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.  

 

 

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.

Predictions for the Next Decade of Education

I recently read this article from the Atlantic titled, Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong.  It’s an interesting read for a variety of reasons, but what stood out to me was the plethora of evidence that confirms what many of us have known for decades: the standardized testing movement simply doesn’t work.  Despite our efforts to systematize learning and add more “rigor,” we continue to end up with the same results along with an ever-expanding achievement gap.

The author, Natalie Wexler poses the questions, “

“What if the medicine we have been prescribing is only making matters worse, particularly for poor children? What if the best way to boost reading comprehension is not to drill kids on discrete skills but to teach them, as early as possible, the very things we’ve marginalized—including history, science, and other content that could build the knowledge and vocabulary they need to understand both written texts and the world around them?”

She pokes holes in many common literacy practices in the U.S. as well as presents examples of teachers who are finding success in trying out different approaches.  The article got me thinking about education overall, how we have tried so many new things, abandoned many ideas, gone back to the same ideas, but education has, for the most part, looked the exact same way for generations.

The start of a new decade feels like a fresh start for everything, education included.  There is no guarantee of what the next 10 years will bring, but I am optimistic that this decade will bring what the past hundreds of years have not, an education system that is valuable for all.  There are a plethora of amazing educators who are leading the charge and sharing their stories on social media and beyond giving me hope that we can and will create powerful educational experiences to help ALL kids succeed.    

Predictions for 2020-2030

The ideas I present in this post are a result of two decades of personal experience working with students, a lot of reading, watching & learning, and most of all, connecting with amazing educators across the globe.  (Thank you PLN!)  You will notice that no idea is brand new.  I believe that we already have the answers which we seek, it is the way that we use them with students that has the power to shift education for the better. 

Less About the Right Answer & More about Great Questions

One of the chapters that stood out to me in The Innovators Mindset was the chapter where George Couros discusses the importance of students being “problem-finders.”  This was sparked from the work of Ewan McIntosh. The premise is that we spend a lot of time working with students to come up with solutions to problems, but what we really need in a dynamic world is students who can find problems and innovative ways to solve these problems.

Besides the fact that solving problems with predetermined answers can be monotonous and insanely boring, (geometry proofs anyone?), if we spend all of our time giving students problems to solve with a finite answer we are giving students the impression that the purpose in life is to simply get the right answer.   Students leave school thinking there is a simple methodology to life and if they follow the success formula given to them they will be successful when really the opposite is true.  We need creative thinkers, students who can look at the world with a new lens and make it better. 

A great way to develop this skill is by teaching students to ask great questions and giving them opportunities to explore ideas that are meaningful to them.  Genius Hour or Passion Projects, QFT, TQE Method, and Socratic Seminar are just some ways that educators around the globe are working to develop the questioning ability in students.  Each of these methodologies helps students to not only create questions of their own, but they encourage rich discussion among students as well which can lead to new ideas from students.  It is exciting to think about what kind of learning will take place when we spend more time empowering students to question, explore & discover as opposed to encouraging them to simply find the right answer.  

Experiential Learning 

In the next ten years, whether virtual or in-person, learning will extend more and more beyond the four walls of the classroom.  Mentioned in the Wexler article, research confirms students learn best when they have experiences and background knowledge to be able to comprehend the texts they are reading.  Creativity is the number one quality that employers are currently looking for.  Reeves & Reeves suggest in their book on creativity, The Myth of the Muse that one of the ways to enhance creativity is through inspiration from experiences.  The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recommend starting science lessons with a phenomenon so that students have a shared experience to ask questions and develop theories from.  Although I still think the best experience is one in real life, Augmented and Virtual Reality makes this a daily possibility for students.  

One school that is doing an amazing job at teaching from this approach is the GEMS World Academy in Chicago, Illinois.  In this school, the teachers plan out larger units that explore a broad question related to an essential idea.  Included in each of these are field trips to a place in the city where students can explore.  From the shared experience students then create questions they have and spend the unit exploring answers to the questions they create.  Each subject area is tied into this big idea including specials.  The result is that students see learning as interconnected as opposed to limited to one subject area which enhances their creative ability to connect ideas and create new ones.

