The ways we learn

The other day we were at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park enjoying some beautiful weather on a late January day – not something you get a lot of in Indiana!  While there, we were passed by a kiddo that was probably about the same age as my son Brody.  She was riding a bike.  Brody watched her go by, and said “I wish I had my bike!”  We told Brody that he could bring his bike the next time we came if he learned how to ride without his training wheels.  Imagine the whiniest 6-year-old voice you can as you read his response: “I’m never going to learn how to do that” and his head went down in disappointment.

I told him “The only way you’re going to learn is if you try!”

This interaction got me thinking about when I was learning to ride my bike.  The training wheels had come off, I may have been wearing a bike helmet (come on, it was the 80s!) with my hockey shin guards and elbow pads.  I mounted up, and I tried…  I didn’t make it very far before I bit the dust.  But I kept getting up and trying again… and again… and… You get the idea!  Eventually I had it down – I could hop on and go without a second thought.

It took time for the neural pathways to connect so that my brain could figure out how to put together the locomotion, the balance, the understanding of body position, and so much more that goes into riding a bike.  Here’s the thing about learning to ride a bike… the only way you can learn is to do it.  No amount of time spent learning about how the bike works would have helped me to ride more quickly.  I wouldn’t have been a superstar rider on that first day if I understood the role that inertia, friction, and rolling resistance plays in being able to get myself to go.

I just had to get on the bike and try.  For those of you who are parents, or who might have helped a youngster you know learn to ride a bike, you know what that it’s so important to try it over and over.

I’d even argue – through my own experiences and the experiences of my daughter Lainey – that we learn how to ride a bike because of our failures, because of the falls.  Our brain figures out that we did something wrong, and helps our body to do it differently the next time until we have it down pat.

Learning anything does not happen by watching someone model.  Showing our students how to do something doesn’t teach them.  Having your students read about how to do something doesn’t help them learn how to do it.  Even watching a video doesn’t help them learn.  Ultimately the only way they are going to learn is by doing something.

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind

Always be thinking about how you can make the activities in your class be focused on how students can actually do whatever it is that they are learning about.  Less time showing, more time actually doing!  That’s how we all learn just about anything!

What are your thoughts?  Am I wrong?  Are there things you’ve learned that didn’t actually involve “doing” it?  Are there other examples like the bike that you would only learn by doing?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also, as I was writing this post, it got me thinking about an excellent video by Destin Sandlin, who runs an educational video web series called Smarter Every Day.  It’s a little under 8 minutes long, and goes through his process of learning to ride a bike in a whole new way.  Check it out to see how learning by doing really works!

How are you taking care of yourself?

Earlier this week there was a morning I woke up about a half hour before my alarm was set to go off. As much as I wanted to go back to sleep, my brain wouldn’t stop thinking about a specific student and family that I have been working with. I knew that there were some struggles going on for the family, and as much as I tried to make myself let it go in that moment (I mean… it’s not like I’m really going to solve this problem while lying in bed at 4 am!), I couldn’t stop my brain from thinking. I’m sure that each of you has a story much like this.  Educators are a compassionate bunch, and we often feel stress based on our efforts to care for the kids in our school.

self-compassion is simply

I can’t tell you how many times I have lost sleep or felt stress due to things that were happening that were well beyond my control.  It’s affected my sleep, it’s affected my ability to focus, and it’s prevented me from being my best self.  Compassion fatigue is a real thing – it’s a state experienced by those who are helping others in distress. In most extreme situations, it can create secondary traumatic stress for the helper.

I think there are times when we all focus so much on what is happening in the minds of our students that we forget to think about and assess where we are right now. Are you feeling stress? Do you feel like you are being pulled in too many directions? Do you feel “on edge” about something? Your answers to these questions can help you begin to assess if you might be feeling some secondary stress, or at a minimum help you identify times when you might need to take care of yourself.

