Curriculum: A Deliverable or A Set of Challenges?

Summer is briskly passing by. July is coming to an end. Soon administrators and teachers will be returning from their various adventures to begin the new school year. As we prepare for the August rituals of administrative leadership training, new teachers' week, and institute days, we look at the time available and ponder what learning opportunities can fit within. 

One would think in year four, their would be a formula for this. Here is what we do for this group and this is what we do for that group. Call this person to work with this team and that person to work with that team. However, each year our leaders are different. They may be the same individuals, but as we continue the journey, they change, they grow, their needs and their desires change. As such, providing the same learning opportunities in year one as year four would be insufficient. Our new teachers are different each year. Yes, they teach different subjects, but also hopefully we are hiring them with different skills and attributes to help our district move forward. Finally, our teaching staff changes. Each year our baseline understanding of the roles, obligations, and goals of the organization is hopefully more advanced than the year prior. Simply pulling out the same formulaic opening learning experience would be insufficient to meet the needs of our team.

If it's true that the adults in our organization change and advance both individually and collectively within the organization, is it possible that the students do also? Could it be that the 8th grade class of 2016 has significantly different needs than the 8th grade class of 2012 had or the 8th grade class of 2020 will have? Our 8th grade class of 2016 will be the first to have spent the last 3 years with a 1:1 device. Their resource utilization and problem solving capacity is very different than prior generations. How we support them, challenge them, and engage them is hopefully more personalized and more challenging than that of prior years. Hopefully as the learn with us, they also will help us grow.

Once we understand that students and adults are different each year, it requires us to question the very essence of our curriculum. Is our curriculum, whether it is staff professional development or student learning experiences, something we deliver to the learner or challenges that we engage the learner with to help them move forward? Curriculum that is delivered, a geometry course, local history topic, CRISS training, implies that all individuals will benefit from learning the same set of skills and concepts. Curriculum that is challenges such as investigate this phenomena, design a solution to this problem, research this concept, develop a lesson to meet the needs of these students, implies that our teams need tools but are independent and collaborative problem solvers. Curriculum that is delivered can be consistently applied and measured. Curriculum that is challenges promotes growth and cultivates capacity. In a delivered curriculum, the learner may or may not leave with new skills and capacities. In a challenge curriculum the learner builds upon skills they have, learning new capacities based on the challenges before them.

Is it time we rethink what we mean by curriculum? As we approach this year, whether we are working with adults or children, should our baseline skills and competencies be at the front of mind? Or should we be looking to develop more, should we be looking to help each member of our organization reach to infinity and beyond?

Not Always Does the Teacher Want To Train the Student

Value Added and Adding Value

 I remember sitting with them for the first time. Three of them, wearing white tops and jeans. The silver haired one looked across at me and said, "you know, what we do is important around here. Many of our kids, they wouldn't have much of anything to eat if we didn't make it. Their parents are working hard, just trying to make it. What we do, setting up breakfast and lunch, it's important. It might be the best they get all day." They were the lunch ladies. All three of them. And you know what, they were right. For many of our kids, those were the only meals they'd see that day. I'd walk in during the morning and the ladies would know each child by name. They knew what the child liked and what the child didn't. "Tommy, I know you don't like the carrots, but I have to put them on the side. Federal meal requirements." They found fun and humor with the kids. At times the kids were obnoxious or arrogant. However, most of the time they smiled. Walking forward a little brighter than they entered.

These three ladies were on the front lines. They'd all had jobs that made higher wages before this. This was a second, third, or fourth career. This was the career they weren't going to leave because it was here, serving Sloppy Joes and French Toast that they saw their legacy. Helping kids start their day on the right foot. Making them smile and helping them know someone saw them and cared.

I walked into a kindergarten room a couple of months ago and the teacher came over. She approached me about a student who had eight letters down. It was May and he had eight down. She was vigilant as she focused on what were we going to do to support the child. I looked over and asked her how many when he had entered the class. "Zero. But it's only eight now." This clearly is a child we need to support and are going to support. Lost in the battle for the future was the journey so far. The child had started at nothing and had begun the journey. How rare is it that a child truly starts at nothing? Or more worriesome how frequent is it a child truly starts with nothing? We need to celebrate the gains while being optimistic about the journey ahead. She had chipped away and begun to make the connection between abstract script and sounds. Sometimes the big hits we make are the little ones. Our work is not done, but it had begun well. It was our job to ensure the baton passed safely and the next teacher continued to accelerate the learning curve for this child.

I sat with a friend the other day. He, like many of my friends, lives in the corporate world. Dependent on bottom lines, gross margins, and corporate bonuses. He looked at his beverage and across the table and said, "you know all I really want to do is make a difference. I want to know my work has meaning and creates something valuable." I've seen him up late, running around, trying to make the next conference call. In the whole rigamarole of life, all he wants to do is create value.

Education is a changing place. During the past few years "value added" has meant a statistical measurement aggregating how children changed and performed on "valid and reliable" achievement tests. It is meant to give an indicator of how a child has grown during school and create accountability for the school and the staff to parents and the community. However, like pitcher win-loss records, the "value added" statistics are dependent on many more things than the pitcher or teacher can control. Jose Quintana is a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox this year. His record is 4 wins and 9 losses. Not very good. During his nine losses, the White Sox have scored the following runs: 1-0-1-1-1-0-0-1-1. While Quintana has not been perfect, his team has left him 3 times with no chance to win and 6 times required him to be perfect in order to win. Too often, our schools and classroom teachers are left in situations when they need to be perfect or close to perfect under the No Child Left Behind Act in order to meet achievement and growth targets.

