about whether the new ideas confirm, contradict or complicate our previous thoughts.  We may not all enjoy the same type of book, but that is okay.   We will be given opportunities to read a variety of different texts in Dr. Podraza’s classroom, but will always have the choice to read the types of texts that we enjoy most.  It is our job to grow as readers so that we can read any type of book that we want, learn about the world around us and make an impact in evidence-informed action.  We will push one another’s thinking and help one another to grow.  Dr. Podraza’s job is to introduce is to new ideas, help us to stretch our brains, and work with us to create goals that are meaningful and give us feedback.  To help achieve our goals we will read individually, in small groups and in partnerships.  We will be given opportunities to explore questions and issues that are important to us.  We will get to create based on our learning and when it makes sense to do so.  Dr. Podraza will offer suggestions of ideas, but we are always welcome to develop projects on our own.  We are readers because we want to learn, to question, to have fun, to collaborate with peers, and to grow in our ability to see other perspectives and empathize with others.  

In essence, we would develop a reading identity as a group first.  The instruction would come next, all built around the dialogue and agreements we had as a class.  My literacy instruction would involve more time for students to just read, simply for the joy of it and to develop their reading interests and passions.  When they worked on projects, they would have a purpose beyond just turning it into the teacher.  I’d still meet with students in small groups and 1:1 conferring etc., but there would be more authentic collaboration and discussion in general among students instead of just with the teacher.  

I’ve heard the quote from Peter Drucker many times that,”Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”  In the context of literacy, this statement especially holds true.  No matter how many great strategies we teach kids or interesting work we give them, if they only see the purpose of reading as something they do to get a good grade in school, then our impact is only as far as the end of the school year.  When students are immersed in a classroom culture where reading is valued for authentic reasons they will continue to pursue and enjoy reading for a lifetime.  

The One Question That Will Change Your Data Review Conversation

Ever been to a data review meeting like this?

Data is projected for everyone to see.  

You group students into those who are exceeding, meeting, and not meeting the target expectation.

Everyone gives reasons for why students have reached varied levels of proficiency.

In the last 5-10 minutes, you come up with some ideas for what to do for these students, focusing mostly on the students who are struggling.  These ideas almost always include the following:  reteaching skills in small group and/or a “double-dip” with a specialist. 

Everyone agrees to do said ideas, but these ideas either get pushed to the wayside for new standards being taught or people end up planning the language and strategies of the reteach lessons on their own.  For the most part, everyone ends up in the same place at the next meeting.

I’ve experienced hundreds of meetings like this as both a participant and facilitator.  It can be incredibly frustrating and make everyone feel like they’re wasting their time.  However, I’ve also experienced the opposite where conversations result in specific goals and rich plans for student learning resulting in huge growth for kids.

So what’s the difference?  How can we have meaningful data conversations each time?  

It’s actually a lot simpler than you think, but requires an openness on the part of the participants.  This past week we had a data review of our winter Fountas & Pinnell data planned for each grade level at their weekly 60 minute PLC.  The objective of the meeting was to answer the question, “Is our Tier One instruction meeting the needs of our students?”  

We started out similarly to the description at the top of this post.  We looked at data and gave possible reasons for the results.  This year started with 46% of our 2nd grade students not meeting the grade-level benchmark in literacy, but this percentage had now dropped to 29%, a significant amount in a short few months.  This growth had truly been a group effort that included:

• Coteaching with the EL teacher and reading specialist
• Small group instruction with the reading specialist outside of the classroom
• A deep data dive into phonics skills using the Core Phonics Inventory run by our school psychologist that was monitored and checked in with the team every six months. The results shifted instructional practice and grouping.  
• Parent volunteers who were trained by our reading specialist and one of our 2nd-grade teachers to come and read with ALL kids daily
• A 5th-grade mentor who also read regularly with students
• The instructional coach working with the team to develop a Tier One phonics progression with learning experiences
• A retired teacher from Jefferson regularly volunteering and working with groups as well as reading with individual students as well

When we got to the part where we discussed what the classroom teachers were doing instructionally they attributed the success to their small group instruction.   Like what has happened hundreds of times before, we could have stopped there.  Everyone knows what small group instruction looks like so it must be the same right?  

