Category Archives: Blog

Unheralded Educators

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A friend of mine drove a local school bus.  Driving was a second or third job for him as the two hour early morning and mid- to late afternoon runs created time for mid-day and evening work.  Driving, however, is what drove him.

“Never had a ticket.  Never had an accident.  Never had a lost child.  Never got lost myself”, he would humbly say about his time in the driver’s seat.  At Halloween and Christmas he put masks on the front of his yellow bus.  He had a perpetual gleam in eyes even when he needed to look up into the large rear view mirror to tell a young boy, “Sit down, Mark”.  I don’t believe he ever turned in a discipline referral to the school principals, because he talked with the children on their bus, not his bus. 

Every fall there would be a moment resembling Forrest Gump’s first greeting with his school bus driver.  Forrest introduced himself and she introduced herself and they began a morning and afternoon routine that lasted for years.  Some years there were as few as thirty-some children on his bus, but most years there were 40-plus riders.  He knew of them before their first day on a school bus and he knew about them years after they graduated.  He knew their parents and their parents knew him on a first name basis.  He never left a dropped off young child until he saw a wave from a parent at the door or in a waiting car.  He was a parent in absentia for dozens of children twice each school day.

Like all veteran school bus drivers, he had his share of criers and pukers, kids whose forgotten lunch on the morning bus he delivered to the school offices, and kids who stood at their morning stop without a hat or mittens/gloves.  He carried a box of spares.

One of the most meaningful moments of every school year occurred in the first week of June.  On the last days of the school year, he would say with what some might call teary eyes, “I remember when she started Kindergarten.  They are all so small and she was a brave one.  She rode every day; seldom got a ride to school, until she got her driver’s license.  For the last year or so, she drove to school with friends.  I watched her grow up from a five year old to a fine young woman.  This week, she rode every day and today she brought me a ‘Thank you’ card of being her driver and friend.  She’s one of mine.”

He and our team of school bus drivers are unheralded educators of children.  We are a rural district where most children ride our yellow buses to school.  Let’s do the math.  With approximately 170 days of school each year and an average route time in our district of 25 minutes, bus riding children spend more than 140 hours each school year on a school bus.  That is equal to the amount of time a student spends in a secondary classroom for math or ELA or science.  If a child rides every day of their Kindergarten year through tenth grade, the year a child can get a driver’s license, a child really grows up on a school bus with more than 1,500 hours of riding time or had a class each day with the same teacher for 11 years. 

That is a lot of driver-rider contact time in which there is one driver and dozens of children on a school bus traveling back and forth between homes and school.  We trust children to the safe driving care of our drivers.  We trust their well-being and that a driver who knows them watches out over them every morning and every afternoon.  Across the decades, our driving unheralded educators deliver every day.

Your Personal Pantheon of Teachers

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Miss Blaine knew.  She knew I liked stories and histories and language.  If I could read about it and begin to imagine it, I could know it and the more I read and imagined the more I wanted to learn.  And, she knew I was a quiet student seldom raising my hand but could give illustrated answers when called upon.  Miss Blaine knew me.  She was my teacher for two years – 4th and 5th grade, back-to-back with Miss Blaine – in the late 1950s.

Miss Blaine knew Carol and Richard and Mike W and Bruce.  They topped all the weekly charts for the 32 students in our classroom; those were early Boomer years when all classrooms were bulging.  Spelling, arithmetic quizzes, science check tests and annual ITBS assessments – these were our straight A’s champs week in and week out.   She fed them more assignments than the rest of us, and more comments on their projects, and more difficult books to read.  The more she gave, the better they did.  Miss Blaine knew Dick and Donnie and Steve Y struggled to read and do their math and she gave them more of her one-on-one time.  She knew when a child needed the boost of leading the class from her room to Miss Snyder’s art room, the little self-esteem boost of being picked by Miss Blaine to lead.

Miss Blaine knew how to hook each child in her classroom to cause each of us to learn.  She never looked at us sitting in our rows of desks with a solitary gaze but flitted her eyes from child to child as she spoke so that we knew she was talking to each of us intentionally.  She was short in stature and did not need to kneel or bend very far when she stood by my desk to comment on my work or ask a guiding question to keep me on track.  With eyes shut I can still summon her presence and my want to be a better student, to get more problems right on my nemesis math assignments, because she thought I could.

