Category Archives: Blog

Tighten The Lug Nuts of Learning

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I watched a technician in the auto shop balancing and installing new tires on my car.  He used a pneumatic wrench to tighten the lug nuts that secure each wheel to its axel hub.  The sound of the wrench ratcheting said the nut was tight.  When all four wheels were attached, he walked around the car and manually checked each with a torque wrench.

Catching my watchfulness out of the corner of his eye, he said “Just making sure the work is done right.  Don’t want your wheels flying off while you are driving”.

What We Should Know

With my car safely back in the school parking lot, I recently watched fifth grade children struggle with dividing fractions.  The concept of a reciprocal, inverting the divisor, and multiplying the dividend by the inverted divisor is a head scratcher to many children.  Dividing fractions is not a single lesson, but an operation that is taught, clarified, and strengthened in many lessons.  Some children demonstrated they understood but others had no confidence in their work.  They did what they were told to do without understanding why they did it.

Over the next weeks, I observed this fifth grade teacher checking the lug nuts of dividing fractions.  She knew that only a few children successfully learned this operation through their initial instruction.  Consequently, she literally walked new and clarifying lessons on dividing fractions around the classroom until every child knew what to do when presented a fraction to divide and also could explain how the reciprocal of the divisor allows us to use multiplication to split the dividend into equal parts.  She made each child’s future division of fractions roadworthy for use in learning advanced math.

Does this make teaching and learning just a matter of mechanics?  Not at all.  It demonstrates the diligence required to ensure that all children achieve learning success.  Knowledge and skills that are essential for future and scaffolded learning require teachers to check and recheck that these have been securely learned by every student.  Without the process of checking and tightening, the wheels of their future education will come loose and their learning will crash.

Why Is This Thus?

Although I use mathematics as my example, this blog applies to every unit of instruction taught in school. 

The legendary math “wall” is real and almost all students hit their math “wall”, usually within the content of trigonometry or calculus.  The “wall” arrives when the abstraction of mathematics is greater than the student can conceive.  The “wall” is not a big deal because most of us do not use advanced math in our daily living or careers.  However, not having the math skills below the wall is huge.  All children need to be skillful in math reasoning using numbers and operations, measurement, data analysis, geometry, and solving problems with unknowns.  These are career and life math skills.

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97885.pdf

Successful learning in math up to the “wall” is achieved through scaffolded, grade level or course instruction, and active engagement between a teacher and student.  The scaffold looks like continuous instruction in 4K through grade 6 mathematics, pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, and Geometry.  The scaffold is an annually spiraled teaching of operations, reasoning, and problem solving.  Each successive instruction tightens student comprehension and application of math learning.

Active engagement is when a student interprets the math problem, explains her plan to solve the problem, uses math thinking and reasoning to resolve the problem, and presents a solution.  Engagement is all of these, not just one of the three.  The process takes in-class time because it requires ongoing student and teacher conversations.  The student must put math into words and words into mathematical thinking and use mathematical thinking to find clear and clean solutions.  The teacher listens, critiques, guides, and confirms.  The conversation is a must because it clarifies and secures the student’s learning.  The conversation is the teacher’s torque wrench.

We tighten the math lug nuts in 4K through algebra/geometry by actively engaging each student in exercising their mathematical reasoning continuously through the math curriculum.

What Should We Know About This Thusness?

It is easy and fun for teachers and students to start new lessons.   Motivation to do the work assigned is high when the information and skills are being introduced.  There are multiple “I get it” moments.  As the applications of the new information and skills become more complex, the number of “I get it” moments are harder to achieve.  Ultimately, more students say “I don’t get it” and this is when the engagement between teacher and student is critical. 

“Tell me what you do get” starts the conversation of clarification. 

“Let’s rethink the problem” opens new possibilities for successful learning.

“Let’s assure we are applying the right operations in the order needed and that we understand why we are doing this” secures student learning.

Each of these steps is an out loud conversation that moves a student from “I don’t get it” to “I get it” and the ability to apply what is learned in the future.

