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)

A Call to be more Cognitive in an Accelerating World

In between all the education oriented books and articles I read, I try to have at least one“non-education” book as my go to when I want to relax and “not think” as much.  Currently, I am reading Thomas Friedman’s “Thank You for Being Late” as one of those books.  However, as I was reading that book this week, I came across a concept that I believe ties very well into our current situation in education.
In “Thank You for Being Late”, Friedman points out, to understand the 21st century, he feels you have to understand the planet’s three largest forces: Moore’s Law (technology), the Market (globalization), and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) are accelerating all at once and as a result are transforming the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and the community.  In one of the examples, from the section on Moore’s Law, he talks about the technological evolution from programmable  computers to cognitive computers and how, because of Moore’s Law, computers have become astonishingly powerful.  Without going into too many details, the premise is that programmable computers “are based on rules that shepherd data through a series of predetermined processes to arrive at outcomes” (Friedman, 2016, p.99) and although they are powerful and complex, they are also deterministic, thriving on structured data, but incapable of processing qualitative or unpredictable input (Friedman, 2016).   He goes on to say,  “This rigidity limits their usefulness in addressing many aspects of a complex, emergent world in which ambiguity and uncertainty abound.” (Friedman, 2016, p.99).  In that same section, he states, “Cognitive systems, on the other hand, are probabilistic, meaning they are designed to adapt and make sense of the complexity and unpredictability of unstructured information” (Friedman, 2016, p. 99) and they do not offer definitive answers, but are instead “designed to weigh information and ideas from multiple sources , to reason, and then to offer a hypothesis for consideration” (Friedman, 2016, p. 100).  One of the more famous examples of a cognitive computer is IBM’s “Watson”,  which you might remember from Jeopardy fame.  It is this shift and, in particular, the description of how a cognitive computer is designed to process information that got me thinking about education..  

We have made our own shifts in education over the centuries as well.  Starting from a form of  “learning while playing & observing” as Hunter Gathers, to an  “internship-like education” while working on the farm in an Agricultural Age, and shifting to “apprenticeships” at the beginning of the Industrial Age to a full-blown “education of the masses” via today’s school model toward the end of this same Age.  However, as we are now well into the 21st century, there has been a call to make a shift similar to what took place with computers.  Our current curriculum delivery model of education, in which teachers are the center of the classroom, whose job is to fill the minds of the students with what they need to know, combined with the development of students who are able to follow-directions (be compliant) and efficiently come up with a product (test scores) is analogous to our current programmable computers.  These “programmable students”, like their computer counterparts, can be powerful and complex, but  are also deterministic, thriving on structured data, but incapable of processing qualitative or unpredictable input.  In general, our kids are great at following directions and taking tests, but even our best students struggle with open ended questions, coming up with questions, or knowing what to do when they don’t know what to do.  This rigidity limits their usefulness in addressing many aspects of a complex, emergent world in which ambiguity and uncertainty abound.  

These “programmable students” are the product of the system in which they were “manufactured”  It is a system that is not broken in that it gives us the product it was designed to produce.  Students who are, for the most part, compliant (able to follow directions) and are “designed” to find answers with few mistakes made.  How many times do we as educators ask a question to our students that we already know the answer?  How many times do students expect us to know the answer because we are the teacher?  When you live in an answer driven environment, you only ask questions you know the answers to and you only answer questions for which you know how to respond to the question .  Very little risk of failure on either side takes place and as a result learning or growth is stunted.  Asking a question to which you don’t know the answer can be complex and messy.  However, in his book, “A More Beautiful Question”, Warren Berger points out “Part of being able to tackle complex and difficult questions is accepting that there is nothing wrong with not knowing” (Berger, 2014, p.186).

If you remember “cognitive computers” function differently than “programmable computers” just like “cognitive students”, the kind of student we should be nurturing in the 21st century, processes information differently than our traditional “programmable student” model.  Students today should be able to be probabilistic, meaning they are able to adapt and make sense of the complexity and unpredictability of unstructured information  and  who don’t necessarily offer definitive answers, but instead weigh information and ideas from multiple sources , to reason, and then to offer a hypothesis for consideration.  Sound familiar?  
In an age and world which is constantly changing, we as adults have the responsibility to prepare our kids for the next phase of their lives.  That “education” provided for our kids has changed as we have evolved and adapted to a world of Hunter Gathering, to Agriculatural, to Industrial, and now to a new age which is moving so fast that our kids need to know what to do when they don’t know what to do.  Each “educational system” worked for the age in which it was designed to function, but a shift was necessary at each step in order for our kids to adapt and thrive for that particular time. Today is no different as we enter into a new age.  I am excited to be part of this evolution, one in which I believe we need to look at Schools as a Greenhouse instead of a factory or business.  It is the one “system” that will help our students to be more “cognitive” and ultimately more prepared for the acceleration taking place in the 21st century to which Friedman has alluded.

References

Berger, Warren (2014). A More Beautiful Question.  New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.

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