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Making Instruction Whole Post-COVID 19

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Five years from now, will the world give today’s children a pass saying, “You were educated in the time of COVID 19 and we know that your academic education was incomplete.  That’s okay.  We will not expect as much from you.”  I don’t think they will and I do not expect them to do so.  Our task today is to educate children while schools are closed and then make their education whole so that no one will need a pass.

Scope of the issue

Most schools were closed by order of school boards and state governors in the last weeks of March.  At first, the belief was that schools would be closed for the month of April and re-opened in early May.  As the pandemic bloomed on the east and west coasts and then in larger cities and more slowly across the middle of the United States, hopes for May became a realization that the 2019-20 school year would end with most schools closed.  The next issue to be faced is how schools will open in the fall.  And, if there will be a second wave of COVID 19 in late fall/early winter as is suspected. 

School curricula is either a spiraling band of K-12 instruction or it is chunked into subject area courses.  In both constructs, the teaching of academic units is packaged and scheduled on an annual calendar.  Seldom is the K-12 spiral systemically broken as it has been by COVID.  Organizationally, the machine of instruction begins in September and grinds steadily until June.  With 90%-plus of children present in class every day, a school year is a steady stream of teaching and learning.  We know how to compensate missed learning for children due to their illness or other reasons for school absence.  With lessons either before or after, children become whole in their academic year. 

The issue now is that all children missed two or more months of teaching and learning.  A second issue is, although teachers and children used remote education services to sustain teaching and learning while schools are closed, no one knows the relationship of what was learned to what was expected to be learned.  Remote education is idiosyncratic to the local school district and within a school district it is dependent upon an individual teacher’s skills and dispositions for working remotely.  Add to that the issues of Internet connectivity and instructional effectiveness becomes more of a question. 

A closed school faces many issues.  As one elementary principal said, “We are focused on assuring that our students are safe and secure at home.  We are working to assure they are fed and that their social-emotional concerns in this crisis are addressed.  Daily lessons come after these problems are resolved.”  For some children, remote education is last on their day’s concerns.

Key questions

Much of education is scaffolded.  What a child learns in third grade is foundational for what a child will learn in fourth and fifth grade.  Scaffolding is most easily illustrated in the spiral of mathematics education.  Fractions, a troublesome subject for many children in the best of schooling times, is taught in 4th and 5th grades.  We know from decades of experience that children who are not secure in their understanding and manipulation of numerators and denominators and ratios have difficulty learning Algebra.  And, Algebra is the fundamental to secondary mathematics.  A deficit in fractions plagues a child’s education for years afterward.  Focus then on this question, how can we assure that children in the 2019-20 school year who are scheduled to learn and become secure in fractions are secure in fractions?

Move the scaffold across the curricula to ELA, science, social studies, world languages, the arts, and technical education.  What chunk of foundational learning lacks security? 

Look inside the scaffold.  How well did children with special needs prosper under remote education?  Many schools are diligently providing IEP-required modifications to lessons during remote education.  Special education and school interventionists make daily contact with children to assist their remote learning.  As we look carefully at the learning performances of all children post-COVID, we must look with care at the performances of special needs children to assure they made expected progress.  This includes children with gifted and talented needs as well as children with disabilities.

Work to be done

Our task is to adapt re-opened schools with a focus on making the education of all children whole regarding the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.  There is not a singular solution for doing this.  Every recommendation will have its proponents and opponents.  Each solution attempted will have its challenge, because it will be implemented within the moving parts and new expectations of the 2020-21 school year.  The assessment piece will be difficult, because children’s experiences in remote education will be so varied as to make each child a case of one.  And, continuous monitoring and adjusting of compensatory education filling in the learning gaps will be ongoing requiring more assessment.

At some point in time, perhaps June 2021 or June 2022, we need to say to every child who was schooled in the time of COVID, “Your instruction has been made whole.  Your future education and career will not be impacted by lost instruction doe to COVID 19.” 

We have work to do.

Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID

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In Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove”, Augustus McCrae says, “Yesterday is gone and there is no getting it back”.  Gus was talking about the tragedies of life on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.  In our contemporary world, we can mirror Gus and say, “COVID is changing the way we cause children to learn and when it is over there will be no going back to school exactly the way it was.  Yesterday is gone.”  It is hard to find a similar event in our recent national or state histories that shuttered school houses like COVID has.  Hopefully, COVID is a one and done.  Regardless, COVID will make things different in our future schools.

Yesterday

Two months ago, virtual or remote teaching and learning was the exception to regular school.  Remote learning was the venue of the Khan Academy and home schoolers.  For twenty years, synchronous instructional television (ITV) connected in-school students to curricula they could not receive in regular classrooms.  Students enrolled in AP courses, college colleges, and rich elective courses.  Almost every new curricular product on the school market came with digital features, many of which were accessed by teacher and students anywhere and anytime.  Forward-leaning teachers captured their initial instruction on digitized formats and students accessed these when they are absent from school or need a review of what the teacher said, demonstrated and clarified.  In almost every application thus far, virtual or remote teaching and learning has been an adjunct to regular, daily, classroom-based teaching and learning.  COVID makes an abrupt change to past practice and is forcing new practices.  Today, there is no in-school teaching and learning; everything is remote.

Break and Make

In mid-March, many districts made the decision to close all school programming for several weeks to a month.  Luckily for some, this coincided with their calendared spring break, so the cancellation seemed to fit into place.  Some state governors simultaneously declared all public schools in their state closed for a month.  The general idea of school boards and governors was that closure would allow for a deep cleaning at school and for the influenza to pass.  Remote learning was quickly designed as a practicing of recent instruction or a brief enrichment opportunity.  COVID did not agree.

The first month of remote education divided school districts into yet another division of haves and have nots.  Some districts have extraordinary technology capacity, meaning one digital device per student, and others have little to no capacity.  Some districts have explored e-learning as a school option for snow days and begun training teachers and students for out-of-school education and other districts have no pre-COVID conversation about remote education.  Finally, some school districts have the leadership capacity to make a dramatic sea change toward remote education and other districts will follow later.

Education in the Time of COVID

Today, we are considering the probability that the 2019-20 school year will end with schools closed.  Today, we are considering how to provide two-plus months of school remotely.  Instead of practice exercises of what children learned in February and early March, we are moving into ew and initial instruction provided to all students remotely.  That means all school instruction to all students remotely.  Special education modifications remotely.  Assessments of learning remotely.  Elementary reading groups remotely.  Virtual chemistry labs remotely.  All academics remotely.  Yesterday is gone.  Today and tomorrow are very different.

Past Models of Lasting Change

I consider how we adapted to life with personal computers in the 80s and what that means for life with remote schooling today.  In the 80s, some of us were pioneers looking at the first Compaq, Commodore, Toshiba, Texas Instrument, IBM PCs, and Apple 1 machinery and marveling at what we could do at our desk sites.  Each year provided a new iteration and as we moved to new hard- and software, the technology mainstream followed along.  The first Motorola mobile phones were amazing!  And, every year provided a new amazing!  In the early 90s, the yesterday of no technology was gone and there was no interest in getting it back.  Mobile technology changed the world.

Remote schooling will mirror innovations in technology and just as we don’t want to return to our first Commodore or Motorola StarTac, we will not want school to be exactly as it was before remote learning.

After one week of remote schooling, my 7th grade grand daughter sits on the sofa with her PC on her lap, I-Phone propped to her right so she can read her e-mails and texts and several printed pages on her left so she is reminded of a lesson’s directions.  She splits her screen so she can read citations and write her essay.  When her screen blips, she opens Zoom and immediately sees her friends/classmates for a scheduled collaboration on a math assignment.  When a question arises that the group cannot answer, she uses her phone to text her teacher and five minutes later shares what he said with the group. 

