Category Archives: Professionalism

What does this child need from me?

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In a fine blog post that is well worth your time, Paul Freedman offers a fascinating and compassionate glimpse into the mind and actions of a 4-year old Godzilla. Paul describes engaging Vlad, a self-described “bad Godzilla,” in a project to help re-build a hut-structure in the school’s play space. Eventually, Vlad calms down, helps Paul with the project, and begins to describe himself as a good Godzilla “who can help people when they need help.” Freedman challenges himself (and us) to ask ourselves this question whenever we encounter a child who is acting in a destructive manner: What does this child need from me? (Probably he would agree that this is always the question to ask, no matter the behavior.)

What a wonderfully compassionate, and ultimately realistic, question to ask. Compassionate because it asks us to form a relationship with another, rather than attempt to control him. Realistic, because ultimately there is no lasting control, except self-control. Each action, each word, each response communicates something meaningful. Freedman’s question asks that we listen more deeply than the level of what is said or done. While he doesn’t say it, I hear him asking us to listen to children at the level of what some might call the soul.

Freedman doesn’t stop with describing this success story. He’s been in the business long enough to know there is no “fade to black” to this scene. Real-life is unlike those heroic teacher movies. No credits scroll across the screen of his day. The music doesn’t swell and the house lights come on. Instead, the sun sets. The sun rises. And Vlad will arrive at school; it will be a different day. Paul (and most especially, Vlad) will have to somehow understand what happened and begin to create what will happen next. Freedman ends his entry with some powerful questions:

What implications are there for his schooling and for the program in general?  I certainly don’t believe this “problem” is “solved.”  Something is going on for Vlad that requires attention.  So was this afternoon a step in the right direction?  Does it offer us insight?  Or was it merely a momentary and welcome distraction?  I’d love to invite you all to share your thoughts.  What does this story bring up for you?

So, I’m going to respond to Paul, but since I didn’t want to take up all his comment space with a long-ish story, I’ll tell my story here, one that I’ve been meaning to tell. (Names have been changed.)

The story of Larry
Three years ago Larry arrived in my third grade classroom. He came with a ‘rap sheet’ from former teachers. He was a loner. He spent much of his time in the principal’s office. It was difficult for Larry to express himself in appropriate ways. (I suspect that he struggled with that in some neurological way beyond my ken.) But primarily he expressed anger. He argued and fought with others, including teachers. The first several weeks of school were difficult, to say the least. He screamed at me, at others, and just at the world. He argued, crawled on the floor to the bathroom, hid under his group’s table, and generally scribbled through all of his work without completing it.

One clear answer to Paul Freedman’s question was this: Larry needed me to know that he hated being in school.

It was hard. Hard for him, hard for me, and hard for the other kids in our classroom. I told Larry that I wouldn’t send him to the principal’s office. That wasn’t an option. I told him that I wanted him with me, in the room if possible. If not, then he could go out to a table in the hallway, prop the door open, and try to get himself under control. I told the other teachers on my hall that I was sorry, but they would have to help me out by keeping their doors shut when the noise got too loud and to not complain to me while we worked through this. (They could complain to each other and to their husbands, but not to me!)

Three things started to bring about a gradual, then a much faster change in Larry. First, I didn’t go away and didn’t want him to go away. Each moment was new and as soon as he became easier to deal with, I spent time with him so we could build a relationship during the good times. It would have to last us through the bad times. We got to know each other better and better as time went on. We built trust and respect.

Second, during these good moments I discovered that Larry had a soft and kind heart. Ours is a small town and I often see students around town. One day I saw Larry walking home from school with his younger brother. He was so watchful and careful with the little guy. I watched Larry carry his brother’s backpack along with his own, and wait at intersections until his brother was ready to cross. He was so careful and considerate. Sometime in the next several weeks I mentioned that I had seen them walking and described what I had seen him do, and told him that I thought that showed what a kind hearted guy he was. I still remember the look on his face after I told him that. He had a habit of never looking directly at anyone. This time he lifted his head, tilted it, and locked his eyes with mine.

