Are You Operating Within the Learning Zone?

 I am sure many of you already know that Twitter can be a great way to stumble across

nuggets of information which help to shape how we view education.  Many times, depending on who you follow, it is more of a reinforcement of our own philosophical approach to education. However, every once in a while something  jumps out that gets you really excited about your “new” discovery. Usually, it is something recently posted, but sometimes it is something originally posted from years ago and it makes you wonder, “Where was I when this came out?”    This humbling experience happened for me earlier this week and although it is was originally posted in 2016, I still found it very relevant and felt like I should share.

    What I stumbled across was this illustration for the Learning Zone vs. the Performance Zone.   I thought it was a great way to visualize the value of keeping an open mind to learning and being willing to try new things whether  in a practice for a sport or classroom activity at school. In other words it emphasized we don’t have to be perfect all the time and need to relax and allow ourselves the opportunity to learn.  So, I posted it on Twitter with a comment. Not five minutes later, and this is what is amazing about social media, the originator of the illustration responded back to me via his own tweet.  Eduardo Briceño‏ @ebriceno8 stated that he was glad I liked the illustration and then shared that the poster was inspired by his TedTalk “How to Get Better at Things You Care About.”  How cool is that?

   If you haven’t stopped to view the video yet, I would encourage you to do so right now. The distinction between operating within the learning zone as opposed to the performance zone is powerful mindshift.  “Working hard” and “doing your best” are ideals we, as educators, believe are important and we typically hold ourselves to that standard.  It is also the dominant message that we send to the young people in our class as well as our own children. I am ashamed to say that I was blinded by the idea of hard work and never really thought that it would get in the way of improving.  At first it sounds counter-intuitive that working hard would be a hurdle to learning. However, if you our working hard at trying to be perfect all the time and not be willing to make any mistakes you are trying to operate within the performance zone instead of the learning zone.   Operating within the learning zone means you are trying to improve, not be perfect, which means you must be willing and able to put yourself in situations in which you might make mistakes.  The key is to be able to know when to operate within the learning zone and when to operate within the performance zone. This can be applied to any part of our life, but I will focus on education.

    Most of us will agree that the young people in our classroom should be operating within the learning zone on a daily basis.  This is the best opportunity they have for learning and therefore improving. Occasionally, during a summative assessment for example, they need to shift to operating within the performance zone in order to illustrate what they have learned.  However, what I think needs to be emphasized is this same approach goes for the adults in the school as well.

    As teachers, we can’t approach every day in the performance zone.  That is to say, we can’t try to or expect to be “on” and “perfect” at all times.  We need to be in the learning zone as well. We need to listen to what the young people are saying and adjust accordingly instead of trying to stick to our own timeline.  We should be flexible with our thinking in order to put the young people we work with in the right situation to make connections instead of stubbornly following the lesson plan as scripted.  Most importantly, we have to be willing to try something new, question ourself, make mistakes, and reflect. We are not performing on a daily basis we are learning as well and as a result we need shift our mindset to be in the learning zone.  This learning extends beyond the classroom. We should also be operating in the learning zone when we are collaborating with colleagues and therefore be willing to share our mistakes. PLC time can look like this: reading an article and discussing, reviewing a video and reflecting, analyzing data and asking for help are all examples of operating with the learning zone. This, by the way, goes for administrators as well.

     There are times that we should be operating within the performance zone, maybe during a small segment of your class when presenting new information or perhaps in front of parents at a Board Meeting, but the key is to know when to and then be able to alternate between being in the performance zone and in the learning zone.   One example of this is to video a segment of one of your lessons (when you were in the performance zone) and then reflect on it during your PLC to analyze ways to improve the lesson (operating within the learning zone). If you find yourself working hard and doing your best to operate in the performance zone more often  than when you are working to improve within the learning zone it is highly likely you are not going to grow as much as compared to if you flip that combination.

