What Real Student Engagement Looks Like

Next year, we may be focusing school-wide attention on student engagement.  Here’s an article recap that focuses on student engagement from a student’s perspective.

What Real Student Engagement Looks Like

        In this Kappan article, Elliott Washor (Big Picture Company) and consultant Charles Mojkowski suggest ten dimensions of student engagement, framed as questions students might ask:

        • Relationships – Do my teachers know me, my interests, and my talents? Do my teachers help me form relationships with adults and peers who might serve as models, mentors, and coaches on my career interests? Do my teachers help me build relationships inside and outside the school?

        • Relevance – Do I find what the school is teaching relevant to my interests, including my career interests? Do my teachers help me understand how my learning and work contribute to my community and the world?

        • Choice – Do I have real choices about what, when, and how I will learn and demonstrate my competence? Do my teachers help me make good choices about my learning and work?

        • Challenge – Do I feel appropriately challenged in my learning and work? Am I addressing standards of excellence that are real-world, high, and meaningful?

        • Authenticity – Is the learning and work I do regarded as significant outside school by my communities of practice, experts, family members, and employers? Does the community recognize the value of my work?

        • Application – Do I have opportunities to apply what I am learning in real-world settings? Do I have opportunities to help solve problems in my community and the world?

        • Play – Do I have opportunities to explore – to make mistakes and to learn from them – without being branded a failure? Do my teachers coach me in tinkering, experimenting, and speculating?

        • Practice – Do I have opportunities to engage in deep and sustained practice of the skills I need to learn? Do my teachers guide me in practicing correctly?

        • Time – Do I have sufficient time to learn at my own pace? Am I allocating sufficient

time for my learning – to go deep as well as broad?

        • Timing – Can I pursue my learning outside the standard sequence? Do my teachers help me determine the right time for pursuing a project or taking a course?

“Student Disengagement: It’s Deeper Than You Think” by Elliott Washor and Charles Mojkowski in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2014 (Vol. 95, #8, p. 8-10), www.kappanmagazine.org

Stephen Anderson

Ending a Class Strongly

        In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, David Gooblar (Mount Mercy University and Augustana College) bemoans the fact that he always has to spend a lot of time getting his first-year writing students to craft strong conclusions. “Students either neglect to write one entirely or repeat (sometimes word-for-word) what they’ve written in their introductions,” he says. “I try to get them to see an essay’s final paragraph as an opportunity to sum up, to draw conclusions, and to point forward to further questions beyond the scope of the current piece.”

        Then Gooblar realized that for all the attention he paid to students’ essay conclusions, he gave very little thought to how he concluded his own classes. The flow of a class, he says, should mirror that of an essay: an introduction, the main body of content, and a conclusion that pulls everything together, highlights the most important ideas, and foreshadows the next class.

        Pursuing this train of thought, he found other closing strategies in Robert Hempel’s book, College Teaching, and Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do: for example, ending each class by having students respond in writing to one or two pointed questions – such as, What major conclusions have you drawn from today’s class/reading/discussion? What questions remain in your mind? A brief quiz is also helpful – it solidifies the day’s content in students’ minds (the so-called “retrieval effect”). In addition, students’ responses give the instructor feedback on how well students are learning and can be used at the beginning of the next class to quickly review, spark discussion, clarify misconceptions, tie up loose ends, and segue into the day’s content. This strategy has the additional advantage of showing students that their responses are taken seriously.

        “So then, to sum up,” says Gooblar: “Make the effort to consciously conclude your classes. Allow those conclusions to show how your teaching connects from one class period to the next. Make students an integral part of the course’s progress, and ensure that they will draw the conclusions you hope they’ll draw.”

 

“A Few Words by Way of Conclusion” by David Gooblar in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2014 (Vol. LX, #33, p. A34),

https://chroniclevitae.com/news/447-and-now-a-few-words-by-way-of-conclusion

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Teaching Strategies that Engage High-School Students

        In this American Educational Research Journal article, Kristy Cooper (Michigan State University) says that student engagement (versus boredom) is a key correlate of success in high school, and some teachers are much more successful at engaging their students than others. However, the research so far haven’t given us a clear idea of how to increase engagement across a school. Cooper believes there are three types of student engagement, each ranging from high to low:

• Behavioral – the extent to which a student listens, does assignments, follows directions, participates;
• Cognitive – the extent to which a student applies mental energy, thinks about the content, tries to figure out new material, and grapples with mental challenges;
• Emotional – the extent to which a student enjoys a class, feels comfortable and interested, and wants to do well.

These three dimensions interact in a synergistic way, but the emotional dimension may be the most important, driving the other two. This is because it’s all tied up with adolescents’ identity development – “the process of integrating successes, failures, routines, habits, rituals, novelties, thrills, threats, violations, gratifications, frustrations into a coherent and evolving interpretation of who we are” (Nakkula, 2003). Identity development, says Cooper, “could be an underlying mechanism by which adolescents subconsciously make meaning of classroom experiences and then engage or disengage accordingly.”

        Drawing on extensive surveys and interviews in a diverse high school, Cooper examined three classroom approaches to getting students engaged, to see which worked best:

• Connective instruction – Making personal connections to the subject matter through six teaching practices: helping students see the relevance of academic content to their lives, cultures, and futures; conveying caring for students at an academic, social, and personal level; demonstrating understanding of students; providing affirmation through praise, written feedback, and opportunities for success; using humor; and enabling self-expression by having students share ideas, opinions, and values with others.

• Academic rigor – Emphasizing the academics of a class via three teaching practices: providing challenging work; “academic press” (emphasis on hard work and academic success); and conveying passion for the content.

