Learning Structures that Work and that Really Work

I remember classes. I was there to pass your test. I could listen, stare, interject three answers (because I couldn't sit still), and get an A on your test. I would do only enough homework to ensure that I kept the good driver's discount for my car insurance "B" average). Theoretically I was an example of a child who learned. I was a success story. I was in the top 25% of a good school, went on to college, grad school, a career. Ask me which teacher's I remember that I had. Over thirty different teachers and I can give you 6. Mrs. Lindahl, Dr. Antonoff, Mr. Mundt, Mr. Wiemerslage, Mr. Catalani, and Monsieur Totz. I can remember Ron Cey's batting average in 1983 (.275), I can remember Michael Jordan sinking 6 three-pointers in 1992 against the Portland Trailblazers, but I can't name the majority of my high school teachers that I spent over 150 hours each with.

Furthermore, lets break down who I do remember. Mrs. Lindahl was a mom of another swimmer on the swim team. I saw her for years before I saw her in class. I still remember her class vividly. It was chemistry and we did a lot of lab experiments. Dr. Antonoff was the diving coach and one of the greatest English teachers a live. He sat, he talked with you, he'd question, he'd hang out. I think I took 3 classes from him and that was not enough. Mr. Mundt, well I don't remember almost anything of his class, only that he had used bathroom English to explain the difference between articles and pronouns. I walked away one day laughing about the grammatical difference between what is written on a bathroom stall from "this sucks" and "this school sucks." Cute, humorous, stuck 20 something years later, 150+ hours and that is what I walked away with. Mr. Wiemerslage, physics teacher, I don't remember the class or anything he said, simply that I slept all of swim season in class and made sure I got an A in all the rest of it. Mr. Catalani had the sludge test. Two weeks of figuring out what's in a mystery vial. It's all your's go do it. Monsieur Totz, caught me reading the sports section in French class and made me read the sports section from a French paper in class.

Most of my classes had nearly 30 people in them. We had over 3000 students as a school. I learned. I graduated. I walked away with very little. It was a good school that I am proud to have graduated from.

This is why we are asking the wrong questions. Can we learn in a lecture? Can we learn in whole group? The answer is yes. Of course we can. Or at least a segment of our students can. Can we learn enough content to pass a test? Will they remember it 3, 5, 7, 15 years later? Try it. Conjugate the verb "ser."

What were the commonalities of the effective classes I remember? They had us doing things. It was small group conversations, discussions, contextual experiences. The teachers didn't think about the 150 students they had, but who they were going to talk with this hour. For other classes, all I have is a funny moment or a misdeed by me to remember the class. 150+ hours and here is my parting gift, me napping because I'm overtired from swim practice.

Perhaps the questions are not can they learn in whole group or will they increase from pre-test to post-test in my class. The simple answer is they will. Kids are programmed to do that. Perhaps the real questions are more difficult. Can I help them become independent learners? Can I maximize their growth? Can I help them become collaborative problem-solvers? Can I help them create situations in which they will retain information not for the moment but for a lifetime? When we ask these question, not questions of content coverage but questions of learner development, the paradigm changes. It is in these situations that we see gamification, genius-hour, problem-based learning, growth model student development step forward. It is these situations, the sludge test, the chemistry labs, the French sports section, the small group book discussions, that resonate for a lifetime. These are the instructional methods that change learners. That last a lifetime. Ask yourself, who you remember and why? You'll find it's not because you were learning in the whole group but rather you had someone personalize opportunities for you to develop.

Can we "teach" them? Yes. Will they learn for a lifetime, only if we allow them to be an active participant in the journey.

Student's Have Thoughts and Occasionally Share Them

Born On Dating or as my son would say, BANANA!

About 5 years ago, Budweiser started a campaign regarding the freshness of beer. The commercial focused on the fresher the beer the better the taste. By grouping certain bottles together, you would be more likely to get a bottle that was ready to be tasted. I would assume by the lack of companies that followed this advertising trend that people realized your beer is not a banana. There is no small window in which it is ripe than turns sour. Most often beer is bottled and ready to be consumed when we are ready to partake.

Since we moved from the one room school house to the current framework of learning, we have transitioned from helping kids learn skills & competencies they were ready for to our own version of born on dating. As Sir Ken Robinson points out in his Changing Educational Paradigms video, we use a factory model to put children through learning challenges as if they were bottles of beer or a collection of widgets. Each child being delivered certain content at certain ages, completing certain contents at certain times. Our children learn that they become just cogs in a factory wheel.

