Different Gifts

A few years back, a good friend of mine turned me on to the show Monk. The story of an "Obsessive Compulsive Detective." In the show, Tony Shalhoub plays the character of a brilliant former police detective with a range of phobias and compulsions who assists police in solving mysteries and crimes. The character brings brilliance, insights, and challenges, making the show quirky, fun, and full of heart. There are a plethora of police solving mystery shows, the reason this resonated with fans was that the show brought humanity through the teaching of tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion.

See when we teach tolerance and inclusion, so often whether we like it or not, the perspective learned is that this is about the less-abled or those funny people over there. The conversation is about why do you notice a child or a person is different and how do you come to accept that difference as being "Ok." The creators of Monk took it from a different perspective. The show started with sympathetic supporting characters who were just trying to help Monk survive in the world. However, soon the show shifted and the supporting characters began to realize that they were being successful because of the differences and unique characteristics Monk brought to the team. The lives of the team and eventually the viewer were enriched and empowered because of Monk's different gifts.

In schools, so often we want children to learn similar things, make similar products, accomplish similar tasks. We praise them for being creative when the embellish small aspects and provide individual flavor. We teach children to become very similar while talking to them about their own personal uniqueness. It should be no surprise that eventually they cry out to be different.

When we look for these children to enter the workplace, we look for the differences. We look for what makes them unique, the creative strengths they bring to the table that makes our workplace a more effective unit. We look to find the blend of enough similarities that coworkers and clients can accept the individual and enough differences to help the team innovate, create, and move the team forward. If we start with this perspective of teaching that we are better because we work with people who see the world very differently and can create different things that help us all grow, then perhaps it will be easier to mold our children into these successful future employees and neighbors.

Just like in Monk, we need people who see the world from a different slant. Those that take in information differently, think differently, and make things we could never dream of. In a country that cries out for similarity, it is time to encourage difference. Difference in the products we expect, difference in the way children explore learning, and difference in the way we encourage them to find their path. When our children are first in the sandbox, they don't see shades of skin, they don't see how fast or slow a child talks. They see the cool sand thingy that child is playing with. Inclusion and tolerance are not conversations about accepting others but rather acts of engaging others who uniquely make our lives more exciting, more interesting and more fulfilled. It's time we recognize that each child has different gifts, some are just more obvious than others. We need to encourage these different gifts rather than drive it from them if we want to grow as a society.

Mr. Monk and the Computer

It's a Jungle Out There

"Normal"

In the days before selfies and cell phones, long before the Internet connected us all, students and parents still sought to live normal lives as normal people. When you glimpse back through time, whether it's The Glass Menagerie, Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, or Notting Hill one discovers that "Normal" is just an illusion. As parents, teachers, students, and community members, we look at the past and dream wistfully of easier times. Times which seemed to be more patterned, more relaxed, and more normal. We assume its because of "parents today," "kids today," or "technology" that our world is more of a struggle, more complex, or more challenging. We point to entitlement and arrogance of others and yet we aren't ready to accept that there are consistently challenges, crises of identity, and eventually overcoming the barrier.

No Child Left Behind put us all on the "Lake Wobegon"path. We worked as schools, families, and society to become a place where as Garrison Keillor said,"all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  Legislation that forced us forward to the illusion that all children could be above grade level. A number calculated as the mean of that same population. Through this legislation, states, districts, and schools, began a race towards ratcheting up expectations, policies that identified children as failures, promoted retention practices even though the research clearly identifies the correlation between retention and dropping out of schools, and penalized almost everyone involved. The epitome of this will be the PARCC results when released this December will indicate less than 40% of students meet or exceed state expectations. In the quest to be normal or above average, we have become failures.

The reality is, no one ever leads the normal life. We all have stuff. Things that get in our way. We discover money doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask a professional athlete. It helps, but it doesn't solve them. Fame doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask an actor or actress. It gives you resources, but also challenges. The reality is, each of us has challenges. Each of our children have their own set of gifts and own set of problems. As a principal, I would often say to my students and their families, know what is on the back of your baseball card. Be open and willing to see those statistics, the strengths and the challenges. Be honest with yourself about what each of those are and use them to your advantage. 

When we look inside The Glass Menagerie, we discover a family that looks perfect on the outside has it's own demons on the inside. In Sixteen Candles, Samantha (Meg Ryan) and Robin (Jami Gertz) stare at Caroline, the senior with the perfect body and the perfect boyfriend, only to discover as the night goes on that Caroline's world is falling apart just like everyone else. In Can't Hardly Wait, Preston (Ethan Embry) longs for Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) but discovers that her life is just as problematic as his.  No one has a normal life. No one has it perfect. No one has it easy. We are all working on something different. It's easy to look in from the outside and ask why is that person's life so easy or that person's child so successful. We've all got stuff and we are all making it one day at a time.

