Learning Structures that Work and that Really Work

I remember classes. I was there to pass your test. I could listen, stare, interject three answers (because I couldn't sit still), and get an A on your test. I would do only enough homework to ensure that I kept the good driver's discount for my car insurance "B" average). Theoretically I was an example of a child who learned. I was a success story. I was in the top 25% of a good school, went on to college, grad school, a career. Ask me which teacher's I remember that I had. Over thirty different teachers and I can give you 6. Mrs. Lindahl, Dr. Antonoff, Mr. Mundt, Mr. Wiemerslage, Mr. Catalani, and Monsieur Totz. I can remember Ron Cey's batting average in 1983 (.275), I can remember Michael Jordan sinking 6 three-pointers in 1992 against the Portland Trailblazers, but I can't name the majority of my high school teachers that I spent over 150 hours each with.

Furthermore, lets break down who I do remember. Mrs. Lindahl was a mom of another swimmer on the swim team. I saw her for years before I saw her in class. I still remember her class vividly. It was chemistry and we did a lot of lab experiments. Dr. Antonoff was the diving coach and one of the greatest English teachers a live. He sat, he talked with you, he'd question, he'd hang out. I think I took 3 classes from him and that was not enough. Mr. Mundt, well I don't remember almost anything of his class, only that he had used bathroom English to explain the difference between articles and pronouns. I walked away one day laughing about the grammatical difference between what is written on a bathroom stall from "this sucks" and "this school sucks." Cute, humorous, stuck 20 something years later, 150+ hours and that is what I walked away with. Mr. Wiemerslage, physics teacher, I don't remember the class or anything he said, simply that I slept all of swim season in class and made sure I got an A in all the rest of it. Mr. Catalani had the sludge test. Two weeks of figuring out what's in a mystery vial. It's all your's go do it. Monsieur Totz, caught me reading the sports section in French class and made me read the sports section from a French paper in class.

Most of my classes had nearly 30 people in them. We had over 3000 students as a school. I learned. I graduated. I walked away with very little. It was a good school that I am proud to have graduated from.

This is why we are asking the wrong questions. Can we learn in a lecture? Can we learn in whole group? The answer is yes. Of course we can. Or at least a segment of our students can. Can we learn enough content to pass a test? Will they remember it 3, 5, 7, 15 years later? Try it. Conjugate the verb "ser."

What were the commonalities of the effective classes I remember? They had us doing things. It was small group conversations, discussions, contextual experiences. The teachers didn't think about the 150 students they had, but who they were going to talk with this hour. For other classes, all I have is a funny moment or a misdeed by me to remember the class. 150+ hours and here is my parting gift, me napping because I'm overtired from swim practice.

Perhaps the questions are not can they learn in whole group or will they increase from pre-test to post-test in my class. The simple answer is they will. Kids are programmed to do that. Perhaps the real questions are more difficult. Can I help them become independent learners? Can I maximize their growth? Can I help them become collaborative problem-solvers? Can I help them create situations in which they will retain information not for the moment but for a lifetime? When we ask these question, not questions of content coverage but questions of learner development, the paradigm changes. It is in these situations that we see gamification, genius-hour, problem-based learning, growth model student development step forward. It is these situations, the sludge test, the chemistry labs, the French sports section, the small group book discussions, that resonate for a lifetime. These are the instructional methods that change learners. That last a lifetime. Ask yourself, who you remember and why? You'll find it's not because you were learning in the whole group but rather you had someone personalize opportunities for you to develop.

Can we "teach" them? Yes. Will they learn for a lifetime, only if we allow them to be an active participant in the journey.

Student's Have Thoughts and Occasionally Share Them

Born On Dating or as my son would say, BANANA!

About 5 years ago, Budweiser started a campaign regarding the freshness of beer. The commercial focused on the fresher the beer the better the taste. By grouping certain bottles together, you would be more likely to get a bottle that was ready to be tasted. I would assume by the lack of companies that followed this advertising trend that people realized your beer is not a banana. There is no small window in which it is ripe than turns sour. Most often beer is bottled and ready to be consumed when we are ready to partake.