Third, I try to clear space in our literacy block time for the children to work on self-selected research and writing projects. I discovered from his father that he liked to draw cartoons and created cartoon stories at home. I asked Larry if he wanted to do this in school. If so, I’d love to see some of his work. He started slowly, but soon began to generate reams and reams of comics during our project times. I got him some comic blanks and he filled them up.

Pretty soon other kids began to get interested in what he was doing. They’d gather around in small groups and watch him work. They’d ask him questions and honored him by wanting to try to do some comics, too. These relationships began to build. Classmates started to see Larry as someone with talents and an immense imagination, rather than just the kid who argues and shouts and is difficult to deal with. Some started exploring imaginative play during recess. Others began to sit with him at lunch and chose him to play math games in our classroom. Expressing himself was still hard, but he was happy and known and respected.

The year ended, as they often do, with a sappy group hug and many tears. But Larry sat at his table by himself. I asked if he wanted to come over with his classmates, but shook his head, sat there, back to us, staring straight ahead as we hugged and celebrated. The bell rang and the kids got their backpacks for the last time. I moved over to Larry and put my arm around him. He was crying. I told him that I had a wonderful year, that I was glad to have had him in our classroom, that I had learned so much from him. He said that he didn’t want to leave. I told him that I liked him a lot, but that I thought he didn’t have to worry about next year; that all the good things that he had done this year were his to keep, not mine, because they were things that he had done, not me; and that he could take the Larry he had made wherever he went because it was who he is. And that person was beautiful.

There are some kids that just really get all the way inside, don’t they?

So, I’m left with the same questions as Paul. While Larry was able to “rescue” himself for the year, was it just a welcome, but momentary — a 1/2 year — distraction? Could he carry the self he had created that year, fragile as it was, on through time? Could he continue the project of building a better Larry even farther into the future? And, how could I imagine my own construction project to build a better me because of what I had seen Larry do that year?

None of this had anything to do with what school is supposed to be about, to get kids career and college ready. None of what I’ve written about had anything to do with standardized testing, and couldn’t be measured in any way but the heart. Yet, this (and others) have been some of the most important moments that I’ve had in school. Perhaps for some children, too.

Beyond that. What I learned from Larry was how powerful listening can be. How, away from the storms, time and effort can caulk a leaky hull and make a boat seaworthy once again. How being known and understood is nearly everything. That most people would rather be known as good than bad, if good is an option.

The final thing I learned was that a life is a construction project. That each of us will sail the vessel we build to whatever ports we wish, or must. That’s our joy, and our sorrow. I never found out what happened to Larry. That summer he and his family moved north and I haven’t heard from him since.

Deeper Learning: The importance of the learner

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ThinkingVisibleI’ve been thinking about whether our school district should buy a reading basal series. Last week I posted three questions about whether such a program would bring us to the Promised Land. I believe the short answer is no. The longer answer has brought me to explore a report on deep learning by the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academies of Sciences (NAS), and a very good book about thinking, Making Meaning Visible. And that exploration has caused me to think more about how people learn.

So, on to the second question.

Will a basal series help students develop the habits of good learners?
I’ll start the answer with something that seems obvious: if learning is to happen, the attitude or outlook or intention of the learner is very important. You know it is important from your own learning. I do, too. Drive and desire helped me become a potter a long time ago. (Life events brought me away from pottery recently, but I gotta get back into it!) Deep immersion into US history with a cohort of nerds 🙂 helped me really learn history while I was a graduate student. Both of these examples of deep learning could only have happened because, as a learner, I had a very strong inner desire to not just acquire knowledge, but to master it, and I found a community of like minded people who supported those interests. There are more examples of deep learning to cite. You probably have them, too. The point is this: Learners matter. A lot.

Second, like anything else, what we do, if done often enough, can “grow on you”; it can become habit forming. What values are we creating inside ourselves as we learn? Do we learn how to connect our interests? To persevere through hardship? To solve problems as they arise? To see the value in our work with others? Through our learning, what kind of person are we making ourselves?

As teachers, what kind of habits are we helping our learners form?

