The following post is by  Mark Anderson and William Johnson, and was originally posted on Gotham Schools. 

What makes a great teacher? To a lot of people, the answer seems simple enough: a great teacher is one whose students achieve. For the most part these days, student success is measured with test scores. Logically then, a great teacher is one whose students perform well on tests.

Let’s take it a step further: what makes a great school? Again, the same basic logic applies: great schools are ones that produce the highest proportion of students who perform well on tests. The role of the school, in other words, is to produce students successful according to test proficiency.

Perhaps this framework appears overly simplistic, but it’s the framework that currently directs our efforts to improve public schools. Schools are knowledge-manufacturing facilities, with students being their products. This framework has led school reformers to advocate for accountability systems, human capital mechanisms, and other private sector management tools in public school reform.

Not surprisingly, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is an aggressive proponent of this business framework. The mayor’s private sector management approach recently led him to propose a “turnaround” program at 33 city schools that would require replacing half of those school’s teachers. Not happy with the product? Fire experienced workers and bring in cheaper, lower skilled replacements.

This framework is not just a New York thing. All across the country, school districts are being pushed, by influential figures like U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Calif. Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss, to evaluate teachers based on a “value-added” analysis. What does this mean? It’s a kind of metaphor: students are raw natural resources; unprocessed, they contribute little to the economy and thus possess little value. If teachers process them effectively, however, their value increases.

Let’s leave aside our gut reactions to talking about children this way. The real problem with this framework is that it’s been a dead end. For the most part, debates about how to produce better students have led to discordwithin the field of education, while demonstrating little significant impact.

As special education teachers, we know how critical these environmental factors are. Our students, for reasons as varied as their individual learning needs, rarely thrive in a high pressure, test-driven environment. The vast majority of students with exceptional learning needs perform significantly below the norm on standardized tests, significantly enough that these tests (or the scores required to pass them) must constantly be modified so that our students can be accounted as successful. Students receiving special education services are often more attuned to environmental factors than their general education counterparts. It is this sensitivity to their environment that often makes it so difficult for such students to focus on their studies.

Schools as ecosystems

But positive, supportive environments are not important only for students with exceptional learning needs. All students thrive in environments that support their development in diverse ways: from offering a coherent, sequential curriculum to providing students with a comfortable, stimulating physical space. Such schools, like their curricula, take responsibility not simply for academic development, but personal development as well. School environments where the curriculum is designed around standardized tests, and where factors like the physical and social environment take a back seat to those tests, are not conducive to learning.

We propose a fundamental shift in the framework and language we use to discuss educational reform. Instead of a framework that views students as products, we propose a framework in which the products of education are viewed as the contexts and content of schools themselves. The schools we produce should be positive and nurturing learning environments where students are engaged in a rich, coherent curriculum. Rather than view our students as widgets, we’d do better to view them as vibrant, dynamic organisms, and view the school, by extension, as an ecosystem. While such a model would make it harder to quantify school quality based on a simple numerical scale, it would enable us to have more productive conversations about systemic education reform, and to take action in targeted ways that will have a sustainable impact.

There are principles for maintaining a healthy ecosystem that can provide guidance in strengthening our school environments. We are certain that this shift in focus will — perhaps paradoxically — result in more productive student outcomes. Land maintained according to sound ecological principles results in abundant microbial soil life, interdependency of diverse species, and a sustainable yield. A school maintained according to ecological principles will result in lower teacher turnover, greater community engagement, and positive long-term student outcomes.

Our belief is that many schools commonly considered “great” already operate as healthy, sustainable ecosystems. Such schools offer their students adequate sunlight, fresh air, exercise, and nutrition. Their students feel intellectually, emotionally, and physically safe because their school communities celebrate diversity and offer equity of opportunity. These schools offer an array of supplemental options–such as music, foreign languages, clubs, and sports–to meet the diverse needs of their dynamic student bodies. They offer protection from short-sighted policies and destructive external forces through the strong relationships and trust engendered and developed within the school community. They possess built-in mechanisms to maintain equity and equilibrium, preventing one type of personality or learning need from dominating at the expense of others.

Cultivation, not demolition

How does this framework relate to ongoing conflict around school closures? Under the Department of Education’s current “turnaround” plan, as many as 33 city schools could be closed, re-staffed (with as many as half their current teachers replaced), and reopened. At schools all over New York, teachers, students, and families have voiced concerns about the city’s slash-and-burn approach to school “turnaround.”

If schools are factories, tearing down “ineffective” ones and replacing them with newer, shinier ones might sound like good business. If, however, we view schools as ecosystems, then struggling schools are depleted ecosystems desperately in need of resuscitation and support. Such resuscitation requires a holistic, long-term approach.

Using an ecological design approach, reformers could not treat schools as vacant lots primed for subdivision. Instead, school revitalization would need to be a community-driven, long-term process. In an ecological framework, school reformers would need to acknowledge the complexity of school communities, rather than simply pretending that schools could be leveled, bulldozed, and magically reinvented as high performing lots of isolated land.

Implicit in such a framework, and diametrically opposed to the “student as product” framework, is the understanding that there is no ideal school (nor student). Just as healthy ecosystems might come in a myriad of forms, healthy school environments may come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, dependent on specific local community needs and circumstances. That said, healthy school environments, like ecosystems, are guided and cultivated by a set of core principles, which the authors would like to explore in future posts.

Perhaps the best part of this paradigm shift (for the authors) is that in such a framework, the role of the teacher would shift from test-prep overseer to environmental steward. Instead of being trained and treated as a widget, teachers would be content experts and community leaders of their classroom and school ecosystem, responsible for all the students who inhabit it. Such stewards would necessarily need to be long-term inhabitants of these ecosystems themselves, growing more and more effective as their knowledge of the environment deepens and their relationships within the school community strengthens.