It is the diligence to complete and secure student learning that is hard and this is where too much teaching and learning stumbles.  The wheels come off a student’s learning when we leave her in an “I don’t get it” moment.

To Do

Plan what the learning outcomes look like and secure the learning of each outcome for every student.  Tighten the lug nuts everyday. 

Do this through personal engagement.  Asking “Are there any questions?” after giving students initial instruction only confirms that no one wants to ask a question.  It does not confirm that any student learned what was taught.  “Does anyone have a question?” does not tighten the lugs.

“Tell me…” and “Show me…” and “Explain your thinking” and taking the time to listen, clarify, critique, and confirm are the wrenches that tighten the lug nuts of student learning.

The Big Duh!

Because there is so much to teach and so little time to teach all of it, we feel the need to move quickly through units of instruction.  “We need to be done with this unit by the end of the month” often drives us to close the unit before all children are secure in their learning.  We are consoled by the curricular spiral and thinking “if they don’t learn it this year, they will learn it next year”.  This is how the lug nuts of learning loosen.  Next year’s learning is predicated on success this year, it is not a repeat of the past.

Don’t worry about how long it takes to have every student reach secure learning of a unit.  Learning is built upon secured learning; future learning fails when the clock tells us to move on.

Tighten the lug nuts of learning in every lesson taught to ensure all students are roadworthy for their next educational adventure.

Remembering Is Difficult; Forgetting Is Easy

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When we know the best teaching practices, we should use them.  A best practice for causing children to learn is to build and strengthen short term memory muscle through everyday teaching and learning.

Expediency is the enemy of best practice.  We are all guilty of these three errors in thinking about our teaching.  First, “If I said it, they heard it”.  Second, “If they heard it, they learned it”.  Third, “If they learned it, I am done.  I can go on to the next instruction”.  Sadly, we jump from the first statement to the third statement multiple times in an hour and too many times in a day’s instruction.  Then when children are given a quiz or check test, we wonder why too few children remembered much of what we taught.

Why Is This Thus?

We know memory is not a “drive by” phenomenon.  By our own confession as humans, we do not remember everything we learn, and we forget a lot.  Daily life is so full of factoids, ideas, and things we do, and experience and they happen so quickly and constantly that we are not able to automatically categorize everything into what should or must be remembered.  The reality is that most of our daily experiences come and go and can be allowed to slip away.  We forget what we do not prioritize to remember.  What is true of us is true of our students.  Once in a blue moon we teach a child who seems to have photographic memory – who remembers and can recall what she sees, reads, hears, and experiences with high efficiency.  Blue moon!  Every other child needs our use of best teaching practices to help them build the power of memory so they can optimize what they learn.

Thus!

Best practice tells us that each fact, concept, word of vocabulary, word with definition – everything we want a child to remember – must be repeated and restated, clarified for correction, and reinforced 5 to 7 times before a child can be expected to recall with efficiency what we asked them to remember.  Recall, simply repeating what we said, did, or showed back to us, is short term memory muscle building.  Restating it in their own words increases their hold on that memory.  Finding contexts in which to apply the facts, concepts, and vocabulary learned allows them to flex the muscle of their own memory on demand.  Flexing memory muscle moves what is learned from short term memory into long term memory.  That is successful teaching and learning for what we want children to remember

Do These

Correct the first error in thinking about teaching by asking children frequently “What did you hear me say, do, or show you?”.  Be certain that children heard what you said, and just as importantly, heard you say what you think you said.  Stop here – this is important!  Did children hear you say what you think you said?  Did they see you do what you intended them to see?  A child may have been looking at a friend three chairs away wondering what they will do after school or worrying about their friendship while you were talking, doing, or showing and this child will not clearly know what you think you said, did, or showed.  Children are less focused on you than you think they are.  Ask them to tell you what they just experienced.

