Category Archives: the big picture

Why I Oppose Test Data for Evaluations

Posted on by
2

So, it looks like the education bill in Iowa is hung up on the question of whether teachers will be evaluated on standardized test data, or not. For what it’s worth, I’m against the idea for two big reasons. First, test data are not very accurate, it turns out. Second, for those who are interested in school change as I am, test data focuses our attention on the wrong things; elaborate evaluation systems wouldn’t lead us toward the schools we want. Like a bull in the ring, we are chasing the red robe of test data while the real work of school reform, building cultures of learning and excellence in schools, aren’t being adequately addressed.

Tarde de Toros 1. Tiento
Photo Credit: Jesus Solana via Compfight

Just so you know, I’m not against evaluation. I don’t know any teachers who are against being evaluated. We actually enjoy when someone cares enough about what we do to talk to us about our teaching. In fact, we’d like more of that talk (And better talk, too, not just the Roman emperor, thumbs up-thumbs down kind that happens in evaluations.) The vast majority of teachers relish the chance to talk about our teaching whenever we can.

At the core of using standardized assessment data to evaluate teachers is a belief that poor teaching is a prime cause of our current “crisis” in education. Tough evaluations are necessary to make teaching better. Champions of the use of test data seem to believe that either (or both) of two things will happen when we focus on standardized test data: 1) We’ll weed out the bad teachers, bringing up the level of teaching overall; 2) Teachers will “up their game” to avoid being sacked.

Unfortunately, the focus on evaluation as a driver of change distracts us from what we really need to be doing.

First, as many people have noted (here, here, and here), “value added” test measures are not simple numbers that tell an unambiguous story. These numbers are highly variable, changing dramatically from year to year. Also, as Florida is finding, it is difficult to wrap every teacher’s evaluation into the test data. Turns out not every teacher teaches in a tested area. For example, some Florida teachers have argued that they are being evaluated on measures they have little control over. How can a music teacher be evaluated by tests that yield reading and math scores? A history teacher be evaluated on everything but history? Even if practices like this are constitutional (and the May 2nd Florida court ruling suggests it might be) systems like these don’t inspire confidence or our best effort. They become something to endure. And anything that doesn’t inspire a best effort is a distraction, not a driver of real change.

Second, it’s an element of faith on the reformer side that the profession is rife with bad teachers. Getting rid of them is the highest priority for these folks. Yet, what makes us think that there are so many bad teachers out there that weeding them out would significantly up the game? Where studies have been done, the rates of poorly performing teachers is really low. There’s not a lot to show for all that ‘weeding’ effort in past years.

Third, if you work with kids daily you know that standardized tests do not measure the important stuff. How can they? These are kids we are talking about. Grit is as important as knowledge when taking a math test. Empathy never gets tested, yet empathy will be what you and I both want most in a human as we encounter difficult economic and social issues in our increasingly flat world. The level of learning that most tests assess is low indeed. Their questions focus our attention on “skills” rather than thinking, and never, ever on asking good questions, and formulating good ideas. And, the higher the stakes, the more pressure there will be to narrow the curriculum to raise the test scores, regardless of the learning that will be sacrificed. Tests won’t drive us toward better learning.

What will be the effect of all this effort? Sure some teachers will be “weeded out,” but some of the best teachers will eventually leave as they become fed up with the capriciousness of it all and the focus on tested material that will ensue. Who will take their place in a system as arbitrary as the one that is being constructed? Reformers often act as if teaching was a job that people were clamoring to enter. But is that true? It’s not as if there are a boat load of people wanting to take the job. Inject the system with even more arbitrary data, and the number of interested people goes down further, especially for the kind of folks we want to attract into the profession.

Finally, and most importantly, all this emphasis on value added measures distracts us from the real, hard work that needs to be done to make our schools better: we need to build teachers’ capacity to be better teachers. Why focus so much effort on weeding when what will drive school reform is the healthy fertilizer of engagement, teamwork, and motivation?

