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A School Year Is Not a Year of Instruction

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One afternoon within the next month, millions of school-age children will spill out of schoolhouse doors at the end of their last day in the 2018-19 school year. June will be a time for celebration and reflection. Another school year has been completed by all children. Another year of schooling has been achieved, by some children. Reflection will indicate that less than half the children in the United States gained a year’s growth in reading or in math. However, 90%+ of students will be either graduated or promoted to the next grade level for another school year in the fall.

In reflection, what is a school year or, put differently, what is a year of schooling?

Take Away

Instructional time is the numeric that defines a school year. Each state mandates a minimum amount of time schools are required to provide instruction for Kindergarten, elementary, and secondary school children. The number is different for each age level, recognizing that children may be required to be in Kindergarten for half days, an elementary school day includes recesses, and the high school day is still influenced by Carnegie Units, a standard that parallels a high school course to a college course.

In Wisconsin, “Each school district board shall annually schedule and hold at least 437 hours of direct pupil instruction in kindergarten, at least 1,050 hour of direct pupil instruction in grades 1 through 6, and at least 1,137 hours of direct pupil instruction in grades 7 through 12.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/cal/days-hours

Oops, short on meeting the required number of instructional hours because of winter weather! Then additional school time will be scheduled to make certain the mandated number is met. No one goes home until the magic number is reached. Even though make-up time counts as instructional time, no administrative action is taken when a student skips school on a make-up day in June. Every hour counts, but some hours are more important than others. A school year calendar is time spent in school.

An instructional year is not the same as a school year. The school year will end whether or not teaching and learning are successfully completed. Units, chapters, and lessons not yet taught due to a variety of valid reasons will not be learned. No one protests on the last day of school saying “I’m not done teaching or learning!” An instructional year is the planned scope of knowledge, skills and learner dispositions assigned to an annual grade level or subject area course. It is quality not quantity.

What Do We Know?

We want to say that student learning is what really matters. Did the children successfully learn the knowledge, skills and dispositions of their annual grade level or course curriculum? Maybe and maybe not. Instructional time is a finite number; learning is a variable fit into time.

From start to finish, a school year is comprised of the number of school days that meets the state mandate for hours of instruction, parent-teacher conferencing days, professional development days for school staff, and the sum of holidays that lie between the first and last days on the school calendar. Traditionally, schools calendared 180 days for student instruction, several days for teacher’s professional development, and a couple of days for parent-teacher meetings. If the first day is September 1, the last day is in or after the first week of June. When school districts publish their school calendars, school families and communities arrange their annual schedules around the school calendar. There is an expectation, if not a promise, that school will be in session on the days of the school calendar, not more.

An instructional year is a different beast. It is not a quantitative measure. It is a qualitative achievement. Some children achieve their planned learning outcomes quickly and some children require more instruction and time. There is an expectation, if not a promise, that all children will be successful students.

The substance of an instructional calendar is found in Wisconsin Statute 118.01 which outlines the educational goals and expectations that meet the state’s responsibility for public education. A decade ago, this statute described course subjects required to be taught. A list of subjects was delineated. Today, the statute describes curricular expectations that are left to local school boards to define and implement.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118/01

The Wisconsin legislature adopted the Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts and Mathematics. The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards are in place for all other subjects and grade levels. These standards are the foundation for the creation of school district curricula in Wisconsin schools.

Using the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), school districts start with the scope of standards assigned to a chronological grade level and band standards into units of instruction. CCSS units are complex and complicated with scaffolds of sequenced and leveled standards that build upon one another. Student mastery of early units develops a competency for instruction in subsequent units. CSS units are organized into four to eight weeks of teaching and learning. In the aggregate, a standards-based year of instruction contains six to nine units of instruction.

An inarguable rule in education is that “Time lost is never found”. When we pack 180 days of school with six to nine units of instruction, there is little time to spare, yet life and weather happen and every school year experiences days of school that are cancelled due to weather and facilities or safety emergencies. Add in other interruptions of instructional time, unplanned school assemblies and celebrations, school visitors, and special events and more instructional time is lost. Instructional time is decreased and never increased. Very few instructional years are completed within the realities of a finite and interrupted school year.

Structurally, it is difficult to impossible to complete all the prescribed units of grade level or course instruction in a school year that shrinks. Each school year, CCSS standards that have been adopted by school boards as requirements are not taught due to “time ran out”.

Additionally, for reasons too numerous and complex to elaborate here, many children are not successful learners after their initial instruction. They require second and third tiers of instructional support. Each reteaching or newly conceived teaching and learning response takes time. One of the reasons so many children are not proficient in reading and math is that they require time more instruction each year than a finite school year provides. Instructionally, it is not only difficult – it is impossible – to cause all children to successfully learn their prescribed units of grade level or course instruction because children learn at different rates of time and when time is finite those who take longer to learn are stopped from learning because of the school calendar.

Why Is This Thus

The length of a school year is defined by economic and political constraints. It started with the agrarian calendar. Children could attend school after the fall harvest but needed to be available for spring planting. October through April. The Industrial Age did not change the school calendar much; children were part of the labor force making school attendance optional for most. The introduction of child labor laws and the need for immigrant children to be integrated into the national economy committed schools to day care and literacy education. These factors moved the school calendar toward September through May.

