223 Search Results for "family"

• Customer Service: Pour Some Su Customer Service: Pour Some Sugar On Me

  • From: Steven_Weber
  • Description:

    School staff focus on curriculum alignment, differentiated instruction, professional development, college and career readiness, standards, and academic interventions. Is it possible that schools can lose their focus on customer service? Customers include families, community members, and all guests who visit the school website or schoolhouse.

     

    Customer service involves the front office staff, classroom teachers, teacher assistants, custodians, counselors, and all staff members. How are customers treated when they enter your school? Ask your school staff, “What does it mean to go the extra mile for the customer?” Do families feel like the front office staff answers the phone in a professional manner? Do teachers fire off emails when they are upset with students or parents? How do schools analyze the way they are treating customers?

     

    Six Ways To Pour Some Sugar On The Customer:

     

    Website
    The school website is the new front door. Families and community members make a judgment about your school before they arrive in the front office. Is your school website customer friendly? If you have a focus on technology integration, does your school website look like it was created in 1990? Does your website offer a welcome message or invite families to visit the school? If Open House was the biggest event between 1980-2000, then the school website opens your school to more than the all of the guests who attended Open House during that 20 year span. Your school is connected with the world. What kind of message are you sending? Would a family in Florida view your site and want to buy a house in your community, based on the information and message on your website?

     

    
    Customer Service
    Customer service involves phone skills, email etiquette, communication skills, and the way the customer is treated when they spend time at your school. Which restaurants come to mind when you think of outstanding customer service? Have you ever had poor customer service at a hotel? Have you ever visited a church and felt like none of the members knew you were in attendance? Customer service is easy to identify, especially when we are the recipient of poor customer service. When families have a bad experience at your school, they will spread the word throughout the community and through social media. As communities build more charter schools, private schools, and home school organizations, customers will walk rather than talk.

     

    
    Blog
    The media may promote your school once or twice a year. Administrators and teachers can promote the school on a weekly basis by posting on a school or teacher blog. Pictures from field trips, class projects, community service, guest speakers, and student awards can assist in communicating with families. Most blogs allow for families to forward the message to their family and friends via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Blogs also allow for two-way communication. The traditional method of communicating with families was a flyer in a second grade student’s backpack. With a blog, the school can communicate with families and families can post comments or ask questions about the event before their child arrives home.

     

    
    Coffee Hour
    Several schools host a Principal’s Coffee Hour once monthly. There is usually a topic that the principal or a guest speaker shares with families. The highlight of any Principal’s Coffee Hour is the time that families are able to share their opinions, ask questions, and brainstorm ways to support all students. Coffee Hour provides a monthly time for two-way communication. Parents will provide you with their opinions and they will feel respected because the school provided a forum for adult conversation about their most prized possession, their child. How is your school promoting two-way communication with families and stakeholders?

     

    
    Twitter
    Twitter allows home-to-school and school-to-home communication. Families can receive updates from the school. While Twitter may not work for all families, it is a great tool. Most schools see social media as one form of communication. The sign in front of the school reaches some families, the school website reaches others, and a flyer may still work for families without a computer or a Smartphone. The reason I feel like schools should consider Twitter is because it allows families to forward or reply to each tweet. If you have ever been in a relationship with someone you realize the importance of two-way communication. A strong relationship between families and school staff will improve your customer service and customer satisfaction.

     

    
    School App
    As the number of people with Smartphones increases, your school should consider a school app. “Smartphone vendors shipped 216.2 million units in the first quarter of 2013, which accounted for 51.6 percent of the worldwide mobile phone market” (Bean, April 16, 2013). If the school website is the new front door in 2013, then the school app may be the new front door of the future. An app can combine all of the items highlighted in this article. A school app may not be nice to have, but the next step in your communication and customer-service plan.

     

     

    Conclusion
    Most schools have a professional development plan, school improvement plan, and a curriculum map. I have rarely seen a school’s customer service plan. When it comes to service, if you fail to plan you may be planning to fail. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, said, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” There are only two kinds of schools; those with outstanding customer service and those without outstanding customer service. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rank the customer service at your school?

     

    Next Steps
    Questions for School Staff to Consider

    
    

    1. Does our school provide outstanding customer service?

    
    2. What are our weaknesses? What action steps do we need to take to improve?

    
    3. What are the characteristics of outstanding customer service?
    (Share your own experiences in school and non-school settings)

     

    4. What can we measure every 18 weeks (semester) to analyze our efforts to provide customer service?

     

    5. Do we have a school plan outlining what customer service looks like?
    (Think Chick-fil-A; It doesn’t matter if the manager or a teenager provides you with service. There is consistency within and across stores).

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• You Don't Really Know Until Yo You Don't Really Know Until You Go

  • From: Robert_Zywicki
  • Description:

    

     

     

    I recently returned from Hunterdon Central’s Holocaust Overseas Study Tour.  Our group of twenty students and four educators traveled to Czech Republic and Poland to visit Terezin, Lidice, the Warsaw Ghetto, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a transformative experience for me as an educator, parent, and citizen.

     

    I thought I would be prepared, at least intellectually, for what I would see on our trip. I grew up in a city with large Jewish and Polish populations.  From my earliest years I heard the stories of neighbors and close family friends who had survived Nazi camps.  Beginning in the first grade I was exposed to annual Holocaust education programs. As a social studies teacher I taught about the Holocaust for over a decade. Each camp is a visceral confrontation with the worst depravity known to humanity.  All I can say is that you don’t really know the enormity of the Holocaust until you go and visit the sites. 

     

    I hope more educators launch programs like Central’s Holocaust Overseas Study Tour.  Holocaust education is citizenship education.  The benefits are not just historical knowledge of the Holocaust. It is an opportunity to reflect upon what it means to have rights as a citizen and a reminder that we must be eternally vigilant to protect human rights.

     

    The inscription on the mausoleum at Majdanek in Lublin, Poland reads “let our fate be a warning to you.” The twenty students on the trip who come from a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds were in a word – inspiring. Their desire to study the Holocaust and return to present to their peers and the community about their experience is at the heart of everything we aspire to instill in students.   Tonight, our students will share their experiences from our trip and bear witness at the Flemington Jewish Community Center.

     

     

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• WILL#7 WILL#7

  • From: Joshua_Garcia
  • Description:

    What I Learned Lately (WILL #7)

    5/8/13

    @Garciaj9Josh

    As a father, son, husband, and brother, I share a name with all other men, (Mr.).  When I pause to think about this connection, I remind myself to maintain what I call a “Brothered Mind".  For me this concept is grounded by the need to treat others as family, love my brothers for the common good, and to check my own ego and desires in order to create a better world.  Additionally, it reminds me that I have responsibility to be a "good man" and ultimately my actions label other men around the world.  This is a responsibility that I take extremely seriously. 

     

    The irony for me is that I have learned how to create and maintain a "Brothered Mind" from powerful women.  Women all across the world teach their children and students the value of respecting self, family and community.  In my life, women have taught many lessons.  My mother grew up in abusive family.  My parents ran from the abuse in order to save our family.  For years, I have watched my mom battle through losing homes, jobs, her health and the struggle to separate herself from her past.  My mom has taught me the concept of "relentless".  My wife has and continues to be my mirror.  Teaching me how to raise a daughter, model for my sons and to truly be "present" in the world I live and work in.    From my boss, I learned the concept of unconditional love.  She has taught me that you can't run from your family, past or present; rather you must continuously and unconditionally work to support those that you need you the most.  In our work, we are continuously surrounded by women who teach us how to love each student and to treat all of them as they were their own sons and daughters.  Growing up, learning how to run and now being taught to be present has been rigorous for me.

     

    As I reflect on my learning and get ready to celebrate Mother's Day.  I would like to celebrate all the women that are in all our lives.

     

    Finally by William Butler Yeats - The Song of the Old Mother

    I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;

    And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;

    And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,

    And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:

    While I must work because I am old,

    And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

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• Summer School: SEL Matters Summer School: SEL Matters

  • From: Kevin_Parr
  • Description:

    Soon millions of school children will be celebrating the last day of school and the start of summer vacation.  For many children this will entail family trips, swimming and camping out under the stars among other quintessential summertime activities.  Yet for many children from low-income households it will mean summer school—half days back at school for remediation in math and reading in an attempt to thwart the dreaded, but very real “summer slide.”

     

    These types of summer school programs have their roots in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and its most recent reauthorizations as the No Child Left Behind Act.  Included in these acts is Title 1, which provides funding to close the achievement gap for students from low-income households.  It’s a good thing, too, because it is well documented that there is a direct relationship between household income and academic achievement.  Specifically, students from low-income households have lower levels of academic achievement than their more affluent peers.  In addition, students from low-income households show a larger decline in reading skills over the summer than their middle-class counterparts.  While remedial summer school programs have been shown to have a positive impact on students’ knowledge and skills, a large achievement gap still exists between income groups.

     

    In further addressing the achievement gap, schools would benefit from broadening the scope of their summer school programs to include social and emotional skills.  In fact, social and emotional skills become even more important during summer school because it is largely directed at children from low-income households.  Research shows  that students from low-income households are the very students that need social and emotional skill development the most. Similar to its effect on academic performance, household income is directly related to a child’s social and emotional development.  That is, children from low-income households are at a greater risk of having weaker social and emotional skills than their middle-class counterparts.  Strong social and emotional skills, in turn, have been linked to improved academic achievement. Therefore, the achievement gap persists because low household income negatively affects not just academic achievement alone, but also social and emotional skill development. Therefore, summer school programs unintentionally maintain the achievement gap by ignoring social and emotional skill development and only targeting one contributing factor of the achievement gap—academics. 

     

    If many of our students from low-income households will be spending their summer days in school instead of in ways that mirror our visions of idyllic summer days; let’s at least commit to make their learning as idyllic as possible.  To truly make a difference for these students and reduce the achievement gap, social and emotional skill deficiencies need to be addressed along with academic deficiencies.  Then, summer will become a bit more ideal.     

       

    

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• WILL #6 WILL #6

  • From: Joshua_Garcia
  • Description:

    What I Learned Lately (WILL #6)

    5/3/13

    @Garciaj9Josh

     

    In education, this time of year is often filled with a sea of unknowns.  Educators are continuously battling the complexity of mixed interpretations of budgets, staffing needs, legislative mandates, and emotional conversations regarding graduation, remediation and promotion.  Intertwined throughout this turbulence, are individual and collective celebrations of the social emotional and academic growth of our students and staff.  Days filled with safe and healthy environments where students, staff and community support, engage and challenge themselves minute by minute.

     

    During this time of year, I personally struggle to find inspiration.  I am often engaged in activities that leave me perplexed.  Personally, I struggle to see how these discussions, debates and our activities that help our students.  Rather, these conversations appear to be dominated by personal interests by "Hope Thieves".  These “thieves” are robbing the resources (time, money, and add barriers) that are designed to support our students hopes and dreams.

     

    From these experience I have learned that I should not be "surprised by being surprised".  I am often struck by the intense high that I get from new discoveries in the human spirit.  I know I should not be surprised by the magic of those that I humbly serve with.  However, when I am awaken to those "Hope Heroes" around me, I am elevated to new heights.  Like many heroes, we may never know their motivation and or identity.  Let me tell about a few "Hope Heroes" that recently, I heard about.

