Tag Archives: accountability

When Not If I Have Your Back

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There was a shift in school leadership conversation during the last decade.  I missed it.  This must have been one of my Rip Van Winkle events.  After an apparent doze, I found conversations with school leaders loaded with references to “…having my back”.  The phrase is used most often retroactively and unconditionally, though now and again it precedes the statement of a new idea, as in “I will … if you…”.   I heard flat statements by Board members to each other, “We need to have our administrator’s backs”. And, flat statements by administrators, “They have my back” and “We have each other’s back”.  “Having your back” became a something and I had missed its meaning.

Visions of fighter pilots came to mind.  As planes go into action, a wingman defends the lead plane’s rear, the place the leader is not watching closely in the heat of action.  Having someone’s back is to defend them from attack; it is to protect and safeguard.  I was hearing that school leaders needed similar protection from attack. 

My Van Winkle mind immediately wanted to know “why is this thus and what should I know about this thusness”, a great line from the movie Lincoln.  Why is this thus?

In the 80s and 90s fellow school leaders did not speak of their “back” and the need for that kind of professional protection.  Maybe we did not talk of it because of our naïveté of educational politics or there were underlying assumptions that leaders enjoyed covering protection, but I don’t remember it that way.  My colleagues’ careers rode on the wings of their acts; some flew high and some went down in flames.  Professionalism was collaborative and collegial and defended when in the right.

Public complaining is commonplace.  In 1976 Albert Finch screamed “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more” in the movie Network and gave permission to the dissatisfied to scream and now stream their personal complaints on any and every issue.  Protest, rightful or wrongful, gains attention and attention can cause response.

We should know that our society is more litigious today.  24-hour news shares anguished cries of foul against alleged wrong-doers and equal proclamations of disclaiming.  Any and everything is a potential for “I will see you in court”.  People lawyer up.  Educators and schools have not been immune.  Many suits are filed and even more appear to be threatened with the belief that the threat of going to court will make an undesired decision go away. 

If not a lawsuit, demonstrations can work just as effectively for anyone disagreeing with a school decision.  A group of citizens or parents or students, or all three together, with petitions and banners in hand can make scenes that cause a school leader to flinch.  The flinch becomes more pronounced when television crews show up and cameras roll or reporters call at any time of the day.  And, even more flinch worthy when the School Board is looking on.

School Boards flinch just like school administrators.

We should know that “having a person’s back” meant the person with a protected back literally had a “Kings X”, a truce, or “get out of jail free” card that would free them of personal ownership of the consequences of their decision in question.  Absolution, kind of.

We should know that the idea of institutional protection brought on a circling of wagons, a fortifying of barriers between individuals and complaints.  One can see the circle of wagons at a meeting in the way people arranged the table.  It is apparent in body language and spoken words.  Meetings presumed opposition not agreement or interest in middle grounds.  In fact, “I’m mad as hell…” and circled wagons do not invite middle grounding.

School Boards do more than flinch at the threat of a meeting room full of irate parents, students, and news reporters demanding redress from a school decision.  Instead of moving parties to conciliation, these circling wagons stiffens necks and positions.  It makes the pre-disposition for “having backs” more resolute and “having backs” may make decisions less inclusive in the get-go.  We should know that once circled, it is hard to uncircle the wagons.

What should I know about this thusness?

There is a large difference between protection and support.  Consider protection as an immunity from accountability for the consequences of a decision.  With immunity, no defense of a contested decision is necessary.  The protector of the back insinuates that little in the controversial decision will change and no consequences for poor decisions will be enforced. 

Consider support as not an immunity but as a pre-conditional understanding applied after the fact.  Protection is warranted when protection is warranted.  Support is warranted when support is warranted.  And, no protection or support is warranted when no protection or support is warranted.  This sounds easy and correct, but it falls apart if wagons are allowed to circle.  The key is to circle the facts not the personnel.

Emerging late into the “got your back era”, I found the need to understand these caveats.  Call them the conditions as in “I will have your back when…”.  These are not my caveats, but caveats required for public service.  Support is yours, when

  • You are faithful to the trust that has been given to you as a school leader.
  • You acted with integrity, honesty, and sincerity in making a “best high ground” decision.
  • Your decisions are founded in the school mission and goals.
  • You are child-centered and not self-centered.
  • You are not afraid to make a necessary decision.
  • You are as transparent as the conditions will allow you to be.
  • You are humble when wrong; wrong is a problem that can be fixed if admitted, confronted, and addressed.
  • You balance your wisdom and skills to make good decisions with your wisdom and skills to fix your poor decisions.
  • You support others as you wish to be supported – the Golden Rule of Having Backs.