State legislatures counted the days between September 1 and June 1 and centered on 180 days as a school year. This number held from the 1930s through 2000. 180 was easily carved into two 90-day semesters and four 45-day quarters. Nine weeks per quarter, 18 weeks per semester and 36 weeks make a school school year. 180 days became the status quo school year.

The economics of a 180-day school year created a funding status quo. State allocations to school districts plus local tax collections were predicated on the amount of money required to fund school for 180 days. Politically, all state allocations in the state budget are competitive with all other state funded obligations. More school days require an increase in state of local taxes and increasing taxes is politically unpopular. Thus, the economic status quo of a 180-day school calendar.

A second economic and cultural hurdle to adding days to the school calendar is that working-age children represent seasonal labor for tourist-based state economies. Tourist and associated businesses make their money between Memorial Day and Labor Day. State legislators are lobbied to restrict school from starting prior to September 1 and to be completed as soon after Memorial Day as possible. These lobbies also oppose year-round school proposals.

Adding days is a no, but subtracting days is a yes. In Wisconsin, legislators deleted all statutory reference to a 180-day school year. School boards, required to meet the mandated hours of instruction, can add several minutes to each school day thereby meeting the requirement in less than 180 days. Seven minutes added to the school day or one minute added to each period in an eight-period school day allows the 1137 hours of instruction to be completed in 177 days.

This manipulation saves money. It does not provide an equivalent amount of real teaching and learning time. An additional minute to a class period is meaningless if not insulting.

Economics and politics define both the school and instructional years.

To Do

Look at alternatives to the status quo.

Stop accepting the unacceptable. The current economics and politics of education not only creates but accepts the reality that some children never complete an instructional year of teaching and learning. Our economy accepts that 10%+ of each class entering Kindergarten will not graduate from high school. Our politics accepts that 50%+ of children every year are not proficient in their grade level reading or math. And, we know that children who are not academically proficient by the end of sixth grade are more likely to drop out of school. And, we know that adults without a high school diploma experience limited economic prosperity. And, we know the correlation between low academic proficiency, dropping out of high school and crime. The “and, we knows” list is long, yet we accept them all as the status quo. Stop accepting.

Change the concept of instruction from yearly segments to a continuous progress line from first enrollment in 4K or Kindergarten to the completion of an elementary education. Consider middle school not as two or three years between elementary school and high school, but as a continuous learning model transitioning from elementary school to the course rigor of high school and including all the requisites of blooming adolescence. Consider high school not four years but a readiness for college and career that must be completed not encapsulated in time.

I am enthused by proficiency-based learning (PBL) and competency-based education (CBE). The concepts are not not new, but dissatisfaction with the status quo of student learning achievement has caused several states to renew their interest in PBL and CBE. The Vermont legislator moved all public schools in that state to PBL and CBE.

https://education.vermont.gov/student-learning/proficiency-based-learning

PBL and CBE do not change the limitation of the finite school year. They allows us to change the concept of instruction from yearly to continuous. A Vermont student beginning Kindergarten starts a continuous record of learning progress ending with graduation not June of 12th grade.

I am enthused by continuous progress reporting rather than annual performance reporting. We currently use annual performance reporting as a public accountability tool. In Wisconsin, public accountability is directed at school choice options. This was born out of the No Child Left Behind penalties placed upon underperforming schools.

Stop using school report cards to affirm or denigrate school districts and schools. We have learned that penalizing schools whose underperformance on normed instructional measures to be achieved within the finite school year is whistling in the wind. We know that children with learning disadvantages and challenges are more than unlikely to accomplish an instructional calendar that requires more than a school year of time. Begin using continuous progress measures of learning that depict positive learning growth not arbitrary deficiency.

The Big Duh

A school year is not a year of teaching and learning. The first is a need to comply with finite time and the second is a matter of using time for teaching and learning to achieve required educational outcomes.

School is what it is because that is the way it always has been. School leaders annually try to achieve greater accomplishments within antiquated and faulted constraints. As national and state communities of educators, we know better.

When you know the right things to do, do them.

Teach. Try not. Yoda Redux.

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Language matters. Verbs denoting the action to be taken are significant.

Businesses and professions have their own vocabulary. Some people refer to this as a foreign language, but it really is the words that have been created by the profession and how the profession uses existing words to talk about itself. In schools, non-educators refer to this as “educationese”. The observation or complaint is that school people either use educationese to obfuscate the conversation or to exclude non-educators from understanding and participating in a school conversation. True or not, this perception describes a reality experienced by too many non-educators. Of special interest, I am interested in how educationese uses verbs.

We know from our student years that there are two categories of verbs – action and non-action – and that action verbs are either transitive or intransitive. Action verbs also are called dynamic verbs, because they explain what the noun or subject of the sentence will do or be. School people tend to favor low dynamic action verbs, especially when they talk about program and instructional design. I will call these soft verbs.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “…all fine prose is based upon the verbs carrying the sentence”. If so, a lot of school conversation (narrative about school programs and instruction) is not carried by dynamic action verbs, but by soft or weak or irresolute verbs.

How we talk about school and education and the verbs we use are really important in how we conduct the education of children. Words and verbs, especially, matter. Yoda was very efficient and effective in calling out how verbs work. “Do or do not. Try not.” What can we learn from Yoda? Educate or educate not. Try not.

