Category Archives: Blog

A “Bummer” Is When Children Are Spectators In Class

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How many “bummers” can a teacher have in a month of lessons and still be considered a quality teacher?  A “bummer” is a lesson that does not cause children to learn; it is just a “blah” class period of minimal engagement and no internalizing of knowledge, skills, or dispositions about what is learned.  Almost every student, whether a child in school today or an adult long graduated, knows what a “bummer” feels like because they happen.  When a lesson is a bummer, children are spectators in the classroom.

If you are or were an athlete, you know your “bummers”; a swing and a miss, a whiff, a missed block or tackle, a dropped ball, a missed shot, getting the ball taken away from you, getting pinned to the mat, knocking the bar of the high jump stand, or being DQ’d for a false start.  Most baseball players reach base safely every 2 or 3 times at bat.  That means 70-80% of the time they fail.  Interestingly, you can be a very successful player if your on base average is greater than 30% of your at bats.  Consider any sports statistics and there a lot of bummers.  Actually, there are a lot of bummers in life.

When a bummer happens, what is the “so what”?  In the micro-look, each bummer is a failed opportunity.  We easily say “the next time will be better”.  Even with a minimal lens, multiple bummers demonstrate a lack of skill or at least a lack of focus on being successful and we say “pay attention and get it right”.  With a larger lens, more problems are observable.  Children fall behind in what they need to learn.  If you follow the Packers this season, bummer games cause a lack of confidence in the team and fans begin to look for new players.

Bummers in school happen.  Statistically, we need to acknowledge they do.  Our interest is in limiting and eliminating bummers.  Using the micro-lens, each bummer lesson is a missed opportunity to cause children to learn and the minimal lens tells us that multiple bummers cause children to have gaps in their knowledge and skills that effect future learning. 

The WI DPI describes quality instruction (no bummers here) as follows:  “High quality instruction means curricula, teaching practices, and learning environments are standards-based, evidence-based, engaging, differentiated, culturally responsive, and data-driven”.

https://dpi.wi.gov/rti/resources/high-quality-instruction

In a school with board-approved curriculum, ongoing professional development, attention to student-centered education, and standardized accountability checks, we can unpack most of the DPI definition with an acknowledgement that veteran teachers are prepared to deliver successful lessons on a regular basis.  If this is the case, and I think it is, what causes bummer lessons?

We begin to “bum out” when we fail the set the learning “hook”.  We fail to spark children to learn by telling or showing them why what they are learning is important to them, how they can use what they learn now and in the future, and how successful learning today will cause future successful learning.

The DPI term “engagement” means more than getting children to do the work of learning.  For the non-DPI person, engagement is achieved when children “internalize what they are to learn, get excited about it because it is new and interesting or unique,  see self-value in what they will learn, and move beyond just doing the work of learning to seeing value in the learning”.  The most frequent cause of a bummer is that we do not hook children; we turn children into spectators in the classroom where the teacher is teaching.  Engaged children do not spectate.

A veteran teacher knows her stuff.  She has a developed a unit of instruction with scaffolded lessons she has taught before.   Perhaps she set the hook very well the first time she taught the lesson, but after teaching it multiple times she assumes children are being hooked because they were hooked in the past.  Across time, teachers and everyone else begins to take things for granted.  These assumptions cause us to skip over or minimize aspects of our teaching. 

Make no assumptions, especially about setting the hook for a lesson.  Each lesson taught this year is a new lesson for the children in class; they have not seen or experienced this learning before.  Eliminate a bummer in the making by accentuating their engagement.  Set the hook hard and deep so that no one is a spectator in their learning.

Limit or avoid bummer lessons and enjoy an escalation in student learning. 

How Do We Measure a Rounded Education When the School Report Does Not?

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“Ya, buts…” abound in October whenever the WI State Report Cards for school are published.  When the criteria for school success are limited to achievement and sub-group growth in reading and math with weighting for cohort promotion and graduation every educator and parent who believes that schooling is broader and richer than two subjects should groan their “Ya, but”.  The groaning does not change the report card or the perception of which schools outperform others, but it gives voice to different ways to measure our children’s educational experience by looking at a whole education.

The classic retort against the narrow focus on reading and math involves children with passion for the arts.  The Report Card takes no notice of achievements in our schools attained by children in art studios or music halls.  In the No Child Left Behind era, we boonswoggled art and music teachers with how they contributed to a school’s report card achievement by collateral instruction in reading and math practices in their non-ELA and math classes.  Boonswoggle is the appropriate word.