It is not a long list but it serves to place a leader and her superordinates in the proper relationship.

As caveats, they also play well in creating the proper relationship of the public with School Boards.

Thus, we know that we are not alone.  What we do individually has consequences to others.  We are not perfect and in our imperfections we need to be responsible, accountable, and proactive to be better.  Someone is likely to yell “I’m angry as hell ..” at us sometime.  A quick review that we have been faithful to our caveats sustains us and those who support us. 

And, we also know that some days there are people who are just plain angry as hell and that is their problem.

Where In The World Is My Teacher? He Is A Waldo

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“Where in the world is my teacher?”  School closure and remote education have opened the door for a new breed of teacher, a Waldo.  Waldo, like the personage in the children’s puzzle book depicted within a group of people in different places around the world, is a teacher who can physically be anywhere in the world and work daily as a teacher for your school.  Note – a teacher for your school not in your school.  If Waldo holds a valid teaching license for your state, Waldo can be a remote teacher for your school.  The answer to the question, “where in the world is my teacher”, is this – physical location does not matter. 

The 2020-21 school year will present a buffet of schooling scenarios in any given school district.  In-person schooling will return children to classrooms with protocols for distancing, masking, and hand washing.  School-based remote home schooling will meet the needs of parents who do not believe in-person schooling to be safe for their children.  A families economic and technology status will play into this decision, also.  And, an array of hybrid scenarios involving in-person and remote education will be implemented for schools unable to provide safe, distanced education in their classrooms.  Finally, ever present is the likelihood that COVID may cause a school to close classrooms or schoolhouses and engage their programs for remote education.

From a teacher employment perspective, 2020-21 will require the hiring of more teachers.  Without debate, money will be a problem.  State allocations to schools will be dinged by COVID’s depletion of recent and future state revenues.  Federal monies already approved will be bolstered with more monies to meet the political imperatives.  Local taxation limits will be massaged.  Money will be found, because the real and perceived need for children to be schooled this fall is great.  Period!

Our Wisconsin county contains five school districts.  It is very safe to say that any county resident holding a valid WI teacher license and wanting to teach is or will be employed this fall.  And, we still will be short of licensed teachers.  It also is safe to say that the given economics of Wisconsin and our region do not make relocating for employment a realistic option for job seekers.  Reasonably priced housing in our county is scarce and even low interest rates for housing loans does not change that fact.  We will not be able to attract enough teachers to move to our school districts to fill our teaching needs.

Hello, Waldo!  We will advertise for non-resident employment.  Any teacher holding a valid Wisconsin teaching license for the positions we post will be considered for employment as a remote teacher.  A candidate can live anywhere.  The only stipulation is that the teacher’s location has and can sustain adequate Internet connectivity.  We will provide modems, laptops, additional screens, cameras, and other technologies to make the remote teacher synchronous with our school, students, and parents.

A Waldo will teach the school’s curriculum using lesson plans devised by our in-person teachers.  As an example, an in-person first grade teacher will use the district’s curriculum guides to create unit and lesson plans for in-person students.  We want all first grade children to receive the same high quality instruction regardless of their physical location.  These units and lessons comply with state disciplinary standards and provide the academic progression for children to advance grade level to grade level and through secondary subject sequences.  Although standardization historically has been frowned upon, in the time of COVID and the need for school scenarios, standardization will be a requirement of instructional supervision.

Waldo will be provided lessons in reading, ELA, math, science and social studies.  Elementary Waldos also will be provided lessons in art, music, and physical education.  A remote education will be an identical twin to an in-person education.  Secondary Waldos will teach subjects within their licensure.  We will need specialist Waldos.  Waldo also will be provided with student assessments and access to the school’s pupil records to ensure that students and parents can accurately follow a child’s academic progress.  Waldo, like an in-person teacher, will communicate with students and parents regarding a child’s schoolwork. 

