Month: October 2018

Our superintendent, Kevin Alfano, recently returned from a meeting with a group of superintendents.  He was telling us about the focus of the learning: school organizations as bureaucracies vs. learning organizations.  Our intention is to well live and work in the latter.  In the conversation, he mentioned an author, John Tanner.  Turns out that John Tanner has written a book called The Pitfalls of Reform: Its Incompatibility with Actual Improvement.  The description of the book and its author caught my attention…so I bought the book and have nearly finished reading it.  It’s an amazing discussion about standardized testing, what it can do, and what it definitely can’t do.  And how it has zero to do with actual improvement for kids and teachers.

Here are a few booming quotes/ideas that hit home:

What do good educators do with research that will improve learning for kids? 

Before that question can be addressed, there’s a more important question.  Do teachers, after college (or even in college given my experience), connect with research as their careers are rolling along?

In our district, we try to keep our educators apprised of research.  For example, we have shared Hattie’s work, especially the finding regarding ‘Collective Teacher Efficacy’.  At one of our kick off days several years ago, we introduced them to Jenni Donohoo, the author of Collective Efficacy: How Educators’ Beliefs Impact Student Learning.  We literally had Jenni onsite, working directly with our teachers.  That pretty much made the research come to life.  Collective teacher efficacy continues to this day to be a topic of conversation, planning, and action in our schools.

One of the main reasons it’s easy for educators to get behind Collective Teacher Efficacy?  It just flat makes sense.  When educators share the belief that, through their collective actions, they can influence student outcomes and increase achievement. Educators with high efficacy show greater effort and persistence, willingness to try new teaching approaches, and attend more closely to struggling students’ needs.  Common sense.

Here’s another common sense idea with the power of research behind it.

Greeting kids at the door.  Yep.  That simple idea.  Makes a whopping difference for kids.  Here’s the actual research.  Common sense.  I know teachers who were doing this before they knew about the research.

From the research article, “In practical terms, students in the PGD (Positive Greetings at the Door) classes evidenced a 20% gain in AET (Academic Engaged Time), which corresponds to an extra 12 min of on-task behavior per instructional hour or an additional hour of engagement over the course of a 5-hr instructional day. On a larger scale, use of the PGD strategy could potentially result in gains of several more hours of additional academic engagement over the course of the academic year, which could produce significant improvements in actual academic achievement.”

Back to the original question.  What do good educators do with research that will improve the learning for kids?   When they know about it, do they act upon it?

Our great teachers do both.  They know about it.  They act upon it.

Boom!

“So when kids come to your class, are they learning math or math class?”

There’s a question for you.  Are kids learning math or math class?  Ignore the content area.  The question remains the same.  Not something I had contemplated before.  But it really rocked me back when I heard the line.  So I started thinking back to the math classes I taught.  Or the language arts classes.  Or the social studies classes.

Did the kids learn math…or math class?

I tweeted this line out a while ago.  One of the replies came from the twitter account of Teacher2Teacher.

They asked a fair question:

My answer was, “I guess I think about what kids are doing. Are they DOING math? Or have they simply figured out how to do your math class? Are they up to their eyeballs in math or up to their eyeballs in the math class routine. And I know one doesn’t automatically exclude the other.”

That answer is fine.  It’s close to what I could express within the limits of twitter. A better answer would focus on of what constitutes the majority of the kids’ learning?  Do they primarily learn math?  With joy, creativity, challenge, open ended thinking, collaboration?  Or do they primarily learn math class?

I know the kids learned math class because I had my routine. Get out your homework while I take attendance. Maybe a bell ringer activity.  Any questions from last night’s homework?  No?  Ok, switch papers.  Correct.  Turn them in.  Get out your notes.  I give some notes about the next thing in the math book.  Any questions?  No.  Ok, the assignment is page 48, 2-40 even.  Go ahead and get to work.

Ugh.  As goes the old saying, if I only knew then what I know now.  That model would be blown up.  Way less teacher.  Way more kid.  Way more interaction among kids.  Way more talk, questions, strategies, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.

(Back when I didn’t know what I know now)

The line also made the me think about ‘classroom management’.  Such an awkward phrase.  Like teachers are managing a classroom.  They’re not.  The classroom is fine.  It’s a room.  The ‘management’ is of students.  Kids.  And usually the ‘management’ is focused solely on behavior.  And more specifically, sadly, kids being quiet and orderly.  Again, the old saying.  I’d rework the entire classroom management conversation. Something more along the lines of, “How to we maximize our learning time together everyday?”  “What does it look like and feel like in here when we’re learning?”  And 5 bucks says the answers wouldn’t all focus on quiet.

One little line disrupted my thinking.  That’s a darn good thing.

Sometimes when we’re out and about and people ask us what our roles are, we tell them we work in in the TLI department in Fife.  And of course we’re asked what the heck TLI stands for.  Teaching-Learning-Innovation.  Most people get the Teaching-Learning part.  In our little shed down here, we define learning thusly, “Learning results in a permanent change in thinking or behavior.”  So…one has learned something when a permanent change in thinking or behavior occurs.  Turns out, for example, I never actually learned about photosynthesis.  I held the information for a while, until the test, then gave the information back, and went my merry way. No permanent change in thinking or behavior.  And of course teaching is everything that great educators do with/for kids to create learning.  And everything that great educators do create learning for themselves.

 

How about the innovation part?  Well we get our definition for innovation from an educator named George Couros.  He wrote a book called The Innovator’s Mindset.  I’ve probably mentioned over 1000 times that this is simply the best book about the learning world I’ve ever read.  A career changing mind blower.  Couros on innovation, “I’m defining innovation as a way of thinking that creates something new and better. Innovation can come from either “invention” (something totally new) or “iteration” (a change of something that already exists), but if it does not meet the idea of “new and better,” it is not innovative. That means that change for the sake of change is never good enough. Neither is using innovation as a buzzword, as many organizations do, to appear current or relevant.”

Something is innovative if it creates something new and better.

We have examples of innovation all over the place in our district!  One of the questions we encourage ourselves and our educator colleagues to consider is, “When was the last time I did something for the first time?”  That’s a decent place to start thinking about something new.  But not new for the sake of new.  That’s dumb. New and making something better.

 

Here’s a perfect example.  Mr. Beddes, SLMS principal, wanted to focus on the educators at SLMS and improve communication to our community.  So, he decided to give podcasting a try.  Podcasts, in and of themselves, aren’t new.  But Mr. Beddes made them innovative in how he used them, and in doing so, made communication about SLMS better.  New and better.

Here’s his latest podcast, where he interviews Mr. Kratzig.  It’s a remarkable and insightful interview.

Way to model innovation gentlemen!