a site for inspired and aspiring teachers

As we approach fall with all the hopes, anxieties and excitement that accompany it,  have a listen to this interview with Doug Lemov, on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

Lemov, a teacher himself, believes passionately that champion teachers are made, not born. He studied successful teachers, and describes specific classroom management techniques that could help all teachers be more effective educators.

There’s also an article exploring Lemov’s techniques that ran in the New York Times Magazine. Click here to check it out.

I recently listened to Sir Ken Robinson again, this time on an online TED video. Robinson is known for his focus on creativity and the individual differences of students.  A memorable comment from the speech was the recommendation that we need to escape from “the tyranny of common sense.” That line has been haunting me since I heard it.

Often what we call common sense is an aggregate of averages. We observe, for instance, that are more jobs for computer technicians than glass blowers.  “Common sense” then leads us to tell our children or students that “Glass blowing is a hobby, not a career.”  Without intending to, we lie. There are jobs for glass blowers, and some people, think of Dale Chilhuly, for instance, achieve fame and fortune in glass blowing.

It is true that there are relatively few choreographers, puppeteers, astronauts, rodeo clowns, inventors, and luge athletes, but these opportunities do exist, as do a thousand other obscure, yet interesting, pursuits.  By following a personal passion, people who do such things often build a life that is very satisfying, a reflection of their soul’s passion. Why do we feel compelled to tell people with goals like these that their ideas are foolish or impossible? Just because these jobs are statistically less frequent, tells us nothing about individual cases.

At other times, common sense is merely a statement of an adult’s preference.  We say, “Sit still! You will not amount to anything if you don’t pay attention.” In real life, however, those people who couldn’t sit still as children play valuable roles. They run dance studios or karate schools, they become Marine colonels or Army sergeants; they build houses, run day care centers, summer camps or rock climbing schools. We may be unable, at 2 p.m. on some random Thursday, to project 15 years into a given child’s future, but that never means he has no future.

We are also fixated on what “everyone needs.” While everyone needs a basic understanding of the world around them, not all information has to be delivered and certified by a school. Most pool-playing champs use geometry every day, though they may never have passed a geometry class in high school. We are seeing a new movement toward self-education, where young people investigate their interests online or in informal apprenticeships and many of them succeed rather well.  If this makes us nervous, we can think back to the self-education of Abraham Lincoln and recognize its value.

To me, the point is to respect the passions, interests and talents of each person we meet. “That will never work out,” is a demeaning statement.  It implies that we know better than the person whose life choices are under discussion what that life should be.  Saying “What a fascinating possibility!” and sincerely meaning it, allows for possibilities that “common sense” may deny.

Only one teacher in ten can go to a traditional professional development offering—an expert talking to a room full of strangers—and successfully implement the new method all  by themselves when they return to the classroom.*

This struggle makes sense.  How many pilots fly a new plane without a training flight? How many surgeons use a new open heart procedure without another surgeon present in the operating room for consultation? People need guidance, advice and support in order to master new tools and techniques.

It follows, then, that most teachers will need some professional hand-holding if we are to reach our potential.

A few school districts have the habits of learning that provide trained mentors or coaches on a regular basis to all their teachers.  Some school buildings have a continuous development approach that has colleagues constantly encouraging one another.  So far, these support systems are not yet universal.  So what is a teacher to do?

Never walk alone! Find or invent a support system.

• Find a person in your department or grade level to work with. Visit one another’s classrooms. Brainstorm lesson plans, think up discipline solutions, or discuss whatever concerns you.
• Make regular videos of yourself teaching. Watch them once to get over how you look, and then view them several times— for one viewing, pay attention to your methods, for another, look for students’ reactions, then watch again with a colleague, asking for  comments on what he or she observes.
• Have a virtual partner. Stay in touch with a former classmate or in-service attendee. Talk about what you have tried or what you might do. Consult notes you both took to compare your understanding or discover details that will make your implementation go better.
• Make the most of your evaluations.  Request feedback from your administrator that will actually help you improve rather than expecting him or her to know what you need.
• Request a coach or help develop a coaching system for your school or district that everyone can rely on. A coach makes an amazing difference. While implementation is about 10% when we try to do it alone, teachers who get instructional coaching in their own classrooms show a 90% implementation rate.* It’s a way to multiply effectiveness,  so let’s stop trying to go it alone.

*Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction. Jim Knight, A joint publication of NSCD and Corwin Press, 2007

Teaching is a lot like being a marathon runner. There are great physical and mental demands over a long period of time.

Teachers have to pace themselves, make the most of their energy in the light of continuous challenges.  Like runners, they also benefit from trained coaches to give them objective information that they may  overlook in the midst of the long term effort they are called on to expend.

