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Academic Standards – The Genome of Proficient Learning

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Academic standards are the genome of a 21st century PK-12 education.  Turn back the covers on any curriculum today and you will find “standards.”  They are the “who says this is the right stuff to teach” credentials of school curriculum.  As consumers, we look for credentialing,  like the Good Housekeeping Seal or Underwrites Laboratory Approval, that gives us reliance that school curriculum is not something cooked up during the summer by a local committee but is written by experts in the field of PK-12 education.

Although politics has kicked dirt on the Common Core Academic Standards, they remain the best of academic standards available to PK-12 educators.  In Wisconsin, the Common Core Standards were adopted as the official academic standards of the Department of Public Instruction in 2010 and are the basis for instruction, assessment and educational accountability.

A genome, even the sound of the word, is scientific.  It is the complete set of genes present in a cell or organism.  By applying genome to the organism of academic standards, academic standards are the complete set of academic characteristics of a graduate of our PK-12 educational system.

Like the genome encoded on a strand of DNA, the genome of academic standards seems just as mysterious.  But, it isn’t.  They are clearly written and complete, just in educationese.  Educational leaders need to take the time and make the effort to de-mystify the verbiage of academic standards into plain speak.  This explanation must include two components – why they are important and how they work.  What are academic standards and how does our school use PK-12 academic standards?  And, what does proficient performance of each standard mean?  The latter is essential, because proficiency or advanced performance indicates the grade level goal which are the code of the genome.

This is what the DPI says about standards.  It is a good beginning.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards tell us what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.  Wisconsin has standards for 24 separate subjects.

Why are academic standards important?

Standards provide goals for teaching and learning. Standards are clear statements about what students must know and be able to do.

What does an academic standard look like?

Seventh grade mathematics: solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

How do standards differ from curriculum?

While standards provide the goals for learning, curriculum is the day to day activity that helps a student meet those goals. Curriculum, which should be thought of as the student’s overall classroom experience, is affected by lesson plans, classroom assessments, textbooks, and more. In Wisconsin, curriculum is developed and approved by local school boards to meet their local needs.

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/standards

This explanation should be repeated to students and parents frequently, so that children and their moms and dads clearly understand that “standards-based” means “these are statements of what each child should know and be able to do and all of our assessments will focus on helping everyone understand how well children know and can perform these.”  And, because the standards build upon each successive grade level and course, students and parents need to know that Algebra and Geometry, for example, are introduced in elementary school arithmetic and are developed through middle school and applied and expanded in higher mathematics courses in high school.  Like the DNA genome, the genome of academic standards winds through the school organism across many years of student learning.

This explanation may sound or read like, “This year our first grade math students will begin to use mathematical operations and algebraic thinking.  Yes, Algebra in first grade.  These are the operations and algebraic thinking standards and a description of what your child will know and be able to do as a result of our first grade math instruction.

Standard:  Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Standard:  Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
  2. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Standard:  Add and subtract within 20.

Performance:

  1. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
  2. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Standard:  Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Performance:

  1. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
  2. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = � – 3, 6 + 6 = �.

This standard is just one of many in first grade mathematics instruction.  As your child tells you ‘This is what we learned in math today,’ please keep these standards in mind.  When your child enters second grade, the next instructional year will add to and expand these first grade standards.”

As an extension, good practice would also help children and parents to connect standards to periodic classroom tests and assessments.  Just adding a standards statement to the top of the test page indicates the alignment of preceding instruction and the assessment to a particular academic standard.

The reason for this time and effort points directly to the accountability that school leaders and teachers have for causing all children to learn and proficiently perform grade level academic standards.  Each first grade child who successfully knows and can perform the operations and algebraic thinking standard given in this example will be ready for instruction in second grade operations and algebraic thinking.