     

    One of our student, Zachary, was facing the brick wall of our states standardized testing requirements.  Zachary had already been accepted to College and is eligible of a scholarship.  One hero spent hours upon hours combing through files to identify multiple measures to ensure that Zachary, a student of poverty, graduates from high school and is able to access their dreams by going to College.

     

    One of our moms was battling domestic violence and was facing the reality that she needed to run with her family support in order to provide stability and safety for herself and our students.  One of our heroes, worked behind the scenes to counsel, support and develop an action plan for this family.  The result was nothing more than amazing.  Our family was able to stay in the area, in safe place and our students were able to remain in their schools and not lose any learning time. 

     

    This week I was lost, I stood still.  What I saw was the examples of heroes flying around me.  In between the two breathes that I took, I realized life takes place.

     

    Finally from Hemingway - From Whom the Bell Tolls:

    Help me, O Lord, tomorrow to comport myself as a man should in his last hours.  Help me, O Lord to understand clearly the needs of the day.  Help me, O Lord, to dominate the movement of my legs that I should not run when the bad moment comes.  Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a man tomorrow in the day of battle.  Since I have asked this aid of thee, please grant it, knowing I would not ask it if it were not serious, and I will ask nothing of thee again.

     

     

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• WILL#5 WILL#5

  • From: Joshua_Garcia
  • Description:

    What I Learned Lately (WILL #5)

    4/23/13

    @Garciaj9Josh

     

    Maya Angelou once said, “Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud”.  When I first heard this phrase I was taken back about the idea that we may never know when we are making a difference in someone’s life.  At any point, anyone of us may be seen as “Rainbow” in a dark and cloudy life.  This past week I observed first hand a few rainbows in the making.

     

    First, I visited one of our schools and got a chance to meet “Jason” and “Marcus”.  Jason is a first grader who struggles and relies on the staff to help him be successful.  He can’t make it through a day or a lesson without being able to sit with his friend Marcus.  I was touched by how our staff has embraced Jason’s learning needs.  They encourage Jason to own his learning and be responsible for keeping Marcus up to speed on his lessons.  Staff arranges chairs and support when they are together or when Jason wants to be alone.  When I met Jason, he was smiling and on the “go” and I am sure Marcus was right with him.  Jason is the only one that can see Marcus.  Instead of fighting Jason and making him feel unsafe; our staff has been a rainbow.  Unfortunately, it is likely that society will require Marcus to hide and likely Jason will feel alone.  However this year, Jason’s clouds have a break and he is able to grow and learn in a safe environment.

     

    On Monday morning, I watched a team of rainbows go to work.  Tragically, four of LHS students will never be the same, one died, one is in prison and two more will forever be scared.  Behind the scenes, many adults were trying to make meaning, provide support and frantically communicate in order to put action steps in place.  As I sat in the back of the theater with the staff, you could feel heaviness of the room.  I watched our colleagues, deliver the horrific news with grace and humility.  This was followed with our Crisis Response team guiding us on the unknown of emotions and reactions that were sure to follow.  This group may be the unsung heroes of our organization.  Knowing that any minute they may be called upon, they gently navigate the mixed emotions of anger, sadness, and fear.  On Friday, many of these same rainbows were at the funeral to support the family and bury one of our own.  That afternoon, I visited the young man in jail.  Rarely, if ever have I felt so helpless.  I want to forget this week and I want to move on.  Unfortunately, I know that is selfish of me and that we need forgive but not forget.  When, I drove home there was no rainbow, there was no happy ending, just the sobering effect that I was awake.   If we truly believe in ALL, then we have a responsibility to be awakened by the truths that surround us daily.

     

    Finally -

    "Denial of the truths in our society doesn't console the awaken soul, it doesn't fill up any students' bucket of hope, all it does is leave our future empty".

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• WILL #5 WILL #5

  • From: Joshua_Garcia1
  • Description:

    What I Learned Lately (#WILL 5)

    4/23/13

    @Garciaj9Josh

     

    Maya Angelou once said, “Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud”.  When I first heard this phrase I was taken back about the idea that we may never know when we are making a difference in someone’s life.  At any point, anyone of us may be seen as “Rainbow” in a dark and cloudy life.  This past week I observed first hand a few rainbows in the making.

     

    First, I visited one of our schools and got a chance to meet “Jason” and “Marcus”.  Jason is a first grader who struggles and relies on the staff to help him be successful.  He can’t make it through a day or a lesson without being able to sit with his friend Marcus.  I was touched by how our staff has embraced Jason’s learning needs.  They encourage Jason to own his learning and be responsible for keeping Marcus up to speed on his lessons.  Staff arranges chairs and support when they are together or when Jason wants to be alone.  When I met Jason, he was smiling and on the “go” and I am sure Marcus was right with him.  Jason is the only one that can see Marcus.  Instead of fighting Jason and making him feel unsafe; our staff has been a rainbow.  Unfortunately, it is likely that society will require Marcus to hide and likely Jason will feel alone.  However this year, Jason’s clouds have a break and he is able to grow and learn in a safe environment.

     

    On Monday morning, I watched a team of rainbows go to work.  Tragically, four of LHS students will never be the same, one died, one is in prison and two more will forever be scared.  Behind the scenes, many adults were trying to make meaning, provide support and frantically communicate in order to put action steps in place.  As I sat in the back of the theater with the staff, you could feel heaviness of the room.  I watched our colleagues, deliver the horrific news with grace and humility.  This was followed with our Crisis Response team guiding us on the unknown of emotions and reactions that were sure to follow.  This group may be the unsung heroes of our organization.  Knowing that any minute they may be called upon, they genentley navigate the mixed emotions of anger, sadness, and fear.  On Friday, many of these same rainbows were at the funeral to support the family and bury one of our own.  That afternoon, I visited the young man in jail.  Rarely, if ever have I felt so helpless.  I want to forget this week and I want to move on.  Unfortunately, I know that is selfish of me and that we need forgive but not forget.  When, I drove home there was no rainbow, there was no happy ending, just the sobering effect that I was awake.   If we truly believe in ALL, then we have a responsibility to be awakened by the truths that surround us daily.

     

    Finally -

    "Denial of the truths in our society doesn't console the awaken soul, it doesn't fill up any students' bucket of hope, all it does is leave our future empty".

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• L2L News: April 2013 L2L News: April 2013

  • From: Meg_Simpson
  • Description:

     

    Thanks for a fantastic 2013 ASCD Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois!

    Read ASCD Executive Director Dr. Gene Carter’s annual conference reflections here.

    Your To-Do List: Action Items for ASCD Leaders

    •  Submit a proposal for ASCD’s 2014 Annual Conference. ASCD is accepting proposals for 2014 Annual Conference presentations until May 15.

     

    Register for the Whole Child Virtual Conference: May 6–10, 2013

    Join ASCD for its third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference. This free online event offers thought leadership discussions; presentations from leading authors and experts; and an exploration of the steps outstanding schools, communities, and individual countries take as they move along the continuum of a whole child approach—from implementation to sustainability to culture. No matter where you are on this continuum, you’ll find lessons you can learn and questions you can ask to improve and grow your schools.

    This year the conference will include 24 sessions over 7 days between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. eastern time, with sessions on May 2 and 3 specifically for Australasian and European audiences. This year’s conference speakers include authors and experts Thomas Armstrong, Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, Eric Jensen, Wendy Ostroff, William Parrett and Kathleen M. Budge, Pasi Sahlberg, and Yong Zhao.

    Sessions will also feature presentations from ASCD Emerging Leaders, ASCD’s Outstanding Young Educators Award winner, the recipient of Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award, and members of ASCD’s Whole Child Network of Schools.

    Registration is now open. Go to www.ascd.org/wcvirtualconference to sign up.

     

    ASCD Nominations Committee Applications Open in May

    ASCD is seeking ASCD leaders who are interested in serving on the 2013–14 ASCD Nominations Committee. More information—the committee’s charge, qualifications for service, and time commitment—will be available starting May 1 on www.ascd.org. ASCD will be accepting applications May 1–31. We invite ASCD leaders to consider their interest in this opportunity over the next few weeks before the application becomes available.

      

     ASCD Leaders in Action: News from the ASCD Leader Community

     

    ASCD Student Chapters Help Chicago’s Hungry During ASCD Annual Conference

    On March 15, 46 ASCD Student Chapter members volunteered to make a difference in the fight against hunger in Chicago. Working together the Friday morning before ASCD’s Annual Conference, the students packaged more than 15,000 pounds of food to help feed the nearly 678,000 people who rely on emergency and supplemental food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Thank you and congratulations to our ASCD Student Chapter volunteers! Read the full Conference Daily article.

    
    

    ASCD Forum Session at ASCD Annual Conference Gives Educators a Voice on Teacher and Principal Effectiveness

    On March 17, ASCD Past President Debra Hill facilitated a discussion of the ASCD Forum topic “how do we define and measure teacher and principal effectiveness?” Ten ASCD leaders stepped forward to help lead the discussion:

    ·         Jason Flom, ASCD Emerging Leader

    ·         Ben Shuldiner, Position Advisory Committee Member

    ·         Amy Vanden Boogart, ASCD Emerging Leader

    ·         Jeffrey Lofthus, Alaska ASCD Executive Director

    ·         Daina Lieberman, ASCD Emerging Leader

    ·         Mamzelle Adolphine, Professional Interest Community Facilitator

    ·         Laurie McCullough, Virginia ASCD Executive Director

    ·         Alice Wells, Arizona ASCD Executive Director

    ·         Matthew Cotton, ASCD Emerging Leader

    ·         Torian White, ASCD Emerging Leader

     

    Session attendees stepped up to the front of the room to share their thoughts and also posted tweets to the #ASCDForum hashtag. Many thanks to the ASCD leaders who participated to make this session a success!

     

    Congratulations to ASCD Affiliate Recognition Award Winners

    Please join ASCD in congratulating the ASCD Affiliate Recognition Award Recipients:

    Two affiliates were recognized for the 2013 Overall Excellence Award: Iowa ASCD, for its increased focus on integrating technology into professional learning opportunities and their influence and advocacy work with ASCD, and New Hampshire ASCD, for its work to increase membership and provide increased professional learning opportunities, such as Common Core workshops.

    In addition, New Jersey ASCD received the Area Excellence Award for Programs, Products, and Services for their leadership in their state as a trusted source for professional learning. Texas ASCD received an Exceptional Progress Award in Influence and Policy, and Alberta ASCD, Ohio ASCD, and Vermont ASCD were all recipients of the Exceptional Progress Award in Programs, Products, and Services.

    Read the Conference Daily article.

     

    Welcome to the “Educating Beyond Disabilities” Professional Interest Community

    Please join ASCD in welcoming our newest Professional Interest Community, facilitated by 2011 ASCD Emerging Leader Christina Yuknis. Please join her group on ASCD EDge.

     

    Tennessee ASCD Featured in ASCD Inservice Blog Series

    Weasked some of our affiliate leaders to tell us how the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has been going in their home states. In the sixth post of the series, Tennessee ASCD President-Elect John Combs writes about the challenges and successes that Tennessee has had with CCSS implementation.

    Previous Posts:New Jersey ASCD,Alabama ASCD, Arkansas ASCD, New Hampshire ASCD, and Florida ASCD

    
    

    Congratulations!