In order to be our best selves, in order to help support our students, we need to make sure that we are in the best place possible. One of the ways that we can help make sure that we are ready to help others is by building our own self-care plan. As we begin to think about what a self-care plan might look like, there are 6 categories that you might want to think about:

  1. Physical Self-Care – These are the things we do to take care of our body. Examples might include: sleep; nutrition; exercise; and regular health care visits. What do you do to take care of yourself physically?
  2. Emotional Self-Care – These are the things that we do to take care of our own feelings. Examples might include: personal or professional support systems; journaling; talking about feelings with others; or counseling/therapy sessions. How well do you take care of yourself emotionally?
  3. Cognitive Self–Care – These are things we do to improve our mind and understand ourselves better. Examples might include: reading for pleasure or work; writing; and continued education. What do you do to take care of yourself psychologically?
  4. Social Self–Care – These are the things we do to relate to others and the world around us. Examples might include: spending time with family, friends, and colleagues you enjoy; having fun and playing; belonging to groups. Are there things you do to help take care of your social well-being?
  5. Financial Self–Care – These are the things we do to save or spend responsibly. Examples might include: balancing a checking account; planning for the future; spending money in thoughtful and productive ways. What are the things you do to take care of your personal finances?
  6. Spiritual Self–Care – These are the things we do to gain a perspective on our own life. Examples might include: meditation; contact with nature; prayer; or a connection with God or a Higher Power. How do you take care of yourself spiritually?

Your self-care plan is going to be unique to you.  You may find that there are items on this list above that don’t fit your needs. Ultimately, to be able to do our best and be able to serve our kids in the best ways possible, we have to first take care of ourselves. Hopefully the ideas above will help you think about the ways that you can focus on your own individual wellness. Our success in self-care will help prevent the negative consequences of compassion fatigue.

What types of things are the most successful for you to be able to care for yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The teacher from the movies

When you think of teacher movies, what comes to mind? Do you think of someone like Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Mr. Strickland in Back to the Future? Or do you go the way of someone more like Miss Riley in October Sky or Mr. Holland in Mr. Holland’s Opus? I’m sure that for all of you, there is a connection (and maybe even a feeling) that goes with each of those characters. You might even be able to think back on one of your own teachers who is a little like one of them.

I’m guessing that we would all agree that some of these teachers are a little stronger than others. But what is it that makes the “good” movie teachers? There are a few things that these great teachers have in common – they build connections with their students, the students and teachers have respect for each other, and the students are empowered. The “mean” teachers were focused on control and compliance, while the “good” teachers were focused on community and empowerment.

In creating the environments of the teachers that they make movies about, you build a relationship with your students where there is an understanding between the teacher and the students that we’re two people here. What those movie teachers understand is that classroom management has much more to do with the environment, and much less to do with the rules that are put in place.

One of my all-time favorite teacher movies is Dead Poets Society. Mr. Keating does some amazing things with his group of students. Many people think of the Oh Captain, My Captain! scene when they think of that movie, and trust me, it’s a great scene.  But one of the more overlooked scenes is the soccer scene.  Take just a moment to watch the scene:

The reason I love this scene so much is that it reminds me of the value of movement in learning – especially for students that are in the age group I work most directly with. Most of us know intrinsically that a fifth or sixth grader cannot sit still for much more than 10 minutes, and yet we consistently have classroom situations where students have to sit for double that – sometimes even more! One of the things that will make you a movie star teacher to your students is to allow them opportunities for movement consistently.

I always like to provide some kind of new idea, and here’s one that you could try tomorrow to add some movement in your class. Many people use the turn and talk consistently to get students to share their thinking. What if you take that a little bit further and do something new called musical chairs. Explain to students that you are going to play about 10 seconds of music, during that time they should move around the room and find a partner. When the music stops, they start talking about your question. After enough time for both students to respond, start the music again and let them find a new partner. It’s kind of like musical chairs for a turn and talk. Students get to share their thinking, and get their movement and wiggles out! The best of both worlds! After a couple of rounds, have them move back to their seats and continue.

Or you might try a walk and talk – take your class for a walk on our campus. Talk about your points while you walk. Occasionally stop and allow students to partner up for a pair share, then continue the walk.

With each of these strategies, you have to build to structure in advance. That’s what the movie star teacher would do. Set your expectations high, and then hold your students to them. Don’t let those 2 knuckleheads pull your expectations down to the mean. Let them know that you trust them to do the right thing, and then lay out what needs to happen. Most kids will not want to ruin something fun, even if they are a knucklehead!

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Just a few of the things that happen in the classrooms of the movie teacher!

So what movie teacher do you think of? What made that teacher great? Of not so great? What elements of the movie teacher do you try to bring to your classroom? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

#OneWord2018 – Who can pick just one?