And, here is the rub.  Every child who does not successfully know and can not perform the elementary and/or middle school grade level math standards at the appropriate grade level proficiency level begins a parade of successive years of incomplete learning in math.  It is no wonder that high school Algebra is “the wall” for so many students, the course where the annual standards of algebraic thinking in elementary and middle school coalesce into a single math course.  Children who have successfully learned and performed their elementary and middle school math standards are ready and prepared for high school Algebra.  Children who did not are severely challenged in Algebra and all subsequent math courses.

The mutual responsibility that school leaders, teachers and parents have for student learning can be made easier when annual academic standards are explained, distributed across the year of their instruction, and clearly aligned with grade level instruction and assessments.  When we know what we are supposed to do, the doing is made easier.

The genome of academic standards is a road map that is designed not only for instruction, but to aid school leaders and parents to assure that each child successfully learns what they are to know and be able to do each school year.  It is our road map and needs to be closely followed.

Promotional Proficiency – An Educational Promise Unkept

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“I promise…” are words added, often unconsciously, to statements we make to others. Other add-ons include, “… believe me”, “…to be honest with you”, and “… you have my word.” We speak these words and we hear others speak them, but what do they really mean? Do we really make a promise when we say “…I promise” with an expectation of being held to that promise? Does saying “believe me” make a person more believable? If one says “honestly”, does that word make what follows more honest than all else the person usually says?

I am told that these are just colloquialisms, figures of speech, and attention-getters when I respond with “I shall hold you to that promise.” Call me old-fashioned, but grandmother taught us that “a promise is a debt unpaid” and grandfather told us “a man’s word is his bond.” These words matter, because promises that are unfulfilled and statements of honesty that turn out to be lies are and should be held against the speaker. If you say it, you should be committed to living up to your word with hard and clear evidence of effort. People can understand that time and unseen occurrences may prevent complete fulfillment, but they should not forgive meaningless statements of a promise, or a request to be believed, or proclamations of honesty when there is no intention of living up to these words.

That said, I apply this truth-telling to the work of a school board. The American Dream is founded largely on the success of a child’s education. Over-simply stated, learning to read becomes reading to learn and reading complex and complicated information grows knowledge, and skills and problem-solving abilities and these lead to a high school graduate’s readiness for success in college and career. Apply the same scenario to arithmetic and mathematics and you have the backbone of a school curriculum – reading and mathematics. Success in school, children are told, promises preparation and readiness for success in adulthood. This is a traditional school promises and school boards are the keepers of that promise.

What then are we willing to do to pay the debt of this universal promise we make to students and parents, to paraphrase grandmother?

When a child is promoted to first grade and each subsequent grade level, the child is prepared and ready for instruction at that next grade level and when a student graduates from high school the graduate is prepared and ready for post-secondary education.

This is our fundamental promise. It is the premise and foundation for the ladder of PK-12 education. We march cohorts of children through their school years in an enactment of this promise. Take this promise away – tell children and parents that there is no assurance that first grade is necessary for entrance into second grade and middle school is not a preparation for high school – and school becomes the K-Mart of education with blue light specials in every school corridor. The cashier will check you out.

Are we fulfilling our promise? Are all children prepared and ready for their promotion? Not so much. The Wisconsin DPI released its 2018 School Report Cards in late November and a perusal of state data and randomly selected school districts indicates these two facts –

A percentage of children but far from all are proficient, achievement at the advanced of proficient levels, in reading and mathematics. That percentage is higher or lower depending upon school district, and too often, the socio-economic characteristics of the district are a determinant in that percentage.

The percentage of children statewide who are proficient in reading and math is static if not trending slightly downward – approximately 40% of all children are proficient in reading and less than 40% are proficient in math.

In our local schools,

68.9% of elementary children were proficient in reading; 68.2% in math.

48.9% of middle school children were proficient in reading; 39.4% in math.

48.8% of high school children were proficient in reading; 29.2% in math.

We acknowledge that a quality education is comprised of many more variables than proficiency in reading and mathematics. Our local school touts the breadth of its programming in academics, activities, arts and athletics and the high percentage of student participation in the latter three. However, we made no promises other than “access to opportunity” in activities, arts and athletics. We did make promises regarding academics. Promotion means preparation and readiness for what comes next.