She says to me, “Gramps, I get more schoolwork done in less time doing it this way.  I don’t know how I will do on the tests, but I am reading and re-reading and editing what I write much more than I would at school.  But, I miss being at school with my friends.  I miss the structure of a school day.” 

An hour later, she complained, “Why doesn’t my teacher get back to me quicker.  I need his help now!”.

On FaceTime I talk with grandchildren in two other school districts each in a different state.  In one district, children are waiting for their next week’s assignments to arrive via US Postal Service.  In the other district, children received batches of e-mailed assignments with scant directions.  “I am not a teacher”, my daughter-in-law lamented.  “I need directions that I can understand so that I can help my children.”

In the immediacy of education in the time of COVID, we are all over the landscape.  If there is disconnect between the federal government and state governments regarding medical supplies, it is even greater between schools and homes regarding ongoing education.

And, therein lies the challenge for tomorrow.  Remote education done well will provide some children with powerful new learning tools and strategies, new environments within which to learn, and more collaborative tools to use with teachers and fellow students.  Some children will thrive in remote schooling and be loathe to return to regular school.  Remote education not done well will leave too many children one-half to a year behind in their educational progress.  Those children will not thrive, but will languish.

My discussion with area school districts includes the following:

  • If you are not a pioneer in remote education, be a good and high-quality follower.  Schools need not invent their way through out-of-school education in the time of COVID.  Find a credible and similar school district that is moving forward and replicate their movement.  It is impossible to overcome past capacity needs in the immediacy and there are more important daily needs to be met.
  • Achieve learning equity for all children.  If you are mailing out assignments, make all assignments quality learning.  If you are on a learning management system, assure that all children are getting quality instruction and learning opportunities.  Quality over quantity.
  • Do not try to replicate a day in school in your remote education design.  Instead of seven hours of class time, strive for three to four hours of student engagement.
  • Create teacher accessibility.  Children will have more questions in remote education than they do in-school.  While a parent may be in the room at home, children want to talk with their teacher.  Telephone.  E-mail.  FaceTime.  Once lessons are in the hands of children, teachers need to be accessible.
  • Make everything parent friendly.  For each new and initial chunk of instruction, provide parent instructions to assist them to assist their children.  Creating parent instructions takes time, but without good parent instructions, we lose whole families to the frustration of “We cannot do this!!”.
  • Use teacher strengths.  Within a grade level or subject area team, let the teacher with the most expertise create remote education assignments.  It is not necessary that every teacher creates lessons, because some are not as adept at remote teaching and learning.  This is a fact.  Let the creative create and others do the daily contact with children to assist their learning.  Let teachers who are really good at group work meet with children face-to-face virtually.  Let teachers who are good at differentiation and lesson modification connect with children who need personal assistance.  Differentiate the roles of teaching.
  • Use all instructional personnel.  School closure does not mean furloughing teacher aides and paraprofessionals.  Each child who benefited from their instructional assistance yesterday will need their assistance tomorrow.
  • Educate all children.  Children with special education needs need more and different assistance in remote education.  A school’s responsibilities for an IEP does not stop if a school engages in remote education.  Children with needs for enrichment need attention in remote education.  Special needs are magnified in remote education. 

Next Tomorrows

When COVID 19 leaves us three realities (or more) will confront us. 

  1. Most people will want to re-stabilize life by returning to pre-COVID.  We will re-open schools next fall and many students and parents will expect the normalcy they lost.  While we look backward at that old normalcy, we need to be cognizant of what we learned using remote education.
  2. COVID and remote teaching and learning will cause us to re-evaluate what is essential in 4K-12 education.  Some pre-COVID school functions and roles may not seem as essential after COVID.  The advantages of remote instructional delivery for some children and some curricula will need to be integrated into the new normal.  Education will have evolved and we will need to recognize its new forms.
  3. And, sadly, there may well be a COVID X and we will return to remote education.  We need to consider what we have learned from COVID 19, make plans for a new and improved remote education, and be ready for our unknown future.