Nope.  

When we were about to move on, I asked a simple question to one of the teachers, the question that I would recommend asking every time you meet as a group.

“What does your instructional practice actually look like?”  

From this one simple question, we got a variety of answers that ended up resulting in a huge shift to the direction we were going in as well as a concrete plan for next steps.  One teacher explained that she has the students do the reading for group at their desks and then the time she spends with them is actually on talking about the book and developing instructional strategies.  Another teacher explained that she was working on questioning which was different from another teacher on the team.  The third member of the grade level team said that she gives students at least 10 minutes each day to just read independently.

As we delved more deeply into the specifics of their instruction we realized as a team that students were frequently meeting with teachers and getting systematic instruction, but that the amount of time students had to read independently varied greatly.  Teachers were honest in the fact that they were worried that many students weren’t able to do this for extended periods of time on their own.  This was the reason why they had come in as such struggling readers at the beginning of the year because they were mostly “fake reading.”   

We celebrated as a team how far the students had come from the beginning of the year, but really started to push one another’s thinking on independent reading.  Essentially, how could students continue to grow if they were never really reading longer than 10 minutes on their own?  

Instead of leaving saying, let’s make sure our students can read at least x amount of minutes a day without a concrete plan for how to do this, we made sure that the team was supported with ideas as well as resources to help.  Our instructional coach brought up Jennifer Serravallo’s engagement inventory that many on the team had used before. She offered to come in and do it for the teachers so that they could work with students.  Another part of the plan was freezing some of the group work that was happening so that the teachers could monitor independent reading for “fake reading” as well as independent strategy use.  This would be done by conferring.  They planned to redo their “Good Fit” book discussion as well as their processes for students filling their book boxes which was planned outside of the independent reading time.

The team ultimately decided they would set a goal for the students to read independently for 20 minutes a day.  This benchmark would be progress-monitored and discussed regularly at PLC meetings.  The conversations that they would have as a team would be explicit discussions of conferring strategies, students who were struggling with independence followed by specific plans of action moving forward.

Another realization that came out of this conversation was the importance of academic language and that students might be missing understanding simply from not knowing the vocabulary.  An additional plan was created for this outcome as well.  The meeting finished with a few minutes to spare and a sense of accomplishment.

It is amazing what can be accomplished in a short time when the goal is clear and the participants share deeply.  DuFour created these PLC Questions decades ago:

• What do we want all students to know and be able to do?
• How will we know if they learn it?
• How will we respond when some students do not learn?
• How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?

Each of these questions plans plays a critical role in the power of a PLC, but if we don’t have deeply explicit conversations about any of the questions, then they are relegated to simply a discussion tool to run the organization of a meeting.  The power in the PLC is the expertise of the participants, trusting one another, benefitting from one another’s strengths and ideas.   The next time you are planning or participating in a PLC, give explicit time to share how you teach, not just what you did.  Making this tiny shift will create an incredible ripple of effects on student learning.  

 

 

What Is My Principal Really Looking for in my Summative?

It’s that time of year where many educators (myself included) are preparing to meet with their administrator for the glorious summative meeting.  Throughout my career, I’ve experienced a wide variety of these that have been anything from a short five-minute conversation to an hour-long meeting where I was required to bring a binder of evidence and plan to talk about my data for at least half of it.

Even when I received a lot of direction for what to prepare for, I never really felt like I knew what I’d be walking into other than some sort of rating at the end along with information on whether I’d be hired back for the following year.  Now that I’m on the other side of the fence so to speak I thought I’d help out my fellow educators and tell a little bit about what many administrators are looking for when we meet to talk with you  at your summative.