That retort was echoed by teachers of science and social studies, business and technology, second languages and physical education and health.  And, what of Driver Education, the one course in high school that had immediate impact on the well-being of everyone in the school community?  These educators and their teaching does not matter in the School Report Card.  Student achievement in reading and math is all that is measured.

School districts post their mission statements on their websites.  Most speak to the district’s goals in teaching all children to be well-rounded, educated graduates ready to contribute to the community in their adult life.  Something like that.  Our local mission prioritizes the Four As – academics, activities, arts, and athletics.  I have not read a mission statement yet that purports to educate children only in reading and math, yet those are the two academic subjects by which we rate our school effectiveness.

What does matter and what ought to be measured?  What are the values expressed in a local, public education?  We fill our athletic grandstands and gymnasiums with parents and resident fans who put great store and value in the success of their school’s athletes.  Children in athletic programs spend as much, if not more, daily time practicing and playing in season as they do in reading and math instruction in their classrooms, yet their gains in athleticism, self-esteem, team play, and commitment to and achievement goals are not measured and reported.

If we want a description of educational growth, we should measure and report how a child handed a trumpet in 7th grade learns and improves and perfects her play through band class whole group and individual instruction.  Growth from “I can’t make a sound” to “hitting the high notes and harmonizing” is worth our measurement and reporting as an educational outcome.   Or, we should report how a student who frowns in math class is lit up in tech classes when learning the skills of an electrician.  This is the child who will be your “go to repairman” when he graduates.  The educational achievements of these students are school-based, school-caused, and school-ignored.

In the past two decades, educators were tasked with teaching “soft skills” to all children.  These were thought to be essential 20th Century skills.  Collaboration, cooperation, and team work.  Listening and questioning.  Problem-solving.  Soft skills were differentiated from the harder skill sets of academics, like reading and math.  Quite rightly, soft skills assist our children in many of their non-curricular school activities, like DECADES, Destination Imagination, Debate, and Forensics.  The economic driver of our local school community is small business, yet DECA and our Business Education program are invisible in our measure of school achievement.

A high-quality, well-rounded education results from a broad cadre of teachers, coaches, advisors, counselors, administrators, custodians, food service, and drivers interacting with children every school day.  Such an education takes place in schools were children and adults feel safe and cared for by each other and by a community that wants its children to be wholly-educated. 

Teachers and administrators do not get to choose the metrics used in the State Report Card.  Governments that need single indicators for comparative purposes make that decision.  Hence, the comparison of nations by the OECD using reading and math achievements.  The USA ranks in the middle of the pack.  Hence, the comparison of states and school districts within states based upon two academic measures.  The need to rank and differentiate is more essential than the want to understand and illuminate.  If only life were that simple. 

The quality of an educated school graduate ready to be a law abiding, contributing and productive citizen as an adult will not be predetermined by reading and math achievements alone.  Let’s talk about the well-rounded, wholly educated adults we want our children to become.  We are so much more successful than we give ourselves credit for.

The Tension of High Expectations

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Tension.  Anxiety.  Investment.  These are tangibles most of us want to diminish in our daily lives.  Tension, anxiety, and pressure can be aggravants and we see them as undesirable for our general well-being.  Yet, without degrees of tension, anxiety, and an investment to move forward, it is hard to cause learning.  Highly effective teachers know how to use positive attributes of external tension, anxiety, and investment to raise a child’s internal motivation to learn and keep learning. 

Primary schooling for most children begins with excitement.  School is new and exciting for a 4K or K student.  It is a new place with lots of children who will become friends and new things to do.  The blaze of early social excitement wears off with time.  While some children rise every morning with a “I can’t wait to get to school”, most need our assistance in answering the school bell every day.  Motivational theory helps us to keep children from sinking into the drudgery of compulsory education, the grind of getting through school.

Madeline Hunter taught us how components of tension assists motivation that leads to successful student learning.  (Hunter’s name and teaching reverberate in many discussions of teaching and learning.)  Motivation starts with a teacher setting a positive yet challenging feeling tone about learning.  A feeling tone has a friendly edge to it; an edge like a tool that is constantly pushed into new information and skills to be learned and the tension of that pushing causes learning.  That edge is a tension that the teacher sets and controls over time.  It is a friendly edge because effective teachers coat it with more Hunterisms – personal interest, challenge, the rewards of success, and how what is learned is useful in a child’s future.