    • ASCD Emerging Leader Jessica Bohn wrote an article for this month’s Educational Leadership issue on The Principalship. Read her article “First-Year Hurdles” on ascd.org.
      
      
    • ASCD Emerging Leader Craig Martin is featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Teachers of Color Magazine.Read the article (PDF).
      
      
    • Niles West High School Dean and ASCD Emerging Leader Alum Antwan Babakhani has been promoted to be the school’s new assistant principal effective July 1. Read more about Antwan.
      
      
    • ASCD Emerging Leader Torian White was featured in a blog post for the points he made during the ASCD Forum discussion. Read the post about Torian.

     

    Other News

    • ASCD Emerging Leaders Curtis Pelham,Amy Murphy, and Armentress Robinson were recently featured in the ASCDInservice blog “8 Questions” series.
       
    • Check out Fred Ende’sWhole Child Blog post, “Exceeding Needs Through a Partnership Perspective.”
      
      
    • Minnesota ASCD’sSpring Conference, “Creating a Highly Engaged Classroom,” takes place on April 25.
       
    • South Carolina ASCD’s Spring Conference was a huge success! Read more at scascd.org.
      
      
    • Check out Illinois ASCD’s revised website.
      
      
    • Five new members joined the ASCD Board of Directors at ASCD Annual Conference. Read the press release.

     

    Meet ASCD President Becky Berg

    Becky J. Berg is from a family of educators. "My dad was a school board president; my mom was a career educator; and my sister, my grandmother, and my great-grandfather were educators," she says. Despite the genetic pull, Berg wasn't completely convinced she would follow in the family's footsteps until her experience as a summer camp counselor while she was in college. It was then that she realized how much she loved working with kids. Read the full Conference Daily article.

     

    Congratulations to the 2013 Outstanding Young Educator Award Winners!

    ASCD salutes a new generation’s passion for education excellence through this year’s selection of two Outstanding Young Educator Award winners: Joshua Garcia, deputy superintendent of Tacoma Public Schools (Wash.), and Parkville High School  (Parkville, Md.) teacher Ryan Twentey. Twentey teaches art, photography, and interactive media production and also serves as the school’s technology liaison. Read the full Conference Daily article.

     

    Interactive ASCD 2012 Annual Report Features ASCD Leaders

    Check out the ASCD 2012 Annual Report, entitled “Creating Solutions: The ASCD Revolution in Motion.” This interactive report features videos footage of ASCD leaders, including ASCD Emerging Leader Steven Anderson, Florida ASCD President Alina Davis, Alabama ASCD Executive Director Jane Cobia, ASCD Board Member Harriet Arnold, and Connecticut ASCD President David Cormier.

    
    

    Throughout April at wholechildeducation.org: Principal Leadership

    Principals are the key players in developing the climate, culture, and processes in their schools. They are critical to implementing meaningful and lasting school change and in the ongoing school-improvement process. Principals who have a clear vision; inspire and engage others in embracing change for improvement; drive, facilitate, and monitor the teaching and learning process; and foster a cohesive culture of learning are the collaborative leaders our schools need to fully commit to ensuring each student—and school staff member—is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

    What qualities do principals in today’s (and tomorrow’s) schools need to fulfill their roles as visionary, instructional, influential, and learning leaders?

    There are two episodes of the Whole Child Podcast in April for you to download and share. The first episode, “Leveling and Raising the Playing Field,” features school staff from Oregon’s Milwaukie High School, winner of the 2013 Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award, and is available now. On April 11, the second episode will be available. It will focus on principal leadership and include guests Kevin Enerson, principal of Whole Child Network school Le Sueur-Henderson High School in Minnesota, and Jessica Bohn, ASCD Emerging Leader and principal of  Gibsonville Elementary School in North Carolina.

    Throughout the month, read the Whole Child Blog and tell us what has worked in your school and with your students. E-mail us and share resources, research, and examples.

     

    The Best-Case Scenario

    As we review and reinforce our schools’ safety measures, we aren’t planning for the worst-case scenario that might happen; we are working to make sure the best-case scenario—where schools are learning environments that are physically, socially, and emotionally safe for students and adults—is an everyday occurrence that does happen. Read more on the Whole Child Blog.

    In February and March, we looked at what we, as educators, believe is crucial to making our schools safe—not just physically safe, but also safe places to teach and learn. Listen to the Whole Child Podcast with guests Joseph Bergant II, superintendent of Chardon Schools in Ohio; Howard Adelman, professor of psychology at UCLA and codirector of the School Mental Health Project and the Center for Mental Health in Schools (a whole child partner); and Jonathan Cohen, adjunct professor in psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and president and cofounder of whole child partner National School Climate Center.

    Have you signed up to receive the Whole Child Newsletter? Read the latest newsletter and visit the archive for more strategies, resources, and tools you can use to help ensure that each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

      

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    Association News

    • ASCD Announces 2013 Conference on Teaching Excellence in National Harbor, Md.—ASCD will host its Conference on Teaching Excellence June 28–30, 2013, in National Harbor, Md. The conference—which will take place over two and a half days—will focus on the topic of teaching excellence and will have more than 150 sessions tailored for educators of all levels, including teachers, teacher leaders, principals, and district supervisors. Read the full press release.
      
      
    • ASCD Announces New Spring and Summer Professional Development Institutes Supporting Common Core Implementation—ASCD announces new one- and two-day Professional Development Institutes supporting educators nationwide as they implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Read the full press release.
      
      
    • The Third Annual ASCD Whole Child Virtual Conference Launches May 6, 2013—ASCD’s third annual Whole Child Virtual Conference, entitled “Moving from Implementation to Sustainability to Culture,” will run May 6–10, 2013. The free and exclusively online event—which attracted more than 900 participants last year—offers educators around the globe 24 sessions to support their work to implement and sustain a whole child approach to education. Read the full press release.
      
      
    • ASCD Names 2013 Elected Leaders and Affiliate Awards Recipients—ASCD announced Becky J. Berg—superintendent of the Deer Park School District in Deer Park, Wash. —as the association’s new President. Berg took office at the conclusion of ASCD’s 68th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Chicago, Ill., on March 18. Read the full press release.
      
      
    • ASCD Launches Interactive 2012 Annual Report—ASCD is pleased to announce the release of the association’s 2012 Annual Report, entitled “Creating Solutions: The ASCD Revolution in Motion.” This report showcases the association’s achievements and serves as a resource discovery tool for educators who seek programs, products, and services that empower them to support the success of each learner. Read the full press release.
      
      
    • Florida Association of District School Superintendents Launches Professional Development Partnership with ASCD—At ASCD’s 68th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show, ASCD and the Florida Association of District School Superintendents (FADSS) announced a new partnership to provide FADSS members statewide with customized professional development that will build participants’ capacity for successfully leading, supporting, and monitoring the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in their districts. Read the full press release.
      
      
    • ASCD Selects Washington State Deputy Superintendent and Maryland Teacher as 2013 Outstanding Young Educators—At ASCD’s 68th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Chicago, Ill., Joshua Garcia, deputy superintendent of Tacoma Public Schools in Tacoma, Wash., and Ryan Twentey, a photography teacher at Parkville High School in Parkville, Md., were announced as winners of the association’s prestigious 2013 Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA). Read the full press release.
      
      
    • Oregon's Milwaukie High School Named 2013 Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award Winner—ASCD announced that Milwaukie High School, located in Milwaukie, Ore., is the 2013 winner of the association’s Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award. Principal Mark Pinder accepted the award on behalf of Milwaukie High School from ASCD Executive Director and CEO Dr. Gene R. Carter at ASCD's 68th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Chicago, Ill., on Sunday, March 17. Read the full press release.
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• Complexity: Chaos versus Compl Complexity: Chaos versus Complexity

  • From: Kevin_Goddard
  • Description:

    Many confuse chaos theory with complexity theory. Chaos theory is defined by nonlinear, chaotic systems, homogeneous in nature, moving toward strange attractors which may very well describe dysfunctional organizational units within a complex system. Complexity theory seeks to understand heterogeneous complex adaptive systems moving toward one or more attractor patterns with the ability for “strong emergence” with radically novel results which describes the institution of education as a whole (Gilstrap, 2005).

    Theory is meant to explain in order to gain understanding to the point of accurate predictability whereas the science of complexity serves as a “conceptual framework” or paradigm to analyze complex adaptive systems (Semetsky, 2006). Bloch (2005) says, “It is in the nature of each [complex adaptive entity] to adapt to its environment and internal state to maintain its life” (p. 195). Levin (2002) defines the properties of complex adaptive systems as diversity and individuality of components, localized interactions among those components, and an autonomous process that uses the outcomes of those interactions to select a subset of those components for replication or enhancement. Schools can only be complex if they are more than their ‘complicated’ parts. Structure is not enough since those components have to be in competition and cooperation with each other to have enough tension for the system to become emergent as appropriate components within the school are replicated and enhanced. Schools are just now beginning to embrace complexity since the past has been an effort to revolve and replicate the entire institution of education around a point attractor and wait for the next cycle to occur.

    In Waldrop’s (1992) masterpiece, he defines complexity as:

    A class of behaviors in which the components of the system never quite lock into place, yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either. These are the systems that are both stable enough to store information, and yet evanescent enough to transmit it. These are the systems that can be organized to perform complex computations, to react to the world, to be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive (p. 293).

    While Stacey’s (1996) following piece examining complexity in human organizations speculates

    what the peculiarly human features do seem to add is potential complexity; they make the operation of human systems more complex and unpredictable rather than less so…the rate of information flow, the level of diversity in schemas, and the richness of connectivity among agents all remain as control parameters [with] further control parameters added…of power differentials and levels of anxiety containment (p. 114)

     which move the organization along the complexity continuum and/or edge of chaos.

    “Complexity arises because you have a great many of these simple components interacting simultaneously” (Waldrop, 1992, p. 86). Since broad features of complex adaptive systems are knowable (Levin, 2002), “the challenge for theorists…is to formulate universal laws that describe when and how such complexities emerge in nature” (Waldrop, 1992, p. 86). Understandings of complex organizations coalesce around relationships, especially in schools where the density of network connections determines the level of complexity (Bloch, 2005; Gilstrap, 2005).

    A supersystem such as education has “a holographic or fractal aspect in which the parts interact continually to recreate the whole and the whole affects how the parts interact” (Stacey, 1996, p. 21). As smaller organizational units or fractals, which look similar to the overall organization, paradoxically enable and constrain each other through the layers of the organization, leaders have the opportunity to understand, through complexity science, the “dynamic, co-implicated…integrated levels—including the neurological, the experiential, the contextual/material, the social, the symbolic, the cultural, and the ecological—” of the school “rather than isolated phenomena” (Davis & Simmt, 2006, p. 296). Levin (2002, p. 16-17) asks “seductive” questions surrounding the study of complex adaptive systems that make their study relevant to educational leaders facing diminishing resources, increasing accountability, a hostile political environment, rigid school structures protected by reluctant staff and unions, growing concerns of equity and social justice, and absent family involvement:

    • How does cooperation arise and become sustained?
    • How do social norms arise in human societies and become sustained against external influences?
    • Can this understanding help us to sustain patterns of behavior that serve the common good…
    • And to change antiquated frameworks that are resistant to progress simply because they have become frozen accidents of a cultural evolutionary process?