• Lively teaching – Replacing tedious lectures and low-involvement videos with three perkier teaching practices: using games and fun activities (such as academic Jeopardy and Family Feud); having students work in cooperative groups; and assigning hands-on projects.

        What were Cooper’s findings? All twelve teaching practices were significantly correlated with student engagement and with one another, but some were much more effective than others. Connective instruction practices were seven times more effective at fostering student engagement than academic rigor and lively teaching, with lively teaching by itself coming in last. The key, Cooper believes, is tapping into students’ identity development: “Through emphasizing relational connections between students and their teachers, content, and learning experiences,” she says, “connective instruction practices appear to draw on students’ sense of self as a mechanism for engagement.”

Here are some of the details: Students’ perception that a teacher cared for them was the highest of all the teaching practices (r = .59); challenging work was the lowest (r = .19). The strongest correlation among teaching practices was for care and understanding (r = .76), while the lowest correlations were between challenging work and games and fun activities (r = .05) and group work (r = .11).

Connective teaching practices scored highest overall, but they don’t necessarily lead to high levels of engagement – and academic rigor and lively teaching don’t necessarily produce low engagement, as illustrated by five case studies of teachers in this high school:

• Mr. Knowles’s physics class – High connection, high academic rigor, high lively teaching practices – his engagement score was 1.16.
• Mr. Lifsky’s history class – High connections and academic rigor, low liveliness – his engagement score was 0.57.
• Ms. Warner’s physics class – High liveliness and lower connections and rigor – her engagement score was 0.56.
• Ms. Ingels’s biology class – High liveliness and academic rigor, low connections – her engagement score was 0.31.
• Coach Connor’s English class – High connections, low rigor and liveliness – his engagement score was 0.57.

Here are details from Mr. Knowles’s physics class, showing how the three dimensions interact. “In their surveys, students said Knowles was a personable, entertaining, and knowledgeable teacher who integrated frequent labs and group tasks into an easy-going class atmosphere in which students participated regularly and saw physics as being highly relevant to their lives,” says Cooper. “Although students reported high levels of all three types of practices, they spoke most enthusiastically about connective instruction and suggested an additive effect of having all three types of practices.”

        Mr. Lifsky was not a lively teacher but compensated for it by through connections and academic rigor. A former high-school dropout who enlisted in the military, was injured, and got into teaching to provide a role model for students, he frequently shared his life story, and students believed he was there for them. He worked students very hard, lectured in traditional fashion, and assigned copious written work. Most students responded positively to his caring boot camp, buying into his pedagogy and giving him moderately high marks for engagement.

        Coach Connors was a young, charismatic teacher/coach whom students loved, but one commented that they were doing “the same English stuff we’ve been learning since our freshman year.”

What are the implications of this study for high schools? Cooper believes principals, instructional coaches, and teachers should administer student perception surveys, focus on what students say is and isn’t engaging, and systematically develop the teaching practices that produce the most student engagement. “For example,” she says, “knowing that demonstrating care can help students to feel valued in ways that might foster emotional connection could motivate teachers to more conscientiously make gestures of care to students who appear alienated or uninvested.”

 

“Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices” by Kristy Cooper in American Educational Research Journal, April 2014 (Vol. 51, #2, p. 363-402); I highly recommend getting the full article, which can be purchased at: http://aer.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/23/0002831213507973.abstract; 

Cooper can be reached at kcooper@msu.edu

 

Stephen Anderson

How a Teacher-Written Exemplar Can Support Effective Teaching

        In this Kappan column, Newark educator/author Paul Bambrick-Santoyo suggests that before teachers give their students a challenging Common Core-aligned question on a passage – for example, How does the author use figurative language to convey the protagonist’s tone? – the teacher should sit down and write the kind of response students should ideally produce. This gives the teacher a helpful end-in-sight benchmark for planning the lesson, for doing on-the-spot checking as students work, and for assessing students’ finished products. “Writing an objective is only the beginning of envisioning how far your students can go,” says Bambrick-Santoyo. “Writing an exemplar will bring it into unmistakable focus, so that there can be no doubt when your students have reached it.”

        “At its core, an exemplar takes our broad standards and transforms them into a concrete definition of how ‘rigor’ works,” he continues. “The most a standard can offer – even a great standard – is a vague description of ‘what’ students must learn. An exemplar paves the way from ‘what’ they’ll learn to ‘how’ they’ll show it” – for example, linking the evidence to a central claim.

        An exemplar also makes it possible for the teacher to compare students’ work-in-progress with the ideal and provide efficient real-time feedback (Bambrick-Santoyo watched a middle-school teacher give individual help to her entire class in just ten minutes). Here are the key elements to such rapid-fire teaching:

        • Gather useful clues. “When you use in-class data to inform your next move,” he says, “you not only address error in the moment, but you also give yourself guidance on how to plan in the days and weeks to come.”

        • Work with the fasters writers first. Many teachers help their weakest students first, get bogged down, and don’t reach most of the class. Bambrick-Santoyo recommends doing the opposite – working first with students who write the fastest (who aren’t necessarily the strongest writers), then moving on to struggling students as they reach the point where help is most productive.

        • Use “shorthand” symbols to communicate with students. For example, as a teacher circulates, she might put checks by evidence that is on target and circle evidence or explanations that need to be fixed. Agreed-upon marks like these allow the teacher to move more quickly from student to student and give feedback to the entire class in just a few minutes.

“When Students Don’t Meet the Bar” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2014 (Vol. 95, #7, p. 72-73), www.kappanmagazine.org;

 Bambrick-Santoyo can be reached at  pbambrick@uncommonschools.org.

