Saturday, March 21, 2020

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

I wasn’t planning on posting this week as I was literally supposed to be on a plane to Key West with my wife to celebrate our 25th Anniversary as I type this blog.  First World problems. :) We both are very appreciative and realize we are blessed to be healthy, along with our children, in these uncertain times. So, thanks to COVID-19, I decided to practice some cognitive jiu-jitsu on myself and think about how we can take advantage of the current situation that has schools closed with the expectation for some form of on-line learning to take place at home.
     Two concepts popped in my mind as I started to look at the upside of what is taking place.  The first is that we have always known the importance of the community/school connection. That is to say we are always trying to find ways to get the community in the schools and the schools out into the community.  Today we find ourselves in a scenario in which the schools are in the community as each parent is now getting a small dose of what is taking place in the classroom. I say a small dose because, as you know, what is going home is just a shadow of the activities, conversations, and learning taking place on a daily basis in the classroom.  However, I think this is a great opportunity for parents to gain a better understanding of our approach to teaching and learning. With that said, it is very important to avoid the curriculum delivery model approach when designing on-line lessons. These lessons must not be about covering content, but instead focusing on the opportunities for LEARNING.  
     These opportunities for learning give parents a chance to see how schools have evolved since they attended.  In our district, we are fortunate to have two outstanding Academic Coaches in Jen Miller, our ELA Specialist, and Cara Morelos, our Math Specialist.  Cara and Jen used our math and ELA frameworks and each designed an on-line lesson that was then shared with teachers as a potential model to focus less on content delivery and more on the learning.   As you can see in the K-1 and 2-5 ELA Online Activity Framework and the K-5 Math Online Activity Framework, there is a heavy emphasis on nurturing the skills for reading, writing, and mathematics.  If parents see their kids working on activities such as these, the conversations at home will be more focused on what a young person learned today rather than what they covered today.  This is why it is so important to stay away from worksheets and/or “activities” that check off the box of covering content. Parents might be more willing to acquiesce to this approach for their children in grades K-5, but many will worry that in grades 6-12 this approach won’t work as there is typically a heavier curriculum coverage focus.
    I was happy to see that even the College Board, the group that is responsible for Advanced Placement courses and testing, recognized that this time should not be about covering content.  In their most recent update, published on 3/20/20, the College Board has slashed units and expectations of covering content for each of their courses and emphasized the reduced testing that will be done is going to be focused less on content and more on application (free response).   Although it is not official yet, the writing is on the wall for Ohio to cancel the state testing for grades 3-11 as well. Once this takes place, which I believe will happen by next week, the imaginary shackles we have put on ourselves for covering the content will also be removed leaving an opportunity for this on-line experience to be about the learning that can take place at home.  In education, time is currency, that is to say, what we spend our time on is what we value. This is a great opportunity to design activities and on-line environments that have young people spending more time on building and applying skills and less on covering content. It is more important than ever for teachers to consider our Design Specifications for Learning Environments when developing on-line lessons.   Designing activities such as these will also steer us away from the second concept we should take advantage of under the current situation which is an opportunity to de-emphasize points and grades.
      It is understood this opportunity for learning can not take the place of the face-to-face and day-to-day interactions that occur during a typical school day and our goal should not be to try to replicate the classroom experience.   As a result, our expectations should not be to assign points or grades to activities, but rather provide actionable feedback to the work which young people submit through this process. Actionable or formative feedback focuses on where the young person’s current understanding of a concept is and what are the next best steps for that individual’s learning.  The actionable part allows young people to set goals with the support of their teacher and starts a dialog between the two that can be revisited and expanded over time. This changes the narrative from completion and coverage to learning and growth. When parents hear and see this new narrative they will begin to have a better understanding of how schooling is evolving since they last attended.  
     As parents become more familiar with the focus on skill-building taking place in schools, they will begin to change their own understanding of what schools should look and sound like.  Expectations and discussions will shift away from points and grades and toward skills and growth. This online learning/homeschooling scenario can provide the opportunity for parents to see and begin to articulate this new narrative.  By creating/nurturing online environments that provide opportunities for this process, we will not only be emphasizing a school culture that prepares young people for life, but we will also be embracing a connection to the community which will enrich the narrative of our schools far beyond scores and rankings.  What if those experiences demonstrate a narrative shift from the school being an “A” district to being a district that prepares young people for life?  How do the schools prepare young people for life?  In grades K-12, the schools design learning environments that honor identity through relationships, understand learning is social, nurture innovation, value process over product, and go beyond points and grades.   This is how we make lemonade out of the lemons we have been given.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

