Are You Saying This About Your Students??

Not too long ago, I heard a phrase used by a colleague that left me feeling unsettled.  I was unsettled both because I didn't agree with the spirit of the sentiment, but also because it was a phrase that I recognized having used in one form or another myself.  I recognized it as a mental trap that had allowed me to justify teaching practices that weren't meeting the needs of all of my students.

While this is something that I think is commonplace in many teachers' thinking, and in fact may seem completely self-evident, I believe it is something we teachers should work to remove from our vernacular.  If this is something you've found yourself saying, please realize that I'm coming from a place of understanding, and not one of vilification.  As I said, I've been guilty of adopting this way of thinking, so I "get" why people say this phrase and ones like it.  I hope that I can lay a compelling a case for what makes it faulty however.

What was this insidious phrase?  Simply this:

"The world still needs its ditch diggers."

I should perhaps clarify that the person who used the phrase wasn't exactly the youngest of educators, so his use of the term "ditch digger," while a bit dated, could be replaced with any sort of menial labourer that is stereotypically performed by the poorly educated: trash collector, janitor, letter carrier, taxi driver, etc.

I suspect that I do not even need to contextualize the conversation in order for the average teacher to surmise what was discussed.  Nonetheless, here is a rough synopsis:  "These students are failing to meet my standards. I have tried everything to turn them around, but many of them just don't seem to pick up what I'm putting down.  Oh well.  I guess the world still needs its ditch diggers, right?"

It seems a pretty straight forward sentiment.  It's roughly equivalent to the notion that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, right?  Wisdom that has stood the test of time. Except that I'm of the opinion that these times might need a changin'.  Here's ultimately what I think the "ditch digger" statement really means:

"Some kids are smart, hard working, and successful.  Some are less so.  No matter what we do as educators, that will always be true.  The world will always have roles for people who can't succeed in school, so it's really not so bad that some kids, in fact, don't succeed.  If everyone was successful, who would dig the ditches (or salt the fries, or take away the trash, or clean the floors, etc.)?"

As products of a system that consistently produced bell curves, and as students who typically landed on the happy side of those curves when we were young, we teachers are well conditioned to accept the "truth" of this notion.  What research tells us, however, is that bell curves don't always tell the correct tale of a student's potential later in life, and the notion that they serve our students and our society well holds very little truth at all.  So with that in mind, I present...

4 Reasons Why Teachers Should NEVER Apply the Ditch Digger Excuse to Their Students

1.  Ditch diggers??  Do we REALLY need ditch diggers??

Firstly, I have to pick on my colleague's choice of labourer here.  I found it particularly ironic that they chose "ditch digger" as the job that the world still apparently is in need of.  There is literally no such thing as a ditch digger any more, at least not in the developed world.  Historically, a ditch digger was the person tasked with the ignominious job of digging out a latrine used by soldiers who were making camp.  Our modern definition of ditch (a drainage channel beside a path or roadway) would typically be formed as part of the larger task of creating a road.  I sincerely doubt that road construction crews have a specialized role for this one task.  Even if they do, then I suspect that person requires the prerequisite skill of being able to operate some heavy machinery effectively -- a task that would require specialized training and skill in order to perform effectively.  Thus, it actually cannot be done by the utterly uneducated.

As it turns out, the world, in fact, doesn't really need ditch diggers.  Granted, my colleague could have used a more relevant and current stereotype, perhaps a fast food clerk. The point I'd like to make here is that in the developed world careers have been steadily evolving away from menial forms of labour.  Factory work done by people in the early 1900s gave way to automated assembly lines.  Clerical work done by people in the middle of the century has given way to software handled by computers.  Today, outsourcing and various forms of automation reinforce the notion that the world (or at least the developed world), in fact, simply doesn't need "ditch diggers" nearly as much as it needs critical thinkers, strong communicators, innovative problem solvers, and effective collaborators.  Schools that produce graduates capable only of digging ditches (or serving fries) serves neither the graduates nor the society of which they are a part.

In it's most basic and literal context "the world still needs its ditch diggers," is more false than it has ever been.  

2.  It actually means "I can't help you."

As I mentioned earlier, I used to use the Ditch Digger Excuse in my own practice, so believe me when I say that I get it.  While I'd like to think that I used more updated phrasing perhaps, ultimately it was the same sentiment.  For me, it might have gone something like this: "I hope that kid doesn't mind asking folks if they 'want fries with that.'  He's going to be saying it a lot."  This is maybe a more modern and cheeky phrasing, but it's saying the same essential thing: "That student is on the path to failure, and there's nothing I can do about it."

What I've come to realize about the moments when I used that type of sentiment, however, is that they were less a lament over a student's inability to perform and more a surrender of my responsibility to effect change.  It was a cop out, my excusing an inability or an unwillingness to try something different or go in another direction.  "My approach is working for all the other students, so obviously the problem is with this kid, and not with me, right?"  I have since come to recognize that using the Ditch Digger Excuse had less to do with student performance and more to do with teacher performance... my performance.  It would have been frankly more honest to say "I give up."

Does this mean that I think that if a teacher is unable to turn a struggling student's fortunes around that it is evidence of his failure as an educator?  Probably not.  I'm simply saying that using the fact that there are jobs in the world for people who don't succeed in school as justification for acceptance of student failure is the wrong mindset.  To put it simply, we should never be okay with student failure.

3.  What if your child was handed the shovel?

At its heart, the Ditch Digger Excuse dehumanizes children.  It reduces them to an imaginary role in an imaginary future where uneducated folks are handed shovels and told to dig.  When a teacher suggests that "the world still needs its ditch diggers" as justification for soldiering onward with her content, her lecture, her test, or her worksheets while students flounder and fail, she's essentially saying "I'm comfortable with handing you your shovel right here and now."

