K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Sister

If you are a teacher then chances are you're experiencing the most stressful August you’ve ever endured. Whether your school is about to open in-person, has already opened, or whether you’re teaching virtually, nothing about the beginning of school is normal this year. Nothing.

With so much to worry about this year (Will I get Covid? Will I pass it on to my loved ones? How do I keep students physically distanced at recess? How can I teach word study with my mouth covered by a mask? What happens when the little rugrats start shooting their masks at each other?) it would probably behoove us to take a deep breath and think about these two questions:

1. What must we ABSOLUTELY get right during the first weeks of school?
2. What can wait?

I’ve learned than when things get complicated, it’s best to react with simplicity. Distill down the most critical concepts and save the others for later.

What MUST we get right?

First, it is imperative that students feel safe and loved when they come to school. Some of our students are extremely anxious about picking up the virus, some have been in neglectful or abusive situations for the past five months, and others are simply “regular” anxious about the beginning of school. Our first order of business needs to be building trust and a sense of community so that these little people can relax. Eric Jensen has shown us that stressful situations release cortisol, and cortisol has distinct negative effects on people’s ability to learn. If our kids don’t feel safe and cared for, all the teaching we do will be for naught.

Secondly, we must create and follow procedures that will make future learning possible. If you are teaching in-person, that means all the new rituals and routines surrounding CDC guidelines: how do we line up safely without touching each other? When do we have to wear a mask? What do we do with our mask when we don’t have to wear it? How and when should I use hand sanitizer? How can I use classroom manipulatives safely? If you’re teaching virtually, students must understand your schedule, create a learning spot at home, and make a plan for sharing devices with siblings and parents.

All of this will be different this year, and it must be taught. Of all the things that are new, I think this is what stresses teachers the most because we’re trying to teach kids something we’ve never done before. Therefore, while this teaching-of-safety-routines is a must, we need to give ourselves grace while we work through it. Tell your students, “This is how we’re going to store our masks when we go to recess today. We might do it differently tomorrow or next week, but if we change I promise I’ll show you how so we can all get it right.” Flexibility is the name of the game for both teachers and students.

Finally, in these beginning weeks of school we must help students become familiar with technology and the platforms/tools our schools are using. Most likely our schools will be going digital at some point this year, or at the very least particular students or cohorts will go digital if they have to quarantine. They need to be comfortable logging in and navigating the platform. This can be done through games, scavenger hunts, and simple assignments that inspire confidence rather than fear in students (and parents!). If your students are beginning the year in a digital format, it’s even more important for them to be comfortable with the technology before you introduce grade-level concepts.

What can wait?

Honestly, deeper content and grade-level standards are not important in these first weeks. Give yourself and your kids a break and instead play games to build community and trust. You might toss in some concepts they learned last year, but make sure they’re easy concepts that your students are sure to have mastered. Nothing provokes anxiety more than being thrown two-digit multiplication when you’re still unsure about addition.

Another piece of the educational puzzle that can wait? Assessments. This may be a bit controversial, especially since we know our students will likely not be academically up to speed due to last spring’s Pandemic Pause. But I still come back to the great amount of stress students and teachers are under right now. Imagine if you were on a mission trip to a third-world country and when you arrived instead of allowing you to settle in, your hosts drove you to the middle of the capital and dropped you off to “assess” your ability to find your way to the mission compound? You’d have done much better if they’d just waited a short while and let you get the lay of the land. The same applies to students. Of course, teachers are constantly assessing in informal ways from day one – speaking vocabulary, behavioral strengths, small motor control, desire to read – and these can still be done during games and routines. Just save the formal assessments until kids have settled in.

"Don't let success go to your head. Don't let failure go to your heart." - Tim Keller 

We know these first weeks of school will be hard. The only thing that’s guaranteed is change. In these times of uncertainty, keep it simple. Love your students and let them know it. Create structure that will allow for deeper learning later. And above all, give yourself grace.

Classroom Community in the Time of Covid

It’s the time of year when I find myself dreaming of school each night, but this year instead of energizing thoughts of fresh faces and sharpened pencils, my dreams are anxious ones, troubled by struggling to keep kids apart, computer programs that won’t operate, and children chewing their masks into soggy chinstraps.

Among the many things Covid-19 has stolen from us is the ability for the approximately 3.7 million teachers across the county to plan for the beginning of school. What would normally be one of the most enjoyable times of year for a teacher (Anything is possible! This will be the perfect class of eager, dedicated learners!) is instead being spent in debates between politicians, parents, and the general public with no clear right answer.

