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Prep Time: A Mismanaged Resource and Professional Bone of Contention

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Fact: Public education suffers today from a shortage of prepared and licensed teachers. Fewer undergraduates are enrolling in baccalaureate teacher preparation programs and the largest generation of teachers, Boomers, is retiring. We need teachers.

Fact: 40% of teachers leave teaching within five years. A multitude of factors dissuade them for continuing in the profession they trained for and entered.

Fact: Teacher burn out is a reality and too many teachers resign not retire from teaching. These pre-retirement leavers who accommodated most of the factors that chased initial teachers from the classroom find late in their careers that the same factors erode their commitment to teaching

Given these three facts, to what extent are schools working to retain high quality teachers and to what extent are schools exacerbating the problem with practices that defeat a veteran teacher’s professionalism?

Professionalism may be at the heart of the matter. Is a teacher a laborer in the classroom or is a teacher a professional expert in causing children to learn? There is a significant difference. We anticipate turnover in the labor market. We anticipate the lifespan of professional careers. Daily schoolhouse practices that are based upon these two different anticipations have a lot to do with the three facts cited above.

I will use preparation time for teaching as an example of a daily schoolhouse practice that is a misused resource and a contributor to diminishing professionalism.

Take Away

Today’s classrooms contain more diversity of culture, socio-economic background, native languages spoken, academic proficiency, and motivation to learn than ever before. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it reflects our community and contemporary culture in the United States. Such diversity is, however, a challenge for clinical teaching. For clinical teaching, each child presents a unique and challenging mind to be taught. Clinical teaching engages each child individually, assessing their current level of understanding and skill, and causing each child to learn from that beginning point. And, in a clinical teaching model, this assessment is the basis for preparing each day’s lesson plan.

Daily preparation of lesson plans is more critical today than ever before. The following illustrates four attributes of preparation for effective teaching and learning:

• Motivation – The immediate lesson piques each child’s interest in learning. From a unique question or the “hook” of a surprise to a review of yesterday’s lesson, effective teaching actively connects children to what they are to learn. The literature is replete with the connection of non-motivated children and failed learning. No motivation, little learning.

• Differentiation – The lesson includes materials for children at different reading levels. Even though the vocabulary and complexity of the text must differ, the prepared material helps each child to reach similar understandings and competencies relative to the lesson objectives. The objective is learning, the pathway to learning will be different for different children.

• ESL – Students whose native language is not English require help in being ready to learn, such as previewing vocabulary, interpretation of terms in their native language, physical models and, most importantly, time in each lesson to check for their understanding. Knowledge is reached no matter the language.

• Engagement – The lesson must ask each child to actively respond with “this is what I think” or “this is what I feel” and provide teacher feedback a child’s response. If a child is not actively engaged in the lesson, the child is a spectator.

• Good lessons do not happen by accident. They are carefully constructed and refined. Good lesson planning, review, and improvement require time.

What Do We Know?

Teachers in one-room schools did not have prep time. My grandmother taught in a very rural one-room school in southwestern Wisconsin. Her assignment was to teach 40+ children in grades 1 through 8. From the moment children arrived at school to the moment they departed, she was the only adult in the school and was constantly on duty. She prepped at home.

The provision of prep time for daily teaching is borrowed from a collegiate model. College professors and instructors typically worked within a balanced schedule of student instruction and professional work, including office hours for meeting with students and preparation for next instruction. The collegiate model includes the expectation that professors consistently engage in professional reading, writing and research.

Prep time in most schools is a product of collective bargaining. It emerged in teacher contracts in the 1950s and 60s as teacher associations aligned with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or National Education Association (NEA) and engaged in bargaining. The provision of prep time was treated as a benefit subject to the give and take of contract negotiations. Minutes of prep time were argued and depending upon the contract was approximately one class period to prepare for all other classes of instruction.

In 2018, a study of prep time revealed “that out of an average 7.5-hour workday, the most common amount of planning time provided to teachers is 45 minutes per day. Across the country, prep times vary, from 15 minutes per day day to more than an hour in some districts.”

https://www.k12insight.com/trusted/teachers-don’t-have-enough-prep-time/

Why Is This Thus?