Ask children to repeat back to you constantly during a day of instruction.  As a first statement of practice, you are checking to understand what they heard, saw, and experienced.  As a second statement of practice, you are saying to all children “Pay attention.  You know I am going to ask you a clear and simple question.  Be prepared to answer.”

At this point, if multiple children cannot repeat back to you what you said, did, or showed them, then you need to tell, do, or show them again.  Don’t look for fault; just respond to fact.  If they can’t recall, you need too back up and repeat yourself.  This time with their attention.

Once you verify correctness of what children heard or saw, fix the second error – have students repeat it.  This expands your fixing the first error.  Ask multiple children to repeat what you said.  It may seem too repetitive and a waste of time, but you assumed that children listened to you.  Why do you assume they listen to each other?  Asking multiple children to repeat allows you to verify that each child you ask repeats correct information.  Asking multiple children begins to personalize their memory muscle. 

Remember your taxonomy.  Recall is good but recall is the basic level of learning.  The most basic.  Help all children muscle up by moving from recall to understanding of what they are learning by restating what you want them to remember using their own words.  No puppetry – no recitation of the teacher here.  “Tell me in your own words …” requires a child to manipulate their personal vocabulary and thinking about a fact, an idea, or an experience and to retell it in words that make sense to that child.  Share the muscle-building by asking multiple children to “Tell me in your own words …”.  Reciting is the teacher’s words; understanding is the child’s words.

Fix the third error by looping lessons in a unit of instruction.  You will go on to the next lesson in the natural flow of teaching.  Within the unit of teaching and learning you planned, lessons are building blocks of understanding where the second and third lessons build upon what was learned in the first lesson or a prior unit of teaching.  Madeline Hunter taught us to use “prior knowledge” in introducing new lessons.  Use key words, facts, ideas, and a recall of experiences to “set the stage” for next teaching and learning.  Looping also builds memory.  The best stage for next learning is when children discuss their “prior knowledge” not when the teacher tells them about their prior learning.  It is their learning you will build upon not yours.

Looping also builds muscle memory by making what is remembered contextual.  The act of repeating facts, ideas, and skills and of retelling of their understanding of their prior knowledge, and connecting what is remembered into the purpose of what is to be learned gives memory context.  If it can be applied, it is valuable to be remembered.  If it helps to explain, it is valuable to be remembered.  If it helps future learning, it needs to be strengthened in memory muscle.

Easy?  No.  Use the art of teaching to assist the best practices of teaching.

Building memory is mental work for a child.  It is strategic work for a teacher.  Like doing physical exercises everyday, it is routine and not necessarily exciting for either child or teacher.  As an analogy, we know that an adult’s physical health is optimized by “steps per day”.  Some experts point to 10,000 steps per day and others argue fewer is adequate, but most experts agree that steps cum muscle movement is very important for personal health.  The number aside, it is the stepping that is essential for building health.  But stepping for the sake of stepping can be tedious – it is not easy. 

Effective teachers use best practices to cause children to learn.  Effective teachers use the art of teaching to engage children in their learning.  Building muscle memory requires structured practices throughout every lesson and every unit of teaching.  These structures can begin to look and feel like routine and routines create a tension of engagement.  New and unique can be fun and exciting while routine and usual can become boring.  Boring is the tension.  This tension is real – to build memory requires structured teaching and learning but structured routines can become uninteresting for children and even for teachers.  That leads us to another best practice, because when we know what best practice is, we should try to do it.

Stay tuned for another blog!

Snow Days of Yore No More

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A school snow day is not what it once was, and we need to see it for what it is.  The image of children frolicking in fresh-fallen snow building their own Frosty with a carrot nose and charcoal eyes is a Currier and Ives vision of Americana that is rarely seen today.  It happens, but don’t take off your mittens to count the yards where Frosty stands.  These days when school is closed due to snow the majority, almost all children, enjoy a day at home doing what children today do when time is theirs.  They watch television.  They sit with cell phones in-hand conversing, texting, and socializing with friends.  They hunker down with electronic gaming.  They stay warm and dry.  Some children bundle up and head outdoors to play like children of yore but count the minutes until they are back indoors being children of today.