Which brings me to the reading basal series dilemma. I think packaged programs, in an effort to “teach the skills” leave out of their package the one really important piece: the learner. I’ve tried to teach with a reading basal program before. The kids were busy. Incredibly busy. I’d have them reading books I’d chosen, learning about grammar and punctuation, writing, reading some more, and learning how to spell “age-appropriate” words. They were so busy doing what I asked them to do (or not!) that they didn’t have time to think. They didn’t have time to choose, to struggle, to fail, to try again, to create, to reflect, to succeed. They do have time to react to someone else’s agenda and to complete the duties as they are assigned. Just barely. But is this enough to develop the habits of a good learner?

No.

When I taught the reading basal, I never felt like the kids were really engaged, like really engaged from deep inside. For the most successful students, the learning seemed wide and shallow. For less successful students, the learning didn’t really happen.

Even worse, I came to realize that I was training my students to be CONSUMERS of education, not creators of their own minds. Too often, I believe, education casts students in that consumer role, a role whose agency comes from choosing whether to “buy” what is happening in class or not. We train students into this passive role, and they exercise it by tuning in or out as suits their fancy. They get enough practice as consumers. They don’t need more.

The authors of Making Thinking Visible and the authors of the NRC – NAS report argue that deep learning happens when a student is deeply engaged, when the intentions of the learner draw him into the learning situation. Not when they are engaged in shallow coverage of loads of material. We need to try to carve out times during the day for exploration and projects, to help students develop interests and see themselves as interested, capable people. And school as a place to develop good habits of learning.

If we choose a reading basal series, I think we’ll miss an opportunity. In the long run, we might even do more harm than we imagine.

Next. Will a basal series help teachers develop the skills we need to teach deep learning?

Deep learning — The importance of time

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After reading about it in a blog post, I’ve been studying the National Research Council and the National Academies of Sciences report, Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. The authors argue for educators to focus on “deeper learning”, by which they mean learning that transfers knowledge from one domain into another. This requires careful attention to not just the content knowledge of learning, but also cognitive competence (problem-solving, analysis, interpretation), and competence in the intrapersonal (grit, work ethic, integrity) and the interpersonal (collaboration, empathy, communication) realms as well.

Three areas for deep learningFor deeper learning to occur, teachers “should use modeling and feedback techniques that highlight the processes of thinking rather than focusing exclusively on the products of thinking.” So, we teachers should strive for not just knowledge transmission, but developing the student as a thinker. Furthermore, this process isn’t easy. The authors go on:

“sustained instruction and effort are necessary to develop expertise in problem solving and metacognition; there is no simple way to achieve competence without time, effort, motivation, and informative feedback.” (p.10)

Theirs is a holistic model that requires time, sustained effort from learners, and good teaching. It’s also where, I’m hoping, the CCSS are pointing us, if we are able to take control of them from the powers that be.

Which brings me back to some questions I have about the whole reading basal issue that I’ve been obsessing about. Three pop into my mind immediately:

1. Will a basal series help us carve out sufficient time to think and do?
2. Will a basal series help students develop the habits of good learners?
3. Will a basal series help teachers develop the skills they need to teach deep learning?

This is a lot to think about so I’m going to break this into (at least!) three posts.

Here goes with the first question.

Will a basal series help carve out time to think and do?
The National Academies report argued that there is no way to develop deep learning without “time, effort, and motivation…” The cognitive, intra- and interpersonal competencies they’ve outlined take a lifetime to learn. That’s a lot of practice!

I’ve looked at a couple of reading basal series. Wow. They are jam-packed with skill-based instruction. Each day has way more phonics, grammar, writing, and reading lessons than a person could possibly push kids through in a day, unless you were doing just that, pushing kids through them. When you push people through lessons, where can the deep learning happen? How can you explore the same idea in different contexts? Create time for play that engages learners and piques their interest?

The authors of the National Academies study suggest that we need to focus on a few key ideas explored very, very deeply. Sure, with a reading basal we can point to the date and time that we “covered” the material, maybe even when we “assessed” the material, but does that time and attention promote deeper learning of fundamental concepts, develop metacognition and problem-solving expertise, develop solid intra- and inter-personal skills?

