You Gotta Try This!

Just about one year ago, in my first blog post (Resolution 2017?), I made a pseudo resolution to post a reflection each week on what I was reading, working on in school, or what was taking place in education.  It wasn’t really a resolution because the start of the new year wasn’t the inspiration, but rather something I read in George Couros' book "Innovator's Mindset" and the subsequent visit to his blog page  George Couros: Principal of Change.  In short, he emphasized the importance of getting your thoughts down on “paper” and out to others for feedback.  This will be my 46th post of the year, I only posted once in June and July due to the slower pace at work, and I have to say I am surprised at how much I look forward to looking back at the week each Saturday morning.  Posting my reflections forced me to process the week and allowed me to organize my thoughts which then led to the unexpected benefit of them being more accessible during conversations with colleagues.  That is when the real value kicked in for me.  

Rick DuFour & Michael Fullan’s observed,  “If there is one consistent lesson that emerges from studies of the change process, it is that no one leader has all the energy and expertise to reform...a district, improve a school, or meet the needs of students in the classroom each day” (DuFour & Fullan, 2013, p. 24).  Change, and the ability to sustain it, can’t come from one person, but must be brought about through nurturing the ideas of the teachers throughout the district and that nurturing takes place through conversations.  My conversations with teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and even our young people and their parents were more natural because my thoughts on the schools was more accessible thanks to these weekly reflections.  Of course, you don’t have to put your reflection out there through a blog, but I can’t tell you the number of times someone brought up a topic “from the blog” in a conversation with me.  Sometimes it came from people I had no idea were even “following” what I was posting, but it still  led to some great discussions on education...it has been awesome.  So, like I said earlier, you gotta try this!

Because it is the end of the year, I thought I would do a Casey Kasem American Top 40-like breakdown of the “greatest hits of the year”.  However, because I don’t really have any “hits”, I am limiting it to the Top 5 most viewed “Greenmen Steward” blog posts from 2017 plus an extra post that you probably never read, but I still thought was worth pointing out.

1 The Red Queen Effect and the Importance of Professional Development

           February 4th

    2. Oh Good....Are They Just Reading?

           April 29th

    3.  A Call to be more Cognitive in an Accelerating World

          November 4th

    4. Raising Young People as Human Beings vs. Manufacturing Machines

          November 25th

    5. Average is Officially Over

          December 16th

   +1  Cognitive Jiu Jitsu in the Classroom

            January 21st

If you are still reading this post, I wanted to be sure to thank you for taking time from your day to read through these posts and even more so if it led to a conversation with a colleague.  Happy New Year!

References

DuFour, R. & Fullan, M. (2013).  Cultures built to last: Systemic PLCs at work.
Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Need an Alibi this Break?

I wanted to provide an alibi for when the chaos of the next few days passes and you are relaxing on the couch wondering what you can do to look busy, so your better half doesn't ask you to help clean the dishes or take down the tree.  These, Potential PLC Resources  are articles, blogs, or videos that I have come across and, I believe, would be great to consider for Professional Learning Community (PLC) discussions.  Many are thought provoking while others touch upon important pedagogy.  By the way, digging deep into these resources is not only a great alibi to use for your spouse, it works for pets as well.  There have been many times I can sense my dog staring at me just waiting to make eye contact, so she can guilt me into taking her for a walk or letting her out on the leash.  I use these resources to avert my attention from her eyes until she goes off to put the same guilt trip on my wife.   The fact that these resources can overcome the pull of the pitiful look you see to your right is a testament to the power of the resources.  Imagine the discussions they could generate in your PLC.  

