July 23, 2021

Are we thinking about learning in the same way?

(Note: These thoughts are my own sense-making and build on the good thinking of others referenced within. Shout out to Jim May for kickstarting some initial framing. There are inevitably blind spots and misunderstandings for me, and I appreciate the continued conversations to advance my thinking and understanding.)

In the course of my work, I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to consistently think with and learn from some inspiring educators in schools and districts that are tackling innovative work. And that work is hard too. Increasingly, I wonder if one thing that makes that work hard is that we are thinking about and/or acting on different understandings of “learning”?

It seems obvious that educators might talk about learning a lot and work to get aligned in that conversation, but I don’t believe that’s the case, for a range of reasons. Working from inconsistent understandings of “learning” leads us each to act on the same idea or change effort in inconsistent ways, limiting what’s possible for those that are to do the learning.

So consider this an invitation to a conversation about learning, possibly with others or maybe just a good chat with yourself. The act of writing this, getting lots of good feedback, revising, rewriting, etc. has already kicked up some needed conversation and reflection for me. I hope it does for you too.

Let’s start with this video, and perhaps you have seen it already.

When conditioned to pay attention to one set of details, how easy was it to miss other details?

“Like a pane of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see.” (Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, & Kelner, 2009, p. 235)

I find that analogy of a “pane of glass” quite useful when considering mental models, and will stick with it here. The longer we look through that unique pane of glass, the less we consciously think about the glass itself and what it frames. Peter Senge, in his work on Systems Thinking, discusses the idea of mental models, which are deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations that influence how we understand the world and take action in it. (Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, & Kelner, 2009)

Two people holding different mental models can process an event or idea in entirely different ways. A simplified example of that is how two pedestrians, one American and one British, might approach crossing a busy street in London with two different sets of operating assumptions about how traffic flows. The American has spent a lifetime situated within a set of agreements and rules about which side of the street cars drive on. Based on that conditioning, the American in London needs an explicit nudge (i.e. “Look right!”) to pause and re-examine her pane of glass in order to make better decisions.

MENTAL MODELS IN EDUCATION

The mental models educators hold about learning greatly influence what happens or not in their classrooms and schools. In my experience of working with schools and districts around the country, educators generally operate from one of two mental models about learning:

Mental Models for “What is Learning?”

(Building from Jim May’s initial thinking)

The Transactional mental model for learning operates from one set of assumptions, while the Transformational mental model for learning operates from a different set of assumptions. There are certainly degrees between and around these two mental models, and I find most educators and policymakers predominantly operate from one or the other. And depending on your mental model for what learning is, that pane of glass then frames your thinking on how people learn, and as a result, what school should look like.

MENTAL MODEL #1 – TRANSACTIONAL LEARNING

Traditionally, schools and classrooms have been centered around this definition of learning, where students are expected to commit authoritative bodies of information to memory and teachers are expected to get that information to the students. That’s the exchange, hence the label for Mental Model #1 – Transactional Learning. This mental model can lead to more passive student experiences where the learning ends with singular right answers. A classroom example is 1) listen to the lecture and look at the slides, 2) fill out the worksheet with the answers, 3) get a grade on what you got right and wrong, and 4) repeat.

The Transactional Learning mental model is attractive, and possibly addictive, because it is easy to measure at small and large scales. As a result, education policymakers and standardized test creators have and continue to look predominantly through the Transactional Learning pane of glass. The decisions made from this mental model by policymakers cascade down and shape the mental models about learning for districts, schools, and the individuals inside them. Schools pushing in directions contrary to Transactional Learning often find themselves facing systemic headwinds that pull them back to how things “ought to be.”

In my experience, this mental model for learning often encourages quantitative, rather than qualitative, responses when the outcomes are deemed insufficient. It responds with more rather than different, often putting the burden on the learner to get more out of the transactional experience. That looks like adding an additional period of math for a struggling learner who did poorly on an interim test, thus adding more time for math but continuing with the same set of assumptions about how learning happens (or not in this case). While more time can certainly help, our mental model for learning will influence how we choose to structure the time for learning that we have.

A sole focus on the learning “transaction” misses the opportunity to investigate what else might be needed in the learning experience for a student to advance their understanding of a concept or skill. As Hattie and others have argued, there is a role for surface learning experiences in the overall learning journey, but, on its own, Transactional Learning just doesn’t go far enough. (Hattie & Donoghue, 2016)

TRANSACTIONAL LEARNING AND INEQUITY

The history of Transactional Learning shows a consistent effect of oppressing those at the margins. That’s not been accidental. One way this happens is through limiting opportunities for students to engage with a thinking curriculum.

As an example, Samuel Armstong, Booker T. Washington, and others aimed to produce a Black working force post-slavery, and they viewed schooling through this limited pane of glass for learning. While it certainly was radical coming out of slavery, Black youth were to be steered toward the trades and the industrial arts, without access to intellectual pursuits. This conveniently supplied northern industrialists with a relatively skilled labor force less able to interrogate the unjust system they were situated within. This also promoted a view of Black Americans as racially inferior and effectively tracked who ended up where in the resulting social and working hierarchy. (Nelson & Williams, 2018) This history of Transactional Learning points at those in power using that power to determine what is to be learned and by whom, with the ultimate goal of maintaining the hierarchy.

We see the same story today as a disproportionate number of poor kids and students of color struggle in under-funded and under-resourced schools that can’t and don’t offer the same rigorous instruction offered in more affluent and whiter schools. (Noguera, Darling-Hammond, Friedlaender, 2015)

Fortunately, there is also a long history of critique, in both word and practice, of this narrow mental model for learning.

Along with others, W.E.B. DuBois challenged Transactional Learning views and schooling being designed with that mental model. Paulo Freire, in his seminal book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, labels this the “banking” concept of education, with teachers as depositors and students as the containers to be filled (Freire, 1972). As educators have consciously and subconsciously adopted and operated from a Transactional Learning mental model, schools and classrooms have replicated oppressive society as a whole, dehumanizing the learner in the learning process. (Haberman, 1991)

While “dehumanizing” may feel like a strong word initially, consider what happens to the motivation and zeal for learning as a typical 5-year-old progresses through public schooling to an eventual high school graduation. Positioning the learners as passive recipients in the learning process, Transactional Learning fails to acknowledge the inherent curiosity, desire, social needs and cognitive needs of the learner, who must be empowered in that process.

Historically, education has primarily been viewed through the Transactional Learning pane of glass, which has then framed the structural, political, cultural, and instructional choices made about learning, including who has power and who doesn’t, in and beyond the classroom. This is the school we likely went to ourselves, and it is deeply woven into a subconscious act of replicating “how we do things around here.” Improvement efforts come and go, but the underlying Transactional mental model holds on tight. That’s the rub with mental models, they become deeply ingrained (Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, & Kelner, 2009), and we actually fail to realize the pane of glass has distorted and limited our view, yet we remain stumped by the dogged and disappointing outcomes.

The Transactional Learning mental model for learning, on its own, is wholly inadequate for serving our kids and communities. The data has proven that out over and over again. Thankfully, there’s another, more expansive mental model for learning that we can operate from.

