Teaching children in the primary grades presents two humongous challenges: close the background knowledge gaps that children bring to their school-based learning and create a foundation for life-long learning. These two goals do not have to be competitive or counter-productive, but often they are made so. Our challenge is to do the right work at the right time to help all children by accomplishing both of these goals.

In any new academic learning that children face in 4K through second grade, the greatest instructional hurdle is creating the framework of background knowledge that allows the new learning to make sense. Once children possess the language and experiences from which new learning emerges, it is very likely that they will be able to learn the new information and skills they are taught. The reality is that children who enroll in 4K and Kindergarten bring with them a wide range of intellectual information and experiences. Children whose parents talk with and read to them using real world words have the advantage of hearing and repeating words that are beyond their age. Like clothing that is oversized for a young child, they will grow into those words. The same is true when children are “out in the world.” Parents who take their children to museums, zoos, national parks, libraries, and travel away from their neighborhoods and cities give their children intellectual experiences that grow larger over time. Conversely, children who are not exposed to language and “out in the world” experiences greater than their age are consistently disadvantaged in their school learning. That is, unless we back-build their vocabulary and provide them with indirect experiences from which to have the framework to understand new learning.

How do we know this? Two fields of evidence describe the problem. Children who have early language and experiential development are better prepared for later learning, and children who are not proficient readers by third grade and do not have a strong background knowledge are educationally at risk.

“Although it is true that the extent to which students will learn this new content is dependent on factors such as the skill of the teacher, the interest of the student, and the complexity of the content, the research literature supports one compelling fact: what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information relative to the content.

To interpret this average correlation, let’s consider one student, Jana, who is at the 50th percentile in terms of both her background knowledge and her academic achievement. Envision Jana’s achievement at the 50th percentile as shown in the middle of Figure 1.1. (For a more detailed explanation of this example, see Technical Note 2 on pp. 127–129.) If we increase her background knowledge by one standard deviation (that is, move her from the 50th to the 84th percentile), her academic achievement would be expected to increase from the 50th to the 75th percentile (see the bars on the right side of Figure 1.1). In contrast, if we decrease Jana’s academic background knowledge by one standard deviation (that is, move her from the 50th to the 16th percentile), her academic achievement would be expected to drop to the 25th percentile (see the bars on the left side of Figure 1.1). These three scenarios demonstrate the dramatic impact of academic background knowledge on success in school. Students who have a great deal of background knowledge in a given subject area are likely to learn new information readily and quite well. The converse is also true.”

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104017/chapters/The-Importance-of-Background-Knowledge.aspx“

A student who can’t read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time. Add poverty to the mix, and a student is 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2011/04/the_disquieting_side_effect_of.html

The right work is backfilling vocabulary and indirect experiences for children who do not have these while extending the vocabulary and school-based experiences for all children until the vocabulary and school-necessary background knowledge of all children is approximately the same. It would be easy and equally criminal to disregard the need of children who already possess a strong age-appropriate vocabulary and background knowledge in order to focus all the school’s efforts on those who do not. The right work is teaching all students their appropriate age level curricula while taking the time to back-teach children who do not have enough language or experience to approach their new learning. Back-teaching is not a derogatory or discriminatory term. It is a word that is factual and temporary that describes an educational status and need.

Back-teaching requires

• a multi-year commitment to bring all children to an approximately similar place in their language and school-based experiences. It is not the responsibility of a single teacher; it is the school’s responsibility because the right work must be conducted throughout the primary years.

• a commitment to the goal of equalized vocabulary and educational experiences by the end of third grade. This commitment surrenders traditional demands placed upon daily assignments or homework to the larger goal of assuring more than a year’s vocabulary and experiential learning every year. These usual drivers of daily instruction are not completely ignored but they are secondary assessments of a child’s progress.

• strong curricular preparation. A teacher cannot conjure up back-teaching on a day by day basis. The school must possess a library of instructional strategies and materials for teaching vocabulary and for providing in-direct experiences (virtual field trips).

• strong instructional time management in the classroom. The classroom teacher is the lead instructor who prescribes both her own back-teaching activities and those of the Title 1 and ELL and any other instructional support professionals available. If the focus for these supports is blended into the big picture commitment, they will accomplish their specific programmatic objectives.

• parents and family must be incorporated into the big picture. Moms and dads must be informed of the multi-year goal and, if they do not have the materials at home, such as books and literature, be provided these things by the school. School liaisoning plays a significant role in helping working parents find the time in their adult commitments to talk to and read with their children.

And, the most significant requirement is a change in how educators view a child’s readiness for learning. Children no longer will be placed on a curve of learning readiness based upon home advantages that historically have led to a disparate curve of learning achievement. No matter where the child starts, all children must be prepared to achieve similar educational outcomes by the end of third grade.

