A Lack of Vision

Each of us aims to create products that will delight our clients. We want to stun them with the ways we have in a cost-efficient manner innovated in order to create a unique product that fills their desires. We look for employees that will bring ideas and talents to the table so that we can develop new ideas, new products, and reach new clients. Helping grow our businesses, our industries, and our success. This is a simple goal that truly hasn't changed since the 1920's. What has changed is our technologies to reach new clients, capacities to build new products, and our ways to interact with each other. Information, once a scarcity, is now something in abundance. We can have all the knowledge in the world in an instant but can we understand what the client needs, work collaboratively to maximize our talents to fulfill this need, and communicate back to the client this is your product and this is how it works.

In a knowledge economy, information-based assessment made sense. The quicker you could get information, the quicker you could react to the client's needs and make a solution. Standardized-assessments, requiring the good-old #2 pencil could quickly assess what each person knew and identify if they knew enough. The trope used to be, there are no trick questions, you can either do it or not. The funny thing is technology has changed dramatically, the interchange within our world changed dramatically, knowledge is no longer at a premium, and yet our tests merely evolve. Our world has tools straight out of Star Trek, computers that answer questions at a verbal whim, communication devices that fit in our ears and our pockets and can call across the globe, we can land spacecraft on a comet over 300 million miles away. Yet our tests are simple substitutions for the prior generation of Scantrons. Now the questions openly try to trick you with linguistic complexity. The questions build on each other. There are videos integrated. One writes, excuse me types, a little bit of extended responses. Our students will sit for hours demonstrating skills almost useless in the modern workplace. They will sit in classes for hundreds of hours preparing skills almost useless in the modern workplace so they can be assessed by these tests. We can spend billions of dollars and quite frankly the creators of Get Smart or Inspector Gadget could have done better.

See, in those shows, the agent was given a mission to complete. A real task in which they really had to do something. Our lack of vision has created substitutional exams within which we have traditional knowledge based tasks and assessments for a world that requires very little of this. An assessment system that had vision would have used those billions of dollars to have students work together to make real products. Wondering how it could look? Try this:

A school receives 20 boxes for their 79 fourth grade students. On each box are 3 to 4 student ID numbers selected at random by the computer. Each group of 3 to 4 students needs to work together to complete the project inside. They have a week to do it. Inside the box are directions and outcome expectations. The project itself can be both explicit in some details and vague in others. At the end of the week, the children fill the box with their product/project and send it off. 

This is real world. One works with people in a group identified by someone else to make a product that someone different requested. One doesn't have a person to constantly ask questions to but instead has infinite access to any knowledge and resource around them. Instead of being bored staring at a screen or a Scantron, our students could be meaningfully assessed based on direct measurable outcomes. Instead of limited knowledge and skill assessment we could be breeding a system that promotes knowledge, understanding, communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. There are lots of ways to spend a few billion dollars. Just ask Steve Ballmer. It is our lack of vision that limits our ability to spend them well.

You're NASA

Are We Listening?