MENTAL MODEL #2 – TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING

One of my favorite moments in Project-Based Learning occurs at the moment of “transfer.” It’s that moment when, after posing some good questions and getting some good scaffolding, the students attempt to transfer a new understanding to an authentic problem. That’s where the rubber meets the road, or not. How nimble is that student’s understanding of the concept? Is their grasp of the idea flexible and adaptable enough to apply it toward a meaningful problem? It can also be wonderful when those transfer attempts don’t go so well, and then students ask even better questions about the targeted idea…the deeper questions they didn’t initially realize they needed to ask.

A version of this plays out for me fairly regularly with home repair. It goes something like this:

Something goes wrong with the house (often that’s water going where it shouldn’t).
I poke around to see if it’s a familiar problem, and often it isn’t. This kicks off a series of questions for me.
I head to Google with my questions, which then offers up some scaffolding for me, usually in the form of a YouTube video of someone more skilled doing a similar repair.
After a trip to Lowes for needed supplies, I take my first attempt at the fix – this is that moment where I attempt to “transfer” my understanding from the video towards my specific problem. This almost always helps me realize that I missed something I should have paid more attention to in the YouTube video.
I go back to the video with my additional questions, possibly search for another video, or, if still stuck, will call up someone who has possibly tried this repair (my Dad, Father-In-Law, or a handy friend).
I then go back for another “transfer” attempt to fix the issue. If all goes OK, I make some version of a repair that lasts for a while!

The above process matters because when the same or similar issues inevitably go wrong with the house again, the previous learning experience has equipped me to do better. The scaffolding can be removed because I’ve learned something deeply enough to continue applying it.

THE SCIENCE OF LEARNING

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in their book How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts and Cultures, describe learning in this way:

“Learn” is an active verb; it is something people do, not something that happens to them. People are not passive recipients of learning, even if they are not always aware that the learning process is happening. Instead, through acting in the world, people encounter situations, problems, and ideas. By engaging with these situations, problems, and ideas, they have social, emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences, and they adapt. These experiences and adaptations shape a person’s abilities, skills, and inclinations going forward, thereby influencing and organizing the individual’s thoughts and actions into the future.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Mental Model #2 offers an alternative pane of glass to look through – a framing and view for defining learning that is consistent with the science of how people learn. While the Transactional Learning model ends with attempts at depositing information into the student, a Transformational Learning mental model promotes learning as the active endeavor we know it to be. This model for learning assumes that the learner must develop an ability to assign meaning to the information, and then use that new understanding to make new, better decisions for themselves and society. There, again, is that important “transfer” moment. What good is knowledge if it is unable to find traction beyond a multiple choice test?

When looking through this pane of glass, the framing and view is much different than a Transactional view of learning. Decisions made from a Transformational Learning mental model point to very different classroom experiences, where students are asked to advance surface understandings, and to use information and meaning to engage complex, meaningful problems. The added questions of “what can you do with that understanding?” and “what has that new understanding done to you?” distinguish this from a Transactional mental model. Both the learner and the learner’s surrounding environment are Transformed as a result of the learning process.

INTERROGATING OUR MENTAL MODELS IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORY

Post-slavery, some northern whites wanted to “save” former slaves through education and saw the need to “civilize” Black people into white culture via the creation of schools. They centered a Transactional model for learning, combined with blatant racism (the two often go hand-in-hand). Power and authority over knowledge was to be held by the white teachers and policy makers. (Nelson & Williams, 2018) In essence, they were creating the distorted pane of glass by which learning was to be viewed and framed.

Where Transactional mental models have been consistently effective in generating inequitable outcomes by race and class, Transformational Learning provides fertile ground for pedagogies that intentionally disrupt traditional power dynamics in school and beyond, situating the learner to think as an active and collaborative inquirer in pursuit of understanding. And that shift produces outcomes that matter.

Historically, resistance to Transactional Learning and its applications for schooling came from many. The African Methodist Episcopal church sought a more humanizing model for schooling, designed and run by Black educators, that empowered Black youth to interrogate the injustices of the past and create a better future. (Butler-Mokoro, 2010) DuBois later followed with his push to move on from the narrow, vocational education focus for Black youth to higher pursuits for rigorous learning. The Black literary societies of the 19th century moved beyond literacy as a limited set of atomized skills and proficiencies to a more expansive view of literacy grounded in its applied power for action and liberation. (Muhammad, 2020)

It’s important to recognize the perils and depth of the fight by the Black community, post-slavery, for a more just, rigorous education inclusive of the intellectual thought promoted by Transformational Learning. During this quest for a more intellectual and ambitious view of learning from 1866-1872, an estimated 20,000 people, both black and white, were killed because of the fear of a rightfully educated Black person. (Nelson & Williams, 2018)

We must see learning in its fullest possibility, as resistance to that unjust past and the inequitable outcomes that continue to plague public schooling. Learning must be inclusive of Equity Pedagogy’s environments in which “students can acquire, interrogate, and produce knowledge and envision new possibilities for the use of that knowledge for societal change.” (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995, p. 153) Through leveraging student inquiry to engage authentic problems in our communities via Transformational Learning, students are supported to develop job-ready AND democracy-ready skills and mindsets in the process.

This points at a more expansive purpose for school, enabled by a Transformational Learning mental model. Beyond just helping kids graduate and get jobs, which is important, this mental model for learning also must equip young people to lead and engage intellectually in a multicultural democracy. The rich, intellectual traditions of the Black community have pushed for this view of learning. It is a markedly different pane of glass by which to view learning and schooling, one where school is much more than a place to passively take in information and gain a few job skills. (Perry, 1993)

Transformational Learning requires a learning process to practice what it preaches by rebalancing power more equitably in schools and classrooms. AND, in its fullest ambition, it develops students that can then enact the needed changes to rebalance power equitably in our society. In other words, Transformational Learning emphasizes both how you take the learning journey AND the outcomes the journey fosters.

MENTAL MODELS AND SCHOOL INNOVATION

Many efforts at Transformational Learning practices like Project-Based Learning (PBL) fail before they get started. This might happen when a district leader or school board member is drawn toward the look and feel of the PBL instructional approach. As the school attempts to scale those instructional efforts, the people and system continue to operate from a Transactional Learning mental model for everything else. Confusion and frustration reigns as Transformational Learning efforts run into a school/district system and culture designed for a different purpose of school and a different understanding of what learning is. Specific examples of this conflict include:

7-8 period-days of 45-50 min classes vs the 75+ minutes needed for deeper learning
Excessive interim testing on lower order thinking that eats up a lot of time and limits opportunities for teacher autonomy to design meaningful inquiry-based experiences
CTE certifications held as a higher priority than developing strong readers, writers and critical thinkers

I often hear educators I’m working with report doing some “traditional” teaching when taking a break from efforts at PBL. And that always gives me pause, because “traditional” teaching that centers a Transactional Learning mental model has proven over and over to be ineffective and harmful. It turns out that a lot of “tradition” in our public schooling system sucks.

I recognize that committing to look at everything through a Transformational Learning “pane of glass” requires work. History and research tell us that work is a necessity, though the work becomes efficient and effective as the school and district system become more aligned around a shared Transformational Learning mental model.