Reading basals are wide and shallow. They won’t help us carve out the time, or focus our attention on the kinds of issues the National Academies report highlights. We need to focus on a few, really important ideas; give kids lots and lots of practice developing expertise with these ideas; and allow them the chance to apply these ideas to other domains. That’s the way deeper learning occurs.

Students need to have time to reflect on what they’ve done, and to ask questions. If we are presenting them with “skills” all the time, there will be no time to reflect, explore, try, and fail, then try again.

As you can see, I’m skeptical about all the skills that are supposed to be so necessary for students to learn. If we don’t give students time, then how will the skills be developed in other domains and to the depth they need for life and learning?

I’ll think more about these next two questions in some upcoming blogs posts.

UPDATE: I’ve also been reading a great book, Making Thinking Visible. Thinking and deep learning are connected, obviously. I worry about the way basal series keep learners very, very busy learning skills for the short term, and not so much thinking at a deeper level. Here’s the authors of Making…:

“…coverage is the ultimate delusion of those who place the act of teaching (or presenting) above the act of learning. It is a deceit perpetuated on a grand scale in education. A deceit in which both teachers and learner implicitly agree that in the name of achieving coverage of the curriculum, only superficial and short-term learning will be expected. However, to achieve insight and understanding, one must have the time to think about and with ideas.” (p. 242. Bold added by me for emphasis.)

The importance of being flexible

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Soon our school district will make a decision about whether to purchase a basal reading program. I’ve been thinking about this decision here, and here. This blog will explore what I think could be done.

RolfstackingrocksWhat needs to be done
I think any successful solution must address the following immediate problems:

  1. K-5 curriculum to be vertically aligned. Teachers need to know that what they do builds on the work of other teachers. Any ELA decision must end with a vertically aligned K-5 curriculum.
  2. Teaching resources identified and purchased. Teachers are spending a lot of time gathering resources for lessons. An ELA decision must identify and purchase grade level materials — mentor texts, book sets, big books, word work components, etc. — so teachers can spend more time learning and teaching.
  3. Bring district curriculum and instruction up to the Common Core standards. Everything that I’ve been reading lately tells me that the CCSS represents a large leap in what we are asking our students to know and be able to do. Our decision will have to not only align with the CCSS, but provide support for deep and meaningful teaching and learning to happen.
  4. Be flexible enough to change as more is known about CCSS. Our understanding of the CCSS is evolving. In fact, my optimistic side wants to believe that good teachers can wrest control of the CCSS movement by talking about the way it emphasizes thinking over skill instruction. We’ll see if that happens, but at the very least, this is a rapidly evolving environment so flexibility will be important.
  5. Integrate science and social studies units of study into ELA curriculum. With the emphasis on informational text and persuasive reading and writing, it only makes sense to more fully integrate science and social studies units of study into our ELA curriculum. This would allow us to more seamlessly move between ELA and content areas, which is one direction the CCSS is pushing anyway.

These criteria sound like they could justify a basal series, I guess. The ones that I’ve seen — Houghton-Mifflin and, only online, the Reading Street 2013 from Pearson — certainly provide vertical alignment of skills; plenty of resources can be purchased, and they try to integrate science and social studies into the ELA instructional sequence.

The reading basal series: Inflexible and ponderous
Reading basal series are, to my mind, an educational equivalent of the Soviet-style five-year economic plans. They provide lots of details about who needs to do what and when, but are unwieldy and inflexible.

Once you’ve purchased a reading series, unless your district has a lot of money, it will be “for keeps” or at least for the next 8-10 years, which is as close to keeps as you get in education. Do we know enough about how the CCSS are evolving to purchase a first generation reading basal? How will our understanding of the CCSS change over time? Already the creators of the CCSS have issued further updates about the standards. As I delve farther and farther into them, I can see that they are in a state of evolution. That’s a good thing! But how will our understanding of them change over the next several years? One guarantee: we’ll be thinking about them a lot differently in three years than we do now. A reading basal is set in time, now, and can’t evolve. Furthermore, fidelity to the program is highly recommended because it is so…er…complete!

