Most professional development is a plan to fail because too many school districts do not take advantage of what we know about quality professional development. Typical professional development is more about the obligation to inform teachers about issues and prepare teachers for events than it is about the opportunity to train teachers to improve student achievement.

There is a small but growing body of professional study about professional development. “What Makes Professional Development Effective – Results from a National Sample of Teachers” by Garet et al tells us –

• The most common type of professional development is the after-school and summer workshop. And, the most criticized form of PD is the after-school and summer workshop.
• Many teachers are not prepared to implement teaching practices based upon high standards of deeper student understanding and competency. Many teachers learned to teach using models of learning and teaching that focused heavily on memorizing facts and little upon developing deeper understandings and this is how they teach on a daily basis.
• PD that assists teachers to learn new teaching methods shares several features. These include the involvement of teachers in a rich, multiple-year experience in collaborative planning of instruction; the clear linkage of improved teaching practices with the improvement of student achievement; PD that is clearly focused upon student thinking, the curriculum to be learned and pedagogy; and, open access to alternative ideas and methods about teaching and the opportunity to observe and experiment with these and then reflect upon their effectiveness.
• Two significant impediments to high quality PD are cost and balanced effort. Professional development is one of the first cuts when budgets are reduced while the cost of teacher time and travel and training increases. Because of limited financial resources, PD always is underfunded and on the cheap. And, most PD leaders try to provide some training to all teachers at the detriment of providing quality training to any teachers.

http://www.imoberg.com/files/Unit_D_ch._24_–_Garet_et_al._article.pdf

We also know that PD that is displayed as a logical plan has a higher chance of success. Logical plans are based upon local data, clearly describe student and teacher learning needs, explicitly describe professional learning outcomes in terms of improved content knowledge and teaching skills, specify needed support in terms of time and resources that will be applied to the PD experience, and explain how the effects of the content and skills PD will be evaluated.

http://mdk12.org/share/pdf/MarylandTeacherProfessionalDevelopmentPlanningGuide.pdf

Yet, this is what a typical beginning-of-the-school year explanation of a school district PD plan sounds like.

Thank you Dr. Jones for explaining the district’s instructional goals for this school year. Everyone shares your concerns regarding the district’s need to improve student achievement in reading and math.

Our professional development plan for the school year is very promising. This summer we planned the entire year’s PD calendar to assure that everyone is professionally prepared for another outstanding school year.

The two pre-service days will provide all teachers with an overview of all the changes within the district since the last school year with reports from every district department. During the two days, approximately six hours will be allowed for classroom preparations.

A 30-minute staff meeting is scheduled for the second Monday of each month. These after school meetings will help teachers prepare for things like the statewide testing in October, the Open House in November, Christmas concerts in December, and first semester grades in January.

Four in-service days are scheduled; one each quarter of the school year. There will be three presentations on each day to allow our district coordinators to inform all teachers of how we are meeting the state mandates related to their departments. There will be time for teachers to ask questions at each session.

Teacher requests to attend professional conferences were submitted last spring and we have allocated substitute teacher time and travel money to as many requests as we could. In order to provide conference attendance to as many teachers as possible, only one day of multiple day conferences was approved and mileage reimbursements are limited to 50 miles.

Also, meetings are scheduled for all Title 1 and Title 3 teachers, as well as all special education teachers, to review new regulations for these programs. Due to our limited sub budget, we are not able to provide substitute teachers to cover your absences for these meetings. Children will be assigned to regular ed for additional classroom time.

The National Staff Development Council completed a multi-year study of professional development in US schools and recommends these points for improved PD.

1. PD should be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice.

2. PD should focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific content.

3. PD should align with school improvement priorities and goals.

4. PD should build strong working relationships among teachers.

http://learningforward.org/docs/pdf/nsdcstudy2009.pdf

So, plan your PD locally. And, plan your local PD with a backwards design.

Develop and commit to intensive and ongoing training of cadres of teachers who share similar teaching assignments for a group of students at the same school site. Multiple cadres can mean multiple groups within a school, multiple schools, and cadres from multiple school districts.