Just Saying No

Bad Decision

Eye of the Beholder

So much of what we see is what we anticipate seeing. As I talked with a former high school principal yesterday, he shared a story of when the school decided to allow students to use their cell phones in the hallways between classes. Initially, in anticipation of the rule change, parents and teachers expressed significant concern that the students would be texting throughout the hallways and no longer socializing with other students. Upon implementation, the adults in the building discovered that actually the students did very little texting in the hallways and when they did it was often with their parents. Why? Simply because their friends were with them at school. The students shared funny videos and memes with each other but the device wasn't the center of their universe but rather their personal social network was. Convincing parents that this was the reality, a harder job than to facilitate the implementation of the rule change.

Often what we look for is what we expect to see. At kindergarten orientation, the teachers asked my son to draw a picture of himself. Rather than trying he replied to the staff that he couldn't do it. Between not drawing the picture and not sitting for the big book story, the staff assumed that he was delayed and expressed their concern to us. When we asked if they investigated his ability to read or do mathematics, they replied that most kindergartners don't read. Their expectations, like many of ours, are impacted by what we expect to see and what we want to see. As is often the case, this limits our perceptions of what can be. Do we see who the child is and what they can be or do we see their present behavior and academic performance?

In Sunday School, our team allows fifth grade students to bring their own devices as part of the learning. Parents worry that it will be a case of the haves and the have nots. Some children operating with tools and others unable to. Some showing off their latest wares and some jealous. I'm sure their are some children jealous of others. They are also jealous of the name brand clothes others wear or the vacations that other families take. It is a situation we need to council children through, not one exacerbated by the presence of digital devices. Other families worry that all the children will do is play games or text their friends. I am sure at points our children do both. However, in addition to that, they collaborate on a great many things. The students read stories from Genesis and Exodus. They have found preferred sources of information. For some it is our text book. For others, aish.com a simpler read. And for some, the Jewish Virtual Library, a more complex reading of the text. Students also make unique products. Students have recorded their own movies and plays. Composed their own songs which they have recorded and built choose your own adventure games using Minecraft. If we create constraints by our own vision of what is their we reduce children's ability to innovate powerful products.

So often what we see is what we expect to see. When we open our eyes up to the possibility of new products, ideas, or innovations, we see a world of potential. It is difficult to acknowledge our assumptions and clear them for new opportunities. However, it is a journey worth doing. We live in an amazing world of insight and experience. It is up to us to open up our eyes and see it.

The Carpenter's Cup

Holding Out For A Hero

As Halloween passed, I was struck by the large number of Kylo Ren and Stormtrooper costumes I saw wandering the streets and up to our door. It was an interesting realization to see so many more Stormtroopers and Sith than Jedis. My mind wanders to nearly thirty years ago. Would we have seen so many villains running the streets? I went to Costco and discovered that one could purchase the lightsaber for Kylo Ren, but not a Jedi lightsaber. We could get a Sith sleeping bag but not a Jedi one. At first I wondered if people had simply purchased all the protagonist materials, but the displays are new. It makes me wonder.

Over time we have embraced the flawed protagonist. Heroes are no longer as naive as Luke Skywalker or as virtuous as Ren McCormack. They have become more complicated. Iron Man Tony Stark is known as widely for his brilliant mind and inventiveness as his penchant to make mistakes. When Captain America calls Iron Man out for "Language" he realizes he will be made fun of. We have begun to accept the flawed protagonist, but have our protagonists become so flawed that our children no longer see or prefer the side of good to the side of mayhem.

Clearly the marketing for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is focused on the Sith. The children are gravitating not to Han and Leia, but to those who I assume are the antagonists. In fact, we don't even know all the names of the protagonists. While it does build mystery and suspense, I wonder after they see the movie, will the children still be drawn to the Sith. In our act of creating depth, have we made the dark side more attractive?

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice." - Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

The world is a changing place. Sometimes what you think is right is wrong. Sometimes people you think are wrong are right. At times the lines between good and evil, bad and good, are blurred. Perhaps in time, we will find that these are not all that different. If Johnny Lawrence can be the true Karate Kid, anything is possible. However, I hope my boys grow up to be Jedi because the Sith scare me..

Holding Out For A Hero

The Flipped Life

I've heard a lot about the flipped classroom. Five years ago I had never heard the term, and now it is prevalent in many conversations with teachers and leaders. My eldest son is in his second year in a flipped math classroom. It has made sense for his learning and he certainly seems to be growing in the experience. Math made sense. Children watch the video of the instruction. Replay the skill a couple of times. Teacher does guided practice in the class. Ok, I get it. Then I started to hear more and more. His English-Language Arts teacher shared that she was flipping the grammar instruction. He brought home the video. In great Cameron style, 5:10am will snagging down some pancakes, we were introduced to independent and dependent clauses with a few references from the Simpsons. Ok, I get it. Later that morning, I was talking to his cross country coach and she shared that she was flipping her PE class. OK, I didn't get it.

She explained, that while she has been teaching for twenty-something years, she always is looking to try something new. Like all teachers, her instruction has constraints. She is limited by a 39 minute period and wants to maximize movement, dialogue, and skills during that time. In flipping her classroom, the children watch 5-7 minutes at home and then can maximize their feedback and processing time with her. In her world the interchange of dialogue, practice, and reflection was the priority. Distribution of content knowledge needed to at times come in a different form.

