As teachers and leaders, we frequently tell our children that it's ok to make mistakes, that is the only way we learn. Sounds great, seems great, but do we believe it. Do we create a culture that not only accepts mistakes but encourages them and celebrates when we overcome our mistakes? Like so many things do our actions match our words.
A student completes a task in math, what feedback do we give them? Do they grade the assignment marking the number wrong at the top of the page and making an "x" by the incorrect questions? Do we grade the assignment and do the same? Do we have them check with a classmate and confer about what they believe they have mastered and what they haven't? Do we have them check against a master document and see which ones do not match and then go back and figure out why they didn't get them to match? Our practices and strategies impact our children's underlying beliefs regarding whether or not it is ok to make mistakes and recover or whether they need to be right the first time.
Engage Students in Self Reflection and Let Them Keep Track of and Share Their Learning
Powerful actions that promote effective learning. Ones that only exist is we as classroom leaders make it acceptable for them to exist. This is no different for us as adults. Do we believe that each day we too have the right not to be perfect? Do we believe that there are multiple ways for us to lead our classrooms, buildings, or district? What happens when someone else walks into our building or our classroom? Are we open to new ideas, willing to listen to others and see that there are multiple ways to help our children learn and grow? Our we open to revision?
As part of the Google Teacher Academy, we had the opportunity to meet with a number of Google employees. Frequently they would talk about a culture in which they were willing to try new things, fail fast, and make a next iteration better. As I think of Google products, Android, Nexus Q, Google TV. Their culture demonstrates this level of efficacy. We rarely hear about Google executives or engineers being fired because a product failed, yet their products fail all of the time. However, Android Cupcake has been followed by numerous versions including the soon to be released Kit Kat, Google TV and Nexus Q have led to Chromecast.
At some point, we need to give ourselves the right of revision. That it is truly best practice not to get it correct immediately but rather to work with others to refine our work. We need to accept that each day each of us our giving our best for that day but it doesn't need to be the best ever. The best ever comes from learning from each iteration, collaborating, revising, and honestly moving forward. The only reason we fail is that we don't believe that we can succeed. Our own perceptions that others are judging us rather than their collectively owning our growth and success prevents us from collaboratively owning the right to revision and cultivating greater levels of success. Once we believe that it doesn't have to be perfect, that we can fail and try again then we can encourage our students to do the same. They won't believe it unless we do and we create an environment which promotes it. Google has, can we?
I'll admit, I didn't get it. I had been to Google this past summer, walked through their halls, met with their engineers and public relations team. I saw the great gathering areas, fantastically themed rooms, and even a couple of guys playing ping pong. I guess one couldn't see them doing their 20% time. However, even Google was getting rid of their 20% time. Then I came back and lots of our teachers were talking about 20% time. They called it "Genius Hour" and they were serious about it. It seemed so odd to me, here Google is getting rid of some of this and we were jumping on the bandwagon.
As an organization, we support teachers and students taking risks. If we want to reach new horizons, we believe that often that innovation can come from those closest to the point of impact. As such, I listened and I supported our "Genius Hour" plans. The teachers were excited. They were passionate. They were invested. Simply by following them on twitter and listening to their conversations it was clear that the "Genius Hour" experiences they wanted to explore would have students researching new topics, creating new products and presentations, revising their work, and sharing their insights. Clearly the process of learning would not just cover the Common Core State Standards and 21st century skills, but embed it in every component of the practice. This would not simply be some teacher sharing their favorite theme but rather organized chaos of student-led research investigation. I still didn't get it. It seemed like an awful lot of work and a classroom management nightmare.
Recently I began to see the tweets on our hashtag #dg58learns. Pictures coming from different rooms of kids doing research. The kids in the background too busy to look up and smile at the camera. Children with books, papers, and devices scattered around them on the ground. I walked into a classroom of seven year-olds and the children wouldn't stop talking to me about all the great things they found. I didn't even ask. They didn't know who I was other than just another guy who worked there. They were sure I needed to know everything about this mammal they were researching. It was passion. Their passion. Children so invested in their narrow band of interest that they had a hard time putting the information down. Children reading so much simply because they needed to know it. Creating amazing products because everyone else needs to understand why their thing is the coolest thing in the world.