At the same time, teachers are rightfully suspicious of some who might offer them advice. They don’t want one-size-fits-all advice because they are aware of the unique contexts that their classrooms represent. They don’t want generalized ideas from those who have not taught their subject area or their grade level.  What they DO want is focused, useful ideas that they can put to use immediately.

In this quest, teachers would be wise to determine what different helpers offer and then turn to  those who can give what is needed at a given moment. I have found that helpers can generally be sorted into three categories: consultant, collaborator and coach.

Consultant – Consultants can be thought of as topic-area experts; they bring us information we do not yet know, but would benefit from. Book publishers send consultants to explain how a text and its supporting materials are organized, what needs the materials address and how educators can use the whole set effectively.

Similarly, consultants may come to explain or demonstrate the use of various methods and approaches that have emerged since our own days in education schools—team learning, EBIs, professional learning communities, etc.  In this way new awareness can lead to development of a new proficienc .  If I feel confused or notice a gap in my own understanding, I might purposely seek an “expert” to fill me in and broaden my understanding of a difficult technique or an uncomfortable situation that has developed in my classroom.

Collaborator – We might turn to a collaborator when we become aware of a problem ; collaborators work with us so we can create solutions together. Department planning teams often act as collaborators. They create units or activities that emerge from discussions and much “tweaking” — many people make suggestions in order to create the whole.

If I feel stale or stuck, I may turn to a collaborator who will help me brainstorm a new approach or build a more engaging lesson by enriching my thinking with ideas of his or her own.

Coach – Good coaches watch analytically and ask us about our own thinking, our plans, our hopes and our analysis of what is going on in our teaching. They do not offer ideas or new approaches. Rather, they help us find the ideas underlying what we choose to do and they encourage us to discover approaches within ourselves that we had not yet had time or focus to identify.

Coaches can make us more thoroughly who we are as they help us identify resources within ourselves. If I am tired or frustrated, a coach can help me find a new perspective and the energy to try again.

Getting the wrong sort of help can be annoying and not very useful.  Yet no one knows what we need as well as we ourselves do.  As we grow up as professionals, we learn to identify and seek the precise input that will help us most. That way we can continue the race in good shape and finish strong.

Check out this great article and video about Rob Stephenson, Michigan Teacher of the Year and a nominee for National Teacher of the Year.  http://bit.ly/d5sYiP

Every classroom has its own feel and its own patterns. In some rooms they are not overtly stated; in most classrooms, however, they are the result of specific efforts by teachers to make students aware of “the way we do things here.”

As I visit classrooms, it appears that most teachers plan and enact various activities to establish rules, procedures or norms of behavior.  I have noticed three general approaches, though surely there are others. I am going to give each a name, merely to simplify discussion: announcing rules, eliciting rules from students , and exploring rules.

What are the strengths or implications of each approach?

Announcing rules – On the positive side, this method is fast and appears efficient. The teacher chooses rules, communicates them and tells students to follow them.  Consequences are also announced and, presumably, doled out fairly.  With this approach, the teacher is the final, perhaps the only enforcer.

The challenge is that enforcement can be time consuming and may leave students passive or quietly resistant.  Perhaps the greatest difficulty lies in definitions.  If the rule is “Pay attention,” what does paying attention look like? Does that mean eyes on teacher, or can a student doodle if they cause no trouble? If teacher and students have different ideas of what compliance looks like, disagreements result. I would like to have a method for collecting all the classroom time spent accusing and defending; it would lengthen the school year dramatically.

Eliciting rules – In my experience, this approach usually starts with a one-time discussion held during the first week of school.  Teachers have the students themselves offer suggested rules which are then listed on paper and posted on the wall permanently.    The idea is that student ownership increases if they participate in establishing norms of behavior.

A difficulty is that students’ suggestions are unpredictable. They may offer too few, too many or rules that are too specific or too general. A second problem is that secondary teachers have five separate sets of rules to administer. Since this is too confusing, the rules may devolve into mere suggestions that are rarely referred to.

Exploring rules – This is a layered process beginning with a discussion or brainstorming session to develop a list of possible behaviors or rules and the implications of each. After the exploration, the main ideas can be summarized or even boiled down to one central idea. Teachers may ask students to list what behaviors by themselves or others have contributed to their learning or hindered their success.

Then students are asked to look carefully at each suggestion, to offer examples, exceptions and reactions. At the end, specific rules can be distilled, or a general statement or philosophy can be developed, similar to a mission statement.  This takes some time, but has the advantage of having students consider the reason for rules and how they contribute to the general good. It also insures that students have, at least once, thought about the reasons for and applications of rules in specific situations and that all share an understanding of what each rule looks like in practice.

