Best Practices – Page 11 – Mrs. Kelly Love

We can work it out.

Sometimes convincing ourselves (of fill in the blank) is the most challenging argument of all; we set rules and boundaries of fair play, and then (sometimes aggressively) expect others to abide. And one life occasion where this is grandly obvious is the activity of “group work.”

when I die

Let’s talk about the beast that is ‘group work.’ There are multiple lists of how to make group work run more smoothly, and whether we want to admit this horrible truth about adulthood to our young charges, a reality of most work environments. And like just about everything with a label, not all group work, project-based, problem-based, etc. endeavors is created equal. Four 13 years olds deciding how the XVIII Amendment altered their lives does not necessarily engage the intellect or free the senses. Rarely will the ONE IDEA TO RULE THEM ALL emerges when more than one person is in charge: the compromises and ‘go along’ attitudes vary on spectrums depending on a group member’s individual temperament. Does the student see themselves as the leader, the boss, or the bewildered head-nodder? And we all play our part in group work--think about any staff meeting or committee you’ve been on, and how much effectively and efficiently gets done. Not much. Perhaps it is the ‘getting done’ part —do we want the result the process or the product?

And yes, while introducing the group project we completed right before the break, I scared my students with the TALES OF THE OPEN CRYPT OFFICE SPACES, and kind of a quasi ‘all for one fails, one for all fails’ kind of tactic. Not very nice of me, but they forced my hand –listening and collaborating are skills I hold dear, and by this time in the year it was time to put those values to the test. And up to this point, group work was one area of deficiency. I do want them to achieve great things, and learning how to be heard and gain people’s trust and belief is part of that. But I also hold the individual studio/workshop time and process sacred. If I had to choose between creating in a vacuum, never sharing my work, or to listen to other people’s ideas in a group forever, that would be a special kind of hellish choice for me.

But here’s the tricky part: in any group, does there need to be recognition for (only) one or two visionaries? Perhaps we’ve been looking at group roles all wrong. Perhaps everyone needs a chance to be the ‘visionary’ and direct the work and shark-tank their ideas through a vetting process. I wonder if Bisman Deu had brought up her phenomenal idea in a classroom setting if no one would have listened to her, and her idea would have been tossed in the wastebasket. John Spencer wrote about the seven types of creative teachers: how can we apply this to students’ personalities and work styles?

I did say regarding some group work it is life or death. In all seriousness, Bob Ebeiling carried 30 years of guilt because no one listened to him when he tried to warn of the shuttle disaster. It can have tragic and deeply personal consequences when teams don’t heed others warnings.

http://www.npr.org/player/embed/466555217/468149502

Self-Perception, Individualism, and Performance

Perhaps it’s time to focus on the individual’s skill set in terms of their self-perception before going into a group project. In other words, each student reflects in an individual asset portfolio, thinking about their own perceptions of their role in a group project, their strengths, and their triggers. I can think of one student who is shining in cooking in her elective class, and gets the other students to follow directions and is a leader, while during the group work for the Amendments Project, she floundered and pointed fingers. My class work demands reading, and she struggles with this. Therefore, her sense of self-efficacy diminished per the demands of the tasks.

How Does Self-Perception Affect Performance?

Kids who see themselves as “good” students tend to trust their efforts. Because they believe in their ability to adapt and learn, these students have a high sense of “self-efficacy” (Ruddell and Unrau 2004). We can think of self-efficacy as a kind of faith in future results; it’s a student’s belief that, through personal effort, he or she can master new knowledge and skills. The idea of self-efficacy also reflects an understanding that academic competency is an acquired— not a natural— ability. Everyone can relate to the feeling of being a novice. We expect to make mistakes when learning to ride a bike, play soccer, or drive a car. However, some students don’t see the same learning curve when it comes to their academic work. They see themselves as “bad” students who have “always” struggled in school. Revealing the process of apprenticeship that all learning requires can reassure many frustrated students— and help them understand that the first step toward better performance is to see themselves as capable of achievement. Students who develop this strong sense of self-efficacy are, not surprisingly, more motivated to improve their reading and writing skills. Self-efficacy can be especially important for low-income and minority students. Research suggests that sustained effort over time, as reflected by high school GPA, is a more accurate predictor of college success than high-stakes assessments like the SAT— a test on which students with high socioeconomic status typically outperform students with low socioeconomic status (Geiser and Santelices 2007). Personal attributes such as motivation, discipline, and perseverance— in other words, a high sense of self-efficacy— can be even more important indicators of academic preparation than traditional aptitude tests. This means that students who consistently trust their efforts have a better chance of completing a college education.

Fletcher, Jennifer (2015-02-28). Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response (Kindle Locations 4663-4677). Stenhouse Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Here are some of my tips about group work that I’ve learned the hard way:

Always balance a group portion with an individual one.
Allow them time to divvy up the tasks to allow for ownership. Make this process transparent.
Provide time for a group mission statement, resolution, or creed. Post it on the wall.
Create a template if necessary, but also, allow more advanced group work to lead toward medium agnosticism.
For middle school kids, they will be furious and resentful if one of their groupmates isn’t pulling her share. Welcome to life, kiddo. See #1, and let that be your response.
Consider the process over product: for the Amendment Project (details below), the target and success depended on more upon what they learned, and what they could teach me and each other than perfect spelling or presentation skills at the front of the room. (Big fan of the gallery-walk structure.)

The Amendment Project

As with any new unit of study, tweaks and adjustments are required.