Quick Side Note

    Over the last two years I have been posting on this blog as a way to reflect on what I have learned through the week.  Although, I did try something new at the beginning of this school year and pulled back my posts to once a month. To my surprise, I found myself missing the forced reflection time each week and felt a monthly reflection is not nearly as effective as weekly reflections.   Just saying.

    This is the last post of the year, so I wanted to share the top four most viewed weekly reflections of 2018 and an extra reflection that wasn’t viewed as much, but one that I still thought was worth re-sharing.

Happy New Year!

Mike

1.   What Schools Could Be

       (June 23, 2018)

2.  We Need to Change the Story

   (February 17, 2018)

3.  Working Towards Debunking Education’s “Big Lie”

    (February 24, 2018)

4.  No Need To Go Around the World to Be Mathematical

     (March 17, 2018)

Extra:  An Apprenticeship for Learning

(December 15, 2018)

An Apprenticeship for Learning

Kindergartners, like most young people their age and younger, come into school with a ton of questions and curiosity about the world in which they live.  Fast forward 13 years and these same Kindergartners, now as seniors, possess a very small amount of that energy and curiosity. Some of the change is due to maturity and a clearer picture of how the world works.  However, if we say we value curiosity, passion, and the ability to ask questions in the young people who graduate from a K-12 education, then I think we need to stop and reflect on why the dramatic change in our young people?

In the book "Free to Learn", Dr.  Peter Gray shares his view on the importance of play when it comes to learning.  In short Dr. Gray points out that those who have studied and written about play have identified five characteristics of play:  1-Play is self-chosen and self-directed, 2-In play the means are more valued than the ends, 3-Play does have structure and rules that emanate from the minds of the players, 4-Play is imaginative and non-literal, and 5-Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.  I dove deeper into the idea of substituting “learning” for “play” in a post titled Can Playing and Learning be Synonymous?, so I won’t go there for this post.  However, I bring it up because it is through play that young people satisfy, maintain, and enhance their curiosity.  The current structure of schools often counters our ability for young people to “play”. The standards in particular act as a metaphorical  governor on the curiosity engine driving our young people’s passion for learning. At the same time, I do feel standards are important for eliminating the educational lottery that can arise from low to no common expectations in school. (see also Using Standards and Collective Efficacy to get On Common Ground).  So, if not “play”, then what?

Many of you reading this blog are educators and as a result have completed your student teaching prior to graduating and gaining your teaching license.  I suspect most of you had the same experience I had in that more learning and understanding of being a teacher was gained through the process of student teaching than all of the education classes I took combined.  It was, in short, an apprenticeship in teaching that was most likely carried on in the first few years of teaching under the support of a mentor. Today, we tend to think of “apprenticeships” taking place after graduation from college or perhaps high school.  However, the history of apprenticeships dates back for literally hundreds of years, but it begins with children. Think of a page for a knight in the middle ages or a blacksmith’s apprentice in the 1800’s. These young people had the mental capacity to learn and kids today have that same intellectual ability, if not more, when given the opportunity.  Now admittedly, if you were a 12 year old page or blacksmith apprentice back then you were already close to half the age of your life expectancy. So, it made sense that you were on some sort of pathway to a vocation. Today, with a life expectancy of 80 or higher, we typically don’t encourage the same rush to vocational training for our children. We certainly wouldn’t expect, nor would we want, a sixth grader selecting what they wanted to do for the rest of their life and restricting them to that pathway.  At the same time, as we have seen with apprenticeships of the past and present, there is value in developing a set of skills that can prepare you for your future through working with a mentor of sorts. This is where an “Apprenticeship for Learning” comes into play.