   Initially, I thought it was just me. I'd sit down at home, "listen" to my bride present a situation, and quickly share with her several possible solutions. This would quickly upset her and over time I learned that she wasn't looking for me to be a problem-solver but rather simply a sounding board as she explored situations and considered a diverse set of opportunities that could possibly occur next. I'd love to say that I extinguished my problem-solver tendencies but perhaps the right word is reduced my problem-solver nature. When I'm sick, in a rush, or doing other things I quickly slip back in to problem-solver mode and I'm off to the races again missing the messages my bride is sharing. As I said, initially I thought this was just me, but as I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of adults in a multitude of districts I began to realize that being a problem-solver is a cultural role in our society. In my region of the universe, there is this attempt to treat every situation as a task. You have this occurring, here take two of these each day for the next week. Let me know how it works for you. How much time do we sit and listen?
    The listening component is not limited to oral communication. As writers, there has been a definitive move towards becoming more formulaic. The formula, a structured argumentative essay, concisely presenting research based components to support our point of view, begins with the classic hamburger paragraph writing. The 6+1 traits writing that swept the nation was simply based upon the writing rubric for standardized assessments. As the world has become more integrated, we have put a premium on even more concise forms of communication. Texts and tweets limited to 140 characters and possibly a link or a picture have become prevalent forms of interactions. The reality is that when young people text and tweet, they text and tweet a lot. In 2013, US Smartphone holders between 18-24 sent and received nearly 4000 texts per day. So while each text was short, the multitude created a significant level of interaction and dialogue.  Questions remain regarding the quality of communication? Is this sharing, listening, understanding another's point of view? What are the cultural norms behind this?
   Different languages have different structures. This impacts our interactions and understandings. Beeman and Urow in their discussion of biliteracy frameworks discuss the difference between communication styles of native Spanish speakers primarily from Mexico and typical native English speakers in the United States. They identify the frequent tendency in the native English speaker to be sequential and concise, whereas the cultural norms of the native Spanish speakers primarily from Mexico were to explore situations, discuss relationships from a variety of perspectives, and require the audience to cultivate numerous inferences. These are two distinctively different approaches to communication. In a world in which native English speakers are quickly trying to identify and solve problems, we have multilingual kids that are culturally set to explore and elaborate conversations patiently providing nuanced dialogue.
   What happens when we encounter cultures in which the organization of the the language changes, from subject verb object to subject object verb? What does this mean in terms of others interpretation of our actions? What happens when we push students who are culturally set to be linguistic explorers into the concise sequential guidelines of our 6+1 auto-graded writing rubrics? Are we measuring differences in language application and cultural norms, by simply requiring writing in a methodology that one does not naturally order their thoughts in?
   We talk about the Internet causing the world to become more connected. In many respects it is. However, it is still in it's infancy. The reality is 55% of web content is currently written in English whereas only 5% of the world speaks English as it's first language. As mobile devices expand and more people have access more people will seek to use and create at least local content in their native language. Communication from our perspective is limited by our own cultural norms and ideas. As we prepare our students for the world, we may need to rethink our styles to embrace wider methods of communication and a discovery of norms and contexts. We can begin this adventure today, with our partners, the parents of our students that we meet in conferences, and our colleagues. Instead of trying to quickly solve the problem, lets ask open questions and see where the conversation takes us. There may be deeper learnings we discover.

Fresh Prince: Google Translated

   

Who Own's It?

