Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Teach For Enduring and Expansive Learning Not Coverage. Know the Difference.

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“Your teacher covered that last year” or “this semester we will cover” still rankles my professionalism as a teacher. Teaching for coverage means nominal teaching and learning. It means spending the least amount of time engaged in teaching and learning for the sake of topical accountability. Coverage teaching is like the proverbial river that is a mile wide and an inch deep – it emphasizes breadth without depth. In my naivety as a young educator I believed that if something was worth teaching it was worth learning well and that meant deeper teaching and learning. Conversely, why waste time and energy on teaching things we did not plan for children to learn well? I still believe this.

Years ago when I heard my principal or district curriculum leader talk of coverage, I assumed they were generalizing about the amount of information in any grade level of our social studies curriculum and the finite amount of instructional time in an academic year. But they weren’t. “You can’t teach everything in your curriculum with the same level of intensity” I was told. “So, cover it all.” It took me a long and troublesome time to understand this, however understanding did not mean accepting it.

There is a line between coverage and knowing and understanding.

Early on in teacher training, we are taught Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy. In the 1950s Bloom established six levels of thinking, learning, and understanding with labeling that helps us explain a rationale for teaching and learning designs. Seventy years later, I still like how Bloom helps me to add depth to the “wide river” of information we teach. The model below shows a revised taxonomy – the terms have been modified from Bloom’s original for clearer explanation of the cognitive levels.

bloom’s taxonomy revised – Higher order of thinking

Although there is a vertical dimension to the taxonomy, Bloom did not intend for all teaching to involve all six levels. Curriculum planners use the levels as goals for teaching and learning. Some learning, in fact most of what we learn, is meant to be at the remembering/understanding level of usage. Other learning is meant to be scaffolded into a variety of applications, or to inform careful analyses, or to evaluate options and opportunities, and to create original work. Though it looks like a ladder, a user does not use every rung to engage in higher order cognition. Instruction and learning can scaffold from understanding to analyzing, or evaluating, or creatin.

Coverage teaching is the act of “mentioning” without the explicit intention of remembering. There is a lot of mentioning in education. Synonyms for mentioning cause us to smile and acknowledge that teachers mention without teaching. When a teacher “alludes to, refers to, touches upon, hints at, speaks about briefly, broaches or introduces only,” that is mentioning. Children may or may not hear or read what a teacher mentions as an aside. Things that are mentioned are characterized as “things it is nice to know but it is okay not to know.” Like, the value of pi is abbreviated to 3.14. As an irrational number, Pi can be calculated out to an infinite number of numbers but who cares? A math teacher covers or mentions that fact but directly instructs that the usable value of pi is 3.14. Best practice does not include “mentions” in assessments of student learning, although there is a lot of bad practice in the field.

Coverage may be all the questions on Jeopardy that sound somewhat familiar but just will not come to mind.

I think of coverage as the blank space below the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy; it is the noise in the world we are not intended to remember.

Remembering and understanding is the meat and potatoes of most teaching. The information – facts, data, concepts, generalizations, and skill sets we want children to know, we teach with high intention. In the language of backward design, if we intend to test children on something, we intend to teach it well so that it will be remembered and understood.

Direct instruction is one of many teaching strategies most often used when we teach for remembering and understanding.

Children learn the alphabet and numbers, sight words and number facts early as foundational knowledge. In school we use direct instruction to drill and practice and ensure memory of these. Retention theory drives our teaching for remembering – we use immediate drill and practice/repetition to strengthen short-term memory and interval practice over time to ensure what is learned is retained and recalled in long-term memory. In a spiraled social studies curriculum, we teach US History in elementary, middle school, and high school because we want all children to know their national stories. Repetition and elaboration cause remembered learning.

Remembering is a student’s identical retelling of information or identical demonstration of what was taught. We require correct and complete retelling.

Understanding is explaining what was taught with fidelity in the student’s own words and doing the skill with fidelity in the student’s own style. Understanding is using what is remembered and making an inference about it or summarizing it in simpler language or combining several pieces of information into meaningful statement that keeps the significance and essence of what is being combined.

There also is a line between knowing and understanding what we learn and the rest of Bloom – what comes next is the so what of education.

Separating the noise of information from the teaching of remembering and understanding, gets us to the “so what” levels of Bloom where what was learned is applied, analyzed, evaluated, and built upon creatively. These four Bloom levels give us the rationale for why teaching for remembering and understanding are such a large part of our school calendar. Without foundational memory about stars, planets, moons, suns, constellations, galaxies, and a universe(s), nothing we see in the sky above us would make sense. Space would just be space. Lifesaving surgery would be butchery. Agriculture and manufacturing would just be guessing work.

Other teaching strategies become available when students have a knowledge and understanding of foundational information and skills. I use the C3 Framework for social studies as an example of instructing above the remembering and understanding line. C3 (College, Career, Civic Life) uses an inquiry process for students to investigate, expand and integrate their knowledge of civics, economics, geography, history, and the behavioral sciences.