And that effort doesn’t have to look like a full-blown PBL experience every minute. Transformational Learning also has to live in the daily moments too, and can be applied to a single topic or concept. Thankfully there are well-established daily practices, protocols, and thinking routines that position students as active sense-makers and involve them in meaningful discourse with one another.

I get the pleasure of learning from some brilliant educators who have deeply internalized a Transformational Learning mental model. Whether it’s through ambitious community-based PBL experiences, a thoughtful Socratic Seminar, or an intentional round of peer feedback, these educators clearly look at learning through the Transformational Learning pane of glass. And, once you have spent time looking through and experiencing that Transformational Learning mental model, it then becomes deeply ingrained…and there’s no going back. These educators have internalized not just the argument for Transformational Learning based on the science of learning, but also planted themselves firmly in the equity imperative of Transformational Learning too.

LEARNING OUR WAY FORWARD

The systems thinker, Donella Meadows, said “Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.”

As we pursue Transformational Learning, we need to have open and explicit conversations about what we mean by LEARNING before we get into the myriad other topics about how school works, and then continue to have conversations as we experiment with and reflect on new practices. Educators need to get these conversations about learning out in the open, in safe and collegial spaces, where we can reflect on and inquire into these ideas more deeply.

The distinctions I’ve attempted to spell out matter, and trying to communicate across these two very different mental models for learning just doesn’t work. If, in the course of our efforts to better serve kids and communities, these specific conversations about learning go unsaid, then we’ll continue to find ourselves viewing school through different panes of glass, fully unaware of what the other is really talking about.

“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” (Freire, 1972, p. 53)

References

I highly recommend 228 Accelerator’s Design Achievement at the Margins course, which led me to some of the resources that guided my thinking.

Butler-Mokoro, Shannon A., “Racial Uplift and Self-Determination: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and its Pursuit of Higher Education.” Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2010. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/eps_diss/64

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Education.

Haberman, M. (1991, December 1). The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching. Retrieved April 06, 2021, from https://kappanonline.org/the-pedagogy-of-poverty-versus-good-teaching/

Hattie, J. A., & Donoghue, G. M. (2016). Learning strategies: A synthesis and conceptual model. Npj Science of Learning, 1(1). doi:10.1038/npjscilearn.2016.13

McGee Banks, C. A., & Banks, J. (1995). Equity Pedagogy: An Essential Component of Multicultural Education. Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 152-158. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1476634

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Scholastic.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24783. 

Nelson, S., & Williams, M. (Directors). (2018, February 19). Tell Them We Are Rising: The story of Black colleges and universities [Video file]. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/tell-them-we-are-rising/

Noguera, Pedro, Linda Darling-Hammond, & Diane Friedlaender. 2015. Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning. Students at the Center: Deeper Learning Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future.

Perry, T. (1993, February 28). Toward a Theory of African American School Achievement. Report No. 16. Retrieved April 06, 2021, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED366418

Senge, P., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., Smith, B., & Kelner, A. (2009). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. London: Nicholas Brealey.

August 5, 2019

El Paso, Racism and My White Upbringing

Plano Senior High School. Damn. The El Paso shooter graduated from the same suburban high school I attended. My nieces went to school with him.

Each of these mass shootings cuts through me in different ways, and this El Paso tragedy was no different. Having been fortunate to spend time partnering with the warm, generous people in El Paso as part of my work in schools, I am deeply saddened to think about the sheer violence of bullets tearing through that community and the people in it.

And that violence targeted the Latinx community specifically, a demographic of which my own two children are a part of. My 6-year-old daughter saw the front page of the Dallas Morning News while we were at my parents house in Plano yesterday, and she wanted to know what was going on in the pictures. We talked about a very sad thing happening in El Paso because someone made a really mean decision that hurt people.

I didn’t tell her the mean guy only wanted to hurt people with beautiful brown skin like hers.

Distilling this tragedy down to just one issue feels like desperation, which is probably natural with tragedy. We want to fix it. Is it gun policy, racism, mental health, white nationalism, white supremacy, bullying, social isolation, education, addiction to violence, etc.? It’s all of it, and we need to act on each specifically and intentionally. In that spirit, I’m thinking about racism and education in this moment.

The El Paso shooter grew up in suburban Allen, TX which neighbors my hometown of Plano, TX. Both are suburbs just north of Dallas. And he went to my same high school, Plano Senior High School, which, by most measures, would qualify as a good school. So how could he develop such a profound hate/fear of “Hispanics”? Looking back on my own experience growing up in Plano, I can see where some bad seeds for that hate could be planted.

The vast majority of my school-age experiences were with white people – white friends, white parents, white friends’ parents, white teachers, white church. (For reference, Plano is now about 55% white, 19% Asian-American, 14% Latinx, 8% African-American, 2% multi-racial. And I’d guess it was even more white in the 80’s and 90’s when I was there.) These white people all loved me and cared for me deeply, helping clear a path for me to get to where I am now, but it was also a pretty insulated experience for me.

As a teen and even twenty-something, I engaged in thinking and behaviors that were disparaging and demeaning toward people of color and other minority groups. I slung around the term “Mexicans” to lump a large group of people into one category that might or might not have anything to do with their identity. That use of the term “Mexicans” was always demeaning, not empowering. In my white circles, I repeated some N-word jokes I had heard to solicit laughter. This was language I heard from others in my community, and I elected to run with that commentary versus questioning the ideas. Now that I look back on it, I had developed dangerous habits of othering – pointing toward groups of people as less valued members of society. It was racist thinking and acting.

And my racist habits and microagressions went UNCHECKED. That’s right – aside from one time, I don’t remember anybody calling me out on my shit. That subtle language of racism and Othering was the norm. (The one time I remember getting rightfully checked in high school, I made a stupid Jewish joke in the presence of a friend I didn’t know was Jewish. And, thankfully, some good friends called me out on that.)

But, that’s YEARS of young Plano me casually slipping out some ignorant, hateful rhetoric and almost never being taken to task for doing it. And when I went on to Texas A&M, those Othering and racist habits were continued some, if not tacitly encouraged in the circles I was running in.

So am I surprised by this El Paso shooter from my hometown harboring these racist ideas? Unfortunately, not at all.

There are the stereotypical racists and hate groups who are still active in our communities. That dangerous type of hate showed up in the last month just down the road from Plano in Denton. But, often, we take an overly narrow view of racism and white supremacy, depicting them as just the loud, obvious, hate-laden language directed toward people of color or those on the margins. So surely a few jokes and disparaging comments here and there are OK? But racism relies on the subtle aggressions and put-down’s that eventually become less publicly visible while consistently chipping away at the identity and perceived value of people of color. These become systematic and show up in veiled, accepted language that conveys who matters and who matters less. (Take another look at the microaggressions.)

As a kid growing up in Plano, I got good grades, took AP classes, enjoyed sports (despite limited athleticism), was a class officer, didn’t get in trouble much, went to church and was very active in the church youth group. And none of those experiences saved me from my own flawed assumptions, thinking and occasional language that communicated people of color mattered less. These toxic undercurrents exist in every community to varying extremes – they are the air we all breathe in.

