Category: Post-A-Day

53/365 The Most Important Question is What Students are Curious About

Sit in any classroom, traditional or not, and wait until the end. Then, attend to following question, “What were the students in this class curious about?”

It will be tempting, in this excercise, to answer with what they were “supposed” to be curious about, what questions were asked as a class via teacher re-direction, or what you yourself were curious about and thereby assigned to the students. Don’t do any of these things.

Instead, look at the notes you were copiouslly jotting down during your observation and try to find direct, empirical evidence of student curiosity. If you cannot, something is wrong.

One of my favorite questions to ask when debriefing a lesson teachers have just taught is to ask them what they thought students were curious about during the class period. To do so reframes our reflection on teaching in a way that looks to learning as a process of exploration based on the naturally occurring questions and wonder that come along with encountering new ideas. Ask any teacher more in love with their content area than anything else why they love that content, and they’re likely to describe some formative experience when they started questioning and never quite found the motivation to stop. Sadly, these same teachers, enamoured of their content often fail to hold enough back in their teaching to invite those same questions from their students.

Lessons in these classrooms often become, “I know this, and this, and this, and this…and you should too.” Students in these settings have no need for curiosity. The content is presented to them as having uncovered all the answers worth finding.

If our goal is to foster in our students the same sort of wonder that drives our own curiosity, we must realize the answer is not showing all that we know and can be known.

Instead, the answer comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s eight basics of creative writing as outlined in his short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box. We don’t even need all eight. One will do.

“Start as close to the end as possible.”

While appropriating a guideline for fiction writing may seem strange when discussing those things worth knowing as true, it certainly isn’t. To instill curiosity in our students (and ourselves) we must start as close to the end of the story as possible.

History classes are as fine an example as any. In their most traditional sequence, these classes begin with the earliest recorded history and then move forward across the years. Oddly enough, since we began the teaching of history, more of it has taken place, but that might not be obvious in the contemporary history class. A student graduating high school might have learned about the past through the end of World War II (maybe the Vietnam War if he’s lucky), but that is likely where history ended for this student because of our fascination with passing on our knowledge of how things are starting with the earliest details as though they are inherently important to those during the learning.

Imagine, instead, if we take a page from Vonnegut, and teach history starting as close to the end as it stands now and walk into a classroom saying, “Here’s what happened in the world yesterday, what questions does that raise?” Such a class is likely to face a time crunch just as the traditional class did. This time, that crunch will be students not having enough time to ask and search for answers to all the questions that arise rather than the teacher not having enough time to lead an abstract field trip that finds as its point of origin ancient Mesopotamia.

If we ground our reflection in “What were they curious about?” and start our teaching as close to the end as possible so as to draw out that curiosity, we will have moved a long way to creating the schools we need.

52/365 What Do These Pictures Do to Inform our Conversations about Race?

In a recent class, a colleague was describing the Chicano civil rights movement here in Colorado. As she detailed the events, she ended with, “…and then it went nationwide.”

I paused for a moment. Why hadn’t I heard about this movement when I was growing up in Central Illinois? Had it truly gone nationwide?

Then I got curious as to what the Hispanic population looked like by the numbers near my hometown. I’d several friends who identified as Hispanic when I lived in Florida, but couldn’t remember any from my time in Illinois. I took to the Internet. Here’s what I found:

Hispanic PopulationIt seemed from this picture that I had a reason why the movement going nationwide hadn’t resonated as profoundly in the Midwest. This got me curious. Here’s what else I found:

American Indian PopulationAnd…

African-American PopulationAnd…

Asian PopulationThese were things I could probably have described generally if handed a blank map and asked to color in the distribution. It wasn’t until I started considering these maps with regard to the “national” conversations we have about race, ethnicity, and culture I’ve witnessed and participated in as I’ve moved around the country. Some things I’m thinking:

  • While general patterns of cultural dominance and oppression appear regularly across the map, the cultures in question, how they interact, and how they shift those patterns is vastly different.
  • A person with limited geographic mobility living in any of these spaces of greater density of the ethnicities reported above is likely to live with a skewed perception of race in America and limited access to people of other backgrounds, thereby limiting the fulfillment of Allport’s Contact Hypothesis.
  • When we talk about race in America, we’re all having different conversations and are rarely aware of those differences.
  • Integration, equity, and civil rights are going to require varied approaches if we are to find that “more perfect union” we talk about so much.

