Tag Archives: causing learning

Teachers Teach Doers

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George Bernard Shaw wrote in Man and Superman (1903), “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” And since that time, an errant yet common belief is that teaching is for those who lack the capacity to succeed at more substantial work. Shaw did it consider teaching to be an esteemed profession.

We need to dig deeper into Shaw to understand his quote. Shaw attended four Dublin schools before dropping out in his early teens and engaging is self-education. Interestingly, one of the world’s great authors hated school. He learned instead from broad reading and constant visits to Dublin museums where he studied the art collection. Shaw learned from literary and artistic exemplars, often declaring that he was the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. He considered himself self-taught by his study of the best examples of what he wanted to learn.

There is such fallacy in Shaw’s statement. A stronger argument for teaching lies in “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Educating children grows people and teaching changes the world.

What do we know?

When Shaw was school-age and until the early 2000s, classroom teachers were the primary source of information for learning children. A teacher not only managed classrooms, but a teacher also constructed curriculum, determined the content and skills children learn, and designed the pedagogy of teaching. The teacher, school texts, and the school library were the sources of student information. To use a common analogy, teachers were perceived as the expert in the front of the classroom.

We live in a new age. The teaching Shaw experienced ended in the last century. The Internet provides instant access to worlds of information, and tools of technology put that information at every student’s fingertips. Further, AI gives learners a tool for displaying information, if not answers, to any question a learner thinks to ask. Teachers no longer are, or are considered to be, the information expert in a classroom.

The role of teacher has changed, if not improved, and has become more important than ever. Today’s teachers are not the source of classroom information; teachers are navigators, curators, and elucidators helping children find, understand, and learn from the information they read, hear, watch, and experience. Each of these functions – navigation, curation, and elucidation – is essential for learning children in the digital Information Age.

With ubiquitous AI, children need teachers to help them navigate the world of information. Navigation has been an essential skill in Googling Internet information for decades. Left on their own, children are adrift in an ocean of information, especially information spread in social media. Navigator-teachers help children shape what they want to find out into questions. Questions are structurally worded into prompts. Prompts help AI focus its search so that the information displayed meets the student’s inquiry.

Navigation is an increasingly sophisticated skill set that children in their grade levels and various courses. Inquiries in science use the lens of a student-biologist, chemist, physicist, and earth scientist. The lens is different in the social studies where lenses taken on the inquiries of economists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and behavioral scientists. Each academic discipline presents a lens for how to navigate in the world’s information systems. Successful navigation is knowing and being faithful to your lens.

Teachers help children curate the information they obtain. Curation starts with helping children understand that AI searches are fallible and 15-20% of the information provided by a search is wrong, incorrect, or unsubstantiated. One of the great eye-openers is when children learn that AI hallucinates and often just makes up information. The deeper and more complicated the search, the greater the need for curation.

Curator-teachers work beside and behind children in their information searches. A curator is not like a parent on Halloween unwrapping every piece of candy a child brings home for hidden threats. Curators are information-whisperers helping children create their own filters for deciding the reliability and validity of information. Curation is not just a school skill set, but a function children need to exercise 24/7 in the real world.

Finally, teachers are elucidators. Information derived from an Internet search opens many opportunities for “teachable moments.” Teachers start by asking children, “What does this mean?” And “How does this connect to what you already know?” And “What new questions do you have now?” Elucidators also ask children “So, what?” Elucidation helps children find meaning and teaches them be independent finders of informational meaning.

The Big Duh!

This is my “so, what” moment. I modify Shaw’s quote to “teachers teach doers.” Every great invention and break-through event in our history stands on the shoulders of someone who taught an inventor or exploring person foundational knowledge and skills, who posed a “so, what” challenge, and stood aside to help the doing.

Shakespeare did not learn to write in school. He learned Latin and classical literature at King’s New School in Stratford. More to the point, he learned to write poetry and plays in the reality of his day – on-the-job writing and editing and performance. People in the theaters and local printers critiqued and commented on Shakespeare’s work and he refined his writing into the work we know today. The greatest English writer pre-Shaw used navigators, curators, and elucidators of his day, albeit they were not classroom teachers, to learn and perfect his craft. He could do and learned to become a doer. Shaw was a Shakespeare – he learned from others who indirectly helped him navigate, curate, and elucidate what he learned.

Teachers teach AND create doers.

School Friendships and Life

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In my eighth decade, I increasingly reminisce about the people it has been a privilege to know. I refer to myself as a public educator with almost 60 years working in schools, curriculum, and instruction. My world revolves around schools and teaching. I estimate that I have known 1,000+ teachers and 12,000+ school children. In quiet moments, they all come back to mind. So many and so varied. Pictures in yearbooks ignite memories and the events of years ago are as clear as my yesterday. Yet, there are two people who form my schoolhouse book ends. Completely different from each other, they touched and shaped my sense of friendships for all time.

Carol personified intelligence and Bobby the epitome of sincerity. People seldom get better than Carol and Bobby and I see these two clearly when I start trekking back in time.

As the saying implies, Carol was born put together. Tall for her age, she was blonde and blue eyed and pretty. She was not overtly outgoing. Carol carefully selected what she did, who she did it with, and how she did it, and then excelled at all she did. She was aloof if all you wanted was pretty. And she was your friend if you invested in knowing her. Somewhat prim, her shy smile was a gift that lasted weeks. I always knew Carol and she always knew me.

