So I Had Another Topic But Got Distracted By A Tweet

My dad was a pediatric endocrinologist. While we were never sure what the exact definition of endocrinologist meant, a loose translation for us was guy who did an hour of phone calls from his car helping children balance their blood sugars while he took his own children to Hebrew School and swim practice. It was important work, we knew because it was the 80's and he had a car phone because of it. As we met children and adults with diabetes we learned that this invisible to the human eye but medically important condition often meant life or death if it wasn't treated properly and the patient didn't learn to control it. My dad was important, although we never knew it. Only as an adult, as I have met his patients who have grown into adults and as the parents of his patients have approached me to share their stories, have I truly begun to understand the impact my dad made on real people. He changed lives and he saved lives. He made a difference in how young boys, girls, and parents approached life and found comfort in who they were and who they could be.

Diabetes is one of many conditions we see in increasing prevalence in our society. As we become more aware of our world around us, as we become more focused on the needs of all of our children and adults, we are becoming more able to support children and adults with diabetes, allergies, and autism. Raising children in the modern era means that we always ask if a child has food allergies before they come to the house. I find out the types of snacks they can eat, figure out the labels, and make sure the surfaces are clean. Children that may not have survived 30 years ago due to these allergies are now hanging out, doing things, and successfully living full lives with their Epi-pens in the backpack. We have friends with children who are autistic. Their struggle is not as easy, as no simple medication seems to help these children find balance. The kids are great kids and great friends. They are the ones who add the unique idea, show great talents, and yet struggle with great changes. As adults, they may make our world a better place because they see the world with such a unique lens. A lens that will help us all focus on things the rest of us have missed. While there is a building understanding of the uniqueness of autism and due to many of the obvious behaviors produced by autism, it is a condition while accepted the children are far less integrated into our daily lives and society as we should.

So I saw this tweet yesterday:

I read through the comments, which is always a mistake. I looked at people's perceptions. I read through the denials that ADD & ADHD exist and the immediate links to performance enhancement which I am sure is true for some of these player exemptions. And then I thought of my experiences. My childhood was memorable for all involved. I was clearly an unmedicated ADHD child (except for 12 weeks of junior high school). The stories are legendary from bouncing all through an RV from Chicago to Florida, falling out of chairs, knocking over desks, and still having the right answer. I was an unmedicated teenager who graduated high school and college because I was swimming 12-15,000 yards a day and passing out in class. I was a poor driver who cornered quickly and hit the garage once. I was an unmedicated adult who knew the answers to everyone's questions in every conversation but was moving so quickly that I didn't understand the level of anxiety I caused in others as I did so. I was smart enough to do everything without the awareness of my own impulsivity and behaviors that it impacted me in several jobs by making others nervous and anxious.

I have been medicated for six years now. I started 3 weeks after my oldest child began his medication. I look at my boys and see so much of me in them. The eldest, just like his father, is more than smart enough to be successful at school. He could read and do math with the finest. However, like his dad, when he is not medicated he is in constant super speed. I think back to growing up and wonder how my ADHD adversely hurt me. How many relationships ended because I made an impulsive decision? How many people did I make nervous because I never stayed for the whole conversation or interrupted the speaker mid-sentence? How many times did I interact inappropriately within a situation because I didn't read the situation or couldn't read someone else's body language. For me, like so many others, ADHD is not a childhood disorder, not a behavioral disability, but just as biological and medical as Diabetes, Allergies, and Autism. It is a life disorder and a life challenge and one that I have chosen to bring into balance.

Yes, Mr. Olbermann, ADD & ADHD medications do improve your performance. I've been to soccer practice and seen my child the moment the medication begins working. Instead of him running with his body at a 90 degree angle and the ball six feet in front of him, he runs upright and the ball is next to him. I've been to religious services at Temple and seen the medication work. My child changes from skipping and literally bouncing everywhere to a child who is upright, in position, and singing along in the choir. He looks people in the eyes. He listens to a conversation. He gives the long answer and will wait while his hand is raised. The medication improves his life's performance. And, yes I wonder how much better of a swimmer I would have been had I been medicated through high school and college. How much better a student I would have been? How much better a friend I would have been?

