Category Archives: Blog

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.

What Do You See? What Do You Think? Good Questions Always

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What do you see, what to you think

When I sit with grand daughters at our local park looking at the sky and horizon over the waters of Green Bay, they can anticipate two questions. “What do you see?” And, “What do you think/know about what you see?”

“I see water and blue sky and clouds and sunshine, Gramps.”

The game is on. Once they tell me what they see, we begin a conversation and a push of their thinking. The question began with our understanding that there are no right or wrong answers. What do you see asks just that – tell me what YOU SEE. A good open-ended query. Once they tell me what they see out there in the distance, our conversation becomes focused on them and what they observe and know and are willing to consider.

“Tell me about the shape and color of the clouds. Are the clouds moving? Is the water moving? Any boats out there?”

For the next half hour, we talk about the weather. They describe the texture and shape of the clouds and learn about cumulus and cirrus clouds. They give the direction the clouds are moving and talk about wind and earth rotation. They notice calm water in the harbor and heavier ripples beyond the headland and talk about wind and current. They see a laker nearer the Upper Peninsula side of the Bay and talk about incoming and outgoing shipping and what might be aboard. They consider what early French explorers and Native Americans might have seen centuries ago on these waters and if they would recognize this place today.

Or, we might have spent the half hour lying on our backs looking at clouds to see the cloud shapes form faces and fish and sailing ships and pillows for sleeping. “I see a face, Gramps. Eyes and a mouth and lots of frizzy hair. She’s smiling.”

“Tell me about that face,” I say. “What is she smiling about? Tell me a story, Izz.”

And, off we go on a voyage of imagination. Izz develops a character and short plot that change with the shifting shapes of the clouds. We have learned to end our cloud-based stories with a single word. “Poof.” The cloud shapes are gone.

Tell me what you see and tell me what you think/know about what you see are great questions for anywhere and anytime. They are powerful starters for children who may be timid or who worry about making a mistake. The lack of a right or wrong response frees them to talk about what THEY SEE and what THEY THINK.

I use the same question when helping my wife line up a putt on the golf course. “What do you see?” And, “How will what you see affect your putt?” As always, I have the questions, but not the answers. When she rolls the putt 16 feet into the cup, the smiles are all hers. Just as the Izz’s observations and imaginative story about clouds are all hers.

Good questions are winners every time.

“Tell Me” and “Show Me” If You Want To Be Understood

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I can hear Robert Shaw’s voice. “Do ya folla’?”, Quint, the shark-hunting captain of the Orca, asked Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) in Jaws. “Do ya folla’?” was Quint’s way of checking if the Sheriff and oceanographer thoroughly understood what he was asking them to do.  The dangers of hunting a great white shark necessitated that Brody and Hooper followed Quint’s directions to the letter. Without exaggeration, the consequences to the future when we are teaching children can be just as serious as those in Jaws. Instead of being consumed by a shark, children may be consumed by errors of misunderstanding resulting for their failure to learn from you.

What is your checking query? As a classroom teacher or principal or curriculum director or facilities manager, how do you check to verify that those you are instructing or directing or mentoring or leading have a successful understanding of what you expect them to do? A checking query is essential. Not to have one is to be a pitcher throwing nine innings of a baseball game without ever hearing the umpire call “strike” or “ball.” Just like the pitcher watching for the umpire’s call, a teacher who models solutions to a math problem needs to know what each student heard, saw and understands regarding each possible solution. Without this feedback, the teacher should stop and not say another word. No feedback – no going forward.

In educationalese, “do you follow” can easily become one of two requests. Tell me. Show me. If you ask these two questions consistently, you will know if your students, teachers, and custodians are clear in their understanding of your expectations of their future performance. Those who study pedagogy, will recognize “Tell me/Show me” as application of Madeline Hunter’s “checking for understanding,” a timeless lesson design strategy.

What does “tell me” sound like?