Kids form their own groups in grade school. No adult lined us up and assigned us to groups that would become our friends. We kind of looked at each other, got to know each other, and to use a phrase from today, leaned in towards each other. It was not a neighborhood thing; our group was spread out and lived blocks apart. It was not a family status thing; fathers in our group were doctors, businessmen, and tradesmen. All mothers were homemakers. It was a magnetic kind of thing; we were drawn together and stayed together.

We were Baby Boomer kids and there were a lot of us. In our three-section, K-6 elementary school with 30+ in each section, Carol and I were in the same section from kindergarten through 6th grade. Later as a teacher, I would observe principals and teachers use test scores to balance classes. They assured a range of student abilities in each class. I think that is what happened to us. Carol and I were informally tracked from kindergarten through sixth grade. I give my belated thanks to Miss Phillips, our principal.

It was the early 1950s and girls wore dresses with white ankle socks to school. Boys wore blue jeans and Keds. Young girls stayed neat and clean while boys ran and played hard. It also was decades ahead of equity in education issues and in that paternalistic time boys were expected to be school leaders in all things. Yet when grades were posted and honors given, girls did well and Carol always was at the top of the lists. And even we boys knew who to team up with in class. When group work was assigned in class, every student wanted to work with Carol. They wanted her because she helped everyone in her group “get it right.”

There were kids in school who were really smart. Smart as in they knew things. In fact, they knew a lot about the thing they knew best. We had kids who were a whiz in geography or science, and kids who were artistic and could draw and make beautiful works. However, those kids were not the full package of smarts. They were selectively smart. Intelligence and smart are not the same thing. Carol was supremely intelligent. She saw the kernel of a problem, seemed to understand all of its facets, and could explain it so that it made sense to others.

I remember her Carol in kindergarten. She sat with a straight back and head held high and saw and heard everything and everybody. When our teacher told us to form a large circle, we circled up a lot in kindergarten, all eyes went to where Carol stood or sat and that was where the circle formed. We knew she was special from the get-go.

Early on I knew that Carol would be the star student in our class, so I weaseled my way to sit near her in our checkerboard of student desks. I thought that proximity would to the best student might rub off on me and it seemed to; for a while it did. What I really did was copy her traits. When given an assignment, she got right to it. She did not raise her hand often and never waved an arm when our teacher asked for volunteers. When called upon, she hesitated for an instance, formed her answer, and spoke by restating the question in her response. Of course, her penmanship was perfect because she wrote slowly and efficiently. She knew what to write, unlike most of us who started writing trying to find an answer before we ran out of paper or time.

I could keep up with her in language arts and social studies, but not in math and science. She processed information quickly and correctly. I think Carol saw answers where I saw confusion. Third through sixth grade are a sweet spot in my memory. As I became a Cub and then Boy Scout, swam on the YMCA swim team, and played baseball spring, summer, and fall, Carol was my in-school constant. We talked every day. We shared stories. Knowing and being near her made me a better student and a better classmate. I trusted Carol explicitly and knew she would tell me the truth of things without exception. A friend like Carol is an exceptional friend.

Junior high and high school changed us, as I think they were designed to do. I was in Carol’s language arts and social studies classes but not in her math or science classes. The same was true in high school. We saw each other, talked, and shared stories every day. She developed boyfriends and had a girlfriend. She was a musician and I was a jock. But we stayed close friends in class. While her intelligence expanded and her academic honors increased, she stayed the same best “put together person” I knew. If my parents placed their confidence in Walter Cronkite and his reporting of the evening news, I placed all my confidence in Carol and her explanation of our world.

For each of our thirteen years in K-12 classrooms and activities, Carol and I were the same friends we always had been. She was best student I would ever know and she always will be.

College and distance ended our time. She went to a small, private, out-of-state college and I went to a state university. Carol majored in economics and later earned a master’s degree in Russian literature. She founded an insurance consultant company and wrote a highly regarded book. We did not speak again and the fault of that is mine to bear. Carol died in 2002 at the age of 54 years.

My junior high class schedule card told me Room 410 was my new Home Room. I was to report there on my first day in junior high and then every day for three years. There were 650 students in my K-6 elementary school. There were more than 1,200 students in my grade 7-9 junior high school.

In Room 410 I sat at four-student table next to Bobby, a large black kid in jeans and a T-shirt. Bobby was the first black I met in a school classroom. Black kids played on teams from the neighborhoods closer to downtown in our summer baseball league. That was the extent of my knowledge of black people. We played against each other but never spoke, played but never shared, and played and went our separate ways.

Bobby said “Hi” and I said “Hi” back to him. Home room was the beginning place for students in our school every day. It was a school and grade level organizational time not instructional. Our home room teacher told us to introduce ourselves to the other three students at our table. I do not remember the other two. I shared that I was one of five boys in our family – no sisters – and that I lived one mile from our new school and would either ride my bike or walk to school every day. I was looking forward to playing sports in junior high. Bobby seemed reluctant to share. He quietly said he was the oldest of seven brothers and sisters. Then he was quiet.

When we were handed school forms to fill out, Bobby did not have a pencil. I gave him one of mine. When he did not understand the question, I explained it. We were assigned hallway lockers and given school padlocks to secure our locker. My locker was next to Bobby’s, and I helped him with the combination. He had nothing to put in his locker.