“The C3 Framework, like the Common Core Standards, emphasizes the acquisition and application of knowledge to prepare students for college, career, and civic life. It intentionally envisions social studies instruction as an inquiry arc of interlocking and mutually reinforcing elements that speak to the intersection of ideas and learners.” C3 uses “questions to spark curiosity, guide instruction, deepen investigations, acquire rigorous content, and apply knowledge and ideas in real world settings…”

https://www.socialstudies.org/standards/c3

This is not coverage teaching!

Parallel to C3, curricula in every school subject, from art to woodworking, builds upon information and skills students learn at the remembering and understanding levels of instruction. The front of a refrigerator in most student homes is covered with student drawings and finger paintings. Over time, shelves and walls display how student application of basic information and skills blossoms into more intricate and sophisticated art. Student art displayed in local galleries, libraries, and art shows illustrates how student artists apply of fundamental concepts and skills, analyze and interpret subjects, and create new and original art.

Tech ed students manufacture, ag students grow and cultivate, computer science students program and engage in robotics, ELA writers craft poems and stories, and marketing ed students create businesses, apply accounting, create and manage product, lead and supervise personnel in the pursuit of economic growth. Once students know and understand, they can pursue their personal interests for a lifetime.

Know and be the difference.

There is so much in a teacher’s annual curriculum and so little time that it is easy to fall into the coverage mode of teaching. But why? In today’s world, coverage learning is what any child can achieve using Google or AI.

Two centuries ago, teachers were the source of information and applied learning. A century ago, students could read books for information; it was teacher directed and interpreted learning that moved children to young adults ready for college or work. Today, information sources abound, so much so that it hard to know information from noise. Today it takes a teacher to forge information into memory and understanding. And it takes a teacher to guide, monitor, and mentor how students illustrate and expand their learning. Well-conceived and instructed learning remains a springboard for life’s successes.

There is no time or place today for coverage teaching.

In an over-informationed world we are under-literate.

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Literacy is like a tomato. Do you say “tomaeto” or “tomahto”? Just as either says tomato, the concept of literacy has different definitions for the same word. Some of these definitions technically apply yet are not adequate measures of what it means to be literate in today’s parlance. So, what is the big deal about literacy? Is being literate critical to adult life? Given how much information adults are exposed to every day, can we expect adults with varying levels of literacy skills to effectively consider and understand the constant barrage of information? The answer is “no,” yet our world ultimately spins on the voices and decisions of under-literate adults.

Literacy is a status.

Literacy historically is a status based upon measures of reading and writing. As a statistic, “High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.” We generalize that citizens of economically advantaged nations have high literacy rates and citizens of underdeveloped nations have low literacy rates. A nation boasted its high literacy rate as a cause-and-effect proposition. “Our people enjoy a better standard of living because they are literate.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

What should we know about this status?

Using the percentage of the population 15 years and older who can read and write as a measure of literacy, Andorra, Finland, Greenland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and North Korea tie for #1 with 100% of their citizens being literate. North Korea? If a dictator says everyone can read, everyone is literate. The United States is in a large group of nations ranking #2 with 99% of the population rated as literate. Sounds good, but is it?

https://www.uscareerinstitute.edu/blog/which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-literacy-rates

These data raise questions as to how we decide an adult is literate at the international level. This is how the data are gathered.

“The breakdown of strategies for deciding literacy covers four categories:

  • self-reported literacy declared directly by individuals,
  • self-reported literacy declared by the head of the household,
  • tested literacy from proficiency examinations, and
  • indirect estimation or extrapolation.

In most cases, the categories covering ‘self-reports’ correspond to estimates of literacy that rely on answers provided to a simple yes/no question asking people if they can read and write. The category ‘indirect estimation’ corresponds mainly to estimates that rely on indirect evidence from educational attainment, usually based on the highest degree of completed education.”

https://ourworldindata.org/how-is-literacy-measured

Based on self-reported data collection, many adults in the world consider themselves to be literate. But are they? Literacy is more than a statistical number.

Literacy is a functional tool.

Literacy is a tool. “… literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, ‘We Are Here!’”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This consideration of literacy, that is how we communicate and receive communication from others and how we create communicative information, opens new concepts of what it means to be literate. “According to a study by the University of California – San Diego, the average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information every day. This volume is equivalent of around 100,000 words heard or read daily.”

In our age of digital and virtual information, adults are bombarded by and likewise spew volumes of information daily. A literate adult must be skillful and competent on both sides of receiving and sending literacy.

Interestingly the Cambridge Dictionary points to both definitions – status and tool. Cambridge defines literacy as “the ability to read and write.” And literacy is the “knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge. Computer literacy is becoming as essential as the ability to drive a car.”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/literacy

UNESCO reinforces literacy as an essential tool. “Literacy is a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast-changing world. On the historical international scene, literacy is a statistic of the population who can read and write. Literacy also is a broad array of functional skills that are applied in a successful adult life. For others, literacy is the ability to access and understand information in multiple contexts.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This other “tomato” version of literacy opens the realm of higher order skills that are necessary for understanding, interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating information that is read and heard. And then doing something with or because of what one has read and heard. Literacy is making meaning of and considering what to do with information.