I suspect that if a teacher was told that her own child was destined for "the ditches," that teacher would move Heaven and Earth to deflect her son or daughter from a path of menial labour.  Yet I have seen (and ignorantly participated in) countless forms of dehumanization of other parents' children by using this and similar turns of phrase so cavalierly.  Our students are not the jobs we imagine for their futures.  They are not the grades we assign them.  They are not the canned comments we send home about them on their report cards.  They are not an attendance record, a behavioural code, or an IPP (IEP) file.  We owe it to them as human beings to treat them in all ways as people, and we must regard their futures as something as precious to us as it is to them and their parents.

Granted, some of our kids may grow up to work low paying jobs as uneducated labourers.  But while they are in our classes, our moral obligation is to keep searching for ways to help them identify their gifts and strengths and to teach them how to use those to chart a better course.  If they do find themselves one day holding the proverbial shovel, it should be in spite of our efforts, and not because we handed it to them back when they were still children.

4.  Some of those ditch diggers become doctors.

I sometimes encounter a sense from some of my fellow teachers that if students don't learn a particular thing in a particular year, they will simply never be able to learn it at all.  I have found sentiments like the following reasonably commonplace:

"Kids need to have practice with test taking so that they've got a chance when they get to high school."

"If he doesn't learn how to get himself to class on time, how will he ever hold down a job one day?"

"Do you think your future boss is going to let you submit work after a deadline?  You don't get second chances out there in the real world, so you shouldn't expect them here."

"If these kids don't develop some study habits, they'll never even make it past their first year of college."

I'm not going to pretend I've never made statements like these.  Far from it.  I can't count the number of times I've tried to cajole some measure of activity from my students by threatening them with future doom and gloom if they failed to strictly adhere to my obvious wisdom.  But the notion that students can only learn a particular skill, attitude, or mindset while they are in grade school, and that failing to do so at a young age will necessarily result in failure later in life, is absolutely absurd.  Just as necessity is the mother of invention, it is very often also the best teacher.

That there is a strong average correlation between high school grades and college grades is clear.  However, as Todd Rose reminds us in his book The End of Average, group correlations do not translate into individual correlations.  Just because the average student who does poorly in grade school tends to do poorly later in life doesn't mean they all do.

Social media is a very handy tool for maintaining contact with students well after graduation, and the number of students I know personally who have surprised their parents and former teachers by earning a college diploma or a degree after struggling in high school frequently astonishes me.  In his book, Rose describes his own challenges in high school, departing with a D minus average, later becoming a straight A college student, and then later still, a world renowned researcher and author.  Many struggling kids do indeed go on to become struggling adults, but a significant number do not.  We simply can't predict what effects maturity, life's necessities, and different environmental circumstances will have on a future adult by looking through the lens of her childhood. 

The point here is that we have future university graduates among those students who teachers might relegate to "the ditches."  We justify their outcomes by pointing to the successful kids and asking "if these students can achieve, it must be the fault of the failing ones who can't."  It may by the case that the reasons why a particular student struggles are outside a teacher's control.  But it may be equally true that our approach as educators bears some of the blame for excluding certain students from academic success.  And unless we can at the very least acknowledge that fact, instead of resigning ourselves to the notion that it's perfectly acceptable for a school system to produce adults capable of little more than wielding a shovel, we simply aren't doing the jobs we were hired to do.

****

There are many reasons why the Ditch Digger Excuse and its many variants are commonplace.  One of the most significant is education's systemic drive for efficiency.  Taylorism pervades our organizational hierarchies, which inherently pushes us toward a one-size-fits-all model for instructional practices.  This is in spite of a wealth of educational research and discourse that encourages differentiation and personalization for our students.  While individual teachers may be finding ways to connect with individual students, our systems and logistics frequently oppose personalization.  Ballooning class sizes, academic streaming, fixed pacing, centralization of curricula and resources, school design, our appetite for discreet and quantifiable data, and other organizational artifacts often push teachers and schools towards the normalizing of our children.

Normalization tells us that there is a bell curve of ability and thus accepts that some students will inevitably be on the bottom end of the curve.  The Ditch Digger Excuse is just one product of this broken philosophy. We teachers can help replace it with a philosophy that recognizes the potential in every child and continuously works to draw it out individually, child by child.  One of the steps on this journey is to put to rest the notion that the world still needs its ditch diggers.

Vive la revolution.

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News: A New Position, A New Beginning

Yes, my friends, it has indeed been a while.  My last post was all the way back in February, so for those of you who have been wondering where I've been, I will apologize for my lack of regular chatter.  I'm keenly aware that it's a good way to kill a blog's following, but prioritizing is something every teacher has to do.  My students, my program, and my family have needed more attention in the last few months, which I'm sure many an educator can relate to.  I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about my job in this post, so if you're not at all interested in hearing about a bunch of personal stuff, then hopefully I can catch you on the next post.

I've enjoyed being a teacher over these past 15+ years, but if I'm being completely honest, not every year has been amazing.  For reasons too numerous and complex to recount, there have definitely been times where I felt that I needed to consider leaving the profession.  I know this is something many of my colleagues have wrestled with, and I can imagine just about every teacher having their fair share of "why am I doing this?" moments over the course of a career.  

Naturally, some educators make the decision not to stay in the classroom.  Teacher burnout is a thing, and some leave education entirely.  Others make the decision to move on to other positions in education, but outside of classrooms.  While I'm sure many folks who move into admin or jurisdiction offices do so out of a passion for those roles or to take on new challenges, there are undoubtedly those for whom escaping the classroom is a significant motivator.

I'll admit that I've felt like I was in the shoes of one of those latter types of people -- been so disgruntled and dismayed by my teaching experience, that exit strategies were a regular part of my internal monologue, as well as conversations with my family and friends.  

