School talk. With whom do you talk to share your school doings and air your thoughts? You know – the things that raise your ire or get under your skin and nag on you until you can release their toxin by talking with someone. And, who is the first person with whom you share your successes each day? Irritation and enjoyment are the two faces of our professional work. Too often, the answer to each question is the same – no one.

Teachers are exceptionally vulnerable to the malady of isolated work. We work with children all day. We are in contact with their parents, counselors, principals and other teachers regarding these children so much that we don’t have many in-school minutes for personal conversations. Prep time is precious. After school meetings are pre-focused on standards and assessments and calendared school events. By the close of any school day, we are full of things to talk about and the pressures we face professionally make a frequent conversation a requirement for our personal and career health. We all need our place and time to talk and someone to listen.

Recent legislation has made our profession even more comparative and competitive and collegiality often does not include the sharing of confidences, at least the type of confidences required for soul-searching and elation. In the state’s public report card, what is your teacher effectiveness rating? Is it as solid as the ratings of other job-alikes in your school? Sadly, paranoia may raise its head whenever we share confidences with a colleague or with our supervisor. Are we complaining or bragging? By necessity then we need a true confidante who can hear our inner most thoughts without our fear of liability.

Every once and while the teaching gods shine on us. My wife is a teacher of special education children. She returned to teaching in the 80s when the last of our three children enrolled in school. In the mid-70s I changed from a classroom assignment to a schoolhouse assignment as a principal and in the 90s took an assignment as a superintendent. My wife and I talk about schooling every day. We talk about teaching. We talk about teaching that seems to work and why and teaching that seems to fail and why. We talk about children and their learning needs. She talks about hers and I talk about mine. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of our school days every day.

For the past 15 years we have held our daily talks in our hot tub. Nice! Interestingly, we installed the tub for just this purpose – our place to soak and talk. We enjoy the dual benefits of a hot soak that releases the physical tensions and a school talk that releases the professional tensions. We think that the place for our talks needs to be completely separable from a school house; the kind of place that cannot be found where we work. It doesn’t have to be a hot tub, but for us it is.

Why is daily conversation important? Because the history and tradition of classroom work isolates a teacher and in the 21st century we can no longer afford to be isolated.

When Ichabod Crane taught the children in a small hamlet in New Amsterdam, he was THE teacher. There were no other teachers within miles. Master Crane roomed with a local family taking his meals at their table and sleeping under their eaves. He walked or rode his horse alone to the schoolhouse and back each day. Master Crane did not speak of his day at school with anyone and few would have deigned to talk with him about his teaching. What did they know? THE teacher determined what was to be learned, how it was to be learned, and who did and did not learn what was taught. He lived a life of professional isolation.

Schooling did not change for more than 200 years albeit urban communities built large schoolhouses where many Master Cranes taught and lived in much the same fashion as Ichabod. Master Crane could have walked into any rural or small town school and been extremely comfortable with the professional life he found there. And, his professional life would have been very similar as a large school teacher who was singularly responsible for children in a classroom in a large building of many classrooms.

I well remember my grandmother’s small one-room schoolhouse near Fennimore, WI, where she taught in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s. A county superintendent visited her school site once each month, but on a daily basis she worked as a faculty of one. She also primed the pump each morning, ate lunch with her K-8 students in the school yard in good weather, and swept out the classroom each afternoon. My grandmother was widowed in 1946. When I visited my grandmother during the summer, she was eager to talk about the children she taught and I thought that I may well have been the first person to hear many of her stories. I heard each story over and over again because she was eager to talk about her work.

In the 1970s I was part of several school faculties with as many as 80 to 140 teachers in each school. Children came to room 223 where I caused them to learn English/language arts and world cultures in double class periods. There were four other teachers with this assignment for children in the 8th grade and we taught in classrooms spotted around the second floor of the four-story school. We teachers punched the clock in the main office each morning, taught our classes, ate lunch and took our prep periods in the teacher’s lounge and work room, and punched out each late afternoon. Professionally we wore the school’s black and orange colors and told jokes and stories to each other as we supervised the hallways, but I cannot remember professional discussions related to children, teaching, and learning. Certainly, we shared staff meetings and curriculum meetings, but those were “sit and get” meetings. No one asked important questions and or divulged important insights or professional dilemmas. It just wasn’t done.