So, how can teachers find a bit of calm in this storm? How can we make plans when so much is up in the air and un-plannable? We do what we’ve always done – we think of our students first. Our students are coming, one way or the other. If we are nervous and anxious about this year, our students are much more so. They’re likely concerned about the same things as always – Will my teacher be nice? Will the work be too hard? But they’re also probably afraid of how school will be different, whether Covid guidelines will keep them from making friends, and how to negotiate this new version of school. Some will carry with them fears of catching the virus and spreading it to loved ones while others are dealing with the ongoing economic impact to their families. It’s our job to allay those fears as much as we can, and build a supportive community in our classroom, even if it’s a virtual space.

According to Dr. Mark Wilson, teachers and students who had strong, trusting relationships made an easier transition last spring to distance learning. Strong relationships build trust, and when teachers and students trust each other, much more can be asked of each. And we know this year will be asking a lot of all of us.

So, here are some ways I worked to build classroom community and trust at the beginning of each school year, with ideas on how to adjust to a digital format if that’s how school begins in your area:

• I like to help students, even young ones, understand that fair does not always mean equal. Along with sharing this image, I try to bring it closer to home by asking students to interview their guardians to find out the age at which they began to walk (in months), said their first word (in months), and lost their first tooth (in years). We then graph this information, which could easily be accomplished on software such as Kahoot (by creating answer choices with age ranges) or Microsoft Excel. We then have a conversation about how everyone grows differently and reaches milestones at different times. Similarly, not everyone will learn to read or multiply or shoot a basketball at the same exact time. Therefore, my job as a teacher is to meet you exactly where you are and give you just what you need. My teaching will look different for different students, and that’s ok.
• A classroom agreement is a great alternative to a set of rules. I like to read “The Kingdom with No Rules, No Laws, and No King” by Norman Stiles. After discussing how this applies to our classroom, we would create an agreement written in positive language (e.g. We agree to behave in ways that allow our friends to learn). An agreement with several broad, short statements tends to be most effective. If you are meeting with students via video conference this might be done best in groups of 5-7 rather than whole group to allow everyone to participate, then compile and narrow them down as a whole class.
• I also like to start the year by sending the message to students that our community values problem-solving and out-of-the-box thinking, that mistakes are interesting and worth examining, so I like to put students into problem-solving situations fairly quickly. 3-Act Tasks are a great way to do this in math and could be adjusted to a video conference format. To celebrate problem-solving in literacy I love Jon Scieszka’s book Baloney (Henry P.) in which Henry explains why he’s late to class using alien terms that require careful use of context clues. I read the story to students without showing the pictures, then give partners this printout  and ask them to work together to problem-solve the underlined words (if your classroom is digital or you teach younger children the class could work collaboratively with the teacher scribing, perhaps on a shorter section). After sharing our guesses as a group, we finish by listening to the story again with pictures. It’s important that during these problem-solving activities you encourage divergent thinking and praise risk-taking. Repeatedly asking, “What makes you say that?” can help kids begin to adopt a metacognitive stance.
• Personal goal setting can be extremely powerful for students, even our youngest learners. Adapt this goal setting form for specific content areas or for certain timespans (e.g. quarterly goals). 

If you’re finding yourself in a funk (like I am) because it’s hard to find your place in this weird Covid world, spend some time thinking about the students who are on their way to your classroom community. Whether they arrive by bus or by internet videoconference, they’re coming, and it will benefit them and you to plan some community-building exercises to put everyone at ease.

What are some ways you plan to build community in your classroom? Share in the comments below

Book Review: Onward – by Elena Aguilar

This jewel of a book is one you’ll want to read very slowly so that you can stretch out the experience. It has taken me months to read it, and even now I’m sad it’s over. Elena knew it would likely have this effect, because she’s organized each chapter around a month of the year, beginning with June.

The book is about cultivating resilience in educators. Each chapter examines aspects of resilience such as emotional intelligence, storytelling, taking care of yourself, compassion, and dealing with change. Along the way she takes deeper dives into specific emotions such as optimism, empathy, and perfectionism. Each page gave me so much to think about and reflect upon that I felt the need to slow down to digest, but also share with others.

For instance, she begins the short section on perfectionism saying, “At the heart of perfectionism is the belief that, in order to be loved and accepted, we must strive to act and be the best all the time” (p. 166). This isn’t possible, of course, and so along with perfectionism comes frustration and even anger when things don’t work out perfectly. Understanding this helps me understand some people I know who at first glance appear to be angry much of the time, but underneath it all may be frustrated perfectionists. Education is certainly a difficult field if you’re constantly striving for perfection.