If you've been following this blog, however, you'll know that my attitude started changing a few years ago.  While I can't pinpoint the exact moment when the switch was flipped, I can say that a combination of factors have brought me to the point I'm at now, one where I have never been more excited and happy with teaching.  To try to summarize all those factors is a challenge in and of itself, but as an aside, I'd like to try to offer a moment of advice to anyone who finds themselves in that state of mind -- seriously considering an escape route from a classroom you feel trapped in:

1. Stop consuming, and start creating.  Textbooks and other people's lesson plan binders are fine resources when you have little idea what you're doing and you need a lifeline to keep you afloat.  But once you're up and treading water, no satisfaction can be found in other people's creations.  If you start thinking of the work you do with students as your canvas, it can be as creatively fulfilling as any artist's craft.  Make.
2. See your students as your own children, even the ones you would never have raised to behave that way.  Don't worry about keeping them busy or making sure they're always doing.  Think about helping them find who and what they will one day be.
3. Stop looking for that zone where everything is "just right," and you can finally get settled and be comfortable for a while.  That's where "Bored" and "Boring" live.  The fun is in the new, the untried, and the untested.  Make change the norm.
4. If you don't already have at least one, tenaciously seek out one or more teacher buddies -- one(s) who you can be sincere with and who can call you out on your BS.  Let them see you teach, and seek out their honest critique.

Back to the tale at hand, it is with some irony that in the moment when I am least interested in leaving the classroom, an opportunity arises that more or less takes me out of the classroom.  An opportunity in my district's office opened to take on a learning specialist role -- one who works with teachers to coach and support their 21st Century Learning practices.  I applied and was accepted.  Yay!

You might be wondering "Waitasec. Didn't you just say you've never been happier teaching?"  Yes I did.  And it's exactly for that reason why I felt this was something I needed to do.  My very first post on this blog was a declaration of my desire to be a revolutionary.  Why?  Because I have seen first hand that when an alignment of attitude, tools, and environment is just right, great things can happen for kids.  A revolution needs revolutionaries, and it seems to me that a sphere of influence reaching many schools and many teachers offers more opportunity to help guide those alignments in to place than a single classroom within a single school.  I genuinely want to be able to share, almost evangelically, how fulfilling teaching can be with other teachers, especially those who are feeling as though they've lost their way but haven't yet given up on their chosen profession.

I'm not so naive as to think my message will be universally accepted.  Nor am I so naive as to think I have everything figured out and possess the road map to teacher happiness.  I fully expect to be challenged and to not always have the correct (or even any) solution.  But I truly believe I can be of help to teachers, and that will in turn help kids.  

So I don't yet fully know what my new role as "21st Century Learning Specialist" for Rocky View Schools will entail.  I do know, however, that if you're a teacher who could use a teacher buddy, one who can be sincere with you and who wants to help make excellent things happen in your classroom, then I hope you'll consider dropping me a message.

Vive la revolution!

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9 Things Primary and Secondary Teachers Can Teach One Another

"Are you kidding me? I could never do that. Those people are crazy."
-- Every high school teacher when asked if they'd ever consider teaching elementary.

"Are you kidding me? I could never do that. Those people are crazy."
-- Every elementary teacher when asked if they'd ever consider teaching high school.

In my first few years as teacher, I had a kindergarten teacher for a roommate.  Many an evening we would commiserate over the trials and tribulations of our respective positions.  She would tell me of her struggles with nose pickers and biters, and I would relay tales of angsty, full-of-attitude teenagers and the various layers of drama steeped in every hallway.  Each of us marveled at the other's ability to tolerate the intolerable, and would swear to never step foot into one another's arenas.

Life makes it's own plans, of course, and while I have remained professionally a high schooler my whole career, I have since become a father to four children who in their turns are marching their ways through elementary and middle school.  After an occasional class volunteering visit, and countless interactions with my kids and their seemingly endless hordes of neighborhood friends (some days I swear that my wife and I should be charging after-school care fees), I'm more convinced than ever that teaching primary school is not something I would be cut out for.

That said, I have had the good fortune to interact with elementary and middle school teachers a fair bit over these years.  Besides my own children's teachers, the online community is well populated with elementary teachers and some of the emerging social media formats that teachers are gravitating to are finding primary teachers as their early adopters.  Periscope and Blab are two broadcasting apps that are gaining mass appeal, and both of these platforms offer teachers some excellent opportunities to interact with colleagues around their jurisdictions, states and provinces, and the world as a whole.  But for a variety of reasons, both of these platforms seem far more heavily populated with teachers in the younger grades. So I find myself "hanging out" with some fabulous educators, but very few of them are in my teaching stratum.

And while I'm on the subject of the live broadcasting teacher community, I also want to take a moment to put a plug in for the growing teacher families on each of those media streams.  While the majority of teachers currently broadcasting live probably align fairly similarly with Pinterest's demographics (mostly female elementary teachers from the US), they are producing a lot of exciting, informative, and interesting content.  On any given night, you can log in to see people like Sheila Jane from sheilajaneteaching.com spreading missions of happiness and harmony.  Teachers Pay Teachers gurus not only hawk their wares, but share their secrets for growing businesses that help teachers justify hours of personal time spent developing content for their (and others') classrooms.  Education advocates and cheerleaders for student success and engagement share powerful stories of traditional and progressive classrooms around the world.  While these social media streams are in their infancy, I daresay that they might be the "Next Big Thing" in teacher professional networking.

But I digress...

Let me share some of the things we "bigs" can learn from the "littles" and vice versa, starting first with we high schoolers can offer the younger grades.

3 Things that "Littles" Teachers Can Learn From "Bigs" Teachers

1. Non-conformity

Most of these items I hope will be more on the positive side, but I'll start with one that is perhaps a little sour, so that we can end on a happy note.  I will illustrate with a story:

One day I came home from work to what I thought was an empty house.  After a couple minutes I realized that I could hear my aforementioned kindergarten-teaching roommate in the basement, which was unusual, because she was usually one to say hi when one of us came home.  I went down to see her, and as I approached the threshold of "her house" (she lived in the suited basement of my house, but we were well enough friends that the whole house was welcome to each of us), I could hear sniffling and the stilted breath of someone who had obviously been crying.