In the Currier and Ives lithograph, parent faces look out the window at children at play.  Today’s parents trundled off to work in the snow, because a school snow day is not necessarily a vacation from work.  Childcare and work are their snow day concerns.  Parents with very young children may stay home if there is not an older child to assume childcare or local day care is filled.  If children are old enough, they are on their own.  A school snow day is a disruptive problem for working parents and all employers and Currier and Ives do not portray a solution.

The older the parent, the more Currier and Ives influences their thinking about school snow days.  Grandparents certainly daydream of times when there was only black and white TV, a small transistor radio was the only personal electronics, and telephones had dials.  A snow day was either sledding down hills and playing in the snow or sitting indoors doing jigsaw puzzles and board games.  Times have changed.

The younger the parent, the more current their knowledge about what children really do when time is their own.  It is likely that children of parents who work at home are hustled outdoors to experience the snow as relief in the homework site.  Concerns for cyber security rank higher than worries of frostbite on snow days.

All the above written, there is one group of children who embrace a school snowy day.  Older children able to drive snowmobiles or able to get to local ski hills will slam the door shut on their way outdoors and may not return home until dark or the gas tank empties.

We need to reinforce that school is closed when conditions for traveling to and from school are unsafe. These conditions are undeniable and school leaders need to close school when safety requires closing. Changing our understanding of snow days does not change this fact.

I do not write about how schools can use remote education in this blog.  That is another issue.  The misconceiving of a school snow day is enough to handle today.  We need to update our conception of school snow days and treat them for what they are and not what they were.  A day when school is closed due to snow (or any other wintery weather) is a gift from the clouds, not a walk down a lane that fewer and fewer remember.

If We Want Students to Study, We Must Teach Them How

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“I need to study for my test”, I would say to myself.  With self-discipline I sat at the card table that was my desk at home in my high school years, textbook and class notes in front of me, and engaged in the mystery of studying.  Mystery, I say now almost 60-years after high school graduation, because the act and art of studying was so elusive, I might as well have been told to flap my arms and fly.  With little understanding of what it meant to study, I waddled through years of school tests relying on what I heard and observed in class and my reading of the assigned texts.  And so it goes still.  Last week I heard and saw a high school student in our high school library, as I prepared for a school board meeting, say to friends, “I need to study for my test.  I wish I knew what to do!”. 

I ask my readers to consider this article through the eyes and ears of a student in school.  Too many students throw up their hands in defeat repeating the last sentence in the first paragraph.  All students need us to teach them how to be successful in school.  Teaching them what will be on a test is important; teaching them how to study for a test is just as important.

The quick answer to “How should I study?” is that we need to teach all students to

  • Listen and pay attention in class
  • Build short-term memory through repetition
  • Read aloud
  • Focus on key words and ideas
  • Master automaticity of key facts
  • Understand what the problem wants you to do
  • Speak your solutions out loud
  • Study frequently

Listen and Pay attention

School, study and learning have gone hand-in-hand forever.  In the first instance, children are told to pay attention to what their teachers says and does daily.  Listen and watch, listen and watch – these two aspects of paying attention are a child’s first pass at learning.  Remarkably, children learn a lot just from listening and watching.  I was told as a student, “If you just pay attention in class, listen to your teacher, with a special focus on what the teacher writes on the board (now digital screen), you can pass every class”.  I also learned that the bar for passing classes was not very high – just attend school and pay attention.

In the second instance, if a student wants better than passing grades, a student must do more.  If being present and listening to and watching what a teacher says and does can result in a D grade or better, what does a student need to do be earn even better grades?  Study.  Here we go.

What to do:  When you tell students to pay attention, mean it.  Get their attention.  Don’t proceed until you have it.  Too often we say “Now, pay attention” and then proceed without getting their attention.