Able to read. At what level of reading?

Self-reporting is not an adequate measure of how we use literacy as a tool. “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines literacy across six levels. People with Level 1 or below literacy skills are considered to have very poor literacy skills, while Level 3 is considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.

  • Below Level 1: Adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information. Only basic vocabulary knowledge is required, and adults are not required to understand the structure of sentences of paragraphs.
  • Level 1: Adults can read relatively short digital or print texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary, determining the meaning of sentence, and reading short paragraphs of text is expected.
  • Level 2: Adults can make matches between the text, either digital or printed, and information. Adults can paraphrase or make low-level inferences.
  • Level 3: Adults are required to read and navigate dense, lengthy or complex texts.
  • Level 4: Adults can integrate, interpret or synthesize information from complex or lengthy texts. Adults can identify and understand one or more specific, non-central idea(s) in the text in order to interpret or evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse relationships.
  • Level 5: Adults can search for and integrate information across multiple, dense texts; construct syntheses of similar and contrasting ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence-based arguments. Adults understand subtle, rhetorical cues and can make high-level inferences or use specialized background knowledge.”

As a literacy tool, how well do we read?

We get a different portrait of literacy in the United States when we use the OECD’s evidence-based data. Remember that the U.S. claims a 99% literacy status using self-reporting and other non-scientific methods.

“The most recent national survey on adult literacy is from 2012-2017, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The U.S. ranks 16th among the 33 OECD nations included in this study.

Nationally, over 1 in 5 adults (in the United States) have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1. Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials. Those on the higher end of this category can perform simple tasks based on the information they read, but adults below Level 1 may only understand very basic vocabulary or be functionally illiterate.

On the upside, “46% of adults in the U.S. have a literacy proficiency at or above level 3. Adults at Levels 3, 4, and 5 have varying degrees of proficiency in understanding, interpreting and synthesizing information from multiple, complex texts to infer meaning and draw conclusions.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Huh!

Approximately half of the adults in the U.S. have functional literacy tools that are “considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.” The other half of that statistic have less that minimal literacy skills.

The application of literacy as a functional tool is not just eye-opening for the United States. Using the OECD study, 14.9% (or 1 in 7) adults in England have literacy levels below Level 3, which is the equivalent to the literacy skills expected of a nine to 11-year-old.”

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=People%20with%20Level%201%20or,for%20coping%20with%20everyday%20life.

These conclusions are supported by other studies. A Gallup analysis of literacy information gathered by the US Department of Education reports that “About 130 million adults in the U.S., roughly half of Americans between 16 and 74 – have low literacy skills. In this study, literacy is broadly defined as the ability to read and write, but more accurately encompasses the comprehension, evaluation and utilization of information, which is why people describe different types of literacy – such as health, financial, and legal. Low literacy skills can profoundly affect the day-to-day success of adults in the real world, and these impacts extent to their families, too.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Literacy and public education.

Reading achievement has become the annual dip stick for measuring educational effectiveness in the U.S. since No Child Left Behind became national policy in 2002. State, school district, and school report cards annually publicize the percentage of students who meet the state’s performance expectations in reading. In a nation that self-reports its adults to be literate, children in school struggle with reading.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported, “For 2023-24, assessment results show public school student proficiency rates in ELA were at 48%. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs had a proficiency rate of 30.9 percent. Assessment results show proficiency gaps among different student subgroups continue to exist.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2024/student-assessment-results-forward

It is worthwhile to note that “meeting expectations” on a statewide reading or ELA assessment is not a high standard. State “expectations” are minimal levels of reading ability, very much like Level 2 on the OECD literacy assessment. The number of children meeting “expectations” is nothing to really cheer about. They met a low bar.

In truth, every graduation class fits into the OECD and Gallup estimation of adult literacy in the U.S. – about half of the graduates and young adults in our country meet minimal literacy standards.

When we apply literacy as a status to high school graduates, our society annually receives semi-literate young adults into our communities and general employment. As a result of education, more than half of our adult citizenry can only minimally read and write.

When we apply the second definition, we realize that the hierarchy of our layered economic society does not require every adult to be highly literate. Many high school graduates lack the ability to fully read and listen to complex and technical information and then translate it into their daily lives and jobs fulfill society’s economic needs. They are employed and pay taxes. Their earnings circulate in our consumer-based economy. They are law abiding and live socially in our cities, towns, and countryside. The majority do not need more than a high school diploma plus technical or on-the-job training to live in the United States.

“In 2021, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States was distributed as follows: 

  • 8.9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.
  • 27.9% had high school graduate as their highest level of school completed. 
  • 14.9% had completed some college but not a degree.
  • 10.5% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.
  • 23.5% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.
  • 14.4% had completed an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctoral degree. 

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html

Incomplete literacy can lead to incomplete understanding.

