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.  

 

 

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.  

Teaching Students to Respectfully Disagree

I observed a teacher this week who was doing a lesson on creating theories and finding evidence to support one’s thinking.  She used a text from our curriculum called, The Mary Celeste: An Unsolved Mystery by Jane Yolen.  It’s a great text for a variety of reasons, but one of the best things about the book is that it sparks such curiosity in students.  The cast and crew mysteriously disappear in the middle of the ocean in the 1800s and no one has ever figured out what happened to them

Besides the fact that this teacher artfully asked questions that got the students thinking deeply, what stood out to me the most was the way the students conversed with one another about their ideas and how, even when they disagreed, they did so in a way that respected the individual they were talking to.

The lesson began with the students sharing their ideas about what the characteristics of a good theory are. During this conversation, students eagerly raised their hands and shared things like, “it has to have evidence,” with others adding on, “the evidence has to be strong.”  After this, students were partnered up in two lines and did a sort of “speed dating” with their theories about what they thought actually happened.

It was during this time that I observed students saying things like,

“I respectfully disagree with you because…”

“I respect your opinion, but…”

“I can see why you think that, but have you thought about…”

“I thought the same thing….”

“Tell me more about…”

“Can you give me another example?”

“Can you tell me more so I can understand better?”

The purpose set by the teacher for this time was to get new ideas from their partners, evidence or theory.  No one got upset while they were talking.  In fact, students eagerly shared their ideas in authentic conversations.

When I asked the teacher for more information about how she developed this skill in her students, she said:

“I noticed a need for this because I was trying to have my students have deep and mature conversations, but for many this was new and they didn’t yet have the social tools to do this respectfully. Even as we get older disagreeing can be a difficult thing, so I tried to find visuals that the students could refer to when they were vocalizing their thoughts.  If they agreed, I wanted to give them language to further the conversation.”

Her plan is to continue to have her students practice this skill in literacy and then adapt it for math.  She thought this would be particularly useful for student discussions about the reasonableness of answers, which can be tricky for students of all ages.

 As I think about her lesson, I wonder if another element of success was the teacher’s use of the word, theory as opposed to argument.  Coming from the latin stem, argumentum, argument is literally defined as, “an exchange of diverging or opposite views, typically a heated or angry one.”  When we are asked to build an argument and then find support for our idea, the natural tendency is to fight with the person we are speaking with if they disagree until they come to our side.

The connotation of the word theory is quite different, less combative and more collaborative.  The word theory usually refers to a hypothesis that a person is formulating and still seeking information in the process to support the thought.  When talking to another person about his or her theory, the partner wants to help, to question or to add to the other person’s thoughts because it is not absolute yet.

With the volatile world that we currently live in, it is imperative that we teach students to respectfully disagree.  Being able to successfully communicate one’s ideas, as well as perceiving opposing thoughts as an opportunity to learn instead of a personal attack are key skills to success in making our world better.  

 

 

 

Who’s Doing the Thinking?

It’s no secret.  Education is a “mile-wide, inch-deep” endeavor with new ideas about what’s best cropping up in district initiatives all over the nation.  Some people attribute this to caring deeply about students and wanting what’s best for kids.  Others say the world is changing quickly and it is our responsibility to keep up.  Whatever the reason it seems like anywhere between two and ten new things are being added into initiative soup each year.  

With so many options to choose from, I’ve found myself frequently wondering how do we know what to focus on?  

A visit to my school this week from education author and presenter, Eric Sheninger, helped to shine light on the answer to this question. Initially, we were told his purpose was to visit our schools to do a “tech audit” of how the staff is integrating technology in the classrooms.  He did come into our classrooms and give us feedback on this,  but shared that his real purpose was to look at the level of thinking that was occurring in students, technology or not.  Essentially, his driving question was, 

“Who’s doing the thinking?”

I love how simple this question is, and yet how impactful it can be on any lesson. It transcends ideology as well as level and gets to the heart of what we want students to do in a lesson, become independent.  If we are the ones constantly doing the thinking for students then how will this ever occur?  

With adults, it’s the same concept.  As an administrator or coach, if I’m the one who’s doing all of the talking during a coaching session or professional learning experience, how am I really empowering my staff to continue the work when I’m not there?  

