Tag Archives: causing learning

Knowledge, Like Water, Will Slip Between Our Fingers Unless.

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When you cup your hands and use them to scoop up a drink of water, how long can you hold the water before it seeps between your fingers and out of your hands? Some can hold onto the water longer than others, but eventually the water slips from everyone’s hands. So, it is with our memory. We hear a name or phone number or read a story and for a bit of time we remember these. However, after a bit of time, that length of time varies with the person, recall of the name and phone number and the details of the story slip from our memory like water between our fingers. Short-term memory is only that, good for a bit of time. If we want to remember things for a longer stretch of time, we need to build long-term memory. We can build memories if we choose to do so.

What do we know?

We consider memory to be a natural phenomenon for keeping track of things. In everyday life, we have hundreds of micro experiences every day. These are things we see, and hear, and do as part of daily living. Yet we remember very few, because they were insignificant and occurred quickly and without reason to become longer memory. Our brains are not intended to remember everything we see, or hear, or do because there are thousands of these minutiae every day. Consider what it would be like inside your head if your brain were constantly trying to make sense of every detail in every second of your life. Happily, no one knows what your head would be like because this does not happen naturally. Instead, our brain sheds the minutiae in short order. Forgetting is as natural as remembering. Unless we actively work to build memory.

Being a student in school may build many memories but schooling itself does a poor job of teaching students how to remember. Our curricular program for every grade level and every course is industrial in nature. A teacher organizes units of instruction and teaches them one after the other. Sadly, schooling is assembly line instruction, and the conveyor belt only stops at graduation. The daisy chain organization of curriculum assumes that some of what a child learns at an earlier age will relate to or be applied in a later age. Certainly, a child’s developing skill sets in phonics-based reading and use of arithmetic skills are used throughout school and later life. However, what the child reads in fourth grade or the math work the child did in sixth grade are stand-alone assignments. 

Case in point – why do children in the United States typically study US history in grades 5, 8, and 10? The casual answer is that by teaching it again in 8th and 10th grade children develop a deeper understanding of their national story. If that were true, why do so many children have trouble on tests of US history? It is the most repeated curriculum in PK-12 yet ask any adult the name of the 8th US President or the relationship between the American Revolution and the War of 1812 or the effect of the Smoot-Hawley Act and you will wait a long time for answers. Are these important to remember? Maybe not, but they are indicative of how we treat this three-peat taught curriculum. Most American adults cannot pass the Immigration Service civics test. We are illiterate about our national story. So much for teaching children how to remember.

Being smart in school by remembering what you learn should not be a secret – help every child to be as smart as they can be. We need to teach children all the “secrets.”

Long ago and before the Internet’s instant access to information, knowledge was power. People who knew things and could do use their knowledge had advantages over people who did not know. Sadly, schools and teaching were a matter of “teachers know and children do not know – and only the smartest children learn what teachers know.” Too many of us experienced this in school.

Today our teachers’ job is to cause all children to learn what teachers know. A first-grade teacher’s job is to cause all first-grade children to learn the first-grade curriculum. A chemistry teacher’s job is to cause chemistry students to learn chemistry. This is teaching with an “I will do everything in my ethical abilities to teach my children what they need to know and do.”

Memory work is not easy, and it is not intuitive for all children. If a child has natural memorization ability, great! For children who need help memorizing, teach them how to remember. This mandate and constantly needs adaptive practice in every PK-12 classroom. We do not teach how to study and remember in elementary school and never again in middle and high school. We teach and practice these abilities in every classroom.

What to do better.

Start by acknowledging the current state of learning and remembering. We do not teach for long term memory. We do not teach children how to build long term memory, and our classroom practices do not build memory for the long-term. We talk about the importance of building, recalling, and using background knowledge but do not teach children how to recall and use what they have been taught.

Be intentional. Building recall does not take as much time and effort as reteaching what children have forgotten. “Children, we are going to learn how to improve our memory.”