For those of you in the EduTwitter world, if you were online anytime over winter break, you probably saw a few of the people that you follow posting their One Word for 2018. For those of you who aren’t on Twitter, or may have missed the trend, this is kind of like a New Year’s Resolution in a one word format. On New Year’s Day I had some free time (I mean… All that we were doing was watching bowl games), and I started scrolling through posts with the hashtag (you can still find them here: #OneWord2018). There were so many great ideas. I decided to spend some time thinking about what my one word would be.

I started jotting down ideas over the course of the afternoon in my notes app. As I added ideas, I would remove things that were similar, or take away the ones that didn’t seem as strong to me. Even with that effort, I wasn’t able to cut down to just one. Today I’m going to share with you my top 4 – that’s the best I could do. As the people who I spend my time with, I hope you will help hold me accountable to these words and the idea behind them. If you notice that I’m not sticking to one of them (or more), call me out! I need your help!

  • be-presentPresent – For 2 years I have had an index card pinned to the wall next to my desk that says Be Present! This serves as a reminder to me of what my true purpose is. The role of assistant principal can pull me in a lot of different directions, but many of the things I have to do can be done outside of normal school hours. But my opportunity to connect with kids, to see the amazing teaching that happens in our classroom, and to witness the learning that takes place can only happen during the school day. This year I’m re-upping my goal to be present with students and teachers during the school day.
  • Relentless – I have to admit this, I’m stealing this one from one of my recent Twitter follows – Hamish Brewer – who calls himself the relentless principal. He uses the word constantly as his reminder of his goals for the future success of his students. That’s a philosophy that I can get behind! This year I vow to be relentless in the quest for what’s best for every one of our students. To me, that’s one big goal!DOXXBzjVAAAbtVw
  • Growth – This is a reminder to myself that I don’t know it all. I still have things to learn, and people to learn from. This year I am challenging myself to continue to 84271-Alan-Cohen-Quote-Personal-growth-is-not-a-matter-of-learning-newseek opportunities to learn and grow. This summer I will be attending ISTE for the first time, and I’m pumped about that. It’s also my goal to work on getting rid of some of the books in my to read pile (not by tossing them, but by reading and learning from them). Hopefully this year can continue to be one of growth for me!
  • DSeMdNnXUAE23UlUncomfortable – This year is my sixth as an assistant principal. I have gotten to the point that I feel pretty comfortable in the tasks I need to complete in this role. With that level of comfort, it’s time to push myself to try some new things. I have heard the phrase cognitive dissonance to describe that point where we are stepping out of our comfort zone. Being a little bit uncomfortable is where learning and growth take place. I’m trying to step outside of my comfort zone a little more this year!

So, there they are, my #FourWords2018. Hold me to them. If you see me doing something that doesn’t square with one of my words, help hold me accountable. And now, I’m going to challenge you – take some time to think about your word for this year. Don’t worry, I won’t judge you if you can’t come up with just one. Share your word in the comment section below.

Also, as I was looking at the #OneWord2018 hashtag on Twitter this week, I noticed a few teachers sharing ways that they had incorporated this as a classroom activity with their students.  I know that some of you have already begun some goal setting activities with your classroom, but a one word activity could be pretty cool. One teacher even shared the HyperDoc he created for a OneWord activity that he’s doing in his class. Check it out, maybe you could use what he created, or adapt it to meet the needs of your students.

The best time to innovate

Earlier this month, I was looking at a blog by John Spencer, one of the authors of Launch, which is all about design thinking and integrating creative thinking into classroom activities.  The gist of the post was to give some ideas for a creative way to spend the last few days before winter break instead of showing a movie.  You can check that post out here: Ten Creative Alternatives to Showing Movies Before the Break.

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I’m sure you have noticed, when kids are given the opportunity to truly get immersed in an activity that they are interested in and motivated by, they get into this flow state where time just seems to fly.  Once in that flow state, they don’t want to do anything else.

As we continue to move towards more innovative practices in the classroom, it is my hope that we are truly giving students the agency and choice in what and how they learn so that those flow states happen more and more often.  At the same time, I know that there may be some among us that hesitate to dive into highly creative projects.  Maybe you don’t feel like your that creative yourself, maybe you worry about how to motivate the kids, maybe you worry that you don’t have enough time.

Today I’m going to look at one of those factors – time.  There have been many times when I have talked to teachers about some type of creative project that they are considering, and the response that I hear is “I just don’t think I have the time for this.”  Oftentimes those hesitations come from the fear that we might not be able to meet all our standards if we go outside of the box, other times it seems overwhelming to think about a day, or a few days, doing something other than the typical classwork.