If I were in a social studies classroom, I’d be building a unit around these maps and the questions they raise for my students and me. If I were in an English classroom, I’d be asking how these distributions might influence my selection of texts and how I approached helping students access them. If I were leading a school, I’d open a faculty meeting with these images and ask how they might help us think about how we are preparing students for the larger world and their citizenship in it.

And, I’d throw one more map into the mix to make it interesting…

Poverty

 

 

 

 

51/365 What if We Can’t Play?

I had the great opportunity to work with Bud Hunt Wednesday and co-lead a summit workshop at NCCE on hacking the curriculum for the Common Core. A room of 50 educators who work as teachers, IT coordinators, district personnel, librarians and everything in between filled the room.

Bud being who he is and me being who I am, we designed the day around exploration moving toward participants identifying how they could leverage the Common Core to evolve teaching and learning in their sites by hacking the curriculum in the afternoon.

The conversations were rich and the room was full of good will moving into the afternoon.

When we got to the hacking portion, though, it was surprising the number of people who continued conversing about things rather than building something to take back and move their respective conversations.

It wasn’t everyone by any means, and I certainly do not begrudge anyone a rich conversation about practice. What it got me wondering, though, was how much we’ve conditioned teachers away from play and the idea of creation.

The day to that point had been resource-rich and open to many conversations about the problems and goals folks were carrying with them through their workdays.

When the scheduled time to address those problems to, “build the thing you’ve been wanting to build but haven’t had the time,” came, not nearly as many as I would have expected chose to do so.

I don’t know the answers to why, but I do have some ideas and some questions:

  • Did they choose not to because we have built a system where creativity and the building of useful things is seen as devoid of value?
  • Were they restricted by the space (a convention center conference room)? And, if so, what can such a feeling in a room that bears striking resemblance to many school classrooms tell us about what we are doing to students’ own feelings about making?
  • Am I reading the experience completely wrong? Were the conversations in place of making more valuable or necessary before these folks could make their way to creating? If so, what does that tell us about classroom experiences?
  • What could we have done, if anything, to structure the day so that people felt internally compelled to make when given the time and space?

It was a successful day, and I’m happy with the results. People had useful conversation and feedback has been positive. These are the conference equivalent of the questions I’d ask myself after a lesson in my class, no matter how successful I thought it had gone. They are the the weight of feeling like I must always ask, “Why did what happened happen, and how could I have made it better for those who entrusted me with their time?”

I’m thankful to Bud for asking me along today, and I’m thankful to everyone who committed to the experience as worthwhile to improving teaching and learning in their spaces. I’m excited to improve upon it next time.

You can find the wiki for our summit here and the blog posts that came out of folks’ time for writing here.

Learning Grounds Ep. 011: In Which Jessica Alzen talks of teacher evaluation and the split between online and face-to-face teaching

In this episode, Zac talks to researcher and graduate student Jessica Alzen about constructing teacher evaluation systems and the differences between online and face-to-face teaching.

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49/365 We Must Stop Confusing ‘Authoritarian’ and ‘Authority’

Sit and watch any group of novice teachers – those in their first few years, those student teaching, those teaching a new grade level for the first time – and you’re likely to here some variation of the following, “Yeah, most days, it’s all I can do just to get control of the class.” It’s a frequent question asked of mentor teachers, “How do you get control of the kids?”