  The end of the quarter is here. One could here the rush to complete assignments. The groveling for extra credit. The arguing for this point or that point. The accusations of "I turned it in," "You forgot to grade it," and occasionally, "Look, here it is with a marking why don't you have it in your grade book?" It happens all across the country and yet we do nothing to stop it. We own this as teachers, principals, district leaders, parents, and students. And yet, we never ask the critical questions: Did the child learn it? Is learning time bound?
  What is it that we want from learning? Is it to momentarily learn a skill? Is it the ability to cultivate a solution to a problem? Is it to be able to identify a piece of information? Is it the ability to understand information and to develop a viewpoint? When we figure out what we want the child to learn then we start to realize that there are important truths that are neither assignment bound nor time bound. These are things that the child must have when they walk away from the class. Skills and concepts for life. One example of this I have seen comes from my child's 6th grade Social Studies class. In one assignment he needed to be able to argue the point of view of Frederick Douglass. He needed to understand the counter-arguments and have answers for them. This was one of the few activities I have seen in which he needed to synthesize a life skill. It was something that couldn't simply be answered by Wolfram-Alpha, Google Search, Wikipedia, or Photomath.
   Once we realize that all of the content knowledge is constantly at one's fingertips, it becomes clear that our multitude of content-based assignments are becoming worthless. We need to leave the time when we generated multiple activities for multiple grades. The time where points matter is gone. We are entering a period where constructed learning is essential for our children and their future. Chris Bronke, English Department Chair at Downers Grove North High School, shared with our team that during the first two months of school he had 2 grades so far. Children were working on complex tasks and repeatedly adapting and revising their assignments. The process involved deep development, reflection, and frequent revision. His role was to ensure the children grew and maximized their learning. He owns that each child MUST learn the critical concepts in his class. He owns that learning is essential. And with the students together they own cultivating learning experiences that are as meaningful to the student as the learning process is to the teacher.
   Jon Heldmann, Math Department Chair at Downers Grove North High School, also met with our team. He worked on these concepts, Habits of Mind, ways to approach math in order to understand the problem before us and develop a plan and methodology to solve it. In this journey he spoke of a single problem taking multiple days to solve. He wasn't talking about 1-31 the odds happening each night, but the challenge of looking at a situation and figuring out what tool to do. Computers have been able to solve most every math problem I have ever seen in my life. We have moved past the era where my father stacked Fortran cards to program his calculations. We have moved past the time when I sat in the back of the room and pulled out excel on my laptop to calculate the answer. We live in a society within which my 11 year-old knows he can type the equation into Wolfram-Alpha and the answer will appear. He hasn't mention yet the Photomath app within which he could simply take a picture and get the answer. Knowing him, I give it a week or two before that happens. These tools are great but none of them will help a child develop the Habits of Mind. When we stop seeing math as a chain of skills and start seeing it as a thinking process then we will be preparing learners for their future. The tools to solve the chain of skills have been built and are available for less than $2.99 for anyone interested.
   We have talked for as long as I can remember about our curriculum being a mile-wide and an inch-deep. By simply teaching skills and content knowledge it has been. The trouble is that all of those things are now available, frequently for free, to anyone who is interested. Learning needs to be about more. Learning needs to be children applying essential processes that can't be recreated by the computer. It needs to be less about points and grades and more about what a child synthesize. We need to present challenges for children to solve and remove the artificial time boundaries to solving them. The end of the quarter shouldn't mean anything. It should be a demarkation of this is what the child has done so far, these are things they are working on, and these are things that we will work on next. In this world extra credit and grade groveling aren't necessary because it is clear that one is providing a status report on the journey. The learning itself is essential and their is no option not to accomplish it. If one needs to identify a child is Failing a concept, than my recommendation is that we give the Incomplete. For if they fail, we all have failed to help the child learn. If it is Incomplete, we all own the importance of completing the task.

Prime Numbers

Distracted by Shadows

   The days are short. The sun rises quickly and falls just as fast. Our time each day becomes more precious as the days move quicker. Gone are the long evenings sitting by the barbecue as it slowly cools through the evening. Gone are the early mornings with birds chirping and dew out in front. It is Autumn and here we are in the hustle and bustle of life. Here we are with this person needing this and that person needing that. Our children come home with a variety of assignments. Their lives filled with activities and tasks. It is in this time that it is easy to be distracted by the shadows.
    We live busy lives. There is always another assignment, another email, another group we need to help. It's easy to run from place to place to help out wherever you need to and to lose track of what is truly important. This running from place to place, these things we do. They are simply shadows, calling us, flickers of light that pull our attention from what is really important. We lose meaning by looking at the shadows and not seeing the light.
    I was a teacher once. I'd like to think that I still am, but in reality I know that I'm not. I taught children wonderful content that made me marvel. As a Chemistry and Modern Political Systems teacher we had fabulous discussions, we experimented on peeps. We read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. We discussed the Taliban before anyone had heard of the Tailban (this was between 1995-99). We learned about ions, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and electronegativity. I enjoyed it. Children learned it. It has been over 15 years and we all have forgotten most of it. This content was only shadows of important value. Meaningful for the moment. Lost as time ticked forward. Meaningless in a world of "Ok, Google" and "Hey, Siri" where content is available in a moment.
   The common reflection of learning in the United States was that it was that the curriculum was a mile wide and an inch deep. The Partnership for 21st Century Schools analyzed what we needed in order to prepare learners for jobs that didn't exist and a world that was changing by the moment. It provided the following framework for learning:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

   In a the hustle and bustle world, one of movement and action it is easy to only focus on the center. The shadows move so quickly that for many it is easy to lose the outside and only see the core. We do this in our lives and our national leadership has done this in education. Common Core State Standards, PARCC, and SmarterBalance may claim to do more, but in reality they are simply core subject content, standards, and assessments. No more, no less. In reality they are meant to be the stepping stones from which we help students develop life and career skills, through which we explore creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication, during which we apply information, media, and technology skills. Content and standards are meant to be springboards from which learning lifts off into meaningful experience not foreboding anvils that drag us down. 