The bargaining origin of prep time muddied the issue of prep time. The argument of who directs teacher prep time – teacher or administration – was argued but not answered. Is prep time within a teacher’s teaching assignment or is it a benefit outside of the assignment? If it is within, then administration can direct how a teacher uses prep time. If it is a benefit beyond a contracted teaching assignment, a teacher determines how prep time will be used.

Teachers have not helped the argument that prep time is personal time. Historically, students and parents had a distinct perception of how teachers used their non-teaching time. Back when people were allowed to smoke in schools, teacher lounges were smoke-filled havens. Student stories of looking into a lounge clouded with smoke shaped the common image that a teacher prep period was a bathroom stop and time for a cigarette, nothing more.

In the No Smoking era, the use of prep time as personal time extended beyond the teacher lounge. If prep time is personal time, then a teacher can leave school during a prep period to accomplish personal errands, such as banking, going to a pharmacy, or quick shopping. Parents and community members who greet a teacher who is shopping during a school day do not make a critical connection of prep time with the need for instructional preparation.

From the administrative perspective, prep time is part of a contracted teaching assignment and is vulnerable to reassignment based upon daily school needs. As there is a shortage of teachers, there also is an ever-greater shortage of substitute teachers. Principals look at prep time schedules to fill daily substitute needs in classrooms, hallway and cafeteria supervisions, and other non-teaching work. Some teachers report losing more than half their prep time each month to administrative re-assignments. If prep time is part of a teacher’s daily contract, then prep time is available for reassignment. Needs must be met!

Reassignment is a creeping problem. Covering a class for a colleague who is absent from school due to illness or family emergency seems very collegial and natural for a professional teacher. It is a reciprocal agreement – I will cover for your incidental need and you will cover for mine. The creep is that coverage moved from an English teacher covering for an English teacher to an English teacher covering the auto shop and physics class and a lunch shift. Reassignment of prep time has become a generalized practice without concern for a teacher’s preparation to teach the new assignment or the concept that “we need a body” in the halls for a class period.

Perhaps being a “helper” is in the DNA of most teachers. One of the first things out of a teacher’s mouth whenever a problem arises is, “How can I help?”. The outcome of this frequent response is that a teacher willing to help with coverage does more and more instructional review and preparation for teaching at home.

Is reassigning a teacher during a prep period to cover an additional assignment a use of an administrative resource or a misuse of a teaching and learning resource?

This returns us to the Take Away above. The unprofessional treatment of teacher prep time erodes teacher professionalism and career sustainability. In a recent national survey, 60% of teachers who reported that they are considering leaving teaching and it was not the teaching that caused their dissatisfaction. It was the overwhelmingness of everyday non-teaching factors, including constant loss of prep time.

To Do

The following steps will not immediately alleviate a school’s shortage of teachers or substitute teachers. These steps will make an immediate repair to and bolstering of teacher professionalism in any school.

1. Make a clear and inviolate connection between quality preparation for instruction and effective teaching that causes all children to learn. Make this an earthquake policy – broken only in the event of earthquake (valid everywhere but California). Establish a quid pro quo – high quality instruction for the protection and support of instructional preparation.

On a daily basis, the administration demands a continuous progress instruction for each child that is based upon a clinical assessment and alignment of each child’s learning readiness and needs, and, each teacher will use daily preparation time, including before and after school time, to create such continuous progress instruction.

2. Provide administrative support for instructional preparation. The new mantra, “How can we assist your preparation for causing each child to learn?”, replaces “We need you to be a hall supervisor this class period”. The absence of support of instructional preparation cannot be a cause for less than effective teaching. Part of administrative supervision of teaching includes the supervision of instructional preparation. Principal oversight of prep time assures that prep time remains protected and is targeted on effective instruction.

3. Make a clear and inarguable connection between protected preparation time and the achievement of annual curricular goals. Too often a defense of low achievement is the lack of instructional support or the constant interruption of instruction and its preparation for non-instructional reasons. There should be a reciprocal here. Better preparation will beget better instruction that will beget improved learning performance.

Imagine a month of school in which every teacher is provided with protected preparation. Equally imagine a month in which principals casually yet purposefully oversee instructional prep time to provide their support of needed resources. Finally, imagine a year of school and the learning outcomes that can be attained when a school prioritizes prep time, clinical instruction, and student learning. Then, imagine the professionalism of principals and teachers in a school that connects protected prep time with improved student learning.