Another big question I have about a reading basal series is how well they are able to integrate science and social studies with reading and writing. Next Generation science standards aren’t out yet; they are being developed now. I haven’t heard about social studies standards at my grade level, but if there is any kind of fight over them like there was in the ‘90s, they will take awhile to implement. With the CCSS’s emphasis on reading informational text, we’ll see more and more connections between science and social studies content learning and ELA reading and writing learning. What happens when you’ve purchased a program for a large amount of money, and then you have to tweak and change it to integrate science and social studies?

For these two reasons, I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to opt for a solution that is small and flexible, rather than large, complete, and ponderous.

There’s another reason that I’m skeptical about a reading basal: I think they really don’t reflect a learning orientation; they don’t understand how people learn. If the CCSS is about high standards (and it appears they are), then instruction alone won’t get us there. Our classrooms need to focus on deep learning, which clearly involves the learner’s approach to subject matter, rather than merely covering skills from a scope and sequence.

I’ll try to explore that in my next post.

The passion of teachers

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This last week has been a tough one for educators. Everyone I know has been thinking a lot about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary; not so much thinking out loud with the children in our classes. No. Mostly we’ve talked through what we need to talk through with the children for now, though we know more questions may come later.

Rather, we’re thinking about the events around the edges of our own lives, in those moments when the children are out of the classroom, when they are engaged in quiet work, between reading and writing conferences, on the way to and from school, at 2:00 AM, when the witching hour visits and we wake and think. At these times, in the deepest reaches of my mind, I am thinking about the responsibility (and, yes, love) that I have for the students in my classroom, the precious lives that were lost, the anguish of parents and family members.

These thoughts enter my mind, and they are too hard to write about right now in public.

Instead, I’ll take a more distant stance. This last week, since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, I’ve also been thinking about how the public sees teachers. Understanding this public perception is important to me because, like many other teachers in the last couple of years, I’ve felt that my profession is under attack from powerful interests who say that we are selfish, unmotivated, unprofessional, and, worst of all, interested in ourselves at the expense of the children we teach. I live in Iowa and have many friends in Wisconsin. Some Wisconsin political elites deployed that kind of vitriol against teachers as a weapon in a power grab that had been long planned, but not discussed in public.

You can see the effects of these attacks through the surveys of teacher satisfaction, which have plummeted in recent years. I’m no different than my colleagues. These attacks have left me alternately angry and depressed, because they don’t match with my experience with teachers at all.

And yet, this last week has seen another side of teachers emerge, one completely at odds with the vision of lazy, greedy, and selfish teachers advanced by powerful political and economic interests.

Educators at Sandy Hook reacted to the shooting with professionalism and self-sacrifice; a vision of teachers that hasn’t yet entered the public debate, but doesn’t surprise anyone who has taught. Teachers hid children in closets and bathrooms, in cupboards and storage rooms, in libraries and gyms. They locked doors, calmed fears, and helped children walk and run to safety when the police arrived. They comforted children afterward, when the reality of the event began to sink in.

Other educators in the direct line of fire sacrificed themselves for the sake of their students. They ran toward the shooter in an effort to disarm him and save others in the building. They distracted the shooter while children escaped. They shielded children from the bullets with their bodies. They comforted mortally wounded children at the expense of their own lives.

It’s as if a cover has been drawn off and the side of teachers that I’ve known can now be seen by others.

As we move forward (and we must move forward) one wish I have is that educational reformers come to see teachers as strong and close allies in the effort to make learning and schools better; that they affirm the direct knowledge that we are, by a large margin, extremely dedicated to our profession; that they resist creating divisive tropes about the motivation of teachers  in order to rally support for their vision.

I know that those who spout vitriol will not stop. But my other wish is that the many good people will remember just how deeply teachers care about the children we teach. Desperately. Passionately. And that these good people will stand up and speak when the vitriol starts again.

Protocols, part 2

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So, a couple weeks ago I started thinking about Atul Gawande and protocols for doing things. His ideas felt both right for my teaching life, and also wrong. I decided to try to figure it out why they felt right.

