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In an over-informationed world we are under-literate.

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Literacy is like a tomato. Do you say “tomaeto” or “tomahto”? Just as either says tomato, the concept of literacy has different definitions for the same word. Some of these definitions technically apply yet are not adequate measures of what it means to be literate in today’s parlance. So, what is the big deal about literacy? Is being literate critical to adult life? Given how much information adults are exposed to every day, can we expect adults with varying levels of literacy skills to effectively consider and understand the constant barrage of information? The answer is “no,” yet our world ultimately spins on the voices and decisions of under-literate adults.

Literacy is a status.

Literacy historically is a status based upon measures of reading and writing. As a statistic, “High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.” We generalize that citizens of economically advantaged nations have high literacy rates and citizens of underdeveloped nations have low literacy rates. A nation boasted its high literacy rate as a cause-and-effect proposition. “Our people enjoy a better standard of living because they are literate.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

What should we know about this status?

Using the percentage of the population 15 years and older who can read and write as a measure of literacy, Andorra, Finland, Greenland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and North Korea tie for #1 with 100% of their citizens being literate. North Korea? If a dictator says everyone can read, everyone is literate. The United States is in a large group of nations ranking #2 with 99% of the population rated as literate. Sounds good, but is it?

https://www.uscareerinstitute.edu/blog/which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-literacy-rates

These data raise questions as to how we decide an adult is literate at the international level. This is how the data are gathered.

“The breakdown of strategies for deciding literacy covers four categories:

  • self-reported literacy declared directly by individuals,
  • self-reported literacy declared by the head of the household,
  • tested literacy from proficiency examinations, and
  • indirect estimation or extrapolation.

In most cases, the categories covering ‘self-reports’ correspond to estimates of literacy that rely on answers provided to a simple yes/no question asking people if they can read and write. The category ‘indirect estimation’ corresponds mainly to estimates that rely on indirect evidence from educational attainment, usually based on the highest degree of completed education.”

https://ourworldindata.org/how-is-literacy-measured

Based on self-reported data collection, many adults in the world consider themselves to be literate. But are they? Literacy is more than a statistical number.

Literacy is a functional tool.

Literacy is a tool. “… literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, ‘We Are Here!’”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This consideration of literacy, that is how we communicate and receive communication from others and how we create communicative information, opens new concepts of what it means to be literate. “According to a study by the University of California – San Diego, the average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information every day. This volume is equivalent of around 100,000 words heard or read daily.”

In our age of digital and virtual information, adults are bombarded by and likewise spew volumes of information daily. A literate adult must be skillful and competent on both sides of receiving and sending literacy.

Interestingly the Cambridge Dictionary points to both definitions – status and tool. Cambridge defines literacy as “the ability to read and write.” And literacy is the “knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge. Computer literacy is becoming as essential as the ability to drive a car.”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/literacy

UNESCO reinforces literacy as an essential tool. “Literacy is a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast-changing world. On the historical international scene, literacy is a statistic of the population who can read and write. Literacy also is a broad array of functional skills that are applied in a successful adult life. For others, literacy is the ability to access and understand information in multiple contexts.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This other “tomato” version of literacy opens the realm of higher order skills that are necessary for understanding, interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating information that is read and heard. And then doing something with or because of what one has read and heard. Literacy is making meaning of and considering what to do with information.

Able to read. At what level of reading?

Self-reporting is not an adequate measure of how we use literacy as a tool. “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines literacy across six levels. People with Level 1 or below literacy skills are considered to have very poor literacy skills, while Level 3 is considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.

  • Below Level 1: Adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information. Only basic vocabulary knowledge is required, and adults are not required to understand the structure of sentences of paragraphs.
  • Level 1: Adults can read relatively short digital or print texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary, determining the meaning of sentence, and reading short paragraphs of text is expected.
  • Level 2: Adults can make matches between the text, either digital or printed, and information. Adults can paraphrase or make low-level inferences.
  • Level 3: Adults are required to read and navigate dense, lengthy or complex texts.
  • Level 4: Adults can integrate, interpret or synthesize information from complex or lengthy texts. Adults can identify and understand one or more specific, non-central idea(s) in the text in order to interpret or evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse relationships.
  • Level 5: Adults can search for and integrate information across multiple, dense texts; construct syntheses of similar and contrasting ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence-based arguments. Adults understand subtle, rhetorical cues and can make high-level inferences or use specialized background knowledge.”