Divide students in groups of 4 (3-5).
Have them read through the Amendments and choose ones that intrigue them.
Bring their ideas to their group, and decide which one they will focus on.
Claim Evidence Reasoning document to help guide their knowledge building
Provide a template for initial group work, then move toward medium agnostic for more advanced projects.
Reading for Argument template
Make sure to give space for their individual contributions (per the template)
Provide discussions/forums to allow for individual contributions
Be aware that many shared, collaborative tech tools let us down: PowerPoint on-line is still wonky and weird. One student was near tears because it deleted his final thoughts paragraph. I’m disappointed, too, because he is an articulate thinker and I always enjoy reading his insights.

There were many excellent exchanges and sharing of ideas that resulted from this project. One student looked up at me, shaking his head and said, “Mrs. Love…electoral college…” I know, young squire….I know. The other one happened when a student didn’t think the law about being a ‘natural born citizen’ was fair. I said well, it is what it is, basically, and then later, another member of his group respectfully said, “Mrs. Love, you’re right most of the time….” and I said, “But this time I’m not, right?” He said yes. Then we had one of the best discussions about ‘natural born citizens’ in the context of its time, and what it means now, and that laws are messy–and that’s the beauty. I could see a roomful of young men and women who would be amazing leaders of this nation, and I told them if this was their mission, to learn, be a scholar, understand law, and they could create amendments to suit their vision. Dangerous thinking? Absolutely. The key is teaching context, and any concept in a contexual framework of ‘then and now’ creates the liveliest and most engaging of humanities discourse.

Every single one of my students was successful with this project — every one. Every student contributed to the conversation, the work, and the process. They took the laws and considered them as relevant to their worlds today. I can’t ask for any greater self-efficacy than that.

Project Based Learning Resource:

Buck Institute for Education (BIE)

Graveyard of Jargon

hopesdreams — What educational jargon or bandwagons have you had to bury?

My friend Philip Cummings recently posted something on social media that caught my eye, “Letting Go of Learning Styles” by Amber and Andy Ankowski on the PBS Parents site. This article busts the myth of learning styles, one of education’s most holiest of shrines, and offers much more authentic alternatives. And the Ankowskis have a point: no matter how special our snowflake, we’re all trying to figure out how to use gravity to our advantage during the storm.

Wait–that was a TERRIBLE metaphor. Forgive me. I’ve been doing mom-chores and adulting all day, and I’m cranky. College boy is in town and needed to get him squared away, and the whole tax thing, and now people are arguing, being bossy over one another, and quite frankly, it’s all a little silly. Or in the words of the immortal Mr. Krabs, “What a baby.” The deal is, we really need to be careful when jumping on bandwagons: they have a habit of gaining speed and being much more dangerous during the departing.

Here are a few of my thoughts/questions:

What if a teacher becomes an ‘expert’ in one of these sacred teachings, and then that path is no longer valid or respected? I’m thinking of one educator I know whose expertise is in ‘learning styles,’ and how is she going to feel that others believe that it’s bunk?
What about all the backlash and misinterpretation of “grit,” growth mindset,” or gangum style? Whatever. I still dance to it. Just kidding. You know what I mean.
What’s next? What about the ed-tech movement, our love of Alfie Kohn, or DON’T EVEN THINK IT: UBD?!

STEP. AWAY. FROM. THE. U.B.D. AND NO ONE GETS HURT.

But back to learning styles, John Spencer noted,

“I feel like the original research on learning styles was flawed (and I’ve never bought into the notion of fixed learning styles). However, almost all of the research “overturning” learning styles relies on flawed metrics. In most cases, the assessments don’t match the instruction. So, a visual style of instruction and an auditory style of instruction both end up with a written test at the end. They do this to boost reliability but in the process, the validity suffers.”

I always liked Howard Gardner, and even he said learning styles was misused. His “multiple intelligences’ are NOT learning styles. That’s always the way, isn’t it? Someone has a good idea, does mountains of research, draws conclusions, and adjusts and flexes thinking, and then some bureaucrat gets a hold of it and takes all the flavor out. While becoming a teacher, of course I applied all the things I was learning about to my own young sons. The older one was the musician/mathematician, and the younger one (I was sure) was destined to be the next Jane Goodall with his love of nature. But again I think we confuse interests with concrete, fixated means of functioning in a classroom. We label, box, and shelve. We forget we are complex, adaptive systems, capable of multiple approaches to something. The concept of content becoming the focus makes sense: I wouldn’t learn about how to throw a ball from seeing a picture of someone doing it as well as just doing it. Moreover, I wouldn’t learn how to write a solid rebuttal from an interpretive dance (however much fun that would be).

There is just some stuff we need to know– like how to throw a ball, or write a great rebuttal. And we have teacher-experts in those areas who are more than capable and desirous of teaching those skills.

And then we come to the big tests that only focus on ‘reading’ and ‘math.’ And the ELA and math teachers seem to be the only ones who get their names tied to those scores.

I am predicting that ‘close reading’ is going to be next on the list of educational movements to at least catch a cold, if not completely buried in the Graveyard of Jargon. Close reading is great, and though everyone’s been cautioned not to overuse it, guess what? It’s being overused. And when something is overused it loses its effectiveness and provides diminishing returns.

But damn, that poor woman who spoke about grit. Bet she’s sorry.

What educational tropes do you think are about to expire and meet their maker in the big classroom, where St. Dewey watches over all of us, just smiling to himself?

Ah well. Enough of this. Time to dance!

I don’t care what anyone says: this is still fun to dance to.

Deep down.

deep diving — Underwater Cave Diving by Viktor Lyagushkin http://www.flowcheck.es

Today I was observed for the last 40 minutes of my last class of the day on the first day back from winter break, and that was perfectly fine. I trust my evaluator completely and know that the feedback I receive will be informed and valuable. In our time -constrained worlds, though, I am not sure I’ll have the opportunity to tell her all the things leading up to the moment where she came in.

So here is where I get to reflect–this space is a good thinking space.

