Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

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Wissenschaft and Kenntnis

March 25, 2010

How does teachers’ use of multiple instructional strategies benefit students?

Leonard Sax (2007) talks about different kinds of knowing.  He explains that in most European languages, there are two separate verbs for knowing.  In German, for example, “knowledge about a person or a place that you’ve actually experienced is Kenntnis, from kennen, ‘to  know by experience’; knowledge learned from books is Wissenschaft,  from wissen, ‘to know about something’” (Sax, 2007, p. 28).  He goes on to argue, “American education, today more than ever before, is characterized by a serious lack of understanding of, and respect for, Kenntnis” (Sax, 2007, p. 29).  He cites “more than fifty years of research on the importance, for child development, of multisensory interaction with the real world….in order for the child’s brain and mind to develop properly” (Sax, 2007, p. 29).  Combining direct instruction (DI) with indirect and experiential instruction creates better-rounded educational environment.

In particular, adding experiential instruction to a wissenschaft-heavy curriculum creates a much more meaningful context for learning.  Sax says it well, “You can easily find high school students in America today who can tell you about the importance of the environment, the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle, and so on, but they’ve never spent a  night outdoors” (Sax, 2007, p. 30).  An all-wissenschaft curriculum sucks the life, energy, joy, and curiosity from learning.  Human beings are social animals and made of flesh and blood.  To be fully realized, they need social interactions, exchanges of ideas, touch and taste and texture.  Depriving them of these human experiences necessarily reduces the education and the student.  Of course, there are situations and subjects that require direct instruction.  However, even then the learning, breadth of learning, and the learning retention will benefit from a generous integration with indirect learning strategies.
Reference

Sax, L. (2007). Boys adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

March 22, 2010

The first step in establishing a cohesive, productive group is to establish a common framework of behavior and expectations.  In my case, this means a framework of mutual respect.  Respect is a sound basis for a classroom for many reasons.  First, it creates a healthy, cooperative relationship between teacher and students.  Second, it covers the major frictions and playground quirks of elementary school.  It covers name calling, exclusivity, cliques, criticism, prejudice and much more.  It also covers self-respect and, thus, achievement.  Finally, it wraps the classroom in a set of behaviors that are civilized and calming.

The second step is to establish clear goals for class as a whole and to make clear that each student will be fully supported in reaching those goals.  Under the mantle of respect, each student will be expected to support their fellow students fully in their path to meeting expectations.  Under the mantle of respect, group work would be caring and cooperative.  With respect, social interactions are cordial and cooperative, even under difficult circumstances.  Respect provides a clear framework for resolving disputes.  With clear goals for individual lessons, units and the year as a whole, the students understand expectations and can find safety in that clarity.

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Little Johnny, Again

March 21, 2010

Relevance.

I know that a good answer to “why should I care?” is important in keeping me focused. In addition, being a conceptual learner, knowing the big picture of “what’s the point?” helps me pay attention. Being a boy, I’d much rather be watching or chasing moving objects than studying, so I particularly need a good reason to force myself to concentrate. It goes back to my post about “Little Johnny could care less.” I think teachers all too often do not allow themselves to acknowledge how little their students want to be students. Most little boys, for sure, would much rather be elsewhere (and many big boys too, mostly). Many girls are bored stiff as well. Their higher oxytocin levels helps them pay attention, but only because they want to stay in relationship with their teacher. This may fool the teachers into believing that what they are doing is interesting (and that it is the boys who are the problem) but, all too often, that is not true. Sadly, contraproductively, and frequently, most students would prefer to be somewhere else, doing something else.

I am thinking more and more, that creating a context for the students is essential. A new subject should start with the very big picture of why the students should care. Then we can focus in on how this subject hooks into other things the students already know. Then we can move on to what the students are expected to learn from the experience, making sure the learning objectives are clear to them. Only then can it move into force feeding, err, teaching them the actual subject. Oh, and all this relevance and usefulness should be recapped at the end, after the assessment, in the debrief.

Once again, respect leads to the right choice. It is disrespectful, bordering on insulting, not to acknowledge that the students are not necessarily where the system wants them to be in terms of excitement about learning. The truth is it is a kid’s job to be thinking about anything but school. We know it individually, from our own experience. We do know it collectively, from our literature. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, etc, etc. It is our well-understood American cultural heritage. Ironically, teachers teach that literature, but that particular message is ignored or dismissed.

I am going to honor my students by acknowledging their reality. Then I will build a case for why they should care. Then I will make the experience as relevant, immersive, entertaining, and successful.

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Shame

March 19, 2010

The fear of being wrong is so powerful and so corrosive. We all have such a powerful fear of public humiliation yet everybody makes mistakes and everybody is imperfect.