A More Personalized Approach to Education

If you would have asked me if this was possible ten years ago my answer would have emphatically been no.  It takes too much time.  It’s not necessary or realistic.  It is amazing what a decade of experience can do.  I now believe it is more necessary than ever.  As you will hear me mention throughout this post, in the dynamic world we live in we no longer need students who can just get the right answer, we need students who are curious, think creatively and can find new problems to solve.  We want students to leave school with a positive view of themselves, recognizing not only what their talents are, but how they can use them to make a positive impact on the world.   

When I say a more personalized approach to education, I am not saying that every student would be doing something different in every moment of the day.  Students need foundational knowledge in order to be creative, ask questions and generate new ideas.  However, I think it’s a different approach to looking at the school day.  Design39 Campus in California has been exploring this idea for the past five years.  You can check out this link for more information, but their day is split up into Integrated Learning Time, Deep Dives & Explorations.   During Integrated Learning Time is when they explore content across curriculums for purposeful application of skills.  Deep Dives is time for students to explore their passions in an academic setting.  Explorations give students time to explore new things they are interested in trying.  I love the way they organize their day because it gives students foundational understanding as well as time to explore passions and build new ones.  For more information on how the idea began and the success they are having with students, check out this podcast from Modern Learners.

Going Gradeless/Meaningful Feedback

At some point, we have to recognize that grades are just meaningless little letters that students look at and then toss.  Even when we add in comments to the grade or SBR number students associate more meaning with the grade and typically ignore the feedback.   Both John Hattie and Susan Brookhart have written books on the topic and the research shows that feedback is a much more effective learning tool for students over grades.  

Many educators are already moving towards a feedback-heavy or gradeless classroom.  (check out the #gradeless on Twitter) Instead of using grades or fear of punishment to motivate students to complete their work, they have shifted their instructional practices to have students set goals that are meaningful to them.  The teacher and/or peers give them feedback on progress towards their goal to move their learning forward.  Learning then becomes a continuum as opposed to an endpoint.  I’ve linked a few useful resources below if you are considering making this shift.

6 Tips for Going Gradeless by Starr Sackstein

More Teachers are Going Gradeless.  I Asked Them Why.  EL Magazine July 2019

Teachers Going Gradeless (TG² Podcast)

Collaboration Over Competition

One of the best videos I have seen this year that has had a huge impact on the way I think about the classroom is Why School Should Be about Us Instead of Me from Trevor Muir.  Besides the fact that it has a totally Hamilton-esque vibe, the premise that school sets up a culture of competition as opposed to what our world needs, a culture of collaboration, rings completely true.  I’ve watched it probably 20 times.

I was definitely one of the students who groaned every time I heard it was time to work on a group project.  There was always the people who did everything, a few people who did nothing, and then somehow a project evolved.  It never felt to me like there was any purpose in working together.  As a teacher, I tried to circumvent this issue by assigning roles to each student, but even this had uneven results with students continuing to work in silos as opposed to creating something together.

After reading a wonderful post by John Spencer about collaboration, what I realized was missing was students seeing the value in one another’s strengths and using those strengths to build something greater than what could be done alone.  Instead of starting group projects by assigning roles, have students share their strengths, set goals for the project together and give them opportunities to give one another feedback along the way.  This creates greater meaning for the work and also mirrors the type of work they will be doing outside of school.  In the working world students will be collaborating daily, we have to increase the amount of collaboration they do throughout the day, but it also has to be done in a way that is meaningful so that it doesn’t just become another one of the dreaded group projects.

If you’re looking for ways to create this type of classroom, Trevor Muir’s new book, The Collaborative Classroom, filled with practical ideas and examples, is a great place to start.

The End of Labels 

This last one I am most excited about, although I think it might take a little bit more time.  I predict that gradually the labels we use in education, “gifted, special education, EL” will disappear.  As we start to shift the focus of school from everyone ending up in the same exact spot to encouraging students to be curious learners who explore their passions and develop their talents, the need for labels will go away because we will see students for their greatness of whom they already are, not some arbitrary standard we want them to become.   

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“Logic will take you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

We have spent the past hundred years approaching education from a logical standpoint.  Students need to learn ______________ so we will teach them ___________________.  We will set standards that everyone needs to reach and if they don’t reach those standards we will fix them with _____________________.   This is a very logical approach if we are working with products, but hasn’t always served us well with students.  We need more creativity and flexibility if we are going to reach all students.  