I would like to think that every student in every school experiences their own Miss Blaine.  Across the fourteen years of 4K-12 education, a random draw of Miss Blaine’s in elementary, middle, and high school, in grade level classes and in subject classes, is enough to make school and learning meaningful.  It is enough hooking by master teachers to keep children self-invested in their learning.

Consider your own history as a student.  Can you name your Miss Blaines?  Can you remember how specific teachers made a difference in your school life?  In your heart of hearts you know them as they knew you.

Miss Blaine, Mrs. Wendlent, Mr. Marshall, Mrs. McArthur, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Chute, Mr. Mixdorf, Mr. Hubacek – I am eternally grateful that you taught me. 

My listing these names does not mean I did not learn from each of the 80+ teachers who were mine in my kindergarten through senior year experience.  I indeed learned from all.  But, there really is a difference in a child’s connections with their teachers.  Some connections are as routine and pedestrian as the spending of common time and the management of 180 days’ of school work.  Other connections mark you for your lifetime.

My Miss Blaine is long gone, as are almost all my teachers.  So are many of my classmates.  We know that the effects of a person’s lifetime are short-lived, but while we live and remember the effects of the teachers who knew us and hooked us as learning children, the glory of their good teaching prevails.

A “Bummer” Is When Children Are Spectators In Class

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How many “bummers” can a teacher have in a month of lessons and still be considered a quality teacher?  A “bummer” is a lesson that does not cause children to learn; it is just a “blah” class period of minimal engagement and no internalizing of knowledge, skills, or dispositions about what is learned.  Almost every student, whether a child in school today or an adult long graduated, knows what a “bummer” feels like because they happen.  When a lesson is a bummer, children are spectators in the classroom.

If you are or were an athlete, you know your “bummers”; a swing and a miss, a whiff, a missed block or tackle, a dropped ball, a missed shot, getting the ball taken away from you, getting pinned to the mat, knocking the bar of the high jump stand, or being DQ’d for a false start.  Most baseball players reach base safely every 2 or 3 times at bat.  That means 70-80% of the time they fail.  Interestingly, you can be a very successful player if your on base average is greater than 30% of your at bats.  Consider any sports statistics and there a lot of bummers.  Actually, there are a lot of bummers in life.

When a bummer happens, what is the “so what”?  In the micro-look, each bummer is a failed opportunity.  We easily say “the next time will be better”.  Even with a minimal lens, multiple bummers demonstrate a lack of skill or at least a lack of focus on being successful and we say “pay attention and get it right”.  With a larger lens, more problems are observable.  Children fall behind in what they need to learn.  If you follow the Packers this season, bummer games cause a lack of confidence in the team and fans begin to look for new players.

Bummers in school happen.  Statistically, we need to acknowledge they do.  Our interest is in limiting and eliminating bummers.  Using the micro-lens, each bummer lesson is a missed opportunity to cause children to learn and the minimal lens tells us that multiple bummers cause children to have gaps in their knowledge and skills that effect future learning. 

The WI DPI describes quality instruction (no bummers here) as follows:  “High quality instruction means curricula, teaching practices, and learning environments are standards-based, evidence-based, engaging, differentiated, culturally responsive, and data-driven”.

https://dpi.wi.gov/rti/resources/high-quality-instruction

In a school with board-approved curriculum, ongoing professional development, attention to student-centered education, and standardized accountability checks, we can unpack most of the DPI definition with an acknowledgement that veteran teachers are prepared to deliver successful lessons on a regular basis.  If this is the case, and I think it is, what causes bummer lessons?

We begin to “bum out” when we fail the set the learning “hook”.  We fail to spark children to learn by telling or showing them why what they are learning is important to them, how they can use what they learn now and in the future, and how successful learning today will cause future successful learning.

The DPI term “engagement” means more than getting children to do the work of learning.  For the non-DPI person, engagement is achieved when children “internalize what they are to learn, get excited about it because it is new and interesting or unique,  see self-value in what they will learn, and move beyond just doing the work of learning to seeing value in the learning”.  The most frequent cause of a bummer is that we do not hook children; we turn children into spectators in the classroom where the teacher is teaching.  Engaged children do not spectate.