I do not claim to be an “expert” in any of the four core areas (even Science) covered in this resource.  As I have mentioned in “Instruction Leader = Questioner not Expert” I stress that school leaders should acquiesce to the classroom teacher’s expertise, but should have enough of an understanding of the topic and pedagogy to ask appropriate questions that lead to reflection.  Classroom teachers who are not being reflective of their practice make their expertise null and void if they don’t adapt to the needs of the young people in their class.  In that light, these resources help with that much needed reflection.  As an example, if you are a math teacher, I would highly recommend checking out The Best Way to Teach Subtraction  from Christina Tondevold and Graham Fletcher’s  3-Act Lessons from the resource list.  These two are experts in their areas and the two links are just the tip of the iceberg for ideas they share that can be applied in the classroom.  Both believe the best way to help our  young people to become more mathematical is to put them in situations that allow them to see patterns, make connections, and form relationships between concepts that lead to better understanding of the mathematics.  It is about the process for them and not the product (answers).  

Hopefully, you will have time between the holidays to sit down and enjoy exploring through their lessons as well as some of the other links on the Potential PLC Resources page mentioned.  I hope you have a restful break with family and friends. Thanks go out to all of you, from around the world, who have taken the time to read through this blog throughout the year. Feliz navidad y próspero año nuevo (Spanish), веселого Рождества и счастливого (Russian), Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku (Polish), 즐거운 성탄절 보내시고 새해 복 많이 받으세요 (Korean), Frohe Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr (German), Щасливого Різдва і щасливого Нового року (Ukranian), Feliz Natal e Feliz Ano Novo (Portuguese),  Joyeux Noel et Bonne Année (French), and finally to everyone else Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Average is Officially Over

This was a long time coming, but with yesterday’s announcement there will most likely be a new tax code implemented this coming year, which will squeeze the middle class a little more, and I think it is safe to say average is officially over.  I say this is a long time coming because, as educators, we have been aware of the signs for at least the last decade if not more.  Specifically, during the mid to late 20th century in the United States, there were opportunities to succeed if you were committed and worked hard. In fact, this became the mantra of my generation (Generation X), and the state of the union led us to believe that a public education would provide us with what we needed to be successful once we graduated. However, that has changed. 

Thomas Friedman touches upon this shift in his book “Thank You for Being Late”.   In the mid-late 20th century there were many factors that favored the “average” worker in America.  “America dominated the world economy...Outsourcing was limited...the push and pull of globalization was mild...Companies could afford in house training of their workers...because the pace of change was slower, whatever you learned in high school and college stayed relevant and useful much longer...machines, robots, and software had not advanced to the point...where they could not undermine the bargaining power of both industrial and service unions” (Friedman, 2016)  As teaches, we saw this coming and, for the sake of our young people’s futures, were quick to agree with Linda Darling-Hammonds assessment that we must be working towards “preparing students to work at jobs that do not yet exist, creating ideas and solutions for products and problems that have not yet been identified, using technologies that have not yet been invented” (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 2).   What we didn’t realize is that included us as well.

Friedman points out that in the late 20th century there were high-wage/high-skilled jobs, high wage/middle-skilled jobs, and low-wage/low-skilled jobs.  In the 21st century, in this age of accelerations, “the high-wage/middle-skilled jobs have gone the way of Kodak film” (Friedman, 2016, p. 204).  The other two categories, at either ends of the spectrum, still exist, but the high-wage/middle-skilled jobs are being replaced by technology.  I point this out because, as educators, if we are to meet our charge of preparing young people for the 21st century, there needs to be a shift which parallels Friedman’s observations.  Teaching needs to shift from a high-wage/middle-skilled profession to high-wage/high-skilled profession.  When I say “middle-skilled” I am referencing a teacher centered didactic classroom in which the main pedagogical practice is a transfer of knowledge to our young people as if we are filling an empty vessel.  As I mentioned in “Is Education your Job, Career, or Calling”, teaching is not an easy job.  However, the skills needed to implement a “Curriculum Transfer Model” classroom are not the same as those of a “Preparing for Life Model” (See “Guilty as Charged”).   In my mind, the shift to “high-skilled” includes a shift to a becoming more diagnostic in the classroom and shifting to a more student centered classroom (see “Change a Practice, Change a Life”).    I don’t claim to know exactly what needs to be done in each classroom, at each grade level, at each school. However, I do agree with Friedman that “An on-demand world requires on-demand learning for everyone, accessible to anyone around the world, anywhere on your phone or tablet, and this really changes the definition of learning” (Friedman, 2016, p.205).  This new definition of learning requires a different approach to teaching.  