So what if I had grown up in a violent home, or if I had experienced consistent bullying and isolation by my peers? What if I lacked a group of friends and a tight community that loved me well? What if I didn’t have a very present, loving family? What if I had a shitload of anger and just needed an enemy to direct it toward? Could those small seeds of hate that were in me have grown into something more extreme and more violent?

I’m not proud of how I acted or thought when I was younger, and I’ve spent the last 20+ years reckoning with that. It took me getting out of my comfort zones, deeply engaging with people that have a different lived experience (including people of color), being humble enough to question myself, doing a lot of reading, and learning. Learning that racism preceded race. Learning about the long history of systemic racial oppression – before, during and after slavery in America. Learning about how racial oppression shows up today. Learning that I was something else before I was white. Learning about the power of language in either perpetuating or dismantling racial oppression. Learning that I need to be louder about racial oppression now, and learning how to be better in those conversations. Learning how to be a model for my two Chicanx children who I want to be powerful advocates for justice and for themselves.

I’ve got a lot more learning to do. And so do all of our communities, Plano included, that are raising the next generations of kids. What language will the young people in your community hear from you? Will you interrupt both the overt and subtle racism that happens around you, or are you gonna let it slide? Our young people are listening.

May 8, 2019

The 70% Rule – How The School Leader Empowers the Instructional Coach

70%

70%. That’s the percentage of time instructional coaches should be working with teachers in classrooms on coaching cycles according to Jim Knight, a leader in researching the coaching function in schools. That’s 5 hours and 36 minutes of an 8 hour day that a coach is in classrooms with teachers, partnering through a coaching cycle.

The figure, 70%, grabbed my attention the first time I read it, as it likely did for you. From what I see in my work in schools and districts, that 70% minimum is rarely, if ever, reached by coaches. AND, in these same schools and districts, I consistently see the coaching role diluted with a range of non-coaching responsibilities.

What makes it so hard for an instructional coach to spend time…ahem…coaching?

Many coaches were thrust into the role because of their success as a teacher. A school or district leader saw that success and said “we want more of that.” So, the great teacher is promoted to be a coach, but with little support on what coaching should look like. There’s limited communication in the school about what this new coach does or does not do. Leaders might even mistakenly make her coaching compulsory for some teachers, further wrecking the potential of the coach to partner with teachers.

With the role unclear, and limited understanding in the school of how coaching actually works, the coach is under-utilized. So she takes on and/or is given a range of other admin roles. Ironically, some of these extra responsibilities a coach is given address challenges (e.g. behavior management, student interventions) that could be alleviated through the better instruction a good coach fosters.

And here lies the opportunity. It comes down to time. Where you choose to allocate your time as a school is a direct expression of what you value. Reaching the 70% goal means restructuring a coach’s role and responsibilities to focus her time on coaching cycles. The rest of the coach’s time is planning for those coaching cycles, following up with teachers, collaborating with leadership, and her own professional development as a coach.

School leaders must create the needed time for the instructional coach to coach, in combination with growth opportunities for that coach to hone her craft. That means choosing to increase the value you place on teacher development over the alternatives for using that coach’s time.

Interested in how New Tech Network partners with districts and schools in support of better coaching? Shoot me an email at mthompson@newtechnetwork.org

May 1, 2019

Avoiding “The Conversation”

ostrich-clip-art No…this is not a post about the proper timing for the birds & the bees chat with your kids. I won’t claim expertise on that conversation, outside of a cautionary tale of how that played out when I was growing up.

“The conversation” I’m referring to is the one about teaching & learning, and the lengths we go to in order to avoid actually talking about teaching & learning. Diane Ravitch, the education historian, first got me thinking about this in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (buy the book here):

“Market reforms have a certain appeal to some of those who are accustomed to ‘seeing like a state.’ There is something comforting about the belief that the invisible hand of the market, as Adam Smith called it, will bring improvements through some unknown force. In education, this belief in market forces lets us ordinary mortals off the hook, especially those who have not figure out how to improve low-performing schools or to break through the lassitude of unmotivated teens. Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing, one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions. One need not know anything about children or education. The lure of the market is the idea that freedom from government regulation is a solution all by itself. This notion is very appealing, especially when so many seemingly well-planned school reforms have failed to deliver on their promise.” (p. 12)

While that speaks to a broader policy level, the italicized ideas had me thinking about what conversations are had or not had as a school tries to get better.

So what does it look or sound like when we avoid “the conversation” about the actual moments of teaching and learning?

“We’ve got to get a handle on discipline/behavior first.” This can mistakenly attribute poor student performance to bad behavior only. The common argument is that if the kids didn’t act up, they would do better. This fails to acknowledge the role that task design and quality scaffolding play in student engagement. We miss out on the discussion of whether the task was too easy, too hard, or terribly uninteresting. Or whether the students interaction with the new ideas was an overly passive experience that encouraged them to check out of the learning. (Side note – this “bad behavior” plays out with adults all the time during PD that sucks.)

Interventions emphasizing changes in quantity. Interventions based on more of the same instruction that led to the need for intervention in the first place saves us from unpacking why the design of the original learning experiences didn’t work for a student.

“We’ve got to work on our culture.” This might be true in some general sense but 1) the statement’s lack of specificity makes it entirely unhelpful, and 2) culture shouldn’t be disconnected from learning. Again, while the statement might hold some truth, driving our focus toward culture only can save us from hard discussions about what’s working or not in the singular moments where learning should be happening.

Overly focusing on the project elements of PBL rather than the daily facilitation. I’ll plead guilty here. We often center our thinking around great project ideas, with authentic contexts and community partners, some cool products the kids will make, and the final presentation format. All of those are important considerations. But, if we fail to adequately think about how, within that project, we will map a thoughtful and targeted learning progression and scaffold a range of students through that progression, we’ve missed the point. This might look like a school team primarily doing a lot of feedback on project ideas as opposed to also providing development opportunities to learn a new student-centered strategy that could be used to construct understanding of a new concept.

“But these kids _____________.” This one’s toxic. It’s so much easier and terribly flawed to take a deficit view of the kids when student performance isn’t what we hoped for. Shifting the blame for low performance to the student or his family saves us from taking a hard look at the design of our instruction and the learning experience that led to that performance.

Too often, we either intentionally or unintentionally choose conversations that prevent us from getting into the nuts and bolts of what makes for good teaching & learning. That avoidance often results from a lack of understanding about the necessary changes needed to improve teaching & learning. AND THAT LACK OF UNDERSTANDING SHOULD BE OK AND ENCOURAGED, as long as we then do something to develop understanding together.

But somehow we’ve created this ridiculous expectation that every teacher and administrator comes into their roles knowing all they need to know to help kids learn best. And, therefore, we can just manage our way to better teaching and learning by issuing grand pronouncements, with no developmental support, of what we should do more or less of in school. Within that environment, schools become adept at choosing any conversation other than the one about teaching & learning.

April 4, 2019

Processing Deeply: An Opportunity Gap Worth Closing Through Systemic Change

“To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty, and to wait.” – Elizabeth Lesser

In the course of partnering with schools over the last seven years while at New Tech Network, I’ve leaned heavily on our Hierarchy of Change. It promotes the idea that change in schools has to be rooted in a clear sense of purpose, with a culture, structures and classroom experience that empower the pursuit of that purpose.

