Tag Archives: School

Mar 25 2010

Wissenschaft and Kenntnis

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.

Mar 22 2010

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

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.

Mar 19 2010

Shame

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.

Mar 17 2010

Little Johnny Could Care Less

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.

Mar 17 2010

Homework

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.

Mar 17 2010

Being a “Charismatic Adult”

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

Mar 15 2010

Task Analysis

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.

Mar 14 2010

Testing as a Team Sport

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.

Mar 12 2010

Test Scores

I’ve tried to liken testing in the students’ minds to a performance or a sporting event. I want them “up” and focused on outcomes but I also want them positive and aggressive, not scared. I want to create it in their minds like other things in their lives that are challenging and where success is the goal. However, I want to stay well clear of the “this determines your whole life” vibe that’s around (and not entirely inaccurate).

On that note, I wonder if test results are really that important for most students? Does plus/minus one standard deviation of the mean make any difference in a life at all? Nearly 7 in 10 kids will fall into that range, if I recall my stats class correctly. Sure, test scores are important for kids who want to get into elite and top-100 schools, but that’s probably only the top 16% of kids (to pick a number). And they’re probably important for the bottom 16%, but I’d imagine that test scores for those kids are only confirming issues already readily apparent. If this logic is right, most kids can be pretty calm about testing. Sure, it’s a big deal like a little league playoff game or whatever, but it’s just a game, just a test.

It seems like where the pressure really lies is on the schools, teachers, and administrators rather than on the kids. For those adults, every point counts. At a basic level, they’re fighting to make AYP. But even at my daughter’s school (which is ok w/ AYP), the API  is still carefully monitored. Did it go up? How does it compare to sister schools in the area? How did a particular teacher do? Maybe it’s the adults who are truly under the microscope.

Mar 11 2010

Standardized Tests

Standardized tests are blunt weapons, but not an ineffective ones. The three real issues with them are 1) we have to be prepared to sacrifice every bit of learning that isn’t on the test and 2) the tests need to reflect the standards perfectly and 3) the standards have to reflect all the essential knowledge that the students need to learn.

It really is that simple. If we’re prepared to accept that the kids will mostly only learn the standards and we trust the people who write the standards to write the right ones, then testing will steadily drive the results (and therefore the learning of the standards) in the right direction.

We can see that in California. Since NCLB came into effect, the aggregate test scores have steadily improved. From 2003 to 2009, 17% more students are testing proficient or better on Math and 15% more are testing proficient or better on English Language Arts (ELA) (California Department of Education, 2010).

Of course, the aggregate numbers are still horrible: only 57% are proficient or better in math and 50% test proficient or better in ELA, up from 41% and 35% respectively in 2003. Maybe that’s a good reason to accept the blunt weapon of standardized testing, the historical alternative was apparently far less effective.

Reference

California Department of Education. (2010). Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Results. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://star.cde.ca.gov/