Commitment means providing adequate released time for massed instruction of specific content and pedagogical skills followed with adequate distributed time for application of, reflection about, and reinforcement of what has been learned.

Commitment also means diminishing the usual distractors of PD. Bring the PD closer to the teachers’ work site instead of having them spend released time traveling to the training. Supply adequate time for the teachers being trained to prepare students and substitute teachers for their significant absences from the classroom. And, connect principals and curriculum supervisors to the training so that everyone responsible for improving student achievement is on the same page.

Quality PD is not the same PD for every teacher. Commit to training teachers relative to their relationship to district priorities and goals. The provision of quality PD also does not mean that all teachers are engaged in PD all of the time or at the same time. It is okay for some teachers to be engaged in PD while others are not.

Finally, understand the difference between informing and training. Assuring that all teachers are informed about current issues and concerns related to the classroom, grade level, school and school district is the work of communications. Communications is not professional development. Staff meetings and newsletters and blogs and wikis are appropriate for good vehicles for communications. A half-day workshop or seminar can enhance the sharing of information. However, these episodic meetings regardless of frequency are no substitute for intensive, continuous and goals-based professional development.

Consider the significance of student teaching to the initial training of a teacher. Most teachers believe that their student teaching was the most important, formative experience in their preparation as a teacher. In order to effect significant changes and improvement in a veteran teacher’s content understanding and pedagogical skills, effective PD practices must present a student teaching-like commitment of time and resources, instruction and practice, reflection and reinforcement if educational leaders have any hope of causing real improvements in student achievement.

Change is a constant in our lives as nothing stays the same forever. Change is a constant phenomenon because the interplay of time and the human propensity to muck around mean that eventually even the most stalwart feature of our human world will change. Change is what it is – just a multi-dimensional shifting from one point of reference to another point of reference in preparation for yet another shift. It is content free and totally impersonal. Change is just a process of nature.

As irrefutable as change is, change scares most people spitless. And, even as change scares people, spitless people, and the extent to which spitless people will go, can cause organizations undergoing planned change to miserably fail to complete a change process.

The diagram below displays a theory of change.

http://stevenmsmith.com/ar-satir-change-model/

In the Satir Change Model, the “late status quo” is the usual condition of most healthy organizations. Good health means that the organization always is making slight adjustments in its forward movement. As the elements that surround the organization change due to economic, political and cultural shifts, to name a few, in its general environment, the organization makes slight adjustments in its forward path. It is like the airplane flying from Boston to Los Angeles, never flying on a straight line but always making compass and altitude adjustments until it successfully lands in LAX.

Pay attention to the sequence of “late status quo, foreign element, resistance, and chaos.” It is how an organization responds to the chaos that determines its potential for successfully completing planned changes.

Planned change actually is the introduction of a pre-considered “foreign element” into the organizational environment. Sometimes referred to as an improvement or innovative practice, or, as the next generation in positioning the organization to meet a better future, the introduction of the new idea, practice, product or personnel is regarded by the status quo as foreign. It is the new kid in the neighborhood that nobody knows. It is an uninvited guest at the company party. At its heart, it represents the unknown. For some, the unknown is welcome and they embrace it. For others, the unknown is greatly disturbing and excites their fight or flight responses.

For the sake of an educational example, let’s examine the Common Core State Standards as a “foreign element.” The initial exposure of the Core looked like another compass or altitude adjustment in the status quo of K-12 education in the United States. After all, the Core was authorized, approved and disseminated by the National Governors Council, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and a select group of Fortune 500 companies. Just another planned change.

Following a brief time for first blush reading, examination and analysis, the Core initiated a ripple of adjustments to all of the economic, political and cultural status quo systems within education. Many felt the Core may be like new math/old math controversy or the debate between phonics and whole language. Not quite. Within months and in a not-too-subtle manner, the federal Department of Education used the Core as a driver for change within the fifty state Departments of Public Instruction. State adoption of the Core was part of the quid pro quo for a waiver from the draconian mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. Most states found this a welcome consolation. Forty-five states and state education departments adopted the Core, accepted the waiver, and other financial incentives of the Race To The Top program. For a brief time, the change process resembled the Satir model and was preparing for “transformation.”

