The Novice to Expert Continuum

I’ve recently been reading the book Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching by Zach Groshell. I see it as something of the convergence of the work from John Sweller on Cognitive Load Theory and the work from Anita Archer on Explicit Instruction. I’ve been really enjoying the book, and I highly recommend it as a way to reflect on how you explain your instruction to your students. Plus, it’s a speedy read!

I often think of people as either novices or experts, almost as if they are binary. But what I hadn’t thought about carefully enough that Groshell calls attention to is that the transition from novice to expert really exists along a continuum. The reminder about the needs of learners based on where they are in the learning process was probably one of the greatest aha moments for me. Let’s dig into that a little bit.

As a former science teacher, I will use an example of something that I often felt all of my students came to me as something of a novice at: using the triple beam balance to measure the mass of objects. We would learn this skill early in the year because many of the labs we would do throughout the year would require using the balance and getting accurate mass measurements. In case you’ve forgotten what a triple beam balance looks like, the ones we used in my classroom were practically identical to this:

When we learned to use the triple beam balance, I would often take one of our balances, show our students how to “zero” the balance, and then take a random object to find the mass. To build background knowledge, we’d talk about how many people had ever used a scale that you had to move the weights (when I was in the classroom, most doctor’s offices still had that type of scale, not the digital ones that are everywhere now). Then, I’d explain how the balance is similar.

To allow everyone to see the process, I’d place the balance on my document projector and use it like a camera to project the steps on the screen for all to see. First, I’d take my object and place it on the pan. Then, I’d explain that you start by moving the 100 g mass. Once it gets to the point where the balance goes down, you go back to the previous notch. Then, you move to the 10 g mass. Once the balance goes down, you go to the previous notch. Finally, you slide the 1 g marker until the balance is zeroed or the marker on the right points to the 0 mark. That would tell us that the object’s mass is the same as the mass we moved on the balance’s three beams. We would then add up the 100 g mass, the 10 g mass, and the 1 g mass rounded to the nearest tenth of a g. We’d do a couple more examples with objects I had on or around my desk. I might have students say what step to do next, but I was still moving the masses on the balance, although they could see it on the screen.

After a few samples, I’d have one member of the table group come and get a balance with a few objects on a tray to bring back to their table. Then, I’d set them free. And that is where I made my mistake. Invariably, table groups would have a hard time. One group would have an issue, so I’d have to answer those questions. While I was helping that group, other groups would have problems, but with nobody to help, learning would break down, and engagement would break down. The different groups were entirely disengaged when I finished with the first or second group. Potentially, there were behavior issues. Kids were frustrated because they “couldn’t get it.” I would see kids from across the room doing things in the wrong order but couldn’t do anything about it because I was stuck at this table helping this group.

In retrospect, I see the error of my ways. I went directly from the “I do” modeling portion of my lesson to the “You do” portion. I skipped the “We do” portion and jumped directly from the novice to the expert stage, but my students weren’t yet experts. Insert face palm emoji here!

If I could go back, I’d do the task differently. I’d still model the task in the “I do” stage the same way. Nothing seems wrong there. However, I need to strengthen the “We do” portion of the lesson. To do that, each tray would have identical objects. That way, I would know they had the same mass. This would allow me to do a completion problem, where a portion of the task is shown to them, and then they need to finish the final step to find the answer. For the triple beam balance, I’d show them (and have them follow along on their own balance) what to do with the 100 g mass, then the 10 g mass, and then have them use the 1 g mass to find the result. We’d use something like a whiteboard to write our answers, then use a “3… 2… 1… show me” to quickly check how people did. I’d be able to see if any groups were way off that needed additional support, if we were ready to pull back on support as a class, etc. Over time, I’d fade the support, adding more steps they would complete on their own, eventually getting to the point that students were working in their groups, finding the mass of objects they selected around the room, and then having me check their work.

Chances are, this process would take more than one day to play out, but by following a similar process, I’d build a stronger understanding of the task at hand. What I found in my old methods was that I often had to reteach the triple beam balance every time we used it because the methods I used never got my students to master it in the first place. By taking a little more time the first time and ensuring we all get to mastery, we might not have to spend as much time on a reteach the next time we pull out the triple beam balances.

Do you ever find that with something you teach, you have to reteach every time you come back to it? Maybe you need to rethink the gradual release of the task in your teaching to get your students to mastery in the first place.

