Tag Archives: personalized learning

If you want parrots, teach birds not children

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Talking about education cannot withstand a vacuum.  Just when the reading wars are subsiding, and masks have come off other versions of passion-based arguing rise to poke public education.  Peruse any recent educational journal, education reporter in your local newspaper, and be prepared for oppositional values wars (oppositional meaning my side v. your side, not just red or blue).

And hypocrisy knows no bounds.  The banners read “Educate, Don’t Indoctrinate”.  If the subliminal message is “Indoctrinate with my doctrine only”, are we having a discussion or a demand?

What do we know?

We were forewarned.  The first warning long ago was “all politics are local”.  Regarding education, partisan value issues have a difficult path at the national level.  Congress has little to do with schooling.  It is not easier at the state level; fifty states and cats are hard to corral.  Efforts at the statehouse level face tough sledding unless the governor, house/assembly, and senate are on the same page on the same day.  If they are, all that follows is a one-sided story.  Grass roots politics are at the county, city, town, township, and village levels and this is where the real arguments about education are being waged.

The second warning was “local schools and local rules” mean “who controls school board elections controls local schools”.  School board membership has become the logical and easy target for any faction of a community active and driven enough to change local schools into their own image.  Split the ballot with enough candidates, narrow the field with a primary, and run for the board in a spring election on a non-Presidential election year.  The spring election is the ballot that traditionally brings out the fewest voters.  And, voila!  A person or persons representing a small fraction/faction with a particular agenda can be school board members.  Swinging several seats and a new majority of a usual seven-member board can control local schools through local rules.  Easy peasy!

What do we know about school governance?

There are 421 school districts in Wisconsin, each with its statutory school board.  By statute, members are agents of the state responsible for local school governance including adherence with state rules and policies.  Board membership involves attendance at the board’s regular business, committee, and special meetings.  The Milwaukee Public Schools Board is an outlier with member salaries of $36,000+ and the meeting demands of a large, complex, urban district.  Board work is a business in our largest district and a small, part-time job in most WI districts.  Typical board members in the hundreds of small districts receive an honorarium of $2-3,000 and meeting obligations require less than 10 hours per month.

School board members typically are not prepared for the vitriol of agenda-based arguments or attacks.  Most members rise from the traditional school booster groups of parents committed to educational programs for their children and their children’s peer group.  Their usual challenges are how to sustain current programs with reduced state financial aid, whether to buy a new school bus this year or next, and what is an optimal class size in their schools.  These are significant yet not “attack dog” issues.  When the dogs are out, many boards either close up shop or cave in.

What must we remember?

At the heart of most, if not every school board discussion and decision, should be children.  “How will this enhance the education of children?”, should be our constant mantra.  Played large, this mantra informs everything from reading programs to school remodeling to employee salaries to football uniforms.  Simply put, schooling is about children not adults.

This blog is not used to promote any point of view or specific, contemporary agenda.  Rather, the blog advocates for best practices for causing all children to learn.

What do we know about educating children?

Personal inquisitiveness is a foundation for lifelong learning.  The first word, personal, is essential.  Most of us want to learn to know, not be told how or what to know.  The intrinsic motivation of personalized learning is a powerful force for exciting children to learn and helping them persist in learning.  Somethings children learn have a social context and they must engage in learning with other children.  Yet, when a child feels a personalized engagement with what is being learned, a child is more likely to learn and remember.

Inquisitive is the operant word in personalized education.  To inquire is to ask a question.  It says, “I want to know about this”.  Its synonyms are equally powerful.  To explore.  To investigate.  To examine.  To analyze.  To inquire opens the door for learning with a question leading to all sorts of new information and experiences.  To inquire retains a personal control of the learning as what unfolds may not be of interest or significance.  To inquire about something opens the door to ask about something else.  Life is full of inquiry.  We want children to be inquisitive.  When we start with this purpose, untold possibilities for significant learning emerge.  Without inquisitiveness, we are training puppets of our thinking.