Take Away

What is the designated outcome of school mission statements that read “We hope to …”, or “We strive to …”, or “We will try to …”? It is no more than Intention. The noun-verb combinations actually are we “intend to … and will make an effort to…”. These transitive action verbs are soft. They say to the reader or listener that the school really wants to succeed at reaching a goal or targeted outcome, but by its language the school will accept reasonable effort rather than the actual achievement. The choice of verb is exceptionally important in how we explain the work of schools to our constituents, including students and parents.

When a parent sits with school administrators and teachers to discuss her child’s need to improve learning performances, school people display the objective data of achievement and the targeted goals for future learning. Numbers matter when describing learning performances. “Your child needs to improve …” is followed with “We will try to …” and “We will provide…”. Hard, measurable targets with soft, intentional actions. School people are inconsistent in how to attach verbs to their direct and indirect objects. “We will (soft verb) these very objective learning outcomes.”

It is interesting that effort counts when schools evaluate their institutional performance, but effort is of little or no account when students are tested or evaluated. Schools accept soft, inexact outcomes, but require children to perform exact and measurable outcomes.

A sea change would be for school people to be exact in the dynamic verbs they use to achieve the quantity and quality of student achievement planned. “Our instructional program will cause your child to achieve grade level or better reading skills at the end of XXX grade.” Or, “As a result of our math instruction, your child will be proficient (85%+ correct, 85%+ of the time) in her understanding of Algebra and ability to correctly resolve Algebra problems.” The cause-effect statement, who will do what for whom to achieve what outcome, sets the tone for everything that happens afterward.

What Do We Know

When people are given specific outcomes with strong, dynamic verbs, they are more likely to be committed to the outcomes than when their directive is to make an attempt, to try, or to intend to achieve the outcome.

Action verbs are measurable by the action that we commit to do. Action verbs are performed or they are not performed and the outcome to be achieved is or is not achieved. The language is clear. “Each day I will give your child one-do-one instruction in multi-sensory techniques for phonetically sounding out the words she reads.” The teaching action is clear. The teacher will give one-to-one instruction in multi-sensory techniques. The teacher is committed to the action.

The ability to perform a prescribed action is how we evaluate both the person doing the action and the action required to be performed. Teacher evaluations are a combination of the teacher’s ability to demonstrate various components of teaching practice and the evidence that a teacher’s work has caused children to learn. Teaching is active work requiring the prescription of a learner’s current capacity and needs, diagnosis of the best pedagogy to cause learning, delivery and formative assessment of the pedagogy, practice and reinforcement of the learning and summative evaluation and confirmation of the learning leading to future learning. Each step of the prior sentence demands the use of specific, dynamic verbs. Soft verbs will not get the job done. Evaluations celebrate the abilities of a teacher to use all her skills and knowledge to cause learning; evaluations celebrate active teaching. Teach or teach not.

Clear objectives with action action verbs and outcome ownership cause school people to determine if they have the human capacity to achieve the objective outcomes. Do teachers have the knowledge and instructional skill sets to teach students to achieve these outcomes? There is no sin in understanding that teacher professional development is needed and then effectively improving teacher capacity. There is large sin involved in using soft verbs and accepting diminished outcomes because we do not have instructional capacity to deliver on hard, active verbs.

Clear objectives also give school people the power to explain that additional community supports are needed if the school does not have the physical or human capacity to achieve needed and reasonable student outcomes. Communities that limit the quality and quantity of student outcomes by the financial support they give to their schools truly reap a diminished future for everyone in the community.

Why Is This Thus

There are many reasons.

By nature, most educators have very high intentional expectations but purposefully make small promises when describing the outcomes of their intentions. I don’t know if this is learned or innate in those called to education, but it is a valid generalization.

Many variables can affect student achievement. The variety and extent of learning challenges that individual students present at enrollment are well documented, but the existence of challenges does not pre-limit educational outcomes. And, the existence of challenges presented by some children too often pre-establishes limitations to instructional designs for all children. We decry our obstacles before we attempt our work.

Schools are mandated providers of a plethora of human and real services beyond student learning. The list gets longer and never shorter. If student learning achievement is that important, it would be the first item on a short list. Schools can be successful and recognized as successful for delivering all sorts of services while not delivering strong student learning.

It is the way schools have always been and always will be. Schools are soft providers. Nice counts.

Every movement to apply increased accountability in public education has settled at the mean of an historic status quo. There is a lot of fuss but no imperative to persist with stronger accountability. The value of schools as day care centers and social program providers outweigh schools’ ability to cause strong learning achievements. Decades of reforms have not moved a measurement needle of student learning that always returns to the mean of the status quo.

Education is an inexact science without clear cause-effect relationships for positive outcomes. This is not true, but it is held to be true. We have outcome-based pedagogy that causes children to learn. However, schools that emphasize these outcome-based strategies are met with parent protests that such pre-determined outcomes are not their outcomes of interest. The argument of small content defeats the possibility of delivering large learning.

Is an educational goal or target a promise to perform? Is it a contract between the school and a child’s parents? And, what happens if the hard target is not achieved? Are schools willing to fire teachers who do not cause the levels of achievement prescribed in parent-teacher meetings? Will this real-world business model work in schools? To date, there is little to no evidence that school leaders and teachers have an appetite for this level of accountability. Firm and resolute language that is not achieved opens education to consequences it is not willing to undertake.