Stephen Anderson

Small Actions That Can Cut the Pyramid of Prejudice Down to Size

        In this powerful Kappan article, David Light Shields (Saint Louis Community College) describes comments that are heard almost every day in schools:

• “Boys will be boys.”
• “That’s so gay!”
• “It figures that he’s good at math – he’s Asian.”
• “He throws like a girl.”
• “Oh, that’s lame.”

Comments like these feel wrong but often fly below the disciplinary radar, seemingly not serious enough to challenge.

        “While subdued forms of everyday prejudice may seem harmless,” says Shields, “appearances can be deceiving. Such commonplace prejudices form the foundation upon which more extreme acts of prejudice build. And they leave us vulnerable to costly errors of judgment that can have tragic consequences. That is why addressing prejudice in the classroom is as crucial to our youth’s education as learning to read.”

        At their most basic level, preconceptions about others are an “inevitable part of human cognition,” says Shields. “Stereotypes are cognitive maps that help us simplify our highly complex social world. To some extent, they are necessary for mental efficiency and ease. Still, that efficiency comes at the cost of accuracy and fairness.” He goes on to provide some helpful definitions:

• Prejudice – One psychological root of prejudice is people’s need to feel good about themselves, which often comes by comparing something they are or have – being middle class or being American, for example – with something that others aren’t or don’t have. Prejudices like these can prevent the privileged from understanding what it’s like to be less fortunate.
• Discrimination is actions, policies, or social arrangements that disadvantage people based on their group. Discrimination is sometimes embedded in organizations and can continue even if individuals implementing discriminatory policies aren’t themselves prejudiced.
• Sexism, racism, classism, etc. – “The ‘-isms’ are fundamentally about prejudices combining with power, though the power may be exercised in subtle and indirect ways,” says Shields.

He then explains the pyramid principle. Most people are at the broad base of the pyramid, where everyday prejudices and acts of discrimination often go unnoticed – “they have a quiet, inconspicuous, everyday quality to them,” says Shields, and most people at this level would be shocked to be described as prejudiced or discriminatory.

Moving up the pyramid, a smaller number of people engage in comments and actions that are more overt, obvious, and extreme. At the top of the pyramid, a very small number of people commit horrendous acts. “The key point is that every vertical movement up the pyramid builds from and depends upon the attitudes and behaviors established by the levels below,” says Shields. “[T]he blatant prejudices of the few are magnifications of the latent prejudices of the many… acts of hate or discrimination carried out by the troubled few are actually ugly and exaggerated reflections of imperfections in ourselves.”

        People at the base of the pyramid don’t see themselves as part of the problem – that’s the lunatics at the top, they think. “But none of us are completely free of bias,” says Shields, “most of which is unconscious.” Recent psychological research has shown that a lot of what goes on in our brains is “fast thinking,” and that’s where most biases and prejudices operate. Stereotypes about male and female behavior are common in schools – blue and pink clothing, “boys’ toys” and “girls’ toys”, “feminine” behavior – all based on assumptions about gender that can reinforce biases against those who don’t conform.

Stereotypes about race are also common. For example, an African-American boy is described as “aggressive” while a white boy with similar behaviors is “spirited.” A black girl is described as a “natural” athlete. Teachers may be more alert to rule violations by black than by white children. “Most prejudices at the base of the pyramid have few immediate and obvious negative consequences,” says Shields. “Their cost comes from their cumulative effect and the launching pad they provide for expressions of prejudice at higher levels.”

        The higher on the pyramid we go, the more it’s the legal system that should provide remedies. The lower on the pyramid we go, “the more it is the educational system that needs to take responsibility,” says Shields. “That is where schools and teachers need to shoulder responsibility.” The problem is that educators who step up to the plate on small manifestations of prejudice are often told, “You’re just being PC.” A lot of people are so afraid of the “politically correct” put-down that they don’t speak up when they should. “Every act at the bottom of the pyramid is shouldering part of the responsibility for those acts residing above,” says Shields. A boy laughs at a racist joke but defends himself by saying he didn’t use the “n” word. He doesn’t see how he’s part of continuing racial prejudice in the community.

        What should K-12 educators do? Step one, says Shields, is self-awareness. Why is the Latina girl in a playground fight singled out as the aggressor? Underlying a lot of prejudice is an us/them mindset and we need to be aware of it. Step two is speaking up. “Silence endorses,” he says. “Silence leaves harmful patterns uninterrupted. Speak with humility and grace, but speak up when everyday prejudices are expressed or exhibited.”

Step three is a schoolwide dialogue. “Spotting prejudices in others is easier than seeing them in ourselves,” says Shields, “and an open, honest discussion can be helpful. Dealing with the adult culture of the school is a prerequisite to dealing effectively with students and their peer culture.” These themes can be incorporated into character-education programs, cooperative learning structures in classrooms, and competitive team sports (using heterogeneous teams within which diverse students can build bridges).

And then there’s the academic curriculum: “If you teach biology, why not challenge the false dualism of male and female?” asks Shields. “If you teach health and physical education, why not reflect on why there are significant health disparities across racial and ethnic groups or why gay athletes have a hard time coming out? If you teach literature, social studies, or history, the possibilities are almost endless.”       