In a 2016 presentation at the Cleveland City Club titled Education in the Age of Smart Machines, Yong Zhao points out that “we did not strap rockets to a covered wagon in order to get to the moon”.  Instead we used a completely different approach to achieve this new goal.  I believe a similar shift in  approach can take place in the classroom, but it will require all of us to become more skilled in our profession.  This shift is also one in which education focuses more on how to help our students be more human.(see “Raising Young People as Human Beings…”) and therefore successful in the 21st century.  “In every major economic shift a new asset class becomes the main basis of productivity growth, wealth creation, and opportunity...In the agrarian economy, that asset was land...in the industrial economy it was physical capital...in the services economy it was intangible assets such as methods, designs, software, and patents...in today’s knowledge-human economy it will be human (italics added) capital- talent, skills, tacit know-how, empathy, and creativity...these are massive undervalued, human assets to unlock-and our educational institutions and labor markets need to adapt to that” (Friedman, 2016, p.207).  This is why on-line learning does not equate to an on-line education.  You can’t get an education, nurturing of those human assets, from a computer.  It has to happen in the classroom with caring highly skilled teachers utilizing  a student centered preparing for life model.  As educators, if we want to help our students make the shift we need to make it ourselves which means in order to properly prepare our young people and  meet their needs, average is officially over.

References

Darling-Hammond, Linda (2010).  The Flat World and Education.  New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Friedman, Thomas (2016).  Thank You for Being Late.  New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Is being an Educator your Job, Career, or Calling?

I tried to think of when and where I first came across the concept of looking at an occupation as being a “job”, a “career”, or a “calling” and I worked my way back to Shawn Achor’s book “The Happiness Advantage”, but I knew that wasn’t the origin of the reference.  So, after doing a little searching, the oldest reference I could find was a 1997 research article by Amy Wrzesniewski in the Journal of Research in Personality titled “Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relation to Their Work”.  In the research, Wrzesniewski and colleagues presented evidence suggesting that most people see their work as either a Job (focus on financial rewards and necessity rather than pleasure or fulfillment; not a major positive part of life), a Career (focus on advancement), or a Calling (focus on enjoyment of fulfilling, socially useful work).  In, admittedly, a moment of frustration this week, I found myself grumbling about some of our staff treating their role as educators more like a job than a calling.  Then I caught myself in my own complaint and acknowledged a legitimate question, “Is it so bad that educators look at their occupation as a job?”.  Before I answered myself, I know this is getting weird, I thought it would make sense to provide my own interpretation of educators looking at their occupation as a job, career, or calling.

Educator (Job Description)

I am using the term educator because I want to be inclusive of educational administrators. I like to think “once a teacher always a teacher” and consider administrators as “teachers working outside of the classroom”.  As an example, when people ask me what I do, I explain I am a teacher, but I am no longer in the classroom.  Instead, my job title is Assistant Superintendent of our district.  I mention this because, for this blog, I am going to use the term “Teacher” to include all types of educators including Administrators, Aides, Tutors, Psychologists, Specialists, or anyone else working with our young people.  

There is no question the “job” of being a teacher is challenging.  The job requires you to work with young people on a daily basis, to have an understanding of your content area, and to communicate with parents.  Those are the expectations in the job description, or contract,  for most school districts.  These expectations, by themselves, are enough to drive many teachers from teaching  after just a few years.  Teachers earn their money everyday and the “job” of being a teacher can help our young people.  

Signs of looking at Education as a Job:

• You find yourself working to the contract.

• The words, “My kids can’t…” have been uttered from your mouth.

• You won’t/can’t attend a meeting because you’ve met your quota for the week.

• You feel teaching gets in the way of your personal life.