To Do

Parents, assert yourselves. Know your school’s and your student’s performance data and demand improvement in the data. Then, demand/expect school people to use action verbs that denote what the school will do to improve performances. Demand active language.

Teachers, make the needles of measurable achievement move and take credit for the advancement. Use action verbs, “I/we will ….”, to commit yourselves to causing significant student learning. Then, celebrate your accomplishments. Teachers cause children to learn – take credit for successful teaching.

Teachers and parents, collaboratively discuss needed and reasonable growth in each child’s educational performance and each deliver on your responsibilities for the agreed upon outcomes. When you have agreed upon the outcomes, solidify the action to cause those outcomes through strong active verbs that commit each party to the plan.

Principals, endorse parent and teacher achievement plans that include action verbs, use your own action verbs to provide the resources needed for success, and actively call out the successes and failures resulting from this work. Principal support of

The Big Duh

We get what we settle for. Soft verbs beget soft commitments that result in soft performances. Is that really what we want? Heck, no.

Reduce the language to who WILL DO what and how will WE KNOW that that it is done. Yoda, please change your memorable phrase to – Teach. Try not.

Squeaky Wheels Should Be Listened To Not Greased

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Somewhere in the cobwebs of our memory old sayings live and every now again emerge into thought. Common wisdoms and witticisms learned in our youth can be reworked to give us guidance as adults. Experience has informed me of new truths about proverbial squeaky wheels. The concept of old is that the irritation of the squeak causes listeners to fix or stop the wheel from squeaking by giving it grease. The learning point was “squeak loud and often enough and you will get what you want” or “squeakers get more of what they want than non-squeakers”.

Consider this modification. Squeaky wheels get someone to listen and in a world of increasing noise being listened to matters.

Take Away

My organizational gene asks me to investigate why the wheel makes a squeaking noise. The squeak is a signal that some organizational operation is ineffective. What conjunction of moving parts is not working properly? Examine the organization in its parts. Fix it as a whole. Return to organizational effectiveness. Schools are organizations and this approach to problem-solving can work.

If the squeaker is a person, listen and look. What is the righteousness of their squeak? What complaint or grievance underlies the squeak? Is the response they seek a just response? Will it improve the organization or salve the person – is it a systemic improvement or a band-aid? To what extent does the medium of the squeak influence my interest in responding? People are complex squeakers and listening for and giving attention to these questions assists in resolving people-based squeaks.

My efficiency and “take care of it now” gene tells me that when a wheel on my bike, car, utility tractor or golf cart squeaks, get a new wheel. It is easier and more efficient to remove, replace and get moving than to investigate the cause of the irritating squeak. Most often, new wheels don’t squeak. Given time and wear, a new wheel also may become squeaky, but when the goal is to eliminate irritation, another replacement wheel will be the proven solution. Schools are physical plants and this works for an efficient management of facility operations.

If that squeak is a person, there is a threshold of squeakiness that can be borne, but beyond that threshold, a new person, like a new wheel, is an adequate efficiency response. This is a mechanistic approach to human relations and, whereas it may seem just, it breeds organizational dragons. Yet, it can work as a response to a persistent squeaker.

School organizations generate a lot of noise. Some noise is just operational clutter. Like dust on the floor, we sweep clutter aside. Some noise is infrastructural tension. We need to tend to sounds of equipment distress or the equipment will fail. Some noise is human interaction including normal work noise. Some joyful human noise is a sign of organizational success and other human noise displays organizational problems. I return to the wheel analogy. Like the difference between tires humming along the road or the screeching of a broken wheel bearing, all human noise in a school is not the same. If the first noise is a sign that all is well and the second is a sign that the wheels will fall off, distress squeaking in school can be a sign that the wheels of the school organization are in peril. We need to listen to our human school noises.

Why Is This Thus

Noise is commonplace. Although we can manufacture an environment that is completely soundless and soundproof, it is not a natural phenomenon. Noise is part of life.

We should treat noise that is noise as just noise. It is sonic chatter.

Noise can be meant to get our attention. We need and want to hear this noise. When we hear emergency alarms, we are taught to act. When we hear cries for help, we are moved to look and attempt assistance. When we hear pleasing and soothing music, we want to appreciate what we hear. When we hear words of affection and endearment, we sidle up closer. While physical noises get our attention, human noises need to provoke our listening.

Marshall McLuhan taught us that the medium can be the message. However, a message carried in an aggravating and unwanted sound is a medium that we do not want to hear. Like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard, we not only don’t like the message, we don’t like the messenger. Schools have their share of fingernail draggers.

We observe that humans have learned to be squeaky wheels. By nature or nurture, some people are given to accommodation or to squeaking. We see on a daily basis the ways in which school people absorb and accommodate irritations like a late school bus, incomplete school assignments, homework that seems like make work, test results and grades that do not correspond with expectations, costs and fees of school activities, and responses to personal requests. While schools cause a tremendous amount of teaching and learning success and satisfaction, there also are disappointments in how school works – in its real and affective treatment of people and their issues. Whether it is an irritation or a disappointment, teachers, students, parents and the community squeak to school leaders and some squeakers are satisfied and some are not.