The ability to inquire should be a bedrock in child education.  We know –

  • Inquisitiveness is innate.  The interest to know, if not the need to know, is within every child. 
  • Inquisitiveness is to wonder and “I wonder …” is the beginning of an adventure.
  • Inquisitiveness is unbiased.  A child learns the winds that will fill their personal sails and there are many winds.
  • Inquisitiveness leads to exploration and invention and creation.  Our world needs exploring, inventive, and creative people.
  • Inquisitiveness allows individuals to grow and develop and to share.  “I wonder…” initiates learning that frequently results in “Hey, did you know …”.  Then, our children begin to educate others.

We learn more about inquisitiveness by addressing what it is not.  To not want a child to be inquisitive is to insist she –

  • Accept what she is told without question.
  • Ignores options and possibilities.
  • Considers all things she is told as facts whether true of not.
  • Abandons the joy of being surprised.

What do we want for our children?

“I want our children to be wiser and braver than me and prepared to meet the unknowns they will encounter.” 

This is both a personal statement and one that I hear from many of my generation.  We Baby Boomers had our whack at the world.  In hindsight and with the judgments of successor generations, Boomers had some significant successes and left some very significant messes.  After studying, I found the same to be true of predecessor generations. 

I am proud of our local schools where inquiry and exploration are prized and supported.  Our purpose is to provide all children with opportunities for learning.  We would rather our children are reading and learning broadly so that when asked “What do you think about…?”, or “Show us what you have learned?”, they will give informed and insightful responses and performances and not parrot back limited incantations of what they were told.  Their 21st century requires no less.

Children are great people, and we assist them to be great adults through the type of education we provide in their formative years.  I tell all but my bachelor bird loving friends, if you want parrots, raise birds.  I tell my school board colleagues, if you want a braver and wiser next generation, don’t educate them like parrots.  And resist anyone who wants to make a classroom into a parrot factory.

Mommy, Daddy. What Did You Do During the Pandemic of 2020?

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It’s time to write some history!

Children of the Baby Boom unknowingly were given unrecognized gifts by parents and grandparents and older friends and neighbors.  Being one, I remember.  We heard stories of the Depression and World War Two from people who were there.  We heard stories of the hard times and scarcity of the 1930s when work was hard to find and supper was measured in spoonfuls.  We were told their thoughts and fears on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States was committed to war.  They cried telling stories of family members and friends who died in uniform.  They explained about our family fall out shelter in the basement with its blocked windows and stacks of canned meats and vegetables water canteens.  We were gifted with first-hand accounts from people whose words made history meaningful to next generations.

In the summer of COVID, educational and social writers encourage summer school or an early start of school in the fall as a strategy for recouping lost teaching and learning due to remote education this past spring.  At the same time, polls show that 2/3s of families are hesitant to send children back to school because they believe virus remains a real danger.  Our question:  what do we do as educators between these two important positions?

A good rule of thumb when you seem to be uncertain of the direction you should go is to stop, stand still, and observe all around you.  Let the world find you.

In the gap between a remoted spring and an unknown fall, let’s write history.  We can assist children who are living through a unique world event to memorialize their experiences for family and friends decades from now.   We have the skills to help them to tell their story of Life in the Time of Covid.  We have the opportunity to create gifts that will help children in the future to know what their parents and grandparents did in the Pandemic of 2020.

This is a wonderful summer project with educational outcomes.  Stories From the Time of COVID can be recorded by children of all ages.  Stories can be in written word, personal artwork, photographs, song and playwriting, recorded voices and any combination of the same.  There is no right or wrong or passing or failing in storytelling, just the telling of stories.  This is personalized learning at its best.  It is a learning project every child can accomplish.