  • Use recall events. Tell children “Before the next chapter or unit test, we are going to do things to help you remember what you are learning. These small activities will strengthen your memory of what you are learning before our usual tests.” Every several days have children “Tell me about the story we have been reading? I want to hear what you recall and your thoughts about the main characters, the plot, and where you think this story is going.” At the start, be non-evaluative and over time expect children to develop correct details. Have children tell each other about steps they have been taught to use in checking their multiplication problems. Do not just do the steps but explain why each step is mathematically important. Have children hum the song they are learning or restate the safety rules for using a turning wheel for pottery. Work on recalling the essential things in the current chapter or unit or story or class activity. Then, do it again next week.
  • Use non-graded retesting. Tell children “Frequent review of what you learned and was in a recent test helps you to remember what you learned. So, we will have several follow-up tests of that same information. The follow-up tests will not be graded, because we are taking these tests to build memory of what you already were tested on.”
  • Use flash cards. Have children make their own flash cards. This applies to all K-12 children in all subjects. Cards can be created to build recall for vocabulary and definitions, events with dates and names, series of steps in a process, and to explain significance. The practice of creating flash cards alone builds memory; the use of flash cards builds stronger memory.

No child is too old for flash cards! At age 77 I am relearning French language and flash cards are part of the routine.

  • Use intermittent review. Students tend to cram for tests. Tell children “Better practice is scheduled or intermittent review over time. Do not leave studying for a test until the last night before test day.” The recall events described above practice intermittent study. Use intermittent for end of course and end-of-year tests. Next month do a review of essential content and skills taught the previous month. Run through last month’s flash cards. Three months hence do it again. The reason is this – background knowledge, like water in your cupped hands, eventually will slip away if you do review/refill it.
  • Use memory organizers. Tell children “It is okay to create your own ways of remembering what you don’t want to forget.” Teach them how to draw a concept map linking ideas together as supporting details. Teach them associations to link new learning to what they know. Teach them how to create a rhyming word phrase so that each word reminds them of ideas and strings of ideas they want to remember. Teach them to use a simple sentence where each word reminds them of an idea or string of ideas they want to remember.

The Big Duh!

Return to a variation of Cartesian logic. “If I taught something to children and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?” Possibly. Instead posit, “If I taught children and did not teach them how to remember what I taught them, did I really teach anything?” Indeed, not. If you expect children to remember what you taught them, teach them how to remember.

The Art of Breathing and Teaching

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Breathing is an autonomic body function and is essential for human life. A healthy person breathes without thinking about it. When teaching children, knowing when to pause and take another breath to let learning unfold is a conscious act of breath control. Effective teachers know the art of breathing.

What do we know?

As a child, I was told to pinch my nose, jump into the deep end of the pool and swim. “Take a deep breath, hold it, and jump!” “Oh, and do not open your mouth to breath until you must. You will know when!”

As a student teacher, I learned to prepare an objectives-based lesson with a Madeline Hunter lesson design. When all students were seated and I had their attention, I took a deep breath and jumped into the lesson. Once I had connected the day’s lesson to yesterday’s lesson, I taught/swam hard moving through my lesson plan. My college supervised advised, “Once you have children’s attention, do not lose that connection until the lesson is finished. It is easier to keep them with you than it is to regain the attention of children you lost.” That mantra served me well until I looked up and around. Like a swimmer who has held his breath and come up for air, I was teacher in the middle of a lesson without knowing much about the children I was teaching. Their learning was secondary to my teaching.

Experience can teach us, and informed experience teaches us to create better experiences. I learned that I did not need to pinch my nostrils and hold my breath like a balloon under water. Diving headfirst was both more efficient and more exhilarating. I learned shallow racing dives and to hold a for four flutter kicks then to begin my stroke count and breath as planned. Informed practices created better experiences.

So, it is with teaching. Breathing may be autonomic, but effective teachers know how to pause, breathe, and let learning catch up with their teaching.

Intellectual breathing.

Hunter taught us to check for cognitive understanding. Checking is taking a breath from teaching finding the extent to which children are learning from your teaching.