Bobby and I did not share any classes. And Bobby did not go out for the seventh-grade football team. I thought he would, partly because he was a big kid, and I just hoped he would. When I asked him to meet me after school and I would take him to the locker room to talk with our coach, Bobby said he needed to go home right after school.

Bobby and I talked every morning during the first month of school. In early October, Bobby was absent from home room. I was not worried about his absence on the first day or the second but after the third day I asked our teacher if she knew if Bobby was okay. I thought he must be sick at home. She told me that Bobby was fine and was in a new home room. Strange, I thought, but what did I know.

Our junior high had a large cafeteria and four lunch shifts. I was a sack luncher and bought a half-pint milk carton every day to go with my sandwich, carrot sticks and cookie. There was a milk counter at each end of the cafeteria. I knew that were classrooms on short hallways behind the milk counters, but I did not know anyone who went to those classrooms. Down the hallway, there were open doorways and I could see students walking from room to room. I had never been in that basement corner of our school.

I was buying my lunch milk one day in early December when I saw Bobby. He was standing in the hall, about 40 feet away, looking at me. We mirrored each other in our smiles and waved at each other simultaneously. I turned to the lunch lady when she asked for my nickel for the carton of milk and when I looked again Bobby was gone.

The next morning, I asked my home room teacher about the classrooms behind the cafeteria. She told me something that was completely new to me. Those classrooms were for special education students. They had a small and separate school within our school. I asked her what was special about special education, and she told me it was for students who have difficulties learning in regular classes. And that was all she said.

I asked my mother about special education, and she told me that some children are born with mental disabilities that make learning in school difficult and there are special classes that teach those students differently than how I am taught. I was hearing a lot of small answers for a larger question.

For weeks I looked for Bobby down that hallway. I saw others but no Bobby. In January, after our winter vacation, I bought my lunch milk, stepped around the milk counter, and walked down the hallway. Looking in the doors, I saw students in wheelchairs in one classroom and students weaving baskets from straw in another. In the third classroom I found Bobby all by himself. When I called his name, he looked up, shook his head, and waved me off. He said in a faint voice, “I am in time out.”

“Steve, can I help you?” It was one of our football coaches. “I was looking for my friend, Bobby” I said. “Bobby is in time out because he was causing a problem in class” Coach said. “Problem? Bobby? He is never a problem with me,” I said. With a smile and kind voice, Coach told me to go back to the cafeteria.

I never saw Bobby in school, junior high or high school, again.

In the 1960s I could earn my University of Iowa tuition, room and board, and spending money, and more, from summer employment at the meat packing plant in our city. The “more” at the packing plant was my education into the working men and women who did not live in my neighborhood or attend the university. These were men who tutored me in the killing and butchering of cattle, hogs, and sheep. They were my surrogate parents in the world of work. It was hard and honest work that required sweat, attention to safety, and unique camaraderie. Our mutual safety and well-being rested in the person working on either side.

We talked while we worked. I learned stories of men who were born in the south, served in World War Two, and moved to Iowa after the war for new beginnings. Throughout all stories, I heard about underlying bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. These were not stories told in my neighborhood or in my classes at the university. Their stories were the gist of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. They were stories of people who suffered discrimination because of their color and race. Work at the meat packing plant, we called it “the Pack,” was a job they could get, and hold, and create a life around.

At the Pack, the only prejudice was for a person who would not work hard and safely. I worked, ate my lunch, took my breaks, and learned every day from black men who became my friends.

That is where I re-found Bobby. At the age of 21 he was a large man and did a large man’s work. Bobby worked in the beef offal section. His job was to fill in where needed. Because of his size, he easily pushed the carts of lace fats from offal to the rendering room. He carted out the kidneys and the livers. I saw him cleaning cow stomachs, washing intestines, and cleaning silage from the floors. He was good with a knife, a smile, and willingness to do whatever was asked of him.

One day as I was filling in for a man in offal on the stomach washing stand, I felt a tug on the back of my full-length rubber apron. After a second tug, I looked behind to see Bobby. It was a face I knew. He was all smiles. I smiled back at him instantly.

“See you at break” I yelled above the constant and loud noise, and he nodded and pushed another lace fat cart down the aisle between stands.

Bobby and I took breaks and lunch together for the rest of my summer employment. Slowly, Bobby filled in the years. He dropped out of school after seventh grade. Due to being retained in a grade level several times, he was a 16-year-old seventh grader. He said that school was too hard, no fun, and not worth his time. At 16 years he got his first job at the Pack and had been working there since. Although he wanted to hear about me, I wanted to learn about him.

Sometimes we learn from a person and sometimes from what others say about that person. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was Bobby’s friend. “He is the kindest soul on earth!” “He has a quick smile, a great laugh, and helping hands.” “I can’t tell you how many times and in how many ways he has helped me. Most importantly, he has been my friend.” “Bobby is family.”

Bobby lived with his aunt. His parents told him that if he was working at the Pack and not going to school, he needed to live elsewhere. He would not be a good influence on his younger brothers and sisters. His aunt took him in, renting him a room with breakfast and supper for $1 per year. Even though he was no longer in his parents’ home, Bobby saw and played with his brothers and sisters every day. He did not go bars or hang out with older single men. He loved his family.