Educator (Career Description)

Those who look at being a teacher as a description of their career describe their occupation more as their profession.  They are knowledgeable concerning the ways of their profession whether it be pedagogical or content knowledge and they often will do what it takes to help our young people meet expectations while reflecting on the practice of teaching.  This often means they are working with students before and after school, working on some form of school work  at home on a regular basis,  they understand it is important to learn and grow as an educator and basically do whatever it takes to meet their professional obligations.

Signs of looking at Education as a Career and Not a Calling:

• You find yourself comparing your role to another teacher’s role.

• The words, “That is not fair…” have been uttered from your mouth.

• You won’t/can’t believe someone can offer you advice on pedagogy or content.

• You feel teachers have to work harder than the kids these days.

Educator (As a Calling Description)

Certainly all educators who look at teaching as a Calling meet all of the same criteria of those who look at teaching as a Career or Profession.  However, I would argue that not all “Career” educators meet the “Calling” criteria.   If teaching is your Calling, there is an altruistic undertone to your approach and it becomes much more than your profession.  Probably one of the clear distinctions is the level and frequency in which reflection is taking place.  A second area that bifurcates teachers in a Career vs. a Calling pool is in the area of professional growth.  Those in a calling have an almost obsession with learning and improving their practice BECAUSE of how it can positively impact our young people.  They honor the RED QUEEN EFFECT approach to teaching in spades.

Signs of crossing over to looking at teaching as a Calling:

• You find yourself lost in time as you think/talk/learn about education.

• The words, “Don’t all kids deserve...” have been uttered from your mouth.

• You won’t/can’t accept a situation that doesn’t help our young people.
• You feel you can constantly grow and have something to learn

In my opinion, each of these descriptors of educators has their own merit and I believe it is important for all of us to know where we fit on the continuum of teaching.  Knowing where you “fit” and where your colleagues are categorized helps to have authentic conversations and can avoid areas of frustration.  As an example, the expectations of a educator who looks at her occupation as a Calling is not going to be in-line with one who is a looking at being an educator as a Job.  If these two are part of the same Professional Learning Community (PLC) this is an important fact to consider.  It doesn’t mean they can’t work together, but it will probably change how they work together.  

So, to answer my previous question, “Is it so bad that educators look at their occupation as a job?”, I would say, “I guess not, but would then ask, “Can that mindset be sustained?”.  I do not believe ANYONE went into teaching, or at least stayed after a few years, with the mindset of it being their job.  Teaching  is way too hard of an occupation  to go in day in and day out with only a paycheck as your motivation.  However, I do believe that we have educators, at all levels, that fall into this category.  If that is the case, how did that happen and what can we do to help each other? I am going to circle back to Amy Wrzesniewski to plant a seed.  
Amy also talks about “job crafting”, which she describes as “what employees do to redesign their own jobs in ways that foster engagement at work, job satisfaction, resilience, and thriving.  She suggests four ways to help promote job crafting in the workplace.

1. Boost Autonomy and Support- this allows us to use the expertise we have

(Build on our strengths as teachers)

2. Build Developmental Plans- this focuses on the value of continuous improvement.

(Back to the Red Queen Effect)

3. Communicate Strategic Goals-  this is having a shared vision

(Looking at Schools as a Greenhouse comes to mind)

4. Holding Job Crafting Swap Meets- this addresses the importance of collaboration

(Collective Teacher Efficacy within PLC as applied to educators)

Keeping these four suggestions in mind will, I believe,  help promote job crafting within an educational environment which can help, at minimum, to shift looking at teaching as a “job” to looking at teaching as a “career” and perhaps  also provide an environment which will give the latitude needed for those who are called to teach.