How do we fertilize, rather than weed? Take the resources being invested in value added measures and use them to create workplaces (and classrooms!) that are about learning, growing, sharing ideas, innovation that is grounded solidly in learning theory, reflection, and critique. In short, we need a revolution in the cultures of schools. A revolution takes resources, vision, and leadership. It’s a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-busy kind of work that engages people and systems effectively. It’s not the kind of leadership that you do entirely from behind a spreadsheet. Other places have made these kinds of cultural changes (here and here.) We can, too.

As a teacher, as a human, I know that real accountability comes from people who care about what they do. It originates from the desire to do well coupled with having the tools to do the job effectively, then multiplied by the good will of many people working toward a common goal. Good (and poor) work is super easy to see, you don’t need a lot of spreadsheets to find it. If we work hard to foster good conversations, learning, and reflection, accountability will take care of itself because everyone will be engaged in raising the bar and everyone will have a stake in accomplishing something great…together.

That’s the brave new world I want to live in. Do you?

Some Thoughts at the Third Grade Music Concert

Posted on by
Reply

Just back from our third grade music concert and the kids did a really great job. Our music teacher is awesome, and so is the music teacher in the K-2 building. It’s a very musical school.

I can get sentimental and sappy. I know that. But when I saw some of the kids up on stage I couldn’t help but be extremely proud of the progress they have made this year, the way they’ve grown up. For one kid, tantrums are way down and a smile is often on his face.  Another is able to take criticism better and even is beginning to see that mistakes can “be our friends.” I see another whose passion for reading has grown so very much, and another three who have been writing a wonderful graphic novel in their “spare time.” Cool. Others still struggle, and all of them I can imagine the next steps we’d take together. If we had the chance.

The year is coming to and end. I feel it each year when the weather starts to turn warm. I can’t help but think of all the effort we’ve put in each year. We. The child and me. I remember one thing that Paul Freedman, who I met via the Cooperative Catalyst blog, said a few months ago in a comment on one of my previous posts. It’s stuck with me and probably always will:

“How did we decide that 9 months is the optimal length of time for a learning relationship? How much could be gained by keeping students with a teacher for several years at a time? All that time spent getting to know a student, his interests, skill levels, learning styles, preferred modalities, not to mention building a relationship with parents, etc. Then just as you’re getting going, it’s time to say goodbye, and welcome in the next batch of of 30. Exhausting.”

He’s right. It is exhausting. I thought of that as I watched the kids perform on stage. A mixture of pride, and exhaustion.

I had hoped to try to “loop” with the kids this year. I imagined what we could have accomplished with another year together, but it wasn’t allowed. Argh. Tough to accept.

Tonight, though, they did well. Cool beans.

A Close Read of our School’s Mission Statement

Posted on by
1

...and go (cc)
Photo Credit: Martin Fisch via Compfight

I’ve been thinking about how I can be a “force for good” in my school district, to help us build our understanding of who we are and what our mission is, to help us grow and go forward. One way might be to go back to our school’s mission statement and see what we said about who we are. So, here it is in bold.

XYZ (I don’t want to put my district’s name out there right now) Community School District is committed to

  • creating a student-centered environment

I understand this to mean something similar to what the Iowa Core says about student-centered learning: students should be “directly involved and invested in the discovery of their own knowledge” through “experiential learning which is authentic, holistic, and challenging.”

I think this would represent a big change from “traditional” education. Do we, for example, have Project (or Problem or Inquiry) based learning in mind when we say this? Is this kind of learning a mid- or long-term goal of our district? If we are forced to choose between coverage of material for a test and a “student centered environment” with significant amounts of “experiential learning,” which would we choose?

A student-centered environment requires lots of change for students, too. They cannot sit back and be passive recipients, but must become more active participants. How can we help them acquire those skills? That orientation? Parents, too, would need to understand what these changes mean for school. Probably they would not have experienced much student-centered learning and might not understand a change in school culture that includes student-centered learning. If we take this seriously, we’ll need to be very transparent about it with students and parents, too.

