Tag Archives: integrity

If you want parrots, teach birds not children

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Talking about education cannot withstand a vacuum.  Just when the reading wars are subsiding, and masks have come off other versions of passion-based arguing rise to poke public education.  Peruse any recent educational journal, education reporter in your local newspaper, and be prepared for oppositional values wars (oppositional meaning my side v. your side, not just red or blue).

And hypocrisy knows no bounds.  The banners read “Educate, Don’t Indoctrinate”.  If the subliminal message is “Indoctrinate with my doctrine only”, are we having a discussion or a demand?

What do we know?

We were forewarned.  The first warning long ago was “all politics are local”.  Regarding education, partisan value issues have a difficult path at the national level.  Congress has little to do with schooling.  It is not easier at the state level; fifty states and cats are hard to corral.  Efforts at the statehouse level face tough sledding unless the governor, house/assembly, and senate are on the same page on the same day.  If they are, all that follows is a one-sided story.  Grass roots politics are at the county, city, town, township, and village levels and this is where the real arguments about education are being waged.

The second warning was “local schools and local rules” mean “who controls school board elections controls local schools”.  School board membership has become the logical and easy target for any faction of a community active and driven enough to change local schools into their own image.  Split the ballot with enough candidates, narrow the field with a primary, and run for the board in a spring election on a non-Presidential election year.  The spring election is the ballot that traditionally brings out the fewest voters.  And, voila!  A person or persons representing a small fraction/faction with a particular agenda can be school board members.  Swinging several seats and a new majority of a usual seven-member board can control local schools through local rules.  Easy peasy!

What do we know about school governance?

There are 421 school districts in Wisconsin, each with its statutory school board.  By statute, members are agents of the state responsible for local school governance including adherence with state rules and policies.  Board membership involves attendance at the board’s regular business, committee, and special meetings.  The Milwaukee Public Schools Board is an outlier with member salaries of $36,000+ and the meeting demands of a large, complex, urban district.  Board work is a business in our largest district and a small, part-time job in most WI districts.  Typical board members in the hundreds of small districts receive an honorarium of $2-3,000 and meeting obligations require less than 10 hours per month.

School board members typically are not prepared for the vitriol of agenda-based arguments or attacks.  Most members rise from the traditional school booster groups of parents committed to educational programs for their children and their children’s peer group.  Their usual challenges are how to sustain current programs with reduced state financial aid, whether to buy a new school bus this year or next, and what is an optimal class size in their schools.  These are significant yet not “attack dog” issues.  When the dogs are out, many boards either close up shop or cave in.

What must we remember?

At the heart of most, if not every school board discussion and decision, should be children.  “How will this enhance the education of children?”, should be our constant mantra.  Played large, this mantra informs everything from reading programs to school remodeling to employee salaries to football uniforms.  Simply put, schooling is about children not adults.

This blog is not used to promote any point of view or specific, contemporary agenda.  Rather, the blog advocates for best practices for causing all children to learn.

What do we know about educating children?

Personal inquisitiveness is a foundation for lifelong learning.  The first word, personal, is essential.  Most of us want to learn to know, not be told how or what to know.  The intrinsic motivation of personalized learning is a powerful force for exciting children to learn and helping them persist in learning.  Somethings children learn have a social context and they must engage in learning with other children.  Yet, when a child feels a personalized engagement with what is being learned, a child is more likely to learn and remember.

Inquisitive is the operant word in personalized education.  To inquire is to ask a question.  It says, “I want to know about this”.  Its synonyms are equally powerful.  To explore.  To investigate.  To examine.  To analyze.  To inquire opens the door for learning with a question leading to all sorts of new information and experiences.  To inquire retains a personal control of the learning as what unfolds may not be of interest or significance.  To inquire about something opens the door to ask about something else.  Life is full of inquiry.  We want children to be inquisitive.  When we start with this purpose, untold possibilities for significant learning emerge.  Without inquisitiveness, we are training puppets of our thinking.

The ability to inquire should be a bedrock in child education.  We know –

  • Inquisitiveness is innate.  The interest to know, if not the need to know, is within every child. 
  • Inquisitiveness is to wonder and “I wonder …” is the beginning of an adventure.
  • Inquisitiveness is unbiased.  A child learns the winds that will fill their personal sails and there are many winds.
  • Inquisitiveness leads to exploration and invention and creation.  Our world needs exploring, inventive, and creative people.
  • Inquisitiveness allows individuals to grow and develop and to share.  “I wonder…” initiates learning that frequently results in “Hey, did you know …”.  Then, our children begin to educate others.

