Educators have been talking for many years about the need to increase student engagement. We all remember sitting in those classes where the lecturer droned on about a topic. The motion picture industry has numerous scenes of the typical classroom teacher talking on and on about some mind boggling useless topic with students holding their bodies awake through the terror of the monotonous lecture. As we have taken this stereotype to mean that we need to move from teaching students as if they were sponges absorbing content to having them actually perform tasks within the classroom.
Students actively doing tasks within the classroom may only be slightly better than half-listening to the parable of the day. Essentially, not all activities are created equal. Early in my career, I remember walking into primary grade classrooms before school each morning to see the teacher circulating around the room distributing the morning work. Piled upon each desk was a set of worksheets. Many easy coloring of letters, sight words, or early mathematical concepts. The expectation was that the children would walk into the classroom and begin their morning work. As the bell rang, the children would walk through the room, give a hug to their teacher, sit at their desks and complete their pile of papers. Sure the children were doing things, but for some of the students, all they could complete was the coloring of the letter, the rest of the worksheets sat untouched. For others, they were done in 6 minutes because the few actual problems within the tasks were so below their level that the answers were rote. And yet for some students, they stared at the pile. The simple set of tasks shut them down before they even considered whether the concepts were above or below their level. Essentially, the majority of students were compliant with completing the daily tasks.
What did the students' gain? What long term learning happened during this time? Are there other tasks that could have been done during these 30 minutes each day, or 90 school hours each year that would have had greater long term benefit? Certainly the children learned to work quietly and independently. The teacher had time to complete the administrative tasks of the day. However, is there more to learning.
In a world where knowledge is not always at our finger tips, compliant knowledge-based learning experiences are less and less meaningful. Engagement in modern education needs to mean more than students simply doing a task independently or with partners. Engagement needs to incorporate manipulation of ideas or concepts. Students need to add value to the knowledge, creating deeper meaning or connections than those that can simply be gleaned from a textbook or Google. Engagement isn't always quiet, although it can be. Engagement isn't always consistently productive. It ebbs and flows. Engagement isn't always collaborative nor always solitary. It moves in and out.
In an engaged learning experience, students have to draw conclusions based on their knowledge gains. Frequently making unique products as a result. In Sunday School this morning, I will be encouraging students to explore Jewish Immigration during the Early Colonial period. Students will be asked to research who the first Jews were to come to the Americas. They can Google that. As they discover that the Jews arrived and colonized in Recefe, Brazil, they will be asked to figure out why they went there and what may have caused them to leave. They move from knowledge to analysis. Drawing conclusions based on Internet-available information. Students will then explore online the first three Jewish Congregations in the United States, comparing the origins of the Congregations to the architectural styles of their buildings. Finally, students will explore a letter from George Washington to one of the Jewish Congregations and explain why the letter is important. An hour later, these 10 year olds will have some tangible artifacts and dialogues about the Jewish Colonial Immigrant experience.
Could we lecture them? Of course, but they would remember nothing except we talked about George Washington. Could we give them worksheets? Absolutely, but they would walk out drawing pretty pictures of Jewish Temples. Giving students big questions and saying you go find the information. Following that with questions in which they need to think and draw conclusions engages children to manipulate the information, connect it to their background knowledge, and generate their personal perspectives. This is engagement. This is when learning becomes personal and meaningful. This is possible in many of our lessons. If this can be done with Early Colonial Jewish Immigration with 25 ten-year old children who would have 900 better things to be doing with their Sunday mornings than be at Sunday School, it certainly can be done when we explore the characters and settings of a story in our classroom or identify volumes of different shapes in our math classes. Engagement is possible if we allow it. Engagement is powerful if we go beyond compliance and make it personally meaningful.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Changing the Variables in Learning
We all remember walking into the class and being handed the syllabus. The preprogrammed guide for each course of this is what was being taught when. Often it was two or three pages, identifying the topic of the week or session, the reading, important points of what was being covered, and what assignments or projects being completed. Some were printed on freshly minted paper, some were not. I remember taking a quantitative statistics class during graduate school back in 1997. The syllabus was distributed and the ink was in this odd purple color. The paper was a blanched white held together by a rusted paper clip. In this class apparently once upon a year the professor had mimeographed his syllabus, put them together, and his course had quite frankly not changed since. His advocacy, introductory statistics hadn't changed, why waste the time and resources to change the syllabus.
The professor wasn't wrong, the course hadn't changed. The challenge was that the learners had changed and the expectations of the learners needed to change. For most of us growing up, the variables in learning where when did the teacher teach the concept, when was the test, and how much of the knowledge did I have at the end of the test. Close the book, pack it away, unseal it for the final, and call it a day. Think about it. How many of us can conjugate the verb "ser" in Spanish now? Most of us "learned it" but did we retain it. How about doing stoichiometric calculations? We spent a month in Chemistry working on it, but do you remember stoichiometry now. The list goes on and on of things that we were taught but never learned.