Interestingly, the State of Wisconsin proclaims that our local middle school and high school meet our state’s educational expectations and the elementary school significantly exceeds state expectations. Perhaps the State of Wisconsin is no longer a party to the promise of readiness and preparation or takes the promise as lightly given.

Locally, we have our work before us. What are we willing to do fulfill our promise and keep our word? Time will tell, but for secondary students, time is running out.

Classroom Observations Open Door of Black Box Teaching

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Consider this profile.  “I am a professional educator with an earned baccalaureate from a teacher preparation program at our state university.  I am an English major who is an expert in causing children to use language to learn, to clarify and illuminate their understanding of complex and complicated concepts, to communicate with clarity, and to explore the world through the application of language skills.  Children I have taught have excelled in our school and in their education and careers after high school and consistently communicate their successes with me.  After twenty years’ teaching in our school, I remain professionally challenged to be a better teacher.  I love being a teacher in our school.”

And, reconcile this profile with this reality.  “I cannot overcome the extreme anxiety I feel when an administrator or school board member or parent enters my classroom while I am teaching.  Being watched while I teach interferes with my relationship with my students and interrupts my ability to be the teacher I know I am.  Their presence causes me to worry about everything I say and do.  I understand that administrators are required to evaluate me and board members and parents can visit my classroom, but they cause me to be insecure and overly anxious as a teacher.  And, mentors and teaching coaches also cause me to be overly circumspect when they observe my teaching.”

I am pleased to say that almost all teachers in our local school fit the first paragraph.  As a faculty, they are well-educated, well-prepared, skillful and experienced teachers.  In the aggregate, their characteristics make ours an excellent faculty.

At the same time, I am dismayed that almost all teachers in our local school are afflicted with insecurity and anxiety when the black box of their classroom is opened to others.  It doesn’t matter if I walk into their classroom or stand outside an open doorway.  As a group, teachers like and want the security of their black box classroom and become highly anxious when their work is being observed let alone evaluated.

Education is fraught with over-generalizations.  A handful of teachers in our school welcome visitors to their classroom and do not demonstrate or speak of insecurity arising from being observed.  To a person, they say that observation raises anxiety, but they don’t find it to be a negative anxiety.

When my house was being constructed, I liked to watch the work in progress.  One day I asked the carpenters if they bent over more nails they were pounding when I was present and watching than when I was not.  “No, it usually is a knot in the wood I cannot see that causes me to bend a nail.  And, I will curse the knot if you are watching or not watching.  I may bend about one nail in a hundred regardless of who is around.”  I asked the same of the plumbers.  “Your watching me does not change the way I install this sink or toilet.  I know what I am doing and just do it.  And, your presence will not make the water run any sooner.  In fact, if you keep asking questions, you won’t have water until next week.”

I realize the impropriety of generalizing large from small samples.  Yet, the insecurity that arises when black box teaching is observed intrigues me.  I do not compare teaching with carpentry or plumbing, or vice versa, but I do wonder about the root of observational tension.  What is it in teaching that causes so many teachers to be overly anxious when being observed?

Without a research model, I posit these;

