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Lessons learned at recess

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We learned a lot in elementary school.  Mrs. Wogen and Miss White taught us to read and to add and subtract.  Mrs. Wendlendt taught us to love good stories and Miss Blaine taught us to write complete sentences.  Miss Lubbock taught some of us to stand tall and smile and try to blend in because we could not carry a tune.  And Miss Phillips taught us that respect is earned.  We were taught well, and we learned many academic lessons in the early grades, but our elementary schooling was more than what our teachers taught.  It also was what we learned from each other.

Grade school for kids is time in the classroom and time on the playground.  Ask any third-grade boy about his day at school and you are more likely to hear a story from recess than what happened in his reading group.  The classroom and playground are essential for a childhood; they create a balance in a kid’s life, if we let them.  That balance is achieved because teachers make up and enforce rules in their classrooms while on the playground, kids make up and enforce the rules for recess.  With unspoken agreement, kids set the standards of how to play and how not to play, who wins and who loses, and how to treat each other.  In hindsight, recess rules ruled us when we were young, and they became unwritten, indelible rules for our entire life.

These are ten recess rules I learned and have practiced for more than half a century.  They applied to me and my friends when we were running and playing across the playground, and they applied to me in my career and in raising a family.  You may have rules from your youth that have served you well.  Consider these and remember your own.

  • There are my guys and there is everybody else.  The law of magnetism says likes repel and opposites attract but those rules do not apply on the playground where likes attract other likes.  We were 300 children spilling out the school doors for recess when we grouped ourselves in “likes”.  Generally, boys grouped with boys and girls with girls and the dozen or so boys I found myself with were those who loved any game with a ball that required movement, throwing, and catching.  Also, we all lived within a radius of several blocks from each other, so games on the playground became games after school and then Cub Scouts and summer swimming classes.  Other kids on the playground found their “guys”.   Guys back then was not a gender thing.  We referred to other boys and girls as “you guys”.  There were more than 100 children at my grade level and I knew everyone by name and face and considered them all to be my friends.  The guys, my special friends, were spread across the three classrooms in our grade level.  When the bell sounded recess time, we rushed down the stairs from our separate classrooms and gathered at the place where asphalt became a field of grass.  That is where the recess games began.  A real game for guys back then was football or softball or keep away.  The games that mattered were my guys against any other group of guys.
  • Things happen with, for, and against.  Even then, I could categorize what happened at recess in three ways.  I played with the guys.  I did all I could for the guys.  Together, the guys and I played hard against the other guys.  Those prepositions were involved in every story we told about recess.  Later, the same words applied to our junior and high school sports.  I played with my teammates.  I did all I could for my teammates.  Together, we competed against other teams.  And, later still, with and for applied to how I approached my work life. 
  • Be on time and be ready.  When recess started, the games began.  If you dawdled in the hallways or restroom, no one waited.  In fact, the guys sized up who was ready to play and started almost before the ringing bell stopped echoing.  Joining a game in progress was not easy.  If you were not on time and ready, you were a spectator until the next recess.  When you were late or not ready, you knew who to blame – yourself. 
  • Don’t knock down a girl.  It was easier then; boys wore pants and girls wore dresses.  You never ran into, threw a ball at, or knocked down someone in a dress.  This is not to say that guys didn’t get carried away and sometimes a game crossed into where girls played.  It happened and there was hell to pay if you were the one who knocked down a girl.  There were phone calls that night between parents and when parents got into talking about recess, that was a bad thing.  You could get sidelined for nothing more than mud on a dress.
  • Fast is fast; you can’t get faster, but you can get better.  Among our guys, I was not the fastest runner.  It used to pain me that, try as I might, I could not pick up and lay down my feet any faster than I did.  I was not slow; just not fast.  Early on it was clear that if I could not improve my foot speed, I needed to find things I could improve.  I worked on three ways to be better than faster: catch the ball and keep the ball, look for the smart next move, and, if someone runs into you, make that person feel the pain.  Learning how to improve upon what genetics provided proved a good lesson for recess and good for high school sports and life in general, even the idea of physical collisions.
  • Know your role.  Somedays you lead and somedays you follow.  Every recess you have a place and role in what is happening.  The games gave each of the guys chances to step up and step aside.  Of course, being young boys, we sometimes did not do either gracefully or needed one of the guys to tell us.  Knowing when and how to lead and how to follow was part of being with the guys and we had plenty of opportunities to learn to be a role-player.
  • Leave it on the playground.  Because you win some and you lose some, it was important to leave the games of recess on the playground.  Miss Blaine did not care which guys won a softball game during the lunch recess when she called on kids to talk about the plot of a story in afternoon language arts class.  By the same token, the kid who put the hurt in your bruised shoulder sat two rows to your right and neither you nor he wanted anyone in class to know why he smiled, and you frowned.  It was best for everyone when what happened on the playground did not enter the classroom.  And there will be a recess tomorrow, Bruce!
  • Competition breeds respect and respect builds new friendships.  Some of the other guys lived in distant neighborhoods.  We did not see each other except at school.  Some lived in bigger and some in smaller houses than mine; that was a way of knowing something about a guy.  Bigger house guys had newer Chuck Taylor Converse shoes with good tread and the gym shoe tread for guys from smaller houses usually was worn off.  Tread mattered back then.  Recess, though, gave every group of guys an equal chance to shine.  While I wasn’t fast, I admired guys in other groups who were.  Some had better hands or better throwing arms.  After a while, I knew which of the other guys hit the ball harder or ran faster.  I also knew what I had to do to beat them, if I could, and when we each tried to do our best, I wanted to know them better.  They weren’t one of my guys, but they became some of my good friends. 
  • Games are games not life; know the difference.  Miss Phillips, our principal, watched us at play.  Although she looked like someone’s grandmother, she had a quick eye that twinkled when she talked with me.  “Nice catch”, she would say.  Nothing more; just enough to let me know that she was watching.  More importantly, she also said, “I saw your ITBS scores, and you did very well” and “Miss Knapp told me you held the door open for her when she had her hands full.  Being a good student and well-mannered won’t score runs but they win the games that matter”. 