The question of accountability arises for Waldos.  Out of sight leads to less in mind.  To remove this problem, school principals will supervise Waldo just as they supervise in-person teachers.  Principals will observe Waldo’s daily interactions with in-person teachers, students and parents.  Principals will observe Waldo’s synchronicity to ensure that Waldo is approximating in-person teacher and student exchanges.  Principals will observe Waldo’s pupil recordkeeping.  Remote teaching is not interstellar – it is clicked connection away.

In every aspect, except physical location and responsibility for unit, lesson, and assessment design, Waldo will act as an in-person teacher in the schools.  Our socially distanced and safe faculty meetings will include all Waldos.  Literally, Waldo is just down the hall and around the corner.

The future will be affected by the present.  When COVID becomes history, the evolution of teaching and learning may find advantages in using remote teaching talent, talent that is not physically in the schoolhouse.  Waldo may not just be anywhere, Waldo will be everywhere.

A School Year Is Long Enough To …

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I have not yet met a person who does not have an opinion on the length of a school year.  By and large, most people who are not students, parents of students, in the business of school or reliant upon child labor don’t care and “I don’t care” is an opinion.  The remainder, a minority of our community – parents, grandparents, employers and others whose daily life is touched by school – form their opinion from their personal experience, their self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  Normally, this blog sets a proposition, examines what we know and think about the topic, and creates an action or To Do with a rationale.  Today, I will start with the conclusion.

The Big Duh

A school year must be the length of time necessary to teach and cause children to become competent in an annual curriculum.  It need not be longer nor shorter than that, but it must be long enough to teach an annual curriculum. 

What Do We Know?

Over time educators have packaged learning into grade levels and content courses and courses of study and each package is an annual curriculum.  Elementary school is parsed into 4K or pre-kindergarten, Kindergarten, and 1st grade through the last grade of your school’s organization, typically 5th or 6th grade.  Each grade level is a step on a curricular scaffold building a child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions about learning school year by school year.  Secondary school is parsed into content courses of English/language arts, math, science and socials studies and perhaps a world language.  These are stacked or sequenced, as in English 7 through English 12 and Algebra through Calculus.  Some content courses seem to be stand alone courses, like Marketing or Personal Finance, but have underlying content and skill structure in English, social studies, and math.  Also, secondary school instruction provides continuous courses of study in music, the arts, and technical education.  Year after year of instruction in choir, band and orchestra or in painting and ceramics or technical training refines and improves student performance.

The packaging in terms of time began when our communities were agriculture-based and children could attend school when not needed during the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons.  Packaging was reconsidered when child labor laws were implemented and regular schooling replaced daily work.  A school day mirrored a work day and a school week mirrored a world week and school calendaring filled the community need for day care for millions of children nationwide.

Curricular packaging has been refined and fit into grade level and course competencies.  A child’s progress through the 3 R’s was a pathway up the scaffold of reading, writing and arithmetic.  At one time, a 6th grade education or the ability to read, write and cipher at the 6th grade level was an adequate adult competency.  Later, the level of competency advanced to 8th grade and children could stop attending school after completion of 8th grade or the age of 16.  That was good enough.  Today, high school is the completion of 13 or 14 years of schooling and a generalized competency of 10th grade or better.

Our contemporary school scaffold is a child’s annual demonstrated competence on annual curricula that validates promotion to the next annual curricula and eventually graduation.  The time required to complete each step of the scaffold or each packaged curriculum is approximately 180 school days or 36 weeks of school.

There are no prizes or awards for schools that have shorter or longer school years.  There is no economic incentive to add days to a school year.  School revenues and contracts for all school employees are a set amount in a school’s annual budget and decreasing or extending a school year does not alter these major expenses.

Why Is This Thus?

Why is 180 days the seemingly standard for a school year?  The question was asked and answered more than 100 years ago.  The world’s richest man of his time, Andrew Carnegie, was committed to the role of education as the essential strategy for improving life in the early 1900s.  In 1906, he funded the Carnegie Foundation led by Harvard President Charles Elliot to study and recommend standards for a college education.  At the time, the national college graduation rate was less than 10% and the quality of a college education was dependent upon the college.  There were no national standards for education.  The Carnegie Foundation literally defined college and university education in the United States for the next century. 