As a literacy tool, how well do we read?

We get a different portrait of literacy in the United States when we use the OECD’s evidence-based data. Remember that the U.S. claims a 99% literacy status using self-reporting and other non-scientific methods.

“The most recent national survey on adult literacy is from 2012-2017, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The U.S. ranks 16th among the 33 OECD nations included in this study.

Nationally, over 1 in 5 adults (in the United States) have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1. Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials. Those on the higher end of this category can perform simple tasks based on the information they read, but adults below Level 1 may only understand very basic vocabulary or be functionally illiterate.

On the upside, “46% of adults in the U.S. have a literacy proficiency at or above level 3. Adults at Levels 3, 4, and 5 have varying degrees of proficiency in understanding, interpreting and synthesizing information from multiple, complex texts to infer meaning and draw conclusions.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Huh!

Approximately half of the adults in the U.S. have functional literacy tools that are “considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.” The other half of that statistic have less that minimal literacy skills.

The application of literacy as a functional tool is not just eye-opening for the United States. Using the OECD study, 14.9% (or 1 in 7) adults in England have literacy levels below Level 3, which is the equivalent to the literacy skills expected of a nine to 11-year-old.”

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=People%20with%20Level%201%20or,for%20coping%20with%20everyday%20life.

These conclusions are supported by other studies. A Gallup analysis of literacy information gathered by the US Department of Education reports that “About 130 million adults in the U.S., roughly half of Americans between 16 and 74 – have low literacy skills. In this study, literacy is broadly defined as the ability to read and write, but more accurately encompasses the comprehension, evaluation and utilization of information, which is why people describe different types of literacy – such as health, financial, and legal. Low literacy skills can profoundly affect the day-to-day success of adults in the real world, and these impacts extent to their families, too.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Literacy and public education.

Reading achievement has become the annual dip stick for measuring educational effectiveness in the U.S. since No Child Left Behind became national policy in 2002. State, school district, and school report cards annually publicize the percentage of students who meet the state’s performance expectations in reading. In a nation that self-reports its adults to be literate, children in school struggle with reading.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported, “For 2023-24, assessment results show public school student proficiency rates in ELA were at 48%. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs had a proficiency rate of 30.9 percent. Assessment results show proficiency gaps among different student subgroups continue to exist.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2024/student-assessment-results-forward

It is worthwhile to note that “meeting expectations” on a statewide reading or ELA assessment is not a high standard. State “expectations” are minimal levels of reading ability, very much like Level 2 on the OECD literacy assessment. The number of children meeting “expectations” is nothing to really cheer about. They met a low bar.

In truth, every graduation class fits into the OECD and Gallup estimation of adult literacy in the U.S. – about half of the graduates and young adults in our country meet minimal literacy standards.

When we apply literacy as a status to high school graduates, our society annually receives semi-literate young adults into our communities and general employment. As a result of education, more than half of our adult citizenry can only minimally read and write.

When we apply the second definition, we realize that the hierarchy of our layered economic society does not require every adult to be highly literate. Many high school graduates lack the ability to fully read and listen to complex and technical information and then translate it into their daily lives and jobs fulfill society’s economic needs. They are employed and pay taxes. Their earnings circulate in our consumer-based economy. They are law abiding and live socially in our cities, towns, and countryside. The majority do not need more than a high school diploma plus technical or on-the-job training to live in the United States.

“In 2021, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States was distributed as follows: 

  • 8.9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.
  • 27.9% had high school graduate as their highest level of school completed. 
  • 14.9% had completed some college but not a degree.
  • 10.5% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.
  • 23.5% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.
  • 14.4% had completed an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctoral degree. 

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html

Incomplete literacy can lead to incomplete understanding.

The ability to read, understand, and evaluate information has become more essential as the volume of daily information has increased. When a person hears or reads almost 100,000 words daily, a person must either try to process all that information or begin to categorize and ignore selected types and sources of information. My best bet is the latter. People become increasingly selective in the media they listen to and the text they read, ignoring sources that do not agree with their personal points of view. As they scan text and skim media, they disregard sources they do not agree with and pay attention only to sources agreeable to their perspectives. The loss of a 360-degree listening and reading narrows their understanding to the range of information they choose to hear and read.

