Category Archives: Blog

Don’t Be The Biggest Kid In The Classroom

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Read, smile and realize “I know that.”  That should be the response a teacher has to reading Sarah McKibben’s “Stay Calm and Teach On” article in ASCD’s Education Update.  McKibben succinctly describes the practices of several veteran teachers who work diligently to be the teacher in the classroom and not the biggest kid in class.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/dec17/vol59/num12/Stay-Calm-and-Teach-On.aspx

And, that is my take on the dilemma that many teachers face when confronted with disruptive and non-responsive children under their supervision.  It is clear in her reporting that veteran teachers who practice staying calm work hard to create the emotive state of calmness.  It is so very easy to let a belligerent child, one who throws a fit of defiance or purposefully and loudly ridicules other children, or looks the teacher in the eye and refuses to take direction, get under your skin and cause you to erupt.  That is when a teacher becomes the biggest kid in class.

Staying calm is hard work.  It means having a game plan for staying calm that encompasses what you say, the face you make, your body posture, your walk, and the timing of what you eventually do as a teacher in response to a child.  As Michael Linsin contributed, he resets his game plan each day.  He calms himself and reaffirms his role as the teacher who knows how to remain calm and teach on.

As I talk with young teachers, we acknowledge the wrongness of how the so-called “old guard legends” in our schools responded to children with bad behavior decades ago.  Calling out of children using profanity, belittling children, laying hands on, and paddling were trademarks of the biggest and worst kids in class – abusive teachers.  Today’s young teachers face the same challenges as the old guard, but staying calm and teaching on while using planned and appropriate disciplinary responses has become their best practice.

I encourage readers to check out McKibben’s article.  If you don’t say “I know that”, you will find a description of best practices that will cause you say “I will try that.”

Whose Learning Needle Must Move? Every Child’s Learning Needle

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What we say and what we do matters. If we believe that all children can and must learn, say it aloud and often and then cause it to happen.

Imagine walking into a school classroom on Monday morning, looking at the faces of children sitting and looking at you, their teacher, and saying, “This week I will improve the reading skills of five children. Although all of you will join me in reading groups, I am only interested in improving the reading skills of five children.” Or, saying to children in an Algebra class, “This week you will learn about quadratic equations. However, by Friday I expect only three of you to be able to balance an equation.”

In looking at test scores in elementary reading and middle school math, the paragraph above too often reflects student achievement following classroom instruction. The distribution of achievement staircases children from those who demonstrated advanced understanding and skills to those who minimally understand and demonstrate little to no skill. In this proverbial week, some children improved their reading skills and some children learned to resolve quadratic equations. Some children did not. In reverse, what we caused to happen we certainly would not have announced. We allowed the learning needle (how we measure learning achievement) for some children to be stagnant or recede while we advanced the learning needle for others.

The issue is clear. Whose learning needle needs to move? Every child’s. Which learning needle needs to move? The needle that measures the educational attribute receiving our current focus. Causing learning is a purposeful instructional attention focused on every child that does not cease until every child’s needle is moved.

Enlarge the scope of this proposition. Imagine your band or choir director giving focused and measured instruction only to the brass instruments or the sopranos while giving unfocused attention to the remainder of the band or choir. Or, the home construction teacher giving focused instruction only to the carpenters and less attention to students learning the electrical and plumbing trades. In these two examples, we hear and see the results of attending only to the learning needles of some children and not all. Music performances at band and choir concerts will cause patrons to lose all confidence in the school music instruction. The learning needles of all band and choir members need equal attention to create a quality ensemble performance. Realtors trying to sell the school-built home will stop showing the property. The learning needles of all members of the construction crew contribute the quality of the build.

This is true also of the quality of a school’s academic program. The learning needles of all children need to move in every grade level and every subject. Quality academic programs don’t just have high achievers. They concentrate on moving the learning needles of every child, on increasing every child’s understanding, skills and problem-solving, and closing the measured gaps between the learning needles. Instead of an achievement distribution with children languishing as minimal performers, quality academic programs give concentrated instructional focus to cause every child to reach proficiency in their understanding, skill sets, and ability to resolve challenging problems.

Imagine walking into a school classroom on Monday, looking at the face of every child and saying, “This week we will cause each of you to look for periods in your reading and to take a breath after a period before starting the next sentence. At the end of the week, each of you will know how a period works in a sentence and you will improve your reading using periods as stops between sentences.” And, then cause it to happen.