Today I began a unit I created from scratch. I use the steel-cased, reinforced, V-8 engine with multiple air bags of UBD, or Understanding By Design. It’s adaptive, flexible, and meaty. For my vegan friends: packed with protein.

Since I’m Humanities this year, and love cross-content, real-world connections, this past summer, before news of Zika broke out, I thought I would do a yellow fever unit, and how diseases impact history. My Enduing Understanding is: “Disease shapes the course of history, and often societies’ responses to health/disease are culturally based.” One of the essential questions is: How did our new nation handle health/disease?

And I’m using a classroom set, with an in-class reading of Yellow Fever: 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. I could only get my hands on 30 copies, so I told the students a few things:

1. We only have 30 copies; I can’t get more (a book angel gave me her 12 books from her classroom library, so now I have a few extras: bless you, book angel!)

2. We will work on stamina: stamina is the ability to focus on text during a time. The reason we work on stamina is mental training, just like we’re training for a sport. It’s endurance. It’s getting in the zone and not wanting to stop reading.

3. I told them my insights about students who say “I HATE READING.”

*They hate reading because they kept reading logs

*They hate reading because they don’t have choice

*They hate reading because someone shamed them when it was difficult

*They may struggle and not know why

But this is what got them: I told them no baby is born hating to read. Every baby loves to communicate, to look at their parents’ faces, to babble and blurb, and every baby loves stories.

They became believers. But they also don’t know how much I have to fight this current trend of just reading passages. Robert Zaretsky, who teaches at the University of Houston, wrote this article, “Taught to pass tests, they don’t know how to read books” concerning how college students are ill prepared to read and discuss novels.

Today, we are reaping the results of this strategy. Among its many catastrophic consequences has been its impact on student literacy. Like a koan riddle, we might soon be asking if a textbook war can take place if no one knows how to read. The decline of reading among American youth is reflected by a growing raft of books with titles like “Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It,” “Why Kids Can’t Read” and “I Read It, But I Don’t Get It.” These books, written by teachers, confirm what my conversations with my brother-in-law, a bright and dedicated Houston-based high school English teacher, long ago revealed: Forced to teach to the test, he can no longer encourage students to reach for the texts as sources of wisdom and wonder.

I am trying not to let that happen on my watch.

Close reading has an important place in instruction, there is no doubt, because…it’s not new. It’s as old as stories themselves. So I created a quote log that serves a few purposes: it provides 3 lenses to consider:

1. The author puts a quote at the beginning of every chapter: why? How is it significant to the chapter once read?

2. Talk about character/plot events: how are the characters responding to the events?

3. Look through the medical/health lens; was there anything in this chapter that related to health?

They will not be doing this alone. We will read independently, and burst forth with conversation. We will learn everything we can about the medical practices of the time, and how science and superstition can devastate or be our savior.

And they will read the entire book.

A few kids are hooked after the first chapter: who can’t relate to a pouty teenage girl who’s annoyed her nagging mother is waking her up to do chores? This response is universal.

One thing Zaretsky may want to try is what I did– remind his college students they love stories. And if he wants them to read stories worth telling, which he does, they will.

December Drabble-A-Day

New traditions

I’m not sure when I did my first December Drabble-A-Day unit. “Unit” even sounds too mechanical and factory-ordered. I do need to thank one of my PSWP writing buddies, Aimee, who first introduced me to the word ‘drabble.’

A drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length, not necessarily including the title. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

So here’s how it works:

Whatever writing concept you want to teach, make a series of mini-lessons based on that particular concept.

Example: Creating Sensory Images–consider a series of images that deal with our senses of touch, taste, sight, sound, smell, and perhaps a sixth sense of anticipation or intuition. Have writers craft a story based on that one sense.
- Example: Topic and Image Combinations–very broad-based ideas
- Example: Traditional Writing Prompts
  Use RAFTS–Role, Audience, Form, Topic, and Strong Verb constructs, or see if you can find some clever ones from Writing Prompts tumblr or WriteAbout.
- Example: Punctuation–drabbles are a perfect time to practice perfecting the semi-colon, colons, ellipses, em dashes, etc. to help support meaning and nuance.
Collect a hefty amount of images from a variety of photographers, subjects, and levels of abstraction.
Have students take their own images, too.

Taken at the University of Washington campus and text added using WordSwag.

Keep track of writing excerpts that may illustrate a particular writing concept you wish our young authors would like to try. A Kindle is a great tool for this.

This excerpt from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars serves to demonstrate writer’s craft in terms of using humor to deflect a serious topic:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

Green, John (2012-01-10). The Fault in Our Stars (pp. 3-4). Dutton Juvenile. Kindle Edition.

So you have all of these things: ideas, prompts, concepts, excerpts, images, etc. Map out two paths: first, choice. Make sure to give students choice with prompts that serve the purpose. Then, provide time and space to write and participate in writer’s workshop with trustworthy partners.

The boon

The students write nine of ten drabble choices: because it’s December, and December is for giving (and forgiving), the tenth drabble is a gift exchange. Every student chooses their best/favorite one, and shares it with their classmates. The students end up with a suite of drabbles in a portfolio, much like a printer’s suite of prints from shared artists. There is a ~~student~~ writer’s reflection cover sheet as well, for each student to reflect on which drabbles they enjoyed writing, what was challenging, and how well they attempted the concept(s) presented.

Ultimately, writers enjoy choice built on structure and support, and love sharing their work, too. If you would like guidelines for writing workshop protocols, those are relatively simple. Everyone writes. Every one listens first. Then, every one gives feedback that’s safe, constructive, and non judgmental. Ah, if only all our lives were as such. Happy Writing!

