http://edge.ascd.org/service/getFeed.kickAction?mediaType=BLOG&quantity=25&as=127586 New blogs from Robyn_Jackson on ASCD EDge Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:15:59 GMT Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:15:59 GMT website@ascd.org (ascdAdmin) website@ascd.org (ascdAdmin) KickApps Feed Builder 2012-07-12T04:15:59Z 20 http://edge.ascd.org/service/searchEverything.kickAction?as=127586&sortType=recent&tags=null 0 http://edge.ascd.org/_Want-an-Alternative-to-Traditional-Walk-throughs-Try-Micro-Slicing/blog/6220563/127586.html I was visiting a school recently and taking the instructional leaders on classroom walkthroughs as a part of the leadership training we were doing in the district. The purpose of the walkthrough was to help the leaders learn how to distinguish rigorous instruction and provide teachers with effective feedback that would significantly improve their practice. At the beginning of the day, I started by explaining the purpose of the walkthrough and outlining the Mindsteps rules for the walkthrough process which are a little different from traditional walkthroughs. First, the leaders were not allowed to take notes in the classroom. They were only allowed to jot down notes once they were safely down the hall. Second, as they observed, they were to look for information that would help them answer three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? The third rule was that we could not stay for longer than 5-7 minutes. At first the team bristled at the idea that they couldn’t write anything down. They were used to using their iPads and district-provided checklists during walkthroughs. They worried that they wouldn’t remember everything or would miss something by not being able to write their observations down. But I insisted. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and pay attention. I didn’t want them so consumed with checking off behaviors on a checklist that they failed to absorb what was happening in the classroom. I wanted them to focus on what was happening. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and absorb whatever they saw. They should pay attention to what the teacher is doing, what the students are doing, what is written on the board, whatever catches their attention. They were also concerned that they wouldn’t be able to answer my three questions with only a five-minute observation. But again, I insisted. We have found at Mindsteps that observing what we call a “micro-slice” of instruction actually helps leaders hone their observations. Longer observations have their place, but they can tend to muddy observer’s lenses. By observing a short slice of instruction, you can tell much of what you need to know about a teacher through a five minute observation. As we began the walkthrough, I could tell that the team was uncomfortable. We walked into the first classroom and stayed for about five minutes. They fidgeted nervously as they tried to take the entire classroom in and remember what they saw. At the end of five minutes, we left the classroom and took two to three minutes in the hall to jot down notes that captured our observations. Then I took them to an empty classroom to discuss what we’d just observed. During the discussion, I asked the team to focus on the three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? It’s that ONE THING question that always stumps the observers at first. If the lesson is unsuccessful, they want to try to suggest alternate strategies or rewrite the teacher’s lesson plans. If the lesson was successful it gets even harder. They offer nebulous explanations for why the lesson work and fail to get at the ONE THING that the teacher is doing that made the entire lesson hang together. But it is the discipline of the ONE THING is what makes the discussion so rich. So we spent our time there, really trying to get down to the ONE THING in the lesson we just observed. Together, the team and I dug deeper in our discussion. Suddenly, things that we dismissed during our observation achieved more significance. And, as we reached for that ONE THING, we started to notice patterns among the information we collected. It’s a highly rigorous way to observe because the value isn’t in the information we collected but in how we interpret it. We ended up having a 20-minute discussions from that one 5 minute slice of instruction. But, that one discussion helped the leadership team closely examine their beliefs about teaching and learning, upgrade the quality of their feedback to teachers, and develop more internal consistency in the kind of feedback teachers receive from the team. At the end of the discussion, we agreed as a team what the ONE THING is. From there, we crafted that feedback into the appropriate strategic conversation that will help the teacher act on it given the teacher’s will and skill. It was a powerful learning experience for both the teacher and the team of observers. If you conduct walk-throughs in your school, I urge you to try using micro-slicing as a way to help you get to the root of a teacher’s practice, deepen your own leadership practice, and provide more targeted and useful support. If you’d like to learn more about how to conduct effective walkthroughs in general, check out our book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. And, if you’d like to learn more about how you can schedule this kind of coaching for your leadership team, contact us here. I was visiting a school recently and taking the instructional leaders on classroom walkthroughs as a part of the leadership training we were doing in the district. The purpose of the walkthrough was to help the leaders learn how to distinguish rigorous instruction and provide teachers with effective feedback that would significantly improve their practice. At the beginning of the day, I started by explaining the purpose of the walkthrough and outlining the Mindsteps rules for the walkthrough process which are a little different from traditional walkthroughs. First, the leaders were not allowed to take notes in the classroom. They were only allowed to jot down notes once they were safely down the hall. Second, as they observed, they were to look for information that would help them answer three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? The third rule was that we could not stay for longer than 5-7 minutes. At first the team bristled at the idea that they couldn’t write anything down. They were used to using their iPads and district-provided checklists during walkthroughs. They worried that they wouldn’t remember everything or would miss something by not being able to write their observations down. But I insisted. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and pay attention. I didn’t want them so consumed with checking off behaviors on a checklist that they failed to absorb what was happening in the classroom. I wanted them to focus on what was happening. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and absorb whatever they saw. They should pay attention to what the teacher is doing, what the students are doing, what is written on the board, whatever catches their attention. They were also concerned that they wouldn’t be able to answer my three questions with only a five-minute observation. But again, I insisted. We have found at Mindsteps that observing what we call a “micro-slice” of instruction actually helps leaders hone their observations. Longer observations have their place, but they can tend to muddy observer’s lenses. By observing a short slice of instruction, you can tell much of what you need to know about a teacher through a five minute observation. As we began the walkthrough, I could tell that the team was uncomfortable. We walked into the first classroom and stayed for about five minutes. They fidgeted nervously as they tried to take the entire classroom in and remember what they saw. At the end of five minutes, we left the classroom and took two to three minutes in the hall to jot down notes that captured our observations. Then I took them to an empty classroom to discuss what we’d just observed. During the discussion, I asked the team to focus on the three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? It’s that ONE THING question that always stumps the observers at first. If the lesson is unsuccessful, they want to try to suggest alternate strategies or rewrite the teacher’s lesson plans. If the lesson was successful it gets even harder. They offer nebulous explanations for why the lesson work and fail to get at the ONE THING that the teacher is doing that made the entire lesson hang together. But it is the discipline of the ONE THING is what makes the discussion so rich. So we spent our time there, really trying to get down to the ONE THING in the lesson we just observed. Together, the team and I dug deeper in our discussion. Suddenly, things that we dismissed during our observation achieved more significance. And, as we reached for that ONE THING, we started to notice patterns among the information we collected. It’s a highly rigorous way to observe because the value isn’t in the information we collected but in how we interpret it. We ended up having a 20-minute discussions from that one 5 minute slice of instruction. But, that one discussion helped the leadership team closely examine their beliefs about teaching and learning, upgrade the quality of their feedback to teachers, and develop more internal consistency in the kind of feedback teachers receive from the team. At the end of the discussion, we agreed as a team what the ONE THING is. From there, we crafted that feedback into the appropriate strategic conversation that will help the teacher act on it given the teacher’s will and skill. It was a powerful learning experience for both the teacher and the team of observers. If you conduct walk-throughs in your school, I urge you to try using micro-slicing as a way to help you get to the root of a teacher’s practice, deepen your own leadership practice, and provide more targeted and useful support. If you’d like to learn more about how to conduct effective walkthroughs in general, check out our book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. And, if you’d like to learn more about how you can schedule this kind of coaching for your leadership team, contact us here. Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:15:59 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Want-an-Alternative-to-Traditional-Walk-throughs-Try-Micro-Slicing/blog/6220563/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2012-07-12T04:15:59Z ASCD EDge I was visiting a school recently and taking the instructional leaders on classroom walkthroughs as a part of the leadership training we were doing in the district. The purpose of the walkthrough was to help the leaders learn how to distinguish rigorous instruction and provide teachers with effective feedback that would significantly improve their practice. At the beginning of the day, I started by explaining the purpose of the walkthrough and outlining the Mindsteps rules for the walkthrough process which are a little different from traditional walkthroughs. First, the leaders were not allowed to take notes in the classroom. They were only allowed to jot down notes once they were safely down the hall. Second, as they observed, they were to look for information that would help them answer three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? The third rule was that we could not stay for longer than 5-7 minutes. At first the team bristled at the idea that they couldn’t write anything down. They were used to using their iPads and district-provided checklists during walkthroughs. They worried that they wouldn’t remember everything or would miss something by not being able to write their observations down. But I insisted. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and pay attention. I didn’t want them so consumed with checking off behaviors on a checklist that they failed to absorb what was happening in the classroom. I wanted them to focus on what was happening. I wanted them to sit in the classroom and absorb whatever they saw. They should pay attention to what the teacher is doing, what the students are doing, what is written on the board, whatever catches their attention. They were also concerned that they wouldn’t be able to answer my three questions with only a five-minute observation. But again, I insisted. We have found at Mindsteps that observing what we call a “micro-slice” of instruction actually helps leaders hone their observations. Longer observations have their place, but they can tend to muddy observer’s lenses. By observing a short slice of instruction, you can tell much of what you need to know about a teacher through a five minute observation. As we began the walkthrough, I could tell that the team was uncomfortable. We walked into the first classroom and stayed for about five minutes. They fidgeted nervously as they tried to take the entire classroom in and remember what they saw. At the end of five minutes, we left the classroom and took two to three minutes in the hall to jot down notes that captured our observations. Then I took them to an empty classroom to discuss what we’d just observed. During the discussion, I asked the team to focus on the three questions: 1. What was the teacher trying to do?2. Was the teacher successful?3. What was the ONE thing that either made the teacher successful or could make the teacher successful? It’s that ONE THING question that always stumps the observers at first. If the lesson is unsuccessful, they want to try to suggest alternate strategies or rewrite the teacher’s lesson plans. If the lesson was successful it gets even harder. They offer nebulous explanations for why the lesson work and fail to get at the ONE THING that the teacher is doing that made the entire lesson hang together. But it is the discipline of the ONE THING is what makes the discussion so rich. So we spent our time there, really trying to get down to the ONE THING in the lesson we just observed. Together, the team and I dug deeper in our discussion. Suddenly, things that we dismissed during our observation achieved more significance. And, as we reached for that ONE THING, we started to notice patterns among the information we collected. It’s a highly rigorous way to observe because the value isn’t in the information we collected but in how we interpret it. We ended up having a 20-minute discussions from that one 5 minute slice of instruction. But, that one discussion helped the leadership team closely examine their beliefs about teaching and learning, upgrade the quality of their feedback to teachers, and develop more internal consistency in the kind of feedback teachers receive from the team. At the end of the discussion, we agreed as a team what the ONE THING is. From there, we crafted that feedback into the appropriate strategic conversation that will help the teacher act on it given the teacher’s will and skill. It was a powerful learning experience for both the teacher and the team of observers. If you conduct walk-throughs in your school, I urge you to try using micro-slicing as a way to help you get to the root of a teacher’s practice, deepen your own leadership practice, and provide more targeted and useful support. If you’d like to learn more about how to conduct effective walkthroughs in general, check out our book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. And, if you’d like to learn more about how you can schedule this kind of coaching for your leadership team, contact us here. walk-through nonadult false Want an Alternative to Traditional Walk-throughs? Try Micro-Slicing text blog walk-through 3910 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 4 0 6220563 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Conducting-Post-Observation-Conferences-Learn-From-My-Mistakes/blog/6182581/127586.html I welcomed Laura into my office and offered her a seat at the small conference table across from my desk. I sat down next to her and opened my observation notes. Smiling, I thanked her for coming in and handed her a written summary of the main points I wanted to discuss. One-by-one, I reviewed those points, providing my assessment of what worked and did not work during her lesson, giving examples from her classroom to bolster my assessment, and offering suggestions for how she could improve her practice. When I finished, I asked her if she had any questions. Laura looked thoughtfully at my bulleted list for a moment and then asked my advice on how she might implement some of my suggestions. I reached to the shelf behind me and pulled out a book I had recently read and turned to the page I had dog-eared earlier. I summarized the key points of the chapter and then showed her a few exercises she could try. I handed her the book and promised to get a full write up of my observation to her by the end of the day. Laura thanked me profusely and said that she looked forward to reading it. As we stood and shook hands, she told me how much she learned from our meeting and how she couldn’t wait to try the strategies I suggested.“Oh my,” I smiled, slightly embarrassed at her heart-felt declaration.“I’m just doing my job.” At least that is how it went in my head. So, I wasn’t nervous when I ushered Laura into my office the next morning for her post-observation conference. I had already rehearsed what I was going to say, the notes were all prepared, the resources organized and within arms’ reach, ready for her whenever she asked for them. How was I, a brand new administrator, to know that the conversation wouldn’t be quite that easy? I had been trained on how to do observations, trained on how to conduct post-observation conferences, female and I had done my research. Besides, I was a likable person who, when I was teaching, other teachers sought for advice. Why wouldn’t the conversation go exactly as I had planned? But three minutes into the conversation, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. Laura wasn’t eagerly accepting my assessment of her classroom. She wasn’t asking for my advice on how she could improve. She wasn’t nodding her head in agreement to my prescription for her teaching. She sat across from me arms crossed, lips tight, turning redder by the second. When I finished talking, she didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she launched into a defense of what had happened in her classroom and told me that it was really hard for me to get an accurate assessment of her teaching after having only been in her classroom once. I was too shocked to say much after that so I thanked her for her input, mumbled something about having her observation to her by the end of the day, and stood. She grabbed her papers and stormed out. Like I said, that went differently in my head. After that early experience, I learned to dread having post-observation conferences with teachers. I would wake up the morning of one of these conferences sick to my stomach. I compensated for my nervousness by over-preparing and by structuring the conferences so much that the teacher had little opportunity to contribute. They sat across from me nodding while pretending to understand what I was talking about or smiling indulgently and gamely playing along or tersely answering my questions with thinly veiled hostility counting the minutes until they could get out of my office. I plowed on sharing my comments and suggestions and providing resources that were neither asked for nor used. Each of us played our parts in the dance between teachers and administrators that goes on in schools all over this country every day and very little changed in the classroom. Perhaps you too are frustrated with the way your post-observation conferences typically go. Maybe you too dread meeting with teachers because these meetings are usually fraught with tension and yield little results in the classroom. Maybe you are looking for a way to provide better feedback to teachers. As instructional leaders, our jobs rely on conversations. It is our main tool. We discipline students through conversations. We work with parents through conversations. We respond to district mandates through conversations. We learn through conversations. And, we provide leadership to teachers through conversations. If we don’t get the conversations right, we seriously handicap our ability to lead effectively. If, however, we understand how to harness the power of conversations, we can dramatically improve teaching and learning in our building. Typically, the feedback we give teachers is supervisory, designed to convey information rather than exchange ideas. These conversations are one-sided – you tell teachers your goals, ideas, and assessment of their teaching. The only reply available to a teacher in this type of conversation is a reaction to your assessment rather than a genuine response to the information. Strategic conversations are different. While supervisory feedback seems more designed to provide a single and final evaluation of a teacher’s performance and cookie cutter prescriptions for improvement, strategic conversations provide teachers with ongoing direct and honest assessments of their current performance and help them develop the skills and the disposition they need to improve and meet or exceed the standards. The feedback is not a one shot deal. It is part of a continuous dialogue about effective instruction and student achievement. And, because this feedback is tailored to teachers’ individual needs, it is more likely to make a real difference in their practice. In strategic conversations you are not the problem solver; you facilitates problem solving among teachers. It is the teacher’s responsibility to manage their own professional growth and solve their own instructional challenges. Strategic conversations are based on the assumption that teachers are trying to do the best they can. The role of the instructional leader is to help teachers discover the root cause of their instructional challenges and to guide teachers to resolve these challenges themselves. At the heart of strategic conversations is a relationship. Strategic conversations help you establish trust and maintain it — even when you are sharing really difficult feedback. When teachers feel safe, they are more likely to take the steps they need to improve. To learn more about strategic conversations, check out my book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. It includes step-by-step advice for how to have difficult conversations with teachers, how to share feedback that actually helps teachers improve their performance, and how to choose the right conversational approach given your goals and teachers’ needs. You can also check out resources from the book by visiting here.   I welcomed Laura into my office and offered her a seat at the small conference table across from my desk. I sat down next to her and opened my observation notes. Smiling, I thanked her for coming in and handed her a written summary of the main points I wanted to discuss. One-by-one, I reviewed those points, providing my assessment of what worked and did not work during her lesson, giving examples from her classroom to bolster my assessment, and offering suggestions for how she could improve her practice. When I finished, I asked her if she had any questions. Laura looked thoughtfully at my bulleted list for a moment and then asked my advice on how she might implement some of my suggestions. I reached to the shelf behind me and pulled out a book I had recently read and turned to the page I had dog-eared earlier. I summarized the key points of the chapter and then showed her a few exercises she could try. I handed her the book and promised to get a full write up of my observation to her by the end of the day. Laura thanked me profusely and said that she looked forward to reading it. As we stood and shook hands, she told me how much she learned from our meeting and how she couldn’t wait to try the strategies I suggested.“Oh my,” I smiled, slightly embarrassed at her heart-felt declaration.“I’m just doing my job.” At least that is how it went in my head. So, I wasn’t nervous when I ushered Laura into my office the next morning for her post-observation conference. I had already rehearsed what I was going to say, the notes were all prepared, the resources organized and within arms’ reach, ready for her whenever she asked for them. How was I, a brand new administrator, to know that the conversation wouldn’t be quite that easy? I had been trained on how to do observations, trained on how to conduct post-observation conferences, female and I had done my research. Besides, I was a likable person who, when I was teaching, other teachers sought for advice. Why wouldn’t the conversation go exactly as I had planned? But three minutes into the conversation, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. Laura wasn’t eagerly accepting my assessment of her classroom. She wasn’t asking for my advice on how she could improve. She wasn’t nodding her head in agreement to my prescription for her teaching. She sat across from me arms crossed, lips tight, turning redder by the second. When I finished talking, she didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she launched into a defense of what had happened in her classroom and told me that it was really hard for me to get an accurate assessment of her teaching after having only been in her classroom once. I was too shocked to say much after that so I thanked her for her input, mumbled something about having her observation to her by the end of the day, and stood. She grabbed her papers and stormed out. Like I said, that went differently in my head. After that early experience, I learned to dread having post-observation conferences with teachers. I would wake up the morning of one of these conferences sick to my stomach. I compensated for my nervousness by over-preparing and by structuring the conferences so much that the teacher had little opportunity to contribute. They sat across from me nodding while pretending to understand what I was talking about or smiling indulgently and gamely playing along or tersely answering my questions with thinly veiled hostility counting the minutes until they could get out of my office. I plowed on sharing my comments and suggestions and providing resources that were neither asked for nor used. Each of us played our parts in the dance between teachers and administrators that goes on in schools all over this country every day and very little changed in the classroom. Perhaps you too are frustrated with the way your post-observation conferences typically go. Maybe you too dread meeting with teachers because these meetings are usually fraught with tension and yield little results in the classroom. Maybe you are looking for a way to provide better feedback to teachers. As instructional leaders, our jobs rely on conversations. It is our main tool. We discipline students through conversations. We work with parents through conversations. We respond to district mandates through conversations. We learn through conversations. And, we provide leadership to teachers through conversations. If we don’t get the conversations right, we seriously handicap our ability to lead effectively. If, however, we understand how to harness the power of conversations, we can dramatically improve teaching and learning in our building. Typically, the feedback we give teachers is supervisory, designed to convey information rather than exchange ideas. These conversations are one-sided – you tell teachers your goals, ideas, and assessment of their teaching. The only reply available to a teacher in this type of conversation is a reaction to your assessment rather than a genuine response to the information. Strategic conversations are different. While supervisory feedback seems more designed to provide a single and final evaluation of a teacher’s performance and cookie cutter prescriptions for improvement, strategic conversations provide teachers with ongoing direct and honest assessments of their current performance and help them develop the skills and the disposition they need to improve and meet or exceed the standards. The feedback is not a one shot deal. It is part of a continuous dialogue about effective instruction and student achievement. And, because this feedback is tailored to teachers’ individual needs, it is more likely to make a real difference in their practice. In strategic conversations you are not the problem solver; you facilitates problem solving among teachers. It is the teacher’s responsibility to manage their own professional growth and solve their own instructional challenges. Strategic conversations are based on the assumption that teachers are trying to do the best they can. The role of the instructional leader is to help teachers discover the root cause of their instructional challenges and to guide teachers to resolve these challenges themselves. At the heart of strategic conversations is a relationship. Strategic conversations help you establish trust and maintain it — even when you are sharing really difficult feedback. When teachers feel safe, they are more likely to take the steps they need to improve. To learn more about strategic conversations, check out my book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. It includes step-by-step advice for how to have difficult conversations with teachers, how to share feedback that actually helps teachers improve their performance, and how to choose the right conversational approach given your goals and teachers’ needs. You can also check out resources from the book by visiting here.   Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:22:41 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Conducting-Post-Observation-Conferences-Learn-From-My-Mistakes/blog/6182581/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2012-06-19T19:22:41Z ASCD EDge I welcomed Laura into my office and offered her a seat at the small conference table across from my desk. I sat down next to her and opened my observation notes. Smiling, I thanked her for coming in and handed her a written summary of the main points I wanted to discuss. One-by-one, I reviewed those points, providing my assessment of what worked and did not work during her lesson, giving examples from her classroom to bolster my assessment, and offering suggestions for how she could improve her practice. When I finished, I asked her if she had any questions. Laura looked thoughtfully at my bulleted list for a moment and then asked my advice on how she might implement some of my suggestions. I reached to the shelf behind me and pulled out a book I had recently read and turned to the page I had dog-eared earlier. I summarized the key points of the chapter and then showed her a few exercises she could try. I handed her the book and promised to get a full write up of my observation to her by the end of the day. Laura thanked me profusely and said that she looked forward to reading it. As we stood and shook hands, she told me how much she learned from our meeting and how she couldn’t wait to try the strategies I suggested.“Oh my,” I smiled, slightly embarrassed at her heart-felt declaration.