Since we moved from the one room school house to the current framework of learning, we have transitioned from helping kids learn skills & competencies they were ready for to our own version of born on dating. As Sir Ken Robinson points out in his Changing Educational Paradigms video, we use a factory model to put children through learning challenges as if they were bottles of beer or a collection of widgets. Each child being delivered certain content at certain ages, completing certain contents at certain times. Our children learn that they become just cogs in a factory wheel.

I have two children. Into them they have had the same genes, similar formative experiences, similar amounts of years of preschool, same school growing up, and similar extracurriculars. For many things they are the same. As learners, they couldn't be more opposite. Both have the ability to learn at high levels but both demonstrate readiness and learning in different ways. Providing the factory-based methodology that we often provide would most often not meet either child's needs. What if we were to change the paradigm? What would it take to create the efficiencies of the factory model yet provide for the individual nature of child's development?

Big data has come to education. We are able to ask questions that we have never been able to ask before. We can identify with relative accuracy what content skills a child knows and what learning targets they should be working on next. When we ask deeper questions about those competencies and targets we frequently discover that the assessments are accurate but our age-based learning is not. By using the factory model we often create artificial ceilings for many children and push forward some children to attempt competencies they are not ready to master.

What would happen if we truly focused on what children need to learn next. Lets we let go of traditional grades, which rank children comparatively by age and don't tell us exactly what a child knows or doesn't know. Lets also let go of traditional standards-based grade models which tell us more about what a child knows but still rely on comparative rank while not identifying what each child needs to learn next. We could develop longitudinal frameworks for learning. What are all the competencies and skills within a subject a child needs to learn? Just like a patient's chart at a doctor's office, we could mark off the status of where the child is at now and what they need to accomplish next. From here, guided grouping could meaningfully occur. Simply, we add our longitudinal data to a database that also contains our standardized assessment data and we could provide in school meaningful learning opportunities with the personnel we have.

An example of this. Lets say we are working on number sense. If I have the longitudinal classroom data and standardized data, I could create groups relatively easily for a school, providing on concept instruction for children utilizing the staff I have. I query my data base, students at Alpha School with a Winter MAP Numbers and Operation RIT between 170-190, who have not completed "Understand Place Value up to 1000." Out comes the names and I have an instructional group. That group will contain 6 year olds, 7 year olds, and 8 year olds. Or as we like to call them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. If we schedule their math at the same time, we can have 1 teacher work with all of this group on these skills rather than 6 teachers work on or ignore these skills based on the needs of the whole group. Simply creating longitudinal frames for recording student progress allows us to create and triangulate student needs and facilitate better use of student and staff talents.

The factory model of learning creates artificial limits to student development. If we want truly appropriate learning and hope to maximize growth, we need to realize that children are more like bananas than beer. They are ripe for certain things at certain times. However, unlike bananas, they don't all ripen at the same rate. Giving the right dose of learning opportunity at the right time will us to use our staff's talents well and increase our learning growth rate for students.

Banana!!!

Banana Song

Why Does This All Matter?

This past week, I was with a leader as the "aha!" moment occurred. The leader is a recovering cog in the machine. For school had been a series of structures. You know how cogs are. In schools they see schedules, semesters, grades, courses, content to cover, and students to get in class. For cogs, student engagement is following the teachers directions, completing the assignment and making sure the grade book is up to date.

But there it was, the "aha!" moment. In explaining rumination of thoughts for the upcoming year, the leader explained that the goal for everything was student ownership. Ownership, not the usual cog like answer of responsibility, but ownership. See responsibility is me completing what others want me to do and me behaving the way others want me to behave. Ownership is me being invested in what I am doing. Me wanting to be involved in the experience and the teachers including me as an important part of the experience. The experience revolves around me just as much as it revolves around the teacher, the course, the grade, or the content.