A new metric

Do we sound like dreamers? Would such a model be impossible to quantify? We do not believe so, and we’re not the first to propose such a paradigm shift. In fact, we believe that by refocusing our attention on the content and contexts of our schools, we can establish a new measuring stick. What’s more, since this framework would not be based on improving student test scores but on improving school environments, the responsibility would be shared by all who work within and support that community, rather than solely upon the backs of individual students and teachers within the confines of an isolated classroom.

In the posts that follow, the authors will lay out a series of ecological principles that we believe can be used as a guide for effective school design and reform. We will also examine model schools and investigate how they’ve constructed such exceptional school environments. We look forward to your feedback.

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Imagine the present corporately promoted education reform effort as a truck, its tires nearly flat from the weight of the many unexamined assumptions it carries.

On board: An assumption that punishment and rewards effectively motivate; that machines can measure the quality of human thought; that learning is hard, unpleasant work; that what the young need to know is some agreed-upon, standard body of knowledge; that doing more rigorously what we’ve always done will raise test scores; that teacher talk and textbook text can teach complex ideas; that … well, you get the idea.

Misdiagnosing the Main Problem

Right now, the biggest, heaviest assumption on the reform truck has it that, when the Common Core State Standards Initiative is complete – when somebody has decided exactly what every kid in every state is supposed to know in every school subject at every grade level – the education reform truck will take off like gangbusters.

It won’t. If all the reformers’ flawed assumptions are corrected, but the traditional math-science-language-arts-social-studies “core curriculum” remains the main organizer of knowledge, the truck may creep forward a few inches, but it won’t take the young where they need to go if we care about societal survival. The mess from this generation’s political paralysis and refusal to address looming problems can’t be cleaned up using the same education that helped create it.

What’s wrong with “the core”? For its content to be processed, stored in memory, retrieved and combined in novel ways to create new knowledge, it would have to be well organized and integrated. It isn’t. It’s a confusing, random, overwhelming, intellectually unmanageable assortment of facts, specialized vocabularies, disconnected conceptual frameworks, and abstractions – the whole too far removed from life as the young live it for them to care about it.

So, they don’t. They’re being blasted with information at fire-hose velocity. The diligent and the fearful store as much as they can in short-term memory, and when testing is over, their brains delete what’s considered clutter because it’s not immediately useful. The non-diligent and the cynical guess and/or cheat the answer sheets. The rest (and their numbers, understandably, are steadily increasing) opt out of the trivia game, or are opted out by thoughtful, caring parents.

A Different Organizer

There’s an alternative to the core as an organizer of information and knowledge. We use it from birth to death, and we didn’t learn it in school. It’s the key to an order-of-magnitude improvement in learner performance.

For firsthand evidence of that system’s potential, consider how much we learn and how fast we learn it long before we walk through school doors. Starting from scratch, we figure out how to meet personal needs; learn what’s acceptable and unacceptable behavior; construct explanatory theories; master one or more complex languages; adapt appropriately to many different personality types; absorb the foundational patterns of action and premises of one or more cultures; and much, much else.

Our “natural” knowledge-organizing and integrating system’s main components are those we use to create the most complete and sophisticated models of reality known – stories. To make sense of any and all reality, we seek answers to just five questions – Who? What? When? Where? Why? All knowledge is an elaboration of one or more of those five distinct kinds of information.

“We did something,” communicates. “Because we were bored, Tanya and I went to the mall yesterday,” elaborates. “Because Tanya Jones and I, Mary Smith, were bored, we went to Bath and Body Works in Eastland Mall in Columbus, Ohio, arriving in the parking lot a few minutes after three o’clock on the 13th of January,” elaborates further. The exercise could continue, adding layers of increasing precision.

The more we know about a particular subject, situation or science, the more elaborations we have from which to choose. When Hippocrates wrote about cancer in 400 BC, he almost certainly didn’t see it as a group of diseases, each sufficiently different from the others to warrant the range of labels that help today’s researchers and doctors think and talk about cancer more productively. As cancer research advances, the elaborating process will continue.

We make sense by choosing from elaborating options for who, what, when, where and why, and weaving our choices together systemically. As options increase and potential systemic relationships multiply, ever-better sense is made, creativity is stimulated and knowledge expands.

An Unknown Known

Our sense-making system – like the concept of gravity before Sir Isaac Newton – is so familiar we don’t think of it as a system. And, when it’s pointed out, we tend to dismiss it as too simple and obvious to be important, much less the key to educational transformation. But made explicit and put to work, our implicitly known knowledge organizer moves learner performance to levels far beyond the reach of the measurement capabilities of standardized tests, including the ones on which international comparisons are based.

Skillful use of the system can’t be taught in the usual sense of the word – can’t, that is, be transferred in useable form from mind to mind by words on a page, images on a screen or lectures from a stage. Learners have to construct understanding for themselves.

To appreciate the teaching-learning challenge, imagine trying to explain water to a fish. Success requires that the utterly familiar be made “strange enough to see.” A five-hour lecture to a fish on the subject of water wouldn’t match the memorable experience of being lifted out of the water for a five-second exposure to air.

Experience is the best teacher, but attention must be paid. Adolescents, encouraged to look long and hard at particular, ordinary experiences – and to think and talk about what they’re doing – eventually discover their basic, five-element approach to sense-making. They’ve lived long enough to have experiences they can analyze, are mature enough to examine those experiences introspectively and haven’t yet been programmed by schooling to sort what they know into disconnected boxes with subject-matter labels.

Reasoning their way to those five distinct kinds of information, they “own” the foundation of their knowledge-categorizing and -manipulating system. No reading from a textbook, no listening to a lecture, no viewing of a video production, will ever match the level of understanding of ideas that emerge from firsthand experience refined by dialogue.