What to do:  When you tell students to “add this to your notes” check their notes.  If they wrote down the wrong things, they will study the wrong things.  If it is important enough to tell them to write it down, ensure that they wrote it down.

Short-term Memory

Short-term memory counts because most tests assess short periods of learning.  Quizzes assess the smallest amount learning.  Chapter or unit tests, think four weeks of learning, are the most common school assessments.  Semester and end-of-year tests by their nature assess the most important ideas and skills learned in 18 and 36 weeks.  Annual state tests cover learning over multiple years, usually going back at least two years.  Knowing this, short-term memory is the first key to studying for most tests.

Short-term memory is all about repetition.  Repetitive practice does not make perfect, as people want to believe, but it does make what is repeated permanent.  The brain needs reinforcement if we want it to remember something and the more often, we say or do the same thing, the more likely the brain will remember it.  When a child listens and watches the teacher, the brain gets an initial introduction to information, but it is not enough if we want the brain to remember that information for very long.

As a rule, when you think short-term memory think 5 to 7 repetitions.  Re-read the assigned information multiple times.  A chapter in a text or a book the class is reading or the handouts or a screen shot that was shown since a last chapter or monthly test is what will be on the next chapter or monthly test.  This information is what a student needs to re-read and re-look at multiple times.  If it helps, make chicken scratches on a bookmark for every time you read re-read this information.  Get to at least 5 preferably 7 scratch marks.  If your brain has 5 to 7 repetitions of the same material, your brain will be prepared to answer questions about this material on an assessment.

What to do:  Use class time to practice short-term memory.  “We are going to take five minutes for you to read that paragraph (word list, vocabulary definitions…) at least five times to yourself.  Start now.”  If you want students to know information, show them how and give them time, your time, to know it.

Re-read Aloud

One more step – read it aloud.  It is too easy to just skim over the pages when you read it silently.  Your eyes move but your brain does not engage.  Reading aloud means the brain must see and you must say every word.  Too many of us say, “I already read it.  I don’t need to waste time reading it again”.  However, reading once is not enough to create adequate short-term memory.  Read it again and read it aloud.

What to do:  Once again, do it in class.  Students can read aloud with soft voices.  Spread them out around the room and use all your square footage.  Then, listen to students as they read aloud.  Nod, smile, and reinforce.

Focus on What the Teacher Focuses On

Teachers give students clues about what is MOST important in the lessons they teach.   Most teachers tell their classes, “Write this down” or “Add this to your notes”.  Then they write or display the most important words or ideas in the current lesson on the board or screen.  If a teacher writes it, a student should also write it.  And write it exactly as the teacher writes it.  Treat these words and ideas like a giant billboard with flashing lights that tell you “Know this because it will be on the test”.

If a student’s notes only show what a teacher writes on the board or screen, that student has a start in preparing for the next test.  Build understanding from these key words and ideas.  If it is a word, define it – know what the word means.  If it is an idea, write several sentences about how the idea was explain in class.  For example, if the word is “germinate”, define it.  If the idea is “growing season”, write down an example of a growing season and what happens over time.

Then, build these definitions and examples into short-term memory with 5 to 7 repetitions. 

Listen and pay attention, copying key words and ideas, re-reading aloud and doing these things 5 to 7 times builds good short-term memory in language arts, social studies, most of science, second languages,

What to do:  Interview students.  Simply ask each student to “Tell me what you know about…”.  Formative assessments are not always quizzes.  A quick oral interview of a cross section of students will tell you if instruction has been successful in causing learning.

What to do:  Teach students to self-interview.  “What do I know about…?”, is a question a student can use as a studying check-up.

Math is Different

There is only so much that short-term memory can achieve in arithmetic and math.  In the primary grades, teachers work to create automaticity of facts.  Consider the tables students memorize and the urgency for knowing these facts on demand.  The clearest example is a multiplication table.  Repetition and short-term memory allow a student to quickly call out 63 when asked to multiply 7 times 9.  All students need to achieve automaticity mastery of math facts. 