A Reflective Conversation

One of the most important qualities an educator can have is being highly reflective.  At this meeting, we want to hear your thoughts on your teaching for the year, both positive and areas for growth.  My assistant principal and I ask our teachers to come prepared to talk about examples of their strengths as well as areas for growth, favorite lessons this year, a student who has grown the most, a student who continues to be a concern, and progress towards the goals they set at the beginning of the year.  We don’t expect a portfolio, but we do want to have an in-depth conversation about the reasons why our teachers chose the examples they brought.  This allows us to see how they reflect on their practice as well as gives us an opportunity to talk about ways we can support them if they need it.  (p.s. Tying in the examples you give to the school goals or vision is an excellent strategy!)

A Celebration

A summative meeting is definitely a place for a celebration!  Even though the meetings typically take place 2/3 of the year through, there are plenty of examples of great things happening in classrooms.  To prepare for the meeting, my assistant principal and I write a narrative with specific examples from each domain.  At the meeting we share this with our teachers in a more casual conversational format.  Be prepared to smile as your administrator shares all of the good stuff with you! It’s wonderful being able to share specific examples of things our teachers do really well. 

An Opportunity to Grow

In addition to celebrating you, expect some feedback from your administrator regarding your practice.  When I asked my school leadership team what they wanted in the summative meeting, the most common trend was that applicable and actionable feedback was most important to them.  Because of this feedback, as I prepare for the meeting I always have the Danielson components in front of me as well as notes from my visits to my teachers’ classrooms throughout the year.  I then write up a few specific ideas for the teacher that will elevate the work they are already doing.  Your administrator will probably want to know your thoughts on their ideas so think about how you might implement their idea or questions you have regarding their feedback.  The feedback portion is another way to demonstrate that you are a reflective educator who considers growth an important part of teaching.  

Feedback for Me

I view this meeting as an opportunity for my own growth as well so I always end the meeting with an opportunity for my teachers to give feedback and ask questions.  This helps me to get better at my job as well as understand the needs of the building that I might not have considered.  Even if your administrator does not directly ask for it, I recommend coming to your meeting prepared to share ideas you have.  

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I know that many people worry about the summative meeting because it’s where educators receive their rating and if untenured, communication about whether they’ll be back next year.   This definitely is a component of the meeting, but for my admin team at least, it’s not the focus.  Our greatest goal is to get to know our teachers and students best.  As much as we try to be in classrooms, we don’t always catch some of the things in the highlight reel or things that we could help with.  Summative meetings are an opportunity for us to see more of the good and the work being done in classrooms as well as continue to grow through reflection.  

If you are currently preparing for a summative meeting, please remember, it’s all about being able to brag a little, reflect a little and impact the culture of the building through your feedback.  Walk in proud, prepared to share all of the amazing stuff you’ve been doing!  Your administrator is looking forward to getting to celebrate with you!

 

  

Sometimes You Just Need to Go All Gerry Brooks

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

I need a break, how about you?

It’s February.  As much as routines are in place and students are usually flying academically this time of year, it can also be an extra stressful time with second-trimester report cards around the corner, summative evaluation meetings, and students pushing limits with unusual behaviors.

Knowing this, my instructional leadership team and I decided to dedicate our staff meeting this week to the connection part of our #unlimitedgrowthandconnection goal of the year at Jefferson.  Using an app called, Goosechase (Thanks Cult of Pedagogy! 6 Ed Tech Tools You Should Try in 2020), we created a scavenger hunt game for our staff to play in teams of three around our school.  The prize?  A duty-free hour lunch on me at a restaurant and day of their choosing.  

Titled, The Big Game of Awesome, the scavenger hunt involved teachers taking either a picture or video of them completing a wide variety of challenges worth anywhere from 400 to 2000 points.  The app includes a leaderboard that teams can check on as they compete upping the fun of the game.   As teams complete challenges, their pictures and videos are added to a feed as well.  