Here’s my list of 4 times when it’s a really great time to try something innovative:

  1. Right before a break – Let’s be real, right before a break, no matter when it falls in the school year, whether it’s the three day weekend for Labor Day or President’s Day, a week for fall break or spring break, or a longer break right before winter break or summer break, we are all a little worn out.  Students, teachers, parents, administrators – we’re all looking forward to the chance to take some time away from school to recharge.  Often around breaks when I walk the halls, it’s a question of who is not showing a movie.  If we say we don’t have time to innovate, but we do have time to show a movie, I would like to challenge that thinking.  Before the next break, try something new and innovative with your class and just see how it goes.  If you’re looking for suggestions, the post from John Spencer above contains some really great activities that could be done in any classroom.
  2. The end of a unit – What happens when you wrap up a unit on a Wednesday or Thursday.  Do you dive right into the next unit, or do you do some sort of activity as a pallet cleanser?  That day or two after a unit could be a great opportunity to try out something innovative.  It gets you and your students out of the routine, which is a great way to increase thinking or learning.  Since I’m a runner, I think about it from the perspective of a training plan.  When I’m working up to my next half marathon, there are days where I will go for long, steady state runs to increase strength.  More often than not though, my pace is slower on those days.  A couple times a week I may work in a shorter session where I am doing interval training (moments where I mix some sprints in with some regular or low speed running).  While I generally run more miles on the long run days, I’m more tired after an interval training session.  I’ve taxed my muscles in a different way.  After a few weeks of the interval runs, I find that my pace on my longer runs starts getting faster.  Our brain can act like a muscle at times.  When you teach in a different way, you create new pathways in the brains of your students, which allows new learning to happen, and new ideas to stick!
  3. The first day back from a break – So often on that first day back, your students are pumped to be back.  They are excited to see you, to see their classmates, and to get into the learning.  Instead of coming back and going right into the typical routine, switch it up.  Try some form of creative learning.  The fun that goes with these types of creative activities will have the kids begging for more!
  4. Any old time… Just because! – A while back I was reading a post – I honestly can’t remember who it was by – and the author said that the best time to try something innovative is right now.  When we get the desire to try something new, we are often tempted to wait for the better time – the end of the grading period, the start of the next semester, or next year.  The main point of the post though, was that if you believe that an activity would benefit your students, don’t you owe it to them to do it right now?  It was an idea that made sense to me.  The next time you see something that would be new and better for your students, go for it.  Don’t wait for later, just dive in.  What’s the worst that happens?  If it doesn’t go well, you’ve got a great way to model growth mindset.  And if it does, you’ve just created an amazing learning opportunity for your students!

So, what are your thoughts?  Do you have any additional ideas of when it’s a good time to do something innovative for your class?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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College and career ready

Think back to the beginning of your college career.  What did innovation look like for you?  What did technology look like for you?  What did learning look like for you?

I know what it looked like for me:

 

 

I’m sure that each of us could come up with a different description of what learning and innovation looked like at the beginning of our college career.  Then I think back to my 5th and 6th grade years.  The first time I remember using a computer was as a 6th grader.  Our school put in a computer lab that year as part of a remodel.  The only thing that we did with the computer was learn keyboarding skills (as far as my teacher was concerned, the computer was just a fancy typewriter).

Now let’s think about what innovation might look for our students after they graduate from college.  For those of you who work with kids who haven’t even hit junior high yet (like me), it’s kind of hard to imagine, right?  The sixth graders in my school will graduate from high school in 2024, and our fifth graders will graduate in 2025.  We could make predictions today about what specific skills our kids may need when they graduate, but knowing how much things changed between the time I was in 6th grade and when I graduated from college, and knowing that technology is accelerating at a pace much faster than it did during my formative years in the 80s and 90s, there is no way for us to be sure what specific skills our kids will need in terms of innovation and technology.

And yet, there’s always that idea that we need to “prepare our students for a successful future.”  Isn’t that what most teachers would agree is our goal?  So how do we do that when we don’t know exactly what our kids need to know?

Edutopia is one of my favorite social media follows, and this is what popped up in my Instagram feed the other night:

What strikes you as you look at that graph of job growth?  Look at the growth in the need for analytical skills and social skills, while there is a massive fall off in the need for an ability to complete repetitive tasks.  What are you doing in your class to explicitly teach social and emotional learning to your students?

