Tag Archives: responsibility

Summer – School’s Necessary Fifth Quarter

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I always smiled when Click and Clack, as NPR’s “Car Guys”, welcomed listeners to the third half of their hour-long radio broadcast.  The “third half” was how they partitioned and used their time on the air not about the  arithmetic of three halves making a whole.  In a like manner, summer is an educator’s fifth quarter.  After the four quarters of a school year are completed, summer is the interlude, the fifth quarter for professional reflection, analysis, and  planning. There is scant time in the four quarters of a school year for these three activities because daily teaching is all about meeting the immediate needs of students – it is on-demand work.  The fifth quarter is all about review, consideration, and design. 

In earlier blogs, I have made the professional case for teachers to be calendar year employees not just school year.  Today, I let the needed work of education provide the argument.

The case for reflection.  A wonderful young teacher in our school district assembles and makes an online posting every Monday of the coming week’s school activities.  The weeks of May and early June are loaded to the gills with events – school for all ages is non-stop, on-the-go motion.  The spring musical and spring sports schedules, grade level trips to Madison and Green Bay, the spring music concerts, Senior Banquet, and graduation make the days and evening of spring a mad dash to the finish line for teachers.  It is acceleration into a quick and final deceleration – and the school year is over. 

On her weekly postings of school events there is no time designated for reflection on the school year soon ending.  There is not one minute of a school day invested in our teachers’ retrospection about the 2021-22 academic year.  Everyone is engaged in the forward motion of ending the school year. 

Incorporated in the definition of a professional is the capacity and commitment to being reflective about one’s professional work.  Candid reflection affirms the good practices leading to positive outcomes and leads to improvement or elimination of weaker practices.  Professionals are reflective yet our school provides no time for reflection.  We need to make professional reflection a planned reality in our school year of days.

The case for analysis.  Earlier in May our students sat for their spring assessments.  Elementary children completed the spring end of their annual universal screener assessments.  Elementary and middle level children completed their spring ACT Aspire assessments.  High school children took AP exams and final whacks at the ACT.  Every child in our school was tested, some multiple times.  All of these were calendared on our weekly announcements.  What I didn’t see was scheduled time for reflection and analysis of these data.  Nada.

We assume teachers have time in May and early June before the last day of school to reflect on their school year and the end-of-year data.  But when?  Time for teachers in the last quarter of the school year is fully subscribed.  Then, the school year is over.  Classrooms are closed and teachers depart for the summer. 

As of this date, no data meetings have been held in our school for the analysis of spring assessments, evaluation of each child’s fall to spring growth, or the effectiveness of our instruction.

If not now, when?  An organized reflection and analysis of instruction and learning is placed on the back burner of school life until late August and the return of teachers for a new school year.  The summer “quarter” is reserved for summer school and vacation.

Does this fly in the face of what we know is best practice?  You bet it does!  We know that mental retention is influenced by “meaningfulness”.  When information is compellingly meaningful we pay attention to it.  When information is current and relevant we pay attention to it.  When information affects our ongoing work we pay attention to it.  Postponing the reflection and analysis of spring assessment data until late August treats these data as irrelevant to our teaching and learning. 

We know that August is “ramp up time” for the start of a new school year.  The scant time in our August in-service days is loaded with getting classes, classrooms, and new colleagues ready for Game Day – the first day of school.  Inserting data analysis into the week before school starts leaves every teacher in the room wishing they were somewhere else getting ready for Game Day.  Analysis of SY 21-22 data the week before Game Day is lip service to data analysis.  Administrators and teachers alike know this for what it is – not meaningful and not productive.

The Fifth Quarter – Oh, the good we could do with time outside the school year calendar.  First, a fifth quarter is outcome-based not time- or place-based.  Work time can begin at 9:00 or later.  Work place can be at school or not – how about a coffee shop.  Shorts and sandals or whatever is the garb of the hour.  We know how to do remote and work from home and this fits well into a fifth quarter.