We decided to plan a variety of challenges for the staff that would include an opportunity to laugh, connect with one another and learn from each other.  Below is a slideshow of the challenges (called missions in the app) we created:

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As I started talking at the staff meeting on Thursday, a twinge of nervousness and self-doubt hit my mind and I thought, Are people going to be mad?  Will they think we are wasting their time?  Would they have preferred time to just work?  Thankfully that feeling ended up being completely quelled as I watched the teams race out of the library to start the missions.

My two favorite challenges ended up being Sing a Song of Jefferson and Go All Gerry Brooks.  The song mission showed people’s creativity and it warmed my heart to see our teams making up songs about our school’s mission.  The Gerry Brooks mission gave people permission to be irreverent and brought a levity to some of the things we take so seriously.  When teams came back to the library at the end I played most of them for the staff causing everyone to break out in uproarious laughter. This one, making fun of the actual challenge itself I’ve watched about 10 times since and it makes me laugh every time. 

This experience reminded me we don’t always have to be so serious in education.  The game gave our staff an opportunity to get into one another’s classrooms, learn from one another, build each other up, laugh and grow our community as a whole.  The feedback received was incredibly positive and all of this took less than an hour.  It was just what we all needed.

On a final note, next time you’re considering a structure for a PL or staff meeting or lesson with students, I highly recommend the GooseChase app.  It’s free and super easy to set up.  🙂  If you want to play the same game we created, you can search for The Big Game of Awesome in the app.  (And I swear they didn’t pay me to say any of this)  

 

 

 

 

A Mathematical Conundrum

It’s Wednesday.  I’m sitting in my office with two students waiting for a third to arrive when one of them shares this epiphany.

“I couldn’t stop Dr. Podraza.  I worked on this problem the entire weekend.  I looked up articles.  I had my parents Google stuff.  I got everyone involved.”

“And I don’t think the math is actually right.  After all, it doesn’t make sense that my answer was in the billions.”He then went on to explain why he thought his answer was implausible citing relevant facts.  

There it was.  The thing educators all dream of.  A student who was so engaged in learning that he pursued it for the pure joy of it as opposed to turning it in for a good grade.  

So what caused all of this determination and excitement? 

Right before Winter Break, I was talking with these same students about how they hated the current way they had to learn math because they were given problems that were either out of context, completely fake, or that they were being forced to solve them in a way that was inefficient. 

“So what do you think we could do about it?  How would you like to learn math?”  

“We think math should be connected to the real world.  We should be able to solve problems about things that we can connect to, not some weird story about a monster at the bottom of a made-up lake or worse, Felicia’s cookies (this is an inside joke).  We get that we have to solve problems and learn the math behind it, but it’s frustrating when we are told we have to use a specific way of doing it.”

“Ok, so what might that look like?”

“Well, there’s stuff going on in the world.  Like global warming.  Stuff that’s actually a problem and math is probably related to it.  We want to solve problems like that.”

This was how the Top Secret “Tangerine” project began.  We decided at that meeting that the three of them would create their own YouTube Channel (real name forthcoming) based on real-world math problems.  It would be a weekly show where they presented a math conundrum to their viewers based on something happening in the news.  There would be opportunities for viewers to suggest problems or topics as well, but the work would always be done by the students.  They’ve even tossed around the idea of writing their own curriculum one day.  

I’ve seen this type of enthusiasm in students hundreds of times throughout my career and it’s always related to the same type of work.  Ryan & Deci would attribute it to something called, “Self-Determination Theory” which hypothesizes that any human needs competence, relatedness, and autonomy to be intrinsically motivated.  In non-theoretical terms, it’s really just offering students relevant and meaningful work that they can connect to.  Genius Hour, Passion Projects, Project-Based Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, & Service Learning are all examples of how educators are currently harnessing the power of relevance in their classrooms.

