Category Archives: Blog

Aaron Burr and Zooming Into the Room Where It Happens

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If you are not personally present when and where things are decided, how do you know what was decided and what was not and what were the critical considerations leading to a decision?  A good question. 

Aaron Burr spoke for many in his lamenting tirade to be in “The Room Where It Happens” in the musical Hamilton.  In the song by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Burr sings that he is an outsider to the group of leaders who make significant decisions during the Revolution and in formation of the new federal government.  He wants to be “in the room” where decisions are made.  If you are not in the room, you don’t know “… how the parties get to ‘yes’, the pieces that are sacrificed in every game of chess, we just assume that it happens…”, he sings.

Well, Mr. Burr, welcome to modern day local governance, the pandemic, and the Time of Zoom.  Since your day, the doors of backroom decision making have been thrown open.  Wisconsin Open Meeting Law says that “all meetings shall be publicly held in places reasonably accessible to members of the public and be open to all citizens at all times”.  Everyone can be in the room.  And, Mr. Burr, the pandemic and virtual technologies opened the doors further – you can sit at home or anywhere you choose to observe an open meeting on-screen.  In fact, local government officials also can be in the room virtually.  The room no longer has doors and walls.

You are in the room.  Anyone who wants can be in the room, but understand that you are not at the table.  There is a difference.  I will use School Board governance, the most grass root of local government, as my example.

School Boards sit at the table in the room where school policies are legislated, rules and regulations are debated and approved, and critical school decisions regarding local public education are made.  The room is open for an in-person and remote audience.  Access is being present.  Further, being in the room allows persons in the audience to make comments or raise questions to the Board regarding agenda items.  Access is the right to speak to and be heard by the Board.  Access is the ability to hear the debate of the Board as it deliberates on all aspects of the issue.  Debate of the agenda item, however, is conducted by the Board.  Voting on the agenda is reserved exclusively to the Board.  Being in the room is the ability to observe government in action, but it is not being able to make the decision.  Governing decision making takes place “at the table” not just “in the room”.  Perhaps, Mr. Burr wanted not only to be “in the room” but “at the table”.

“In the room” works well at the School Board and other local levels of government because the elected and the electors have proximity – they live and work in the same community.  “In the room” and “in the community” are almost synonymous for local government.  Distance makes “in the room” more contentious.  Distance is measured not only in the miles between home and the state or national capital but also in the number of people between a concerned citizen-elector and the elected.  The ability to speak to and be heard by an elected official becomes more difficult with the size of the government.  It also makes the vehemence of agreement and disagreement more acute.  Our recent national politics contain many Aaron Burr stories.

Let us remember our history.  Mr. Burr later held elective offices and as Vice President of the United States sat at the big table. 

Load-bearing Learning

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When something makes sense, pay attention to it. 

I recently read the terms “load-bearing learning” in our WI DPI publications and the words stuck.  They are not a new concept.  We have spoken in the past about essential learning, enduring concepts, and required instruction.  Those terms made and make sense.  Load-bearing, though, provides a new way of envisioning the importance of essential and required learning as building blocks for later learning.  Architecturally, load bearing structures, like footings, must be strong enough to support the weight and wear of designs that subsequently are built upon them.  Strength, solid security, and built to last characterize load-bearing structures.  And, selectivity.  Not everything is load-bearing.  The need to acquire load bearing learning helps to explain why some children are efficient and effective learners in the intermediate and secondary grades and some children are not. 

Let’s use literacy as a way to decide what is load-bearing.

A traditional definition of literacy is “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts”.  One of UNESCO’s goals is to grow and promote literacy in every country.

http://gaml.uis.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/4.6.1_07_4.6-defining-literacy.pdf

For our purposes, let’s use a different definition.  “Literacy is a competence or knowledge in a specified area.”

https://www.yourdictionary.com/literacy

Using this definition of literacy, I posit there are five literacies in elementary education that are the load bearing learning all children must master.  These are

  • Reading and writing phonetically
  • Computing four mathematical operations
  • Reading music
  • Collaborating with others
  • Fine motor skills

A child who masters these five literacies, has achieved competency and knowledge in these specific areas, by the completion of grade 3 has a solid load bearing foundation for learning all school curricula in grades 4 -12 and beyond.  We can build wonderful structures of content knowledge, detailed skill sets, and elaborated pursuits of personal interests when a child is foundationally literate. 