Daily Quotes

Recently I was sitting in a meeting with a family, and the teacher of the student leaned over and said to the student “When you’re here, I’m worried about expanding your heart … and your brain.”  I loved how this teacher put the heart first, and how there was a pause before the brain!  In a world where the answer to almost any question can be found by looking on Google or YouTube, college and career readiness isn’t going to be defined by how many factual questions your students can answer.  It’s going to be driven by your student’s ability to be empathetic towards others.  It’s going to be driven by your student’s ability to see problems in our world, and collaborate with peers to find solutions.

I’ve recently been reading the book Creative Schools by Ken Robinson, and there was a quote that stood out to me:

Our communities depend on an enormous diversity of talents, roles, and occupations. The work of electricians, builders, plumbers, chefs, paramedics, mechanics, engineers, security staff,

Let us all remember that our students’ futures don’t necessarily rely on their ability to recite their math facts, to memorize 20 vocab words in this unit, to be able to identify all 50 states and capitals, or be able to list the names of the planet in order from the sun to the end of the solar system.  All of those things can be answered now, in most living rooms, by asking Siri, Alexa, or Google.  Also remember that academia may not be the path for every student who steps into your classroom.

There is such a diverse range of needs for the future that I believe the best thing we can do is to focus on those so called soft skills.  Take the time to model what collaborative skills actually look like.  Use a fish bowl activity where some students model while others observe, then have students both on the inside and the outside of the fish bowl discuss what went well and reflect on areas that they need to continue to grow.  If needed, as the teacher you should give them the feedback that they need to be successful the next time they are working collaboratively.

Help your students learn how to use technology to accelerate their learning.  It’s not just for consumption, but also for creation.  Allow them to notice real world problems, and then help them to figure out ways to solve the problems they notice.  Keep working with them on their communication skills – both written and spoken.  Find ways to encourage every student not only to speak, but to lead in the classroom.

As the Friedman quote above reminds us, we are preparing our students for an unknown future.  The constants for our kids will be collaboration, technology, problem-solving, communication, and the ability to be a leader.  As you plan your lessons, focus on those skills.  If you empower your students in all those areas, they will be ready for whatever the future holds.

Planting trees

8 years ago when my daughter was born, we planted a tree in our backyard. It was a Japanese Maple, and at the time of planting it only came up to about my waist. Unfortunately, we no longer live in that same house, so I am not quite sure exactly how tall that tree is now, but based on what I know about the growth rate of trees like the one we planted, it’s probably no taller than me. Given that amount of growth, I’m sure it only provides shade for a small section of the lawn. As any of you know, planting trees for your own benefit is a long-term project. The Chinese have a proverb that I believe says it best:

Chinese Proverb

Education can be a lot like planting trees. When our kids first come to kindergarten, they are a like a seed, and before long they begin to sprout. The amount of change that takes place in that kindergarten year can be truly impressive. Throughout elementary school, students develop much like that sprout, and by the time they hit the intermediate grades, they are a bit like a sapling. Those saplings are more developed, and beginning to look a little like a tree, but saplings still have a lot of development to do in order to provide meaningful shade.

One of our roles in education is to be like the gardener, and help each of our seeds grow into a mature tree over the life of their education career. There is an important thing to remember though – trees don’t completely mature in just a year. It takes time and effort to get them to grow.

In the house we live in now, there are 3 maple trees in the backyard. Two of them were already there when we moved in, and a third was added last summer. The tallest of the three is not even as tall as our house, and I didn’t even have to rake the leaves that were produced this year, I just ran over them with a mower. They don’t give off a ton of shade yet. At times that can be frustrating – especially on a hot summer day. Each year I have to trim back a little on the branches, but I know that trimming them back is sometimes the key to new growth.

I know that in time, those trees will grow and provide our backyard with plenty of shade. Two of them are close enough together that I may even be able to hang a hammock between them for some relaxation.

Just like those trees, our students don’t always come along quite like we would hope. Some of them are challenging, and we need to do work to help them to learn and grow as we would want them to. Some of them don’t seem to grow as quickly as we’d like them to. It’s easy to become frustrated when our students don’t get to where we “think” they should be, but we have to remember that the education of each of our students didn’t start with us, and it won’t finish with us. We get the opportunity to do the best we can with each of our students, help them to learn and grow the best that we can, and have the confidence that through our best efforts, they will continue to develop into the mature tree that we want them to be.