The friction of change was different for local school districts that did their first blush reading, examination and analysis of the Core and found an instant need for major professional development. Regional educational agencies and national professional development vendors responded to the alarm of the local school districts with a wide array of workshops, seminars and training institutes. Whereas, there were early adopters of the Core by the major powerbrokers at the national, state and local levels, it did not take long for the friction of change to mount a growing resistance. Call it “slap back.”

The issues of resistance to the Core rose in each of the factors of the status quo – economic, political and cultural. Taxpayers balked at the implied financial resources needed to retrain four million teachers and the new educational materials needed for the alignment of instruction with the Core’s new and different academic standards. State and local school district budgets already were maxed out. Money became an issue. Politicians at all levels balked at the federalization of public education which constitutionally is under the purview of the state. The Core became synonymous with the Affordable Care Act. Partisanship and radicalism became an issue. Somehow, there also is a fear that the Core represents the forces of advocates of One World and this was an affront to patriotic Americans. And, traditionalists argued that each local school district historically established its own educational requirements and the Core trampled on local control. The reduction of emphasis upon classic literature in favor of increasing instructional focus upon a literacy for contemporary information was hotly argued. Local control of the quantitative and qualitative focus of instruction became an issue.

Resistance rose and chaos ensued. And, in this episode of chaos there appeared to be no allowance for a “transforming idea, integration, and new status quo.” (see the diagram) The future direction seemed to be any direction but the Core.

It is how organizations respond to resistance and chaos that bespeaks their true health. At all times, there are elements of resistance and chaos within the life and times of every organization. Most are accommodated within its negotiated systems. Wages and benefits are negotiated. Discontinuation of old products necessitates retooling for new products. Work groups may be transplanted from one geographic location to another, sometimes across the country or world. New skills sets are needed by new employees as veterans and outmoded skill sets transist from the workforce. Each has change creates its own uncertainties and each uncertainty its incumbent resistance. Healthy organizations are able to accommodate the give and take of change. Yet, life adjusts and the organization goes on. Not so true for unhealthy organizations.

Increasingly, however, resistance and ensuing chaos in our contemporary culture have found new types of power. Resistors do not seek accommodation of planned change; they seek to restructure and sometimes strengthen the status quo as a price for diminishing the chaos. As a result, organizational leaders wet a finger and lift it to the wind each time the resistance bell is rung. Within the chaos, leaders are determining their personal stake in the nature of the attempted organizational changes or if they can harness the chaos for their personal advantage. This capacity is forging a new generation national, state and local leaders.

It is a given that an organization does not emerge from its dealing with the issues of chaos along the same pathway it held prior to the chaos. There will be change, but not the change that was planned.

The upshot is that change may no longer be a planned process assisting an organization to navigate from point A to point B. Organizations now may exist within the pinball machine of time in which they put the “ball” of their wanted change into motion not knowing clearly how each element in the system will tap and redirect the change. Finally, however, ball will come to rest and that is where the organization will find itself. A plane headed for LAX may be anywhere on the globe.

Hence, any persons contemplating a planned change within their organization must understand the new dynamics of change theory. Plan with resistance and chaos in mind. Not to do so, is to court organizational disaster.

Huh? is an appropriate question when the status quo of schlock is deemed preferable to improving the education of generations of children.

The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for the Social Studies was written in the early 1980s and confirmed in 1998. There has been no work by the WI Department of Public Instruction on social studies standards since 1998. The delay in standards reconsideration was further put on hold with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics in 2010. The DPI’s professed plan was to adopt the CCSS for Science and Social Studies when they were released sometime in this decade.