Today, we must. Individually and collectively we must share by talking, expose by divulging, listen so that we can resolve, and work out our and our colleagues problems so that we all can improve in our profession of causing children to learn. The fate of public education rests on our ability to do so, if not our careers. We cannot afford to work in isolation of each other.

Hence, the hot tub. What is said every night in the hot tub stays in the hot tub and every morning my wife and I are able to return to the challenges of the work we love free of insignificant angst and fortified by a conversation that bolsters our good professional practice. We each tell colleagues in our respective schools about our daily hot tub talks and are encouraged by the increasing number who are finding their own time and places to talk and persons who will listen. In most cases, their conversations are sprouting up at home with a spouse or significant friend. For others, conversations are blossoming at school with fellow teachers who are willing to stay after hours and let down their professional hair. Several are texting each other about their work and one or two have created blogs to share their thoughts.

The isolated teacher needs to be as anachronistic as Ichabod Crane. Find your hot tub place and time to talk and a person to listen and prosper.

When school became parentis in absentia, educators co-opted the need to understand and respond to student behavior. School was no longer just about reading, writing and arithmetic. Quickly, we learned that when “Johnny was good, he could be oh so good; but when Johnny was bad, he could be oh so bad.” We could handle the good, but the bad has forever been a problem.

You have to be of an age to remember these strategies for responding to bad. School justice was resolved on a child’s backside with a paddle or the sole of a “Chuck Taylor All Star” Converse gym shoe. Teachers, especially male teachers and coaches, acted as the local sheriff and meted out punishment in the hallway or the locker room. Other students observed Johnny going to the hall and heard the smack and silently vowed that they would never be made to assume the position against a long row of lockers. A Chuck Taylor waffle welt lasted about an hour but was remembered for years.

Rights and wrongs were discerned with authority by a principal standing in the office doorway with arms folded across the chest and a serious frown on his brow. A principal’s frown could last for weeks and haunt the cafeteria and playground, as well as be seen looking through classroom doors at bad-doers. Often, the frown was handed down through progressive siblings and felt more like a label than a look.

School discipline in those times and places was abrupt and expected that Johnny would return immediately to the norms of the school. The only kept records were mental and emotional. Paternalistic teachers, coaches and principals dealt with the issue and/or transferred their story about bad Johnny to his pater familias. If behaviors were changed, it was due to a fear of Chuck Taylor or of a delayed justice through the student’s transcript or of what would happen when Johnny got home; if not, behaviors hardened or were stored up for potential review in the child’s adulthood.

Corporal punishment slowly was abolished by legislation and policy in many locales and an era of referral was popular at the end of the last century. When Johnny’s misbehaviors reached an indeterminate number or frequency, Johnny was referred by his teacher to the “specialists.” School counseling fell somewhere inside that indeterminate number and provided assistance in interpreting and “dealing” with Johnny. Counseling validated a need for the services of the specialists. Referral moved the problem from the classroom to another venue and once referred the initiator was relieved of the onus for responsible action. Educator pedigrees became specialized with titled positions, such as school social worker, behavioral disabilities teacher, multi-disabilities teacher, and school psychologist. The era began with Johnny being sent from the classroom for treatment and ended with the classroom being part of Johnny’s treatment.

Today, we address Johnny’s behavioral needs on the mirrored pyramid of RtI and PBIS triangles. Interestingly, no matter the era in which Johnny’s behaviors caught our attention, we faced a common dilemma in each and every instance. Or, at least, we had the opportunity to contemplate this dilemma. “What is Johnny’s choice of behavior about?” Simple question, but the coach in the locker room was more interested in quick law and order and the frowning principal needed to prevent Johnny’s behavior from infecting his classmates and a referring teacher saw a referral as a chance to spend more time teaching good Johnnies. However, “what is this behavior all about?”, remains Johnny’s persistent and haunting issue.