The Challenge of Change

Making deliberate use of our usual system for organizing knowledge doesn’t discard academic disciplines or the school subjects based on them. It elevates and enhances them; puts them in context; and makes them mutually supportive, systemically integrated parts of each learner’s seamless “model of reality” – the mental template laid down on particular experience to generate questions leading to the making of sense.

Ironically, it’s probable that use of the system would perpetuate the curse of standardized testing. When kids know how their mental “filing systems” work, and make use of them to retrieve trivia from memory, scores will go up. But the long-term positives of using familiar school subjects and procedures to smooth the change process cancel the negatives, primarily by allowing the process to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Eventually, as making more sense of experience replaces the ubiquitous “preparing for college and career” as the working aim of schooling, broader change will follow. Coming (as it should) “bottom up,” from teachers and learners focused on improving sense-making rather than on raising test scores, the direction of change will always be appropriate.

There will be surprises, but they’ll be pleasant. A major one will be the discovery that kids are far smarter than they’re given credit for being. Another will be that adequately feeding the left, order-seeking side of the brain takes much less time than is currently being devoted to it. A third related surprise will be that the time thus released will make possible a world of useful educational activities – projects, apprenticeships, advanced studies, and so on. A fourth will be that a much better education can be had for considerably less money.

To begin to make use of our natural system for making sense, a little handholding should help. A rough, first-generation tool for that purpose titled Connections: Investigating Reality (think of it as a beta version) can be downloaded from the Internet. In the spirit of “open source,” and acknowledging a deep-seated American aversion to spending public money on educating, it’s free to individual educators for use with students.

Connections requires no special training, no additional materials and no new technology. It does, however, require teachers or mentors who are willing to play a non-traditional role. Present textbooks and teacher talk offer learners secondhand, supposedly expert knowledge about reality. Connections directs attention to reality itself in all its inherent complexity, and poses questions or problems. Particular realities may be as mundane as the arrangement of furniture in a classroom, a familiar television commercial, a popular children’s book, an obscure folk song. The young – less programmed by life experience – may see in them what the teacher does not. Sufficient humility to accept that fact and encourage its demonstration is appropriate.

Connections makes provision for user dialogue. If advantage is taken of the tool, the differing perspectives and collective wisdom of teachers and learners will allow the general education curriculum to continuously adapt to the needs and trends of the era.

On the Other Hand

When the CEOs and the politicians they’ve bought finish the simplistic “reform” they’ve started, when the claim that an order-of-magnitude improvement in learner intellectual performance has been dismissed as hyperbole, when all 50 states have been pressured to adopt the regressive Common Core Standards locking the knowledge-fragmenting 1893 curriculum in permanent place, when standardized subject-matter tests that can’t measure the qualities and quality of thought have been nationalized, when the Standards and Testing Police are fully deployed and looking over every teacher’s shoulder, it’ll all be over. America and the nations that follow its lead in education will face a dynamic world equipped with a static curriculum.

Catastrophe will be inevitable.

This piece was originally published on truthout. 

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One of the most difficult tasks a teacher faces is motivating students to learn. While some students have a natural love of learning, others arrive at a class under protest and act as if they’re being tortured rather than taught. Teachers must find a way to motivate these challenging students.

A teacher can tap into two basic types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation occurs when the student pursues learning due to their interest in a specific topic. MBA Online states that having the motivation to execute ideas you’re deeply interested in is an important skill to have when starting a business or looking for a job. For example, a student who wants to be an astronaut when they grow up will exert extra effort into their astronomy class just because they’re interested in the topic. Giving positive feedback frequently can instill intrinsic motivation, as can using the students’ interests to teach a subject. Another example would be a student interested in dinosaurs will have a greater interest in learning about types of plants if they are given a chance to set up a dinosaur habitat with plants they’ve chosen to support dinosaur life.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the students. A student who makes an A and gets $10 for it may want to make more A’s to make more money. Because of this, many teachers set up reward systems for reading a certain number of books, for completing homework or for successfully finishing learning tasks. While this may sound like a falsified form of educating children, the end result may be the same; students end up learning the same amount of material regardless of how they are motivated to do so. However, research into the long-term gains, or lack thereof, with such an approach should caution teachers against overuse.

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have their benefits and drawbacks. Intrinsic motivation can be difficult to tap into because of its personal nature. In some cases, students may be dealing with difficulties in their personal lives that use up their energy and leaves little room for academic enthusiasm. In those cases, some interest in the subject can often be encouraged by a teacher willing to show concern for the student. One first step is to listen to your students, get to know them, their interests, and their dreams. Use these “data” points to tailor curricula to help hook them into the topic.

Cultivating and maintaining intrinsic motivation is a life-long skill that all students can develop. Although grade school is typically a place for students to learn fundamentals of a wide range of topics, teachers must also help students learn how to learn. Understanding research methods, how to analyze texts, and ways to study for tests are all just as important as learning the Pythagorean theorem. Adults often have tasks at work or home that must be done even though they will receive no outside payment or recognition. Learning to be satisfied with a job well done is an important part of growing up.

Extrinsic motivation is much easier to establish once the teacher knows what the student is willing to work for. Whether it is stickers, a bit of extra free time or some sort of prize, students usually have a reward they value. An extrinsic reward system can teach students to put in hard work in order to get a reward, another life skill. However, in jest, a downside to extrinsic motivation is that it can get expensive for the motivator. The real problem, though, is that extrinsic motivation works in the short term, but it does little to light (and keep lit) the fire of curiosity that leads to life long learning. It may be that the book a teacher bribes a student to read hooks them into reading, however, there is little guarantee of this. Better to find books that link naturally with the student’s interest and provide multiple entry points for that student to engage in the topic in a meaningful and relevant context.