The Butterflies Are Loose; Help the Unexpected to Find Flight

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Edward Lorenz published his first paper on chaos behavior in 1972.  Loosely, he said chaos occurs when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future, then unpredicted and unexpected stuff happens.  His paper was titled “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?”

Education in the time of COVID 19 offers us the opportunity to understand a bit of chaos theory and allow butterflies to flit.

Crisis sometimes begets chaos and sometimes it opens the door to what has been in the offing. Our Governor has mandated that all K-12 public schools be closed at the end of day last Wednesday.  Believing that local conditions required differently, our school board directed that our K-12 school would be closed beginning the Monday in advance of the Governor. 

More than a decade ago, our school board began a one digital device program per student program.  High school students were given laptops for their 24/7 use.  Middle school students were given Chromebooks for in school use that quickly morphed to 24/7 use.  Elementary students had IPads for daily use at school. 

Two years ago our school board began discussion of e- or remote learning as a response to school closures due to weather or other emergencies.  Discussion with teachers and parents waggled on the effectiveness of virtual learning and the capacity of school families to manage learning at home.  All the controversies of Internet availability and daytime home supervision were played out.  Several months ago, our school held an “in school” e-day.  Normal class activities were suspended and children did “lessons” as if they were at home.  Some were asynchronous online assignments.  Others were pre-prepared lessons using tablets and laptops.  And, some were traditional learning packets.  A month ago our school held a “stay at home” e-day.  Lessons resembled the in-school e-day.  Afterward, administrators surveyed parents and talked with teachers about the day.

Then, COVID 19 arrived. This week our school staff, students and parents entered the world of remote schooling opportunity like every other school community in the state.  However, instead of jumping into the deep end of the pool, our school waded into familiar waters.  At the end of the day on Friday, every student took a school-provided digital device home along with their school books and supplies.  On Monday and Tuesday, teachers and instructional aides prepared and disseminated lessons for several day’s learning at a time.  ELA and math and social studies and Spanish are sequential and feel like daily lessons.  Tech ed, science, art, music, and PE are chunked into a week’s lessons.  All assignments have a due date plus one week as a provision for tech problems, necessary remote assistance on a lesson, and the possibility of illness.  Teachers and aides prep each day from 8 am to 10 am and are available online between 10 am and 4 am.  Administrators and counselors make daily contacts, voice and digital, with children with special needs.  Special educators and aides provide IEP-based assistance to children with their remote lessons.  The school food service will make sacked meals that will be bussed to local fire stations for families to pick up as needed.

As we put these remote school operations into motion, we have created a new normal that will hold until future notice.  Normal now is schooling that is not normal.

The butterflies are loose.  Random acts are causing unpredicted and random effects.  We are learning new things about schooling everyday when the approximate future does not approximately determine the future.  Now is the time to consider what school should, can and will be like when the COVID 19 epidemic no longer plagues us.

What rules and regulations regarding schooling should no longer hold because we have evidence to their contrary?  To what extent are we able to release education from mandated days and hours of instruction when school days become possible again?  If children can learn a curriculum by not attending school daily, what level of school attendance is required?  If non-education businesses and enterprises can work from home or not at school, can educators?  What are the non-educational services that families and community rely upon – the must haves – versus the services that we learned to do without?  If school is not in session, can we re-allocate dollars required for daily school to other school district services?

We cannot yet measure the effectiveness of remote learning?  One can imagine that student proficiencies in ELA and math that were at less than 50% may be still be less than 50%.  But, what if they are not?  Perhaps, we will reassess our thinking about and need for standardized proficiencies.

Students at home with a passion for learning will pursue their passion.  They will practice their flutes and cellos.  They will draw and paint.  They will read and think.  They will cook and bake and sew and create. New fashions will be forthcoming. They will be online and their programming and gaming and communicating will stretch their today far beyond what they have done in the past.  Perhaps we will observe real break out performances otherwise not possible.