Belatedly, we can count and record all of the efforts expended in dealing with Johnny’s behavior against an often insufficient effort at parsing out the reason for his behavior and treating that reason(s) with a directness and compassion that Johnny may not have been able to request in his own words. This type of response typically must come from the person who deals with Johnny when and where his “badness” is exhibited – back to the educators in the classroom and playground and cafeteria and hallway. This type of response typically is very personal, as in listening to Johnny, letting Johnny’s behavior diminish from his running out of gas, confronting Johnny in non-confrontational ways, being personally direct with Johnny and spelling things out that other students may clearly understand, and protecting others from Johnny’s behavior while not ignoring Johnny. And, most importantly, a persistence and commitment to Johnny that often seems disproportionate to the distributed time devoted to all other children.

In the society of a school, upholding rules and behavioral expectations is a never ending story. In these societies, misbehavior dwells amongst a very large volume of good behaviors. Our professional value is remarkably enhanced when we are able to move Johnny’s or Julie’s behavior from problematic to acceptable. We know that no student must be angel every hour of every day, but we also know that we can help Johnny find his halo by working with him and not on him.

In 1959 I stood in a snowballer’s ambush of my fellow sixth graders on a great winter day. She came upon me from behind and I turned and threw as hard as I could, hitting Miss Knurr in the chest of her thick parka and double-layered sweaters with my best snowball. She demanded suspension, but Miss Phillips had me write “I will not throw snowballs” on tear-stained paper until Miss Knurr huffed out of the office. Then, she told me to stop writing, took my hands in hers and told me how she watched her sixth graders play baseball at recess each spring. She talked about throwing baseballs and games and she smiled the entire time and kept smiling when I apologized to Miss Knurr. Miss Phillips assigned me to dust Miss Knurr’s chalkboard erasers every day after school for the remainder of the winter and that was okay, because in happier times I would have volunteered to dust a teacher’s erasers. I know my story would have been different and properly handled had I hurt Miss Knurr, but Miss Phillips dealt with the facts and not the might-have-beens. Somewhere in that dusty time, Miss Knurr also helped me with fractions and her frown inverted into a smile.

Miss Phillips lingered with me during my 38 years of principalling. She worked to understand me and was not swept up with the mistake of a weenie-armed snowball thrower. All of my Johnnies deserved the best Miss Phillips interpretation I could give them. I constantly wondered, “Who and why are they rather than what have they done now.”

An excellent tool for understanding what bad behavior is about is “Your Can Handle Them All” by Robert DeBruyn and Jack Larson. This resource is delivered as a book or in a quick-action card deck by The Master Teacher.

When I pick up Izzy, a Kindergarten granddaughter, at her school to take her home and she is buckled in, I begin. “What is the letter of the week, Izz?” Yesterday she said, “P, Gramps.”

“Izz, please tell me five words that begin with P.” She did.

“Izz, please tell me five words that end with P.” She did.

“Izz, please think of words that have two Ps in their spelling. Can you tell me any of these words?” She did.

And, so it goes.

“Izz, tell me again what the letter of the week was last week.” “O, Gramps.” And, she began telling me words that begin, end with and contain the letter O.

Once in a while, I use my phone to record the way she tells me these words. She has great five-year old attitude. But, more than attitude she is learning language. She begins rhyming, finding patterns and creating word families. She sing-songs the words. She stops and looks out the windows for a while and then erupts with new words. Because I make up words sometimes to fit into a story I am telling her, she also makes up words with the letter of interest.

“Izz, tell me a story about some jalapeño peppered popcorn placed in a packet inside a pumpkin that was painted purple.” She is used to my nonsense and humors us with a short story that shows imagination and fantasy, but is laced with P-words.