My parents brought over an article from the New England Journal of Medicine a couple of weeks ago. It was about identification and treatment of Adult ADD and ADHD. While these adults may not be as bouncy or dazed off as their seven year-old selves, the conditions are still there. It made me wonder, how many divorces occur because of ADHD? How many poor impulses occur that results in accidents? How many jobs lost from adults trying to find themselves? How many interpersonal relationships struggle because of this? And most importantly, how many teens and adults self-medicate through alcohol and other drugs because we are a society that is at times unwilling to accept that ADD exists and is a medical condition? If it were as easy to accept as Diabetes, Allergies, or Autism, we may find the answers are before us.

My mom knits a lot. A real lot. She knits in meetings. She knits on planes. She knits in conversations. She knits on the train. Her hands are in constant motion as she talks to everyone around. She's brilliant. She's well educated. She was a national level swimmer growing up in the 50's and one of the first woman doctors in her field in our county. She is so much of her parents, proud, smart, feisty, and active. She was an obstetrician & gynecologist at a time when women weren't. While people didn't share their war stories of time with my mother when I was younger, the moment I passed thirty her patients both mothers and children have sought me out to share times of how mom was there for them whenever they needed it. They share their moments, at times in graphic detail, of split-second impulse my mom had that saved their baby or her diligent perseverance as she would stay all through the night to ensure they were supported throughout that delivery or surgery. It makes one proud to have grown up being raised by a difference maker.

So I was going to write about recipe-based teaching, learning, and the Common Core State Standards with a great tweet referencing Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe, but I guess I got distracted....

The Report Card

My oldest son came home last night and promptly stated, "my report card is in my backpack." Dropped his backpack and went to go read a book. I guess there are many responses I could have had. I could have immediately rushed to go read it, checked the markings, and seen all of the A's, B's, and C's. I guess. How would I feel if I did? Would I be more or less proud of my child because of it? Would I know more about my child from it? Would I have any idea of what to do with my child based on what it said? Would the results have been the same if he had a different teacher? What do those results even really mean?
The report card, a checklist of marks that rank our children in various ways to there peers. Given in content areas that date back to before I was born. Sure, schools have tried to evolve it over time. Schools have tried to make it less subjective, using "standards-based" reporting methods. They have tried to make it more fair by using more or less homework, more or less effort grades, more weighting at the end of units to allow time for learning. Yet, it seems that what we are truly doing is trying to take an inadequate communication and reporting system and placing it on high-quality pretty paper with a nice scent.
For a while I joked by saying, "How important is a fourth grade report card? or Who even knows where their report card is?" I did that until one of my best teachers sent me a picture of her third grade report card. Cracked me up. She knew where it was. She and her parents valued it. It made me laugh. It also made me think, we need to do this better.
I look at my fifth grader and see that he is my dad in so many ways. My dad taught himself to read at late 2 early 3. He's the guy who skipped a grade in school, did all of the work, ranked ridiculously high in high school and went to University of Chicago to be an Astrophysics major. He marched to the beat of his own drummer and was driven to do well. What report card could his teachers give him that showed the knowledge he gained in the class? What report card would have informed his parents on what he needed to learn next? He walked into school and if evaluated by knowledge and performance standards compared to his peers, one could mark straight A's the day he entered and been done with it. If we used age-level standards-based reporting, his parents would have looked at the document the day entered the class and wondered why he was there as he could do every one of the skills at mastery level the day he entered the classroom. How could the report card be a meaningful tool?
I look at my fifth grader and he is me in so many ways also. When he does his work at times it is the absolute bare minimum. The writing is fragments, showing that he has the knowledge but would rather go onto something else that is more interesting and challenging than waste time writing more. His worksheets and tests are done quickly, showing the tiny errors that make it a B or B- not because he doesn't know it but more because he didn't bother to learn all the little minutia surrounding a topic or detail and didn't spend the time reading the whole thing because he wanted to back to his book or his game. The stuff he did read on the paper, he remembers for ever.
I look at the backpack containing the report card and realize his teacher agonized over all of the markings on the document. She, like so many others, spends hours making sure the report card is "accurate" and "fair." She wants to show his strengths and growth areas on a document that is quite frankly inadequate. A document that isn't fair to the learner, the instructor, or the parent. I really like his teacher and feel bad for her.
It's time that we rethink our reporting mechanism. Leaving the rankings of the letter grades is a start. They are subjective in every way. They are subjective by the cohort of students, the subjectivity of assignments, the questions on the assignments, extra-credit, and the ridiculous scale of 90-80-70. Letter grades are not comparable teacher to teacher none the less school to school. Moreover, why is remembering 90% of the content important. Will that help you ten years from now? Standards-based learning is a start. It lets us know a little about what the child is working on. However the standards themselves are just steps in a much bigger ladder. We have children each year that walk into classrooms and will never meet the "grade-level" standards and others that walk in and can do everyone of the "grade-level" standards the first day. These tools tell us only a little more than the letter grade ranking system before it. What we really need is a standards-based ladder report card. One that looks at curriculum vertically, perhaps k-16, and marks where a child is at with spaces underneath it for what that child needs to learn next. One that looks in Geometry and identifies the skills a child has and gives the parent an idea of what to work on going forward. We need to leave the age-modeled factory design and instead embrace a meritocracy that identifies how we can grow and improve.
When that report card shows up, I can do something with it. I can guide my child on activities to work on and skills to improve. Until then, I think I'll look at the work he has brought home this week and go do the dishes. Conferences are on Monday and I'll listen to the teacher's perspective. She's fun and she get's it. Those are the valuable things. His mom can read the report card when she gets to it, if she wants to.