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Perhaps the best argument for this approach to change is the litany of instructional initiatives, in every school, that have gone off to die quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet deaths. These initiatives often fail to align with the purpose and mission of the school. Even if the initiatives do align with the purpose, they can run into friction with cultural norms that run counter, or maybe bump into the absence of an adult learning structure that affords time for staff to actually make sense of the initiative. And maybe there was no purpose to begin with, so any new idea that comes along gets added to an incoherent mix of strategies, providing a response to a question that was never posed.

In the last three years, our organization has taken on the hard work of channeling our model toward equity and closing opportunity gaps for students and staff in our schools. This necessary evolution in our work has challenged me deeply. As a father to two Chicano children just getting started in our public school system, the predictable outcomes in our schools haunt me.

To move the needle on this challenge, the Hierarchy of Change only increases in importance in the context of equity. Here’s how I’m thinking about it.

Purpose

I was at a systems leadership workshop, and we were asked to envision some things we want more of in our life. One thing that rose to the top for me was belly laughter. Yes, I’ll have more of that, please. The kind that literally takes over your mental faculties for self-control. Where you try to move on from it, but it won’t let you go just yet. Or it does let you go, only to suck you back in five seconds later.

Expanding on that idea had me thinking more generally about the chance to deeply process an experience. I mean really feel it. And that could be within a community or on your own. Belly laughter is just one illustration of that, with other experiences charting some completely different emotional waters.

The opportunity to process moments deeply matters. We see and hear each other better in those moments. We do our most inspired thinking and our passions stir up. We are pushed by a community and by ourselves to check in on our assumptions. We are disrupted. Those moments can call us back for more. They can get us up in the morning and sometimes keep us up at night. They connect us. They feel like purpose and meaning being pursued and lived out. That certainly doesn’t mean they are easy, or come when we would like them to. They can be grueling and sad. Yet, either way, new insights and perspectives are gained IF we have the opportunity to process the moments deeply. They take us on a journey that we feel. Especially if the experiences are bad or even tragic, it’s important not to miss out on the chance to process and feel those moments. We change and grow through the processing. We are active as sense-makers in this processing. By its nature, the processing experience is humanizing.

In thinking about opportunity gaps, that humanizing opportunity to deeply process experiences gets cut short for many for a variety of reasons. An environment of scarcity, where we feel we just don’t have enough of something (e.g. time, money), is a common contributor. Why does scarcity matter? The research on scarcity shows that it tunnels our view, impairing our ability to be creative or think beyond what’s in front of us. It’s physiological. When we’re experiencing scarcity, we’ve got neurological blinders up and can’t see what sits on the fringes and periphery. Our decision-making is compromised. We can’t get a broader, or balcony, perspective. We can’t access our best selves. (Mullainathan & Shafir, 2014)

This scarcity plays out in schools and districts daily, offering few opportunities to deeply process anything. So much noise rains down on historically poor performing schools and districts, where an alarmingly disproportionate number of students of color can be found. Talk about tunneled. At every level (state, district, school, classroom), the system is almost designed to keep people tunneled and operating in an environment of scarcity, unable to access their best thinking. The system plays whack-a-mole with the innovators and those willing to push on flawed assumptions about teaching and learning. In these systems, the needed sense of space and a culture for critical thought are crowded out, and scarcity-induced tunnel vision becomes the norm. The result is kids and adults getting screwed. There’s no chance to slow down, get a good look at ourselves, and learn our way out of the behaviors and assumptions that allow our challenges to persist. Schools get caught in that vicious cycle, and there is little to no space for adults or kids to process deeply. It creates doers, not thinkers. It is dehumanizing.

The tension of thinkers vs doers is one that many others have written about, with Paulo Freire being a favorite (and Grant Wiggins too). The school system narrative described above, where the opportunity to process experiences deeply is consistently denied, will typically include the stripping out of the autonomy of the staff and students to drive the learning. This could come in the form of strict pacing guides or zero-tolerance disciplinary approaches. As Freire describes, it is “treating the oppressed as objects to be analyzed and presented with prescriptions for behavior.” (Freire, 1921/1998) And, yes, this is oppression. People treated as cogs in the machine, as doers only, not thinkers.

It takes conscious interrupters to push against this system. To make the choice to create a community of thinkers rather than just doers. To get personal and forge deep relationships. To say “thanks but no thanks” to the possibly well-intentioned supports that spread everybody way too thin. To create the space and conditions for people to deeply experience their world, to begin to question flawed assumptions, to innovate, to channel passions in support of a community, to create conscious citizens who will push back on the systems that oppress so many of them. And we can move forward in that journey if we process our experiences deeply and make sense of them.

That’s an opportunity gap worth closing. So, in application of the Hierarchy of Change, let’s consider this purpose: To process deeply and support others in doing the same.

Culture & Relationships

What do culture & relationships need to look, sound, and feel like in pursuit of this purpose (to process deeply and support others in doing the same)? As a starting point, let’s begin with a really important relationship, and one that is often ignored – the relationship with yourself.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes relentlessly about the role and importance of critical thinking in tackling oppression. Through increased self-awareness and a new lens into what surrounds them, Freire rightly argues that the oppressed develop “the power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they begin to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.” (Freire, 1921/1998) There’s power in that awareness and in that relationship with self.

Processing deeply asks us to slow down in pursuit of an honest, critical and generous view of ourselves, our thinking, our surroundings, and our interactions with those surroundings. With an opportunity to process deeply, you become more aware of yourself, and it is so unsettling when it happens well. You begin to question yourself and how you perceive the people, things, and environments around you. The ground you’ve stood on is not so firm. You begin to get curious where, in the past, you blindly took in “truths” or wrote off anything that didn’t conveniently align with your perspective. You become more aware of assumptions you are making. You pause more. You come at topics from new angles. How you engage and relate to the world changes…for good. These are new glasses you can’t take off. You start to author your own questions and perspectives based on this newfound curiosity.

Critical thought, particularly when applied to ourselves and our thinking, affords this chance to process and feel the world deeply. I use the words “pursuit” and “journey” intentionally, for it’s in that process of trying to make sense of things that the experiences are felt so deeply.

That’s all just so…personal. And it should be. It’s humbling as hell. But empowering too and liberating. The additional awareness of and honesty with oneself creates a more honest interaction with the people and things around you. You’re less likely to be a jerk. You arrive at recognitions that were not available to you before. You get more of those goosebump moments where you are living. In short, you are a learner.

Put a lot of that together in a room, and that’s a culture I would feel the instant I walked in the room. I’d see it on the creased faces deep in thought. There would be some heavy, quiet moments. I’d hear it in the questions being shared more so than in the answers.

That’s a space I want to be in. And, from what we know about learning, those spaces can be best created with others in a spirit of collegiality. The idea of creating these spaces for one another, something so personal, is important. What more could we do for each other than to help a person get an honest look at themselves and their thoughts? Some might call that love.

Whether you are thinking about this as the culture of the classroom or amongst the adults, you are right. In my experience, trying to split those two just won’t work. These spaces for processing deeply need to show up regardless of the setting or who is in the room, be that students, teachers, admin, district leadership, parents, etc.

