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Board Members: Perch Like A Bird To Learn About Your School

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Information is powerful and firsthand gathering of information without bias is essential.  Given this as truth, how can a school board member be informed about his school in ways that do not cross the lines between board and administration and employees?  I recommend perching.

A board member appearing at school too often raises inappropriate hackles.  If drivers on the highway slow down and become circumspect about their speed and safe driving procedures when a highway patrol cruiser appears in their rear view mirror, administrators and teachers too often grow anxious when a school board member walks down the school hallway.  Anxiety is a natural phenomena.  In the presence of law enforcement, I may be more thoughtful about what I am doing, but it does not change the relationship I have with the laws.  We both travel on the highway and I drive on.  So it should be in public schools.  School Board members come to school.

Perching is being a silent and unobtrusive yet acknowledged observer of the daily life of a school.  Perchers watch and listen, smile a lot, and only engage to clarify what they see or hear.  Sounds kind of spooky and weird; it is not.  As a percher, I am just another adult in the school.

A percher should observe the amenities.  Informing the school administration before perching is one of those amenities.  There is nothing in a school to be hidden from board view, but if an administrator has scheduled an evaluative observation at the same time and place a board member wants to perch, perching needs to be rescheduled.  Secondly, as members on the same team, informing the administration about a planned perch is just good practice.

Perchers need built-in filters.  The variety of words and stories and scenes a percher hears and observes is amazing.  Once you are seen and acknowledged by students and staff, your silent presence seems to be forgotten and, as the saying goes, “people say and do the darnedest things.”  Personal stories and observations of persons doing personal things are filed in the “personal” category.  Unless it is the proverbial person yelling “Fire!”, perchers filter out the personal and filter in pertinent.

I perched in the high school media center last week.  After communicating my intention to the superintendent and receiving a “happy perching’ response, I took a seat at a library table on the edge of a group of tables where students often sit.  From my seat, I observed all the comings and goings in the media center.

A media center is a latter day school library.  Our media center looks like and acts like a school library, that is lots of books on shelves and large, traditional library tables that seat six to eight students.  I had learned from our media aide who supervises students in the media center and handles material circulation that very few teachers bring their classes to the “library” as used to happen.  Because our secondary school issues one-to-one laptops and chrome books to all students in grades 6 – 12, students have almost all of the media and reference material once found in the school library at their classroom desks.  And, their personal technology is interactive.  Because classes no longer schedule time in the media center, almost all student use is study hall time or meetings with tutors or reading and math interventionists or college reps looking for a quiet place to meet.

On my perch this day, I learned three things.

The first thing I learned involved five high school students who were seated at a larger table reviewing for an AP Psych test.  Happenstance led their AP Psych teacher to walk through the media center, and seeing them, to ask the usual “How ya doin’ today?”  Without prompting, one young lady said she had questions about the terminology related to brain stimulation – neurons, soma, dendrites, axons – “That stuff.”  Their teacher sat in an available chair and for twenty minutes conducted an outstanding tutorial.  He didn’t tell; he helped each student clarify what they already knew and corrected a few items that were inaccurately related.  Each student was engaged, leaning forward, and profiting from the moment.  It was the type of experience that happens with frequency, I believe, but is not often observed.

With all questions resolved, the teacher went on his way.  What happened next was icing on a percher’s cake.  One after another, the tutored talked about what a “great teacher Mr. X is” and how much they are learning.  Their appreciation was genuine, as Mr. X had departed, and no “brownie points” were to be gained.  As a percher, I had the privilege of observing the kind of teacher/student interaction and the quality of relationship we assume but seldom see first hand.  Later in the day, I found Mr. X and told him about this observation and he was very modestly pleased.

My second learning regarded a school policy, student practices, and student perception of the policy.  Our school has policies related to when and how students can use “personal devices” like cell phones and tablets for personal texting, phone calls and game playing.  In a nutshell, personal devices are not to be used for these purposes during class time; begrudged permission is given during passing periods and lunch time only.  But, children being children, our students push against the margins of rules and policies.

I observed high school students using their study hall time in the media center to game on their school-provided laptops, text and FaceTime on their cell phones, and send and receive texts.  It was not so much a startling observation as it was a confirming observation.  Several students committed all of their media center time to texting and gaming – not studying.  Others allowed the incoming text or silenced phone ringer interrupt their studies – no students appeared to decline a text or call.