The ability to read, understand, and evaluate information has become more essential as the volume of daily information has increased. When a person hears or reads almost 100,000 words daily, a person must either try to process all that information or begin to categorize and ignore selected types and sources of information. My best bet is the latter. People become increasingly selective in the media they listen to and the text they read, ignoring sources that do not agree with their personal points of view. As they scan text and skim media, they disregard sources they do not agree with and pay attention only to sources agreeable to their perspectives. The loss of a 360-degree listening and reading narrows their understanding to the range of information they choose to hear and read.

Let’s do the arithmetic. In Wisconsin, less than half of our students meet minimal expectations on statewide reading assessments. With their high school and associate degrees, they elect to hear and read only words that express their points of view about our state and world. If this is true, then we need to add a third tomato – incomplete literacy. Given that literacy is a tool, when the tool or reading and listening is applied only to what we want to read and hear, then we have achieved incomplete literacy.

We always do get what we settle for.

Our national and state Founding Fathers valued education. Because they believed a literate populace would be better able to take part in our democratic form of government, they supported public education. The ability to read was essential for voters to make informed choices of leadership and the policies their leaders would execute. As a nation of immigrants, literacy in the English language has always been a pathway to citizenship.

With all that purpose and history, today we have achieved a nation that is minimally and incompletely literate and this is considered good enough for our economic and political welfare.

In a world that is over-informationed, we are under-literate. As educators, we have work to do!

Teach Up to Cause Children to Meet Higher Expectations

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One of the most common phrases in school mission statements is “we have high expectations.” These words are used to describe school goals for academic learning, athletic and artistic performances, student behaviors, and rankings in state report cards. School boards and school leaders use the phrases “we have high expectations” and “we expect great things” as if just saying the words makes it so. They do not. What usually is not explained is what the school or teachers, coaches, and directors will do to move student achievements from “usual expectations” to “higher expectations.” The action necessary is teaching up, coaching up, directing up, and reinforcing up so that “ups” are achieved. The conversation about the actions needed to move achievement upward and the commitment to those actions is what bridges the distance between having high expectations and achieving high expectations.

Teaching up is a choice.

Carol Ann Tomlinson writes, “Teachers who make the choice to teach up believe, or are at least willing to believe, that all students are capable of much more than they currently show the world. Teachers who make the choice to teach up know that brains are malleable and thrive in rich environments. They also know, perhaps from research, perhaps from their own experiences are learners or as classroom observers, that students who have teachers that set high expectations are more likely to flourish than students who set lower expectations.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/making-the-choice-to-teach-up

Tomlinson nails it. Teaching up to elevate student achievement is a choice when meeting minimal or usual expectations is a universal expectation or goal. The words “minimal expectations” are not used casually. Too many children and schools struggle to make minimal academic, athletic, and artistic progress. There are a multitude of environmental reasons, including poverty at home and in school financing, lack of home and familial support, lack of food security, challenges in a child’s socio-emotional and mental health, and post-pandemic student apathy that make achieving minimal achievement goals an uphill struggle. Just making minimal achievement goals can take tremendous teaching efforts.

The choice to teach up is to buck the norms in statewide assessments that say “minimal” is good enough or local expectations to be just a little better than a neighboring school and cause children to overachieve.

How much “up” and what does “up” look like?

Once a decision to teach, coach, and/or direct up is made, the real work is identifying how much upward improvement will be the target of higher expectations and the meaningful instructional, coaching, and directing actions needed to elevate student achievements to those expectations. Increasing the desired levels of achievement too much can overwhelm children, but increasing levels too little may seem meaningless. The level “up” should have transferable benefits, like climbing to the next plateau provides a base for climbing to a yet higher plateau on the way to a pinnacle. Increasing knowledge, skills, and dispositions is the scaffolding for future increases in achievement.

Generically, regular teaching is characterized by a teacher making more challenging yet supported assignments for children ready for the challenge. Students are assigned to read texts and materials that are above their current reading level preceded by the teacher pointing out new and significant vocabulary, providing necessary background information and context, and chunking the reading into smaller readings.

Generically, regular teaching is assigning more multiple step math problems, performing more complex music preceded by technical voice and fingering instruction, or diminishing the tolerances in milling a piece of metal preceded by technical instruction in settings, timing, and rate of milling.

Generically, regular coaching and directing is scheduling more successful teams to play and pieces to perform and expecting athletic and performance skills to rise to the level of new competition and expectation.

These kinds of “up” are usual in most teacher’s instruction of children in all subjects and grades, and in athletics and the arts. They are incremental and baked into school curricula.

To be significant, teaching “up” is condensing or leapfrogging usual increments and expectations with the belief that, as Tomlinson wrote, “… children’s brains are malleable and thrive in rich environments…”

“Up” looks like a demonstrably higher sophistication in the quality of student outcomes. To accomplish much higher outcomes requires explicit instruction, coaching, and directing of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for significantly higher achievement. Usual or regular teaching will not result in unusual or irregular achievements; it takes stronger instructional knowledge and skill.