Motivation is jump started by a teacher’s understanding of each child’s readiness to learn and beginning point for learning and adjusting initial instruction for early, meaningful success.  Motivational tension is enhanced when the challenge of what comes next is “just beyond the current reach” of student knowledge and skills yet within a student’s grasp with guided work.  There is a tension in that distance between what a child knows and can do now and what she needs to know and do next.  Effective teachers make this a positive tension because it results in success.

Bill Spady taught us that “successful learning begets more successful learning”.  When he laid out the outcomes to be taught and learned, he relied upon sound instructional practices to cause learning.  Students become invested when the outcomes set by the teacher are important and meaningful.  The drive to achieve important outcomes carries an element of anxiety to succeed.  Teachers monitor each student’s sense of internal anxiety knowing that too much causes a student to shut down or make poor decisions.  Just the right amount of anxiety keeps a student properly and positively pointed toward learning success.

All children need to see that what they learn is beneficial to them personally.  They need to see and feel personal gain or improvement in order to invest themselves in school assignments.  If a child does not feel personal interest and connection to a curriculum, it is easy to see school assignments as just a long line of work assigned by teachers and required to pass to the next grade.  Drudgery.  When this is a child’s mindset, any distraction or other thing to do moves a child’s interest from learning to something more immediately rewarding or fun to do.  Gaming and other Internet links are perfect and available for distracted and disillusioned students who have no personal investment in their school education.  A child may not see herself in every assignment, but there has to be enough and frequent enough personal interest to keep her invested.

Effective teachers purposefully tell students that “what comes next” holds special interests for aspiring artists and musicians, or is very hands-on for students needing tactile learning, or is necessary for students who see themselves in a medical profession.  Good teaching tells them then shows them.  Investment in the future is a wonderful subliminal tag for any new subject or skill set.

Teaching and learning carry many caveats, some more meaningful than others.  One of the most potent is “low expectations are connected to low achievements and higher expectations to higher achievements.”  Raising expectations is more than just declaring them or sending them in an e-mail.  Higher expectations are built by teachers with rigorous instruction of knowledge, skills, and dispositions AND by students who elevate their work, their commitment, and their performance.  There is a lot of “doing” in teaching and learning to higher expectations.  Higher achievements are a continuous push-pull between teachers and students.

Tension, anxiety, and investment are used by effective teachers in setting the right tone and providing rigorous teaching toward the knowledge and skills learning children need to learn.  Expectations won’t rise on their own – they are constructed on sound principles of motivation and instruction.  Constructive use of tension is a necessary component for teachers and students to achieve successful teaching and learning.

Highly Effective Teachers are Masters at Adjusting Instruction

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October.  Four weeks into the school year and it’s time to adjust.  Unless a teacher is gifted with the “all seeing eye”, true omniscience, the reality of September’s class time changed any informed assumptions a teacher made before the first day of school about a child’s readiness to learn and anticipated success in learning.  Summer regression, summer experiences, the effects of time on a child’s interests and preferences, and how a child reacts to September’s instruction and new teachers alter the best of assumptions and plans.  Adjustments are a necessary stage in successful teaching that is committed to causing every child to learn.

Decades ago, a principal would ask to see a teacher’s instructional units and lesson plans at the beginning of the school year.  A teacher prepared units and lessons for the entire 36 weeks of a school year.  This meant the teacher was locked and loaded with a plan for teaching.  It is also true that decades ago teachers did not use universal screening and most school assessments were summative.  We taught the “book”.  There was a test at the end of each chapter or unit that preceded the beginning of the next chapter or unit.  Teach and test, teach and test.  The school report card was a single indicator, usually the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and a child’s ITBS scores marked her school standing for the year.  Instruction was a straight line continuum from September until June.  Decades ago.

Today, adjustments in instruction are the name of the teaching game.  Adjustments to instruction begin in student teaching when teachers-in-training must demonstrate their proficiency using adjusted instruction to qualify for an initial teaching license.  As a consultant working with the DPI on educator preparation programs, I have firsthand experience in creating standards-based pre-student teaching and student teaching requirements.  Student teachers must demonstrate their ability to “plan, teach, assess, adjust teaching, and assess again” to pass their clinical semester.  The emphasis is on each child learning from the lesson and units not the coverage of texts or a calendar of class time.