A Whole New World: Learning with a 1:1 Tablet Initiative

The Personal Computer, PC, initially meant that we had moved from the network workstation to an individual unit. A computer that operated on its own. One that could be in the workplace or in the home, but in the end it was a Productivity Computer. As a society through branding and ownership we separated the "PC" and the "Mac" groups. One group in the end was seen as a viable option for the home and the workplace and one was seen as a toy. This marketed personal impacted us for from Windows 3.1 through Windows 7. Microsoft coined the term smartphone and made the early tablet operating systems. These too, whether you had a Windows CE device or a Blackberry were work tools. They may have been personal in the fact that individuals carried them, but they were sparse, clunky, and truly designed with the productivity organization in mind. Lets be honest, the iPhone changed all that. It showed us that a personal device can be both truly personal and productive. It connected us with our work, our documents, our presentations, and our contacts but also allowed us to connect to the world in ways that we could not imagine. With Android following this lead, the two competing operating systems have pushed each other to create tools that are elegant, personal, and powerful. For those of us who imagine ourselves to be in a world of PC vs Mac or Android vs iOS we are stuck in a rut and missing the bigger picture. The world is changing. It is not the world we grew up in and we are not preparing our children for this world.

I entered Hillcrest school as a kindergartener in 1978. Mrs. Roush played the piano. We had art time. We read some. I even believe we might have taken naps. In fourth grade we studied states. In fifth grade we studied the country. In sixth grade we studied the world. There were reading groups. There was math. There was even a TI-99 in the library. In 1985, as a 7th grader at O'Neill Junior High, we first learned world history. I learned about the colonization, the British Empire, the separation of India and Pakistan, World Super Powers. It was the Cold War, US vs the Soviet Union, everything in dichotomous relationships. The teacher talked, we listened (sort of), and we wrote papers. This was my education, an education I was proud of.

This week, I saw this video. One I encourage everyone to watch:

We are no longer preparing our children for a dichotomous world, one that lacks information, or one that depends on utilizing productivity tools. We are preparing our children for an information rich world. One that surrounds us and needs innovative approaches that connect societies, and helps people solve great problems.

We began our 1:1 initiative in January last year as children and teachers spent 3-weeks units together using tablets at both home and school. We called them Learning Labs. The children learned. The teachers learned. We learned. Immediately the experience was transformative. Within days children were making a wide-range of products. We set up concepts to be explored and the children were creating videos, art, and writing stories in ways we could not imagine. As adults, we set up learning situations and content to be studied, and the children created a variety of products. They became the teachers, of the technology, the tools, and eventually the content to each other and to the adults. In 3-week units worlds were transformed in a way that we couldn't go back.

