Winds of Change, School in the Mirror

One of the most distinctive features of independent schools should be the ability to change, and to lead education into new and exciting frontiers. One might ask why, then, that so many independent schools operate in much the same way they did thirty, forty, or even more years ago. Public school education changes at a rate roughly equivalent to the time it takes to turn a lump of coal into a diamond - an issue that is often not the fault of the educators who are at the mercy of bureaucracies that do not impact independent schools. The reasons behind independent schools not changing are more complex - partly human nature, partly the limitations that success sometimes put on our imaginations.

I read recently that married people weigh on average about 15 percent more than their single counterparts of the same age. Speculation of the author was that marriage and its familiarity breeds complacency. The same might be said of schools that experience some success and establish familiar patterns. The familiarity of those patterns, and the comfort of that past success can dangerously obscure visions of positive change. A few years ago, author Jim Collins famously wrote that " Good is the enemy of great...". So often that truism can be applied to schools which rely on past successes to the extent that they become barriers to positive, meaningful improvement.

In order to change, the overweight married couple needs to first look in a mirror to recognize that they may have let heir bodies go a little bit. A few more cookies at Christmas, a few too many fast food meals, and too few hours in the gym, and complacency begets an unflattering result. The same is true of schools - we must constantly subject ourselves to honest looks in the mirror. Self- reflection distinguishes good schools from great. 

At Country Day we are going through a virtual fun house of mirrors right now, examining our school from many angles. We are undergoing a curriculum alignment we have called " Five in, Five out" designed to vertically and horizontally align our curriculum by identifying five essential skills a student needs to be successful to begin a course or grade level content area, and five essential skills students should possess on exit from a course or grade level. In this way we are connecting our whole school curriculum, pk-12. In addition we are going through a peer evaluation by the Independent School Association of Central States (ISACS) which has caused us to look at all of our practices, and which will result in a peer report that evaluates our school. We have just closed an engagement survey of our faculty and staff to identify strengths and opportunities in our school community, and are in the process of developing our new teacher evaluation model. In short, we are putting every aspect of our school in front of the mirror, and examining for flaws. Most of our bodies could not hold up to that level of scrutiny...

DCDS intends to continue to be a leader not only in the independent school world, but in a continuous effort to be at the cutting edge of educational best practice. That kind of commitment requires constant self- reflection, and visionary approaches to stave off complacency. We are up to the challenge - just takes a little looking in the mirror...

Wigwams, Occam's Razor, and Things We Learn from Kindergarten

Last week I visited a wigwam made by 4th graders, and a tinker toy village, before later visiting a Theory of Knowledge classroom of Upper School students try to stump one another on the topic of Occam's Razor in a review competition. In my dual role as Upper School Head, and PK - 12 Chief Academic officer, I get the pleasure of visiting classrooms across the learning spectrum. The opportunity to see where kids start, and to what heights they grow, and to see it in the same day is a powerful way to develop a picture of a school's curriculum coming to life. As students progress through grade levels and content areas, and mature to more sophisticated concepts, a truism is that levels of student engagement often drop considerably. Crawling in and out of a wigwam can seem like a lot more fun that logarithms, slope, or Puritan literature. It's a good reminder to all of us that some of the principles of elementary education can apply to keeping student engagment levels high at the upper grades.

Blogger Doug Johnson posted recently on maintaining student engagement levels. He created Everything I Know about Engagement I Learned in Kindergarten:

 

In kindergarten we get:

1. Show and tell. You got to do something or bring something and then tell others about it. Secondary skill attainment measurement needs to be less about testing and more about show and tell performance-based assessment. Oh, and listening to other students is a lot more involving than listening to the old person in the room.

2. Choices. As a little kid you often got to choose - your library book, your reading buddy, your activity, the subject of your drawing. People tend to choose things that interest them and interesting things are engaging. How often do we let older students choose?