  • where individual needs are addressed,

How radically do we take this? I understand individual needs to mean that we need to really understand our kids, not just academically, but socially and emotionally, too; I’m a proponent of teaching the “whole child.”

If we think the whole child is important, what does that mean about how we teach? About how we construct our discipline policies? The classroom environments we create? The school building cultures that we create? How DO you create cultures that take into account the whole child?

Even when seen from the strictly academic side, taking an individual’s needs into account can lead to difficult questions. For instance, do we feel that everyone needs to be at a certain level by, say, third grade even if adhering to those academic needs harms the social-emotional needs of the child?

How flexibly do we understanding “individual needs?” Can someone be gifted in one area and not in another? Do we hold that person back to address some percieved deficit, or do we help them soar with the gift and work on the other stuff along the way? In fact, do we see learners primarily based on their deficits, or do we understand their “needs” as including their need to soar?

And this doesn’t begin to even address the other kinds of needs — health, financial, etc. — that cause our country to lag so far behind other industrialized nations.

  • cooperation and teamwork are valued,

I understand this to mean that students and teachers need the skills necessary to effectively collaborate. How will we build cooperation and teamwork among staff? Among students? Among education partners?

What is my role as a leader in my union to help create a place where teamwork can thrive? To help teachers see the value of cooperation and teamwork? How can I lead administration toward building cooperation and teamwork among staff? Between union and administration? Toward what goals?

  • competent professionals lead,

What does “competency” mean? For that matter, what does “lead” mean?

I’m thinking that “lead” means that teachers and administrators need to both see themselves as creating something important together. Each of us has power in particular areas — teachers are primarily responsible for creating the educational environment for the students — and administrators can help influence these environments through careful, thoughtful choices about allocation of funds and through fostering conversations about long-term direction.

I’m thinking “competency” means that teachers and administrators need to be learners themselves as competency is not achieved and then checked off the list. I strongly believe that competency is not an inherent property of individuals — for example, I’d be incompetent if I suddenly moved to kindergarten from third grade — but a function of time, effort, and an institution that helps to foster learning and growth. How can we  encourage deep and important conversations about teaching and learning that lead toward thoughtful and lasting improvement rather than simply change for its own sake?

  • community partnerships flourish,
  • a commitment to excellence prevails,
  • and lifelong learning continues.

These sections contain much about how we could move forward. What does it mean to have community partnerships? How do we work together? Toward what goals?

What does excellence mean? Simple test scores or something more substantive, more excellent? Are we willing to measure these things as assiduously as we do test scores? To make focused goals based on these other things that matter more than test scores? How do we show our commitment if not by that kind of focus?

Does lifelong learning mean we need to focus on learning rather than content? In order for learning to become important, don’t children (and adults) need to see the value in learning by engaging in deep inquiry about important questions? How can we foster that kind of learning among students? Among staff?

It is the goal of the District to provide a

  • guaranteed
  • and viable curriculum
  • for every student in the XYZ Community Schools.

There is much to say about all of these other sections of the our school’s mission, too. For instance, does guaranteed mean that everyone does the same thing? In other words, is there room for some students to NOT take required courses if they are already competent, or have sufficiently large other “student-centered” interests? What are we guaranteeing? Seat time alone? A minimum test score? I hope something bigger than that!

Does viable extend beyond “career and college readiness” to include global citizenship? The ability and interest to be an active and effective citizen? Do ethics factor in? Are we okay with educating Enron executives, Country Wide mortgage lenders, LIBOR rate fixers, all of whom were extremely successful in careers and college, but flunked the ethics part. There’s lots there to talk about.