I play tennis. So many people equate winning at tennis with self-worth. But half the people who play tennis necessarily lose each match. There is only one richest person, one most powerful person, one best looking person, one smartest person on the planet. If we set our goals on ‘winning,’ we will fail continuously.

I’ve learned to make respect the center of the classroom. Of course, respect from others is important and the foundation of a civil and enlightened community. But respect for one’s self is all that is required for a successful life. Everybody gets answers wrong, wears unfashionable clothes, forgets names, trips or spills or bumps or burps. The list goes on and on, there are so many things that are mortifying but ubiquitous. It’s ridiculous, the shame we all carry when the truth is that we are all just wonderfully human. It’d be fascinating to see the little thought bubbles over every head in the classroom, all the privates shames. “I’m too tall, “I’m too short,” “I have a pimple,” “I speak with an accent,” “I’m not wearing the right outfit.” So painful and so utterly without importance.

In my classroom, I will tolerate nothing that adds to the panic towards perfection, the demand for conformity. Respect will include supporting everyone in their imperfections and raw humanity. We all think we will die if our private shames are revealed. The reality is we are all dying bit by bit trying to keep them hidden. Our lives get pushed and warped and twisted as we try to look the way we want to be seen. Yet, inevitably, we fail because perfection lives only in our tortured imaginations. How much simpler to teach children from an early age to revel in their imperfections, to find love for themselves instead of shame.

In my classroom, embarrassment will be honored and uniformly supported.

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Little Johnny Could Care Less

March 17, 2010

There is one thing that has been bothering me for several weeks.  As an enthusiastic adult, I am excited to be in the classroom working with the students on the subject of the day.  However, the reality is that the school work itself is frequently so boring that were I not on the teaching end of the project, I would run screaming from the room.  That’s what occurred to me and it has bothered me ever since. 

There’s a gap in the meta-cognition between students and teachers.  We adults know why we’re in the classroom and we know how important it is that little Johnny  learns to count and read.  Little Johnny, on the other hand, could care less about all that.  In kindergarten or first grade, Johnny and his fellow students simply don’t have the development to operate on such abstract incentives.  Even for older children, who may have the mental development, there may remain a lack of faith in these abstract goals.  All too often, children fail to believe how costly and limiting a weak academic background can be.  Finally, there is frequently a maturity gap between what children know they should do and what they want to do.  Deliberately doing something horribly unpleasant is generally an act that requires a deadening of the soul that only adults have achieved.

The reality is twofold:  One, boring lessons place a tremendous burden on the willpower and developmental level of the students.  This burden falls hardest on those with the weakest motivation and the greatest need.  Second, it is crucial to remember that while school is “for the students own good,” it is rarely considered so by the students.  Anything teachers can do to make every aspect of school work entertaining and relevant is a giant step towards helping our students succeed.

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Homework

March 17, 2010

On the subject of homework, like all the rest, I am still learning.  What I have read suggests that homework loads and educational outcomes are uncorrelated.  Unfortunately, I have also read that homework performance is the single largest factor explaining why “boys receive 70 percent of the D’s and F’s on report cards” (Kauchak & Eggen, 2005, p. 97).  On the other hand, I can see why homework is valuable for reinforcing concepts taught in the classroom and broadening those concepts.  Homework is also the only viable opportunity for reading.

My theory is that I will use homework for these later purposes.  There’s no doubt that learned concepts must be practiced to be retained and that reading is an essential part of education.  However, the distinction I intend to hold inviolable is that any homework must be for a clear and important purpose and that purpose must be made known to all concerned.  It is also my intention to keep the burden of homework within acceptable levels.  There is much more to being a child than homework and that understanding is part of the environment of mutual respect I intend to maintain.

Reference

Kauchak, P., & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

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Being a “Charismatic Adult”

March 17, 2010

Brooks & Goldstein (2001) talk about the need for a “charismatic adult” in each child’s life.  They quote Julius Segal, defining a charismatic adult as “a person with whom children ‘could identify and from whom they gather strength’” (Brooks & Goldstein, 2001, p. 88).  They later quote Segal again, saying that “in a ‘surprising number of cases that person turns out to be a teacher’” (Brooks & Goldstein, 2001). This charismatic individual can be the difference between a resilient child who succeeds in spite of difficult circumstances and a non-resilient child who does not.

I think it’s easy to forget that the classroom just might be the best, safest part of a child’s day.  It’s easy to forget that many students are struggling in school because they’re not getting the right kind of support at home.  Going that extra step and the one after that might just make all the difference in a child’s future.  Teachers cannot save every child that passes through but they will not save any if they do not try.