  • Memories of the playground live forever.  It is not surprising that the first people I look for at our high school class reunions are the guys.  After elementary school, we went to the same junior high and high school.  After high school, we split and went separate ways.  Some to college, others into the military, and some into adult life.  Years passed and life happened.  Yet, when the Class of XXXX gets together, that old oppositional magnetism works again.  We find each other and talk always wanders back to the playground.  “Do you remember ….?, starts our first and last conversation. 

My elementary school has closed.  Across the city, school enrollments decreased over the years and the economics of public education regrouped fewer children into fewer school buildings.  My elementary school stands empty, windows dark and doors locked, but the four acres of playground are filled every good weather day with youth football, soccer, and softball.  Younger children climb the jungle gyms and gather for rope jumping on the asphalt.  A playground calls children to play and children will always answer that call.

As I watch, I see children still are learning some of life’s essential rules on the playgrounds and I wish them well.

When it comes to study skills, “You are on your own, kid.”

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Because teaching children how to study is not in our curriculum and teachers are not taught how to teach studying skills in their teacher preparation programs.  Inconceivable, you might think, but true.  As a result, the random ability of a child to self-develop personal study skills becomes a highly reliable predictor of academic success in high school.  And it is a random ability.

Check it out.  Ask any group of high school students to explain their study habits.

You may find a child who enjoys virtual photographic memory.  This child reads or sees something one time and on test day recalls that initial intake with astounding reliability.  This child, though an outlier and rare, obscures our concepts of studying.  We cannot generalize about their uniqueness.

Most students will report they reread pages of their textbook and review their notes of what the teacher said in class.  A second “most” will report they do a reread and review one or two nights before a scheduled test.  Usually, they cram!

A few will say they reread text material and “rewrote their notes”.

One or two will say they “reread the text and their notes, identified key words and ideas, made flash cards of these and tested themselves on their flash cards until they memorized this information”.  They add, “I start several days before the test”.  When asked, “Who told you to study like this?”, none will say “My teacher”.  This is metacognitive studying.  Sadly, we do not teach children how to do this.  You will not find it in any publishing guide or in a baccalaureate teacher prep curriculum.

Want to hazard a guess as to which children get high grades and which children do not?

What do we know?