How do we build load bearing learning?  By design, with unwavering commitment to its achievement, and with targeted resources. 

Reading and writing are not innate skills, like speaking and listening.  Because each child must be taught to read and to write, our design must create technically effective and efficient skill sets using a phonics-base.  Children who master the ability to translate sounds into letters and letters into sounds and both sounds and letters into meaning can learn to read anything.  The ability to read and write must not be left to chance, to the “let’s see how this develops over several years”.  Beginning in 4K, we must purposefully teach and ensure that each child learns a scaffold of phonics-based reading and writing skills that lead to a sold capacity to read and write by the end of third grade.  Certainly, reading and writing skills will continue to grow throughout grade 4 – 12, yet the evidence is clear and profound that children who have not established “load bearing” reading and writing by the end of third grade will be challenged to do so later.

Why would we create a design that leave any child with predicted challenges for later learning success?

The same approach to technical teaching and learning applies to each child’s mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Mathematical numeracy and literacy are the load bearing basis for the math that follows.  I heard a retired neighbor speak about his career.  He said, “I was lucky.  My teacher taught me how to add, subtract, multiply and divide so well that Algebra and Geometry made sense to me.  Unbelievably, I used math and Geometry, specifically, almost every day I worked.”  He repeated, “I was lucky.”

No child should think that their education is a matter of luck.  We control the design by which each child builds their load bearing learning.

I add reading music, collaborating skills, and fine motor skills to the list of five literacies that result in a load bearing early education.

Music is not an elective in education or a special subject out of the mainstream.  Music is foundational.  Just listen to the world around you – music is everywhere.  Music and rhythm and tempo surround us, permeate us, and move our souls.  The choice of music may be a personal choice, but the core of what music is is universal in all of us.  Literacy in music begins with our teaching children to read music.  The ability to read music opens the doors of capacity to perform, interpret, explain, and create music. 

Stand in the crowd when the National Anthem is played and everyone is singing.  You will know who was able to read a note of music, interpret that note into sound, and repeat that sound with confidence and fidelity.  And, who cannot.  Not being able to read and perform music does not diminish our enjoyment of music.  It limits us to being consumers only.  We watch others who are able to do.

No child’s education should limit their future to one half of an experience when the whole is completely possible.

The succession of generations and evolution of networking that connects every part of our lives only makes collaborating skills more essential as load bearing learning.  While stalwart Baby Boomers touted individualism and personal initiative, Millenials and Gen Zers are defining the essence of community membership and collaboration.  Donne’s “… no man is an island…” has ever been more true.

“Playing fair in the sandbox” is not innate to a specie born with fight or flight impulses.  Some children are socially inclined and intrinsically motivated toward cooperation, collegiality, consensus, and collaboration.  Others bare their teeth.  Schooling should teach “out” individualism.  It should teach “in” the social constructs of togetherness.

We purposefully implement group activities in secondary education because we have learned that collegiality and collaboration are strong instructional models and cause improved learning.  A child in high school or college or in later career should not be caught up short in a group work project saying “I don’t know how to work with others.”  This is a load bearing skills that begins in 4K.

Lastly, fine motor skills are hugely load bearing and and just as hugely ignored in traditional school education.  A conversation about personal motor skills points us to physical education where they are drowned out by fitness, strength, and stamina and life-long recreational activity instruction.  Touch and feel and delicate movement are not units of instruction in elementary school.  Yet, students in art, technology education, “maker labs”, science labs, and baking and cooking labs need very fine motor skills.  Try painting with large muscle groups or creating slides for microscopic viewing or measuring ingredients without fine motor skills.  Or, try playing a music instrument without touch and feel.  If a child has these, it is not the result of schooling only their natural gifts.  However, we can assist every child to develop improved fine motor skills and be better prepared for education and life.

Wrongly, we don’t address fine motor skills in the mainstream, only as a specific therapy for children diagnosed with physical or occupational training needs. 