“I’m just doing my job.” At least that is how it went in my head. So, I wasn’t nervous when I ushered Laura into my office the next morning for her post-observation conference. I had already rehearsed what I was going to say, the notes were all prepared, the resources organized and within arms’ reach, ready for her whenever she asked for them. How was I, a brand new administrator, to know that the conversation wouldn’t be quite that easy? I had been trained on how to do observations, trained on how to conduct post-observation conferences, female and I had done my research. Besides, I was a likable person who, when I was teaching, other teachers sought for advice. Why wouldn’t the conversation go exactly as I had planned? But three minutes into the conversation, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. Laura wasn’t eagerly accepting my assessment of her classroom. She wasn’t asking for my advice on how she could improve. She wasn’t nodding her head in agreement to my prescription for her teaching. She sat across from me arms crossed, lips tight, turning redder by the second. When I finished talking, she didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she launched into a defense of what had happened in her classroom and told me that it was really hard for me to get an accurate assessment of her teaching after having only been in her classroom once. I was too shocked to say much after that so I thanked her for her input, mumbled something about having her observation to her by the end of the day, and stood. She grabbed her papers and stormed out. Like I said, that went differently in my head. After that early experience, I learned to dread having post-observation conferences with teachers. I would wake up the morning of one of these conferences sick to my stomach. I compensated for my nervousness by over-preparing and by structuring the conferences so much that the teacher had little opportunity to contribute. They sat across from me nodding while pretending to understand what I was talking about or smiling indulgently and gamely playing along or tersely answering my questions with thinly veiled hostility counting the minutes until they could get out of my office. I plowed on sharing my comments and suggestions and providing resources that were neither asked for nor used. Each of us played our parts in the dance between teachers and administrators that goes on in schools all over this country every day and very little changed in the classroom. Perhaps you too are frustrated with the way your post-observation conferences typically go. Maybe you too dread meeting with teachers because these meetings are usually fraught with tension and yield little results in the classroom. Maybe you are looking for a way to provide better feedback to teachers. As instructional leaders, our jobs rely on conversations. It is our main tool. We discipline students through conversations. We work with parents through conversations. We respond to district mandates through conversations. We learn through conversations. And, we provide leadership to teachers through conversations. If we don’t get the conversations right, we seriously handicap our ability to lead effectively. If, however, we understand how to harness the power of conversations, we can dramatically improve teaching and learning in our building. Typically, the feedback we give teachers is supervisory, designed to convey information rather than exchange ideas. These conversations are one-sided – you tell teachers your goals, ideas, and assessment of their teaching. The only reply available to a teacher in this type of conversation is a reaction to your assessment rather than a genuine response to the information. Strategic conversations are different. While supervisory feedback seems more designed to provide a single and final evaluation of a teacher’s performance and cookie cutter prescriptions for improvement, strategic conversations provide teachers with ongoing direct and honest assessments of their current performance and help them develop the skills and the disposition they need to improve and meet or exceed the standards. The feedback is not a one shot deal. It is part of a continuous dialogue about effective instruction and student achievement. And, because this feedback is tailored to teachers’ individual needs, it is more likely to make a real difference in their practice. In strategic conversations you are not the problem solver; you facilitates problem solving among teachers. It is the teacher’s responsibility to manage their own professional growth and solve their own instructional challenges. Strategic conversations are based on the assumption that teachers are trying to do the best they can. The role of the instructional leader is to help teachers discover the root cause of their instructional challenges and to guide teachers to resolve these challenges themselves. At the heart of strategic conversations is a relationship. Strategic conversations help you establish trust and maintain it — even when you are sharing really difficult feedback. When teachers feel safe, they are more likely to take the steps they need to improve. To learn more about strategic conversations, check out my book The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers. It includes step-by-step advice for how to have difficult conversations with teachers, how to share feedback that actually helps teachers improve their performance, and how to choose the right conversational approach given your goals and teachers’ needs. You can also check out resources from the book by visiting here.   nonadult false Conducting Post Observation Conferences? Learn From My Mistakes text blog 1845 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 0 6182581 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_3-Teacher-Evaluation-Mistakes-to-Avoid/blog/6089617/127586.html School districts across the US are creating new teacher evaluation systems that are supposed to better identify ineffective teaching and, in some cases, tie a teacher’s rating to student performance. My quarrel is not with the evaluation systems themselves however. My quarrel is with how they are being implemented. Here are three of the most common mistakes I’ve seen: 1. Limiting the number of teachers who can rate in the highest category: Some school districts have warned principals that they should not award too many of the highest evaluation marks for teachers. Afraid of evaluation inflation, some districts are actually discouraging evaluators giving the highest marks. What’s more, teachers are being told that it is okay if they don’t score in the highest category because most teachers rarely do. 2. Not tying professional development to the evaluation and salary system: Many teachers are being required to participate in professional development that does not directly address any one of the domains or categories for which they are being evaluated. In some districts I’ve seen, the professional development has absolutely no connection to the teacher evaluation system or the schedule for salary advancement. Thus teachers are being asked to dance to the beat of three competing drummers. 3. Not providing follow-up professional development, feedback, and coaching that helps teachers respond effectively to the evaluation: This mistake is perhaps the most egregious. While all districts provide some training to teachers and instructional leaders on the components and mechanics of the new teacher evaluation systems, most do not provide comprehensive training to show evaluators how to follow up a negative evaluation, how to give growth-oriented feedback that shows teachers how to improve, or how to help teachers respond to evaluative feedback and ultimately improve their instruction. I wrote Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching for precisely these reasons. First, I wanted to make mastery teaching the norm, not some rarified achievement for a gifted few. I wanted to make professional development and evaluation more coherent and connected, and I wanted to provide a framework that showed leaders and teachers how to take their evaluation and turn it into an opportunity to grow. By understanding the Seven Principles of Effective Instruction and the master teacher trajectory , leaders and teachers could have an accurate assessment of where the teacher is, understand what exactly the teacher needs to do to grow, and have a process for getting the teacher there. Rather than give teachers vague evaluative feedback, provide unconnected professional development, and apply random strategies for growth, teachers and leaders could use the evaluation and professional development cycle to actually improve instructional practice. If you want to grow as a teacher, I encourage you to focus on where your teaching challenges are and what principle or principles will best help you address those challenges. (You can find a template for doing just that in Never Work Harder Than Your Students starting on page 229). If you are an administrator, you can use your evaluative feedback to help teachers grow by connecting their teaching challenges to one or more of the principles (Check out our list of classroom challenges by principle in Never Work Harder Than Your Students page 233 for help). And, if your district is using the Danielson Framework for Teaching as the foundation of its new evaluation system, check out this  TIP Sheet ( Click on the TIP Sheet "The Seven Principles and the Danielson Framework for Teaching") which shows how each of the Seven Principles helps you grow in your practice of the four domains. It’s time we had a more coherent evaluation process that provides growth-oriented, actionable feedback with coherent professional development and consistent professional growth. The seven principles of effective instruction support your evaluation process can help you make your system do just that. School districts across the US are creating new teacher evaluation systems that are supposed to better identify ineffective teaching and, in some cases, tie a teacher’s rating to student performance. My quarrel is not with the evaluation systems themselves however. My quarrel is with how they are being implemented. Here are three of the most common mistakes I’ve seen: 1. Limiting the number of teachers who can rate in the highest category: Some school districts have warned principals that they should not award too many of the highest evaluation marks for teachers. Afraid of evaluation inflation, some districts are actually discouraging evaluators giving the highest marks. What’s more, teachers are being told that it is okay if they don’t score in the highest category because most teachers rarely do. 2. Not tying professional development to the evaluation and salary system: Many teachers are being required to participate in professional development that does not directly address any one of the domains or categories for which they are being evaluated. In some districts I’ve seen, the professional development has absolutely no connection to the teacher evaluation system or the schedule for salary advancement. Thus teachers are being asked to dance to the beat of three competing drummers. 3. Not providing follow-up professional development, feedback, and coaching that helps teachers respond effectively to the evaluation: This mistake is perhaps the most egregious. While all districts provide some training to teachers and instructional leaders on the components and mechanics of the new teacher evaluation systems, most do not provide comprehensive training to show evaluators how to follow up a negative evaluation, how to give growth-oriented feedback that shows teachers how to improve, or how to help teachers respond to evaluative feedback and ultimately improve their instruction. I wrote Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching for precisely these reasons. First, I wanted to make mastery teaching the norm, not some rarified achievement for a gifted few. I wanted to make professional development and evaluation more coherent and connected, and I wanted to provide a framework that showed leaders and teachers how to take their evaluation and turn it into an opportunity to grow. By understanding the Seven Principles of Effective Instruction and the master teacher trajectory , leaders and teachers could have an accurate assessment of where the teacher is, understand what exactly the teacher needs to do to grow, and have a process for getting the teacher there. Rather than give teachers vague evaluative feedback, provide unconnected professional development, and apply random strategies for growth, teachers and leaders could use the evaluation and professional development cycle to actually improve instructional practice. If you want to grow as a teacher, I encourage you to focus on where your teaching challenges are and what principle or principles will best help you address those challenges. (You can find a template for doing just that in Never Work Harder Than Your Students starting on page 229). If you are an administrator, you can use your evaluative feedback to help teachers grow by connecting their teaching challenges to one or more of the principles (Check out our list of classroom challenges by principle in Never Work Harder Than Your Students page 233 for help). And, if your district is using the Danielson Framework for Teaching as the foundation of its new evaluation system, check out this  TIP Sheet ( Click on the TIP Sheet "The Seven Principles and the Danielson Framework for Teaching") which shows how each of the Seven Principles helps you grow in your practice of the four domains. It’s time we had a more coherent evaluation process that provides growth-oriented, actionable feedback with coherent professional development and consistent professional growth. The seven principles of effective instruction support your evaluation process can help you make your system do just that. Fri, 18 May 2012 00:53:11 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_3-Teacher-Evaluation-Mistakes-to-Avoid/blog/6089617/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2012-05-18T00:53:11Z ASCD EDge School districts across the US are creating new teacher evaluation systems that are supposed to better identify ineffective teaching and, in some cases, tie a teacher’s rating to student performance. My quarrel is not with the evaluation systems themselves however. My quarrel is with how they are being implemented. Here are three of the most common mistakes I’ve seen: 1. Limiting the number of teachers who can rate in the highest category: Some school districts have warned principals that they should not award too many of the highest evaluation marks for teachers. Afraid of evaluation inflation, some districts are actually discouraging evaluators giving the highest marks. What’s more, teachers are being told that it is okay if they don’t score in the highest category because most teachers rarely do. 2. Not tying professional development to the evaluation and salary system: Many teachers are being required to participate in professional development that does not directly address any one of the domains or categories for which they are being evaluated. In some districts I’ve seen, the professional development has absolutely no connection to the teacher evaluation system or the schedule for salary advancement. Thus teachers are being asked to dance to the beat of three competing drummers. 3. Not providing follow-up professional development, feedback, and coaching that helps teachers respond effectively to the evaluation: This mistake is perhaps the most egregious. While all districts provide some training to teachers and instructional leaders on the components and mechanics of the new teacher evaluation systems, most do not provide comprehensive training to show evaluators how to follow up a negative evaluation, how to give growth-oriented feedback that shows teachers how to improve, or how to help teachers respond to evaluative feedback and ultimately improve their instruction. I wrote Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching for precisely these reasons. First, I wanted to make mastery teaching the norm, not some rarified achievement for a gifted few. I wanted to make professional development and evaluation more coherent and connected, and I wanted to provide a framework that showed leaders and teachers how to take their evaluation and turn it into an opportunity to grow. By understanding the Seven Principles of Effective Instruction and the master teacher trajectory , leaders and teachers could have an accurate assessment of where the teacher is, understand what exactly the teacher needs to do to grow, and have a process for getting the teacher there. Rather than give teachers vague evaluative feedback, provide unconnected professional development, and apply random strategies for growth, teachers and leaders could use the evaluation and professional development cycle to actually improve instructional practice. If you want to grow as a teacher, I encourage you to focus on where your teaching challenges are and what principle or principles will best help you address those challenges. (You can find a template for doing just that in Never Work Harder Than Your Students starting on page 229). If you are an administrator, you can use your evaluative feedback to help teachers grow by connecting their teaching challenges to one or more of the principles (Check out our list of classroom challenges by principle in Never Work Harder Than Your Students page 233 for help). And, if your district is using the Danielson Framework for Teaching as the foundation of its new evaluation system, check out this  TIP Sheet ( Click on the TIP Sheet "The Seven Principles and the Danielson Framework for Teaching") which shows how each of the Seven Principles helps you grow in your practice of the four domains. It’s time we had a more coherent evaluation process that provides growth-oriented, actionable feedback with coherent professional development and consistent professional growth. The seven principles of effective instruction support your evaluation process can help you make your system do just that. danielson framework nonadult false 3 Teacher Evaluation Mistakes to Avoid text blog danielson framework 4287 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 0 6089617 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_5-Professional-Development-Lies/blog/5719053/127586.html The New Year is typically the time we resolve to be better, fitter, slimmer, and[image]more organized. We vow to overcome the mistakes of our past and start fresh. So we march into school in January full of new resolve. And by February, we’re already back to our old habits. The same thing happens every time we read a new book or attend a new workshop. We come back energized, vowing to make changes to our teaching and leadership practices, only to fizzle out shortly thereafter. So to help you stay on track this year, we’re exposing the top five lies professional development tells you: Lie # 5: You just need to work harder. Many professional development workshops and books convey the message that if you just worked at it a little harder, you’d be a master teacher. They assume that the reason you are not as successful in the classroom as you’d like is that you aren’t working hard enough. If only you would put in more time, work nights and weekends, sacrifice your entire summer, and basically give up life as you know it, you too can be a master teacher! More likely, all that “hard work” will only lead to frustration and burn out. The problem isn’t that you aren’t working hard enough, the problem is that you are working too hard at the wrong things. We waste valuable time investing in fads, programs, and strategies that do not give us any return in terms of student achievement. Hard work alone won’t make you a master teacher any more than practicing scales for hours each day will make you a concert pianist. Sure, it takes hard work to be a master teacher but I suspect you are working pretty hard right now and you are just plain exhausted. Working harder isn’t the answer. Working on the right things is. Lie # 4: This will be easy. Beware of easy. Good teaching looks easy but rarely is -- at least not at first. It takes hard work in order to seamlessly integrate the principles of effective instruction into your practice so that they become your natural response to students. Over time, it will get easier, but initially, it will take a lot of concentration, reflection, adjustment, and refinement. Mastery takes time. It doesn’t happen over night and there are no quick fixes. You cannot just read a book or attend a workshop and suddenly become a master teacher. It will not be easy or comfortable or quick. Becoming a master teacher requires consistent, focused, intentional effort over time. Lie # 3: Do this and you will be a master teacher. No one strategy will make you a master teacher. Becoming a master teacher is a process that takes time. You must rigorously apply the principles of effective instruction to your practice until they become your natural response to students. That’s it. No quick fixes. No magical moves. Becoming a master teacher takes deliberate practice and reflection over time. It’s a process. So, rather than focus on trying to become a master teacher over night, give into the process. Understand that all teachers progress from novice, to apprentice, to practitioner, to master teacher.  Focus on moving to the next level rather than trying to instantly become a master teacher. Lie # 2: This one strategy will immediately raise test scores. Test scores and student achievement for that matter are a result of a combination of factors including teaching quality, student background knowledge and motivation, the quality of the curriculum, and the influence of outside factors. Sure there are things that you can do to significantly raise test scores but thinking that there is one magic bullet will set you up for failure. Remember, test scores represent student learning and the best way to increase student learning is good teaching. Good teaching cannot be reduced to one strategy or approach. It is the result of rigorously applying a set of principles to your practice over time. The better you are at applying the principles, the more students learn. The more students learn, the better they perform on tests. There is no magic bullet. And the top professional development lie is… Lie # 1: All you have to do is… If good teaching could be reduced to a single strategy or approach, there would be more master teachers. Good teaching is nuanced. It’s hard. A strategy that works beautifully for one teacher will fail miserably with another. Becoming a master teacher is not simply a response to good training. We don’t have an epiphany and instantly become master teachers. Good teaching is a result of systematically taking all that we know about teaching, organizing it into a few governing principles , and rigorously apply these principles to our teaching until they become our spontaneous response to students in the classroom.  That’s all you have to do. The New Year is typically the time we resolve to be better, fitter, slimmer, and[image]more organized. We vow to overcome the mistakes of our past and start fresh. So we march into school in January full of new resolve. And by February, we’re already back to our old habits. The same thing happens every time we read a new book or attend a new workshop. We come back energized, vowing to make changes to our teaching and leadership practices, only to fizzle out shortly thereafter. So to help you stay on track this year, we’re exposing the top five lies professional development tells you: Lie # 5: You just need to work harder. Many professional development workshops and books convey the message that if you just worked at it a little harder, you’d be a master teacher. They assume that the reason you are not as successful in the classroom as you’d like is that you aren’t working hard enough. If only you would put in more time, work nights and weekends, sacrifice your entire summer, and basically give up life as you know it, you too can be a master teacher! More likely, all that “hard work” will only lead to frustration and burn out. The problem isn’t that you aren’t working hard enough, the problem is that you are working too hard at the wrong things. We waste valuable time investing in fads, programs, and strategies that do not give us any return in terms of student achievement. Hard work alone won’t make you a master teacher any more than practicing scales for hours each day will make you a concert pianist. Sure, it takes hard work to be a master teacher but I suspect you are working pretty hard right now and you are just plain exhausted. Working harder isn’t the answer. Working on the right things is. Lie # 4: This will be easy. Beware of easy. Good teaching looks easy but rarely is -- at least not at first. It takes hard work in order to seamlessly integrate the principles of effective instruction into your practice so that they become your natural response to students. Over time, it will get easier, but initially, it will take a lot of concentration, reflection, adjustment, and refinement. Mastery takes time. It doesn’t happen over night and there are no quick fixes. You cannot just read a book or attend a workshop and suddenly become a master teacher. It will not be easy or comfortable or quick. Becoming a master teacher requires consistent, focused, intentional effort over time. Lie # 3: Do this and you will be a master teacher. No one strategy will make you a master teacher. Becoming a master teacher is a process that takes time. You must rigorously apply the principles of effective instruction to your practice until they become your natural response to students. That’s it. No quick fixes. No magical moves. Becoming a master teacher takes deliberate practice and reflection over time. It’s a process. So, rather than focus on trying to become a master teacher over night, give into the process. Understand that all teachers progress from novice, to apprentice, to practitioner, to master teacher.  Focus on moving to the next level rather than trying to instantly become a master teacher. Lie # 2: This one strategy will immediately raise test scores. Test scores and student achievement for that matter are a result of a combination of factors including teaching quality, student background knowledge and motivation, the quality of the curriculum, and the influence of outside factors. Sure there are things that you can do to significantly raise test scores but thinking that there is one magic bullet will set you up for failure. Remember, test scores represent student learning and the best way to increase student learning is good teaching. Good teaching cannot be reduced to one strategy or approach. It is the result of rigorously applying a set of principles to your practice over time. The better you are at applying the principles, the more students learn. The more students learn, the better they perform on tests. There is no magic bullet. And the top professional development lie is… Lie # 1: All you have to do is… If good teaching could be reduced to a single strategy or approach, there would be more master teachers. Good teaching is nuanced. It’s hard. A strategy that works beautifully for one teacher will fail miserably with another. Becoming a master teacher is not simply a response to good training. We don’t have an epiphany and instantly become master teachers. Good teaching is a result of systematically taking all that we know about teaching, organizing it into a few governing principles , and rigorously apply these principles to our teaching until they become our spontaneous response to students in the classroom.  That’s all you have to do. Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:25:44 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_5-Professional-Development-Lies/blog/5719053/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2012-01-18T19:07:37Z ASCD EDge The New Year is typically the time we resolve to be better, fitter, slimmer, and[image]more organized. We vow to overcome the mistakes of our past and start fresh. So we march into school in January full of new resolve. And by February, we’re already back to our old habits. The same thing happens every time we read a new book or attend a new workshop. We come back energized, vowing to make changes to our teaching and leadership practices, only to fizzle out shortly thereafter. So to help you stay on track this year, we’re exposing the top five lies professional development tells you: Lie # 5: You just need to work harder. Many professional development workshops and books convey the message that if you just worked at it a little harder, you’d be a master teacher. They assume that the reason you are not as successful in the classroom as you’d like is that you aren’t working hard enough. If only you would put in more time, work nights and weekends, sacrifice your entire summer, and basically give up life as you know it, you too can be a master teacher! More likely, all that “hard work” will only lead to frustration and burn out. The problem isn’t that you aren’t working hard enough, the problem is that you are working too hard at the wrong things. We waste valuable time investing in fads, programs, and strategies that do not give us any return in terms of student achievement. Hard work alone won’t make you a master teacher any more than practicing scales for hours each day will make you a concert pianist. Sure, it takes hard work to be a master teacher but I suspect you are working pretty hard right now and you are just plain exhausted. Working harder isn’t the answer. Working on the right things is. Lie # 4: This will be easy. Beware of easy. Good teaching looks easy but rarely is -- at least not at first. It takes hard work in order to seamlessly integrate the principles of effective instruction into your practice so that they become your natural response to students. Over time, it will get easier, but initially, it will take a lot of concentration, reflection, adjustment, and refinement. Mastery takes time. It doesn’t happen over night and there are no quick fixes. You cannot just read a book or attend a workshop and suddenly become a master teacher. It will not be easy or comfortable or quick. Becoming a master teacher requires consistent, focused, intentional effort over time. Lie # 3: Do this and you will be a master teacher. No one strategy will make you a master teacher. Becoming a master teacher is a process that takes time. You must rigorously apply the principles of effective instruction to your practice until they become your natural response to students. That’s it. No quick fixes. No magical moves. Becoming a master teacher takes deliberate practice and reflection over time. It’s a process. So, rather than focus on trying to become a master teacher over night, give into the process. Understand that all teachers progress from novice, to apprentice, to practitioner, to master teacher.  Focus on moving to the next level rather than trying to instantly become a master teacher. Lie # 2: This one strategy will immediately raise test scores. Test scores and student achievement for that matter are a result of a combination of factors including teaching quality, student background knowledge and motivation, the quality of the curriculum, and the influence of outside factors. Sure there are things that you can do to significantly raise test scores but thinking that there is one magic bullet will set you up for failure. Remember, test scores represent student learning and the best way to increase student learning is good teaching. Good teaching cannot be reduced to one strategy or approach. It is the result of rigorously applying a set of principles to your practice over time. The better you are at applying the principles, the more students learn. The more students learn, the better they perform on tests. There is no magic bullet. And the top professional development lie is… Lie # 1: All you have to do is… If good teaching could be reduced to a single strategy or approach, there would be more master teachers. Good teaching is nuanced. It’s hard. A strategy that works beautifully for one teacher will fail miserably with another. Becoming a master teacher is not simply a response to good training. We don’t have an epiphany and instantly become master teachers. Good teaching is a result of systematically taking all that we know about teaching, organizing it into a few governing principles , and rigorously apply these principles to our teaching until they become our spontaneous response to students in the classroom.  That’s all you have to do. mindsteps, professional development, rigor nonadult false 5 Professional Development Lies text blog mindsteps,professional development,rigor 6346 12 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 0 5719053 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_7-Tips-for-Overcoming-Teacher-Burn-Out/blog/5477206/127586.html  Be you. One of the key messages of Never Work Harder Than Your Students is[image] that you can be a master teacher without becoming a caricature of someone else’s idea of what a master teacher should look like. You can become a master teacher and still be true to who you are. The trick is to find a way to be who you are and still help students succeed. If you prefer lecture over group activities but your students crave student-to-student discourse, find ways to make your lectures more interactive. If you prefer project-based learning but your curriculum demands benchmark testing, find ways to prepare students for the tests with the projects you design. You don’t have to stop being yourself (you can’t anyway!). Just be the best you and help your students be successful given (or even in spite of) who you are. Find your tribe. Seek out others who are constantly growing and refining their practice. Look for colleagues who are on the same path as you are and can offer you encouragement. If the staff lounge has become a toxic place full of grousing and complaining, find another place to eat your lunch. If your colleagues spend their time complaining about “those kids,” run! Don’t let them infect you with their negativity. Look for people who are focused on the solution, not the problems. If you cannot find them in your own building, find them Take a long view of your teaching career.Our teaching careers are not made on the basis of one incident, one class of students, or one year. They are made on the basis of the trend in our careers. Most master teachers will tell you that they too started out poorly, made some huge mistakes, or taught under the wrong assumptions about students, about their role with students, and about teaching itself. But the difference between master teachers and the rest of us is not that they never made mistakes; it’s that they chose to learn from their mistakes and use them to get really good at teaching. Don’t judge your career by your mistakes. Judge your career by what you have learned from your mistakes and how you have used them to get better at teaching. Be impatient. People say that master teachers are patient, but most of the master teachers I’ve studied aren’t patient at all. In fact, they are impatient. They want to get better now and they don’t have time for complacency. They are always focused on the next move, the next new skill to develop, the holes in their practice that they wanted to fix. They are always impatient for their students to achieve, excel, master content, and they find the quickest, most direct route to get students there. The difference between their brand of impatience is that they never let their impatience turn to frustration. They allow their impatience to propel them ahead, to keep them searching for the better way, to focus on the possible rather than the frustrations of right now. Impatience forces you to continue to push, to get better and better and to ask your students to do the same. It forces you to move on – If A doesn’t work, then you’ll try B and C and D and so on until you find what does work. Find the bright spots. In times of stress, we tend to focus on what’s not working. But, when we focus only on what didn’t work, we miss a powerful opportunity to learn from what is working. Be intentional about looking for the bright spots, the things that are working, the small moments when you actually do see students engaged and learning. Then, figure out why those moments work and what you can do to replicate them. Not only do the bright spots offer powerful learning opportunities, they feed your faith and show you that there are things in your practice right now that are working. Focus on what you can do right now. In times of high stress, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When you clearly see the work before you, it can feel more like an abyss. But, instead of focusing on what can’t be done, cultivate a keen awareness about all that can be done right now. Identify the best, worst, and most likely scenarios, understand what you can and cannot control, and prepare to move forward past the obstacles. Focus on getting better rather than being good. One of the things that trips us up the most is that we try to be master teachers right away. Mastery doesn’t happen that way. It only comes as a result of consistent and deliberate practice over time. If you focus on being good, you will see failure as an evaluation of your skill rather than as an event from which you can learn and grow. If you focus always on getting better, every set-back becomes a learning experience and an opportunity to grow. Mastery is a progressive process. You don’t get good at teaching or at anything else right away. Just try to get a little better every day and over time, you’ll be good. Very good.  