The slope of responsibility for independent study starts as a flat line in the primary grades, approaches 45 degrees in the intermediate grades and then goes vertical in the secondary grades.  The degree of responsibility for independent study is not met with explicit instruction teaching children how to study.  We literally tell children what to study and then say “go study” thinking effective study techniques are in each child’s genetic map. 

Observations of K-4 classrooms show teachers telling children what to know, practicing what to know, and reteaching when children are not successful in initial knowing with good regularity.  This good practice has not changed much over time.  Parents will remember their teachers using the chalkboard to write out new words, ideas, and arithmetic strategies.  Children today see their teachers doing the same on smart interactive screens.  The “write it, say it, explain it” pedagogy works well in the primary grades for teaching all subjects.  The amount of information or skills being taught/learned is controlled by the teacher who uses repetition as drill and practice to drive home daily learning.  Teacher guided repetition works well until the batch of new information increases in volume or the degree of complexity increases in middle school.  There is little independent homework in the primary grades; mostly children do projects at home and bring them to class to show.

Intermediate teachers traditionally tell their students “The amount of homework you will be assigned in middle school is significantly more than we are doing.  Be ready!”.  Fair warning, but children need more than just a warning.

The following describes what middle school students are told to do to be successful in their homework and independent study.  I hear these “keys to doing homework” repeated annually in middle school classrooms.

  • Establish a study area at home.
  • Communicate with the teacher.
  • Keep assignments organized.
  • Avoid procrastination.
  • Take notes in class.
  • Highlight key concepts in the reading materials.
  • Prepare your book-bag before going to bed.

https://www.kumon.com/resources/7-important-study-habits-for-school/

Why is this the state of study skills?

These hints are like telling children that brushing their teeth daily promotes dental health.  Once told, no one checks on their brushing practices.  Likewise, once we provide the above hints for homework success.

The real culprit lies with teacher preparation.  A review of our state’s college and university teacher preparation curricula shows not a single course unit devoted to teaching children how to study.  Our required curricula assure licensed teachers possess content knowledge, pedagogical skills, understanding of human relations, and informed dispositions about the diverse students they teach, but there is not one mention of how to teach student study skills.  In essence, teachers are prepared to teach children what to know but not how to learn it.

Helpful but not complete practices

Some schools insert a unit in study skills in the middle school curriculum.  The dominant study skill taught is note taking and the predominant technique for taking notes is the Cornell system.

The Cornell Note Taking System

However, study skills and note taking, once taught are seldom if ever checked afterward.  We treat the initial instruction of study skills like a vaccine, once given then forever safe from the fate of poor study habits.  Nothing is further from the truth.  One month after the Cornell system is taught to children, I do not observe any teacher explicitly checking each child’s note taking.  There is no follow-up and that is on us as teachers and principals.

A second practice that has merit is providing students with a study guide.  Teachers who do this hand each student a preview of what will be tested.  A study guide looks like an outline of the teacher’s teaching notes.  For some students, the study guide helps them to check the validity of their note taking.  Notes should reflect the guide.  Study guides are great, but they also revert to the issue of how to study.  A student who just reads and rereads the study guide is only a tad better off than a student who reads and rereads the text and personal notes.  They achieve familiarity with the material, not a usable understanding of it.  There is no metacognitive practice is giving a study guide without teaching how to use it.

What do we need – to teach all children a metacognitive study strategy and hold children accountable for using it.  The following is one example.

There are several strategies for moving a student from familiarity with information to a usable understanding.  Part of these strategies are organizational, and part is repetitive memorization and practice.  The following strategy can be applied to every subject, all academic content, and all skills.  It is time tested.  It is a discipline for successful metacognitive learning.