For the teacher balancing the pace of a fast moving curriculum with a desire to make learning fun and engaging, perhaps the best motivation system is one that provides both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. While students may get tangible rewards for their work, they also get positive feedback and chances to explore their own interest within the scope of their subject. For example, a teacher might let students choose their own topic for a research project related to their subject area. Hopefully students get intrinsic motivation from picking a topic they are interested in and having a choice in how they will approach the topic. When students display the final product of their research, they get the extrinsic motivation of a grade and perhaps even the positive attention of their peers.

While motivation is often a challenging task for teachers, the rewards of having students who are interested and eager to learn make the hard work worth the effort. By combining intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, teachers can help students learn the subject at hand as well as valuable life skills.

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IF you listen to too much of the rhetoric about school reform these days, you may be led to believe that schooling is about achievement, first and foremost. However, for those on the ground floor, achievement is a byproduct of something more profound and simple — Learning. Life long learning. For most educators it is the Holy Grail of “schooling.”

However, cultivating a body of students who have the ability, dedication, and desire to learn both inside and outside of school is an objective worthy of a Mission Impossible background score. For educational leaders, the obstacles mount daily and relentlessly, often compounding on one another, until principals are fried and burned out.

Managing this simingly impossible mission necessitates school leaders embrace learning themselves. They must be dedicated students in the heady parlance of school leadership and tenacious practitioners at applying those teachings on the ground floor. For the busy leader (and which one isn’t, really?) distilling theory down to applied action can be a monumental task in itself. As Yogi Berra poignantly quipped, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

Dr. William Sterrett‘s new book, Insights into Action, bridges this gap confidently and insightfully. Through interviews, research and anecdotes, Sterrett provides readers with a scope of ideas and pragmatic suggestions that are both academic and applicable.

In this fast paced volume, Sterrett makes a compelling (though perhaps unintentional) argument for rethinking how we think about school. It is clear throughout the book that he cares about two things — students and learning. These two elements are the red thread that tie the chapters together. Even as other trends emerge — increasing communication channels, cultivating diverse leadership, and mission driven action — it is the students and learning that are ever-present.

In each chapter, Sterrett weaves personal stories of transformative leadership together with action items backed by research. He grounds these in the day to day undertakings and practicality of running a school, a district, or even a classroom. The lessons and ideas are general enough to be applicable in multiple disciplines and at a range of leadership levels, yet specific enough to offer action items that can be differentiated to each person’s precise needs.

For instance, in Section 1, “Learning to Lead,” he lays out numerous concepts that provide the broad brush strokes of effective leadership in a school setting. Sterrett outlines Rick DuFour’s model of a “learning leader” by highlighting the four principles school leaders would be wise to embrace:

1. Believe That “Learning Is Fun.”
2. Be a Servant Leader.
3. Apply External Leadership Principles.
4. Insist on Relevance and Authenticity.

While Sterrett doesn’t offer a recipe for how to accomplish each of these tasks, he does finish each chapter with a more developed set of “In-the-Field Activities.” (Click the image on the left for a readable sample.) These help point the proactive leader toward implementation with some simple exercises. It is herein that the book demonstrates its utility for both new and veteran leaders.

As a volume, it is relatively short and can leave the reader feeling that Sterrett has 500 pages of material he’s trying to distill to 120 pages. Additionally, the breadth and scope come across as more as a survey than an in-depth analysis. However, it seems that that is part of the point. School leaders are beset with fires that need putting out, immediately and constantly. This book is meant to be read quickly, and then used as a tool to help stimulate and spur initiatives over the course of a year, two years, or a career.

Ambitious leaders eager to implement each and every suggestion will find themselves overwhelmed with projects too numerous to keep track of. And it is in this way that the book can be unintentionally beguiling. While the book itself read’s easily and quickly, the reader must remember that the ideas, comments and suggestions span years and take consistent stoking to bring to maturity. In many ways, this counter balance of the minutiae with the long view is one of the text’s strengths.

The leaders Sterrett interviews have dedicated many years of their lives to making an impact in the lives of students. No one made it into this book because she/he was a one hit wonder. Each has overcome challenges, faced daunting odds, and remained resolute at times and have learned to listen and reflect and adapt at other times. It is, ultimately, a book of culled wisdom, punctuated with practical suggestions for standing on the shoulders of the giants herein. It is from the vantage point of their experiences and their stories that we are able to see through the occasional (and probable) tempests to the other side in which an innovative change has become a norm. Or, to envision what might be.

For example, in the chapter titled, “Turning Technology into Engaged Learning,” Sterrett focuses on Dr. Pam Moran, superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia, who has steadfastly worked to ingrate technology into all levels of the school district. She candidly shares some of the obstacles and speed bumps she has navigated over the years in being a technology advocate and leader. In speaking about a centralized online server to “consolidate data and curriculum,” Sterrett reports:

Although, Moran concedes, the work was “messy” for the first few years, as teachers and administrators learned to navigate through the new software, it has continually improved the accessibility of the data and the curriculum and fostered understanding collaboration in the learning community.

It is a reminder that leadership is not accomplished in a day, a week, or even a year. It is however, sown in the minutes and moments that accumulate over time. What’s more, the harvest is not in the professional accolades amassed over the course of our careers, but in the attitudes, ambitions, and successes of our students. The secondary harvest is in the legacy of “Dispersed Leadership” that we leave behind that ensures a school or district maintains a high quality of professionalism dedicated to a pervasive culture of learning far beyond any one person’s tenure.

This idea takes shape right out of the gate. In the first chapter, Sterrett focuses on award-winning principal Baruti Kafele. Kafele’s approach to leadership is to BE the leader, the tone setter for the whole school. He advocates “living the vision.” The force of his energy is evident even in script, and it is clear he channels it to improve those around him, including the students and teachers.