    The dominant metaparadigm currently views organizations predominantly in equilibrium with members acting rationally and cooperating. Outcomes are predictable in the long run within a regular and uniform world. A metaparadigm based on the science of complexity would understand effective organizations as far from equilibrium operating at the edge of chaos, but not quite falling into chaos. The organization could embrace the paradox of competition and self-organizing cooperation in the behavior of its agents. Actions into outcomes would be unpredictable except in the extremely short-term as “the links between actions and their long-term outcomes are lost in the complex interactions between various components of the system” (Stacey, 1996, p. 248).

    An educational complexity metaparadigm would serve as a framework for understanding how school systems act as complex adaptive systems within local, national, and global ecosystems (Waldrop, 1992).  Because complex adaptive systems have many parts cooperating and competing, interaction is too overwhelming to reflect on at once, so, paradoxically, educators use many lenses to focus on one or two aspects of a system while keeping in mind that all the systems and agents working together actually account for what is happing on local and global scales (Stacey, 1996). Educational complexity is the matrix of cultural, social, environmental, political, symbolic, economic, historical, and directional interactions and contexts of which any given school is comprised. A school would not exist in as richly a manner and be able to provide the degree of cognitive stimulation necessary for the development of future citizenry without the complexity existent in the public school system. If we were all white, middle-class males from the same geographic location of the U. S. and would never work outside the local school community, then maybe complexity would not be as big an issue; regardless, the brain is a complex learning system that grows by being challenged and making connections through complex problem-solving situations (Nasir & Hand, 2006).

    Education is constantly barraged by new programs and new practices (Marzano et al., 2005). The recent trend of comprehensive school reform recognizes the complexity of the school system and attempts “to address all aspects of school effectiveness” (U.S. Department of Education, 1998, p. 21); however, through a lens of complexity, leadership recognizes resources “not as discrete items…but as inter-related variables that are a part of a comprehensive plan to impact student achievement in high-poverty schools. This is an important step beyond one-shot remedies or magic bullets” (Machtinger, 2007, p. 7). Marzano and colleagues(2005) agree with Fritz (1984) and Fullan (2001) that education is too complex for absolute truths or “once-and-for-all answers” (p. 67). DuFour and Eaker (1998) reiterate, “The interconnectedness of the elements affecting teaching and learning makes it impossible to attribute either improvements or problems to a single area” (p. 268). Leaders prepare for structural and pedagogical changes in school function as complex, difficult, and dependent on context while gauging multiple cores of successful practice within unstable environments (Marzano et al., 2005; Schechter & Tischler, 2007; Chenoweth, 2007).

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• Complexity: Sociocultural Capi Complexity: Sociocultural Capital

  • From: Kevin_Goddard
  • Description:

    Attention to sociocultural capital in High-Performing High-Poverty Schools (HP2S) helps teachers understand where marginalized students are coming from. Teachers who share a sociocultural identity with students in the school may increase achievement in marginalized students (Chu Clewell & Campbell, 2007). Regardless of the focus on AYP in reading and math, ultimately, education is “the process of cultural transmission” (Rury, 2005, p. 10). The cultural resources imparted to students become capital “when they function as a ‘social relation of power’ by becoming objects of struggle as valued resources” (Swartz, 1997, p. 43). Cultural capital has a positive effect on all educational outcomes (Dumais, 2005). Acting as a resource for social power is why sociocultural capital is hoarded from marginalized groups by the dominant class. The power connected to cultural capital is a valuable resource “intersect[ing] with all aspects of cultural life” (p. 286). Bourdieu’s studies into capital have led him to believe that schools act as the main gatekeepers to capital giving the dominant class access to status, privilege, and symbolic power. “Schools offer the primary institutional setting for the production, transmission, and accumulation of various forms of cultural capital” (Swartz, 1997, p. 189) making restriction to capital through education a likely abuse by the privileged who already control education policy and practice (Nesbit, 2006). Even some reformers intent on social justice follow the dominant class way of thinking, valuing the expertise of professionals and managers over the working class, which presumes that “knowledge deficits” in the working class may be overcome through greater effort to move closer to dominant ideology (Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2005).

    A long-term view of student success by educators recognizes that students are not blank slates waiting to be filled, but “are the products of many years of complex interactions with their family of origin and cultural, social, political, and educational environments” (Kuh et al., 2007, p. 5). The combined SES of students in the school along with differences in sociocultural capital is an important factor in student performance. The resulting push for accountability has narrowed education’s view of what schools should be doing down to reading, math, and science (Henig et al., 1999; Kuh et al., 2007; Rury, 2005).

    Schools are middle class institutions where teachers have high levels of middle class sociocultural capital and reward students who have it, but may consciously or subconsciously discriminate against students who do not. When teacher and student capital is congruent, the performance of marginalized students is more likely to benefit. Popular society and specialists transmit values about the best way to raise children which is generally followed by middle class society aligning them with the beliefs of educational institutions. Working class parents are slower to change child-rearing practices to dominant practice keeping them out of sync with the school’s perception of the ideal home environment influencing teacher perception of the child and the child’s home life (Dumais, 2005; Lareau, 2003; Nesbit, 2006; Chu Clewell & Campbell, 2007).

    The test scores of marginalized students would currently be lower if schools had not already been making progress at reducing the disadvantages of family educational background and SES previous to the passage of NCLB (Henig et al., 1999). Educational leaders, principals in particular, use an understanding of “cultural, social, and the promise of economic capital” to bring competing groups and individuals together to find common goals and shift marginalized interests to the center by “mutual choice” (Watkins & Tisdell, 2006, p. 156). Schools tap into a sense of agency in communities to bring about mutual choice to move toward federal goals, otherwise mandates like NCLB will ultimately get nowhere (Cohen & Ball, 1999, p. 23). Different forms of capital, but sociocultural capital in particular, can operate as lenses principals use to view particular educational contexts. A lens of the middle-class, white norm limits a school’s responsiveness to cultural capital possessed by students (Machtinger, 2007; Swartz, 1997).

    Learning capacity is equivalent to intellectual capital (Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2005). All forms of capital are resources “that can be drawn on for social advancement” (Rury, 2005, p. 13). Bourdieu, one of the world experts on capital, believes there are four basic types of capital: economic, cultural, social, and symbolic with economic capital being the most important form in the United States followed by cultural (Swartz, 1997). While school cannot provide students with economic capital, schools can help students develop the other types of capital. Incongruence between the amount and type of capital students possess and the forms of capital valued in the school community can cause problems for the student (Kennedy et al., 2006).

    Cultural capital has been defined in numerous ways. Church (2005) quotes Nieto’s definition of culture as

    the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion…Culture is dynamic; multi-faceted; embedded in context, influenced by social, economic, and political factors; created and socially constructed; learned; and dialectical (p. 48).

    Or in other words: highly complex. Cultural capital comes in an objectified form such as works of art, an embodied form based in an appreciation and understanding of objectified cultural capital, and institutionalized form found in educational credits and degrees. Cultural capital is a resource used to gain or maintain power and privilege. Based on the assumption that certain attitudes, behaviors, and values are more admired and rewarded in society than others, dominant forms of cultural capital give students who possess them an advantage over marginalized students (Dumais, 2005; Rury, 2005).

    Cultural capital, within the school setting, is the embodiment of the previous experience and learning of a community of people and influences how students accumulate, exchange, and utilize resources they gain from the school. Culture can be verbal facility, general cultural awareness, aesthetic preferences, scientific knowledge, and educational credentials and becomes a power source. Objectified cultural capital such as books, art, scientific instruments, and other tools require cultural abilities to use which can impact student engagement and parent involvement (Cohen & Ball, 1999; Stacey, 1996; Swartz, 1997). Parent access to the educational setting is also mediated by their personal experiences with school and other education-related institutions. In theU.S., where the dominant culture is not as strong as in other countries, cultural capital benefits both students from privileged backgrounds and all students who possess it allowing for “cultural mobility”. As cultural capital is distributed unevenly by society, schools make important decisions based on capital they have or capital they are trying to get which can be attributed to school failure as opposed to the limitations of individuals (Dumais, 2005; Lee & Bowen, 2006; Nasir & Hand, 2006; Schaughency & Ervin, 2006).

    Coleman expands cultural and human capital theories into social capital which is a “community-based support-system network” that is context specific and has the two common elements of social structures and facilitation of individual and group actions within those structures. Social capital is a network of individual human capital. This view seems too limiting to the richness of cultural capital as described by Bourdieu (Musial, 1999). Social capital is the benefit derived from social networks and organizations including relationships within family and community that generates trust and schema to increase the capacity for collaboration (Dumais, 2005; Farmer-Hinton & Adams, 2006; Lee & Bowen, 2006; Rury, 2005; Zacharakis & Flora, 2005).  Agents in the form of individuals and class will “struggle for social distinction” in a form of self-organization (Swartz, 1997). In this light, capital seems destined to be reproduced as “the quality of education children receive is directly related in part to the ability of parents to generate social capital” (Noguera, 2004, p. 2155).

    Obviously, the forms of cultural, social, human, and economic capital are often interrelated. Cultural capital intersects with social capital to give agents more influence. This intersection means agency cannot be separated from the social and cultural contexts within the global environment in which it occurs. While social capital can be a means to a desirable end, the dominant class will most often prevail as they possess more capital (Lattuca, 2002; Lee & Bowen, 2006; Watkins & Tisdell, 2006).

    More simply, “culture can be thought of as a set of behavioral characteristics or traits that are typical of a social group” (Rury, 2005, p. 9). The social setting is an organization of networks between social positions where dominant and marginalized groups compete for control of resources. Capital is specific to setting and does not exist without it. The education system reproduces social inequity where the possession of cultural capital leads to academic success. The most valuable form of capital in school is cultural capital congruent with capital valued within that particular school’s social setting (Dumais, 2005).

    Whereas the social-constructivist perspective makes a distinction between the individual cognitive activities and the environment in which the individual is present, the socio-cultural perspective regards the individual as being part of that environment. Accordingly, learning cannot be understood as a process that is solely in the mind of the learner…Knowledge, according to this perspective, is constructed in settings of joint activity…Learning is a process of participating in cultural practices, a process that structures and shapes cognitive activity (De Laat & Lally, 2003, p. 14).

    Nasir and Hand (2006) explain this complex interaction of social and cultural capital within specific environments as proof that educators need to attend to fostering agency in students’ focus on local problems. The number of students bringing middle class capital with them to school is decreasing and the number of students bringing sociocultural capital from the lower classes is increasing. “As in any demographic switch, the prevailing rules and policies eventually give way to the group with the largest numbers” (Payne, 2001, p. 79).

    Engrained dispositions from previous experience can sub- or un-consciously limit student success. Called “habitus”, these dispositions provide the opportunity to mitigate cultural predispositions by structuring school situations and interactions with positive models and diversity-oriented experiences (Kuh et al., 2007). However, the concept of habitus does not account for the complexity and variety of hopes and dreams of different groups. Humanity is too varied and complex to be perfectly categorized into any model, but habitus does give a vocabulary to talk about how dominant and marginalized groups may be socialized starting at a young age. “Habitus…privileges the basic idea that action is governed by a ‘practical sense’ of how to move in the social world. Culture is a practical tool used for getting along in the social world” (Swartz, 1997, p. 115). Habitus is a collection of cultural habits.