The leader went on to explain that this would really need to involve a whole lot of staff contemplation and discussion. Ongoing conversations regarding not what this class is supposed to cover but rather where students are at and what do they need to learn next. Refocusing our learning experiences in every subject around the children's progress, goals, and gains rather than activities we've used.

We all remember the first learning experience which truly mattered to us. We all know when learning became important and when school became important. Furthermore, we all have friends who never found that moment in which learning in school became something important for them. Some who exit thinking they wasted 13 years of their lives completing the tasks of others.

Student ownership generates student growth. Learning experiences such as problem-based learning, Genius Hour/20% time, self-selected reading dialogues, student-involved choices, and gamification all seek to invest the children in making learning theirs and not ours. For in schools, if we simply train, practice, drill, and test. It is all impractical and we are doomed to failure. Only when we make connections both academic and social, apply in real life, and find ways to make it part of us, can we make learning matter.

Eye of the Tiger - Chuck

In Our Efforts to Avoid It, Have We Become A Nation at Risk?

My brothers and I are children of the "A Nation At Risk" report. The first of three children, born in the baby bust (1973 & 1974) and the baby boomlet (1981), we were the ones the report was "analyzing" and the report was preparing for. We have grown up. We are parents. We have taken on careers, families, and are about to carry the mantle handed down to us from "The Greatest Generation" and the "Baby Boomers." What is this legacy you hand us? In education, we are still grappling with that very question.

Lets see what has occurred after "A Nation At Risk." The calendar did not reform. Many schools are still as set on an agrarian calendar as if we needed to head to the fields each Memorial day. School funding hasn't equalized. We had great debates regarding equity and adequacy. We learned that we can find taxing mechanisms that seem more fair but less stable. Michigan still reels after it's "Proposal A" funding reform which while the auto industry boomed during the first 5 years was fine and has since had 15 years of cuts to the point in which if one wants to become a teacher more often one leaves the state. Professionalization and respect for the teaching profession has not increased. Teachers and administrators are pitted annually with false layers of "unwillingness to change," "lack of accountability," and "satiated by tenure." 

In the last 32 years, we have as a nation have added standards set after standards set, test after test, reduced professionalism in the classroom and added accountability. We are sending the children of No Child Left Behind onto college and into the career world discovering that that are really good at standardized having completed year after year of test prep and wondering why they are disenchanted and disconnected with greater society values. We have stressed accountability in the classroom and demonstrated a lack of accountability in other institutions. They are America's children. They have noticed the gridlock in the legislature, the huge corporate funding influencing their "representatives" and the bailouts of Wall Street. If we wonder why they don't go into teaching, look at their experiences. They want to create and have found that schools were a test prep academy.

In an era of statistical sampling, SABRmetrics, and advanced metrics in life and in sports, only through Federal mandate and state law would we create a system that required annual population data. The census is taken every ten years. Elections accurately predict winners prior not only to every vote being counted but rather most votes being even cast. Yet, each child, third to eighth grade and some high school years, will spend more time this year than any year prior taking standardized assessment. 

The funny thing is despite this journey through education reform after reform, test after test. Inside schools Generations X, the Millennials, and Generation Z have decided to create, to innovate, to grow flowers in the desert. For them, for us, we look at these mandates and ask, what can we do despite the legislature? How can we "right size" this assessment and our efforts to fulfill it? How quickly can we get back to the business of having children explore, create, dialogue, argue, and build? How soon can we be back to coding, genius hour, guided instruction, science exploration, and social-emotional learning? We have received the letters from the Illinois State Board of Education and US Department of Education. Letters from leaders of generations past, reminding us of our legal requirements and the penalties we will receive if we do not comply. And we will be compliant. But do we value the energies of your reform? Will families value these PARCC and SmarterBalanced test scores? Or is this simply an exercise until we get back to the good stuff. We are doing it. We will be compliant. But will we value it, what will it's impact be on this next generation of learners, and is it worth it? What is price tag of our journey? Have we become the Nation at Risk? 