  1. Teach all children to:
    • Read the text material to identify new key vocabulary and ideas, cause and effect relationships, questions that are posed and conclusions that are stated.
    • Use a note taking system to listen to a teacher’s lesson noting key vocabulary, new ideas and skills, and how the teacher displays those skills (math strategies).
    • Reread the text material for familiarity with it – “I know what it is about”.
    • Make flash cards of the key vocabulary and ideas, cause and effect relationships, steps in a problem-solving strategy, and conclusions the text or teacher make in the lessons. Key words on one side of the note card and definition on the other.
    • Either partner with a parent or classmate using flash cards. “Show me the word and I will define it. Check me. If I am wrong, tell me the correction.” Children should repeat this until they can respond correctly to each flash card prompt.
  2. Prior to a math or science test, teach all children to:
    • Do the problems in the textbook or on teacher assignment sheets again, as if they are a new assignment. Do the entire problem. Show all the work, as if you are explaining it to the teacher.
    • Repeat the scientific process related to recent lessons. What is the hypothesis, what is the evidence, what is the conclusion? Flash card this material.
  3. DO THIS! Commit class time to personally checking each child’s study materials.
    • Check their note cards for accuracy in identifying key vocabulary and ideas, relationships, and questions/conclusions.
    • Check their reworking of math and science problems.
    • Tell each child what is right and what is wrong in their study materials.
  4. DO THIS! Commit class time for children to practice their flash cards and to rework math and science problems. Observe them studying and reinforce/correct their study strategy.
  5. DO THIS consistently for several units and them randomly during the remainder of the school year.

The Big Duh!

There should be no mysteries in the education of a child.  Our goal is for all children to be successful and to do that we must give them the tools, the strategies, and our help in perfecting those.  Success in school should not be left to the random insights of a child into how to study.  Our success as teachers should be when every child demonstrates strong study skills, and every child achieves high grades.  We are not successful otherwise.

Public Education Ensures Our Future

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“What do you do?”, I was asked.

“I am a public educator.”

“What does that mean?”, he continued.

Declaring oneself to be a public educator is not a common response to “what do you do?”.  From a person working in education, one more commonly hears “I am a teacher”, “I teach math (or 2nd grade or children with special needs)”, I am a high school teacher”, “I coach basketball”, “I am a school counselor”, or “I am the principal at…”.  Those asked usually provide a more precise answer by stating their employment assignment.  Seldom is “public educator” given in a response to “what do you do?”. 

“As a public educator, I prepare each high school graduate to be an informed, inquiring, skill-based young adult citizen ready to be a productive member of our society.”

Is the concept of public important?  Not so much and then very much.

Teacher preparation is what and who we teach.

PI 34 or Chapter 34 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code is the “bible” for teacher licensing in our state.  Licensing programs are tactically written to validate a teacher candidate’s understandings and provide evidence of the candidate’s proficiency in each standard prescribed by PI 34 for a particular teaching license.  Successful candidates are endorsed by their college or university to receive a DPI license to teach a curriculum supported by the issued license.  That is to say, the job of a teacher has fences around it – the grade levels and the specified content of the license issued.  The term “silo” is applied to a variety of descriptors about teaching.  Teachers work within their licensure silo; they are content and grade level specialists.

Our local school is a confederation of these specialist teachers.  We display our faculty roster by teacher name as well as by teaching assignment.  When we advertise a teaching position, we do not list the simple word “teacher” but clearly state the specific licensure we seek.  Our mosaic of teachers is very effective in causing all our students to achieve success in their schooling.  Without failure, when asked “what do you do?”, our specialists will correctly identify their teaching license, their silo of expertise within our school’s faculty.

As a mosaic, take out any one of the many specialist pieces and our school fails to teach all children the curricula they need to learn.  We build a synergy of teaching by uniting all our specialists to our school’s mission and high-performance standards.

Public Education is why we teach.

Chapter 34 does not include the word “public” in its definitions or in its statutory requirements for the establishment of teacher preparation programs or the endorsement of a person as a licensed educator.  It determines what and who we teach, not why we teach.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/pi/34/iv/012

In contrast to Chapter 34’s licensing teachers as specialists, Chapter 118 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code, General School Operations, provides the “public” to public education.  The chapter states the purpose, goals, and expectations of public schools.  Section one tells us “Public education is a fundamental responsibility of the state” and there is a “… common understanding of what public schools should be and do…”.  The “be and do” is “Each school board should provide curriculum, course requirements and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established under sub (2) with … the development of academic skills and knowledge is the most important goal for schools…”.  This is the why statement of public education: to create an educated citizenry.

The specifics of public education, the goals and expectations of our state government for the education of all citizens, are detailed in the chapter’s subsequent sections.  The legislation describes the minimal education of the public in our state in the areas of

  • academic basic skills
  • vocational skills
  • citizenship, and
  • personal development.