I am optimistic about the shifts I continue to see happening in our schools.  I believe that through these shifts we will have students leaving school with more creativity, empathy, equity, and curiosity than we ever have in the past.  It is inspiring to think about the wonderful world that these students will create.  

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

A Culture of Inquiry Vs. A Culture of Learning

We were discussing data at an EC-12 meeting this week when one of my colleagues posed a question I had never really considered before:

Would you rather have a culture of learning or a culture of inquiry in your building?

He had recently gone to a training for a grant he was a part of and the trainer had focused part of the day on this question.  The discussion that evolved from this question ended up being the most meaningful part of the day.

This got me thinking about how I might answer that question and its implications for education.  I’d say traditionally most schools have focused on the former. Mission statements of educational institutions across the country frequently include phrases like, “to create lifelong learners” or “develop a love of learning.”  Since we want learning to continue way past students’ school days this focus makes sense to me.

But what if we instead focused on building a culture of inquiry in both our staff and students?  What might that look like?  What would the benefits be?

In their new book, Inquiry Illuminated, Goodvis, Harvey & Buhrow spend their first chapter making a case for an inquiry-based culture in classrooms.  They postulate that students who are supported by teachers in inquiry:

• Live a life full of wonder and curiosity
• Explore ideas and topics and issues that are central to their interests and concerns, linking these to the wider world
• Read and respond inquisitively with an inquisitive mind and a skeptical stance
• Think creatively to express and share new learning

To me, this means that in an inquiry-based culture, learners (both staff and students) are encouraged to ponder & discover problems or issues, ask deep questions about their cause, and spend time researching and exploring a variety of possible solutions.

From an educator stance, an inquiry-based culture would mean that we would take the time to ponder the why first before jumping into solutions.  For example, my kindergarten team was recently meeting in a PLC discussing how many of their students have been struggling to formulate questions about basically anything in class.  Instead of jumping right to, “let’s give them questions stems and organizers to help them to better formulate questions,” they spent the first part of the meeting talking about the root causes of the issue.  A variety of ideas were offered, but what they realized was that students were lacking in curiosity, not the ability to produce questions themselves.

From this realization, they designed a variety of activities to be done at home and at school including a Wonder Wall, “See, Think, Wonder, Talk” activity with pictures, question cards and more.  After the meeting one of the teachers even sent out a link to this article from ASCD about cultivating curiosity in students to further spark ideas.

Professional learning opportunities for staff could also look different from a culture of inquiry stance.  Instead of starting with outcomes for the day, participants might be asked to first think about a problem of practice.  They would then be given time to talk about its root causes with peers and finally have time to develop solutions to be implemented in the school or classroom.  At the next professional learning opportunity, staff members could talk about the results of their work in teams and then either problem-solve another issue they were pondering or go more deeply into the first issue.

In education, many times we are quick to jump to solutions before thinking about what might actually be causing the issue in the first place. Sometimes this fixes the problem, but other times it makes us appear like we are a “squirrel-based” culture, jumping from one new best practice to another.  This results in frustration from many parties, and in many cases does not actually fix the issue.

I do not think that we should go full forward into developing a “Culture of Inquiry” over a “Culture of Learning,” but rather the two seem to be intertwined and necessary for success in our schools.  If educators and students are going to be able to come up with plausible viable solutions for the problems they find then they have to be skilled at learning.   Having a voracious desire for knowledge can only lead to curiosity and asking questions.

I am definitely interested in exploring this topic further.  I plan on creating a bulletin board in the staff lounge or by the copy machine with the questions,

“What does a culture of inquiry mean to you?”

“What does a culture of learning mean to you?”

“Which do you think is more important in our school? Why?”

Their answers will determine the next steps we take as a staff, but at a bare minimum, I hope to spark the curiosity that these questions evoked in me.

If you are interested in developing more inquiry in your classroom or school I highly recommend reading Inquiry Illuminated by Anne Goudvis, Stephanie Harvey & Brad Buhrow or Comprehension & Collaboration by Stephanie Harvey & Harvey “Smokey” Daniels.  They give a great framework as well as a multitude of examples and strategies that can be applied to any grade.  I have to give a huge shout out to my EL teacher, Kory Curcio for recommending the latter.

I would love to hear any other ideas or resources you have enjoyed related to this topic! Christina