Structure (Report Cards) Dictates Function (Pedagogy)

Pretty much any Biology teacher will be able to tell you, structure dictates function in the living world around us.  This is true on a molecular level in the form of water being a polar molecule leading to its properties as a universal solvent, on a cellular level for as the shape of a protein is changed so too is the way that it functions, and even within a particular environment as in the length of a giraffe's neck allowing it to reach more nutrients within a tree and therefore give it an advantage to live long enough to produce offspring which carry that same trait allowing it to be better adapted to that specific environment (natural selection).  There are literally thousands of examples in nature where structure determines function and it is not uncommon for us to get ideas from nature to help our own cause.  That is what took place for me this week as I came across yet another example of structure dictating function.  This time it was within the classroom.

The conversation being overheard boiled down to “we don’t have enough assessments on this standard and need to give another test so we have enough points in the gradebook”  I suspect this, or something like it,  sounds familiar because whether you are using a standards based report card or a more typical point accumulating report card, the number of points in the gradebook are being used to determine the grade.  It is a classic case of structure dictating function.  In this example, the gradebook and its need for points (structure) is dictating the pedagogy (function) taking place within the classroom and as a result students are being assessed not for gaining an understanding of where they are in their skill level, but because they need more points for the gradebook.  This happened to be in a second grade classroom, but it could take place in any K-12 classroom where the demands of the report card (structure) interfere with meeting the needs of the young people within the classroom (function of school).  Another quick example was overheard at the high school when a teacher commented on the need to have more homework assigned so there were enough  points in the gradebook to give students a chance to overcome their poor test scores.  Neither of these pedagogical  practice had anything to do with learning and had everything to do with meeting the demands of the structure in place (the report card).  The structure of this grade reporting system also tends to force concepts or standards to be taught in isolation or silos if you will.

How many times have you found yourself short on time because students are struggling with applying a concept, but you are reluctant to slow down lest you not cover what needs to be covered by the end of the grading period?  Part of the reason why our young folks struggle with applying particular concepts is because those concepts or skills are often  taught in isolation and they are taught in isolation because we have to be able to identify the point value to submit in the gradebook.  This is yet another example of structure dictating function.  Time is currency in a school and it should be treated as such.  We should not be spending valuable time in class focusing on having enough points, but should instead be using that time accumulating information through a variety of ways to have a better understanding of what our young people are learning or not learning in class.  To add to this dilemma, think about the purpose (function) of a report card.  Why do we have them?  In my mind our gradebooks and therefore report cards should be able to clearly and honestly communicate to parents what skills their children have developed as well as what they understand  about a designated topic.  If that is the case, what does a “B” mean?  How about an 83%?  What would a “3” mean to a parent?   Is it really any more informative than a letter grade?  Should an “F” be given to a third grader who doesn’t understand a concept yet or to a middle schooler for that matter?    I ask, because if the function of a report card is to clearly and honestly communicate to the parents, does the current structure allow for that to take place?  If your answer is “no”, like mine, how can the structure be changed to meet the function?  That is the question we are working on in our district at the K-5 level to start.

As we self-reflected, we found  there was not really a grade reporting structure that wasn’t “accounting based” in our district.  The 3-5 grades were using a traditional point accumulation grading system and K-2 were struggling with a standards based system that was connected to an accumulation of points.  Teachers go into our profession to help kids not to be accountants, yet the grade reporting system was forcing them to focus on point totals and not kids.  We are wrestling with the idea of changing the structure of our reporting system so it meets our expectations of clearly and honestly reporting what our young people understand (function).  In this way the pedagogy will dictate the reporting and not the other way around.  In order to gain insight we continue to meet with teachers to gain valuable insight , but also have come across some interesting resources including Starr Sackstein’s “Hacking Assessments: 10 Ways to go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School” in which she shares some interesting ways to shift the focus to learning over points as well as Larry Geni ’s “Teacher Handbook” which includes a number of suggestions including the development of student contracts.  I am excited because we are rolling out the first iteration of our “new gradebook” to our Grading Practice Committee this coming Tuesday.  Being it is the first iteration, by definition, we know there are a lot of changes to be made to the structure, but we hope to ultimately be able to have a reporting system (structure) that can clearly and honestly report to parents while giving teacher the latitude to be able to follow best practices (function).  Stay tuned for updates. :)