I cherry pick statements from each to demonstrate the breadth of what a public education in Wisconsin is supposed to “be and do”.

From academic basic skills –

  • “Analytical skills, including the ability to think rationally, solve problems, use various learning methods, gather and analyze information, make critical and independent judgments and argue persuasively.”
  • “The skills and attitudes that will further lifelong intellectual activity and learning.”

From vocational skills –

  • “An understanding of the range and nature of available occupations and required skills and abilities.”
  • “Positive work attitudes and habits.”

From citizenship –

  • “An understanding of the basic workings of all levels of government, including the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.”
  • “An appreciation and understanding of different value systems and cultures.”
  • “At all grade levels, an understanding of human relations, particularly with regard to American Indians, Black Americans, and Hispanics.”
  • “A commitment to the basic values of our government, including by appropriate instruction and ceremony the proper reverence and respect for and the history and meaning of the American flag, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the constitution and laws of this state.”

From personal development –

  • “The skills needed to cope with social change.”
  • “Ability to construct personal ethics and goals.”
  • “Knowledge of morality and the individual’s responsibility as a social being, including the responsibility and morality of family living and the value of frugality and other basic qualities and principles…”
  • “Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils, including child abuse, sexual abuse, and child enticement.”

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118/01

One graduating class at a time

School boards, according to the statutes and in real time governance, are responsible for the education of children on their pathway to becoming adult citizens.  Boards do this one graduating class at a time.  Although graduation requirements are a list of course requirements, they speak to the totality of what a student learns in elementary and secondary school.  A 4K-12, chapter 118-based curricula is both broad and deep, requiring attention to foundational and well-scaffolded skill sets.  An education is not achieved by learning or becoming proficient in one academic subject, but by learning the necessary content and skills of a broad array of subjects.

Although students complete annual grade level and course content curricula, most of the outcomes of a public education are not known until well after a graduating class leaves school.  Looking at the mandates of Chapter 118, we don’t know how well students understand and can apply knowledge of vocational skills until they do so in their post-high school life.  And, some outcomes, such as citizenship, are exercised continuously in adulthood.  The quality of a public education is not assessed in our statewide testing systems but is demonstrated by each graduate in their post-high school years.

The mandate of public education is a monumental task.  The role of public educators is to constantly keep our school boards and their educational programs focused on annual achievement goals that, in the aggregate, contribute to a well-educated public.  A person who identifies as a public educator takes a 360-degree view of a 4K-12 education, using achievement data to ensure students are on track to meeting the goals of Chapter 118.  While a teacher focuses on the test data of the content/skills the teacher teaches, a public educator examines a wider swath of data.  Math and reading test data indicates proficiency in math and reading.  Daily attendance data indicates commitment and persistence to being educated.  Student disciplinary data indicates abilities to work and achieve within social and organizational guidelines.  Problem-based and project-based experiences indicate abilities to set goals, analyze information, and strategize problem/project solutions.  Participation in school life indicates healthy socio-emotional dispositions.  Public educators monitor and adjust a multitude of factors that assist children to grow towards successful life as adults.

The graduation handshake

One of the joys for a superintendent and school board member is a handshake with each high school graduate.  In our smaller school districts, the administrator and board member knew each graduating senior over the years of her 4K-12 education.  When the graduate’s name is read, a panoply of memories of the student’s in-school experiences rises as she walks across the graduation stage.  Giving a diploma with one hand and a handshake with the other is a wonderful symbolizing that the goals of a public education will be met in the graduate’s future.

Given the privilege of time and opportunity, we get to check the verity of that confidence in interactions with our local school graduates when they are residents, homeowners, gainfully employed, and often parents of children enrolled in our schools. 

A public education begets our next community.

School Requires less Moore

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If I was educated in school, what am I now?  Am I edu-inoculated for years to come?  The concept of an educated person is a constantly moving target.  Each generation goes to school to graduate with a diploma certifying proficiency in a curriculum that is out of date or semi-irrelevant almost before the cap and gown have been removed.  How is this so?  We apply Moore’s Law regarding the speed at which computer chip generations change to education.  Except for “rear view mirror studies” of history and literature as soon as something is learned in the present tense it is morphed and altered with new applications and needs of the future.  Schooling today is not about being educated but about skills for a student’s ability to be constantly educating for all the years after graduation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Want a case in point?  Members of the Class of 22 struggled to write the perfect college admissions essay or job application.  Members of the Class of 23 will insert key words and an AI bot will generate as many essays and applications as class members could want.  Moore told us this would happen.  Education does not stand still.