   We have become distracted by the shadows in both life and learning. Over time I have realized that the value I brought as a teacher was through our conversation, relationships, and collective exploration. It wasn't that they learned who Peter Stuyvesant was or did the flame test in my class. In our world, these are just shadows, little bits of activities, not necessary information. We could have just as much had amazing argumentative papers and expository videos regarding the plethora of effective techniques in performing underwater basket weaving. For the value is in the conversation and exploration and not the distraction of the content itself.

   Our time is short in this world. Each day life moves fast. It is so important to grab onto what is meaningful and to avoid being distracted by the shadows.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

 


 

Now and In The Future

   Wait until next year. Wait until you get there. That's where it's hard. You know, if we coddle you here and help you out, we are just enabling you. We can't do that because you will never learn to be successful. It always seemed that our current year teacher always needed to toughen us up for the big scary future. You remember, you heard the calls, you've seen the long assignments, you've smelled the fear. Around the corner is always the big scary year of high expectations.

   In my travels, I have worked in five different districts, two k-12 districts and three k-8 districts in two different states. The underlying themes from the leadership in every district I have been in, we want the students to succeed and if they fall, figure out how to help them get back up. I've seen teachers give incomplete grades for a month after school ended, come in throughout June to ensure a child understood a concept. I have seen children lining the walls of swim pool, coming in at 5:30 in the morning to get extra assistance because they knew the coaches would help them in whatever content area they needed assistance. I've seen math teachers extend hours every single day after school and chase children down the halls to ensure they figured out how to multiply by the reciprocal. The reality at every single level of schooling is that for the most part teachers regardless of children's ages want the student to get it.

   Lets start at the top and look at the university level. I have the opportunity to take a graduate level class this fall. The professor for the class has three students who's professional role does not match those of other students. Instead of requiring the exact same product, so that the grades and rigor can be the same, she is modifying products and learning experiences in order to meet the needs of the each constituency. She presents flexibility regarding when assignments are due but also requests two-way understanding that she also has obligations to complete. There are no lines in the sand being drawn but rather individuals listening to each other to maximize the learning and increase the value of the experience. Clearly present in the class is a sense of human worth and as such we all work to learn more and cultivate value in the class.

   When applying to colleges, admissions departments brag about the wide-range of supports available to students. There are learning labs, tutors, flipped videos. You walk down the hall and three other people have taken the class. Sure there may be that one or two that has their "strict requirements" but generally, it is that individual that lacks understanding and the leadership, the person's colleagues, and just about everyone else knows its an individual's issue not the tone of the university. Go on tour some day on a college campus, you will be amazed at the level of supports available. Personally, I remember struggling in Calculus 1 and 2. I spent hours, week after week, meeting with Professor Fink getting support. I learned far more from him about how people support people than I remember about Calculus. His patience, his understanding, and his willingness to help me look at problems from a variety of perspectives has influenced me in so many aspects of my career. What must have been simple for him but was difficult for me, he explained through 16 different lenses. Those courses could have been, you need to toughen up, but instead they were ones of lets find the path.
   In Downers Grove, we have both a k-8 district and a 9-12 district. The High School District has more than 15 feeder school districts. Each school is large, containing over 2000 people. They could be ominous places. However when you go inside they are full of energy and spirit. We meet regularly with leaders from the High School team. Our learning coaches meet with their coaches, their department chairs help us with our committees and learning, the leadership team and ours talk, share, and support each other. When we meet with them, the conversation is never we need you to have the children prepared for this, but rather this is what we are working on how is it similar to what you are doing. While we are truly two separate entities, we have more k-12 alignment than any place I have worked. The reason for this is simple, the high school believes that if you prepare and support children for the experiences they are ready to learn now, then they will be more than prepared to be successful in high school. Furthermore, if they stumble at high school there are a plethora of resources to support them there also. The math department chair, Jon, came in and willingly shared how they are focusing on deepening Math practices. He talked about how sometimes they don't get to all the content and that's ok. He shared that there are times a single problem is focused on for several days. His focus, deep understanding not a race to cover with stringent explanations. The English-Language Arts chair, Chris, came in and shared conversations regarding exploration, thought, revision, and reflection. He talked about having far fewer grades in the book and high quality work that requires personal exploration, deep thought, and revision prior to completion. While large in size, the feeling we left with was leadership desires personalization of practice.
   And so the story goes, level by level, we need to understand that we don't need to prepare children for an ominous future of insurmountable expectations but rather meet them in the present. We need to give learning opportunities at their instructional level. Request products that encourage their development realizing that not every child needs to complete the same task but rather each child needs to forward their learning journey. Learning is not an exercise of power and control but rather a journey of discovery, synthesis, and communication. We need to stop worrying about preparing them for next year and provide the learning opportunities and expectations that are appropriate for today. By doing that, they will be ready for whatever the future brings when it arrives.