Reports galore. It is easy for a reader of educational literature to be swamped by the hundreds of reports that are published each year. Some should be scanned. Some should be shredded. Some should be taken to heart and used to inform new practice. And, some should be considered for how their data and methodologies can illuminate the work of local schools.

The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation commissioned and published a repeat of its 2007 and 2009 Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card of Educational Effectiveness report cards.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2014/09/state_leaders_and_laggards_report.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS3

The report is understood within the biases of a chamber of commerce study. This is illustrated in the first paragraph of the Introduction.

“In our increasingly globalized world, an effective, first class education is more and more critical. For businesses to compete globally and for the U.S. economy to continue to grow, access to high-quality talent and a skilled workforce is essential. While the numerous benefits of an educated society are well documented—higher earnings, reduced inequality, and improved health and well-being, to name just a few—solutions to the challenges facing business will be solved by those countries that can access the best and brightest human capital and thereby gain a competitive advantage. Failure to compete will not only exacerbate unemployment, poverty, and inequality, but it will put the nation at risk of long-term economic stagnation.”

Taken as a whole, the report is a solid interpretation of selected educational data displayed on a state-by-state basis. To their credit, the US Chamber used categories that relate to most of the major mandates for educational reform. Also, to their credit, the Chamber did not restrain from objectively grading the states. The Ds and Fs are both many and apparently deserved.

So, what is the import of the Leaders and Laggards for a local school district? If there is not local import, this and any other report quickly distances itself from local interest – shelf it. To the contrary, this report can be localized.

The Chamber selected NAEP data because these data can be compared with the data from OECD reports. Good for international comparison, but unusable by local schools. NAEP data is not available at the district or school level and only selectively at the state level. So, substitute ACT test data for NAEP data. Use local ACT data instead of NAEP data in these reports:

• Academic Achievement

• Academic Achievement for Low-Income and Minority Students

• Report on Investment

• Truth in Advertising

• International Competitiveness

Use local AP data and other local data in place of state AP data and other state data.

Local schools should consider making this local interpretation of the Leaders and Laggards report for these reasons.

1. So many reports decry the lack of reform effectiveness by the states and local school districts and do so by generalization. Interpreting the data gives local leaders a local look at these effectiveness issues.

2. So many reports and so little local import. When a school can use a national study and tailor the methodology to illustrate its effectiveness status, local leaders have a meaningful data to talk about.

3. The Leaders and Laggards provides a framework for comparison over time – 2007, 2009 and 2013. Change over time is the proper view for any consideration of educational effectiveness reforms.

4. Lastly, there are many, large differences between a state’s status on educational effectiveness reforms and a local school’s status. The results for many local school districts will be better and more positive than their state’s results. Local leaders cannot make good decisions for future and needed improvements based upon generalized state reports.

So, local leaders, take the time and make the effort to look at this report. Regardless of your state’s status, is your school district a Leader or a Laggard?

The world of the classroom teacher is not what it once was. Use all three tenses of the word change – past, present and future – and you are describing the status of a teacher in any classroom in the United States. In the comparative, today’s teacher is not the same as your mother’s teacher and tomorrow’s teacher will not be the same as yours. The future of teaching is not what it used to be and educational leadership is trying its darnedest to help the person known as a teacher transform into her next and her successive iterations.

My wife and I watched butterflies recently while walking in a nearby state park. A butterfly is transfixing; a swarm of butterflies is visually stupefying. They were beautiful and bewildering. But, watching these beauties peeked our aging memories. How long does a butterfly live? Is the butterfly we watched in late August the same butterfly that migrated from Mexico or thereabouts to Wisconsin last spring? So, sitting on a rock wall we Googled and were reminded that the answers are a matter of weeks and “nope”. A year of butterflies is comprised of four life cycles. We were watching the third, I think. This butterfly did not migrate from nor will it migrate back to Mexico. It was born locally, is living locally, and will die locally, but not before laying the eggs of the fourth annual cycle of butterflies, those that those will migrate south and lay the eggs of next year’s first cycle. Butterflies? So, what does this have to do with teaching?

Teachers must transform or their current status as a teacher will perish, metaphorically speaking, just like the third cycle butterfly we watched fly out over the waters of Green Bay will perish. The transformation of a teacher is a change from an older skill set through the chrysalis of professional development to newer skill set. If not a more beautiful teacher/creature, butterflies are more beautiful than caterpillars, what will a transformed teacher be after this transformation? That is a chrysalis question!

From reading much of the daily political and professional literature regarding mandates and demands for educational reform, the key word in a changing teacher’s world is “effective”. I will now proceed to overuse the word “effective” in the context of the mandates and demands. Tomorrow’s teacher will be more effective in causing children to be better learners and higher achievers that today’s teacher. The term effective relates to qualitative differences that may or may not be quantified but will be observed and recorded. Almost every program that educational leaders are examining to assist in transforming teachers includes the phrase “… a more effective teacher…” or “…more effective teaching practices…” In “administrative talk”, effective refers to the credibility and reliability of what the teacher does to cause children to achieve measureable learning.