We learn more about inquisitiveness by addressing what it is not.  To not want a child to be inquisitive is to insist she –

  • Accept what she is told without question.
  • Ignores options and possibilities.
  • Considers all things she is told as facts whether true of not.
  • Abandons the joy of being surprised.

What do we want for our children?

“I want our children to be wiser and braver than me and prepared to meet the unknowns they will encounter.” 

This is both a personal statement and one that I hear from many of my generation.  We Baby Boomers had our whack at the world.  In hindsight and with the judgments of successor generations, Boomers had some significant successes and left some very significant messes.  After studying, I found the same to be true of predecessor generations. 

I am proud of our local schools where inquiry and exploration are prized and supported.  Our purpose is to provide all children with opportunities for learning.  We would rather our children are reading and learning broadly so that when asked “What do you think about…?”, or “Show us what you have learned?”, they will give informed and insightful responses and performances and not parrot back limited incantations of what they were told.  Their 21st century requires no less.

Children are great people, and we assist them to be great adults through the type of education we provide in their formative years.  I tell all but my bachelor bird loving friends, if you want parrots, raise birds.  I tell my school board colleagues, if you want a braver and wiser next generation, don’t educate them like parrots.  And resist anyone who wants to make a classroom into a parrot factory.

Unheralded Educators

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A friend of mine drove a local school bus.  Driving was a second or third job for him as the two hour early morning and mid- to late afternoon runs created time for mid-day and evening work.  Driving, however, is what drove him.

“Never had a ticket.  Never had an accident.  Never had a lost child.  Never got lost myself”, he would humbly say about his time in the driver’s seat.  At Halloween and Christmas he put masks on the front of his yellow bus.  He had a perpetual gleam in eyes even when he needed to look up into the large rear view mirror to tell a young boy, “Sit down, Mark”.  I don’t believe he ever turned in a discipline referral to the school principals, because he talked with the children on their bus, not his bus. 

Every fall there would be a moment resembling Forrest Gump’s first greeting with his school bus driver.  Forrest introduced himself and she introduced herself and they began a morning and afternoon routine that lasted for years.  Some years there were as few as thirty-some children on his bus, but most years there were 40-plus riders.  He knew of them before their first day on a school bus and he knew about them years after they graduated.  He knew their parents and their parents knew him on a first name basis.  He never left a dropped off young child until he saw a wave from a parent at the door or in a waiting car.  He was a parent in absentia for dozens of children twice each school day.

Like all veteran school bus drivers, he had his share of criers and pukers, kids whose forgotten lunch on the morning bus he delivered to the school offices, and kids who stood at their morning stop without a hat or mittens/gloves.  He carried a box of spares.

One of the most meaningful moments of every school year occurred in the first week of June.  On the last days of the school year, he would say with what some might call teary eyes, “I remember when she started Kindergarten.  They are all so small and she was a brave one.  She rode every day; seldom got a ride to school, until she got her driver’s license.  For the last year or so, she drove to school with friends.  I watched her grow up from a five year old to a fine young woman.  This week, she rode every day and today she brought me a ‘Thank you’ card of being her driver and friend.  She’s one of mine.”

He and our team of school bus drivers are unheralded educators of children.  We are a rural district where most children ride our yellow buses to school.  Let’s do the math.  With approximately 170 days of school each year and an average route time in our district of 25 minutes, bus riding children spend more than 140 hours each school year on a school bus.  That is equal to the amount of time a student spends in a secondary classroom for math or ELA or science.  If a child rides every day of their Kindergarten year through tenth grade, the year a child can get a driver’s license, a child really grows up on a school bus with more than 1,500 hours of riding time or had a class each day with the same teacher for 11 years. 

That is a lot of driver-rider contact time in which there is one driver and dozens of children on a school bus traveling back and forth between homes and school.  We trust children to the safe driving care of our drivers.  We trust their well-being and that a driver who knows them watches out over them every morning and every afternoon.  Across the decades, our driving unheralded educators deliver every day.

Your Personal Pantheon of Teachers

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Miss Blaine knew.  She knew I liked stories and histories and language.  If I could read about it and begin to imagine it, I could know it and the more I read and imagined the more I wanted to learn.  And, she knew I was a quiet student seldom raising my hand but could give illustrated answers when called upon.  Miss Blaine knew me.  She was my teacher for two years – 4th and 5th grade, back-to-back with Miss Blaine – in the late 1950s.