So here’s what I’m currently grappling with.  Students would love to pursue this type of work all day every day if we let them.  The group of kids in the Tangerine project has requested to come to school as early as 7:00 a.m. to work on it and would stay until five or later if I had the time.  It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that school should be a place where everyone pursues projects all day long, but in reality, that may not be the case.  It’s made me wonder…

• What would school look like if we gave kids longer periods of time to work on big projects instead of the way we currently teach?  What are the opportunity costs of this approach?
• How do we balance teaching students’ skills with working on the projects themselves so that they can handle the cognitive load required?  What types of teaching structures might work best for this? 
• Do we teach the skills in isolation first and then give students time to explore projects or do we have them work on projects first and teach the skills as they come up? (the chicken or the egg question)
• What professional learning would educators need to successfully approach the classroom this way?  Are there any mindsets shifts that need to occur (within myself and others) related to this?

I wish I could tell you I had an even semi definitive answer to these questions, but unfortunately, I don’t.  I keep hearing that we live in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), so it makes sense that we should give students experiences where the answer is not immediately obvious.  However, within this world of unpredictability, there are also constraints that we all must adhere to so it also seems relevant to provide students with structured learning experiences as well.   The only way to really know how much of each is to continually experiment in the classroom and see what works best with our students. 

 

 

 

Am I Doing It Right?

During my five years as a coach in Naperville, we implemented at least 15 new initiatives, maybe more.  So it makes sense that I was frequently asked, “What’s the right way to do this?” or similarly, “Am I doing it right?” Questions of this variety reflect our desire as educators to do our best.  Many of us grew up in an education environment where there was almost always only one path to the correct answer.  When we became teachers that mentality had already been ingrained in us so it makes sense that we would continue to ponder correctness of our actions in the classroom.

The problem is there are so many “right ways” to teach depending on our students that there really isn’t an easy way to answer that question.  When teachers ask me if they are doing it right, I always respond with, “what’s the impact on the students?”  If you are seeing students grow, then you are “doing it right.”  If not, it doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong, it just means it’s not working for that group of students.  And that’s okay.  It just means we need to reflect on what we know about our students, tweak our approach and try again. 

Some years one structure or teaching strategy will have a phenomenal impact on kids and other years it will absolutely flop.   The best teachers are constantly in “beta” stage, regularly creating, reflecting on student growth and refining their work in a continuous cycle of improvement.  When something doesn’t work they don’t give up or blame the students, they try something new from the plethora of strategies in their own toolbox or reach out to their PLC or PLN for more ideas. 

Change is inevitable and constant in education.  As we implement new strategies and structures, it is important to not get hung up on perfection of the thing being implemented, but instead, place greater importance on the impact we are having on students.  Asking the simple question, “what’s the impact on students?” will always lead to “doing it right” for our kids.

Do We Need Grade Level Standards Any More?

I’m writing this post as a question, not a statement for a reason.  I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I’m honestly not sure.  Writing this post is an effort to organize my thoughts.

This struggle is mostly connected to the conviction I have that students are all individuals who have a variety of strengths and talents.  The primary function of education should be to help students to recognize and develop these strengths and talents to their fullest capacity.  Saying that students must reach the same standards at the end of the year based solely on their birth year seems counterintuitive to this notion.  It’s giving the message that everyone can and should grow at the same exact rate each year.  It is rare that I have found this to be true.

Additionally, most grade-level standards are broken into different subject areas.   This places emphasis in school on mostly academic learning areas like math, literacy, science, and social studies.   Students whose strengths lie in areas outside of these traditional subjects seldom get an opportunity to shine in school because of this.   

Breaking standards into different subject areas also sets up the false dichotomy that subjects are always separate from one another.  In the world outside of school, new ideas and solutions are overwhelmingly created using interdisciplinary work.

Finally, no matter how much we tell ourselves that grade level standards-based reporting is better than traditional grades, it still communicates to parents and students that the purpose of education is to get some sort of score.   We can share the descriptor for the grade level standard, and continue to give them feedback towards mastery, but when a number is factored in, it still shifts motivation towards a number instead of the reward of progress and learning.  

What If…

Instead of using grade-level standards, what if we looked at learning as a continuum?  Instead of breaking this continuum into subject areas, it would incorporate broader, ideas.  Asking questions, constructing ideas with viable support, collaborating with others, creating plans and executing long-term projects are just some of the ideas that would incorporate multiple subject areas.  