I’d never looked at the mission statement before as something to interpret and think about. I found that a close look at it raised some philosophical and practical questions that could (potentially) be a very useful way to think toward a future. (Aren’t we, shouldn’t we, always be thinking toward a future?) Would this be a useful ongoing conversation to have?

What do you think? Have you ever tried to do this kind of thing before? Have you ever looked at your mission statement and tried to figure out what it really meant? To engage others in a conversation about a shared mission? If so, consider posting to let me know how it turned out, or what you think about a project like this.

Trying to be a “Force for Good”

Posted on by
2

I’ve blogged in the past (here and here and here) about whether or not our school district will purchase a reading basal program. It’s down to decision time and the decision isn’t an easy one.

A recent survey of our K-5 teaching staff (about 32 people took the survey) indicated strong support for a basal series, about 2/3 teachers wanted one. As you might have guessed, I’m in the 1/3 category. I’m disappointed, to be sure, but I want to be a positive force for change no matter what the outcome.

We abandoned a reading basal series several years ago and tried to go our own route. We adopted management practices like the Daily 5 and instructional practices based on the CAFE model. Most teachers now recognize these practices allowed students to do more actual reading in our classrooms than under the former basal approach. We purchased a book room full of real literature so we could do more small group reading. Most teachers recognize these resources have helped us find materials more quickly and easily. We created summer classes — attended by about 1/2 of the staff during various summers — that explored the Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Continuum, which was intended to give some common structures to the teaching.

Though I think we weren’t really clear about that at the time, the implicit goals were to build the capacity of teachers to make instructional decisions about individual learners. We believed that good teaching wasn’t necessarily bound by simple grade level expectations, but by a teacher’s knowledge of what needed to be done in order to bring a particular student the next steps. We believed what Richard Allington said: “Readers differ. Teachers matter.”

We could have done a better job of building a culture of collaboration and learning and, certainly, we could have done a better job of big-picture planning. Our literacy efforts have been derailed (wholly or in part) by many different initiatives that have come down the pike. I think that’s a problem with the way educational change happens.

So, I’m struck by the conundrum we’re in right now. While other districts are struggling to keep a reading workshop approach in a climate of increasing standardization, a sizable number of our teachers are voluntarily requesting a standardized approach to literacy. They are tired and want a break.

It would be nice if I could identify a group “out there” who is forcing us down the skill-based basal route. I know there are groups out there that are forcing standardized changes in other school districts. But I’m faced with the fact that we teachers are also the ones who can’t imagine a different outcome, who are tired out by years of uncertainty and a laser-beam focus on test scores instead of kids.

If we are to make large-scale changes, we need to figure out how to lead toward the kind of school we think is best for kids. On a personal level, I struggle with the fact that teachers in my school district are not supporting the changes that I think will build creative, flexible, and self-motivated learners. I need to work in a way that builds the capacity of the teaching staff to learn and grow from each other, rather than damages relationships and creates a bunker-like mentality.

I’m tired, too.

In our classroom of super-heroes, we try to be a force for good. So: To the phone booth.

NOTE: This is NOT an actual photograph of me attempting to be a super-hero.

Superman
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: T K via Compfight

Testing Kids and Relationships

Posted on by
2

By Sfoerster (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By Sfoerster (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I made two kids cry this week. I’m not proud of that. Both the children and I have to deal with it. I know that I can repair the relationships, but you’d like to think the benefit was worth the cost. It wasn’t.

If you read this blog, you know that my goal is to create a classroom community, not unmanageable stress. Both crying incidents came from kids who had to take the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) tests. One, through tears, said: “That test is EVIL! I’m not coming to school if I have to finish that test on Monday!” He’s a boy who has become our go-to class expert on whales, despite serious learning disabilities. Another, while sitting in his chair, managed to put his head on the floor (imagine an inverted U-shape, or a wilted flower) and let out a plaintive cry: “But Mr. P, you didn’t teach us this stuff! How am I supposed to answer this question?!” He’s a boy who writes immensely interesting graphic stories, and struggles mightily to control his anger.