However, in October 2012 the Council of Chief State School Officers (state school superintendents) terminated any further discussion of common state standards beyond the already released English Language Arts and mathematics standards. The CCSSO along with the National Governor’s Council and Achieve, a group of Fortune 500 companies, comprised the educational reform leadership for writing and authorizing the Common Core standards for ELA and math. The state superintendents, state governors and corporate leaders were on a roll in leading educational standards revision until conservative political forces at the national level caused the elected officials of Common Core leadership to abandon the work.

Conservative politics also has been at play at the state level of educational reforms. Wisconsin was one of 45 states to adopt the ELA and math Common Core standards and was on track to adopt the science and social standards as they were released. In March 2013, Governor Scott Walker and all members of the state legislature received letters from individuals representing Patriot networks, TEA Party committees, Faith and Freedom coalitions, and Young Americans for Liberty asking them to abolish the Common Core standards in Wisconsin. Their complaint is that the Common Core standards are not rigorous enough for Wisconsin children, the Common Core is a federal intrusion into the state’s responsibility for education and further displaces local control, and that the nationalization of educational standards is another “Obamacare.”

http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/131126Walker

“I’d like the Legislature to hold those hearings,” Walker said in a response to Wisconsin Reporter’s question on Common Core. “And in the larger context I’d like us to be in the position where we can identify our own unique standards that I think in many ways will be higher and more aggressive than the ones they’re talking about.”

http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/scott-walker-says-state-should-have-more-rigorous-standards-than/article_32eff547-1ea8-5393-b297-25915eb7d744.html

So, what are we to think about social studies education today? As the Governor touts that every child is to become college and career ready as a result of their education in Wisconsin, what should we know about a student’s understanding of government and citizenship, economics and personal finance, US and world history, geography and world cultures? Not to mention the ways in which sociology and psychology help us to understand ourselves and the behaviors of those around us. In Wisconsin, the expectation of a social studies education is now thirty years old and aging fast. We are teaching Millenials and their children the social studies we taught their grandparents.

As the academic standards for social studies now are locked in time in Wisconsin, what do we know about the quality of this status quo? Actually, we know that the quality is not good. In 2011 the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Advancing Educational Excellence evaluated the “State of State US History Standards” for each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. This is the Fordham summary of that evaluation.

“Presidents’ Day 2011 has come and gone, but George Washington would be dismayed by the findings of this new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Reviewers evaluated state standards for U.S. history in grades K-12. What they found is discouraging: Twenty-eight states—a majority—deserve D or F grades for their academic standards in this key subject. The average grade across all states is a dismal D. Among the few bright spots, South Carolina earns a straight A for its standards and six other jurisdictions—Alabama, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia—garner A-minuses.”

Specifically, Wisconsin’s US History standards earned a grade of “F.”

“Wisconsin’s U.S. history standards, for all practical purposes, do not exist. Their sole content is a list of ten eras in American and Wisconsin history, followed by a few brief and vague directives to understand vast swaths of history and broad historical concepts. Determining an actual course’s scope, sequence, and content rests entirely on the shoulders of local teachers and districts.

Local districts must, we are told, have “the flexibility to determine” not only classroom sequence and organization but also the “content of their social studies curriculum.” For “if teachers are to understand fully the performance standards and the spiraling nature of the content and concepts, they must be actively involved in the process of selecting content and materials.” Yet the only result of such “spiraling” seems likely to be dizzy teachers. They are told to “select” content for their courses but are given no meaningful guidance in doing so. The state abdicates the responsibility of standards to define minimum and shared content expectations for all students. Teachers and districts are left on their own.”

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-us.html

In an imperfect, or at least an overly political world, the immediate question regarding educational standards may be “which is the best basis for student instruction” when every set of new standards will have its critics. Wisconsin is doing a “back to the future” to reinstate/confirm all of its Model Academic Standards. Politically-speaking they may be good enough. Educationally-speaking they are not. Using the Fordham Institute evaluation as a screener, Wisconsin’s English standards earned a D- grade and the mathematics standards earned an F. And, the science and social studies standards for Wisconsin each earned grades of F in the Fordham study.