 

“Deconstructing the Pyramid of Prejudice” by David Light Shields in Phi Delta Kappan, March 2014 (Vol. 95, #6, p. 20-24), www.kappanmagazine.org; Shields can be reached at dshields32@stlcc.edu.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Children’s Books That Turbocharge the Math Curriculum

        “Integrating children’s literature into math makes learning more engaging and less intimidating,” says South Carolina educator Candice Brucke in this helpful article in AMLE Magazine. “It can motivate, provoke interest, connect mathematical ideas, promote critical thinking skills, inspire a creating writing experience for students (and teachers), and provide a context that leads to problem solving.” She believes her use of well-chosen books was a major reason for very high achievement in her classes – her class ranked ninth best in the entire state in 2007. Here are some of her suggestions, including one she wrote herself:

• The Grapes of Math (Tang, 2004) and The Important Book (Brown, 1999) to teach number properties;
• A Giraffe to France (Hillard, 2000) for measurement and writing and solving equations;
• The Missing Piece (Silverstein, 2006) for missing-angle measures and sectors of a circle;
• How I Became a Pirate (Long, 2003) to assess students’ prior knowledge on the coordinate plane;
• Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999) for circumference and π.
• Skippyjon Jones Lost in Spice (Schachner, 2005) for combinations and permutations;
• Wrappers Wanted: A Mathematical Adventure in Surface Area (Brucke, 2009) for surface area;
• Chasing Vermeer (Balliett, 2005) to introduce manipulatives such as pentominoes;
• My Full Moon Is Square (Pinczes, 2002) for the concept of square numbers;
• The Lion King (Disney, 1994) for the concept of slope – students can graph the good/ill fate points for a particular character;
• What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Ellis, 2004) for the Pythagorean Theorem applied to everyday situations;
• One Grain of Rice (Demi, 1997) for exponential growth;
• Cinder Edna (Jackson, 1998) for box/scatter plots;
• Multiplying Menace: The Revenge of Rumplestiltskin (Calvert, 2006) to review fractions.

 

“Connecting Children’s Literature to Middle Grades Math” by Candice Brucke in AMLE Magazine, March 2014 (Vol. 1, #7, p. 23-24), www.amle.org; Brucke can be reached at cbrucke@oconee.k12.sc.us.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Bringing the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Life

        “Far too frequently, many students find history to be boring, rate it as their least favorite subject, or perceive it as irrelevant,” say Scott Waring (University of Central Florida) and Cicely Scheiner-Fisher (Seminole County Schools instructional specialist) in this Middle School Journal article. But they believe that even tech-savvy adolescents will love history if teachers use primary-source documents and focus on how events affected ordinary people. Waring’s and Scheiner-Fisher’s article is a detailed example of how this played out in a unit on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The big question for the unit: What was it like for Lewis and Clark to travel west? Here is the seven-step SOURCES framework they used:

        • Scrutinize the primary source material. From the Library of Congress collection, Waring and Scheiner-Fisher chose Thomas Jefferson’s letter of instructions for the expedition as the best document (see http://tinyurl.com/7b7wbg6). To scaffold students’ close reading of this document, they used a primary source analysis sheet produced by the Library of Congress.

        • Organize thoughts. Students watched a video providing background, including the fact that Jefferson’s letter went through multiple drafts and incorporated feedback from a number of experts and political figures.

        • Understand the context. Students learned about the historical background of the expedition and Jefferson’s goals.

        • Read between the lines. Using this information, students re-read the primary document with new understanding.

        • Corroborate and refute. At this point, students were asked to examine other primary documents on the Library of Congress website to learn more about the expedition:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/lewis-landc.html.

        • Establish a plausible narrative. Students were assigned the following performance task: pretend you are a member of the expedition and write a journal on how it unfolded.

        • Summarize final thoughts. Students were asked to pull together what they learned and what questions still lingered.

 

“Using SOURCES to Allow Digital Natives to Explore the Lewis and Clark Expedition” by Scott Waring and Cicely Scheiner-Fisher in Middle School Journal, March 2014 (Vol. 45, #4, p. 3-11); www.amle.org; the authors can be reached atScott.Waring@ucf.edu and Cicely_Fisher@scps.us. The full article is rich with details and suggested websites.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Anger, In Moderation, Is Emotionally Intelligent

        In this intriguing Psychology Today article, Joanne Ellison Rodgers says that anger (mild to moderate, not uncontrolled rage) is an important and functional emotion. “Researchers are amassing evidence that anger is a potent form of social communication,” says Rodgers, “a logical part of people’s emotional tool kit, an appetitive force that not only moves us toward what we want but fuels optimism, creative brainstorming, and problem solving by focusing mind and mood in highly refined ways. Brainwise, it’s the polar opposite of fear, sadness, disgust, and anxiety – feelings that prompt avoidance and cause us to move away from what we deem unpleasant. When the gall rises, it propels the irate toward challenges they otherwise would flee and actions to get others to do what they, the angry, wish.” For example, the anger Americans felt after 9/11 brought people together in a common cause and minimized paralyzing fear.

        Interestingly, when we’re angry, heart rate and testosterone levels rise but cortisol, the stress hormone, falls. Brain scans have also shown that anger activates the left frontal lobe and the left anterior cortex, which control rational, logical, systematic, and positive ways of dealing with a problem. In short, anger works to help us focus on a challenge and think straight – as opposed to avoiding or running away from it. “Anger allows us to detect our own value in any conflicting interaction,” says Rodgers, “then motivates us to get others to rethink our positions, to pay a lot more attention to what it will cost us to get what we want – and whether it’s worth the cost.”

        The most important take-away about anger, she concludes, is that we shouldn’t suppress it but should keep the flame low and use it to help solve problems and deal constructively with others.

