The IEP (Individualized Eating Plan)

My dad likes to cook. He glances through recipe books from all sorts of cultures, ethnicities, and regions of the world. He is a dabbler, rarely following the recipe, but adding a little of this and a little of that. Each creation doesn't taste exactly like it did the last time around. He's a very good cook. He understands the chemistry and processes behind creating culinary dishes and wields this knowledge frequently in the kitchen.

The problem was he had three boys. The youngest, well to be honest, I am not sure what he ate. I think it was whatever we put in front of him, since he was 8 years younger, during the early years he probably had very little choice and when my brother and I left the house, he had nearly a decade of being the sole decision influencer. The middle child who was definitely his father's culinary son. He, anguished over the meal, and by 8 or 9, he was in charge of the major food prep in the house. He was an early developing gourmet cook long before culinary expertise was a value. He remains the "gifted and talented" chef. Finally, there was me. I was in charge of salad.

In our house, there really wasn't time to cook every night. With swim practices, religious school, Hebrew School, and other activities, someone was always coming and going. We would make a couple of stock meals for the week, a soup or a large thing of spaghetti sauce, that we would have two or three times in the week, and scatter in some other meals when we could make them. If you didn't like what was being cooked, you had a couple of choices hit the stock meal or scrounge the kitchen for another dinner.

A generation later, our house doesn't feel much different now. I am a little more experimental of a chef than 10 year-old me, my wife is an exquisite experimental baker. We have one child who is willing to try to eat most anything and one child who eats about 4 foods at any particular time of the year. We make certain staple foods, grilled items during the spring and summary with food prepped the night before. Chili during the Fall. Soups on and off during the winter. And some of us eat certain meals. Cameron's up for chili most any time, Logan has yet to ever try it. As such, each meal feels like and individualized eating plan. Who eats this, what's the alternative, can we give him a couple of yogurts and still call it dinner?

When preparing lessons for guided math or guided reading, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking I have 25 individualized learning plans, this will never work. However, just like cooking at our house, each plan is often a small variant from the staple dinner. Sometimes each group has different levels of problems, but the staple idea is linear expressions. Sometimes each group gets the same teacher-led session like adding negative numbers yet the supporting centers vary based on concepts they need to practice. The trick is to get certain learning experiences that our staples, the ones which we consistently build off of, and add the variety based on the needs of the group.

My bride is an amazing baker. Her "banana bread" is something that people will give up season tickets for. It's a creation of bananas, chocolate, toffee, and other sensations that excite a household. It comes from scratch and when it is created all of the house becomes a happier place. She doesn't cook it every time, but just enough that the world is a better place. She also has a book, semi-homemade baking. In this set of recipes, desserts are built of a cake-box base. She adds a little of this or a little of that to take a Betty Crocker dessert in a box and turn it into something special. At times she also gets the breakable cookie dough from the aisle in the store. Every once in a while when the kids have friends over she turns on the oven, throws them in, and ten minutes later fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. And, every once in a while the kids eat the cookie dough before its been cooked.

Planning for instruction is like cooking at our house or my wife's baking. Sometimes we have time to create the most magnificent dishes, often we build off of a base by adding a little of this or a little of that, and every once in a while we just take a serving of something straight from the store and say "here you go." It's the combination of each of these techniques that allows us to make an Individualized Education (Eating) Plan for all of our students (children).

