Monday, February 4, 2013

Passion and Perspective

Passion is a fire that burns anything in its path

Teaching and learning is an extremely complex human transaction. In schools today, we worry that too many students are not experiencing positive learning experiences and therefore may become more of a burden to society rather than a contributor to society. We try to take the best lessons from research in improving our schools. Every state is currently engaged in re-examining standards and anticipating a next generation of student assessments. 

As a result of federal leadership, increased focus is placed upon creating rigorous teacher evaluation systems that are objective and standardized. It is hoped that an increased emphasis on evaluation will recognize outstanding teachers, direct mediocre teachers to professional improvement and expel substandard teacher from the profession. These evaluation efforts seek to identify a skills list that comprise the teaching process. This complex analysis of teaching is likely to result in what I call a “paralysis of analysis”. We may inadvertently create teachers that are so confused over trying to do the right thing in their classroom that they lose that excitement of engaging the student in thoughtful learning. Complex teaching frameworks and extensive rubrics for evaluating teachers may cause teachers to think too much about doing the right thing rather than focusing on learning and their students.

A talented athlete needs to learn the fundamentals of his or her sport but in the moment of competition they can easily become ineffective if they focus too much on all of the fundamentals of how to perform that sport. Outstanding athletes focus mentally on very simple thoughts with a very concentrated focus to achieve peak performance. Teaching is similar in that it is a complex practice that requires teachers to learn the fundamentals.  But every day in the classroom teachers need to focus very intensely on a few simple thoughts in order to be effective. Worrying about all of the fundamentals or a long list of teacher evaluation standards may actually cause teachers to become less effective in the transaction of teaching and learning.

Simple Mental Images

The two simple mental images that can be powerful mental models for effective teaching are passion and perspective. Passion evokes the emotions around learning and human interaction. We envision schools as buildings but schools are really communities that involve large numbers of students and teachers. The interactions between these large numbers of people are complex. When passion is brought to these transactions,  it has a significant ripple effect across a wide community similar to throwing a stone into a quiet pool of water creating waves of emotion that role through the community. Perspective has to do with the broader vision of high-quality instruction. Effective teachers constantly make adjustments in their instruction to adapt to the unique needs of students in his or her classroom. Learning can only occur if it builds on student's prior knowledge. If teachers have a clear focus perspective of what they're trying to accomplish with good quality instruction, it will guide their decisions on creating instruction that appropriately challenges students and gives them an opportunity to learn deeply.

Passion

Humans are social animals. Our brains are wired to respond to other humans around us. We use our senses of touch, smell, hearing and most importantly sight to connect with other humans. We do not connect on a logical, intellectual basis, we connect via emotions we innately use this aspect of emotions when we communicate with an infant child. We do not talk to a baby in rich colorful language using complex adjectives, grammatically correct sentences or statistics to sway our argument. We communicate with babies with nonsensical sounds and extreme fluctuations in tone and pitch. We do this because infants respond to those sounds. For they are characteristics of emotional laden communication.

Effective schools are not just about hiring good teachers in putting students in the classroom. Schools are a community and the emotions that one student brings to a classroom influence the emotions of others. Teachers likewise communicate to students the importance of learning when they introduce passion to their subjects and get excited about what they're teaching. That enthusiasm is contagious and likely to build student interest in that particular learning.

Learning involves emotion. Very little learning can occur without emotional engagement, but also too much in emotion can cause learning to shut down. Passion is that positive introduction of emotion that enables us to connect to other individuals and to influence their learning. Teachers can create a highly collaborative and positive learning environment in the school when they evoke passion in communicating with their colleagues. When teachers can approach their profession with enthusiasm and a positive energy that we describe as passion great things can happen regarding the learning transaction.  Here are Guidelines for Passion-based Learning.

Perspective

Perspective is about a common direction moving toward high-quality instruction.  This perspective must be simple so that teachers can constantly focus on moving instruction toward a specific goal. The most successful perspective that I have seen in helping teachers move instruction positively is focusing on rigor and relevance using the Rigor/Relevance Framework . This framework describes four quadrants of learning. Quadrant A is low-rigor and low relevance learning - the basic facts and vocabulary that comprise foundation learning. Quadrant B is the application of learning where students get the opportunity to apply what they've learned often in hands-on activities deepening their knowledge through application. Quadrant C is extending learning to more complex problems. The reflects moving students from rote memorization to where their challenged to analyze, to reflect, to create and propose original solutions. Quadrant D learning is high rigor/high relevance in which students work through complex real-world problems often designing unique solutions and presenting their work to others.

When students participate in Quadrant D learning they are more likely to be intensely engaged in the work and more likely to retain the learning beyond the end of the semester. Students at any age can move to levels of high rigor or high relevance. While all students need to learn fundamentals they should not be held hostage to rote teaching of low rigor and low relevant skills before giving them the opportunity to engage in challenging applications of learning.

When teachers use the Rigor/Relevant Framework this gives them a positive perspective to think about the levels of their instruction. As they adjust instruction to meet the appropriate challenges of their students, they can constantly reflect how they can increase the rigor and relevance of their teaching. This perspective gives them a daily mental model that they can use to improve the quality of instruction over time.

Summary

Passion is exciting and can cause people to engage in their work more intensely. But if you approach teaching and learning with only passion you might be perceived by others as a member of the lunatic fringe. Perspective is powerful in giving teachers a mental model of how to improve instruction. But perspective alone may leave you a lonely intellectual in which you feel isolated from others that don't embrace that same perspective. However, the combination of passion and perspective can create an environment where high quality teaching and learning takes place on a daily basis. Passion and perspective cannot replace learning the fundamentals of good instructional practices, however passion and perspective can give high-performing teachers and appropriate way to think about their daily work and guide them to remarkable learning transactions with their students.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Stimulating Reflection by Richard Jones


We often refer to the 3R’s of school improvement as rigor, relevance, and relationships. These are very important and powerful in improving teaching and learning. However, a fourth R that is crucial for professionals raising their expertise is Reflection. I like the quote from John Dewey, “we do not learn from experience: we learn from reflecting on experience.”

