Category Archives: Blog

Teaching Is Causing Learning; Get Rid Of Other Agendas

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Tis a time for simplicity.

Amongst the piles of edu-data, reform proposals, governmental mandates, and clutchings for new ways to improve student learning outcomes, one simple explanation remains. Learning is a transaction between the learner and what is to be learned. This is an application of Occam’s Razor which tells us “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

Strip away the nouveau and extraneous. Technology. Assessments. Instructional delivery. Parental choice and politics. Educational financing. After the onion is peeled, the remainder is a student confronting what is to be learned. Or, is it what is learned confronting a student? Yes, these are Occam’s two remaining variables. And, this is how we always should approach the proposition of improving educational outcomes. How can we magnetize that confrontation? How can we make the learner’s interest in the learning compelling? How can we make what is to be learned compelling for the learner? This is the first and most important place where “we”, the educational enterprise, enters the learning interaction.

The educator’s constant quandary is “How to illuminate, amplify, and activate, and perpetuate” the learner’s interaction with what is to be learned. It is eyes-on, hands-on, and minds-on work. It is personal and persistent. It begins every morning and expands across the day. Learner – teacher – learning. This is the most basic of educational propositions. How can I help you to learn?

Education actually is this simple. Sadly, the enterprise makes it much more difficult. Within our educational enterprise, there are propositions that Occam would say “strip it away.” And, there are propositions that Occam would tell us to selectively utilize.

Teachers are inundated with data, recordkeeping, and time-consuming chores related to data management. This has little to do with our basic proposition. Strip it away. The enterprise should be clear about what is to be learned and how it will be assessed. This is all a learner and teacher need to know.

The conversation about and implementation of new academic standards and new state assessments are exceptionally heavy in controversy. The emotionality of these issues distract both learners and teachers. Strip it away.

The politics of parent choice of school options is loud and irrelevant to daily learning. Strip it away from the schoolhouse.

Teachers are expected to be tech-users and social media communicators. Very 21st century and very chic. Considering the dynamic of the learning interaction – how to make it compelling – the use of technology and social media are very assistive. Technology can be the flashlight that illuminates what is to be learned and social media the conduit for teacher/learner talking. Great! Optimize it.

The more that we can do to clarify and personalize each student’s relationship with what is to be learned and the more we can strip away the impediments that obscure the teacher’s organization and management of teaching, the more likely we will be in causing student learning.

Be a Who Shouting “No Guns In School”

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It is time for the Whos to bellow loudly. You remember the Whos of Dr. Seuss Horton Hears A Who fame. Really, if you cannot find your loudest voice on this issue, then you should be on a mote of dust blowing in the wind.

Guns in schools? Shout out your “No way, never!” Your legislators need to hear your Who-like voice.

In Wisconsin, Senate President Mary Lazich is offering a bill that will make it legal for persons with concealed gun permits to carry their weapons onto school grounds and into schools. Her unbelievable premise is that gun toters may go to school to deliver or pick up their children forgetting that it is illegal to carry guns onto school grounds and into schools. She does not “…want well-intentioned law-abiding people…” to be arrested because of their oversight.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/gop-bill-would-allow-guns-on-school-grounds-classroom-buildings-b99651260z1-365186111.html

Unbelievable! A person who is authorized for the concealed carry of weapons is obligated to know the laws related to carrying a gun on their person. If they do not, they should be liable under the law.

And further, bill co-sponsor Rep. Robert Brooks says “… he would feel terrible if there were a school shooting and parents and teachers told him afterward they didn’t have a chance to defend themselves because of state law.” Again, unbelievable. We read too often of law enforcement personnel empting their ammunition clips in a shootout and inadvertently hitting a bystander. In a school with hundreds of potential bystanders, even those in classrooms hiding or trying to flee, the potential for inadvertent victims in schools magnifies exponentially. I wonder how will Rep. Brooks “feel” at the funeral of a child or teacher inadvertently shot by a gun-toting parent.