It was a lot to process. So many of us had gone to school to be content specialists. I was a Chemistry and Political Science major. I had a vast background in two disciplines that I loved to share. Yet, as constraints are starting to pull on how we use our time, here were several veteran leaders in multiple disciplines giving up their group knowledge distribution fix and focusing their time and energy into processing, reflection, and feedback.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that as a society we love flipped learning. I remember growing up watching Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting on PBS and Bob Villa on This Old House. I have spent more than enough time watching What Not To Wear and HGTV. Simply we want content knowledge when we want it.

Moreover, our children are learning to find and seek resources in this manner on their own from their friends. Children learn ways to shoot basketballs better, build/mod Minecraft levels, and new fashion tips from "YouTubers" everywhere. They are teaching themselves how to gather content knowledge in quick and efficient methods from short videos they find online. Our students are leading the flipped life. We can to. Whether it is learning to fix the laundry machine online or refining our movie editing skills with a professional course at lynda.com there are flipped opportunities for all of us.

That's the funny thing. When my wife was in her social work program, she would often say, "meet the client where the clients at." These teachers, whether math, language arts, or physical education have begun to realize, that the path to knowledge distribution is now more often on video. The way they find value is how they can guide these students to refine their work, products, and practices. It's a different world, one that is truly moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. A world where content knowledge is a commodity and teacher feedback and guidance is where the true value lies. It's a flipped life, a life where each of us can be a difference maker.

"We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents." -Bob Ross

Courage and Kindness

When it comes to movies, I am a simple person. There are three genres that interest me, "stupid action," "stupid comedy," and "romantic comedy." While you may find me watching Kentucky Fried Movie or Bulletproof Monk, I have missed out on quality films such as Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Night. See life is about choices: who we choose to be, who we choose to be around, what we choose to do and how we choose to go about it. These are important not just to us, but to our children and the children we teach.

As a principal at Pleasant Ridge School, we focused on the "Fish Philosophy!" as a way to help both ourselves and our children learn the social-emotional component of life. In "four easy steps" the "Fish Philosophy!" helps individuals approach their day to day life in progressive steps that allows them to seek happiness and fulfillment. It's powerful stuff, focusing on what we can control: Choose Your Attitude, Play, Make Their Day, and Be Present. Simple stuff that is not automatic. We found it to be powerful also. Focusing on what we could control. Aiming at what we could do to be better and make the day better for others. Four steps that adults could do, children could do, bus drivers could do, teachers could do, and principals could do. These daily directions, and sometimes redirections, helped us take on challenges both academic and social.

In one of our kindergarten rooms, there is one rule, "Be Brave." See, when you are five years old, for many of us the world is an intimidating place. Learning to take steps in a world in which you may not be comfortable is a challenge. When I first had the chance to work with our kindergarten team, they lamented about how play and socialization had been pushed out in favor of more and more academics. We had lost our "Kindergarten Magic." In a world in which we ask children to "Be Brave" we need opportunities for them to learn courage and kindness. This comes through play and socialization. It's not only true in kindergarten but in life. Whether children or adults, we need to learn that simple magic, learn to be brave and make daily choices that demonstrate courage and kindness.

Students, teachers, and schools have been asked to be a lot more productive. We have higher expectations and have not been given additional resources. There is not extra time, money, or people. Just us, having to rethink how we do what we do. Learning to maximize time, money, and ourselves to make a more impactful difference. It is easy for each of us, student, teacher, parent, or leader to become sullen, angry, or overwhelmed, or we can learn to "Be Brave." We can take on each day, choosing our attitude, playing, making other people's day, and being present. Working to make baby steps forward in our learning and our practice. Carrying ourselves with courage and kindness, and seeing in others those same qualities.

I choose movies where the hero wins. Impossible moments like Ferris Bueller dancing in a parade and Will Smith & Jeff Goldblum doing a victory lap saving the world from aliens.  I like television shows like the Flash, where the protagonist and his friends take on impossible challenges and seek opportunities to make a difference. And this weekend, my wife, son, and I watched the latest version of Cinderella. Learning once again, courage, kindness, and forgiveness will bring a little magic to everyone's life.

Cinderella 2015

"If the Commonwealth's High Guard
had a weakness, it was this:
Its officers were too competent,
too caring, and too brave."

Opening Scene - Andromeda Television Series

Frustration and Resilience

Warning... I am not a golfer. I have never been a golfer. I have been on a course three times in my life and then only once actually taken a couple of shots (BAD!). The closest thing to golf that I get is to watch Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore.

This weekend I had the opportunity to "caddy" for my brother-in-law as he played in a Golf-Amateur
tournament this weekend. My brother-in-law is a former high school and collegiate golfer. Aside from being a talented individual in life, he enjoys time with his brothers and friends on the course. He took this opportunity to select a course near Chicago so I could join him on his adventure. An opportunity I am grateful for as it was an incredibly relaxing experience for me. I didn't touch email, work, the blog, twitter, or anything. I sat on the shores of Lake Michigan and watched sheep graze and grown men get upset as they swung a stick around in the wind.