Teaching “up” requires “upped” teaching.

Teaching, coaching, and directing “up” requires the teacher, coach and director to study, learn, and master skill sets that cause children to learn and master higher order knowledge, skills, and dispositions. These are not in initial educator preparation programs. We must learn to teach up before children can up their learning. For example, there are specific skill sets required to

  • improve children’s close reading and technical writing abilities to elevate and expand their levels of comprehension, understanding, and analysis/evaluation so that they can create more precise or expressive writings, or
  • improve players’ ability to hit a baseball and putting it in play with more frequency and power, or
  • increase children’s ability to understand the uses of perspective and interest in real life drawing, painting, and photographic creations.

Teachers must commit themselves to mastering improvements and changes in how they teach if they want children to master new learning and achieve higher order outcomes.

Teaching for higher order close reading.

Close reading is more than holding the book closer. It is a set of reading practices that require commitment. Most children give a text assignment a single read. They may take notes or create a brief outline. Better students create flash cards to self-quiz their accuracy and memory retention.

Upping reading has children do the following:

  • Read the text multiple times. First to gain a basic understanding and key ideas included in the text. Second, focus on structure, language, and the author’s writing style. They focus on text-specific questions not just questions assigned to any and every text. And in a third reading, children read and reflect on both the text and relate it to their knowledge and understanding of other texts. Children consistently write notes, annotate, and reflect on key literary and text analysis questions.
  • To focus on reading comprehension, the teacher chunks the text and engages children with reading aloud and thinking aloud. Thinking aloud is reacting and responding immediately to what has been read. Doing things aloud takes time and consideration and these two elements push the reading and thinking upward.
  • Teachers teach children a Socratic discussion model and children use this model to up their comprehension, interpretations, and insights. Children are expected/required to engage in discussions. As children listen to other children, they reflect on, consider, and edit and amend their own thoughts and conclusions. Socratic processing benefits the speaker and the listener.
  • Parallel to multi-step reading and Socratic discussion, children use graphic organizing techniques the teacher has taught them to break down the text into logical parts that aid in their memory and recall. They use and then file these organizers for future references.
  • Children act out a part of the literary text, rewrite a part to create a different outcome, or creatively illustrate the setting of part(s) of the text. For non-literary text, children create chronologies of actions leading up to and after the information in the text or create parallels of what else is happening simultaneously with the text.

These, or all of these, are not usual in classroom instruction focused on knowledge and understanding of the general curriculum. In the aggregate, these teaching/learning episodes move a child’s cognitive, social-emotional, and performance-based achievements to higher order levels. They are demonstrable for the teacher’s peers, administrators and the child’s parents to observe and acknowledge.

Coaching up for improved hitting technique.

I played on several state championship baseball teams in my high school years and never was instructed in hitting. To improve hitting, we took more batting practice and rotated in pitchers with different deliveries and throwing velocities. The only critique when we struck out was “you need more practice.”

Coaching up for hitting involves the following:

  • Having the hitter not just assume a batting stance but analyze the set up and stance. Is the stance balanced on the width of the feet with flexed knees, bend or no bend at the waist, and good weight distribution. The hitter needs to talk aloud with the coach about the stance set up in order to understand how a stance and set up work. The hitter needs to do this in the batters box and in front of a mirror or camera. Too many hitters think they are balanced and flexed when they are not. The coach needs to press hands on the batter to check for balance, flex, and weight distribution.
  • In the stance and set up, are the hands in natural position near the back shoulder, does the head position allow for a clear vision of the pitcher and ball in flight, and are the toes, knees, hips, and shoulders aligned. Hitters don’t do this solo, but under the supervision and critique of the coach. Many hitters think their stance and set up are solid when they are not.
  • Swinging the bat is not just swinging the bat. In preparing to swing, the hitter’s weight should be slightly loaded on the back foot while maintaining a balanced posture. The stride forward initiates the swing and rotation of the shoulders. A hitter’s stride is highly individualized, but if it is too long or too short it disrupts the plane, power, and release of the swing. During the stride, the hitter starts with a hip then shoulder rotation to create torque and power. There is a natural release and forward press of the upper body. Coaches can detect better than hitters when the release and press are not natural.
  • Swinging on a plane is essential to striking a thrown pitch. On plane gets the bat into the hitting zone leading with the hands (bat pointing slightly behind the hands). Hitters need to be consistent with their plane – is it down with bat control for hitting hard ground balls, is it parallel to the plate for hitting line drives with power or is it upward for long fly balls. Gifted hitters can change swing planes depending on game situations. Most hitters need consistency and coach supervision, critiquing, and correction to create and consistently be on lane.
  • Getting the bat to the ball is just the start. Hitters need to extend their arms through contact with the ball to drive the ball. Pitch speed, bat speed, and extended driving through the ball create power. Extension plus rotation to a high finish with the bat behind the lead shoulder almost to the hitter’s back makes a complete swing.
  • Hitting coaches study the art and science of swinging a bat and hitting a ball. They know that each hitter has a different physique and baseball personality. Hence, coaching hitters is a highly individualized and personalized endeavor. Coaches use soft toss and front toss drills, live batting practice, video analysis, and consistent work on identifying a pitch as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. Hitters have fractions of a second to make the decision to swing or not swing at a pitch and if they swing their mechanics need to be designed and practiced for hitting success.