In August we began piloting 1:1 initiatives throughout our district. Over 1400 students in grades k-6, about 35% of our students in those age groups, began working with iPad minis. We have lived through the honeymoon of this is awesome and entered the realm of reality that this is what life looks like in a 1:1 initiative. There is great variance within our pilot classrooms yet common themes emerge. Kids are owning more of the learning. They are becoming partners in the teaching. The iPad mini truly is a personal device. It takes learning and makes it our own. It allows children to become experts in things and carry learning well beyond the classroom. Our teachers that have allowed their classes to use email find that the learning goes on between them and the students and between student groups well after the school day has ended. We have found tablets make a difference, children individualize. They make songs, movies, and artwork. They take pictures of their world and write about it. We have discovered that Explain Everything one of the most important tools in learning as it gives us insight into a child's thinking and allows us to share our work with our school community. We have learned that tablets are cross-curricular devices, being just as vital in Art or Music as they are in Reading and Math.

There is so much that we are learning, but mostly we are learning that tablets enable our children to be personal instructional leaders in the classroom. They create products with such diversity because of the nature of the tool and the capacity of our teachers to be open to such ideas. Students are innovative and creative because while they know they are working on a common learning target they are excited to share the unique ways in which they develop solutions and products. Our 1:1 devices are not the portable productivity pieces of PC era, but truly personal life and learning tools that allow for productivity but also humanity and imagination.

The tool is only one reason why we are being successful. The other important reason we are transforming as a learning institution is our teachers and principals. Our school district is a learning community. Staff are sharing, in every way possible. They understand that the technology is a tool, often a scary one at that, but it opens doors. Our pilot teachers are sharing with grade level partners, allowing each other to do things differently, but dialoguing about the successes and challenges they are facing. Our instructional coaches are meeting with individual teachers and groups, helping identify what the learning targets are and what activities/tools might help the students demonstrate mastery of those targets. Our teachers are creating free professional development opportunities to support each other and to connect with colleagues around them through activities such as Playdatedg58, ipadtacula, and the Student Involved in Technology conference. Then there is the twitter hashtag #dg58learns. 140 character snipits that are staff driven sharing. Resources, pictures, questions, and successes.

We just started our journey. We look how far we have come and we look forward to the road ahead. We have had great leaders that have put us on this path, but it is our path now. Any of us can do this. Any of us can start this in our districts. It starts with a dialogue, a hashtag, and a vision. We are preparing children for a different world. In order to do that, we too need to see our world in different ways.

Pesky, Yet Persistent Problems With Perspectives of Positional Authority

There is a book, a long book, that sits on a shelf in a room. This book has been read by seven people in the last fourteen years. For the author, it was an interesting adventure to write. The seven readers, well they read it because it was required. Since then, the book has remained on a shelf, a nice particle  board laminated shelf with other books. The book is my dissertation. With its completion and defense in from to the committee, I was granted three little letters to write on resumes that opened doors for the rest of my career. I am grateful for the professors who channeled me into the experience and through the experience. I am grateful to the committee of seven who read it. I am grateful for the doors those three little letters opened because it gave me opportunities to help students and adults learn throughout Illinois.

The funny thing is, the three little letters aren't the things that make one a good leader or an effective leader. They opened doors, the process of earning them gave me experiences and introduced me to fascinating people, but in the end doesn't make the difference between when a student learns or not, when a teacher is successful or not, when a teacher's assistant feels empowered or not. I learned a great lesson two months after I earned my degree. While co-teaching 4th grade Sunday School with my bride, she looked at me and said, "We both have the same number of graduate hours, one of us has two masters' degrees and one of us a doctorate. There is no way we are calling you doctor in our classroom." Wisest decision we ever made. 

That's the thing, it isn't about the title, the degree, or the organizational position that derives authority and respect. Each organization needs people to be responsible for different tasks. These tasks are independently important, require different skill sets, and come with different sets of problems and drama. Organizations are most effective when authority and respect are cultivated through mutual admiration, belief, and support. When these things are in place that is when schools, districts, and businesses thrive.

As a principal, staff frequently looked at me to ask the question about whether or not we were going to have indoor recess. When asked, I would frequently respond, "I don't know, we need to ask a member of the associates' team. They are the leaders outside and they will need to determine if it is safe or not to go out." While, I was responsible for all of the children and staff, it was the associates that were in the trenches daily at recess. They new the students, the fields, the blacktop, and if they looked at the weather, they would be able to make the most accurate decision. My role was to establish the parameters with the team for successful indoor and outdoor recesses but then to step back and trust those closest to the decision with the most knowledge to make the right call.