Perhaps I should provide my unique interpretation of the word "caddy" as it applies to me. To caddy: to drive the cart that holds clubs up and down the cart path with some strange guy from the foursome while my brother-in-law walks the course to keep his rhythm while occasionally handing him a club, a range finder, or his putter. Pretty much I got sun, enjoyed the countryside, and watched 3 out of 4 grown men have a meltdown as they did five and half hours of forestry with a poorly formed scythe. Now to be fair, there were high winds and the course had lots of rolls and hills. The experience for the participants was frustrating.

While the first hole went fine for most, it was a downhill decent from there. By hole 9 we were watching internal combustion. Some were falling in the forests. Some were muttering under their breaths. Some were hyper analyzing their game. By hole 12 it sounded like a Tourette's convention. Grown men who were well established in their perspective fields sounded like 14 year-olds upset with their homework. By hole 18 they were at peace, opportunities lost and found again. The day near-ending a performance in the books, more over than anything else. Five and half hours of frustration. A gentleman's game? A lesson in frustration and resilience.

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to facilitate our annual Ellis Island simulation with our fifth grade students. We had about 60 of our 120 students due to the Columbus Day weekend. This provided a challenge for us as the nearly 2 hour simulation relies on having long lines and getting children to experience the arbitrariness and frustration of the immigrant experience. We warn the children for two weeks before hand that this is a frustrating experience and annually children break down into tears.

This year was no different. It doesn't take screaming or shouting. It doesn't take stealing of paperwork. Simply telling children to go back in line. Telling them their paperwork is wrong. Stating that they need to make corrections. Arbitrarily moving them from place to place. The tears well, anger raises, and the flood gates open.

When analyzing this experience we share the story of a recent immigrant who is a parent in our Sunday School. She talked about even today needing to go back on a daily basis for another paper, another document, another line. She shared that it took months to complete the process. Two hours in lines and some of our children are in pieces each year. When processing our children made the connection that their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents took on challenges that they themselves may not of been able to handle in order to become citizens of this country.

The children also realized that this bureaucratic frustration is not limited to immigration. They themselves may need to do the same thing for they driver's license or to get service from Comcast. Furthermore, we need to give them challenges so they can learn to master their craft. Imagine if Thomas Edison had given up on try #6 or the Wright Brothers had thrown in the towel. Learning to master tough skills is not inherent to us, resiliency occurs as a result of experience. It is a great gift we hand a child to make them revise, re-craft, and learn to make their work better. A lesson that will help them on the golf course and in life.

Thomas Edison Quote

Happy Overcomes Challenges

Reinventing Play in the Classroom

It's October and a first grade girl looks up at her mom and says, "You know, I really like first grade, but where did the toys all go?" Kindergarten, even in the world of Common Core and rigorous learning, a place of magic and play. A space in time when children explore their world and each other. A moment that becomes shorter each year as the pressures of core academics invade its space. However, have we really explored the consequences of work with less play at the elementary level.

Eight years ago a thin gentleman in a black turtleneck and jeans got on stage and introduced a radical idea, a smart phone without a keyboard. People said it would never work. Eight years later, his company sold 13 million of these phones in two weeks. As I play with this phone, when I press down more things happen. Pictures, sounds, and actions occur. I look at my friends' phones, on some of them the display wraps around the sides. I have one friend who takes pictures of everything he sees with his phone. Growing up, a phone was a big boxy thing attached to the wall. My aunt was cool, she got a phone one year that looked like Mickey Mouse was holding it.

Where do these ideas come from? What pushes us to move our world forward? Is it the relentless pursuit of content and knowledge, the recitation of key information and algorithms? Or is it finding ways to explore the world differently? Could we benefit from pursuing time with divergent thoughts and ideas? Sir Ken Robinson believes so. In his speech regarding Changing the Educational Paradigm, he discusses creativity and divergent thinking and how participation in schools correlates with reduction of these values. Why, because we learn there are certain ways to do things.

Life doesn't need to be that way. While science class is an opportunity to breed inquiry and ask why, if we include engineering we begin to ask so what solution could you make. In science we observe a situation and begin to question what makes the situation occur. In engineering we see the situation and we say, well what can we do with this. Steve Jobs' team saw a phone and asked, what can we do with this? Instead of taking in the knowledge of this is an instrument that allows verbal communication between two parties, they saw an object that people carried that could be a lot more if we allowed it. They asked, could it be a map? a clock? a communication device? a camera? a weather tracker? By the engineers playing and asking questions they innovated a lot more.

Playing is something we see less and less in schools. Some will say it's a product of the video game/cell phone generation. Since students have these electronic gadgets, they don't socialize or play. However, my observational experience says otherwise. When alone, or with their parents, they don't choose to socialize. Although, I'm not sure teenagers and pre-teens ever wanted to socialize much with their parents. However, when students congregate, they want to talk, explore, and play.