  • Causing children to learn has a rich research base, yet remains an inexact science conducted predominantly in single-teacher classrooms with all the variables that a random assignment of children in a diverse community can raise. The most expert of teachers faces times when what children bring to the classroom from home and community obscures the best of lesson plans.  And, as expert teachers know, they must deal with the external before they can approach the internal.  Observers must realize this and shape their conclusions commensurately. If causing a class of children to learn was easy, anyone could do it.
  • Teaching is an extremely interpersonal interaction between teacher and student swayed more often by the affective than the cognitive.  “My teacher likes me” may be the single most important motivator for student learning.  The management of this affect tips student readiness to learn.  It is not difficult to discern children in a classroom who strongly believe “my teacher does not like me.”  Work on the affective to get to the cognitive.
  • Education is built upon a variety of goals, often too many and more often too transient, and a teacher is expected to be effective on every goal.  Without pre-agreement of the purpose of the observation, it is reasonable for a teacher to be dismayed and disgruntled in the vacuum of “what are they looking for today?”  Observers and teachers need to talk about observations often enough so that teachers understand what and why observers, board members especially, make observations. We need more talk about opening the black box.
  • Every observation is a real or pseudo evaluation of sorts.  Administrators have a clear and defined responsibility to observe teachers for effective educator characteristics.  Observations combined with other measures, including student achievement, comprise professional evaluation.  No other observers of classroom teaching are formal evaluators, yet classroom teachers rightfully know that every non-administrator observer also is reaching evaluative conclusions from the observations.  Hence, observation equals evaluation, some official and most unofficial.  Observers also need to understand and honor this knowledge. Being observed by others is a natural and rational event in a school setting.
  • Contemporary politics have converted union-protected, tenured teachers into “at will” employees.  The loss of union and tenure status means that, given a due process review, a bad evaluation may cause teacher termination without recourse.  “At will” employees may be anxious when their work is observed. Observers need to know that Act 10 in Wisconsin changed the playing field and many veteran teachers still are not comfortable in the new realities.
  • Data is the current driver of educational accountability.  Data that is objective and standardized can be understood.  Data is now part of every teacher’s professional evaluation.  Information derived from observations that are subjective and not-always-standardized can be harder to understand, to explain, and to mutually agree upon. A teacher may rightfully be anxious in wondering “What data snapshot will be derived from this observation?
  • Most unofficial observations do not result in feedback to the teacher.  On the one hand, feedback from an unofficial observation can make it a more official observation.  But, no feedback leaves a teacher wondering “Just what did they see?”  A non-evaluative observation deserves feedback from the observer to the observed, if nothing else than to repeat “this was non-evaluative.”

Against these rationales for anxiety, I respond with “Get over it and get used to it”.  As a member of the school board, I represent the voters of the community in every aspect of our public education.  The board hires a professional faculty and staff, an administrative team to execute board policy and all relevant school laws and rules, and sets district direction and procedural regulations through policy.  More than this, board members have a obligation to formulate first-hand information about the schools so that, as a school board, members can attest to the quality of district operations.  Whereas, most information a board member receives is second- and third-hand as reported and presented by the administration, first-hand observations are invaluable for a board member to be able to say “I know this…”  I also reiterate, “Your principal makes evaluations; board members do not evaluate.  I appreciate the work that you do everyday to cause children to learn.’

As with all human endeavors, if you know what to expect, don’t be overly surprised by your experiences.  A black box classroom may be a teacher’s professional workplace 90% of a school day, as everyone in the schoolhouse goes about their daily business and no one is looking in.  But in knowing that observations and evaluations are part of their professional work, every teacher should become accustomed to and ready for eyes looking at him or her.  Opening the doors and windows of the black box is good educational policy and practice – good for all concerned.

Expand Your First-Hand Knowledge To Grow Your Credibility

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First-hand, second-hand or third-hand:  how “handy” is your decision making?

When you make a decision based upon information, which of the following do you find most credible?

First-hand – information gathered by what you personally have heard, seen and experienced.

Second-hand – information told to you based upon the personal observations and experiences of others.

Third-hand – information regarding the observations and experiences of people gathered and retold by others.

Elected members of school boards face this question frequently when confronted with a school problem or an issue requiring board action.  This is a dilemma of positional relationships.  How many “hands removed’ can a board member be and still render just decisions that portray a thoughtful consideration of all information sources?  As every information teller has built in biases, how can a board member sift information and bias to reach a credible understanding, and, as distance grows between first-hand involvement and resulting information sharing, how can a board member filter the levels of functionality that can color the information the board hears?