If you need help in using mentor texts, consider picking up a copy of The Writing Thief by Ruth Culham.

How to teach a novel.

There are veteran English teachers shuddering ‘tsk tsk’ at the title of this post, as if to suggest it’s a simple process, and doesn’t take years of practice, studying, and scholarly pursuits. And reading. A lot of reading. (And if you’re a middle school teacher, some dislike that age group of literature: I find it to be some of the most honest and terrifying. Really think about The Giver? Nightmare fuel.)

About two weeks ago, one of my colleagues, who ventured on a long time ago to do great things, asked me if I was still teaching the “Journey of the Hero” unit which I played an integral part in developing. When we worked together, he even gave me a gift that belonged to his grandfather, a copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. I sighed and said no, that I had asked if I could update it to embed CCSS, since the Common Core seemed perfectly aligned to something as accessible as the journey of the hero –it is a unit that lends itself so beautifully to showing patterns of thought to develop thematic concepts. But, no matter. It’s not the only thematic game in town.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.9
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

But the move in our district seems to be choosing more stand-alone novels, without context or connection to other content areas, and that’s fine. It’s fine because it helps teachers focus on specific close reading skills, and not worry about how does it support other content areas. That may be a traditional approach to English/Language Arts, the ‘whole class novel’ as opposed to novel or text sets that are thematic and tied to multiple concepts and curriculum. I’m not really sure. It’s one of those tidbits I packed from reading Kelly Gallagher: things change, and change back, and be a critical thinker of what to keep, and what to throw away.

This is a long excerpt from How To Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. If you want “How to be an English Teacher” this is it. Fortunately, not only do I have engaging authors like Foster when I want to brush up on my subtext and genre themes, but I have my husband and sons, who love to talk about the big ideas, no English degree necessary.

OKAY, SO HERE’S THE DEAL: let’s say, purely hypothetically, you’re reading a book about an average sixteen-year-old kid in the summer of 1968. The kid— let’s call him Kip— who hopes his acne clears up before he gets drafted, is on his way to the A& P. His bike is a one-speed with a coaster brake and therefore deeply humiliating, and riding it to run an errand for his mother makes it even worse. Along the way he has a couple of disturbing experiences, including a minorly unpleasant encounter with a German shepherd, topped off in the supermarket parking lot where he sees the girl of his dreams, Karen, laughing and horsing around in Tony Vauxhall’s brand-new Barracuda. Now Kip hates Tony already because he has a name like Vauxhall and not like Smith, which Kip thinks is pretty lame as a name to follow Kip, and because the ’Cuda is bright green and goes approximately the speed of light, and also because Tony has never had to work a day in his life. So Karen, who is laughing and having a great time, turns and sees Kip, who has recently asked her out, and she keeps laughing. (She could stop laughing and it wouldn’t matter to us, since we’re considering this structurally. In the story we’re inventing here, though, she keeps laughing.) Kip goes on into the store to buy the loaf of Wonder Bread that his mother told him to pick up, and as he reaches for the bread, he decides right then and there to lie about his age to the Marine recruiter even though it means going to Vietnam, because nothing will ever happen for him in this one-horse burg where the only thing that matters is how much money your old man has. Either that or Kip has a vision of St. Abillard (any saint will do, but our imaginary author picked a comparatively obscure one), whose face appears on one of the red, yellow, or blue balloons. For our purposes, the nature of the decision doesn’t matter any more than whether Karen keeps laughing or which color balloon manifests the saint. What just happened here?

If you were an English professor, and not even a particularly weird English professor, you’d know that you’d just watched a knight have a not very suitable encounter with his nemesis. In other words, a quest just happened.But it just looked like a trip to the store for some white bread. True. But consider the quest. Of what does it consist? A knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail (whatever one of those may be), at least one dragon, one evil knight, one princess. Sound about right? That’s a list I can live with: a knight (named Kip), a dangerous road (nasty German shepherds), a Holy Grail (one form of which is a loaf of Wonder Bread), at least one dragon (trust me, a ’68 ’Cuda could definitely breathe fire), one evil knight (Tony), one princess (who can either keep laughing or stop). Seems like a bit of a stretch. On the surface, sure. But let’s think structurally. The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. Item (a) is easy; a quester is just a person who goes on a quest, whether or not he knows it’s a quest. In fact, usually he doesn’t know. Items (b) and (c) should be considered together: someone tells our protagonist, our hero, who need not look very heroic, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail. Go to the store for bread. Go to Vegas and whack a guy. Tasks of varying nobility, to be sure, but structurally all the same. Go there, do that. Note that I said the stated reason for the quest. That’s because of item (e). The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don’t know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-old men either have self-knowledge or they’re never going to get it, while your average sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old kid is likely to have a long way to go in the self-knowledge department.

Foster, Thomas C. (2014-02-25). How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (pp. 2-3). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The TL:DR version is there are patterns in genres. Don’t be fooled by surface topics. Dig deeper. Talk. Think.

Recently NPR aired a story about Dungeons and Dragons, and how it sustains current gaming now; however, that was not the the gaming industry that caught my attention, but writers who used the writing involved with D&D, and how that launched their careers. Consider this when planning a unit on reading–connect the story to what students love–they love their own narratives, and incorporate free-form writing with their reading. They love when they see the pattern, and feel capable of understanding the big ideas–the big ideas are accessible and not put out of reach like dangerous cleaning supplies.

Ultimately I tell students trust their instincts–take a risk. What do they think is going on? Spit-ball some ideas, and see what sticks. Metaphorical spit-balls, that is. Please. For teachers wanting to know more about how to teach a novel, I would say the same: trust your instincts, be willing to talk, and open to new ideas about the book. It’s acceptable and encouraged to see another’s view point, and not necessarily accept it as your own. I wouldn’t know half as much if I read in isolation and never talked about movies or books I watched–not that that has to happen all the time. Balance and connection – and willingness to learn something new.