The Foundation also recommended changes in public education.  For our purposes, the Foundation defined a high school Carnegie Unit as a (one) credit awarded for completion of 120 hours of instruction over the length of a school year.  A school year, then, is the length of time to required to achieve 120 hours of instruction plus assessments plus other school requirements.  According to the Carnegie plan, a high school student could earn six to seven credits per year and 24 to 28 credits over four years and high school graduation became the completion of 24-28 credits. 

Using the 120 hours of instruction as the standard for an annual curriculum and allowing for reteaching and make-up lessons for students absent from school and for the additional legislative mandates that must be accomplished in a school year, 180 days became the normal length of a school year in US public schools.  Ninety days was a semester and 45 days was a quarter or grading period.

Since 1906, much as changed in the field of teaching and learning, yet the basics of a Carnegie Unit and the standards for a school year have remained largely unchanged.  A discussion of a school year begins with 180 days.

We must always be aware of the influences of money and politics in public, as these are constantly at play in public education.  By rule of the US Constitution, the responsibility for public education is delegated to the states.  Hence, the funding and rules related to public education are legislated by state government.

It is honest to state that state funding for public education is allocated according to money available not by money needed.  This basic understanding tells us that legislatures with a need to fund many state programs that compete for a limited annual state budget are always looking for ways to reduce or contain costs.  Public education, prisons and highways are the three largest expenses in state budgets.

The school year is an example of such manipulation.  For decades, a school year was 180 days of instruction.  First, start with this as the number of interest:  180 times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the largest cost of a school year.  More than 80% of school costs are paid in salary and benefits to employees.  If school funding is considered on a per day basis not a per year basis and a school year is defined by hours instead of days, then the total sum of money spent for salaries and benefits can be changed.  Second, change the number of interest to:  hours of instruction times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the cost of a school year.  The total remains the same as long as the hours of instruction equal 180 days of instruction. 

In Wisconsin, 437 hours of instruction are required for Kindergarten students, 1,050 hours for grades 1 through 6, and 1,137 for grades 7 through 12. 

Third, allow schools to determine the length of class periods and the number of hours in a school day so that each grade level meets the legislated number of instruction hours.  Now, a school year can be less than 180 days.  More importantly, the cost of school is reduced by each day of salary and benefit that is removed from the annual school calendar. 

Politics and economics not student learning drive the contemporary defining of a school year.  Today, a school year can be reduced to the bare minimum of days required to complete mandated hours of instruction, a number in the 170s.

Yes but!  If we add the concept of educational accountability to the definition of a school year, how much teaching and learning is required for a child to competently complete an annual grade level, a content course or a course of study?  There is no magic in the Carnegie Unit.  Critics of the Unit have harped for decades on its arbitrariness.  Yet, the idea that the completion of a rigorous course of instruction should be the basis of how we “package” a year of school keeps us returning to the idea of the Unit.  A school year must be accountable for learning not just time in class.

To Do

Accountability for learning matters and competency is the metric of measure.  The number of hours in a school day or in a school year is just the vehicle for achieving competent learning.  School Boards approve and adopt annual curricula for all children in all grade levels and courses with the intention that children will successfully and competently complete each.  We must honor this element of local school control of public education. 

We have a national problem with proficiency.  A majority of children do not meet proficiency standards on local, state and national assessments.  This is an instructional challenge.  We must improve the instructional tool box used by all teachers to more effectively cause every child to learn.  This is a commitment challenge.  We must hold to the goals of annual student achievement and invoke what we know about the science and art of explicit teaching and the necessity for instructional interventions when initial instruction is not successful.  Proficiency is created when a child is competent in each curricular unit of instruction so that at the end of a school year there is a sequence of proficient learning.  We must intervene at the point of mislearning or non-learning not at the end of school year.  And, to point, reducing the number of days in a school year contradicts what we know about student proficiency.  Teachers need all the time they can have with children not less.

Take Away

As a School Board member, I hear from parents who want to reduce the length of our school year.  I return to the first paragraph.  Most who have an opinion about the length of a school year base their opinion upon personal experience, self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  A Board member’s responsibility includes educating the public about education and local education, in particular.  As an educator who is a Board member, my first accountability is to causing every child to become a proficient learner and to learn.  In the business of causing learning, instructional time is our most valuable resource.  We can improve teaching skills and refine curriculum.  However, without adequate time for all of the layers of instruction, initial through necessary interventions, to be successfully deployed, teacher skill and engaging curricula will not cause the educational outcomes children need.  A school year may be an arbitrary number of hours and days, yet there is a substantial rationale connecting instructional time with learning accountability.  At the end of conversation, we get what we settle for and less time will result in less learning.