Her chapter on change made a big impression on me as well. Appropriately, she fit this into the April chapter, which in education is the month of testing and finding out the big changes for next year – the principal’s not coming back, or you’re asked to teach a new grade level. Change is incredibly stressful. The secret to leading change, Elena says, is to understand that most people are fearful of change, and as leaders we must acknowledge this and lend encouragement. There’s no fast way through this. “Leading change most often includes learning; in order for people to do something different, whatever it is that you want them to do, you need to address skill, knowledge, capacity, will, cultural competency, and emotional intelligence” (p. 280). She suggests setting up opportunities for teachers to reflect on their purpose and their ongoing growth. And above all, to listen.

As teachers, we all feel a complete range of emotions throughout the year. If you have lately been feeling less bounce in your step, less resilience in the face of challenge, I urge you to pick up this book. Each time I set it down after reading, I felt better, more encouraged, and filled with food for thought. Treat yourself to this book – you deserve it.

Why aren’t they doing what I taught them?

Recently I spent the morning facilitating a lesson study with K-2 teachers and an afternoon meeting with coaches only to find that both groups were having problems with the same basic idea – lack of transfer from instruction to independent work. For the teachers, they felt they had taught students lesson after lesson about editing writing for punctuation, spelling, and capital usage, but students were unable to correct the work on their own. If teachers pointed out the errors, students recognized them and could fix them, but they weren’t finding the mistakes on their own.

With the coaches, the concern was that the teachers they worked with had watched them model workshop and mini-lessons, but when coaches dropped by classrooms the teachers weren’t necessarily putting the work into practice. Instead, unannounced visits revealed teachers reverting back to the instructional methods they’d previously used.

In both of these cases, instruction had happened, but wasn’t sticking. Why?

There could be lots of reasons, but I wonder if it has to do with the gradual release model not being gradual enough. When we think about “I do” moving into “we do” until finally “you do,” I’m not sure we’ve really thought about the different variations of “we do” deeply enough. Within that large middle section of “we do,” how might we intentionally back off our support in ways that translate to confidence on the part of the learner?

Perhaps part of the confusion lies in how long gradual release should take. I wonder if the teachers discussing writing conventions felt like they had gradually released sufficiently since over the course of the mini-lesson they’d modeled and had kids work with partners? But what if it takes longer than that? Are we building in enough time for kids to discuss their options and work through the difficulties? Do the materials we model with closely match the students’ materials, or are they just different enough to confuse those extra-literal students? Are we giving kids the concrete steps or strategies they need in order to walk through the editing process?

In thinking about gradual release as it applies to coaching, perhaps we’re also cutting gradual release too short. Just because we’re working with adults doesn’t mean those adults don’t also deserve to receive a great deal of “we do” support from the coach.

That might mean the coach co-plans and co-teaches more lessons with the teacher. It might mean asking the teacher to videotape her teaching in order to capture “the work” for you both to reflect on. It might mean building in more intentional reflection time after lessons in order to point out on-the-fly decisions and to look at the resulting student work.

And what about our so-called “you do” segment? Are we really expecting learners, whether children or adults, to apply what they’ve learned in completely solo environments? What if we built in support through partnerships by coaching two teachers instead of one, so there’s a built-in talk-partner for times the coach is not available?

These are just a few of my current ideas on why our work might not be sticking, whether it’s with students or adults. I need to do a lot more thinking about this. What are your thoughts? How can we make sure that the work we’re doing is effective and transfers to independence?

Correcting the Fundamental Attribution Error

It turns out that we’ve all made a critical error. And not just any error, but a fundamental attribution error. If it sounds terrifying, well, that may be only slightly off the mark.

I read about this error in Richard Nisbett’s book Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking  in which he describes “scientific and philosophical concepts that can change the way we solve problems by helping us to think more effectively about our behavior and our world.” It turns out that we are not nearly as smart as we think we are.

Our problem is that we tend to attribute other people’s successes and failures to personal dispositions while we discount the context or circumstances that may have contributed to them. For instance, we might think of Todd as a lazy student, or of our co-worker Susan as standoffish and rude, or of Bill Gates as incredibly brilliant. We don’t take into account the circumstances that may have led to our perceptions. Nisbett digs into the Bill Gates story to reveal that when he was an 8^th grader his parents transferred him to a different school because he was bored. His new school happened to be one of the very few schools in 1968 that was connected to a mainframe computer. This lucky break meant that he was able to log time on the computer and even test software for a local company. From there he began sneaking out of the house at 3am to spend time at the University of Washington computer center. If Gates had not transferred schools at that critical time, would he have become who he is today?