The Big Duh!

Trends are phenomenon that have a life cycle. The trending perception that teaching is not a desired profession can be altered by our professional practices. I wager the proverbial dime that a school that protects and supports instructional preparation and connects protected prep time with effective teaching and learning outcomes will be a school that both attracts teacher candidates and retains veteran teachers.

A school leader may say “We cannot afford to protect teacher prep time. We don’t have alternative resources to cover our daily demands.” I respond by saying, “As a profession of teachers and educators, we cannot afford the continuation of non-professional practices. Change now or continue the trend of diminishing teacher professionalism and the perception of a teaching career”.

Leaders and Legacy: Work In Progress

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Why does a person take a leadership position? After all the hoopla of interviewing, recruitment and hiring have faded, after new pay checks have been received, and after your name is on the letterhead, most say they assumed leadership in order to make a difference in the life of the organization – in this case, a school or school district. Being hired to be a school superintendent is personally and professionally exciting. There is a honeymoon period of getting to know each other and egos bloom. However, the clock is ticking. The opportunity to make a difference began on day one not the end of the honeymoon. Now, what? Will you be a placeholder or will you have made a difference?

What Do We Know?

School boards typically hire a new superintendent who is different from the prior superintendent. This is not a slam on the predecessor, it is just the way things work. Also, school boards do not hire a superintendent to continue the work of the prior superintendent. The intention of the employer and the employee is that something new and better will happen.

Thus, the dilemma. The length of tenure and the time it takes to implement a meaningful program are not equal. Change takes time.

The mean tenure for a superintendent in the same position is five to six years. Interestingly, this is slightly more than a decade ago when the mean was 3-4 years. Tenures are somewhat longer for smaller school and suburban leaders than large, urban school district leaders. With an annual turnover rate of 14 to 16 percent each year, superintendents have roughly six years to do their significant work.

https://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

A six-year tenure is a superintendent’s window of opportunity. Because six years is an averaged number, some leaders arithmetically will have more years. On the other side of the statistic, an equal number of leaders have fewer years to implement the programs the newness they were hired to bring to their schools.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/SuperintendentsBrown-Center9314.pdf

The truth is this – time runs out.

Why Is This Thus?

Organizational change theory is well-studied and it pertains to school leadership.

“Change takes tremendous effort. It takes as much effort to organize and manage a significant change initiative as it does to manage the daily operations of the ongoing school operations. In effect, it takes twice as much human effort to affect a significant change because the humans also must do their daily work.”

https://nwi.pdx.edu/NWI-book/Chapters/Franz-5b-(system-change).pdf

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”

https://hbr.org/2008/07/choosing-strategies-for-change

Because change can be difficult for people and processes that do not want to be changed, leaders find their being responsible for change to be a precarious employment position. For this reason alone, leaders are often tentative in initiating significant change early in their tenure before they have developed sustainable working relationships.

From beginning to end, a change process takes up to eight years to realize the results that were intended by those initiating the change. Eight years!

Pick your theory and model for implementing organizational change. I have looked at each. They all take time.

MAJOR APPROACHES & MODELS OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT
1) Lewin’s Change Management Model.
2) McKinsey 7 S Model.
3) Kotter’s change management theory.
4) Nudge Theory.
5) ADKAR model.
6) Bridges’ Transition Model.
7) Kübler-Ross Five Stage Model.

https://www.cleverism.com/major-approaches-models-of-change-management/

Change in education is slightly different than change in other human industries. The research on change is largely informed by research organizations where the results of change can be observed within a short period of time. Research has concentrated on business, especially health care. When change is directed at instructional practices, curricular reform, and teacher professional development and the critical outcomes of interest are measures by school and/or student performance, it takes evaluation over four to five years to observe meaningful performance differences and to correlate the movement to the implemented change.