What if the mindset in schools was not the current “curriculum transfer” model that is most prevalent, but instead a form of apprenticeship for learning that will help to better prepare our young people for life.  By focusing on learning as the skill to be passed down or developed, we are not restricting the young people in our classrooms to a specific vocational pathway.  After all, learning is a skill that can be applied to any vocation as well as any part of being successful in life. It is the most valueable skill we can develop in our young people.  Just like any apprenticeship, an apprenticeship for learning starts slow as our young people first learn the basics (ex. Learn to read) and then gradually apply the skill (ex. Read to learn).  What is different in a learning apprenticeship from the experience of school for most students today is that young people are not told what they should know and then expected to know it, but are instead put into situations by a mentor that allows them to see patterns, make connections, and form relationships which are the hallmarks of learning.  An apprentice must learn by doing and the first time they try something it never goes well. They are not expected to be experts at this point of the apprenticeship. That is why they learn, often through failure, from the situations in which they are put in by their mentor. Gradually, through time and experience, they get better at their craft until eventually they approach, rival, or even surpass their mentor’s skills.

If we want young people to develop their ability to learn, and we all say we do, then an apprenticeship for learning is the best model for schools.  In this model, the ability to learn is the focus and not the curriculum. The curriculum is merely the medium in which we work. The situations in which we put the young people in our classroom are what become valuable for learning and not what we “tell” them.  The apprenticeship still calls for a mentor, but the expertise is that of being a learner. Learners beget Learners, just as life begets life, so we as mentors must also be learners. It is an impossible task for a non-learner to properly mentor a learner. Which means that if we want to support an apprenticeship for learning in schools we, as the educators/mentors/experts, must be “learners” and continue to learn as well.  (see also The Red Queen Effect).  This approach in schools provides the latitude of play that Dr. Gray references with the consistency which standards provide.  It will work K-12 if we, as educators, get in the mindset that schools are an apprenticeship for learning.

What is Our Job?

“It’s my job to make sure you are not struggling.”  These are words that, when overheard in a classroom a decade ago, would have made  most people smile and feel as if the kids in this class will be alright. So, why is it that when I heard , “It’s my job to make sure you are not struggling” recently uttered in a classroom, did it make me shudder instead of smile?  I think I am starting to be able to point to why that statement shouldn’t sit well anymore for any educators focused on preparing young people for life.

    Struggling in itself should not automatically be thought of as something bad.  There are many benefits when young people have their thinking stretched. Such struggles can be an opportunity to dive more deeply into understanding of a particular concept and can, with some support from the teacher,  lead to young people being more able to apply their learning to new problems or situations. (See also They Do Not Understand Shallowness, Because They Do Not Experience Depth.)  The key is to be sure the struggle the young people are experiencing is productive rather than being unproductive.  In order for that to happen, teachers must be cognizant of the concepts the young people should be familiar with and understand the learning progressions both prior to and following those particular concepts.  

Having an understanding of these learning trajectories will help teachers to know what to look for when collecting evidence (formative assessments) and where to go based on the evidence collected.  “The gathering of evidence should be neither left to chance nor gathered sporadically” (Leinwand, 2014, p.53) and as a result careful planning ahead of time must take place. In other words, teachers need to be diagnostic in their approach to assessing and then  meeting the needs of the young people in their classroom. In order to do this the right questions need to be asked in order to make the thinking of the young people and therefore their current understanding more visible to the teacher.

The “right” questions can not always be preplanned, but without understanding of the progressions of learning and some prior planning the appropriate purposeful questions will not be asked.  Purposeful questions include the types of questions asked as well as the pattern of questioning that takes place. The questions should not “funnel” students to the right answer, but instead must promote the opportunities for young people to make connections to what they already know.  If the young people in class come in with low prior knowledge, the questions teachers ask should help them to see patterns or relationships within the information presented which will then help them to make their own connections. Pre-planning of questions allow for teachers to develop some “information gathering” questions, but it is even more  important for teachers to be able to go “off script” and ask probing questions or questions that make the students thinking more visible in order to gather evidence which will uncover what students actually understand. A key piece to asking questions is to listen to the response and consider the answer provided. Too often, we are guilty of not allocating time to think about a question asked or to give ourselves or the young people in class time to process an answer given.  