School boards employ school faculty, staff and administrators.  Faculty and staff work directly with students and the parents of students as week as community members who come to school.  Many meaty questions and issues are created at this level of the school district as this is where the greatest number of employees work and personal interactions arise that can result in a conflict of interests.  Whereas, we tend to focus of teacher-student interactions in and around the classroom, adult-child interactions on the school bus, on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the school offices, on the playing fields and in the locker rooms, on the stage, and at night and weekend activities account for a greater number of interactions than teacher-student.  Each and every one of these interactions creates first hand experiences that shape the school experiences of persons involved.  It is difficult to know which interactions will generate an issue that must be resolved, although when a hot issue rises everyone involved knows it for what it is.

One level of functionality away, administrators supervise and evaluate school faculty and staff.  Administrative functions mean that most interactions are with faculty and staff and some are with students, parents, and community members.  Often, student and parent interactions are referred to the administrator by faculty and staff.  Their span of responsibility places administrators at the second-hand of most faculty and staff interactions with students and parents.  Others tell administrators of their first-hand experiences or submit a report about their experience.

Administrators, of course, are first-hand in their interactions with those they supervise.  A majority of administrative first-hand experiences are casual and informed by “walking about” or “being present” around the school.  Administrators who take a holistic approach to their function look at classrooms as representing teachers, children, instruction, learning, curriculum, orderliness, furniture, technology, climate, lighting, air temperature and quality, cleanliness and, at the end, the administrator understands a satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what has been seen and heard and felt.  Extend this holistic approach to the school campus and every room of the school and you approach the first-hand experiences of an administrator.

The board supervises and evaluates administrators and this places the board at a third-hand relationship to faculty and staff interactions with students and parents and second-hand to interactions between administrators and faculty and staff.  Everything that is first-hand to a “holistic experiencing” administrator is second-hand to the board.  Everything that is first-hand to children and teachers and staff and is told or reported to an administrator who reports stories of these experiences to the school board is third-hand to the board.

Confusing?  Perhaps.  Consequential?  You bet.  Board members have an exceptionally small amount of first-hand experiences in the school environment.  School board meeting agendas are chock full of presentations and reports based upon second- and third-hand interactions with information and experiences.  All data is filtered.  All stories are filtered.  And, every second- and third-hand reporting of information and explaining of conclusions drawn from data and school experiences calls credibility and trust into question.  When the data and stories are objective and all persons are in agreement with the reporting, credibility and trust are assumed and not an issue.  And, most board agenda items are in this category.

However, when stories do not jive, when the “handedness” of information gathering, interpretation, and storytelling creates different versions of the same interaction, the board is placed in a “Which version is more credible and who do you trust more?” dilemma.  When disputations arise – on a school bus between driver and children, on the baseball team between coach and players, regarding student achievement on state assessments, between administrators and students and parents regarding a disciplinary issue, and between employee groups on “turf issues” – the board must moderate, arbitrate, or adjudicate a resolution.

Often, this is a “no win” dilemma.  In the immediacy, the board faces an either/or proposition.  There may well be middle ground, but disputing persons view these as win-lose situations.  Overtime, the either/or can become a we/they issue and if the board tends to believe we more than they, they lose confidence in the justness of the board and the system.

Consequential?  Unbelievably.

Arbitrarily, board members have been held or hold themselves in distanced relationships with students, parents, faculty and staff.  Board members have been “schooled” into believing that the handling of issues at the first-hand is the responsibility of their administrators.  Board members are told not to communicate directly with teachers and staff and principals, but with the superintendent who communicates down the chain of command with all employees.  Board members, by design, have been relegated to second- and third-hand information.  Hence, board members are constantly in the chair of “do we support the information filtering and storytelling of our administration or not?”

Balderdash.  There is no statute or rule that precludes school board members from commingling in the life of the schools so as to be first- or second-hand to the information that is the lifeblood of the system.  Being first-hand never places the board member into a faculty or a staff or an administrative function.  When in the first-hand mode, that is, a board member observing in the classrooms, hallways, media centers, cafeterias, auditoriums and athletic areas of the schools, board members are in an oversight function.  They are not supervising children.  They are not evaluating employees.  They are witnessing the manner in which the programs and policies approved by the board are playing out for the education of all children and for the professional work of all employees.