Consider changing a reading program in elementary schools. If the goal is to improve reading proficiency by the end of third grade, a change starting this year in Kindergarten will take four academic years to demonstrate comparable data to the proficiency data of the prior program. If the change is an instructional model, implementing Danielson’s Frameworks of Teaching for example, it will take three to four years for a teacher to eliminate a prior model and thoroughly implement the new. This makes the timeline of planning, preparation for change, implementation of change strategies, regression of old strategies and practice of new new strategies, and evaluation of results stretch to eight years.

For most school leaders, given the average six years of tenure, the necessary six to eight years of time runs out before they can affect a significant change in their schools.

To Do

The “do no harm” approach: Follow the Hippocratic Oath for medical doctors and “do no harm”. Lead and manage your schools so that they are as strong on your last day as they were on your first day. This is the approach taken by most superintendents.

The “do some good” approach: Each school year presents opportunities for small changes and small improvements that can be achieved without the turmoil of organizational change. Changing a bell schedule requires staff and students to adjust their usual routines, but it can realize a reprioritization of time. A bell schedule change process from first discussion to accepted practice may take an academic year. Changes to school operations, such as new security systems, monitored entrances and exits, and visitor badge wear constitute very valid and worthwhile changes that require changes in behavior. These should be implemented without causing much organizational turmoil. Changing a school mascot or reducing school programs may seem easier to accomplish than they really are. Some small change opportunities can become professional graveyards.

The “do great things” approach: Time, opportunity, convergence of personalities, and money present singular opportunities for a superintendent to affect major and significant change. This convergence makes all the difference between dreamers and doers. When a school leader is at the junction of these factors and has the personal leadership skills and drive to make things happen, great things can happen. A superintendent may have one opportunity in a career to to build a significant new school. The economics and politics of successful school mergers and closings are dicey, but can be accomplished. Installing curricular reform, such as K-12 reading/ELA or K-12 math, big change initiatives requiring time, professional development, money, and planning and argumentation can be achieved. For the superintendent and school board, these types of changes spend a great deal of relationships capital, but they succeed everyone wins. Some succeed wonderfully while others succumb to the weight of the effort and cost. Perhaps all superintendents dream of doing great things then find they are subject to time, place and circumstances.

The Big Duh!

Your legacy is yours to create.

Most school leaders do not think of the legacy they will leave in their current position until it is time for their departure. Then, it is retrospective and reconstructive work.

Some school leaders consider legacy opportunities, the ways in which they can affect major improvements in their schools, all the time. When they have a schools-first not a my-reputation-first mindset and when they are at the convergence of the “do great things” factors, these leaders can cause their schools to emerge from change with outstanding improvements.

Where are you in your legacy work?

No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. Bucks Launch Great Results

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A great line from Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff explains what caused the development of the jet planes that broke the sound barrier: “…no bucks, no Buck Rogers”. Bucks as in money. Test pilot courage and skill and the aerodynamics of the Bell X1 aside, funding was the propellant necessary for moving man past the speed of sound and into outer space. Money makes things happen.

The presence or absence of bucks also explains a lot about schools. Money is not the the singular characteristic of successful schools, but the constant lack of money is a regular characteristic of struggling schools. Money that is well spent has the power to propel student learning just as it did NASA’s rockets. Money committed to a specific educational outcome can accomplish great achievements in student learning. What would it take to make your school district a Buck Rogers launch pad?

Take Away

Public education is a public expense derived from the collection of taxes levied for public purposes. I accentuate the word “public” because the responsibility for educating our youth is assigned by the Constitution to each state’s government. Although the federal government contributes large bundles of money through Title programs, a majority of education cost is paid by state and local tax money. Public education taken in total is one of our nation’s major businesses. National spending on education in 2019 approximated $690 billion. A huge number! The number is more understandable as a per pupil expense of $12,201 in 2019.

Turn the numbers sidewise. The average 2019 teacher salary in the USA is $60,000. Tack on a benefits package of $20,000. Using averages with an instructional year of 180 days and a workday of 8 hours, an hour of instruction costs $65.

What do we know?

Education is an intentional cause and effect relationship. We are instructed and we learn. We can be educated about many things at little to no cost. Self-instruction. The difference between self-education and public education is scope. Part of the scope is the number of students. Consider all the children in your community and that is your target scope. Another part of scope is time. As a rule, we educate children for 13 years or from enrollment in 4K to graduation from grade 12. The third component of scope is the breadth and depth of curricular and co-curricular programs. This scope is all the academic, activity, arts and athletic programs sponsored by the school board.