I get it now. A little slow on the uptake, but I get it. "Genius Hour" is about their curiosity, their passion, their work. While in its infancy, this time has the opportunity to cultivate more learning than perhaps the entire rest of our day. Not that it should be our whole day, but rather that coveted part of our day that makes our work special. The passion and investment of students and teachers discovering those interesting nuggets, analyzing the seeds of newly found information, synthesizing these into unique products are everything we should be about as a learning organization. There is great power when we are passionate. The power to utterly destroy and the power to build amazing things. It is our job to allow the risks that channel our passions to create the innovative works of art that may someday change all of our lives.
My child participated in Destination Imagination last year. The task was to build a structure that could hold a certain weight and have certain forces act upon the structure. He and several other 9 year old children worked for weeks engineering a structure. Like many children, he has a younger sibling. In the first five minutes of the group working on the first day, the younger brother walks into the room, takes a shoebox, flips it over, places the weight on it and states, "Like this?" He is immediately shouted out of the room and his structure ignored. Months later, the children still didn't have a structure as the now long forgotten 5-year-old's product.
In education, like many professions, we often miss the forest from the trees. We get caught up on the next challenge, such as "college & career readiness" or "PARCC" that we lose track of the greater goal. We, like the children working diligently building their structure for Destination Imagination, are so busy looking for solutions to the next challenge that frequently we forget the tools that we have in front of us. For school districts, typically 60% of the budget is teaching staff, 85% of the budget is personnel overall. These are our biggest assets, yet frequently we are looking for the next software, the next publisher's program that will be less than 1% of our budget to provide the solution. Yes, we miss moving the big rocks because we are distracted by the newest pebble.
The overall goal of Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Partnership for 21st Century Learning is to prepare students for a world that we cannot predict. The challenge is for children to be able to manipulate information, utilize skills creatively, collaborate together to make new innovative solutions, critically analyze situations, and communication internally and externally to ensure the challenge is solved appropriately. These skills aren't partial to any particular time period, but rather products of all time periods. The most innovative members of every society demonstrate some of these attributes. Furthermore, societies have risen and fallen based on their capacity to implement these skills.
What I don't understand is why we as educational leaders believe that in order to build these capacities within children that we should provide children with a lock-step path requiring teachers to teach with the same recipe provided by a software developer or textbook publisher. The dialogue goes like this:
Administrator: "I want you to teach or children to be innovative and critical thinkers."
Teacher: "Great, we are going to have lots of challenges and problem-solving activities at their level."
Administrator: "Absolutely, they are all in this book. Just follow a chapter at a time at the same pace as your colleague in the other school. Each chapter contains appropriate challenges for children each from a different diverse ethnic minority that is thematically appropriate for your children's age. Also, there is a specialized software program that complements each chapter."
Teacher: "Ok, so how are they supposed to be creative."
Administrator: "Each unit has creativity challenges."
Dutifully, the teacher goes into her room, follows the pacing guide, and executes the same learning experiences in the same order as her colleague in the other school. Children receive the same experiences and create the same outcomes. Clearly, while having a consistent experience that exposes the children to knowledge, none of the actual 21st century skills are developed by either the adults or the children.
If we want our students to be 21st century learners we need to embrace our classroom leaders as 21st century teachers. District and building leaders need to outline the challenges, analyze the data in partnership with their instructional team, and cultivate the opportunity for the team to create innovative solutions. We need to embrace the publisher materials, whether traditional or digital, as tools to help us accomplish the learning and growth for our students rather than full-scale solutions for all of learning. 21st century teaching requires leaders to trust their teams to work together, share, innovate, and try new things in order to promote growth. We can't expect these skills in the students if it is not part demonstrated by the classroom leader.