Teaching student teachers to make in-unit adjustments is easy.  They do not know a different process.  Working with veteran teachers to stop the progression of a unit because some children were not successful learners and to adjust teaching to cause them to be successful is a more difficult professional challenge.  Adjustment is not reteaching but teaching differently.  “Why now?” and ““why me?” are common responses.  “Because you are responsible for the success of every child” is the singular answer.

The best “… teach, assess, adjust…” process is collaborative.  Explaining one’s work and thinking and planning to another educator provides a teacher with a reality check.  “Does it make sense?”  It is easy for a teacher in a closed classroom to recline into the flow of school weeks and the check off of the units and chapters and activities taught.  This is especially true if principal visits to the classroom are infrequent and aligned only with annual evaluations or effective educator documentation.  Better practice is for the principal to make many informal “look ins” and “check ins” across a semester.  Looking in is a physical, first person, in the classroom visualization of teaching and learning.  “Checking” is a conversation about the teaching that is more than a “how is it going?”.  Checking in asks the teacher to provide stories, in-class data, and to explain how reflection informs her ability to bring all children to success.

Collaboration may be easier between teachers than a teacher and principal because evaluative accountability is not present.  Lesson studies create a “let’s focus a group conversation on a lesson I just taught.  Here are the assessments from that lesson.  What is the best next thing to do?”.

Adjusting is not a negative.  Some may perceive the need for a teacher to adjust and teach again as a failure of initial teaching.  Far from it.  Even when a lesson is aimed properly at children’s readiness to learn and all children have the prerequisite information and skills for the new lesson, the nature of challenging material and rigorous expectations will mean that 20-30% of the children will not achieve solid and secured learning with initial instruction alone.  Challenging and rigorous learning goals mean that some children need adjusted and extra teaching to achieve success.  If the lesson target is too easy to achieve, it was not properly targeted and not worth the time to teach.  Good planning expects adjustments to teaching.

It is October, a time for serious consideration of effectiveness of your first units to instruction considering the data from multiple assessments now at hand.  Consider your assumptions about your class and about each student.  Consider your assumptions about the rigor of your lessons and how you challenged all children.  Consider the effectiveness of your tier 2 in-class grouping of children who needed adjusted instruction to be successful learners in September.  Consider the adjustments you need to make in the units and lessons to be taught during the next eight months to cause every child to learn.

This will not be the only time for instructional adjustments.  Adjustments should occur continuously throughout the school year.  October, though, is a wonderful second month of school for principals to do their diligence and assure that the entire faculty is in adjustment mode.  October adjustments set the tone for best instructional practices throughout the school year. 

So that the rest of the staff does not feel left out, October also is prime time to review school lunch menus, assignments of aides for instructional support, routines on the school bus as the weather turns cold, the maintenance of outdoor fields for winter, protocols for safety and security, and every other thing that seems routine in the school.  Check it out now and make necessary adjustments.

Never Take Good Teaching For Granted

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Looking in through classroom doors at teachers and children at work is a treat.  It is like watching the conductor of an orchestra cause an ensemble of musicians to perform complex pieces of music, or the pilot of a plane take off, fly a thousand miles on a constantly altered flight plan, and land safely at the planned destination, or watching a sculptor size up a block stone knowing there is a mermaid in it waiting to be exposed. 

Good teaching is not magic, though causing some children to understand the division of fractions disproves the statement.  First, good teaching is understanding strategies of pedagogy and the ability to create a string of exercises that result in a learned and understood outcome.  Second, good teaching is knowing your students and their readiness to learn.  Put those two requirements together, and no matter the grade level or course content, good teaching is very identifiable and predictable.

Through one classroom door I saw a veteran teacher with 30 years experience in the district quietly reading and reviewing the lesson plan she would teach later in the day.  I know this because she looked up and we spoke.  She was reviewing a plan she had taught many times to ensure that she knew exactly how to cause each of her students to learn from the lesson.  She might as well have been an Olympic gymnast mentally moving through all the gyrations of a floor exercise routine, eyes closed and envisioning each change in motion she must perform.  This teacher was making a preparation for good teaching and taking nothing for granted.  As many times, as she had taught this lesson, she committed time and energy to ensuring and pedagogy and student readiness were aligned to create learned outcomes.

Good teaching is an intellectual design transforming the lives of learners.  There are 98,000-plus public schools in our nation.  The most important thing we do to assure that every child in every school is receiving good teaching is understanding that good teaching is professional work requiring dedicated professional teachers.  We cannot take good teaching for granted.  Appreciate it when you see it.