 

“Go Forth in Anger” by Joann Ellison Rodgers in Psychology Today, March/April 2014 (Vol. 47, #2, p. 72-79), no e-link available

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Best Practices with Formative Assessment

(Originally titled “Formative Assessment in Seven Good Moves”)

        In this thoughtful Educational Leadership article, Brent Duckor (San Jose State University) says that effective use of on-the-spot assessments is the most influential factor in improving student learning. Duckor recommends the following seven “moves”:

        • Explicitly prepare students. “Unfortunately, the literature on formative assessment provides few accounts of the culture shock many students experience when they’re expected to learn in this new and perhaps puzzling manner,” says Duckor:

• Why is the teacher always answering a question with another question?
• Why is the teacher asking “Why” all the time?
• Why is the teacher using Popsicle sticks to call on us?
• Why is the teacher pausing before taking answers?
• Why is the teacher writing up all the answers, even the wrong ones?
• Why can’t the teacher just solve the problem and write the correct answer on the board so we can move on?

• Pose good questions. Many classroom questions are either too simple (“Can someone give me the definition of mitosis?”) or too open-ended (“Why did the French Revolution occur?”). “An effective question sizes up the context for learning, has a purpose related to the lesson and unit plan and, ideally, is related to larger essential questions in the discipline,” says Duckor. For example, in a high-school civics class discussing a segregated skating rink: “Should the integration of public facilities extend beyond the ruling on education addressed by the Brown v. Board of Education decision?”

• Give students time to think. Some teachers feel uncomfortable with silences. Giving adequate wait time for students to process their answers requires planning, patience, and complementary moves – turn-and-talk, think-pair-share, journal writing, polling. All these help the teacher gauge the level of understanding and guide next steps.

• Probe student responses. Many standard classroom questions lead to staccato exchanges with students – “Does everyone understand?” “Can we move on now?” Standard Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? questions have one correct answer, and as soon as a student provides it, there’s no need to follow up since “we” all know the correct answer. Probing, on the other hand, means there’s always more to know. For example, in a lesson on buoyancy, a teacher might ask, “So who thinks things float because they’re hollow? Can you say why? Turn to your partner and ask for an example of a hollow thing that might sink.” “The more one learns about how real students in a particular classroom approach the material,” says Duckor, “the better one can guide them through the bottlenecks, cul-de-sacs, and eddies that will inevitably mark a student’s progression toward an understanding of conceptually difficult material.”

• Question all students. “Feedback is about generating a loop,” says Duckor. “Too often, the loop is too small, occurring mostly between the teacher and a few eager students.” This can give the teacher an inaccurate sense of whole-class understanding and allow most students to rest on their oars. The solution: cold-calling with popsicle sticks or all-class response systems. This is particularly important for low-achieving students and English language learners.

• Use tagging to generate a wide range of responses. For example, the teacher asks the class, “What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word ratio?” and has students jot their ideas, turn and talk to a partner, and then creates a word web on the board. Some teachers are uncomfortable entertaining incorrect answers, but, says Duckor, “If teachers don’t create a space for students to express both their understandings and their misunderstandings, students who are too embarrassed to express a potentially incorrect answer will simply remain silent.”

• Sort answers into “bins.” As students answer questions, the teacher mentally sorts them – correct, misconception, proficient, etc. “A teacher needs to know, through practical training and rich classroom experience, where kids get stuck and why,” says Duckor. For example, teaching a science unit on why things sink or float, teachers need to know common misconceptions about mass, volume, density, and relative density.

 

“Formative Assessment in Seven Good Moves” by Brent Duckor in Educational Leadership, March 2014 (Vol. 71, #6, p. 28-32),

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar14/vol71/num06/toc.aspx; Duckor can be reached at brent.duckor@sjsu.edu.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Chester Finn Finds the Middle Ground in U.S. School Debates

        “Modern U.S. politics leave scant middle ground where compromise or synthesis can be forged,” says Chester Finn Jr. in this sweeping Education Gadfly article. “But it should be the job of serious education reformers to plant their policy banners – and themselves – on whatever demilitarized territory can be found.” Finn examines a number of perennial “debates and dichotomies” in American education and argues for a sensible middle ground in each one:

        • Skills vs. knowledge – The Common Core standards appear at first to be skills-centric, he says, but they also “make clear that success hinges on the deployment of a rich, sequential, content-focused curriculum.”

        • “Sage on the stage” vs. “guide on the side” – It’s not students’ job to figure out for themselves why the Civil War was fought or what atoms make up a molecule of water, says Finn. “It’s their job to internalize much that has been figured out by others – and to use it themselves, both for purposes of their own devising and for purposes that adults place before them.”

        • Who should be in charge, parents or the state? Education is both a private and a public good, says Finn. We need to balance students’ preferences/needs/aspirations (as gauged by parents) and “a set of needs, priorities, and capacities determined by the larger society…”

        • Evaluate teachers by student results or peer judgments? Each approach has serious limitations, says Finn, and the best way to compensate for them is to use a blend of both approaches, augmented by student surveys and other data.

        • Assess achievement via test scores or pupil “performance”? Standardized tests, for all their deficiencies, can gather important information, he says, but performance assessments go deeper, measuring creativity, understanding, and the ability to apply knowledge and skills. Use both, says Finn.

        • Gauging pupil progress by grade level or competency? Instructing students at their assessed levels seems more efficient, but it wreaks havoc with the traditional structure of schools and is confusing to many parents (my child is at fifth grade level in math and seventh grade in writing?). Finn advocates working toward an amalgam of both.

        • Learning with technology or humans? Online education seems efficient, “But what about socialization?” asks Finn. “What about music and phys. ed.? Basketball and Christmas pageant? How about children’s relations with adults and other kids – and the teacher’s role not just in answering their curricular questions and helping them understand the lesson but also seeing what excites their minds, how they’re behaving, and what may be going awry in other parts of their lives?” Yet the traditional model is expensive, depends heavily on the quality and character of individual teachers, tends to be boring to fast learners and frustrating for those with learning difficulties, and harms students who are stuck in subpar schools. Once again, a blend works best.