Board members cannot be first-hand to everything in a school.  That is neither possible nor desired.  However, when members have enough first-hand information against which they can weigh the second- and third-hand information they are provided, then board decisions are seen by all stakeholders as being better informed of a complete picture and more just to the realities of all concerned.  Trust is not blindly given, it is earned.  A board member observing employees at their daily work – administrators, teachers and all staff – with frequency and objectivity sees credible work first hand and can trust that credibility.  Employees observing board members observing their work with frequency can credibly know that the board member is creating a base of first-hand knowledge.  Trust flows both ways when people work to establish credibility.

I encourage fellow board members to invest in first-hand experiences in their schools.  Remember your level of function and gain a balance to your informed understanding of the life and times of your school district.  If you keep to your function, that is board oversight, you are in a great position to support every person in your school community by being credible and balanced in your understanding of first-, second-, and third-hand stories.

Board Members: Perch Like A Bird To Learn About Your School

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Information is powerful and firsthand gathering of information without bias is essential.  Given this as truth, how can a school board member be informed about his school in ways that do not cross the lines between board and administration and employees?  I recommend perching.

A board member appearing at school too often raises inappropriate hackles.  If drivers on the highway slow down and become circumspect about their speed and safe driving procedures when a highway patrol cruiser appears in their rear view mirror, administrators and teachers too often grow anxious when a school board member walks down the school hallway.  Anxiety is a natural phenomena.  In the presence of law enforcement, I may be more thoughtful about what I am doing, but it does not change the relationship I have with the laws.  We both travel on the highway and I drive on.  So it should be in public schools.  School Board members come to school.

Perching is being a silent and unobtrusive yet acknowledged observer of the daily life of a school.  Perchers watch and listen, smile a lot, and only engage to clarify what they see or hear.  Sounds kind of spooky and weird; it is not.  As a percher, I am just another adult in the school.

A percher should observe the amenities.  Informing the school administration before perching is one of those amenities.  There is nothing in a school to be hidden from board view, but if an administrator has scheduled an evaluative observation at the same time and place a board member wants to perch, perching needs to be rescheduled.  Secondly, as members on the same team, informing the administration about a planned perch is just good practice.

Perchers need built-in filters.  The variety of words and stories and scenes a percher hears and observes is amazing.  Once you are seen and acknowledged by students and staff, your silent presence seems to be forgotten and, as the saying goes, “people say and do the darnedest things.”  Personal stories and observations of persons doing personal things are filed in the “personal” category.  Unless it is the proverbial person yelling “Fire!”, perchers filter out the personal and filter in pertinent.

I perched in the high school media center last week.  After communicating my intention to the superintendent and receiving a “happy perching’ response, I took a seat at a library table on the edge of a group of tables where students often sit.  From my seat, I observed all the comings and goings in the media center.

A media center is a latter day school library.  Our media center looks like and acts like a school library, that is lots of books on shelves and large, traditional library tables that seat six to eight students.  I had learned from our media aide who supervises students in the media center and handles material circulation that very few teachers bring their classes to the “library” as used to happen.  Because our secondary school issues one-to-one laptops and chrome books to all students in grades 6 – 12, students have almost all of the media and reference material once found in the school library at their classroom desks.  And, their personal technology is interactive.  Because classes no longer schedule time in the media center, almost all student use is study hall time or meetings with tutors or reading and math interventionists or college reps looking for a quiet place to meet.

On my perch this day, I learned three things.

The first thing I learned involved five high school students who were seated at a larger table reviewing for an AP Psych test.  Happenstance led their AP Psych teacher to walk through the media center, and seeing them, to ask the usual “How ya doin’ today?”  Without prompting, one young lady said she had questions about the terminology related to brain stimulation – neurons, soma, dendrites, axons – “That stuff.”  Their teacher sat in an available chair and for twenty minutes conducted an outstanding tutorial.  He didn’t tell; he helped each student clarify what they already knew and corrected a few items that were inaccurately related.  Each student was engaged, leaning forward, and profiting from the moment.  It was the type of experience that happens with frequency, I believe, but is not often observed.