Teachers will refine the language and presentation of initial instruction using synchronous and asynchronous pedagogy.  They will need to be more precise in their initial instruction and to respond to questions with more clarity.  Consider the quantity of wait time in a regular classroom.  Remember the hours of off-task time.  Can we be more efficient with remote learning?

Just like a butterfly in flight, one question about “what will school be like when this crisis is ended” creates or bounces off another question. The possible answers abound and create more and more potentiality that the future will not look at all like what was before.

I hope that educators everywhere will use the COVID 19 months to consider where our better educational butterflies want to go so that our re-emergence from crisis into non-crisis will not take us unwittingly back to yesterday.

A School Year Is Long Enough To …

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I have not yet met a person who does not have an opinion on the length of a school year.  By and large, most people who are not students, parents of students, in the business of school or reliant upon child labor don’t care and “I don’t care” is an opinion.  The remainder, a minority of our community – parents, grandparents, employers and others whose daily life is touched by school – form their opinion from their personal experience, their self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  Normally, this blog sets a proposition, examines what we know and think about the topic, and creates an action or To Do with a rationale.  Today, I will start with the conclusion.

The Big Duh

A school year must be the length of time necessary to teach and cause children to become competent in an annual curriculum.  It need not be longer nor shorter than that, but it must be long enough to teach an annual curriculum. 

What Do We Know?

Over time educators have packaged learning into grade levels and content courses and courses of study and each package is an annual curriculum.  Elementary school is parsed into 4K or pre-kindergarten, Kindergarten, and 1st grade through the last grade of your school’s organization, typically 5th or 6th grade.  Each grade level is a step on a curricular scaffold building a child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions about learning school year by school year.  Secondary school is parsed into content courses of English/language arts, math, science and socials studies and perhaps a world language.  These are stacked or sequenced, as in English 7 through English 12 and Algebra through Calculus.  Some content courses seem to be stand alone courses, like Marketing or Personal Finance, but have underlying content and skill structure in English, social studies, and math.  Also, secondary school instruction provides continuous courses of study in music, the arts, and technical education.  Year after year of instruction in choir, band and orchestra or in painting and ceramics or technical training refines and improves student performance.

The packaging in terms of time began when our communities were agriculture-based and children could attend school when not needed during the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons.  Packaging was reconsidered when child labor laws were implemented and regular schooling replaced daily work.  A school day mirrored a work day and a school week mirrored a world week and school calendaring filled the community need for day care for millions of children nationwide.

Curricular packaging has been refined and fit into grade level and course competencies.  A child’s progress through the 3 R’s was a pathway up the scaffold of reading, writing and arithmetic.  At one time, a 6th grade education or the ability to read, write and cipher at the 6th grade level was an adequate adult competency.  Later, the level of competency advanced to 8th grade and children could stop attending school after completion of 8th grade or the age of 16.  That was good enough.  Today, high school is the completion of 13 or 14 years of schooling and a generalized competency of 10th grade or better.

Our contemporary school scaffold is a child’s annual demonstrated competence on annual curricula that validates promotion to the next annual curricula and eventually graduation.  The time required to complete each step of the scaffold or each packaged curriculum is approximately 180 school days or 36 weeks of school.

There are no prizes or awards for schools that have shorter or longer school years.  There is no economic incentive to add days to a school year.  School revenues and contracts for all school employees are a set amount in a school’s annual budget and decreasing or extending a school year does not alter these major expenses.

Why Is This Thus?

Why is 180 days the seemingly standard for a school year?  The question was asked and answered more than 100 years ago.  The world’s richest man of his time, Andrew Carnegie, was committed to the role of education as the essential strategy for improving life in the early 1900s.  In 1906, he funded the Carnegie Foundation led by Harvard President Charles Elliot to study and recommend standards for a college education.  At the time, the national college graduation rate was less than 10% and the quality of a college education was dependent upon the college.  There were no national standards for education.  The Carnegie Foundation literally defined college and university education in the United States for the next century. 