The fact is that most coaches coach a team to play baseball or softball. They have a basic understanding of throwing, catching, hitting, running the bases and sliding, and fielding ground balls and pop flies. They do not have the skill sets to up player performance with explicit instruction in any of the game’s skills. It is the difference between a coach saying, “just do this” and another coach saying “this is the physiology and physics of doing this.” Upping requires knowing what up is.

The Big Duh!

Tomlinson told us that “…all students are capable of much more than they currently show the world.” It is a teacher who causes them either to achieve only the minimum expectations that our world holds for our students, athletes, and artists or to show their much higher levels of achievement and performance. It is both a teacher’s decision to teach up and a teacher’s ability to teach up that moves child achievements upward.

Rigor and Productive Struggle – “Kind of Hard” Causes Leaning

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Teaching for learning often resembles the Goldilocks story. If things are not just right, Goldilocks is not happy. Her sampling of chairs, porridge, and beds showed some chairs and beds to be too soft or too hard and some bowls of porridge to be too cold or too hot. By experimenting, she found her “just right” spot.

When children find lessons that are too easy to too hard, and I add, not interesting or of no perceived value to them, they also are not happy. They express their unhappiness by wandering off into boredom, distractive behaviors, and absenteeism. The “just right” lesson can catch each child’s attention and positively challenge their emerging skills sets. Such is a teacher’s constant dilemma – designing lessons with enough rigor and interest, not too little nor too much, to cause learning.

The sweet spot.

In “Productive Struggle Is a Learner’s Sweet Spot” (ASCD, Vol 14, No. 11), Barbara Blackburn describes the tension in instructional design teachers face in creating lessons that are “just right” on the scales of interest and rigor. “Student success occurs when you create an instructional environment that sets high expectations for each student and provides scaffolding without offering excessive help. The key is to incorporate productive struggle.

Productive struggle is what I call the “sweet spot” in between scaffolding and support. Rather than immediately helping students at the first sign of trouble, we should allow them to work through struggles independently before we offer assistance. That may sound counterintuitive, since many of us assume that helping students learn means protecting them from negative feelings of frustration. But for students to become independent learners, they must learn to persist in the face of challenge.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/productive-struggle-is-a-learners-sweet-spot

Blackburn speaks of two essential elements for teaching in the sweet spot. One is using the tension between the Goldilocks’ just right and too hard to provoke children to learn. Instruction that is too easy will not cause learning. It is the tension between what a student knows and can do now and what they need to know and do next that is the cutting edge for their learning. Teachers use the tension to motivate, instruct, and reinforce new learning.

Blackburn’s second element is scaffolding new learning so that all children incrementally secure their learning and developmentally grow their knowledge and skills through productive struggle. Blackburn does not allow Goldilocks to settle back into comfort but keeps pushing Goldilocks to learn to know and do what initially is too hard for her. For Goldilocks-like students, what is just right today will become too soft in the future

Blackburn locates that sweet spot by finding the critical attributes of the new or next learning in her curriculum. Madeline Hunter taught us to assess critical attributes by sorting the ideas, concepts, and generalizations of knowledge and the rigor of skill sets to identify what children need to learn “right now.” This creates the sequence and the rate and degree of what will be taught to cause learning. The scaffold ensures that children are prepared and ready to climb from one step of the learning sequence to the next. Children learn the facts and skills in the order required to create concepts and generalizations needed for new progressions of their curricular learning.

When an appropriately considered scaffold is absent, children easily drift into boredom and disinterest. “Over time, students who are continually and insufficiently challenged tend to become disengaged and complacent, exerting lower effort and gaining only superficial learning. As a result, some fail to develop resilience and perseverance with difficult tasks.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/thriving-in-the-zone-of-productive-struggle

Lev Vygotsky added to our understanding of how children learn with “the Zone of Proximal Learning. “According to Vygotsky’s theory, the ZPD describes the area between a child’s current and future ability. The ZPD is a hypothesized construct that describes the range of children’s abilities from what they are capable of doing to what they are unable to do on their own. When teaching, teachers should encourage child learning by using activities and supporting strategies that enable a child to accomplish a task with the assistance of another peer or teacher. It is important while scaffolding that teachers ask questions and give tasks that target a child’s current developmental level. As children begin to master skills on their own, teachers adjust their teaching strategies accordingly so that children continue to advance.”

Vygotsky

Just right is “kind of hard.”

There is an intersection where applications of productive struggle and proximal learning can be used to enhance student learning by finding the “just right” spot.

Does it make sense to make learning slightly harder?