Why is this thus?

We are an additive addicted people.  We are addicted to the next new thing and want it immediately.  Our closets are full of past year’s shoes.  Our garages brim with gizmos that popped up in yesterday’s social media ad.  Our front doors are drop off stations for Amazon Prime.  We see it, we order it, we have it!  We are addicted to the next things to add to our lives and the almost instant gratification of Internet shopping.

“New and more” are our go to solutions to problems.  At the end of every commercial we anticipate the “…But wait!”, and the next bit of something we can purchase appears.  Check your credit card bills to ascertain your personal addictions.

Addictive addiction also applies to education and it makes our current concepts of academic education obsolete.  For our children to be educated for a life of education, Moore must become less to become better.

Where to start? 

Empty the closet of what no longer works or is needed.

For almost 120 years public education has used the Carnegie Unit, the assignment of one graduation credit for one hour of daily instruction for one school year, as the gold standard for validating school learning.  In our local school, a high school graduate must complete 26 credits of prescribed and elective course work.  These are piled on the faux credits of middle school’s annual curricula of ELA, math, science, and social studies, that are piled on annual grade level curricula in elementary school.  4K-12 schooling is a box of Carnegie Units that depict our concept of education as an aggregate of additives.

The purpose of the Carnegie Unit was to standardize and stabilize secondary education using a collegiate model.  This filled a need in 1906 that does not exist in 2023.  The fact that we still use the Unit is testimony to education’s resistance to change.  Sticking to four credits of English, three credits of math, three credits of science, and three credits of social studies assured that our out-of-date academics were change resistant.  When the next “add this” is discussed by a school board, the educator’s response should be “The class day is full and can take no more.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-high-school-credit-hour-a-timeline-of-the-carnegie-unit/2022/12

Trade in the Unit for proficiencies

We, as educators, need to focus education on educational skills graduates will need to remain educable over time.  Here is the “new bimodal model”:  our 4K-8 students need to be proficient in academic skills needed for lifelong learning AND our grade 6-12 students need to be proficient in the use of knowledge and skills that can be expanded over time for their adult successes. 

We must teach the essential life skills and dispositions for children in our primary grades that will be the foundation of their life’s continuing education.  Everything else in 4K-12 and post-graduation education and training is application and extension requiring these essential life skills.  It really is easy once we scrape back all the “nice to do” and “momentary enrichments” that cloud our ability to educate children for lifelong learning.

Proficiencies for the elementary school; all else is secondary

  • Ability to read and listen, comprehend, analyze, and effectively use information to illuminate a student’s world.
  • Ability to effectively listen and communicate (express ourselves through speech, writing, art, and music). 
  • Ability to quantify, measure, and value through statistical analysis. 
  • Ability to tolerate, collaborate, and cooperate in a multi-cultural, multi-dimensional world.
  • Ability to respect and expect respect.

Why these?

The concept follows the truth of “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”.  Moore tells us that the speed of life changes is inexorable.  Information is a daily flood.  We are exposed to more things to see and hear every day.  Therefore, essential skill sets that universally underlie Moore’s predicted changes need to be the foundational curriculum for every child.  Regardless of what our future presents, these are skill sets that will allow children growing into adulthood to learn and always be educated to meet their future.

How do we do this? 

  • Align school board, administrators, and teachers to prescribed and defensible standards of student performance.

School boards, school leadership, and faculty are the products of past education.  Start by declaring a new day; set aside the confines of how you were educated.  Do not approve a future that is a clone of the past.

Historically, we provided children with instruction.  “Provided” was a soft euphemism for “here it is kids, learn what you can” of what the school offers.  Today, we must ensure student learning and performances validate learning.  “Ensure” means we teach until we have evidence that all children meet or exceed the board-adopted standards.  We no longer offer; we teach for learning.