Nisbett states, 

“Behind many a successful person lies a string of lucky breaks that we have no inkling about” (p. 35). 

We tend to assume it was the person’s characteristics rather than the surrounding circumstances that made them succeed or struggle.

The kicker is that we do the opposite with ourselves – we, having the luxury of an intimate knowledge of our own circumstances, tend to give ourselves a break when we experience failure. We attribute our problem not to a personal traits, but to the situation. “Well, I would have gotten that job if I had not gotten a cold – I just wasn’t at the top of my game” or “The teacher doesn’t like me” or “The requirements aren’t fair.”

The truth is, contexts and situations have a great deal to do with our behaviors. While we tend to think other people behave the way they do because of some innate characteristic (e.g. laziness, brilliance, greed) the reality is that life is a series of circumstances that make us into the people we currently are.

This Fundamental Attribution Error has huge implications for teachers when we think about how we approach students, parents, and even our fellow teachers. I’ve been guilty of thinking Parent A “just doesn’t care” about their child’s needs in school, or that Teacher X just has a chip on her shoulder, or that my administrator is rude. But if it were me in those exact same circumstances I would cut myself a break by understanding how the current situation is making me appear as if I don’t have time for my child or that I’m too busy to socialize and be friendly with my co-workers or that my fracturing marriage is spilling over into negative interactions at work.  

The bottom line is that we need to give each other a break. It can be hard to catch yourself doing this but, fittingly, it’s easier to catch someone else in the midst of committing the Fundamental Attribution Error. Once you begin to see it in others, you can notice it in yourself.

Does this strike a chord for you? Do you notice yourself doing this with others? Have you discovered ways to catch yourself in the act of judging others and halt the judgment? Share in the comments below.

We're Never Using Scissors Again...

The other day I was working with a group of Kindergarten teachers, otherwise known as the saints of the teaching world, when a second-year teacher gave me some words of wisdom that I think God intended me to hear. She lamented that the first time she tried to have her students use scissors it was a disaster. So much so that she went home and told her mom, a retired Kindergarten teacher, that they were never using scissors again. Ever.

Her mom gave her some advice, which has been reverberating through my mind ever since: The first time you do ANYTHING with Kindergarteners, it’s a disaster. Just expect it. And know that it will get better the more you do it.

I think that advice may not be just for Kindergarteners. It may apply to any person, or group of people, no matter their size.

I think about the first time I tried to ride a Razor scooter – I’m lucky I didn’t end up at Urgent Care with a tree-shaped dent in my forehead. Or the first time I modeled a lesson in front of a teacher – the lesson went too long, I hadn’t planned out EXACTLY what to say during the think aloud, and the kids left the lesson confused and befuddled.

I brought up this scissors story to a different group of teachers during a lesson study in which we decided to try revision stations from Kate Messner’s Real Revision . We planned each station, prepared the materials, and tried to anticipate students’ confusions. But the teachers were still worried that it wouldn’t work. Well, guess what? The first time, it probably won’t! It might even turn out to be a complete Kindergarten-Scissors disaster. But that doesn’t mean there’s not value in the attempt.

If we gave ourselves room to have a nuclear-meltdown disaster every time we tried something new, and just expected it to not go well, then I’m guessing we might be pleasantly surprised at least half the time. And that’s a WAY better feeling than the anxiety and frustration that comes with expecting perfection and not getting it.

Some might think this is a pessimistic way to look at things, but I actually think it’s the opposite. It’s giving yourself permission to flop at something the first few times you try it, to expect it to be less than perfect. And to be optimistic that it will improve a little, with every future attempt.

Expecting disaster could make us more daring and willing to try a new strategy. And in the process we might end up being kinder to ourselves.

Facing Down Imposter Syndrome

Becoming a coach is not an easy transition. Actually, part of being human is realizing that there are no easy transitions - becoming a teenager, moving to a new home, getting a divorce - most change is hard for us fragile beings.

I suppose much of it comes from discomfort with a lack of control. Most of us like feeling that we know what we're doing, and transitioning to a new place or a new position puts us in a place of Wobble, as my friend Bob Fecho calls it. Wobble is good however - it means we're changing, growing, and learning, becoming more than we were before. But it is also often uncomfortable.

Sometimes, those of us in this period of change subscribe to what is called Imposter Syndrome, or the feeling that we should “fake it til you make it." Imposter Syndrome is that uncomfortable feeling that you SHOULD know something, that others are depending on you for the answers, and that to not know them would appear weak. It can manifest as a feeling of guilt or shame or even in some cases in defensive behaviors such as anger.