To Do

Be a credible listener. One can take the time to hear a person’s squeak but never listen with an intention the respond. If squeakers perceive that is all you are doing, expect the wheels of your school to fall off. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day.

Be a just responder. Some squeaky people are happy in knowing you are listening to them. Listen with personal interest to what they say. Others seek appropriate and proportional responses that understand the cause of and apply a fix to a problem. Clinical fixes to organizational problems work and when they are done properly, squeakers are satisfied. Empathetic and supportive responses to human relations problems work and the personal care factor is as important to the squeaker as the fix. Some responders demand huge responses to small problems. An inappropriate fix thrown at a problem is as unjust as no response and may result in louder squeaking.

Look for and see the silent squeaker. You may not hear them and their needs, but they are present. The school leader who is sensitive to and responds to silent squeakers gives a hugely positive message to all squeakers. This school cares. Your wheels are superbly greased.

Discern the messages of loud squeakers. Those who make righteous noise need to a leader’s help to reestablish organizational effectiveness. Their noise can make everyone better. Discern the medium of loud squeakers. Those who abuse the medium of squeaking with unrighteous noise require a different attention.

Know when the squeak is about the school and when the squeak is about you. The truth is this – if you are the cause of the squeak and “the physician cannot heal himself”, a just response may be to get a new wheel. Lots of metaphors get mixed when we attempt to say that a school leader no longer is an effective school leader. Inordinate amounts of human and physical squeakiness can be a sign of ineffective leadership.

The Big Duh

Squeaky wheels in a school need listening to and sometimes just the listening is all a squeaker seeks. But, when attention to a squeak requires strong and proactive action, do what is right – respond to the squeaker and repair the organization. In schools, people are the organization. Be a credible listener and a just responder and squeakers will be informed of when and how to squeak. Squeaky wheels need more than a grease job.

No Room For Black Box Teaching Today

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Knowing that someone knows and understands the work you do is an affirmation that your work matters. Affirmation is invigorating, no matter the work you do. The lack of affirmation leads to a distancing between the employee, the employer and the mission of the employment.

Al stood on the opposite side of a four-foot wide stainless-steel from me in the beef offal department of the Wilson meat packing plant. Our job was to wash the inside of beef stomachs cleansing them of the silage they held at the time of slaughter – grass and corn and stuff. We turned the stomach inside-out over the cone and used the folded-in edges to scrub the honey-combs of the stomach’s lining. I saw Al’s work and he saw mine. He would point at a clump I had missed as I would comment on his work, if necessary. We knew each other’s work, because we observed it first-hand. We were accountable for our work.

In my first years of teaching, my junior high school classroom in a 1925 building had tall windows, built-in cupboards and book cases of polished oak, waxed maple floors and real slate blackboards. The night custodian and I were the only adults who frequented my classroom; the assistant principal made two one-class period visits annually and the principal was never there. No one knew my work. No one observed my teaching. I felt like a private contractor operating in a black box inside a public school.

Today, effective educator processes mandate visual observations of teachers by trained and certified administrators who compare teacher behaviors with adopted models, such as Danielson’s Framework For Teaching. The Wisconsin EE process is a three-school year affair resulting in a professional evaluation. Observation or first hand knowledge of a teacher’s work is a requirement of the Framework.

Charlotte Danielson wrote, “Overall, my recommendation is that the observation component of a full evaluation consist of one full lesson, and three additional, shorter observations, and that these observations are conducted by two different individuals.” The research-based premise is that trained observers can discern the essential characteristics of how a teacher demonstrates the domains of teaching in a 15-minute observation.

https://danielsongroup.org/

The first hand observation of teaching is critical to an objective understanding of the quality and success of a teacher’s work.

Take Away

As has been reported before in these blogs, teaching in most American classrooms has been treated as a black box operation – it takes place inside four walls and is unobserved by other educators or stakeholders in a child’s education. A teacher and children are in a classroom, lab, shop, or studio where instruction and learning take place daily. Over the course of a school year, a curriculum is taught and learned and assessed. We look at the tangible second and third hand evidence of teaching and learning, such as test scores, projects completed, concerts and other student performances and we draw conclusions regarding the successes achieved. While we believe the research indicating that the most critical factor in the education of children is the quality and thoroughness of teacher instruction – teaching, assessment, reteaching, assessment, extension and enrichment – we look at second and third hand evidence. We do not look at the engine that produces that evidence – the act of teaching- because it remains in the unobserved black box.

The lack of inspection, retrospection and prospection about what happens in classrooms is immensely problematic. How can we validate what we do not see, hear or feel? How can we respond to the challenges that different children present in their learning needs? How can we respond to parent inquiry without firsthand knowledge? How can we assist a teacher in the presentation of continuous high quality teaching without first hand observation of the teaching act? The answer is “We can’t.”

At the next level, how can school administrators vouchsafe the quality and equity of learning by all children without making frequent first hand observations? The answer is “They can’t”.

In order to know a teacher’s work, an administrator and teacher must be similar to Al and me standing in close proximity with enough frequency to enable the administrator to point and say “Good job there” or “You missed something here” or “Have you considered ….?” And, to say by the principal’s presence in the classroom, “I know your work”. Without close frequent observation, no one knows a teacher’s work and it is worth knowing.