I kind of felt like I didn’t want to come to school either.

While mandated by the State of Iowa, these tests don’t give me much useful information. Like, for instance, it’s hard to take the test score of a boy with his butt in a chair and his head on the floor seriously. What might that tell me about him, other than that he is much more limber than I am?

Thankfully, now our classroom is finished with our year of standardized testing: MAP testing for math, reading, and language in the fall and spring (about 8 hours total testing time) and one round of IA Assessments for reading, math, vocabulary, science, and social studies in January (about 5-6 hours of total testing time.) Total standardized testing time is about 12 – 14 hours.

That amount of time doesn’t begin to touch the amount of instructional time that is lost to testing. Testing always disrupts the day in various ways. Testing parses up the day into less than ideal chunks and affects our instruction. Our classroom is weighted with kids with special needs to allow our wonderful special needs teachers the opportunity to serve more children, better. I love working with both the kids and the teachers, but at testing times I lose almost all special education support because their time is taken up reading tests and providing cheer leading encouragement for children whose needs are already very well-known. We adjust our learning for 3 weeks in the fall, 2 weeks in the winter, and 3 weeks in the spring. Learning happens. Just not as much, and our projects slow down tremendously.

For all that time and effort, I don’t get much useful information from the tests. They are billed as being diagnostic, even precise. They are supposed to give exact areas of need and clear “skills” to teach. Supposed to.

I’ve never found them to be helpful.

Some students do well on them, some don’t. But I know what they can do and what their next challenges are because I’ve had a bazillion conversations with them about books and ideas, seen their writing, watched them develop interests and self-motivated learning, and seen how they interact with others and the world around them.

If I don’t get information from the testing, and if the kids don’t learn anything from them beyond what they can tolerate and what they can’t, then the only reason we’re giving them is because someone, somewhere doesn’t trust me or my administration to build our capacity to know kids, develop learning opportunities and deliver instruction, and provide useful feedback to parents and children about the learning that is happening.

Ironic, isn’t it, during this week when indictments were handed down in the Atlanta cheating scandal and questions have been repeatedly raised about the Washington DC “school reform miracle” under Michelle Rhee, that at the root of this testing craze is a lack of trust and a belief that bad teachers are the problem; the answer seems, unimaginatively, to come back to “objective tests” with high stakes for kids and teachers.

There is a better way. Together we can build the capacity of educators to create environments where real, important learning occurs. Many conversations are already underway. Let’s keep them growing.

On Poetry, Teaching, and “Voice”

Posted on by
Reply

Among other things, I have been reading Jane Hirshfield’s book about writing poetry, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. Here’s a long quote that I think is worth thinking about, not just from the poetry angle, but from the position of being a teacher who is trying to write his own poem through his teaching. This section discusses voice, one of the Nine Gates through which poetry enters the reader’s heart and mind. I’d argue that good teaching is like writing a poem; I imagined a classroom when I read this passage.

Voice is not a matter of subject, or of activity a poem undertakes; it is another level of content, equally essential  to a poem’s realization, infusing each choice and gesture a poem makes. Voice is the underlying style of being that creates a poem’s rounding presence, making it continuous, idiosyncratic, and recognizable.

A person’s heard voice is replete with information. So it is with the voice of a poem, directing us in myriad ways into the realm it inhabits — a realm more or less formal, more or less argumentative, more or less emotional, linear, textured. As we gauge a person’s kindness by tone, regardless of what she is saying, we similarly recognize a poem’s tenderness or harshness to the world around it; its engagement or detachment; whether it is ironic, comic, fantastic, serious, compassionate, irreverent, or philosophical. We intuit these things as a dog intuits another dog’s friendly or challenging disposition.