Price Tag - Pitch Perfect

How Do We Measure Growth?

"Value Added" has become the focal point of the newest wave of education reform. How did your students gain when they were with you? Conceptually it makes sense. What achievement level did the students walk in at and what level did they leave at? If we were measuring the height of a student, it would be easy. Have the student stand next to the wall, mark the level they walk in as, mark the level they are at the end of the semester. Voila! The difference is how much they have grown.

When looking at student data, this is much harder. Here are two real examples using NWEA MAP data:

Group 1: Current First Grade Students in Math

        Fall Score - 171.66  RIT Mean

        Winter Score - 181.48 RIT Mean

        Mean Growth - 9.78 RIT

        68% of Students make their target growth

        19% more overall growth than a class of comparative peers in the Fall

Group 2: Current Fourth Grade Students in Math

        Fall Score - 205.73  RIT Mean

        Winter Score - 210.80 RIT Mean

        Mean Growth - 5.07 RIT

        50% of Students make their target growth

        2% more overall growth than a class of comparative peers in the Fall

From the data, it Group 1's teachers clearly out performed Group 2's teachers. They added more value. If only it were this easy. Lets add one more data point:

Group 1: Current First Grade Students in Math      

        Spring Score - 181.30 RIT Mean

        Fall Score - 171.66  RIT Mean

        Winter Score - 181.48 RIT Mean

        Mean Growth (Spring to Winter) - 0.18 RIT

Group 2: Fourth Grade Students in Math

        Spring Score - 205.50 RIT Mean

        Fall Score - 205.73  RIT Mean

        Winter Score - 210.80 RIT Mean

        Mean Growth (Spring to Winter) - 5.30 RIT

Group 1 did a great job this year with what they had. Their students lost a significant amount over the Summer (over 10 RIT points) and they brought those children back during the first semester. Who do we blame for the loss? The six-year old students? Their parents? Their Kindergarten teacher who got them that high? Lack of year round schools? None of these are realistic options. These teachers and children had significant growth but it was earn back growth.

Group 2 also did a great job. At the surface it seemed simply average, but as we look deeper this group achieved all new growth. They cut into new territory and helped their children learn new things because of the lack of regression for these students. 

Growth is vital to our overall achievement but it is more than a pre-post test scenario. It is complex including multiple factors: school, home, teacher, student, parent(s), and society. We need to drive forward and help improve, but when analyzing the data we can't simply set universal bars and say go achieve. It's far more complicated than that and that's ok. Perhaps there is more to growth of a child than simple numbers.

How You've Grown

Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales?

On Wednesday, I spent some time with one of my district's kindergarten teachers. She was spending her afternoon entering assessment data into the computer for the state. It was one moment of about 20 hours she'll spend in the next two weeks in front of her computer moving from child to child filling in ovals on a LCD. On the board was a drawing, far better than one I could have drawn. It was a drawing of a person, standing on the pier with a fishing pole and fish swimming underneath.

Since I was visiting, rather than venting about the assessment data entry, she decided to tell me about the drawing. Apparently in class, she was reading a story and the term fishing hook came up. All but two of her five-year-olds were staring blankly at her. She described putting her finger and thumb into an "L" shape and sticking her thumb mouth as if she were being hooked. The two who "got it" had laughed hysterically, but for her other 23, she was simply building background knowledge.

I think to my youngest son. He's a big second grader now. I can't think of a pier anywhere close to us. He's never been fishing, never had a fishing hook or line in his hand. I'm not sure if he knows it. I'm not sure if it matters. I do know, he needs teachers like this one. One's who make the learning come alive, generate background knowledge through creative artistry, are willing to make a fool of themselves to ensure that children learn. That teacher creates greatness, cultivates knowledge, and makes the why fun.