Wisconsin could do another version of back to the future and re-employ state authorship with legislative oversight. However, the effect of washing educational standards through the legislative process was official adoption of Model Academic Standards graded as D- and F. This process of creating state consensus for approving academic standards is only as good as the last critic’s demands when that person’s vote is the deciding vote cast. Or, when all radical, liberal or conservative, opinions must be accommodated. This consensus process only breeds mediocrity.

In regard to social studies education, should Wisconsin continue to use of homegrown standards rated by Fordham as “F” or the state consider other resources? Should Wisconsin give in to the mandates of local control, vis-à-vis 1984, process that produced “non-directive” and “vague” standards?

This writing is not intended to endorse the Common Core standards as the definitive word in reformed education in the United States. While there are many things good about the Common Core there also are many things that are not good. Diane Ravitch’s speech to the Modern Language Association raises many valid criticisms and questions regarding the Common Core. Interestingly, she was a Core supporter but dropped her support after more intensive investigation. Yet, Ravitch opens an invitation to fix the current ELA and math standards and apply the “fix” procedures to future attempts at Core science and social studies standards.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/

As a re-beginning point, the National Council for the Social Studies’ C3 Framework (college, career and civic life) was written by national social studies experts, including members of most of the national organizations for the individual disciplines of the social studies. The authors are authentic experts in their field of study. The C3 Framework is not a set of standards. The Framework is a template of social studies principles that should be incorporated into an interdisciplinary instruction of civics, economics, geography and history. The authors of the Framework leave decisions of content and pedagogy to be made by organizations of classroom educators in the various states. They recognized the minefield that exists in attempting to author standards that must be supported by the various special interest groups in our nation. Most importantly, the Framework embeds intellectual inquiry and investigation, strategies for collaborative problem-solving, and ramped up requirements for reading and writing skills. Lastly, the C3 is not tied to the national testing that surrounds the Common Core. The Framework presents a purely academic platform upon which Wisconsin could create a 2014 set of social studies standards.

http://www.socialstudies.org/c3

So, what is the answer to “huh?” The political stalemate to replacing failed educational standards in Wisconsin is not an acceptable status quo for children who have only one pass through their K-12 education. Since 1984, almost thirty graduating classes from Wisconsin high schools have gone into the world with the background of “F” social studies standards. For the social studies, if not the Common Core approach and if not the C3 Framework, then what? Or, is the answer from the right another push toward the privatization of education where state-approved academic standards are not required?

Talking with young children is a treat. As Art Linkletter noted in his 1945-1969 radio and television series, “kids say the darndest things.” Bill Cosby later hosted a television special based upon this Linkletter quote. But, unlike Linkletter and Cosby, I don’t listen to the stories children tell but to the words they use. Like sticking a thermometer under a child’s tongue to determine her general health, the words spoken atop the tongue are a very good gauge of her current educational status, potential for future educational success, and later economic potential as an adult. Words – the expulsion of a breath, a manipulation of tongue, lips and jaw, and the momentary expression of thought – weigh nothing, can be packed hundreds to the written page and even more to a minute of speech. Yet, these wisps of sound or scratch of writing are clear bellwethers of the intellectual person.

E. D. Hirsch initiated the educational discussion of cultural literacy in the 1980s pointing to the value of a person’s background knowledge and the personal vocabulary that person possesses as an expression of personal knowledge (Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, 1987). Hirsch and Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind, 1987) pointed educators away from the “theme” or teacher-written unit of classroom instruction toward an instruction of meaningful information based upon the child’s social and scientific worlds. Hirsch and Bloom began the argument that education should teach children a “core of knowledge” based upon real cultural and scientific information. Hirsch’s work assisted the Canadian government to restructure its national curriculum. Most recently, Hirsch has linked the lagging international test scores of children in the U.S. to a “knowledge deficit” that comes from recent trends in generalized and non-directed school curricula (The Knowledge Deficit, 2006).

Ongoing arguments about educating children are a dime-a-dozen with the educated and uneducated alike having almost unlimited capacity for airing their informed and uninformed opinions. How to teach children and what to teach children have educational, political, economic and socio-cultural aspects leaving most practicing educators scratching their heads.