Lest you think such speech is solely the domain of novice teachers, try speaking at a conference sesssion or staff development meeting and advocating a shift in practice that would mean giving students more choice in the classroom. Within seconds, a few hands will be raised, one will be called on, and a veteran teacher will say, “Yeah, that sounds great and all, but if we did what you’re suggesting our classrooms would be madhouses. It’d be too difficult to keep control.”

Good.

There is a difference between being an authority and being authoritarian (and we should shoot for the former).

If the bulk of teacher’s practices are geared around maintaining control of the classroom or control of the students, then they’ve lost sight of what’s possible in schools. Scott Paris and Julienne Turner give four key components of this in their piece “Situated Motivation.”

Sometimes, we say motivation as a white washed way of thinking about control, “That student is really motivated,” or “That teacher is very motivational.” Replace “motivation” with “control” in those two students and you get to the meat of the meaning.

Paris and Turner found out motivation, like control, is not inherent in the individual. Anyone who has planned an amazingly successful lesson one day and then felt like a ringmaster the next knows this to be true. Instead, Paris and Turner found that motivation is situated in the context of an activity. Activities, it turns out, are motivational.

Well, they can be if they include four key components – choice, challenge, collaboration, and control. The more of these components a teacher builds in to a learning experience, the more likely they are to find a class that might be construed as being in their control. Structuring lessons to include choice, challenge, collaboration, and control will move the teacher to a different role than that of authoritarian. He will find himself as he should be – an authority.

The teacher as authority knows the content of the day, knows his students, knows the community, and knows how to structure a learning experience that will produce motivation in his students. This is the role of the teacher. Contrary to the tener of much of the driving conversation about teachers, we are authorities. We are authorities of education and we must be willing to stand up and say as much.

Sadly, it is not only the reformist/traditionalist camps that are wearing away the authority of teachers, though they are those whose practice tends toward authoritarianism.

Progressives have long contrued the works of John Dewey to suggest that teachers should step back, hide their authority and let students fail as they will without assistance. This is decidedly neither what Dewey meant nor what he wrote.

Writing in his small but powerful Experience & Education, Dewey wrote, “On the contrary, basing education upon personal experience may mean more multiplied and more intimate contacts between the mature and the immature than ever existed in the traditional school, and consequently more, rather than less, guidance by others.”

What Dewey was certainly arguing against, and what does not become a great school or great community is teacher as authoritarian, dictating actions, answers, and access with little-to-know regard for students’ abilities to navigate those spaces on their own.

Control is a tempting mistress. In the absense of wisdom and the ability or will to structure motivating learning experiences for students, it is frequently the goal of many classroom teachers of all stripes. To build the schools we need, though, we must be authorities within a democracy.

48/365 No School Should be ‘On Silent’

A warning from a teacher during a school visit: Don’t be offended if the students don’t acknowledge you if you say hi in the hallways. They’re on silent and know they’ll get a demerit if they acknowledge your presence.

The offense is not felt at the cold shoulder from these middle school students. They are, after all, only following the rules, and what are schools for if not rules?

The offense comes on behalf of these students. At a time in their lives when norms of socialization a forging connections with others is as salient and important a skills as anything they’re learning in math class, they’ve had their legs cut out from under them with the threat of a demerit if they practice these nascent and important skills.

The silence in this school is championed by adults who claim the rule keeps the students focused. They’re not wild, crazed adolescents when they get to class if they never get a chance to work themselves up.

The counter-argument (well, one counter-argument) is that these students will never know how to de-escalate themselves when they’re outside the restrictive confines of the school and find themselves upset, energized, or otherwise worked up by something in life.

The more important argument against such repressive policies as this and others similar to it in schools across the country that put on or could put on the “no excuses” moniker is what such rules teach students about themselves. The implied lessons of the rules and how they sustain cultural power structures are dangerous and dripping with thinly-veiled racism and classism. In this school, the vast majority of the students are Latino and African American. The teachers – white.