I’ve been mulling it over for a couple weeks now, I had some conversations with friends, and I’ve been writing about it a bit in my journal. Still things aren’t all that clear to me yet, but here’s my best first attempt to understand what my heart feels.

Protocol as auxiliary executive function
Teaching is really, really complex. It strains the brain. And one important function of the brain, which I can almost feel drain away the busier I get, is the executive function. The executive function is the part of the brain that helps me figure out what is important and unimportant so I can focus on the most important first. It helps me prioritize goals and make plans, and be strategic about how to accomplish the goals. It keeps me from jumping impulsively at the first thing that pops into my mind. It reminds me to “Don’t just do something, sit there!”

I don’t know how many times I’ve done something that worked one year and then, in the crush of activity, forgotten how to do it another year. Or, I decide on my priorities and realize that they are the same ones as I developed last year. Or, I get drawn away by chasing “the grail” that I lose track of the riches I found. It’s hard to build something good (but complicated), when I forget where I put the tools.

At moments like these I wish that I had a protocol for my academic work. For example, what if there was a good protocol for reading instruction? It might read like a set of principles: good reading instruction would be directed toward accomplishing these excellent goals (wouldn’t that be a fun conversation to determine those?) using these practices (and wouldn’t that also be a fun conversation, too?) Then, when my executive function gets overwhelmed with the day-to-day, I could return to my set of principles to ground myself once again. Oh yeah, I might say, THAT’S what I’m doing…

Protocol as perspective widener
Amnesia and an overworked executive function isn’t the only problem I have, and a set of MY principles might not give me the best read on the world. Sometimes I get myopic and need to have my perspective widened. (In a way, that’s what friends are for, aren’t they? 🙂

Myopic thinking happens often when I’m dealing with children, especially in what I details I notice and how I react to them. Here’s an example. I know a child who is just plain difficult to get along with. He challenges adults and children, has a touchy personality, he argues and screams and shouts. Of course, I know these behaviors don’t really describe him as a person. He is much more that that, and through some hard (but gentle) work, we’re making good progress! But, in boxing terminology, he LEADS with those behaviors so I’m constantly dealing with them, trying to swat them away to get at what lies beyond. My attention gets focused on the behaviors — my attention is only so big (as is my heart) — so I miss lots and lots of other stuff.

That’s when I think: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a really good social-emotional protocol that I could fall back on to help me re-orient myself toward a wider range of observation about this child? Perhaps a “scaffold for the teacher’s soul?” When I’m into the thick of the relationship, a protocol might help remind me of how I’ve gotten through that rough patch before, or help me distance from parrying the behaviors he LEADS with, and notice the other parts of the interaction that could help me move beyond the most obvious? I’d love a great protocol that helped me build my capacity to notice and act on social-emotional interactions. I can imagine other protocols that would help me notice academic behaviors, too. Noticing takes practice and seems mechanistic before it becomes natural.

Protocol as conversation starter
Protocols might also help me have conversations about my own teaching. This conversation, of course, would introduce me to ideas about the world that I didn’t even know existed. In the instance above about social emotional interactions, I can imagine a conversation, almost like a coaching situation, where a protocol could help start a conversation about what I notice. I don’t have as much experience as I need with really difficult children (and they are often difficult in different ways), but the wisdom of others, with a store of information that I don’t have available to me through experience, could help guide my thinking.

If a protocol, and the conversation that came out of that protocol’s use, could help me notice deeper and deeper levels of interaction, that would be a good thing! Protocols might provide that common point of meeting between my coach and I that would allow a deepening conversation to occur.

In fact, I’d be against any protocol that would shut down conversation, which is the side of me that worries about protocols. I worry that protocols could be used to prescribe the way that things WILL BE DONE and could become a meter stick against which one’s compliance gets measured. If protocols became this kind of stick, then they would lose the power to relieve tired executive functions, to widen perspectives and open hearts, and to start conversations. And if that happens, they would lose their power to create  better teaching and learning; they’d become yet another in a growing arsenal of cudgels.