In the absence of compelling argument, I like compelling evidence. There appears to be highly compelling and unopposed evidence of the following three facts.

1. There is a strong and positive correlation between an adult’s educational attainment and their annual income potential. Continuing and advanced education opens income-earning opportunities, it does not guarantee income earnings.

2. There is a strong and positive correlation between the volume and depth of a student’s working academic vocabulary and later success in school and eventual educational attainment. Vocabulary is related to reading and reading is related to academic success.

3. There is a strong and positive correlation between a child’s early development of an academic vocabulary and formative learning. Children who are exposed to and achieve a substantive vocabulary at an early age have real advantages over those who lack an early vocabulary.

Regarding education and income potential, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau publish an annual social and economic supplement that analyzes the annual earnings of people 25 years old and older. These data indicate median income levels which range broadly around the monetary value displayed. However, as a general indicator of income tendencies, there is a significant improvement in annual income based upon attained education levels. A person who attains a baccalaureate degree earns more than a high school graduate. A person with a Masters’ degree earns more than a person with a BA. Education pays off.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new03_028.htm

Success in school is not capricious. Just as those who are successful brain surgeons or carpenters or PGA golfers because they are highly skilled doctors, woodworkers and strikers of a golf ball, success in school is related to competence in what matters in school. The following excerpts from relevant research support the statement that a vocabulary, specifically academic vocabulary, is a significant indicator of a child’s formative learning and success in school, points 2 and 3 above.

“A child’s vocabulary is their passport to understanding and interpreting a wide range of texts. Unfortunately many children from low-income settings enter school with significantly smaller vocabularies than their more economically-advantaged peers. Hart & Risley’s (1995) research with young children showed a 30-million word gap by age three. This gap has an enormous impact on school success, with longitudinal research showing a strong correlation between the richness of vocabulary at age three and language test scores in vocabulary, listening, syntax and reading comprehension at ages 9 and 10.”

http://www.earlychildhoodwebinars.com/presentations/proven-strategies-early-education-administrators-can-use-to-help-teachers-close-the-vocabulary-gap-in-their-classrooms/

“Many research studies show that vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of success in school.” (Elley, W. B. 1988 New Vocabulary: How do Children Learn New Words)

“From decoding and comprehension to succinctly expressing one’s thoughts through writing, language skill, such as appropriately posing and replying to questions vocabulary knowledge, and inference, are vital for academic success.”

http://www.speechpathology.com/articles/language-and-reading-skills-their-1175ademic success.”

“Vocabulary and reading show highest correlation with educational development. Results of early reading and vocab tests are best indicators of later academic achievement on Iowa tests.” (R. L. Thorndike, 1973-74, Reading as reasoning)

“Ryder and Graves (1984) contend that a lack of vocabulary is one of the reasons for failure in school. In addition to this, Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) report that students who have a wide vocabulary knowledge, get higher grades than students who have a lack vocabulary.

Children who have reading and reading comprehension problems have limited vocabulary. Particularly as these children read expository tests, they have difficulty in comprehending these texts due to the fact these texts include very difficult words compared to narrative texts.”

http://www.academia.edu/1393974/Is_Vocabulary_a_Strong_Variable_Predicting_Reading_Comprehension_and_Does_the_Prediction_Degree_of_Vocabulary_Vary_according_to_Text_Types

“English vocabulary level has been shown to be strongly related to educational success. Vocabulary level is a useful predictor of academic ability, even for courses like Chemistry that do not emphasize language usage.” (Bowker, R. 1981 English vocabulary manual)

“Vocabulary correlates highly with SAT Verbal and ACT and these tests correlate with college achievement.” (Mathiasen, R. 1984 Predicting college achievement: A research view)

“Reading and writing are intricate and complex processes that are closely related to and dependent on other language abilities (Pearson & Stephens, 1994). Language is the vehicle by which individuals acquire literate behaviors. Without language, we could not effectively express our thoughts and opinions or understand the thoughts and opinions of others. Language plays an important role in the development of literacy during the school-age and adolescent years. Therefore, the reciprocal relationship between language and literacy is one that cannot be ignored when considering students’ academic success.