As I know I’ve shared before, I believe that every one of our students has a path to success inside of them. Sometimes it isn’t easy to see that path, but it is there. All we can do is to guide them along their path of development.

The value of communication and collaboration

Lombardi - Work Together

About a month ago, one of my posts (What are you learning?) made reference to the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook report.  I want to come back to that report today and look at the top 6 items on the report.  As I look over the list it keeps bringing me back to one of my favorite questions when thinking about learning in our classrooms: What do our kids need in order to be successful in the future?  This list can help serve as a guide.

NACE Attributes Employers Seek

Think about some of the most successful companies in our world today.  Whatever the company is, if they are trying to be innovative in their field, they are focused on creating the best products possible for their customers.  What does work look like for those innovative companies?  I’m guessing that they are concerned about their teams of employees working together to create innovation.

Think for a second about your best lessons.  How many of you can claim that every aspect of your best lesson for your students was imagined, planned, created, and developed completely by you?  I know when I was still in the classroom, I was constantly collaborating with other teachers to improve my lessons, to add cool new ideas, or to make the learning experience even better for the learners in my classroom.  I’m guessing that most (if not all) of you will say the same thing.

If we know that innovative companies seek communication and collaboration, and we know that we achieve our own best work through communication and collaboration, and the data from the most recent NACE Jobs Outlook report shows that employers value communication and collaboration, what are we doing in our classroom to explicitly teach our students how to communicate and collaborate?  Paul Solarz, the author of Learn Like a Pirate has an entire chapter on peer collaboration.  He shared lots of great ideas of how he creates a collaborative environment for his students.

Early in the chapter he talks about the importance of establishing classroom expectations and norms as a group, where all members of the class have their input in those norms.  As you build in and truly teach collaboration skills, students will take ownership of those skills and will help one another to be better collaborators, letting each other know what they need from one another so that all can be successful.

Even with the opportunity to teach collaboration, the only way students will be able to learn and grow in this skill is through the opportunity to practice.  Be looking for as many ways as possible to integrate collaboration and communication into your lessons.

And something has to be said about the classroom environment in order to create an environment that is conducive to communication and collaboration.  Think about when you are working with colleagues, how do you choose to sit?  Based on my informal observations visiting team PLC time in our building, generally we sit in a group in such a way that everyone can see everyone else.  Students need to be able to do the same when they have time to collaborate.  Rows aren’t conducive to communication and collaboration.  Seats where students are far away from their nearest neighbor don’t facilitate collaboration either.

Many of the classrooms in our school have created opportunities and spaces for students to be able to sit together and collaborate, whether it’s a small spot on the floor, a rug area, creative seating options, a couch, or high tables and chairs, there are places where students can sit together and collaborate in the classroom.  To take it a step further, how many of you have considered not having a seating chart in your classroom?  A true flexible seating environment can be created where there are norms about students choosing the space that they are able to do their best space.  And as a safety net for you, you can always set the norm that poor choices by students may result in the teacher asking the student to make a different choice.  Think about the way you would empower the learners in your room to be able to select their own seat each and every day in order to meet their learning needs!

I want to conclude this post sharing some pictures from offices for Google and Apple, two of the most innovative companies around today, as well as one of my favorite shared working space, Starbucks.  I’m not saying that our classrooms need to necessarily look like these (they’re a bit extreme), but we might want to think about how spaces like this create environments where employees are able to put out amazing and innovative products.  We also should realize that some of the students will be doing work in environments like this in their future.  What can we do in our classrooms today to help them be successful in their future?

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So what are your thoughts?  Have you had success teaching students communication and collaboration explicitly?  What has worked for you?  What concerns do you have about integrating more collaboration and communication into your classroom?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

What does the research say?

A couple weeks ago I wrote about John Hattie’s work developing a ranking system that rated the effectiveness of a variety of influences on student learning. If you didn’t get a chance to read that post, you can find it here: Research, meta-analysis, and John Hattie. As I shared in that post, sometimes it’s overwhelming to begin looking into educational research for ideas to implement in our classroom. What I love about Hattie’s work is that he does most of the heavy lifting for us. He has combed through nearly 1200 research studies, and has a list of 195 influences that can relate to learning outcomes.