In thinking about relationships with others, I mentioned that these deeply processed experiences are humbling, in a wonderful way. In thinking about creating and supporting that environment for and with others, you’ve got to be a partner with someone to create these moments. You can’t accountability them into it. Dialogue is the key element here.

“Dialogue” comes from the Greek word dialogos . Logos means ‘the word’, or in our case we would think of ‘the meaning of the word’. And dia means through’—it doesn’t mean ‘two’…. The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which may emerge some new understanding. It’s something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It’s something creative. And this shared meaning is the ‘glue’ or ‘cement’ that holds people and societies together. (Bohm, 1996)

In creating an atmosphere where this type of dialogue is possible, where there is space to process deeply, we not only access our best selves but access our best collective thinking. To steal again from Freire, we operate as “critical co-investigators” in dialogue with one another, seeking out deeper understanding as described in the Bohm reference above. (Freire, 1921/1998) We move beyond just doing to thinking, and we learn. Then, when it comes time for the doing, we’ve garnered our best selves and our best thinking in support of better action.

As philosopher Martin Buber pointed out in 1914, dialogue is a mode of exchange where we turn to one another, appreciating each other not just as objects of social function, but as genuine beings. For this type of dialogue to happen, clearly we must be adept listeners, and carry a spirit of curiosity rather than judgment. And in these moments where we authentically turn to one another, deep relationships and community are generated. Those deeper relationships, in turn, feed the future dialogue creating a virtuous cycle, as opposed to the vicious cycle of cold relationships and surface level interactions. And people stick around places where they feel seen, heard, challenged and appreciated. Matter of fact, they seek these places out.

To process deeply, and support others in doing the same. Shaping culture and relationships in pursuit of that purpose starts in the two places as described above: critical thought within ourselves, and dialogue with one another.

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Policies & Structures

In order to achieve this depth of thought, dialogue, and community, there needs to be a sense of space. Our thinking won’t reach much depth and our relationships with one another won’t grow if the environment feels constricted, rushed or unsafe. We’re not going to access our best thoughts, and we certainly won’t be vulnerable as we question our assumptions if the space feels judgmental. There are some things you just can’t rush – rich dialogue and relationship-building certainly fall in that category.

Creating a sense of space runs into an obvious constraint: time. “My kids came to my class knowing everything they should already know,” said no teacher ever. This time-constrained sentiment develops into a larger sense of staff and students always lagging behind and reinforces the scarcity mindset and narrow view of our challenges, opportunities and learning (if we even see them at all). The typical response to lagging behind is to ramp up the quantity of what we are doing in classrooms and staff rooms. This encourages increasingly more shallow, and often harmful, interactions with each other and with ideas. And the increase in quantity of what we are doing breeds frustration, burnout, and a need to distance from the stress. In responding to the constraint of time in this manner, we are actively making two choices: we choose “more” over “different”, and we choose doing over thinking.

We’ve explore doing vs thinking already, but what about more vs different? To process deeply, and support others in doing the same pushes on the choices we make in these moments when time gets constrained. Rather than choosing the “more” option, what if we choose the “different” option? Instead of ramping up the volume of stuff we do, we need to choose depth of thinking and connecting. And, yes, this means not doing some things. We are already dropping things anyway. It just usually happens unintentionally amidst the chaos in the spring when we realize there’s zero chance we can do everything we needed to get to. Focus on what matters most, because it all can’t matter most.

Michael Pollan, author of several books on food and eating including Omnivore’s Dilemma, presented a new way for me to think about food by suggesting that three times per day we get an opportunity to express our values through our choices about the food we eat. Perhaps we should think about our use of time in schools the same way – where that time goes is a very direct expression of what we are choosing to value most. If someone were to look at where you are spending time as an educator or as a school, what would they say you value most?

It bears repeating that our most vulnerable students, staff and communities are also the most likely to be found in struggling schools. In these schools, it can be difficult to find the necessary sense of space where thinking (rather than just doing) can happen. The accountability pressures on these schools, while possibly well-intentioned at some point in time (though I’m not sure about that), crowd out spaces for processing deeply. The choice in these schools is often the “more” option, but that isn’t working. Choosing the “different” approach to learning and engaging with one another does NOT mean you are choosing poor performance on traditional metrics like test scores. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Choosing “different” is choosing to protect spaces for critical thought within ourselves and dialogue with one another. Achieving this requires structure, and protocols are a great tool for mobilizing time in support of deeper processing, feeling and interaction. There’s a range of protocols for the interaction you hope to have – discussion protocols, text-based protocols, dilemma protocols, equity protocols (see some here). Smart people have put a lot of thought into the intentional design of these protocols, and consistent use of protocols scaffolds an organization’s ability to put thinking, learning, and connecting at the center of its focus. After spending time using protocols, the intention and structure they promote starts to show up in un-protocoled discussions. They help develop the internalized norms for interaction that we wished we had.

Protocols provide a structure for the more consistent interactions that happen in schools. But there are also those pivotal moments that occur throughout a school year. Chip and Dan Heath, in their recent book The Power of Moments, make an interesting argument that certain moments will be much more deeply processed than others, yet we often discount our capacity to create those moments. Schools are filled with transitional moments that, through intentional structures, can be elevated in support of community building, deep processing, and reflection.

Graduation is one transition that schools have recognized the importance of (as evidenced by my weeping through the ones I’ve had the pleasure to experience). A school, a student, her family and friends come together at one moment to celebrate that graduate and the work she has put in. But what if that depth of experience, processing and emotion happened more often for both students and staff?

If structures create behaviors, then structures to call attention to these transitional moments will influence our behaviors around connection and reflection. This might look like instituting structures for home visits prior to school start to connect with families, or it could be portfolio defenses. It also could be the everyday transitional moment of getting a school day started on the right foot with a morning meeting. Each of these transitional moments holds the potential to be processed deeply, pushing toward critical thought within ourselves, collegiality, and a recognition of the value in elevating certain experiences for those purposes.

Intentionally elevating these transitions and rituals also points to Culture in the Hierarchy of Change. But I’m putting them here in Structures to highlight the importance of protecting the time and spaces for these moments. Without structures in place, the possibilities in these moments and the gravity of these transitions gets relegated to chance, becomes mechanical in nature, or, at worst, is forgotten entirely.

In many ways, these structures are just about caring for our most fundamental needs as humans. Creating a sense of space, leveraging protocols, and honoring important transitions are all humanizing in nature. Accessing our best selves as individuals and as a collective won’t be achieved through happenstance; only through structures can we ensure we are actively working on that.

Instruction & Assessment

“Learning can only happen when students are dissatisfied with the fruitfulness of their preexisting notions.” (Slater, 2003) I love this explanation of what it means to be a learner. Those previous assumptions you held become permeable. Because of that dissatisfaction, those moments are felt deeply. Heifitz references intelligence as “the ability to hold two completely different explanations at the same time and not rush to judgment.” (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009) Talk about being super aware of yourself and a willingness to be critical of your own thinking.