Let’s do the arithmetic. In Wisconsin, less than half of our students meet minimal expectations on statewide reading assessments. With their high school and associate degrees, they elect to hear and read only words that express their points of view about our state and world. If this is true, then we need to add a third tomato – incomplete literacy. Given that literacy is a tool, when the tool or reading and listening is applied only to what we want to read and hear, then we have achieved incomplete literacy.

We always do get what we settle for.

Our national and state Founding Fathers valued education. Because they believed a literate populace would be better able to take part in our democratic form of government, they supported public education. The ability to read was essential for voters to make informed choices of leadership and the policies their leaders would execute. As a nation of immigrants, literacy in the English language has always been a pathway to citizenship.

With all that purpose and history, today we have achieved a nation that is minimally and incompletely literate and this is considered good enough for our economic and political welfare.

In a world that is over-informationed, we are under-literate. As educators, we have work to do!

Rigor and Productive Struggle – “Kind of Hard” Causes Leaning

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Teaching for learning often resembles the Goldilocks story. If things are not just right, Goldilocks is not happy. Her sampling of chairs, porridge, and beds showed some chairs and beds to be too soft or too hard and some bowls of porridge to be too cold or too hot. By experimenting, she found her “just right” spot.

When children find lessons that are too easy to too hard, and I add, not interesting or of no perceived value to them, they also are not happy. They express their unhappiness by wandering off into boredom, distractive behaviors, and absenteeism. The “just right” lesson can catch each child’s attention and positively challenge their emerging skills sets. Such is a teacher’s constant dilemma – designing lessons with enough rigor and interest, not too little nor too much, to cause learning.

The sweet spot.

In “Productive Struggle Is a Learner’s Sweet Spot” (ASCD, Vol 14, No. 11), Barbara Blackburn describes the tension in instructional design teachers face in creating lessons that are “just right” on the scales of interest and rigor. “Student success occurs when you create an instructional environment that sets high expectations for each student and provides scaffolding without offering excessive help. The key is to incorporate productive struggle.

Productive struggle is what I call the “sweet spot” in between scaffolding and support. Rather than immediately helping students at the first sign of trouble, we should allow them to work through struggles independently before we offer assistance. That may sound counterintuitive, since many of us assume that helping students learn means protecting them from negative feelings of frustration. But for students to become independent learners, they must learn to persist in the face of challenge.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/productive-struggle-is-a-learners-sweet-spot

Blackburn speaks of two essential elements for teaching in the sweet spot. One is using the tension between the Goldilocks’ just right and too hard to provoke children to learn. Instruction that is too easy will not cause learning. It is the tension between what a student knows and can do now and what they need to know and do next that is the cutting edge for their learning. Teachers use the tension to motivate, instruct, and reinforce new learning.

Blackburn’s second element is scaffolding new learning so that all children incrementally secure their learning and developmentally grow their knowledge and skills through productive struggle. Blackburn does not allow Goldilocks to settle back into comfort but keeps pushing Goldilocks to learn to know and do what initially is too hard for her. For Goldilocks-like students, what is just right today will become too soft in the future

Blackburn locates that sweet spot by finding the critical attributes of the new or next learning in her curriculum. Madeline Hunter taught us to assess critical attributes by sorting the ideas, concepts, and generalizations of knowledge and the rigor of skill sets to identify what children need to learn “right now.” This creates the sequence and the rate and degree of what will be taught to cause learning. The scaffold ensures that children are prepared and ready to climb from one step of the learning sequence to the next. Children learn the facts and skills in the order required to create concepts and generalizations needed for new progressions of their curricular learning.

When an appropriately considered scaffold is absent, children easily drift into boredom and disinterest. “Over time, students who are continually and insufficiently challenged tend to become disengaged and complacent, exerting lower effort and gaining only superficial learning. As a result, some fail to develop resilience and perseverance with difficult tasks.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/thriving-in-the-zone-of-productive-struggle

Lev Vygotsky added to our understanding of how children learn with “the Zone of Proximal Learning. “According to Vygotsky’s theory, the ZPD describes the area between a child’s current and future ability. The ZPD is a hypothesized construct that describes the range of children’s abilities from what they are capable of doing to what they are unable to do on their own. When teaching, teachers should encourage child learning by using activities and supporting strategies that enable a child to accomplish a task with the assistance of another peer or teacher. It is important while scaffolding that teachers ask questions and give tasks that target a child’s current developmental level. As children begin to master skills on their own, teachers adjust their teaching strategies accordingly so that children continue to advance.”