So, I think that is why I shudder when I hear, “It is my job to make sure you are not struggling.”   I am sure it is well intended, but if we provide so much support for students that they never or rarely do the “heavy lifting,” then we also deprive them of the excitement that comes from making  those connections themselves. (See also Energizing Our Schools Through Thinking).  It is challenging to pose purposeful questions and to keep the various young people in our classroom in the zone of proximal development (productive struggle).  This is a near impossible challenge if a teacher doesn’t have an understanding of the progressions of learning for their particular content area. However, I do believe that is our challenge.   How well we accomplish this will depend on how well we work together. Districts must provide, and teachers must experience, continuous and embedded professional development (PD) through PLCs, a variety of PD in the form of training such as co-teaching and Cognitive Based Assessments as just two examples, classroom support via coaching, and a belief that by working together we can  meet the needs of each of the young people in our classrooms (collective teacher efficacy). All this together, I believe, is “our job” which will ultimately help us prepare young people for life.

References

Leinwand, Steven  (2014). Principles to Action: Ensuring Mathematical Success

for All.  Reston,VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).

Energizing Our Schools Through Thinking

I recently had the opportunity to hear math guru Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) give the best example yet of why we should avoid the Curriculum Delivery Model in our schools as much as possible (See also What is Your One Wish for the School Year?). Our current curriculum delivery model of education, in which teachers are the center of the classroom and whose job is to fill the minds of the students with what they need to know leads to what Meyer equates to being a “spoiler” to the energizing discoveries, and therefore thinking, that could have taken place.  

This analogy resonates because everyone can relate to a “spoiler,”something that ruins the surprise,  in some form or another be it for a book, movie, or even a gift. Meyer used several examples of potential spoilers.  As a Star Wars fan, I related best to the big reveal of the 1980’s that is to say, when we found out Darth Vader was Luke’s father. I had a reaction similar to this precious moment caught on video:  Reaction to Empire Strikes Back Big Reveal.  This reaction would have never happened if someone ruined the surprise by telling it before it was discovered.  In our house the funniest spoiler took place years ago when my wife was totally immersed in the “Twilight Series” and one of our kids innocently asked, “Did you get to the part where Jacob is a werewolf yet?”  She was devastated when that opportunity for surprise was inadvertently and innocently taken away from her. Do you remember a surprise revealed that spoiled a big reveal for you? Meyers point was that we do this to the young people in our classrooms when we “tell” them rather than allowing them to make the connection/discovery for themselves.   As teachers, we don’t mean to spoil the surprise, often we think it is our job to tell, but in reality we are playing the role of spoiler by taking away the opportunity to think. So, if telling takes away the opportunity to think and therefore learn, how do we help our young people to think?

Our first step is to understand how thinking works.  Dr. Derek Cabrera, an international metacognitive expert from Cornell University, created a thought provoking TEDTalk titled, “How Thinking Works.”   In it he points out that “we are, as curriculum designers, teachers, and educators,  over engineering the content curriculum and surgically removing the thinking, so are kids are simply following instructions, painting by the numbers, and getting the grade.”  We often inadvertently, though with good intentions, “spoil the surprise” for the young people in our class by over scaffolding or straight out telling what is important to know instead of allowing our young people to make the connections that reveal the surprise on their own.    As a result, when our young people graduate from high school and college they are great test takers, but not prepared for life to be thinkers and learners. We need to design our classrooms in such a way to provide the opportunity for our young people to be put in situations which allow them to make the connections on their own.  Dr. Cabrera suggests four universal thinking skills that research shows has a positive impact on thinking:

Make Distinctions-  by encouraging young people to make increasingly sophisticated distinctions between ideas, objects, and things. This leads to a deeper understanding through the creation of these distinctions.