Annie Murphy Paul wrote, “Yes, and the reason is twofold. The first reason to make learning harder is to make it interesting. Learning something new and complicated is hard in itself, as we saw above. Lightening the learner’s cognitive load will allow her to learn more effectively without becoming frustrated or confused.

But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.

The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better. UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork has developed the idea of “desirable difficulties” — difficulties that we actually want to introduce into students’ learning to make it more effective. Bjork notes that many of the learning activities that make students feel competent and successful — like reading over a textbook passage several times so that it feels familiar — actually they do very little to help them learn. What they should do instead is something like this: close that textbook and ask themselves to recall from memory what they’ve just read.

It won’t feel as good. They’ll struggle to remember the words that were just in front of their eyes. But this activity, known as retrieval practice (or simply self-testing) is an example of a desirable difficulty that will dramatically increase students’ learning.”

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/making-learning-easier-harder-for-kids

Paul suggests that cognitive load is a factor in what makes learning new content and skills easy or hard. “Cognitive load refers to the amount of information our working memory can process at any given time. For educational purposes, cognitive load theory helps us to avoid overloading learners with more than they can effectively process into schemas for long-term memory storage and future recall.”

https://www.mcw.edu/-/media/MCW/Education/Academic-Affairs/OEI/Faculty-Quick-Guides/Cognitive-Load-Theory.pdf

How much is “just right?”

As we design lessons for cognitive load, we consider the number of pieces or chunks of new information the brain can process at once. “In a famous paper humorously describing “the magical number seven plus or minus two, “Miller claimed to be persecuted by an integer. He demonstrated that one can repeat back a list of no more than about seven randomly ordered, meaningful items or chunks (which could be letters, digits, or words). Other research has yielded different results, though. Young adults can recall only 3 or 4 longer verbal chunks, such as idioms or short sentences (Gilchrist, Cowan, & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008). Some have shrugged their shoulders, concluding that the limit “just depends” on details of the memory task. Recent research, however, indicates when and how the limit is predictable.

The recall limit is important because it measures what is termed working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960), the few temporarily active thoughts. Working memory is used in mental tasks, such as language comprehension (for example, retaining ideas from early in a sentence to be combined with ideas later on), problem solving (in arithmetic, carrying a digit from the ones to the tens column while remembering the numbers), and planning (determining the best order in which to visit the bank, library, and grocery). Many studies indicate that working memory capacity varies among people, predicts individual differences in intellectual ability, and changes across the life span (Cowan, 2005).

It has been difficult to determine the capacity limit of working memory because multiple mechanisms retain information. Considerable research suggests, for example, that one can retain about 2 seconds’ worth of speech through silent rehearsal (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Working memory cannot be limited this way alone, though; in running span procedures, only the last 3 to 5 digits can be recalled (less than 2 seconds’ worth). In these procedures, the participant does not know when a list will end and, when it does, must recall several items from the end of the list (Cowan, 2001).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2864034

Once “just right” is taught, teach children how to remember/study.

One may think that Goldilocks was just goofing around in the three bears home. But she wasn’t. She tasted porridge to find something to eat and she tested chairs and beds for something to sit and sleep on. So, it is with lesson design. Learning must be focused on the right outcomes.

Paul also referred to Bjork’s “desirable outcomes” or expectancy theory. In his example of a study habit – re-reading – he shows that when a child re-reads material several times, the expected outcome is familiarity not memorization what was read. To memorize, a child must set the expectation of recall not familiarity. Hence, instead of re-reading, close the book and try to recall what was read. If not successful, read again, close the book, and try to recall. This is practicing the expectation that the child really wants – to remember what was read not just be familiar with it.

As we teach children new information and skills, we want them to internalize what they learn not just parrot it back to us. Early on in their school careers, children must be taught how to create memory and not just expect memorization to happen. The ability to memorize is just as important as content and skills. To do this, teach a small chunk of new information, then ask children to repeat it back to you. Have children read a paragraph, set the reading aside, and tell you what they read. Extend their listening and reading to larger chunks of information. And correct them when their repeating or telling is not correct. Practice this in class and tell them they need to do this when they study at home. We teachers assume children know this intuitively and they do not.

The Big Duh!

The design of good instructional lessons is not easy. Assess what children know now and what they need to know next. Assemble new information and skills that are at the hard edge of what would be relatively easy for them to learn. Set the motivational hooks of novelty, interest, and challenging material for children before they engage in new learning so they will choose to engage in learning. Don’t provide help too soon – productive struggle builds resiliency. Teach them to study and create short- then long-term memory of what they learned.

Then, do it again for their next lessons.

Teachers of Bygone and New Eras

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There is a cadre of career teachers in our local school who are on the brink of retirement. Each are nearing their 40-year anniversaries in teaching, several with careers in our local school only. Those in the lower grades are teaching the grandchildren of their first students. Experienced? Measured in decades. Talented? Unbelievable teaching skills. Dedicated? Consistently trying to be better. Passionate about teaching? They put a capital “T” in Teacher! They also are part of a dwindling breed of teachers – those who were called to be teachers not just employed as teachers.