Programming over time has cost and these costs vary according to the population. Consider the 1.1 million children in New York City’s public schools and the 503 children in my local school district. NYC requires $25 billion to per year fund all its programs for its population of 4K-12 children and our local schools require $11 million per year. Each is a lot of zeroes; the scope of cost is in the zeroes.

Dazzling dollar signs aside, there is no scientifically-derived amount of money that equals a quality education. Children can succeed in schools with low per pupil spending as well as in high spending schools. And, low spending schools can achieve superb educational outcomes for all children and high spending schools can sputter to cause below basic educational outcomes. Returning to The Right Stuff, some schools send their children into space and other schools fail to leave the ground. The critical attributes are well-trained teachers connecting with well-written curricula and a variety of learning support systems to assist children with challenges.

The question I raise is “What prevents all schools from sending all children into the educational equivalent of outer space?”.

As long teachers are paid a fair, living wage for the community in which they reside and work, the answer is not spending more money on salaries and benefits.

Instead, the answer is “What is the cost of the educational outcomes you want for all children?”. The answer is “The amount of money needed to create my school district’s Buck Rogers”. I understand Buck Rogers may be a different educational goal and outcome in each school school district.

Why is this thus?

Local control. National averages show that 47% of public education costs are paid by state funding. 8% is paid with federal funds. 45% of educational costs are borne by local taxes. Political processes complicate or eliminate the possibility of state legislatures or Congress significantly increasing the dollars available to educate the children in your community. School boards levy local taxes to raise, on average, $45 of every $100 spent in local pubic school. If school boards need more money to provide their Buck Rogers education, their local control of the tax levy is the tool to do so. As Kevin Bacon said in A Few Good Men, “These are the facts and they are undisputed”. If a school board wants Buck Rogers results, the school board has the power to raise the necessary money.

To Do

• Prioritize your educational outcomes. What is a Buck Rogers educational outcome in your school district? Remember that Rogers did not just get off the launch pad, he reached into outer space. Your Buck Rogers educational outcome needs to be very significant.
• Commit to assuring the achievement of your highest priority outcome. Create a community consensus agreeing to your significant Buck Rogers educational outcome. Publish what Buck Rogers looks like in your schools.
• Determine a strategy of actions required to achieve your Buck Rogers outcome. Plan the work. The plan undoubtedly will require time for educator training, curricular organization, development of support services, and monitoring and adjusting along the way. Take the long look in developing your outcome strategy. A big Buck Rogers is worth doing well.
• Create a funding strategy to pay for these required actions. Fund the work. Simply remember this: No bucks, no Buck Rogers. Most strong Buck Rogers outcomes require initial and continuing funding – create funding that goes the distance.
• Implement your strategy of actions. Work the plan. Remember that all other educational programs within your schools will continue to operate while you develop your Buck Rogers. If you allow other programs to diminish or fail, Rogers will crash. Buck Rogers is inside the district’s total programming not instead of its programming.
• Achieve your local Buck Rogers education.

It is surprising how simple planning for a Buck Rogers educational outcome is once you commit your school district to achieving a Rogers outcome. The most difficult part of the scheme is selecting your district’s Buck Rogers outcome. As soon as you make that your #1, the rest of the #s fall into place.

The Big Duh

School Boards are not required to create Buck Rogers plans. A board can adopt an annual educational plan that meets state standards and statutory requirements. No more than that is required. A board can levy the minimum amount of money required to achieve their minimal educational plan. Today, when school boards meet the statutory and mandate requirements, boards are meeting the responsibilities of their elected office. However, meeting the mandate and statutory requirements in my state and across our nation result in a majority of our children achieving below proficiency on all academic standards. Read this again. The outcomes that schools achieve by implementing only the mandated and statutory requirements are academic inproficiency.

Buck Rogers flies well above the proficiency barrier. Local control gives a school board the option to provide Buck Rogers educational outcomes. Buck Rogers requires bucks and spending of those bucks stops or starts at the school board.

Brag About Your School – Who Will Brag If You Won’t?