        • Diversity vs. uniformity? Finn is for a body of shared knowledge, with reasonable variations for the marvelous diversity of America.

        • Is education run best by professionals or laypeople? “We need them working in tandem,” he says. Political leaders need to set broad parameters, but shouldn’t be micromanaging at the classroom level.

        • Local or centralized control? Finn believes governance needs a “top-to-bottom renovation” to bring a 19^th-century structure up to speed with a 21^st-century world of geographic spread, increasing diversity, charter schools, and more.

 

“Education’s Endless, Erroneous Either-Ors” by Chester Finn Jr. in The Education Gadfly, March 6, 2014 (Vol. 14, #10), http://bit.ly/1qcNo5L

 

 

Stephen Anderson

An Informative High-School Student Survey

        In this article in Independent School, Amada Torres (National Association of Independent Schools) reports on her organization’s three-year pilot of the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), which is designed to measure three aspects of students’ life in school:

• Engagement of the mind – Cognitive, intellectual, and academic;
• Engagement in the life of the school – Social, behavioral, participatory;
• Engagement of the heart – Emotional.

Here is a sampling of questions with the stem, “How much has your experience at this school contributed to:

• Writing effectively
• Thinking critically
• Reading and understanding challenging material
• Learning independently
• Developing creative ideas and solutions
• Speaking effectively
• Using technology to gather and communicate information
• Acquiring skills for a job after completing high school
• Developing career goals
• Applying school-based knowledge to everyday life
• Understanding why what you learn in school will be important after high school.

To see a sample HSSSE survey, go to http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse/HSSSE_ForResearch.pdf; for general information, see http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse.

 

“Assessing Student Engagement” by Amada Torres in Independent School, Spring 2014 (Vol. 73, #3, p. 16-18),www.nais.org

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Schoolwide Essential Questions

        In this thought-provoking article in Principal Leadership, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher (San Diego State University) and Heather Anderson (Health Science High School) draw a distinction between essential questions that are course-specific (for example, How do fractions, decimals, and percentages allow us to describe the world?) and schoolwide essential questions. Frey, Fisher, and Anderson describe how Anderson’s high school has used a set of schoolwide essential questions each year to provoke high-level discourse and improve student achievement. In developing its questions, the school used the definition developed by Grant

Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2013):

• Essential questions are worthy of inquiry, calling for higher-order thinking – analysis, inference, evaluation, and prediction.
• They are thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, sparking discussion and debate, giving students the tools and a forum to wrestle with important ideas.
• They are open-ended – that is, there isn’t a single, final, correct answer.
• They require support and justification, not just the answer.
• They produce a humbling acceptance that some matters are never truly settled, but at the same time a desire to think about such questions.
• They point toward important, transferable ideas within and across disciplines.
• They raise additional questions, spark further inquiry, and need to be revisited over time.

Each year the school collects possible questions, screens them using the Wiggins/McTighe criteria (plus one more – questions involve two or more academic disciplines), asks students to vote on them, and decides on the best sequence (one question for each academic quarter). Here are some of the school’s essential questions from recent years:

• What sustains us?
• If we can, should we?
• Does age matter?
• How do people approach their health?
• What is race, and does it matter?
• Can you buy your way to happiness?
• Who am I? Why do I matter?
• What is beauty and/or what is beautiful?
• Does gender matter?
• Who are your heroes and role models?
• What’s worth fighting or even dying for?
• What will you, or won’t you, do for love?
• What is normal, anyway?
• How does your world influence you?
• Is there a limit to tolerance?
• What makes you “you”?
• Which is worse, failing or never trying?
• You exist, but do you live?
• If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
• Are humans naturally good or evil?
• Is freedom ever free?
• Do looks matter?

Each year’s questions are displayed in public areas of the school and sent home to parents, and visitors are given the opportunity to comment in a response log. Teachers start the year by thinking about how to integrate the questions into their own course content and, if possible, make cross-disciplinary links. For example, a 2010-11 question about beauty led English teachers to have students read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Body Rituals Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner, “Ain’t I a Woman” by Sojourner Truth, and “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. A tenth-grade World History teacher addressed the issue through a study of philosophers of the Enlightenment, and a geometry teacher looked at the concept of the golden mean in architecture and design.

        When the school first started using schoolwide questions, students were asked to write about them in a single discipline. “Over time, we began to understand that complex interdisciplinary thinking requires that students participate in discussion and debate before writing,” say Frey, Fisher, and Anderson. “Teachers now devote a portion of one class period each week to a Socratic circle on the question of the quarter.” The location of these discussions rotates among the four core academic classes so students think about the questions from every possible angle. Student responses can come in a variety of formats – formal research papers, Facebook postings, 3-D sculptures, animations, and more.

“Using Schoolwide Essential Questions to Drive Learning” by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Heather Anderson in Principal Leadership, February 2014 (Vol. 14, #6, p. 52-55), www.nassp.org; the authors can be reached at nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu, dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu, and hlanderson@hshmc.org.

Stephen Anderson

Good Teaching, Deconstructed

        “What do great teachers do differently?” ask Jodi Newton (Stamford University/ Birmingham, AL) and Betty Winches (Homewood, AL Schools) in this article in Reading Improvement. Their study of elementary- and middle-school teachers who produced significant gains in student learning for three consecutive years yielded the following insights:

        • Highly effective teachers have clear learning targets and their students understand what it takes to get better and own their learning. These teachers focus on ultimate learning outcomes more than compliance with required assignments.

        • They create a culture of redemption. They assess frequently and see students’ mistakes as a road map to improvement.