He owned and drove a car, but he did not have a driver’s license. He could not pass the written test. He had a savings account at the Pack’s credit union, though he gave more than half his weekly earnings to his family and aunt.

I worked five summers at the Pack. The first day on the job each summer, I used my morning break to find Bobby, and each June it seemed like we had not been apart since the prior September. While I was getting a college education and preparing to teach English and social studies, Bobby worked his jobs at the Pack.

Before I graduated from university, I was offered teaching contracts in four different school districts. I accepted a job at junior high school out-of-state. Reality, though, was that I had no money to get from graduation, across the summer months, to the start of my teaching job.

I returned to the Pack the day after graduation and my friends and Bobby. I was assigned beef offal, of all places, for my first day. At the morning break, I was surrounded by men and women in their rubber aprons and Pack hats who congratulated me on my graduation. My working friends were happy with my educational success. Although none of them attended college, and some had not finished high school, most had children who were college grads. Educating their children was hugely important for Pack workers. And Bobby was right there in the middle. Smiling as always.

It was a short summer at the Pack. I needed to move hundreds of miles away, settle into an apartment, and attend new teacher orientation. On my last day at the Pack, Bobby and my friends took me to the closest bar for a lunch of sandwiches and lemonade (for Bobby and me). Knowing what was planned, I had arranged to pay the bill. And, at the end of the day, I left the Pack never to return.

Life is life. I taught junior high English and social studies for five years, earned a master’s degree, and took a job as an assistant high school principal. The meat packing industry changed. Meat packing was mechanized and robotics replaced human hands. After several years, the Pack closed and the city razed its buildings; the contaminants in the ground were monumental.

I read Bobby’s obituary in 2005. He never left the neighborhood. Bobby died in a car accident, he was driving. I feel the same about Bobby as I do about Carol. I could have but had not kept up our friendship.

My bookends stayed with me throughout my career in school. Because of them, I was highly aware of intelligent children and challenged children. I knew hundreds of children like Carol whose significant intelligence lit up their classrooms and teachers. Carol was my reminder that the “stars” in school need friendship and nurturing. The pressure of being the top student can be unkind and harmful. And I knew thousands of children like Bobby who did not need basement and hidden classrooms, but teachers who saw their assets instead of their deficits. Bobby is my reminder that all children can learn if we know how to teach them.

So, I will write it again. Life is life. As I did not stay in contact with Carol and Bobby, neither did they keep in contact with me. The former is my fault. In my sunset days, I spend moments considering the latter. Although I remember and cherish my years with them, perhaps their time with me was not that special to them. That is sobering.

Correctly Coloring our World Was Never More Important Than Now

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We are “multi-, and you can fill in the hyphen-linked word. Multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-economicked, and multi-politicked. Let’s start there. And, in our being so multi-, we are constantly engaged in equality and equity arguments based on who has advantages over others in their daily living. This, I think, is an accurate description of our contemporary American society.

Equality and equity are burning issues in our nation that pre-date our founding. And they are huge today. I read that the way for our nation to be fair and equal is to be color blind and the only way to be color blind is to be completely blind to all colors. This is a perspective embraced by several Supreme Court Justices, and they give being color blind a large amount of traction in our political conversations.

Blind to color means paying no attention to color, race, or ethnicity in all aspects of life – ignoring all differences among peoples. The purest outcome of a color-blind society, they say, ensures all people are treated exactly the same. “Exactly” is an important word because “exactly” insures no variance in treatment. There is no advantage or disadvantage to a person’s color, race, or ethnicity.

Well, wake up! Those in power calling loudest for color blindness are trying the hardest to gain the greatest advantages over other people.  Power tilts our world, and power is corrupted by its own existence. Power does not willingly relinquish its status or capacity to affect its world. Power also is expanding in scope while diminishing in the number and characteristics of the people who hold it. The first dictum of power is that those who hold power must commit to sustaining their hold on it. This is United States political and economic theory 101.

So, let’s talk about the coloration the powerful want us to be color blind to. Our nation is split ethnically – 57.5% white and 42.5% non-white. Race and ethnicity are not demographically the same.

Race:

  • White 74.8%
  • Black/African American 13.7%
  • Asian 6.7%
  • American Indian/Alaska Native 1.4%
  • Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander .3%
  • Two or more race 3.1%

Ethnicity

  • White (non-Hispanic) 57.5%
  • Hispanic/Latino 19.5%
  • Black 12%
  • Asian 6%
  • Multi-racial 4.5%

Minorities make up 42% of the US population. Color blindness ignores the historical and cultural background of almost half our population. Consider what we serve as meals at home. How many recipes are ethnic based? At our July 4th picnics, the most American of celebrations, food served will represent all the cultures of our nation. Hot dogs, brats, and all the flavorings on ribs are imported variations.

Primary language at home

  • English 77%
  • Spanish 13.5%
  • Other Indo-European languages 4%
  • Asian/Pacific Island 3.5%
  • Other languages 1%

Color blindness is deaf to all languages but English. Yet our commerce is not. All manuals and directions accompanying a store-bought purchase are in multiple languages, Spanish especially. Manufacturers understand and serve people speaking languages other than English who use their products.