This is a sign of our rush to get to letting the students “do the work.” And trust me, I get it! We want them to be able to do it! But what is the cost of letting them do it if they cannot do it correctly? They might practice incorrectly and solidify their understanding of an incorrect method, making your job harder to reteach. Or they might become frustrated and just start to believe “I’m not a ____ person” (fill in the blank with the appropriate subject area). By remembering this concept of the novice to expert continuum, slowly fading our support, and providing models that students can go back to, they are better able to figure it out.

My favorite suggestion from this section of Groshell’s book was the idea of a completion problem. Imagine math class with a problem that takes 4 steps to solve. In a completion problem, you model steps 1 through 3 for your students and then ask them to do step 4 on their own. After you have mastered that step, you fade the support by modeling steps 1 and 2, asking the students to do steps 3 and 4 independently. With mastery, you fade to only modeling the first step. Eventually, you get to the point where you do not complete any of the steps because your students know how to do the entire process. When we explicitly teach math (or anything), it becomes easy for our students. If you have students take pictures of these models, or you take pictures on your own and then put them on Canvas for your students, they now have a resource they can return to any time they need to remember how it’s done. I loved this idea – I often modeled problems. I frequently asked students to tell me what to do. But I never went to the level of thought that Groshell went to here. I hope it’s an aha for you too!

So, what is a takeaway for you? What might you try to do differently in your classroom due to this post? How will you think of your students a little differently now that you know about the idea of the novice to expert continuum? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Motivation vs. Discipline

As many of you know, I am active in the #FitLeaders community. This is a group of leaders who realize that being successful in leadership takes balance. To grow as a leader, to be my best, I must first take care of myself. For me, that means getting up early almost every morning to do a basement workout, go for a run, or hit the road on my bike. Many of you know that I am disciplined in my 4:30 get-up time. Some of you know not to try to schedule a meeting with me at 11:00, because if you do, I probably have not had lunch yet, and most likely will not be focused on our meeting. Many of you also know that I’m not likely to return a school email after 6:00 pm. These are parts of the discipline that I have placed in my life so that I can stay in balance in the various roles that make me who I am.

For those of you who know me well now, it may be hard to believe it, but what you see today is not the version of me that existed at the end of my college career. When I graduated from high school, I walked around as a generally healthy person, and my weight hovered right around 175 pounds. In college, things changed. Gone were the days of healthy home-cooked meals (thanks mom, I know you’re reading!), and they were replaced with the dorm cafeteria food that included all-you-can-eat ice cream stations, or the food courts around campus (would you believe I ate Baked Ziti from Sbarro’s for dinner almost every night for at least a couple of months. Later there were dinners in the fraternity, and while there was salad, that was not what I was eating most of the time. Then came the apartment year – carry-out, fried food, late-night pizza runs. When I graduated from college, I was up to about 225 pounds and was not that healthy at all. Climbing the stairs in the School of Education on the IU campus was almost too much to bear!

After graduation, I somehow ended up with a book about healthy eating and healthy habits. I don’t recall the title, but based on some of the ideas it shared, I felt like I could make some changes. I had a job and was living in a house with a friend. During that phase of life, there were probably still some bad choices in terms of what to eat, but I was motivated to try to make a change. I decided I was ready to re-up my membership in the YMCA, a regular part of my childhood and high school years.

I was motivated.

But here’s the thing about motivation, at the start, it looks like this:

But eventually, that fire burns down, and your motivation looks a little more like this:

My motivation at the start was high, but the changes in behavior were challenging. My muscles got sore. I was tired. And pizza tastes so good! Over time, that motivation began to die down, just like a fire if you stop adding fuel. There were swings between periods of success – eating healthy, working out, and seeing progress – and then periods of regressing to some of the bad habits.

Eventually, I got a full-time teaching job, which brought me to Indianapolis. I moved into an apartment of my own. When I did, the place where I ended up was right across the street from the YMCA. I couldn’t look out any window, go out my front door, or sit on my patio without seeing it. With that proximity and being in a new town without a ton of connections, it was easy to find my motivation again. What I found over time was that motivation switched. Working out became a part of my daily routine. Instead of thinking of it as something I “had to” do, it became something that just happened. My routine became this: go to school, come home and walk the dog, go to the YMCA, come back home and have a good dinner, and go to bed at an appropriate time. The routine became naturally ingrained in what I was doing, and instead of feeling like I needed motivation, I developed a level of discipline to do what was needed.