Why Is This Thus

My teacher friends always tell me that a level of tension and anxiety arises when a principal, curriculum coordinator, or superintendent is in their classroom during a lesson. This is the friction of “inspection”. It is natural that anxiety occurs. Call it “worry when someone is watching” or stage fright or accountability insecurity when your work is being observed – it is a natural response that we all experience in one shape or another. The fact that teachers are anxious when being observed and a friction between teacher and administrator arises is not a rationale for principals to stay out of classrooms.

My principal friends always tell me they don’t have time in their busy, daily school life to be in classrooms more than they are. I get that the job description of a school principal is complicated and multi-faceted. It is supposed to be, because the principal is the general manager of all aspects of the school’s operations, including classroom instruction. The response, however, tells me a lot about how a principal prioritizes her job.

My superintendent and central office friends always tell me that their most important job is hiring highly qualified teachers and staff and then allowing the talented employees of the schools to accomplish the educational programs of the school district. Hire the best and get out of their way! Let the talent work! They rely upon the supervision of on-site principals who may or may not prioritize first hand observation of teachers.

It has always been thus. From the days of one room school houses to the contemporary high school campus of 5,000 students, classroom teaching has been framed as classroom + teacher + students = the black box of teaching and learning. When open classroom and wall-less classroom concepts were introduced in the 1970s, one of the first educator responses was to place book cases and chalkboards as barriers between instructional spaces. The concept did not last – walls or at least partition were erected to recreate a separated, black box classroom. Everything seems to revert to the mean of accepted practices or the normal status quo of the black box.

What Do We Know

Teacher anxiety is not sufficient cause to keep principals and curriculum directors and specialists out of classrooms. I picture Tiger Woods standing over a putt with a thousand golf fans surrounding the green or a pitcher on the mound at Yankee Stadium trying to throw a strike that cannot be hit with 54,000 fans screaming. Medical procedures are recorded so that best practices can be assured. Live video displays legislators on C-Span and attorneys in court. Employment anxiety is a fact of life for everyone. Being observed by your principal is not a big deal in the world of observable professional work.

Additionally, teachers should always know that the principal observing them is in turn being observed by the superintendent or someone in the central office chain of command. It is part of a principal’s performance accountability. In public education everyone’s employment performance is open to observation and scrutiny.

A principal who cannot find time for frequent classroom walkabouts needs to re-prioritize her time management. We recognize the uber-priority of school safety and do not recommend anything that diminishes this principal function. However, when we prioritize the list of a principal’s job responsibilities, the responsibility for successful student learning is job number one. And, when a principal apportions her time and effort to the importance of successful student learning, almost all other job responsibilities will renumber themselves on her daily to-do list. Almost.

I agree that employing talented employees is the first essential in assuring successful educational programs, but the second essential is the maintenance and sustenance of talented employees. Talented and satisfactory employees alike require recognition, professional engagement, and personal attention. When those at the top of the chain of school command are not paying attention to the human and professional needs of talented teachers, talented teachers will seek employment where that attention exists.

There is an abundance of professional literature and workshop instruction to help administrators create a practice of “walk about” or informal observation techniques. An administrator who is not conversant with these strategies and a school district that is not reinforcing the importance of informal information gathering are not up-to-date in their professional practices. Additionally, administrators sometimes try to formalize the informal, to give the unstructured “walk about” a formal and structured routine. I observe some schools that refrain from “walking about” because they have not formalized the informal. They are paralyzed by their inaction.

Informational observations require informational feedback. The informational feedback need not be an opus. A texted message or a sticky note or a face-to-face conversation do nicely for same day feedback. A principal should acknowledge an aspect of the lesson observed regarding teacher work, student work or both. The feedback may follow the ongoing conversation in a string of walk-in observations, or reinforce something the principal and all teachers are working on, or comment on any pertinent pedagogical concept. The important thing is that the teacher gets information from the observer.

To Do

Make an open box classroom the norm for your school. At the point of hire, explain to the teacher candidate that “your work is our work” and principals and instructional leaders will be in your classroom frequently. Candidates for employment who cannot accept this are not really candidates for your employment.

One of the first steps in creating this norm is opening classroom doors when safety and security, or too much noise and distraction, are not issues. An open doorway breaks the four walls of the black box and invites entry and observation.

Establish this truth – classroom room observations take place for more reasons than employee evaluation. If a teacher believes that a principal is making a formal evaluation observation every time the principal is in her classroom, then anxiety and tension may be appropriate. Typical contractual framework requires employee performance evaluation to be pre-scheduled between principals and teachers and, if unannounced performance evaluation observations are included in the contract, the manner in which a principal enters a classroom and sets up for such an observation is in itself very observable. But, when principals are doing daily walk-about and walking into classrooms, their purpose is not evaluative but informative. Teachers should be told the difference and principal practices should demonstrate the differences.

Talk about what you see. The lack of conversation is a death knell to the overly anxious. Teachers should ask their principal after a “walk in”, “What did you think about …?” An informal walk-in is a great opportunity to get non-evaluative feedback, reinforcement of new teaching ideas, and to share discussion of teaching and learning. In the other shoes, a walk-in gives a principal an excellent opportunity to affirm “I see the good work you are doing” and enhance the collegial relationship between teacher and principal.