There were regrettable politics and distorted practices associated with the words “No Child Left Behind.” Yet, those words clearly express the intent and necessary actions for moving every child’s learning needle. Be clear in telling each child, “We are going to move your learning needle today (this week, this month) and this is what your new needle will cause you to know, do and be.” Then, cause it to happen.

Educating Is Moving The Needle

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“What am I doing here?” is a good question to ask oneself frequently. The context of this question is your workplace, your career, your job. I surmise that many respond with confidence that “I am doing the work I want to do and have trained for and I am pleased with where I find myself.” Or, “I find my work to be both challenging and rewarding. What I do matters to me and to others.” To these responses, I say “Great! Keep on keeping on.” When considering their work, these folks smile, become energized, and talk with specific examples that illustrate what they do and how their work is a positive contribution to their industry. What they do helps their employer to achieve positive qualitative and quantitative organizational goals. This is “moving the needle” – how you measure performance – toward success.

Others may be both discomforted and disappointed when looking for an answer. This leads them to not ask the question very often. For these folks, I need to rephrase the question. “Is what I am doing here meaningful to me or to others?” “Is what I am doing important?” “Does what I do make a difference?” Already the fear that the answer may be “no” or “not much” may have them rethinking the wisdom in pursuing the question.

When considering these questions, you must come to grips with the “what am I doing and why am I doing it?” As a high school and later college student, I worked summers and vacations in a meatpacking plant. I helped to reduce animals to meat and agri-products. My goal, however, was to earn money. My needle was my bank account and success meant having enough money to pay for the next year of college. As a junior high school teacher, I taught English and social studies. My goal was to cause children to learn our grade level curricula. My needle was a measurement of what they knew, could do and how they solved learning problems on September 1 compared with the same measurements on June 1. Success was achieved when every child was ready for the next year’s curricular instruction. As a wrestling coach, my goal was to cause wrestlers to win and how to think about how they won. Success was measured in wins through a personal commitment to healthy goals. As a high school principal, my work was to cause every teacher to cause every child to learn their grade level curricula – to be a needle moving teacher. Success was measured in finding positive cause and effect relationships – what instruction would cause learning improvements. The scope of these cause and effect challenges increased when I was a district administrator. In each context, the “here” changed, but the “what I am doing” did not. My goal always is to move the needle. Sometime the needle was a direct cause and effect and easy to measure. Hours in the hog kill equals payroll. A wrestler’s hand raised in victory. Some time the needle of cause-effect was less direct and not easy to measure, as in learning and learning performances. Yet, in every situation, “What am I doing” is about moving the needle.

When you add the “here” to “what am I doing,” you give the question personalized immediacy. For educators, “here” requires you to be introspective concerning your current assignment and the educational objectives that are attached to the assignment. “Here” is all about you and your ability to move the needle of learning for the children you teach, coach or direct.

Too often we consider only one needle in education – academic performances. Make no mistake, academic performances are extremely important, yet there are other needles of importance beyond test scores. And, these needles also move as a result of a teacher’s work efforts.

  • Daily school attendance
  • Child behavior
  • Willingness to engage in learning
  • Persistence
  • Self-esteem
  • Collegiality
  • Problem solving
  • Creativity
  • Career preparation
  • Artistic and aesthetic appreciation
  • More

Identifying needles to be moved does not rest with you alone. If it did, any needle movement would do. Identifying needles to move relates to the goals of the school and its community, the realities of learning challenges each student and all students present, the current status of measured needles, and the skill sets of each and all teachers. Picking priority needles leads to the determination of targets for how far and how fast the needle must move in the macro sense of whole school or classroom and in the micro sense of each child. Moving needles is hard work and it begins with selecting appropriate needles and targets of needle movement.

The rest is easier. Needle movement is doing the work needed to move the needle. In a meatpacking plant, you do the bloody work of earning a paycheck so that your bank account will let you do what comes next in life. In teaching, it is causing all children to become proficient learners and to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and problem solving at a quality level. In educational leadership, it is focusing school resources to cause all children to achieve high quality outcomes in academic, activity, arts and athletic programs, and to be proactive and healthy problem solvers.

Educating is moving the needle.

Calculating a School Lockdown: A Thank You

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A locked down school in response to a “potential” safety threat no longer makes the news headlines. School lock downs happen too frequently these days. But, that does not make locking down a school a daily routine. It isn’t. Enacting a lock down procedure is a very calculated administrative decision that needs to be understood and appreciated for how as well as why it works.