Instead of using numbers or letters to communicate progress to students in report-like format, what if we met with students weekly in conferences to discuss their progress on the learning continuum.  At the beginning of a cycle, we would set goals with students on areas they wanted to work on based on the continuum.  We decided with them artifacts that would show they had progressed to the next stage in the continuum.   We gave them time to work on the standards individually as well as in groups.  These conferences would be recorded and shared with parents.  Parents could even electronically be a part of the conference through a digital tool like Google Hangout.  This would make education truly a collaborative effort between home and school.

Instead of putting students into classrooms based on age, what if we put them in multi-age classrooms? We developed their leadership and collaborative skills at all ages.   We celebrated mentorship and the ability to help others, instead of placing a focus on being better than others.  Better yet, what if we grouped students into classrooms based on areas they wanted to explore more deeply?  We put kids who had mutual passions in the same classroom who were passionate about the same things and empowered them to explore these ideas.  What might happen to kids’ perceptions of the purpose of school then?

But…

What about time?

What about college?  

What about basic foundational learning that everyone needs to know?

Setting up school this way would definitely require a different way of looking at the way we organize the school day.  Instead of teaching in subject blocks, students would need to work for longer periods of time.   

I recognize that colleges currently select students based on their grades and ability to score highly on standardized tests.   Getting rid of grades and grade-level standards definitely muddies the water on this, but should we really never change what we are doing solely based on a system that colleges set up hundreds of years ago?  The world is changing exponentially each day.  Colleges need to change as well.  If we continue to keep our system the same, there is no motivation for colleges to change either.  We need to stop viewing change as an unwanted thing and embrace it for its possibilities.

There is no reason that this shift would abolish foundational knowledge.  When learning is seen as a continuum, any type of knowledge can be included.  Learning to read, write, draw, perform, code and build foundational skills for math (the list could go on) would all be included.  

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Using grade-level standards is an easy way for us to communicate progress to parents because it is a system that most people have experienced and understand.  As a principal, I see student success in a variety of standards on a daily basis.  I also see students struggle.  I hear conversations about meeting standards.  I see kids celebrated and I see kids defeated.  I am wondering what the shift in the percentage of celebrated success might be if we looked at education differently.  Ultimately, is ease of communication really the standard we want to use in deciding how we give feedback to students and structure our schools?  

 

The Phrase in Education That Needs to Go

Teach with Fidelity.

If you want to get me riled up, tell me I need to do anything with this as the standard.

I remember when I first started teaching almost 20 years ago, I was told by a colleague that the first year we implemented a new curriculum we had to, “teach it with fidelity.”  After that, we could maybe make changes, but the first year we had to do every single lesson exactly the way that it was written in the exact order that it was written.  The thought behind this was that by teaching every lesson we would have a better understanding of how the program worked.  If we didn’t teach it exactly as the curriculum said, it was our fault that kids weren’t learning.

This philosophy made sense at the time.  It was the era of No Child Left Behind where there was a heavy focus on “research-based programming.”  According to the rhetoric (being propagated by politicians), our schools were failing and we had to do something about it.  Curriculum written by mythical education gurus was suddenly the answer to everything.  Teacher weren’t the experts.  Curriculum writers were.  And so began the fallacy that curriculum has all the answers.

Teaching With Fidelity is an archaic phrase that needs to disappear.   I might argue it’s actually one of the most harmful phrases in education today.     

If educators are told that they cannot change any lesson and must teach it exactly in the order it is written, it nullifies their ability to respond to the learners in their classroom.  This is counterintuitive to responsive instruction, an effective instructional practice that results in growth in students because it meets them where they are and grows their abilities from there.   When we teach every student every lesson exactly the same way we are harming both kids who can go beyond the curriculum as well as the ones who are not yet ready for the lesson.  It takes away the ability of educators to select lessons that are connected to students’ lives and interests which takes away their ability to make lessons meaningful.  The result is boredom, frustration or even apathy in students.  