Strategies for intellectual breathing include the following:

  • Cold calling. Do not ask for volunteers, but call in your “bell weather” students, the students who if they understand then most other students also will understand.
  • Think-pair-share. Students write quick responses to your question, share their response with another student, discuss and modify their mutual response, and report orally to the class.
  • Roll a question around. Ask a question requiring more than recall, one that causes a child to connect new learning with prior learning or provide a new context. Then ask another child to either agree, disagree, or add to the response. Continue with five or six students to push their thinking.
  • Quick quiz/ticket. Ask students to respond in writing to name the main points of the lesson so far, or to explain a concept in the first instruction, or formulate questions they have about what they have learned.
  • Use a visual fist to five. This strategy checks each child’s security with what they have learned. A five-finger wave says the child believes she has a high level of understanding, and a fist says, “I am confused.”

These are formative strategies that tell a teacher “Success. Keep teaching.” Or “Whoa, you need to reteach, correct, clarify, and reinforce what children know before going on,”

Emotional breathing.

Teaching usually is focused on what children think and know. Take a breath and pause to allow children to consider how they feel about what they have learned. “Aw, this is soft. Feelings do not help students on their statewide assessments.” Wrong!

Unlike the factual nature of checking for cognitive understanding, taking an emotional breath is observational and attitudinal. As children progress through a lesson or unit, their executive skills, social awareness, relationship skills, and ethical well-being are equal to their cognitive understanding.

Can or are all students able to –

  • Initiate and use a new skill independently? Can they self-start or are they dependent on their teacher?
  • Aware of the social context of what they have learned? Do they know that different economic, socio-political, cultural, or linguistic groups have a different take on the topic? Can they accept such diverse thinking? How do they feel about this?
  • Work with all other children in the class to extend their new learning. What groupings will help understanding? What needs to be done to improve child-to-child relationships?
  • See ethical and responsible decision-making issues in what they are learning? Can children self-regulate based on their ethical integrity?

Emotional breath taking relies on a teacher’s observational and perceptional acuity. First, a teacher must be self-aware of each of these. Second, a teacher needs to be aware of indicators of SEL indicators that children give off in their classroom experiences. Third, a teacher needs to be prepared to convert observation into planned instructions. If children are lacking in executive functions, teach them. If students are socially unaware, teach them. If children do not see ethical issues, teach them.

Taking a breath of emotional checking assures that teaching and learning are not mechanical but also humane.

Self-awareness.

Breathe also for yourself. Like the swimmer coming up for air, take a pause to help yourself adjust within the lesson. Stop teaching. Take a sip of water. Look around and breathe. Take time to see where you are in the classroom. As a mentor told me, “Pull your socks back up. You have been going at it strong.” I have seen teachers so “into their teaching” they are not aware that they have walked themselves into a corner of the room where the whiteboard hits the wall. One or two kept on teaching through the passing bell and when they turned around a new class of children was seated in their classroom wondering what they should do.

With experience, most teachers know when lessons are working successfully and when they are not. Perceptive teachers know when a lesson that is faltering lies in their preparation and when it is with them in the moment. They can take a breath and adjust themselves and their teaching.

At the same time, ineffective teachers do know how to breathe. They plow ahead in their ineffective lessons with ineffective practices.

The Big Duh!

Teaching is a human endeavor exercising the art and science of causing children to learn. Because we are human, we need to use our natural instincts to inform our uses of the arts and sciences. Effective teachers know how to stop teaching, take a breath, use the pause to monitor and adjust themselves and their instruction, and with new insights go forward.

Lastly, and most importantly, while you pause for breath look around at children engaged in learning. It is a most wonderful sight. And know that your pause for breath also is instruction and reinforcement to children that they also need to pause and breathe.

Master Teachers Know How to Correct Errors in Student Learning

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“What, Romeo and Juliet die! They were young and in love. Did I miss something?”