Religious affiliations

  • Christian 62%
  • Non-Christian 7%
  • Religiously unaffiliated 29%

Among Christians

  • Evangelical Protestant 23%
  • Mainline Protestant 11%
  • Catholic 21%
  • Other Christian 2%

Non-Christian

  • Jewish 2%
  • Muslim 1%
  • Hindu 1%

Although our national motto is “In God We Trust,” the peoples of our nation worship a variety of Gods. Notably, almost one-third do not claim religious affiliation. This does not mean they are Godless – it says they are outside the generalizations that we are a church-going nations. Power aligns with the vocal minority who are Evangelical Protestants and America First supporters. But whose America? The powerful’s America. What about the 75% of Christians who are not evangelical nationalists?

Color blindness ignores these real data. Like the ostrich with its head buried in the earth, color blindness does not see or hear any of these real differences. The color blind know the consequences of zeroing out so much in our communities, states, and nation and do not care.

How does this work? Can we reset the game clock and backstory and become color blind?

As a child, I played outdoor games after supper. Tag, hide and seek, and kick the can were our favorites. In our games players had the possibility to stop a game at any time. In their loudest child voice, a player yelled “freeze” and all other players stopped where they were, became statue-like and did not move.

During a “freeze” we allowed players to “unstatue” to retie shoestrings, take care of toileting, get a drink or a snack, get a sweatshirt against the evening chill, or check in with their parents about how long into the evening they could play. We took care of whatever needed attending to so that we could continue playing the game. Sometimes we traded positions with another player because we each thought the other’s position was more favorable.

On some occasions, we even modified the rules of the game. The slowest afoot were allowed to be tagged twice without becoming “it.” If they were “it” they were unlikely to catch anyone but the next slowest. Those of us with poor eyesight could use a flashlight to penetrate the darkness. Home base in hide and seek was larger for girls than for boys. Every modification was intended to “even” the playing field. Interestingly, as children, we knew differences existed among us and we, in our innocence, made compensation.

A “frozen” status held until all players returned to their former or new statue posture and the freezing player yelled “unfreeze.” Then the game continued, often with new rules, as if the game had not stopped.

Ah! If only we could yell “freeze” today and stop the world in its tracks for true time-outs so we could take care of needs and correct or change positions. If only we could yell “freeze” and change or correct the way the world works. But we cannot.

Life does not have a “freeze” possibility. Changing our world from its multi-variants to a color blinded perception of people requires a God-only freeze action, like the end of days and, though it feels end-of-days-like, we are not there yet.

Public education helps us to correctly color the world.

Instead of becoming color blind, we can correctly color the world. Correctly coloring the world means to historically understand time and events from multi-sources, multi-places, and to understand them without prejudice. To say it bluntly, correctly coloring negates a partisan political urgency to whitewash our history, to literally and completely whitewash history without recognition of the world’s multi-back stories. Instead of whitewashing, correctly coloring teaches about all colors in order not to be biased by any color.

Correctly coloring means to consider how each of the multi-perspectives views and addresses a problem in the world. It means understanding the variances in food-, health-, and wealth-security. Coloring correctly knows how various political, economic, and religious systems work in the world for the benefit of the people who live in those areas and how these various systems connect or collide with each other. Correctly coloring the world means studying and learning without bias. It is an equal and equitable knowledge and understanding of a multi-world.

Correctly coloring in public education means that teachers have non-partisan academic freedom to correctly color teaching and learning. They are not pressured to influence or bias what and how they teach, and what and how students learn. Teachers are accountable for creating a correctly color-informed next generation.

Can we do this? Yes. Will we do this? It will be hard.

Our public education is becoming tilted by the powers in our federal and state governments and local governance. While crying for color blindness, the powerful decry the existence and value of color in our world.

As with all change, correctly coloring the world begins small and in small places. Classrooms and schoolhouses are small places. All education begins and ends with grass roots teaching and learning. Children learn from their daily instruction and experiences. Thus, teachers in their classrooms, studios, labs, and fields start with color correct teaching. I will use the word color or coloration to mean races, ethnicities, religious groups, and linguistic groups.

We educate all children with multi-perspectives. There is no “one” viewpoint used to learn about people or our world and national history or the colors of the world. We teach many perspectives so that children will learn there are many ways to view people, places, and events and all colors have worth.

We educate all children with understandings of multi-backgrounds. Understanding applies higher order cognition. Children know the names and characteristics of each coloration. They can objectively analyze and compare each other to the others. They can evaluate how a color lives in the world, its aspirations, its needs, and its challenges.

Teaching children is not relegated only to classrooms. We can educate all children to address each other with dignity and respect. The best way to teach this to children is to model it. I find the greatest satisfaction in the simple act of acknowledging others and being acknowledged by others. In the checkout line at Target, I smile and nod towards people I do not know. Yesterday, I saw a black man with his family two lines over and we looked at each other. I nodded toward him and he nodded toward me. We each smiled. Expressing “I see you” is easy and reciprocal.

I say hello to people on the street, at the mall, while passing, and sitting in waiting rooms. Men, women, children, my color, any color. Recognition and acknowledgement of someone else confirms that we each exist and co-exist. That acknowledgement without prejudice opens opportunities for conversation and conversation for understanding.