Does This Teacher Still Exist? Should He Ever Have?

Right of Verticality

   Learning has not always been synthesized in age-based chunks. In many aspects of life, achievement earns the next set of opportunities not age. Students are neither extended nor denied additional opportunities due to their age but these decisions are based on merit. The most famous of these processes is the learning of all martial arts. There is no set entry age for martial arts, there is no set date of achievement, status is made step by step, unit by unit as the student learns the necessary skills and concepts to achieve each belt. The learning itself is a journey.
   The report card is a challenge for many in our system. I was so proud and jealous of my son's district, when I received an email this week from their Assistant Superintendent indicating that they were eliminating grades k-5 and moving to a standards-based document. I applaud their effort and wish I was willing to pull the band-aid in the way they were. They have renamed their document Progress Report instead of Report Card. Their steps are ones we all need to make. I can't wait to see their format.
    Our district began this journey before I arrived and landed with a document that has both standards and grades. Many on the committee openly agreed it was a document that would not work for standards measurement is a task of achievement regardless of time and comparative rank whereas grades, from the word gradient, openly means to rank in status. They are two conflicting systems.
   The challenge is, this is where we are at with Common Core Standards and Value-Added Measurement Evaluation. The Common Core Standards are theoretically steps that should be progressions achieved over time that each individual should make. They are flawed, gradient by age, assuming minimally each child should step each point up the ladder by the end date of that age's step. Value-Added Measurement Evaluation points that we must move each child forward at least a step regardless of how high they are. The teacher is judged if they are not able to push the majority of their children forward at least one step. Like our report cards with standards and grades these ideas are in conflict.
    In the NBA, they have a rule of verticality:
"A player is entitled to a vertical position even to the extent of holding his arms above his shoulders, as in post play or when double-teaming in pressing tactics."
    The player is allowed to move into the space above them as high as they can reach. There are no ceilings in the NBA, on floors to catch their fall. Perhaps this conflict between Common Core Standards and Value-Added Measurement Evaluation is the same stage as we are with the report card, stuck between standards and grades. Perhaps the next iteration of standards and evaluation will be the place we are striving to move forward to in our district, vertical learning. In a standards-based vertical learning model, parents, teachers, and students are provided a rubric of curriculum outcome steps they need to achieve. Learning is modular and children's opportunities, progress, and outcomes report indicate where the child is at in a standards area and where they need to go next. It informs all parties of the successes and the opportunities. Here is an example:

Children are able to tackle any unit they are ready for. Teachers are provided modular units of learning, the standards of achievement are dictated by the state, the curriculum objectives and modular resources dictated by the district, the learning opportunities designed and implemented by the teacher, and the progression through the curriculum objectives is dictated by the learner. Children can be grouped to take on appropriate task challenges together as merit demonstrates. 