The threads of the book — purposeful work, intentional communication, top to bottom learning, inspired and shared leadership, and most importantly, student success — offer the reader numerous insights into action, just as the title suggests. It is a handy, and important, volume to read, dog ear, highlight, and refer to throughout the years.

The bottom line: Bill Sterrett has crafted a condensed volume of action insights that bridge the gap between theory and practice. By layering lessons and anecdotes from successful school leaders with action items and applicable activities, he constructs a series of eminently readable chapters that satisfy thinkers, pragmatists, and those of us in-between. Leaders, be they aspiring, novice, or veteran, will all find valuable tricks, tips and theories to spur innovation and improve efficiency, while cultivating a culture of learning in the process. His red thread — making a difference in lives of our students — ensures that we finish the book well aware of what matters most in our schools and armed with some strategies to do something about it.

• Action image: ISPWP
• Book cover image: ASCD
• In-the-Field image: ASCD

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Participation and discussion in the classroom helps students become engaged with the lessons and provides them the opportunity to develop their own ideas on discussed topics. Many educators, masters degree holders, and experts believe that a student who is engaged and developing his own opinions and thoughts on the subject matter is more likely to learn and remember the material than a student who listens to a lecture. Here are several methods for motivating students to get involved in the classroom.

Learning Environment

One method, suggested by the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, for encouraging discussion among the entire classroom is to place students’ chairs and desks in either a circle or in the shape of a “u”. Students are more apt to communicate with each other when they are seated facing each other. Teachers should sit with the students during the discussion portion of the class. By sitting with the students, the teacher is encouraging students to talk amongst each other rather than raise their hands and speak directly to the teacher. This allows for a conversational flow, rather than the typical question and answer structure commonly found in classrooms.

Expectations

Experts from University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence suggest that teachers should clearly define their intention and expectation that students participate in activities and in discussions. However, because some students are unsure of a teacher’s expectations, it is wise to start the year or semester by discussing what is meant by “active participation.” Some teachers find it effective to include class participation as a clearly-defined part of a student’s grade. Be ever mindful, though, of how engagement is tied to rewards as it can work against the goals of the teacher and classroom.

Pre-Engage

Charles C. Bonwell and James A. Eison from The National Teaching & Learning Forum encourage teachers to assign in-class ungraded writing exercises to students before discussions. This gives students the opportunity to develop and organize their thoughts so that they have plenty of material to bring to the discussion. For example, before leading a discussion on prohibition, assign each student to write three reasons why prohibition is a good idea and three reasons why prohibition is a bad idea. Give students five or ten minutes to finish writing, then start the discussion.

Small Groups

Another method that works well to encourage discussion is by putting students in small discussion groups. This is especially beneficial for shy students who do not want to speak in front of an entire classroom of students. These shy students are more comfortable speaking with a few of their peers, and this type of discussion atmosphere is the ideal atmosphere for genuine conversations rather than unsubstantial outbursts in order to receive check marks for participation points.

A teacher will improve his or her students’ interest in classroom participation by putting one or more of these methods into practice. It is important to remember that not all students respond the same way to teaching methods, so it is a good idea to experiment and find a combination of methods that works well for a particular classroom. Give each method a chance, and ask for input from students about which methods they like best.

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How to Achieve the Optimal Learning Environment in the Classroom

While many theories exist for how the classroom environment directly attributes to student success, there are common threads that you can use in your classroom practice no matter what level of learner you teach. Whether you are influenced by the historical lab school movement of John Dewey, the innovative early childhood work of Maria Montessori, or more modern theorists such as Howard Gardner, one thing is certain: classroom environment has been a subject of teacher consciousness for probably as long as there have been schools.

Consider the following:

Physical Classroom Space

As teachers, we expect that students come into our spaces ready to learn, but are the spaces conducive to teaching?

When possible the classroom should be lit with natural light and have at least a few windows that open. Although many climate controlled buildings do exist, the preference is for natural light and windows that open. The temperature should be on the cooler side; about 66-68 degrees Fahrenheit is optimal in winter to keep germ transmission down and also to prevent sleepiness in the classroom. Students should be encouraged to wear layers to regulate individual comfort levels.

Students of all ages come in various sizes and shapes so it is important to provide a variety of height chairs. Many modern schools opt for tables with various size chairs to increase comfort and promote group work.

By thoughtfully arranging the classroom, you can also control foot traffic patterns, set up work areas, organize hall pass processes, plan for work collection flow, and allow for the seating needs of a variety of learners. Some students will require individual seating, or might even need special accommodations that you will need to attend to in your classroom arrangement. When you are going to change the arrangement, let the students know ahead of time and if possible, involve them in the process.

Wall Space

In general best practice data shows that students respond best to clean lines, clear surfaces, and streamlined visual stimuli. Keep wall colors muted and soft. Display items for a unit in a clear, logical, and neat way. Use part of your wall space to celebrate student success; part of it to display housekeeping details; and part of it to support your current unit.

Involve students in a sense of classroom ownership through letting them discuss and post a short set of rules or norms that everyone signs and works towards. Involve students in setting up the classroom for your new units as much as possible. (Tennis balls on the bottom of chairs and table legs can help with this.) Creating a positive buzz about what you are getting ready to cover is one way to promote positive student interactions. Students of all ages generally respond well to being included in the process of enhancing the learning environment. Ownership over their environment has a positive effect on their learning.

Tone

How you set up the workflow procedures in your classroom, as well as how you decorate the physical space all contribute to the tone of your classroom environment. Being mindful of your student groupings, how you arrange your work centers, the level of productive noise you nurture, and the way you circulate among students during class time set the tone for learning. When you walk into a classroom that has productive tone, you can feel it. Veteran teachers will tell you that a positive classroom environment is carefully and strategically constructed. Skilled teachers spend years learning how to make the classroom environment their number one discipline tool.