With all questions resolved, the teacher went on his way.  What happened next was icing on a percher’s cake.  One after another, the tutored talked about what a “great teacher Mr. X is” and how much they are learning.  Their appreciation was genuine, as Mr. X had departed, and no “brownie points” were to be gained.  As a percher, I had the privilege of observing the kind of teacher/student interaction and the quality of relationship we assume but seldom see first hand.  Later in the day, I found Mr. X and told him about this observation and he was very modestly pleased.

My second learning regarded a school policy, student practices, and student perception of the policy.  Our school has policies related to when and how students can use “personal devices” like cell phones and tablets for personal texting, phone calls and game playing.  In a nutshell, personal devices are not to be used for these purposes during class time; begrudged permission is given during passing periods and lunch time only.  But, children being children, our students push against the margins of rules and policies.

I observed high school students using their study hall time in the media center to game on their school-provided laptops, text and FaceTime on their cell phones, and send and receive texts.  It was not so much a startling observation as it was a confirming observation.  Several students committed all of their media center time to texting and gaming – not studying.  Others allowed the incoming text or silenced phone ringer interrupt their studies – no students appeared to decline a text or call.

High school teachers are concerned that their students believe they are entitled to use their personal devices when and how they choose regardless of school rules.  And, student use of personal devices during study time causes too many students to have incomplete or unattempted class assignments.  From my perch, I observed about half of the students in the media center committed to their study time and about half who either committed their study time to personal device usage or allowed their personal devices to interrupt their study time.

During the next class passing period, I asked a student I recognized about student use of personal devices to texting and gaming in the media center and she gave me a very Cartesian response.  “If no one saw a student texting or gaming, then the rules were not violated.”

My third observation is a cost-benefit understanding.  Schools have not always had libraries.   The commitment of cost to a school library was innovative in the early 1900s and by mid-century a school library was a “must have” in secondary schools and many elementary schools.  The collection of resources for teachers and students in a central location supported the delivery of curriculum and instruction.  Today, this is not the case.  Technology, either streamed into the classroom or accessible through laptops and tablets on student desks, brings everything from the library to the teacher and student wherever they are.  This leaves schools with a large investment in media centers that is not fully utilized in terms of financial resources as well as physical space.

My many perchings in school media centers confirms that the contemporary function of these “centers’ require these –

  • Comfortable places for students to read and study.  Comfort includes individual and group settings with supportive and cushioned seating.  No more rigid chairs that leave marks on your back and cut off circulation to your buttocks and below.
  • Abundant and accessible power stations for school-provided laptops, Chromebooks and tablets.  Most libraries lack electrical outlets and those that are present were placed for the work of librarians.
  • Good lighting and air circulation.  Students are increasingly aware of the amount of time they spend under fluorescent lighting and in internally-circulated air.  Natural light and fresh air are essential.
  • Seating and flooring that accommodates student drinking of water.  Brain research tells us that well-functioning brains need oxygen and water.  Our classroom teachers accommodate water bottles and our media centers should as well.
  • Reconsideration of the secondary collection.  Middle school students circulate contemporary fiction, especially graphic novels, much more than high school students.  In fact, high school circulation is in continual decline.  High school circulation relates to class assignments and most of the reference, research, and supplemental information they seek is on the Internet.  Floor space that is committed to the secondary collection can be reallocated.

This returns me to value of perching.  Those responsible for educating children expand their knowledge bases from professional meetings, organized discussions, and group interactions.  These opportunities assure that there is common breadth and depth in their understanding.  However, due to their scope and function, these informational events lack first hand information.  To get real, personal first hand information, I recommend perching.  Sit quietly.  Observe and listen.  Filter what you see and hear – some things are not your business.  Become informed in the first-hand.  And, even though perchers do not typically engage with others while perching, being seen on your perch gives you a real credibility with faculty, staff and students.