Look at the Parts & the Whole that make up Systems- When we try to understand something we tend to either break it down to look at the parts individually or lump the parts together to understand the whole picture.  Our young people need to be flexible in their thinking to be able to do both and therefore we must help to change the OR to AND in order to promote better thinking.

Recognize Relationships-  Schools tend to isolate subject areas, but we need to help our young people to recognize relationships, see patterns, and make connections between subjects as well as within a subject.  The world is interconnected and our young people need to be able to make those connections. This can’t happen in isolation.

Take Multiple Perspectives-  Looking through multiple lenses promotes empathy, compassion, and even leads to developing better skills of negotiation.  In short, by putting our young people in situations that allow or force them to have a different perspective we are promoting their ability to think different.

These are all examples of helping our students to be more metacognitive which is one of three major characteristic of meaningful reflection.  “Metacognitive reflection can be used to develop resilience in the face of challenge” (Pahomov, 2014, p.110). By putting our young people in situations to be more metacognitive and asking questions which promote metacognition we demonstrate that we are not concerned with assessment (grades), but instead with self-improvement.  Meaningful reflection also needs to be applicable. Reflection that is in the moment (formative) is more powerful than one that is after the fact (summative) because it is more applicable and therefore more impactfull. When this takes place in class, “reflection suddenly has a real and immediate purpose” (Pahomov, 2014, p. 112).  Learning is social and in order to promote thinking and learning young people must be able to talk and reflect with each other. A classroom which promotes sharing, the third characteristic of meaningful reflection, will create a culture of thinking. Young people love to share their ideas, I see it all the time in our elementary schools, but by the time they get to the high school it is like pulling teeth to get them to share.  Somehow we have stifled sharing over the course of their journey through school. We, as educators must be cognizant that sharing is a necessary component of meaningful reflection/thinking and therefore must promote dialog within our classrooms. Whoever is doing the talking is doing the thinking.

Thinking lies at the roots of democracy. Public education, when designed to promote thinking, can nurture those roots.  It is more important than every to design classrooms that provide opportunities for surprise (avoid the “spoiler effect”) which naturally lead to our young people making their own connections.   Through the promotion of the aforementioned universal skills of thinking we have some steps to create such a culture. This really can be energizing for the young people in our schools.  A picture is worth a 1000 words, so I will end with stating, once this comic is no longer funny to the public (see below) we will know that we are making thinking a part of our schools.

References

Pahomov, Larissa  (2014). Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Student

Through Inquiry.  Alexandria,VA: ASCD.

Time, Priorities, & Sharpening the Saw

One of my favorite stories about time starts with two lumberjacks sharing a beer and arguing over who is the best at his craft.  They decide that the next day the two would have a contest to see who can cut the most wood in 60 minutes. As the contest begins the next morning the lumberjacks feverishly saw through their designated log for the first ten minutes.  The first lumberjack then peeks over his shoulder and cracks a smile as the second lumberjack sits down to take a break. Seeing the opportunity to get ahead, he immediately doubles his efforts. Soon the second lumberjack is back at it and the two continue for the next ten minutes until the second lumberjack, once again takes a break.  Astonished that the second lumberjack would be taking a second break the first lumberjack confidently trudged along with his task. However, the second lumberjack continued this pattern until the end of the 60 minute contest. As time expired, the first lumberjack looked at the stack of wood he had sawed over the period. Exhausted, but with much satisfaction, he turned to the second lumberjack’s pile to see how much smaller the stack would be as compared to his own.  To his surprise, the second lumberjack’s pile was not smaller, but actually a third higher than his own. Unable to contain his frustration the first lumberjack demanded to know how he had lost as he had not taken a break and worked as hard as physically possible over the time period. Although equally tired, the second lumberjack managed a smile and stated that he had not taken a break, but instead had simply taken the time throughout the contest to stop and sharpen his saw.