Practice (another P-word) theory pervades much that Izzy and I do together. The story goes that when a musician asked how to get from his hotel to Carnegie Hall, he was told “practice, practice and more practice.” The way to grow a child’s learning always includes practice. Whether Izzy is learning to ride a bike, play her keyboard, do a cartwheel, name the variety of trees in her front yard, manipulate her favorite games on an IPad or learn how to satisfy her Gramps, practice is part and parcel to her success.

The principles pertaining to practice are simple.

How much? Practice the smallest amount that has meaning and build on that practice.

How long? Start with several short practices that are long enough in duration to cause learning; too long leads to lost interest and too short to nothing being accomplished.

How often? Begin with frequent sessions as newly acquired learning can be forgotten easily. Seven to eight times for short-term memory and 16 to 18 times for longer term retention. Then, repeat in a staggered manner over time.

How well? Smaller amounts in smaller time increments can lead accurate and correct learning. Seeking more complex and complicated responses and transferring the desired responses to other settings adds memory muscle. Be careful; incorrect responses require clarification and reteaching.

It is difficult to think of any learning that we want a child to do that is not related to and strengthened by practice theory. No, it is difficult to think of any learning period that does not require practice theories if it is to be learned for life.

Group work. What shall we think of it? Walk down a school hallway any day and I bet you will see multiple classrooms attempting one or more components of group work. Some children thrive in group work and others are immediately lost in their group assignment. Some teachers are masters at using group assignments to provide them with time for individual student and group tutorials and other teachers view group work assignments as extended prep time. So, what shall we think of it? A child’s ability to work productively in a collaborative group is an essential learning opportunity. So, we need to apply group work properly or not use group work at all!

Let’s understand the sixth sentence first. An effective use of group work is an essential teacher tool for creating time for individual or small group tutorials. Without good tutorial time, few teachers are able to monitor student learning and do the necessary reteaching needed to assure that all students are successful. So, what are appropriate group work practices.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills tells us that the ability to work with others is an essential and necessary component for a person to succeed in this century’s world of work. http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework Specifically, to be 21st century-ready, children need to:

• Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams,
• Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal, and
• Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member.

Let’s start with these as the educational target.

These are several components of a strong instructional design using group work.

1. Group work is face-to-face work. Children need to see each other up close, share ideas with one another, discuss with and explain to each other, summarize what each other has contributed, and create a consensus together. “With one another” cannot be accomplished from opposite sides of the classroom or virtually. It is best when children are “knee to knee” at a group table or circle of chairs or desks.
2. Group work requires each child to do work. Too often group work has been accomplished by the one or two “go get ‘em” children in a group while others are cheerleaders or observers. As best practice, each child must do the initial work (reading, viewing, doing) and generate a conclusion from their initial work (written, spoken, shown). Each child must explain their initial work to the group and find similarities and differences in their collective initial work. Each child doing the initial work is the first separator between good and bad learning practice. If only some children do the initial work, the use of collaborative groups automatically is poor practice.
3. Group work requires appropriate social skills. Children need to take turns speaking and doing, listening and watching, and sharing their ideas. They need to respect the ideas of other children. Social skills do not arise by accident. While we encourage a competitive attitude in many school activities, we need to have children check their competitiveness and open themselves to cooperation and collaboration. This is an instructional target unto itself in which the teacher explains and demonstrates the active, receptive, and collaborative skills that build group collaboration.
4. Group work may apply structural roles of leader/facilitator, recorder/secretary, checker, timekeeper, summarizer/reflector. Once again, the importance of these roles creates its own teaching moment because a child needs a strong image of how these roles contribute to the group’s effectiveness. http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/roles.htGroups must be heterogeneously assigned. Ability grouping condemns a group of high ability children to a competitive race and a group of low ability children to a dearth of ideas. 1 – 4 above contribute to the success of each student regardless of their ability. Too often, proponents of gifted and talented ideology demand that high ability students work only with high ability children. There is time and place for ability grouping, but not in the design of collaborative group instruction. Resist these demands.
5. Group work allows the teacher to monitor and assess each student’s initial work, demonstration of social skills, skill in expressing a group role, skill in collaborating for consensus, and ability to work with children of differing abilities. Good practice includes an assessment rubric on each of these points.