One of the best ways to understand the COVID pandemic has been to read the stories of those who lived through the Spanish Flu pandemic 100 years ago.  Or a war.  Or the Civil Rights years.  Or through a time of great turmoil.  The personal stories and photos of their times help us to understand the historical phenomenon of a pandemic, its devastation of death, what people did to survive, and the after effects of their ordeal.  Children today can read about children then and compare and contrast their own experiences.

I encourage teachers to make this suggestion to their students:  This was my life during the Pandemic of 2020.  This is not a required assignment.  It will not be graded.  However, it will be important and it will be cherished.  Someday in the future, the stories of how children and young adults lived during this pandemic will be helpful to children and young adults them as they face their own challenges. 

In a summer without structured, large group activities for children of all ages, a suggestion from a teacher may help a summering student find an important outlet for time, talent and energy. 

Then, take your own advice and write your personal story:  This is what I did during the Pandemic of 2020.

Stop Coddling the Hare; Tend to the Tortoise

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Aesop spun a fable about a race between the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise won! However, that was just a fable and not likely in real life where tortoises are what they are – slow and late to the finish line. Aesop aside, most races are dominated by the hares. The daily news is replete with stories of hares and scant mention of tortoises. A banner runs at the bottom of the TV screen with scores of games – winners in bold. Social media texts the day’s stock market activity – gains before losses. As Billy Bean said in Money Ball, “Nobody remembers who came in second in the World Series.” Winners matter and they get the attention; but, there are a lot more tortoises in the world than hares and the quality of the world’s life is shaped by the status of the tortoise not the bling of the hare.

Hares in most races are the genetically gifted, the economically advantaged, and the lucky-in-birth who most often are at the head of the pack from start to finish in every race, game and contest. Most people don’t choose to be hares; they are born with quick twitch muscles, funds for training, and into the cultivation of their winning ways. Although there are real-life “boot strap” kids who blaze like comets out of poverty and disadvantage, seldom do tortoises become hares. The hares win at the Olympics, in pro sports, and in the general elections. They also win in school races, on school tests, at spelling bees, and whenever school work is graded. This is where our real story begins. We can abide the hare winning at most things, but we must not abide the tortoise losing in education.

It is up to us to make Aesop’s fable into a new reality in which tortoises, more common and greatly more numerous than hares, win in school. And, win with regularity. This is exceedingly hard to do in a contemporary culture that adores winners and cradles every newborn in the hope that he or she will be a star. But, absent star power, what will it take to create school winners of all the tortoises?

Surprisingly, not much – just two things. Let the hares run.  Stop coddling them.  And, calmly tend to the tortoises.

Let the hares run is easy. Star students most often are self-directed and self-starting. The greatest dilemma they face in school is not being allowed to run. So, let them. “I see you completed today’s assignment and did well, as always. What would you like to do now? Great, what do you need?” Say and do no more, because the hares will run happily and they will learn and grow and succeed. In fact, the more you tend to their needs, the less and the slower they run.

Interestingly and politically, parents of the hares have made schools feel guilty when their hare-children are not receiving constant attention. Stop feeding the speed frenzy of the speedy. Just say, “If your hare really is one of the special children, they don’t need someone else telling them what, when, or how to learn.  We’ll point them and let them run.” Attending to hares who run fast and in many directions is a never-ending commitment. Stop with the endlessness.

Calmly tend to the plodding tortoises. Sit beside each tortoise, they won’t run away from you, and frequently make this single, simple inquiry. “Let’s see where you are now on this assignment. Tell me (show me).” And, follow their reply with instruction that causes them to continuously advance their work until the assignment is successfully completed. It should not surprise us that most tortoises fail in school not because they cannot understand and complete the assignment, but because they run out of time. When the hares finish the same assignment that the tortoises work on slowly, time runs out for everyone and the entire class moves to the next assignment. There is a long trail of uncompleted assignments behind every tortoise, assignments they could and should have completed if the race was not all about the hares.

An educational system focused on student learning success, not student speed in learning, will let the hares run and tend to the tortoises until all, hares and tortoises, have crossed the finish line.