High school teachers are concerned that their students believe they are entitled to use their personal devices when and how they choose regardless of school rules.  And, student use of personal devices during study time causes too many students to have incomplete or unattempted class assignments.  From my perch, I observed about half of the students in the media center committed to their study time and about half who either committed their study time to personal device usage or allowed their personal devices to interrupt their study time.

During the next class passing period, I asked a student I recognized about student use of personal devices to texting and gaming in the media center and she gave me a very Cartesian response.  “If no one saw a student texting or gaming, then the rules were not violated.”

My third observation is a cost-benefit understanding.  Schools have not always had libraries.   The commitment of cost to a school library was innovative in the early 1900s and by mid-century a school library was a “must have” in secondary schools and many elementary schools.  The collection of resources for teachers and students in a central location supported the delivery of curriculum and instruction.  Today, this is not the case.  Technology, either streamed into the classroom or accessible through laptops and tablets on student desks, brings everything from the library to the teacher and student wherever they are.  This leaves schools with a large investment in media centers that is not fully utilized in terms of financial resources as well as physical space.

My many perchings in school media centers confirms that the contemporary function of these “centers’ require these –

  • Comfortable places for students to read and study.  Comfort includes individual and group settings with supportive and cushioned seating.  No more rigid chairs that leave marks on your back and cut off circulation to your buttocks and below.
  • Abundant and accessible power stations for school-provided laptops, Chromebooks and tablets.  Most libraries lack electrical outlets and those that are present were placed for the work of librarians.
  • Good lighting and air circulation.  Students are increasingly aware of the amount of time they spend under fluorescent lighting and in internally-circulated air.  Natural light and fresh air are essential.
  • Seating and flooring that accommodates student drinking of water.  Brain research tells us that well-functioning brains need oxygen and water.  Our classroom teachers accommodate water bottles and our media centers should as well.
  • Reconsideration of the secondary collection.  Middle school students circulate contemporary fiction, especially graphic novels, much more than high school students.  In fact, high school circulation is in continual decline.  High school circulation relates to class assignments and most of the reference, research, and supplemental information they seek is on the Internet.  Floor space that is committed to the secondary collection can be reallocated.

This returns me to value of perching.  Those responsible for educating children expand their knowledge bases from professional meetings, organized discussions, and group interactions.  These opportunities assure that there is common breadth and depth in their understanding.  However, due to their scope and function, these informational events lack first hand information.  To get real, personal first hand information, I recommend perching.  Sit quietly.  Observe and listen.  Filter what you see and hear – some things are not your business.  Become informed in the first-hand.  And, even though perchers do not typically engage with others while perching, being seen on your perch gives you a real credibility with faculty, staff and students.

School – A Compact of Good Faith

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Watching your child leave the security of your vehicle, walk under the hump of her backpack to the schoolhouse doors, and disappear inside is a leap of faith.  I sat watching her form disappear behind the darkened glass of the closed door as antsy drop-off parents along the curb behind me impatiently inched forward.  Every morning without exception, I silently wished my child a good and safe day of learning and mouthed “See you after school.”

Inside the doors, my daughter walks to her locker and along the way meets up with her friends, the girls who find each other every morning before their first class to talk about what they have done since last seeing each other the day before.  In her first class, she is surrounded at her desk by classmates she has known since starting school in Kindergarten and friends she just met this year.  Smiles and “Hi’s” are exchanged per usual, last minute gossip is passed, and schooling for my daughter begins again.

School is a good and safe place for my daughter.  I know it.  She will be instructed today by capable teachers and she will advance her learning.  I know it.  She is among friends who care about her and who she cares about.  I know it.  Yet, watching her leave my care every morning and enter into the maw of school gives me pause.  Then I make the leap, resolving that the adults in her school will take care of my little girl today.

There are more than 800 children in my daughter’s school.  I make the assumption that other parents share my morning feelings and that they, like me, accept in good faith the compact parents make with their school.  I enroll my child in your school and in the aggregate of all enrollments, the school is funded and salaries and benefits are paid to all school staff.  In exchange for your livelihood, you will educate and safeguard my child.  Perhaps, the concept of safeguard is a more recent addition to this compact given events of violence in disparate locales across our nation.  Some years ago, the compact was livelihood in exchange for education.  Today, safeguarding is added without a second thought.

Even with my trepidations, I am not a lawnmower parent who wants every bump my daughter may experience in her childhood at school to be eased, if not eliminated.  Life in school will reflect much of life out of school.  She will scrape her knees on the playground at recess.  She will spill her lunch into her lap in the cafeteria.  She will receive less than an “A+” on some assignments.  She will be emotionally wracked by unkind words and her words will wound others, unintentionally I hope.  She will enjoy the quality work of most teachers and fret through a school year with a “Captain Homework” or a “shrew who must hate all children.”  Life presents these and my little girl will make the most of her school life.