Those moments that are felt deeply stick with us. There’s the physiological side of that as we consider our brains. The deeply felt experience triggers the amygdala in our brain to release dopamine, which enhances memory and the processing of information. So we actually learn and retain information better when the experiences are deeply felt. This is most clearly stated by USC Professor of Education, Psychology, and Neuroscience, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: “It’s literally neurobiologically impossible to remember or think deeply about anything that you haven’t felt emotion about.”

Thinking back to our Hierarchy of Change, how might our purpose (to process deeply, and support others in doing the same) inform the design of these kind of learning moments themselves? There are fortunately some bright minds writing about how deeper learning, its design, and its outcomes can do just that. And protocols can be a nice structure for scaffolding too. But I’m going to focus on one area that feels particularly important in pursuit of our purpose – authentic learning.

As a bit of context, our work at New Tech Network focuses on Project-Based Learning as an efficient and reliable means to develop a broader set of learning outcomes for students. So we end up thinking a lot about what the design of these PBL experiences might look like. With the help of some colleagues, I generated a Spectrum of Authenticity as a way to think through the design of authentic learning experiences for students.

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The “Audience & Impact” section of this spectrum often feels like where more of the authenticity conversations live in PBL. This includes having an authentic audience for student work and presentations, and project scenarios where the student products are used outside the school in some way. These efforts are well worth the time they require. They drive student engagement and ask the students to transfer their understandings toward an authentic context, which asks for a depth of understanding from the student. (It’s a really valuable assessment moment too.)

But, for our thinking about processing deeply and supporting others in doing the same, I’ll focus on Personal Relevance. This requires centering the design of learning experiences around our students’ lived experiences. As my colleague Jim May posed, what if you were to think about your students’ lives as a text, worthy of examination and as the foundation for your projects? This certainly assumes that you have built relationships within your classroom, and created a space where that school community knows and cares for one another. I’ve discussed above how intentional work on Culture & Relationships can help build that.

To use an example, there was a high school project centered around the Syrian refugee crisis where students, moved by the nature and overall tragedy unfolding, were asked to generate an awareness campaign. This certainly was learning that was current, providing relevance in that sense. But there was a missed opportunity too. Many families and individuals in this school community were well-acquainted with the notion of picking up a few things you care about most and leaving a home in search of another. Connecting to those community-based experiences, in a safe environment, is taking your classroom to a different place entirely.

Personally relevant learning experiences close the distance between the topics and ourselves, thereby creating deeply processed moments that are more richly experienced. They invite more emotion and feeling into the learning, which, again, improves how we encode those moments in our brains. In creating those personally relevant experiences, we create that virtuous cycle where we slow down, forge deeper relationships with one another, change the dialogue that can happen in that space, and access our best individual and collective thinking and learning.

Wrapping Up

In the systems leadership workshop mentioned at the beginning, Peter Senge proposed to us that there is a fundamental difference in coming at our life and work from a “what are we trying to change?” orientation versus a “what are we trying to grow?” orientation. The “what are we trying to grow?” stance is more inspired, and also points us toward systemic change rather than what can often digress into surface problem-solving. This line of thinking isn’t new, with this quote attributed to Socrates: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

I want to grow more opportunities for each learner, young and older, to process deeply and support others in doing the same. It’s both a worthy and ambitious goal, not for the light-hearted. And we shouldn’t accept less, for the students or the adults. Harnessing the power of the Hierarchy of Change toward this purpose is about creating the space and conditions for this systemic change to take root and grow. All levels of the Hierarchy of Change must work in concert with one another for this to happen, which requires an intense focus and the operational shifts to truly enact our professed values. We owe it to ourselves to actively choose thinking over just doing, connection over isolation, dialogue over pleasantries, space over constriction, different over more, depth over breadth, and humanizing over dehumanizing.

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REFERENCES

Bohm, D. (1996). On Dialogue. London: Routledge.

Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. New Revised 20th-Anniversary Edition. (Original work published 1921)

Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and The World. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.

Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2014). Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives. New York: Picador.

Slater, T. F. (2003). When Is a Good Day Teaching a Bad Thing? The Physics Teacher,41(7), 437-437. doi:10.1119/1.1616492

January 26, 2018

Schedule in the deeper learning.

I recently read a post from my friend, Lee Fleming, about the challenges of 45-minute class periods, and it inspired me to dust off this blog post that has been sitting in draft mode for too long.

There’s a moment in PBL that I love. I do like the beginning of projects when students interact with an entry event and surface lots of good questions (need-to-knows), but that’s not my favorite moment. My favorite part comes after a project is underway. It happens after a teacher has provided a scaffolding activity (or workshop as we call it at NTN) to target a student need-to-know. And then, the students are asked to take that new understanding to help address the larger question or problem the project is centered around. Watching students make these attempts is my favorite. Initially, the attempts might be clumsy, but each clumsy attempt has the potential to turn into a powerful learning moment of deep connection with the concept being explored.

To me, that’s the rub of PBL, or at least better PBL. It’s where the deeper learning happens. Summed up well by the National Research Council’s paper on developing transferable knowledge and skills: “The product of deeper learning is transferable knowledge, including content knowledge in a domain and knowledge of how, why, and when to apply this knowledge to answer questions and solve problems.” Transfer – that’s where it’s at for deeper learning.

Creating these types of learning experiences at scale in a school is hard work, but certainly achievable and absolutely worth pursuing. And I’ve been coming back to one structure in the secondary schools I’ve visited over the last 6 years that consistently makes and breaks opportunities for this kind of deeper learning: the schedule.

Let’s look at that deeper learning moment from above and see how that might play out in two different schedules, a 45-min period and a 90-min period.

Here’s a few important differences in how things play out above:

In the 45-min period, students go from the workshop straight to the exit ticket! There’s no immediate chance for the students to experiment with that new skill in the project context and the teacher’s chance to assess students’ transfer ability gets delayed.
In the 45-min period, there is a 23-HOUR BREAK. Lots can happen in there – six other classes, band practice, stresses at home, etc. When they eventually do come back, who knows what knowledge/skills from the workshop stuck or got kicked out of a kid’s head.
The 45-minute approach asks for students to make double the transitions. (Class of 28 energetic youth) x (Number of Transitions Required) = Chaos Possibility Factor. The 90-minute block asks for less transitions, which takes me to my next point.
In the 90-minute block, students have 40% more structured work time. Wow. That affords students the chance to play around with the new skill they got in the workshop, to make some messy attempts at applying (aka transferring) it toward the project challenge, to get some feedback and support from peers and teacher, and to try again….all in the same continuous stretch of time. That additional time could be a great space for teachers to encourage students to go a little divergent with their thinking, knowing there’s more time for the thinking to converge back toward progress on the project.
There’s just more time and space to see, hear and respond to kids in the 90-minute block, without the next impending transition looming. That’s good for culture and relationships.

Coincidentally, ALL of this applies to the staff learning in your school too, where deeper learning should be the norm. You just can’t get very deep in a 30-minute after school PD. This might be worthy of a blog post of its own.

I value the notion that structures drive behaviors, and, if the behaviors we want are about deeper learning for students AND staff, getting the structure of the schedule right is time well spent.