Twenty-five years ago, I picked up my favorite book for the first time. I remember getting caught up in the story of a young boy who learns to find the means within himself and the other students to save the world. I read the book through the eyes of an adolescent. They eyes that saw the struggle to find oneself, the challenge of making difficult decisions, the need to win in order to survive and the desire to learn at times in spite of the teachers. It quickly became my favorite book, one that I read several times and when I became a teacher I passed down to many of my students. As the movie comes out, I have spent the last week listening to the audiobook. Reliving many of my memories as a child, but seeing the book through different eyes. At 40 years old, no longer do I relate as well young Ender Wiggin, but more to Colonel Graff. Now as I reread this book, once again does it bring meaning to my life and to my work. There are many lessons we as educators can learn from Ender's Game.
Learning Needs to Be Challenging Not Simply Rigorous:
Throughout the book, the children are presented with a multitude of games. The games itself are initially interesting, but it is not the game aspect that holds the students attention. After a while, the game aspect begins to fade and the children identify that the game itself is less fun. However, the children continue to pursue completing the game or task because the task itself provides interesting new challenges. Children become intrigued when they believe there is something solvable but the solution is not readily apparent. Simply increasing the amount of work, the detail within the work, or the level of precision required within the work does not increase learning or the desire to learn, but increasing the level of challenge can.
Learning Needs to Follow a Logical Progression:
When designing Ender's instructional program, the games were designed to become increasingly more difficult. Learning challenges started easy and became increasingly more difficult. Instructors started with managable tasks that engaged the students but were doable and increased both the challenge and pace as students were ready for them. The pacing of learning was based on the learners achievement and readiness for the next challenge. It is easy in committee meetings and administrative offices to establish pacing guides. However, if the objective is learning, shouldn't the learner's progression and success determine the pace.
It is the Students' Problem to Solve:
It is emphasized throughout the story that in order for Ender to reach the peak of his abilities, that he must never ever believe that the adults will rescue him. His success is solely dependent on the solutions he and the other students can create and implement. This is hard for us. Our compassion and empathy push us to lend a hand. However, we graduated. We passed the class. It is our task to create the logical progression, to provide the resources, but then we need to step back. We need to teach children to find answers, create answers, and seek each other out to solve challenges. The hardest part of teaching is to let the students do it without us. However, if we want them to do well on whatever measurement is before them, we need to let them figure out how to solve the problem on their own.
The Enemy's Gate is Down:
Ender's first learning in Battle School is that just because you enter a situation with one perspective, doesn't mean that it is the right perspective or that it is the perspective that should stay. In a world of Common Core, PARCC, and Smart Balance, doing more of the same with greater rigor isn't always right. Stepping back, shifting our view points as we approach challenges of teaching and learning. Risk-taking while keeping the end objectives in mind can create more powerful solutions. Finally keeping the overall objective first and foremost while not getting lost in details that distract but in the end do not matter is difficult but important. The "Enemy's Gate is Down" is all about becoming conscious of our perspective and questioning that vantage point in order to open up to possibilities of new solutions.
We aren't raising children to fight aliens, save the world, or to become little soldiers. However we are raising them to become innovative leaders with creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking skills. Our desire each day is to help them discover the best within themselves and others. As we prepare them for their adult world, one we can imagine but not necessarily predict, it may be time for us to re-orient ourselves. The Enemy's Gate is Down. I am excited that next month one of my favorite books will become a movie. I hope the movie doesn't ruin it for me.
So often as a society we forget how fantastic our people in the classroom are. It's not that we don't think highly of them, we do. If you aren't there each moment of each day, you don't have a chance to notice the little things like the moment a teacher kneels next to a child and hands them a kleenex or the 11pm email to a parent saying I'll look into that first thing tomorrow. We forget when we hand out information about PARCC or Smarter Balanced that those very same people will be spending hour perseverating on what they need to "teach" their children in order to "ensure" they will be successful.