I challenge you this week as you are planning to ask yourself, who is really doing most of the thinking in this work?  If it’s more you than them, I encourage you to shift what you are doing, or just don’t do the activity at all.

Some small shifts you can make to increase the thinking in your learners:

• Make sure that students know what the success criteria of the lesson and the work they are doing.  Have them evaluate themselves at the beginning of the lesson as well as at the end.  If you’re feeling really awesome develop the success criteria with the students.  This lessens the number of, “Did I do this right? Am I done?” questions.
• Incorporate more peer discussion where students have to defend their thinking in response to a question, prompt, or idea.  Have students share their ideas and invite the class to evaluate the validity of the ideas.
• Talk less.  Pause more.  Thinking takes time.  I know it can be insanely awkward to wait, but when we rescue students at the first sign of struggle we are giving them the message that they are not capable and need someone to rescue them.  Pre-plan questions that you might ask to students who you know might struggle with the work so that they get there on their own.  
•  Plan for activities that have multiple paths of success.  It is rare that I have ever seen a worksheet or graphic organizer do this.  I know that many curriculum come with these handy options and understand why they are frequently used, but if we are really examining the level of thinking it’s usually just filling in blanks and boxes to win the school game instead of deepening or extending learning.  
• Make kids the creators.  Some of the best learning I have seen is when a teacher asks students to design something on their own based on their understanding of the learning target.  

By focusing more on increasing the level of thinking in our learners, and less on perfecting the latest initiative, we create a system for success that will transcend any subject, learning style or mandate.  As Todd Whitaker says, it’s people, not programs that make the difference in education.

When You’ve Had One Too Many Google Slides

Audio version of this post.

Email at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night.  Tomorrow school is cancelled due to inclement weather.  (Cue the cheering)

Email at 9:45 p.m.  All admin must still report to fulfill their contractual obligation. (Cue the booing)

Not gonna lie.  That last email didn’t exactly make my night, BUT it did lead to an amazing meeting Monday.  So, one might argue that the 9:45 email was actually better than the 9:30 one.  Let me explain.

When I got to school I sent an email to my staff saying I was available if anyone needed anything.  About 20 minutes later I received a response from a teacher asking if I would like to meet.  We had been trying to officially talk for weeks about an idea she had, but up until this point it was all hallway conversations here and there.  Turns out her power was out so this was a great opportunity for us to actually create a plan as well as a warm place to be.  Win. Win.

The teacher was planning out a social science inquiry unit about the Age of Exploration.  Her problem was twofold:

1.  She frequently offered her students choice in how they would demonstrate their learning, but they ALWAYS seemed to use Google slides.
2. Finding good resources for the students to explore in the Hyperdoc she was creating was super time consuming.

Enter two of my favorite things:  Curation & Meaningful Content.   I learned about curation when listening to a podcast from Jennifer Gonzalez’ Cult of Pedagogy website when I was an instructional coach.  (Sidenote: If you do not listen to her podcasts or at least check out her website periodically you are missing out on a WEALTH of tools, strategies, and just plain good stuff.)

There are many different ways to approach it, but basically curation is taking the concept of a museum curator and giving it a classroom context.   Students might create a playlist of videos that are all relevant to a topic they are studying, make a list of articles, images, and videos that answer a question or even a create Top 10 list.  The idea is that they are sifting through a wide range of information and choosing the best items to fit.  In addition to giving them a purpose for watching and reading numerous content, it also causes them to have to apply critical thinking skills such as determining importance and synthesis.  Check out her post for many more ideas for curation applications.

Curation fit perfectly into the explorer unit.  Students are first going to create their own question under the larger umbrella question of, “Is exploration always a good thing?”  After reading and watching a few common texts and videos, the students will next be tasked with curating their own list of videos, texts and images that answer their personal question.  The only requirement is that each resource on the list must be summarized with reasons for why it is included.  These curations will then be reviewed by their peers (creating even more shared ideas) and inevitably be used in future years as well.  Genius.

Books Make a Great Foundation, But…

Which led us to our our next dilemma.  What kinds of resources did we really want students going through?  Where would we start?  When we first started chatting it was suggested that we take the students to the public library to find texts to use as their primary sources.  Although I am a super fan of the library and will always believe in the power of a physical book, I thought we should also ponder digital content like YouTube, Blogs, and websites.  This would give them an opportunity to explore media resources that they were already regularly consuming outside of school, but with a critical lens.