Lenses:

Character
Pattern of plot/story
Symbols
Literary devices: what is the writer doing well, or what seems awkward?
Author’s voice: word choices are not arbitrary
Text Sets: Informational connections to literary texts

As I said in a previous post, Gluing the Wings Back On, all this analysis has somewhat disrupted my own reading life. For fun, I’m reading The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston. It’s a romance. Know how I know? The heroine conveniently can’t/won’t speak, and forces her new husband to communicate with gestures, glances, and inferences. Talk about forcing your partner to truly listen. Every paragraph is a volley of “does he love me, does he not?” and for some reason she can’t write him a note. Her lack of writing literacy hasn’t been addressed yet, and I’m not sure it will be. Sometimes I wish I could read this sort of stuff as a 12-year-old. Unlike The Witch’s Boy by Michael Gruber, which is truly a magical book–a retelling of a classic fairy tale with grit, and takes the patterns and practice of fairy tale into a realm of authenticity and surprise. (It takes a lot to surprise me about a fairy tale, and someday perhaps a romance will surprise me again, too. So far only The Princess Bride and just about anything by John Irving have taught me new narratives about romance. Okay…Jane Austen, too. And The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.) But I digress – perhaps this is a post for another time: what authors speak to our life’s themes?

Till next time – turning the page.

Got the whole data in his hands…

This may not have much to do with the topic, but I always think a little Carl Sagan thrown in on a hopeless Saturday morning to be a good thing to get some perspective. Everything from Ben Carson wanting to use his magic time machine and give guns to Jews, (and others who think he was right, who also have no idea how anything works), to folks conflating their religious beliefs with their tax dollars. Me? Shrug. I’ve got big data to keep me warm for a few hours! Seriously – no snark, promise –this is fun for me–looking over ideas from charts and exploring what’s behind the numbers.

Visible Learning by John Hattie (2009) takes on ‘meta-analysis relating to achievement.‘ This book is a gift from our new administrator, and I am grateful for it. In a nutshell, there are over a hundred concepts that have been tried in education to promote student achievement. The word “achievement” has a mental bookmark for me, because I need to stop and look up the definition of achievement in this context.

After a few attempts around the Interwebs, I came across this:

Achievement and assessment

1. What defines ‘achievement’? Is it student results in standardized testing or are there other measures?

Achievement relates to the subjects typically taught in schools, with the preponderance in math and reading (followed by Science, Social Studies) and fewer in the Arts. In terms of the Visible Learning research, there is a good mix of standardised tests, state tests, researcher constructed and teacher made tests.

That still doesn’t quite answer my question, but I’ll take this to mean students are meeting or exceeding the expectations of the content at any point in time. No need to stir more into the pot.

Examples/Glossary and links to instructional methods are here.

A colleague and I were discussing at lunch that most of the reports, when investigated further, need to be considered through a critical eye–to me, the data are a tapestry. If, say for instance Home Life is not judged solely on the basis of its number, but on the complex responses of parents to children’s schooling, then it does have an impact when taken out of its data silo. The concept of parent ‘surveillance’ hit home with me especially in this day of instant progress and missing assignment reports. I’ve been guilty of this, and perhaps we need to look at our grading reporting systems so we don’t enable parents to be supervisors or spies in their children’s education, but seek to aspire as Hattie suggests. Looking at classroom size–this needs another review. If you’re at 20 to 30 there isn’t much difference, but if you get to classroom sizes of 40, yes, that has to impact learning, if those 40 are relenting to peer pressure and not tracking the instruction. Teasing out one factor from another is difficult. But maybe I’m just clinging to the Old Gods of Educational Myths.

Grant Wiggins wrote on article back in 2012 on Hattie’s work, and there are a few editorial comments/changes. It’s a good article, and I suggest reading it.

Here is the big snake of data: (click to enlarge)

1. Self-report grades

Self reported grades with John Hattie from Cognition Education on Vimeo.

If some of the systems in place in the positive zone on the lower rungs of impact aren’t in place, does this impact the upper rungs?

John Hattie’s Summary: Know thy impact from Cognition Education on Vimeo.

Well, ultimately, his message is clear: allow for risk and listening. I would add one other factor which I am not sure he addresses, and that is student influences on one another. Perhaps he does, but it’s not clear where it is in the data belt.

Overhearing students tell another to “not to do the work,” and adding that peer pressure and ridicule their friends when they do like school is HUGE. Perhaps this is covered under another of Hattie’s data point umbrellas, but in middle school where friendship and belonging are the rings that rule them all, it’s something to be mindful of. Students work ethic is affected by their peer groups, and using that knowledge to move the momentum back to achievement (it’s cool to be smart/gain knowledge) is a value that can help all students.

What’s your take away from Hattie’s work? Is he just another educator trying to sell a program? A scholar supporting important messages? I value the focus: the intentional focus on not getting spun out by the distractions or misdirections in educational conversations. If meta-analysis provides evidence of key educational concepts that have the greatest impact, then those focused conversations may be of great value.

I believe the larger vision is to align his work with those of our PLCs, so I plan on giving this some thought. It took my group about five collective hours just to agree on what a good summary is, but I have hope. This means we’re truly thinking and evaluating, and not taking things at surface level. (My mantra: ‘retell is not a summary…retell is not a summary….retell is not a summary’). One thing I do know is we’re a pretty savvy group of educators, and we’ll figure it out. This gives us some clarity, and what to reprioritize.

It's working.