Be you. One of the key messages of Never Work Harder Than Your Students is[image] that you can be a master teacher without becoming a caricature of someone else’s idea of what a master teacher should look like. You can become a master teacher and still be true to who you are. The trick is to find a way to be who you are and still help students succeed. If you prefer lecture over group activities but your students crave student-to-student discourse, find ways to make your lectures more interactive. If you prefer project-based learning but your curriculum demands benchmark testing, find ways to prepare students for the tests with the projects you design. You don’t have to stop being yourself (you can’t anyway!). Just be the best you and help your students be successful given (or even in spite of) who you are. Find your tribe. Seek out others who are constantly growing and refining their practice. Look for colleagues who are on the same path as you are and can offer you encouragement. If the staff lounge has become a toxic place full of grousing and complaining, find another place to eat your lunch. If your colleagues spend their time complaining about “those kids,” run! Don’t let them infect you with their negativity. Look for people who are focused on the solution, not the problems. If you cannot find them in your own building, find them Take a long view of your teaching career.Our teaching careers are not made on the basis of one incident, one class of students, or one year. They are made on the basis of the trend in our careers. Most master teachers will tell you that they too started out poorly, made some huge mistakes, or taught under the wrong assumptions about students, about their role with students, and about teaching itself. But the difference between master teachers and the rest of us is not that they never made mistakes; it’s that they chose to learn from their mistakes and use them to get really good at teaching. Don’t judge your career by your mistakes. Judge your career by what you have learned from your mistakes and how you have used them to get better at teaching. Be impatient. People say that master teachers are patient, but most of the master teachers I’ve studied aren’t patient at all. In fact, they are impatient. They want to get better now and they don’t have time for complacency. They are always focused on the next move, the next new skill to develop, the holes in their practice that they wanted to fix. They are always impatient for their students to achieve, excel, master content, and they find the quickest, most direct route to get students there. The difference between their brand of impatience is that they never let their impatience turn to frustration. They allow their impatience to propel them ahead, to keep them searching for the better way, to focus on the possible rather than the frustrations of right now. Impatience forces you to continue to push, to get better and better and to ask your students to do the same. It forces you to move on – If A doesn’t work, then you’ll try B and C and D and so on until you find what does work. Find the bright spots. In times of stress, we tend to focus on what’s not working. But, when we focus only on what didn’t work, we miss a powerful opportunity to learn from what is working. Be intentional about looking for the bright spots, the things that are working, the small moments when you actually do see students engaged and learning. Then, figure out why those moments work and what you can do to replicate them. Not only do the bright spots offer powerful learning opportunities, they feed your faith and show you that there are things in your practice right now that are working. Focus on what you can do right now. In times of high stress, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When you clearly see the work before you, it can feel more like an abyss. But, instead of focusing on what can’t be done, cultivate a keen awareness about all that can be done right now. Identify the best, worst, and most likely scenarios, understand what you can and cannot control, and prepare to move forward past the obstacles. Focus on getting better rather than being good. One of the things that trips us up the most is that we try to be master teachers right away. Mastery doesn’t happen that way. It only comes as a result of consistent and deliberate practice over time. If you focus on being good, you will see failure as an evaluation of your skill rather than as an event from which you can learn and grow. If you focus always on getting better, every set-back becomes a learning experience and an opportunity to grow. Mastery is a progressive process. You don’t get good at teaching or at anything else right away. Just try to get a little better every day and over time, you’ll be good. Very good. Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:15:05 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_7-Tips-for-Overcoming-Teacher-Burn-Out/blog/5477206/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-11-16T10:15:05Z ASCD EDge  Be you. One of the key messages of Never Work Harder Than Your Students is[image] that you can be a master teacher without becoming a caricature of someone else’s idea of what a master teacher should look like. You can become a master teacher and still be true to who you are. The trick is to find a way to be who you are and still help students succeed. If you prefer lecture over group activities but your students crave student-to-student discourse, find ways to make your lectures more interactive. If you prefer project-based learning but your curriculum demands benchmark testing, find ways to prepare students for the tests with the projects you design. You don’t have to stop being yourself (you can’t anyway!). Just be the best you and help your students be successful given (or even in spite of) who you are. Find your tribe. Seek out others who are constantly growing and refining their practice. Look for colleagues who are on the same path as you are and can offer you encouragement. If the staff lounge has become a toxic place full of grousing and complaining, find another place to eat your lunch. If your colleagues spend their time complaining about “those kids,” run! Don’t let them infect you with their negativity. Look for people who are focused on the solution, not the problems. If you cannot find them in your own building, find them Take a long view of your teaching career.Our teaching careers are not made on the basis of one incident, one class of students, or one year. They are made on the basis of the trend in our careers. Most master teachers will tell you that they too started out poorly, made some huge mistakes, or taught under the wrong assumptions about students, about their role with students, and about teaching itself. But the difference between master teachers and the rest of us is not that they never made mistakes; it’s that they chose to learn from their mistakes and use them to get really good at teaching. Don’t judge your career by your mistakes. Judge your career by what you have learned from your mistakes and how you have used them to get better at teaching. Be impatient. People say that master teachers are patient, but most of the master teachers I’ve studied aren’t patient at all. In fact, they are impatient. They want to get better now and they don’t have time for complacency. They are always focused on the next move, the next new skill to develop, the holes in their practice that they wanted to fix. They are always impatient for their students to achieve, excel, master content, and they find the quickest, most direct route to get students there. The difference between their brand of impatience is that they never let their impatience turn to frustration. They allow their impatience to propel them ahead, to keep them searching for the better way, to focus on the possible rather than the frustrations of right now. Impatience forces you to continue to push, to get better and better and to ask your students to do the same. It forces you to move on – If A doesn’t work, then you’ll try B and C and D and so on until you find what does work. Find the bright spots. In times of stress, we tend to focus on what’s not working. But, when we focus only on what didn’t work, we miss a powerful opportunity to learn from what is working. Be intentional about looking for the bright spots, the things that are working, the small moments when you actually do see students engaged and learning. Then, figure out why those moments work and what you can do to replicate them. Not only do the bright spots offer powerful learning opportunities, they feed your faith and show you that there are things in your practice right now that are working. Focus on what you can do right now. In times of high stress, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When you clearly see the work before you, it can feel more like an abyss. But, instead of focusing on what can’t be done, cultivate a keen awareness about all that can be done right now. Identify the best, worst, and most likely scenarios, understand what you can and cannot control, and prepare to move forward past the obstacles. Focus on getting better rather than being good. One of the things that trips us up the most is that we try to be master teachers right away. Mastery doesn’t happen that way. It only comes as a result of consistent and deliberate practice over time. If you focus on being good, you will see failure as an evaluation of your skill rather than as an event from which you can learn and grow. If you focus always on getting better, every set-back becomes a learning experience and an opportunity to grow. Mastery is a progressive process. You don’t get good at teaching or at anything else right away. Just try to get a little better every day and over time, you’ll be good. Very good. mindsteps, robyn jackson, teacher burn out nonadult false 7 Tips for Overcoming Teacher Burn-Out text blog mindsteps,robyn jackson,teacher burn out 17044 11 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 4 3 5477206 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_What-Students-Want/blog/3577630/127586.html As part of the work my company Mindsteps typically does with our sustainable PD clients, we conduct student focus groups to determine whether the work we are doing with teachers is actually making a difference for students in the classroom. So, I've spent the last month in classrooms talking to students grades k-12. What I love about these focus groups is that the students really don't hold back. They are brutally honest about what is working (and not working) about school, their teachers, and their principals. Here's what they told me: School is so boring. Most of the students with whom I met complain that their classes are too teacher directed. One group of urban high school students said that "All the teachers do is run their mouths. All you have to do is sit there. You really don't have to do anything else." Another group of teenagers told me that they wanted to learn but that their classes were so boring with no interactivity. In fact, boredom was the universal complaint among all the middle and high school students I met. They crave interactivity and the opportunity to, as one teen stated, "learn for ourselves." School is too easy. Several students complained that their school work wasn't challenging enough. They wanted rigorous learning experiences rather than blindly complete homework and class work individually in their seats. They told me that they don't do homework at home because they could easily complete it during first period while the teacher was talking. Others said that some class work was so easy, they rushed through it so that they could just take a break, sit and do nothing for a bit. They raved about teachers who pushed them to go beyond the surface understanding of the subject, posed interesting dilemmas, and taught them how to solve interesting problems. Students wanted to be challenged, to engage in rigorous learning that "actually makes you think." School is too hard. Other students worried that school was too hard for them. They wanted to learn but felt that "the teachers talk over our heads" or that they weren't getting the supports they needed to be successful. They knew that they didn't understand certain concepts but shrugged and said that the teacher just moved on anyway. They wanted their teachers to take time to help them understand course content, provide additional support in class rather than during lunch, recess, and after school, and explain things using "plain English." School rules are stupid. Across all grade levels (k-12) students complained about school rules. This wasn't the normal teen-aged rebellion against order here. Students complained about silent lunches and the inability to use cell phones or gaming consoles during lunch, recess, and other periods designated "their own time." They complained that they didn't get enough time during the school day to interact with their friends and that their lunch and recess time was so controlled that neither were very much fun for them. We want relationships with our teachers. The students praised some of their teachers for taking time to get to know who they were and care about them on a personal level. Those teachers were universally their favorites. In fact, in one school where the majority of the students skipped at least one class per day, the students told me that they never skip the classes of the teachers who care about them and seek out relationships with them. The elementary students I met with even wanted a personal relationship with their principal. They wanted a principal who knows them by name, cares about who they are, visits their classrooms and talks with them in the halls. Overwhelmingly, the students expressed a need for adults who knew and understood them and showed that they cared about who they were. They worked hard for the teachers that did and ignored or outright rebelled against the teachers who didn't. We don't always do our part either. Students were honest in admitting that there was more that they should be doing as well. They admitted to skipping classes, not doing their homework, sleeping during class, and breaking class and school rules. Elementary students wanted teachers and principals who enforced the rules and held them and other students accountable for misbehaving. It was really important that school be a safe and orderly place to learn. Middle and high school students were equally effusive about teachers and administrators who "didn't let them get away with no stuff." They wanted to be held accountable.As one student put it, "the teachers who care about you don't let you get away with anything and that's all right. It means that they care about you and want you to be something." As much as they craved being held accountable, they hated discipline in the traditional sense. They didn't want to be simply punished for breaking the rules and they complained that some teachers and administrators didn't know how to let things go. One elementary student said that she understood that teachers have to enforce the rules but that "they don't have to be mean about it." Again, that relationship is so important. Students want to be held accountable, but they also want to be forgiven and they want to know that their teachers believe in them even when they misbehave. As part of the work my company Mindsteps typically does with our sustainable PD clients, we conduct student focus groups to determine whether the work we are doing with teachers is actually making a difference for students in the classroom. So, I've spent the last month in classrooms talking to students grades k-12. What I love about these focus groups is that the students really don't hold back. They are brutally honest about what is working (and not working) about school, their teachers, and their principals. Here's what they told me: School is so boring. Most of the students with whom I met complain that their classes are too teacher directed. One group of urban high school students said that "All the teachers do is run their mouths. All you have to do is sit there. You really don't have to do anything else." Another group of teenagers told me that they wanted to learn but that their classes were so boring with no interactivity. In fact, boredom was the universal complaint among all the middle and high school students I met. They crave interactivity and the opportunity to, as one teen stated, "learn for ourselves." School is too easy. Several students complained that their school work wasn't challenging enough. They wanted rigorous learning experiences rather than blindly complete homework and class work individually in their seats. They told me that they don't do homework at home because they could easily complete it during first period while the teacher was talking. Others said that some class work was so easy, they rushed through it so that they could just take a break, sit and do nothing for a bit. They raved about teachers who pushed them to go beyond the surface understanding of the subject, posed interesting dilemmas, and taught them how to solve interesting problems. Students wanted to be challenged, to engage in rigorous learning that "actually makes you think." School is too hard. Other students worried that school was too hard for them. They wanted to learn but felt that "the teachers talk over our heads" or that they weren't getting the supports they needed to be successful. They knew that they didn't understand certain concepts but shrugged and said that the teacher just moved on anyway. They wanted their teachers to take time to help them understand course content, provide additional support in class rather than during lunch, recess, and after school, and explain things using "plain English." School rules are stupid. Across all grade levels (k-12) students complained about school rules. This wasn't the normal teen-aged rebellion against order here. Students complained about silent lunches and the inability to use cell phones or gaming consoles during lunch, recess, and other periods designated "their own time." They complained that they didn't get enough time during the school day to interact with their friends and that their lunch and recess time was so controlled that neither were very much fun for them. We want relationships with our teachers. The students praised some of their teachers for taking time to get to know who they were and care about them on a personal level. Those teachers were universally their favorites. In fact, in one school where the majority of the students skipped at least one class per day, the students told me that they never skip the classes of the teachers who care about them and seek out relationships with them. The elementary students I met with even wanted a personal relationship with their principal. They wanted a principal who knows them by name, cares about who they are, visits their classrooms and talks with them in the halls. Overwhelmingly, the students expressed a need for adults who knew and understood them and showed that they cared about who they were. They worked hard for the teachers that did and ignored or outright rebelled against the teachers who didn't. We don't always do our part either. Students were honest in admitting that there was more that they should be doing as well. They admitted to skipping classes, not doing their homework, sleeping during class, and breaking class and school rules. Elementary students wanted teachers and principals who enforced the rules and held them and other students accountable for misbehaving. It was really important that school be a safe and orderly place to learn. Middle and high school students were equally effusive about teachers and administrators who "didn't let them get away with no stuff." They wanted to be held accountable.As one student put it, "the teachers who care about you don't let you get away with anything and that's all right. It means that they care about you and want you to be something." As much as they craved being held accountable, they hated discipline in the traditional sense. They didn't want to be simply punished for breaking the rules and they complained that some teachers and administrators didn't know how to let things go. One elementary student said that she understood that teachers have to enforce the rules but that "they don't have to be mean about it." Again, that relationship is so important. Students want to be held accountable, but they also want to be forgiven and they want to know that their teachers believe in them even when they misbehave. Fri, 06 May 2011 16:05:03 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_What-Students-Want/blog/3577630/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-05-06T16:05:03Z ASCD EDge As part of the work my company Mindsteps typically does with our sustainable PD clients, we conduct student focus groups to determine whether the work we are doing with teachers is actually making a difference for students in the classroom. So, I've spent the last month in classrooms talking to students grades k-12. What I love about these focus groups is that the students really don't hold back. They are brutally honest about what is working (and not working) about school, their teachers, and their principals. Here's what they told me: School is so boring. Most of the students with whom I met complain that their classes are too teacher directed. One group of urban high school students said that "All the teachers do is run their mouths. All you have to do is sit there. You really don't have to do anything else." Another group of teenagers told me that they wanted to learn but that their classes were so boring with no interactivity. In fact, boredom was the universal complaint among all the middle and high school students I met. They crave interactivity and the opportunity to, as one teen stated, "learn for ourselves." School is too easy. Several students complained that their school work wasn't challenging enough. They wanted rigorous learning experiences rather than blindly complete homework and class work individually in their seats. They told me that they don't do homework at home because they could easily complete it during first period while the teacher was talking. Others said that some class work was so easy, they rushed through it so that they could just take a break, sit and do nothing for a bit. They raved about teachers who pushed them to go beyond the surface understanding of the subject, posed interesting dilemmas, and taught them how to solve interesting problems. Students wanted to be challenged, to engage in rigorous learning that "actually makes you think." School is too hard. Other students worried that school was too hard for them. They wanted to learn but felt that "the teachers talk over our heads" or that they weren't getting the supports they needed to be successful. They knew that they didn't understand certain concepts but shrugged and said that the teacher just moved on anyway. They wanted their teachers to take time to help them understand course content, provide additional support in class rather than during lunch, recess, and after school, and explain things using "plain English." School rules are stupid. Across all grade levels (k-12) students complained about school rules. This wasn't the normal teen-aged rebellion against order here. Students complained about silent lunches and the inability to use cell phones or gaming consoles during lunch, recess, and other periods designated "their own time." They complained that they didn't get enough time during the school day to interact with their friends and that their lunch and recess time was so controlled that neither were very much fun for them. We want relationships with our teachers. The students praised some of their teachers for taking time to get to know who they were and care about them on a personal level. Those teachers were universally their favorites. In fact, in one school where the majority of the students skipped at least one class per day, the students told me that they never skip the classes of the teachers who care about them and seek out relationships with them. The elementary students I met with even wanted a personal relationship with their principal. They wanted a principal who knows them by name, cares about who they are, visits their classrooms and talks with them in the halls. Overwhelmingly, the students expressed a need for adults who knew and understood them and showed that they cared about who they were. They worked hard for the teachers that did and ignored or outright rebelled against the teachers who didn't. We don't always do our part either. Students were honest in admitting that there was more that they should be doing as well. They admitted to skipping classes, not doing their homework, sleeping during class, and breaking class and school rules. Elementary students wanted teachers and principals who enforced the rules and held them and other students accountable for misbehaving. It was really important that school be a safe and orderly place to learn. Middle and high school students were equally effusive about teachers and administrators who "didn't let them get away with no stuff." They wanted to be held accountable.As one student put it, "the teachers who care about you don't let you get away with anything and that's all right. It means that they care about you and want you to be something." As much as they craved being held accountable, they hated discipline in the traditional sense. They didn't want to be simply punished for breaking the rules and they complained that some teachers and administrators didn't know how to let things go. One elementary student said that she understood that teachers have to enforce the rules but that "they don't have to be mean about it." Again, that relationship is so important. Students want to be held accountable, but they also want to be forgiven and they want to know that their teachers believe in them even when they misbehave. nonadult false What Students Want text blog 2046 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 0 3577630 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Differentiated-Instruction-Yes-but-My-response-to-one-reader39s-comment/blog/3368609/127586.html The other day, a user commented on my blog post Four Differentiation Mistakes to Avoid. The comment was long, but this part caught my attention: "Hello Dr. Jackson,Playing devil's advocate, I see a couple of unsupported statements in the post. For example, you say ?learning style is static.? Do you really think so? But the mention of "low group" students "sailing through an activity," sounds farfetched to me as an urban high school and community college math teacher. I would only call students "low group" if they scored in the lowest quartile, or the low failing range, 208-218, say, on the 8th or 10th grade MCAS  the Massachusetts statewide test. Students in this group are showing that they are not yet interested in, or not yet ready for, manipulating numbers in the abstract (algebra.) Most, if not all, of the students in this "low group" do not know times tables, lack number sense that comes from knowing times tables and equivalent fractions, and many would apparently rather put the brakes on high school (almost at any cost ? our drop-out rate is very high) than carry on with high school courses in which they have no choice. And, to their credit, some would rather retry learning arithmetic ? but to do this they (and I as their teacher) would have to be in ?violation? of the ?standards.? Curriculum Framework Standards indicate all 9th graders should be learning algebra. And I feel, after reading posts like this, that the problem of uninterested/unprepared 9th graders not doing well in Algebra can easily, (thoughtlessly, and unfairly) be blamed on poor 9th grade Algebra teaching. Therein lies the problem. It seems only natural to me that folks who have been doing a job for a long time feel pretty expert at it and when someone comes in and says ?do it this (new) way because your students? failure is due to your teaching,? it better come from someone who a) knows what you are doing and b) has proven what they are saying. So can you clarify: Are you thinking that the teaching of algebra to 9th graders like those in my ?low group? can be done successfully as long as it is done by ?differentiated instruction?? If so, this is where the rubber hits the road: where are the detailed, real-life examples of a year-long algebra course that shows successful ?differentiated instruction? in practice? And shows how it differs from current (best) practices? I keep looking and keep not finding. I read you had great success teaching AP English. What about 9th grade algebra in a "failing school?" I meet a lot of teachers who share these same frustrations all the time. In fact, in all of my books, I take the time to address these kinds of questions in the "Yes,but..." sections so I thought I should take the time in a separate post to address this "Yes, but..." First, I should warn that I am not going to be able to provide a solution in a blog post. The best I can do is share my thoughts briefly here to a few points raised in this comment and invite further conversation, not just between this member and myself but with the entire Edge Community. So, here goes! Is learning style really static? I am not arguing that a students' learning style is static but once we label a student a "kinestetic learner" for instance, those labels tend to stick and they limit us from finding creative solutions that help us customize our approach to students. The approach to differentiation I am advocating recognizes that a students' learning style is much more fluid than our labels allow and that we should look beyond learning styles to the immediate learning needs in front of us. If learning styles can inform our approach, great? But most of the time, I see them being used a a poor proxy for the kind of careful consideration of students' "right now" learning needs that makes differentiation successful. Can "low" students really "sail" through an activity? I can only tell you what I've seen in my work with urban schools and districts and in the work I did myself as a teacher. It doesn't happen every single time, but I have witnessed students sailing through an activity when they have the right kind of support. Scaffolding is critical and when it happens, I have seen struggling students meet with immediate success with certain grade-level activities. But it doesn't happen every day and it takes some work to get there. Is poor performance really the fault of poor teachers?  