Popcorn Shrimp

Teach Like Yoda

   It was July 21st, 1999. My wife and I stood in the Eastern Michigan University Bookstore. I was nervously wasting time waiting to defend my dissertation later that afternoon and I purchased a poster that still sits behind my desk. This poster has guided me as much or more as the work I did on the dissertation. It is a poster of the Wisdom of Yoda. Now, I enjoyed the original Star Wars trilogy as a kid. I truly have a hard time watching any of the prequels and for some odd reason I am excited about the new movie coming in December. In real life, however I am not a fanboy. I do watch it once a year or every other year with my boys, but I watch a lot of movies annually with my kids. Often it's better than what's out in the theater or on television. I can quote Star Wars, but I can also quote Star Trek IV, Forest Gump, Field of Dreams, Armageddon, and many other films I haven't seen in a decade. The Wisdom of Yoda has guided me far more than any class, any book, or any professor.
   In the original movies, Yoda rarely did anything. He was funny. He was odd. He gimped around slowly. He didn't actually do anything because he was a Muppet. Instead, he made Luke do almost everything. Yoda setup problems for Luke to solve. He was a companion, supporter, and cheerleader as Luke explored the Force. He reminds us that there are times we need to commit, to "do or do not, there is no try." He creates opportunities for Luke to learn and provides minimal guidance as he explores. When  Luke senses something in the cave, he asks Yoda what is in there and Yoda vaguely reveals "only what you bring with you." It is only when the student quits, that Yoda disappointedly demonstrates that the work is possible.
   Teaching like Yoda is about facilitating learning. So often in our world, teaching means "I do. We do. You do." We perseverate on modeling as opposed to discovery. This is great if we are teaching safety features on a device. It's far less effective for inspiring problem solving, new solutions, and innovative results. In the modeling based education world, we get reproducible results. In Yoda's innovative world we get new solutions because the learner must create them. If we want to teach like Yoda, we need to realize that we already graduated from school. We have already learned it. This is their time. We must pass the mantle of learning to the younger generation and let them figure out the problem.
   Last night, I sat at dinner next to a 13 year-old student. The child is bright, articulate, and a hard worker. The child hates math. For her math experience is often one of simply repeating problems that have been modeled on the board. She can follow the rules and do the algorithms, but math has no applicable meaning in her world. For eight years it has been drilled into her. Teachers have stood in front of her, "I do. We do. You do." She is simply at "who cares?" I wish for her to have a teacher like Jon Heldmann at Downers North or Paul Stevenson at Downers South. A teacher who will occasionally put a single problem up on the board for a day or two and ask the students to figure it out. A teacher that realizes it's not simply the number of problems that we can reproduce but how we approach a situation, use our resources, access our colleagues, discover new routes, and find the solutions. A teacher who answers our questions not with "the answer" but with guidance to find the answer ourselves. This is what it means to teach like Yoda. It is to facilitate practice and learning so that when the time comes, the student is able to take this mantle and run with it. That is the goal, for them to become Jedi, because we already have had our time.

Feel the Force

January, a Natural Opportunity for Renewal and Risks

Have you ever wondered, "I wish I had tried that"? This might have been interesting, but I wish I had been able to start it at the beginning of the year with that group of kids, they would have done really well with it. So often in education we are hesitant to try new things at the beginning of the school year because we are afraid that this cohort of students may not have the skills, capacities, or personalities of our previously successful groups. Moreover, we are hesitant to change things during the middle of the year because we are hesitant to disrupt the routine and flow of the class. As such, frequently we end up in a natural cycle of making minimal adjustments rather than leaps forward.

Interestingly enough, although we don't often recognize it, schools are blessed with two beginnings each year. In August, we come back to school, we begin the cycle with a new group of kids and do the dance of getting to know each other again. We learn, we grow, we make mistakes, we rub each other the wrong way at times, and we grow closer together. In January, we have a second beginning. The students return from a two-week break. The calendar year has changed and everyone is expecting some "New Year resolutions" to be changes in our practice. Unlike in September, during this second beginning, we know the children, their strengths, their needs, their personalities, and their quirks. We have had time to reflect on our gains. And now, we have the natural opportunity to take a risk and leap forward. All of the items that are barriers to risk in September are gone now in January.

Yes, change will cause ripples. There will be children confused as the routine and structure change slightly with these new risks. However, there is trust now between teacher and student. There is understanding of who we are and what we are trying to accomplish. And there is renewal, a natural time of year in which we all have reflected and work to make our next opportunities better. Take the risk, jump in, there truly is no better time than now.

Jeffster Movie Trailer