Knowing the importance of vocabulary is one thing. Doing related to what you know is another thing entirely. Googling “how to build vocabulary in children” results in many pages of citations including academic papers, blogs and personal opinions, and the enticements of commercial vendors. Generally, these citations can be divided into school-based and home-based applications. Each base of action, school and home, is an essential contributor to a child’s vocabulary development and, when coordinated, each element supports the child’s innate interests as well as academic needs in developing a strong working vocabulary.

From the school side, the work of Robert Marzano is particularly significant. His “Building Academic Vocabulary” (http://marzano-strategies.wikispaces.com/Building+Vocabulary) has been adopted by individual classrooms, schools and school districts, and state departments of public instruction. Marzano’s designs for a structured teaching and learning of domains of vocabulary is very close to the recommendations made by Hirsch. The learning of vocabulary needs to be by instructional design in order for a child to develop a skeletal structure of language with which to add quantity and quality to a personal vocabulary. There are too many words to allow vocabulary to be taught or learned randomly.

Parents of school-aged children should become informed regarding their school’s strategy for vocabulary development. Becoming informed is not a passive waiting for the school to tell you – it is a personal inquiry into how children learn vocabulary in that school. A parent’s inspection should include knowledge of how vocabulary is addressed in grade level reading and language arts instruction, especially in the child’s learning different word groups and their semantics. Vocabulary also should be taught in every subject area as part of that discipline’s academic base. In particular, vocabulary should be a strong component of science, social studies, and mathematics. In order to understand and talk the language of biology and chemistry, history, economics and geography, algebra and geometry, the child must know the terminology of each subject. Vocabulary is just as important in art and music, physical education and technical education, and business education. Learning a foreign language intuitively is a heavy dose of vocabulary instruction. Parents should know how their child learns the skills and concepts of language and vocabulary acquisition. Memorization is important to building a vocabulary, but building a vocabulary is more than memorization.

The home-based applications can and should be just as designed and thought out as the school-based. Marzano’s six step process for building vocabulary also works at home, especially as the “subjects” learned at home are just as context-heavy as the subjects learned at school. Parents can identify the vocabulary of their home and that of their neighborhood and community. The words and word groups native to home, family and community translate very well back into school instruction.

As examples, before traveling to a grandparent’s or relative’s home in another community or state, talking about differences in location (geography, science, and culture), routes of travel (geography, mathematics, economics, culture), and how to act and behave when away from home (culture, psychology, sociology) can cause a child to learn, appropriately use and reinforce many current and new words. Food preparation and home maintenance have their own vocabularies. Personal and family shopping experiences use unique word groups and specific words. There is a vocabulary lesson available in almost every aspect of a child’s life. Whereas, every activity need not be a vocabulary lesson, because children are natural learners, taking a moment to repeat or explain an activity-based word can pay dividends, especially when multiplied by the great number of individual activities children do in the course of a day.

Children are social beings and communicating with each other is a natural process in most lives. The use of words is automatic in almost all communicating. As such, the greater a child’s vocabulary, the more successful a child will be in communicating and understanding the communications of others. The greater a child’s background knowledge as represented by vocabulary, the greater that child’s ability to comprehend what happens in her daily life, and to conceptualize about her world. A child’s vocabulary is her key to opening the future of school and adult success.

When most of us purchase a new-to-us car, we expect that the car will have an engine and a transmission, four wheels that go around when the engine and transmission are engaged, and a compartment within which we can ride. A basic concept of what we expect. But, what if the car you find when they hand you the keys only has three wheels? Or, if there are pedals instead of an engine? Or, if there only two wooden benches upon which to sit inside the car? Does what you expect match with what you got? It’s all about expectations.

Then again, sometimes we receive things in the blind – sight unseen. Things arrive in the mail box or standing directly in front of us. Things pop up, people pop up, ideas pop up and events happen. Life sometimes happens in the blind when we don’t notice or we are not attentive. Getting something in the blind can be by choice or design and often is rather fun, especially if the something is whimsical and of no great consequence. Mostly, we don’t want things that are important to us to happen in the blind.

