Who Own's It?

  The end of the quarter is here. One could here the rush to complete assignments. The groveling for extra credit. The arguing for this point or that point. The accusations of "I turned it in," "You forgot to grade it," and occasionally, "Look, here it is with a marking why don't you have it in your grade book?" It happens all across the country and yet we do nothing to stop it. We own this as teachers, principals, district leaders, parents, and students. And yet, we never ask the critical questions: Did the child learn it? Is learning time bound?
  What is it that we want from learning? Is it to momentarily learn a skill? Is it the ability to cultivate a solution to a problem? Is it to be able to identify a piece of information? Is it the ability to understand information and to develop a viewpoint? When we figure out what we want the child to learn then we start to realize that there are important truths that are neither assignment bound nor time bound. These are things that the child must have when they walk away from the class. Skills and concepts for life. One example of this I have seen comes from my child's 6th grade Social Studies class. In one assignment he needed to be able to argue the point of view of Frederick Douglass. He needed to understand the counter-arguments and have answers for them. This was one of the few activities I have seen in which he needed to synthesize a life skill. It was something that couldn't simply be answered by Wolfram-Alpha, Google Search, Wikipedia, or Photomath.
   Once we realize that all of the content knowledge is constantly at one's fingertips, it becomes clear that our multitude of content-based assignments are becoming worthless. We need to leave the time when we generated multiple activities for multiple grades. The time where points matter is gone. We are entering a period where constructed learning is essential for our children and their future. Chris Bronke, English Department Chair at Downers Grove North High School, shared with our team that during the first two months of school he had 2 grades so far. Children were working on complex tasks and repeatedly adapting and revising their assignments. The process involved deep development, reflection, and frequent revision. His role was to ensure the children grew and maximized their learning. He owns that each child MUST learn the critical concepts in his class. He owns that learning is essential. And with the students together they own cultivating learning experiences that are as meaningful to the student as the learning process is to the teacher.
   Jon Heldmann, Math Department Chair at Downers Grove North High School, also met with our team. He worked on these concepts, Habits of Mind, ways to approach math in order to understand the problem before us and develop a plan and methodology to solve it. In this journey he spoke of a single problem taking multiple days to solve. He wasn't talking about 1-31 the odds happening each night, but the challenge of looking at a situation and figuring out what tool to do. Computers have been able to solve most every math problem I have ever seen in my life. We have moved past the era where my father stacked Fortran cards to program his calculations. We have moved past the time when I sat in the back of the room and pulled out excel on my laptop to calculate the answer. We live in a society within which my 11 year-old knows he can type the equation into Wolfram-Alpha and the answer will appear. He hasn't mention yet the Photomath app within which he could simply take a picture and get the answer. Knowing him, I give it a week or two before that happens. These tools are great but none of them will help a child develop the Habits of Mind. When we stop seeing math as a chain of skills and start seeing it as a thinking process then we will be preparing learners for their future. The tools to solve the chain of skills have been built and are available for less than $2.99 for anyone interested.
   We have talked for as long as I can remember about our curriculum being a mile-wide and an inch-deep. By simply teaching skills and content knowledge it has been. The trouble is that all of those things are now available, frequently for free, to anyone who is interested. Learning needs to be about more. Learning needs to be children applying essential processes that can't be recreated by the computer. It needs to be less about points and grades and more about what a child synthesize. We need to present challenges for children to solve and remove the artificial time boundaries to solving them. The end of the quarter shouldn't mean anything. It should be a demarkation of this is what the child has done so far, these are things they are working on, and these are things that we will work on next. In this world extra credit and grade groveling aren't necessary because it is clear that one is providing a status report on the journey. The learning itself is essential and their is no option not to accomplish it. If one needs to identify a child is Failing a concept, than my recommendation is that we give the Incomplete. For if they fail, we all have failed to help the child learn. If it is Incomplete, we all own the importance of completing the task.

Prime Numbers