Teaching and learning are not a linear transaction – a teacher speaks, and students do not always learn what the teacher wants them to learn. There are too many variables that intrude between the teacher and the children being taught. The eyes and ears and brains of children are not constantly connected to what the teacher is saying, doing, demonstrating, and explaining. In a child’s head, it does not take much, just an errant thought about a recent conversation with a friend, a side glance out the classroom window, a rethinking of a text the child read on the way to school, or an anticipation of after school doings, and whatever the teacher said, did, or showed was missed or received incorrectly. Or a child may get tired of reading and not finish the rest of the story. Or a child may rely upon what their small group mates tell them what they should know and not upon their own study. In these moments, correct learning lurches, and incorrect learning takes its place.

Best practice teaching also requires the pedagogic ability to clear up and clean up errors in student learning.

Identify errors in learning early.

A teacher must have ears that clang whenever she hears incorrectness. The clang occurs when a child says “2 + 2 = 5” or “Me and my friend …”, or “George Washington was President during the Civil War” or “Newton’s first law says objects are independent and move randomly.” CLANG!

Each clang requires correction. The issues for a teacher become when and how to make the necessary correction. “Do I stop everything, stop the lesson I am teaching, or the small group I am leading to correct a single student on a single point of misinformation?” Or “does every incorrect thing a child says need correction? If it does, I will never be able to teach anything new because there are so many little incorrect things children say or do.”

Yep, teachers need to plan how to correct errors, now or later. Identify and correct errors when they occur or as quickly as you can after you identify them. Student reality is that errors in their learning are reinforced and are used to distort subsequent learning the longer you wait to correct them.

No fault insurance – learning is what matters.

When correcting student learning, don’t place blame or fault on what caused the incorrect learning. Fault finding is a lonely and dangerous road. Use a “your fault, my fault, or anybody’s fault – I don’t care. We are going to correct this now” mindset. You want to correct learning and not focus children on faults.

If 100 children hear something that a teacher says, statistically only a fraction of them truly comprehend and internalize it accurately. The variables in attention, interpretation, and understanding mean that not all children are in sync with the instruction at hand. This discrepancy highlights the critical need for the teacher to hear the clangs of incorrect learning and make corrections. Given this, there is no time for fault finding; only correcting errors in learning and then moving forward.

The decision is either to make the correction now or at the end of the lesson or, if more than several students demonstrate the same error, to form a tier 2 small group for corrective teaching. Just do it.

Isolate the incorrect – replace with the correct.

Once the decision of when to correct errors in student learning is made, the steps for correction are similar.

  • Explain to students that you and they are going to correct errors in their knowledge content, or conceptualization, or skills they have learned because the error in learning will cause them to have learning problems in the future.
  • State the error in what they learned. “The idea that Romeo and Juliet do not die but live happily ever-after is an error. They die. Their deaths are what makes Romeo and Juliet and tragic love story.”
  • State the corrected learning. “Due to a tragic misunderstanding, Romeo kills himself with poison and Juliet uses Romeo’s knife to kill herself.” Romeo and Juliet die. No need to be graphic, just exact.
  • Give the students the context for their corrected learning by reviewing the family feud between the Montagues and the Capulets that prevented Romeo and Juliet from marrying, the friar’s plan to resolve the feud by faking Juliet’s death, and the scene when Romeo finds Juliet lying death-like but not dead. This review need not take long, just enough to give context to the conclusion – Romeo and Juliet die.
  • Have the students retell this conclusion and the summary of its context. It may seem like overdoing, but if there is a small group of students in this corrective, require each student to make a correct statement and summary of the context. Stating the corrected learning replaces the error with the correction.
  • Conclude by restating the importance of correcting and clarifying what students learn if we know it was not correct. And thank them for doing so.

The Big Duh!

I turn wood on a lathe to make a variety of products. Like any craftsman, my work is not always perfect. Flaws in my use of a bowl gouge combined with unanticipated changes in the wood cause mistakes. Craftsmen are not always error-free 100% of the time, but 100% of the time craftsmen know how to clean up their errors. Cleaning up takes time, effort, and technique. It is the correcting of errors that defines craftsmanship.