Teaching with Fidelity is harmful to school culture as well.  It sends a message to teachers that I don’t trust you and your expertise and experience in teaching.  Unfortunately, there is a dichotomy of “us vs. them” with teachers and admin in some schools and this phrase only adds to that tension.  We have to trust our teachers.  They are the ones who work with students daily.  They know the students’ strengths and the intricacies of the next steps in instruction because of the relationships they work hard at building.  Because of this, we need to empower them to make instructional decisions, not undermine their competence by expecting them to follow a box.

This phrase also results in a system where the ability to confirm is more highly valued than innovative ideas.  It tells both students and teachers that there is only one right path to learning.  If I cannot teach or learn exactly the way someone else tells me then there is something wrong with me.  This is the complete opposite of the world outside of school where creativity and innovation are sought out and celebrated.  We need to provide learners with school experiences that empower them to own their learning so they are prepared for the multitude of experiences they have outside of school.  I struggle to see how teaching with fidelity does that.  

I’ve seen this quote from Maya Angelou quite a bit lately on social media.  

“Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better.”

We know better than Teaching with Fidelity.  We know that getting to know our learners and building on their strengths and talents as is the best teaching practice to help them continue to grow.  The idea that there is one program that can reach all learners is archaic and misleading.  John Hattie names Collective Teacher Efficacy as the number one factor being strongly correlated with student achievement.  We need to empower our teachers, not take away their ability to make informed instructional decisions.

We know better.  Let’s do better.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Empowered Learning Experiences

I recently finished, Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners through UDL by George Couros and Kative Novak.  Full of inspiring anecdotes as well as thought-provoking ideas, the book is split into three sections:  

1. The Core of Innovative Teaching & Learning
2. Characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset
3. You are the Change You Seek

One of my favorite things about the book is the reflective questions that come at the end of each chapter.   Every chapter was meaningful, but the one that has felt most meaningful for me to reflect on today is Creating Empowering Learning Experiences from the Core of Innovative Teaching & Learning section.  When I was in the classroom as both a teacher and instructional coach, my main focus was how to best engage learners.  I thought that if I could plan highly engaging lessons then I would be fully meeting the needs of my learners.  

Previous work of George’s as well as this chapter has helped me to realize, if I am not providing empowering learning experiences, I am not adequately preparing them for the world outside of school.  When we engage students we are the ones who make learning meaningful and interesting to students, but when we empower them, they get to “develop the skills and motivation to solve meaningful problems.”  They are learning as a result of an internal drive which creates a cycle of perpetual learning, a skill that is incredibly important in the quickly changing world we live in.

Empowered Learning involves choice, developing better questions, as well as finding & solving meaningful problems with the opportunity to create.  At the end of this chapter, the following questions is asked, 

What are some examples of “empowered learning” in your classrooms for students and in your school/organization as professionals?  How are you empowered as an educator, and how does that empower students in learning?

It got me thinking about how I was empowering learners when I was in the classroom as well as steps I would take if I were still in the classroom to create more empowered learning experiences.

Previous Classroom Literacy Practice:  When I was in the classroom I tried to offer as much choice as possible to students.  In literacy, they received a weekly schedule with options that they could choose from to plan out their time that included things like read to self, blog post, meet with the teacher, responding to reading, or talk with a partner about their book.   They got to choose the books they were reading as well as the order they wanted to accomplish the tasks.  When we met 1:1 or in a small group, I would give them positive feedback as well as goals for their next steps in learning.

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I offered a lot of choice to students, the activities were dictated by me.  Empowered learning involves giving students opportunities to create learning experiences that are meaningful to them.  If I were in the classroom, I would also include an option for them to choose what they wanted to explore in literacy.  I would also try to balance the amount of feedback I was giving to the students with the number of questions I was asking them about how they felt about their progress in literacy and the new goals they wanted to set.  I would give them more opportunities to set goals for themselves as opposed to their goals being dictated by me.  In elementary this would involve giving students a choice board of goals and letting them pick so that I could support them in becoming independent in goal selection.