May 2, 2017

Staff matters

Over the past month, I’ve enjoyed facilitating some reflective discussions with five very different schools (elementary, middle school, high school, rural, urban, etc.). As part of each of those conversations, they have checked back in on their Purpose & Mission. In each school, there was reflective discussion around the school’s mission specifically, reflecting on the “what” and “how” for their “why.”

Unprompted, when each school discussed their “what” and “how”, they all kept pointing to the dynamics within and culture of the staff as being critical to how effective they could be in making progress on their purpose. Yet that idea didn’t show up explicitly in any mission statements.

Maybe it comes across the wrong way to some stakeholders if a school’s mission says something about making sure “the staff are connected, challenged and honored.” Maybe someone could extend that thinking and read “this school cares more about the staff than my kids”? After all, a mission is supposed to be filled with pedagogical buzzwords (e.g. rigorous, PBL, student-centered). Right?

I do think some of those buzzwords matter and should be part of a mission (assuming those words have depth in your school), but, after this last month, it’s been clear to me that a school’s mission should be about the students AND the staff in the building. And it’s important to say that publicly and explicitly, rather than keeping it as some hidden or implied truth.

My colleague, Jim May, and I put together a presentation of learning as part of our internal learning at New Tech Network. We used a couple of pictures to frame our presentation.

In the above, the alien-ish looking figure on the left represents someone with influence on learning in a school (e.g. principal, instructional coach), the middle figure could be a teacher, and the students are on the right. As it suggests, the staff member in the middle is often positioned as just a means to an end, with the end being improved outcomes for students. And, of course, student outcomes are a worthwhile end to focus on.

But, as this second picture suggests, what I’m arguing for here is that the outcomes for STAFF in a school building matter just as much. As Jim said well (which he’s known to do), it’s important we see staff as a “legitimate end unto themselves” rather than a means to an end. They are humans after all, who merit the same connection, challenge and honor we seek to provide students.

Show me a staff team that is connected meaningfully, challenged to learn deeply on a regular basis, and honored as individuals, and I’m confident the classrooms will mirror that.

So, include the focus on staff outcomes (collectively and individually) as part of your mission. Say it loud and proud. And then actually USE that mission to guide how you design what happens, or not, in your school.

Image icons from the Noun Project created by Stefan Parnarov, Stephanie Rusch, and Wilson Joseph.

November 17, 2016

Arguing with myself

I’ll confess that this post is equally influenced by what I see playing out around me in spaces that are not schools. But, as it always seems to, I can’t help but think about what it means for schools and learning.

I’ve recently taken a break from Facebook. While I’m grateful for the wide cross-section of views from friends and family, I had found myself on occasion too far down the rabbit hole of the comments section. (Where did the videos of kids and cats go in my feed?) And it was stirring up some unhealthy responses for me, so I needed a break. I’m sure there’s a fair amount of user error involved, but I think there’s also something else at play, with Facebook being just one venue where it’s playing out.

We’re more than happy to argue with each other, but much less eager to argue with ourselves.

It’s just so much easier to give into the reflex and lob out an argument against something or someone. You can do all of that without actually ever having to process ideas that don’t align with how you currently make sense of things.

The alternative, which is often not my first impulse, is to pause. In that pause, several things can happen. For one, you can actually listen and hear. And then there’s also a chance to step back and look at your own thinking. Better yet, try arguing with yourself. Try earnestly to poke holes in your own thinking and see where you end up. That might land you exactly where your first reflex was, but it might create a noticeable shift in how you are making sense of things. Either way, there will be an increased depth and nuance to your thinking as a result of the process. Some, like Dewey, might just call that learning. And Kegan’s notion of growth comes to mind too.

I’ve got a long list of parenting fails, but one that I’m really hoping to get right with my kids is helping them develop “iceberg thinking.” My hope is that they will learn to appreciate that below the surface of what they see in interactions with someone or something, there lies a much more elaborate story, full of complexity, that is worth exploring. But if we don’t pause and get a view of our thinking in those interactions, we’ve just let a chance for learning, connection and growth to slip by.

So, start an argument…with yourself. Help your students figure out how to do that. The process is worth the pause.

July 22, 2015

Inspiration creates inspiration.

This morning we kicked off a session at #NTAC15 with a room full of 60 electives teachers from around the country who are learning more about project-based learning (PBL). The participants came from a wide range of subject areas across the spectrum of electives.

The day is a bit of a blur in looking back, but, by the afternoon, we ended up in some project ideation that was no less than inspiring. And I think that’s what sometimes gets left behind in the PBL equation through attempts to overly systematize the approach. No doubt you need those fundamental elements and strategies for PBL to meet your learning objectives, but a healthy dose of inspiration pushes toward a bolder set of outcomes for kids (and adults too).

Meeting with a local nursing home and its residents to design and build a flower garden on site. Reaching out to partner on marketing materials with a non-profit recently started by a young teenager whose life was altered by a drunk driver. Exploring how performed music can heal through interpreting a selection to be performed for patients at St Jude’s children’s hospital. Exploring the artistic style of Realism and biological habitats through development of educational signage for a riverfront park.

Some of these projects have already happened, and stories about those experiences were shared today. But some of these projects are just starting to take shape. And, with that inspiration built in, I’m confident that the stories to be told about those projects will also give me the chills.

Keep the inspiration coming.

March 26, 2014

Leave college to college.

In recent conversations with multiple high schools and high school leaders, AP courses and college credits continue to come up in discussion. In the thick of master scheduling for next year, these conversations have a sense of urgency and a sense of accountability based on what states/districts expect and require.

I’m over AP courses, and I’m starting to get a little tired of all the other college-credit-getting experiences (CCGEs…my acronym contribution to education) being pushed into high schools.

There’s plenty of good perspectives on how AP courses and overall AP course strategy has become disconnected from its original intent…here and here. Thinking WAY back to my own experience with AP, I took AP Physics and AP Calculus in high school. Having placed out of the first Engineering math course, I found myself as an awkward college freshman in a room full of primarily sophomores and juniors who had a much better handle on how college worked. My primary high school study strategy of cramming the 30 minutes on the morning of the test combined with an undeveloped sense of agency allowed me to barely get a C in that course. The college physics course was a similar experience and nearly wrecked my high school love for the subject (we’ve since made up and are on speaking terms).

In a discussion with a high school principal a couple of weeks ago, I arrived at this realization: why are we all still trying to do college in high school when we don’t have high school right yet?

I love the basic idea of really cheap or free college credits for kids while in high school, particularly if it motivates a kid to attend college that would not have otherwise. But from what I’m seeing, there’s often a significant expense in that approach for the school/district and potentially the kid. Besides, there are other ways to get a student aware, eligible and prepared for post-secondary education.

What if we shifted all the efforts we put into AP and other CCGEs toward developing the skills and attributes a learner will need to be college/career ready and persist at the next level? This would serve kids well in getting a deeper learning experience while in high school too, and maybe put us on a better path to actually getting high school and college right.

Recognizing there’s some top-down demands at play, we just need colleges, states, and districts to make meaningful advances in recognizing and appreciating young people who are truly learners rather than just transcript filler-uppers.

One other thing…how much inequity are “AP tracks” generating in districts?

All this feels like it needs a big restart at every level.