Over time, I got back to what I’d consider a healthy place. My weight is not quite as low as it was in high school, but it’s much closer to that than when I graduated from college. And I’d say that my overall health is in a much better place – I’m able to run around with my kids, and even outrun them at times. The discipline that I’ve developed helps me maintain the appropriate balance between a strong and healthy body and a mind that can take on the task of leading an elementary school.

Now, as many of you know, this blog is focused on my reflection, learning, and growth in education. So, you might be wondering how this story about my health journey relates to what I do as an educator, or what you can do as an educator.

As educators, we have the chance to learn lots of new things. Currently, the staff in my school has been learning a lot about our new literacy resources. Most of the PD we have done so far this school year has been focused on the goal of designing intentional reading practices around our new resource. As we learn about the new resource, we might be motivated to utilize some of our new pieces of information.

But as with anything else, motivation can die down over time. In a recent episode of George Couros’s podcast, he talked a bit about this idea. He said:

*^{Here’s a link to that podcast – it’s only 9 minutes long! https://overcast.fm/+wluP1vlVM}*

What’s important for us to remember is that motivation is dependent on some outside force – a speaker, a book, a professional learning opportunity. We will feel that motivation for a period, but like the fire, it will go out without continued fuel. Discipline on the other hand is something that only we can control. If we shift from a mindset of feeling motivated, to focusing instead on how we stay disciplined, then we are more likely to make a difference in the lives of our students.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Have you ever been motivated to try something and found that motivation then faded over time? Was there anything that helped you keep moving forward? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Setting a vision

In my last post, I spent some time talking about the strategies I used to build relationships with the staff of my school after I transitioned into the role of principal of Fishers Elementary School. After spending that time listening to our staff, it was clear that there was a lot of energy, a lot of ideas, and a willingness to grow. But what it seemed was lacking was a clear direction. During an early meeting with the staff, we started talking about the process of building a vision of learning for Fishers Elementary School. We all agreed that there needed to be one, and that it needed to start with each one of us – our beliefs, ideas, and personal passions about teaching and learning.

In order for someone to understand what they are doing, they have to also be really clear on the how and why that goes with that what. Simon Sinek has a book and a TED Talk titled Start With Why (the book is a quick and easy read, or you can check out the talk here). In both, he shares the idea of The Golden Circle. In both the book and the talk, he explains that the people and companies who are the most successful have a really clear definition of their Why, and then work their way out on the Golden Circle. But most companies or organizations start with the what and work their way in. I felt that if we wanted to have a really clear understanding of what we were trying to accomplish at FES, we needed a clear definition of our why.

For our January staff meeting, I planned, then presented my own version of an Ignite session (if you’ve never done this, it’s a 20 slide presentation, where the slides automatically shift every 15 seconds) titled “My Why” (I wrote a post about it a while ago – you can read about it here). I then encouraged everyone to take some time in the coming weeks to think about their own why.

At our next staff meeting, we came together again. It was a chance for us to all reflect on our personal why. I encouraged everyone to sit in a grade level team, and with that team, they had a short amount of time to discuss and define a shared why. We then used a collaborative powerpoint document, where each team created their own slide. The work around defining our why was so important in helping all of us to be really clear on our beliefs about education and learning. It’s the why that drives what we do, not the other way around.

As we were spending time talking defining our why, we also talked about the importance of a shared vision. A Vision for Learning for FES that is written by one person based on their beliefs is not going to be meaningful to all the stakeholders. We started talking about who else we needed to get input from. In these conversations, we knew we wanted the thoughts of our students, we wanted the thoughts or our families, and if possible, we wanted the thoughts of our community. We wanted to make sure that whatever our Vision for Learning was to be included in the ideas of multiple stakeholders.

In February, we were planning to gather the thoughts about learning from our community. It was a couple of days before an upcoming PTO meeting and I was sitting in the conference room with my leadership team. As we were talking, someone pointed at a bulletin board in the room and said “Well, we already have a vision statement right here.” I was floored. “You mean I’ve been here for almost 3 months, and I’ve talked with all of you about developing a vision, and nobody told me that there was already one on a bulletin board?” (OK, maybe my fault for not noticing.)

But what I quickly came to realize is that the vision that was on that bulletin board was nothing but words on a wall to most of the people in the building. They did not feel that the vision that was on the wall accurately reflected them. I’m not exactly sure who all was involved in the writing of that vision, but it wasn’t a shared vision. It didn’t drive the decisions that we made about learning in our building. It was just words on a wall.

To gather some thoughts, we started with 4 questions. Those questions were driven by the book Thrive by Grant Lichtman and included:

We asked these questions first in a staff meeting, and then in our PTO meeting. The thoughts we gathered were so impressive!