I wait for, aid, and help anyone of any color who can use my small assistances as we mutually navigate our communities. Courtesy is free, goodwill is easy, and doing these often is habit-forming. I cannot count the times when, after holding the door for someone, I turn to see a younger person holding the door for others. Is this causation or a coincidence of courteous people? I like causation. Goodwill can be learned.

We can educate all children to know the human story, live in the realities of our multi- nation, and create a future without the prejudice of artificial advantage.

The Big Duh!

A color-blind public education is not color blind but is color real. It teaches all the colors of nature, all the stories of our history without prejudice, and treats all children with dignity and respect.

If we want a color-blind society, we do not deny color but see all the colors so well and with such understanding that we live our colors. And we stop all attachment of advantages or disadvantages to color-relatedness. I swear, the next person who lectures me about our need to be color blind deserves a dope-slap.

I guess my goodwill towards all may know some bounds.

Effective Study Habits Should Not Be a Mystery for Children.

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Succeeding in school is a mystery to most children. The pathway of learning, testing, and good grades is broad and all children travel it but the doorway to academic success is narrow and few are awarded an A grade. The most common road sign along the way reads “Study and you will do well!” But maps for what it means to study are vague and seldom shared. How to study is the mysterious missing link to school success; we preach about studying but do not children how to study.

What do we know about this?

Our study of child development tells us that children, especially when they are young, are natural learners. Their brain sees and hears and files information automatically. Over time, their brain learns to read and textual information magnifies the quantity of information their brain processes. Children are natural learning sponges; they soak it all in.

Our study also tells us that children are born forgetters. There is a natural dumping of the information their brain processes if they do not purposefully change it from short-term to long-term memory. If they did not forget most of the millions of bits of information they see, hear, read, and feel, they would be in perpetual chaos trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Education attempts to meaningfully focus and train a child’s learning brain. A school has curriculum and teachers have instructional methods to teach children subject matter content and academic skills. A spiraling 4K-12 curriculum presents more complex and complicated information so that children can build sophistication in what we know and can do. Teaching and learning help children make sense of what to remember and what to forget.

Education also has tests for children to show they have indeed learned information and can perform academic skills. There is a rational sequence of learn, study, test that drives the annual school calendar. We teach what we test. We test what we taught. We tell children to study, but we do not teach them how to study.

Is there a problem?

You bet there is. On the one hand, schools cite the high-quality instruction of their teaching faculty and their standards-based curriculum. School say all children are taught and prepared to do be successful learners. However, test results continue to look like a bell-shaped curve with as many children achieving less than average as the number of children achieving more than average. And on higher stakes testing, more than half the children tested do not show proficiency in their test results.

It is oxymoronic to claim high quality instruction and accept low quality test results. Yet, we do.

The reason is that most children do not know how to study – how to make sense of what they have learned. I often ask children how they study. “I don’t study” is the most frequent answer. “Why don’t you study? I ask. Again, the most common response – “I don’t know what to do.” When a child tells me that they do study, I ask them who taught them. “No body. I Googled what to do” is the most common response from children who study. Ugh!

What if we taught, practiced, and consistently reinforced best practices in studying? What if students studied for a test under our supervision? What if we did not test a child until we verified that the child had used best practice study habits to prepare for the test? Well, it is likely that every child would be a successful learner. Are we prepared for this result? That may be the greater question.

Best practice study methods

We misconstrue study as how to pack information, and skill sets into the brain. That is why ineffective study is known as “cramming.”  Why is this a mistake? Because testing is about getting information and skill set manipulation out of the brain. We do not test students on how to cram; we test on how to de-cram. Studying should be building the capacity to retrieve what has been learned from the brain not trying to get more information into it.

How do we know this? Without other instructions about how to study and left to their own designs, most children do these two re-packing strategies. They –

  • Re-read the text material and re-read their notes, sometimes several times.
  • Underline or highlight text material and class notes and then re-read the underlining and highlighting.

Post-testing analysis of children who use these practices align how they studied with some B but mostly C, D, and F grades. Study habits using retrieval habits align with A and B grades, though some retrievers still have bad testing days. Study is demanding work – when it feels easy, studying is not working very well. Re-reading, underlining, and highlighting are easy and feel easy. They do not tax the brain; hence they do not work. The following practices feel like and are demanding work.

These are effective retrieval practices.

Flash cards.

  • Making and using flash cards seems tedious with a lot of manual not mental work but using flash cards works. Keep flash cards simple – one fact or one concept per card. Write a prompt on one side of the card – a word, concept, process, or cause and effect. Write the definition, explanation, sequence in a process on the other side of the card
  • Make a card for terminology – words in the text in bold print and words in the text that the teacher uses in class.
  • Make a card for cause and effect, like “these are three causes of the Great Depression.”
  • Make a card for steps in a process – “the steps in photosynthesis are …”
  • Read the introduction to a chapter – “In this chapter you will learn…” or the summary – “In this chapter, you …” Make a card for each of these major ideas, concepts, and processes.
  • Review class quizzes. Make a card for any question you answered incorrectly on a quiz.
  • Then, practice retrieval. Read the prompt from one side of the card and say aloud the fact, definition, process, application, or reasons for on the other side. Doing this aloud is a commitment to the answer; doing it silently is too passive. Mix the cards up so they are not always in the same order. Practice retrieval until you can accurately answer the prompt on every card.