So, it is with teaching and learning. Teachers are craftsmen in causing children to learn. Teachers do not need to be effective 100% of the time in their instruction, but 100% of the time teachers need to correct errors in student learning.

We would rather a teacher use the time and effort to identify and correct errors in student learning and not teach everything in a year’s curriculum than teach every lesson in a year’s curriculum even though children have many errors in their learning. Errors in learning, like potholes in winter streets, only grow to cause major disruption later in the student’s life.

When There Is a Shortage of Teachers, Will Any “Teacher” In the Classroom Do?

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Every year school principals post openings for classroom teacher vacancies with the intention to hire a licensed teacher with the academic and pedagogic preparation to teach the children a school curriculum. However, the shortage of licensed and prepared teachers seeking employment as teachers means that a principal may not find any candidates with a valid license to teach the posted assignment. This is New Personnel 101 for principals in thousands of schools every year – how to make do without a licensed and prepared teacher.

So, a principal scrambles to hire the next best – a teacher with a different license but who knows how to teach. Or a long-term substitute teacher without a teaching license or academic and pedagogic training. Or an apprentice teacher who is enrolled in an on-the-job teacher preparation program but not yet fully trained. Or a local resident well known in the school who has a baccalaureate degree and is willing to try out as a classroom teacher. The WI Department of Instruction has protocols for issuing permits or temporary licenses with stipulations that allow a school board to employ any of these people who are explicitly prepared for the vacant teaching assignment. Or the principal may give up on finding a teacher and reassign the children to other classrooms. Each of these options has an immediate upside and a longer downside.

New Personnel 101 does not go away when an unlicensed, unprepared teacher is hired. The principal is supposed to continue posting this position as a teacher vacancy until a licensed and prepared teacher is hired. If an unlicensed teacher with a temporary license is hired, the principal is responsible for assuring and supporting the “temp” in meeting the stipulations of the temporary license. That amounts to significant extra time and effort. New Personnel 101 is an ongoing unanticipated and unwanted work effort.

The rub comes if the principal believes the “next best” is good enough and that reposting will not find a better “next best.” This is acutely true if there are no student discipline or parent issues arising from a “next best” teacher in a temporary assignment. The WI DPI will renew a temporary license with stipulations almost indefinitely, if the temporary teacher continues to make “efforts” to remove the stipulations of the temporary license. It does not take much to be an “effort.”

The sad outcome of New Personnel 101 is that a continuing contract for “next best” who never completes a licensing program but never has classroom problems gets lost in all the other high demands a principal faces in the business of administering a school. When the critical attribute for good enough is the absence of discipline problems and parent complaints, the good enough of New Personnel 101 makes the expediency of putting a teacher in the classroom more important than giving all children the quality instruction they deserve and need.

The reality of New Personnel 101

There is a significant corps of unlicensed teachers in our classrooms. “Different sources estimate between 42,000 and over 100,000 unfilled teacher positions nationwide. Moreover, another 270,000 to 365,000 employed K-12 teachers are reported to be unqualified or not fully certified for the teaching assignments that they have been given. In some areas, the inability to find qualified teachers is so bad that anyone who passes a background check gets hired, even without holding a relevant degree.”

In Wisconsin, there are 2,400 unfilled teacher vacancies for the 2024-25 school year with 4,057 unqualified teachers in classrooms.

https://www.fullmindlearning.com/blog/teacher-vacancies-by-state-us?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Apprenticeship resolves New Personnel 101.