    Field is the social setting organized around types and combinations of capital which habitus operates. Schools act as a field for the competitive investment, exchange, and accumulation of various forms of capital (Swartz, 1997). Struggling within a local environment, schools should reflect the shifting community field. “Education clearly affects the course of social development, and schools reflect the influence of their immediate social context” (Rury, 2005, p. 1).

    Schools are viewed as vehicles for individual social and economic mobility. The education field itself provides mobility of cultural capital for low SES/marginalized groups and is often one of few examples children and community members have of mobility and opportunity. This perception itself may create the reproduction of limited mobility in marginalized groups. In truth, some schools value cultural knowledge while others are more forgiving (Dumais, 2005; Henig et al., 1999; Johnson et al., 2000).

    Empowerment of marginalized communities is collective, not individual. In order to realize change in the face of limited resources, communities rely on social capital for strength and agency. For school communities, this means that improved engagement can have profound consequences in improving achievement, agency, and equality (Schutz, 2006). Communalism helps build and accrue capital, generates “positive emotional energy”, and “may enhance motivation and engagement” (Seiler & Elmesky, 2007, p. 393). The social capital web is comprised of household, neighborhood, and school (Musial, 1999). But “working class peoples’ indigenous learning capacities…have been denied, suppressed, degraded or diverted within most capitalist schooling” (Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2005, p. 111). Overcoming cultural and historical differences “concerns activity and access to tools and mediated learning” (Portes, 2005, p. 176). Literacy, numeracy, and student well-being are practiced fluidly and dynamically across boundaries in social contexts. These pathways between family and community “need to be understood in out-of-home learning communities so that pedagogies, including assessment practices and the pedagogy of relationships can address the complexities related to children’s different life chances and ways of learning” (Kennedy et al., 2006, p. 16).

    “Biological models of deficiency [such as the Bell curve have been] replaced by cultural deficit models” (Nasir & Hand, 2006, p. 451). Private and charter schools can stick to a particular ideology that does not have to concern itself with discipline, ideology, and related social problems. These schools are successful because the students who attend them possess congruent sociocultural capital. The success of private and parochial schools suggests these schools acting as self-organizing units self-organize around the sociocultural capital available within and surround them as opposed to the capital they possess being superior (Bower, 2006; Portes, 2005; Walk, 1998). Capacity becomes a non-issue in middle class schools because the ingredients for success already reside in the boundaries and pathways established within the school community.

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• Complexity: Capacity Building Complexity: Capacity Building

  • From: Kevin_Goddard
  • Description:

    Capacity building is one of the buzz phrases in education due to the complex nature of how society defines student success: “academic achievement; engagement in educationally purposeful activities; satisfaction; acquisition of desired knowledge, skills, and competencies; persistence; and attainment of educational objectives” (Kuh et al., 2007, p. 10). Capacity building within schools could not focus on only one aspect of development within the school because a single group within the school community could not possess all of the capacity necessary to fuel student success. Research indicates that capacity building increases student achievement (Cooter, 2003). All educators in effective schools take responsibility for improvement and professional capacity (Eaker, DuFour & DuFour, 2002; Chu Clewell & Campbell, 2007). Capacity builds as schools focus on learning and getting resources into classrooms to directly benefit students (Machtinger, 2007; U.S. Department of Education, 1998).

    Many authors have tried to articulate a definition of capacity. Ervin, Schaughency, Goodman, McGlinchy, and Matthews (2006) simply define capacity as skills, know-how, and available resources. Gewertz (2007) describes capacity as “building the school’s and community partners’ skills to improve, securing the resources to do it” (no page #). Fullan (2006) focuses on marginalized students when he articulates that

    capacity building involves any policy, strategy, or other action undertaken that enhances the gap of student learning for all students. Usually it consists of the development of three components in concert: new knowledge and competencies, new and enhanced resources, and new and deeper motivation and commitment to improve things…all played out collectively (p. 28).

    Knowledgeable education leaders understand that capacity building relies on the mission and vision of the local context which probably does not include academic achievement as primary to the futures of marginalized students (Schutz, 2006). Low performing schools do not have the capacity to turn themselves around in academic achievement when principals and communities are simply trying to survive concentrated poverty, low expectations, weak courses, burnt out teachers, run down facilities, overcrowding, and poor student behavior (U.S. Department of Education, 1998).

    Narrowly focusing expectations of schools in the form of AYP for all students as measured by one unattainable and not always relevant standard, when schools were on the brink of realizing the importance of participation by marginalized populations and opening up the possibility of class mobility of these populations, deflected attention away from what should be the true purposes of education (Noddings, 2006). By focusing attention on education’s inability to teach 100% of children to read and calculate on grade level in grade three through eight and the resulting distrust and dissatisfaction of the school community, schools have an even harder time building the capacity necessary to reach a critical mass in affecting true educational reform to create a truly powerful school-community coalition that could realize greater economic support for low SES schools, more democratic decision-making within low SES communities, and ultimately, better informed and equipped citizens of the future from all classes that might disrupt the status quo of the dominant class (Noguera, 2004). Low SES schools that were led by forward thinking and steadfast administrators continued this course of building the capacity of the school community to ensure truly unlimited opportunity for their student populations where the resources were available to students to be successful academically, socially, and culturally (Nesbit, 2006).

    The problem for meaningful and sustainable school reform is not attributable to a lack of energy, ideas, or a willingness to change in education. Fads, competing priorities, and unreasonable mandates deluge leaders immobilizing efforts to sustain and expand promising initiatives (Henig et al., 1999). As funding resources shrink, efficiency and capacity building become more and more important (Kezar, 2006). Teaching specific practices to families over making the effort to build capacity may result in advantages in certain times and places, but a “right way” approach causes action to lose its distinctive character providing the advantage (Lareau, 2000). “We need to reframe our entire reform strategy so that it focuses relentlessly and deeply on capacity building and accountability—a difficult but…doable high-yield strategy” (Fullan, 2006, p. 28).

    Capacity building is closely related to organizational learning. Knowledge and understanding moves from tacit to explicit back to tacit. “Teacher change, like most human change, must emanate from within” (Bonner, 2006, p. 41). Education becomes more than parents deferring to teacher professional judgment and only being involved to the extent that teachers value (Henig et al., 1999). By understanding capacity, the “lonely teacher… reaches out to and joins the community and family [as] school is a network with permeable boundaries connecting it to the other institutions comprising society” (Musial, 1999, p. 120), instead of “erect[ing] barriers with one hand while reaching out with the other” (Schutz, 2006, p. 726). Often, in unsuccessful schools, agents simply “do not know how to improve it, or they do not believe it can be improved” (Fullan, 2006, p. 60) when collective efficacy holds the potential for a better future (DuFour & Eaker, 1998). Authoritative leadership is not sustainable; but collective, collaborative, distributed leadership can build capacity and commitment to changing school culture in marginalized communities successfully through cooperating and competition, boundary conversations, dialogue, and productive conflict (Barr & Parrett, 2007; Copland, 2003; Patterson & Rolheiser, 2004; Stacey, 1996).

    As part of capacity building, principals actively build leadership capacity in others by “broad-based, skillful participation; a shared vision; established norms of inquiry and collaboration; reflective practice; and improving student achievement” (Lambert, 2003, Chapter 1, p. 1; Copland, 2003) and by developing learning communities where staff growth expands their capacity to provide for students (Eaker, et al., 2002). School reform rooted in the efforts of individuals and dependent on individual academic success cannot be sustained and will fail; working class learning is determined by the cultural context in systems dependent on sociocultural capital as opposed to individual capacity (Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2005; Musial, 1999). If capacity relies only on relationships or only on structure, capacity will be too soft or too rigid. Capacity is essential. “Because social systems are uncertain by their very nature, schools are fragile places (Lambert, 2003, Chapter 10, p. 1).

                Many factors interact to determine educational capacity (O’Day et al., 1995). Yet, education experts agree, capacity building “must become a core feature of all improvement strategies” (Fullan, 2006, p. 104). Education has progressed to the point where discussion about capacity involves lists whose discussion centers around lines of responsibility versus lines of authority. These discussions describe capacity as built through clear accountability, relevant data available for analysis and application, and high expectations for staff with support of professional development (Walk, 1998). O’Day and colleagues (1995) feel “interdependence of organization and individual capacity” contributes to an understanding of instructional capacity (no page #). These authors list the five dimensions of organizational capacity as vision and leadership, collective commitment and cultural norms, knowledge or access to knowledge, organizational structures and management, and resources.

                McREL (Dean et al., 2005, p. 5) defines capacity in three ways:

    • Leadership capacity: knowledge and skills to fulfill or support leadership responsibilities associated with high levels of student achievement, manage implications of change, establish and maintain a purposeful community, and determine a focus for improvement efforts
    • School capacity: collective ability to address the school-level, teacher-level, and student-level factors that are associated with high levels of student achievement and the ability to maintain a purposeful community
    • Teacher capacity: individual teacher’s ability to help all students succeed, contribute to school-level efforts, and address the teacher-level and student-level factors that are associated with high levels of student achievement

    Complex descriptions alluding to practices evident in High-Performing High-Poverty Schools (HP2S) get past the tendency to create lists and begin to open the door to envisioning improving instructional capacity in schools as an interaction of multiple elements to “produce worthwhile and substantial learning” (Cohen & Ball, 1999). Capacity building efforts result in “adoption, sustainability, and evolution of innovation” to allow HP2S to emerge (Schaughency & Ervin, 2006, p. 162).

     

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• What is it about Teachers that What is it about Teachers that makes them targets?

  • From: Tom_Whitby
  • Description:

    People who know me understand that I have hot buttons that set me off when it comes to certain topics of education. That would actually encompass a huge number of topics including the rights of teachers. As I scanned the news channels last week, I came upon a story covering a teacher strike in one of the urban districts of the U.S. The reporter covering the event kept repeating and repeating a single line during his coverage that just set me off. “These teachers care more about their jobs than they do about the kids”.

     

    What is it that enables people to vilify teachers for placing the security of their families before the demands of their job? Of course the security of a teacher’s family must come before the demands of the job. Doesn’t everyone value their family and want to insure their safety and security as a first consideration in life?

    The fact is that here are many teachers who grapple with this very issue throughout their career. Teaching is a noble profession that does require sacrifice on the part of each educator to do right by his or her students. It is that self-sacrifice and “teacher’s guilt” that has enabled some districts to take advantage of teachers in regard to labor issues since the beginning of public education.

    As a generalization most teachers do not market themselves well. They do not expound upon their accomplishments. They view that as flaunting one’s self, and that is frowned upon by teachers. They do not like it when any teacher publicly claims credit for accomplishments. They consider it as bragging or showboating. Most teachers are humbled by public recognition. By and large teachers do what they do, not just because the public expects it, but it is they who expect it of themselves. That is their strength and their weakness. It is that very feature in teachers that enables a reporter to repeatedly state: “These teachers care more about their jobs than they do about the kids”. That question tears at the teacher more than it resonates with the public.

    People have been convinced that the American Education system is failing our country. Too often we try to simplify complicated issues. There are many, many reasons why our education system needs improvement. An objective analysis of the issues is warranted and should be done. Tax reformers, politicians, and business people looking to profit in an education market however often obscure that needed objectivity. To sell the snake oil, they simplify the problem, and target a simple solution, the teacher. It is a travesty that the very group that is maintaining the best of a system, which is in need of repair, while being maligned and even corrupted by the interference of non-educators, has come under attack. Teacher morale is the lowest it has ever been. Teachers are leaving the profession and youngsters are hesitant to enter it. This will only add to the problem.