Vygotsky

Just right is “kind of hard.”

There is an intersection where applications of productive struggle and proximal learning can be used to enhance student learning by finding the “just right” spot.

Does it make sense to make learning slightly harder?

Annie Murphy Paul wrote, “Yes, and the reason is twofold. The first reason to make learning harder is to make it interesting. Learning something new and complicated is hard in itself, as we saw above. Lightening the learner’s cognitive load will allow her to learn more effectively without becoming frustrated or confused.

But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.

The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better. UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork has developed the idea of “desirable difficulties” — difficulties that we actually want to introduce into students’ learning to make it more effective. Bjork notes that many of the learning activities that make students feel competent and successful — like reading over a textbook passage several times so that it feels familiar — actually they do very little to help them learn. What they should do instead is something like this: close that textbook and ask themselves to recall from memory what they’ve just read.

It won’t feel as good. They’ll struggle to remember the words that were just in front of their eyes. But this activity, known as retrieval practice (or simply self-testing) is an example of a desirable difficulty that will dramatically increase students’ learning.”

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/making-learning-easier-harder-for-kids

Paul suggests that cognitive load is a factor in what makes learning new content and skills easy or hard. “Cognitive load refers to the amount of information our working memory can process at any given time. For educational purposes, cognitive load theory helps us to avoid overloading learners with more than they can effectively process into schemas for long-term memory storage and future recall.”

https://www.mcw.edu/-/media/MCW/Education/Academic-Affairs/OEI/Faculty-Quick-Guides/Cognitive-Load-Theory.pdf

How much is “just right?”

As we design lessons for cognitive load, we consider the number of pieces or chunks of new information the brain can process at once. “In a famous paper humorously describing “the magical number seven plus or minus two, “Miller claimed to be persecuted by an integer. He demonstrated that one can repeat back a list of no more than about seven randomly ordered, meaningful items or chunks (which could be letters, digits, or words). Other research has yielded different results, though. Young adults can recall only 3 or 4 longer verbal chunks, such as idioms or short sentences (Gilchrist, Cowan, & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008). Some have shrugged their shoulders, concluding that the limit “just depends” on details of the memory task. Recent research, however, indicates when and how the limit is predictable.

The recall limit is important because it measures what is termed working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960), the few temporarily active thoughts. Working memory is used in mental tasks, such as language comprehension (for example, retaining ideas from early in a sentence to be combined with ideas later on), problem solving (in arithmetic, carrying a digit from the ones to the tens column while remembering the numbers), and planning (determining the best order in which to visit the bank, library, and grocery). Many studies indicate that working memory capacity varies among people, predicts individual differences in intellectual ability, and changes across the life span (Cowan, 2005).

It has been difficult to determine the capacity limit of working memory because multiple mechanisms retain information. Considerable research suggests, for example, that one can retain about 2 seconds’ worth of speech through silent rehearsal (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Working memory cannot be limited this way alone, though; in running span procedures, only the last 3 to 5 digits can be recalled (less than 2 seconds’ worth). In these procedures, the participant does not know when a list will end and, when it does, must recall several items from the end of the list (Cowan, 2001).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2864034

Once “just right” is taught, teach children how to remember/study.

One may think that Goldilocks was just goofing around in the three bears home. But she wasn’t. She tasted porridge to find something to eat and she tested chairs and beds for something to sit and sleep on. So, it is with lesson design. Learning must be focused on the right outcomes.

Paul also referred to Bjork’s “desirable outcomes” or expectancy theory. In his example of a study habit – re-reading – he shows that when a child re-reads material several times, the expected outcome is familiarity not memorization what was read. To memorize, a child must set the expectation of recall not familiarity. Hence, instead of re-reading, close the book and try to recall what was read. If not successful, read again, close the book, and try to recall. This is practicing the expectation that the child really wants – to remember what was read not just be familiar with it.

As we teach children new information and skills, we want them to internalize what they learn not just parrot it back to us. Early on in their school careers, children must be taught how to create memory and not just expect memorization to happen. The ability to memorize is just as important as content and skills. To do this, teach a small chunk of new information, then ask children to repeat it back to you. Have children read a paragraph, set the reading aside, and tell you what they read. Extend their listening and reading to larger chunks of information. And correct them when their repeating or telling is not correct. Practice this in class and tell them they need to do this when they study at home. We teachers assume children know this intuitively and they do not.