When administrators talk Common Core, immediately they talk assessment. We aren't learning Common Core because Common Core is good, we're learning it because the hammer is coming, 2014-15, we will be assessed. It will be digital. Are you ready? Are we? Should we be? Will these assessments actually meaningfully measure meaningful information?
Our teachers are questioning. They are thinking of those little ones. They are thinking about what it is their children need to learn, not because I tell them to or the state tells them to, but because they are kneeling next to that child, emailing that parent and asking themselves what will this child need to be a happy successful adult in the future. Is it just ELA, Mathematics, and Science or is it more? Will preparing them for a standardized test prepare them for the real world? Is our goal to fill their brains or help them become good citizens of our world? These questions are real and legitimate.
There are many good things in the Common Core. Like all documents, it's not perfect. Explicitly, I believe that several of the ELA Anchor Standards broaden our view of literacy. However, this conversation is lost as we focus on the tests. So much effort, energy, and finances are being focused on compliance assessments that the quality learning may be lost. If we think back to final exams. All the studying, all the cramming, all the energy preparing. We took the test. It never covered all that we studied all that we "learned." A tremendous amount of human capital went in. How many of our students remembered that content a week later, a month later, a year later, a decade later? I am sure three of my former students reading this jumped up and shouted "Electronegativity." And that's the point, lets focus on improving learning, adding value, and creating deep understanding. If we simply focus on the assessments the learning will be lost and meaningless.
In the summer of 1990, while I was looking at colleges, the Detroit Tigers had a pudgy first baseman who was hitting the ball over the fence at a rate faster than any I had ever seen. Each night I would come in and ask my dad, did Cecil hit another one. After a while, my dad would remind me that he was nowhere near the pace to break the record. As I probed further with him, he would explain to me that in 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 home runs but it took him 162 games, in 1927 "Babe" Ruth hit 60 home runs in 154 games. Statistically "Babe" Ruth was still the record holder. It was fun to watch Cecil hit 52 that year, but clearly the "Babe" was still the home run king.
The great thing about many baseball statistics is that the numbers mean something. They are comparable from year to year and generation to generation. Passed down as sacred texts from which we can ask, "Who was the greatest?" or "How would this guy have played on that team?" Unfortunately, this doesn't always hold true. Pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1968, Bob Gibson had an ERA of 1.12, perhaps the single greatest season by a pitcher in the Modern Era. The trick is we will never know. After years of descending Pitcher ERA's, beginning in 1969, Major League Baseball lowered the pitchers mound from 15 inches to 10 inches. Unlike changing the number of games in a season, through which the numbers could be pro-rated, the impact of this was not quantifiable in a linear manner. The next season Gibson had a ERA of 2.18. No one knew if this was better or worse. In 1981 Nolan Ryan had an ERA of 1.69, 1985 Dwight Gooden pitched to a 1.53, and Greg Maddux had a 1.56 in 1994. The numbers were no longer comparable. Bob Gibson remains the best pitcher of his ERA and Dwight Gooden in the 45 years since, but we will never know who was the best.
In education we also are always looking for accurate comparable information. How is my child doing? Do they know enough? How do they rank in the world? As concerns were raised in the 80's and 90's, States began to administer their own assessments to ensure academic achievement and communicate an accurate picture to parents about their child's performance. Regardless one's belief of the validity and value of these measures, in 1988 Illinois parents received the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) results for their child. For eleven years, parents received a consistent report about their child's achievement. In 1999, Illinois parents began receiving results from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) based on the Illinois Learning Standards. Like the lowering of the mound in baseball, the content and standards had changed, leaving the IGAP comparable to IGAP and ISAT comparable to ISAT.
In 2002 President Bush signed the "No Child Left Behind Act" as he reauthorized funds for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This law dynamically changed the purpose and framework of accountability and assessment, requiring accountability, achievement levels, and measurements of schools and districts through Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) and Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives (AMAO). Under this law, schools needed to eventually have 97 percent of their students and student subgroups attain certain state designated levels of achievement as approved by the Department of Education. A law intended to create an America similar that mythical land described by Garrison Keillor, "Welcome to Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average."