Conclusion

Although nearly all best practice theory models call for small group interaction and hands-on learning, the reality of most teachers is that the numbers in the classroom can pose challenges to orchestrating best practice methods.

Taking a close and critical look at your classroom environment can help you create an arranged order that can boost intellectual engagement of student work groups. Carefully arranging the physical space with intent toward ordered work flow will help support your overall educational goals. Allowing students the opportunity to contribute toward the ownership of the classroom space will support discipline and group problem-solving. Taken all together, a more detailed orchestration of the classroom environment will set a positive and powerful tone of learning that will be clear to not only to you, but to your students, and to visitors.

Veteran teachers can tell you that having the knowledge and skills to create a productive classroom environment is the magic piece of the puzzle that complements all the pedagogical knowledge and turns pretty good classrooms into great ones.

Article supplied by Karen Lederer from Dominican University’s Masters in Elementary Education.

Image: Tart Cider

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A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued,

“It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.

“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail ‘cut score’? How?

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

There you have it. A concise summary of what’s wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.

Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then they’re sold to the public by the rich and powerful.

All that without so much as a pilot program to see if their simplistic, worn-out ideas work, and without a single procedure in place that imposes on them what they demand of teachers: accountability.

But maybe there’s hope. As I write, a New York Times story by Michael Winerip makes my day. The stupidity of the current test-based thrust of reform has triggered the first revolt of school principals.

Winerip writes: “As of last night, 658 principals around the state (New York) had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.”

One of those school principals, Winerip says, is Bernard Kaplan. Kaplan runs one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, but is required to attend 10 training sessions.

“It’s education by humiliation,” Kaplan said. “I’ve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.”

Carol Burris, named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, has to attend those 10 training sessions.

Katie Zahedi, another principal, said the session she attended was “two days of total nonsense. I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations.”

A fourth principal, Mario Fernandez, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking. They’re expecting a tornado to go through a junkyard and have a brand new Mercedes pop up.”

My school board member-friend concluded his email with this: “I can’t escape the conclusion that those of us who are expected to follow through on decisions that have been made for us are doing something ethically questionable.”

He’s wrong. What they’re being made to do isn’t ethically questionable. It’s ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible.

How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution? Why haven’t they been asked?

This post was originally published on Washington Post’s Answer Sheet Blog.

Image: Asne Media

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A couple of days ago I watched and read the transcript of Fareed Zakaria’s CNN primetime special, “Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education.”

Zakaria talks to Bill Gates, whose five-billion-plus investment in schools has bought him a seat at the head table of education reformers.

If I’d gotten any response from my previous attempts to correspond with Mr. Gates, I’d write him again. Here’s a draft of what I might say:

Writer Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become really competent in a job. The day you were born — Oct. 28, 1955 — I was 28 years old. It was a school day, so I’d have spent it teaching in a high school in Ohio. My total time on the job probably now comes to about 80,000 hours. That, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I could be a slower learner than you are.

But I continue to try. I visit schools here and abroad, talk to kids and teachers, write books, op-eds, newspaper columns, and journal articles, and correspond about education with people on every continent.

You’ve even picked up the tab for some of that. Twice, some years ago, an organization you helped finance flew me to their headquarters and asked for advice. I’m sorry to say I wasted your money. In matters educational, I’m what Gladwell calls an “outlier.” They thought my ideas were too unorthodox to take seriously.

It’s obvious that much of corporate America’s interest in education is self-serving, best explained by the adage, “Follow the money.” That’s understandable and acceptable until it becomes the tail wagging the education dog.

However, I don’t think that’s where you’re coming from. And, since I don’t accept fees for consulting, and the teaching and learning materials I produce can be downloaded from the Internet at zero cost, it’s clearly not where I’m coming from either. My hand isn’t out with the palm up.

With that out of the way, may I share a few thoughts?

I think it’s fair to say that Lou Gerstner— along with you, an early leader of the standards and accountability education reform effort —was right when he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the reform effort has been a bust. I’d go farther and argue that it’s done, and continues to do, enormous damage to the young, but I won’t go into that here. I just want to offer a possible explanation for that failure, and do it from a business management rather than an educational perspective.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the work of the late Douglas McGregor, but a reminder may help. His 1960 book, The Human Side of Management, is considered one of the most influential books on management principles ever written. In it, he describes two very different assumptions about human nature, labels them “Theory X,” and “Theory Y,” and discusses their implications and ramifications for productivity.

Theory X managers, he said, assume that most people dislike work, avoid it if possible, tend to be irresponsible, and need tight controls in the form of penalties and rewards to keep them from deviating from organizational goals.

Theory Y managers assume that work is natural, satisfying, and rewarding, and that if organizational goals are clear and acceptable, most people, given sufficient autonomy, will take the initiative, seek responsibility, and bring imagination, creativity, and ingenuity to their work.

Read those two paragraphs again, please, substituting the word “learning” for the word “work.”

McGregor said that people who are managed in accordance with either theory tend to develop behavior that matches the theory. You know a lot about feedback loops. Give some serious thought to that one, and its implications for, say, performance gaps and school discipline problems.

The educators I think you want and surely need on your side are those who know from years of firsthand classroom experience the costs and limitations of Theory X and the productive potential of Theory Y. But instead of enlisting them, the reform efforts you’ve been promoting, and the promotional strategies you’ve used, drive them up a wall.

Corporate interests, Congress, and state legislatures push Theory X with a vengeance — No Child Left Behind; Race to the Top; standardized, high-stakes tests; teacher pay tied to test scores; school closings; the Common Core Standards; school systems headed by mayors, CEOs, and retired military officers; teachers accused of “the soft bigotry of low expectations;” states prostituting themselves to compete for federal dollars; letter grades assigned to schools; public naming and shaming; constant yammering about “raising the bar” and “rigor!”