This is not short-term memory but long-term memory work.  To build long-term memory students need 17-20 repetitions and then frequent repetitions over time.  What does this mean?  Teachers and students hammer the drill and practice with intensity.  Repeatedly until short-term memory cannot help but answer 63 to the 7 x 9 question.  AND, then repeated practice frequently but not intensely over time.  That means next week and next month.

What to do:  On demand and without fanfare ask a student to tell you their addition or multiplication or division tables.  Make the telling oral so that it quick fire.  Do this over time with all students to reinforce long-term memory.

Know the Language of Math by Writing Math Sentences

Once math facts are secure, math learning is all about understanding the language of a math problem.  What does the math language of the problem tell you to do?  Without fail, some students read the text of a math story problem or look at the numerics of a math problem and do not know what the language of the problem is telling them to do.  The have not learned to read the language of math; math is Greek to too many children.  Because students can read text, we assume they can read math, and this is not a leap we should make.

As always, demonstrate and over-demonstrate the skills of interpreting English sentences into math sentences by visibly interpreting the words or numbers into “math sentences”.  Do this each time a new math concept is taught.  “This is how you read the math problem and we will write each step of the problem into a math sentence.”  Once students learn to do this, the mystery of story problems is resolved.

What to do:  Each time you make a math assignment, demonstrate how to interpret the language of the problem into math sentences.  Say it aloud and write it on the board/screen.

What to do:  When circulating around the class while students do their assignment, don’t look for right answers/current solutions.  Ask students to tell you their math sentences.  This is the skill that gets them to the right answers.

The Template for Short Answers and Essays

Most quizzes and tests use multiple choice, true-false, and fill in the information questions.  These are easier to correct.  They also are easier to turn into the data of learning as the number of correct answers seems to equate to learning.  Given the factual nature of most multiple questions, m-c is a test of memory.

Many students frown when the test or quiz requires short answers or essays.  In multiple choices and fill in type questions, a correct answer or information leading to a correct answer is displayed in the problem stem.  This is not always true in short answers or essays.

Once again we teach students to write short answers and essays by teaching them how with frequent demonstrations.  How often has a student heard a teacher say, “You should have learned how to write an essay back in grade xxx”.  If the teacher has to say this, she already knows that a student did not learn how to write an essay back then.  We need to fill this gap in learning.

Additionally, an essay written in fifth grade will not satisfy the requirements for an essay in 8th or 11th grade.  We expect more sophisticated thinking in essay answers as students get older.  We need to teach students what “more sophisticated” looks like by providing models, requiring short answer and essay writing in daily and chapter work, and, here it is, providing ungraded, critical feedback to students about their writing.  Ungraded and critical feedback takes the pressure off students for on-demand writing and incrementally develops writing strength.

The starting point is for each student to understand a five-part essay template:  introduction sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.  Just like math facts and vocabulary definitions, students need an immediate response to an essay assignment.  They immediately begin an outline of five parts.

What to do:  Have faculty agreement in a five-part essay template.  Remove the mystery of how to write an essay or short answer.

What to do:  Write essays frequently.  Remove the on-demand paralysis by making writing essays a general practice.

What to do:  Essay practice should be like basketball practice; we don’t keep score in practice sessions.  Instead, give critical feedback on how the clarity of each part of the essay, the strength of the supporting information, and the interpretation of the conclusion.  Build essay muscle.

Cramming is Guilt Studying

Lastly, keep students from doing what what I did.  Cramming for tests is a student’s attempt to resolve guilt for not doing the daily and weekly practices that build readiness for school tests.  If we teach and build study habit practices into usual teaching and learning, there is no need for cramming.  All the above is designed for daily, weekly and repeated practice.  

What to do:  If it is important that students learn to study, teach them how to study.

The Big Duh!

There should be no surprises in school tests.  All information and skills should be clearly taught and practiced so that a test is a natural wrap-up to what has been taught and learned.