A Purpose, A Vision & A Process

A Purpose 
     In his book “The Greatest Generation,” Tom Brokaw speaks of an overwhelming driving force that provided an opportunity for ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary tasks.  This force was a sense of common purpose. Brokaw remembers from when he was five, “Looking back, I can recall that the grown-ups all seemed to have a sense of purpose...there was something greater connecting all of us, in large ways and small”(Brokaw, 1998, p.11).  The theme is revisited throughout the book in the many stories he shares. This sense of common purpose for Americans to defeat the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy), the driving force at the time, provided them the opportunity to rise to the occasion. I can think of no more powerful example of the value of a shared vision or common purpose.  The power behind a common purpose can be easily connected to building our school culture through the metaphor of looking at schools as a greenhouse.
     The metaphor for schools as a greenhouse works because nurturing takes place in both a school and a greenhouse.  In a greenhouse the roots of plants are nurtured so that as they develop they will be able to successfully anchor and support the plant no matter the environment outside the greenhouse.  The analogous “roots” of students which are nurtured in schools are the soft skills students develop that are not seen on the surface nor are easily measured. Nonetheless, these “soft skills” or “competencies”  help anchor and support the young person no matter where they lay down their roots once they leave school. It is the development of these “roots” or “competencies” of the young people attending Aurora Schools that our strategic vision is built upon.  


A Vision
     The Aurora City Schools Strategic Vision stresses the importance of focusing on the whole child which aligns with the Ohio Department of Education’s “Each Child- Our Future” vision.  We believe today’s schools must not only build a solid foundation of academic knowledge, but also nurture a deep sense of purpose and self in young people. These young people are not merely students, but LEARNERS with a skill set that prepares them to be successful in an ever changing world.  This vision, Aurora Learners-Future Ready, is intended to serve as a guide or north star for the day to day learning taking place in grades PreK-12 and is composed of six competencies which help to support Aurora Learners to be future ready.
    These competencies:  Balanced, Resilient, Innovative, Collaborative, Empathetic, and being a Critical Thinker function as the aforementioned “roots” when thinking about Schools as a Greenhouse.  The greenhouse is intended to provide the ideal conditions for the plant’s roots to develop, so that those roots will be able to anchor, support, and provide nutrients to the plant no matter the environment in which the plant is placed once it leaves the greenhouse.  So too should the environment in our schools nurture the “roots” of young people as these “roots” will allow young people to be anchored and supported no matter the environment (school, work, or military) in which they place down their roots. As we work to nurture these competencies  of the young people who attend our schools these “roots” grow deeper and stronger year by year throughout their PreK-12 experience so that in the end the young people who attend the Aurora City Schools will be deeply rooted and prepared to contribute once they graduate.


A Process
     The common purpose of creating schools that act as a greenhouse combined with the vision of providing an environment which will nurture the competencies that prepare young people to be successful once they leave our schools need to be combined with one more element in order to be successful and that is a way or process in which to make this come to fruition.  In other words, we need a process that is able to address just HOW the purpose and vision can be fulfilled.  
     The first step towards creating such an environment is more mental than physical.  It is a mindshift for all educators that require us to shift from the mindset of a curriculum delivery model for teachers to one in which teachers instead design environments for learning.  These environments ideally put young people in situations which allow them to recognize patterns within the new information, create relationships between the concepts introduced, and make connections to their past learning.  This process requires teachers to consider certain requirements or specifications when creating or designing activities and lessons. Considering these specifications when designing lessons are HOW the purpose and vision become reality.
     The shift from a traditional model of schools which emphasizes curriculum delivery to a model in which young people are prepared for life can be made if we focus on five main ideas or specifications when designing our classroom environments.
Specification 1: Honoring Identity Through Relationships


Specification 2: Learning is Social 


Specification 3: Nurturing Innovation


Specification 4: Process vs. Product


Specification 5: Beyond Points and Grades


How this will look will be very different for a first grade classroom than in a Calculus class, but the five specifications serve as a common framework for teachers to consider.  If classroom activities and lessons are designed with these specifications in mind, instead of focusing on covering content through the curriculum delivery model, the purpose and vision we have proposed for young people in schools will be fulfilled no matter the age level.  
      A school culture  in which all educators (teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists, etc.) focus on a common purpose, vision, and process for developing young people’s ability to learn (Nurture the Roots) more than the curriculum to be delivered or the scores students produce is why we went into education, what our parents want, and how kids need to learn.


References
Brokaw, Tom. (1998).  The Greatest Generation.  New York, NY.: Random House.