These responses were collected during a staff meeting and then a PTO meeting on March 11th. When we collected these thoughts, we did not fully grasp what was about to happen in our world. On March 13th, we let out of school earlier than scheduled for spring break due to concerns about the risks of Covid-19. We taught from home for a week, then had a 2-week spring break during which the governor of Indiana announced that schools would not reopen.

After spring break, we transitioned to what I would call emergency remote learning. It was nothing close to the ideal learning environment for our students. Initially, when this transition happened, I had big plans. I thought we could still do our work on the Vision of Learning for FES virtually. But what I quickly found is that we weren’t ready for that. Most of us were barely able to tread water to meet the learning needs of our students. In January, my goal was to have a well-defined vision for learning before the start of this school year. By April, it was clear we needed to hit the pause button on that work.

So now, I sit here at the start of September. Students start in our building tomorrow. So much of our mental energy has been devoted to the logistics of opening a school in the middle of a global pandemic. But, my assistant principal, our teacher development specialist, and I are once again reading Thrive. In talking through the first section, we all feel like we’re currently at the point where we need to identify our value proposition – what is the thing that makes us valuable to our community? In the coming couple of weeks, I will be working on writing this up for our school community. I’ll share with our teachers, I’ll share with our PTO, and I’ll share it here, to seek feedback on our value at Fishers Elementary School. That will move us one step closer on the path of a clear Vision for Learning.

Time

Today I was sitting in a meeting with colleagues. During the meeting, we had a conversation around the idea of whether we were a person who led through checklists, or if we were one who led through the rally cry mentality. I know that for me, I definitely trend towards the rally cry side of things. I like to think about big ideas, about making change happen, about causing good trouble, about being a ruckus maker for the benefit of all the learners in my school (notice the intent of learners – that’s not just students). But the tradition in educational leadership has trended more towards the checklist mentality.

I think that this checklist leadership has led to an education system that relies on their checklists. I think that those checklists are what cause us to pull out the same activities from year to year, not being responsive to our students, not being responsive to the environment around us. It’s why in January we write stories about snow even when there isn’t any snow on the ground, or why we might spend a lesson in science on what a full moon is even though if we were to look at the night sky we might notice that the moon is currently in the new moon phase.

If we operate on checklists, our system is going to stay the way that it is. And here’s the thing… The system as it is can be hard to argue with for some. If you teach in a school that “does well” on the standardized assessment, even though you operate from that checklist mindset, it’s going to be hard to convince you, or your families, or maybe even your students, that there might be a better way to make learning happen.

But I believe there is a better way, because our checklist mindsets create kids who think in checklist ways. But our world doesn’t need checklist thinkers. In a recent article from Forbes (The 10+ Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020), the following list was shared:

Data Literacy

Critical Thinking

Tech Savviness

Adaptability and Flexibility

Creativity

Emotional Intelligence

Cultural Intelligence and Diversity

Leadership Skills

Judgment and Complex Decision Making

Collaboration

Or you could take a look at the list of Key Attributes that Employers Want to See on Students’ Resumes (click here). This survey, put out every year by National Association of Colleges and Employers, doesn’t list skills that could be achieved by checklist thinking anywhere near the top of their list.

Excitement and Curiosity So, my mindset is that education needs a little bit of a jolt. A swift kick in the behind. Because the system as we know it doesn’t help create students who are prepared for these skills listed above. Not to mention, I’m very fearful of any system where its users enter with excitement and curiosity, and exit feeling bored and disconnected. Visit a kindergarten classroom… After you get past all the hugs and stories, you’ll see learners who are excited to tell you about the littlest details of their curiosity. But somehow, by the time they reach late elementary or middle school, that excitement is mostly gone.

These fears drive me to a lot of conversations with other educators about what schools could be. About what we need to do to create a system that our users exit just as excited as when they enter, but with all the skills listed in the lists above. What’s hard about those conversations – so many of the educators I have those conversations with are checklist thinkers. They have the thing that they do every year because it’s the first month of school, or because it’s almost winter break, or because it’s the middle of winter and no matter what it looks and feels like outside we’re writing our snow stories.

And here’s the thing that drives me crazy. As soon as I start talking about my admittedly crazy ideas, as soon as I share a little bit about what it might mean for us to truly adjust what we do to be more responsive to the day to day needs of our students, and be responsive to the future needs of our society, I almost immediately get one word thrown back at me…

TIME

And I get that, I really do. When we live in a checklist mindset, our most important factor of those checklists is being able to check off the things on the list. And that means we have to do it at the time that we plan on checking it off.