    Teachers need to take back the discussion of education that has been hijacked by so many non-educators. They need to shout out their accomplishments. Administrators need to lead, as well as call out the praises of their teachers. Superintendents need to claim their leadership positions in education to stand against mandates being imposed that are detrimental to education and educators. We must have our leaders connect and collaborate on the needs and solutions for education and not have them dictated to educators by non-educators who are unaware. Public Education is very much in jeopardy if left to the politicians and profiteers. Timidity is not a virtue in a modern educator.  

  • Blog post
  • 1 month ago
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• Whac-A-Mole Leadership Whac-A-Mole Leadership

  • From: Steven_Weber
  • Description:

    One of my favorite arcade games is Whac-A-Mole.  When you drop your token in the machine, you have a limited amount of time to ‘whac’ as many moles as you can.  In the beginning of the game, one or two moles pop their heads up and it is fairly easy to hit each one.  About twenty seconds into the game, the moles start popping up three at a time and when you smash a mole with the mallet it may pop up again.

     

    Whac-A-Mole is similar to the daily routine of a principal.  From the time you arrive at school in the morning until late in the evening, moles pop up.  Your job is to address each mole and to prioritize which one is most important.  In this article, I am going to describe the ‘Six Moles’ a principal must address in order to be a good leader.

     

    Six Moles A Principal Must Address

     

    Family Concerns

    Principals receive phone calls, emails, and face-to-face messages from families.  If you work in the car rider line at an elementary school, a parent or grandparent may share a concern with you as they drop their child off at school.  When you check your email, you may have an email from multiple families with a concern about something that happened the day before.  There are times when a family member has a concern about something that is a district level concern, but it is the principal’s job to advocate for families and contact the central office or assist the family in navigating communication with the central office.  Families are not ‘moles’, but concerns pop up frequently and the principal cannot ignore family concerns.  It is not wise to ‘whac’ a family member, but the concern must be addressed.

     

    Instructional Rounds

    A principal wears several hats and the instructional leadership hat is critical to the success of the school.  If a principal is focused on email, returning phone calls, developing professional development, and attending meetings, he or she will not be able to focus on the main thing.  When a principal visits classrooms for formal or informal observations, it helps him or her get a pulse for student achievement and curriculum implementation.  A principal should be a coach, cheerleader, critical friend, and more!  If a principal does not visit classrooms on a regular basis, then the school will not continue to grow.  Instructional rounds cannot be something that a principal does when the ‘mole’ pops up.  This important leadership role must be part of the principal’s regular schedule.

     

    Student Discipline

    Student Discipline pops up unexpectedly.  There may be a student issue on the bus ride to school.  Students may have a dispute on the playground.  A student may break a school rule on the way to the next class.  Handling student discipline is one of the main roles of principal leadership.  Teachers and staff assist with student discipline, but when this ‘mole’ pops its head up, the principal cannot ignore it and move to the next three moles that pop up.  Some of you reading this article may be thinking, “If student discipline is a mole, then ‘whac’ it.”  You cannot use a hammer to hit every problem.  When you use the Whac-A-Mole approach to student discipline it means you handle the problems as they arise, rather than waiting for more problems to pop up.

     

    Email

    One of the most challenging ‘moles’ for a principal is email.  If you sit at your desk from 8:00 am – Noon, you will see multiple moles pop up on your screen.  More building principals are carrying a personal or school assigned smart phone on their hip.  At one point, it was easy to avoid email because you could walk away from the computer.  Principals have the ability to check email in the hallway, in meetings, while they are off campus, at home, and any time day or night.  If principals focus on each email as it pops up then they will get distracted and miss out on other important leadership duties.  Email is a great analogy to the game Whac-A-Mole.  When you reply to email it continues to pop up.  Time management is important and Whac-A-Mole Leadership involves more than whacking each email, hoping to bop all of the ‘email moles.’

     

    Professional Development

    Leading professional development is important.  When a school staff stops learning, they stop growing.  It is easy for principals to spend several hours developing a video, presentation, or hands-on learning activity.  Quality professional development requires planning, learning goals, and materials.  Principals are wise to develop a teacher leadership team who can assist with professional development.  This will allow the principal to have a role in leading professional development, without having to plan the entire session. This year, our school has conducted professional development on the Six Instructional Shifts (Common Core State Standards), Technology Integration, Literacy, and School Safety.  If the principal ignores professional development, then it may not happen.  However, a building principal cannot sit in the office and develop every PD, while ignoring other ‘moles’ throughout the school.

     

    Communication

    Communication is an important responsibility and it cannot be ignored.  Principals need to communicate through the school website, email, newsletters, video, blogs, face-to-face meetings, PTA meetings, Coffee Hour, phone calls, and informal meetings in the parking lot.  Principals need to be intentional about communication.  Principals need to communicate with classroom teachers through classroom observations, email, blog, faculty meetings, notes, and informal meetings.  A principal could spend his or her entire day developing communication documents or preparing a speech for the next meeting.  It is important to see communication as a mole that you ‘whac’, but also as something you plan for.  If you are not communicating and marketing the great things about your school, then who is marketing your school?  You cannot afford to let the ‘communication mole’ pop its head up too many times.

     

    Conclusion

    Whac-A-Mole Leadership is a humorous way to describe the day of a principal.  We can all laugh and relate to the moles that pop up throughout the day.  You can probably describe several more moles that principals must address if you reflect on your past week.  “Leaders are usually distinguished by their ability to think big. But when their focus shifts, they suddenly start thinking small. They micro manage, they get caught up in details better left to others, and they become consumed with the trivial and unimportant. And to make matters worse, this tendency can be exacerbated by an inclination toward perfectionism” (Sanborn, M.).  If the goal of leadership becomes whacking the next mole, we may miss the most important things.  Stephen Covey shared the Leadership Matrix (as shared by Michael Hyatt, Intentional Leadership).  Principals must ask, “Is this mole important and urgent?” or “Is this mole urgent, but not important?”  As the moles pop up at your school, I wish you the best.  Keep whacking moles, but make certain you are focused on the right mole.

  • Blog post
  • 2 months ago
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• A Few Reasons Why You Need to A Few Reasons Why You Need to Be Giving Kids an Allowance

  • From: Clay_Piggy
  • Description:

    For most people, deciding to give a child an allowance can be a tough decision. There are arguments that an allowance is a great learning tool for children, but there are also those who feel an allowance will teach a kid to feel privileged over their peers. If you have children who are too young to work, then this decision will come into play. Actually, if you want to teach your children financial literacy, then an allowance is very helpful. Here is what you need to know about the value of an allowance for young children.

    Teaching Them Financial Literacy Early

    It is never too early to teach kids about finances and to ensure they are financially literate at a young age. All too often, parents never instill any information about money to their children. The kids grow up with very little concept of how money works and how to manage it wisely. The result of this can be detrimental when the child gets older and actually needs to budget their money and expenses. By giving your kids an allowance at a young age, you can help them learn basic math and financial literacy well before they actually need it.

    Showing Kids to Be Self-Assured

    Some parents have found a way to use an allowance for positive reinforcement. Your child needs to learn self-confidence, and you can try this simple trick with your kids. It is guaranteed to help them learn to be more self-assured.

    • Create an allowance jar and keep it in a prominent place.
    • Fill the jar with ones based on a set weekly allowance.
    • Make it clear that every time your child says “I can’t” they will lose a dollar from the jar.
    • Stick with the plan. This will teach kids to make an effort instead of immediately thinking they cannot do something.
    • At the end of the week, give them the money out of the jar.

    Essentially, this is a type of positive reinforcement in two different manners. You are teaching your kids to not be dependent on you for everything. In addition, you are gaining the other benefits of providing a child with an allowance.

    A Great Way to Teach Life Lessons

    Children need to learn what it means to actually earn their money and buy things they want. You can use an allowance to help them learn this very important life lesson. Here is what you will need to do:

    • Schedule certain chores that are your child’s responsibility. Make sure they know what chores they must complete and when.
    • Let them know that if they complete all of their chores, they will receive their allowance.
    • When your child wants something, like a new toy or a book, have them pay for the new item from their own allowance.

    When kids have to work for the things that they want, they will have a much greater appreciation for the value of money. While you definitely should to provide your children with everything they need, and some of their wants of course, you should allow them to use their own money toward some things.

    An allowance can actually be a very important learning tool for kids who are too young to work. While an allowance that is too high could cause some problems, creating a set amount that will give your kids some money each week can be a powerful tool. You can teach your children to be independent and self-assured. You can teach your kids how to manage their money. Finally, you can teach your kids what it means to earn their own money.

    About Clay Piggy:

    Clay Piggy is a virtual world gaming environment which teaches children basic money management skills and the concept of Earning, Spending, Saving, Investing and Giving in a fun and social way. Clay Piggy users choose their avatars by selecting and customizing their characters. Users earn virtual money by working at a job. Users also learn concept of credit score, different kinds of bank accounts, deposit money in bank, write checks and use debit / credit cards.

  • Blog post
  • 2 months ago
  • Views: 256

• K-5 Blogging to Publish Studen K-5 Blogging to Publish Student Writing

  • From: Anjilla_Young
  • Description:

    We published "4 Free Technology Tools to Jazz Up Writers Workshop" in a previous issue of Inspired Writer. If you missed, it you'll definitely want to check out these powerful motivators for young students developing Common Core writing skills: StoryBird, Little Bird Tales, ePals, and iMovie.
    
    Then, if you haven't found your way into blogging yet, try another publishing option your students will love: a free blogging platform that's so simple, even first graders can use it! Our fourth-grade curriculum creator, Katie Davis, recently gave WriteSteps Coaching Director Arlynn King the scoop on Kidblog.

    

    
    Arlynn: The Common Core standards for writing require elementary teachers to introduce students to digital publishing tools. Continuing with the technology theme in our August e-Newsletter, can you tell us about your favorite free digital tool for publishing student writing?

    Blogging is Not Just for Older Kids

    Katie: Last year, we blogged regularly in first grade, and we'll do it next year in my second grade room. Blogging is definitely not just for older kids. I use the website kidblog.org. It's free and it's wonderful for elementary students!
    
    Arlynn: Can you describe how it works?
    
    Katie: We have a classroom page, and within that, each child has his or her own blog. Students can publish the stories they write and comment on classmates’ posts. We do positive comments only in first grade. 

    I can also share the password to our blogs with family members so parents and grandparents can see the children's work online. It's very exciting for them, and it gives my students an authentic audience, real feedback from readers, and an engaging writing experience.
    
    Arlynn: Do you blog as a teacher, too?
    
    Katie: Yes, I have my own classroom blog where I will regularly post student work via pictures and podcasts -- students reading their written work. Kids love visiting our class blog in the computer lab and at home to see their work. It's the new version of me hanging their work on the "refrigerator!" 

    Again, this has been very helpful in engaging students, getting them excited about writing, and motivating them to revise - they do lots of revising and practicing before reading a piece for a podcast. It also gives them a framework to begin learning to think about their audience.
    
    Arlynn: Is there anything else you'd like to share about blogging at school, Katie?