Every single one of those is straight, undiluted Theory X.

Theory X has brought public schooling to crisis. Theory X will eventually destroy it.

If you want to make a real and permanent difference in what goes on in kids’ heads, accept the fact that you’ve been backing the wrong horse. Use your enormous influence and resources to get policymakers in Washington and state capitols to back off X — dump seat-time rules, required-subject rules, fill-out-a-form-for-everything rules, everybody-on-the-same-page rules, my-way-or-the-highway rules, and begin moving toward Theory Y.

Unleash what America’s schools always had too little of, but the little they once had made our schools the envy of the world — enough Theory Y going on behind closed classroom doors to capitalize on kid and teacher imagination, creativity, and ingenuity.

If you want to see that theory in action, check out the new “studio school” movement in the United Kingdom. Or “project learning” here in America. Just a few days ago, George Wood, superintendent of the Federal Hocking Local School District in Stewart, Ohio, painted a word picture of the possibilities of that idea.

What I’m asking you to do will be really, really hard. Just about everybody — including, probably, most educators—will try to “yes, but” it to death. Of those yes-buts, the one that will seem the most intractable will be insistence that the familiar “core curriculum” — the one adopted in 1893, the one now being locked in permanent place with the Common Core Standards — has to be taught, and doing so takes most of the school day, leaving little time for anything else.

Taking issue with that contention is the main reason I’ve been labeled an “outlier.” For almost fifty years I’ve been repeating what respected scholars have been saying for centuries: Adequate sense can’t be made of the world by chopping it into little pieces and studying the pieces without regard for how they fit together and interact.

And I’ve said that problem can be easily solved, that systems theory as it developed during World War II can weave together, logically, all present and future academic subjects and fill in the gaps between them to form a much simpler, more efficient and effective, less time-consuming (and less expensive) general education. Here’s one example. If you’re willing to give the example more than a cursory glance, do so not looking for math, science, language arts and social studies instruction. Instead, think of school subjects simply as tools for making better sense of the world and how we experience it — as means rather than ends.

“Human history,” said H.G. Wells, is “a race between education and catastrophe.” The more than five billion bucks you’ve spent thus far trying to improve American education suggests you think as I do, that catastrophe has a big lead.

Be a real game changer. Be a hero. Promote Theory Y with the same enthusiasm you’ve brought to Theory X. Given institutional inertia, you won’t live long enough to see all or even most schools change very much. But from even limited success will come the kids best equipped intellectually and emotionally to save us from ourselves.

This post was originally published on Washington Post’s Answer Sheet.

Image: Culture, Business, and Globalization

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“Poverty isn’t destiny,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is fond of saying. Taken literally, it’s a ridiculous statement. If “destiny” is defined as an inevitable or predetermined end state, it only takes one instance of someone escaping poverty to refute the claim that poverty is destiny. Race isn’t destiny, either; but that’s little consolation for the one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 who are incarcerated, many for offenses that resulted in harsher sentences than for whites found guilty of engaging in similar behaviors.

So if the phrase “poverty isn’t destiny” isn’t to be taken literally, what might Arne Duncan mean? Presumably, he believes that the educational policies of the Obama administration have demonstrated that school districts can “overcome” poverty to create schools in which poor children achieve at very high levels. Just as it only takes one person to counter the poverty-destiny equation, a single school can do so as well.

But although there are some shining examples of high-performing schools serving high concentrations of students in poverty, they surely aren’t typical–and it would be very misleading to claim that any state or school district has effectively eliminated the link between poverty and low academic achievement, despite a decade or more of federal and state reforms intended to do just that.

Secretary Duncan may view himself as a cheerleader for these reforms, saying with great confidence that the tweaking of the package of reforms embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act, and the policies propelled by the Race to the Top competition, will have bold consequences for educational inequalities associated with race, income, English proficiency and disability. Wishing doesn’t make it so, however. There’s no evidence to date that the kinds of accountability provisions in NCLB have had these kinds of effects.

What’s even worse is that the “poverty isn’t destiny” trope disguises real changes over time in the structure of economic inequality in American society. Put simply, the disadvantages associated with poverty are getting worse. A new book edited by economists Greg Duncan of the University of California-Irvine and Richard Murnane of the Harvard Graduate School of Education–Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (Russell Sage Foundation)–demonstrates that rising income inequality in the U.S. is associated with growing inequalities in reading and math achievement, college graduation rates, and spending on enrichment activities such as music or art lessons, or travel.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Duncan and Murnane argue that the consequences of this economic inequality are far-reaching. “Debating the merits of teachers unions, charter schools and test-based accountability,” they write, “all fail to address the core problem, which is that growth in family income inequality has eroded educational opportunities.”

Duncan and Murnane are not arguing that school reform policies don’t matter. Rather, they’re suggesting that there are other policies that are much more likely to be successful in reducing educational inequality–high quality preschool education and income supports for low-income families, to name two. If we’re serious about improving equality of opportunity in American society, we’re better off attacking the root problem than tinkering with its consequences.

Duncan vs. Duncan: Who would have guessed I’d side with the economist?

This post was originally published on Aaron Pallas’s blog, Sociological Eye on Education. 

Image: Urban Minimal

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If you’re a teacher or have ever been a teacher, you know you’ve thought it. We all have, at some point. “If they spent half as much on education as they do on the military . . .”

Well, what if we had our cake and ate it too? Why not keep the military spending and military jobs, but employ the armed forces to improve our schools? Think about it, military technology would revolutionize innovation in our schools, resulting in students who are amped to go to school and who are prepared to tackle the military challenges of the 21st century. It’s a win-win-win.

So, just in case some folks at the Pentagon, in the White House, and on the Budget and Appropriations committee thinks it’s a great idea (and why wouldn’t they?), I’ve come up with some suggestions to get them started.