We are all given the same amount of time in life and therefore by default in our jobs/professions/callings.  How we spend our time is a indication of what we value. This “sharpen the saw” story is a variation of Steven Covey’s seventh habit “Sharpen the Saw” from his best seller “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”  Although Covey was focusing on “balance” the point of how we spend our fixed amount of time is emphasized in the story.  I continue to say that in education “time is currency.” Just like our checkbooks demonstrate what we value by how we spend our money, our lesson plans demonstrate what we value by how we spend our time.  How much of your lesson is focused on teacher centered time vs. time focused on learning opportunities for young people in our classroom? Is there more time set aside for curriculum delivery to students or opportunities for young people to prepare for life?  Neither of these questions are meant to be accusatory. They are instead meant to promote reflection. Much of what we do in education is because we are short on time and looking for a more efficient way to teach and for students to learn. However, “the quest for efficiency may actually shortchange learning” (Ritchhart, 2015, p. 105) for the young people in our schools.  We are well intentioned in wanting to “avoid confusion” or “waste time” in our classrooms, but this is another example of the importance of considering all the “side-effects” of our actions (see also Close No Doors Requires Considering Side-Effects)  I would encourage all of us to audit how we spend our time and ask, if in the name of efficiency, are we creating unintended side-effects for our young people?

The “sharpen the saw” story can also apply to our own professional growth as well.  So often we say, “I need to be in my classroom” or “I need to be with my kids” and though well intended, we don’t take the time to stop and “sharpen” our own skills that can help us to be more effective when working with the young people in our schools.  Ritchhart refers to “The Big Rocks Video”  to emphasis the importance of prioritizing our time.  Although I prefer the “Life and a Can of Beer Version,” the point is still the same that we need to start with what is important first and many times it should be considering our own professional growth for the benefit of the young people we serve.  It is a “put on your own oxygen mask first” message that flight attendants give before every flight. We shouldn’t apologize for taking time away from the classroom if the time is well spent for our own growth (i.e. sharpening the saw).   

       

References

Ritchhart, Ron (2015).  Creating Cultures of Thinking. San Francisco, CA:

Jossey-Bass Publishing

Reminder to Self: Self-Determination is the Goal

My youngest of four, and only daughter, turns 18 today, which I guess officially makes my wife and I “childless” and instead the proud parents of four young adults.  Like most parents we still worry about our “kids” no matter what their age. We certainly aren’t perfect parents, but I thought we have done a pretty good job of raising young people who will give back to society.  However, I am in the middle of reading “The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.” by William Stixrud &  Ned Johnson and although we are aligned to much of what I read, there have been parts of the book that made me say, “Why didn’t I think of that when our kids were growing up?”  As a matter of fact, “The Self-Driven Child” is a great read for any parent or educator, because much of what we want to see in our kids are some of the same skills we strive to nurture with young people in our classroom.  One of the most impactful of these for our classroom as well as life outside of the four walls of school is self-determination.

So, I guess I shouldn’t have cringed  so much when we asked our daughter what she wanted for her birthday and she dead-panned, “My freedom.”  Ouch, talk about a dagger to the heart. I guess that was a loaded question for a parent to ask a teenager who has a midnight curfew she doesn’t like. My mind immediately went to a sign that I had hanging in my classroom which read:

TEENAGERS Tired of being harassed by your parents? ACT NOW! Move out, get a job, & pay your own way QUICK! While you still know everything.

The young people who read it always laughed, because it does carry with it a bit of truth.  However, if self-determination is an important skill for our young people to develop, and it is, then we should be alright with loosening the reins as educators and (reluctantly) as parents too.