My third grade child's teacher has done something radical this year. She has apparently read some research and decided that it would be more valuable if the children read for 30 minutes a night and didn't do other homework. The result in our house has been not only less conflict between parent and child but also a constant collection of Zoobs being played with, imaginary dialogues about lightsabers, and a multitude of odd Lego structures. His friend, who is in the same class, has arranged a near constant playdate each afternoon. When after school care ends, the party continues at one house or another. Children dashing from place to place having complex dialogues about things I quite frankly don't understand. Since neither child has homework, it's okay to play, socialize, and invent until about 7pm each night. The ideas they are coming up with are wild. The intricacies of the dialogues could be scripts for a screen play. When we let children's imaginations run, they innovate.

The Second Calvin & Hobbes Wiki - Character by Bill Patterson

Innovation can happen in the classroom as well as at home. Throughout the country, schools and classrooms are creating Makerspaces where children build, innovate, and invent. School leaders and teachers are beginning to understand that learning isn't simply intaking other people's ideas and regurgitating them but also asking what could this possibly become or how could you make this better and different. In some classrooms, teachers are understanding that reading and writing can be amazingly better if the children read books written by other members of the class and write scripts that others can act out. Innovation is something we need to encourage and nurture. To do so, we need make the time and space to play.


“Bean heard him climb into bed. He got up from the floor and did likewise. He thought of a half dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased—every one of them was stupid.”

Excerpt From: Orson Scott Card. “Ender's Game.” iBooks. 

More Than Just a Princess

Cultivating Student Engagement

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.

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.

Voo Doo Economics

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.

(de Nys, 2008)

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.

Let Them See Clearly

Magic is just Science we don't understand yet. - Jane Foster in the movie Thor

My son is taking Algebra this school year. Algebra, a class we all remember. It had variables. We did equations. Each of us knows because we were there. We all took the class twenty or thirty years ago. We think we remember it but do we. To be honest, I don't. I remember FOIL. I remember variables. I truly don't remember the curriculum objectives or the activities. Mostly I remember where I sat in the class. So my son is taking Algebra and I really have no idea of what he is actually going to learn.

The Algebra story could be said for any course. Whether it's third grade (I think we were supposed to learn cursive and multiplication), Civics, Physics, or Global Studies, the story is the same, the name of the course obscures the meaning. So often as parents and students we see the big picture of the course name and the little picture of the individual assignments but don't see the middle steps - the curriculum objectives one is actually learning. It is here that meaning is established.

According to the "New Illinois Learning Standards", which can be found at http://isbe.net/common_core/default.htm  (New Illinois Learning Standards - feels local.... website link feels national, but hey, what's in a name) we learn to add and subtract fractions in fourth grade. I don't know that off the top of my head, when I think fourth grade math, I don't necessarily think fractions. Now that I know it's something I can wrap my head around, focus on, and support my child in learning. When I think adding and subtracting fractions, I don't necessarily think of each individual skill adding like fractions, subtracting like fractions, converting denominators, computing improper fractions, renaming whole numbers as fractions for computation, and converting mixed numbers into fraction for computation. When focusing on the concept, 4th grade math is too broad for me to understand what my child is learning. The daily lesson of computing improper fractions is a means both too numerous (170 individual lessons in the year) and too narrow (a 1-2 day skill) for me to generate meaning. However, the curriculum objective, my child can add and subtract fractions, is something meaningful that I can wrap my head around. If my child is successful in it, I know they can move on and have a tangible skill that will at least help them when they cook or bake. If they don't get it, then I can dive deeper and help them work on the 6-8 lessons underneath until they understand it. The curriculum objective is a meaningful chunk for me, my child, and the teacher. 

Grades and grading systems often serve more to obscure our understanding of a child's performance than to clarify it. What is an "A"? A child earned more than 90% on a test or in a class? Well, who was writing the test? What was the test on? What was learned in the class? Was the "A" on a curve? In one class I took, an a was 37% on a test because of the curve. Did anyone really learn anything in the class? Was what was assessed what was learned? The class was called "Physical Chemistry," what does that name mean to you? In reality, I as student don't need to be normatively ranked in the class. I can tell you who the faster and slower learners are without the grades. What my parents and I need to know is have I mastered adding and subtracting fractions. If so, great lets move on. If not, help me figure out how to understand it because I want to make homemade cookies later tonight.

My son is taking Algebra this school year. I love my child's math teacher. Each week he sends out a note to parents and students identifying the big idea the students will be learning this week. He flips his classroom with videos on how to do the concept so that the students can review and practice the concept until they feel comfortable with it. When a child doesn't master a concept, they can keep working on it until they get it. Last year, with this teacher, was the first year my child didn't know all the math instantaneously. Many times he had to go back to the drawing board to learn and relearn how to find surface areas or complete algebraic expressions (did you know we teach algebraic concepts well before kids take "Algebra). In the end, he had to issue a grade. Three months later, my son no longer remembers his grade. In his mind, it was an A or B, either way he passed. He does know he can calculate surface area and volume of unique objects. He is seeing learning clearly not because of the name of the class, not because of the grade, but because the teacher has turned Magic into Science. He has created meaningful chunks of learning for his students to master and let the students and parents see it.