Equally, there should be no mystery in how to study.  Every student should be taught independent study skills just as they are taught their A, B, Cs.  When we accept that study habits are not innate but are learned practices we teach students, then we are the right track of causing every student to become a strong learner. 

No Time For Dull Teaching Tools

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I turn wood on a lathe.  A sharp edge on a steel tool is required to ensure clean cuts expose the beauty of the wood and the shapes I design.  As a rule, I sharpen a chisel or gouge after 15 to 20 minutes of use.  The contrast between using a sharp or dull chisel is apparent when I stand back and examine my work.  Dull tools leave torn and ragged wood fibers, uneven edges, and the appearance of sloppy craftsmanship.  Products I will not display.  Who would choose to use tools that are not sharp?

How does this apply to causing learning?

Professionally speaking, sharp tools also cause better results.  A professional tool is a strategy or methodology used to cause a positive response or to eliminate an unwanted outcome.  Some professional tools are hardened steel, but most are mental or dispositional or best practices for doing the work.  Prospective teachers in their teacher preparation programs learn a variety of pedagogical strategies for causing children to learn content, skills, and ways of considering their world.  They take methods classes and use student teaching to practice and learn to apply the strategies of teaching.  This is an introduction to the tools of their profession.

A teaching tool is the philosophical construct used to design units and lessons of instruction.  Sharply cut designs engage children with questions and problems and ideas that get into each child’s head at the start of a unit or lesson.  Good designs cause children to want to know what comes next.  Every lesson in a unit needs to fit into this pre-conceived pathway along which the teacher uses other specific teaching tools to shape student knowledge, skills, and dispositions for learning. 

Teaching tools include strategies for introducing and engaging children in a daily lesson, leading a discussion with insightful questions, using positive reinforcement to strengthen learning outcomes, or reflection and reteaching to correct or strengthen lesson outcomes.  Drill down on any of these, the use of positive reinforcement for example, for the explicit words, phrases, body language, and context for giving a child reinforcing positive messages.  Each teacher will find their personal use of specific words, a way of saying those words, and a way of looking at a child when saying the words that causes the most positive reinforcement for that child.  This is a sharp tool.  Conversely, using the dull tool of a casual comment leaves a child unsure of the strength of their learning, uncertain that their learning matters, and more likely to disengage.

While there are general pedagogical tools used by all teachers, there also are grade level and subject area tools that are required across the 4K-12 continuum.  Down on your knees physical proximity to a young student works wonders but not so much with a high schooler.  Shared glee with a kindergarten child is not only contagious but an essential tool shaping their young ownership of their learning.  Inquiry and problem-based learning strategies are strong tools for social studies teachers.  Sharply honed lessons with timely propositions, strategic access to resources, time outs for “tell me what you know and what you need to know next”, and opportunities for differentiated presentation of results hook children into being avid learners at all ages. 

Specific tools are used by teachers of children with special education and gifted educational needs.  Some exceptional needs children need tasks and ideas broken down into smaller tasks and ideas with special consideration for sequencing and pacing and reinforcement.  Others require more room for creativity than the classroom and teaching skills and mentoring that push the teacher as much as the student.

And, the universe of teaching tools is constantly being added to and modified, even though we think good teaching practices are timeless.

How often does an educator stand back to inspect the effects of her teaching tools – the sharpness of her teaching practices?  Inspection is a meta-self-analysis of a teaching practice and the individual tools a teacher uses to shape student learning.  It requires taking lessons apart after they are taught for tool inspection.  “What did I say and what did I do?  And, how did students respond?”. 

Once examined, how often do we resharpen our teaching tools?  Sharpening is focusing on the “What did I say and what did I do” that could be reworded to provoke a clearer meaning, a more specific direction, a more illustrative modeling, or a leave a student with a better understanding.  Sharpening is changing unit and lesson designs to ensure that the next time the lesson is taught, the teacher will use these sharper tools.

The children we teach are our products.  Sharp teaching tools cause children to be successful learners and achieve educational outcomes we can be proud of displaying.  Just as in wood turning, dull teaching tools cause dull products.  How often do we inspect – not often enough.