And, so the years of school go until the day of her high school graduation and she and I acknowledge that never again will my daughter enter a K-12 schoolhouse door.  She will go to college in some distant state and all my worrying will be conducted from afar.  The leap of faith underlying the compact between parent and educators extends even through post-secondary education.

Years, no decades, have passed since I last watched my daughter enter her school as a student.  Today, it is my granddaughter I watch.  She seems younger than my daughter could have been at the same grade level.  And, I worry more than I used to worry.   It is not my compact with the school, but my daughter who is the parent in this arrangement.  A grandfather is just a sometimes driver delivering his granddaughter to the schoolhouse door.  Yet, I still wait unmoving in my car as my daughter’s daughter walks under an even larger backpack and disappears behind the closing glass door.  I wait even after I no longer can see her knowing that younger parents inching along the curb behind me urge the “geezer” to get moving.  And, I silently wish my granddaughter a good and safe day of learning and mouth “See you after school.”

Good “Yeah, Buts” Belong In School

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It may depend upon who says “Yeah, but…”  At the end of the day the consideration of a good “Yeah, but…” often causes us to find and select better options.  Other times, what seems like a good “yeah, but” causes grief.  I am not certain that people are innately wired to easily and often accept a “Yeah, but”.  Most of my friends tend to like their own thinking first.  “Yeah, but” clanks against their predilections.  Yet, these friends do value that someone has the temerity to interject himself into what would otherwise would be a “think of it and do it my way”.  With courtesy, they listen to another idea before providing their own “Yeah, but.”  And, so the reasoning through a course of action goes toward a better than what could have been the outcome with a good “yeah, but,” “yeah, but,” and “yeah but.”  Some time.

My father worked in “Systems and Procedures” for an international avionics communications corporation.  With responsibilities for developing and institutionalizing interactive processes within the business, he clearly knew the value of discussion, consensus, and compliance.  In the workplace, there was a time and opportunity for divergent points of view on the path to agreements.  Home, however, was a different environment.  Father understood the time and trials that possibility thinking with five children could involve.  He wanted little of that.  Often in speaking to his sons, he would lead or close his words with “There will be no buts about it.”  As a son, I understood that my penchant for “buts” would not be abided.  Interestingly, when my mother slipped a “yeah, but” into their conversation, father was amenable to the probability that the  outcome would be bent in her direction if not hers.  The time, place and speaker of “yeah, but” matters.

School offers these same values of and tolerations of divergent thinking that a good “yeah, but” can lead.  Somethings in school are non-negotiable.  Some “Yeah, buts” get heard only – heard with no anticipated action.  “Yeah, but I don’t like milk.  Can I have a beer with my lunch?”  “Yeah, but he was making fun of me, so I hit him.”  “Yeah, but I don’t think learning about fractions is important.  I want to work with whole numbers only.”  There is a hum of “yeah, buts” in most institutions that are just the routines of talking.  Children come to understand that some “yeah, buts” go nowhere.

Other “Yeah buts” cause us to stop and think about the issue being raised.  A good “yeah, but” makes us question assumptions that create routines.

“Yeah, but this takes too long.”  Children frequently create a single file line to move from one place in school to another.  Single files can be orderly.  Only seeing the child in front, most children walk or stand in single file without distracting each other.  Very orderly.  On the other hand, a single file of 25 children takes time walking to the next class or to the cafeteria or to recess.  A double-file line takes less time and triple-file even less.  “Yeah, but can we trust children to walk side-by-side?”  Probably.

“Yeah.  I know I should show all the steps I used to resolve this math problem.  But, sometimes my mind doesn’t need to list these two steps because step 4 always leads to step 5 and then to step 6, so I just list step 3 with an arrow to 6.” Most math teachers insist in all steps being shown in a student’s solution of an assigned problem.  Yet, it is reasonable for a student to demonstrate recognition of the step without displaying the step.  A teacher can understand the displayed abbreviation and agree to a “yeah, but.”  With reason.