A veteran teacher knows her stuff.  She has a developed a unit of instruction with scaffolded lessons she has taught before.   Perhaps she set the hook very well the first time she taught the lesson, but after teaching it multiple times she assumes children are being hooked because they were hooked in the past.  Across time, teachers and everyone else begins to take things for granted.  These assumptions cause us to skip over or minimize aspects of our teaching. 

Make no assumptions, especially about setting the hook for a lesson.  Each lesson taught this year is a new lesson for the children in class; they have not seen or experienced this learning before.  Eliminate a bummer in the making by accentuating their engagement.  Set the hook hard and deep so that no one is a spectator in their learning.

Limit or avoid bummer lessons and enjoy an escalation in student learning. 

How Do We Measure a Rounded Education When the School Report Does Not?

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“Ya, buts…” abound in October whenever the WI State Report Cards for school are published.  When the criteria for school success are limited to achievement and sub-group growth in reading and math with weighting for cohort promotion and graduation every educator and parent who believes that schooling is broader and richer than two subjects should groan their “Ya, but”.  The groaning does not change the report card or the perception of which schools outperform others, but it gives voice to different ways to measure our children’s educational experience by looking at a whole education.

The classic retort against the narrow focus on reading and math involves children with passion for the arts.  The Report Card takes no notice of achievements in our schools attained by children in art studios or music halls.  In the No Child Left Behind era, we boonswoggled art and music teachers with how they contributed to a school’s report card achievement by collateral instruction in reading and math practices in their non-ELA and math classes.  Boonswoggle is the appropriate word.

That retort was echoed by teachers of science and social studies, business and technology, second languages and physical education and health.  And, what of Driver Education, the one course in high school that had immediate impact on the well-being of everyone in the school community?  These educators and their teaching does not matter in the School Report Card.  Student achievement in reading and math is all that is measured.

School districts post their mission statements on their websites.  Most speak to the district’s goals in teaching all children to be well-rounded, educated graduates ready to contribute to the community in their adult life.  Something like that.  Our local mission prioritizes the Four As – academics, activities, arts, and athletics.  I have not read a mission statement yet that purports to educate children only in reading and math, yet those are the two academic subjects by which we rate our school effectiveness.

What does matter and what ought to be measured?  What are the values expressed in a local, public education?  We fill our athletic grandstands and gymnasiums with parents and resident fans who put great store and value in the success of their school’s athletes.  Children in athletic programs spend as much, if not more, daily time practicing and playing in season as they do in reading and math instruction in their classrooms, yet their gains in athleticism, self-esteem, team play, and commitment to and achievement goals are not measured and reported.

If we want a description of educational growth, we should measure and report how a child handed a trumpet in 7th grade learns and improves and perfects her play through band class whole group and individual instruction.  Growth from “I can’t make a sound” to “hitting the high notes and harmonizing” is worth our measurement and reporting as an educational outcome.   Or, we should report how a student who frowns in math class is lit up in tech classes when learning the skills of an electrician.  This is the child who will be your “go to repairman” when he graduates.  The educational achievements of these students are school-based, school-caused, and school-ignored.

In the past two decades, educators were tasked with teaching “soft skills” to all children.  These were thought to be essential 20th Century skills.  Collaboration, cooperation, and team work.  Listening and questioning.  Problem-solving.  Soft skills were differentiated from the harder skill sets of academics, like reading and math.  Quite rightly, soft skills assist our children in many of their non-curricular school activities, like DECADES, Destination Imagination, Debate, and Forensics.  The economic driver of our local school community is small business, yet DECA and our Business Education program are invisible in our measure of school achievement.

A high-quality, well-rounded education results from a broad cadre of teachers, coaches, advisors, counselors, administrators, custodians, food service, and drivers interacting with children every school day.  Such an education takes place in schools were children and adults feel safe and cared for by each other and by a community that wants its children to be wholly-educated. 

Teachers and administrators do not get to choose the metrics used in the State Report Card.  Governments that need single indicators for comparative purposes make that decision.  Hence, the comparison of nations by the OECD using reading and math achievements.  The USA ranks in the middle of the pack.  Hence, the comparison of states and school districts within states based upon two academic measures.  The need to rank and differentiate is more essential than the want to understand and illuminate.  If only life were that simple. 