Looking around, no one seems aware of the implied message of dominance and submission that lives within the rule of silence. There’s likely no malevolence in the rule. These teachers, to a person, will likely profess their love of the children in their care, and could probably list myriad ways they’ve worked to help students become more successful.

Creating structures where students are silenced in any way as a replacement for the often difficult task of discussing social norms, answering difficult questions and having to repeatedly model what’s expected is a cop out of the highest order and it does, students, schools and teachers a monumental disservice.

Let’s imagine the school in our example as what it could have been. Rather than a multitude of rules posted at every turn, students and visitors are greeted by a sign upon entry that reads, “Welcome to our community of learning.”

What the visitors can’t see upon entry are the frequent conversations in homeroom, advisory or whatever the common community space is of these students that focus on helping students articulate what a community of learning means and what it means to be a member of that community.

Rather than warning away possible offense at not being acknowledged if we greet a student, our host encourages us to introduce ourselves to students and to let her know at the end of the day if we have any conversations that serve as particularly good models of participating in a community of learning so those students can be acknowledged for representing the school well.

Fostering this latter community is work, much more work, than the first example. It requires adults who see themselves as authorities on helping students build community and citizenship, and it means a curriculum stocked with explicit socio-emotional supports alonside academic content. At a foundational level, a school that sees itself as a community of learners must also be a place where the adults engage in frequent conversation reflecting on who they want to be and how well the school is doing at reaching this goal.

It is much more work, but it is work with an eye toward equity, community, and being the better versions of ourselves.

Learning Grounds Ep. 010: In which The JLV talks math, wrong answers, and how he found his way to the classroom

In this episode, Zac talks with José Vilson about how he shapes his practice in the math classroom, why he hates “wrong answers,” and how education became his life. You can find José at www.thejosevilson.com.

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46/365 Every Kid Needs a Mentor

Mentoring Statistics

In a conversation about changes in social expectations of children in communities, juvenile advocate and community orgnizer Jolon McNeil remembered her own childhood in comparison with the worlds and schools of the children she dedicates her life to helping. “If I had gotten suspended,” McNeil said, “everyong in my family, everyone in my community, and everyone in my church would have kicked my butt.”

Today’s students have it differently, McNeil says, because of a disconnect between schools and communities, that same level of home awareness and community consequences have faded into the past for many.

While it is a tough sell that schoold should or could step in and take the space of the family, community and faith organization, there is something they can do that requires minimal resources and improves the lives of everyone involved.

Every kid needs a mentor.

Mentoring builds social and cultural capital in students, connects them with singular adults whose purpose is to support the student, and ties students to an anchor in the community.

For the community, the benefits are equally plentiful. Mentoring is an investment in the community, not in an economic sense (though that argument can also be made). Instead, mentoring is an investment in growing the kind of citizens, neighbors, and community leaders mentors want to live alongside in the coming years.

To be certain, teachers can be and are mentors to the students they teach. We spend more time with our students than many of them spend with their parents in the later grades. Connecting with students on online platforms like Facebook is a form of mentorship in that I am able to model appropriate behavior, find connection with students who are feeling lost and can’t bring themselves to make contact face-to-face, and step in as an adult when students push too far past what is acceptable conduct in any community – online or off.

Expecting teachers to be full mentors is laying an unliftable weight on their shoulders. The thick connections inherent in a full mentoring relationship require time and personal committment impossible with a roster of 150 students.

Schools can be the conduits and catalysts for mentoring relationships though.

Wanting to match as many of its students with mentors as possible, Phoenix Academy, a magnet high school in Sarasota, FL that recruits only the lowest achieving students in the district, sought to build its capacity to meet its goal by partnering with those already doing the work.

The school contacted the local Big Brothers Big Sisters office and explained their goals. BBBS said they could help. In a matter of weeks, the school welcomed representatives from the organization into the school one evening. Also in attendance were those community members school personnel were able to recruit into mentorship. Throughout the course of the evening, the would-be mentors navigated the school district’s volunteer clearance procedure and received BBBS orientation training and clearance checks en masse.