Not entirely. Much of the work I do now is with schools that are trying to figure out how to help the lowest performing students meet or exceed the standards. One of the reasons I developed the differentiation framework I developed was because I wanted to find a way to make differentiation work in a secondary classroom with over-worked teachers and failing students. And, I wanted to make challenging courses accessible to students who were clearly un-prepared for them. I am not just talking about suburban schools or wealthy districts or "AP kids" or even simply "average" kids. I work and have worked in schools in DC where students have moved from Algebra II directly to AP calculus with little more than a summer refresher course and in schools in NYC, Baltimore, Boston, LA, and several "border towns" in Texas where student only show up for school 2-3 days a week, where crime is rampant, where failure is persistent and seemingly intractable, where the culture is dysfunctional, and where the kids are so far behind that they are operating 2-4 grades below grade level. Right now I am teaching a writing course to students in an urban school system who are reading and writing 2-4 grade levels below where they need to be and who are still now writing in complete sentences. In all cases, it is a confluence of factors that lead to student failure. We cannot control many of those factors but we can control the quality of our instruction. So do I think persistent failure is entirely the teacher's fault? Absolutely not. (Check out my many posts on why we shouldn't blame the teacher here here here and here). But do I think that there is more that we can be doing in the classroom to help all students meet or exceed the standards? Yes I do. It's not that I don't recognize that we are up against profound and powerful deterrents to teaching and learning. It's just that I'd rather spend my time looking for things I (and the teachers I support) can do immediately to improve these kids' chances.  Is Differentiated Instruction really "the answer?" I get into trouble a lot when I start talking about Differentiated Instruction. So many school systems and pundits have latched onto it as the "second coming" of instructional strategies. I believe it is a powerful strategy that should be used in combination with other strategies but it is by no means a panecea nor should it be treated as one. At it's best, differentiated instruction isn't even a strategy at all -- it's a integral part of what good teachers are doing any way. Master teachers are responsive to their students' needs. They adjust their instruction to meet those needs. They are neither controlled (and shackled) by the standards nor are they dismissive of them. Instead, they keep the standards as the target but adjust their instructional approaches to respond to students' individual needs. In doing so, they may take a departure from "page 25 of the curriculum guide" or even stop to fill in background knowledge but their ultimate goal is to help every student meet or exceed the standards. When I work with ninth-grade algebra teachers or fifth-grade teachers in a failing school or third grade teachers struggling to teach students literacy skills or AP US history teachers opening the gates to under-prepared students I am not telling them that differentiation is the answer. I try to differentiate my coaching and support in the same way that I want to see them differentiate their instruction. I try to understand their teaching situation and customize my advice to meet their immediate teaching needs. Sometimes it's differentiated instruction. Other times, it's strategies to increase rigor or ways to proactively support struggling students or tips on how to set students up to learn. Each teacher is different and each classroom requires a different approach depending on the students' individual challenges and the teacher's unique teaching style and approach.  Ultimately, I believe that's the spirit behind differentiated instruction and it's not just for students. The same consideration should be given to teachers (and the advice I give them) as well. I'd love to hear from others who are struggling with the same thing. What works, what hasn't, and what questions do you have? The other day, a user commented on my blog post Four Differentiation Mistakes to Avoid. The comment was long, but this part caught my attention: "Hello Dr. Jackson,Playing devil's advocate, I see a couple of unsupported statements in the post. For example, you say ?learning style is static.? Do you really think so? But the mention of "low group" students "sailing through an activity," sounds farfetched to me as an urban high school and community college math teacher. I would only call students "low group" if they scored in the lowest quartile, or the low failing range, 208-218, say, on the 8th or 10th grade MCAS  the Massachusetts statewide test. Students in this group are showing that they are not yet interested in, or not yet ready for, manipulating numbers in the abstract (algebra.) Most, if not all, of the students in this "low group" do not know times tables, lack number sense that comes from knowing times tables and equivalent fractions, and many would apparently rather put the brakes on high school (almost at any cost ? our drop-out rate is very high) than carry on with high school courses in which they have no choice. And, to their credit, some would rather retry learning arithmetic ? but to do this they (and I as their teacher) would have to be in ?violation? of the ?standards.? Curriculum Framework Standards indicate all 9th graders should be learning algebra. And I feel, after reading posts like this, that the problem of uninterested/unprepared 9th graders not doing well in Algebra can easily, (thoughtlessly, and unfairly) be blamed on poor 9th grade Algebra teaching. Therein lies the problem. It seems only natural to me that folks who have been doing a job for a long time feel pretty expert at it and when someone comes in and says ?do it this (new) way because your students? failure is due to your teaching,? it better come from someone who a) knows what you are doing and b) has proven what they are saying. So can you clarify: Are you thinking that the teaching of algebra to 9th graders like those in my ?low group? can be done successfully as long as it is done by ?differentiated instruction?? If so, this is where the rubber hits the road: where are the detailed, real-life examples of a year-long algebra course that shows successful ?differentiated instruction? in practice? And shows how it differs from current (best) practices? I keep looking and keep not finding. I read you had great success teaching AP English. What about 9th grade algebra in a "failing school?" I meet a lot of teachers who share these same frustrations all the time. In fact, in all of my books, I take the time to address these kinds of questions in the "Yes,but..." sections so I thought I should take the time in a separate post to address this "Yes, but..." First, I should warn that I am not going to be able to provide a solution in a blog post. The best I can do is share my thoughts briefly here to a few points raised in this comment and invite further conversation, not just between this member and myself but with the entire Edge Community. So, here goes! Is learning style really static? I am not arguing that a students' learning style is static but once we label a student a "kinestetic learner" for instance, those labels tend to stick and they limit us from finding creative solutions that help us customize our approach to students. The approach to differentiation I am advocating recognizes that a students' learning style is much more fluid than our labels allow and that we should look beyond learning styles to the immediate learning needs in front of us. If learning styles can inform our approach, great? But most of the time, I see them being used a a poor proxy for the kind of careful consideration of students' "right now" learning needs that makes differentiation successful. Can "low" students really "sail" through an activity? I can only tell you what I've seen in my work with urban schools and districts and in the work I did myself as a teacher. It doesn't happen every single time, but I have witnessed students sailing through an activity when they have the right kind of support. Scaffolding is critical and when it happens, I have seen struggling students meet with immediate success with certain grade-level activities. But it doesn't happen every day and it takes some work to get there. Is poor performance really the fault of poor teachers?  Not entirely. Much of the work I do now is with schools that are trying to figure out how to help the lowest performing students meet or exceed the standards. One of the reasons I developed the differentiation framework I developed was because I wanted to find a way to make differentiation work in a secondary classroom with over-worked teachers and failing students. And, I wanted to make challenging courses accessible to students who were clearly un-prepared for them. I am not just talking about suburban schools or wealthy districts or "AP kids" or even simply "average" kids. I work and have worked in schools in DC where students have moved from Algebra II directly to AP calculus with little more than a summer refresher course and in schools in NYC, Baltimore, Boston, LA, and several "border towns" in Texas where student only show up for school 2-3 days a week, where crime is rampant, where failure is persistent and seemingly intractable, where the culture is dysfunctional, and where the kids are so far behind that they are operating 2-4 grades below grade level. Right now I am teaching a writing course to students in an urban school system who are reading and writing 2-4 grade levels below where they need to be and who are still now writing in complete sentences. In all cases, it is a confluence of factors that lead to student failure. We cannot control many of those factors but we can control the quality of our instruction. So do I think persistent failure is entirely the teacher's fault? Absolutely not. (Check out my many posts on why we shouldn't blame the teacher here here here and here). But do I think that there is more that we can be doing in the classroom to help all students meet or exceed the standards? Yes I do. It's not that I don't recognize that we are up against profound and powerful deterrents to teaching and learning. It's just that I'd rather spend my time looking for things I (and the teachers I support) can do immediately to improve these kids' chances.  Is Differentiated Instruction really "the answer?" I get into trouble a lot when I start talking about Differentiated Instruction. So many school systems and pundits have latched onto it as the "second coming" of instructional strategies. I believe it is a powerful strategy that should be used in combination with other strategies but it is by no means a panecea nor should it be treated as one. At it's best, differentiated instruction isn't even a strategy at all -- it's a integral part of what good teachers are doing any way. Master teachers are responsive to their students' needs. They adjust their instruction to meet those needs. They are neither controlled (and shackled) by the standards nor are they dismissive of them. Instead, they keep the standards as the target but adjust their instructional approaches to respond to students' individual needs. In doing so, they may take a departure from "page 25 of the curriculum guide" or even stop to fill in background knowledge but their ultimate goal is to help every student meet or exceed the standards. When I work with ninth-grade algebra teachers or fifth-grade teachers in a failing school or third grade teachers struggling to teach students literacy skills or AP US history teachers opening the gates to under-prepared students I am not telling them that differentiation is the answer. I try to differentiate my coaching and support in the same way that I want to see them differentiate their instruction. I try to understand their teaching situation and customize my advice to meet their immediate teaching needs. Sometimes it's differentiated instruction. Other times, it's strategies to increase rigor or ways to proactively support struggling students or tips on how to set students up to learn. Each teacher is different and each classroom requires a different approach depending on the students' individual challenges and the teacher's unique teaching style and approach.  Ultimately, I believe that's the spirit behind differentiated instruction and it's not just for students. The same consideration should be given to teachers (and the advice I give them) as well. I'd love to hear from others who are struggling with the same thing. What works, what hasn't, and what questions do you have? Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:36:24 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Differentiated-Instruction-Yes-but-My-response-to-one-reader39s-comment/blog/3368609/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-03-05T02:36:24Z ASCD EDge The other day, a user commented on my blog post Four Differentiation Mistakes to Avoid. The comment was long, but this part caught my attention: "Hello Dr. Jackson,Playing devil's advocate, I see a couple of unsupported statements in the post. For example, you say ?learning style is static.? Do you really think so? But the mention of "low group" students "sailing through an activity," sounds farfetched to me as an urban high school and community college math teacher. I would only call students "low group" if they scored in the lowest quartile, or the low failing range, 208-218, say, on the 8th or 10th grade MCAS  the Massachusetts statewide test. Students in this group are showing that they are not yet interested in, or not yet ready for, manipulating numbers in the abstract (algebra.) Most, if not all, of the students in this "low group" do not know times tables, lack number sense that comes from knowing times tables and equivalent fractions, and many would apparently rather put the brakes on high school (almost at any cost ? our drop-out rate is very high) than carry on with high school courses in which they have no choice. And, to their credit, some would rather retry learning arithmetic ? but to do this they (and I as their teacher) would have to be in ?violation? of the ?standards.? Curriculum Framework Standards indicate all 9th graders should be learning algebra. And I feel, after reading posts like this, that the problem of uninterested/unprepared 9th graders not doing well in Algebra can easily, (thoughtlessly, and unfairly) be blamed on poor 9th grade Algebra teaching. Therein lies the problem. It seems only natural to me that folks who have been doing a job for a long time feel pretty expert at it and when someone comes in and says ?do it this (new) way because your students? failure is due to your teaching,? it better come from someone who a) knows what you are doing and b) has proven what they are saying. So can you clarify: Are you thinking that the teaching of algebra to 9th graders like those in my ?low group? can be done successfully as long as it is done by ?differentiated instruction?? If so, this is where the rubber hits the road: where are the detailed, real-life examples of a year-long algebra course that shows successful ?differentiated instruction? in practice? And shows how it differs from current (best) practices? I keep looking and keep not finding. I read you had great success teaching AP English. What about 9th grade algebra in a "failing school?" I meet a lot of teachers who share these same frustrations all the time. In fact, in all of my books, I take the time to address these kinds of questions in the "Yes,but..." sections so I thought I should take the time in a separate post to address this "Yes, but..." First, I should warn that I am not going to be able to provide a solution in a blog post. The best I can do is share my thoughts briefly here to a few points raised in this comment and invite further conversation, not just between this member and myself but with the entire Edge Community. So, here goes! Is learning style really static? I am not arguing that a students' learning style is static but once we label a student a "kinestetic learner" for instance, those labels tend to stick and they limit us from finding creative solutions that help us customize our approach to students. The approach to differentiation I am advocating recognizes that a students' learning style is much more fluid than our labels allow and that we should look beyond learning styles to the immediate learning needs in front of us. If learning styles can inform our approach, great? But most of the time, I see them being used a a poor proxy for the kind of careful consideration of students' "right now" learning needs that makes differentiation successful. Can "low" students really "sail" through an activity? I can only tell you what I've seen in my work with urban schools and districts and in the work I did myself as a teacher. It doesn't happen every single time, but I have witnessed students sailing through an activity when they have the right kind of support. Scaffolding is critical and when it happens, I have seen struggling students meet with immediate success with certain grade-level activities. But it doesn't happen every day and it takes some work to get there. Is poor performance really the fault of poor teachers?  Not entirely. Much of the work I do now is with schools that are trying to figure out how to help the lowest performing students meet or exceed the standards. One of the reasons I developed the differentiation framework I developed was because I wanted to find a way to make differentiation work in a secondary classroom with over-worked teachers and failing students. And, I wanted to make challenging courses accessible to students who were clearly un-prepared for them. I am not just talking about suburban schools or wealthy districts or "AP kids" or even simply "average" kids. I work and have worked in schools in DC where students have moved from Algebra II directly to AP calculus with little more than a summer refresher course and in schools in NYC, Baltimore, Boston, LA, and several "border towns" in Texas where student only show up for school 2-3 days a week, where crime is rampant, where failure is persistent and seemingly intractable, where the culture is dysfunctional, and where the kids are so far behind that they are operating 2-4 grades below grade level. Right now I am teaching a writing course to students in an urban school system who are reading and writing 2-4 grade levels below where they need to be and who are still now writing in complete sentences. In all cases, it is a confluence of factors that lead to student failure. We cannot control many of those factors but we can control the quality of our instruction. So do I think persistent failure is entirely the teacher's fault? Absolutely not. (Check out my many posts on why we shouldn't blame the teacher here here here and here). But do I think that there is more that we can be doing in the classroom to help all students meet or exceed the standards? Yes I do. It's not that I don't recognize that we are up against profound and powerful deterrents to teaching and learning. It's just that I'd rather spend my time looking for things I (and the teachers I support) can do immediately to improve these kids' chances.  Is Differentiated Instruction really "the answer?" I get into trouble a lot when I start talking about Differentiated Instruction. So many school systems and pundits have latched onto it as the "second coming" of instructional strategies. I believe it is a powerful strategy that should be used in combination with other strategies but it is by no means a panecea nor should it be treated as one. At it's best, differentiated instruction isn't even a strategy at all -- it's a integral part of what good teachers are doing any way. Master teachers are responsive to their students' needs. They adjust their instruction to meet those needs. They are neither controlled (and shackled) by the standards nor are they dismissive of them. Instead, they keep the standards as the target but adjust their instructional approaches to respond to students' individual needs. In doing so, they may take a departure from "page 25 of the curriculum guide" or even stop to fill in background knowledge but their ultimate goal is to help every student meet or exceed the standards. When I work with ninth-grade algebra teachers or fifth-grade teachers in a failing school or third grade teachers struggling to teach students literacy skills or AP US history teachers opening the gates to under-prepared students I am not telling them that differentiation is the answer. I try to differentiate my coaching and support in the same way that I want to see them differentiate their instruction. I try to understand their teaching situation and customize my advice to meet their immediate teaching needs. Sometimes it's differentiated instruction. Other times, it's strategies to increase rigor or ways to proactively support struggling students or tips on how to set students up to learn. Each teacher is different and each classroom requires a different approach depending on the students' individual challenges and the teacher's unique teaching style and approach.  Ultimately, I believe that's the spirit behind differentiated instruction and it's not just for students. The same consideration should be given to teachers (and the advice I give them) as well. I'd love to hear from others who are struggling with the same thing. What works, what hasn't, and what questions do you have? differentiated, differentiation, instruction, jackson, mindsteps, robyn nonadult false Differentiated Instruction? Yes, but...: My response to one reader's comment. text blog differentiated,differentiation,instruction,jackson,mindsteps,robyn 2304 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 0 3368609 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Are-You-Making-these-Four-Differentiated-Instruction-Mistakes/blog/3321350/127586.html If we truly want to help ALL students meet or master the standards, we must provide effective differentiation for our students. However, over the years, several practices have crept into the way we differentiate lessons that actually make student success LESS likely. The following are four practices that actually interfere with effective differentiated instruction. Creating multiple assignments rather than multiple pathways. Differentiation is not about the number of assignments you create; it's about giving students multiple pathways to success and then helping them choose the pathway that is best for them. Simply providing multiple assignments not only creates a lot of work for you, it can pigeonhole some students into lowered expectations and decreased opportunities to stretch and grow. Instead of creating different assignments, create ONE assignment and provide students several different pathways to success on that assignment (for more on planning differentiated lessons that rely on ONE assignment, check out The Differentiation Workbook for a lesson plan and process). By focusing on different supports rather than different assignments, you can better target students' needs and give them the scaffolding they need to reach success. Differentiating by learning style versus learning needs. Not every lesson you give will accommodate students' preferred learning style - nor does every lesson need to. Our time is better spent examining students' particular learning needs for each assignment and using their learning needs to identify and provide the support and scaffolding they need to be successful. Learning styles are static while learning needs constantly change and shift depending on students' current content and procedural knowledge. Learning needs give you a much more accurate picture of where students are currently and what you must do to help them successfully master a range of standards and skills. From there you can create customized pathways and supports to help all students meet or exceed the standards. Differentiating by achievement level rather than by students' current learning level. Some will tell you that there are three kinds of students - high, medium, and low. But this distinction is not very useful. There are times when a student you consider to be in your high group will struggle with the content. Other time, students in your low group will sail through an activity, outperforming the students in your high group. Because students bring a variety of skills and experiences to the classroom, classifying them as high, medium, and low doesn't really help you adjust your instruction effectively to meet their complex needs.  These static groupings also limit students.  Once you start thinking about students in these ways, it is difficult to see them any other way.  Differentiating by achievement level often results in lowered expectations for struggling students and extra work for advanced students. Lowering the target for some students while raising the learning target for others is not differentiation - it's tracking. Real differentiation takes into account where students are at a particular point in time. It doesn't label kids "low", "average," and "advanced"; it groups students by their current understanding of the content and processes involved in a particular learning activity and then provides students with the targeted supports they need to successfully master that activity. Differentiating down rather than up. When we differentiate down, we tend to look for ways to "dumb down" an assignment to students' current learning level and hope that over time, they will begin working at the level demanded by the standards. In most cases, our efforts fall short. Differentiating up means starting with the standard and figuring out what supports students will need to reach the standard. All assignments are written at or above grade-level. We can offer students varying degrees of support and different routes to success but the target itself should never change. By avoiding these mistakes, you can make your efforts at differentiation much more successful -- and much less stressful. Take a look at your differentiation practice and make sure that you are not unintentionally making things harder for both you and your students. If we truly want to help ALL students meet or master the standards, we must provide effective differentiation for our students. However, over the years, several practices have crept into the way we differentiate lessons that actually make student success LESS likely. The following are four practices that actually interfere with effective differentiated instruction. Creating multiple assignments rather than multiple pathways. Differentiation is not about the number of assignments you create; it's about giving students multiple pathways to success and then helping them choose the pathway that is best for them. Simply providing multiple assignments not only creates a lot of work for you, it can pigeonhole some students into lowered expectations and decreased opportunities to stretch and grow. Instead of creating different assignments, create ONE assignment and provide students several different pathways to success on that assignment (for more on planning differentiated lessons that rely on ONE assignment, check out The Differentiation Workbook for a lesson plan and process). By focusing on different supports rather than different assignments, you can better target students' needs and give them the scaffolding they need to reach success. Differentiating by learning style versus learning needs. Not every lesson you give will accommodate students' preferred learning style - nor does every lesson need to. Our time is better spent examining students' particular learning needs for each assignment and using their learning needs to identify and provide the support and scaffolding they need to be successful. Learning styles are static while learning needs constantly change and shift depending on students' current content and procedural knowledge. Learning needs give you a much more accurate picture of where students are currently and what you must do to help them successfully master a range of standards and skills. From there you can create customized pathways and supports to help all students meet or exceed the standards. Differentiating by achievement level rather than by students' current learning level. Some will tell you that there are three kinds of students - high, medium, and low. But this distinction is not very useful. There are times when a student you consider to be in your high group will struggle with the content. Other time, students in your low group will sail through an activity, outperforming the students in your high group. Because students bring a variety of skills and experiences to the classroom, classifying them as high, medium, and low doesn't really help you adjust your instruction effectively to meet their complex needs.  These static groupings also limit students.  Once you start thinking about students in these ways, it is difficult to see them any other way.  Differentiating by achievement level often results in lowered expectations for struggling students and extra work for advanced students. Lowering the target for some students while raising the learning target for others is not differentiation - it's tracking. Real differentiation takes into account where students are at a particular point in time. It doesn't label kids "low", "average," and "advanced"; it groups students by their current understanding of the content and processes involved in a particular learning activity and then provides students with the targeted supports they need to successfully master that activity. Differentiating down rather than up. When we differentiate down, we tend to look for ways to "dumb down" an assignment to students' current learning level and hope that over time, they will begin working at the level demanded by the standards. In most cases, our efforts fall short. Differentiating up means starting with the standard and figuring out what supports students will need to reach the standard. All assignments are written at or above grade-level. We can offer students varying degrees of support and different routes to success but the target itself should never change. By avoiding these mistakes, you can make your efforts at differentiation much more successful -- and much less stressful. Take a look at your differentiation practice and make sure that you are not unintentionally making things harder for both you and your students. Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:47:08 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Are-You-Making-these-Four-Differentiated-Instruction-Mistakes/blog/3321350/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-02-18T11:16:54Z ASCD EDge If we truly want to help ALL students meet or master the standards, we must provide effective differentiation for our students. However, over the years, several practices have crept into the way we differentiate lessons that actually make student success LESS likely. The following are four practices that actually interfere with effective differentiated instruction. Creating multiple assignments rather than multiple pathways. Differentiation is not about the number of assignments you create; it's about giving students multiple pathways to success and then helping them choose the pathway that is best for them. Simply providing multiple assignments not only creates a lot of work for you, it can pigeonhole some students into lowered expectations and decreased opportunities to stretch and grow. Instead of creating different assignments, create ONE assignment and provide students several different pathways to success on that assignment (for more on planning differentiated lessons that rely on ONE assignment, check out The Differentiation Workbook for a lesson plan and process). By focusing on different supports rather than different assignments, you can better target students' needs and give them the scaffolding they need to reach success. Differentiating by learning style versus learning needs. Not every lesson you give will accommodate students' preferred learning style - nor does every lesson need to. Our time is better spent examining students' particular learning needs for each assignment and using their learning needs to identify and provide the support and scaffolding they need to be successful. Learning styles are static while learning needs constantly change and shift depending on students' current content and procedural knowledge. Learning needs give you a much more accurate picture of where students are currently and what you must do to help them successfully master a range of standards and skills. From there you can create customized pathways and supports to help all students meet or exceed the standards. Differentiating by achievement level rather than by students' current learning level. Some will tell you that there are three kinds of students - high, medium, and low. But this distinction is not very useful. There are times when a student you consider to be in your high group will struggle with the content. Other time, students in your low group will sail through an activity, outperforming the students in your high group. Because students bring a variety of skills and experiences to the classroom, classifying them as high, medium, and low doesn't really help you adjust your instruction effectively to meet their complex needs.  These static groupings also limit students.  Once you start thinking about students in these ways, it is difficult to see them any other way.  