What I think of when I see the new hall pass vest... — What I think of when I see the new hall pass vest…

If you live in my part of the country you are experiencing a glorious day today. It’s Labor Day, 69 degrees F, 57% humidity, 5MPH wind. It’s beautiful. Clear blue skies, a hint, a soucent of apple-crispness and promises of an effervescent fall to follow. Ah, lovely…

It’s mellowed me out when I think of my first week back to school, not that I needed much mellowing in truth: it was a wonderful week. We have new admin, new support staff, and new rules that make a lot of sense for students and teachers. The only ones that threw me off were when students can get into the building, which of course I made sure to send out an (incorrect) all-staff email and was summarily and kindly corrected. (It was concerning when students can get into the building, which is a good change –I always just made a pass for the student ahead of time, but this way there will be more flexibility.) The other change that threw me off was the whole-school hall passes: we have a safety vest for ALL THINGS PASSING, and I kid you not, in the first fifteen minutes of class a kid was called to the office and another had a nose bleed. The nose bleed won, and got blood on the vest. (Biohazards are part of the job.)

I am hoping our new principal allows us to manage two passes: the vest for bathrooms, water fountains, and lockers, and one pass for nurse/office. We’ll see. Her philosophy includes ‘no stupid rules,’ and I’m sure she will support us supporting our students.

And I have to say, I am noticing the shifts, and not just with new admin, but with teaching practices in the elementary grades. When asked to ‘turn and talk,’ students in my class did so with ease and honesty. They really did TURN AND TALK – ! — so perhaps some of these pedagogical practices are taking root. There are so many good ideas out there, so much I want to share and discuss, it’s exciting. And once again I am reminded of the nature of the middle school child: when discussing dress code, got in a lively and engaging debate with one 7th grade girl about our culture of shaming, etc. while other students (mostly boys) looked around wondering what the heck was going on. The disparity in development, awareness, and social cues are vast, but that’s what makes middle school kids awesome. But think about it–what if some teacher said, “Hey, I have a great idea! What if we let kids talk about their ideas!” and other teachers said “What, are you crazy?! Kids can’t be trusted to talk.” Nothing would progress.

And there are a few metaphorical grubs and vermin under the rock. As excited as I am to try and share new ideas, and refine some solid ones (I feel very pioneering when I think of my Burning Questions unit, for example, and other original units I created). I was told in a meeting when I asked about starting a “genius hour” that “We can’t do that” by a colleague. Not sure why, or what her reasoning is, just a “no.” But hey, some folks are the proverbial “not the boss of me,” my students are, so I’m going to try it anyway. Cult of Pedagogy just reminded me of this, and so I’m going to think about its implementation when the year gets chugging along.

But how to go about this? Well, I guess I’m using my 20% time to figure it out! One thing, it’s not a ‘free for all’ time:

JG: Is there a “wrong” way to do 20 percent time?

AJ: The worst thing you can do is assign this project and then sit back and say, Alright, it’s on you guys, 20 percent time, learn what you want! I’m here if you need me! That’s the worst way you can do it. It doesn’t work out. The teacher has to be more active in this learning experience than anything else. Because students need coaching. They need to be connected to the right resources, to the right people. They need help on their projects. There are going to be pitfalls and failures, and they need someone there to kind of say that’s okay, that’s what it’s all about.

I’m not sure how to structure this at first, or when. This LiveBinder is a great place to start, as this bread-crumb starter of an Edutopia article. I am really liking the idea of “pitching” a project as my starting place for them.

My students are chomping at the bit, happy, and engaged–I don’t want to mess this up. I don’t want negativity to undermine them. I can’t help the watchdog in me. I am hoping I can get some support from other staff members, but if not that’s okay. I’ve got the Internet and my PLN, and my students have me. It’ll all work out.

How to [anything]

“How to” is married to “how come?” They are partners in our curiosity and creativity.

But along with this great beauty comes something much harder to bear. What do you do about the answers that lie beyond your reach?

I have only had one teaching job to date, and this past spring I wondered if the grass might be greener. I’ve been honest with employers and interview committees of why I may be seeking other opportunities, and subsequently why I decided to stop having those conversations for the time being. I am overdue for some professional growth opportunities: those moments have been truncated and stagnant with past administrators (note: this is not a criticism, just a different leadership style and priorities). There has been a lot to learn from sitting on that side of the interview table, and I’ve also been sitting on the interviewer side, too. I can’t and won’t divulge details of what candidates offered, nor where I took missteps. (Okay: I’ll share one: I pointed out a typo on the questions for a high school ELA position, joking that I wondered if it was a test. The unsmiling faces and defensiveness of the teachers interviewing me assured me no, it was not intentional, and their senses of humor, in short supply anyway, quickly evaporated. Is it sour grapes to say it probably wasn’t a good fit if they didn’t get my irreverent sense of humor?)

Sorry for the detour. This is intended to be a discussion about ‘how to teach [fill in the blank]. A colleague and I noticed none of the ELA candidates spoke to reading instruction other than an aside, and all (and I am not being generalizing or global here) spoke about writing instruction and their work in that area. Some spoke about presentation and the listening/speaking standards; however, reading was the afterthought.

I am wondering if maybe the questions themselves lent the respondents to focus on writing, or if there is some message that’s being telegraphed about writing instruction being neglected. I wonder if others believe I’m not a competent teacher of reading because I talked about my work with PSWP/NWP, and my work with reading instruction is quiet and deep. (I would have thought my masters in children’s literature as engaging reading instruction, my National Boards certification, or my multiple novel units/curriculum would have demonstrated adequately my skills, but I am terrible at self-promotion.) This is the only reason I can think some jumped to this Island of Conclusions.

"To be sure," said Canby; "you're on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You're apt to be here for some time." — “To be sure,” said Canby; “you’re on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You’re apt to be here for some time.”