I Can See Clearly Now

Its Not Over Until We Say Its Over - The End of Summative Assessment

I remember my last swim race. Senior year of college, a cold February Sunday in Holland, Michigan. I remember the brown bricks around the natatorium. Chatting with Brian Miller as we warmed up in the diving well adjacent to the pool. I remember the feel of the blocks beneath my feet. I remember the chill of the air as I stood ready to start, thinking this is my last race. I had been swimming since I was nine years old at Indian Boundary YMCA. I had stood upon the blocks of various pools countless times. I remember the rush of the water going past my ears as I entered the pool. The pull, the kick, and the pull again as I emerged swimming the 200 yard Breaststroke. I remember nailing the third turn. I don't remember the time. I don't remember the place. I remember Brian won the race. Mostly, I remember the feel, being proud of the time (maybe it was 2:21?), and knowing this was the end.

The funny thing is that for many of my friends college swimming wasn't the end. They swim masters races and triathlons. My Uncle Leo swam into his late seventies, competing in world level championship. Even though the constructs we had growing said this would be the end, it wasn't the end of the story but rather simply the end of this chapter.

In schools we teach this artificial idea that learning and experiencing are time bound. Now we are on the Kinetics chapter. Next month we are learning Thermodynamics. You need to complete and demonstrate that you have mastered Kinetics by the 28th as that's when we are having the summative assessment. We create artificial boundaries as to when children can learn a concept and when they have to master it by. We teach students that if they don't master it, the concept will go away and they just simply weren't very good at it. We construct the artificial notion that learning is time bound and all they need to do is have a "passable" result.

Children aren't naturally inclined to giving up. Only in school. Children aren't naturally inclined to produce mediocrity. Only in school. The time and number of attempts to learn something is only limited in school. Mostly because we say so. I watch my friend's daughter make pastries. She loves to be crafty. She is willing to make the tiniest of pastries with the most artistic of coverings. She will spend hours manipulating the frosting. Her sister will spend hours building her world in Minecraft. My son will spend hours recreating his construction in magnet blocks. Learning, recovering from repeated failures and making adjustments, is only limited by our industrial age vision of school. The course, the class, the grade, the summative assessment, and the ranking teach children to fail, be mediocre, and it will go away. In other aspects of their lives they learn resiliency and perfection.

It's time for us to say good bye to the summative assessment. The test at the end of learning. We need to think of the curriculum as skills students need to master and continue to work with them if they don't. It is not the Chemistry class that's important, but rather the concepts that make up Chemistry. Learning Thermodynamics but not Kinetics is a problem. Both are valuable, both are necessary, and both have equal merit. We may move on in the class from Kinetics to Thermodynamics, but it is my responsibility as teacher to help the children that have not mastered Kinetics to learn it regardless of the extra time and extra work. It is the student's responsibility to learn it regardless of the extra time and extra work. Just because the main learning has moved on doesn't exempt us from learning the concept.

Time is an artificial construct. In the elementary school district I work in now, we have at least nine years to have each of our students learn as much as possible. Even longer for children who begin in preschool. Learning a concept isn't over until they cross that podium in eighth grade and even then we pass the baton to our high school. Summative assessments imply that learning is complete. We as a system have a choice. We can choose to use the data from that assessment to influence the next opportunity to learn regardless of content area or concept. It's not over, until we say its over whether we are a parent or a student.

I remember working with a young man as an assistant principal. He decided not to do anything in class beginning in late April. It frustrated the teacher, the parents, and us administrators. He was going to wait it out. He knew school was going to go away in June. What he didn't realize was both mom and I worked for the district and I was working summer school. The school year ended and mom kept bringing the young man to school. After the first two days of summer at school, the work began and learning recommenced. He completed school June 23rd that year. It's not over until we all say it's over.

May Rufus Be Your Guide

The Kids Can Play

In many professions the assumption is that one can't count on individuals fresh to the profession to make key contributions to the organizations success. The idea is those new to the business need to learn how the business works, how the cogs connect in the wheel in order to make things run. In baseball, the rule of thumb is that you can't count on young teams to build success. Eventually youth will be over run by the wear of the year and the grind of the day to day journey.

In 1997, the Chicago White Sox were 3 1/2 games out of first place. They devastated their fanbase, committing the "White Flag Trade," sending 2 starting pitchers and an all-star reliever to the San Francisco Giants for a bunch of people no one had ever heard of. While San Francisco ran to a division title and the playoffs, the White Sox fell out of contention, ending the year 80-81. They floundered and carried low expectations for a couple of years to the point in which entering the 2000 season, the marketing department recognized that no one had heard of most of the club. Expectations were low as the White Sox had been bad in recent memory. The public relations folks put out the slogan "The Kids Can Play," and what do you know, they could. The team went an American League best 95-67 before losing in the playoffs.