It's time to rethink "value added." Test scores, like wins or RBIs, are some indicators but they are dependent indicators. Details that rely on a confluence of events and activities. As we look at learning and education, we need to dig deeper and cultivate metrics that provide insight towards the whole picture. Each day, there are people making a difference. What is measurable, is not always valuable and what is valuable is not always measurable. Lets add value.

Sometimes the big hits we make are the little ones

Curmudgeon Tales

It must be something about the Fourth of July. There's fireworks, music, festivals, and somehow some authors reach back to the mythical land of yore to complain about life nowadays. Perhaps the sound bangs and light show woke someone up. Perhaps it was a long simmering pot ready to boil over inside of them. However, when one reads their perspectives, one can't help but feel like someone is simply complaining about society. On July 6th, the New York Times started it with Jane Brody's personal health piece, Screen Addiction is Taking A Toll on Children. Sportscaster and former Sun-Times columnist Terry Boers followed it up with Finally, the Grateful Dead are Gone. Now, Boers makes a living making fun of people for silly decisions. I don't follow Brody enough to know her perspective, but both pieces come across as if the authors were members of the focus group described in The American President's final speech:

     "That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she's to blame for their lot in life."

 As Boers' pillages those who attend the Grateful Dead concert, he cherry picks examples of disconnected hallucinogenic fans to make vast generalizations. People like Allen, who wanted to "touch the hand of Jerry Garcia" and Jeff, who was trying to "cleanse his soul." Now I'll admit, I am not the music aficionado in the family. I am as likely to be listening to A-ha as Taylor Swift and not know the difference. I leave it to my bride and 8-year-old son to guide the music. However, I did look at the packed concert pictures from the weekend's Grateful Dead concerts. Attending I saw pictures doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, and rabbis. Adults, sometimes with their kids, posing with their red solo cups having a good time. For some of the pictures, I felt like I could overlay a picture of the same individuals 20 years earlier attending the same concert. And the same curmudgeon's would be out saying these kids today are going to amount to nothing. They have no fiber and no values. Today those kids are building our world and leading our souls. Terry Boers may not like the stink of the Grateful Dead concert, but it's no more a problem than Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Rush, or Taylor Swift.

Jane Brody comes across the exact same way hitting on the morally objectionable devices that are plaguing America's youth. At least Boers' had direct quotes from the Chicago Tribune. Brody cites an unnamed study by "Chinese doctors" who are diagnosing children with this disorder and sending children off for treatment. She brings out the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on technology, which truly is analyzing any form of digital media consumption. And then she cites studies about number of texts authored by kids per day and how kids lose sleep because they are texting all night. I almost cried as I could hear her shouting "those darn kids today are in serious trouble because of these devices." John Herrman in his piece "Why Grandma's Sad" on the Awl does a much better job than I could in an analyzing Brody's position. If you want to read a great counter to it, his piece is fantastic. The reality is, Brody is right in the fact that the mobile internet is changing the fabric of our world. However, it's not just kids and it's not just for the worst. There are issues and we will have to deal with them.

Screen addiction is the wrong word. Just because one drinks alcohol one is not necessarily an alcoholic. One can have an occasional drink and certainly not be the local drunkard. Moreover, many of us know people who can't live without their morning coffee or soft drink. I am pretty sure one of my fifth grade teachers always had a stash of Diet Coke somewhere when I was a principal. Screens are a medium through which we access a world of information and a world of others we wish to connect with. They connect us to our personally selected interests. Whether that is a local seven-year-old playing Minecraft alone or with friends, a pre-teen Instagraming duck-faced selfies to a group of friends, 40-somethings hash tagging pictures of themselves on Facebook as they are running around the Grateful Dead concert, or seventy year-olds posting inspirational quotes and political action articles on Facebook. Screens are a portal. They themselves are not the addiction, we, both children and adults crave the high interest and high engagement. We crave the communication, the connection, the stimulus. We crave the idea that we are unique but also part of something more. We crave to hear and to be heard. Screens aren't addicting, the substance behind them is powerful.

Brody complains about kids texting all night. Kids not talking to the people in the present. This is not new. I remember sitting with my grandmother. I remember her complaining about everything. And she did, just ask my Aunt and my parents. I couldn't wait to get out of there. I also remember my son hanging with a 90-something Grandma Bernice. She didn't complain about anything all she did was hang with him and talk to him about what he was doing. She laughed with him and sometimes at us. You know what, Cameron loved hanging with Grandma Bernice. At 96, Grandma Bernice was an active iPad user. Grandma Marjie, Grandad Don, Grandma Nancy, and Grandpa Barry are as likely to be on their devices as 12 year-old Cameron and 8 year-old Logan. If you are worried about the device time, be a parent. If you need some suggestions, here are 4 easy steps. Just remember, those darn screens aren't the problem. It's a problem only if we choose to not be the parent and let it become a problem.

Kids are Always the Problem