The critical attributes are the reflection upon our work and the analysis of our data each directed at an informed planning for the next school year.  In our small, rural school, fifth quarter should mean a  reflection and data analysis on a student-by-student basis resulting in an informed plan for each student’s teaching and learning in the next school year.

Fifth Quarter For All – The fifth quarter is all about school responsibility and accountability.  It applies to all school faculty and staff.  Food service, cleaning and maintenance, transportation, guidance and counseling, athletics and activities and arts – every facet of the school enterprise benefits from fifth quarter work.  We focus so much attention upon teaching and learning that we tend to ignore the other necessary work that makes a school function with efficiency and effectiveness.  Fifth quarter review, consideration and design improves the next year’s work of every school worker.  Too often it takes a seismic event to change practices in transportation, food service, and maintenance.  Instead, allow thoughtful and timely review and consideration change the design of that work.

Commitment to a Fifth Quarter – School boards need to commit dollars to the fifth quarter; the boards are buying professional time.  Administrators need to commit responsibility and accountability to the fifth quarter; making time and resources available and engaging with teachers in the reflection and analysis.  And at the end of the fifth quarter, the administration is responsible for ensuring that the quarter’s work shapes teaching and learning in the fall of the new school year. 

Even though review, reflection and design are inherent in teaching, if they are not explicitly constructed in the school calendar, they fall to the wayside of passing time.  And, then we wonder why one school year feels like the same old, same old of the previous. 

Cell Phone Use In School – Freedom and Responsibility

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A student walks into a high school classroom. A ringtone sounds on her cellphone and she answers as she walks to her desk.  Classmates take their seats and a bell rings signally class has started.  Should she finish her conversation or disconnect?

A student is working at a biology lab station.  His cellphone buzzes in his pocket informing him that he has received a text message.  All his classmates are busy with their lab assignments and his teacher is in deep conversation at a lab station across the classroom.  Should he check his message and perhaps respond?

The band is rehearsing for a concert scheduled for the following week.  The director has stopped play to help one of the alto sax players to hold a note for three beats when a cellphone rings in the percussion section.  Because everyone but the sax player has stopped playing, band members either look toward the sound of the phone or at the director.  Should the director confront the disturbance or ignore it?

The argument of whether students should bring cellphones into school classrooms has not been resolved.  Across the 20+ years that high school students have carried personal cellphones, the issue of how schools should address student cellphones in school has eluded a universal resolution.  Now that a cellphone also is an Internet connection to a world of information, a networking tool, and a productivity tool, what are the parameters for the use of a cellphone in the classroom?  Is the cellphone an unwanted distraction to student learning?  Is a cellphone a learning tool connecting the isolated classroom to the greater world?  Is having access to a cellphone a right or a responsibility?

Historically, the closest we come to the cellphone dilemma may be chewing gum.  Does a teacher’s view of cellphones mirror the historical view of chewing gum?  For decades students were forbidden to visibly chew gum in class for no other real reason than teacher “say so.”  After introspection, chewing gum in class posed no real distractions to teaching and learning.  In fact, chewing may have calmed student anxiety.  It also is true that some “bratty” students may have made smacking sounds as they chewed.  But, the bottom line was “You can or cannot chew gum in my class.  It is my rule.”  Teacher rules prevailed.

In each representative scenario above, the current practice in most classrooms is the same as chewing gum.  The use of a cellphone, even the presence of a cellphone in class, is that classroom teacher’s rule.  But, is teacher’s choice a satisfactory resolution?  Why would a student walking into class keep talking after the bell or a student engage in text messaging in a lab class or a band director not respond to a phone ringing during rehearsal?  Time and place make these intrusions unacceptable.  We need to teach children to understand and exercise the freedom and responsibility of cellphone use.  And, we, parents and educators, need to integrate cellphone technology into contemporary living/teaching/learning design.  Leaving the use of cellphone technology to a teacher’s rule is a very weak resolution.  The exercise of a common standard of behavior based upon sensitivity to time and place is much better.

In 1908, John Dewey, a formative educational leader, wrote the following.

RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

“The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual. His freedom is the greater, because the more numerous are the effective stimuli to action, and the more varied and the more certain the ways in which he may fulfill his powers. His responsibility is greater because there are more demands for considering the consequences of his acts; and more agencies for bringing home to him the recognition of consequences which affect not merely more persons individually, but which also influence the more remote and hidden social ties.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/responsibility-and-freedom/

Dewey certainly did not foresee the advent of cellphones.  But, he understood the dynamics of how the individual interacts in society and those insights speak to the personal use of cellphones in school today.  The lead sentence – “The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual” – gets directly at the problem. The purpose of the classroom as a place for teaching and learning requires that a student’s responsibility to that purpose transcends the freedom of instantaneous cellphone activity. As a slight exaggeration, imagine a classroom where the opposite view holds. At any moment when a student’s cellphone rings the student immediately engages in a phone conversation or a series of texts or activates music or video of choice. Or, initiates a phone call to a friend. Or, engages in an interactive game on a cellphone. All the while, a teacher is expected to teach as if the distraction did not occur. If the classroom was lackadaisical daycare, this chaos may be acceptable. The classroom is a place for teaching and learning and such chaos is fully unacceptable.

Changing the use of cellphones from ubiquitous to discrete begins with attitude.  The use of a cellphone is not a child’s entitlement.  I observe an attitude of entitlement when children engage with their cellphone anywhere and anytime with an air of “it is my right to do so.”  They quickly become irate when told to put away their cellphone.  This attitude comes from two cultural phenomena.  Today’s children have never known a world without cellphones, and, most have been raised with digital devices as pacifiers – parents provide devices to children to keep them happy and content – the 21st century “nuk.”

We replace the attitude of entitlement with an understanding of discrete time and place.  It is important for children to know there are times and places when a child must and should use a cellphone.  As we teach our children to exercise freedom and responsibility thinking to regulate their cellphone use, we must accentuate times and places where cellphone use is both necessary and warranted.

  • Calling 911 for an emergency.  No one should hesitate when health and safety are threatened.
  • Calling a parent for permission or guidance.  Children who follow parental restrictions need to seek parent permission or guidance when their daily activities contradict what they believe they are supposed to.
  • Capturing the moment.  Children know when something unusual is happening.  Using a cellphone camera or voice recording to make a record through a photo or sound recording is a wonderful use of cellphone technology.
  • Getting an answer.  As much as “Ask Siri” is an advertisement, it also is an active way of seeking information.  Googling is an accepted verb.  As an Internet device in your pocket or purse, a cellphone is an unbelievably wonderful tool for seeking information.
  • What’s happening?  News alerts help children to know the daily events of their world.  More than any generation of the past, children with cellphones can know local, state and world events as they unfold.  If they choose, children can know and study news and how it is reported on demand.
  • Finding yourself.  Mapping and location tracking apps help children to know exactly where they are.  “I am here” and “That is where I want to go” are easily displayed with keystrokes or voice commands.
  • Personal entertainment anywhere and anytime.  Music and video libraries stored on a cellphone provide children with their “go to” entertainment when they want it.

There are times when and places where a child should not use a cellphone.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking, we do not physically take cellphones away from children.  That is a losing strategy from the get-go.  Also, we do not make lists of times and places where cellphones should mot be used.  To do so, makes the list the argument.  Instead, we want the argument to be an intellectual, observational, reflective, and sensitive decision that the individual makes in certain times and places.  When freedom and responsibility thinking is at work, a child has the opportunity to consider if “this is a time when a cellphone must, can or should be used?  Is this a time when it is my decision to use a cellphone?  And, will use of my cellphone be a distraction or affront to people around me?”  The last condition demonstrates the sensitivity to time and place we want children to consider.

Freedom and responsibility thinking pertains to many things that people do in their daily living.  It is an essential way of thinking about how an individual can live well in the society of others.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking is a reasonable strategy for teaching children to prosper in their use of cellphone technology.