Differentiating by achievement level often results in lowered expectations for struggling students and extra work for advanced students. Lowering the target for some students while raising the learning target for others is not differentiation - it's tracking. Real differentiation takes into account where students are at a particular point in time. It doesn't label kids "low", "average," and "advanced"; it groups students by their current understanding of the content and processes involved in a particular learning activity and then provides students with the targeted supports they need to successfully master that activity. Differentiating down rather than up. When we differentiate down, we tend to look for ways to "dumb down" an assignment to students' current learning level and hope that over time, they will begin working at the level demanded by the standards. In most cases, our efforts fall short. Differentiating up means starting with the standard and figuring out what supports students will need to reach the standard. All assignments are written at or above grade-level. We can offer students varying degrees of support and different routes to success but the target itself should never change. By avoiding these mistakes, you can make your efforts at differentiation much more successful -- and much less stressful. Take a look at your differentiation practice and make sure that you are not unintentionally making things harder for both you and your students. differentiated discussion, differentiation nonadult false Are You Making these Four Differentiated Instruction Mistakes? text blog differentiated discussion,differentiation 13680 11 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 15 17 3321350 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Seven-Myths-About-Rigor/blog/3235457/127586.html Unfortunately, over the years the term rigorous has accumulated a lot of baggage. The following are seven myths about Rigor. Myth One:  If you have rigorous standards, you have a rigorous course.  Rigor isn’t as much about the standards as it is about how you ask students to reach the standards. There are times when students are asked to achieve highly rigorous standards in un-rigorous ways. And other times, teachers are able to take mediocre standards and help students achieve highly rigorous learning by designing rigorous learning experiences that correspond with those standards.  Myth Two:  Rigor means more work.  While rigorous instruction may require that students put forth more effort, it is not based on the volume of work students complete. Rigor is about the quality of the work students are asked to do, not the quantity. More assignments or more reading does not guarantee more rigor. In fact, rigorous classrooms often have less assignments and homework. Myth Three:  Rigor means harder.  Rigorous classrooms do present more challenge to students but there is a difference between challenging and difficult. Challenging work asks students to stretch and reach for new understanding. Work can be difficult however for a variety of reasons including unclear instructions, a lack of necessary resources, a lack of adequate support, demands that are too great for the time allotted, etc. We can all think of assignments we endured that were difficult without being intellectually challenging. Thus, it is a mistake to think that just because students had difficulty completing their work, they have engaged in a rigorous assignment. Myth Four:  Rigor is a matter of content.  Just because you select highly rigorous content does not guarantee a highly rigorous learning experience for students. How you ask students to engage in the content also determines the level of rigor for your course. Myth Five:  Younger students cannot engage in rigorous instruction Even young children can think and interact with material in highly rigorous ways. In fact, left to their own devices, children naturally take what they are learning to solve unpredictable problems and deal with uncertainty. Doing so is at the very nature of learning. They key is to make sure that your rigorous instruction is developmentally appropriate.   Myth Six:  In order to engage in rigor, students must first master the basics.  Rigorous thinking is involved in learning even the most basic material.  Students can learn the basics in highly rigorous ways.  They can learn how to build adequate representations, organize those facts in some way, analyze and construct relationships among those facts, and make inferences beyond what is explicitly presented while they are mastering the basics.  Myth Seven: Rigor is for the elite.  All students can and should have access to rigorous instruction and learning. To reserve rigorous learning opportunities for an elite group of students while relegating others to lives of memorizing disconnected facts and blindly participating in meaningless activities is to leave them unprepared to meet the demands of a 21st century and beyond. Find out how to conquer these myths by ordering your copy of How to Plan Rigorous Instruction http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/110077.aspx   Unfortunately, over the years the term rigorous has accumulated a lot of baggage. The following are seven myths about Rigor. Myth One:  If you have rigorous standards, you have a rigorous course.  Rigor isn’t as much about the standards as it is about how you ask students to reach the standards. There are times when students are asked to achieve highly rigorous standards in un-rigorous ways. And other times, teachers are able to take mediocre standards and help students achieve highly rigorous learning by designing rigorous learning experiences that correspond with those standards.  Myth Two:  Rigor means more work.  While rigorous instruction may require that students put forth more effort, it is not based on the volume of work students complete. Rigor is about the quality of the work students are asked to do, not the quantity. More assignments or more reading does not guarantee more rigor. In fact, rigorous classrooms often have less assignments and homework. Myth Three:  Rigor means harder.  Rigorous classrooms do present more challenge to students but there is a difference between challenging and difficult. Challenging work asks students to stretch and reach for new understanding. Work can be difficult however for a variety of reasons including unclear instructions, a lack of necessary resources, a lack of adequate support, demands that are too great for the time allotted, etc. We can all think of assignments we endured that were difficult without being intellectually challenging. Thus, it is a mistake to think that just because students had difficulty completing their work, they have engaged in a rigorous assignment. Myth Four:  Rigor is a matter of content.  Just because you select highly rigorous content does not guarantee a highly rigorous learning experience for students. How you ask students to engage in the content also determines the level of rigor for your course. Myth Five:  Younger students cannot engage in rigorous instruction Even young children can think and interact with material in highly rigorous ways. In fact, left to their own devices, children naturally take what they are learning to solve unpredictable problems and deal with uncertainty. Doing so is at the very nature of learning. They key is to make sure that your rigorous instruction is developmentally appropriate.   Myth Six:  In order to engage in rigor, students must first master the basics.  Rigorous thinking is involved in learning even the most basic material.  Students can learn the basics in highly rigorous ways.  They can learn how to build adequate representations, organize those facts in some way, analyze and construct relationships among those facts, and make inferences beyond what is explicitly presented while they are mastering the basics.  Myth Seven: Rigor is for the elite.  All students can and should have access to rigorous instruction and learning. To reserve rigorous learning opportunities for an elite group of students while relegating others to lives of memorizing disconnected facts and blindly participating in meaningless activities is to leave them unprepared to meet the demands of a 21st century and beyond. Find out how to conquer these myths by ordering your copy of How to Plan Rigorous Instruction http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/110077.aspx   Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:36:36 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Seven-Myths-About-Rigor/blog/3235457/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-01-13T17:36:36Z ASCD EDge Unfortunately, over the years the term rigorous has accumulated a lot of baggage. The following are seven myths about Rigor. Myth One:  If you have rigorous standards, you have a rigorous course.  Rigor isn’t as much about the standards as it is about how you ask students to reach the standards. There are times when students are asked to achieve highly rigorous standards in un-rigorous ways. And other times, teachers are able to take mediocre standards and help students achieve highly rigorous learning by designing rigorous learning experiences that correspond with those standards.  Myth Two:  Rigor means more work.  While rigorous instruction may require that students put forth more effort, it is not based on the volume of work students complete. Rigor is about the quality of the work students are asked to do, not the quantity. More assignments or more reading does not guarantee more rigor. In fact, rigorous classrooms often have less assignments and homework. Myth Three:  Rigor means harder.  Rigorous classrooms do present more challenge to students but there is a difference between challenging and difficult. Challenging work asks students to stretch and reach for new understanding. Work can be difficult however for a variety of reasons including unclear instructions, a lack of necessary resources, a lack of adequate support, demands that are too great for the time allotted, etc. We can all think of assignments we endured that were difficult without being intellectually challenging. Thus, it is a mistake to think that just because students had difficulty completing their work, they have engaged in a rigorous assignment. Myth Four:  Rigor is a matter of content.  Just because you select highly rigorous content does not guarantee a highly rigorous learning experience for students. How you ask students to engage in the content also determines the level of rigor for your course. Myth Five:  Younger students cannot engage in rigorous instruction Even young children can think and interact with material in highly rigorous ways. In fact, left to their own devices, children naturally take what they are learning to solve unpredictable problems and deal with uncertainty. Doing so is at the very nature of learning. They key is to make sure that your rigorous instruction is developmentally appropriate.   Myth Six:  In order to engage in rigor, students must first master the basics.  Rigorous thinking is involved in learning even the most basic material.  Students can learn the basics in highly rigorous ways.  They can learn how to build adequate representations, organize those facts in some way, analyze and construct relationships among those facts, and make inferences beyond what is explicitly presented while they are mastering the basics.  Myth Seven: Rigor is for the elite.  All students can and should have access to rigorous instruction and learning. To reserve rigorous learning opportunities for an elite group of students while relegating others to lives of memorizing disconnected facts and blindly participating in meaningless activities is to leave them unprepared to meet the demands of a 21st century and beyond. Find out how to conquer these myths by ordering your copy of How to Plan Rigorous Instruction http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/110077.aspx   nonadult false Seven Myths About Rigor text blog 12049 14 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 4 6 3235457 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_What-I-Learned-from-My-Year-Long-Quest-for-Better-PD/blog/3197224/127586.html Last year around this time, I issued a manifesto. I declared that this year, I would work toward providing better professional development. I was a woman on a mission and indeed, I did spend the year looking for ways to provide better PD to the teachers and administrators I served. Here's what I learned along the way. Better PD isn't about the right gimmick or hook. At the beginning of the year, I looked for a "hook," a way to engage participants who were forced to sit through one of my workshops by their principals or districts. I tried to create more engaging openers to my sessions, issued get out of jail free cards (to really lackluster results)  and even resorted to giving away Mindsteps Money (20 dollar bills wtih my picture on them instead of theother Jackson's) in order to motivate people to participate, share ideas, and provide on-going feedback. My motives were sincere. I was looking for tangible ways to help people participate. But, it never rose beyond the level of a gimmick. That's because gimmicks don't ensure quality professional learning. They merely entertain. That's not to say that a gimmick here or there doesn't wake up what would otherwise be a long and intense day of learning. It's just that I can't rely on gimmicks to ensure that there is quality engagement during one of our workshops. Less is really more. I used to try to cram my presentations with as much information as I could. I wanted to make sure that everyone left my sessions with something they could use. In the process, I created a lot of brain overload. So I experimented with including up to half the information I would normally use and found that the workshop participants responded much more enthusiastically, participated more, and remembered more. Rather than overload people with information, I began to shape my workshops so that people could focus on learning no more than three new things and learning those things well. We are finding that by streamlining our presentations, more of what people are learning is actually making it into the classroom. Professional Development is a two-way street. Most PD is one-way. I, the (ahem) expert, provide the audience with my knowledge. The audience faithfully takes notes. But what I have learned this year is that the best PD experiences are transactional. I share what I know and allow the audience to re-shape it to fit their teaching and leading situations and their experiences. When I allow my audience to co-create the agenda with me, to push back and question what I am sharing, and to share their own experiences, we all learn something valuable in the process. But here is the biggest thing that I learned. I learned that The Principles of Great Teaching Apply to Great PD as well.The times when I rigorously applied the principles of mastery teaching to the way I shaped and prepared my presentations and workshops were some of the most valuable learning experiences I facilitated all year long. I began to think it was crazy to teach teachers and administrators what great teaching is using strategies that violated the very principles I was trying to share. Rather than look for a new approach or a new gimmick, I was much better off doing what I know works. So our workshops and materials at Mindsteps now must pass the mastery principle test: Do they start where teachers and administrators are and recognize the currencies they bring with them to the workshop? Do they know where they are going by having clear, rigorous outcomes and are those outcomes clearly communicated? Does the presenter and the materials communicate the expectation that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice? Are support mechanisms built in to ensure that adult learners with different needs and learning styles and experiences can reach the outcomes of the session? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to provide feedback during the process and are mechanisms in place to adjust the process in response to the feedback? Does the presentation or workshop focus on quality rather than quantity? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to co-create the learning experience and actively participate in their own professional development rather than passively receive information? I'll keep searching for ways to provide more effective professional development but I think that whatever I discover will still align with these timeless principles of effective instruction.   Last year around this time, I issued a manifesto. I declared that this year, I would work toward providing better professional development. I was a woman on a mission and indeed, I did spend the year looking for ways to provide better PD to the teachers and administrators I served. Here's what I learned along the way. Better PD isn't about the right gimmick or hook. At the beginning of the year, I looked for a "hook," a way to engage participants who were forced to sit through one of my workshops by their principals or districts. I tried to create more engaging openers to my sessions, issued get out of jail free cards (to really lackluster results)  and even resorted to giving away Mindsteps Money (20 dollar bills wtih my picture on them instead of theother Jackson's) in order to motivate people to participate, share ideas, and provide on-going feedback. My motives were sincere. I was looking for tangible ways to help people participate. But, it never rose beyond the level of a gimmick. That's because gimmicks don't ensure quality professional learning. They merely entertain. That's not to say that a gimmick here or there doesn't wake up what would otherwise be a long and intense day of learning. It's just that I can't rely on gimmicks to ensure that there is quality engagement during one of our workshops. Less is really more. I used to try to cram my presentations with as much information as I could. I wanted to make sure that everyone left my sessions with something they could use. In the process, I created a lot of brain overload. So I experimented with including up to half the information I would normally use and found that the workshop participants responded much more enthusiastically, participated more, and remembered more. Rather than overload people with information, I began to shape my workshops so that people could focus on learning no more than three new things and learning those things well. We are finding that by streamlining our presentations, more of what people are learning is actually making it into the classroom. Professional Development is a two-way street. Most PD is one-way. I, the (ahem) expert, provide the audience with my knowledge. The audience faithfully takes notes. But what I have learned this year is that the best PD experiences are transactional. I share what I know and allow the audience to re-shape it to fit their teaching and leading situations and their experiences. When I allow my audience to co-create the agenda with me, to push back and question what I am sharing, and to share their own experiences, we all learn something valuable in the process. But here is the biggest thing that I learned. I learned that The Principles of Great Teaching Apply to Great PD as well.The times when I rigorously applied the principles of mastery teaching to the way I shaped and prepared my presentations and workshops were some of the most valuable learning experiences I facilitated all year long. I began to think it was crazy to teach teachers and administrators what great teaching is using strategies that violated the very principles I was trying to share. Rather than look for a new approach or a new gimmick, I was much better off doing what I know works. So our workshops and materials at Mindsteps now must pass the mastery principle test: Do they start where teachers and administrators are and recognize the currencies they bring with them to the workshop? Do they know where they are going by having clear, rigorous outcomes and are those outcomes clearly communicated? Does the presenter and the materials communicate the expectation that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice? Are support mechanisms built in to ensure that adult learners with different needs and learning styles and experiences can reach the outcomes of the session? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to provide feedback during the process and are mechanisms in place to adjust the process in response to the feedback? Does the presentation or workshop focus on quality rather than quantity? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to co-create the learning experience and actively participate in their own professional development rather than passively receive information? I'll keep searching for ways to provide more effective professional development but I think that whatever I discover will still align with these timeless principles of effective instruction.   Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:20:43 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_What-I-Learned-from-My-Year-Long-Quest-for-Better-PD/blog/3197224/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2011-01-03T18:20:43Z ASCD EDge Last year around this time, I issued a manifesto. I declared that this year, I would work toward providing better professional development. I was a woman on a mission and indeed, I did spend the year looking for ways to provide better PD to the teachers and administrators I served. Here's what I learned along the way. Better PD isn't about the right gimmick or hook. At the beginning of the year, I looked for a "hook," a way to engage participants who were forced to sit through one of my workshops by their principals or districts. I tried to create more engaging openers to my sessions, issued get out of jail free cards (to really lackluster results)  and even resorted to giving away Mindsteps Money (20 dollar bills wtih my picture on them instead of theother Jackson's) in order to motivate people to participate, share ideas, and provide on-going feedback. My motives were sincere. I was looking for tangible ways to help people participate. But, it never rose beyond the level of a gimmick. That's because gimmicks don't ensure quality professional learning. They merely entertain. That's not to say that a gimmick here or there doesn't wake up what would otherwise be a long and intense day of learning. It's just that I can't rely on gimmicks to ensure that there is quality engagement during one of our workshops. Less is really more. I used to try to cram my presentations with as much information as I could. I wanted to make sure that everyone left my sessions with something they could use. In the process, I created a lot of brain overload. So I experimented with including up to half the information I would normally use and found that the workshop participants responded much more enthusiastically, participated more, and remembered more. Rather than overload people with information, I began to shape my workshops so that people could focus on learning no more than three new things and learning those things well. We are finding that by streamlining our presentations, more of what people are learning is actually making it into the classroom. Professional Development is a two-way street. Most PD is one-way. I, the (ahem) expert, provide the audience with my knowledge. The audience faithfully takes notes. But what I have learned this year is that the best PD experiences are transactional. I share what I know and allow the audience to re-shape it to fit their teaching and leading situations and their experiences. When I allow my audience to co-create the agenda with me, to push back and question what I am sharing, and to share their own experiences, we all learn something valuable in the process. But here is the biggest thing that I learned. I learned that The Principles of Great Teaching Apply to Great PD as well.The times when I rigorously applied the principles of mastery teaching to the way I shaped and prepared my presentations and workshops were some of the most valuable learning experiences I facilitated all year long. I began to think it was crazy to teach teachers and administrators what great teaching is using strategies that violated the very principles I was trying to share. Rather than look for a new approach or a new gimmick, I was much better off doing what I know works. So our workshops and materials at Mindsteps now must pass the mastery principle test: Do they start where teachers and administrators are and recognize the currencies they bring with them to the workshop? Do they know where they are going by having clear, rigorous outcomes and are those outcomes clearly communicated? Does the presenter and the materials communicate the expectation that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice? Are support mechanisms built in to ensure that adult learners with different needs and learning styles and experiences can reach the outcomes of the session? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to provide feedback during the process and are mechanisms in place to adjust the process in response to the feedback? Does the presentation or workshop focus on quality rather than quantity? Does the presentation or workshop allow for participants to co-create the learning experience and actively participate in their own professional development rather than passively receive information? I'll keep searching for ways to provide more effective professional development but I think that whatever I discover will still align with these timeless principles of effective instruction.   nonadult false What I Learned from My Year-Long Quest for Better PD text blog 1312 12 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 0 3197224 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Six-Reasons-We-Appreciate-Teachers/blog/3017757/127586.html From the Mindsteps monthly e-newsletter (www.mindstepsinc.com)... 1. We are grateful for your bravery. In today’s political climate, I have become convinced that good teaching is a singular act of bravery. To teach to the students instead of to the test, to continue to make children feel safe even if your job is not, to do what is right instead of what is expedient or fashionable requires a special brand of courage. Thank you for teaching courageously. 2. We are grateful for your commitment. Teaching isn’t easy. Many of you knew that before you took the job and you stayed any way. You love your students and are committed to their success and you won’t give up at the first sign of trouble. Thank you for loving our children and our profession enough to stick with it even when things get rough. 3. We are grateful for your tenacity. When students don’t get it the first time, you try again. And again. And again, until they do get it. You don’t give up; you figure it out. Thank you for persisting with every child until he or she is successful. 4. We are grateful for your humility. You quietly work miracles in the classroom every day, asking for no recognition, and rarely receiving praise. It is often a thankless job but you do it anyway. Thank you for quietly working miracles in the lives of children. 5. We are grateful for your power. Only a teacher can transform the illiterate into expert readers, the ignorant into life-long learners, failures into scholars. You don’t just see children’s potential -- you ignite it! Thank you for using your power to empower others. 6. We are grateful for your generosity. You love children and you selflessly give them your very best each day. You want to see them learn and you work hard on their behalf to ensure that they do. Thank you for sharing the gift of learning with your students, your colleagues, and your communities. Thank you for all that you do for our children. You make all of our lives richer because of it.   From the Mindsteps monthly e-newsletter (www.mindstepsinc.com)... 1. We are grateful for your bravery. In today’s political climate, I have become convinced that good teaching is a singular act of bravery. To teach to the students instead of to the test, to continue to make children feel safe even if your job is not, to do what is right instead of what is expedient or fashionable requires a special brand of courage. Thank you for teaching courageously. 2. We are grateful for your commitment. Teaching isn’t easy. Many of you knew that before you took the job and you stayed any way. You love your students and are committed to their success and you won’t give up at the first sign of trouble. Thank you for loving our children and our profession enough to stick with it even when things get rough. 3. We are grateful for your tenacity. When students don’t get it the first time, you try again. And again. And again, until they do get it. You don’t give up; you figure it out. Thank you for persisting with every child until he or she is successful. 4. We are grateful for your humility. You quietly work miracles in the classroom every day, asking for no recognition, and rarely receiving praise. It is often a thankless job but you do it anyway. Thank you for quietly working miracles in the lives of children. 5. We are grateful for your power. Only a teacher can transform the illiterate into expert readers, the ignorant into life-long learners, failures into scholars. You don’t just see children’s potential -- you ignite it! Thank you for using your power to empower others. 6. We are grateful for your generosity. You love children and you selflessly give them your very best each day. You want to see them learn and you work hard on their behalf to ensure that they do. Thank you for sharing the gift of learning with your students, your colleagues, and your communities. Thank you for all that you do for our children. You make all of our lives richer because of it.   Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:07:25 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Six-Reasons-We-Appreciate-Teachers/blog/3017757/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-11-24T02:07:25Z ASCD EDge From the Mindsteps monthly e-newsletter (www.mindstepsinc.com)... 1. We are grateful for your bravery. In today’s political climate, I have become convinced that good teaching is a singular act of bravery. To teach to the students instead of to the test, to continue to make children feel safe even if your job is not, to do what is right instead of what is expedient or fashionable requires a special brand of courage. Thank you for teaching courageously. 2. We are grateful for your commitment. Teaching isn’t easy. Many of you knew that before you took the job and you stayed any way. You love your students and are committed to their success and you won’t give up at the first sign of trouble. Thank you for loving our children and our profession enough to stick with it even when things get rough. 3. We are grateful for your tenacity. When students don’t get it the first time, you try again. And again. And again, until they do get it. You don’t give up; you figure it out. Thank you for persisting with every child until he or she is successful. 4. We are grateful for your humility. You quietly work miracles in the classroom every day, asking for no recognition, and rarely receiving praise. It is often a thankless job but you do it anyway. Thank you for quietly working miracles in the lives of children. 5. We are grateful for your power. Only a teacher can transform the illiterate into expert readers, the ignorant into life-long learners, failures into scholars. You don’t just see children’s potential -- you ignite it! Thank you for using your power to empower others. 6. We are grateful for your generosity. You love children and you selflessly give them your very best each day. You want to see them learn and you work hard on their behalf to ensure that they do. Thank you for sharing the gift of learning with your students, your colleagues, and your communities. Thank you for all that you do for our children. You make all of our lives richer because of it.   nonadult false Six Reasons We Appreciate Teachers text blog 4914 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 1 3017757 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Reformers-Without-Chalk-on-Their-Hands/blog/3011673/127586.html This post appeared originally at www.mindstepsinc.com/blog as part of the Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform. You can find other post like it here. One of the most disturbing trends in education right now is the assumption that anyone can run a school. With rising support for alternative certification routes like Teach for America whose members are swept into the classroom after only 6 weeks of preparation, to the choice of non-educators to head large school districts, it seems that America is ready to substitute passion for pedagogy and results for real reform. In fact, in some cases, it seems that just having attended school once makes you qualified to run one. The results however, have told a different story. Superintendents without chalk on their hands have not as a whole done any better, and in some cases, have done much worse than superintendents with educational chops. As James Harvey of the National Superintendents Roundtable points out, "After 20 years, nontraditional superintendents have not provided unambiguous evidence that they were better able to improve urban schools than their traditional counterparts." In fact, many leave after only a few years at the job, without a marked improvement in teaching and learning. Teachers who jump into teaching through alternative certification routes typically leave after only a few years and often get more out of the experience (in terms of resume boosting and a broader perspective on life) than their students do. In fact, most leave after only a few years' experience. And, while some studies show slight gains in student achievement (or at least no drop in student achievement) for students taught by uncertified or alternatively certified TFA teachers, other studies argue that "while a band-aid on a bleeding sore is helpful in a crisis, healing wounds of inequality and poverty is also a policy problem worth solving."