The Foundation also recommended changes in public education.  For our purposes, the Foundation defined a high school Carnegie Unit as a (one) credit awarded for completion of 120 hours of instruction over the length of a school year.  A school year, then, is the length of time to required to achieve 120 hours of instruction plus assessments plus other school requirements.  According to the Carnegie plan, a high school student could earn six to seven credits per year and 24 to 28 credits over four years and high school graduation became the completion of 24-28 credits. 

Using the 120 hours of instruction as the standard for an annual curriculum and allowing for reteaching and make-up lessons for students absent from school and for the additional legislative mandates that must be accomplished in a school year, 180 days became the normal length of a school year in US public schools.  Ninety days was a semester and 45 days was a quarter or grading period.

Since 1906, much as changed in the field of teaching and learning, yet the basics of a Carnegie Unit and the standards for a school year have remained largely unchanged.  A discussion of a school year begins with 180 days.

We must always be aware of the influences of money and politics in public, as these are constantly at play in public education.  By rule of the US Constitution, the responsibility for public education is delegated to the states.  Hence, the funding and rules related to public education are legislated by state government.

It is honest to state that state funding for public education is allocated according to money available not by money needed.  This basic understanding tells us that legislatures with a need to fund many state programs that compete for a limited annual state budget are always looking for ways to reduce or contain costs.  Public education, prisons and highways are the three largest expenses in state budgets.

The school year is an example of such manipulation.  For decades, a school year was 180 days of instruction.  First, start with this as the number of interest:  180 times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the largest cost of a school year.  More than 80% of school costs are paid in salary and benefits to employees.  If school funding is considered on a per day basis not a per year basis and a school year is defined by hours instead of days, then the total sum of money spent for salaries and benefits can be changed.  Second, change the number of interest to:  hours of instruction times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the cost of a school year.  The total remains the same as long as the hours of instruction equal 180 days of instruction. 

In Wisconsin, 437 hours of instruction are required for Kindergarten students, 1,050 hours for grades 1 through 6, and 1,137 for grades 7 through 12. 

Third, allow schools to determine the length of class periods and the number of hours in a school day so that each grade level meets the legislated number of instruction hours.  Now, a school year can be less than 180 days.  More importantly, the cost of school is reduced by each day of salary and benefit that is removed from the annual school calendar. 

Politics and economics not student learning drive the contemporary defining of a school year.  Today, a school year can be reduced to the bare minimum of days required to complete mandated hours of instruction, a number in the 170s.

Yes but!  If we add the concept of educational accountability to the definition of a school year, how much teaching and learning is required for a child to competently complete an annual grade level, a content course or a course of study?  There is no magic in the Carnegie Unit.  Critics of the Unit have harped for decades on its arbitrariness.  Yet, the idea that the completion of a rigorous course of instruction should be the basis of how we “package” a year of school keeps us returning to the idea of the Unit.  A school year must be accountable for learning not just time in class.

To Do

Accountability for learning matters and competency is the metric of measure.  The number of hours in a school day or in a school year is just the vehicle for achieving competent learning.  School Boards approve and adopt annual curricula for all children in all grade levels and courses with the intention that children will successfully and competently complete each.  We must honor this element of local school control of public education. 

We have a national problem with proficiency.  A majority of children do not meet proficiency standards on local, state and national assessments.  This is an instructional challenge.  We must improve the instructional tool box used by all teachers to more effectively cause every child to learn.  This is a commitment challenge.  We must hold to the goals of annual student achievement and invoke what we know about the science and art of explicit teaching and the necessity for instructional interventions when initial instruction is not successful.  Proficiency is created when a child is competent in each curricular unit of instruction so that at the end of a school year there is a sequence of proficient learning.  We must intervene at the point of mislearning or non-learning not at the end of school year.  And, to point, reducing the number of days in a school year contradicts what we know about student proficiency.  Teachers need all the time they can have with children not less.