In Raising Young People as Human Beings vs. Manufacturing Machines  I stressed our goal as educators should not be to raise test scores, but to help raise human beings.  Self-determination is an important part of being human and with it comes three basic needs:

+A sense of Autonomy

+A sense of competence

+A sense of relatedness

All three of these “human needs” are not only factors to consider when raising a child, but also when raising human beings in our classrooms.  Autonomy is the most important of the three for developing internal motivation in a young person, or an adult for that matter, because it promotes a sense of self control  (Stixrud & Johnson, 2018). This is part of the push for more “choice and voice” in the classroom, but it goes even further because the more we design our classroom environments with autonomy in mind, the more we will catalyze internal motivation and the less we will need to rely on external motivation in the form of sticks and carrots (Grades, as an example, fulfill both of these roles.).  “Competence is more about our feeling that we can handle a situation than it is about really being great at something” (Stixrud & Johnson, 2018, p.110). We, as educators and parents, often focus on the narrow definition of competence in the form of “competent” or performance/reaching a goal. However, that narrow focus doesn’t address the importance of the journey to reach that goal of high performance which is fueled by internal motivation through growth and therefore the development of competence..  The last basic need, relatedness, address the sense of being connected. In our classrooms, we often refer to having a good rapport with students. However, I believe educators who have that ability to seemingly get young people to “run through a wall for them” have not just developed a rapport, but have a classroom culture which nurtures this connection that meets young people’s need for relatedness. This connection helps to contribute to an environment of strong trust, low stress, and high willingness to take risks.

Developing self-determination is an important part of parenting and educating.  We, as adults, should celebrate as the young people in our lives make more connections, develop competence, and yes even (and most importantly) have a strong sense of autonomy.  A friend of mine has said, “Don’t you love them enough to make the hard decisions as they grow up, so that you don’t enable them?” A lot of hard decisions are made when nurturing an environment that promotes self-determination.  However, if the goal is to develop young people that are prepared for life, then I believe it is not only the best step at home for a parent, but it is also a necessity for educators in our schools.

Wish me good luck...I think I hear my daughter waking up.  :)

References

Stixrud, William & Johnson, Ned  (2018). The Self-Driven Child: The Science and

Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.  New York, NY.

Penguin Random House LLC.

Viewing DOK Through a Different Lens

This week our District Instructional Leadership Team  was fortunate to have Tom Rounds, a Northeast Ohio Field Specialist from the Ohio Department of Education, share his expertise on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) during our annual kick-off meeting.  Although DOK is not brand new to us we are going to be looking at it through a different lens this year.

Over five years ago now, then Assistant Superintendent and now Superintendent Pat Ciccantelli, introduced DOK to support work with some of our K-5 teams while they were breaking down the standards.  At that time we were just getting a handle on what was expected from the State and were using a backward design model which provided a target for some of our pedagogy. What is so exciting about revisiting the DOK levels is that we are now in a place that is going to allow the reverse.  As an example, thanks to our Math and ELA frameworks, we have a stronger understanding of the pedagogy needed to put our young people in situations to allow them to make connections in order to support and nurture their growth and learning. We will be able to use the DOK levels , to not drive our instruction, but to instead help us assess if our pedagogy is having the positive impact we are seeing in our classrooms through anecdotal or qualitative pieces of evidence.  Having appropriate leveled DOK formative and summative assessments in place, will allow teachers in the moment and within PLCs to have a better understanding of our young people’s learning.

This is the first step of many in revisiting the DOK levels this year, but by changing the lens through which we view these levels we are going to be able to  provide even more opportunities to help our young people. The goal for us is to continue to find ways to nurture our young people’s “roots” through a culture which is designed to prepare them for life over one focused on the transfer of a curriculum.  Using DOK levels as checkpoints, and not drivers of instruction, will help us to reach that goal.

Close No Doors Requires Considering Side-Effects

In a post titled “Raising Young People as Human Beings vs. Manufacturing Machines,”

I mentioned a comment from Yong Zhao concerning the importance of considering side-effects when practicing certain pedagogy.  Zhao mentioned 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.”  This observation stuck with me and I have used the quote several times over the past year, so you can imagine my excitement when Zhao came out with his latest book titled “What Works May Hurt: Side Effects in Education.”