Our children’s education occurs mostly in the blind. We have expectations based upon our own education or that of older children. However, when it comes to a particular child, most of his or her education happens outside of our notice and immediate attention. A child goes to school for 180 days of the year with noticeable benchmarks of vacations, open houses, parent conferences and report cards. In between benchmarks, the school year is a long string of days when the child is out of the house.

The daily exchange between a parent and a child gives us insight into a parent’s expectation about schooling to be and their attentiveness to school life. I wonder what parents really expect a child to say at the supper table (or breakfast table or anytime when parents and children are regularly together) when he or she is asked “What did you learn at school today?” What is a parent expecting to hear? To what extent will what they expect to hear align with what their child actually says? Sadly, I think that most often a parent’s questions about a child’s school day are perfunctory, much like a “how are you?” is asked when seeing an acquaintance at the grocery. It is a question asked without much regard for the answer; a question asked in the blind. If a child made the usual comments about reading and writing and arithmetic with a comment about lunch and snuck in “oh, and I invited my teacher home for dessert tonight” would a parent even hear it? In most homes, there is a very low threshold of expectation when a parent talks with a child about their day at school.

You must know what you are expecting in order for what you get to make any sense or have any ordinate value. It may be more like playing horseshoes than not. Tossed shoes are expected to be somewhere near the post even if they are not ringers. Tosses that land out of the pit should raise your eyebrows, as in “… my teacher is coming for dessert.” You expect what a child says about a day in school to be somewhere close to your expectation – in proximity to the post of your understanding about what they should be learning.

To this point, I offer assistance for parents to help them know where today’s “post” is in the sandpit of school. Re-visualizing the educational post is important because most parents believe that their child’s educational “post” is the same “post” of their schooling 25 to 40 years ago. Interestingly, these same parents can readily contrast the changes in cars over 25 to 4o years and would not pay today’s prices for a car made 30 years ago. But, at the supper table, they judge what their child says about school based upon their own experiences in school more than 30 years before.

These references can assist.

Grade-by-Grade Learning Guide

http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/going-to-school/grade-by-grade/first/

This Guide describes the literacy, reading, math, science and social studies concepts that a child typically learns in each grade, K through 5. The authors also include descriptors of how children at each grade level learn and how learning changes across the grade levels.

Kindergarten through fifth grade: What your child should know

http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/531-K-5-benchmarks.gs

This source describes grade level learning as end-of-year outcomes – what the child should know at the end of each grade level. Working backwards, a parents can stage this learning across the school year. Know how the educational post moves during the year and pay attention to how close your child’s talk is to what he or she should be talking about.

Grade Level Application of Dolch Sight Words

Grade Level Application of Dolch Sight Word List

This resource uses Dolch sight words to describe student learning. Because facility with sight words opens a student’s readiness for learning, sight words are a good indicator of ongoing learning. Watch to see that your child can recognize these words whenever and wherever they are seen.

Building Academic Vocabulary – Oklahoma State Department of Education

Robert Marzano and his associates studied and identified the academic vocabulary that is required for learning success at each grade level and in each subject area. These are the words a child needs to know and use in order to be ready to learn and extend their learning.

http://ok.gov/sde/building-academic-vocabulary

Know more about your child’s learning “post” so that you can better assure that the instruction your child receives and the learning they achieve matches your and the school’s expectations. Listen for benchmark words that correlate with grade level expectations in math, science and social studies. Listen for academic vocabulary that is appropriate for grade level reading and curricular understanding. If these benchmarks and vocabulary words are usual in your child’s supper table talk, then your child’s learning is around the expectation “post.” Then, know where the “post” moves as your child moves through the grade levels and subjects.

Eliminate as much of the educational blind as you can. You may not know everything about your child’s daily education, but when know what the learning “posts” look and sound like and pay attention, your expectations will be very close to your child’s daily schooling.