One of the key elements of instructional leadership is to have a clear focused target on which instruction needs to be directed. This is important but the process of getting staff to move toward that target requires reflection. Reflection does not result from a memo or a mandate, it is initiated by the individual. However, there are conditions leaders can address to stimulate reflection.

The several conditions  on which leaders must focus in order to create an environment that stimulates reflection are; emotional engagement, quiet time, recognized gaps, thoughtful prompts, and experience.

Emotional Engagement

Individuals will not reflect on something that they do not feel an emotional connection with. We think about the things that we care about. In order to create a higher level of reflection in education, it is important for teachers and administrators to feel a personal, emotional connection to the issue at hand. For example, when discussing school performance data, this often leaves a very distant emotional connection. Translating data into student faces and names regarding achievement can help to build an emotional connection. iConsequently teachers feel an emotional connection and a greater sense of urgency to reflect around the issues of poor student achievement.

Quiet Time

Reflection is about thinking on the work. It is very difficult to think on the work when we are engaged in the work. It is important to have quiet time away from the demands of the job in order to truly reflect. This does not have to be extended periods of time, however it needs to be free of distractions. Leaders need to provide opportunities for quiet time and personally we need to provide our own quiet time in order to increase reflection.

Visible Gaps

The usefulness of data-driven instruction is that it provides a quantifiable gap between our present performance and our desired performance. Reflection usually doesn’t occur unless we see and can visualize a gap between where we currently are where we want to be. Visible gaps can be  between past performance and current performance. It is those visual gaps that lead to reflection. We reflect about things that were not satisfied with and the more that we can visualize and quantify gaps, the more we can stimulate reflection.

Thoughtful Prompt

Events trigger reflection! We spend most of our day putting the observations around us into the categories and patterns of normal conditions. When we see something out of the ordinary we think about it. When we see a student with a remarkable achievement or on the other end a student with very poor achievement we tend to analyze and reflect why that situation occurred. In order to stimulate more reflection, it is often useful to create these unique events. This might be in the form of a story. It might be in the form of a video, or it might be in the form of an unusual or provocative question. When we go about our normal routines we rarely take time to redirect our brain to thinking and reflecting. We concentrate on doing and handling the events around us that require our attention. By identifying and creating some thoughtful prompt we can stimulate more reflection. 

Experience

The process of reflection is analyzing prior experiences in order to determine a new course of action. When our previous experiences are very limited, we have very limited ideas upon which to reflect. Even if we are excited about the opportunity to reflect, if our experiences are limited, we will not be very successful. Sometimes in order to improve reflection we need to provide more experiences. More experienced teachers have greater opportunity to reflect and likewise creating new experiences such as having teachers observe other classrooms or other schools gives them a richer set of experiences upon which to reflect.

Summary 

Reflection is not an accidental event. Leaders and facilitators can increase the level of reflection by paying attention to these necessary conditions in order to enrich reflective experiences.  Reflection is that essential ingredient that enhances personal development and ultimately improvement in teaching and learning.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

How We Think About Our Business is How We Do Our Business - Annual Conference Preview

by Robert Harris, Director of School Improvement Initiatives,  Performance Learning Systems
Roundtable Session RT2 Tuesday December 4, 2012 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM



“… We don’t see things as they are – we see them as we are”…Anais Nin


How We Think About Our Business Is How We Do Our Business
  • How DO we think about our business?
  • What are our goals as an organization?
  • What are the core competencies of this organization?
  • How does it present itself to its many constituencies?
  • How does its leadership present its vision for the future so that it can move towards it and bring it about?
  • How does it establish, track, maintain and predict its’ processes so that it can continuously improve and develop in all of it’ major areas of focus?
  • How does it plan to build an adaptive organization with a clear identity – without which a vision and the ability to reach it are jeopardized?
  • NOTE: How we think influences the ways that we work together- How we work together influences the ways that we think about that work

…moving from a singular WE to a collective WE- a community of learners

The Potential to Revolutionize K–12 Education - Annual Conference Preview


 by Robert Harris,Director of School Improvement Initiatives
 VSCHOOLZ
 Roundtable Discussion RT1 Monday December 3, 2012 10:10 to 12:00 PM


Blended learning has the potential to revolutionize K–12 education in terms of quality and cost, as it allows for a fundamental redesign of the educational model around the following:
  •  A more consistent and personalized pedagogy that allows each student to work at her own pace and helps each child feel and be successful at school. Leveraging technology, blended-learning programs can let students learn at their own pace, use preferred learning modalities, and receive frequent and timely feedback on their performance for a far higher quality learning experience. As online programs capture student achievement data in real-time across the school, teachers can spend more time helping personalize learning for students.
  • Productive new school models that require fewer, more specialized teachers and use space more efficiently. Schools can leverage technology to create radically different staffing structures that increase school-wide student-teacher ratios, even as students experience more personalized learning from more effective teachers. Leveraging technology in this way changes the assumptions of the traditional school model, where labor has accounted for 70 to 85 percent of costs and where only a fraction of students have access to great teachers. Teachers shifting to blended-learning models are finding that they have more time to focus on high-value activities like critical thinking, writing, and project- based learning as they spend less time on low-value, manual tasks.

These opportunities to innovate can occur even as providers take advantage of the things that leading brick-and-mortar schools do well, such as creating a strong, supportive culture that promotes rigor and high expectations for all students, as well as providing healthy, supportive relationships and mentorship.