The Big Duh!

The design of good instructional lessons is not easy. Assess what children know now and what they need to know next. Assemble new information and skills that are at the hard edge of what would be relatively easy for them to learn. Set the motivational hooks of novelty, interest, and challenging material for children before they engage in new learning so they will choose to engage in learning. Don’t provide help too soon – productive struggle builds resiliency. Teach them to study and create short- then long-term memory of what they learned.

Then, do it again for their next lessons.

Would I want me to be my teacher?

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Mirrors sometime present both the best and the worst of ourselves. Standing before the glass we see ourselves as we are. Mirrors do not lie. At the same time, we see ourselves as we want others to see us. It is that dual impression that we must address. Are we who we think we are and is that who we present to others?

Let children be your mirror.

Years ago, I knelt beside a second-grade child to check how she was doing with math fact flash cards. Her face scrunched up in thinking as she quietly talked herself through the cards. I counted eight successful automatic responses to eight flash cards. She was nailing her math facts and then she nailed me. When I gave her a thumbs up for her math, she smiled then frowned and said, “Your breath smells like bad coffee.” Immediately I went from happy educator to crestfallen odor-monger. Her impression and my impression of me did not jive and I knew that hers was the only one that counts. That day I quit drinking coffee at school. I also began making a closer inspection of how the children I taught perceived their teacher.

I began by questioning the values I thought I brought to the classroom every day. I listed 15 statements of what I believe about good instruction that causes learning. These are six I held up to my mirror asking, “would I want to be my teacher?”

  • The purpose of instruction is learning. Is my instruction explicitly connected to the learning outcomes children need? The mirror says sometimes I enjoy the teaching act too much thinking the spotlight is on me. I need to assure that the spotlight is on learning children. If children are not learning, I am not teaching. Children need to see themselves as the most important people in my classroom.
  • Instruction causes every child to learn. How do I know that every child successfully learns the targeted objectives of each lesson? Truth – The mirror says this is a problem. The calendar and clock are not my friends. There is so much curriculum and so little time. I need to assure that all children learn the lessons taught even if I do not teach every unit or lesson this school year. I need to see evidence of learning before I move to the next lesson. Children need to see themselves as successful learners so often they believe it even though some lessons require more work to be learned successfully. Their frustration is my cue to teach better.
  • The learning environment supports student learning. Am I appropriately adjusting the environment to support different instructional strategies and outcomes? The mirror says I need to change the environment when I move from direct to inquiry- or problem-based instruction. Sometimes children need to face me and sometimes they need to face each other. It takes effort to arrange a classroom purposefully or move the class elsewhere in the school or outdoors. Effort that causes learning is effort well spent. Children need to learn to learn in multiple environments and that is my responsibility.
  • Because children learn at different rates and degree, learning is on their clock not mine. Does the curricular calendar drive me or guide me? The mirror says I call on the first hands to go up and end a lesson when most children are done with the assignment. I need to optimize wait time after asking a question, ask a clarifying question if a response is not clear to me, and individualize tier two instruction when first tier did not cause a child to learn. Learning takes the time it takes, and I will commit the time necessary.
  • Engagement is not optional although all children may not be equally engaged at the same time or in the same ways. How do I flex instruction to connect with all children? How well do I accept non-engagement when non-engagement for that child at that time is okay? How thorough am I in checking for involvement as the lesson unfolds? The mirror I do insist that children be on task and devote time to individualizing time with children who are not. Intellectually I know some children seem to learn innately, and others need to grind through the lesson to learn. I probably quick-time the grinders. I need to confirm that each is engaged in ways that leads to their individualized learning, let the grinders grind, and give the quick completers enrichment and extended learning opportunities
  • If best practice is best, why accept or do anything else. Duh! I don’t need the mirror for this one.

Once I started checking my assumptions, I confirmed some practices but needed to adjust others so that I was constantly moving toward best practices. However, my teaching soul can take only so much introspection before it wants to say “Ouch” and loses its critical focus. On another day I questioned other practices. Doing a professional introspection several times each school year keeps me from becoming stale and just teaching the same lessons repeatedly. At the end of ten years, I want my students to have a teacher who strengthened his teaching over ten years not a first-year teacher who repeated being a first-year teacher ten times.

After several rounds of introspection, I changed the question from “would I want me to be my teacher” to “would I want me to be my daughter’s teacher.” That really ramped up the critical review.