While many people have not seemed to understand the Chicago Cubs plan, the organization has been quite clear, it was time to do something different. After battling in and out of the playoffs with high-priced free agent talent in the 2000's, the Cubs chose to bottom out in 2010. For the past 5 seasons, the Chicago Cubs have been cellar dwellers, rebuilding their organization on both the business and talent side. Reconstructing their minor leagues, international presence, and scouting operations. Not much was expected from the 2015 season aside from the Back to the Future II prediction of a world championship.

As of August 15th, the Cubs have starters in 3 key positions that didn't begin the year with them. In total, they have 4 rookies and 5 key contributors under the age of 25. By definition, they are a group discovering what they can do as they win games. Currently they are 18 games above .500, with a 66-48 record and tracking towards the playoffs. If they believed that young veterans and rookies couldn't do it, they would be tracking for the next several years of mediocrity. 

The reality is in all professions, the "Kids Can Play." Those entering the profession have joined the profession because they believe they have the ideas, capacities, and fortitude to be successful. Veterans stay in the profession not because of habit but because they believe they have value to add. Together, these groups can make a difference. While each group will go up the mountains and down in the valleys of successes and failures, they both eventually find success together. 

Necessary Roughness

300 Batting Averages & the Quest for Meaningful Numbers

Growing up, baseball was a thing. We listened to the Cubs and White Sox in the car. We had bats, balls and mitts at home. Every couple of weeks during the summer we would have something going on in the neighborhood involving baseball. Whether it was running bases, a makeshift game, 500, or simply catch. Growing up, I believed good ball players had a 0.300 batting average, or hit the ball 3 out of every 10 at-bats. The best of the best, Ted Williams had hit 0.400 but good players hit 0.300.  So the other day, I looked up who was hitting 0.300 in Major League Baseball this year. Twenty position players were currently hitting 0.300 or above within a minimum 338 plate appearances. Figure each baseball team has 7 regular starters and 12 -13 total position players on the roster, 20 players out of a possible 210 regular starters and 375 rostered players were hitting 0.300 or less than 10% of regular starters were hitting my mental level of being "good."

Well, maybe it's just this season. So I took a trip down to Baseball-Reference.com and discovered that the average Hall of Fame player had a batting average of 0.303, the acknowledged best of the best only on average barely made it over my "good" standard. Ty Cobb was the career leader at 0.366, Mr. 400, Ted Williams hit 0.344 and ranked 6th, the best hitter I ever saw Tony Gwynn is 15th at 0.338. In fact only 79 hitters in the Hall of Fame have a career average above 0.300. It seems 300 is not something every hitter does, but only the best of the best do.

This week I had the chance to listen to a webinar from the Illinois State Board of Education. In the webinar, they use words like "New Illinois Learning Standards," "College and Career Readiness," and meaningful assessment. They shared about a group of teachers and State leaders going to Denver to set cut scores for the PARCC assessment and how this test and these scores are going to provide an indication to parents, educators, and government leaders on how "college and career ready" our students are. The reality is we don't know if this test or any of the new assessments have any correlation with college success and won't know that for over a decade until this 1st group of students who took the test actually graduates from college. We won't know if it indicates they were career ready until this 1st group of students who took the assessment actually has careers. We do know that two years ago when they re-normed the ISAT, that they set the line that approximately 60% of the students would meet or exceed standards and then when the students took the test, approximately 60% of the students met or exceeded standards.

In the webinar, the state explained it's new calculations for at-risk schools/districts and for improvement. Essentially, schools/districts will use a combination 2015 PARCC and other assessment factors as their baseline number for % meets and exceeds standards. Schools/districts will need to cut the distance between this number and 100% meeting and exceeding standards in half within 6 years. Here are some examples:
     School A:
                         75% of Students Meet and Exceed State Standards in 2015
                         25% more need to get 100%%
                         half of this is 12.5%
                         by the 2021 PARCC, 87.5% of students need to Meet or Exceed State Standards

    School B:
                         54% of Students Meet and Exceed State Standards in 2015
                         46% more need to get 100%%
                         half of this is 23%
                         by the 2021 PARCC, 77% of students need to Meet or Exceed State Standards

Now, lets remember that the State set the statistical bar for 60% of kids to meet the criterion line the last time around. This is like the 0.300 batting average. It seems mentally good, mentally reasonable, but in reality only 79 Hall of Famers have hit that for their career.

SMART goals talk about the idea of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, and Time-bound goals. Yes, we should be working to improve. Yes, we should be giving parents, students, educators, and government officials quality accurate information. Yes, we should be preparing students for colleges and careers. However, none of these indicators provide this. In fact, they make the transmission of information more convoluted.

The National Football League has not changed the NFL combine assessment activities in nearly 20 years. Yes, each year, the average player is slightly bigger, stronger, and faster. By keeping the events the same, it allows for year to year comparisons of each athlete. Results are at least comparable. When we talk receivers, we think 4.4 speed is a solid result. Well, since electronic timing was instituted in 1999, only 17 players have ever run 4.3 or faster at the combine. Only 7 of those players were receivers.