In today’s post I’m going to look at a couple of the most promising influences on learning outcomes. These are the things that we might use to find the answer to the never ending question of “What works best in education?” As a reminder from last week’s post, mileage may vary based on the background and influences in your classroom, but the larger the effect size in Hattie’s meta-analysis, the more likely it is to impact learning for the students in your class, and an average effect size is a 0.40. Anything over a 1.0 would have a huge impact.

  • Teacher Estimates of Achievement (Effect size 1.62): We all naturally make judgements about students. For a long period of time, research has shown that teachers have lower expectations for students from low-income families and black students. In an interesting study out of Brown University, boys and girls who start school with the same types of behavior problems generally end up in very different places down the line. Boys in this group have lower test scores and lower graduation rates. Why does this happen? Boys from this background are not expected to be successful, so they aren’t. I’ve always loved the Henry Ford quote “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”  What if we change that quote slightly – Whether you think they can or think they can’t, you’re right. The research is solid – when we believe that our students can learn and be successful, they are much more likely to live up to it. We’ve all had moments where we think (or say) “That poor kiddo just can’t do it.” Be aware of these thoughts, because they can impact your attitude. Our attitude affects our choices, and our choices have consequences.The reality is that if we believe we can make a difference for these kids, they are more likely to be successful!
  • Collective Teacher Efficacy (Effect size 1.57): This refers to a group of teachers who believe that through working together, they are able to develop students’ abilities. Basically, if you believe in yourself and your own abilities, you are much more likely to be able to help your students to learn and grow. When a teacher has a high level of efficacy, that teacher is likely to have a higher level of effort and persistence, be more willing to try new teaching approaches, set more challenging goals for themselves and their students, and attend more closely to the needs of students who require extra attention.
  • Self-Reported Grades (Effect size 1.33): Another name for this strategy could be student expectations – how prepared do students believe they are t show what they know? Children are generally pretty accurate in predicting how well they will do on a test prior to taking it. As the teacher, you would then find out what those student expectations are, and then pus the student to exceed their expectations (Growth Mindset!). A way to do this would be to ask a kiddo to write down their predicted score on the top of an exam prior to taking the exam.  se that information to engage your students to try to do even better than what they predict!

There are many more influences in Hattie’s meta-analysis, but I wanted to point out these three because they are all more than 3 times the average effect size, they are all relatively easy to implement, and especially in the case of the first 2, they are entirely reliant on our own beliefs about students and learning!  We’ve talked a lot about growth mindset in education – to implement these influences, we need to practice our own growth mindset!

Hattie - Good things follow

What are your thoughts?  Do any of the three influences above strike a chord with you?  What can you do with this information to impact the learning of your students?  In a recent interview, I heard one teacher talking about the importance of starting right now.  Sometimes in education we’re tempted to wait until after a break, or until the end of the semester.  The teacher shared that in her opinion, if you know better, why wouldn’t you want to do better?  Take something from this post, and think carefully about how you could use it for the benefit of your kids, and then… Just do it!  Don’t put it off, dive in!

Growth mindset and the innovator’s mindset

In the past 6 weeks I have been participating in #IMMOOC (Innovator’s Mindset Massive Open Online Course). For those of you who aren’t aware of #IMMOOC, the course is centered around the book The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros. The book focuses on these guiding questions:

  • How do you move from “pockets of innovation” to a “culture of innovation”?
  • How do we start to innovate inside the box?
  • How do we move from “engagement” to “empowerment”?
  • What does innovation mean for education, and should every educator be an innovator?

In the first week I wrote a blog post titled Innovate…why? in which I pointed out my 3 main reasons for innovation in education. One of the items I shared was on the role growth mindset plays in innovation in education. After posting my blog, I got the comment below from George:

Couros Comment

With this comment, I began thinking about the role that growth mindset plays in The Innovator’s Mindset.  Couros defines this mindset as:

the belief that the abilities, intelligences, and talents are developed so that they lead to the creation of new and better ideas.

I believe that all teachers agree that we are looking for ways to help the learning that happens in their classroom be “new and better”.  As I read more and more of The Innovators Mindset, I began making connections between what I read from Couros, and the book Mindset by Carol Dweck.  In this book, Dweck shares a quote from Benjamin Bloom that I feel relates to The Innovator’s Mindset:

After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.

Think about the power of that statement. This is not about the top 1-2 percent – the ones we might call geniuses – being able to learn anything. It’s the belief that with the right circumstances, anyone can learn anything.  What does that fact do for you as a teacher? I know that for me, that drives me to think about what those appropriate conditions are that will lead to the best possible conditions for learning.