Brain Dump.

  • Consider the topics that will be on a test. For example, a test on a chapter(s) in a book or on a genetics and heredity or cell structure or the order of operations in Algebra or on the causes and implications of the Great Depression. On a sheet of paper write down all you know about the topic(s) on the test. List terms and definitions. People, places, dates, and events AND the significance of each. Write out processes – this is how mitosis works. Retrieve all that you can and try to make sense of it.
  • Then compare your Brain Dump with the text and your notes. Work on completeness and accuracy.
  • Then, repeat brain dumping until your output accurately mirrors the input.
  • Practice tests. When a teacher returns a quiz or test, write down the correct answers to questions or problems you answered incorrectly. Keep all quizzes and tests returned to you. For retrieval practice, copy the questions and retake the quiz or test. Check your answers with your kept copies. Redo practice tests until you can answer all questions and problems correctly.

Distributed retrieval practice.

  • Remember cramming? Do not spend four hours the night before a test trying to remember what you have not remembered. Instead, spend one hour each school night four nights before a test making and reviewing flash cards from the day’s assignments. Spend one hour each night for four nights before a test doing a brain dump. If you do not practice retrieval, your brain forgets as fast as it remembers.
  • Distributing retrieval practice over time builds short term memory into longer term memory.

Interleaving/mixing up the order of retrieval demands.

  • When practicing retrieval for a test, change the “batting order” of your retrieving. If you start with flash cards on terms and definitions one night followed by processes, then explanations, the next night start with processes or explanations. Do not get into a groove for retrieval. Mix up what you are trying to retrieve to make your brain work harder.

Explanations not just facts.

  • Making sense of what we know reinforces the structure of our memory. Retrieval begins with the facts of who, what, and when then builds into stories that explain how and why. This is effective retrieval, especially for essay tests. Remembering the labels and steps of the digestive process is best told in explaining the process of how digestion works.

What should we do about what we know?

Consider your own school education and how you were taught to study. I am wagering that you were taught how to organize what you were to learn but were not taught how to study what you learned. We teach the Cornell note taking system, graphic organizers, and mnemonics to assist remembering. And nothing more. These are processes for learning. They are not processes for retrieving what we have learned

We should teach all children how to remember and how to retrieve what they remember, and we should practice these systems repeatedly in school and not expect children to learn them out of school. What does this look like?

  1. Most teachers plan their first summative quizzes and tests for the third or fourth week of school, usually the end of September. This is when children are finishing a first unit of instruction. BEFORE giving any children their first end of unit test, teach them how to study.
  2. In the third week of school in 4th grade, a week or more before the end of the first unit, TEACH FLASH CARDING. Why 4th grade? We teach children how to read in 4K through grade 3. In 4th grade children begin to read to learn. The amount of content knowledge increases in 4th grade. Additionally, in 4th and 5th grade students begin to attend subject area classes – ELA, math, science, social studies, art, music, world language. Each of these subject areas have content-rich assessments.
  3. Use direct instruction to teach children how to sort what you have taught, what is most important to know, and how to make flash cards of this information. Make this an “I do – we do – you do” lesson to ensure every child knows how to create proper flash cards.
  4. Use class time for children to study their flash cards. Children should study independently and collaboratively. Teachers should actively coach children how to use flash cards reinforcing effective use and correcting ineffective use.
  5. Only give children the first unit test of the school year after they have learned how to study for the test.
  6. Repeat this before any end of semester tests in 4th grade – both first and second semesters.
  7. Do this every year in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Build and support student study habits.

The Big Duh!

The goal of teaching is to cause learning. Learning is knowing. Testing is the way we ask children to show what they know. So, success in testing, retrieving what they know, should not be a mystery for children. High quality instruction does not stop with packing information into a child’s brain, it continues with how children use the information they packed in.

Teach all children how to study. Every child can earn an A on a test if we teach them how to earn it.

New Leadership Is About Solid Outputs Not New Inputs

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What if a school leadership candidate told the interviewing committee, “We will not introduce anything new! We will improve the effectiveness of how we work to improve the quality of our student achievement results!” Would you support that leader?

In our culture of consumption, every version of something new must be bold and innovative. The world’s most recognized brand name is our best example. Each year’s new Apple product rollouts exemplify this requirement. New displays, new functions, and new features make the new product better than the old. With high anticipation, we look forward to the annual Apple rollout of “new and improved.” Even if you have last year’s version, you no longer are in on the best of what is new. In fact, in every industry, including education, the words “new and improved…” precede every big announcement.

How does this work in selecting school leaders?

Currently, our local school board is hiring a new high school principal. Each candidate in the interview process fervently explains that she or he will bring the most benefit to the leadership position. “Pick me,” is the constancy between all candidates. “This is what I will do for you” is the variable that board members listen for and weigh in their hiring decision. Board members want to know what new and innovative thing a candidate gives the district that other candidates do not.

I once was a candidate for principal and superintendent positions selling my “new” ideas and I also was a school board president listening to candidates sell their “new” ideas. From both sides of the interview, the storyline was the same. Leaders are hired based upon how well the candidate identifies district needs and wants and translates those into statements of “new” leadership.

Interview for outputs not inputs.