Fine motor skills, like phonics-based reading and writing, operational proficiency in math, reading music, and collaborating with others, create and expand learning opportunities for children.  Take any of these away from a child’s foundational learning experiences and that child is not equipped for new learning in the future.

Load-bearing learning is a powerful construct for envisioning the full extent of a school education and informing how and what we prioritize for every child’s learning success.  For one, the concept will change how I consider issues of elementary school teaching and learning and how I speak with parents regarding the most important outcomes of 4K to grade 3 education.

Leave No Child Unconnected

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Money and schools are in a constant dance.  It takes money to educate children in all the school-based programs our communities demand.  Of this there is no debate.  Schooling requires money.  Our dance with money begins and ends with governments.  How much will the state legislature allocate?  The state is the largest banker for school funding.  How many federal dollars will make it to local schools?  And, what amount of money will local taxpayers approve for the school board’s local levy?  Add together the monies contributed by these three levels of government and you have the revenue side of the annual school budget.   Although it seems that the “ask” is always larger than than the “get”, for the purpose of general education our schools are adequately funded.

Except.  There is one “ask” that has not been satisfied and now is the time to “get” this singular requirement of education successfully funded.  Internet infrastructure.  

Education is now married to the Internet.  The pandemic sealed those vows.  Every school and every child is an Internet user or needs to be.  In the post-pandemic, the requirement for students wherever they are to be connected to the Internet will not diminish – it will only grow larger.  Yet, we are nation of Internet patchworks that provide wonderful high speed connectivity for some and no connectivity to ineffective connectivity for others. 

If there was governmental funding power in Leave No Child Behind, we need to reword that charge into Leave No Child Unconnected. 

The Biden administration has opened the door.  Generally stated, the White House wants to provide significant economic relief that bridges all in our nation to a better post-pandemic economy, and, they want everyone in the nation to know that the federal government is providing that economic relief.  Infrastructure is large in their political-economic game plan.  The President has pointed to bridges and highways and dams.  Federal dollars dedicated to replacement and improvement of infrastructure will fuel business recovery and expand employment.  A great plan!  We have historical examples of this level of federal infusion succeeds, thank you FDR.

A part of the Roosevelt plan was rural electrification.  A part of the Biden plan must be rural Internet connectivity.

High speed Internet connectivity for every community must be one of our infrastructure outcomes.  Internet connectivity fits the White House’s agenda perfectly.  The Internet is the modern interstate highway of commerce, communication, and education.  Every person in the nation is directly or indirectly a user of the Internet.  Yet, too many are so far off the Internet grid that they are not within the economy.  We cannot raise everyone in our national economy without lifting those Internet connections into the economy.

And, the Internet is in dire need of governmental action.  The pandemic has taught us that a patchwork of local fixes to a national problem is ineffective and inefficient.  Cities and towns and villages and townships do not have the financial resources to create the Internet systems required.  We need to get the Internet off our telephone lines and power it through cables and towers and satellites.  A local tax levy cannot fund this level of infrastructural improvement.  We need big government to make a big difference.

Schools fit into this plan for infrastructural improvement.  When schools closed their campuses in March 2020, the Internet became the classroom.  Teaching and learning went on-screen.  However, children at home needed adequate Internet connection in order to be on-screen and too many had no Internet in their home or extremely poor Internet.  In the post-pandemic, remote and virtual education are not going away.  Remote education is the new option of parent choice of schooling for children.  The pandemic pointed out our extreme Internet inequity, an inequity that will only become more apparent with our increased uses of virtual teaching and learning.

A dredging up of the Bush slogan “Leave No Child Behind” makes this statement boldly evident – any child without adequate high speed Internet connection is left behind.

If I need to make more of an argument for this need to get a reader’s positive nod, then nothing I can write will succeed. 

We need universal high speed Internet connectivity in every household in every community of our nation and governmental funding is the only mechanism that will satisfy this need.  Our representatives in United States Senate and House of Representatives are the government that can make this happen.  They are the dancers on this singular dance floor and only they can create enough money to Leave No Child Unconnected.