I look at this new generation of assessments. Long data entry rubrics. Hours in front of stale white and black computer screens answering "rigorous" questions. I wonder, what do we want for out kids. How much basic skills and how much innovation? How much genius hour and how many hours answering digital assessments? We are the only nation that requires each of our public school students to test annually grades 3-8. Our children will spend more time on standardized assessments each year than a doctor spends each decade on their medical boards or a lawyer for their bar exam. Is our goal to have innovators or automatons? Do we want great set of standard skills or a wide range of diverse capacities? Do we need to assess everyone annually or will survey assessment data provide us with the same insight?

Simply, as The Onion critically asked in 2008, "Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales?"

The IEP (Individualized Eating Plan)

My dad likes to cook. He glances through recipe books from all sorts of cultures, ethnicities, and regions of the world. He is a dabbler, rarely following the recipe, but adding a little of this and a little of that. Each creation doesn't taste exactly like it did the last time around. He's a very good cook. He understands the chemistry and processes behind creating culinary dishes and wields this knowledge frequently in the kitchen.

The problem was he had three boys. The youngest, well to be honest, I am not sure what he ate. I think it was whatever we put in front of him, since he was 8 years younger, during the early years he probably had very little choice and when my brother and I left the house, he had nearly a decade of being the sole decision influencer. The middle child who was definitely his father's culinary son. He, anguished over the meal, and by 8 or 9, he was in charge of the major food prep in the house. He was an early developing gourmet cook long before culinary expertise was a value. He remains the "gifted and talented" chef. Finally, there was me. I was in charge of salad.

In our house, there really wasn't time to cook every night. With swim practices, religious school, Hebrew School, and other activities, someone was always coming and going. We would make a couple of stock meals for the week, a soup or a large thing of spaghetti sauce, that we would have two or three times in the week, and scatter in some other meals when we could make them. If you didn't like what was being cooked, you had a couple of choices hit the stock meal or scrounge the kitchen for another dinner.

A generation later, our house doesn't feel much different now. I am a little more experimental of a chef than 10 year-old me, my wife is an exquisite experimental baker. We have one child who is willing to try to eat most anything and one child who eats about 4 foods at any particular time of the year. We make certain staple foods, grilled items during the spring and summary with food prepped the night before. Chili during the Fall. Soups on and off during the winter. And some of us eat certain meals. Cameron's up for chili most any time, Logan has yet to ever try it. As such, each meal feels like and individualized eating plan. Who eats this, what's the alternative, can we give him a couple of yogurts and still call it dinner?

When preparing lessons for guided math or guided reading, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking I have 25 individualized learning plans, this will never work. However, just like cooking at our house, each plan is often a small variant from the staple dinner. Sometimes each group has different levels of problems, but the staple idea is linear expressions. Sometimes each group gets the same teacher-led session like adding negative numbers yet the supporting centers vary based on concepts they need to practice. The trick is to get certain learning experiences that our staples, the ones which we consistently build off of, and add the variety based on the needs of the group.

My bride is an amazing baker. Her "banana bread" is something that people will give up season tickets for. It's a creation of bananas, chocolate, toffee, and other sensations that excite a household. It comes from scratch and when it is created all of the house becomes a happier place. She doesn't cook it every time, but just enough that the world is a better place. She also has a book, semi-homemade baking. In this set of recipes, desserts are built of a cake-box base. She adds a little of this or a little of that to take a Betty Crocker dessert in a box and turn it into something special. At times she also gets the breakable cookie dough from the aisle in the store. Every once in a while when the kids have friends over she turns on the oven, throws them in, and ten minutes later fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. And, every once in a while the kids eat the cookie dough before its been cooked.

Planning for instruction is like cooking at our house or my wife's baking. Sometimes we have time to create the most magnificent dishes, often we build off of a base by adding a little of this or a little of that, and every once in a while we just take a serving of something straight from the store and say "here you go." It's the combination of each of these techniques that allows us to make an Individualized Education (Eating) Plan for all of our students (children).

Popcorn Shrimp