UPDATE: I’ve just started reading David Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. I realize now that one of the things I want protocols to do for me is to challenge my “fast thinking” heuristics so I don’t get stuck in ruts so often, and to help me improve the ones I have since teachers can’t always rely on “slow thinking” procedures in complex situations like the classroom. Protocols as focused slow thinking, widened by the perspective of the hive? …hmmm. Interesting book, by the way!

Atul Gawande and protocols

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Last week I worried about what getting a reading program might mean to me, as a professional, and to my students. This week I’m thinking about whether there are overarching literacy principles that could be “codified” into a set of protocols. Maybe that’s a contradiction? Could overarching literacy principles help teachers? Hinder teachers? Am I schizophrenic? 🙂

What I heard Atul Gawande say
Recently I read a piece in the New Yorker by physician and writer, Atul Gawande. In it Gawande argues for a set of protocols in medicine that might help improve health care outcomes. He says that standardization might not be all that bad for some of these reasons:

  • Medicine is a complex process of data gathering and problem-solving. Having standard protocols in place can free up the practitioner’s brain for other tasks besides developing a plan of action for each person, including further observation and data gathering to make the treatment and recuperation more individualized.
  • Individual practitioners have deep knowledge about specific patients, but shallow knowledge about a bigger picture, knowledge that can best be gotten by aggregating data that is unavailable on the small scale. Gawande argues that physicians’ decisions should be influenced by the larger scale data as well as the local data gathered from interaction with the patient.
  • Protocols are developed from the big picture data and serve as a way for that information to influence the decision-making of physicians for their individual patients.
  • Conversation is important. Gawande also argues for breaking down boundaries between professionals (e.g. through video-conferencing) so decision-making at the local level can benefit from ideas and information that extend beyond the situated and local. I presume that the larger picture protocols can also benefit from interaction with the local level, as the ultimate goal is to have them improve health outcomes.

How Gawande got me thinking
Now I’m the guy who roots for the Luddites against the machine weavers, who mourns the loss of the iron puddlers when the Bessemer furnace arrived. (I taught labor history and organized unions for a living, for Pete’s sake!)  Standardization is one way that labor gets deskilled, and control over the outcome gets turned over to larger, more abstract segments of a bureaucracy. I’m aware of what deskilling labor can do to individual professionals, and how bureaucracies can be insensitive to individuals.

Despite my reservations, Gawande got me wondering how protocols might help me be a better teacher. A couple of his ideas in particular made me think. First, I was struck by his idea that protocols actually represent data in forms that are not very discernible to individual professions. One of his examples was that it appears certain artificial knees are both cheaper and perform better than others. These data are known on the meta-level, but cannot be known at the level of individual practitioners, as they don’t have the data sets to generate these kinds of comparisons. Individual practitioners’ choices are much more influenced by more narrowly defined experience and are informed by historical accident. In this case, the data derived from larger data sets could be really useful at the level of individual physicians. Are there meta-data that I could use to help me teach reading for instance? Are there things that I am missing because my vision is, by virtue of my position, myopic?

A second idea of Gawande’s that got me thinking was that of the importance of breaking down barriers and having conversations with other professionals. This idea is at the heart of the move toward teacher coaching, but can it be expanded? Professionals can benefit from opening up their practice and having conversation with others. Even the act of trying to articulate an answer to the question — Why are you thinking of doing that? — can sharpen the mind. What would it look like if teaching was more visible to each other, and teaching conversations were more common? What can our profession learn from others that would allow this to happen more easily? Fluidly?

Kids are not artificial knees
Now…I know that kids aren’t artificial knees, so maybe Gawande’s ideas don’t apply to teaching. While knees can be pretty complex, and individual knee recipients are not all the same, kids are even more different and individual learning is quite a bit more complex than knees. (In fact, I’m aware that Gawande’s ideas created quite a stir in the health care field, too.) Yet, I’m still stuck with the idea that there might be a way for teachers to think of themselves as incredibly skilled individual craftsmen and women, but try to build some of the advantages of a “super-organism”, too.

Maybe I’ll think more about how we might balance teacher intuition and the wisdom of the group in future posts.