Olly Olly Oxen Free

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On a dusky summer evening in our neighborhood a parent would hear “Olly olly oxen free” and know that children still unfound in a game of hide and seek could now come out of hiding, gather around the home base, and start a new game.  Hide and seek, a game that allows children to scatter, find cover, wait out the person seeking them, and if not found, return to home base a winner.  Many winners were possible in every game.  Sounds like remote education in a pandemic.

Olly olly oxen free was what children heard and repeated when the originators of the game actually yelled into the dusk, “All ye out come in free”. 

That should be the message to all children and their parents from a school today.  It is time to gather all the children who are enrolled in the school and provide everyone with a needed status check.  In the game of learning, we need to know the status of each child’s learning?  Schools don’t know.  Parents don’t know.  Children don’t know.  We all need to know.

This is not necessarily a call for all children to return to in-person learning in their pre-pandemic school.  Facts are that some children already have returned to in-person learning.  Facts are that some children have found new schooling providers and will not return to their pre-pandemic school.  Facts are that some parents are not yet ready to return their children to any school for in-person learning.  These are the facts regarding children who were enrolled in our schools when the pandemic sent them home.

There is another fact that must be addressed.  That is, the current learning status of each child after twelve-plus months of pandemic education.  Each school needs to say to its pre-pandemic parents with credible assessment results –

  • These are the achievement facts of your child’s pre-pandemic learning, and,
  • These are the current achievement facts of your child’s pandemic learning.

“All ye out come in free” is a call to parents to receive unblemished educational assessments.  Information always is powerful.  It informs decisions.  A lack of information can lead to uninformed decisions.  Parents and schools need information and they need it now.

Assessments are more than reading and math testing.  We need information about a student’s learning status regarding each of the standards-based curricula that is taught in our schools.  This includes all academics – reading, writing, speaking, language development, math problem solving, math information, science, and social studies.  It includes the arts – art, band, and choral music.  It includes each second language a child was studying at the beginning of the pandemic.  It includes each of the elective areas of education – business and marketing, technology, computer sciences, and driver’s education.  And, it includes health and physical education.  In our school, each of these represents a curriculum based upon school board adopted standards.  This curriculum is the substance of our school’s instructional program and we need to know about all of it.

Some may say that we should wait until a child returns to her pre-pandemic school or formally enrolls in another school to conduct such assessments.  I fully disagree with the first part of this caution.  Our school is obligated to provide this information on an annual basis to the parents of each child enrolled in the school.  Although statewide assessments for the purpose of school report cards have been waived, there have been no waivers for a school’s responsibility to inform parents about their child’s ongoing learning developmnts.  I will agree that a school is responsible for assessing each of its enrolled children and this extends to new school enrollees.  To extend this, a school is responsible for obtaining a new enrollee’s educational records so parents will have pre-pandemic and current pandemic information for their child. 

It is time to call “Olly olly oxen free”, gather our school children, and conduct a full range of educational assessments.  It is time for school, parents, and children to have these educational facts.  This spring, April, May and early June, is the time.  The fact is, we know what to assess, how to assess, and who to assess.  The fact is, teaching and learning in the 2021-22 school year requires these assessments.  The question is, will we?  Or will all the oxen still roam free?

School Board Work Is A Wonderful Responsibility

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To each person duly elected to the local school board, I say “Welcome.  Today you will begin to see, listen to, and think about school in an entirely new dimension.  Engage with fellow board members in a thoughtful discussion of how your board will meet its responsibilities to educate all children.  Then, get to know your school from the inside out.  We have a lot to learn and talk about.” 

An introduction to the school board was not always like this.

A few years back a newly elected school board member was chastised by the board president for visiting school classrooms and talking with teachers.  He was told, “Follow the chain of command.  Board members speak with the superintendent.  The superintendent speaks with principals and other administrators.  Principals and other administrators speak with teachers and other employees.  Don’t violate this chain for command”.  A conversation with the executive director of the state’s school board association confirmed this absurdity.  “Follow the chain of command”, he advised, “it exists for a purpose.”

And, they also should have said, “Take a firm grip on your rubber stamp, because the limiting funnel of information allowed through such a command structure will require little to no discussion by board members.  One voice.  One interpretation of information.  No discussion necessary.”