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Bragging rights. Every school, large or small, urban, suburban or rural, public or private has something it can brag about. It is the stuff that The Beach Boys sang in “Be True to Your School” in the 1950s, a song that is played annually at homecoming and state tournament time. A brag is the school’s claim to glory that connects current students, alumnae, and the community. More than a mascot or school colors, a brag memorializes achievement.

It is okay for schools to brag; it really is. If a school won’t brag about itself, who will?

Somewhere there is a sign with your school’s brag on it. On the main highway leading into small midwestern towns, the brag is on signage large enough to be read from a passing car that says

Home of the Smallville Tigers
Girls Basketball State Champs
2003
2004
2009
2014

In every school there is signage on the walls and in trophy cases proclaiming state or conference champs in football, boy’s basketball, or track. It may tout teams or individuals. Brags are any sport or activity that is a source of school pride. Debate teams, math teams, bands and choirs, theater actors and actresses, and Destination Imagination champs all merit bragging. Your brag may be your designation as a Blue Ribbon School or a recognized school of academic achievement.

Most recently, brags appear on school websites. There are more digital readers than motorists passing through Smallville and websites expand viewership of school brags. Once posted, brags can be linked to any school story related to achievement and success and are discoverable by anyone browsing through the school site. The “badges” provided by awarding organizations are identifiable and transportable. Any link of your school name with an awarding organization and the awarded achievement is public relations gold.

Take Away

A good and well-earned brag is potent. A strong brag bolsters a school image in a contemporary culture that values image. It is an identification with achievement in a society that regales winners. People everywhere understand brags and look for the next super-performance to create a new something to crow about.

Brags also have echo power because they can be retold again and again. They are treated as truths. School graduates who settle in their hometowns carry brags from one generation to the next. An individual or team that established records which stand over time challenge the efforts of current and future students. I grew up under the maternal challenge to be as good as Niles Kinnick, a Heisman Trophy winner, All-American and Phi Beta Kappa scholar. The brag of Adel, IA, and the University of Iowa still shines brightly.

If you want to test your brag, try taking it down. Begin a rumor that old banners will be removed from the gym or plaques from the band and choir rooms or a trophy case will be repurposed. The backslap will confirm which of these is your school’s most important brag.

What do we know?

Most school successes are intentional both at the personal and the organizational levels. We can point to the athlete with unbelievable natural athleticism and strength. And, we can point to the child with a gift for mathematical thinking who excels in calculus while in 8th grade. Giftedness aside, most often school success finds children who commit to doing something exceptionally well. They focus, they persist, they seek opportunities to grow, and in the end they excel. They are intentional and purposeful and committed. Successful schools intentionally and purposefully have programs that attract and nurture students who strive for success.

In the same breath, we can point at school-based programs that purposefully grow opportunities for children to become achievers and those programs were born from an individual leader or succession of leaders. A superintendent, principal, teacher, coach, director and advisor are in positions for initiating programs that breed school and student success. Leadership is a critical element in successful school programs.

I attended a high school where the boys swim team won 17 state championships. In that community, every child at the Y, summer swimming programs, and school swim classes was looked at as future state champ. I worked in a high school where high academic achievement was the expectation. The bar for average was higher than the bar for excellence in most schools. The target was an ACT average of 30 or better and institutional practices were in place to help all students stretch their ACT preparation to add their names to the school’s academic honors. These are two examples of educators initiating sustainable programs that motivate and nurture high levels of student success that become points of school and community pride.

Brags matter to parents. School choice options make enrollment a competitive field and brags bolster a school’s competitive edge. Parents look for the right school environment and culture that gives their child an educational advantage compared to children in other schools. Self-interest is a driving component in school choice. To be “choice” competitive, your school needs to identify its brag, align it with an enrollment market, and advertise. Bragging can be more than public relations.

Why is this thus

Schools are intentionally designed. Today, most schools post and publish their vision, mission statements, and annual school goals. Many states require public schools to publish an annual report card of student performance and schools have the opportunity to align these achievements with their mission. At the school level, most success is the result of the alignment of mission, commitment, resources, results-based leadership, and continuity over time.

Success begets success. At the personal and institutional levels, the psychology of success is a powerful motivator to extend current success further or to find new opportunities for success. At the community level, people acknowledge school success and then wait for the next success. There is an environment in successful schools that cultivates more not less success.