I peeked slowly around the corner, and asked "hey... you OK?"

She sobbed softly.  I sat beside her and gave her a hug, trying to figure out what this might be about.  She was quite upset.  Had someone passed away?  Had her boyfriend dumped her?  I waited for her to compose herself, and asked again what was troubling her.

"It's stupid," she replied sheepishly.

"It can't be THAT stupid if it's got you this upset.  What's up?"

"Shirley" (a colleague) "told Christine" (another colleague) "that my bulletin board... and this is how she put it... 'looks like someone let the resource kids be in charge of it.'"  

This brought on a renewal of tears, which was convenient for me because they caused her to miss the look of abject confusion on my face as I pondered how it could be possible that a second-hand critique of a teacher's bulletin boards by a colleague could warrant this much anxiety.

Apparently in elementary school, bulletin boards are a thing.

And I've since come to learn that just about everything else is too.  While it certainly isn't a universal truth about every school and every staff, I've come to learn that Keeping-Up-With-the-Joneses can be a very big deal in the younger grades.  That's not to say that it doesn't happen in upper levels, but we tend to have a much more difficult time (and thus perhaps a lesser tendency) of comparing one another across subject specialties.  I, quite frankly, don't have nearly as focussed a picture of what an excellent English/Language Arts classroom looks like as, say, a Science classroom.  Moreover, we expect that the Music teacher and the PE teacher will have very different personalities and skill sets, and while that might be a source for some good-natured (and sometimes not-so-good-natured) joking, diversity is sort of the norm in secondary school.

But in many elementary schools, there is apparently a "way" that everyone is more or less expected to be.  Whether it's how loud a classroom is, what's up on its walls, how much tech is being used, how a class lines up at the end of recess, or the quality of a grade's Christmas pageant offering, just about everything is fair game for scrutiny and judgement.

This may sound fairly accusatory, but it really is not meant to be.  I want to call it out because I desperately want teachers, no matter what their grade or subject level, to be helpful and supportive of one another.  I want this for more reasons than I can count -- for the mental health and well-being of my colleagues, my kids, and my society as a whole.  I want all teachers to feel like they have a chance to be themselves and to express themselves creatively through the contexts of their practices.  When we create, when we are able to be expressive of ourselves as a person, we can be at our best.

So I'm going to offer this to the primary teachers out there.  It's an outsider's advice, so I will take no offense if you tell me to stuff it:

Embrace your differences.  If you like how you're doing things, and they're working for your kids, great!  Keep doing it.  Yes, there's such a thing as best practice, but the notion that best practice looks the same in every room is simply incorrect.  Personalities factor in, and these differ from class to class, teacher to teacher.  Your colleagues can certainly be a source of inspiration and ideas, but the people you have to answer to and live up to are the ones who sit in the small desks in your room, not the ones who sit in the big desks outside of it.  Be your kids' hero, not your colleagues'.

If you do encounter differences in approach with a colleague who is producing results in their students learning (and please let's focus on that and not the window dressing that often gets critiqued instead) that is of lesser quality, then find the courage and compassion to support, nurture, and encourage that colleague with positivity and kindness.  If you can't do that, then kindly keep your opinions to yourself.

2. What You Need to Give Them Before You Give Them to Us

A dear friend asked me advice one day on how to approach the subject of homework with his daughter's grade 2 teacher.  Apparently his 7-year old was getting homework on almost a nightly basis, sometimes more than an hour's worth in a single evening.  He felt this was extreme for a grade 2, and wanted some advice on how to broach the subject from someone "on the inside."

I couldn't provide much advice beyond advising him to address the issue with the teacher before sending it up the flagpole to admin.  One thing I encouraged him to ask, however, was about the teacher's philosophical foundations regarding homework.  "Ask her what she thinks the students gain by doing the work she is assigning at home, rather than at school," I advised.  I encouraged this partially because it was a question for which I was myself curious to hear the answer.  Later on, he shared with me her response:

"We need to develop good study habits so they're ready when they get to high school."

You're probably giving your head as vigorous a shake as I did when I heard this reply.  Does a grade 2 teacher really feel compelled to prepare students for something that doesn't begin for another 7 or 8 years??  I am fully aware that this example is an exception among elementary teachers, and not the rule.  My own children have all received very reasonable amounts of homework at their respective grade levels in my opinion.  

That said, I have often come across the notion among teachers of all grades that students need to be habituated to certain norms in preparation for their future schooling, sometimes schooling that is particularly distant.  We high schoolers are equally guilty, "preparing" many more students for college and university careers that a significant percentage of them are never going to have (not only because some won't attend college, but also because many won't take classes in our particular subject area).

So primary teachers, I'd like to pass along a request from one upper level counterpart, and perhaps my fellow high schoolers will extrapolate similar advice:

The only grade you need to get your students ready for is their next grade.  That is all.  If you teach grade 2, please only get them ready for grade 3.  That's it.  Please let us worry about getting the 9th grader ready for 10th grade and so on.

And to teachers of every grade:  I appreciate that you are thinking of your student's future.  I am too.  But can I ask you to also think about his or her present?  If your class is only concerned with tomorrow, how can you ask them to be engaged with their learning today?  You might be able to match the importance of your work today with rewards you'll see down the road, but you have the benefit of a well-developed frontal lobe to help you make those connections.  Kids do not.  If you spend too much time preparing your students for my world, they're going to show up already hating it, and in that case any gains you've made in preparation will have been lost in their attitudes and motivation.

3. Math

I get it: Math isn't everyone's cup of tea.  More than any other subject area, Math gets treated as the one plain donut in a box of iced and jelly-filled goodness.  Certainly that's not true of every class and every teacher, and I know that there are plenty of innovative teachers who are doing amazing things at developing numeracy skills in young learners.

But I also know that it only takes one bad year in math for a kid to be completely turned off the subject, and, sadly, by the time they show up in their first high school math class, most kids have firmly made up their minds about the subject, and many have decided that they "just aren't any good at math" or that they "can't do math at all."