(Linda Darling-Hammond). It just makes sense that reformers need a little chalk on their hands. As Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation points out that "a veteran of public school teaching will have a better idea of how a particular education reform is likely to be implemented in practice." Without a solid understanding of pedagogy, these reformers focus on what they know -- a focus on management rather than leadership, market-based reforms, bureaucratic tweaks, and labor controls. The results are frightening. Two results are particularly disturbing. The first is The commodification of learning where student learning is reduced to only what can be measured by a test and those test scores are trafficked and traded like corn and beans. Many school annual reports read like annual reports to shareholders, noting that scores are up or down but giving little evidence that students are thriving or becoming good learners rather than merely adept at taking tests. The second disturbing result is Reform by HR where reformers focus on hiring and firing as a catch-all solution to whatever ails a system. Ideas like firing the lowest performing 5-10% of teachers in order to improve the profession with little thought given to why those teachers are performing so poorly in the first place or what structures need to be in place to prevent that kind of low-performance from the next batch of recruits. Others talk of firing bad teachers and hiring good teachers as if good teaching is a static quality rather than an evolving process of growth. In both cases, the assumption that anyone can teach or run a school is not only flawed, it's downright dangerous.  As Rudy Crews of the Global Partnership Schools points out "What's needed are skillful relationships between a teacher, a student, and a family. Every child, every day needs that relationship. And to characterize that relationship as something which anybody in business can produce without having the slightest hint of technical understanding and skill is an insult to the very children, parents, and communities now in [their] care." I don't blame those who embrace these ideas. I believe their misguided attempts to "fix" schools are on some level well-intentioned. But, without chalk on their hands, their reforms are doomed to fail. Until they shift their focus from blame and finger-pointing  and take time to understand pedagogy, until they in other words get a little chalk on their hands themselves, they will never develop reforms that actually make a difference.   This post appeared originally at www.mindstepsinc.com/blog as part of the Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform. You can find other post like it here. One of the most disturbing trends in education right now is the assumption that anyone can run a school. With rising support for alternative certification routes like Teach for America whose members are swept into the classroom after only 6 weeks of preparation, to the choice of non-educators to head large school districts, it seems that America is ready to substitute passion for pedagogy and results for real reform. In fact, in some cases, it seems that just having attended school once makes you qualified to run one. The results however, have told a different story. Superintendents without chalk on their hands have not as a whole done any better, and in some cases, have done much worse than superintendents with educational chops. As James Harvey of the National Superintendents Roundtable points out, "After 20 years, nontraditional superintendents have not provided unambiguous evidence that they were better able to improve urban schools than their traditional counterparts." In fact, many leave after only a few years at the job, without a marked improvement in teaching and learning. Teachers who jump into teaching through alternative certification routes typically leave after only a few years and often get more out of the experience (in terms of resume boosting and a broader perspective on life) than their students do. In fact, most leave after only a few years' experience. And, while some studies show slight gains in student achievement (or at least no drop in student achievement) for students taught by uncertified or alternatively certified TFA teachers, other studies argue that "while a band-aid on a bleeding sore is helpful in a crisis, healing wounds of inequality and poverty is also a policy problem worth solving."(Linda Darling-Hammond). It just makes sense that reformers need a little chalk on their hands. As Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation points out that "a veteran of public school teaching will have a better idea of how a particular education reform is likely to be implemented in practice." Without a solid understanding of pedagogy, these reformers focus on what they know -- a focus on management rather than leadership, market-based reforms, bureaucratic tweaks, and labor controls. The results are frightening. Two results are particularly disturbing. The first is The commodification of learning where student learning is reduced to only what can be measured by a test and those test scores are trafficked and traded like corn and beans. Many school annual reports read like annual reports to shareholders, noting that scores are up or down but giving little evidence that students are thriving or becoming good learners rather than merely adept at taking tests. The second disturbing result is Reform by HR where reformers focus on hiring and firing as a catch-all solution to whatever ails a system. Ideas like firing the lowest performing 5-10% of teachers in order to improve the profession with little thought given to why those teachers are performing so poorly in the first place or what structures need to be in place to prevent that kind of low-performance from the next batch of recruits. Others talk of firing bad teachers and hiring good teachers as if good teaching is a static quality rather than an evolving process of growth. In both cases, the assumption that anyone can teach or run a school is not only flawed, it's downright dangerous.  As Rudy Crews of the Global Partnership Schools points out "What's needed are skillful relationships between a teacher, a student, and a family. Every child, every day needs that relationship. And to characterize that relationship as something which anybody in business can produce without having the slightest hint of technical understanding and skill is an insult to the very children, parents, and communities now in [their] care." I don't blame those who embrace these ideas. I believe their misguided attempts to "fix" schools are on some level well-intentioned. But, without chalk on their hands, their reforms are doomed to fail. Until they shift their focus from blame and finger-pointing  and take time to understand pedagogy, until they in other words get a little chalk on their hands themselves, they will never develop reforms that actually make a difference.   Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:16:34 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Reformers-Without-Chalk-on-Their-Hands/blog/3011673/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-11-22T17:16:34Z ASCD EDge This post appeared originally at www.mindstepsinc.com/blog as part of the Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform. You can find other post like it here. One of the most disturbing trends in education right now is the assumption that anyone can run a school. With rising support for alternative certification routes like Teach for America whose members are swept into the classroom after only 6 weeks of preparation, to the choice of non-educators to head large school districts, it seems that America is ready to substitute passion for pedagogy and results for real reform. In fact, in some cases, it seems that just having attended school once makes you qualified to run one. The results however, have told a different story. Superintendents without chalk on their hands have not as a whole done any better, and in some cases, have done much worse than superintendents with educational chops. As James Harvey of the National Superintendents Roundtable points out, "After 20 years, nontraditional superintendents have not provided unambiguous evidence that they were better able to improve urban schools than their traditional counterparts." In fact, many leave after only a few years at the job, without a marked improvement in teaching and learning. Teachers who jump into teaching through alternative certification routes typically leave after only a few years and often get more out of the experience (in terms of resume boosting and a broader perspective on life) than their students do. In fact, most leave after only a few years' experience. And, while some studies show slight gains in student achievement (or at least no drop in student achievement) for students taught by uncertified or alternatively certified TFA teachers, other studies argue that "while a band-aid on a bleeding sore is helpful in a crisis, healing wounds of inequality and poverty is also a policy problem worth solving."(Linda Darling-Hammond). It just makes sense that reformers need a little chalk on their hands. As Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation points out that "a veteran of public school teaching will have a better idea of how a particular education reform is likely to be implemented in practice." Without a solid understanding of pedagogy, these reformers focus on what they know -- a focus on management rather than leadership, market-based reforms, bureaucratic tweaks, and labor controls. The results are frightening. Two results are particularly disturbing. The first is The commodification of learning where student learning is reduced to only what can be measured by a test and those test scores are trafficked and traded like corn and beans. Many school annual reports read like annual reports to shareholders, noting that scores are up or down but giving little evidence that students are thriving or becoming good learners rather than merely adept at taking tests. The second disturbing result is Reform by HR where reformers focus on hiring and firing as a catch-all solution to whatever ails a system. Ideas like firing the lowest performing 5-10% of teachers in order to improve the profession with little thought given to why those teachers are performing so poorly in the first place or what structures need to be in place to prevent that kind of low-performance from the next batch of recruits. Others talk of firing bad teachers and hiring good teachers as if good teaching is a static quality rather than an evolving process of growth. In both cases, the assumption that anyone can teach or run a school is not only flawed, it's downright dangerous.  As Rudy Crews of the Global Partnership Schools points out "What's needed are skillful relationships between a teacher, a student, and a family. Every child, every day needs that relationship. And to characterize that relationship as something which anybody in business can produce without having the slightest hint of technical understanding and skill is an insult to the very children, parents, and communities now in [their] care." I don't blame those who embrace these ideas. I believe their misguided attempts to "fix" schools are on some level well-intentioned. But, without chalk on their hands, their reforms are doomed to fail. Until they shift their focus from blame and finger-pointing  and take time to understand pedagogy, until they in other words get a little chalk on their hands themselves, they will never develop reforms that actually make a difference.   nonadult false Reformers Without Chalk on Their Hands text blog 1408 1 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 2 0 3011673 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Five-of-the-Biggest-Mistakes-I-made-as-a-new-teacher/blog/2762294/127586.html I’ve been talking to teachers lately about creating an environment in their classrooms where students are free to make mistakes and supported in learning from their mistakes.  I argue that learning from mistakes can be a powerful way of helping students learn. But the value in learning mistakes isn’t just limited to our students. As professionals, we need to learn from our mistakes as well. I realize that the environment in our profession isn’t exactly friendly to making and learning from mistakes right now, but I would encourage you to not let that stop you. Don’t be afraid to make the inevitable mistake or two in the classroom as you teach. Instead, be open to learning from your mistakes and using them to make your teaching stronger. To get the ball rolling, I thought I’d share five mistakes I made early in my career and what I learned from them. Please share your mistakes as well in the comments section and let’s learn from each other. Mistake #1: I took everything personally. If the students disobeyed me, I got angry at them.  If they didn’t do their work, I took it as a personal affront.  Every time they put their heads down or didn’t turn in their homework, I was personally offended.  The problem with taking things personally is that it usually leads to blaming the students. The moment I realized that it wasn’t about me, I was able to to shift my focus from how offended I was to what I needed to do to help my students make better decisions the next time. When I stopped taking personal offense at everything my students did (or didn’t do) I was able to focus on how I could best respect, honor, appreciate, and capitalize on the currencies they brought to the classroom. Mistake #2: I avoided dealing with parents. When parents contacted me, I used to cringe.  Usually, they were not calling with good news.  I did everything I could to avoid dealing with them.  By seeing them as an adversary, or at least a nuisance I wanted to avoid,  I created more problems with parents than I solved.  Once I learned to see parents as my partners, to keep them informed about what was going on in my class, and to bring them into the loop early in the process, I found that parents were my best allies.  As a result, even when we disagreed on a course of action for their child, we were more likely to work out a plan that we could both support. Mistake #3: I waited until students were failing to intervene. I was always surprised at interim time that certain students were failing.  What made it even worse was that by the time I sent out interims, there was really little students could do to redeem their grades before the end of the marking period.  It wasn’t until I created aproactive intervention plan that forced me to systematically look at student performance that I started to notice the moment students began to fail and plan in advance what I would do to get them back on track.  Then, I could intervene before they got so far in the hole that they could not possibly ever get out. Mistake #4: I was afraid to make mistakes. I thought that as the teacher, I always had to be right.  I worked really hard at being the smartest person in the room.  When my students asked me a question for which I had no answer, I’d make one up.  If I made a mistake, I would cover it up.  Only when I gave myself permission to be, well, human, did my teaching get really good.  When I let my students see me make mistakes, admit them, and then take steps to correct them, it made it okay for them to make mistakes too.  The more I took risks in the classroom, the more I made it safe for them to take risks.  As a result, my classroom became a place where real learning could happen. Mistake #5: I tried to cover everything. I thought that if it was in the curriculum, it had to be taught.  The problem is that most curriculum documents are so bloated that it is difficult to cover everything or allot the same amount of time to every assignment.  What’s more, covering the curriculum does not guarantee that the students will meet all of the standards.  Once I realized that, I began to focus on the standards and on helping my students reach the standards rather than just cover the curriculum.  Doing so gave me more time to teach what really mattered and more flexibility to adjust my teaching based on my students’ needs. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned from them?   I’ve been talking to teachers lately about creating an environment in their classrooms where students are free to make mistakes and supported in learning from their mistakes.  I argue that learning from mistakes can be a powerful way of helping students learn. But the value in learning mistakes isn’t just limited to our students. As professionals, we need to learn from our mistakes as well. I realize that the environment in our profession isn’t exactly friendly to making and learning from mistakes right now, but I would encourage you to not let that stop you. Don’t be afraid to make the inevitable mistake or two in the classroom as you teach. Instead, be open to learning from your mistakes and using them to make your teaching stronger. To get the ball rolling, I thought I’d share five mistakes I made early in my career and what I learned from them. Please share your mistakes as well in the comments section and let’s learn from each other. Mistake #1: I took everything personally. If the students disobeyed me, I got angry at them.  If they didn’t do their work, I took it as a personal affront.  Every time they put their heads down or didn’t turn in their homework, I was personally offended.  The problem with taking things personally is that it usually leads to blaming the students. The moment I realized that it wasn’t about me, I was able to to shift my focus from how offended I was to what I needed to do to help my students make better decisions the next time. When I stopped taking personal offense at everything my students did (or didn’t do) I was able to focus on how I could best respect, honor, appreciate, and capitalize on the currencies they brought to the classroom. Mistake #2: I avoided dealing with parents. When parents contacted me, I used to cringe.  Usually, they were not calling with good news.  I did everything I could to avoid dealing with them.  By seeing them as an adversary, or at least a nuisance I wanted to avoid,  I created more problems with parents than I solved.  Once I learned to see parents as my partners, to keep them informed about what was going on in my class, and to bring them into the loop early in the process, I found that parents were my best allies.  As a result, even when we disagreed on a course of action for their child, we were more likely to work out a plan that we could both support. Mistake #3: I waited until students were failing to intervene. I was always surprised at interim time that certain students were failing.  What made it even worse was that by the time I sent out interims, there was really little students could do to redeem their grades before the end of the marking period.  It wasn’t until I created aproactive intervention plan that forced me to systematically look at student performance that I started to notice the moment students began to fail and plan in advance what I would do to get them back on track.  Then, I could intervene before they got so far in the hole that they could not possibly ever get out. Mistake #4: I was afraid to make mistakes. I thought that as the teacher, I always had to be right.  I worked really hard at being the smartest person in the room.  When my students asked me a question for which I had no answer, I’d make one up.  If I made a mistake, I would cover it up.  Only when I gave myself permission to be, well, human, did my teaching get really good.  When I let my students see me make mistakes, admit them, and then take steps to correct them, it made it okay for them to make mistakes too.  The more I took risks in the classroom, the more I made it safe for them to take risks.  As a result, my classroom became a place where real learning could happen. Mistake #5: I tried to cover everything. I thought that if it was in the curriculum, it had to be taught.  The problem is that most curriculum documents are so bloated that it is difficult to cover everything or allot the same amount of time to every assignment.  What’s more, covering the curriculum does not guarantee that the students will meet all of the standards.  Once I realized that, I began to focus on the standards and on helping my students reach the standards rather than just cover the curriculum.  Doing so gave me more time to teach what really mattered and more flexibility to adjust my teaching based on my students’ needs. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned from them?   Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:36:49 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Five-of-the-Biggest-Mistakes-I-made-as-a-new-teacher/blog/2762294/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-10-19T04:36:49Z ASCD EDge I’ve been talking to teachers lately about creating an environment in their classrooms where students are free to make mistakes and supported in learning from their mistakes.  I argue that learning from mistakes can be a powerful way of helping students learn. But the value in learning mistakes isn’t just limited to our students. As professionals, we need to learn from our mistakes as well. I realize that the environment in our profession isn’t exactly friendly to making and learning from mistakes right now, but I would encourage you to not let that stop you. Don’t be afraid to make the inevitable mistake or two in the classroom as you teach. Instead, be open to learning from your mistakes and using them to make your teaching stronger. To get the ball rolling, I thought I’d share five mistakes I made early in my career and what I learned from them. Please share your mistakes as well in the comments section and let’s learn from each other. Mistake #1: I took everything personally. If the students disobeyed me, I got angry at them.  If they didn’t do their work, I took it as a personal affront.  Every time they put their heads down or didn’t turn in their homework, I was personally offended.  The problem with taking things personally is that it usually leads to blaming the students. The moment I realized that it wasn’t about me, I was able to to shift my focus from how offended I was to what I needed to do to help my students make better decisions the next time. When I stopped taking personal offense at everything my students did (or didn’t do) I was able to focus on how I could best respect, honor, appreciate, and capitalize on the currencies they brought to the classroom. Mistake #2: I avoided dealing with parents. When parents contacted me, I used to cringe.  Usually, they were not calling with good news.  I did everything I could to avoid dealing with them.  By seeing them as an adversary, or at least a nuisance I wanted to avoid,  I created more problems with parents than I solved.  Once I learned to see parents as my partners, to keep them informed about what was going on in my class, and to bring them into the loop early in the process, I found that parents were my best allies.  As a result, even when we disagreed on a course of action for their child, we were more likely to work out a plan that we could both support. Mistake #3: I waited until students were failing to intervene. I was always surprised at interim time that certain students were failing.  What made it even worse was that by the time I sent out interims, there was really little students could do to redeem their grades before the end of the marking period.  It wasn’t until I created aproactive intervention plan that forced me to systematically look at student performance that I started to notice the moment students began to fail and plan in advance what I would do to get them back on track.  Then, I could intervene before they got so far in the hole that they could not possibly ever get out. Mistake #4: I was afraid to make mistakes. I thought that as the teacher, I always had to be right.  I worked really hard at being the smartest person in the room.  When my students asked me a question for which I had no answer, I’d make one up.  If I made a mistake, I would cover it up.  Only when I gave myself permission to be, well, human, did my teaching get really good.  When I let my students see me make mistakes, admit them, and then take steps to correct them, it made it okay for them to make mistakes too.  The more I took risks in the classroom, the more I made it safe for them to take risks.  As a result, my classroom became a place where real learning could happen. Mistake #5: I tried to cover everything. I thought that if it was in the curriculum, it had to be taught.  The problem is that most curriculum documents are so bloated that it is difficult to cover everything or allot the same amount of time to every assignment.  What’s more, covering the curriculum does not guarantee that the students will meet all of the standards.  Once I realized that, I began to focus on the standards and on helping my students reach the standards rather than just cover the curriculum.  Doing so gave me more time to teach what really mattered and more flexibility to adjust my teaching based on my students’ needs. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned from them?   nonadult false Five of the Biggest Mistakes I made as a new teacher text blog 20230 15 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 8 10 2762294 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Help-the-Bear/blog/2729725/127586.html From the Mindsteps Blog: Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about educational reform. Schools are broken, the narrative goes, so we have to do something to fix them. The “something” currently in vogue is a combination of market-based reforms such as merit pay and value-added scores, mixed with a fawning adoration of charters and alternative routes to certification.  Suddenly, it's cool -- even heroic -- to be an educational reformer. I am glad that so many people are waking up to the fact that education is a civil right.  I am thrilled that more parents are asking how can I get involved?  The number of people who are stepping up and providing support for schools either through cash or influence and political support energizes me. I am excited that education has finally garnered the national attention and concern it deserves. But I am also a little worried. Some of the reforms proposed aren’t designed to fix schools; they’re designed to blow them up. I am worried about the blame game (it's the teachers' fault!  No, it's the parents' fault! No it's the unions' and the politicians' and the meddlesome billionaires' fault!). I am worried that the conversation about education has been co-opted by people who know very little about how to educate children. I am worried that many of the people who claim to suddenly care about our children have less than noble motives that have more to do with the amount of money and political capital pouring into education right now than they do with a real concern for our future generations. I worry that the debate is becoming more and more one-sided as those of us who express genuine concern about some of the so-called “reforms” being offered are cast as obstructionists who care more about adults and preserving the status quo than we do about children.  I worry that when they’re through "blowing up the system" as some reformers put it, we will be left to clean up the carnage. My uncle used to tell me a story about two men who went camping. One day, one of the men went hiking alone in the early morning while the other one slept in. It wasn’t very long before the sleeping camper was awakened by the screams of his friend. He rushed out of the tent to see what was the matter and saw his friend being chased by a huge and hungry bear. Quickly he grabbed his camping gear and ran to help. First, he threw his canteen at the bear and hit the bear firmly on the back of the head. This only served to enrage the bear who growled loudly and quickened his chase. Then he threw his compass at the bear only to miss the bear entirely and hit his friend in the head. Next, he threw his backpack at the bear but he missed and it hit his friend in the leg sending him stumbling forward. “What are you doing?!?” his friend called angrily as yet another canteen whizzed by his head. “I am helping you,” the first camper replied, while reaching for a rock to throw at the angry bear. “Helping me?” the friend asked incredulously as he ducked the rock. “I’ll tell you what.  Help the bear!” There are times when I want to say to the people who are rushing in to “fix” education, “help the bear.”  It’s not that I think that everything is fine. No. There are schools that are broken, some irreparably so. There are students every day who are cheated of the chance to learn by teachers who do not know how to teach and who don’t care enough to get better. I feel the desperation of parents who don’t have any other choice but to send their children to a school that will not prepare them for life after school or give them access to greater options.  I too am impatient for solutions and believe that we need to do something RIGHT NOW; I just worry that we are willing to try anything, regardless of whether it is the right thing or whether it is the best thing for children. I am all for reform, but to those people who want to substitute passion for pedagogy, and rhetoric for real reform, help the bear. To those people who have cast teachers as villains instead of working to make them all heros, help the bear. To those people who want to turn schools into businesses and children into products, help the bear.  To those who want to use circumstances as an excuse for lethargy or who spend all of their time defending the status quo rather than critically examining it, help the bear.  To those who use the current debate as an excuse or a distraction from real change, help the bear. To all those whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up?  Help the bear. To all those self-styled supermen and women whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up? Help the bear. Please.   From the Mindsteps Blog: Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about educational reform. Schools are broken, the narrative goes, so we have to do something to fix them. The “something” currently in vogue is a combination of market-based reforms such as merit pay and value-added scores, mixed with a fawning adoration of charters and alternative routes to certification.  Suddenly, it's cool -- even heroic -- to be an educational reformer. I am glad that so many people are waking up to the fact that education is a civil right.  I am thrilled that more parents are asking how can I get involved?  The number of people who are stepping up and providing support for schools either through cash or influence and political support energizes me. I am excited that education has finally garnered the national attention and concern it deserves. But I am also a little worried. Some of the reforms proposed aren’t designed to fix schools; they’re designed to blow them up. I am worried about the blame game (it's the teachers' fault!  No, it's the parents' fault! No it's the unions' and the politicians' and the meddlesome billionaires' fault!). I am worried that the conversation about education has been co-opted by people who know very little about how to educate children. I am worried that many of the people who claim to suddenly care about our children have less than noble motives that have more to do with the amount of money and political capital pouring into education right now than they do with a real concern for our future generations. I worry that the debate is becoming more and more one-sided as those of us who express genuine concern about some of the so-called “reforms” being offered are cast as obstructionists who care more about adults and preserving the status quo than we do about children.  I worry that when they’re through "blowing up the system" as some reformers put it, we will be left to clean up the carnage. My uncle used to tell me a story about two men who went camping. One day, one of the men went hiking alone in the early morning while the other one slept in. It wasn’t very long before the sleeping camper was awakened by the screams of his friend. He rushed out of the tent to see what was the matter and saw his friend being chased by a huge and hungry bear. Quickly he grabbed his camping gear and ran to help. First, he threw his canteen at the bear and hit the bear firmly on the back of the head. This only served to enrage the bear who growled loudly and quickened his chase. Then he threw his compass at the bear only to miss the bear entirely and hit his friend in the head. Next, he threw his backpack at the bear but he missed and it hit his friend in the leg sending him stumbling forward. “What are you doing?!?” his friend called angrily as yet another canteen whizzed by his head. “I am helping you,” the first camper replied, while reaching for a rock to throw at the angry bear. “Helping me?” the friend asked incredulously as he ducked the rock. “I’ll tell you what.  