Voice in this sense is the body language of a poem — the part that cannot help but reveal what it is. Everything that has gone into making us who we are is held there. Yet we also speak of writers “finding their voice.” The phrase is both meaningful and odd, a perennial puzzle: how can we “find” what we already use? The answer lies, paradoxically, in the quality of listening that accompanies self-aware speech: singers, to stay in tune, must not only hear the orchestral music they sing with, but also themselves. Similarly, writers who have “found a voice” are those whose ears turn at once inward and outward, both toward their own nature, thought patterns and rhythms, and toward those of the culture at large.

If “finding a voice,” one that helps to create a learning environment, requires ears that listen both inward and outward, then how can we see teaching as anything but an artful creation, one that creates a relationship and transforms a relationship simultaneously? How do we build the capacity of teachers to “find their voices?” Maybe one way is to look away from corporate, mechanistic models, and toward models like Hirshfield’s. For me, that means my “poem” includes thinking about the “voice” I create for myself, and through which I speak in my classroom.

At the Intersection of Equality and Responsibility

Posted on by
2

Anu Partanen, What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland’s School Success:

Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important — as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform — Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

And here’s a bonus. Pasi Sahlberg talking about accountability. I’ve blogged earlier about who’s driving the bus. Sahlberg seems to agree with Fullan that building capacity is where real change happens:

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. “There’s no word for accountability in Finnish,” he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. “Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

I suspect we know what needs to be done, it’s just we aren’t able to do it. I’m almost 53 years old. I want to be around for the positive change after this wave of corporate reform has washed over us. Will I keep trying to make change where ever I can? You bet. Will I be around to see it happen? I sure hope so, but I’m not holding my breath.

Building a Mind Project: Documenting Student Work, Round One

Posted on by
Reply

I believe learning is more than acquiring a set of “skills”, that learners need to reflect on what they do and how they learn in order to build confidence, competence, and self-knowledge. I’m a big fan of Peter Johnston (Choice Words and Opening Minds) who describes how “noticing and naming” can build a powerful learning culture.

So, I’ve embarked on a half-formed (half-baked?) idea whose goal is to build strong thinking habits in myself and the kids in our classroom. To that end, I hope to create a dialog based on noticing and naming selected habits of mind.

What does that mean?

Several weeks ago, I introduced the children to the idea that they have the opportunity to build their own minds as they get older. The mind they build will help them think and give them lots of pleasure as well as understanding. In short, their lives will be richer and more interesting with a strong mind than it will be without one. I introduced them to six habits of mind that I thought were at the foundation of such a life-long project. I realized that this would be an abstract concept for them, so I’ve tried to point out adults who they admire, and how their minds must have been built from some of the same habits as we are noticing. Of course, I’ve also tried to point out to them when they are engaged in just the kind of thinking that builds strong minds, too.

I’m reporting the first round of that project, which is where I attempt to document some of the thinking they are doing. Here’s how that happened.

First, I identified a habit that we would notice as we went through the week. I chose the habit: Notice Details and Look for Patterns. Next, we brainstormed places that we’ve already noticed details: our science unit on beetles and crayfish; in math, where we had been exploring number and shape patterns; in our reading, where we noticed lots and lots of details and patterns in all sorts of texts. I should have extended our search out to PE, Music, Art, and recess, but didn’t think of it at the time! Then, we spent the week noticing patterns and trying to remember to jot them down in a journal. I tried as often as possible to notice them noticing details and patterns, so they could see what I was talking about. At the end of the week I had the students fill out a template that I hoped would help them collect and reflect on one specific instance they practiced this habit of mind. (I’m certainly not saying this template is good, or even sufficient! But it’s trying to head in the direction I’d like to go.) Finally, I posted their work on a bulletin board so everyone could see the thinking we were doing as a community.

A lot of entries were about science. We had just spent some time trying to look closely at a beetle and draw it carefully. That practice led the kids to notice similarities and differences between beetles and crayfish (distant relatives.) The children were amazed by how much they saw once they got used to looking.