In his book Teach Like Your Hair Is On Fire, Rafe Esquith described using an approach similar to exploring rules. He taught his fifth graders the stages of moral development and challenged them to put them in to action, leading to an occasion in which a student helped someoneand specifically did not identify herself, feeling it was better to do right even if no one ever knew. Rafe only deduced her actions by the fact that she alone did not make eye contact when a reward was offered, and no one stepped up to claim it.  I believe that this level of personal accountability is what we all hope for in the end—students who do what is right simply because it is right. Exploring rules, I feel, is the best way to achieve this.

When someone asks me a question, I notice that I have predictable patterns of response.  Sometimes I have a quick answer, believing that it’s a factual matter and I know the correct response.  I rarely stop to look for any elaboration or dig any deeper. I am instantly ready to move on to other matters.

Other times my quick answers can be defensive, though I don’t see this.  Only someone who knows me well and cares about my growth is likely to force me to slow down.

“Hey,” says my friend, “you’ve answered before you’ve even had time to process the question. Slow down and absorb it. Take a deep breath and let the pitch of your voice relax. Consider it. I’m not attacking, you know.”

This, of course, is frustrating. It takes effort to do as she, or he, suggests. Still, I try to follow those suggestions because I respect my friend and sense there is wisdom there. I have to sit with momentary discomfort and learn from the examination of possibilities. Such moments can lead me to change my instantaneous reactions into something deeper, more real and much more helpful to my grasp of a so-complex reality.

Then there are the times when questions trigger a moment of mild terror when I sense, deep inside myself, that I have NO IDEA what the answer might be and, worse, no idea of where I might dredge up an answer.  For seconds I feel helpless and not very swift. But if I can hold on for a moment, a secondary comprehension creeps in: This is important. This is a true opportunity for discovery.  I can listen. I can admit a gap and open myself to input that may fill gaps in my understanding.

If I stay calm, questioners may become coaches, sharers, truth tellers because, in their asking, they’ve given me space to expand my own understanding.  Miraculously, in these moments, sometimes an answer comes to me, my own answer, even though I didn’t even know it was in me until I paused and let it begin to surface.

So it occurs to me that I need to place greater value on the questions that I face.  They are gifts from life. They offer me the chance to crack open my own assumptions, blind spots, ignorance or narrowness. Without resistance, my muscles cannot gain strength; without questions, my mind cannot gain wisdom. And that is my quest, really, to use my experiences in this life to develop my own potentialities, and then turn and offer assistance to those coming behind me so that they can gain wisdom too. So let me now welcome questions as important signs in my life quest and treasure the spaces they open up.

I believe I can benefit from this approach in all areas of my life, but this is particularly important for my teacher-self. Students’ questions are often probes for more information to truly understand the material. Colleagues’ questions allow be to expand my thinking about my practice. But if I react defensively, assuming that they are challenging me, I miss the opportunity to grow, to learn, and to improve my teaching.

Okay, let’s compare learning to an elevator car in a very tall building.

Below us are all the floors our car has already passed—in other words, the things we’ve mastered, the things we have down cold, those things we no longer need help understanding or remembering. Once we know the definition of perambulation, or the square root of four, we know it. We could call this static knowledge; it is nailed down.

Above us, further up that elevator shaft, are all the things we might know someday. Even though we don’t yet understand nuclear fission or speak Bengali, we may learn them in the future; we have that potential. We may comprehend these topics someday, but for today they remain unlearned.

So in the car, where we currently stand, are the things we can process right now; this material is often close to, or related to, what we already know.  This elevator car creates a learning space for building our new knowledge. It is a space between what we know independently and what we can potentially understand with the help of a more knowledgeable person, whether a teacher or a peer. This suggests that all humans need other people in the elevator car with them if they are to learn to their potential. We need to interact with these helpers, asking, listening and co-creating new understandings. This reminds us that learning has a very important social component.

This elevator car of learning sometimes goes by another name. Lev Vygotsky called it the Zone of Proximal Development. However, when we call it a zone, it sounds static and immovable, even though it is not. The ZPD is a moving target; as new things are learned, the elevator car moves upward, presumably for every day of our lives.

So, if learning is an elevator car, what are the implications for us—both as students and teachers. And how will the social component of learning be provided?

First, what is learned in that elevator car, that Zone of Proximal Development, is dynamic. As we interact with people to learn new material, at first our comprehension is slippery. We feel like we understand as we hear explanations, yet explaining what we just heard is hard and applying it even harder. That’s because as we learn, there is movement—we are coming closer to a full understanding—to moving up a floor—but it rarely happens instantly. This explains why a teacher can teach a concept on Tuesday and see confused faces again on Wednesday.