This book is a great quick read which points out that we should  not only consider the

benefits of various pedagogical practices, but also weigh the side-effects of the aforementioned practices.  The analogy to medicine and the individual analysis doctors must consider when prescribing medication is emphasized. As an example, penicillin is an effective medication which kills bacteria to the benefit of the patient, yet the very same drug can also be harmful to those who are allergic to it or become a problem if over prescribed.  A doctor must consider these side effects on an individual basis, so that that proper prescription is prescribed. This takes place best when the doctor has a conversation with the patient, listens to the needs of that particular individual, makes a diagnosis, and then provides the proper prescription.  Similarly in the classroom, we need to be sure that we are taking the time for individual conversations with the young people under our care, listen to where their understanding lies, analyze or diagnose where they fall in the continuum of a particular concept or skill, and than “prescribe” or apply the appropriate pedagogy.  If we were to approach teaching in such a way we could avoid the seemingly inevitable swing of the educational pendulum.

“Education remains stuck in perpetual pendulum swings-lots of movement and action,

but going nowhere” (Zhao, 2018, p.108).  We seem to fall into the same trap over the years by shifting from one pedagogical approach to another because we are looking for the “silver bullet” that can be used on all of our students.  As an example, Zhao points out that “Math Wars” have taken place because math education has “been caught in a 200 plus year pendulum swing between an overemphasis of rote practice of isolated skills and procedures and an overemphasis of conceptual understanding, with their respective overreliance on either teacher directed or student centered instruction” (Zhao, 2018, p. 106).  Some of the more recent battles were waged in the 1960’s, appeared again in the 1990’s, and have reappeared today as “new math” through the Common Core. Reading instruction has had a similar cyclical battle between phonics and whole-language during that same time period. Both the reading and math battles have arose from the war between progressivism and academic traditionalism.  “This war is the mother of all wars in education. The division between progressive, child-centered, and inquiry based education and academic curriculum-driven education is the power source that has fueled the reading wars, math wars, the battles over direct instruction versus inquiry based learning, the wars over standards and testing, and the wars over the national curriculum” (Zhao, 2018, p. 119).   Unfortunately, both sides of this war are looking for one overarching approach that will meet the need of all students, but both ignore the potential side-effects of the individual young people who are affected by the prescription.

What we should be doing is listening to what our young people need.  There will be times when some individuals will need more direct instruction and others will thrive when given more latitude.  We should consider side-effects, and not just results or outcomes, when making all of our pedagogical decisions. This approach can be beneficial whether you are in the progressive or traditional camp.  However, using this approach will emphasize that there is no panacea in education. By the way, compromise is not the answer either. A doctor would never prescribe a lower dose of a medication to which a patient is allergic as a compromise.  The politically correct advice to find middle ground or balance between opposing views is scientifically irresponsible and combining them would actually reduce effectiveness (Zhao, 2018). It comes down to making informed decisions and that means as educators we need to constantly be analyzing what the young people in our care need.  Sometimes they will need more direct instruction as a group, other times individuals will benefit more from being put in situations which allow them to make their own connections and develop their own relationships as they recognize patterns between concepts. This means that every day and every class could and probably should look different.   

A doctor who prescribes a medication for a patient because that is what has always been done or because it works on most patients without considering the needs of the individual patient or potential side-effects of the individual would never be tolerated. As a matter of fact, the doctor would be breaking the oath to “do no harm” and it would be considered malpractice.  Why should we, as educators, be held to a lower standard? If we follow a pedagogical practice that has always been done because it works for most of our students, be it progressive or traditional, and do not consider the potential side-effects of the practice on the individual young people in our care we would be guilty of educational malpractice and breaking what should be our own oath to “close no doors.”  That is Zhao’s call to action. Considering side-effects of our practices is something we should be doing as a district, within our schools, during our PLCs, and in our daily practice within our classrooms.

References

Zhao,Yong  (2018). What Works May Hurt: Side Effects in Education.  New York, NY.

Teachers College Press.