Why is thus?

  • Every teacher is the product of a teacher-as-student academic preparation program.   The teacher-as-student learns the content knowledge and skills to be taught and the pedagogical tools of teaching.  Colleges and post-baccalaureate teacher prep agencies provide the prospective teacher with an initial toolbox of teaching skills.  Learned and practiced in student teaching, these are the tools a teacher brings to her first classroom.  This academic and sheltered preparation is intended to be adequate for her to be a successful teacher of children.
  • The first year on the job is a test drive of teaching skills.  Just like a new car owner test drives a vehicle that has passed assembly line inspections yet needs to be road tested to create confidence and assurance, a first-year teacher tests her tools against the realities of school and a classroom of children.  Absent mentor observation and coaching, the test driver also is test assessor.  Yikes!  It is hard to make critical self-assessments while trying to steer a test drive.
  • We assume that continuous practice keeps teaching tools sharp.  However, the school year is a constantly moving conveyor belt of units and lessons.  The school calendar does not stop for an inspection of tools, or the effects caused by teaching tools.  A teaching tool literally is used and placed back in the teacher’s toolbox for a next use without dedicated inspection or consideration of its sharpness.  The pace of schooling creates its own obstruction to tool inspection and sharpening.  The calendar presents little to no time to do so.   
  • Each child and class of children is like a new specie of wood to be turned on a lathe.  A teaching strategy that worked well in causing one child or one class to learn may not be as efficient or effective with other children.  Tools are constantly being modified rather than remaining constant, hence sharpening a tool is sharpening a constantly changing tool.
  • Teacher evaluation systems take a broad view of teaching effectiveness and efficiency.  Pedagogical skill is less than 25%, perhaps 10%, of the evaluation process.  Wisconsin’s Effective Educator system looks at planning and preparation, learning environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.  Inspection of effective teaching tools is smothered by non-instructional concerns.  Combine a flaccid EE with the statutory fiat prohibiting the use of student achievement scores on state mandated assessments to describe a teacher’s effectiveness and the sharpness of teaching tools falls out of evaluation conversations.

What to do

When facing obfuscation, don’t go there.  Obfuscation is all the reasons we tell ourselves or others that the status is okay or even very good.  Or, it is the reasons we accept for why we cannot change.  Instead, make new declarations for improvement of teaching tools at the school site level.

Principals need to declare that the conscientious use of universal learning designs is prioritized by all teachers.  If adopting UDL, declare that a teacher’s application of UDL will be part of the teacher’s professional development and professional evaluation.  Tools that are embedded in UDL need constant professional discussion, demonstration, refinement, and critical examination.  Walk the talk of engagement, representation, and action/expression.

Use lesson studies.  Record teachers’ classroom teaching and establish collegial, non-evaluative study groups to provide the teacher with feedback on what they see in the recordings.  When every teacher records and every teacher provide feedback, every teacher grows sharper teaching practices.

In the sequence of professional development make learning new teaching tools, refining teaching tools, sharing knowledge and experience of teaching tools, and evaluating the effectiveness of teaching tools in causing student learning an essential part of the school culture.  Important things in school a given time in the calendar; give discussion and examination of teaching important.

Don’t abide teaching that is chronically not sharp.  I have known some great people, really kind and caring people, people who will do everything asked of them at school, who could not teach a coherent lesson.  They did not have nor did they work at acquiring sharp teaching skills.  Help them find their way to another profession.

The Big Duh!

Teaching children is the most important profession in the world.  It also is incredibly hard.  And, teaching is impossibly hard without efficient and effective teaching skills.  We no longer can assume that skills learned in a baccalaureate program are sharp enough to last a career.  Professional development of our pedagogy needs to be a way of life for every teacher.  If it isn’t sharp, sharpen it.  If it can’t be sharpened, find a new tool.  If professional work isn’t sharp, find a new professional.