In hindsight, we ask candidates the wrong questions. We seek leaders who can provide new inputs into our educational systems. Instead, we should be asking new leaders how they can improve the outputs, the results of instruction, in our schools. Just one two-part question matters. How will you improve the teaching/coaching/directing/mentoring to improve the educational achievements of all our children?

Instead of seeking leaders with new inputs, seek leaders who can assure the effectiveness of the professionals in your school to improve the quality of the school’s outputs – its student achievements.

What do we know?

Improving school outputs is not first, second, or third on a principal’s to do list. Principals typically self-report their daily time partitioned in these tasks:

  • Administrative tasks – 15-21%
  • Student affairs – 20-25%
  • Curriculum and teaching – 25-29%
  • Parent/Community interaction – 10-15%

The partitioning of these tasks supports the status quo of a school. The principal pays attention to the business of the school environment when spending time on administrative tasks, student affairs (discipline), and parent/community interactions. Given, each of these task categories is important, but status quo maintenance does not move the student outcomes needle. Too many principals spend too little time on the most important purpose of the school – student educational outcomes.

We get what we settle for from leadership, so raise the bar of what we settle for.

A principal’s primary focus should be on the effectiveness of the instruction, coaching, directing, and mentoring of students. To affect student achievement outcomes, new leaders must focus on what teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do. To impact achievements, they need to improve professional performances that directly affect student outcomes.

So, what can a new principal do to have a positive impact on student achievements? We know from educational research that everything our teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do can be calibrated for its impact on student learning in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. A school leader who causes teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to increase the use of higher impact instruction and to decrease the use lower impact instruction can move the student achievement needle.

What to do?

Start with acknowledging that teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors share the same major task – how to teach children to be competent and improving performers in curricular classrooms and studios, playing fields and gymnasiums, activity venues, and student life. They are instructors, first and foremost. This starting point is significant because very few school leaders consider coaches, directors, and mentors as teaching children. As a generalization, the quality of coaching, for example, is never considered for its pedagogy. Sadly, coaching effectiveness relies singularly on each athlete’s native talent and seldom on talent development.

Second, use educational research. John Hattie provides our starting point. His study of typical school/classroom practices and calibration of their impact on student achievement gives us a ranking of the typical ways teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors “teach” children. See the link below.

Visible Learning – Hattie’s Research on Effect Size

My first take in reading Hattie’s work was clouded by my past understanding of teacher effectiveness studies. I was and still am a practitioner of teaching strategies aligned with learning objectives – direct, inquiry-based, problem/project-based, and implicit methodologies. I had not considered all the aspects of school-centric practices in Hattie’s study. Now, I believe they are the new starting point for improving student outcomes. Increase our capacity and use of higher impact activities and decrease the use of lower impact strategies.

Third, change our concept of the principal as an instructional leader. Instead of being the school’s teacher of teachers, the principal is the school’s empresario of school improvement. The principal causes improvement in student outcomes to happen. Causing positive things to happen is a powerful administrative skill set.

For one, principals neither have the time nor the preparation to teach teachers how to improve pedagogy, coaching, directing, or mentoring. But they can work with their school board to bring experts to the school or send school staff to the experts to learn and improve their high impact strategies.

Fourth, begin a new annual reporting of student achievement that includes all academics, student activities, the arts, and athletics. These are the scope of what students engage in in school, so report on their reality. And stop hyperventilating on annual student performances on state-mandated assessments of reading, ELA, and mathematics. Granted, annual school report cards report reading, ELA, and math for disaggregated groups, and include attendance, discipline, and graduation data. But the governmental view of school achievement exists only for schools and states to receive federal money.

What does this look like?

Use the 25+% of a principal’s current daily commitment to curriculum and instruction to

  • Helping teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to understand and use data-based research on effective teaching practices. All staff need to see the principal’s big picture – We all are teachers and we all can improve student achievements by using higher impact teaching strategies.
  • Collaborating with the school board, school district leaders, and the school leadership team to teach teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors how to optimize their use of high impact strategies. Do not assume that all “teachers of children” know the top ten strategies on Hattie’s list. Do not assume that their recognition of the strategy is the same as knowing how to effectively use the strategy. Teach or improve the capacity of all “teachers of children” in how to use high impact strategies.
  • Change the principal’s use of daily “walk throughs” around all the school from innocuous comments to reinforcing effective practices and diminishing ineffective practices. Most teachers report that traditional “walk throughs” and notes left in mailboxes are in the “ineffective” practice category.

Effective leadership is not bright and shiny – it is hard earned and endurable.

Most teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors rely on the “teaching” methods they learned in their educators licensing program. Although teachers are required to engage in continuing education, PD is conducted as a check-off requirement. Very little PD is directly connected to the practices that improve the effectiveness of teaching related to student achievements in academics, activities, arts, or athletics.

Consequently, a principal’s initiative to increase and improve the use of highly effective practices and diminish the use of ineffective practices will be “new.”

New is a hard task. New inputs face the age-old trial of change theory. Schools, as institutions, have built-in buffers against change initiatives. School traditions, past practice, standardized training of educators, time, and money are all barriers to novel changes in the system of things. Change theory tells us it takes five to seven years to implement and embed significant changes.

The Big Duh!

Yet, new is required for real change to happen. When school boards hire new school leaders, they must take care that they are bringing a “new” to the school that really will have an impact on the most important things – student achievements.