Ubiquitous observation should feel invisible because it is ubiquitous. Finding a place in the classroom that does not distract from students seeing the teacher and her instruction and the teacher seeing her students is not difficult. Principals should scout it out beforehand. Find the corner or the wall space or a chair where observation is invisible to ongoing teaching and learning. Every classroom has places where an observer can see everyone and everything and not be on the instructional stage. And, be quiet when observing. Turn off your cell phone or security radio or use ear buds, if necessary. Don’t make a big deal about taking notes on a large laptop. Use your phone or digital device quietly make a note to assist your conversation with the teacher after your walk-in.

Make classroom observations the number one priority for principals and curriculum specialists. How can they really know how their most important school personnel are performing without first hand observations. When I drive my sports car, my eyes are on the speedometer, tachometer, temp gauge and I am listening to the sounds of the engine as well as on the road and constantly checking rear view mirrors. Feedback is essential. The only way to be really informed about a teacher’s work is to approach the performance first hand, gather the sights, sounds and feeling of the classroom, and know the quality of the teaching and learning exchange. See it, hear it, feel it, and then talk with the observed teacher about it. Affirm that the teacher is an essential member of the school. Applaud them as golf patrons and Yankee fans affirm putts made and strikes thrown.

And, then go one step further. Provide feedback from informational observations to students as well as teachers. There are many aspects of student classroom life that merit a principal’s commentary. A note that says, “I saw or heard you … when I visited (teacher’s name) classroom” is a wonderful connection between an administrator and child. It also pays dividends in school-home relations.

The Big Duh

There is no room in school today for a black box classroom. Principals and teachers who proactively use the practices of informational observations understand much more about each other’s work and mutually can use their understanding for the continuous improvement of instruction and learning and school life. Progressive improvements are enhanced when work when is observed and information is shared. Work that is sheltered from observation is more likely to become repetitive and regressive.

Teachers thrive when principals and supervisors make first hand observations their work, engage collegiality in an informed discussion of what has been observed, and use information for mutual understanding. “I see you at your work and know the quality of your work first hand and am want to talk about your work” is essential to collegial professionalism. If you are not doing these things, what message is a principal giving to classroom teachers?

Relevant Background Knowledge Is The Glue of Our Conversations

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A finalist on American Idol on site in Hawaii watched military planes fly overhead and commented that that there seemed to be more military planes in Hawaii than in the skies over his home in New York state. His companion said, “The Pearl Harbor base is nearby”. Without hesitation, the contestant said, “I though that was a movie”.

The historian in me winced. This man should know the stories of Pearl Harbor and “the Day in Infamy”. How could he not?

The educator in me wondered. What is the relevance of details from US History, the story of Pearl Harbor and what occurred 50 years before his birth, to a man in his mid-20s scratching a living as a vocal instructor in Phoenix, AZ?

Background knowledge is the residual content information of what we learn and experience. Our ability to access background knowledge is the glue that allows us to participate in the conversations of our lives. Relevance is the stickiness in our personal glue. How does a person build personal relevance for the retention of cultural literacy? Is relevance universal? And, the laws of forgetfulness tell us that if we don’t access our memory of content information, over time we will lose it regardless of its original relevance.

What Do We Know

More and more stuff happens everyday. Just observe the breaking news pop-ups on your personal device. Listen to the news on broadcast media. News, news everywhere and none that is newsworthy enough to demand that we remember it. (Does that line bring back Coleridge’s “Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink” from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?) Absent a national event like 9/11 or a local event involving disaster, death or economic upheaval, most people do not practice the intellectual filtering that sifts the daily events to isolate the few events that will affect their lives. Most current events are background noise not background knowledge. A good overstatement – without filters, the daily bombardment of news is background noise not background information. So, what should we know?

We each have developed our built in filters that alert us to information that is important to us. As we pay attention to sirens blaring and lights blazing of emergency vehicles, specific types of information immediately catch our attention while other information is just traffic. These preconditioned sensors perk up if we are highly interested in sports scores, the stock market, national politics, local events or the lives of celebrities. Our preconditioned sensors quickly analyze what we hear, see and experience and connect this immediate information to what we already know.

Background information or cultural literacy also must be refreshed and nourished if it is to be retained in our memory. One of the several purposes of a public K-12 education is to build background knowledge and cultural literacy in our population. The sequencing and spiraling of school curriculum is designed to build up content knowledge. That is why children learn US History in 5th, 8th and 10th grades in most schools and why mathematics builds its algebraic ladder for solving problems with unknown values.

On the plus side, 84.1% of the children in each year’s K-12 cohort (entering kindergarten and passing on to 12th grade in 13 years) graduates from high school. The diploma verifies the accomplishment of a background knowledge.

https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/data-us-graduation-rates-by-state-and.html

Then, life happens. Without reinforcement, 85% of the information we learn in school will be forgotten by the time of our 20th high school class reunion. This is a fact and it is irrefutable. Without accessing what we once learned, we forget it.

In terms of how well our background knowledge of US history and government persists over time, the result is this: Only four in ten (40%) citizens in the US can pass a citizenship test of multiple choice questions surveying United States history and government, the informations we learned in 5th, 8th and 10th grade plus senior government. Reverse the numbers. 60% of US citizens cannot pass a US citizenship test.

https://woodrow.org/americanhistory/

Take Away

Relevance is situational and relevance is significant. Line up ten people and ask them what is important to them and you will find that each has a set of personally relevant topics and a depth of knowledge about these topics. Relevance is personal, interest-building and self-reinforcing for each of us. Ask the same ten people to take the citizenship test and only four will pass. The detail of citizenship information has little daily impact on how most engage in their world although the principles of US history and government are what make that engagement possible. Relevance is the lynch pin to accumulating and renewing background knowledge.