This not only deeply offends me, but these dangerous assumptions create a climate of defensiveness and undermining. And I am struck by how much I’m not laughing about it now, either. And perhaps those multiple candidates did not speak about reading because teaching reading is about as difficult as it gets. Our responses and biases toward any text are as complex as a dream, and twice as difficult to describe or explain.

Why is reading difficult to teach? While many articles focus on teachers’ actions as the culprit for why reading is a “instructional ghetto,” many voices strive to underscore the inequity of school-readiness. I know whose parents have the luxury of time to read to their children, and those who don’t. I’ve encouraged many students throughout the year to read to younger siblings. I’ve done book talks, librarian discussions, close text and annotating lessons, and a text-rich classroom.

Personally, I’m returning to basics, as well as refreshing some tried and true approaches. I’ve linked this before, but it deserves another read, to think about engaging texts not in terms of difficulty, but in terms of thematic thinking. Close reading need not be the pulling the wings off the butterfly, but expressing the beauty and anguish in language; not being afraid to teach the fundamentals of reading. By the time I get students in eighth grade, there will be a handful in every class who do not know that the vowel sound changes if you had an ‘e’ at the end, or to chunk sound patterns instead of the laborious ‘sounding it out.’ Their prior teachers did nothing wrong: the gaps come from our never-ending push through of students and not knowing their strengths and weaknesses.

One thing I plan on doing intentionally and wholly this year is teaching reading with love. Not the kind of love that is mushy or some kind of Facebook sentimental glop. The kind of love that is dangerous, and full of conflict and struggle, as well as safety and agreement. I’m going to hold that baby multiple ways, but never, ever drop it.

Agility.

For years, a continuing lament of teachers is students’ ‘learned helplessness.’ I witnessed this time and again: students who eschew pencils on the ground or break them then repeatedly asking for another, treating provided materials with disdain, echoing phrases of “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand,” and waging a war of attrition: who’s going to break first– me or them–when it comes to clarifying instructions or letting them become overly frustrated? (I usually just answer questions with questions, but somehow that doesn’t always inspire.) How could they NOT be getting this?! The learning targets and success criteria are written with great thought and precision every single day: why won’t they look at the board, and tuck into this delicious buffet of knowledge and enlightenment I’ve offered? The old phrase ‘students should work harder than the teacher’ often didn’t happen. Some folks think grit may be the answer, but to date no one knows how to ‘teach grit,’ or even if it should be taught.

If asked what the learning target/success criteria is for any given lesson, students are trained to parrot back what’s on the board, robotically and usually, joyless. If an evaluator is in the room, this signal from teachers to students is an expectation, and often students are pulled away and quietly asked, “What is the learning target today?” as a check-point for the teacher. The locus of control and agency shifts from student engagement to teacher accountability. And the learned helplessness increases.

I now know why.

And I want my colleagues to pay attention and collaborate with me, and see if we can do better.

How we learn to be helpless—and unlearn it

Learned helplessness keeps people in bad jobs, poor health, terrible relationships, and awful circumstances despite how easy it may be to escape. Learn how to defeat this psychological trap, thanks to the work of Martin Seligman.

BY DAVID MCRANEY

Here’s Seligman’s experiment in a nutshell: a box, electric shocks, dogs, and a tone. When the dogs hear the tone, receive a shock, they would jump to the ‘safe’ side. In the second group, they took away the tone, the dogs learned to prepare on their own, and learned to go to the ‘safe’ side. Bring back group one, no tone, and the dogs gave up –whimpered and cried–they learned that without the signal/tone, the dogs had no chance of an ‘epiphany’ or mindset growth.

When Seligman put those three groups in the room with the electric floors and wall, groups one and two quickly learned to jump over the wall when the tone alerted them to incoming shocks. The third group did not. Instead, they curled up on the floor and whimpered. The previous experiment had taught them there was no point in trying to figure out a pattern. It was as if they thought bad things just happen sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even though they could have escaped the pain, they didn’t even try.

Could it be in all this talk about growth mindset having students parrot back learning targets is the complete opposite of what we’re asking them to do? Are we asking them to give up, that there is no point in trying to figure out what the purpose of any given lesson is because it’s handed to them?

We need to change things up, but what exactly? I did my own experiment last year, by which I covered up the learning target/success criteria, taught the lesson, and as an exit ticket had students write down what they thought the targets were. Approximately 60% of students were either spot-on (develop an argument as to whether or not aliens exist) or darn close (claim/evidence/reasoning) and about 30% confused it with the performance task (work well in a group/do group work). This happened toward the end of the year, so they had been accustomed to the ‘tone’ of the learning target all year, so that they stopped hearing it. By requiring them to think and reflect, they owned the lesson much more deeply.

Some might argue that learning targets and success criteria show students what happens in ‘the real world.’ Yes and no: depends on which ‘real world.’ Minimum-wage jobs have very strict guidelines and protocols, and do not encourage free-thinking or innovation. If you ask me today the weight and required temperature of a Starbucks’ latte I could probably recall that information. My husband and I were talking about this, and his 25 years of experience in design and UX tell a very different story: if you’re hired by a company in a salaried job, you’d better come prepared to think on your own, and offer your own insights and experience. No one gives you a ‘learning target’ script. This may be one cultural factor which Chinese and Indian educational systems speak of — they are highly trained in routine and computational thinking, but not innovation. Their words, not mine.

And just why is thinking critically so darn important, anyway? The world doesn’t come with warnings. I want my students to be hungry for learning when they come in my classroom, not passive and spoon-fed. I don’t want them to ask ‘why we have a bell?’ when I say I am the one to dismiss them. I want the end of the class to come as a surprise because they were so deep in their work they lost track of time. I have seen this less and less during the past two to three years of the “Learning Target/Success Criteria” regime. We need to spring from our haunches, prepare and adapt. It’s one thing to have drills and escape routes: that provides options. It’s altogether a different beast when we suffer from the notion that nothing we do will affect change. (Including taking down a flag as step one when there are so many other steps to take, too.)

