Category: Learning Through Reflecting

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The Myth of the “Recipe for Success”

Faige Meller, a friend in my PLN recently wrote about mindsets:

“One of our teacher mindsets has been to follow rules. We ask kids to follow the rules, because that’s what we as teachers do. We might not like to admit that some of what we do is part of the recipe of schools; schedules, routines, classroom design, classroom rules, administrative directives and so on and so forth.”

Reading this instantly took me back to a memory early in my first year of teaching. During a teacher education course, I had been given a piece of advice from a professor: “At your first job, ask for the standardized testing data right away. Your principal will love you!”

Wanting to make a good impression, I did just that — before the students had even arrived for the first day of school, I asked my administrators for that data. And like magic, it worked. They seemed pleased.

But I couldn’t shake an unsettled feeling. Faithful to the “recipe for success” I’d been given, I did indeed look over the data — but it turned out that it didn’t tell me much anyway. What was more troubling, however, was the fact that I knew I hadn’t engaged in any sort of authentic relationship-building. I had simply demonstrated that I was willing to be a compliant hoop-jumper.

Don’t get me wrong — willingness to be a “team-player” has its place in any work setting. However, it seems that too often, we’re willing to stop there. As long as the job gets done, why go further? Why bother with real relationship-building? Why push the status quo? That advice I had been given as a pre-service teacher definitely promoted that mentality.

Maybe it’s because we don’t want to give advice that has any degree of uncertainty to it. But John Spencer illustrates the role of that uncertainty well:

by John Spencer

If we’re always “sure this will work,” we choose the comfort of certainty over the messiness of opportunities.

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How Ownership Can Get Rid of “I Suck at…”

Think having students self-grade and reflect is fluff?

Think again.

Over the course of a 15 year study, John Hattie analyzed over 800 meta-studies to identify effects that have the strongest impact on learning (and he is constantly updating this list through continued studies). Self reported grades is almost at the top of the list of over 150 effects.

It beat out motivation. It beat out home environment. It even beat out “decreasing disruptive behavior.”

The truth is, students know a lot more about their own learning process than we so often give them credit for.

Which brings me to the issue at hand: When a student claims he/she “sucks at ___.”

When I hear that claim, I hear a student that has become convinced that their personal rate of learning is inferior to classmates. That because their progress has not looked identical to their peers, it must mean they are defective. That their learning is fixed, hopeless, and beyond theirs or anyone else’s reach.

Now, discouragement is normal for all learners from time to time. But when said discouragement is also rooted in learning that feels irrelevant or imposed, we’ve got problems.

Enter student ownership.

Any time we empower students with tools to take their learning in their own hands, we are giving them ownership.

Self-assessments are one such powerful tool.

Michael BondClegg recently wrote about giving students the opportunity to write their own report card comments, encouraging teachers to help students identify “ways in which learners can identify their strengths and areas for growth” and “plans for improving.”

This may seem trivial, but really, it turns the whole “I suck at” model on its head.

When a teacher fills out the comments, it perpetuates the whole “this is out of my hands” notion.

When a student is encouraged to fill out those comments in this way, it places the learning back in the students’ hands.

A student in diagnostics mode is student on her way toward a stronger growth mindset.

 

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Getting to the Other Side of Confidence

I vividly remember my introduction to email. I was over at my friend’s house down the street — they had a computer in their own house! She pulled up her email account and started showing me how to set up a message to send. But even as she seemed to effortlessly correspond back and forth with friends, I remember wondering, how does an email address work exactly? How could a message possibly get from your computer to another person’s computer? It felt wildly beyond my comprehension.

Next major obstacle in my tech journey: Apple’s “There’s an app for that” commercials. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why one would need an app at all.  If we could access the internet on a smart phone, why would we need anything else? My husband tried to explain ease of use and navigation to me, but it still seemed gimmicky, and again, beyond my comprehension.

And the latest hurdle: Twitter. All seemed well when I initially created an account and posted a couple of interesting teaching links. But months later, when I decided to really expand my PLN and dive in, I felt hopelessly inept. What on earth were hashtags? How did chats work? How was I supposed to actually connect with others in any kind of meaningful way?

Roba Al-Assi

This is, of course, just a short list of hurdles which, at the time, felt insurmountable in my ability to progress with technology. Yet somehow, with gradual and almost invisible progress, I suddenly found myself on the other side of confidence.

Interestingly enough, as I reflect further on each of these three anecdotes, I realize that it has taken me shorter and shorter amounts of time to work past the uncomfortable newness (years for the first, months for the second, weeks for the third).  I don’t expect that my next hurdle will necessarily follow form with an even shorter period of uncertainty, but I do feel that it is indicative of a shift in mindset.

This kind of growth mindset in tech has applications for ourselves in our professional development, and certainly in the mindset we can and should hope to model to our students. Here are my takeaways:

  • Recognize that the discomfort is temporary — if we persist.
  • Use resources in established, comfortable spheres to take you through the uncomfortable.
  • Know that both confidence and broadened possibilities (possibly life-changing) are just on the other side of the current discomfort.
  • For every victory, you build up your growth mindset and flexibility.
  • It’s ok to be picky about what you will pursue through the discomfort (we can’t possibly become experts in every new thing that comes our way as teachers or even human beings in the 21st century) — but not if the only reason you skip out on new ideas is because of that discomfort.