Alignment starts with school board policies that are crafted by insightful school leaders and faculty.  Within each policy must be wording that tells teachers, children, and parents, “these are the minimum proficiencies that your child must perform to qualify for promotion to the next grade”.  Alignment continues with principals working with each teacher to write and teach units and lessons that incrementally cause all children to achieve the required proficiencies.  Alignment means that teachers can use all appropriate skills to ensure the teaching and learning of the required proficiencies.  Alignment means that parents must be adults with their children and support the teacher’s instruction.  This does not mean that parents do not partner with their children’s teachers to mutually understand and daily schoolwork; but it does mean that all partnering is focused on a child’s achievement of required proficiencies.

  • Commit to 4K through grade 5 learning proficiencies. 

Commitment means to ensure that every child has successfully learned grade level proficiencies through 5th grade for these essential skills.  Every child must be proficient.

For too long instruction has been time-based and taught to the standard of “if you don’t learn it this year, you will be taught it next year”.  In an industrial culture that needed socialized and literate workers, graduates who never achieved proficiency in their essential skills found employment and adult life in factories.  They were taught shop specific skills necessary for daily work.  Many became skilled in the trades of the shop – foundry men, iron workers, mill operators, fabricators, assembly linemen (and women).  I worked in the 60s and 70s with meat packers who started on the hog side of the plant doing entry level work and were promoted to skilled knife trimmers over the years.  These men and women earned a good living and raised their families based upon the industrial wage and benefit.  Those jobs no longer exist.

School boards must devise policies for administrators to enforce true proficiency standards for each grade’s skill sets.  This starts with board members holding firm to standards of student performance, because there will be hue and cry for exceptions.  No problem.  Accommodation will allow all students to meet the standards without disregarding the standards.

  • Commit to the professional development required for all teachers to teach to high student performance standards.  This level of teaching does not exist universally today because educational traditions expect student performances to conform to a bell curve and teachers teach to that expectation.  To lop off the left-hand side of the bell curve, teachers need training in explicit assessment and instruction and reinforced commitment that all children will perform at or above the former mean.
  • Achieve the impossibility:  Every child reads, writes, speaks, and listens at a 5th grade level of a standards-based curriculum.  Every child not just the top 10%.

No school board has been able to say this historically.  No community has ever been able to say this to all their children.  It has been impossible when boards were blindly locked to archaic concepts of schooling.  And, as long a board lacked commitment to universal high standards for student performance.  And, if excuses were acceptable.  Eliminate the archaic concepts and accept no excuses.

What is the future of Moore?

There always will be change.  The speed and volume of change will increase.  Moore got it right.

If we separate 4K-5 education from 6-12 education, we ca apply Moore to secondary education only after we have made all children in elementary school secure with the skill sets that will allow them to understand and apply the changes they are presented.  No Moore until children are ready for Moore.

If you want parrots, teach birds not children

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Talking about education cannot withstand a vacuum.  Just when the reading wars are subsiding, and masks have come off other versions of passion-based arguing rise to poke public education.  Peruse any recent educational journal, education reporter in your local newspaper, and be prepared for oppositional values wars (oppositional meaning my side v. your side, not just red or blue).

And hypocrisy knows no bounds.  The banners read “Educate, Don’t Indoctrinate”.  If the subliminal message is “Indoctrinate with my doctrine only”, are we having a discussion or a demand?

What do we know?

We were forewarned.  The first warning long ago was “all politics are local”.  Regarding education, partisan value issues have a difficult path at the national level.  Congress has little to do with schooling.  It is not easier at the state level; fifty states and cats are hard to corral.  Efforts at the statehouse level face tough sledding unless the governor, house/assembly, and senate are on the same page on the same day.  If they are, all that follows is a one-sided story.  Grass roots politics are at the county, city, town, township, and village levels and this is where the real arguments about education are being waged.

The second warning was “local schools and local rules” mean “who controls school board elections controls local schools”.  School board membership has become the logical and easy target for any faction of a community active and driven enough to change local schools into their own image.  Split the ballot with enough candidates, narrow the field with a primary, and run for the board in a spring election on a non-Presidential election year.  The spring election is the ballot that traditionally brings out the fewest voters.  And, voila!  A person or persons representing a small fraction/faction with a particular agenda can be school board members.  Swinging several seats and a new majority of a usual seven-member board can control local schools through local rules.  Easy peasy!

What do we know about school governance?