    Katie: I also use my classroom blog as my "newsletter" to parents and families. I update it weekly with curriculum we are working on and tools for parents to work with their children, like word lists, book recommendations, and websites. I use the blog to post snack schedules, volunteer schedules, district and school information and events, at-home reading tips, and pictures or videos of what's happening in our classroom community.
    
    It's a great way to facilitate effective, efficient, and frequent communication with the parents and families of my students. They comment on it frequently, and I can respond to their questions quickly. 

    

    Arlynn: Are there other technologies you’re using to make digital publishing accessible to K-5 students?
    
    Katie: My district also has iPads, which makes blogging even easier for lower elementary students. I can use QR codes for our website and my students can just scan a projected image of a QR code in order to get to their blog. They no longer have to type the whole web address.

    A Red Carpet Premier

    I have also created digital stories with my students using imovie. Because they were first graders, we did this together as a team, rather than independently. We discussed what we wanted to add: pictures the students have created, stories they have written, their voices reading their work, and the musical choices we thought fit with our digital story. We have had a "red carpet premiere" of our movie in the library with guests and popcorn! Many of these ideas I gained from working with the National Writing Project and learning from many other amazing teachers in that community.

    
    Arlynn: Thank you for sharing, Katie! I know you've already dismantled last year's blog, but we look forward to showing your students' work to our readers in the coming school year!
    
    Katie: Thanks, Arlynn, me too!
    
    Katie Davis is a second grade teacher in Grand Ledge, Michigan. She is a National Writing Project Fellow and worked as Writesteps' Fourth Grade Curriculum Creator.

     For additional blog posts and to sign up for the Inspired Writer monthy eNewsletter visit http://WriteStepsWriting.com.

    

  • Blog post
  • 2 months ago
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• Educators, Reinvograte Yoursel Educators, Reinvograte Yourself Without Reinventing Yourself

  • From: Karen_Baptiste
  • Description:

    As a special education instructional coach managing 20 schools in the nations largest school system (NYC), it is easy to get lost in the world of politics, teacher burn out, and inconsistency. I realized that you have to stay positive in the face of adversity. I found myself becoming a bitter educator after just six years! Some of the things I did to reinvigorate myself and find that spark that went dim was finding a support group. You absolutely cannot do this work alone!!! I began to surround myself with positive educators in my professional life, and positive people in my personal life who will be there immediately when I contacted them. These people are my core go to people. Meaning, when I need support in getting all team members on board, I have a specific person to call for that. When I need support with making an unfavorable decision, I have a specific person or people to go to for that. Get my drift? The same goes for the people I begun surrounding myself with in my personal life. You need people who are going to support you and build you up. People who will encourage you to make the right decisions without wavering from your core beliefs!

    There must be balance to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In addition to finding a support group, I joined a gym and began engaging in activities during my personal time that will keep me energized, physically and mentally happy. Anything that was going to develop my emotional, mental and physical state was essential, and I explored it. There's nothing like being healthy and happy simultaneously, while being surrounded by the people who genuinely care for you.

    Last, I found faith again! Without faith or something to turn to when you have seeds of doubt planted, who or what will give you strength to carry on? Although I started to make changes in my life, I still had a hole of emptiness. Nothing was able to fill it. Not family, not friends, not a significant other; nothing other than faith and my relationship with God. You see, without him, nothing is possible. Until He fills that void, you will continue to be lost in your journey.

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  • 2 months ago
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• Performance and the Fundamenta Performance and the Fundamental Way of Being

  • From: Adrian_Bertolini
  • Description:

    "You cannot have performance breakthroughs without cognitive dissonance ... in other words ... challenging what you think you really know and believe is the truth."

     

    The more that I work with schools, the more I realise how important it is to coach teachers and school leaders in having personal performance breakthroughs as part of the journey to creating a high performance learning culture in a school. What I have been finding is that it is the unconscious limitations a person imposes on themselves and/or the individual’s ingrained habits and practices that can limit or slow down the building of an authentic learning culture.

    In my coaching one of the first tools I use I gleaned from Steve Zaffron and David Logan’s book called “The Three Laws of Performance”.  The Three Laws are:

    1.       How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them

    2.       How a situation occurs arises in language

    3.       Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people

    So what influences how situations occur to people?

    Let me delve a little into the neuroscience here. In the simplest description, our brains are pattern making machines that, through trial and error of experience and learning, create a template or mental model of how the world is so the individual can successfully interact with the world around it. As a short cut to operating in an increasingly complex environment, the brain creates unconscious habits and practices for those actions that are ritualised. For example, most of us don’t have to think about walking. We just walk. We put one step in front of the other not consciously recognising the extraordinary coordination required of our brain and body to have this happen. For those of us who drive to work, many of us drive home from our normal place of work mostly unconscious because our brain “knows” where it is going.

    As we grow up there are there spans where we undergo large physiological and neurological changes. These include the period from being a baby / toddler to a child (gaining of language), a child to a teenager (puberty), a teenager to an adult (pre-frontal cortex and executive decision making). These neurological developmental changes are critical periods in our lives as it is at these times that we lay down certain foundational or fundamental ways of being (mental models or templates). Based on these templates we build our interpretation and reaction to the world around us.

    My experience in coaching people over the past 15 years is that in areas where individuals lack performance they have not overcome the programming that originated when they were children. Have you ever experienced an adult who still throws tantrums like they were 6? Have you noticed that some people can’t seem to organise themselves and still act like they are teenagers in managing themselves and their time? Have you noticed the emotions and feelings that come up when you are confronted by conflict in the workplace (most teachers avoid constructive conflict like the plague)!

    In those areas where you experience being challenged to develop yourself or you lack performance, your actions are logical and consistent with a childhood perspective or viewpoint of that situation. How a situation occurs to us is correlated to our fundamental way of being or mental model that originated when we were quite young.

    Conversely, in those areas you do perform, at some point in your life you challenged your childhood mental model and “grew up” in that area. You went through a period of cognitive dissonance and challenged and re-circuited your hardwired habits and practices in that area.

    Let me give you an example. I come from an Italian family and my viewpoint of my father when I was young was that he was not very communicative, he didn’t really show his love for me like my mother did, and that when I did something wrong (which being the middle boy of three boys we always got up to some mischief) he yelled at us and we occasionally got smacked. So I decided at quite a young age that I would “never be enough”. When you look at my behaviour over a long period of time it is not surprising that I am always out to prove myself and succeed in whatever I do. I have three degrees including a Ph.D. I taught Aerospace Engineering (including … yes … rocket science). I came second A LOT, in sport as well as academically, and it frustrated me no end. I know myself as someone who, no matter what I am given, will figure it out and become successful at it. Within this fundamental way of being I have developed particular habits and practices that enable me to learn and develop myself. It isn’t surprising that education is one of my fields of interest.

    The problem with the Fundamental Way of Being is that until I became become conscious to how it was driving me in everything, and the cost it had to my well-being and just being able to be in relationship with people, I had no power to choose to behave in a different way. I was very hard on myself and overanalysed everything. My brain was always whirring and busy so I found that I was constantly exhausted to make up for NEVER being enough. I was quite often surrounded by “fools and idiots” and became frustrated with people when they didn’t understand me. I lacked empathy for others.

    The Fundamental Way of Being is not a bad thing as it has you gain a certain success in life. But like any ritual habit it drives you to behave in particular ways in circumstances that other ways of behaving are more appropriate. You cannot begin to change a habit until you have become present to how it is driving you. Until then you are the passenger in the car that is your behaviour.

    When I coach teachers and people in leadership positions I give them two pieces of homework involving reflective journaling.

    1. At least 2-3 times per week spend 5-10 minutes reflecting on their day and write down experiences from the day that they felt driven by their fundamental way of being. It will feel uncomfortable at times. The intention of the first piece of homework is to have them become self-aware of when their machinery, that is their ritual behavioural pattern, is operating.
        
    2. The second piece of homework is to write down, what they would do differently next time in each situation that arose that day. They could also acknowledge any victories where they took a different action from the one normally given by their mental model. The intention of this part of the homework is to start challenging the ingrained behavioural patterns so that they can create new patterns. In some ways this is about growing up to be an adult!

    What I have found is that, over time, people start to produce remarkable results and shift their behaviour in those areas where they felt stuck or unable to develop and grow.

  • Blog post
  • 2 months ago
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• Can We Cure Test Anxiety? Can We Cure Test Anxiety?

  • From: Steven_Weber
  • Description:

                           

    "What was taken away from my children's education

    in order to make them better at taking standardized tests?"

     - Alfie Kohn (USA Today, 2001)

    
    

     

    Parents send their children to kindergarten full of hope, dreams, creativity, and energy. Teachers don’t use the term “joy of learning” in kindergarten, because students are curious and naturally enjoy discovery at learning centers. Students smile and laugh in whole group, small group, and independent settings. School is a place to learn with friends and to explore how things work. In the third grade, most states begin administering high-stakes tests to students. This is when anxiety begins and students discover that “The Test” is the main thing.

     

    Test Anxiety creates feelings of fear, hopelessness, depression, low self-esteem, and resentment. Some students are naturally anxious and they would develop Test Anxiety on their own. Parents, community members, teachers and administrators are the reason a majority of students develop Test Anxiety. This article will address ways that adults have created a fear of testing and what can be done to redirect the way we prepare for the annual high-stakes tests.

     

    Test Prep Boot Camp

     

    What comes to mind when you hear the term “Boot Camp?” I think of a drill sergeant yelling at the troops, push-ups, and training camp. It does not seem like something that would motivate an eight year old to increase performance. Some schools purchase camouflage t-shirts and the staff walk around in fatigues. There are companies which profit off the Boot Camp mentality by selling camouflage pencils, stickers, certificates, and t-shirts. The final two months of the spring are spent in drill and kill review sessions. While this approach may sound like something from a movie about education, it happens each spring in a school near you.

     

    Test Pep Rally

     

    As a fifth grade teacher, I remember leading our K-5 students in a Beat the Test Pep Rally. We had cheers, songs, and skits like a high school pep rally. At a high school pep rally, students cheer and work themselves into a frenzy as their team prepares to slay their archrival. One year, my students designed a banner to run through (i.e., Friday Night Football). While the Test Pep Rally sounds like a positive approach, it raises anxiety and sends a message to students that this is very important! Don’t let your team, your teachers, or your family down with a low test score.

     

    Test Survival Kit

     

    When I think of the term survival, I think of a hurricane, fire, snow storm, loss of power, poverty, and being stranded in the middle of Mt. Everest without any food. I struggle to see how a Test “Survival Kit” motivates students to do their best on the test. In some schools, the PTA or the teachers create survival kits with a ziploc bag, snacks, a pencil, candy, and a motivational quote or poem. The San Diego Unified School District has directions for creating a Test Survival Kit. What is the opposite of survival? Do we want students to “survive” a high-stakes test or do their best on any assessment that they face in life. Using terms like courage, perseverance, and success to prepare students for a test may be the reason so many students end up discouraged and feeling like a failure.

     

    Test Prep Packets

     

    In the spring, teachers across the U.S. begin making photocopies of sample test items and preparing students for the “big test.” Have you ever noticed how often the copy machine breaks in the spring? Teachers use test prep books, released items from other states, teacher created items, and district assessments to prepare students for the “big test.” As a parent, I have witnessed test prep packets that are over twenty pages long. Teachers tell students, “Don’t worry. We don’t have to complete the packet this week. We will spend the next two months working through the packet so you will rock the test!” In some schools, there is pressure from parents to provide test prep packets. If you are the only teacher not providing a test prep packet, some families may see you as a weak teacher. Test anxiety can be created by families.