In 2008, Illinois eliminated the Illinois Measure of Annual Growth in English (IMAGE) assessment as required by the Department of Education with state officials telling educational leaders that we know the ISAT isn't an appropriate assessment for Second Language Learners, but the Feds are telling us we have to so we are. This created the asterisk in school achievement. The populations changed from the 1999-2007 to the 2008 and beyond assessment. Each school and district could look at their pre-2008 and post-2008 and make independent decisions regarding their rate of improvement. Parents of non-ELL students were not impacted. Their child's reports remained the same. Schools still had a familiar and consistent standard of content to compare their data. While the records weren't the same, like the race between "Babe" Ruth & Roger Maris they were comparable.
Unfortunately, we no longer live in that world. The last consistent data set for the ISAT was the 2012 administration. Like many states throughout the land, Illinois has crafted a plan to earn a waiver from the Department of Education. Essentially saying as they did in 2007 and 2008 that the Feds are making us do this, Illinois has created 4 years of non-comparable assessments:
2012 - Last Traditional ISAT
2013 - ISAT with New Cut Scores & 20% Common Core Content
2014 - ISAT with 100% Common Core Content
2015 - PARCC
In doing this, for nearly half of an elementary student's learning career parents will be unable to accurately compare one year to the next. Schools and Districts are being given talking points to explain why these changes are accurate and appropriate but are not given the tools to accurately convert the data because the State simply can't. It's too many variable changes. Neither state nor school officials can't truly say how much children's learning has grown using these State provided measures.
Unfortunately, the "Steroid Era" has hit education and government. In 1998 Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa "broke" the home run record with 70 and 66 respectively. In 2001 Barry Bonds hit 73. Numbers I used to know. Tainted numbers as we look back recognizing we don't know how many of these individuals cheated to break the record. In fact, as Major League Baseball players and owners turned a blind eye the conditions changed and all of the hitting and pitching performances are so suspect because of the variables of steroids that no one trusts any of them. In education, we are changing too many variables for parents. New content, new standards, annually changing tests are creating a lack of trust by both educators and parents in the data. Like the "Steroid Era" performances, the results at some point become unbelievable.
Principals and teachers are explaining to parents that their 8 year old exceeded standards in Reading in 2012 but only meets standards as a 9 year old in 2013. These same parents look at the (950 to 1100) Lexile information of what their child could read to improve and discover that appropriate books to push their child to that next achievement level include and find that Harry Potter , the Lord of the Rings, and the Lightening Thief series don't fit, why don't you have your child read 1984, the Hobbit, or the Hitchhiker's Guide. All great books but all too complex for the 9 year old mind.
Parents and educators want meaningful information about our children. We want to trust our Federal, State, District, and School leaders to provide an accurate and consistent picture about our children's learning. Just as we can compare the swimming records and performances of Mark Spitz, Matt Biondi, and Michael Phelps, we want to know that the pool, the water, and the race are essentially the same. That way we can marvel at the performance regardless of how much the training and technology has impacted it. For us, the race is essentially the same.
This is a dangerous time for us as educational leaders. We risk changing so much that we make the race moot. Go down the street and ask someone how many home runs Barry Bonds hit. Then ask them how many Roger Maris did. I bet you know your answer already.