I have two children. Into them they have had the same genes, similar formative experiences, similar amounts of years of preschool, same school growing up, and similar extracurriculars. For many things they are the same. As learners, they couldn't be more opposite. Both have the ability to learn at high levels but both demonstrate readiness and learning in different ways. Providing the factory-based methodology that we often provide would most often not meet either child's needs. What if we were to change the paradigm? What would it take to create the efficiencies of the factory model yet provide for the individual nature of child's development?

Big data has come to education. We are able to ask questions that we have never been able to ask before. We can identify with relative accuracy what content skills a child knows and what learning targets they should be working on next. When we ask deeper questions about those competencies and targets we frequently discover that the assessments are accurate but our age-based learning is not. By using the factory model we often create artificial ceilings for many children and push forward some children to attempt competencies they are not ready to master.

What would happen if we truly focused on what children need to learn next. Lets we let go of traditional grades, which rank children comparatively by age and don't tell us exactly what a child knows or doesn't know. Lets also let go of traditional standards-based grade models which tell us more about what a child knows but still rely on comparative rank while not identifying what each child needs to learn next. We could develop longitudinal frameworks for learning. What are all the competencies and skills within a subject a child needs to learn? Just like a patient's chart at a doctor's office, we could mark off the status of where the child is at now and what they need to accomplish next. From here, guided grouping could meaningfully occur. Simply, we add our longitudinal data to a database that also contains our standardized assessment data and we could provide in school meaningful learning opportunities with the personnel we have.

An example of this. Lets say we are working on number sense. If I have the longitudinal classroom data and standardized data, I could create groups relatively easily for a school, providing on concept instruction for children utilizing the staff I have. I query my data base, students at Alpha School with a Winter MAP Numbers and Operation RIT between 170-190, who have not completed "Understand Place Value up to 1000." Out comes the names and I have an instructional group. That group will contain 6 year olds, 7 year olds, and 8 year olds. Or as we like to call them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. If we schedule their math at the same time, we can have 1 teacher work with all of this group on these skills rather than 6 teachers work on or ignore these skills based on the needs of the whole group. Simply creating longitudinal frames for recording student progress allows us to create and triangulate student needs and facilitate better use of student and staff talents.

The factory model of learning creates artificial limits to student development. If we want truly appropriate learning and hope to maximize growth, we need to realize that children are more like bananas than beer. They are ripe for certain things at certain times. However, unlike bananas, they don't all ripen at the same rate. Giving the right dose of learning opportunity at the right time will us to use our staff's talents well and increase our learning growth rate for students.

Banana!!!

Banana Song

Why Does This All Matter?

This past week, I was with a leader as the "aha!" moment occurred. The leader is a recovering cog in the machine. For school had been a series of structures. You know how cogs are. In schools they see schedules, semesters, grades, courses, content to cover, and students to get in class. For cogs, student engagement is following the teachers directions, completing the assignment and making sure the grade book is up to date.

But there it was, the "aha!" moment. In explaining rumination of thoughts for the upcoming year, the leader explained that the goal for everything was student ownership. Ownership, not the usual cog like answer of responsibility, but ownership. See responsibility is me completing what others want me to do and me behaving the way others want me to behave. Ownership is me being invested in what I am doing. Me wanting to be involved in the experience and the teachers including me as an important part of the experience. The experience revolves around me just as much as it revolves around the teacher, the course, the grade, or the content.

The leader went on to explain that this would really need to involve a whole lot of staff contemplation and discussion. Ongoing conversations regarding not what this class is supposed to cover but rather where students are at and what do they need to learn next. Refocusing our learning experiences in every subject around the children's progress, goals, and gains rather than activities we've used.

We all remember the first learning experience which truly mattered to us. We all know when learning became important and when school became important. Furthermore, we all have friends who never found that moment in which learning in school became something important for them. Some who exit thinking they wasted 13 years of their lives completing the tasks of others.

Student ownership generates student growth. Learning experiences such as problem-based learning, Genius Hour/20% time, self-selected reading dialogues, student-involved choices, and gamification all seek to invest the children in making learning theirs and not ours. For in schools, if we simply train, practice, drill, and test. It is all impractical and we are doomed to failure. Only when we make connections both academic and social, apply in real life, and find ways to make it part of us, can we make learning matter.

Eye of the Tiger - Chuck