I remember as a new coach, in a new building of teachers I didn't know, I felt I had WAY more questions than answers to give people. After several days of telling folks I would get back to them, I didn't feel like I'd helped anyone with any thing. I wasn't at all sure that they'd hired the right person for my job, that perhaps I'd just be better off going back to the classroom where at least I knew what I was doing. I remember wishing I could skip the next two years and just magically become an experienced coach who knew the answers.

If I'd had the words to label what I was feeling as Imposter Syndrome, I think it would have helped. I needed to know this was a perfectly normal feeling for a new coach, or even for a new teacher or new principal. I wish I had confided these feelings to someone, and that they had advised me to enjoy the Wobble that came with this new experience. There would only one time in my life I would be a new coach, and I could learn a lot from the experience if I only let myself reflect on it, pay attention to it, and use it.

If this is you this year, or if your next door neighbor down the hall is new this year (to the school, or the grade level, or to teaching), watch for the ugly evidence of Imposter Syndrome and do your best to squash it. Instead, tell yourself (or the other person) to enjoy the Wobble as a sign of growth. Embrace the chance to stretch yourself. And know that to not know something is never a sign of weakness. It is, instead, a sign of transition as our fragile selves change into something new.

Elevator speech

Business people say that everyone should have an elevator speech ready to explain what you do at your job. By elevator speech, they meant a short synopsis of your career that could be explained to a stranger in the time it takes to rise a few floors on an elevator.

I’ve tried for a few years to come up with my elevator speech and when people ask what I do I’ve said such things as, “Well, I’m a coach, but not an athletic coach. I sort of cheer teachers on.” But that’s not right. Or, “I’m a teacher of teachers – I help them find the best instructional strategies for the classroom.” But that implies that I’m the one with all the knowledge, when in fact I’ve learned as much from other teachers as I’ve taught them. It’s certainly not, “I walk the halls and make sure teachers have what they need and do what they should” or “I basically wait around in my office until someone comes to ask me a question or cry on my shoulder.” Describing coaching can be hard.

But then the other day we had a business associate of my husband’s over for dinner and rather than ask, “What grade do you teach?” when he found out I was in education, he asked, “What do you do?” I surprised myself by saying, “My job is about change. I offer teachers support as they change their practice.”

That’s about as succinct as it gets. Coaching is about change. It’s about nudging change to happen, supporting it as it does, questioning when it doesn’t, and celebrating when it succeeds.

What’s your elevator speech?

Why we need to fail

5 Goals for this Year

I recently read Justin Tarte’s blog entitled “My 10 Goals as a First Year Administrator” and it inspired me to think about my goals for the coming year. I’m not in my first year and I'm not an administrator, but it’s never too late to have goals. As a matter of fact, summer is the perfect time to sit back and rethink my views on coaching.

1. I will – work more on my “teddy bear” aspects since I’m so clearly a “magnifying glass” (see here)
2. I will – ask more questions and do less telling.
3. I will – make my coaching student-centered rather than teacher-centered.
4. I will – take deep breaths during stressful situations. Under stress I tend to become shorter in speech and faster in action, neither of which is conducive to building relationships with others.
5. I will – be compassionate. “Always be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” ~ Plato

Education is one of the few professions that allows us to start anew every 12 months. Wherever you are in your journey as an educator, if you took the time to think of changes for the upcoming year, what would they be?

The future of reading?

I keep seeing online references to a book entitled “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr and so today I checked it out via the “look inside” feature on Amazon. The author argues that the internet is changing not only what we read but how we read and also how we think. We know this about children because of the Digital Immigrant/Native article.

Mr. Carr, however, notices a change in his own reading processes, and he’s definitely a digital immigrant, having been born in 1959. He found, after a decade or so of spending the majority of his reading time online, that he is no longer able to concentrate on longer spans of text, such as books. He gets distractible and impatient after 2 or so pages of text, and feels much more comfortable scanning and skimming for important information instead. He cites other bloggers and digerati who have noticed and commented on the same phenomenon.

This inability to read books, or longer more meaningful texts, also came up in a futuristic book I read recently: “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart. Set in the not-so-distant future, it’s a funny-yet-sad commentary on the direction our culture is heading. One scene in particular made me cringe – the protagonist reads aloud to his girlfriend from one of his collection of books (she initially, like everyone else, doesn’t recognize it as being a book and thinks its pages smell bad), but she is unable to follow the narrative because her only exposure to text has been web pages and texting friends. “I never really learned to read,” she says, “in school, they only taught us to skim and scan for important information.”