Back to the beginning. I never again knelt next to a certain young lady without a fresh wintergreen lifesaver in my mouth.

Integrity Matters:  Teach the Uncomfortable to Cause Deep Learning

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It is easy as a retired educator to bull my neck and growl at the social/cultural/political powers that demand schools teach their self-interested and slanted content and opinions.  I no longer have skin in the game or employment to protect.  I also have the advantage of location; Wisconsin is not Florida or Texas, thankfully, where legislators mandate curriculum, ban books, and threaten teachers who would teach differently.  Yet the fumes of bias drift all over our nation and cause educators to blink.  Can we teach uncomfortable topics to children today?  The answer is we must if we are to cause children to achieve deeper learning and understanding of their world.  Teaching anything in the realm of the uncomfortable is always couched within the guardrails of teacher professionalism for knowing what, when, and to what degree to teach any curriculum.  Our integrity as teachers requires us to teach the uncomfortable.

Why is this critical to educators today?

First, school governance has become the new focal interest for activism.  Partisan and ultra-partisan activism is embedded in our Congress and statehouses.  Bills reflecting the activist agenda are queued up for partisan majority approval.  Like an army of ants looking for new grass, activism in many areas of our nation is moving into school board meetings with demands of what and what not to teach.  They are proving a democratic truth that school boards are the real grass roots of politics and community action and approval.  School board meetings and their agendas are public and accessible.  A second truth is activism loves controversy.

Conflating ‘CRT’ and Equity: School Board Members’ Perspectives from the Front Line

https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2024/february/can-school-boards-survive-the-parents-rights-movement

Second, the pandemic created tension between school boards and parents and the local community.  Disparate perspectives regarding school closure, masking, and vaccination requirements caused many communities to have animated and heated agreements and disagreements with their school board.  It was a two-sided argument with information and emotion on both sides.  Board rooms are used to contending with controversy.

Third, life in 2024 is confronted with facts and unfacts, truths and lies, and propaganda from all fronts.  Educators at all levels face the challenge of teaching children how to discern truth from untruth, bias in every perspective, and how to arrive at informed and defendable understandings.

https://www.ascd.org/blogs/confronting-the-uncomfortable-strategies-to-teach-enslavement

To post hole on a current hot issue, the Israeli/Hamas war brings one, two, and three above to the forefront of teaching decisions.  It is such a rich and problematic issue.  Children need to learn about the Holocaust, Zionism, the creation of Israel from a Palestinian homeland, the many conflicts between Israel and Arab/Islamic nations, human rights regardless of nationality or faith, Constitutional rights to speech and protest, and how colleges, universities, and cities respond to protesting demonstrations.  And the confusion of conflating religious beliefs with national/governmental actions.  To repeat, this is a rich and problematic issue.  It is a critical and teachable moment for teachers and children and for the profession of teaching.

Integrity

The Wisconsin Teacher Standards include “Professional Learning and Ethical Practice”.  Specifically, “the teacher uses evidence to continuously evaluate the teacher’s practice, including the effects of the teacher’s choices and actions on pupils, their families, other educators, and the community”.

https://dpi.wi.gov/education-workforce/prepare/educator-preparation-programs/wi-educator-preparation-standards

To teach with integrity today, educators need to consider how they will address this teachable moment against their understanding of the Ethical Practice standard.  There are many professional decisions tobe made for each teachable moment.

An example of teaching the uncomfortable.

In 1992 we took all students in the Whitefish Bay High School (WI) to see the motion picture, Malcolm X.  In 1993, we took all students to see Schindler’s List.  As the high school principal, I worked with our parent support groups to understand how each movie was a teachable moment for children in our Milwaukee suburb with a significant Jewish population and a significant inclusion of non-resident Black students from Milwaukee in our student body.  With parent support I worked with our faculty to gain approval and instructional designs for creating teachable moments outside our annual curriculum. 

Each movie provided an opportunity for pre-teaching, movie attendance, and post-teaching.  We provided parents with the option for their children to not see either movie and had meaningful, parallel curriculum for their study so they could participate in the pre- and post-instruction of what it meant to be Black in America in the context of Malcolm X and to understand the genocide of Nazi Germany against Europe’s Jewish population. 