Innovation’s enemy is learned helplessness. All of us need to be ready to jump and move. This has potential for deep implication in the inclusion model classroom, whereas in order to get all students moving forward, some have had years of entrenched learned helplessness and distract the teacher’s energy so that the process and purpose gets stuck in the mental mud.

The learning targets and success criteria should not become the ‘tone” for students to put aside all of their thinking, to passively accept they know the end game, so why play at all? This teacher activity (and observed by evaluators) has taken up way too much discussion and educational space for their return on learning time investment.

I would love your ideas and thoughts: I believe in purpose, I believe in objectives/goals/targets, and assessment and responsiveness. What ways do you keep students from wallowing in learned helplessness?

The core.

Whereby I confess my most egregious professional sins and meditate, lighting candles to Grant, Wiggins, and Burke, in order to get my head back on right. And a favor: please do not make assumptions about where I’m going with this, and be honest with yourself–it is a rare human who’s never experienced a pang of professional jealousy, or ‘me-too-itis.’

This may be my new favorite teacher-writer: http://www.cultofpedagogy.com

And yes, she takes a great headshot.

Dang, I am jealous. Straight up. Confessing. Green monster. Yuck.

But…this is when I get things moving forward again.

Jennifer Gonzalez writes the blog, Cult of Pedagogy and I’m having one of those ‘where has this been all my life?’ moments. Writes posts that I wish I had written, says the difficult things I wish I was brave enough to discuss. But now I’m going to lay it out on the table – one of her posts resonated so deeply for me this year, it is a mental grout of my brain tiles. (Oof- that is a horrible metaphor. Sorry. Told you I was off my game.) In her article, Gut-Level Teacher Reflection, she asks five intense questions that dig deeply into our constructs of what and who we are.

1. Look around your classroom (or picture it in your mind). What parts of the room make you feel tense, anxious, or exhausted? What parts make you feel calm, happy, or proud?

2. Open up your plan book (or spreadsheet, or wherever you keep your lesson plans from the year) and just start browsing, paying attention to how you’re feeling as your eyes meet certain events. What days and weeks give you a lift when you see them, a feeling of pride or satisfaction? Which ones make you feel disappointed, irritated or embarrassed?

3. Take a look at your student roster. What do you feel when you see each name? Which names make you feel relaxed, satisfied and proud, which ones make your chest tighten with regret, and which ones make your stomach tense?

4. Mentally travel from classroom to classroom, picturing each teacher in the building. What are your feelings as you approach each one? Which coworkers give you a generally positive feeling, which ones are neutral, and which ones make you feel nervous, angry, or annoyed?

5. Look at the following professional practice “buzzwords.” As you read each one, do you have positive, negative, or mixed feelings? What other words have you heard a lot this year that give you a strong feeling one way or the other?

technology

differentiation

data

research-based strategies

Common Core

higher-level thinking

flip

Okay, let’s see: No. 1 – yes, my room needs some deep purging. I can do that. I may even go in this afternoon. Many best laid plans of conferencing areas, writing nooks, and comfortable reading and discussion areas fell by the wayside.

No. 2: With the directives I was given this year I learned some tough lessons. Be careful of other’s visions if the vision is embedded in negativity. Never again will I miss the subtext of someone who is inherently a doomsayer and offers little or no insight or collaborative, positive steps forward. I know and have proven I know time and again what engages students, how to embed purpose, relevance, and authentic self-esteem in constructing knowledge.

Moving on.

No. 3: What causes me anxiety is when I know, with clarity and dismay, that many of my students don’t receive the services they require, even though I pound loudly at the admin door. There is a lot of rhetoric, but not much action, and occasionally I feel I end up mocked for my efforts to try to get children real and true help. Recognizing this is one of my core values serves my efforts to continue to make as many connections with parents as possible. That’s the only way when leadership isn’t available.

No. 4: Ah, coworkers. Yes, there is one or two that cause me anxiety, but overall, my colleagues are amazing, supportive, intelligent and wise, and I know they feel the same about me. I only feel anxiety when I think I’m being compared unfairly to a new rock star on the block, and not being seen for who I am. This, to me, is one of the sins of administration –playing favorites. It was said to me, “Why don’t you teach like so and so? ” this year. That is the mark of a dysfunctional leader.

No. 5: Buzzwords? Not a problem.

There is another fuzzy-monster I need to squash. I have been honored to know John Spencer for approximately 6 or 7 years in a virtual collegial dialogue. He recently announced he’s leaving the classroom to become a professor, a trajectory I thought I might be able to do years ago.

Here’s the thing: he is amazing, creative, and has gotten out there and made it happen. He created lectures, presentations, blogs, websites, books: created and produced his dreams with the love of his family and friends. That is how it’s supposed to work. Now I am doing some hard thinking about my own trajectory, and what I want, need, and where I can provide the greatest service for students with my strengths.

What derails us, and how do we get back on track? Well, perhaps, for me, when I am not brave or honest, or forgive myself, with grace, when life events take precedence over the perfectly-planned lesson or the standing ovation observation. I give a lot of myself to my husband, sons, and students. I am greatly looking forward to this summer when I can nourish my own creativity and purge the unnecessary or cumbersome. Funny, ‘cumbersome’ does not come in the form of too much paper or outdated files, but in emotions: it’s time to clean up any residual mental mold, and be proud and happy I know such wonderful colleagues, and they know me.

To summer!

PS Next post: my reading list…