The paradigm and expectations in education are changing. While I may not agree with the methods for changing them from a National perspective, the values that they are going for make sense. The variable of what is taught no longer matters but rather what is learned. Curriculum is no longer about coverage and exposure but engagement and retention of concepts. The second variable in learning is growth. Simply put, you can't just move the low students up to grade level and warehouse the high students. Each student needs to progress and show gains. Each child needs to move forward. With these two simple changes, assessed by "multiple measures" reported on the school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations, the paradigm shifts dramatically.
See going into that statistics class, I knew my "Measures of Central Tendency," and you probably did too: "Mean, Median, and Mode." Quite frankly, we teach that to some students as early as third and fourth grade. I knew "Standard Deviation," I was a former chemistry major. I could do a "T-Test." In the new world of growth expectations, it wouldn't be ok for me simply to partner up with other kids to teach them what the professor was covering or to sit half-asleep in the back. We would have expected pre-assessment, grouping of students based on the data, and learning experiences to move on. For my group, we may have focused on "Chi squares and ANOVAs" while others were working on fundamentals of samples and populations.
The funny thing is, the students haven't changed, we have always come to school with different strengths and growth areas. We have different background knowledges and different capacities to move forward. What has changed are the variables. No longer is the constant when the teacher is teaching it and how long the teacher teaches it and the variable measured how much the student learned but rather in reverse with the variables being measured when is this student or students' ready for it, how much do they need and the constant being the student demonstrates consistent understanding of it.
Focusing on learning instead of teaching, growth instead of amount learned during a given time will truly make our system better. As I said I may not agree with the mechanisms of change: school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations. However the concepts of not warehousing our high students and ensuring learning matter. A simple example comes to mind. Adding and subtracting fractions, a "fourth grade skill." If a student can do this 70, 80, 90% of the time is that enough consistency. Well, not in my Chemistry class, as they are mixing acids and bases. Not in the art class as they are mixing paints. Not in the kitchen putting together dinner. Not in musical composition when they are making measures. Imagine 2 errors every 10 measures. No, the reality is we need the student to learn it, demonstrate it, and retain it. Otherwise the impact across other subjects and life experiences is dramatic. The variables are changing and we need to change with them. It no longer matters what I have taught and when did I teach it but rather how well our students have learned it.
The professor wasn't wrong, the course hadn't changed. The challenge was that the learners had changed and the expectations of the learners needed to change. For most of us growing up, the variables in learning where when did the teacher teach the concept, when was the test, and how much of the knowledge did I have at the end of the test. Close the book, pack it away, unseal it for the final, and call it a day. Think about it. How many of us can conjugate the verb "ser" in Spanish now? Most of us "learned it" but did we retain it. How about doing stoichiometric calculations? We spent a month in Chemistry working on it, but do you remember stoichiometry now. The list goes on and on of things that we were taught but never learned.
The paradigm and expectations in education are changing. While I may not agree with the methods for changing them from a National perspective, the values that they are going for make sense. The variable of what is taught no longer matters but rather what is learned. Curriculum is no longer about coverage and exposure but engagement and retention of concepts. The second variable in learning is growth. Simply put, you can't just move the low students up to grade level and warehouse the high students. Each student needs to progress and show gains. Each child needs to move forward. With these two simple changes, assessed by "multiple measures" reported on the school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations, the paradigm shifts dramatically.
See going into that statistics class, I knew my "Measures of Central Tendency," and you probably did too: "Mean, Median, and Mode." Quite frankly, we teach that to some students as early as third and fourth grade. I knew "Standard Deviation," I was a former chemistry major. I could do a "T-Test." In the new world of growth expectations, it wouldn't be ok for me simply to partner up with other kids to teach them what the professor was covering or to sit half-asleep in the back. We would have expected pre-assessment, grouping of students based on the data, and learning experiences to move on. For my group, we may have focused on "Chi squares and ANOVAs" while others were working on fundamentals of samples and populations.
The funny thing is, the students haven't changed, we have always come to school with different strengths and growth areas. We have different background knowledges and different capacities to move forward. What has changed are the variables. No longer is the constant when the teacher is teaching it and how long the teacher teaches it and the variable measured how much the student learned but rather in reverse with the variables being measured when is this student or students' ready for it, how much do they need and the constant being the student demonstrates consistent understanding of it.