Another time, as a teacher was working to help a child learn to complete any of his tasks in school, the team looked to me as principal to do something. We talked. We brainstormed. We played through the options. We reflected and decided that yes I could take away his recess, give him detentions, or make him sit in my office until his work was done. We could use the power of the office to scare him or his parents. That might work for a day or a week. In the end, the position itself would mean nothing and the child would revert to not giving effort or completing tasks. We decided to talk with the child instead. A teacher, a social worker, and myself went to the parents home in the trailer park, rang the doorbell, and asked to talk. Forty minutes later we understood our child and family better. The child new we were invested in him and his family. And more work started to get done. Not all of it, but it was progress.

If we want to make a difference in our schools, it does come from top-down. Not because the top knows more, or the top has all the answers, but it is the top that needs to learn that all members of our organization are equally valuable, equally important to our success, and deserve equal respect. It is the top that needs to cultivate understanding throughout the organization that each member is important and when we talk together it is most often in a non-judgmental manner, except when required by the law, through which two humans are working together to support each other in being successful. The person is not telling you to do something because of their role, but rather having a conversation to cultivate support in a process that will help each of us perform our roles better and make everyone more successful.

When we no longer require respect because of position or title but rather cultivate shared responsibility and trust, then we can all be successful as students, teachers, support staff, and leaders. 

The Classroom Climate Spiral

My oldest son is a soccer player. He's not the next Messi, Reynaldo, Maradona, or Pele. He's not even the guy who will be holding their bags at the end of the bench. My son is the hard working kid who finds a spot at the end of the bench hoping for fifteen to twenty minutes sporadically throughout the game. He's the resilient one who shows up to every practice, every extra goalie training, and every extra foot skills opportunity. He's the one who usually doesn't know the final score of the game but is excited to have been part of the team. We all know my kid. The names change. The situations change. He's the kid that we all want around because he's easy to teach, to coach, to be with. He's the one who says "Thanks Coach" after every practice. The one that makes it easy for us to go home every night.

For four years and eight different head coaches this young man was never a starter. He went out. He played. He found his time. He was excited for most of the moments. He'd come out of the game. He'd sit next to coach. He'd listen. He'd walk away from each game with a smile. It didn't matter if he'd won or lost. He would go months without taking a shot, not to mention scoring, and he would be fine. He walked away from each game being able to self-assess his game and always picked up two or three things he felt great about.

The funny thing was, very few of his coaches were big praisers. Occasionally one would say, "I was proud of your passing." Some would say, "Nice work today" or "You played well." None of them were jumping up and down shouting his merit from the hilltops. It didn't matter. My son saw soccer as a journey of success. His coach's put challenges in front of him and in his eyes he achieved. Even when he played children three years older, thirty pounds heavier, and thirteen inches taller, he walked out thinking he had played a good game. My son was on the upward spiral in terms of soccer.

This year is different. From an outside observer, his skills are better. The teams he is playing are better. This year, he notices the results of the game. He knows they haven't won a game yet. However, he has a belief why. To steal his term last night, this year's coach has an "absence of positivity." He's right. It's almost like nails on the chalk board listening to the commentary from across the field. "What were you thinking?" "What was that?" "You're not doing what I was telling you." "If you can't stay wide you will be sitting." It's not swearing. It's not individually demeaning for the most part. It's hard to listen to. The results haven't been pretty, but my son's desire for practice and games have diminished. He relishes when he gets the opportunity to practice with the other coaches, but as a team they are on a downward spiral.

As each school year moves through the natural peaks and valleys, there are days when children do great things and days that make us wonder. The year itself is short but the weeks within it can be very long. It is during these times that we need to make conscious choices about which direction are we pushing our classroom climate spiral. Children listen to our reactions, our comments, and look at our non-verbal gestures. It's November and the classroom honeymoons are over. It's at this time when we know each of our children, can we give the comment or direction that while not necessarily praising still carries the tone of positivity? Can we give the subtle pushes, even when we are tired or exasperated, that provide direction and choice? It is in these moments that our classroom climate is created. It is in these moments that our relationships are maintained. These are the times which truly make a difference our students lives. My hope is that each of us brings a positivity that helps our children move forward on a daily basis. We set them up for success or failure. How will you choose today?