Part of this blame lays at the feet of math curriculum developers who adhere to antiquated notions about what K-12 students "need" in their math education.  But it may also lay at the feet of teachers who have strong reservations and misgivings about the subject.

If imparting a sense of numeracy is not your forte, may I humbly suggest checking out Jo Boaler's video series on the subject.  It's long, but absolutely fantastic, and as a non-native Math teacher, I found it to be game changing in my ability to convey math principles to students at their level.

6 Things that "Bigs" Teachers can Learn From "Littles" Teachers

First off, I want to say that it's no coincidence this list is longer.  Some high schoolers can be pretty high & mighty about being "on top" of the K-12 totem pole (and I've definitely been guilty of this), but we should really get out of our own ways and pay attention to the good things that are happening at the younger grades.  There's plenty that can be gleaned from their examples, and this is just a short list of things I've picked up directly from those wonderful primary teachers over the years:

1. Math (and Reading)

Didn't I just say that this was something the primary teachers need to learn from the high schoolers?  Yes, but there are plenty of elementary teachers who could be of significant benefit to even the most scholarly of high school math teachers as well.  And the same is true of literacy specialists in the younger grades and their English/Language Arts teaching counterparts up above.

We high schoolers come to the table with advanced subject specialties.  The math teachers, for instance, understand complex algebra, geometry, calculus, and statistics.  But do we all understand how to identify deficits in and impart very basic foundational skills in numeracy and literacy?  Not often enough, frankly.  

We teachers each have students in our classes who are struggling well below grade level in reading and math fluency.  All too often, these students see no advancement in their grade level achievement throughout high school unless they have specialized interventions in place with resources that are in limited supply in most schools.  We teachers have the ability to fill in those gaps if we come armed with an understanding of how.  But that understanding is often treated cursorily, if at all, in the secondary math and English programs of teacher colleges.

2. How Carefully Considered Their Spaces Are

I marvel at many elementary classrooms.  Every square inch is considered.  The walls.  The floors.  Sometimes even the ceilings.  It all has a purpose, it's all organized, and often the various corners of a room will have a very particular feel or nuance, perfectly adapted to the task intended to transpire there.  I need to learn this.

Presently, I'm just terrible at setting an emotional tone through my decor.  Growing up, I distinctly remember the "warm" classrooms I learned in and the "cold" ones.  In the warm ones I was more engaged, more relaxed, more welcome, and I simply learned better.  I realize the physical setup is not necessarily the only cause of those effects, but it's certainly one of them.  Following elementary teachers on Pinterest and Instagram has inspired me to make my classroom a better looking space, though I suspect I'll be asking for a lot of advice and guidance from them in the process.  That's okay too.

3. Teaching the Whole Child

This one isn't entirely our faults.  Most primary teachers start with a group of students and stay with them for a full year.  Most secondary teachers see their years divided into semesters & terms and their days divided into courses and periods.  Seeing 120 kids in a single day is by no means a rarity, and you might only see some of them for a couple of months in a year that is chopped into quarters.

Nevertheless, the most important thing we can do as educators is to connect with the kids in our rooms on a personal level.  Yes it's harder when they come and go so much.  Yes, it's hard when we feel the pressures of curricular goals and standardized testing looming over us.  But we need to fight that off and get to know our students on a personal level.

I've seen a few teachers toss out a statement on social media that goes something like this: "I teach students, not subjects."  It's getting to be a touch cliche, but I appreciate the sentiment.  We need to connect with our kids as humans, and not as IPP codes, or social stereotypes (jocks, etc.), or numbers in a grade book.  The moment we start stripping students of their humanity is the moment we license an administrator or a jurisdiction to strip us of ours.

4.  Exhibition

Whether it's with flashy bulletin boards, newsletters home, class performances, or projects to take back to mom and dad, primary teachers do a much better job at exhibiting the work of their students.  That's not to say we don't do this at all, but I think it's fair to say that we don't do it as much (at least not in the "core" subject areas -- my school's fine arts department would have some rather valid counterpoints to make here).  

I can't say enough about the importance of having students perform, exhibit, and share the work they do in school with others.  I have a whole other post coming that describes why the work has to matter more than the grade, so I won't get too carried away here, but exhibition is an important part of that concept.

Now you, dear high school teacher, might ask me "so you want me to hang the students' math worksheets on the walls?"  Nope.  No, I really don't.  I want us to find work for them to do that is worthy of hanging on the walls, taking home, and/or spreading to the world at large.  Again, that is the topic of a very different post.

5. Letting the Village Help Raise the Child

Volunteerism is alive and well in primary schools.  Granted in many schools it's mostly parents doing the volunteering, but for some reason that spirit all but vanishes in many communities by the time the high school years roll around.  I'll freely admit that the needs of a high school math class are substantially different than those of a kindergarten class (to say nothing of the average parent's potential to be of legitimate assistance in those two environments), but we still need to acknowledge that parent involvement in a lot of high schools is spartan at best.  Some of the blame may rest with moms & dads who are happy to finally be reclaiming some of their own lives back after years of bake sales and concerts, but there are plenty of parents who still want be involved, some desperately.  Does your school make it easy to find and make those connections?  Do you?

Beyond parents there are community members eager to share their expertise with students.  Doing a journalism unit in English?  Are there any journalists who might be able to share some insights?  Working on a projectile motion project in physics?  Is there an engineer who might be able to offer advice on student designs?  Making connections with the community and the world at large legitimizes the work we're asking our students to perform.  Finding outlets for parents to get more involved in the school community enriches the culture of the building and potentially affords teachers  the time to do the sorts of things that only we can really do.

6. Collaboration

Yes, I'm going to beat this dead horse some more.  Every grade level needs to ratchet this practice up more, but the primary folks are leading the way here.  Maybe they have a leg up because there is more uniformity in their practices than in ours, but whatever the reason, they're doing it better.  We need to get off our islands, get out of our comfort zones, and start dismantling the walls between subject areas and grade levels, even if it's just once in a while and only a little bit at a time.