Help the bear!” There are times when I want to say to the people who are rushing in to “fix” education, “help the bear.”  It’s not that I think that everything is fine. No. There are schools that are broken, some irreparably so. There are students every day who are cheated of the chance to learn by teachers who do not know how to teach and who don’t care enough to get better. I feel the desperation of parents who don’t have any other choice but to send their children to a school that will not prepare them for life after school or give them access to greater options.  I too am impatient for solutions and believe that we need to do something RIGHT NOW; I just worry that we are willing to try anything, regardless of whether it is the right thing or whether it is the best thing for children. I am all for reform, but to those people who want to substitute passion for pedagogy, and rhetoric for real reform, help the bear. To those people who have cast teachers as villains instead of working to make them all heros, help the bear. To those people who want to turn schools into businesses and children into products, help the bear.  To those who want to use circumstances as an excuse for lethargy or who spend all of their time defending the status quo rather than critically examining it, help the bear.  To those who use the current debate as an excuse or a distraction from real change, help the bear. To all those whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up?  Help the bear. To all those self-styled supermen and women whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up? Help the bear. Please.   Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:59:20 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Help-the-Bear/blog/2729725/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-10-13T11:59:20Z ASCD EDge From the Mindsteps Blog: Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about educational reform. Schools are broken, the narrative goes, so we have to do something to fix them. The “something” currently in vogue is a combination of market-based reforms such as merit pay and value-added scores, mixed with a fawning adoration of charters and alternative routes to certification.  Suddenly, it's cool -- even heroic -- to be an educational reformer. I am glad that so many people are waking up to the fact that education is a civil right.  I am thrilled that more parents are asking how can I get involved?  The number of people who are stepping up and providing support for schools either through cash or influence and political support energizes me. I am excited that education has finally garnered the national attention and concern it deserves. But I am also a little worried. Some of the reforms proposed aren’t designed to fix schools; they’re designed to blow them up. I am worried about the blame game (it's the teachers' fault!  No, it's the parents' fault! No it's the unions' and the politicians' and the meddlesome billionaires' fault!). I am worried that the conversation about education has been co-opted by people who know very little about how to educate children. I am worried that many of the people who claim to suddenly care about our children have less than noble motives that have more to do with the amount of money and political capital pouring into education right now than they do with a real concern for our future generations. I worry that the debate is becoming more and more one-sided as those of us who express genuine concern about some of the so-called “reforms” being offered are cast as obstructionists who care more about adults and preserving the status quo than we do about children.  I worry that when they’re through "blowing up the system" as some reformers put it, we will be left to clean up the carnage. My uncle used to tell me a story about two men who went camping. One day, one of the men went hiking alone in the early morning while the other one slept in. It wasn’t very long before the sleeping camper was awakened by the screams of his friend. He rushed out of the tent to see what was the matter and saw his friend being chased by a huge and hungry bear. Quickly he grabbed his camping gear and ran to help. First, he threw his canteen at the bear and hit the bear firmly on the back of the head. This only served to enrage the bear who growled loudly and quickened his chase. Then he threw his compass at the bear only to miss the bear entirely and hit his friend in the head. Next, he threw his backpack at the bear but he missed and it hit his friend in the leg sending him stumbling forward. “What are you doing?!?” his friend called angrily as yet another canteen whizzed by his head. “I am helping you,” the first camper replied, while reaching for a rock to throw at the angry bear. “Helping me?” the friend asked incredulously as he ducked the rock. “I’ll tell you what.  Help the bear!” There are times when I want to say to the people who are rushing in to “fix” education, “help the bear.”  It’s not that I think that everything is fine. No. There are schools that are broken, some irreparably so. There are students every day who are cheated of the chance to learn by teachers who do not know how to teach and who don’t care enough to get better. I feel the desperation of parents who don’t have any other choice but to send their children to a school that will not prepare them for life after school or give them access to greater options.  I too am impatient for solutions and believe that we need to do something RIGHT NOW; I just worry that we are willing to try anything, regardless of whether it is the right thing or whether it is the best thing for children. I am all for reform, but to those people who want to substitute passion for pedagogy, and rhetoric for real reform, help the bear. To those people who have cast teachers as villains instead of working to make them all heros, help the bear. To those people who want to turn schools into businesses and children into products, help the bear.  To those who want to use circumstances as an excuse for lethargy or who spend all of their time defending the status quo rather than critically examining it, help the bear.  To those who use the current debate as an excuse or a distraction from real change, help the bear. To all those whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up?  Help the bear. To all those self-styled supermen and women whose idea of helping does more to tear the schools apart then it does to build them up? Help the bear. Please.   nonadult false Help the Bear text blog 1064 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 0 2729725 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_The-difference-between-bad-teachers-and-bad-people/blog/2338811/127586.html This post originally appeared on the Mindsteps blog at www.mindstepsblog.com When I built my company Mindsteps on the idea that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I got a lot of push back. Immediately, people bristled at the idea. They pointed to teachers who threw chairs at students, or teachers who were mentally cruel to students, or teachers who were pedaphiles and then they ask "Are you really saying that those teachers can become master teachers?" Uh, no. But it's really an unfair question to begin with. It equates bad teaching with being a bad person.  It's funny, when a disaffected postal worker or tax accountant shoots his colleagues in a rage, we don't call him a bad employee. Or when a doctor molests his patients, we don't call that bad medicine. When an accountant steals her clients' life savings, we don't call that bad accounting.  When a chef throws a knife at a diner, we don't call it bad cooking. It's evil behavior to be sure, but we are able to attribute the behavior to the person, not the profession. Why is it that we are able to separate bad behavior from job performance in just about every other profession except teaching? Wednesday on CNN, I saw some of the most disturbing video footage I have ever seen. In it, a teacher cornered and brutally beat a student while other students watched and laughed. The teacher's behavior was evil, and disgusting, and a whole lot of other adjectives I could come up with, but it wasn't bad teaching. Bad teaching is not planning lessons that clearly move studnts toward mastery, or not using effective strategies to help students learn, or trying to cover too much in one class period, or giving students unclear feedback, or having a lesson so disorganized that students are all over the place. That's bad teaching. So when I express concern about the push to fire bad teachers, don't mean the pedaphiles and the mental, emotional, and physical abusers, and others who present a danger to children. They aren't bad teachers- they're bad people and they have  no business being around children.  But bad teachers -- the ones who, by lack of will or skill, aren't effective in the classroom -- I still beleive that with teh right kind of support and practice, they can become geat teachers and it's worth the investment to help them. More on that in my next post... This post originally appeared on the Mindsteps blog at www.mindstepsblog.com When I built my company Mindsteps on the idea that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I got a lot of push back. Immediately, people bristled at the idea. They pointed to teachers who threw chairs at students, or teachers who were mentally cruel to students, or teachers who were pedaphiles and then they ask "Are you really saying that those teachers can become master teachers?" Uh, no. But it's really an unfair question to begin with. It equates bad teaching with being a bad person.  It's funny, when a disaffected postal worker or tax accountant shoots his colleagues in a rage, we don't call him a bad employee. Or when a doctor molests his patients, we don't call that bad medicine. When an accountant steals her clients' life savings, we don't call that bad accounting.  When a chef throws a knife at a diner, we don't call it bad cooking. It's evil behavior to be sure, but we are able to attribute the behavior to the person, not the profession. Why is it that we are able to separate bad behavior from job performance in just about every other profession except teaching? Wednesday on CNN, I saw some of the most disturbing video footage I have ever seen. In it, a teacher cornered and brutally beat a student while other students watched and laughed. The teacher's behavior was evil, and disgusting, and a whole lot of other adjectives I could come up with, but it wasn't bad teaching. Bad teaching is not planning lessons that clearly move studnts toward mastery, or not using effective strategies to help students learn, or trying to cover too much in one class period, or giving students unclear feedback, or having a lesson so disorganized that students are all over the place. That's bad teaching. So when I express concern about the push to fire bad teachers, don't mean the pedaphiles and the mental, emotional, and physical abusers, and others who present a danger to children. They aren't bad teachers- they're bad people and they have  no business being around children.  But bad teachers -- the ones who, by lack of will or skill, aren't effective in the classroom -- I still beleive that with teh right kind of support and practice, they can become geat teachers and it's worth the investment to help them. More on that in my next post... Sat, 15 May 2010 00:10:33 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_The-difference-between-bad-teachers-and-bad-people/blog/2338811/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-05-15T00:10:33Z ASCD EDge This post originally appeared on the Mindsteps blog at www.mindstepsblog.com When I built my company Mindsteps on the idea that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I got a lot of push back. Immediately, people bristled at the idea. They pointed to teachers who threw chairs at students, or teachers who were mentally cruel to students, or teachers who were pedaphiles and then they ask "Are you really saying that those teachers can become master teachers?" Uh, no. But it's really an unfair question to begin with. It equates bad teaching with being a bad person.  It's funny, when a disaffected postal worker or tax accountant shoots his colleagues in a rage, we don't call him a bad employee. Or when a doctor molests his patients, we don't call that bad medicine. When an accountant steals her clients' life savings, we don't call that bad accounting.  When a chef throws a knife at a diner, we don't call it bad cooking. It's evil behavior to be sure, but we are able to attribute the behavior to the person, not the profession. Why is it that we are able to separate bad behavior from job performance in just about every other profession except teaching? Wednesday on CNN, I saw some of the most disturbing video footage I have ever seen. In it, a teacher cornered and brutally beat a student while other students watched and laughed. The teacher's behavior was evil, and disgusting, and a whole lot of other adjectives I could come up with, but it wasn't bad teaching. Bad teaching is not planning lessons that clearly move studnts toward mastery, or not using effective strategies to help students learn, or trying to cover too much in one class period, or giving students unclear feedback, or having a lesson so disorganized that students are all over the place. That's bad teaching. So when I express concern about the push to fire bad teachers, don't mean the pedaphiles and the mental, emotional, and physical abusers, and others who present a danger to children. They aren't bad teachers- they're bad people and they have  no business being around children.  But bad teachers -- the ones who, by lack of will or skill, aren't effective in the classroom -- I still beleive that with teh right kind of support and practice, they can become geat teachers and it's worth the investment to help them. More on that in my next post... nonadult false The difference between bad teachers and bad people text blog 1196 0 0.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 1 2338811 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Why-getting-rid-of-bad-teachers-creates-more-bad-teachers/blog/2334046/127586.html I am becoming more and more distressed by the conversations I am seeing in the national media that blame "bad" teachers for all the ills in society. Not only do these messages misappropriate blame and over-simplify the very complex problems we face in schools, they unintentially kill good teaching. Case in point. The other day I was helping a teacher rethink how she planned her lessons. We were working on creating more engaging, rigorous learning experiences for students. After I explained how to create spaces in the classroom to allow her students to learn how to deal with the messiness of learning, she said, "This is great Robyn, but what do I do when my principal walks in and sees all this messiness going on. I could lose my job!"  Unfortunately, I hear the same lament time and time again. I would love to teach this way, but ...my principal, the state tests, the curriculum, my district mandate, the parents, etc. To quote Seth Godin in his latest book Linchpin, "Great teachers are wonderful. They change lves. We need them. The problem is that most schools don't like great teachers. They're organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average." There are several reasons why schools don't work, but firing the bad teachers won't fix them, especially when the same systems that prevent really great teaching remain firmly in place. So what do we do? For starters, we have to stop teaching scared. We have to stop letting fear keep us from doing what's right and take the risk for the sake of our kids.  We have to do what master teachers have been doing for years -- ignore the distracting noise outside, close your door, and teach extraordinarily.  We have to stop conforming and doing what is safe.  Instead, we must dare to be good, really good, not at our jobs, but at our calling to help students become great learners.   And most of all, we have to fight every day to get better at what we do, not because of some mandate or because we are afraid of being labeled a "bad teacher" and end up on the cover of Newsweek, but because it is the right and best thing to do. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to ourselves. I am becoming more and more distressed by the conversations I am seeing in the national media that blame "bad" teachers for all the ills in society. Not only do these messages misappropriate blame and over-simplify the very complex problems we face in schools, they unintentially kill good teaching. Case in point. The other day I was helping a teacher rethink how she planned her lessons. We were working on creating more engaging, rigorous learning experiences for students. After I explained how to create spaces in the classroom to allow her students to learn how to deal with the messiness of learning, she said, "This is great Robyn, but what do I do when my principal walks in and sees all this messiness going on. I could lose my job!"  Unfortunately, I hear the same lament time and time again. I would love to teach this way, but ...my principal, the state tests, the curriculum, my district mandate, the parents, etc. To quote Seth Godin in his latest book Linchpin, "Great teachers are wonderful. They change lves. We need them. The problem is that most schools don't like great teachers. They're organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average." There are several reasons why schools don't work, but firing the bad teachers won't fix them, especially when the same systems that prevent really great teaching remain firmly in place. So what do we do? For starters, we have to stop teaching scared. We have to stop letting fear keep us from doing what's right and take the risk for the sake of our kids.  We have to do what master teachers have been doing for years -- ignore the distracting noise outside, close your door, and teach extraordinarily.  We have to stop conforming and doing what is safe.  Instead, we must dare to be good, really good, not at our jobs, but at our calling to help students become great learners.   And most of all, we have to fight every day to get better at what we do, not because of some mandate or because we are afraid of being labeled a "bad teacher" and end up on the cover of Newsweek, but because it is the right and best thing to do. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to ourselves. Tue, 11 May 2010 17:07:21 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Why-getting-rid-of-bad-teachers-creates-more-bad-teachers/blog/2334046/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-05-11T17:07:21Z Blogs ASCD EDge I am becoming more and more distressed by the conversations I am seeing in the national media that blame "bad" teachers for all the ills in society. Not only do these messages misappropriate blame and over-simplify the very complex problems we face in schools, they unintentially kill good teaching. Case in point. The other day I was helping a teacher rethink how she planned her lessons. We were working on creating more engaging, rigorous learning experiences for students. After I explained how to create spaces in the classroom to allow her students to learn how to deal with the messiness of learning, she said, "This is great Robyn, but what do I do when my principal walks in and sees all this messiness going on. I could lose my job!"  Unfortunately, I hear the same lament time and time again. I would love to teach this way, but ...my principal, the state tests, the curriculum, my district mandate, the parents, etc. To quote Seth Godin in his latest book Linchpin, "Great teachers are wonderful. They change lves. We need them. The problem is that most schools don't like great teachers. They're organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average." There are several reasons why schools don't work, but firing the bad teachers won't fix them, especially when the same systems that prevent really great teaching remain firmly in place. So what do we do? For starters, we have to stop teaching scared. We have to stop letting fear keep us from doing what's right and take the risk for the sake of our kids.  We have to do what master teachers have been doing for years -- ignore the distracting noise outside, close your door, and teach extraordinarily.  We have to stop conforming and doing what is safe.  Instead, we must dare to be good, really good, not at our jobs, but at our calling to help students become great learners.   And most of all, we have to fight every day to get better at what we do, not because of some mandate or because we are afraid of being labeled a "bad teacher" and end up on the cover of Newsweek, but because it is the right and best thing to do. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to ourselves. blogs nonadult false Why getting rid of bad teachers creates more bad teachers. text blog blogs 5467 22 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 4 Blogs 3 2334046 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Those-Kids/blog/2296332/127586.html I have been fascinated recently by the conversation many educators are having around so-called "elite" courses - GT, honors, AP, and IB. One term I hear a lot is "those kids," as in "Those kids don't belong," or "We are setting up those kids for failure," or even, "Those kids are lazy." While I recognize the frustration of many teachers who are struggling to help under-prepared students reach the rigorous standards of their courses, I bristle at the notion of "those kids." It smacks of elitism. In many schools there is an unspoken hierarchy of "smart kids," "regular kids" and "struggling students." Any student who tries to climb out of these rigidly established buckets and reach for something more immediately becomes "those kids" and it bothers me. Why aren't we talking about "our kids?" All of them. Ours. Why aren't we working to make sure that all of our kids have the chance to attempt and be successful with highly rigorous coursework? Yes, I know that they come to us under-prepared and often with serious learning gaps. Yes, I know that many of them resist our efforts to help them. And yes, I know how hard it is to help a kid who can't read master rhetorical analysis of difficult texts or a kid who can barely add plumb the depths of calculus. And yet, I know it can be done because I've done it and I've seen it done. I don't think we lack the skill to help even the most academically disadvantaged students successfully engage in highly rigorous coursework. I think we lack the collective will. It's hard work and it is much easier to dumb down the curriculum, point fingers at parents and former teachers, or rigidly sort kids into groups of "those."  Who are we to determine which kids have a shot at a future and which kids remain stuck in the legacies of their communities and families and generation? Who are we to dictate which kids become those kids? Why aren't we working like crazy to make sure that every kid has opportunities and options? Why are we choosing to be gatekeepers instead of dream makers? Why aren't we giving all kids the opportunity and support they need to reach for something more?  I thought that was what public schools were all about. So I am not going to sit idly by and listen as even well-meaning educators slip into the language of "those kids" any more. Because I've come to believe that anyone who persists in thinking of some kids as "those kids" is really one of "those people." I have been fascinated recently by the conversation many educators are having around so-called "elite" courses - GT, honors, AP, and IB. One term I hear a lot is "those kids," as in "Those kids don't belong," or "We are setting up those kids for failure," or even, "Those kids are lazy." While I recognize the frustration of many teachers who are struggling to help under-prepared students reach the rigorous standards of their courses, I bristle at the notion of "those kids." It smacks of elitism. In many schools there is an unspoken hierarchy of "smart kids," "regular kids" and "struggling students." Any student who tries to climb out of these rigidly established buckets and reach for something more immediately becomes "those kids" and it bothers me. Why aren't we talking about "our kids?" All of them. Ours. Why aren't we working to make sure that all of our kids have the chance to attempt and be successful with highly rigorous coursework? Yes, I know that they come to us under-prepared and often with serious learning gaps. Yes, I know that many of them resist our efforts to help them. And yes, I know how hard it is to help a kid who can't read master rhetorical analysis of difficult texts or a kid who can barely add plumb the depths of calculus. And yet, I know it can be done because I've done it and I've seen it done. I don't think we lack the skill to help even the most academically disadvantaged students successfully engage in highly rigorous coursework. I think we lack the collective will. It's hard work and it is much easier to dumb down the curriculum, point fingers at parents and former teachers, or rigidly sort kids into groups of "those."  Who are we to determine which kids have a shot at a future and which kids remain stuck in the legacies of their communities and families and generation? Who are we to dictate which kids become those kids? Why aren't we working like crazy to make sure that every kid has opportunities and options? Why are we choosing to be gatekeepers instead of dream makers? Why aren't we giving all kids the opportunity and support they need to reach for something more?  I thought that was what public schools were all about. So I am not going to sit idly by and listen as even well-meaning educators slip into the language of "those kids" any more. Because I've come to believe that anyone who persists in thinking of some kids as "those kids" is really one of "those people." Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:38:00 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Those-Kids/blog/2296332/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-04-12T15:38:00Z Blogs ASCD EDge I have been fascinated recently by the conversation many educators are having around so-called "elite" courses - GT, honors, AP, and IB. One term I hear a lot is "those kids," as in "Those kids don't belong," or "We are setting up those kids for failure," or even, "Those kids are lazy." While I recognize the frustration of many teachers who are struggling to help under-prepared students reach the rigorous standards of their courses, I bristle at the notion of "those kids." It smacks of elitism. In many schools there is an unspoken hierarchy of "smart kids," "regular kids" and "struggling students." Any student who tries to climb out of these rigidly established buckets and reach for something more immediately becomes "those kids" and it bothers me. Why aren't we talking about "our kids?" All of them. Ours. Why aren't we working to make sure that all of our kids have the chance to attempt and be successful with highly rigorous coursework? Yes, I know that they come to us under-prepared and often with serious learning gaps. Yes, I know that many of them resist our efforts to help them. And yes, I know how hard it is to help a kid who can't read master rhetorical analysis of difficult texts or a kid who can barely add plumb the depths of calculus. And yet, I know it can be done because I've done it and I've seen it done. I don't think we lack the skill to help even the most academically disadvantaged students successfully engage in highly rigorous coursework. I think we lack the collective will. It's hard work and it is much easier to dumb down the curriculum, point fingers at parents and former teachers, or rigidly sort kids into groups of "those."  Who are we to determine which kids have a shot at a future and which kids remain stuck in the legacies of their communities and families and generation? Who are we to dictate which kids become those kids? Why aren't we working like crazy to make sure that every kid has opportunities and options? Why are we choosing to be gatekeepers instead of dream makers? Why aren't we giving all kids the opportunity and support they need to reach for something more?  I thought that was what public schools were all about. So I am not going to sit idly by and listen as even well-meaning educators slip into the language of "those kids" any more. Because I've come to believe that anyone who persists in thinking of some kids as "those kids" is really one of "those people." blogs nonadult false Those Kids text blog blogs 1894 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 1 Blogs 0 2296332 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Is-Intrinsic-Motivation-Over-Rated/blog/1850072/127586.html Here is my latest article from the Mindsteps newsletter and blog: For years, I have unquestioningly accepted the prevailing wisdom that the holy grail in education is to have intrinsically motivated students who learn for learning's sake.   And yet, most of us don’t do everything we do for purely intrinsic reasons.  We work at least partially for a paycheck. We drive the speed limit not because we enjoy driving 25 mph when we are in a hurry but because we don’t want to get a ticket and imperil the lives of the other drivers around us. We work weekends in order to meet deadlines and complete paperwork because its our job.  We clean behind the fridge because company is coming over and we endure family dinners with Aunt Midge so we don’t upset our mothers. In fact, very little of what we do is purely intrinsically motivated. For years I thought the key to student engagement was to make work more interesting and yet studies have found no evidence that the interest value of material is a determinant -- as opposed to a consequence -- of learning. In fact, the more I read the literature on motivation, the more I am struck by one startling idea: Intrinsic motivation may be over-rated.  Two concepts have changed my mind. The first is the idea of integrated extrinsic motivation.  The research shows that external motivators, when used correctly, can actually help people develop intrinsic motivation over time.  When students recognize the underlying value of a behavior, identify with it, and integrate it with other aspects of themselves, they will carry out the behavior independently and outside of your control -- even if they are not intrinsically motivated to do so.  Although externally motivated, they are more likely to transfer to internal motivation.   In order to achieve integrated extrinsic motivation, three factors must exist. Students must feel a sense of autonomy - that they are not being forced to do the activity; they must feel that they can be successful at the activity (competence); and they must see how the activity helps them function within the classroom and outside culture (relatedness).   The second concept is emergent motivation. This theory asserts that although students may initially find an activity boring, it doesn’t mean that they will always find it so.  When they begin to see relevance in the activity or their skill set with the activity improves, and if they can find in the activity opportunities to be successful, the activity becomes more interesting and finally, enjoyable. In other words, our motivation to do something may be initially low, but we can actually grow our motivation over time.   For too long, we have been trying to get students to care about what we teach and lamenting their lack of intrinsic motivation. Turns out, the problem isn’t that our students are not intrinsically motivated.  They may never love literature the way that we do. They may never get their kicks from solving impossible math problems and spelling may never be as important to them as it is to us.  The real problem is that the way we try to motivate them externally fails and puts the work on us. We have to keep pushing them to get any work out of them at all and we are exhausted.  But what if our external motivators could be, well, more motivating?  Do we really need students to love everything we do in the classroom or is it enough that they engage for externally motivated reasons, and in doing so, learn to build their own motivation over time?   Don't forget to leave your ideas and comments here   For more information, check out the Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (2005, Elliot, A., and Dweck, C., Eds.) ~Robyn R. Jackson Here is my latest article from the Mindsteps newsletter and blog: For years, I have unquestioningly accepted the prevailing wisdom that the holy grail in education is to have intrinsically motivated students who learn for learning's sake.   And yet, most of us don’t do everything we do for purely intrinsic reasons.  We work at least partially for a paycheck. We drive the speed limit not because we enjoy driving 25 mph when we are in a hurry but because we don’t want to get a ticket and imperil the lives of the other drivers around us. We work weekends in order to meet deadlines and complete paperwork because its our job.  