3. Play. Elementary teachers can make a game out of almost anything - and make just about every task feel like play. The older we get, the less we get to play and more we have to work. Just why is that? Gamification is a fancy term for putting play back into the curriculum. Look it up.

4. Naps. Most adolescents I know are tired - and not because they've been up all night texting. (Well, maybe that's part of it.) We've long known that teens do better when school starts later in the morning. Tired people have a tough time staying engaged.

5. To go outside. The best learning takes place in the "real world" not in the classroom. Whether it is studying bugs and leaves in first grade, marching with the band in junior high, or doing service learning as seniors, we all are more interested when it is the real world with which we are dealing.

6. Colors. A blank sheet of construction paper and some crayolas have always let young learners be creative. Creativity is inherently engaging. What's the high school classroom's equivilant to scissors and paste?

7. To do it together. Reading groups. Play groups. Science groups. It's better with other kids. Social learners are engaged learners.

8. Reading for enjoyment. Our elementary teachers and librarians want us to practice reading so much they let us read what we like! Do our secondary teachers want us to write so much, know so much, experiment so much, and solve problems so much that we get to do it for enjoyment?

9. Learning that's important. Nobody needs to convince a little kid that learning to read, to add and subtract, or to know about firemen is important. And that you should pay attention when being taught these things. Calculus, world history, the Romantic poets, the atomic structure of non-metals, not so much. If you can't convince me what you are teaching should be important to me, teach something that is.

10. Care. OK, this should have been the first one. I really believe a lot little kids are engaged because they know someone cares that they are. Yeah, the littles are cute and cuddly and all that, but the gangly, awkward, homely teens need to know adults care too. When someone else is paying attention to you, you pay more attention yourself.

 

All teachers, at all levels, have a responsibility to develop engaging lessons that make classroom learning relevant. It's a legitimate question for students to ask what relevance content will have to them beyond school. In an engaging classroom that follows the rules of kindergarten, that questions is rarely asked because the answers are obvious. This challenge grows with the sophistication of material, but these rules of kindergarten are great reminders for parents and teachers alike that learning can, and should be, stimulating, engaging, and fun.

Never Work Harder Than Your Students

In Never Work Harder than Your Students, author Robyn Jackson defines a master teacher as one who follows seven principles:

 

1.       Start where your students are.

2.       Know where your students are going.

3.       Expect to get your students to their goal.

4.       Support your students along the way.

5.       Use frequent and thoughtful feedback to help you and your students get better.

6.       Focus on quality rather than quantity.

7.       Never work harder than your students.

 

To the last point, Jackson argues that teachers commonly do all the work in planning and delivering lessons, assessing the lessons, and dictating the learning (Jackson, p.172).  Jackson further argues that swinging to a completely “student centered” classroom is not the answer to this problem, but rather suggests that the classroom should be a community that should establish a balance between the roles of teacher and student in the learning process. It’s an interesting proposition to consider how much of the responsibility in the learning process falls on the shoulders of the classroom teacher. Teachers who lecture exclusively, or provide the questions or the variables a student must answer to solve complex problems may be shouldering more of the load than necessary or appropriate. Teaching students to ask the right questions is a critical element of the journey.

 

I once evaluated an English teacher who assigned two portions to every assessment. For part I, he required students to write questions for the test that they thought would force one another to think at complex / application levels. He then graded students on their questions for part I of their assessment grade. Part II of their grade was completing an assessment made up of entirely student written questions from Part I. I’ve always thought it was a brilliant model – one of the most important skills a student can learn, is what questions to ask. I’d be willing to bet that each of you can remember times when you or someone you knew studied long hours for an assessment and did poorly because you didn’t study the material that the teacher thought was important enough to be on the assessment. Conversely, you can probably think of times when you studied the right material for a relatively short time, and did much better than students who studied longer, but studied non-critical material. Cultivating the skill of asking questions is critical, and the questions students ask will reveal much about their understanding of content.