For our students, this means we need to provide times for interaction, discussion, brainstorming and verifying with other learners. It means that “Eyes forward, no talking!” must be tempered with chances to pair and share, talk in a group, ask questions and check answers with tablemates.

Just as important, it means teachers too must have peer interaction. Nobody is likely to learn everything by working solo. If there is no one in our elevator car that we can talk to, then all our blind spots, gaps in understanding and confusion will remain pretty much unchanged. No one is to blame; this is simply a reality. It connects to the adage, “If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting what we got.”

Educators would be very wise to push the “Open Door” button on the control panel of our elevator car, and invite others to share the ride, discuss the situation, suggest some options and give us some feedback. It may be the only way we’ll ever get that elevator car all the way to the penthouse suite.

Going to a conference or an in-service often inspired me, yet putting the new ideas or methods to use when I got back to my own classroom was never as easy as I hoped, nor as simple as the presenter’s words seemed to apply. Over time I realized that learning curves are much longer than I recognized.

I saw others’ hopes dashed too.  Sometimes, a few days after a training session, a colleague would announce, “That doesn’t work. I tried it.”  I do not question my colleague’s honesty. I believe each of them did try the ideas—at least they tried some portion of the idea in whatever way they understood it after an initial introduction. The idea of academic freedom was sometimes advanced here, as in, “It’s my classroom and I am not going to do this anymore.”

This leads me to a word I have recently learned to use in a new way. The word is fidelity. This word is probably familiar to you; fidelity means, according to Webster’s, loyalty, faithful devotion to duty, or accurate reproduction of sounds or images. How does fidelity fit into education? Fidelity means learning a strategy or method so well that we can accurately use it in the way it was designed to be used.

Fidelity is important in any professional, trained and reliable profession. Doctors and nurses follow protocols because these are shown to cause better patient outcomes. Teachers too are being asked to use research-based methods, in order to cause better student outcomes.

These days schools are researching programs, interventions and protocols in order to select approaches that will help every child to succeed. Effort and thought go into these selections, and approaches which are chosen show great promise. Still, choosing is only the first step. If we as educators cannot accurately implement the methodology—with fidelity—the choosing is for naught.

There are at least three steps to fidelity as we implement new methods: investigation, initiation and full implementation.

Investigation- Whatever team is charged with selection of new approaches will do the research. However, each staff member will also need to find out the reasons for the choice, and the details that make up the method. Gaps in knowledge will always result in gaps in performance. Furthermore, even after the new method becomes commonplace, each new staff member, whether permanent, like newly-hired teachers, or temporary like student teachers and volunteers, will also need to be brought to an understand of the purpose, the procedures and the payoffs of the planned approach.

Initiation – This is the ramping-up phase. Start with the assumption that none of us will be very comfortable or skilled the first few times we try the new approach. Lots of co-planning and debriefing after the first several attempts will move people forward to growing effectiveness, and get us past the discomfort.  We should beware of adapting before we have followed the recipe numerous times. Too-early adapting is usually the route to corrupting the original plan. I don’t want my surgeon improvising either, not until she has logged in dozens of by-the-book renditions to be sure her skills are in place.

Full implementation – At this point every participant—all teachers, aides, volunteers and teachers-in-training—have learned about the method or research-based-initiative. They all know what to do, how to do it, and they are actually doing it. Until this is true, no one can say if the idea will work, because it remains a mirage unless all are doing it accurately, in other words, with fidelity.

After fidelity is achieved, then creativity, adaptation and academic freedom properly kick in. Teachers begin to see ways to link the new skills to others, to enrich or build upon this new foundation. But until we can practice our craft with fidelity, the freedom to ignore the protocol would be the freedom to fail our students.

What if the most important question isn’t how to bring standardized test scores of U.S. students up to the level of other industrialized nations? What if the bigger issue is how to maintain and nurture our citizenry’s long-standing talent for innovation, patent-earning and productivity on the world stage.

Last year I heard Dr. Yong Zhao speak at a Michigan Department of Education-sponsored conference. I was startled when he told the audience that ever since the first nation-to-nation test score comparisons were made in the 1960’s, U.S. scores have been near the bottom of the pack, yet, as a nation, we have excelled every one of those years in comparison to other nations–more inventions, more patents, and a significantly higher quality of life.

American innovation is legendary and it has been profitable for its citizens. Yet we know that not all of our under-age citizens are getting the start they need. If they did, it is reasonable to assume we might soar even higher that we have in the past century.

You may enjoy listening to Dr. Zhoa’s somewhat contrarian views in the video you can reach through this link.