We clean behind the fridge because company is coming over and we endure family dinners with Aunt Midge so we don’t upset our mothers. In fact, very little of what we do is purely intrinsically motivated. For years I thought the key to student engagement was to make work more interesting and yet studies have found no evidence that the interest value of material is a determinant -- as opposed to a consequence -- of learning. In fact, the more I read the literature on motivation, the more I am struck by one startling idea: Intrinsic motivation may be over-rated.  Two concepts have changed my mind. The first is the idea of integrated extrinsic motivation.  The research shows that external motivators, when used correctly, can actually help people develop intrinsic motivation over time.  When students recognize the underlying value of a behavior, identify with it, and integrate it with other aspects of themselves, they will carry out the behavior independently and outside of your control -- even if they are not intrinsically motivated to do so.  Although externally motivated, they are more likely to transfer to internal motivation.   In order to achieve integrated extrinsic motivation, three factors must exist. Students must feel a sense of autonomy - that they are not being forced to do the activity; they must feel that they can be successful at the activity (competence); and they must see how the activity helps them function within the classroom and outside culture (relatedness).   The second concept is emergent motivation. This theory asserts that although students may initially find an activity boring, it doesn’t mean that they will always find it so.  When they begin to see relevance in the activity or their skill set with the activity improves, and if they can find in the activity opportunities to be successful, the activity becomes more interesting and finally, enjoyable. In other words, our motivation to do something may be initially low, but we can actually grow our motivation over time.   For too long, we have been trying to get students to care about what we teach and lamenting their lack of intrinsic motivation. Turns out, the problem isn’t that our students are not intrinsically motivated.  They may never love literature the way that we do. They may never get their kicks from solving impossible math problems and spelling may never be as important to them as it is to us.  The real problem is that the way we try to motivate them externally fails and puts the work on us. We have to keep pushing them to get any work out of them at all and we are exhausted.  But what if our external motivators could be, well, more motivating?  Do we really need students to love everything we do in the classroom or is it enough that they engage for externally motivated reasons, and in doing so, learn to build their own motivation over time?   Don't forget to leave your ideas and comments here   For more information, check out the Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (2005, Elliot, A., and Dweck, C., Eds.) ~Robyn R. Jackson Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:56:47 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Is-Intrinsic-Motivation-Over-Rated/blog/1850072/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-02-12T06:56:47Z ASCD EDge Here is my latest article from the Mindsteps newsletter and blog: For years, I have unquestioningly accepted the prevailing wisdom that the holy grail in education is to have intrinsically motivated students who learn for learning's sake.   And yet, most of us don’t do everything we do for purely intrinsic reasons.  We work at least partially for a paycheck. We drive the speed limit not because we enjoy driving 25 mph when we are in a hurry but because we don’t want to get a ticket and imperil the lives of the other drivers around us. We work weekends in order to meet deadlines and complete paperwork because its our job.  We clean behind the fridge because company is coming over and we endure family dinners with Aunt Midge so we don’t upset our mothers. In fact, very little of what we do is purely intrinsically motivated. For years I thought the key to student engagement was to make work more interesting and yet studies have found no evidence that the interest value of material is a determinant -- as opposed to a consequence -- of learning. In fact, the more I read the literature on motivation, the more I am struck by one startling idea: Intrinsic motivation may be over-rated.  Two concepts have changed my mind. The first is the idea of integrated extrinsic motivation.  The research shows that external motivators, when used correctly, can actually help people develop intrinsic motivation over time.  When students recognize the underlying value of a behavior, identify with it, and integrate it with other aspects of themselves, they will carry out the behavior independently and outside of your control -- even if they are not intrinsically motivated to do so.  Although externally motivated, they are more likely to transfer to internal motivation.   In order to achieve integrated extrinsic motivation, three factors must exist. Students must feel a sense of autonomy - that they are not being forced to do the activity; they must feel that they can be successful at the activity (competence); and they must see how the activity helps them function within the classroom and outside culture (relatedness).   The second concept is emergent motivation. This theory asserts that although students may initially find an activity boring, it doesn’t mean that they will always find it so.  When they begin to see relevance in the activity or their skill set with the activity improves, and if they can find in the activity opportunities to be successful, the activity becomes more interesting and finally, enjoyable. In other words, our motivation to do something may be initially low, but we can actually grow our motivation over time.   For too long, we have been trying to get students to care about what we teach and lamenting their lack of intrinsic motivation. Turns out, the problem isn’t that our students are not intrinsically motivated.  They may never love literature the way that we do. They may never get their kicks from solving impossible math problems and spelling may never be as important to them as it is to us.  The real problem is that the way we try to motivate them externally fails and puts the work on us. We have to keep pushing them to get any work out of them at all and we are exhausted.  But what if our external motivators could be, well, more motivating?  Do we really need students to love everything we do in the classroom or is it enough that they engage for externally motivated reasons, and in doing so, learn to build their own motivation over time?   Don't forget to leave your ideas and comments here   For more information, check out the Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (2005, Elliot, A., and Dweck, C., Eds.) ~Robyn R. Jackson nonadult false Is Intrinsic Motivation Over-Rated? text blog 3087 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 2 4 1850072 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_Practicing-What-I-Preach/blog/1774348/127586.html   As you know by now, I am looking for ways to make the professional development I provide more valuable to teachers. Last week I tried something new in a workshop I was conducting for a group of teachers. Rather than create a tightly structured agenda where I filled every moment with activities and talk, I did what I often encourage teachers to do — I created spaces in the agenda for the learners to become co-creators of their own learning experience. I started each day with a section called “Feedback on Feedback” where I took time to address any feedback I’d received about the workshop and make adjustments to the agenda based on the needs of the participants.  If something wasn’t working, we nixed it right there and tried something else instead. If participants didn’t feel that an activity would help them reach the objectives for the day, we came up with an alternative. I also included time for teachers to share their own strategies. Sometimes I invited certain teachers to share, other times I announced that we would have time to share and let teachers volunteer. Each teacher had five minutes to share a strategy or resource that was relevant to the instructional principles we were discussing and take questions from the other participants. They could share a strategy they were already using successfully with their own students or one they had developed as a result of the workshop.  I learned as much as the other workshop participants during these sessions.  In fact, these sessions were amazing for how they fostered a learning community where we were all co-creators of the learning experience. I also included time for teachers to work together in subject-alike groups to apply what they were learning and create resources they could use immediately with their students. This was a chance for participants to find practical applications for the theorhetical principles they were learning. Finally, for each learning activity, I included a “rouge” option. Partipants had the choice of completing the activity I planned, or they could negotiate an alternative activity they would complete instead. As long as they could demonstrate how their choice would help them achieve the objectives of the workshop, they were free to pursue it. Some of the best insights of the day came from people who chose to “go rouge.” It was a huge risk but it paid off. The participants told me that it was a much more rewarding workshop for them and I can see from the activity on our follow-up electronic community that the participants are using what they learned in their classrooms and sharing it with their colleagues. They have an enthusiasm for the project that wasn’t present before and I believe that these teachers now own what they have learned and are adapting — not adopting– these strategies into their own instructional practice. Here’s what I learned. While I am a firm advocate of creating spaces in lesson for students to take ownership over their own learning, I have always been afraid to do the same for adults. I thought that if I did, I would seem unprepared. I felt like I needed to have highly structured activities or people would feel that my workshops were a waste of time. What I am learning is that when I let go of the false notions that I have to be the expert and allow room for co-creating, the learning experiences in my workshops can model the types of learning experiences I believe should be happening in the classroom.  I cannot forget that the same principles that work for helping children learn also work for helping adults learn. I plan to spend more time practicing what I preach. And the quest continues…   As you know by now, I am looking for ways to make the professional development I provide more valuable to teachers. Last week I tried something new in a workshop I was conducting for a group of teachers. Rather than create a tightly structured agenda where I filled every moment with activities and talk, I did what I often encourage teachers to do — I created spaces in the agenda for the learners to become co-creators of their own learning experience. I started each day with a section called “Feedback on Feedback” where I took time to address any feedback I’d received about the workshop and make adjustments to the agenda based on the needs of the participants.  If something wasn’t working, we nixed it right there and tried something else instead. If participants didn’t feel that an activity would help them reach the objectives for the day, we came up with an alternative. I also included time for teachers to share their own strategies. Sometimes I invited certain teachers to share, other times I announced that we would have time to share and let teachers volunteer. Each teacher had five minutes to share a strategy or resource that was relevant to the instructional principles we were discussing and take questions from the other participants. They could share a strategy they were already using successfully with their own students or one they had developed as a result of the workshop.  I learned as much as the other workshop participants during these sessions.  In fact, these sessions were amazing for how they fostered a learning community where we were all co-creators of the learning experience. I also included time for teachers to work together in subject-alike groups to apply what they were learning and create resources they could use immediately with their students. This was a chance for participants to find practical applications for the theorhetical principles they were learning. Finally, for each learning activity, I included a “rouge” option. Partipants had the choice of completing the activity I planned, or they could negotiate an alternative activity they would complete instead. As long as they could demonstrate how their choice would help them achieve the objectives of the workshop, they were free to pursue it. Some of the best insights of the day came from people who chose to “go rouge.” It was a huge risk but it paid off. The participants told me that it was a much more rewarding workshop for them and I can see from the activity on our follow-up electronic community that the participants are using what they learned in their classrooms and sharing it with their colleagues. They have an enthusiasm for the project that wasn’t present before and I believe that these teachers now own what they have learned and are adapting — not adopting– these strategies into their own instructional practice. Here’s what I learned. While I am a firm advocate of creating spaces in lesson for students to take ownership over their own learning, I have always been afraid to do the same for adults. I thought that if I did, I would seem unprepared. I felt like I needed to have highly structured activities or people would feel that my workshops were a waste of time. What I am learning is that when I let go of the false notions that I have to be the expert and allow room for co-creating, the learning experiences in my workshops can model the types of learning experiences I believe should be happening in the classroom.  I cannot forget that the same principles that work for helping children learn also work for helping adults learn. I plan to spend more time practicing what I preach. And the quest continues… Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:08:15 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Practicing-What-I-Preach/blog/1774348/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-01-27T22:08:15Z ASCD EDge   As you know by now, I am looking for ways to make the professional development I provide more valuable to teachers. Last week I tried something new in a workshop I was conducting for a group of teachers. Rather than create a tightly structured agenda where I filled every moment with activities and talk, I did what I often encourage teachers to do — I created spaces in the agenda for the learners to become co-creators of their own learning experience. I started each day with a section called “Feedback on Feedback” where I took time to address any feedback I’d received about the workshop and make adjustments to the agenda based on the needs of the participants.  If something wasn’t working, we nixed it right there and tried something else instead. If participants didn’t feel that an activity would help them reach the objectives for the day, we came up with an alternative. I also included time for teachers to share their own strategies. Sometimes I invited certain teachers to share, other times I announced that we would have time to share and let teachers volunteer. Each teacher had five minutes to share a strategy or resource that was relevant to the instructional principles we were discussing and take questions from the other participants. They could share a strategy they were already using successfully with their own students or one they had developed as a result of the workshop.  I learned as much as the other workshop participants during these sessions.  In fact, these sessions were amazing for how they fostered a learning community where we were all co-creators of the learning experience. I also included time for teachers to work together in subject-alike groups to apply what they were learning and create resources they could use immediately with their students. This was a chance for participants to find practical applications for the theorhetical principles they were learning. Finally, for each learning activity, I included a “rouge” option. Partipants had the choice of completing the activity I planned, or they could negotiate an alternative activity they would complete instead. As long as they could demonstrate how their choice would help them achieve the objectives of the workshop, they were free to pursue it. Some of the best insights of the day came from people who chose to “go rouge.” It was a huge risk but it paid off. The participants told me that it was a much more rewarding workshop for them and I can see from the activity on our follow-up electronic community that the participants are using what they learned in their classrooms and sharing it with their colleagues. They have an enthusiasm for the project that wasn’t present before and I believe that these teachers now own what they have learned and are adapting — not adopting– these strategies into their own instructional practice. Here’s what I learned. While I am a firm advocate of creating spaces in lesson for students to take ownership over their own learning, I have always been afraid to do the same for adults. I thought that if I did, I would seem unprepared. I felt like I needed to have highly structured activities or people would feel that my workshops were a waste of time. What I am learning is that when I let go of the false notions that I have to be the expert and allow room for co-creating, the learning experiences in my workshops can model the types of learning experiences I believe should be happening in the classroom.  I cannot forget that the same principles that work for helping children learn also work for helping adults learn. I plan to spend more time practicing what I preach. And the quest continues… nonadult false Practicing What I Preach text blog 755 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 1 1774348 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010 http://edge.ascd.org/_You-Deserve-Better/blog/1695169/127586.html The latest post from the Mindsteps Blog I was talking to a friend and colleague over the holiday break about my frustration with most professional development models. You know the kinds of experiences I’m talking about – the sit and get, spray and pray deals most of us have had to endure perched atop those really uncomfortable cafeteria stools or crammed into the media center aimlessly flipping through a stack of handouts or secretly completing a crossword puzzle while desperately wishing I was in my classroom grading papers and praying for 3:30 when they would unlock the doors and set us free. I’ve always hated those days and work very hard not to deliver the same kind of professional development when I conduct workshops and yet, there were several times in 2009 when I came very close to providing or participating in someone else’s providing the very same kind of experience. There has got to be a better way. And in 2010, I am looking to find it. So I am throwing down the Professional Development Gauntlet: If I cannot deliver a professional development experience that is worth more to teachers than spending the same amount of time grading papers, I won’t offer it. You see, I started Mindsteps not because I wanted to get in on the professional development gravy train. I started Mindsteps because I believed that there was a better way to help teachers. I have never understood why we use such bad teaching practices to show teachers how to be better teachers. I want every teacher to become a master teacher, to reach every child in his or her classroom and to have a ball doing it. I love teaching so much that I want everyone in this profession to love it. And I am convinced that can’t happen if we continue to teach teachers in the same ways we always have. So, I am going to stop trying to improve the old model. I am going to build a new one. The old model doesn’t work and I am no longer satisfied with trying to tweak it. I think if we are going to do what’s right for kids and provide every one of them with a quality education we have to start and end with a master teacher in every classroom. That’s a scary idea to a lot of people. Whenever I declare that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I always face skepticism. People think it isn’t possible and they are right as long as we continue to provide the kinds of training we are currently providing. If we are really going to make a difference for teachers, for the quality of their teaching and the quality of their lives in the classroom, we have got to start by dramatically overhauling the kind of support and practice we provide them. I want professional development that: invites teachers to co-create the learning and influence the direction of how we spend our time together is customizable so that teachers have several access points and can move through the experience at their own level is practical so that teachers have ideas and tools they can use immediately but can also customize so that they are more relevant to each teacher’s context and students models the same teaching principles we expect teachers to use with their students is meaningful and lasts longer than the experienceactually improves the way that we teach and think about teaching It’s an ambitious list that I am sure will grow and change over the next few months as I begin this journey. And if I am really honest, this is a scary thing to do. It means that I am now accountable to you and it also means that in my attempts to create a new way of providing professional development, I will make some mistakes. Publicly. But I am tired of the same ole, same ole. I think you deserve better. I also want to make it clear: I am not beating up my colleagues who provide professional development. I understand how easy it is to get sucked into the old model of providing PD. Many of the conditions are frankly outside of our control. We come in for a day or two and then leave hoping that somehow that brief amount of time has made a difference. I have been sucked into that model as well. But I want something better for the teachers I serve and I am inviting my colleagues to join me in reaching for it. In fact, I will be engaging my colleagues in conversations about how we can create a new model of professional development that honors teachers and our profession. I cannot solve this problem alone. I need their help. I also need your help. What kind of professional development would be most useful to you? What kinds of experiences would dramatically improve your practice? Go ahead and dream big here. I can’t do this without you. I invite you to leave your comments and ideas here. I will check in with you each month and let you know how we are doing. Please take time to comment and let’s build something better together. The latest post from the Mindsteps Blog I was talking to a friend and colleague over the holiday break about my frustration with most professional development models. You know the kinds of experiences I’m talking about – the sit and get, spray and pray deals most of us have had to endure perched atop those really uncomfortable cafeteria stools or crammed into the media center aimlessly flipping through a stack of handouts or secretly completing a crossword puzzle while desperately wishing I was in my classroom grading papers and praying for 3:30 when they would unlock the doors and set us free. I’ve always hated those days and work very hard not to deliver the same kind of professional development when I conduct workshops and yet, there were several times in 2009 when I came very close to providing or participating in someone else’s providing the very same kind of experience. There has got to be a better way. And in 2010, I am looking to find it. So I am throwing down the Professional Development Gauntlet: If I cannot deliver a professional development experience that is worth more to teachers than spending the same amount of time grading papers, I won’t offer it. You see, I started Mindsteps not because I wanted to get in on the professional development gravy train. I started Mindsteps because I believed that there was a better way to help teachers. I have never understood why we use such bad teaching practices to show teachers how to be better teachers. I want every teacher to become a master teacher, to reach every child in his or her classroom and to have a ball doing it. I love teaching so much that I want everyone in this profession to love it. And I am convinced that can’t happen if we continue to teach teachers in the same ways we always have. So, I am going to stop trying to improve the old model. I am going to build a new one. The old model doesn’t work and I am no longer satisfied with trying to tweak it. I think if we are going to do what’s right for kids and provide every one of them with a quality education we have to start and end with a master teacher in every classroom. That’s a scary idea to a lot of people. Whenever I declare that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I always face skepticism. People think it isn’t possible and they are right as long as we continue to provide the kinds of training we are currently providing. If we are really going to make a difference for teachers, for the quality of their teaching and the quality of their lives in the classroom, we have got to start by dramatically overhauling the kind of support and practice we provide them. I want professional development that: invites teachers to co-create the learning and influence the direction of how we spend our time together is customizable so that teachers have several access points and can move through the experience at their own level is practical so that teachers have ideas and tools they can use immediately but can also customize so that they are more relevant to each teacher’s context and students models the same teaching principles we expect teachers to use with their students is meaningful and lasts longer than the experienceactually improves the way that we teach and think about teaching It’s an ambitious list that I am sure will grow and change over the next few months as I begin this journey. And if I am really honest, this is a scary thing to do. It means that I am now accountable to you and it also means that in my attempts to create a new way of providing professional development, I will make some mistakes. Publicly. But I am tired of the same ole, same ole. I think you deserve better. I also want to make it clear: I am not beating up my colleagues who provide professional development. I understand how easy it is to get sucked into the old model of providing PD. Many of the conditions are frankly outside of our control. We come in for a day or two and then leave hoping that somehow that brief amount of time has made a difference. I have been sucked into that model as well. But I want something better for the teachers I serve and I am inviting my colleagues to join me in reaching for it. In fact, I will be engaging my colleagues in conversations about how we can create a new model of professional development that honors teachers and our profession. I cannot solve this problem alone. I need their help. I also need your help. What kind of professional development would be most useful to you? What kinds of experiences would dramatically improve your practice? Go ahead and dream big here. I can’t do this without you. I invite you to leave your comments and ideas here. I will check in with you each month and let you know how we are doing. Please take time to comment and let’s build something better together. Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:38:10 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_You-Deserve-Better/blog/1695169/127586.html Robyn_Jackson 2010-01-06T21:38:10Z Blogs ASCD EDge The latest post from the Mindsteps Blog I was talking to a friend and colleague over the holiday break about my frustration with most professional development models. You know the kinds of experiences I’m talking about – the sit and get, spray and pray deals most of us have had to endure perched atop those really uncomfortable cafeteria stools or crammed into the media center aimlessly flipping through a stack of handouts or secretly completing a crossword puzzle while desperately wishing I was in my classroom grading papers and praying for 3:30 when they would unlock the doors and set us free. I’ve always hated those days and work very hard not to deliver the same kind of professional development when I conduct workshops and yet, there were several times in 2009 when I came very close to providing or participating in someone else’s providing the very same kind of experience. There has got to be a better way. And in 2010, I am looking to find it. So I am throwing down the Professional Development Gauntlet: If I cannot deliver a professional development experience that is worth more to teachers than spending the same amount of time grading papers, I won’t offer it. You see, I started Mindsteps not because I wanted to get in on the professional development gravy train. I started Mindsteps because I believed that there was a better way to help teachers. I have never understood why we use such bad teaching practices to show teachers how to be better teachers. I want every teacher to become a master teacher, to reach every child in his or her classroom and to have a ball doing it. I love teaching so much that I want everyone in this profession to love it. And I am convinced that can’t happen if we continue to teach teachers in the same ways we always have. So, I am going to stop trying to improve the old model. I am going to build a new one. The old model doesn’t work and I am no longer satisfied with trying to tweak it. I think if we are going to do what’s right for kids and provide every one of them with a quality education we have to start and end with a master teacher in every classroom. That’s a scary idea to a lot of people. Whenever I declare that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I always face skepticism. People think it isn’t possible and they are right as long as we continue to provide the kinds of training we are currently providing. If we are really going to make a difference for teachers, for the quality of their teaching and the quality of their lives in the classroom, we have got to start by dramatically overhauling the kind of support and practice we provide them. I want professional development that: invites teachers to co-create the learning and influence the direction of how we spend our time together is customizable so that teachers have several access points and can move through the experience at their own level is practical so that teachers have ideas and tools they can use immediately but can also customize so that they are more relevant to each teacher’s context and students models the same teaching principles we expect teachers to use with their students is meaningful and lasts longer than the experienceactually improves the way that we teach and think about teaching It’s an ambitious list that I am sure will grow and change over the next few months as I begin this journey. And if I am really honest, this is a scary thing to do. It means that I am now accountable to you and it also means that in my attempts to create a new way of providing professional development, I will make some mistakes. Publicly. But I am tired of the same ole, same ole. I think you deserve better. I also want to make it clear: I am not beating up my colleagues who provide professional development. I understand how easy it is to get sucked into the old model of providing PD. Many of the conditions are frankly outside of our control. We come in for a day or two and then leave hoping that somehow that brief amount of time has made a difference. I have been sucked into that model as well. But I want something better for the teachers I serve and I am inviting my colleagues to join me in reaching for it. In fact, I will be engaging my colleagues in conversations about how we can create a new model of professional development that honors teachers and our profession. I cannot solve this problem alone. I need their help. I also need your help. What kind of professional development would be most useful to you? What kinds of experiences would dramatically improve your practice? Go ahead and dream big here. I can’t do this without you. I invite you to leave your comments and ideas here. I will check in with you each month and let you know how we are doing. Please take time to comment and let’s build something better together. blogs nonadult false You Deserve Better! text blog blogs 1045 22 4.90909 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=19135225&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_7244275_127586_19135225_ap_160X120.jpg false United States DC Washington 0 Blogs 4 1695169 19135225 ASCD EDge Member 1010