Raising Young People as Human Beings vs. Manufacturing Machines

One of Pat Ciccantelli’s, our superintendent, favorite sayings is, “Kids don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care” and I couldn’t agree with him more.  This is especially important to remember in today’s age of accountability in schools.  Unfortunately, the pressure from outside sources through standardized testing, has some school personnel taking their eyes off of what is most important in schools.  I have gotten some strange looks from teachers in our district when they hear me say that I’m not worried about the test scores.  It is not that the scores don’t mean anything, but they should not be the driving force or central focus of our district.  Our young people should occupy that place.

I say “young people” to avoid the term “students” as it, although widely used and accepted, feels too institutional to me while “kids” seems too informal and sends the message that our young people are literally minor players in their role at school .  When I moved off of “students”, I first started using the term “learners”, but it never felt right either as it seemed too impersonal and sent the message that school is strictly about how our “learners” gain information. See what I mean about being impersonal?  I suspect you might be wondering why I am so preoccupied with this vocabulary concept that seems to be fairly mundane.  However, vocabulary and how we use it does mean a lot in the classroom.  As an example, what helps you to visualize what is going on in the equation 3 x 4 more:  three times four or three groups of four?  Just a slight change in vocabulary doesn’t necessarily change the meaning, but can make a big difference in the clarity of the message.  I don’t want our young people getting the message that they are a cog in the machine.  To be honest, I think my rant on the use of vocabulary started with two machines that came to my attention this week.

The first was a video of Boston Dynamic's Atlas Robot demonstrating its agility culminating in a backflip.  I was amazed by the video and what  latest Atlas version can do, but it is the end of the video, in the “blooper” section, that really caught my attention.  It showed Atlas actually making adjustments to keep its balance after one of the flips and even putting out its arms to catch itself after a different failed attempt.  The second machine to open my eyes this week came from the Hanson Robotic's Sophia  video posted on November 23rd.  Where Atlas showed the agility advancements in robotics, Sophia showed the artificial intelligence (AI) advancements.  It is my understanding that in this video, she was not “programed” to say what she was thankful for, but rather she was designed to weigh information and ideas from multiple sources, to reason, and then to offer a hypothesis for consideration which she then delivered verbally.  I alluded to this idea of a cognitive computer in an earlier post “A Call to be more Cognitive in an Accelerating World”.  I have to admit, when I first saw Atlas I thought of Terminator 2 and when I saw Sophia my thoughts immediately went to iRobot.  However, where I quickly and ultimately landed on was something I heard  Yong Zhao discuss while attending his talk on Education in the Age of Smart Machines at the Cleveland City Club.

Zhao emphasized that education is the “growth of human beings and not just a simple acquisition of skills” (This actually came up at minute 25 and 43 of the video, but I highly recommend watching all the 30 minute message and the question/answer portion).  That “growth of human beings”  is the difference between instruction and education and schools should be a place where young people come to get an education and not just instruction.  In his talk, Zhao also references (minute 8:10) that those programs in school that are focused solely on raising test scores, Study Island comes to mind for me, should come with a “side-effects disclaimer”.  Like a disclaimer for those medications you see on TV commercials, these disclaimers should state, “This program can raise your reading scores, but will make your children hate reading forever.”  

Our goal, as educators, is not to raise test scores, but to help raise human beings.  That is why the parents send their children to us.  In the daily craziness that can take place in a classroom, it is easy to lose sight of that fact.  However, it is something we can’t forget.  Of course we are not there to enable our young people, that is not what I am saying,  think of your own kids here.  Don’t you love them enough to make the hard decisions as they grow up, so that you don’t enable them?  I would encourage all of us to look at all of our young people in our classrooms in that same light.  We aren’t manufacturing machines in schools, and even if we tried, what we “produce” would never be as efficient as machines are or will be.  We are raising human beings and should be driven by that internal responsibility rather than the external test driven accountability system of today.  That responsibility begins with looking at our young people as human beings everyday and act accordingly.  If we do that, we will send the message that we care.  This is important, because as Rita Pierson stated in her famous TedTalk (Every Kid Needs a Champion), “kids don’t learn from people they don’t like”.    Happy Thanksgiving and Go Bucks!