“Now is the time…” Patrick Henry declared in speaking with revolutionary fervor. It is time now to respond to Lazich and Brooks and your area’s state assemblyman and senator telling them that school is not a place for guns. Make your voice heard loudly like the Whos of Whoville. Sadly, if this time slips away and there is no outcry against allowing concealed carry guns in our schools, it is just a matter of time before Rep. Brooks should feel terrible.

Rosin’s “Suicide High” Is A Must Read

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Read this.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

Articles about child suicide usually put me off. It’s not just the tragedy of a life lost, but the emotional pit into which everyone – parents and family, friends, teachers and coaches – swirls in trying to find reasons that explain the inexplicable or assurances that “this will never happen again.”

Hanna Rosin’s ability to tell a human story supported by her responsible investigation into the lives of those involved and the credible research of experts in the field makes “The Silicon Valley Suicides” a must read. Educators will find that the culture of schooling and school practices are a part of the story but not the entire story. Parents will find their look into the “parenting mirror” is not reassuring because some of what they may see in themselves is killing their children. Children will find that the stress of adolescence is real and heavy and universal and suicide is not a solution.

Thanks to The Atlantic for its commitment to in-depth reporting. Thanks to Ms. Rosin – many thanks, indeed, for her superior writing.

Managing Your School’s DEFCOM Events

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What did we learn from the confrontation between school personnel and a non-compliant student at Spring Valley High School (South Carolina)? You may remember the CNN, Google News and tabloid coverage of this story; it was their headline for a day. Six things, I think, need to be learned and each of the six triggers its own pyramid of discussions and lessons.

First, the erosion of authority and respect in child/adult relationships that presents so many dilemmas to contemporary parenting now lives large in school classrooms. Where once the teacher enjoyed the status of “respected” adult, teachers now are just one more neutered adult responsible for but not empowered to address an increasing level of child issues including recalcitrance to follow adult directives.

The causation of child misbehavior has been well studied and many of the root causes for misbehavior are common to home and school. Linda Albert cites four generalized causes for misbehavior that apply to both home and school. These are generic and are manifested in many child-child and child-adult relationships, often in healthy ways. It is when the child moves from making a statement to deliberately causing a problem that any of these four becomes conflagratory.

  • • Attention-seeking
  • • Power-seeking
  • • Revenge-seeking
  • • Avoidance of failure.

https://prezi.com/t_m2imirzl4o/copy-of-linda-alberts-cooperative-discipline-theory/

Child misbehavior also may be school-specific. “Garner interviewed disruptive students who told him the reasons for their behavior were generally tied to disliking a teacher’s instructional style, personality or the subject that was being taught.” The small and petty can be made major and life-changing. In these instances, the purpose of the behavior is to affront the teacher.

http://www.wpri.org/WPRI/Reports/2013/The-Impact-of-Disruptive-Students-in-Wisconsin-Public-Schools.htm

A less extreme factor is the effect of a low-lying yet constant distracting presence in a classroom. Even if a teacher is able to continue to teach and even if other children do not join the disruptive behavior, one or both may be distracted from the lesson because of the misbehaving child.

http://www.wpri.org/WPRI/Reports/2013/The-Impact-of-Disruptive-Students-in-Wisconsin-Public-Schools.htm

How often does student misbehavior occur? More than we think and with enough frequency to cause significant losses of instructional and learning opportunity. “In a poll of AFT teachers, 17 percent said they lost four or more hours of teaching time per week thanks to disruptive student behavior; another 19 percent said they lost two or three hours. In urban areas, fully 21 percent said they lost four or more hours per week. And in urban secondary schools, the percentage is 24.”

http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/winter-2003-2004/heading-disruptive-behavior#sthash.8pk6u2DE.dpuf

Second, a student’s “no” can create a nuclear event in the classroom. Historically there has been an assumed student acquiescence to directions given by a teacher. Most children still comply readily. However, once the “no” is out there, all energy in the classroom is sucked into the resolution of the “no.” And, depending upon the resolution, the perception of all children for the locus of leadership of the classroom hangs in the balance. Students today are well aware of the snarky-voiced characters in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The Hollywood-glamorized sex, drugs and rock and roll student life style posed copycat problems for some teachers in many classrooms across the states following the 1982 movie release and, as a teen cult movie, snarky talk rears itself now and again.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083929/