Somewhere along the line, we became afraid of the parents. Maybe it happened after A Nation at Risk, maybe it was before. I was too young at the time to remember. But somewhere, we lost the parents trust and we became afraid that the parents would judge us and say we were doing a bad job. Once we became afraid, we changed from having unique classrooms where we were doing unique things to needing to do the same. Maybe it started at the top in some curriculum director's or superintendent's office, maybe it started at the bottom in some pair of pre-school teacher's classrooms, but it started. We said to ourselves. If I am doing the same thing that you are doing at the same time, they can't tell both of us we are doing the wrong thing. It's ok if I give page 37 as homework to all of my students if you give page 37 tonight as homework to all of your students. They won't judge us because we are both doing it. The sameness spread like wild fire. Recipes were created. This is what unit 7 looks like. Here is the pacing guide. I think Joe Average, our students can get 80% on unit 7 if we all take 12 days. We have curriculum integrity if all of our 4th grade students do all of the same activities in all of our schools at the same time. Over time, we had a recipe for each grade. Oldest children in a family received the same input of experiences as their younger siblings 2-3 years later. For each grade, we had a back of the box recipe. This is what the learning experience for 8 year olds will look like. This is what the learning experience for 6 year olds will look like. They can't judge us because we are being fair. Everyone gets the same thing. Oh, your kid is a high achiever? We give all of those high achiever this slightly more difficult story on the same topic. It has seven letter words in it instead of five letter words. We differentiate for that. How can they judge us? We are all doing the same. I'm no different than my colleague in the room next door, the school next door, or the district next door. Yes for a long time Betty Crocker instruction has won and innovation has left the building.
The defensible position, this need for doing generally the same thing for the majority of our students at generally the same time has led to a repression of student growth and a decimation of creativity within schools. When one analyzes the instructional staff, one can identify a myriad of similarities but also a myriad of differences. To require each teacher to do all of the same activities would put some teachers in advantageous positions because their strengths fit within those activities and others in positions of deficit because those activities require instructional techniques in their areas of deficit. The impact to children would be that some children would grow more and some less. Even though programatically we believed we were providing the same learning experience at the first point of implementation it fails to support student growth.
The analogy fails further when we actually look at the student's needs. The assumption built upon "born on" dating that the majority of 7 year olds need this and the majority of 9 year olds need that, most children have similar strengths and similar deficits and can maximize growth by following this pattern of learning experiences with that sequence of activities doesn't match the reality within a family unit much less a classroom, school, district, or community. Ask a parent, do their children have the same strengths and growth areas. A majority will identify some similarities and some differences. If we do Betty Crocker teaching for the two kids, can we possibly maximize growth for them?
It'll be ok. As long as we are doing the same thing, we can't be judged. It must be right.
It's just not true. Neither children or teachers are widgets. They can not simply role of the assembly line floor, having gotten the same treatment and have grown to their maximal potential. As school, district, and classroom leaders we need to embrace a different defensible position, one that acknowledges the strengths and growth areas of our staff and students. Instead of the Betty Crocker input hypothesis, we need to look at outputs. Instead of every student and every teacher participating in the same activity, we need to develop systems in which children have common goal areas such as development of geometric knowledge and common curriculum objectives such as we will understand that a triangle is a shape or we can identify the sides and verticies of a triangle and allow teachers and children to move up the ladder of geometric knowledge as they are ready to take on the next challenge. We need to embrace teacher and student differences, allowing them to develop different learning experiences to meet these curriculum outcomes and encourage them to move up the ladder as they are ready for the next step. We need to recognize that it is ok for me to be at a higher rung in geometry and a lower rung for computation, my teacher can provide me with great opportunities to help me move up each of those ladders.
If we allow for this diversity. Allow teachers to have outcome integrity instead of input integrity. We may see something marvelous, children growing at a quicker rate because their teacher had the freedom and support to meet each of them at their instructional level. Instead of some children feeling bored because they had done this and other children feeling frustrated because the activity was beyond them, each child can have an instructional experience that is ready for them.
It's not easy. We can't have 25 different activities going on at the same time as we teach geometry. As we analyze our students we will find that there are similarities. I may have 5 groups of students in my class in geometry. My teaching partner may have 4 groups in their class. If we combine the classes, we have 6 groups. Each teacher could do three groups. That could be doable. Together we can do it.
It is a new defensible position, one based on student outcomes instead of instead of input recipes.