As educators we want to improve, grow, and make a difference. Each day we have the opportunity to make a difference in a child's life and change the future. We seek to be measured and share our successes. Like all professions, we wish to be measured against an achievable bar and so do our students.

The Difference Between .250 and .300

What Does That Word Mean?

Lord of the Manor & the Constitutional Peasant

In most job interviews there is a question, "Why are you interested in this position?" I am sure personnel people around the world are used to hearing a wide range of eccentric answers. Its not the eccentric in education that worries me. Its the answer I hear approximately a third of the time. "I've always known I wanted to be a teacher. When I was a kid, I set up a little classroom in my basement and would have my siblings and their friends down their. We had a little chalkboard, I taught them things, and we did school." Individuals don't become accountants or pharmacists as primary school students. We don't hear I am going to be a wedding band singer or a plumber at that age. We hear individuals say I want to be teachers, police officers, and fireman from that age.

My worries are that 7-year olds don't see what any of these professions are. To a 7-year old, the police officer is someone in charge, telling others what to do and they do it. To a 7-year old, a firefighter is a hero who runs in to save lives. To a 7-year old, the teacher is queen of the castle, the lord of the manor, the one who runs the classroom, cares about others, and delivers information. Often this vision of teaching runs through the idea that I am going to say things and kids are going to do things.

We have known for a while that we often learn the most when the learner is doing the work. Whether it is researching the concept, seeking information, building a product, or cultivating a solution. When learners sit downstream of the information firehose, while they may take some of the information from the tap a large quantity streams right by.

When we start with new teachers this upcoming August, it will be a journey to help them realize the lord of the manor isn't one who dictates the tasks and responsibilities for learning, but rather one that gives others space to explore and make decisions. The classroom leaders that we need are ones that set up opportunities for students to investigate, explore, innovate, and develop solutions of their own. The classroom leaders that we desire have learning outcomes but allow for multiple paths and products for the learning to be accomplished. Growing up, we may have seen teachers as queens of the castle but in reality we need them to empower their peasants to decisions for themselves and the whole.

Constitutional Peasant

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

Raising Children in a Changing World

In schools, we talk about needing to prepare children for a changing world. We have conversations about the number of careers an individual will have in their lifetime. We discuss the ever changing workforce and preparing students for jobs that don't exist. We engineer imaginary objects and dialogue about what technologies the future will bring. And then their is social studies. We discuss our past and our present but rarely our future.
I remember Social Studies pretty well, which seems odd because going through elementary school, junior high, and high school I remember that we'd constantly talk about how boring it was. Social Studies in the early years was all about our community. The neighborhood, policeman, fireman, the mayor, the library. We learned to read a map before Google and Apple put us on the map. Then we studied cities, regions, US History (never getting to Vietnam) and World History. We learned the Constitution and why it was written. In the end, it was about a bunch of mostly dead people that set up rules so we could live in one place. Social Studies was the past and the present. It wasn't our future. Maybe that's why my generation, Generation X, had so many movie about feeling disconnected from society (Breakfast Club, Reality Bites, etc.) Our learning about society was about a world we had no control of yet in everything else we were learning skills to observe and build in our world. It was a great disconnect.
Apparently, whether we learned it in school or not, we found our voice. As I read my Facebook feed this weekend, the normally white background with blue trimming has turned the rainbow colors of a cereal bowl with a half-eaten collection of Lucky Charms. There are two themes that go through my timeline, individuals on "both sides of the aisle" sharing #lovewins and my staunchest Republican friends complaining about leaders who advocate about getting rid of the courts. I have lived and worked in "liberal" and "conservative" communities. The thing is, both titles are fueled by ideas of the past not visions of possible futures. Versions of Reagan and Bush's healthcare plan has become the "Obamacare" or "Affordable Care Act" of the present. The Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act was named after Reagan's White House press secretary, James Brady. Ideas that political parties want to capitalize on as being "liberal" or "conservative" are truly encapsulations of our past not visions of our future.
While we didn't learn social action as part of Social Studies, it was being taught somewhere because it is evident in my timeline. Perhaps we learned it from Sesame Street and Raffi. Social Studies is more than our past and our present. It needs to also be about our future. We need to understand the frameworks of our society and discuss what it could mean. Encourage children to question structures that deny individuals liberties and rights. We need to prepare them and ourselves for an active future which may not be the same as our present. If we are preparing students for an ever-changing society, one in which job markets and careers constantly evolve, perhaps we also need to prepare them for a society in which prejudices and generalizations of generations past are not those of our future. Perhaps we can encourage them to envision a world not trapped in the judgements of their parents and grandparents generations. Raising children for the future means preparing them to be more than workers. It is our job to help them become leaders and difference makers. In the words of Google, "Don't be Evil" and of Apple "To Leave the World a Better Place Than We Found It."

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