More problematic today are characterizations of the dark, quiet and ephemeral Ally Sheedy character in Saturday Morning Breakfast Club who refused to engage with her teachers and principal. Her passively defiant behavior was much more difficult for school personnel to deal with compared with the aggressiveness of Emilio Estevez, the clandestine actions of Judd Nelson and the small-time truancies of a spoiled Molly Ringwald. Classmates today see the quiet refusal of a student to comply with teacher directives as a statement of individualism against the conformity demanded in high stakes schools. Small-time classroom heroes emerge from the Sheedy-likes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/fullcredits/

A teacher’s toolkit is large and potent in dealing with children who want to engage in their learning. It remains potent with children who have a variety of learning difficulties and distractions. The toolkit is theoretically rich but realistically limited when a student turtles-up into a “no” position and refuses to negotiate a strategy toward learning. Stalemate becomes checkmate.

Third, nothing in our communications-rich world lives in isolation. The Spring Valley student who demanded to use her cell phone instead of doing the classroom assignment wasn’t the only child in the room with a cell phone. Once the “no” escalated to action, the “story” was recorded by other students on their devices and immediately broadcast to the world. Schools have glass walls and every teacher and principal must be super aware that they and all that they do are on universal public display.

The argument about whether or not children can have cell phones at school has passed. It is a given that cell phones with cameras are present everywhere. Teaching children that there is a time and place for them to use their devices is the current work before educators. No tolerance policies have shape-shifted to “when and where” policies. That said, any and every confrontation between children and between children and adults at school is a child’s definition of “when” pull out and use their cell device. It is a new era and teacher behavior must be shaped by the fact that what they say and do in a child’s “when” will be recorded and may become viral.

Fourth, the adage that children need the best teacher available in order to advance their educational future, although still true, has been flipped in the era of performance-based teacher evaluation. Teachers now need the best students available to them to bolster the data of their professional work. Every hour of instruction in which a student(s) is inattentive to learning puts the teacher’s statistical effectiveness at risk. Today, a teacher who is mindful of student inattentiveness must be a master tactician in incident management. Keep in mind the AFT poll cited above and the hours of lost learning time that plague so many classrooms. When children are inattentive or “turtled up”, they cannot be productive learners. And, when inattentive and recalcitrant behaviors are present a teacher is not able to provide “best instruction.” Everyone loses. And this leads us immediately to number five.

Fifth, keep the DEFCOM scale in mind and assure that levels 1, 2 and 3 are kept in the “once every other century drawer.” Most school discipline problems need to be handled at DEFCON 5, the lowest level of response. And, one valuable variation of DEFCOM 5 is “ignore the problem for the time being.” Every child behavior does not require management or immediate intervention. Letting one child be herself for a class period while all other children can be engaged in learning is much more profitable for all rather letting your Dr. Strangelove loose on the problem. Strangelove’s work guarantees a nuclear event and everyone will be scorched.

The confrontation at Spring Valley defined its faculty and its students in the public mind and, although public attention is fickle and short-lived, for months and years to come that confrontation is all the public will know about Spring Valley High School. A good reputation takes years and even decades to accrue. Damage to a reputation can happen in a key stroke.

And sixth, Etta Jackson, a very insightful school counselor, schooled me decades ago in this truth: If a person who belongs to a protected class is involved in a problem, the issue immediately focuses on that protected class. The problem remains the same, but it becomes secondary to the issue. In Spring Valley, the issue the world observed was about race, treatment of a child, and gender. All that the national media wanted to talk about were the issues of race, age and gender. The problem of how adults today can deal with a child who willfully chooses to refuse direction remains the overarching and pervasive dilemma for everyone, including Spring Valley High. The issue will overwhelm and bury the problem if we ignore Etta’s wisdom. As Etta told me, when every child is a protected class of one we can help them the most with the goodness of our best daily and usual practices.