I wonder – is that really where we’re headed? I thought it was just the exaggeration of a novelist until I read Nicholas Carr’s book, but now I wonder whether people of the future will actually read long sections of connected text? Even a full webpage seems like too much text to a populace used to short blog entries, quick status updates, and even shorter Tweets. Our communication is getting shorter and quicker, not longer and more thoughtful. The irony is that with all the information available to us, you think we’d have more intelligent, thoughtful things to say about all that we’re learning. Instead, we barely pause between scanning websites or posting our locations on our smart phones to digest the information swirling around us.

There is a definite skill in reading connected, more difficult text. I find myself stopping to think, stare at the ceiling, filter the information as I receive it and decide how it fits with what I already know. My digestive pauses while reading are integral to my final comprehension of the text, and the longer and more difficult the text, the slower I read. That, unfortunately, doesn’t fit with the speed of today’s world. Will today’s budding readers learn how to read longer texts and digest them fully? Or will they end up like the girlfriend in “Love Story”, back to texting on her smart phone while her boyfriend finishes the book alone? Will those of us who enjoy books be freaks? If you’ve stuck with me this far, perhaps there’s hope for you.

The future of professional learning?

Learning, as we know it, is about to change. I’ve written before about the advances that are coming to education through blended learning, and as I learn more about how this might look in the classroom, I’m also finding it has the potential to change professional learning as well.

Currently, what teachers learn on the job is determined almost completely by the administration at their school. Some schools offer a full slate of opportunities to learn about new instructional practices, technological offerings, or assessment choices. But other schools may get by without offering anything. Current policies dictate that teachers will no longer be paid for new degree levels, and so the burden of continuing education for teachers falls much more heavily on the district, and therefore with the instructional coaches, in which they reside. For some teachers, however, schools offer very few opportunities to improve.

Blended learning has the potential to change that. In a recent discussion with representatives from Dell’s educational division, I was given an overview of how professional learning might look in a blended situation that includes some face-to-face meetings and some self-paced, individual learning.

After an initial face-to-face meeting to establish protocols and to ensure that everyone understands the expectations and can link up to the host site, a class might be broken up like this:

Session 1: Teachers work individually and on their own time (asynchronously) to learn about the topic at hand. The website contains links to text, videos, podcasts or other media that provide background on the topic. There might be an element of choice here, with the teachers choosing to go more deeply in some areas than into others. There’s an agreed-upon time frame to complete this session, with some sort of “deliverable” due at the end, such as a quiz or open-ended response.

Session 2: The teachers meet with a partner to analyze and discuss the content from session 1. This might involve more online activities, such as viewing videos or podcasts and responding to discussion boards, and is completed on their own time.

Session 3: The teachers meet in small groups to work on applying the concept in the classroom. At the end of sessions 2 and 3 facilitators create another “deliverable” for participants to demonstrate their understanding.

Session 4: The only other face-to-face meeting besides the initial meeting, this is the participants’ chance to “go public” with their learning and how they’ve applied it in their classrooms. The focus is on giving and receiving feedback, and discussing future applications of the topic.

Blended learning as described in this simple outline has the potential to level the playing field of professional learning between schools. No longer will it matter where you work or what your particular school offers. Instead, courses will be offered online during the year with very few face-to-face meetings required yet with expectations of application in the classroom.

This approach in no way eliminates the necessity of coaches to work side-by-side with teachers. There will always be a need for individual coaching of new assessments, interesting instructional strategies, and help with struggling students. Research shows that the most effective professional learning occurs on the job with a knowledgeable “other” as support.

But for those times when teachers want to learn new information, blended learning offers a flexible, individualized alternative to what we’ve done in the past.

What are your thoughts? Is blended professional learning a positive or negative move?

Book review: "Disrupting Class"

One of the best books I’ve read about initiating large-scale change in education is “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”. The authors summarize where the education field has been regarding its attempts to change, and then clearly lay out their proposal for the future.

Their argument is basically this: if we agree that students learn differently, then the monolithic, factory-based model of pushing kids through curriculum in batches we call grades is no longer acceptable. Teaching everyone the same things on the same day in the same way will not work in today’s world. Using this model, students have lost motivation and feel disconnected from school and its purpose.

Instead, education needs to become modular. Students should be allowed to assemble a learning plan that allows them to learn in a manner that fits best. The authors argue that this will increasingly involve technology that allows individualized, asynchronous learning and a teacher who no longer “stands and delivers” but instead serves as a facilitator of knowledge.

In the past, however, attempts at large-scales changes in education have always resulted in small-scale shifts because we’ve absorbed the ideas into our existing structure. NCLB, merit pay, classroom-based computers – all of these were attempted in the context of a traditional classroom setting with students expected to learn in the manner the teacher required. The authors of this book argue that in order for change to be disruptive, it must not confront the current situation head-on, but instead should begin in a separate dimension where there is little or no alternative.