But when I’m talking about change, that means we need to go into design thinking mode. When I say the word innovator, who do you think of? Maybe Einstein, or Edison, Tesla, Jobs, Musk, Wozniak, Gates… Those are the people that we think of as innovators. As we get into a problem-solving mindset for education, I want to remind you of a quote from Einstein that I love:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.”

You see, Einstein got that our ability to solve a problem doesn’t lie in the solution itself. Rather it lies in the ability to appropriately identify the problem. And if you were able to talk to Einstein, or any of the other innovators that I listed above, you’d learn that one of the last things you do in an innovative design process is start to allocate resources.

Time is a resource.

Let me say that again a little louder for the people in the back:

Time is a resource.

And as a resource, it’s not part of our innovative discussions. As educators, there are definitely some resources that we can’t solve. We probably don’t get to pick the location of our school. We typically don’t get to make many changes to the physical building itself. We can’t ignore our state standards of learning. But what happens within the walls, the pedagogical decisions, the allocation of staff, the assignment of students, those are all things that can be adapted. There are schools who have found ways to build regular collaboration time into the school day for teachers. There are schools who have removed a grade-based system, and instead meet each kid right where they are in terms of the instructional decisions that need to be made. Other people have figured out ways to make these innovative things happen. And they didn’t let that pesky issue of time get in the way.

Unless I’m missing something, that 24 hours a day thing is kind of consistent everywhere. Others who have made massive changes to the way they do education don’t have any more time than we do. They’ve just chosen to allocate that resource in a different way. They’ve chosen to change their dispositions, to change their mindsets.

So here’s where I am right now. I’m ready to throw the whole system out on the table. From soup to nuts, what’s not working? What might work better? Let’s try things. Let’s ideate as a staff. What do our kids need in order to be able to leave our building just as curious as the first time they set foot in it. Let’s put it all out there. There’s no such thing as a bad idea. Then, let’s start testing. Just like how SpaceX must test each and every part in order to build a rocket that can do this:

We must be willing to ideate, innovate, test, reiterate, and test again. Eventually we can land our own system that creates students who are ready to leave us with the skills that employers need.

This IS GOING TO BE A MINDSET SHIFT for us all! But I’m on board. I’m ready to start testing, start trying, start building. These kids are too important to not.

Start with why

Why? It’s a question I’m pretty sure I have heard a million times from my son. He’s a super curious kid. Any of you who have kids or have worked around young kids know that why is one of the most important questions in the eyes of a child.

That question of why is the reason that prior to the first opportunity I had to meet with my new staff at Fishers Elementary, I shared Simon Sinek’s TED Talk – How great leaders inspire action. (If you haven’t seen it, you can get to it here)

golden-circle In this talk, Sinek refers to the Golden Circle. As he describes it, a lot of companies can define what they do, some can even define how they do it, but only a select few can define why. In companies with great leadership, they start with the why.

Think about a corporation like Apple. Ultimately, they are a technology company. But when we think about what made Apple the brand that it is today, it was the complete focus on the fact that they were making beautiful products that fulfilled their customer’s digital needs. They worked the golden circle from the inside out.

So, what’s the reason that so many of the companies that start with defining their why in the first place end up being so successful? I think a lot of it comes from that childhood sense of wonder we all have. Intrinsically I think all humans are wired to be curious beings. We all want to understand the why. Sometimes we don’t even recognize that is what we need. I can’t remember who said it, but they told me if you really want to understand a person’s thinking, keep asking the question why. When you get to the 7^th why, you probably have a pretty good grasp on where the person is coming from.

So, Sinek’s TED Talk now has me thinking. In the notes app on my phone I now have a note titled My Why. Currently there are 13 bullet points in this list. I hope to work on it and refine it some, because I plan to share my why with my staff at the next staff meeting. Then, we’re going to work together on first identifying our own personal why for what we do, and then work together to build a shared why. The purpose behind this activity will be to build a vision for what Fishers Elementary stands for moving forward.

I’m excited about the work that this will entail. And I’m ready to take my time. We are not going to walk out of our next staff meeting with our mission and vision, rather we are going to be working on this throughout the next semester. It is my hope that by the end of the school year, we have gathered input from our teachers and staff, from our students, from our families, and from our community.

It’s an exciting time to be a Tiger! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on the process!

The View from 518

Category: Leadership