The decision to do this was compelling but not necessary in the teaching of our usual curriculum.  It became compelling and necessary as we considered how to best teach our children about two issues, racism and ethnic/religious genocide, that pervade our national and world history.  Our ethical responsibility supported a decision to teach the uncomfortable.  I look back on our faculty and parents with great pride and with admiration for our superintendent and school board who supported our teaching the uncomfortable.  We took our students to the opening week showing of each movie and caused an indelible learning episode in their school lives.

Carpe’ teaching the uncomfortable.

School boards provide their teachers with a vetted and approved annual curriculum.  The decision to disrupt children’s learning of this standards-based instruction must be taken very seriously.  Taking an entire school to the movies is a big leap.  Teaching the uncomfortable is strategic.  It is not everyday schooling.  However, there is plenty of room within the approved standards of our social studies and ELA curriculum for inspecting the uncomfortable and contemporary issues of daily life and news.  Any discussion of campus protests over the Israel/Hamas war opens children to background, historical instruction, analysis of religious and national entities, and policies that support national treaties and human welfare.

Any discussion of economics opens children to background and historical instruction on the equity of all Americans’ access to property, employment, and financial security in their American Dream.

Any discussion of local school policies regarding gender and student access to school facilities and team sports opens children to a discussion of diversity.

Any discussion of nation, state, and local community opens children to a discussion of migration, population trends, ethnic and cultural diversity, and a changing, multi-cultural America.

An ethical position to teach the uncomfortable is high ground.

Children need a solid education in grade level and course curriculum.  Teaching the uncomfortable are strategic decisions designed to capture teachable moments.  It is not everyday work.  Some teachers are uncomfortable with the uncomfortable.  For the educator who is comfortable, there is room for many educators on the high ground of teaching the uncomfortable.  Grab it and teach!

Gone:  Three-sport Athletes and Bench Jockeys

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The Dodo Bird is our classic example of an extinct species.  Now add the traditional three-sport high school athlete and the bench jockey.  These well-defined categories in both boys and girls high school athletics are nearing extinction.  Their death knell is not due to predation or climate change or a meteor slamming earth.  They are on their way into the history book of school athletics due to specialization, elitism, and family self-interest.  Today’s athletic bench is reserved for boys and girls who specialize in one sport, are driven to be elite athletes, and have access to personal training, camps, and significant travel expenses.  Say it ain’t so, Joe, but it is.

Three-sport athletes were the backbone of athletic programs.

A three-sport athlete in the last century participated consecutively in fall, winter, and spring/summer sports.  Historically, and before Title 9, a three-sport athlete was a male who played football, basketball, and baseball.  Variants included cross country, wrestling, swimming, and track.  Each sport had a concise season and schedule of practices and games.  When one season ended another began and their game schedules never conflicted.  The most talented athletes were awarded twelve athletic letters, and their letter jackets were miniature and portable trophy cases.  Kids grew up seeing themselves on the high school teams and many made it happen.

Title 9 provided parallel opportunities for girls to be three-sport athletes.  Their variants include volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, softball, track, and soccer.  And today we add girls wrestling. 

Three-sport athletes were the backbone of a high school’s athletic teams.  Their athleticism and natural gifts allowed them to be starters at each of the school’s developmental level teams if not immediately on the varsity team.  Three-sport varsity athletes carried the Big Man/Woman On Campus moniker for generations.

Most three-sport athletes were not stars.  In fact, this high percentage were yeoman athletes and bench jockeys who played both for their love of the sport and a personal desire to be on their various teams.  Team membership, even just sitting the bench, was a big deal.

Winning became all that mattered.

In the 1990s our high school’s athletic leadership constructed a competitive scenario answering the question, “what is the optimal combination of athletes for a championship team”.  We considered three categories of athletes, boys and girls, and used basketball as our scenario sport.  A gifted athlete had five skill sets.  They were skilled ball handlers, shot with consistent accuracy, jumped high, had real foot speed, and were always aware of everyone on the court.  A highly competitive athlete had three or four of the five skill sets.  A good athlete had two or three of the five skill sets.

Given this scenario, if a basketball team had four gifted athletes and one highly competitive athlete, we believed a team was on track to a conference championship and WIAA play offs.  If a team had three gifted and two highly competitive athletes, they were championship contenders.  If a team had one gifted athlete, two highly competitive athletes, and two good athletes, they could make a good showing on game night. 