You are an art teacher. You have demonstrated how to mount a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. With students gathered around, you demonstrated the “a, b, c’s” of centering an amount of fresh clay on the center of the wheel, how to use the heels of your palms and your thumbs to work and shape the clay, and how to use finger pressure to draw the clay vertically into the beginnings of a small bowl.  In a perfect world, every child now is ready to throw a bowl from a lump of clay.

Common practice is for the teacher to look at the faces of surrounding children and ask “Any questions?” And, with no children bold enough to show they did not see exactly what the teacher said or did, the teacher sends them to their wheels where more than half sit looking at the lump of clay wondering “What do I do now?”

“Tell me” is an easy question. No one has to straddle the potter’s bench to say “First, you …”. “Tell me” is verbal – just repeat back what I just said to you. The “tell” does not have to be word perfect. Just get the sequence right. Just describe how your hands should work on the clay.  Describe how the turning speed of the wheel does the work of moving the clay.  Describe in words that demonstrate that you have a mental imaging of what you are supposed to do when you sit at your wheel.

If enough students participate in oral feedback, you can generalize that they understand “well enough” what to do. The key is that a majority of the students participated in the “tell me” and those who did not gave adequate visible agreement in what was told.

If the “tell me” does not meet the teacher’s level of confidence, then re-teaching is in order. Re-teaching involves the same key words in a different story line. Re-teaching involves the correction of any parts of the “tell” that were clearly wrong. Re-teaching is aimed at causing all students to be able to contribute to the next “tell me.”

Then do the “tell me” again. And, again, if the second “tell” does not meet your confidence level. Subsequent re-teachings cannot be repeats of the first or even second. They must directly clarify the sequence of steps and correct the mistakes in the “tell”.

You are a principal discussing the school’s practices in using standards-based grading. “Tell me” should achieve the same feedback loop as the “tell me” of the art teacher. And, if you are a curriculum director leading an in-service on the use of formative assessments, your “tell me” will sound like the art teacher and principal’s “tell me.” The same is true for the facilities supervisor who is showing a new custodian how to use a floor scrubbing machine. The supervisor wants to hear an accurate verbal description of what the supervisor demonstrated.

“Tell me” is one of the simplest yet most often ignored or misused strategies for getting instructional feedback. Many leaders will use it once or twice and then believe that if their students and subordinates got it right once or twice, they will get it right each time new instruction is given in the future. Wrong! This may be true if the future instruction is a repeat of past instruction, but if it is new instruction, especially new and without transfer from other past instruction, “tell me” is essential.

You are half-way in confidently believing that students and subordinates understand your instruction or direction. Now, “show me.”

“Show me” is more strategic. A teacher or principal or director or supervisor does not have time to view a “show me” by every student and subordinate. So, pick one or two students to straddle the potters wheel and begin to throw a bowl or go to the SmartBoard to write out a solution to a math problem or construct a grading template for a given middle school writing standard or demonstrate how to set the height adjustments on a riding lawn mower and mow a field in a way that does not require subsequent raking.

“Show me’s” must be objective and subjective. The “show” of the persons selected may not be as perfect as the demonstration. Objectively, does the “show” meet minimum requirements? And, subjectively, the person evaluating the “show” must suspend everything else known about the person showing and observe only the demonstration of the “show”. Being objectively and subjectively fair often is hard in a “show me” but it is essential.

If you pick a representative student and rotate your picking so that all students and subordinates over time will be called upon to “show me”, you can use these selected shows to reinforce your confidence that your students and subordinates know what to do and also know how to do it.

“Tell me and show me” also conserve time. The minutes that it takes to ask students and subordinates to tell and show you what they have heard and observed you say and do is significantly less than the time and effort it would take to go forward with their unchecked work only to find later that their thinking and skills are all wrong. Reteaching after incorrect information has been practiced and reinforced takes a lot of time and very specific instruction to unlearn the incorrect and learn the correct. “Tell me and show me” is an efficient and effective way to assure readiness for independent practice of new learning.

So, now I ask you in my Quint voice, “Do ya follow?” Tell me.  Show me.