How will we know that a transformed teacher is a more effective teacher? By their effects. If we place learning on a scale of 1 to 1oo and consider any aspect of child learning as the aspect of interest on that scale, teachers are responsible for moving the needle of measurement forward from the current status to an improved and greater status tomorrow. The particular aspect may be academic learning, such as reading and comprehending complex texts or quantifiable problems using mathematics. Or, it may be performance-based learning, such as in music, art or theater. Or, it may be social learning, such as the ability to collaborate and effectively work in groups. Moving the needle may refer to an immediate gain in learning achievement, as in causing annual growth, or it may refer to learning over time, as in causing all high school graduates to be college and/or career ready. In all matters related to teachers, the requirement is that teachers become more effective in causing positive changes in learning. No matter the aspect of education, the finger of change points to the teacher to be “the” causation of moving the needle that measures learning status. Effective teachers move the needle.

So, what will happen in the teacher chrysalis that will turn today’s apparently less effective teacher into tomorrow’s more effective teacher? In simple terms, it will be the same causation that teachers are expected to affect in their classrooms. Educational leaders and professional developers will be required to cause improvement in a teacher’s skill sets so that effective use of those improved skill sets will cause improved student achievement. Not yet close to answering the question of what happens in the chrysalis? Consider these two transforming agents.

First, the teacher must become a more effective learner of effective teaching practices. I used the word twice in the last sentence for a purpose. There is no getting around the fact that the teacher alone is the most significant element in changing teaching practices. Think of it as volition. If the teacher wants to, the teacher will. In the past, volition was soft. A teacher may or may not have chosen to change or even to engage wholeheartedly in professional development. Their professional life was not on the line. Today, volition is hard. In order to be an employed teacher, a teacher must be an effective user of effective teaching practices. Like the butterfly cycles, the soft era of teacher evolutionary change has ended and the hard era of teacher revolutionary change is upon us. The chrysalis of professional development is not optional nor is it for the lighthearted. Caterpillars do not exit the chrysalis stage as caterpillars.

Second, teachers will need extreme coaching in order to effectively learn new skills sets for teaching more effectively. Why coaches? Because it is nigh unto impossible for a working teacher to become a changed teacher alone. The reason that help is necessary lies in this analogy. Try competing in a marathon and somewhere between the 6th and 20th mile learn that you don’t have a powerful enough kick to beat your competitors to the finish line. The only way to develop a powerful kick is to practice “kicking” or sprinting for half miles at a time while you run the marathon. Even though you can’t stop running your marathon, you must execute a series of sprints so that when you near the 25th mile you can kick to the finish line. Impossible! For a marathon runner, but not for a teacher. This is what the mandates for teacher reform are demanding. A “teaching” teacher who must become a more effective teacher while teaching children in her classroom every day and being held accountable for their learning achievement. This is why expert/coaches are essential.

Coaching provides the necessary and discreet focus on a set of teaching practices while the teacher teaches. During coaching episodes that take place within a normal teaching day, the expert/coach gives the teacher direct instruction, observed practice, insightful and clinical feedback, clarifying instruction, and validation for the effective use of an effective teaching practice. Some wonder why a teacher should not be expected to make these transformations alone, without coaching. They can’t because of the dual and contradictory demand that they conduct ongoing teaching of their assigned students and curriculum while at the same time learning new strategies for teaching those same curricula and students. They can, however, with the assistance of episodic coaching, clinical but not evaluative training, and time and assistance for inserting newly learned effective teaching practices into their ongoing teaching. And, that is why educational leaders are adding coaches to district personnel rosters.

Now, the hard work begins. Educational leaders must do what they are hired to do – make an informed decision, give direction and provide resources. It would be easy and fully unfair to say that tomorrow’s effective teacher must be effective in all of the new aspects of teacher effectiveness accountability. Administrators must make the hard decision of prioritizing the skills sets of effective teaching practices they will require a teacher to learn and practice. It is fair to assign different skill sets for different teachers but it is not fair to assign all skill sets to any one teacher or all teachers collectively. It is most fair and reasonable to point at one skill set at a time so that over time a teacher effectively learns improved effective teaching practices. Administrators must use backward design to cause this – children will demonstrate higher achievement as a result of their teachers using more effective teaching practices as a result of professional development between teachers and expert/coaches that was prioritized and supported by administrative actions.

Administrators must be careful not to hire token coaches or coaches without mandates. A token coach is a single or handful of trainer/coaches hired so that the district can take credit of having hired coaches to assist the professional development of district teachers. Token hires will not get the job done. A coach without a mandate is hired to cause an untold number of changes in an untold number of teachers. A mandate is the administrator’s accountability line with a coach – “you are hired to cause these teachers to learn and use these specific effective teaching practices.” Expert/coaches with clear mandates can cause the required effects.