I don’t think that the traditional model of school creates those best possible conditions for learning. I think that we as educators reflect on what we can do to learn and grow in ways that will create new and better learning environments for our students. As I think back on the conversations through Twitter, through the guest sessions, and the text of The Innovator’s Mindset, there are a few things that I see as imperatives, and all of them take a growth mindset from us.  Here are 4 of them:

  • Risk Taking: This is not just about getting our students to take risks, it’s about modeling our own risk taking as educators. During our course kick off with Jo Boaler, a statement really resonated with me – “It’s hard to give kids a growth mindset if you don’t have a growth mindset about your own learning.” Statements like “I’m not good at technology” or “Math was never my strong suit” show your students a fixed mindset, and does nothing to encourage their own risk taking. Instead, we might say things like “We’re going to try this and see how it works out.” Even if you fall flat on your face, you modeled for your students a willingness to step outside your own box, which encourages them to do the same.
  • Homework: You better be coming at me with research on this one, because I know some of us in education view homework as a must. As Alice Keeler pointed out, that 10 minute per grade level rule of thumb for homework is totally bunk with no research to support it.  “Some dude just made that up” she says.  The research on homework, especially at the elementary and intermediate grade, shows that the effectiveness is very low. On the other hand, relationships have a very high correlation to learning and growth. What gets in the way of those relationships? One thing is the negative interactions that happen at the start of class when we are discussing homework that wasn’t completed last night. If we take that away, we instantly remove one of the barriers to great relationships with all kids! If you must give homework, assign 20 minutes of free reading time. That reading is correlated with a lot more success than any worksheet! And if the worksheet is so important, shouldn’t you be doing it in class so that the students have appropriate guidance?
  • Grading Practices: For years, there has been a tradition of teach the lesson, hand out the homework, collect it the next day, grade it, put it in the gradebook, and hand it back (that’s what was done to me, and at least for a while, it’s what I did in my classroom). Let’s be honest though – most of those papers we hand back end up in the trash. Kids didn’t value them. Parents often only valued the grade in the gradebook, and how it affected their child’s overall grade. Learning was not the focus, an A-F letter grade was all that mattered. When we put a grade on anything, that signifies an end of learning on that topic. If we want to continue the learning, meaningful feedback is so much more powerful.  And I have to ask, are there times that you don’t pick something up as quickly as a colleague? Maybe some new tech is taking you a while to get used to, maybe you’re trying to figure out how to embed more inquiry into your math, whatever it is, there’s probably somebody who “got it” more quickly than you. Should you be evaluated lower because it takes you longer to make it work in your classroom? I want to applaud those who try something new – even if it takes longer than the teacher next door to them! Students are entitled to the same chance. If the focus of your classroom is on learning, how can we not reteach to those who struggle? How can we not offer a retake to someone who wants to show that they are learning and growing? We need to celebrate that learning, whenever it happens!
  • Flexible Seating: This isn’t just about putting fancy furniture into your classroom and then assigning seats just like you did with desks. True flexible seating is like what happens each time you go to Starbucks to work. I know that sometimes I like the table and chair so that I can spread out. Other times I like the high table so that I can stand while I am typing, or use the stool if I must sit. And every once in a while, that comfy chair in the corner calls may name. How sad would it be if every time I walked into Starbucks, they told me where I had to sit? Kayla Delzer reminded me that “Starbucks is a better learning environment than our classrooms.” A true flexible learning space leads to ownership and choice, which leads to more motivation, which leads to better learning. And here’s the fact – if flexible seating can work in kindergarten classrooms, there’s no way you can’t set the norms for your class to make flexible seating successful! Have kids try out each seating choice, have them reflect on what is their best learning space and why, and then encourage them to choose the spot that works best for them! As you set the norms, remind them that you always have veto power on any poor choices that they make, and then give it a whirl. Why wouldn’t we want our students excited to get to class so that they can pick their just right seat?

OK teachers, how many of you are feeling challenged by some of the things in this post? That’s ok! Are you feeling intrigued to make a shift? Then just do it! Don’t wait for the weekend, don’t wait for Thanksgiving Break, if you believe that a change here could impact learning for your students, then take that leap. Have a growth mindset, but even more, have an innovator’s mindset to try something that will be new and better for your students!

Couros - Best for this learner