In the early years of my teacher practice, I was very uncomfortable with opening my door to outsiders.  I didn't want them to see me for the fraud I often felt that I was as a teacher.  Yes, I did my job, but I often felt as though I didn't know how to do it well, and whatever accolades I received were as a result of what amounted to me as "smoke and mirrors."  I felt as though I was interspersing average teaching with little more than entertainment, and that I'd rather be seen as a good teacher than a bad one who was at least funny sometimes.

If you are like I was, suffering from what some call "Imposter Syndrome," you actually need to open your door more, not less.  The best way to get better at what you do is to talk openly and honestly with others who do the same kind of work, regardless of how much better or worse they are than you.  You need to see and be seen teaching, whether it's informally or formally.

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As teachers, as much as ever, we need to help build one another up and be supportive of each other.  This is a challenging job, and everyone who has stepped in front of a class is a kindred spirit.  Regardless of the age you teach, there is something to be learned and gained from interacting with other teachers.  Sometimes you'll be the one receiving the most benefit from these exchanges, and sometimes another person will.  But overall, our society and our world as a whole prospers when teachers get better at what they do and are more happy doing it.  Every single one of us has the ability to help bring out the best in one another, and in so doing we'll all be better at bringing out the best in our kids.

So I challenge you, dear reader, to listen first, to reserve your judgement, and to lead with compassion and kindness.

♥

Vive la revolution!!

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Are The Goals We Set for Our Struggling Learners Holding Them Back?

Dan is a 9th grade student who is into hockey, skateboarding, and horror flicks.  He has a handful of good friends, is crushing on a girl in his 3rd period math class, and can eat his body weight in cafeteria tater tots.  He also has a learning disability.  In grade 4 he was professionally assessed and diagnosed with ADHD.  His parents were told that because of limitations in his working memory, learning would be a challenge.

Dan's parents sat down with his teachers in elementary school who developed an Individualized Program Plan (IPP) to help support him in his learning.  With the help of aids, he was able to keep his head above water for the next few years, but things started going really sideways around grade 7.  He was failing classes and getting in trouble at school.  He stopped taking his ADHD meds, claiming they didn't help and that he "didn't need them and was stupid anyway, so what's the point."

As he entered high school, his IPP came along with him.  His four teachers in his four classes were given access to a digital version of the document and asked, without ever having met him, to craft some goals and expectations for this student.  They each read his background diligently and each of them make their level best attempt at writing some goals that are consistent with the background spelled out in the document and his grades history.  They write things like...

"Dan will self-advocate and identify instances where accessing accommodations will be of benefit."

"Dan will seek assistance from his classroom teachers and resource aids for help when encountering difficulties."

It is a Tuesday, and Dan has a science test.  He hasn't studied.  He hasn't handed in any of his homework from the unit.  He hasn't attended all of the classes in which the test material was covered.  He is anxious.  There is a knot in his stomach, and he can't keep his feet from wiggling.  He knows that he won't be able to focus on what the test will say, and he knows it would be easier if he moved to a quieter space.  He also knows that if he can hear the questions instead of reading them, that they'll make more sense.

But he also knows everyone in the room will look at him if he asks for anything.  He knows they'll think he's an idiot.  He knows they'll make fun of him later.  He knows that if he just sits there and says nothing, no one will look at him, no one will think badly of him, and no one will care that he doesn't understand any of what's on this test.

The teacher places the test in front of him and pauses for a moment.  He leans in and very quietly whispers,

"Dan, would you like to do this test in the resource room?"

Dan's heart is in his throat.  He can feel everyone staring at him.  His face flushes.

"No, I'm good... I-I'll be fine," he stammers.

The teacher lingers...

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fine."

Dan guesses on almost every question.  He fails.  Again.

*****

It sounds pretty bleak, but if you're thinking this is a rare and particularly fabricated tale, I'll just say that I wish it were so.  Tragically, I can admit that I have played the role of teacher in that tale, and I have taught a great many "Dans."

We come with the very best of intentions, but the execution is all too often simply not meeting the real needs of our kids.  And tragically, too many teachers, administrators, and systems people are not being sufficiently critical of their practices to move this in another direction.

We talk a pretty lofty and idealistic game about how we're going to help kids grow into strong, resilient, self-reliant young adults.  We craft high-minded phrases like "will self-advocate and identify instances" and "will seek assistance" when we imagine how students will climb that responsibility ladder and pull themselves out of intellectual poverty.  Unfortunately, those "goals" are too often the reason for why they can't or don't.

Whether it's a learning disability, a rough home life, an empty belly, or a health problem, kids are bringing hosts of factors beyond their control to school.  We might want them to have "grit," and we might hope they'll all take responsibility for their learning, but our wants and hopes don't make these things happen by themselves any more than theirs do.

It's time for us to own up to the reality that kids are falling through the cracks and that we're contributing to that.  Yes, they have homes, and lives, and histories, and genes that also contribute.  But those facts do not absolve us from doing what we can to make meaningful strides in helping the marginalized and struggling learners in our charge.

When our first conversations with challenged learners start with "goals" that our students had no hand in creating and that ultimately distill down to "try harder" or "figure it out for me," then we've failed them before they've even walked into the building.  Telling kids the only way they'll get help is to come ask for it, when it's already painfully obvious they need the help, is irresponsible.  We have a responsibility as educators to avoid creating barriers that keep kids from getting the help they need.  Heaping the responsibility for learning exclusively on to these students isn't going to build their resiliency, agency, or sense of self-advocacy.  It will (and does) build their resentment, self-loathing, and disenfranchisement.  It is our responsibility to be the care givers and to try to meet them where they are in order to help them forward, rather than to expect them to come on their own.