In the bigger scheme of things, Jeopardy-winning knowledge is not necessary for every day life. While we marvel at the recall speed and breadth of knowledge displayed by Ken Jennings, king of Jeopardy game winners, most people will identify Judge Judy before they will name a member of the US Supreme Court and usually only those who have appeared will know the name of a local district court judge. Naming the moons of Jupiter or the elemental number of magnesium are not common knowledge and easily forgotten, if learned.

Relevance of details diminish over time as the relevance of major issues increases over time. As we are exposed to millions of details, we need to pay attention to the larger questions. It is easy to argue about the truth and accuracy of minutia and those arguments often cause us to abandon our attention to the major issue. Global warming is caught in this dilemma. Those who want to argue that daily weather patterns are just trends that come and go every several years will not conceptualize the changes to our ecosphere. Start large and work to the small. If we start with major climactic changes, such as why our grandchildren will not see glaciers in Glacier National Park, then we can work backwards through the reasons for this.

Why Is This Thus

Nothing is more relevant than a heart attack (or fill in your health crisis of choice). Persons who experience a health crisis quickly seek information and learn to sort through the relevance of all the information available about cardiac care. Cardiac arrest, cancer, stroke, pulmonary disease, paralyzing injury all get our attention and keep it.

Short of a life-threatening event, how we seek and build adult background knowledge is idiosyncratic and susceptible to on-demand change. Career choices point us toward relevancy. I read voraciously in educational topics. The interests of our spouses and mates point us toward their relevancies. I read along with my wife’s strong interest in religion. The needs and developmental choices of our children make their relevancies ours. Our grandchildren are competitive ice skaters, swimmers, gymnasts, soccer and baseball players. Because of grandchildren I can recognize a triple axel, understand the dynamics of a butterfly stroke, and the controlled tension of performing on the balance beam. Next year, their interests may change and tug my attention in their wake. Such is life.

Life focuses what we need to know and expands the opportunities of what we want to know. When I meet with people in my township, the immediate interests focus on road maintenance and property taxes. When I talk with other golfers, we focus on golf club technology and whatever advantage swing dynamics can give us on our scorecards. When I talk with fellow retirees, everyone focuses on the better places to eat and health care. Each pool of people causes me to invest in knowing something about our common interests so that I can remain in the conversation.

General knowledge allows us to connect enough informational clues to be in the conversation. If there are no clues, the conversation is meaningless. The Idol contestant was immediately out of the loop if the conversation moved from planes overhead to December 7, 1941. We tend to avoid meaningless conversations. Hence, the cycle of personal relevance self-perpetuates what we want to know and lack of relevance shuts us off from what we might know.

To Do

As educators, we can assist the children we teach by:

Engaging in frequent reviews of what children have learned. We cannot assume “once learned, always known”. Take the time to review the most significant facts and concepts that children will need to know to be conversant in their educational future and post-school life. Frequency means a review session at least every four weeks or after every two units of study; at least every quarter of the school year; and, before the end of the school year. A review is more than just a “drive by” of what was learned; it is a discussion of concepts supported by facts. If it was important to learn in the first place, it is important to review with frequency for recall.

Slow down the speed of things. The amount of curriculum is not static, it grows with time. However, increased quantity should not mean less quality. Spend quality time in the study of the most enduring information. The number of each amendment to the Constitution is good to know, but not as enduring as a sound learning of the principles of the Bill of Rights and an understanding of the freedoms we enjoy.

Reading is essential for building background knowledge. Reading accesses stories from the past and from distant places that the reader cannot personally experience. Use class time for reading as a balancing and primer for children to continue to read after school. Discuss what is read. Ask children two fundamental questions: What do you think about this? How do you feel about this? These two questions build intellectual relevance.

Travel and personal experience builds visual and sensory connections with information. School field trips have value. We believe that all children in Wisconsin are familiar with farms, yet 80% of children have not set a foot on farm land. An understanding of the importance of agriculture to the state economy becomes relevant when school children go to a farm and talk with a farmer. The same is true of manufacturing and e-commerce. Personal experience builds relevance.

Suggest subjects for exploration for all children. As the adult in the room, teachers have an objective perspective of how a child approaches a new subject. Many times, if the subject is not exciting for a child’s friends, it is not exciting to the child. A teacher who observes a personal connection can overcome the group mentality and ignite a child’s personal passion.

Lastly, every now and then check what you think you know and what you may have forgotten. E. D. Hirsch made a splash in the 90s speaking about cultural literacy and what every person should know. Take a cultural literacy test (keep the results to yourself). If you find that unreinforced information has slipped away from your memory or lost its accuracy, relearn it.

Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know, E. D. Hirsch (1998)

Background knowledge is important for everyday living. However, it is not sacred nor is it self-labeling if a person does not know a fact or detail. Relevance is the key how a person addresses what they know and what they want to know. While we specialize it what we need to know, generalizing in what can know helps us to participate in the conversations of our life and times.