For instance, if individualized, computer-based instruction were introduced in schools today the idea would most likely be seen as far-fetched, too time intensive, and threatening to teachers with little technological experience. But if the idea were introduced for alternative and home-schooled students, who currently have few options, it is much more likely to take off. Over time the program will experience success, the technology will become more sophisticated, and more traditional students, parents and even teachers will begin clamoring for it.

We’re already headed in this direction. Online classes and blended learning – a combination of face-to-face and online learning – are increasingly becoming the norm. I think we can all agree that different students learn differently. This is one way we can teach differently to reach them.

Stages of Competence

This past week our coaches had a good discussion concerning the 4 stages of developing competence. In developing a skill, a person is:

• unconsciously incompetent – completely unaware of their lack of skill. Of course, many children are at this stage in many areas, but I also think of some adults I know and their joyous, uncoordinated flailings on the dance floor. At some point the person then becomes:
• consciously incompetent – all that’s changed is that the person now realizes they could be better at this thing they’re flailing at. Their skill hasn’t improved, simply their awareness of their lack of ability has. With focused effort, the person then becomes:
• consciously competent – much has to happen between stage 2 and stage 3. Really, it’s the crux of everything – how do we get people from stage 2 to 3? Brenda Powers, of Choice Literacy, argues that it’s often “third things” such as books, videos, demonstration lessons, etc. that provide the person with what they need to improve their skill. With time, the person then becomes:
• unconsciously competent – the skill has become natural enough that little thought is given to decisions that are made. In the case of the dancer, after someone has pointed out their lack of coordination , and a great deal of dance lessons have been undertaken, the person can become a graceful, fluid dancer who need not concentrate to the degree they must have when learning their new steps.

For those of us attempting to teach people acquiring new skills, the mistake we too often make is assuming the person is already at stage 2. We take for granted that they’re aware of their need to improve and are willing participants. If, however, they are still at stage 1 no amount of advice or instruction will get through to them until they realize they’re not as good as they think they are. This requires us to “create the need”. Until they know they need help, they won’t hear a bit of the advice that’s given them. No need to buy something they already think they have.

And so, the parallels to coaching should be fairly obvious at this point. As coaches we must:
1. Find out which stage our learners are at
2. If they’re at stage 1, we have to create the need for change to take place
3. If they’re at stage 2, we have to provide those things the learners need to improve their skills. This is the very heart of coaching, and many books have been written about what coaches do at this stage.
4. For teachers at stage 4, we can help them develop what David Baume has termed “reflective competence”.

His thoughts, and I agree completely, are that we can’t stop at simply being unconsciously competent, otherwise how will you teach someone else the skill? If you don’t know how you do it, you can’t pass it on. So in order to become a teacher of that skill yourself, you must become reflective about the theories, skills, and knowledge required in the process.

Regarding teaching, this is where future coaches are made. Those reflective teachers who know why they do what they do and are aware of the literature and research behind it are the perfect people to help those further down the stages of competence.

Pay for Performance

The big item on my mind today has been PFP, based on an article in the AJC. They reported that Georgia teachers will begin participating in PFP this coming fall – at least the 26 districts that opted in to RTTT here .

I’m conflicted about it. On the one hand, this morning I read this interview of Bill Gates and the head of the American Federation of Teachers in which he said that 25% of teachers are very good. Many teachers are not, granted. I’ve worked in two very good school systems which have probably given me a skewed view of education – I think education is much better off than it probably is because of the high quality of teachers I’ve had the privilege to work with.

That being said, if only 25% of teachers are top notch, how does that compare to other professions? What percentage of doctors or lawyers or computer techs would be considered to be “very good”? For that matter, how do we decide what “very good” looks like? If we continually make more teachers “very good”, wouldn’t the bar continue to rise, so that we’ll never have, say, 80% of teachers reach that mark? It’s a moving target, right?

The same goes for student achievement, I’d think. As more knowledge enters the world and as our expectations for what students should be able to do increases, the bar for what we consider an “average” student to be will rise. Fareed Zakaria says that the past few years hasn’t been a case of America falling behind in the world (he was talking economically, but I think it applies to education too). Instead, he says it’s the phenomenon of “the rise of the rest”. We’re not necessarily falling further behind, it’s just that the others are beginning to catch up.