As I brought this idea up to the teacher she said she loved it, but wasn’t sure where to find blogs that would be useful.  She had a few websites that she liked and a couple of videos, but hadn’t seen much else.  I did a quick search of, “Social Studies Blogs” and found a treasure of resources created by history teachers for other teachers to use with students.  (#sschat on Twitter is also a great place to look) I assured her that the beauty of curation was that we didn’t have to be the sole experts finding resources, it was up to the students.  My guess was that they would surprise us with what they knew or were able to find.  Just in case though we planned to make a list of a few good blogs and websites as well as some YouTube channels. (Crash Course Kids is one of my fave’s.)

Slide to the Left…Slide to the Right…

All of this curation led us back to problem number one:  What were the students going to do with all of this knowledge that they had curated and synthesized?  Although this teacher had offered choice in a variety of other units most students defaulted to the ever popular Google slides presentation.  It’s not that Google slides aren’t a good way to present information, but if students are always demonstrating their learning in the exact same way are we really helping them to be prepared to contribute to the world outside of school?

Knowing that with their friends they spend a lot of time on YouTube we decided to start there.  Students would come to class prepared to talk about their favorite YouTube videos that they have learned something from.  They would present their videos in small groups and work to answer the question, “What makes a good presentation?” From this small group discussion the students will create a list as a class of qualities that make a presentation engaging as well as informational.  These qualities will become what the students use to assess themselves on their work.

After this class collaboration the students would then get to work in stations to learn about some other options they could use to answer their individual questions including:

• Adobe Spark – Students can use this to create videos with narration, creative graphics or scrolling webpages.  It’s a pretty intuitive site if you have not used it previously.  
• WeVideo – This is an online platform for creating videos.  I have to give a huge shout out to Jennifer Leban (@mrsleban), our creative technology teacher at one of our middle schools for teaching me how to use this super fun tool! (I have a future post dedicated to my learning with this one coming soon!)
• Seesaw – This is a great tool for student creation, reflection, and collaboration.  It can be used in so many different ways.  One of the best parts is that it is easy to share with parents.  

Students still have the option to use Google slides for their presentations. They just need to make sure that they meet the requirements that the class had come up with together.  By doing this it will hopefully shift their presentations into more complex and engaging content as opposed to just bullet points and fun transitions with a few graphics.  Or, they don’t have to use technology at all if they don’t want to.  They have the option to create their own idea or use one from their teacher’s list like creating a book or a live interview.  

This entire plan is designed to spark not only curiosity, but to also develop four of the six C’s of creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. The teacher plans on using reading, writing, science and social studies as part of the interdisciplinary unit giving students an opportunity to see education as a connected process as opposed to independent ideas.  After the students learn about historical exploration they are also going to be learning about space exploration to ponder how we can use the past to help us to understand or better create the future.

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The two problems discussed in this post are not unique to the teacher I was speaking with.  As a teacher and a coach I would sometimes spend hours on end looking for the best resources to use with students.  This process would many times leave me frustrated blaming “the district” for not providing me with everything I need.   However, when I reflect on what skills students truly need to be successful in school and beyond I think we are doing a disservice to students if we are always the ones providing them with the content they should be reading.  We need to teach them not only how to find information that answers their bigger questions, but also how to evaluate the quality and validity of the information they find. 

I truly applaud this teacher for reflecting on the needs of her students and taking the risk of trying something new with a unit that could easily be taught in a very traditional way.  Moving forward she will be working mostly with our instructional coach, but it was such a treat to have time to talk this out with her on Monday.  I cannot wait to see the creative ideas and projects that evolve as a result!  #greatfulforasnowday

A Good Question Can Solve Any Problem

Audio version of this post.

Judge a Man By His Questions Rather Than By His Answers

Seven years ago I would have seriously struggled with this quote.  Coming out of the classroom into the role of an instructional coach, I thought my sole purpose was to solve any problem that was brought my way.  In some ways this perception was accurate. When I first started at Mill St., a big part of my focus in building relationships was finding out what my staff needed and being the solution to whatever that was.  This built both trust and credibility, but as I would later learn, was not the most impactful way to be a coach.