Academic Standards – The Genome of Proficient Learning

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Academic standards are the genome of a 21st century PK-12 education.  Turn back the covers on any curriculum today and you will find “standards.”  They are the “who says this is the right stuff to teach” credentials of school curriculum.  As consumers, we look for credentialing,  like the Good Housekeeping Seal or Underwrites Laboratory Approval, that gives us reliance that school curriculum is not something cooked up during the summer by a local committee but is written by experts in the field of PK-12 education.

Although politics has kicked dirt on the Common Core Academic Standards, they remain the best of academic standards available to PK-12 educators.  In Wisconsin, the Common Core Standards were adopted as the official academic standards of the Department of Public Instruction in 2010 and are the basis for instruction, assessment and educational accountability.

A genome, even the sound of the word, is scientific.  It is the complete set of genes present in a cell or organism.  By applying genome to the organism of academic standards, academic standards are the complete set of academic characteristics of a graduate of our PK-12 educational system.

Like the genome encoded on a strand of DNA, the genome of academic standards seems just as mysterious.  But, it isn’t.  They are clearly written and complete, just in educationese.  Educational leaders need to take the time and make the effort to de-mystify the verbiage of academic standards into plain speak.  This explanation must include two components – why they are important and how they work.  What are academic standards and how does our school use PK-12 academic standards?  And, what does proficient performance of each standard mean?  The latter is essential, because proficiency or advanced performance indicates the grade level goal which are the code of the genome.

This is what the DPI says about standards.  It is a good beginning.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards tell us what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.  Wisconsin has standards for 24 separate subjects.

Why are academic standards important?

Standards provide goals for teaching and learning. Standards are clear statements about what students must know and be able to do.

What does an academic standard look like?

Seventh grade mathematics: solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

How do standards differ from curriculum?

While standards provide the goals for learning, curriculum is the day to day activity that helps a student meet those goals. Curriculum, which should be thought of as the student’s overall classroom experience, is affected by lesson plans, classroom assessments, textbooks, and more. In Wisconsin, curriculum is developed and approved by local school boards to meet their local needs.

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/standards

This explanation should be repeated to students and parents frequently, so that children and their moms and dads clearly understand that “standards-based” means “these are statements of what each child should know and be able to do and all of our assessments will focus on helping everyone understand how well children know and can perform these.”  And, because the standards build upon each successive grade level and course, students and parents need to know that Algebra and Geometry, for example, are introduced in elementary school arithmetic and are developed through middle school and applied and expanded in higher mathematics courses in high school.  Like the DNA genome, the genome of academic standards winds through the school organism across many years of student learning.

This explanation may sound or read like, “This year our first grade math students will begin to use mathematical operations and algebraic thinking.  Yes, Algebra in first grade.  These are the operations and algebraic thinking standards and a description of what your child will know and be able to do as a result of our first grade math instruction.

Standard:  Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Standard:  Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
  2. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Standard:  Add and subtract within 20.

Performance:

  1. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
  2. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Standard:  Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Performance:

  1. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
  2. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = � – 3, 6 + 6 = �.

This standard is just one of many in first grade mathematics instruction.  As your child tells you ‘This is what we learned in math today,’ please keep these standards in mind.  When your child enters second grade, the next instructional year will add to and expand these first grade standards.”

As an extension, good practice would also help children and parents to connect standards to periodic classroom tests and assessments.  Just adding a standards statement to the top of the test page indicates the alignment of preceding instruction and the assessment to a particular academic standard.

The reason for this time and effort points directly to the accountability that school leaders and teachers have for causing all children to learn and proficiently perform grade level academic standards.  Each first grade child who successfully knows and can perform the operations and algebraic thinking standard given in this example will be ready for instruction in second grade operations and algebraic thinking.