The quality of an educated school graduate ready to be a law abiding, contributing and productive citizen as an adult will not be predetermined by reading and math achievements alone.  Let’s talk about the well-rounded, wholly educated adults we want our children to become.  We are so much more successful than we give ourselves credit for.

The Tension of High Expectations

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Tension.  Anxiety.  Investment.  These are tangibles most of us want to diminish in our daily lives.  Tension, anxiety, and pressure can be aggravants and we see them as undesirable for our general well-being.  Yet, without degrees of tension, anxiety, and an investment to move forward, it is hard to cause learning.  Highly effective teachers know how to use positive attributes of external tension, anxiety, and investment to raise a child’s internal motivation to learn and keep learning. 

Primary schooling for most children begins with excitement.  School is new and exciting for a 4K or K student.  It is a new place with lots of children who will become friends and new things to do.  The blaze of early social excitement wears off with time.  While some children rise every morning with a “I can’t wait to get to school”, most need our assistance in answering the school bell every day.  Motivational theory helps us to keep children from sinking into the drudgery of compulsory education, the grind of getting through school.

Madeline Hunter taught us how components of tension assists motivation that leads to successful student learning.  (Hunter’s name and teaching reverberate in many discussions of teaching and learning.)  Motivation starts with a teacher setting a positive yet challenging feeling tone about learning.  A feeling tone has a friendly edge to it; an edge like a tool that is constantly pushed into new information and skills to be learned and the tension of that pushing causes learning.  That edge is a tension that the teacher sets and controls over time.  It is a friendly edge because effective teachers coat it with more Hunterisms – personal interest, challenge, the rewards of success, and how what is learned is useful in a child’s future.

Motivation is jump started by a teacher’s understanding of each child’s readiness to learn and beginning point for learning and adjusting initial instruction for early, meaningful success.  Motivational tension is enhanced when the challenge of what comes next is “just beyond the current reach” of student knowledge and skills yet within a student’s grasp with guided work.  There is a tension in that distance between what a child knows and can do now and what she needs to know and do next.  Effective teachers make this a positive tension because it results in success.

Bill Spady taught us that “successful learning begets more successful learning”.  When he laid out the outcomes to be taught and learned, he relied upon sound instructional practices to cause learning.  Students become invested when the outcomes set by the teacher are important and meaningful.  The drive to achieve important outcomes carries an element of anxiety to succeed.  Teachers monitor each student’s sense of internal anxiety knowing that too much causes a student to shut down or make poor decisions.  Just the right amount of anxiety keeps a student properly and positively pointed toward learning success.

All children need to see that what they learn is beneficial to them personally.  They need to see and feel personal gain or improvement in order to invest themselves in school assignments.  If a child does not feel personal interest and connection to a curriculum, it is easy to see school assignments as just a long line of work assigned by teachers and required to pass to the next grade.  Drudgery.  When this is a child’s mindset, any distraction or other thing to do moves a child’s interest from learning to something more immediately rewarding or fun to do.  Gaming and other Internet links are perfect and available for distracted and disillusioned students who have no personal investment in their school education.  A child may not see herself in every assignment, but there has to be enough and frequent enough personal interest to keep her invested.

Effective teachers purposefully tell students that “what comes next” holds special interests for aspiring artists and musicians, or is very hands-on for students needing tactile learning, or is necessary for students who see themselves in a medical profession.  Good teaching tells them then shows them.  Investment in the future is a wonderful subliminal tag for any new subject or skill set.

Teaching and learning carry many caveats, some more meaningful than others.  One of the most potent is “low expectations are connected to low achievements and higher expectations to higher achievements.”  Raising expectations is more than just declaring them or sending them in an e-mail.  Higher expectations are built by teachers with rigorous instruction of knowledge, skills, and dispositions AND by students who elevate their work, their commitment, and their performance.  There is a lot of “doing” in teaching and learning to higher expectations.  Higher achievements are a continuous push-pull between teachers and students.

Tension, anxiety, and investment are used by effective teachers in setting the right tone and providing rigorous teaching toward the knowledge and skills learning children need to learn.  Expectations won’t rise on their own – they are constructed on sound principles of motivation and instruction.  Constructive use of tension is a necessary component for teachers and students to achieve successful teaching and learning.