        • They constantly and frequently tweak their lessons in response to how students are doing. Students’ learning needs are more important than lesson plans.

        • They ask questions that go to the heart of the subject and teach students to pose their own questions. “They are able to track misunderstandings and then clarify them for their students,” say Newton and Winches. “As students learn to ask the right questions – those related to their learning targets – they begin to own the goals and maximize their learning.”

        • They create a culture of high expectations coupled with good relationships. These are not friendships but partnerships (You and me, in this together) focused on academic achievement. “This tenacity, concern, and love for each student are obvious, yet are linked directly to unyielding aspirations for each student,” say Newton and Winches.

 

“How to Maximize Learning for All Students” by Jodi Newton and Betty Winches in Reading Improvement, Summer 2013 (Vol. 50, p. 71-74), no e-link available

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Insights on Work/Life Balance

        In this thoughtful Harvard Business Review article, Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams (Harvard Business School) offer advice to maxed-out, stressed-out leaders who have concluded that work/life balance is an unattainable goal. The authors and their collaborators spent five years interviewing 4,000 executives around the world and report that “prospering in the senior ranks is a matter of carefully combining work and home so as not to lose themselves, their loved ones, or their foothold on success.” The key is making deliberate choices about what to pursue and what to say no to at work, at home, and in the community. “Deliberate choices don’t guarantee complete control,” say Groysberg and Abrahams. “Life sometimes takes over, whether it’s a parent’s dementia or a teenager’s car accident. But many of the executives we’ve studied – men and women alike – have sustained their momentum during such challenges while staying connected to their families.” Here are the key factors:

        • Defining success – At work, it might be financial success; individual achievement; making a difference; winning respect from others; working with a good team in a good environment; ongoing learning and development. At home, it might be relationships with loved ones; a life of meaning without regrets; understanding what’s going on in the lives of family members; having dinner at home four nights a week; never missing a Little League game; having emotional energy at work and at home. Groysberg and Abrahams found marked gender differences, with women feeling the cultural expectations of parenting and men being more comfortable rationalizing absences by being good providers and opening opportunities to their children. One woman had a clear template for success: “Define your house right – have a table in the kitchen where your kids can do homework while your husband cooks and you drink a glass of red wine.”

        • Managing technology – Figuring out how to handle the deluge of e-mails, text messages, voice mails, tweets, and other communications is the key to sanity and productivity. The key, say the authors, is to “make yourself available but not too available to your team; be honest with yourself about how much you can multitask; build relationships and trust through face time; and keep your in-box under control.”

Successful executives spoke of the importance of undivided attention and not trying to be in two places at the same time. “When I’m at home, I’m really at home,” said one. “I want to give my kids 100% of my attention. But this also works the other way around, because when I’m at work I really want to focus on work. I believe that mixing these spheres too much leads to confusion and mistakes.” There’s also a trend in the business world toward in-person communication. The key is careful, thoughtful listening, and that happens best in face-to-face conversations.

        Groysberg and Abrahams point to research on the professional benefits of stepping away from the frenetic pace of work. Over the years, a number of important discoveries have popped into scientists’ heads while they were doing mundane tasks (or asleep). Being available 24 hours a day can also enable subordinates. “If you have weak people who must ask your advice all the time, you feel important,” said one executive. “But there is a difference between being truly important and just not letting anyone around you do anything without you.”

        • Building support networks – Having helpers who can handle tasks like shopping, transporting children, and monitoring aging parents is vital, say Groysberg and Abrahams; they make it possible for leaders to spend quality time on the most important human interactions. “Emotional support is equally essential,” they say. “Like anyone else, executives occasionally need to vent when they’re dealing with something crazy or irritating at work, and friends and family are a safer audience than colleagues… Support at work matters too. Trusted colleagues serve as valuable sounding boards.” Sympathetic colleagues are also vital when the unexpected happens – a heart attack, a child’s illness, parents in need of care.

        • Traveling or relocating selectively – Some of the leaders in this study tried to do their most extensive travel and job moves while they were young and unattached. Among married executives, travel and relocation often posed difficult challenges – a number had turned down assignments that involved relocating, and this was more often true of women than men, especially when their children were in their teens. The researchers were discouraged to find that “executives of both sexes consider the tension between work and family to be primarily a women’s problem.”

        • Collaborating with one’s partner – Many of the leaders Groysberg and Abrahams interviewed said how much they valued “their partners’ emotional intelligence, task focus, big-picture thinking, detail orientation – in short, whatever cognitive or behavioral skills balanced out their own tendencies… Partners can help them keep their eyes on what matters, budget their time and energy, live healthfully, and make deliberate choices – sometimes tough choices – about work, travel, household management, and community involvement.” Among executives with the best work/life balance, emotional support and encouragement built on a shared vision of success between partners.

        “In pursuit of rich professional and personal lives,” the authors conclude, “men and women will surely continue to face tough decisions about where to concentrate their efforts.” They offer three concluding thoughts:

• Life happens. A well-planned career path can be upended by an unexpected crisis.
• There are multiple routes to success. Some leaders stay in the same workplace for decades while others have a series of different jobs. Some have stay-at-home partners while other couples juggle two full-time jobs.
• No one can do it alone. “A support network is crucial both at and outside work,” say Groysberg and Abrahams, “and members of that network must get their needs met too.”

 

“Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life: Zero in on What Really Matters” by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams inHarvard Business Review, March 2014 (Vol. 92, #3, p. 58-66), no e-link available

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Influencing Bystanders to Stand Up to Bullying

        In this helpful article in Principal Magazine, Jim Dillon (Measurement Incorporated) says that trying to tighten control of student behavior is not an effective way to stop bullying. “The people who have the most influence in determining the amount and degree of bullying in a school are not the adults, but the students,” he says. The trick is to shift from a controlling to an influencing mindset – changing students’ reactions to bullying through modeling, listening, and winning trust.