     

    Test Prep Strategies

     

    It is sad to see how many days are spent teaching third grade students to completely bubble in the circle. Our students have Instagram, XBox 360, Skype, and iPhones. Do we really think they need more than one class period on filling in the circle? Test prep strategies include the process of elimination, reading for the main idea, using your scratch paper to solve problems, pacing yourself throughout the test, and searching for the ‘best answer.’ It is inappropriate to send students into a test unprepared. However, I believe most of these skills can be taught throughout the year, rather than during the final two weeks prior to the test. All students need to have access to test strategies.

     

    Curricular Reductionism

     

    ‘Curricular Reductionism’ is another popular method of improving student test scores. Curricular Reductionism is a narrow focus on the tested subjects or exclusion of certain skills and concepts because they cannot be measured on a multiple-choice test. This frequently means that science, social studies, and the arts are taught bi-weekly, bi-monthly, or not at all in elementary and middle schools across the United States.  This type of instruction does not support student understanding.

     

    Parent Pep Talks

     

    I have seen more harm from parent pep talks than any other form of test prep. Principals place pressure on teachers to perform and teachers place pressure on students. When parents receive survival kits, notes from their teacher, test prep packets, inspiring poems and breathing techniques, they receive the message.

     

    Parents can create test anxiety by saying:

     

    1. Are you ready for the test? You really need to do your best.

     

    2. This test will impact the teachers you get next year.

     

    3. You have never had a test this big. Please do your best.

     

    4. Are you nervous; because mom is nervous?

     

    5. I am going to pray for you, because this is a really big test.

     

     

    Conclusion

     

    Test anxiety is a plea for help. We claim to provide a safe learning environment for students. Safety should include mental health and the joy of learning.

     

    The ASCD Whole Child tenants are:

    
    

    • Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
    • Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
    • Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
    • Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
    • Each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.

     

    When we review the key terms in a Whole Child school, they do not sound like Boot Camp, Pep Rally, Survival Kit, Test Prep Packets, Pep Talks, or Curricular Reductionism. If students are taking standards-based tests, then schools will be able to prepare students through unpacking the standards and teaching the key skills and concepts outlined in the standards. There seems to be hysteria each spring. Together, adults can support the Whole Child and we may be able to cure test anxiety.

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  • 2 months ago
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• 15 Reasons Why Standardized Te 15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests are Problematic

  • From: Thomas_Armstrong
  • Description:

    It’s wonderful to see all the protests around the country against standardized testing. At Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, teachers are refusing to administer the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). In Texas, hundreds of school districts have passed a resolution saying standardized tests are ”strangling” public schools. The National Resolution on High Stakes Testing, which calls on government officials to reduce standardized testing in our schools, has been endorsed by hundreds of organizations, and over 13,000 individuals. And yet, in spite of all this, standardized testing still is putting a wicked half-Nelson on our students’ curiosity, creativity, and passion for learning in tens of thousands of classrooms around the country. Just in case you are in a position as an educator to influence public policy on this issue, here is a list of 15 reasons why standardized tests are problematic:

    1. Because students know that test scores may affect their future lives, they do whatever they can to pass them, including cheating and taking performance drugs (e.g. psychostimulants like Ritalin “borrowed” from their friends).

    2. Because teachers know that test scores may affect their salaries and job security, they also cheat (see the best-seller Freakonomics for some interesting statistics on this).

    3. Standardized tests don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The results aren’t even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided by test companies on how to improve these test scores.

    4. Standardized tests don’t value creativity. A student who writes a more creative answer in the margins of such a test, doesn’t realize that a human being won’t even see this creative response; that machines grade these tests, and a creative response that doesn’t follow the format is a wrong response.

    5. Standardized tests don’t value diversity. There are a wide range of differences in the people who take standardized tests: they have different cultural backgrounds, different levels of proficiency in the English language, different learning and thinking styles, different family backgrounds, different past experiences. And yet the standardized test treats them as if they were all identical; identical to the group that took the test several years ago, and to which the test has been “normed” (e.g. this original group is the “norm group” against which any future test-takers are to be compared).

    6. Standardized tests favor those who have socio-economic advantages. Test companies (a multi-billion dollar a year industry) not only manufacture the tests, they also manufacture the courses and programs that can be taken to “prepare for the test.” If you have the money, you can even get special tutors that will help you do well on a test. If you don’t have the money, and your school is in a low socio-economic area that gets less funding than rich suburban schools, then you’re not getting the same preparation for the test as those at the higher socio-economic levels do.

    7. Because so much emphasis is placed on standardized test results these days, teachers are spending more and more time “teaching to the test.” If there is something that is interesting, compelling, useful, or otherwise favorable to the development of a student’s understanding of the world, but it is not going to be on the standardized test, then there really isn’t any incentive to cover this material. Instead, most of classroom time consists of either taking the tests or preparing for the tests, and this shuts out the possibility of learning anything new or important. For example, because the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) only tests reading, math, and science that means that art, social studies, physical education, history, and other subjects are given far less attention than used to be the case.

    8. Standardized tests occur in an artificial learning environment: they’re timed, you can’t talk to a fellow student, you can’t ask questions, you can’t use references or learning devices, you can’t get up and move around. How often does the real world look like this? Prisons come to mind. And yet, even the most hard-headed conservative will say that education must prepare students for “the real world.” Clearly standardized testing doesn’t do this.

    9. Standardized tests create stress. Some kids do well with a certain level of stress. Other students fold. So, again, there isn’t a level playing field. Brain research suggests that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful. And when stress becomes overwhelming, the brain shifts into a “fight or flight” response, where it is impossible to engage in the higher-order thinking processes that are necessary to respond correctly to the standardized test questions.

    10. Standardized tests reduce the richness of human experience and human learning to a number or set of numbers. This is dehumanizing. A student may have a deep knowledge of a particular subject, but receive no acknowledgement for it because his or her test score may have been low. If the student were able to draw a picture, lead a group discussion, or create a hands-on project, he/she could show that knowledge. But not in a standardized testing room. Tough luck.

    11. Standardized tests weren’t developed by geniuses. They were developed by mediocre minds. One of the pioneers of standardized testing in this country, Lewis Terman, was a racist (the book to read is The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould). Another pioneer, Edward Thorndike, was a specialist in rats and mazes. Just the kind of mind you want your kid to have, right? Albert Einstein never created a standardized test (although he failed a number of them), and neither did any of the great thinkers of our age or any age. Standardized tests are usually developed by pedantic researchers with Ph.Ds in educational testing or educational psychology. If that’s the kind of mind you want your child or student to have, then go for it!

    12. Standardized tests provide parents and teachers with a false sense of security. If a student scores well on a test, then it is assumed that they know the material. However, this may not be true at all. The student may have simply memorized the fact or formula or trick necessary to do well on the test (some students are naturally gifted in taking standardized tests, others are not). A group of Harvard graduates were asked why it is colder in the winter and warmer in the summer. Most of them got the question wrong. They were good test-takers but didn’t understand fundamental principles that required a deeper comprehension (the book to read is The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests; the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, named in a poll as one of the 100 greatest public intellectuals in the world).

    13. Standardized tests exist for administrative, political, and financial purposes, not for educational ones. Test companies make billions. Politicians get elected by promising better test results. Administrators get funding and avoid harsh penalties by boosting test scores. Everyone benefits except the children. For them, standardized testing is worthless and worse.

    14. Standardized testing creates “winners” and losers.” The losers are those who get labeled as “my low students” “my learning disabled kids,” “my reluctant learners.” Even the winners are trapped by being caught up on a tread mill of achievement that they must stay on at all costs through at least sixteen years of schooling, and more often twenty years. The losers suffer loss of self-esteem, and the damage of “low expectations” (which research shows actually negatively influences performance – the book to read is Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson). The winners suffer loss of soul, since most of them are trained seals performing for fast-track parents and may reach midlife on a pinnacle of power and achievement, yet lack any connection to their deeper selves, to ethical principles, to aesthetic feelings, to spiritual aspirations, to compassion, creativity, and/or commitment to life.

    15. Finally, my most important reason that standardized tests are problematic: During the time that a child is taking a test, he/she could be doing something far more valuable: actually learning something new and interesting!

    To sign the petition against the overuse of standardized testing, click here.

    Read my latest book: Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs Succeed in School and Life. And visit my website: www.institute4learning.com

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  • 2 months ago
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• Multiple Intelligences Expands Multiple Intelligences Expands Around the World

  • From: Thomas_Armstrong
  • Description:

    The use of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory) has been increasing by leaps and bounds in countries across the globe. In many countries, it has become part of national policy. In India, for example, as part of its National Curriculum Framework for School Education teachers are required to have familiarity with the concepts of multiple intelligences. Gardner himself writes: “…I have been amazed to learn of jurisdictions in which the terminology of MI has been incorporated into white papers, recommendations by ministries, and even legislation…I have heard from reliable sources that MI approaches are part of the policy landscape in such diverse lands as Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands” (Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice, p. 248).

    At the same time, research studies based on multiple intelligences have multiplied in higher education institutions around the world. Journal articles dedicated to this subject have covered populations from areas as diverse as Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Malaysia, China, and Japan. In Geneva, Switzerland, the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization, which offers programs to over 600,000 students in 128 countries, has acknowledged Gardner’s role in influencing its own approach to learning: “Howard Gardner has been influential in changing views about learning and the ways we learn. Access and equity within the IB today is much wider than it was previously. It is acknowledged that all students have strengths and weaknesses which must be supported in a strategic way for them to meet their potential.” (IB World, September, 2007).

    In the Phillipines, the MI International High School in Quezon City (a suburb of Manila) puts MI theory to work in the cause of promoting entrepreneurship among its students. Students are challenged to develop real-world business plans based on ideas that emerge from MI lessons. A linguistic group, for example, developed Flash Range, a media center that creates books for teens that deal with environmental and personal and emotional growth issues. A musical group created a business called Boom Box Music, which offers musical composition and record production services. A group of people-smart students conceptualized their own family restaurant –Pastuchi- featuring a fusion of Italian and Japanese cuisines.

    In Denmark, the industrial manufacturer Danfoss, has created a theme park—Danfoss Universe– that incorporates many strategies and ideas from multiple intelligences. They have essentially created a multiple intelligences interactive museum, where children and adults participate in over fifty activities designed to both test their multiple intelligences and also raise awareness concerning the many different ways of being smart.

    In my own work with multiple intelligences, I’ve given keynotes and workshops in twenty countries including Iceland, Singapore, and the tiny province of Andorra. I’ve had my books on multiple intelligences translated in over fifty foreign editions into twenty-three languages (including 11 editions in Chinese alone). It’s truly been marvelous to see the broad impact that MI theory has been making internationally.

    To learn more about the impact of multiple intelligences in cultures around the world, see: Multiple Intelligences Around the World, Jie-Qi Chen, Seana Moran, and Howard Gardner (eds), San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009. To read my chapter from the book, click on the title: “When Cultures Connect: Multiple Intelligences Theory as a Successful American Export to Other Countries

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  • 3 months ago
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