It is a fact that schools say good-bye to veteran teachers every year. In our school we have watched this natural cycle; distinguished teachers retire, and new teachers assume their classrooms However, in past years there was still a remnant of the cadre of the passionate left to carry on. Next year that may not be true.

Differences Matter.

When interviewing candidates for employment, I often asked, “Is teaching your calling or your vocation?”  Some candidates stumbled. They did not understand the question nor the concept of “calling.” Some tried for middle ground saying “both.”  A few either smiled or frowned, either was an appropriate face, saying, “calling.” From an early age, they knew they wanted to be teachers. In school, they selectively considered their teachers as role models. In college, they declared their education majors early and their course work developed necessary academic background. Intuitively, they knew they were meant to be teachers; it was their calling. Not surprisingly, these few formed the cadre of dedicated, talented, veteran teachers who constantly exude their passion for teaching children. They are the backbone of their faculty.

There is no set-in-stone, boilerplate descriptor for a passionate teacher. They exist female and male, of all ethnicities and languages, and teaching all disciplines. Often labeled toward the middle and latter years of their careers as master teachers, they know pedagogy and the content and skills of their subjects. They know how to adjust their teaching to meet their students’ learning challenges. More than anything else, they know how to relate to children and cause all children to learn.

Therein lies a significant difference between those who are called and those who are just employed. The passionate do not teach for teaching’s sake; they teach for learning’s sake.

Walking into a classroom while a teacher works causes a variety of responses from both teacher and students. In some classrooms, the air takes on a new tension because someone is watching. The tension increases when that someone is a principal or superintendent. Teaching and learning become business-like. The visitor is treated as a visitor. In contrast, when entering the classroom of one of the passionate, a visitor is welcomed with a “Hey, look at what we are doing today!” The teacher smiles but does not stop or adjust teaching because someone is watching. Children do not hesitate to explain what they are learning and often ask quiz the visitor showing how smart they are.

There is a difference in classrooms that celebrate learning and those who conduct learning.

Locating a teacher in their classroom also is tell-tale difference. When welcoming and starting a class and providing and modeling initial instruction, the teacher often is front and center before students. Location changes and matters when children are engaged in dependent and independent work and individual and small group work. The passionate are kneeling beside student desks and chairs, sitting, and huddling with a child or small group to help children to clarify or correct their understanding or skills. They listen more than they talk. They suggest more than they tell. They personalize the reality that when a child learns learning a very individual development. The employed teachers retreat to their desks to watch and monitor students and do teacher things. They wait for children to come to them rather than intuitively moving among children to aid, confirm, and clarify their learning.

There is a difference in teaching a classroom of children and teaching for each child in a classroom.

Burning the midnight oil is not just a student’s plight, but also a teacher’s. It refers to doing what needs to be done in preparation for what comes next no matter of the hour. When the school day begins, all teachers are in their classrooms awaiting the first bell. For the employed, a class day begins and ends with contractual bells. For the passionate, the teaching day begins and ends with readiness for what the children need next. As a rule, the first cars in the parking lot in the morning and the last to leave after school are the passionate’s. They also are seen at school on weekends and vacation days. No one asks a teacher to be a slave to their job, but what is slavery to some is being professional to others.

The commitment to teaching is greater than the teaching contract.

When a passionate teacher retires, there is a loss of talent in the school. Their talent is the aggregate of their experience and their professional knowledge and abilities. All teachers begin based upon their baccalaureate and teaching preparation. I have known some to make a career based solely on those credentials; they do only what is necessary to sustain their contract and license. I also have celebrated the awarding of advanced degrees and training for teachers who know that teaching requires lifelong learning and continuous new training. When I clipped and shared professional articles and books with the faculty, some squandered the opportunity while the cadre were eager to talk about what they read and learned.

The cadre is not just passionate about their students’ learning but also about their own continuous development as professional teachers.

It is a new era.

Each year in Wisconsin the number of licenses for baccalaureate-prepared teachers is equal to the number of emergency licenses issued to people who are fully prepared but will achieve their license through on-the-job training. Several years ago, new teachers with emergency licenses only were rare but soon they will be the majority of new hires. Most of the emergency-licensed are second career teachers who come to teaching for a variety of reasons. Few, if any, are called. The shortage of people who want to be classroom teachers is real and many students are taught by not-yet-licensed or prepared teachers. Teaching is a job and there will be no cadre.

The profession of teaching has entered a new era. Most new teachers will be as professional as the business of teaching requires them to be. They will work their contracts. Life for them sets aside the eight hours each day and nine months needed for their teaching job so that they can live their non-job lives.

Years ago, a child seeing a teacher in the grocery store was bewildered because the child only thought of the teacher in a classroom. That was the teacher’s entity. No more. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. To repeat, no one should be a slave to their employment. On the other hand, to swipe a phrase, a presence or absence of a teacher’s “fire in the belly” is clearly discernible. “Fire in the belly” is a critical attribute for master teaching and makes me wonder if we are saying our final farewell to our local Mr./Ms. Chips.