Focusing on learning instead of teaching, growth instead of amount learned during a given time will truly make our system better. As I said I may not agree with the mechanisms of change: school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations. However the concepts of not warehousing our high students and ensuring learning matter. A simple example comes to mind. Adding and subtracting fractions, a "fourth grade skill." If a student can do this 70, 80, 90% of the time is that enough consistency. Well, not in my Chemistry class, as they are mixing acids and bases. Not in the art class as they are mixing paints. Not in the kitchen putting together dinner. Not in musical composition when they are making measures. Imagine 2 errors every 10 measures. No, the reality is we need the student to learn it, demonstrate it, and retain it. Otherwise the impact across other subjects and life experiences is dramatic. The variables are changing and we need to change with them. It no longer matters what I have taught and when did I teach it but rather how well our students have learned it.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Change is Hard
On Wednesday morning I talked to my dad, or more specifically I communicated with him over FaceTime audio as I drove to work. We caught up on the usual things, the Cubs (good), the Bears (bad), and what was going on with the kids. We also talked about my work and us moving from grades to standards in some subjects. As always, dad was enlightening. He reminded me of grading practices from "ancient" past, getting a "D" on a college Russian course test because he hadn't bothered to answer the extra credit question. His colleagues who had earned an "F" because they got it wrong. In this case, the "curve" had saved him. He also reminded me that once, before he was a physician, he was a teacher and his masters' thesis 47 years ago was on mastery learning. How interesting how life evolves, changes, and ideas take time to slowly drip into the system.
Change is hard. There is no question about it. As society over the past 35 years we have begun to ask for more from our teachers and our students. What my dad learned in college physics at University of Chicago, I learned in high school physics at Downers Grove South High School, and now my students learn in middle school science at Herrick and O'Neill. What is being asked from students is different. I had to recite knowledge and skills back. What I could store in my head was what mattered. For our students, all of those skills that I learned can be accomplished by Google. Whether it is showing the math problem, with all of the work, or finding our what the state bird of Georgia is. Google is the entirety of my education and much much more. Students today need to develop skills to apply their ability to find knowledge to create and innovate new solutions to new problems. Teachers also have to change. The goal is no longer how we deliver knowledge, but rather what have children learned.
Change is hard. There is no question about it. As society over the past 35 years we have begun to ask for more from our teachers and our students. What my dad learned in college physics at University of Chicago, I learned in high school physics at Downers Grove South High School, and now my students learn in middle school science at Herrick and O'Neill. What is being asked from students is different. I had to recite knowledge and skills back. What I could store in my head was what mattered. For our students, all of those skills that I learned can be accomplished by Google. Whether it is showing the math problem, with all of the work, or finding our what the state bird of Georgia is. Google is the entirety of my education and much much more. Students today need to develop skills to apply their ability to find knowledge to create and innovate new solutions to new problems. Teachers also have to change. The goal is no longer how we deliver knowledge, but rather what have children learned.
Change is hard. Illinois State Superintendent Tony Smith has been on the job only a few months, but has repeatedly presented the need to move our system from the measurement of seat time as seen by the Carnegie Unit, to a competency-based system that measures what skills and knowledge students have developed. The reality is that the amount of seat time hasn't changed much in the 35 years from when I sat in the desks at Hillcrest School to now as I walk the halls as an educational leader. However, what is expected of the students, the teachers, and the principal has changed dramatically.
Moving away from silos of education, Math, Reading, Science, and Social Studies to an integrated model is hard. It takes time and energy. However connected and integrated learning experiences make a difference to the learner and are more applicable to real life. Moving away from the Bell Curve was hard to the 90, 80, 70 scale was hard, but created a criteria of reference where children were given a chance to succeed rather than simply be ranked. Providing students with different learning experiences because of what they are ready to learn rather than their chronographic age is hard, but something not only can we do but we need to do.
Reporting out that children are having different learning experiences is hard. It admits that all children are different and that we need to push each of them individually to grow. The reality is we have the tools and obligation to do so. I have the challenge and honor to participate in the move to standards-based grades as both a parent and an educational leader this year. It's different. Our teachers, both those of my children's and those of my student's will try different things. Some will work. Some will not. But in the end, my children and my students will each have a chance to learn and grow more. This week I have the opportunity to read two blogs by my son's teachers: Mr. Humphrey's and Mrs. Spies, each talking about how they are pushing children to learn and discover more. Each trying to find ways to make learning meaningful. The loss of grades, like the loss of the curve, is a moment of evolution, a chance to gather more insight into what our children know and what they need to learn next.
Change is hard. I am often known for citing Yoda for so many things. Yet the reality is I must accept change too. Yoda is wrong, we must keep trying until we do it and do it well.
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