Working Toward Creating Labeless Classrooms

All school districts spend  a lot of time and money on supporting our students with disabilities because we all see the importance of meeting the needs of individual students while avoiding the stigma of a label.  We understand that a “label” should not define a student and, for the most part, do a nice job of providing support for our students with disabilities.  What we sometimes forget is that labels are not good for any student and so students who are labeled “gifted” also face dangers in a different form.  I was reminded of this fact when I viewed the short video titled, Rethinkng Giftedness, from  Jo Boaler.  At first, I was disheartened by how even a “positive” label can put a child in a fixed mindset which took me down the road of the importance of considering the jagged learning profile for all kids.  Ultimately, this got me thinking about status as it relates to competence in our classrooms.

This idea of status in the classroom, “the perception of student’s academic capability and social desirability” (Horn, 2017, p.62),  can be applied across the curriculum, but is probably most evident in a math class.  Think back to your own time in school as it relates to the math class.  Were you one of the “smart” kids who “got math” because you could come up with the correct answer quickly or were you one of the kids who “didn’t get math”?  At minimum, I think it was safe to say how we saw ourselves in math class  impacted who we thought we were as a math student (good or bad), but it could also easily carry over to how we see ourselves (good or bad) in school or even beyond as well.  These,  labels can limit our opportunities, but believe it or not don’t have to be “just the way things are”.

A good portion of the reason why kids, or any of us for that matter, don’t take chances or ask questions is because they don’t want to look stupid.  Looking stupid is a social risk that should be avoided at all cost in schools no matter if you have been labeled  “good” or “bad” at something.  There is a direct correlation between taking a risk and a student’s competence.  Naturally, we think people who are “good” at something are competent.   However, competence tends to have a very narrow and different definition in the classroom than it does outside of class.  Going back to math class as an example, competence is typically associated with fast and accurate answers.  Contrary to this thought though,  Ilana Horn points out in her book Motivated,  competence in math is much more than seamlessly  knowing answers.  It includes: making astute connections, seeing and describing patterns, developing clear representations, being systematic, and extending ideas  (Horn, 2017, p. 61).  Students identified as “gifted” by the narrow definition of being quick and accurate suddenly find themselves “incompetent” when put in situations that cause them to struggle or work at a problem.  This leads to the same stigma of failure and appearance of lower status,  that is shared by those who carry  the label  “students with disabilities”, and results in the similar tendency of avoidance at all cost.  What I am getting at is that the label, good or bad, gets in the way and we must make a concerted effort to support classroom environments that don’t look at students with a label, but instead create a nurturing environment for all students focused on  individual strengths and needs.

In math and science class, these environments might include some form of group worthy tasks which allow all students to enter into the activity at any level  (low floor) and provide the ability for extension (high ceiling) for those who want to go deeper.  In a Social Studies and ELA classroom it should  include as much voice and choice as possible, such as with an ELA Reader’s and Writer’s workshop model.  All must be safe environments that promote thinking, nurture asking questions over finding answers, and in general look to provide equity in the form of status in the classroom which lead to developing a much broader definition of student competence.  Competence, by the way, is one of five areas Horn address in her book as essential for creating motivational classrooms.  The others are listed in the graphic below.  

I would recommend checking it out as it is a quick read that can get you thinking about how to best meet the needs of all of our kids.  No matter the label they carry.

References

Horn, Ilana (2017). Motivated.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.