There are 421 school districts in Wisconsin, each with its statutory school board.  By statute, members are agents of the state responsible for local school governance including adherence with state rules and policies.  Board membership involves attendance at the board’s regular business, committee, and special meetings.  The Milwaukee Public Schools Board is an outlier with member salaries of $36,000+ and the meeting demands of a large, complex, urban district.  Board work is a business in our largest district and a small, part-time job in most WI districts.  Typical board members in the hundreds of small districts receive an honorarium of $2-3,000 and meeting obligations require less than 10 hours per month.

School board members typically are not prepared for the vitriol of agenda-based arguments or attacks.  Most members rise from the traditional school booster groups of parents committed to educational programs for their children and their children’s peer group.  Their usual challenges are how to sustain current programs with reduced state financial aid, whether to buy a new school bus this year or next, and what is an optimal class size in their schools.  These are significant yet not “attack dog” issues.  When the dogs are out, many boards either close up shop or cave in.

What must we remember?

At the heart of most, if not every school board discussion and decision, should be children.  “How will this enhance the education of children?”, should be our constant mantra.  Played large, this mantra informs everything from reading programs to school remodeling to employee salaries to football uniforms.  Simply put, schooling is about children not adults.

This blog is not used to promote any point of view or specific, contemporary agenda.  Rather, the blog advocates for best practices for causing all children to learn.

What do we know about educating children?

Personal inquisitiveness is a foundation for lifelong learning.  The first word, personal, is essential.  Most of us want to learn to know, not be told how or what to know.  The intrinsic motivation of personalized learning is a powerful force for exciting children to learn and helping them persist in learning.  Somethings children learn have a social context and they must engage in learning with other children.  Yet, when a child feels a personalized engagement with what is being learned, a child is more likely to learn and remember.

Inquisitive is the operant word in personalized education.  To inquire is to ask a question.  It says, “I want to know about this”.  Its synonyms are equally powerful.  To explore.  To investigate.  To examine.  To analyze.  To inquire opens the door for learning with a question leading to all sorts of new information and experiences.  To inquire retains a personal control of the learning as what unfolds may not be of interest or significance.  To inquire about something opens the door to ask about something else.  Life is full of inquiry.  We want children to be inquisitive.  When we start with this purpose, untold possibilities for significant learning emerge.  Without inquisitiveness, we are training puppets of our thinking.

The ability to inquire should be a bedrock in child education.  We know –

  • Inquisitiveness is innate.  The interest to know, if not the need to know, is within every child. 
  • Inquisitiveness is to wonder and “I wonder …” is the beginning of an adventure.
  • Inquisitiveness is unbiased.  A child learns the winds that will fill their personal sails and there are many winds.
  • Inquisitiveness leads to exploration and invention and creation.  Our world needs exploring, inventive, and creative people.
  • Inquisitiveness allows individuals to grow and develop and to share.  “I wonder…” initiates learning that frequently results in “Hey, did you know …”.  Then, our children begin to educate others.

We learn more about inquisitiveness by addressing what it is not.  To not want a child to be inquisitive is to insist she –

  • Accept what she is told without question.
  • Ignores options and possibilities.
  • Considers all things she is told as facts whether true of not.
  • Abandons the joy of being surprised.

What do we want for our children?

“I want our children to be wiser and braver than me and prepared to meet the unknowns they will encounter.” 

This is both a personal statement and one that I hear from many of my generation.  We Baby Boomers had our whack at the world.  In hindsight and with the judgments of successor generations, Boomers had some significant successes and left some very significant messes.  After studying, I found the same to be true of predecessor generations. 

I am proud of our local schools where inquiry and exploration are prized and supported.  Our purpose is to provide all children with opportunities for learning.  We would rather our children are reading and learning broadly so that when asked “What do you think about…?”, or “Show us what you have learned?”, they will give informed and insightful responses and performances and not parrot back limited incantations of what they were told.  Their 21st century requires no less.

Children are great people, and we assist them to be great adults through the type of education we provide in their formative years.  I tell all but my bachelor bird loving friends, if you want parrots, raise birds.  I tell my school board colleagues, if you want a braver and wiser next generation, don’t educate them like parrots.  And resist anyone who wants to make a classroom into a parrot factory.