I won't pretend to have all the solutions.  I'm struggling with this as well, but here are a few suggestions I can offer:

• Make a very distinct point of making a personal connection with your struggling learners.  It may take longer to whittle away their walls than those of your gregarious classroom all-stars, but keep working on them.  If you can build trust, make them feel safe, make them feel cared for, you might be able to get them to drop the armor long enough to learn how best to help and support them.


• Find a way to generate one-on-one conversations with those students away from the ears and eyes of their peers.  Create private and personalized codes or signals as necessary with them so as to minimize exposure of their vulnerabilities.


• Constantly reflect on what's working and what's not for these students.  Don't assume that the accommodations that they showed up with are still serving their needs.  Try different approaches if things aren't working.  Do they need a reader?  Text-to-speech? A peer mentor or study buddy?  A different kind of desk or chair?  A meal?  A kind ear?  Don't let it leave your radar.  It's hard; I get it.  Schedule yourself an IPP check in your calendar if you think it'll fall off your plate.


• Reflect on the process by which your school generates IPPs (or whatever your particular jurisdiction calls this type of document).  Are students and parents directly involved in the creation and maintenance of these documents?  If not, become an advocate for changing that.


• Talk with the rest of the folks that teach and work with these kids to find out what they're doing and learning about them, especially the resource teachers who are specifically trained in working with kids sporting learning disabilities.  Get off the island and collaborate.


• Reflect and be critical of your practice.  Yes, accountability is a thing, and we want kids to learn to be accountable.  But that is one goal among many, and for some kids, it might not be the most important goal at that moment.  Don't let "holding kids accountable for their learning" be your "moral" justification for not helping them to learn.  Dig deeper.  Figure them out.  Ask for help if you need it, and don't be afraid to admit that you don't know what to do.  Most days neither do I.  Let's keep trying together.

For more information and resources, Alberta Education has an Inclusive Education Library that is very helpful: http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/ieptLibrary/index.html

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The Going Gets Tough - 7 Change Obstacle Dodging Strategies

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Before getting into this post, I'd like to take moment to share something based on a little constructive feedback I recently received...

While I do hope this blog will be read by others (for all of the psychological "payoffs" one would associate with authoring), the truth is that the main reason I write here is to distill and clarify my own thoughts on the process of bringing about positive change.  If you happen to find the use of the second person in my writing and my constant referring to you as the reader a bit presumptuous and forthright, please consider that for most of my writing the "you" I am communicating to in these posts is really, more than anyone else, me.

Thanks for reading.

- Jason

****

TL;DR: Change is hard, and most folks would rather dance with the devil they know than the one they don't.  Identify your obstacles before they show up, be clear about your purpose and your plan, and find both the emotional and intellectual reasons for your stakeholders to support it.

Imagine for a minute that a government transportation official came on TV one day and announced that they would be overhauling all of the rules and laws for driving on roads in order to reduce the frequency of traffic accidents.  Additionally, imagine they hadn't yet fully sorted out the new rules and in their "infinite wisdom" decided that until the new rules were established, all existing rules would be null and void.  Traffic signals & such would still be functional, but no one would be required to obey any of the existing signals or rules until new ones had been established.

Firstly, consider your emotional response to such a proposal.  Granted, the scenario is ludicrous, so a realistic emotional response may be unlikely, but if you can try to imagine how you (or anyone else) would react to such an announcement, could you honestly say that your response would be one of excitement or relief?  Probably not.

The concept is ridiculous for a number of reasons, but consider for a moment what might actually happen in the days immediately following such a radical announcement.  Do you imagine the roads suddenly becoming utter chaos?  I suppose it's possible, but I suspect that what would most likely happen is that the overwhelming majority of folks would simply continue doing what they have always done until they were told to do otherwise: stopping on red, and going on green.  We might all be a lot more mindful and observant of the other drivers around us, but most likely we'd try getting around with what we already knew and were used to.

One of the reasons this is so is because change, particularly change involving uncertain outcomes, is something that we are biologically wired to resist.  Changes, especially the unexpected or ones with uncertain outcomes, trigger our most basic survival instincts.  When we're running on instinct, we tend to operate on what we know, what is familiar, and what is safe.

Now take a moment to think about this in the context of educational reform.  A teacher (or a school or a jurisdiction) is challenged with making a radical change to their operating procedures in order to produce a particular set of outcomes.  If the change has never really been tried, the path to the outcome is uncertain and its achievement is far from guaranteed.  How do most people tend to react to this?

Leadership author, Brent Filson, describes the motivational patterns of individuals in an organization as following a 20-60-20 rule:  He postulates that roughly 20% of people are highly motivated, impactful, and able to adapt to organizational or environmental change with little to no disruption.  At the other end of the scale are the 20% of people who not only tend to get less accomplished, but may also sabotage (intentionally or otherwise) the performance of others.  The remaining 60% lie somewhere between these two extremes in terms of motivation and performance and are often influenced to lean more favorably toward one of the two 20% extremes depending upon how strong or dominant one polar group is relative to the other.

In the context of educational change, we can imagine a similar set of groupings.  Regardless of how well the case for change is made, you can typically divide educators into 3 orientations toward it:

Adopters are ready, willing, and able to make the shift right away.  This is our top group, and while they might not represent exactly 20%, they will still typically be in the minority.
Opposers are not only unready, but they are actively opposed to the change and will either openly or covertly resist it.  This is our bottom group and again, depending on the change, will still probably be in the minority.
What's left is that middle 60 (give or take a few points either way).  These folks could potentially wind up going in either direction, and often the motivational and influential tug-of-war that takes place between the two extreme groups will determine the direction in which the middle majority will head.

What's important to understand here is that the middle group, like a driver on roads suddenly without rules, feels best served by what they already know -- the status quo.