How absurd and how wrong! 

A quick review of state statutes describing the duties of a school board member disabused this new board member of what the president and executive director said.  The statutes contain no such limitations on the scope of a board member’s interaction with the district’s schools.    Our statutes tell us that our duties, among others, include these:

120.12 School board duties. The school board of a common or union high school district shall:

(1) MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT. Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have the possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district, except for property of the school district used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.

(2) GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools of the school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120.pdf

Any board policies or regulations restricting a board member’s interactions are not founded in statute and are propagated only to protect an antiquated concept of the status quo.  The only valid admonition is a board member must refrain from discussion that might compromise the board member’s future role should the board meet in a judicial hearing.  For example, don’t engage in discussion of a specific employee’s work performance or a specific student’s discipline record.  A Board may fulfill its statutory role in hearing a case related to employee termination or student expulsion and the prior discussions of these by a board member may compromise the board member’s capacity to be objectively neutral. 

Better rules to follow are – “Treat everyone, adult and child, with integrity and respect.  Be informed.  Be a voice for the future of all children.  You are a legislator not an administrator.”

  • Integrity and respect are gold standards for boardsmanship.  Each person you speak with requires these two qualities from you.  No matter the person’s role in school – parent, student, teacher, custodian, administrator, community taxpayer – that person has a legitimate claim to your attention.  You are that person’s representative on the school board.  The integrity and respect you demonstrate sets the role model standard for the school district.  If integrity and respect are not present at the school board, how can you expect them be present anywhere else in the school?
  • Integrity and respect are demonstrated by listening rather than talking.  You want to understand their perspective not overlay your own.  You can do that at the board table.  Integrity is demonstrated by sharing the multiple perspectives you have heard.  Integrity is making fact-based decisions and holding to a decision as long as the facts support a decision.  And, when the facts do not support a decision, adjusting the decision to reflect new facts. 
  • Board members need first-hand information.  The old chain of command assured that most information was second- and third-hand.  Create your information base by proactively visiting classrooms to observe instruction, the use of curricular materials, and student and teacher interaction.  I call this “perching”.  You are not in a classroom to interact or participate, but to see and listen and feel.  However, if the teacher invites your participation, do not hesitate.  Enjoy the moment.
  • Engage in hearty discussions about employment policies, responsibilities and expectations, and practices.  Gain firsthand information about the school environment from an employee and student perspective.  See teachers, aides, district and school office staff, kitchen and food service, custodians and maintenance staff, bus drivers, and coaches, directors and advisors doing their work. 
  • Then, with respect and integrity, share your information appropriately at the board table. 

https://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=13914

  • Your real constituency is the children of the school.  You may be elected from a precinct or supported in your election by voters who favor certain programs or want specific changes and improvements in the school district.  However, your focus should always be on the quality education of all children, emphasis on all.  When the board is called upon to vote on a matter, your vote is powerful.  Of all the voices speaking to the matter, when the votes are tallied, only board voices/votes are counted.  Make your vote stand for the highest quality of programming your schools can provide to all children.
  • You are a legislator not an administrator.  Board members work with policies stemming from the mission and goals of the school district.  Affirm policies that are creating desired school district outcomes and amend or delete policies that are not.  When in the school, watch, listen and feel – don’t direct.  You have no authority to tell anyone what to do.  That is a role of school administration and supervision. 
  • Always remember that you are not evaluating any employee’s work.  That is a supervisor’s role.  You are being informed by the work you observe.  This is one of the greatest cliffs from which board members fall.  And, the landing is never good.  Do not engage in an evaluative discussion with school employees of any rank regarding their work performance or the performance of another employee.  The board does this when it annually considers each employee’s contract renewal.  Wait until then.

“Welcome” to the work of the school board.  As you take your seat, consider your role as an elected educational leader.  Commit your tenure to integrity and respect, being informed by the work of every school employee, speak for the education of all children, focus on the connections between school mission and goals and school board policies, and always remember that you are one of the few, a member for the School Board.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct93/vol51/num02/Rethinking-the-School-Board’s-Role.aspx