I start with a thank you to the school administrators who sit in the hot seat of decision making. “Thank you for examining the potentiality of a threat to your school and activating lock down procedures that are designed to keep children and adults safe from harm.” Locking down a school is a calculated decision, because threat credibility is what makes a lock down effective. If students and staff believe that credibility, the lock down will be effective. Children and adults will do exactly what they have been trained to do when their safety is threatened. They will find their safe places and remain safe throughout the lock down. If children and adults do not believe that credibility, locking down begins to look like a recess. “Thank you for weighing the information you are given, often incomplete and in a hurry, and making the right call.”

Hot seat decisions regarding school safety are difficult moments. Regional news often broadcasts that a school is locked down because there has been a neighborhood shooting or a person has escaped police custody or a person has called or posted their intent to harm people at school. These are not everyday broadcasts, but they, especially neighborhood violence, rightfully cause school administrators to invoke school lock downs.

Locking down immediately sparks a variety of community and school reactions. There is a flurry of social media and cell phone communication as children contact parents and parents contact children. Some parents immediately go to school to take their children home. Nearby daycare centers take safety precautions. Law enforcement is drawn to the school. Instruction and daily activities at school are immediately affected, depending upon the level of lockdown. Whatever children and teachers were doing becomes secondary to their need to follow lock down protocols. Visitors coming to the school during a lock down cannot enter the school and visitors in the school cannot leave. If the lock down is at noon, it affects lunch schedules; if at the end of the school day, it affects school bus routes and after school activities. Each and all of these are considered by a school administrator making a hot seat decision.

Gladly, I observe that our regional school leaders place school safety first. In almost lock downs, an initial statement of the threat is given by the news agencies. If necessary, local news and school social media update parents and community about the ongoing situation. Afterward, more information regarding the threat becomes available and the sensibility of a lock down is clarified.

Again, thank you to school administrators sitting in the hot seats of decision making for keeping our schools safe. With well-practiced lock down protocols, real threats are being handled realistically.

The ultimate sad truth, though, is that we never have forewarning when violent school tragedy actually befalls us.

Bull Roar Meter – A New Basic Skill

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Reading, writing, arithmetic and a Bull Roar Meter. Should these be our new basic skills for an educated child? I hope so.

We readily recognize that reading, writing and arithmetic endure as necessary basic skills in the education of every child. As children progress through grade levels of curricula, they engage in increasingly complex and rigorous learning activities that grow these basic skills. By the time a child graduates from high school, a learned capacity to read, write and solve mathematical problems makes the child ready for career or college. Great! But, what about the child’s capacity to engage with their daily deluge of media, news and fanciful spinning of stories that face adults every day? On the one hand, we can hand a student a Bull Roar Meter, perhaps an app for their smartphone, coupled to their high school diploma and believe that each graduate will use it. Or, we can educate children to create an internalized, intellectual Bull Roar Meter that will serve them after graduation. I like the latter.

I am heartened that the Wisconsin academic standards include several statements that approach the concept of an internalized, intellectual Bull Roar Meter for every high school graduate. These are the Model Social Studies Standard C – Political Science and Citizenship and the College and Career Readiness Anchor standards for Reading.

Through their social studies curriculum, children learn to –

C.12.8 Locate, organize, analyze, and use information from various sources to understand an issue of public concern, take a position, and communicate the position

https://dpi.wi.gov/social-studies/standards/political-science

And, in their English/Language Arts curriculum, children will learn to –

7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.*

8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/standards/pdf/ela-stds-app-a-revision.pdf

I ponder how the children currently in our schools would prosper in their future careers and adult lives if they are successfully educated to

• Understand that facts are facts – they are known and can be proved to be true or they are known to have happened or to exist.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fact

• Recognize that some statements are lies and to call out lies for what they are. “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/

• Opinions are important. Opinions are not facts and they are not lies and need to be understood for what they are. “A view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter” and “a belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion

As I observe life in our nation today and consider that most of the significant decisions are made by educated adults, high school graduates at a minimum, I am convinced that the majority were not inculcated in their education with a working Bull Roar Meter. Otherwise, they would not purposefully obfuscate their speech with opinions and lies and defend them as facts. Further, I am convinced that working Bull Roar Meters are not turned on in a majority of our population. Otherwise, they would not be so gullible in accepting and repeating opinions and lies as facts.

It is probable that a person reading this blog may flick on their intellectual Bull Roar Meter and with a cough mutter BS.

Or, a reader may check his or her mental screens for discerning facts, lies and opinions and begin to consider how each of these impacts their thinking and decision making.