One of the options available to school boards is to employ apprentice teachers. An apprentice teacher meets four immediate criteria. An apprentice must –

  1. Have an earned baccalaureate degree. Although this baccalaureate is not in education, it signifies that the apprentice has intellectual knowledge and skills for a college degree and the capacity to become a trained teacher.
  2. Be enrolled in an educator preparation program (EPP). There are a variety of EPPs in Wisconsin and most are affiliated with Cooperative Educational Service Agencies (CESAs). The DPI teacher licensing department supervised EPPs to ensure that the EPP’s teacher training program meets WI’s statutory requirements for teacher training as well as the initial teacher preparation standards for a teaching license. For example, all licensed math teachers must meet the preparation standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).
  3. Be employed by a school board as an apprentice teacher assigned to a classroom aligned with their educator preparation program. Employment as an apprentice is a HUGE asset for apprenticeship programs – apprentices earn while they learn. Unlike enrollment in a college or university teacher prep program that require almost full-time class attendance, apprentices teach classes in school, attend the EPP’s online courses, and have an ongoing income that meets their life needs.
  4. Pass a criminal background check. This is the same requirement for all public education teachers.

The essential benefit of the apprenticeship program is that a “next best” teacher is not hired and forgotten. Apprentices are supported by

  • EPP instructors. I use preparation for a math teacher as an example. As apprentices learn each of the seven NCTM teacher prep standards, the instructor uses course assignments that directly connect each standard to the apprentice’s teaching assignment. Apprentices use their daily work as the application of each standard. Instructors are first-hand supporters of the apprentice’s daily teaching practices.
  • EPP licensing observers who observe the apprentice teaching and coach the apprentice to apply what the apprentice learns in EPP courses into practice in classroom teaching.
  • School principals who make required evaluative classroom observations of the apprentice’s teaching and provide the apprentice with both critical and constructive recommendations.
  • School mentors who teach the same grade level or the same courses as the apprentice.

The downside to hiring an apprentice teacher is that on the first day of classroom teaching the apprentice also is in the first days of course work learning how to teach. As a teacher, the apprentice immediately is a work in progress.

The upside to hiring an apprentice is that the apprentice is constantly learning about the best teaching and learning practices. There is not a settling for good enough that never changes because the apprentice is constantly learning how to become a fully prepared licensed teacher. And at the end of the apprentice’s EPP courses the apprentice has pedagogical training that is equal to the preparation of any university or college depart of education.

The Big Duh!

New Personnel 101 leaves school boards and principals with critical decisions to make when they cannot find a fully licensed teacher that meets their employment needs. They can settle for a “good enough” adult to be a classroom teacher.  They can allow “good enough” to become a permanent employee forgotten in the grind of a school year’s work. Or they can work with an EPP and hire an apprentice and collaborate to create a fully prepared and licensed teacher.

I endorse the employment of apprentice teachers. Through personal and professional experience, I know that this program works when school principals and EPPs collaborate to educate, train, and grow a new teacher one at a time.

New Personnel 101 is not going away. The lack of new teacher candidates is a recurring fact of school life. The question of how to make do with less than fully prepared teachers is our problem and requires school boards and principals to invest in new strategies for causing all children learn.

Reflection On Instruction Begets Improved Student Learning – Give Teachers Time to Reflect

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Time and tide wait for no teacher when there is a school year of curriculum to be taught. There never is enough time to accomplish what takes inestimable time! Instruction that causes all children to learn, including children needing adjusted instruction, requires time for a teacher to reflect and determine how to clarify, correct, and teach anew. Reflection plus adjusted teaching improves learning for all students.

Form follows function – time is attached to what we prioritize

A teacher’s school day is dominated by the clock much like the chain driving an assembly line. Classes, meetings, lunch, prep, paperwork, work that goes on til midnight and then do it again the next day. The class bell does not wait for anyone – teacher or student – and a tardy teacher is worse than a tardy student. And being prepared for the continuing instruction and student learning is never-ending. Yet we know that significant accomplishments – Rome and student learning – require planning, careful work, and checking assurances for quality outcomes. When then, is a teacher able to reflect, really think about the effectiveness of her teaching in causing children to learn?

The easy answer for administrators has two parts.

  • Every teacher has contract-guaranteed prep time as well as time before and after the school day.
  • Professional teachers understand that their work is not limited by the school day and often requires more than eight hours per day.