Knocking out bullies, one scud at a time!

1. Drone Playground Patrol Fleet

The Problem: Little Sammy likes to play with the girls rather than other little dudes. Those other little boys pick on him, call him names, and even push him around a bit. Little Sammy is being bullied for being different, and it is affecting his learning.

The Solution: Armed Drones.  They fly overhead to monitor playground activities at schools during free time. Bullies are targeted, tracked, and taken out. Care packages are then dropped beside kids who’ve been bullied.

One Benefit: When the Drones break down or need maintenance, students in shop can work out the kinks and learn valuable engineering skills. That’s a job ready and bully-free school!

"Hey kids, remember, keep low and be swift when unloading!"

2. Helicopter Student-Transport System

The Problem: Busses.They’re uncomfortable. Loud. And they frustrate the drivers stuck behind them.

The Solution: Black Hawk Student Transport System. Staying out of the flow of traffic, these beauties drop down on roof-top helipads to pick up students, strap them in, and threaten to drop them out if they misbehave. Plus, the noise of the rotors will drown out the noisemakers.

One Benefit: No student wants to miss a helicopter flight, right? Attendance rates will take off (pun intended).

"No! Johnny! Not that button!"

3. Nuclear Sub Portables

The Problem: We can’t build schools fast enough or big enough for the constant stream of ever increasing students. So, we quickly pockmark campuses with portables (aka Mobile Home Classrooms) as a bandaid.

The Solution: Nuclear Submarines! Take some of these nuclear bad boys and voila — super awesome portables. Gone will be the days in which teachers complain about being put in a portable.

“What?! I’m assigned the USS Virginia?! Hell, YES!”

Some Benefits:

• Super high tech computer station (your students can monitor the Drone Playground Patrol fleet — that’s real world job training!)
• Self contained energy source (you can probably provide energy to the school!)
• Two words: The Brig
• Three more words: For misbehaving students
• Your office is the Captain’s quarters. “Earl Grey. Hot.”
• The radar system can be rigged to warn of any approaching “test-it-if-it-moves” advocates.

Mmmm. Makes you wish you had real food to complain about.

4. MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat, aka Meals Rejected by Everyone)

The Problem: Cafeteria food is generally regarded as an abomination in the world of culinary arts. No one likes it, and only kids who are forced to eat it actually eat it. Everyone else? Junk food. Either from venders (which someone thought would be a good idea to have in schools) or from off campus sources.

The Military Solution: MRE’s.  Not only has Uncle Sam calculated the precise amount of food a person needs, he’s packaged so that it can travel and last. Students will get so tired of the same old food day after day after day they’ll beg for the mess of the mess hall.

One benefit: These things go anywhere, so if you want students to have more classes during the day, you can make lunch a learning lunch. They choke down their MRE’s at their desks while working out some quadratic equations. Now the cafeteria can be converted to an ice skating rink.

Boys, keep the goggles on when you go to the bathroom!

5. Night Vision Goggles

The Problem:  Not enough hours in the day. You’ve got unfinished (and unstarted) projects. And if you could just eek out a few more weeks worth of time with the students you’re sure they would have some transformational learning experiences that would lead them to score well on the state test. However, the district insists that all lights get shut down at night to preserve energy.

The Military Solution: Standard issue night vision goggles! Problem solved. At dusk, hand them out, students strap them on, feed the kids their dinnertime MRE’s and carry on with your work. Viola. Work ‘em till they fall asleep drooling on their worksheet.

One Benefit: A nighttime game of hide and seek is sure to thrill even the most reluctant athletes.

Watch out for cheerleader practice! Turn, Dammit! Turn!

6. Tanks for Teens

The Problem: Teenagers aren’t properly prepared for multitasking while driving. Let’s face it, today’s teenagers have it so much tougher than we did growing up. Sure, we had to deal with a clutch, gears and stalling out while cueing a cassette tape to the start of a favorite tune. But that’s nothing compared with the multi-tasking today’s young drivers need to pull off. Texting, drinking mocha lattes, surfing satellite radio, taking self portraits to post on Facebook of them driving (“Look at me, behind the wheel!”), and talking on phones that don’t easily nest between the shoulder and ear.

The Military Solution: Employ tanks for school’s driver’s ed programs. Today’s tanks are incredibly complex and students will need to learn and manage a range of super complex systems all at once to keep the thing moving, much less maneuver it.  The multi-tasking skills necessary to handle a tank will easily transfer to a car. Students will find driving an automatic comparatively simple and will thusly have tons of spare brain to distract in whatever way they see fit. Teens trained with tanks will be less unsuccessful when doing things they shouldn’t do compared to students trained in traditional ways. They’re going to do those things anyway. So why not set them up for success?

One Benefit: When students accidentally plow into a tree, no problem. These things are practically indestructible.

"A shark at my homework" is not a legit excuse.

7. Battleship High

The Problem: Climate change. Ocean levels rising. Coastal communities may be submerged. Students will still need to go to school, but if their school grounds are 6 feet under, what’s a young scholar to do?

The Military Solution: Battleships and Aircraft carriers. Huge and able to accommodate countless students, these floating cities offer an ideal place to educate today’s youth. Not only can we cram hundreds upon hundreds of students onto each one, soccer coaches across the nation will love the quality of ball control their athletes will develop while trying to keep from accidentally kicking the ball into the ocean.

One Benefit: Can you think of a better setting for a John Hughes movie? I didn’t think so. Me either.

Images:

• Bill Murray: Stripes
• Drone: Drone War UK 
• Black Hawk: Kool Wallpaper
• Submarine: Visual Intel
• MRE: Cal Army
• Goggles: Night Vision Goggles
• Tank: Defense Industry Daily
• Aircraft Carrier: Military Desktop

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