        From the student’s point of view, bullying has a clear social purpose – impressing an audience of bystanders and raising one’s social status. “Stopping bullying requires changing the audience response to it,” says Dillon. “Educators… need to focus less on the rule-breakers, and more on the majority of students who don’t break the rules: the bystanders or the audience for acts of bullying.”

A key step is for adults to avoid the fundamental attribution error – the tendency to attribute students’ behavior to the way they are rather than the situation they’re in. Bystanders who don’t intervene aren’t heartless and apathetic; they are subject to a common set of social pressures and haven’t learned how to deal with them. “Just telling bystanders to ‘stand up’ to bullying makes little sense,” says Dillon, “no more sense than just telling a student to be a good reader or become a safe driver without first providing instruction, guidance, coaching, and support.” Based on his research, he offers this summary of the nots – rationalizations that bystanders use for holding back:

• Not really bullying – students sometimes call it “drama;”
• Not wrong – he’s just teasing and joking around;
• Not harmful – nobody’s getting hurt; she can handle it;
• Not against the rules – the bullying is subtle, technically below the radar;
• Not like me, not my “tribe” – the victim is perceived as very different;
• Not worthy of help – the victim deserves it; teachers don’t like this person;
• Not sure what the crowd thinks – “It is very hard, even frightening, for students to act differently from what they perceive the majority of their peers think,” says Dillon.
• Not sure what to do – how can I stop this – especially difficult when the perpetrator is popular and socially connected;
• Not my job – it’s up to teachers or older students;
• Not my decision – others’ inaction is a sign that what is happening is not a problem;
• Not worth the risk – I might become a victim too;
• Not sure if adults will handle the situation well – telling might make things worse;
• Not sure of back-up – I might get in trouble too.

All of these nots are knots that need to be untied, says Dillon, and that process can begin when students are shown how much influence they can have in making their school a better place. Here are some key points that need to be part of a schoolwide campaign:

        • The vast majority of students don’t bully and don’t approve of bullying.

        • People want to do good and be helpful.

        • Student make mistakes and our school will not be trouble-free. “Problems are part of life and learning,” says Dillon. “Viewing them as such will make discussing them a lot less emotional. Students will be more open to sharing them.”

        • Students are subject to social pressures and need to think for themselves and problem-solve. “Students shouldn’t feel guilty if they don’t act courageously in the face of bullying,” says Dillon. “Educators should share their own stories of their doubt, uncertainty, and even indifference in the face of need.”

• Being compassionate toward bullies doesn’t mean the behavior is being condoned. “Students who make mistakes need compassion and will accept guidance and direction when given respect and care,” says Dillon. “Students who bully aren’t bad kids or inherent troublemakers – some just need to learn how not to bully others.”

 

“Untying the ‘Nots’ of Bullying Prevention” by Jim Dillon in Principal Magazine, January/February 2014 (Vol. 93, #3, p. 36-39), www.naesp.org

 

 

Stephen Anderson

The Scent of Roses

Slow Down, Accomplish More!

        In this article in Edutopia, Elena Aguilar (a leadership coach in Oakland, California) suggests ways that educators can slow down, reflect more about their work, and strengthen human connections:

        • Identify a few essential goals. “The primary obstacle to school improvement that I see is the problem of ‘doing too much,’” says Aguilar. “Districts have strategic plans with 27 initiatives, schools have four annual goals, teachers have six professional practice goals, and so on.” She suggests making your own prioritized wish list and crossing out the last item on the list.

        • Trim your commitments. It’s not essential to attend every sporting event and every school board meeting, she says. “Reduce what you do and the information that comes in… Don’t fill every moment.”

        • Take the time to structure meetings up front. “When people haven’t been given a chance to physically, mentally, and emotionally arrive at the meeting… then they can’t be fully present and able to participate effectively,” says Aguilar. She suggests taking 10-15 minutes to preview the agenda, clarify what is to be accomplished, and briefly connect with one another.

        • Take the time to end meetings properly. “Closing routines provide a critical moment for participants to make sense of what’s happened and determine the most effective next steps,” she says. “This takes some time and can’t be rushed.”

        • Put the agenda on a diet. “It took me many years to learn that I needed to ruthlessly cut and prune my agendas,” says Aguilar. This reduces stress and increases productivity and satisfaction.

        • Pick a good moment and regularly ask a colleague a thoughtful question. For example, “What’s something you’re feeling really good about this year?” “What’s been your greatest accomplishment as a teacher?” “Tell me about a student you felt you made a difference with.”

        • Ask a student or parent a thoughtful question. For example, “Tell me what you feel really good about.” “What’s something you’d like me to know about you?” “How can I understand you better?”

        • Eat lunch. Aguilar suggests munching without multitasking one day a week. Better yet, eat with a colleague, focusing on positive conversation.

        • If you’re sick, stay home. “You can’t reflect and make intentional decisions if you’re sick,” she says. “Sleep, rest, drink fluids, you know the routine.”

        • Practice self-care. “I know that if I don’t take care of myself, I’m useless in this struggle to transform our schools,” says Aguilar. Caring for ourselves is not self-indulgence; it’s self-preservation so we can do our best work for students.

 

“Teachers: 10 Tips for Slowing Down” by Elena Aguilar in Edutopia, Jan. 21, 2014,

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ten-ways-to-slow-down-teachers-elena-aguilar

 

Stephen Anderson