Miss Blaine knew Carol and Richard and Mike W and Bruce.  They topped all the weekly charts for the 32 students in our classroom; those were early Boomer years when all classrooms were bulging.  Spelling, arithmetic quizzes, science check tests and annual ITBS assessments – these were our straight A’s champs week in and week out.   She fed them more assignments than the rest of us, and more comments on their projects, and more difficult books to read.  The more she gave, the better they did.  Miss Blaine knew Dick and Donnie and Steve Y struggled to read and do their math and she gave them more of her one-on-one time.  She knew when a child needed the boost of leading the class from her room to Miss Snyder’s art room, the little self-esteem boost of being picked by Miss Blaine to lead.

Miss Blaine knew how to hook each child in her classroom to cause each of us to learn.  She never looked at us sitting in our rows of desks with a solitary gaze but flitted her eyes from child to child as she spoke so that we knew she was talking to each of us intentionally.  She was short in stature and did not need to kneel or bend very far when she stood by my desk to comment on my work or ask a guiding question to keep me on track.  With eyes shut I can still summon her presence and my want to be a better student, to get more problems right on my nemesis math assignments, because she thought I could.

I would like to think that every student in every school experiences their own Miss Blaine.  Across the fourteen years of 4K-12 education, a random draw of Miss Blaine’s in elementary, middle, and high school, in grade level classes and in subject classes, is enough to make school and learning meaningful.  It is enough hooking by master teachers to keep children self-invested in their learning.

Consider your own history as a student.  Can you name your Miss Blaines?  Can you remember how specific teachers made a difference in your school life?  In your heart of hearts you know them as they knew you.

Miss Blaine, Mrs. Wendlent, Mr. Marshall, Mrs. McArthur, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Chute, Mr. Mixdorf, Mr. Hubacek – I am eternally grateful that you taught me. 

My listing these names does not mean I did not learn from each of the 80+ teachers who were mine in my kindergarten through senior year experience.  I indeed learned from all.  But, there really is a difference in a child’s connections with their teachers.  Some connections are as routine and pedestrian as the spending of common time and the management of 180 days’ of school work.  Other connections mark you for your lifetime.

My Miss Blaine is long gone, as are almost all my teachers.  So are many of my classmates.  We know that the effects of a person’s lifetime are short-lived, but while we live and remember the effects of the teachers who knew us and hooked us as learning children, the glory of their good teaching prevails.

Do It Differently, Smarter – Student Rounds

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“I spend the first days and weeks of the school year getting to know my students so that I can meet their needs as learners.”  I have heard this statement each September since the 1970s and I frown.  What hubris!  Unless the child is new to your school, teachers have a wealth of relevant and reliable information about every student’s needs at their fingertips.  There is no need under the sun to waste the first days and weeks “getting know” your students.  Why don’t we do it differently and smarter and do educational rounds just as medical doctors do patient rounds?  And, do these rounds at the end of the preceding school year so that a teacher has all summer to use solid information to plan for each child’s instruction in the fall.

Current Practice

On the last day of school in the spring, the experts who know the most about the students in a teacher’s next fall assignment go home.  Historically, the last days of school are all about ending the current school year.  Records are updated and classrooms are closed.  School is vacated for the summer recess.  The knowledge next year’s teachers need departs for the summer.

Ten weeks later teachers return to school in the last week of August to prepare for a new school year.  The major focus of August work is getting classrooms ready for children and teaching.  As a rule, more professional time is spent reviewing school rules and regulations and putting up bulletin board displays than is spent in discussion of student learning needs.  We are compelled to get ready for the first day of school and most teachers sitting in August PD meetings wish they were in their classrooms doing their physical preparation tasks.

Check this out.  A teacher who cannot pronounce the name of a child in their classroom on the first day does not know that child’s learning needs.  Mispronunciation of the names of children who were students in the school last spring occurs in almost every classroom.  Not knowing how to pronounce a continuing student’s name is a sign that no teacher-to-teacher discussion of learning needs has taken place.

At best, we hold rushed meetings in which counselors share information about various students and their learning challenges.  There is scant time for a teacher to delve into those needs and plan instruction.  We prioritize classroom readiness not instructional readiness. 

The closest current practice comes to rounds is an IEP or 504 Plan meeting that includes all of a child’s teachers plus parents and advocates.

Student Rounds in the Summer

Better practice is to extend contracts for all teachers beyond the last of school and use time at the end of a school year for this year’s teachers to tell next year’s teachers what they know about promoted children.  There are many ways to implement and schedule rounds. 

Grade level to grade level – Within a schedule, 4K talks to 5K, 5K to first grade, until all grade level conversations are completed.  This organization favors more global discussion as teachers discuss each child across all instruction.  All teachers of a grade level, including special subjects and special education participate.  Grade level to grade level applies to children 4K into middle school or until the next year’s student schedule is dominated with elective or leveled courses.