The scenario was premised on averages and the natural abilities of athletes. This scenario worked for decades.  Our school parlayed this scenario into state championships and multiple trips to the state tournament.  It worked until making a good show and being contenders were not good enough for parents of athletes.  The scenario, based on the skill sets athletes naturally brought to the team, worked until the obsession to win overrode the usual distribution of gifted, highly competitive, and good athletes.

The edge.

Gifted athletes are just that, naturally gifted.  Coaching and training do not create total giftedness.  However, for highly competitive athletes, foot speed, hand/eye coordination, and perceptiveness can be honed with coaching and training.  Ball handling and shooting skills also can be improved with coaching.  Specific skill sets can be improved.  The obsession to improve the skill sets of highly competitive athletes became the death knell for three-sport and bench jockey athletes.

The championship scenario changed when multi-sport athletes committed to the edge of improving their skills in just one sport and and became year-round athletes in that sport only. 

The championship scenario changed with commercial coaching and training.  Lay coaches grow athletic skills sets, but professional or commercial coaching and training add a new and higher level of skill set development.  A niche industry developed in specific sport training centers, clinics, and practice facilities. 

The championship scenario changes when a one-sport athlete competes on a regional or national level not just within the local community or athletic conference.  They are exposed to a higher level of competition amongst other highly competitive athletes who hold the same goal – personal improvement.  Elite training and competition are gifted and talented education in sports.

These three changes create the edge.  Each creates an advantage for a single or select group of athletes that grows their ungifted skill sets to an extremely highly competitive level.  With these advantages schools that traditionally not been champion contenders became champions or competed annually for championship trophies.

The final key to creating a greater number of highly competitive athletes is parental commitment of time and money.  Time and money are the engines that gives children access to professional training, camps, and clinics, to compete in regional and national events, and to sustain commitment over time.  There is a very real “keeping up with the Joneses” when it comes to family time and financial commitment.  “If my child is not getting superior coaching, clinics, and camps and is not traveling for competition, all the Jones children who do will have an advantage over my child.” 

Achieving the edge advantage begets elitism and in the arena of high school sports elite athletes get play time and recognition and non-elite athletes do not.  College coaches attend more camps and clinics and regional and national competitions than go to high school games because camps and clinics is where the elite athletes showcase themselves against other elite athletes.

The Dodo Birds are crowded off the bench.

Truly gifted athletes still can compete in multiple sports and be recognized.  They are the top 1-2% of all school athletes.  We see them annually ranked as Five Star Athletes on rosters of the nation’s high school athletes.  University and college teams subsequently are ranked by the number of Five Star Athletes they sign.  The non-gifted athlete who dreams of playing in college or professionally must commit to a single sport and with personal grit and family support grind through camps and clinics and regional showcasing.  

The only remaining multiple sport athlete is the kid who just wants to play and to be on the team.  But, for this kid, the bench is getting crowded.  Most school teams work with a given number of players on the team roster.  Post-season playoffs limit the roster, so rosters for the preceding season begin to reflect playoff rosters.  Bench seats are institutionally limited.

Further, the more single-sport athletes on a team who are committed to the edge, the fewer spots on the bench for the multiple-sport athlete and perennial bench jockeys.  It is a matter of numbers.  School coaches know that using a cut policy creates student and parent problems, but they also know that keeping a child who will never play on the bench creates a deeper problem.  Hence, bench seats are limited to competitive players and the higher percentage of competitive players are single-sport, edge players.

The athletic pyramid is getting steeper.

All athletes empty their athletic locker sooner or later.  They know or are told that their competitive athletic time has come to an end.  The statistical distribution of this “knowing” resembles a pyramid.  A great number of kids drop out of sports at the natural break points of elementary to middle school and middle school to high school and high school to college.  These are invisible departures; they just don’t show up for the next season. 

Other athletes depart when the increased competition pinches them off from bench seats and playing time.  It is an equation of time and resources versus perceived reward.  The diminishing reward of play time and team membership no longer motivates a child to continue with the grind of competing with edge athletes.  Regardless of what children are told about the intangible benefits of sports participation, they know their own realities in the changing world of elite athletes.

The edge advantages of single-sport athletes have made the dimensions of the pyramid grow very steep.  Fewer children either have meaningful access to school teams or game play time.  There are fewer multiple-sport athletes and fewer kids who are able to hang around the game sitting on the bench.

There are no roosting places on the steep pyramid for Dodo birds.

Change is inevitable; extinction is hard to bear.