I’ll never forget my first 1:1 meeting with Melissa Hampton, Director of Professional Learning.  She had come to visit my building to find out how coaching was going and what she could do to support me.  I was so excited to share with her all of the work I had been doing with staff members on everything from learning targets to reading and math workshop.  She too shared my enthusiasm, but then asked me a simple question that has impacted my practice to this day, “What do you think would happen if you were no longer here at Mill?  Would the instructional practices continue?”  I paused for a minute, thought about it, and honestly wasn’t sure.  I knew I had done a good job of modeling, providing resources and coming up with ideas, but what I realized in my earnestness for solving problems was that I was leaving teachers out of the most important part of the process, the thinking behind the planning and creating.

Melissa continued the conversation with me, letting me share my thoughts, pausing (for sometimes what felt like an eternity), and asking questions that moved my thinking forward.  She never once told me, “this is what I would do” unless I asked explicitly for her opinion.  By the end of the meeting I had many ideas and plans for how I would move forward with my coaching that I was genuinely excited about.  She was clearly a wealth of knowledge, but never made me feel like I wasn’t capable.  In short, she had empowered me to reach my own goals.

Long after Melissa left I continued to think about what coaching moves she used and how I could get better at building the capacity of those whom I served.  I realized that what impacted me most were the questions that she asked.  Open-ended and reflective, she genuinely just seemed curious about me and my thoughts.   As a result, I started working daily to improve in my ability to ask meaningful and reflective questions.  The first time I heard someone say, “you ask really good questions” was truly one of the best compliments I had ever received.  By the end of my coaching tenure, I left feeling like the work would last, not because of my expertise, but because through thoughtful questioning & reflection, I helped build upon the talent that already existed within my staff.

Asking Meaningful Questions

A few months into the new school year, I have started thinking again about the art of asking questions, a skill that is often touted as important, but seldom developed as the complex process that it really is.  My ability to ask good questions has really come down to four things:

• Committed Listening
• Curiosity
• Believing the answer is in the room
• Practice, Practice, Practice

Committed Listening

First, the obvious.  It is nearly impossible to ask a good question if you haven’t been listening.  At my first coaching training with the fabulous Cindy Harrison back in 2012, I learned about something called, “Committed Listening.” (Not to be confused with Active Listening which I will forever associate with this episode from Everybody Loves Raymond) I’m not sure where it came from, but basically you are listening without:

1. Thinking about what you will say back
2. Finding fault
3. Piggybacking
4. Formulating a piece of advice
5. Giving a solution

My experience is that people have a tendency towards one of these when they are in a conversation.  For example, my mother is a notorious “Piggybacker” or “One Upper,” if you are an SNL fan.  Every time I share a story with her she has to tell me something related that happened to her.  These connections usually starting with the phrase, “If you think that’s bad, listen to what happened to me,” or “I know exactly how you feel” followed by a lengthy story.  The person you’re talking to assumes that it’s making you feel better by commiserating, but often it just makes the other person feel like you weren’t listening. (And you weren’t right? You were formulating your own story as the person was talking.) You probably could have guessed this from my prior story, but numbers 4 and 5 have been my personal struggle.

So how do you move forward if you know you struggle with one or more of these?  The first step is recognizing that you have a problem.  (Thanks AA)  Now that you are aware that you have a problem, you can recognize when your habit is creeping up and direct your mind back to the person talking.  A strategy that helped me as a coach with this was taking notes while the person was talking.  It was impossible for my mind to both type on the computer and also formulate a piece of advice or solution.  Whatever strategy you use it is going to take practice.  It’s okay to have setbacks, but keep reminding yourself that in the long run being a better listener leads to better questions which leads to increased ownership of the solution.

Curiosity 

In his book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, Ian Leslie makes the argument that curiosity creates more insight and innovation, but thanks to the information rich world we now live in, people are losing their ability to ask good questions.  Further, he posits if we more regularly flex our curiosity muscles we become more empathetic towards others resulting in a positive effect on society as a whole.

When I stopped thinking about how I would respond or formulating solutions while the other person was talking, it opened up my mind to be genuinely curious about what the other person was saying.  I started picking up on little details that in the past I would have missed due to the internal dialogue happening in my head.  My ability to ask better questions improved immensely because I was fully present in the conversation.