“Yeah, but there is no reason everyone who sits in front of me should see my score on this quiz.”  A usual classroom routine is to instruct children to pass their papers forward in the rows of their desks or around their tables so that we can pick up small stack of papers from several places rather walking to pick up each student’s paper individually.  When this routine follows a self-checking of quiz or the collection of test papers after a teacher-led discussion of the test items, is a child’s concern for the privacy of their score valid?  Sure, it is.  A work around could be to have papers passed forward upside down.  Or, in a class transition to have each child walk their paper to your collection basket.  Or, in a transition for the teacher to collect each student’s paper.  “Good suggestion, kiddo!”

“Yeah, buts” are valued in academic discussion.  “Yeah, but” is the same as saying “however” or “although” or “have you considered” or “here is another equally good idea.”

They abound in any discussion that opens with “what if” propositions.  One hypothesis easily leads to a good “yeah, but” when another child offers oppositional evidence or a different hypothesis.  When asked “Just what does the First Amendment tell us about free speech?” causes hands to fly with “yeah, but” examples of what the Amendment does and does not mean or imply.  “Is it right for a man to break an oath of confidentiality in order to expose a truth that would be hidden by confidentiality?” opens a discussion of the Pentagon Papers and the Viet Nam War.  “Yeah, but” is a phrase designed for a discussion and understanding of controversial issues.  Some time we want and work hard to get good “yeah, buts” into the classroom.

Lest we go too far with good “yeah, buts”, some statements should be made and accepted without discussion and “yeah, buts.”  No discussion is necessary when the fire alarm gong sounds.  Discussion of what “hide, flee, fight” means must resolve all “yeah, buts” so that all children know what to do in the advent of serious school danger.

And, how we respond to “yeah, buts” is important.  A reasonable “yeah, but” needs to be heard and responded to reasonably.  A child who offers a new idea or asks a valid question, should be treated respectfully and given a considered response.  How we respond to a reasonable “yeah, but” will determine if that child asks questions or offers suggestions in the future.  Other “yeah, buts” can be answered with a look.  “Yeah, but I’m hot and want to take off my shirt” only requires a look.

Good “yeah, buts” belong in school.

Plan For Listening If You Want To Be Heard

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Descartes opined that when no one is in the woods to hear a tree fall there is no proof that the tree actually fell.  Applied to causing learning, if a teacher is talking/teaching in a classroom and no students are listening, is teaching actually occurring?

Let’s add another question to this point.  A teacher gives oral direction to a class of twenty children.  To what extent does each child hear the same direction?

These two questions are real.  Talking and the expectation of being listened to is an assumption.  Directing and the expectation that others will understand the direction is a second assumption.  These two assumptions are made every day in classrooms and they lead us to the Cartesian conclusion:  if children are not listening and paying attention to what is being said, there is no proof that teaching and direction actually occurred.

The remedy is that we must shelve our assumptions and gather evidence.  To follow Madeline Hunter, we must teach the critical attributes of listening and we must check for understanding of what has been heard.  And, we must practice these critical attributes and checking for understanding until they are fully embedded in our teaching/learning routines.  Then, we must check them intermittently to assure that we do not fall victim to our assumptions once again.

Critical attributes of effective listening begin with the teacher.  Is the teaching and direction constructed in ways that promote attentive listening?  Are they personalized so that children can relate to the words spoken?  If a child does not know that she is expected to listen and that her success as a student is within the teaching/direction, she will not commit her attention.  Is the teaching/directing concise and without the distraction of “bird walks” of irrelevant information?  We all listen in “snippets”.  Effective teaching in five- to ten-minute bursts are consumable for attentive listening.  Directions that include three or four “to do” points are understandable for attentive listening.  Story telling and rambling and anecdotal directing cause a student to tune out and long lists of things to do are confusing.  Teachers who plan to be listened to will be heard.

Checking for understanding is child accountability.  Why would a person take their car in for a repair and not road test the car afterward to assure the repair was actually made?  We need to road test children for what they hear and understand.  Checking is requiring a child or children to demonstrate – to give evidence of what they heard and understood.  Asking a child to paraphrase an instructional snippet verbally or in writing, to connect the instructional snippet to a previous snippet, or to provide the conclusions she has reached after considering the snippet are good checking strategies.  When children know that they will be required to demonstrate their listening and understanding, they become more attentive listeners and learners.  Over time, they become more effective and interactive in their self-accountability for learning and listening.

There are many more techniques and strategies for assuring that teaching/learning and directing/listening occur in classrooms.  To prevent a Cartesian problem, it is essential that a teacher purposefully practices any of these techniques to create the evidence that children are listening and learning.  If this is not done, a teacher might as well hold class in the stillness of the woods where there is no proof that a tree actually fell.