Subjects within grade levels – This organization focuses on each subject areas of instruction and completes one subject area before starting a next area.  Regular, special education, and second language teachers share in discussing each child’s development in one subject at a time.  If there are different art, music, PE, and technology teachers at different grade levels, subject area sharing is the pathway for “specials” teachers to share student information teacher-to-teacher.

Secondary Subject departments – The daily class pathway for children in secondary school fans out, especially in high school with multi-grade classes and electives and an array of teachers.  Using the next year’s already developed student schedules, children are ordered alphabetically and information about their learning preferences, challenges, and uniqueness is shared. 

Face-to-face – School leadership may choose to organize students rounds as a whole school, all teachers at the same time and in the same place activity.  Every student-based meeting is face-to-face.

Virtual – We became better than average facilitators of virtual, group meetings in the pandemic.  Rounds can be held with teachers in school or at home or other locations using virtual platforms.  Virtual rounds accommodate teachers and administrators’ preferences to work from or home.

Why Rounds?

Fresh details matter.  In primary grade transitions, the current teacher has fresh knowledge of the child’s mastery of phonemic sounds and letters and ability to pronounce new words and spell words on demand.  Because these details are fresh, the current teacher can anecdotally describe what works best to support this child’s learning.  Freshness details are diminished over the summer as each former student melds into the greater group of former students.  This just simply happens.

Magnify this across all the children in a school and fresh details become even more important.  There is no reason for next year’s teachers to await similar experiences to arise when they can learn from and plan using the expert commentary of their colleagues.

Learning styles and preferences matter.  Although there is current literature that devalues learning styles profiling, the truth is that some children prefer to watch, listen, or do.  Whereas teachers want to develop broader learning modalities for all children, starting a school year with a child’s preferences creates early school year success and nothing succeeds greater than early success.

Progress in annual strategies prepared by a teacher and a child’s parents’ matter.  We tout and encourage parents to engage with teachers to create student-centered partnerships.  There is no reason to recreate new partnerships every time a teacher assignment changes.  Our current practice of starting a new discussion about their child confirms for parents that teachers are independent contractors and do not cooperate or collaborate.  This is not the storyline we want to perpetuate.  Just share what you know and build upon what you collectively know.  Be professionally seamless.

SEL challenges matter.  Children face developmental challenges as they transition from pre-school to 4K-5K, grade school to middle school, from pre-adolescence adolescence, and into semi-independent learners in high school.  The pandemic and remote education caused challenges for children returning to in-person schooling.  These mean that teacher-to-teacher discussions about children are even more important.  In-school behaviors and dispositions about school, respect and consideration for teachers and fellow students, and consistent school attendance all took hits from the pandemic.  Lack of shared knowledge hampers a child’s next teacher understanding of what she needs to know on day one of a school year.

What To Do?  If you believe your current practices optimize your teachers’ knowledge of the children they will teach in fall, continue with your current practices.  If you believe your current practices are not preparing all teachers for their next year’s students, develop your version of student rounds.  You have a wealth of knowledge about your students, use that knowledge to their advantage in preparing for the 2022-23 school year.  Do student rounds.

Smart Is As Smart Does

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A while ago Holiday Inn Express enjoyed using “I’m not a rocket scientist, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night” as an indicator of the smart and well-informed traveler in their clientele.  They seemed to say, “smart is as smart does”, a reverse paraphrase of Forest Gump. 

Almost every public conversation today about school is overly loaded with Holiday Inn Express overnighters and back door Forest Gumps.  A great many, no matter where they spend the night, speak like an expert on educational subjects.  Truth be told, many a speaker’s most recent personal experience with 4K-12 education was their last day of school prior to graduation. 

That written, public education is all about the opportunity for any person to speak their mind regarding the life and times of their local schools, teachers, curriculum, instruction, and school taxes.  School boards meet in public sessions with scheduled times on the posted agenda for any person to speak to the board members.  In the past two years the public has spoken to school boards, sometimes loudly and passionately, sometimes raucously, and many more  times with explicit commentary.

Professional educators are often baffled by the real outcomes when the public speaks to the school board.  Long-standing past practice, sound theory and research, and well-laid out plans can be cancelled by the requests, demands, and wants of the lay public.  This is not say that a parent or community member is not informed and well-prepared in their speech.  They frequently are.  It is, however, to poke a solid hole in the mantle professionals wear.  School boards can discount professional education and professional experience in the face of a teary, angry, and demanding public in the blink of an eye or the casting of an “aye” vote.

Often, on the night before a school board meeting, I am tempted to drive 200 miles round trip in order to say at the meeting, “I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express” last night.  That may be all the context and perspective that is warranted today.