What about you? What have been examples of getting through that discomfort in your growth as a teacher?

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“I thought if I took away the iPads & phones, they’d grow up to be normal people.”

With kids asleep and husband out of town, I thought I’d settle down for some stereotypically comforting chocolate and HGTV. And it was. Until the person getting a newly renovated boat said something I’ve heard in many different forms over and over:

“I thought if I took away the iPads & phones, they’d grow up to be normal people.”

Normal people?

There seems to be a long history of the older generations criticizing and fearing the youth for their abnormal interests.

Like when the Scientific American railed on the insidious game of chess in July 1859:

via Wikimedia commons/Public Domain

“A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”

Or when an earl complained in an 1843 speech in the House of Commons:

via Wikipedia/Public Domain

“…a fearful multitude of untutored savages… [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits…[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody…the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.

Not to mention society’s habit in general to believe:

“that “the good ‘ol days” are behind us and the current good-for-nothing generation and their new-fangled gadgets and culture are steering us straight into the moral abyss. “There has probably never been a generation since the Paleolithic that did not deplore the fecklessness of the next and worship a golden memory of the past,” notes Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist.” (Why Do We Always Sell the Next Generation Short?“)

Excessive screen time, of course, is a legitimate concern. But if we truly believe the adage that the youth are our future, we must temper our tendency to demonize the new and unknown and instead provide encouragement for the possibilities it provides.

We should take care not to allow our fear of change to limit our children’s capacity to influence the future. That includes leading them to believe that if their childhoods look different from ours, they won’t lead “normal” lives.

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Inquiry into SDGs (The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals)

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Recently, Ms. Hilaa’s Fabulous4thGraders in Pakistan introduced me to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in the form of some truly fabulous Google Form questions.

I’m not sure how I missed the roll-out of the SDGs, but now that I’m aware, I can’t stop thinking about them and their implications for our students!

So this week’s provocation centers around helping students consider the creative ways people around the world are addressing these issues.

Resource #1: Bringing the SDGs to life video

Resource #2: Kate Raworth on Growth by RSA Animations

Resource #3: Embrace Cocoon Innovation

For the TED-Talk that introduced the Embrace and its background, click here.

Resource #4: Jody Williams on Activism by The RSA Animations

Resource #5: If the World Were A Village of 100 People: A Story About the World’s People (book & trailer)

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Provocation Questions:

  • What is the relationship between sustainable development and innovation?
  • What is our responsibility to encourage sustainable development as individuals? As societies?
  • Why is sustainable development important?
  • What are the different perspectives on sustainable development? Why do those different perspectives exist?
  • How does sustainable development impact people’s individual daily lives?

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Why Do They Want to Erase?

Last week, I came across this interesting tweet:

With how much I value process, I initially thought I’d just retweet with an “Amen!”

But then I started to wonder: why exactly do kids want to erase their work, anyway?

As a teacher, I used to think the answer to this question was simple: my fifth graders had been thoroughly trained that all that mattered was the product, and therefore anything that showed the process (or anything less than perfection) was undesirable.

And for many children, maybe this is the case.

But others, I wonder if it’s along the same lines for why I don’t publish my blog posts to the world with every edit in parentheses next to its original boring synonym, punctuation error, or run-on sentence. I want the final piece I’ve worked so hard to improve to take the spotlight.

What’s more, when I reach back further to my own childhood school years, I can recall a certain sulkiness when we were all forced to use the same writing tool for a given assignment. My desire to use a pen vs. pencil alternated many times throughout the day and different assignments. I always had my reasons, even if I couldn’t always articulate them (the ink was stuck in the pen; my pencil was broken and I wasn’t allowed to use the pencil sharpener; I wanted to shade my letters a certain way; I had a new glitter pen that I was dying to try).

 

If we are truly interested in helping students own their learning process, we need to remember that ownership and choice are inextricably connected.

So instead of making a single choice for them all, why not try instead:

  • Asking students to choose how they will share evidence of their learning.
  • Teaching students explicitly about the value of process vs product.
  • Helping students to cultivate a deeper sense of metacognition to focus their decisions — even simple ones such as choosing a writing implement — on what will best serve their learning process.

Ultimately, this is just one small example of how we can help our students take the wheel to drive their learning. But even small things add up!

 

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“Perpetual Motion:” The Self Driving Engine of Student Ownership

Take a look at Pamela Kennedy’s “Perpetual Motion in Room 17” time lapse video:

What do you observe?

I notice:

  • Flexible seating choices
  • Variation in working in pairs, groups, or independently
  • Confidence regarding when and where to be
  • Order and efficiency, yet choice and flexibility

Now take a look at Mr. Humphrey’s class:

Choice – Making it Happen with 33 Students in a Math Classroom

Additional observations I make here include:

  • Freedom to set the pace of learning
  • Respect for students’ decision-making in how they explore concepts
  • Individuality

These are both wonderful examples of what can happen when we allow students to drive their own learning. And as students continue to steer more and more of their learning, I wonder what the next steps will be in each of these classrooms in furthering that ownership?

 

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