Group work is not a group project in which one or two students do all the work or an assignment that leads to all members getting the same grade based upon the final submission. When either of these is present, children are not afforded a good instructional opportunity.

Group work is hard work for a teacher. It requires a strong conceptualization of complex learning targets, discreet instruction of skills and understandings that are embedded in a child’s cooperation and collaboration, and a complex assessment scheme. And, this is just the preparation for group work. Inside the time that children are working in groups, a teacher also needs to plan for and implement individual and small group tutorials.

The next time someone walks past your classroom door and looks in to see group work, show them that your children are actively learning and using strong 21st century collaboration skills. Your good group work instructional practices also will be displayed by the overall academic success of all your children at the end of the year because you combined group work and tutorial instruction to the advantage of all.

Words and terms matter. Reteaching is synonymous with instructional intervention. However, the word intervention today is mired in the policies and politics of RtI. If we use the term intervention to mean reteaching, too many colleagues will immediately focus on their current emotions and district initiatives related to RtI. So, let’s talk about reteaching.

Before reading further, reflect upon the number of times in the past week that 100% of the children you teach learned 100% of the information, concepts, skills or processes that you taught to them. The old and laughable adage that “if I taught it, they should have learned it” no longer cuts it. “If, when I teach I then efficiently assess their learning so that I can reteach children who have not successfully learned, then all really have learned.” That’s better.

Read on.

Reteaching is essential in the new educational environment of complex high stakes assessments with more emphasis on the word “complex” than the words “high stakes.” Children cannot afford to enter those assessments without a solid understanding of the standards being assessed. Why reteaching? Research on the term “reteaching” is thin. Lalley et al (2006) indicate that pre-teaching and re-teaching produced significant increases in student abilities the math concepts, math problems and math computation. Research on “intervention” is much more extensive. Almost every state has developed resources that assist their educators comply with new regulations related to RtI. See the research base for interventions attached to your state’s department of education.

Reteaching 101.

Marzano (2010) provides the most concise description of good practice.

While teaching new content, skills or processes, check children for their understanding and immediately clarify and/or correct misunderstandings, misconceptions and mistakes. In the flow of new instruction, asking children to summarize, apply, explain to another will indicate the accuracy of their learning. Whatever is not acceptable should and can be addressed at that moment and later verified through another check for understanding. Sounds like Madeline Hunter? She originated the terms “checking for understanding” and “reteaching” in her discussion of mastery teaching the 1980s.

Secondly, reteaching should be purposefully attached to every formative or intermediate assessment that is designed to assess for learning. Problems of misunderstanding, misconception and mistake need to be addressed that time. Typically, this means reteaching to an individual child or a small group tutorial. Plan the time and energy for post-assessment reteaching, because it will be necessary if every child is to be prepared for next learning and/or for a summative assessment in the future. Also plan an extension activity that other children can use to profit their ongoing learning while you reteach.

Lastly, reteaching cannot be a repeat. The words and approach need to respond to the child’s misunderstanding, misconception and mistake. Reteaching must explain the error in the child’s learning and then use good teaching/tutorial practice to extinguish the error(s) and create a new and accurate learning. It is a mini-lesson with all of the good practices of initial instruction including the extinction of error.

The need to reteach is not an evaluation of a teacher’s instructional effectiveness. No one achieves 100% student learning all of the time. Reteaching is a skill and process used by an effective teacher to cause all students to learn.

Effects of Pre-teaching and Re-teaching on Math Achievement and Academic Self-Concept of Students with Low Achievement in Math, Lalley, James P. et al (2006)

“Reviving Reteaching”, Robert J. Marzano, Educational Leadership (Oct 2010, Vol 68, No. 2)