Those who actively oppose change get a leg up on the adopters because most folks, even if they might be inclined to head out on the roads and test the chaos (hopefully with far less potential for vehicular mayhem than rule-less roads), will still tend to lean toward what they already know how to do.  And of course, that is not change.  So whether we're talking about teachers implementing a new initiative, parents whose children are navigating unfamiliar teaching methods, or administrators implementing policy changes in a school or a jurisdiction, more people than not are going to tend to prefer the status quo to the untried and untested.  Eventually, even the best laid plans born from the best of intentions will come under scrutiny and opposition.

So let's assume that you, dear reader, are not only an adopter of change, but perhaps even an instigator of it.  You've got your idea or your plan, and you may even have some allies who want to spur changes along with you.  However, it has occurred to you, either by foresight or an encounter, that putting your plan into motion requires getting around, over, or through challenges or barriers put up by others who are not as convinced as you are that the plan is worth pursuing.

So I present to you 7 strategies for getting your change start-up past the roadblocks that might stymie or stall it before it ever gets off the ground.  Most of these strategies are suggested with that middle 60% group in mind.  It's not to say that you couldn't or shouldn't spend time and energy on the opposers.  It's just that once the masses are convinced, once the top 20 (of which you are a part) wins the tug-of-war, the nay-saying will no longer matter.  Even if leadership or gatekeepers are in opposition, once your plan becomes a movement of the masses, no one person can remain in opposition to the majority for long.

1.  Figure out who's going to care and why.

Some might call this a stakeholder map, but whatever you name it spending the time to sort out who the change is going to impact and how it will do so is a vital exercise.  It is also worth considering who has a stake in the implementation and/or the outcomes of your change and why they are going to care about it.  Change produces enough chaos on its own without needing help from confused and uncertain stakeholders.  Will colleagues be affected by your plan?  Which ones, and to what degree?  How about parents? Jurisdiction leaders?

Take time to have a real and honest conversation with your team about what impact your proposal will have on others.  The impact might very well be an overall positive one.  But even so, if your "rollout" gives the impression that you haven't considered others in your grand designs, it will be met with even more opposition.

It's also worth thinking about what each party will want to know and why they might object to your proposal.  This exercise will serve two purposes: Firstly, it will hopefully mitigate the risk of being caught off guard with a question or a concern for which you have no reasonable response.  Secondly, it may allow you to identify real problems with your plan before you pitch it to others.

2.  Be prepared to answer a question that will likely go unasked: "What's in it for me?"

We all want to be able to say that "we're in it for the kids."  However, one needn't look very far or hard to find structures or procedures in education that serve the adults in the system more than the students.  That may seem an indictment of public education, but in reality it is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that the people in education are just that: people.  To some extent we're all looking out for number one, even when we're trying to look out for our students.

When the winds of change start blowing, each and every one of us, whether by instinct or intent, tries to evaluate how the change will impact our own lives and our own practices directly.  When that impact is unclear, the reaction is no better than one to an impact that is clearly negative.

To avoid this reaction, consider what positive effect your proposal might have on the person or group you are pitching the idea to.  Certainly you can (and likely should) come armed with informational ammunition about how your approach will positively impact students and their learning.  But people will also want to know how your change will impact them.  Will this save them time, make them more effective at their jobs, reduce their stress levels, or solve a problem in their lives?  Find what their emotional payoff could or should be and spell that out.  If you can't find one, at the very least be able to offer them as clear a picture as possible of what the impact will be.

3.  Make sure you have a clear idea of what needs to be done along the way.

You can have the most glorious and well articulated end state in mind when you go to sell your idea, but if you can't show others that you've at least found the Yellow Brick Road, they'll be unlikely to believe that you're going to make it to The Emerald City.  Change requires new behaviors.  If you can't articulate what those new behaviors will be and how you will set about implementing them, they'll be less likely to accept that the results are achievable.

It's not enough to say "we're going to increase student engagement."  That's an outcome, and it's a worthwhile one to be sure.  What your stakeholders want to know is how you're going to increase student engagement.  If you can't articulate how you hope to achieve your goals, at a minimum you should be able to articulate how you plan to find out.

4.  Find examples.

There's a very reasonable chance that you're not the first person to try this new thing that you want to try.  Who else has done what you want to do?  Has it worked?  Can you show others that it worked and can you articulate why?  If possible, can you relate that narrative to others in the form of a story?  If so, you've got a compelling recipe for overcoming objections before they are ever raised.  So take the time to do your research.

5.  Call in the cavalry.

Who else would be interested in seeing this change move forward?  Is it consistent with the long range plans of your jurisdiction, your parent council, or your government?  Are there allies whose support or endorsement may lend weight to overcoming opposition?  This may be a delicate issue, so certainly tread with care, but is there a person or organization in a position of superiority or influence to your potential opposition who would be an effective ally?  Consider that you may need to develop a support base before bringing the change to a particular stakeholder.

6.  Can it be prototyped?

If what you're proposing is, in fact, too much for a school or a department to bite off in one move, consider whether it's possible to do what you want on a smaller scale in order to demonstrate its efficacy.  Does narrowing the time frame make it more manageable?  How about the number of students/staff involved?  Can you create a "school within a school" where those who want to opt in can do so without heavily impacting those who do not?  Having a Plan B ready to go that allows you to achieve modest steps forward may be the necessary alternative to simply being told "no."

7.  Be mindful and listen.

Education reimaginer Monika Hardy encourages us to notice, dream, connect, do.  The first step in that sequence is "notice."  In her context, she encourages us to notice the problems and the needs of the world around us and to work towards filling those needs.  In this context the problems and needs of your stakeholders will be communicated to you through both their support and their opposition.  Taking careful notice of those messages and considering them mindfully (as opposed to focussing strictly on your own agenda) will allow you to navigate the challenges you will face as you attempt to bring the vision into reality.

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Change is certainly hard, but whatever happens, stick with it.  Change author Seth Godin tells us that "the way we make change happen is by being human, by being connected, and by doing things that might not work."  It's OK that it might not work.  We know that keeping the things the same ultimately isn't going to work either.  So march on.

Vive le resistance!



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