Hindsight, of course, always is clear and perfect in discerning what should have happened. Learning from our experiences or from the stories of others can give us the opportunity to play in front of hindsight. Rub your own magic ball and forecast what you will do when a child willfully chooses to push your DEFCOM buttons.

Not Reading This Summer? You Will Start School In September With Less Than You Left It in June

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When my grandsons told me not to give them more books as summer gifts, I knew they were heading into the long, eroding slide of a non-reading summer. “We have enough books, Gramps”, they said, and “School is over and summer is for fun.” If left to their own devices, children who do not read or are not engaged in “minds on activities” during their summer vacation lose any learning edge they had during the completed school year. They will begin their next school year well behind where they ended the prior school year.

We have known about summer learning regression for a long time. The National Summer Learning Association says, “All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer (White, 1906; Heyns, 1978; Entwisle & Alexander 1992; Cooper, 1996; Downey et al, 2004).

Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains (Cooper, 1996).”

http://www.summerlearning.org/?page=know_the_facts

A child’s vocabulary is her key to unlocking future learning. When a child knows the words she encounters or has a familiarity with the word families of new words, learning maintains its natural pace. Just remember what it was like in school when a teacher or a classmate used words that you did not know. You experienced the feeling of being a stranger in the conversation and that part of the conversation did not make any sense. With continued repetition of hearing or reading words that are unfamiliar, the conversation stops because you checked out.

Beck and McKeown (1991) indicate that by age six a child should know 2,500 to 5,000 words. Anglin (1993) found that by age ten a child should know 40,000 words. And, Miller and Gildea (1997) learned that a high school graduate should know 80,000 words. Interestingly, most of our word acquisition does not happen through formal instruction.

“School age language acquisition occurs primarily through incidental experience more than formal teaching. Word learning shifts from concrete and functional to abstract and unusual. This shift occurs gradually from third grade through the high school years. Environment matters. Extreme environments extremely matter.” Times and places that are “word rich” grow working vocabularies just as times and places that are “word poor” erode working vocabularies. Sometime the environment is not our choosing, but most of the time it is.

https://languagefix.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/how-many-words-should-a-child-know/

Most of us learn words naturally because we put ourselves in front of word traffic. That’s what happens when we read. It does not matter whether the material is fiction or non-fiction, in hard cover of soft, on an e-reader or a laptop. When we put our eyes on words, we will observe words or word usage that is new to us and when we make our own natural inquiry into a word’s definition or context, we grow our working vocabulary.

I tell my grandsons, aged 7, 9 and 11, that their 67-year old grandfather finds words and word usages every day that are new, or at least seem new, to him. They tend to think that the stack of books and journals on my desk and next to chairs in every room in my home are a form of decoration or just have been forgotten where they lie.

Creating word rich environments is a thriving business in the United States. Huntington is a major educational tutorial service. They say, “Make reading a daily occurrence. Reading can be one of the most drastic regression areas, so develop a nightly reading routine for the whole household. Turn off the television and cell phones and have everyone in the family pull out their books or magazines for 30 minutes or longer. If your child needs help, read together. Keep it fun-let your child choose the reading material when you go to the library.”

http://huntingtonhelps.com/resource/article/how-to-avoid-summertime-regression/#.VYhfA9FRGUl

Having fun in the summer is important for children. Working to either take assist parents with household duties or to earn money also is important for many children. Investing in their intellectual future need not steal from fun or work, because reading can fill in the ten to thirty minutes gaps between fun/work activities or it reading can be a good relaxation activity following higher energy recreation and work.

When children learn to carry a book or magazine or an e-reader with them, they are prepared to take advantage of every opportunity that summer presents. Word acquisition through continuous personalized reading in the summer is one of the most significant strategies a child can use to expand her working vocabulary. It is shameful to lose intellectual ground just because the time of the year is summer and summer is “for fun.”