   I have sent two different children to school. Same genes, same background, same parenting, same opportunities, but two completely different learners. I believe that they will both become happy, successful, high achieving adults. They need different learning opportunities at different times. No set of age-based curriculum, standards, or assessments could accurately measure their strengths and growth areas. For all of us, students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members, we need to give up the fallacy of grades and age-based standards and admit, we have different kids each with their own-right to verticality. Once we do this, we can design, just like martial arts, levels of achievement based on skills, merit, and outcomes. It will take some thought. High schools will not have everyone achieve the standard diploma. They may need to have different types of outcome diploma's (ie. Associate's Diploma, Math and Science Diploma, Engineering and Design Diploma). They will not all "graduate" at 18. However each of them will leave with skills and capacities to help lift us as a society. Instead of choosing the fixed-mindset of ranking through age-based standards and grades let us move to a growth-mindset of vertical learning, a model in which all can achieve.

Learning Can Begin At Any Age

Stuck In Time

     So I am a parent of a middle schooler. It's all there: the gym uniform, the locker, the passing periods. I am not sure how it happened as I keep trying to convince my self that he hasn't been around the house  long enough to be in middle school, but he has. Somethings haven't changed. There is still a lot of math homework each night. The assignment is different. We always had 1-30something the odds, because the answers were in the back of the book where now he needs to do almost all of the problems. His teachers are far more human and caring than I remember mine to be, in fact, I remember so few of mine its scary.
     Sometimes I question, what is it that we are exactly doing here. The structures of most schools feel ancient. The grades, the subjects, the assignments, what's the difference between 1954 and 2014 other than we teach it earlier, children get more of it, and its more likely that the parents won't understand either the content or the process. My mother shares stories of her Grandma Fritzie complaining about "new math" in the 1950's. Scott, who went to high school with me, posted this picture of his child's 2nd grade homework on Facebook:

I was on the floor laughing not because it was "Common Core" math, but because my 2nd grade student had essentially the exact same problem on the exact same day as his child. We live in different communities. We have different teachers. Our school's use different publishers, and yes Pearson has not purchased every publishing firm yet. Our children have never met, yet they are learning the exact same thing on the exact same day.

Slowly we need to break out of this concrete confine of educational structures. We need to recognize that our children our different. They are not better, not worse, not stronger academically, not weaker academically. They are academically different. I know my children are. I have two boys, each with strengths and challenges. One who will be able to do discuss any academic assignment you ask and one who will look at you and be bothered that you are asking him to do an academic assignment. One who can't often put his shirt on in the right direction and one who insists on selecting his outfit in just the right manner. They are different and to assume they both need the exact same assignment on the exact same day as Scott's child is a waste of everyone's time.

      The real education reform needs to come from within. It is about communities, schools, parents, teachers, and students understanding that we have different children and each day we need to help students continuously grow and improve. It isn't about how we rank them but rather how fast we can help them understand the next concept. It isn't about if they were graded fairly but rather did they have room to create a meaningful product that demonstrated the concept but also encouraged them to demonstrate innovation and creativity. It isn't about which homeroom they are in but rather is the school working together to make groups of significant enough scale that allows EACH child to have learning experiences at their instructional level and pushes them forward to the next concept. The whole concept of "graded" bothers me. To grade is not to assess in order to determine what the child needs support with and what to teach next but rather to rank against a scale. It in itself is an output of comparison not learning. My biggest worry is that we will have a child sit for two or three years in that math class and not understand a single thing. The push to strive forward and cover the concepts will leave that child hating math and hating school because its a machine not a journey for them.

       We are stuck in time. No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Race to the Top, SmarterBalance, and PARCC, are simply tools to reinforce the factory line instruction of children. Interestingly enough only "Value-added Measurement" - growth based teacher and administrator evaluation, challenges the concept that all children need to learn the same and encourages us to push all children at their level forward. While I think the tools behind this may be wrong, at least the concept that all children need to improve and grow is encouraging. We are stuck in time. I need to go now and look at my child's grades on Skyward to see if he is missing any assignments. Those missing points will affect his grade and his ability to get into that next level class. Clearly this is all about what he has learned and what challenge he is ready for next. Stuck in time!

Is Mr. Vernon Still There?