By the night’s end, Phoenix Academy had scores of new mentors on call to match with its students, Big Brothers Big Sisters made contact with many community members with whom it would not otherwise have likely connected.

Most importantly, in the weeks that followed, Phoenix students were matched with caring adults from the community in whom they could find a friend, advocate, and mentor.

These kinds of partnerships are possible in communities and schools across the country. They need only a school willing to set the goal and make the initial investment in organizing the effort.

We know the benefits of mentoring. We know the benefits of community connections. We know the strength of shared vision and goals.

We need to match kids with mentors.

Learning Grounds Ep. 009: In which Cori discusses silent stories and the act of storying students

In this episode, Zac got to talk with teacher Cori Saas in discuss her iterative inquiry into the role of stories in her life and in the classroom.

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44/365 What is the measure of greatness of a school?

I’ve been asked by Sam Chaltain to contribute to the conversation over at EdWeek around the series A Year at Mission Hill. I’ll be offering a take on each episode and interpreting some of the research that might be relevant and trying to make it practical. My second piece went live today. You can find it here. For now, you can find the first episode of the series and my first piece below.

In last week’s introduction to the new 10-part series, A Year at Mission Hill, we’re asked an important and timeless question: “How do you create a great school?”

Like most important questions, to answer it we must ask other, deeper questions such as, “What do we mean by great?” “What is the measure of greatness of a school?” and “What greatness has come before us?” Together, our goal will be to use the lens of Mission Hill as a way to collect and translate some of the best thinking and research about how to improve schools and build their capacity for greatness.

Back in 1992, Richard Elmore named a key obstacle to great teaching, and, I would argue, great schools: failing to build the collective capacity of educators beyond the application of “research-based” strategies and tricks. “In current research,” Elmore wrote, “learning means the development of understanding, or the ability to perform complex cognitive tasks that require the active management of different types of knowledge around concrete problems.” To foster this kind of learning in their students, teachers needed — and still need — a different set of tools.

If this is how the students learn, then it must also be true of the teachers.

As Mission Hill Principal Ayla Gavins points out, “Everyone has value.”

Great schools work to uncover each person’s value, and make it explicit.

Some of the most impactful work I’ve seen in this area is the work of Norma Gonzalez, Luis Moll, and Cathy Amanti in their exploration of “funds of knowledge.” Rather than performing a study in order to publish it in a journal article for a select few, these educators chose a different and more practical tack: they trained teachers in the methods of social sciences, and then deployed teams of them into homes throughout the Mexican community of Tucson, Arizona.

These teams were not there to teach parents or students how they could better students’ performance in classrooms. Instead, they were there to discover what knowledge was implicit within these communities. Rather than view the families as impoverished citizens in need of being rescued, these researchers approached the homes they studied as places already rich in value, knowledge, and learning practices. In short, they began from the assumption that when Tucson’s Mexican-American children were at home, they were continuously fulfilling Richard Elmore’s definition of learning. And then they turned their sights on the classrooms from which the teacher-researchers originated and asked: “How can we integrate these deep funds of knowledge into our own teaching practices?”

Not unlike the conversations we’ve already seen taking place at Mission Hill, the Arizona teacher-researchers engaged in after-school conversations designed to compare what was going on in their classrooms with what they’d encountered and grown to understand about their students’ homes. Simply put, they were aligning their professional practices with the lives and experiences of their students.

These stories remind us that teachers who take the time to understand the “funds of knowledge” that surround their students outside of the classroom will learn to see their students as unique individuals with distinct abilities and needs. And while it’s true that this work is insufficient by itself in making and sustaining a great school, it’s equally clear that building such an understanding among adults is an essential ingredient toward deepening a school’s capacity for greatness.