Schools that understand intentional design, have leadership able to align efforts to a purposeful and positive mission, and use the psychology of success to propel student and school achievements naturally create the right to brag.

To do

Be proud of your school. Find school and student achievements that shed a positive light on your school.

Find a brag that –

• is related to successful school achievement. The brag needs to be a measure of success in school academics, activities, arts or athletic programs. If the success derives from what children do out of school, it is not a school brag.

• contains an attribute or value that is positive and holds up over time. Brags built from the attributes of hard work, persistence, commitment, teamwork, healthy practices allow today’s children to see themselves as tomorrow’s success stories. Brags appeal both to groups and individuals. Individual children can see their own creativity or personal commitment to playing a musical instrument leading them to outstanding achievement.

• is related to qualities and characteristics that are achievable. In order to motivate current and future students, brags need to be within their reach. For some schools, it is conference not state championships and honor band distinctions not elite state performance groups. Significant school success at challenging levels is worth bragging.

• supports a positive community image. Every community has its own unique identity. School 4H programs fit well in a rural school and successful school programs at county and state fairs swell community pride. Communities tout their partnerships with colleges and universities which often works best for schools close to those institutions. At the same time, there are ubiquitous activities, such as conservation, marketing, and entrepreneurship that are positive for all communities. A brag that elevates community pride in the school is good for everyone.

Then, brag.

The big duh

The old news media adage of “If it bleeds, it leads” very well relates to school news. Violence at school, bus accidents, and bad acts by school personnel make the news media headlines. School success stories rarely do. For this reason alone, educators, parents of school-age children, and community leaders need to accentuate the positive successes of their local schools. If you won’t take up a school brag, who will?

Listening, Speaking and Arithmetic

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The ability to read and write proficiently has been one of the twin measures of an educated person for centuries. Facility in mathematics is the twin measure. Contemporary K-12 education is geared by a child’s facility with reading and writing. More than grade level promotion, gpa and access to advanced curricula, the ability to read and write shapes a child’s self-esteem and social-emotional well-being. What happens, then, when reading and writing no longer are the gold standard of education? How does the industry of education adjust to a new standard – perhaps, speaking and listening? If the trend of evolving generations holds, oral communication skills are more important than written communication skills. Boomers read and write. Millennials and Gen Z listen, see and speak. Seismic? Yes!

Take Away

My grandchildren do not read literature or biographies or informational texts as we did in earlier generations. They do not read newspapers or news journals. They do not write and share letter writing with relatives and friends. They do not worry out a grammatically correct sentence. Say, what? To learn something new, they do not refer to texts or tomes. They would rather not attend class to learn if there is an option. When I illustrate a daily comment with Shakespeare or Twain or even Stephen King, they do not show any recognition. I cannot even comment, “It is Greek to them” and believe that they know what I mean. They and their generation are oral, aural and visual. They communicate with sound and the texted sound bite and visual imaging. And, my grandchildren are just representative of their generation. I confirmed this generalization in conversations with local middle school children and their teachers. Today’s children prefer listening and talking to reading and writing.

For the proverbial English major, listening to daily conversation has become an aural anguish. So many of the conventions drummed into the Boomer generation have been abandoned by Millennials and Gen Z. Subject and predicate agreement no longer matters. Beginning an oral statement with “So, …” and liberally splashing “… you know…” and “…like…” and “…I mean…” throughout lengthy run-on sentence-statements is now common conversation. They do not know the difference between “he and I” and “him and me” and do not care. Across the conversational English of their generation, this unconventional usage is becoming standardized. If this is the future, what are educators called to do?

If the learning and working language preferences and practices of Gen Z, now becoming our most populated generation, are indicative of the learning preferences and language practices of the generations to come, how should public education respond in terms of teaching and learning?

What do we know?

Historically, school has been the source of reading, writing and arithmetic. Taken at a larger measure, schools were built to teach children to read and write. Books and other printed material were housed in classrooms and libraries. Paper and pencil and pen, long the given medium, gave way to computers and printers, but the functions remained the same. The educational goal was to read fluently and with comprehension and to write succinctly in well-crafted paragraphs. Reading and writing as tools for learning opened all the other subjects of school – the social studies and sciences, art and music, technical arts and technology, even drivers education – to children and their future lives.