Reference

Brooks, R. B., & Goldstein, S. (2001). Raising resilient children : fostering strength, hope, and optimism in your child. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sullivan, R. (2001). What Makes a Child Resilient?. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999479,00.html

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Task Analysis

March 15, 2010

What are the advantages of being able to task analyze your objectives?

Task analysis is an essential part of planning the achievement of any objectives, educational or otherwise. 

Task analysis identifies the steps necessary to achieving an objective.  In doing so, it highlights all the alternative routes to achieving that objective.  By identifying the steps, it also identifies the physical and temporal resources required.  Each of the different routes have different implications for student readiness and capability and place different demands on students’ learning abilities.  Each route requires different resources.  Task analysis highlights the executional details and, by doing so, allows the thoughtful, informed choice of learning path. In short, task analysis makes the choice of lesson plan easy. 

Having chosen a lesson plan, task analysis allows that plan to progress seamlessly and successfully.  It identifies materials and other resources needed.  It identifies time required.  It identifies areas of particular challenge, where special care must be taken.  It provides a roadmap that facilitates mental (and, perhaps, actual) rehearsal.  Perhaps most importantly, it is a confidence builder.  With a solid task analysis, the teacher can be confident of the steps to be taken and confident that the resources are in place to support those steps.

It also allows the teacher more confidence in dealing with any unanticipated issues that might crop up in the execution of the plan.  Having run through a variety of scenarios of how the lesson plan might have progressed, the teacher already has alternative strategies in mind. In addition, having rehearsed the clearly delineated plan, deviations from that plan can be done with more confidence. At very least, the teacher will be clear on where the ‘baseline’ lesson is. There is always a clear path through the material, no matter how far off that path the teacher has to go in the moment.

Task analysis is a basic skill required of effective planning. It is especially useful in the volatile world of teaching.

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Connecting with History

March 15, 2010

I think watching movies as an introduction to an area of study is very, very powerful. I went with my family and my brother-in-law’s family to Normandy last summer. This was a peak experience for me. I have studied the invasion quite a bit and had never been there before. On the other hand, none of the other people I was with knew or much cared about Omaha Beach or Pegasus Bridge. They had no reference to put what they saw into human terms. About halfway through the week, I had them all watch The Longest Day (a wonderful, very factual movie about the invasion that was filmed on the actual sites). Suddenly, everyone was very engaged by our visits and even more excited to visit a site they knew from the movie. Our last stop was the American Cemetery. That would have been attention getting under any circumstances. However, in the context of the movie and the actual sites we’d seen, it was incredibly moving, and culminating, for everyone. Creating a human or personal context for learning changes everything. That will be one of my main instructional tools moving forward.

It doesn’t have to be movies and TV shows. History and art (visual or musical) go together very well, given some human context for both. Likewise, games can really put the students into the shoes of the historical or literary figures they study. There is a game, out of print but on eBay, called Origins of World War II. I can think of no better way to illustrate not only how the calamity of WWII happened but also how good people, acting in enlightened self-interest can create disastrous outcomes. Somebody said, “Everyone has a reason.” That’s such an important concept, and so central to the study of history. Helping the student find those reasons is where the study of the past lives.

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Testing as a Team Sport

March 14, 2010

Having the school declare a test score goal is a way to ensure students understand the emphasis on doing well on standardized tests.  Ideas like posting test results publicly and having students make and display “green” handprints and/or giving them out green colored t-shirts when they score proficient or better all reinforce the goal of raising test scores.  The high visibility of students who score proficient or better is great positive reinforcement and incentive.

However, all the students who are not proficient or better not only get left out but also are to some extent at risk of pressure or stigma.  This would be true normally, kids being the occasionally schoolyard meanies they can be.  But it might be particularly true when there is a stated school goal.  Kids who aren’t scoring proficient are, in one way of looking at it, pulling down the rest of the team.  I’m not saying it’s the right way, but the school I am involved with takes great care to treat as private individual results.  I do wonder at the difference in philosophies and which might be used to get students to learn more effectively and successfully. 

Clearly, posting results gives more urgency (and transparency) to success.  It also puts more demands on the school culture to support every child in their educational journey.  Also, it seems pretty logical that if a school was going this way (“green team,” et al), it might also set up study teams and remediation (perhaps students tutored by other students, as well as more conventional means) to support the effort.  Likewise, one could imagine the school being divided into teams (possibly multiage) to compete internally for best performance.  This would fit naturally and do more to achieve the goals than simply posting school goals.

I’d like to know more about the pros and cons of making results public but, in general, I like the idea of making test solid performance a school goal and supporting that goal with student-friendly learning solutions.

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