Now, that doesn’t mean I think there’s not progress to be made. Ironically, the very system that was created to help us increase our standing in the world has done the most damage – Bush’s NCLB legislation relied so heavily on standardized test scores that the last 10 years has seen an over-emphasis on linear, narrow-minded thinking, both in children and in the educators who teach them. We’ve come to worship correct answers instead of embracing the idea of failure. We need to be open to failure in order for growth to occur (this makes more sense after seeing the previous clip). And that’s not happening in our current school culture.

My question is: Will teachers be open to failure with pay for performance? In other words, will they be willing to try a new instructional strategy if their pay is riding on the progress their students make? Or will they stay inside their instructional box because it’s worked so well in the past?

I understand that education needs to be improved. I even agree that good teaching should be rewarded and also emulated. Perhaps education needs to become a capitalist endeavor, where success is met with monetary reward and comparison of scores from this year and last creates a competitive edge. For me, the jury’s still out. But like it or not, a verdict is coming soon.

Pet Lessons

Recently I was riding my bike along the wooded path my husband and I have built on our property. It’s not a long ride at this point – much less than a mile – and so I tend to ride in circles and figure eights, frontwards and backwards, in an effort to get a workout without getting bored.

I’ve learned that my two dogs are not equally suited to joining me on my afternoon rides. My Border Collie always starts the ride with me, but as we begin our second lap she soon realizes she can cut corners and wait for me, or better yet, cut bait and go straight home to wait on the porch. She’s willing to go for part of the journey, but she’s not wholeheartedly committed.

My elderly Labrador Retriever, on the other hand, is such a people-pleaser that he would run himself into the ground following my every step. He struggles to keep up at times, but refuses to stop and wait or to sit out a single lap.

It occurred to me, on a recent ride, that coaches encounter people of similar disposition in our daily effort to create change. Some of the teachers we work with are eager to please and will try much that we ask them to with very little complaining. They’re open to new experiences and are optimistic, and yet we need to be careful not to ask too much of them for fear of running them ragged.

Other teachers are more like my Collie: cautiously optimistic, but quick to head back home as soon as it looks like our efforts at change are regressing and becoming circular in nature. If we can show what’s in it for them, they’ll stick with us. Otherwise, they’ll leave us to do the work while they watch from the sidelines.

And then there are the cats. They refuse to follow at all, but create their own path. Some of them are housecats and are perfectly comfortable sitting in the windowsill taking a nap. We could tie a rope to our bike and drag them along, but the cat would not be convinced and we’d each most likely end up nursing serious wounds.

What’s the lesson I learned? Perhaps this: take care not to ask too much of your Labradors, demonstrate to your Collies what’s in it for them, and never take a cat on a bike ride.

A Trip Back in Time

Today I spent hours cleaning out one of my filing cabinets, a task that has been long overdue and which is, for me, oddly satisfying. I love getting rid of old things that I no longer use. It’s like weeding the garden and suddenly being able to see organized rows where before there had been only chaos. It’s why, as I recently justified to my husband, I let housework get so far behind: it’s so satisfying to see a stark difference rather than only a slight improvement.

The cleaning of my files brought home the unexpected realization that I have now become one of those older teachers who has drawers filled with outdated, blurry worksheets with no discernible purpose or redeeming qualities. The opening of each file in the cabinet revealed another layer of the onion of the teacher I used to be. Why did I save an entire file on penguins? Did I ever plan thematic units on topics such as soil based on all the possible art, music, social studies and math connections? Or what about one whole file folder dedicated to “bulletin boards”? I still had papers I’d written in college, and even “activity” ideas that I’d inherited from a retiring teacher as I began my career almost 20 years ago. One index card was so wrinkled and coffee-stained I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, despite the fact that it recorded the words to a song I had no idea how to sing.

Reading through the files brought back memories (and actual parent notes and classroom newsletters) of previous years, and I suddenly began to remember that teacher I used to be. People I used to work with, students I’d taught, plans I’d written, notes I’d taken in workshops and articles I’d clipped and taped together. There’s so much that I wasn’t aware that I didn’t know. Ignorance was bliss.

Sandra Cisneros has written about the years of our lives layering upon each other like the skin of an onion. In her short story “Eleven”, she discusses being eleven, and that when you turn eleven underneath you’re still 10 and 9 and 8 and 7 and 6 and 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1. But all people see is the eleven-year-old you. All of us are like that. Even though the teacher/coach I am now feels like a fully-formed, independent person, I’m really just a composite of all those versions of me that came before. A mosaic of experiences, spread out on an office floor, or piled in an office trashcan waiting to be recycled.

Every once in a while it’s good to dig beneath the surface and revisit that earlier version of ourselves, if only to see how far we’ve come.