Previous Classroom Research Practice:  I used to give students a broader topic to study and let them pick which aspect they wanted to research.  The students learned how to ask questions, take notes, and write a research paper with headings for each section.  Usually, these research papers would involve some sort of creative expression at the end that they could choose from that ranged from making a diorama to creating some sort of video.  

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I taught students to ask deep questions during the research process, it was limited to when we were doing research.  If I went back into the classroom I would include asking questions as a part of daily practice woven throughout the day.  I might start a lesson showing a picture or with a short passage or even just projecting the learning target and have students ask questions that they are curious about.  We would have a Wonder Wall and I would give students opportunities to explore these wonderings.  Another problem with the research I was having students do was that the end product was solely connected to me, the final product reader.  If I was having students research now, I would want them to look for problems in the community, school or world around them and come up with solutions.  The end product that they create would be related to solving that problem.  I would provide opportunities and encourage students to connect with “experts in the field” to get more ideas.  We would share our ideas beyond our classroom by putting them in a blog, inviting the community in or asking meaningful stakeholders for feedback on our ideas.  I could still evaluate all the standards I was covering in this process, it would just take a different process on my part.

Previous Math Practice:  I love math and have always loved teaching it.  One of my frustrations as a kid was that I always had to go at the same pace as everyone else when I was ready to move on so I wanted to make sure that my students never had that frustration.  When I first started teaching this looked like me assigning all of the same problems to the students after I had taught a lesson and then students could come up and check their work with myself or my assistant when they were ready and could then move on to choice activities like games or projects.   In my last years of teaching, I would pretest the students on the upcoming standards on Friday.  On Monday they would get a sheet with the list of standards that they had already mastered and a schedule for the week that included activities like meet with the teacher, a web-based self-paced program or more problems in our workbook.  There was also a column for how they would know they had mastered the standards they hadn’t yet by the end of the week.

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I provided choice for my students and gave them feedback on their progress as well as expected them to monitor their understanding, a lot of the math was dictated by me or the program my district had provided for enrichment.  To improve on this process I would provide students time to explore questions they have related to math.  In my last years of coaching we had students explore questions like, “How is math related to gymnastics?” or “How is math related to animals?”  It would be anything that students were interested in.  They would have time to research and then present their findings.  To make this even better I would stop teaching math as a subject on its own and look for ways to incorporate it into the questions that students were asking in class.  I would give them time to explore these ideas and create meaningful products. (like mentioned above) 

Instead of putting students on a web-based program, I would give them opportunities to create videos to help other students in math using applications like WeVideo or Explain Everything or Seesaw.   They could create games based on the standards or I would give them opportunities to work on math projects that solved problems connected to meaningful topics.  They could create problems or projects for other students to solve as well.  I would give them time to explore math-related problems and see what math they could use to solve these problems.

Final Thoughts

I am in no way criticizing the teaching that I did in the past.  I provided my students with many engaging as well as empowering (and even compliant) learning experiences.  I am proud of the work I did and loved every minute I got to spend in the classroom with my amazing students.  I am also not saying that it is possible to empower learners every minute of the day in the classroom.  As discussed in this chapter, there is a time for every type of learning in the classroom: compliant, engaged or empowered.  

The purpose of this reflection was to help me to be a better leader as we move to give students more empowered learning experiences in the classroom.   By reflecting on what my next steps would be, I can further clarify what types of learning experiences I am looking for as I go into classrooms.  This will enhance my ability to have a deep discussion and mentor anyone who is looking to empower learners.  My next steps will be working on my own practice as a leader who empowers her staff.  I am looking forward to talking to my teachers about their thoughts on empowered learning and to co-create our idea of best practice in learning experiences at Jefferson School.   

“Empowered learning experiences should be something that we, as educators, create with our students for our schools and classrooms.” – Innovate Inside the Box, Chapter 3