Here is a representative example of the first round of noticing. As you can see, the kids had a hard time with the metacognitive second part to this form, the part that asks them to try to understand how noticing helped them build a strong mind. More later on how that might influence ROUND 2 of this project. First, though, here is an example:

Noticing crayfish

Here’s exactly what happened…
One day when I was looking at crayfish I noticed that the big crayfish and little crayfish fight a lot.

Here’s how that helped build a good and smart mind…
When they fight sometime a crayfish lost an arm.

In the second part of this project I was to notice what they were doing and fill out some similar sheets about them, so they could see what I noticed, too. I thought this might help them see the depth and, especially, the specificity, I wanted them to reach for and to help them see how much I valued their thinking. I posted these on another bulletin board. I hoped that by placing them near, but not on top of, each other we teachers and students could learn from each other.

Here’s an example of something I gave back to the students:

Caleb Amulet

While I haven’t been as good about recording these as I would like, the practice of noticing has helped me become a better observer. And I don’t think I can write these out quite so elaborately in the future. However, I DO have a wonderful work-study student, Ms. Bergan, who comes from the college to read with the kids and she’s totally into documenting the work of the kids so that will add more examples to the “teacher board.” If I’m okay with not having everyone listed on the teacher board, but a rotating group of good examples (and I am), then maybe this will be manageable?

Finally, I’m going to re-do the student form a bit. Maybe I don’t have to have them try to get to the metacognitive understanding? Maybe I can just have them try to be as specific and descriptive as they can be with their noticing and naming? I’m going to try another round this week and will let you know more as I get the results back.

Have you tried something like this before? Are there things I’m missing? Do you have encouragement for the project? Think it’s a waste of time and energy during a time of testing and skill acquisition? Questions? If you feel so moved, tell me what you think.

Notice the small stuff

Posted on by
6

It is raining today in my little valley in Iowa.

Both the poet and the teacher in me believe that everything really does depend on a red wheelbarrow glistening in the rain. Much of teaching and much of learning emerges from noticing small moments and then diving deeply into them. (See a good post by John Spencer with a different take on the same topic.) These moments change us because we discover how richly textured the world is, and we build a habit of searching for meaning where ever we are. Noticing changes us. And many changes, like majestic canyons, start out small and grow larger through time and practice.

reflection1

I’m puzzling out how to help students understand the importance of those small moments in their own learning, how to help them notice and name and ponder the things that they see and do during their learning day. One way is by helping students’ understand that each day brings them the opportunity to create their own mind. I’m trying to help them notice that what they do as learners helps them create good habits that can last a lifetime. We are born with a brain, but we have the opportunity (and responsibility!) to create a mind.

To make this idea more concrete, I’ve adapted Costa’s 16 Habits of Mind to fit what I think my third graders can more easily handle. So, instead of the full sixteen habits I’ve narrowed down to six so we can focus our attention more carefully and come away with a deeper understanding of each of them. Recently, I created a poster and introduced the kids to these habits through a couple lessons. Here’s the poster:

habits that build a mind

Interestingly, this process of helping students build good habits of mind has evolved into a way to document student learning and thinking. I’ll write more about that in another post, but for right now I’ll just say that our initial focus has been on #2: Notice Details and Look for Patterns.

Already I’m beginning to see possible inquiry units, perhaps early in a school year, emerge from this habits of mind project. These would help us understand what the habits of mind mean and how we might develop them in ourselves. For instance, the habits — Think Before Acting and Listen Deeply to Others — could become an inquiry into how people talk to each other, which could continue through units of study on how people work together and talk to each other about books, or science, or math, or any other subject area.

A study like this might build a strong foundation for later group work, and help the students see how their actions, even in things like group work, are helping them create the kind of mind that they will want to live with for the rest of their lives.

I’m nowhere near clear on where I’m going with this, but I am excited to be starting along this path. Thoughts?

On meaningful goals, and the paths that might lead us there

Posted on by
4

over the stileI’ve been struggling with how to write this post until I read Bud the Teacher’s post, Data Dashboards; suddenly things started to fall into place a bit more.