Using Signposts as Life Preservers Across the Curriculum

It is easy to say, “I’m not a Reading Teacher” when it comes to students struggling with the text  in your Science, Social Studies, Math or any class for that matter.  However, if a student doesn’t have the tools necessary to pull what they need from our non-fiction readings, we still have the responsibility to find a way to help them to help themselves in those situations.  So, how the heck do we do that when we are not “Reading Teachers” and haven’t had the training?  One suggestion is to introduce the students to looking out for “signposts” while reading.

Kylene Beers & Robert Probst have written a book titled “Reading Nonfiction: Notice & Note” and in it they share key “signposts” for students to look for while reading with strategies that any teacher can use to help their students see more deeply into what they are reading in order to pull out needed information.  These signposts provide a scaffold for students, especially struggling ones, to use concrete clues in a text to help them make more sophisticated moves which skilled readers seem to make intuitively (Beers & Probst, 2016).  There are five signposts suggested to signal to students this could be important.  Each signpost is  also tied to an “anchor question” that “help the kids to do the thinking” (Beers et.al., 2016, p.117).  The five signposts are: Contrast & Contradictions, Extreme or Absolute Language, Numbers & Stats, Quoted Words, and Word Gaps.  Beers & Probst have chapters dedicated to describing each of these signposts and how best to share these signposts, so I highly recommend the book.  However,  I thought I would share the graphic organizer that I made to help me “see” where these signposts might arise across the curriculum in our district..

Signpost	Short Description	Anchor Question	Potential Example
Contrast & Contradictions	Info in the text that is contradictory or contrast what you think you already know.	What is the difference and why does it matter?	-In a government class where students are examining economic stances of two political candidates.
Extreme Language	Language that leaves no doubt about a situation.	Why was this language used?	-In Environmental Science class reading about the potential impacts of climate change.
Numbers & Stats	Numbers or words that show amounts to make a point	Why were these number amounts used?	-In a story problem of a math class when all kinds of “extra info” is present.
Quoted Words	Used to share a personal perspective or voice of authority.	Why was this person quoted or cited and what did it add?	-Reading a persuasive article in an ELA class when trying to determine the qualifications or perspective of the author.
Word Gaps	Words or phrases that are not known by the student	Have I seen this someplace else or can I find a clue in the sentence to help me understand it?	-In any class that is using Tier II  or III vocabulary in a reading.

These signpost can be used as life preservers for kids that are drowning in a more complex text or in the amount of material they are being asked to read.  They will help the students to know what to do when they don’t know what to do.  Beers & Probst also go on to share a number of strategies that they believe act as “scaffolds to help make the invisible thinking processes visible” (Beers et.al., 2016, p. 182).  These strategies reminded me of those from  Ron Ritchhart’s,  “Making Thinking Visible” and his corresponding on-line Making Thinking Visible Routines resource. These are also two resources I would recommend for anyone looking to help students to become more independent in their thinking and reading.  

One last thought that resonated with me, after finishing “Reading Non-Fiction: Notice & Note”, which has to do with the difference between fiction and non-fiction.  Beers & Probst point out that “reading nonfiction, in many ways, requires an effort not required in the reading of fiction” (Beers, et.al., 2016, p.19) because “fiction invites us into the writer’s imagined world; non-fiction intrudes into ours and purports to tell us something about it” (Beers, et.al.,2016, p.39).  I love this comparison, because if that is the case, then it is more important than ever for our students to be able to understand what to do when they don’t know what to do.   A long time ago, John Dewey pointed out that “The democratic road is a hard one to take.  It is the road which places the greatest burden of responsibility upon the greatest number of human beings” (Dewey, 1939/1989, p. 100).  I am certain that an effective public education system is paramount for the success of a democracy and in order to have such a system we need readers who have the ability to question those who purport to tell us something about the world in which we live. Something to think about, especially on Veteran’s Day.  Many thanks go out to all who have, or who are serving, to protect our freedom.

 

References

Beers, Kylene & Probst, Robert. (2016).  Reading Nonfiction:  Notice & Note Stances, Signposts

and Strategies.  Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.

Dewey, J. (1989).  Freedom and culture. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. (Original work published 1939)