What an incredible and exciting time in the life of a teacher. Change is and will happen. Change will be most effective if it is the natural result of a change process that is well thought out, well designed, well administered, well coached and well learned by effective teachers. The chrysalis is a magical place for changing a caterpillar into a butterfly. The chrysalis of change for effective teaching can be just as profound.

Parent, have you ever wondered how it happens when you tell your three children to “straighten up their room” that they respond in completely different ways. One may get right to the task and not only pick up and put away everything that lays about and put it all in the right places. Another may walk around the room, pick up several things and put them away, kind of, but then find something, undoubtedly something laying under the bed for weeks, and sit down in the middle of the room to play with it. And, a third may look at you as if to say “Totally not going to happen, Mom.” Most of the time, you, the parent, straightens up your children’s rooms.

Now, consider what happens when a teacher begins an instructional lesson for a class of children. Why would we think that the response of children is any different at school than it is at home? However, unlike the parent who asks children to straighten their rooms and then does it herself, a teacher cannot do the work of learning for her students. She needs to provoke them to learn in some mystical manner.

“Context is worth 80 IQ points.” So said Alan Kay, computer scientist and visionary. Let’s consider this statement and its relevance to teaching and the improvement of learning.

I enjoy watching televised golf and eavesdropping on a caddy talking to his professional golfer. The lesson begins as they approach the golf ball laying wherever it landed, hopefully in the fairway. Using his course book with all of its handwritten notes and measurements, looking at the treetops to discern wind direction and strength, and examining the ball of the ground and the lay of the land around it, the caddy tells the player everything that should be known about the context of the impending golf shot. And, certainly the caddy points to the glob of mud half-hidden on the underside of the ball. To every human endeavor there are impediments.

This conversation takes place approximately 70 times, give or take a few misplayed shots, during every round of golf. No golf shot ever is made in the same exact context as another. The variables are slightly different every time. But every professional golf shot is played in the context of the moment.

Also, I enjoy listening to a teacher replay what she was considering as she began a new lesson to her fourth grade children. Let’s say there are 25 children in the class, so let’s say that there are 25 sets of variables, some with small or large learning impediments, awaiting the new lesson. Each child is a complete set of variables unto her or himself and seldom no child presents the same exact readiness and preparation for learning today that she did yesterday or will tomorrow.

Multiplied by 25, the readiness and preparation of all children in the classroom presents our teacher with a very complex teaching challenge. She is responsible for causing each child to learn this lesson, so must find the motivational words, the initial instructional demonstration, and the reinforcing examples that will cause most of the 25 children to begin to understand what is to be learned. She also must quickly extend and expand her instruction and exampling for children who will quickly grasp the new learning while taking the time to listen to and watch carefully for instructional feedback from children who will be challenged by this new learning.

For a perceptive and ped0gogically strong teacher understanding the contextual readiness and the preparation of each child certainly is worthy of an additional 80 IQ points. Atop normal intelligence, these 80 points make her a genius, or just smart enough to teach her lesson that day. But, tomorrow will be another day!

So, what does a smart teacher need in order to consistently have access to the additional 80 IQ points that comes with context? She needs a caddy beside her in the classroom just like Phil Mickelson has Jim “Bones” McKay beside him wherever and whenever he plays. Bones McKay is constantly providing Phil Mickelson with context. A teacher needs someone beside her often enough to assure that her teaching always is adjusted to the best contextual information available.

In many schools and school districts, this caddy-person is an “instructional coach.” Why there are not more instructional coaches assuring that teachers have the same contextual awareness as any professional golfer receives is not an answer I can make. If the general world accepts that professional golfers need caddies to give them the context for hitting a small ball back and forth in a perfectly landscaped park, then we should be more than willing to provide caddies to the teachers in whom we entrust the intellectual futures of our children.

It’s all about the context, stupid! Thank you, President Clinton.

As a golfer, I admired advice attributed to Tom Kite, outstanding PGA player and course architect. “Tee the ball as high as you can. Swing as hard as you can. Hit the ball as far as you can. We’ll fix the problems along the way.”

As a teacher, I admired a similar advice telling teachers to listen first and often and talk afterward and less. To your students, “Tell me what you know. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you would like to know. We’ll clarify and correct and then expand and extend along the way.”

Each of these seems to treat its pupils naturally. When we prematurely overlay the heavy hand of pre-direction, initiate compensating interventions and create the fear of mistakes, the resulting learning most frequently meets our expectations. It needs redirection, remedial interventions and correcting interventions to accommodate the mistakes of our foreshadowing.

Learning is a natural phenomenon. Let it unfold naturally and the learning child will remember you as a very wise teacher.