Also, historically, education has slowly evolved to meet new realities. Public education is not on the cutting edge of change. In fact, public education often is justifiably criticized for being too slow to change and is an impediment to many needed changes in our world. Will this be true of our recognition of changing generational learning and language preferences and practices?

Why Is this Thus?

Education is designed by the adults in the room not the children. Picture Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers educators and politicians when you look at most school buildings, school curricula, and school organization. Think about the needs of late 20th century business and economy when you consider the educational outcomes of a high school education. Education supplied traditional business models requiring men and women who could fulfill roles in accounting and business, sales and marketing, engineering of all types, law, and medicine. Reading and writing were essential skills for success up to and into the 21st century. Reading and writing proficiency and fluency were symbols of success for those generations.

Millennials and Gen Z are different breeds of cats compared to the Greatest and the Boomers. They are mentally, socially and culturally wired differently. Add to their being different this reality – The American Dream shifted. For all prior generations, young adults believed that their standard of living would exceed that of their parents. Steady advances in personal income would continue for them as it had in the past. Horatio Alger stories of bootstrapping oneself to economic and social prosperity were rewritten. Millennials sweat paying off student debt and out-of-reach home mortgages and Gen Z eschew four-year degrees and are more cautious about long-term commitments. Young adults dream differently than the Greatest and the Boomers and engage in life differently, as well. Their learning preferences and language usages are just tokens of these differences. I engage in some stereotyping of Millennials and Gen Z, but in contrast to the Greatest and Boomers, not much.

To Do

The science of teaching provides us with our clues for tuning education to the preferences of our Gen Z children and beyond. The best practices of good teaching need to be everyday practices for children who are oral, aural and visual learners.

• Say it then write it. Madeline Hunter taught us that children hear faster than they can read. Saying it first allows a child time to hear and begin processing what you want them to learn. Saying it and pronouncing it allays guess work if the child must read an unknown word before hearing it. All of this is left-brain processing work. Then write it. The pause between saying and writing or displaying the word allows short term memory to begin working.

• Keep it simple. Use Hunter’s concepts of critical attributes to identify the important vocabulary, key words, and essential facts. Once these are presented and affirmed in short-term memory, they can be elaborated. And, do not crowd in more and more information. Erase words or take away digital displays when new words and concepts are “said and written”. Overcrowding causes confusion.

• Use visuals and models. It is all about multi-sensory learning. Saying it is aural. Writing it is verbal. Seeing it is visual. Envisioning it in a model provides a definition or model. Gen Z children are more 3D and a physical modeling helps them to mentally play with the information.

The next points are huge.

• Explain it, discuss it, question it. Children who prefer oral and aural learning experiences need to talk about their learning. They need to “think aloud” and hear other’s thinking. Discussion is their form of reinforcement. It provides clarification and repetition. Questions demand that they put it into their own words. Asking questions or being asked questions within their discussion is their way of “proving it”.

• Get all children involved in the discussion. Like all children in prior generations, Gen Z kids can be shy. But, given their proclivity for oral discussion over writing out their thinking, they will talk. Ask children “What do you think?” and then ask other children to agree, disagree or expand and add to what has been said. Oral discussion should become larger in time and scope and importance in instructional design.

• Elaborate and extend it with reading. Once a new idea or concept or model is introduced, oral/aural learners are ready to read about it. Reading makes sense to them when it meaningfully builds upon what they are learning. They would say that the oral/aural gives them a meaningful structure to which they can attach their subsequent reading.

Madeline Hunter, Mastery Learning, Corwin Press, 1982.

The big Duh

Best practices are required for teaching to consistently cause learning. The schools created by and for the Greatest Generation, Boomers, and perhaps Gen X emphasized educational outcomes through reading and writing. Millennials and Gen Z children show preferences for oral and aural learning experiences to achieve the needed educational outcomes for their future world. This fairly seismic shift does not mean that reading and writing are out and listening and speaking are in. Best practices in teaching remain the keys to generational success. Educator’s are constantly called to clinically adapt and use best practices geared to each generation and their learning needs.