My struggle is this. Every year our district sets goals. Here’s this year’s building goal for my school:

During the 2012-2013 school year, at least 80% now in 3rd and 4th grade and who are performing below benchmark will increase their standard score by a minimum of twelve points on the reading assessment.  The measure used will be the Iowa Assessment reading test.

In a few months we’ll be getting those data back that show whether we’ve met that goal or not. Teachers always fight a variety of emotions when these “data days” happen, ranging from depression to head-scratching puzzlement. Each year some kids make it and others don’t, and we never really know why. We suspect our most successful years are the result of setting lower goals, not necessarily better learning. Each year, it seems, teachers are left wondering how these goals have helped us change things in important ways? Some of us ask ourselves how our teaching lives could have become so circumscribed as to be about moving 80% of the students who struggle twelve standard points on the Iowa Assessment. If goals are a statement of purpose…? Ugh.

Along comes Bud and his book club read, The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Read his post to find out more of what his leadership team is doing, but what I took away was that educators can measure leading or lagging indicators. And that distinction helped me realize why we all feel so depressed on “data days” by both our failures AND our successes; we’re measuring a lagging indicator and we don’t know what effect our efforts have had on whether we reach the standardized test goal. Along with that, we suspect that standardized test scores don’t really tell us much about the complex humans we have in our classrooms.

Enter a new set of “leading” indicator-type measures, rather than the “lagging” student achievement measures. The book, Bud writes, argues for setting meaningful goals (the author calls them something like, “wildly important goals”, which sounds wildly impressive), then developing a set of leading indicators or measures and a mechanism (a scoreboard or dashboard) to keep track of them. Here’s an example. Imagine the meaningful goal we set was for students to become better readers who think deeply about what they are reading. (You could probably think of a better worded one!) Your next step is to think of things that you could track that would “lead” you toward that goal. It helps if you already know there is research and/or theory that backs up these as important.

Just thinking out loud here, but what about these as “leading” indicators that might move us toward our important goal of creating better readers and thinkers:

  • Amount of reading time during the day, along with some sort of “effectiveness” measure, since time alone doesn’t exactly equate to high quality reading;
  • A learning log or portfolio of ideas (blog, digital portfolios, whatever) — completed by the student and/or by a teacher — that documents student learning on specific “habits of mind” in order to demonstrate deep or metacognitive thinking. (FYI, I’m working on such a project now and will blog about it later!);
  • A “flow-o-meter,” since getting lost in a book seems important. I’m sure it’s possible to keep track of this since it is lived experience. (By the way, I’ve never seen a kid who has found themselves lost in a book struggle as a reader for very long. I’ve rarely seen students who can’t get lost in a book make dramatic progress in reading.);
  • A log of learning projects started and completed, since the ability to generate questions and sustain interest in learning seems to correlate to depth of learning. This kind of goal would also require us to set aside time to explore some kind of project-based learning.

Those are just a few ideas. Wouldn’t it be fun to think of what you’d keep track of? How you’d do that? How you could engage the students in keeping track of their own dashboard?

Something like this would be a much more concrete task to complete than moving kids on standardized test scores. Each of these leading indicators begs further conversation and research both of the reading and action kind. For example, we could explore improving instructional strategies around our independent reading time; how to set up learning tasks or improve classroom dynamics; how to set up learning “dashboards”, improve curricular goals, or whatever other important changes might result in higher “scores” on the “leading indicators.” Also, these would be more measurable in real-time than a standardized test score, so you’d know if you were making progress or not.

Finally, as a teacher it would be oh-so-much more fun to teach how to become a deeply engaged learner, to log their progress toward that goal, than to abstractly move 80% of the struggling students twelve standard points on the Iowa Assessment.

Thanks, Bud Hunt! I’ll be thinking more about goals and measurements and how they influence learning and teaching.