A great example of this is a conversation I had with a teacher about a boy in her classroom who was frequently misbehaving.  From first glance it appeared that he simply didn’t care about school.  He didn’t want to do the work, and would run out of the room often with other staff members chasing him down. This happened most frequently at the start of each day.  As the teacher told me stories about how he would spend the day disrupting the class I felt her frustration.  It was curious because he was only in first grade and appeared to already despise school.

Instead of coming up with some sort of behavior modification plan, I started asking her what she knew about him.  What were his strengths?  What was important to him?  Was there anything missing that we might not be considering?  The more we talked I could see the wheels turning in this teacher’s mind.  She started sharing that this little boy was very close to his mom.  He had a difficult home life and coming to school was a sense of comfort, but also anxiety because he was missing feeling that connection.  What she decided to do was giving him extra positive attention and share things with him about herself that he could connect to like superheroes and her family.   He loved spelling so that became his first activity of the day.  The change in this little boy was huge.  I’m not going to say he became a perfect angel, but the disruptive behaviors dramatically lessened and he started demonstrating a desire for leadership in her classroom.

The Answer is Always in the Room

“The answer is always in the room” is a classic coaching tenet.  What it really means is that you completely believe in the strengths and talents of everyone around you.  Because of this, you know that both you and the person you are working with are fully capable of coming up with a solution to any problem or puzzle that arises.

The implication for this belief is that it increases both the rigor and tenacity of the questions being asked in the conversation.  More open-ended questions are offered, because with enough reflection, I know we will be able to come up with a solution to whatever we are pondering together.  Additionally, if we reach an impasse, I will continue to probe for more information or ask questions in a different way until we come up with a plan that we both believe in.

In retrospect, I wish I would have approached my students with this philosophy when I was a classroom teacher, particularly my struggling students. Instead of telling them what to do when I saw them get stuck, I could have thought about a question that would have gotten them to find the solution themselves.  I thought by rescuing them I was doing my job, but I now realize what I was really doing was enabling them to always depend on me.

It’s not always easy to do in the moment though.  When I’ve worked with teachers on this issue, we first examine the learning target and talk about what we want students to get out of the lesson.  Next we brainstorm what students might struggle with.  Finally, we create a list of 2-4 questions that the teacher can ask to help a student to get themselves unstuck.  Sometimes, as we went through this reflective process we even ended up devising better ways to teach the students during the lesson, which prevented the struggle in the first place. 🙂

Practice, Practice, Practice

The biggest piece of advice I can give about asking questions is that you simply need to practice.  When I was a coach we met every Friday and got to practice skills related to coaching in a “critical friends” group.  Besides practicing daily with the conversations I was having with teachers, this was the best because I actually had someone listening and giving me feedback on my process.  It helped me to create goals for myself and refine my practice.

Another helpful way to improve is to videotape yourself teaching or talking with a staff member.  Once you’ve gotten past the excruciating experience of watching yourself on video (so hard to not nitpick every little thing), it can be a very powerful way to look for patterns in the types of questions you are asking and the effect you see happening on the person/group you are speaking with.

Here are some things to ask yourself as you reflect:

• (Pattern Seeking) Am I asking more open-ended or closed questions?  What is the ratio of questions that probe for more information vs. move the learner forward for action vs. result in reflection?
• (Positive Presuppositions)  How am I phrasing my questions in a way that show the other person I believe in their capacity and ability?  (For example:  As you examine the student work, what are some of your findings? vs. Did you look at the student work? Click here for more examples.)
• (Type of Questions & Impact)  What questions am I asking that seem to have the greatest impact on the other person’s ability to:
  • Create their own solutions
  • Move forward to action
  • Reflect
  • Delve deeper
  • Come back to the target if the conversation gets off task

A Change in Perspective

The other day I was having a conversation with the instructional coach in one of my buildings about some ideas that she had.   As we were finishing our talk she said, “Christina you ask really good questions.  People should call you the Questionnaire Extroardinnaire.”  I smiled, thanked her for the compliment and felt genuine gratitude for what seemed like my own “Melissa Hampton” moment.

For most of my life I believed my greatest asset was my intellect and ability to create solutions.  Although these are both strengths to be valued, I would much rather be known as someone who asks great questions and builds the strengths and capacity of others.  If we are going to create learning environments where impactful and innovative practices flourish, as opposed to new fads that die with the next leader, we need to make sure that the ability to ask good questions is cultivated in every learner in the school.