Easy for an administrator is not easy for a teacher. A teacher’s school-assigned prep time is invaded without forethought. Urgent matters are a principal’s note to “see me during your prep” or a principal’s scheduling an IEP team meeting during a prep time. The “tapping into” teacher prep time happens with abandon in every school every day.

A teacher’s immediate needs must be met during “untapped” prep time. These include

  • Bio needs in the restroom.
  • Returning parent calls and e-mails.
  • Assembling student work collected prior to the prep time for later inspection.
  • Arranging materials for student instruction after the prep time.

If these are not accommodated during school day prep time, they don’t get done. Consequently, these tasks get done and instructional planning and reflection do not.

Before and after school time also is requisitioned by faculty meetings, grade level and departmental meetings, IEP team meetings, and professional development. Then, add the time needed by a student who “needs extra help” or has a question that could not be asked and answered in class and an eight-hour school day grows into nine and ten hours. The time crunch is exasperated for the many teachers who need to be home after school to take care of their own children.

The reality is that very few teachers use school day prep time for the planning and construction of instruction or the review of instructional effectiveness.

Automaton teaching is easy; informed teaching is hard

It is too easy for a teacher to be an automaton – a person who works in a mechanical, unthinking, and unemotional manner. I observed veteran teachers who had files of units and lesson plans and every year they literally taught through their file drawer. They used the same units and lessons year after year with the justification of “it seemed to work last year, so it will be just as good for this year.” When asked why they automatically repeated units and lessons, they told me “It took a lot of time to develop my units and lessons, and I don’t have time to develop ones or even to change why I have.”

Automaton teaching includes teachers who teach strictly from the publisher’s guide for curriculum their school has adopted. They do not make adjustments or modifications because “this is what my school board expects me to teach.”

Against this model, I observed veteran teachers who used their prep time for informed teaching. From her classroom doorway, I watched a kindergarten teacher using self-talk as she laid out materials on student desks. “Willie needs…, Jackie needs…, Aiden needs…”, and at the end of the lay out she reviewed exactly what each student needed to accomplish the objectives of their next lesson.

I watched a high school chemistry teacher use her whiteboard to review the results of a student quiz the day before. She used data to identify students who demonstrated clear learning and those who did not, and she listed the specific learning that needed to be clarified.

I talked with an ELA teacher as she shared the specific criteria, she had taught that she wanted students to demonstrate in a writing assignment. She used a holistic reading approach to identify assignments that met the requirements and those that did not and added post-a-notes to each writing sample telling the writer the detail that was missing or incorrect.

These teachers buck the pattern of automaton, same old/same old teaching by reflecting daily on the effectiveness of instruction and the adjusted teaching they will use to cause all students to achieve curricular success.

Break the pattern of same old/same old: protect time for instructional reflection

If a principal believes reflection is essential for ensuring high quality teaching and learning, the principal must assign and protect time for reflective work. The time does not need to be the same time of the school day for all teachers. If it is the same, it is too easy for that time to be stolen for other purposes. Ensured reflective planning time needs to be equitable, balanced and inviolate.

Second, the principal needs to “sit in” with teachers as they reflect. “Sitting in” is supportive not evaluative. Different teachers will reflect and plan differently; the just need the principal’s encouragement and affirmation that instructional reflection is a valued professional for improving teaching and learning.

Plan-teach-reflect-teach

I always smiled when told “Mr. Smith is a good teacher” without hearing the criteria for the statement. It was a cynical smile. Good teaching is hard work that requires curricular and pedagogical mastery and consistent use of best practices. Good teaching knows each child being taught and how to connect each child’s uniqueness with instruction. Good teaching requires planning, teaching, reflection, and adjusted teaching. When I heard any or all of these criteria, I gave a true smile.

To make the magic of teaching work, teachers need time to assess the quality of student learning after their initial instruction, provide appropriate next assignments for students who were successful, AND plan how to correct, clarify, and appropriately students who were not initially successful. The magic requires informed reflection and time to reflect.