Take Away

As a School Board member, I hear from parents who want to reduce the length of our school year.  I return to the first paragraph.  Most who have an opinion about the length of a school year base their opinion upon personal experience, self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  A Board member’s responsibility includes educating the public about education and local education, in particular.  As an educator who is a Board member, my first accountability is to causing every child to become a proficient learner and to learn.  In the business of causing learning, instructional time is our most valuable resource.  We can improve teaching skills and refine curriculum.  However, without adequate time for all of the layers of instruction, initial through necessary interventions, to be successfully deployed, teacher skill and engaging curricula will not cause the educational outcomes children need.  A school year may be an arbitrary number of hours and days, yet there is a substantial rationale connecting instructional time with learning accountability.  At the end of conversation, we get what we settle for and less time will result in less learning.

Meddling, Muddling, Modeling Not Middling

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A wonderful educator, Mildred Middleton, taught us that it is very appropriate to “M” around in school work.  Education is not static work, she told us.  Everyone and everything is changing, some appearing as  revolutionary and but most feeling as evolutionary, but it all is changing.  Dick, Jane and Spot left the reading shelf replaced with trade books.  Now, graphic books, anyone?  Anyone?  New Math upset the apple cart and then the apples were collected, the cart arighted, and New became one of several approaches to math instruction.  Common Core made everything more academic and accountability made everyone more antsy.  Change is always at hand somewhere around the schoolhouse.

Mildred helped us to understand change and, to steal a line from Apollo 13, to “work the problem”.  While we wanted to apply a single strategy to understanding the phenomenon of change, she used the M’s to help us work the problem even when we don’t know how.

M-ing is valuable for adults and children alike.  Instead of watching people give up because they don’t know what to do or run around with their hair on fire chasing the solution of the moment, we can teach adults and children to be meddlers, muddlers, modelers, and to never accept middling.

Let’s define our terms.

Meddling is being a Thomas Edison and trying dozens of viable options seeking the best option of all.  Meddling is active engagement, hands-on action, and continuous commitment to the work.  Meddling is inquisitive and inventive.  Meddling is an itch being scratched.

Muddling is observant cognitive and emotional inaction.  Muddling is saying to oneself and to others, “I don’t know what to do at the moment.  I need to stop the doing and push the observing and thinking and talking with others.”  Muddling takes personal strength in a world that expects immediate action and results.  Muddling is taking the problem apart to best understand where and how to start and this requires emotional patience.  Muddling can lead to meddling and modeling when a person has sorted things out.

Modeling is the creation and development of a focused result or set of results when a person has committed to an idea or plan.  Modeling is working the plan.  Modeling is shaping the variables at hand so that they contribute to making the plan work or the idea come alive.  Modeling is how a lump of clay becomes a piece of art or an idea becomes a cogent argument or a social problem is addressed to mutual satisfaction.  Modeling is inherent in the teaching of a successful lesson plan and in a child’s personalization of what is learned from that lesson plan.

Middling is mediocre.  Middling is “any answer will do”.  Middling is meeting the minimal, just passing, just above the grade of F.  Middling is not good enough for those who engage in meddling, muddling and modeling.

The M’s are an intersection of knowledge, skills and dispositions about learning and self that are valuable for children and adults in every area of life.  To work the M’s, a person must know things, have skills to manipulate things, and accept the dilemma of not knowing what to do and the liberation of knowing what to do but having the patience to observe until then.  The M’s are acquired not innate. 

When we engage in the M’s, we need to careful.  Modeling is the most attractive M.  It produces the showcase and salves the ego.  Most people grade and reward the results of modeling because modeling typically results in something we can see, touch, hear, read, or smell.  Care needs to be given to also value good meddling and good muddling.  What if we also assessed and graded the quality of meddling or the quality of muddling?  A good modeled result can only be produced after good meddling and muddling. 

Mildred gave us one more pearl that assists us apply the M’s.  When we understood the value and the strategies of each M, she said, “Now, pull up your socks, young man, and get to work”.  And, we have been M-ing in school ever since.