Pep Talk from Kid President

All of us can use a pep talk every now and then, and I think we can all agree that pep talks from kids can be special - this one is no exception. One of our teachers / directors sent me this great video - hope you enjoy., and watch all the way to the end!

 

Not cool Robert Frost....

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.

Good to Great, Great to Greater

Author Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, writes "Good is the enemy of great....we don't have great schools primarily because we have good schools." His point is that schools, and most organizations, that reach a level of proficiency become complacent and don't move beyond good. They stop reflecting on their practices, and do things the way they've always done them because these practices have proven over time to be good. Country Day School is a school that is great already in most respects, but we're committed to being "greater" in every way possible.

 

One of the initiatives we've undertaken this year is a horizontal and vertical integration of our curriculum. We have used a process we are calling "5 in / 5 out" as the vehicle for aligning our curriculum. The goal is to identify the five essential skills for a student coming into a content area by course or grade level, and the five essential skills or pieces of content knowledge with which a successful student will leave. In this way, we will link together all courses, content areas, and grade levels in the school, pk-12. We will also have a mechanism for eliminating unnecessary redundancies, and filling gaps that we discover exist. Through this process, teachers are meeting not only with their departmental or grade level colleagues, but also with teachers whose courses or grade levels come before and after them in the vertical path towards graduation. We have undertaken this endeavor not because we necessarily feel there are issues with our current curriculum, but so we can open dialogue between faculty at all levels, evaluate our own practices, and look for ways to make a great school even greater.

 

By the end of this school year, we anticipate that we will have completed our curriculum alignment, and will shift our efforts to discussion of "how we teach" rather than "what we teach". In this ongoing evaluation of curriculum and practice, we hope to establish strong connections across grade levels, and really develop the "One Country Day" concept of shared and collegial collaboration. One of the foundations of Detroit Country Day School is a commitment to excellence, and part of that commitment is consistent, ongoing self-reflection and evaluation. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, "If there's a way to do it better - find it."

Happy Holidays to all of our Country Day families. We wish you a happy and healthy holidays season and New Year.

Parent / Teacher Communication

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." -  Mark Twain

 

I've always loved this quote attributed to Twain, as it so aptly describes the evolution we go through in our perceptions of our parents. Young people, particularly adolescents, often fail to appreciate the wisdom and knowledge that comes from their parents. This youthful perception is sometimes extended to all adults, including their teachers.  As both teachers and parents must deal with the commonly held adolescent belief that all adults are clueless, it can be hugely important to join forces in a positive way in the best interests of students. One of the most successful approaches is when parents and teachers knowingly work together to ensure student responsibility and accountability. Putting the responsibility on young people to handle issues with their teachers teaches them valuable coping lessons that will serve them in future issues that require self-reliance. Nevertheless, not all of a student's issues can be solved by the meeting of student and teacher, and the partnership of parents and teachers becomes essential.

 

I am sometimes asked by parents the proper protocol, and best steps to take in communicating with teachers. Parents sometimes worry that if they voice a concern there will be reprisals for their child. Our teachers are professionals, who are in this profession because of their commitment to young people and their growth, and mutual understanding and trust between parent and teacher can resolve most issues. Please consider the following protocol for optimal resolution of issues:

 

DCDS Problem Solving Protocol

1. Student addresses issue with teacher in a private, personal appointment. This will result in successful outcome in the majority of circumstances.
2. If student and teacher cannot resolve issue, parent makes email or phone contact with the teacher or the student's advisor who can often assist in facilitating a solution. If the situation is emotionally charged, it is recommended that this communication be solely for the purpose of arranging a personal meeting between parent and teacher. Many situations can be resolved by email or phone.
3. Personal meeting between parent and teacher - depending on the circumstances, it may be important to also include the student.
4. If a personal meeting with the teacher occurs, and the issue has still not been resolved satisfactorily,  the next step for parents should be contact with the relevant department chair, dean, or school director. Administrative assistance should be an avenue for resolution that occurs after other steps have been exhausted.

Tips, and Potential Pitfalls to Avoid:

1. Teachers appreciate students who advocate for themselves. That being said, private conversations that are pre-arranged are almost always better than a public or classroom conversation.
2. A cooling off period is almost always beneficial for all. If the situation is emotionally charged, follow the 24 hour rule, and allow for some time to pass so that cool heads can resolve issues.
3. Email can be dangerous for resolving complex issues, as many nuances of communication are lost in these impersonal written communications. Email can be very effective for getting information, communicating absences, arranging appointments and other surface communications. It is advisable not to rely on email for exchanges of a more personal nature. If you are unsure as to whether an email is appropriate for a situation, err on the side of a personal meeting.
4. It is not appropriate or constructive to confront a teacher or administrator about personal student matters in public spaces, or without an appointment. In emergency situations, always visit the academic office first for communication with an administrator who will help facilitate problem solving measures.
5. Successful resolutions do not result from threatening language or behavior. Even if it may not seem so at the time, educators try their best to work in the interest of all students, and are generally compassionate and caring towards young people. If you find it difficult to maintain composure because of the tenor of a meeting, involve an administrator to facilitate or take a cooling off period.

Our teachers, administration and staff are here for you and your children. We want the best possible experience for them, and working together with parents in a positive and constructive way to present a unified team approach to students reinforces the important roles of both school and family. It may even result in students who someday recognize our "growth" in knowledge and intelligence as they gain a more global, adult perspective of the motives of parent and school.

 

If you have any questions about appropriate school contacts and , or strategies to resolve conflicts, please don't hesitate to contact me at Tbearden@dcds.edu, or by phone at 248.430.3696.

Welcome

Welcome to The Principal's Office, a blog created by Tim Bearden, Chief Academic Officer and Director of the Upper School at Detroit Country Day School.

The purpose of this blog is not only to provide information and updates relevant to the DCDS school community, but to explore concepts, ideas, programs and directions germane to 21st century schools, and the creativity and innovation that will be necessary to best serve students of this next generation.

This blog is a continuation of the blog The Principal's Office first started at Grosse Pointe North High School. Some of the posts from that blog which have relevance to educational issues in general, and are not specific to North, have been retained as part of this new iteration.

As always, comments are encouraged and welcomed, and thanks for visiting The Principal's Office.