And, here is the rub.  Every child who does not successfully know and can not perform the elementary and/or middle school grade level math standards at the appropriate grade level proficiency level begins a parade of successive years of incomplete learning in math.  It is no wonder that high school Algebra is “the wall” for so many students, the course where the annual standards of algebraic thinking in elementary and middle school coalesce into a single math course.  Children who have successfully learned and performed their elementary and middle school math standards are ready and prepared for high school Algebra.  Children who did not are severely challenged in Algebra and all subsequent math courses.

The mutual responsibility that school leaders, teachers and parents have for student learning can be made easier when annual academic standards are explained, distributed across the year of their instruction, and clearly aligned with grade level instruction and assessments.  When we know what we are supposed to do, the doing is made easier.

The genome of academic standards is a road map that is designed not only for instruction, but to aid school leaders and parents to assure that each child successfully learns what they are to know and be able to do each school year.  It is our road map and needs to be closely followed.

Accountability Using Visual Contracting With Sub-Groups

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Educational accountability places a premium on a teacher’s ability to close achievement gaps. For a myriad of reasons, the academic achievement data of children in your class are scattered on the score sheet. An effective teacher will take this scattergram and teach so that every child’s next achievement score will cluster at or beyond the measure for a full-year’s growth in learning, and, there will be a diminished difference between the clustered scores of each disaggregated sub-group of students. In order to be an “effective” teacher, this is what must be done.

BA, or Before Accountability, I would commonly observe a teacher analyzing their students’ achievement data and resting their eyes upon the names of children whose data was significantly below that of the class norms. Usually this would be one to two children and they would become the teacher’s “special project.” These children would need “special” and very personalized instruction in order to cause their next achievement data to be more like their classmates. Teachers routinely picked their “projects” and did whatever was necessary for the achievement scores of those children to “jump.” That was BA.

Today’s educational expectation reads well but is very amorphous when a teacher stands in front of the class and scans two dozen or more faces. How can every child be a “project?” The theory of closing such gaps says, “Disaggregate the data, look at each face as a weighted score, pick out the faces with the lowest weighted scores and those students are your special projects while your quality teaching advances the learning of all other children.” The reality of projects today is in the faces.

Every face in a classroom represents a child who is looking back at their teacher wondering “Am I your project? Are you thinking that my achievement will provide the leap in numbers that will show you to be an effective teacher?” They are waiting for you to recognize them, understand how their needs mesh with your needs, and make them your project.

So, point your mental finger and to yourself say, “You, you and you. We need to grow you by almost a year and a half. This next group needs to grow at least a full year. You over there and you and you and you need to move your scores by eight months. You scan a large group, knowing they need to grow by several months. And, you and you, not many are you, are already at this year’s target – let’s see how much we can grow you.”

The pressure is on. The administrators know the scores and they also have seen the faces that must experience the greatest growth. At the same time, the administration has been pressured by parents of the two children who already have achieved more than your grade level. They want assurance that you will continue the wonderful achievement of their children so that they will be two years or more beyond their classmates.

So you scan the faces once again to make visual contacts that would sound a lot like this.

“We have a lot to do. I will be seem like a second skin to my first group because we have things to unlearn as well as learn. As your second skin, I will sit with you to make certain you understand what to do, how to do, and check that you always do it right. You may squirm but you will not escape my hard attention and in June you will be at grade level.

Now, I am looking at my groups that need to grow at least a grade level this year. I will be your shadow because shadowing is the way I cause children who are learning on schedule to stay on schedule. Although I will allow you to wander a bit, I will check your understanding every day. We will find what you need to know and do and ways of doing it together.

You kiddos who are within months of our grade level targets will also make a full year’s growth. I will hover above you to steer your learning but you will organize and conduct most of it. There are many ways to learn and you will experience these through our work.

Finally, my pair who are already a grade level ahead of the class, you will be more than that when we reach June. Together, we will talk about how you will achieve your goals and I will stand to the side to non-directively push your learning. We will assess your understanding of this grade level curricula to assure your foundations, but move on to new learning independent of your classmates.”

Visual contracting says “I see you and you see me. This is what I am going to do and I know what you are going to do. When I nod, you will know that the game is on.”

Nodding is a unique educational recognition. No one in a court of law would claim that shared nods represent a legal contract. Yet, in the classroom, when an effective teacher looks a student in the eye and nods, there is an understanding and there will be a reckoning.