processing/reflection from today's training

Today I attended a presentation by Sue Szachowicz on “Leadership Lessons Learned the Hard Way.” I was lucky enough to be invited by Mrs. Aldrich to attend, along with Mrs. Green (6^th grade Math) and Mrs. Elliott (7^th grade Science). I will admit that I was under the impression that the discussion would focus upon the Common Core State Standards, but it was only mentioned once. Nonetheless, the day was productive and the presentation was insightful.

Since the presentation didn’t start until 9:00, and I usually get to work by 6:30, I had a lot of time in the morning at home to be productive. So, I set up a diigo account and updated my Evernote app. I played around with the diigo account on my MacBook, and made sure it synced well with my iPad. I did the same with the Evernote app. This meant that I was very happy as I walked in to the White River Conference Center; even if I wasn’t sure about the presentation, at least the day would prove to be a good opportunity for me to test out the new/renewed technology tools from my morning.

As I said, the presentation by Mrs. Szachowicz proved to be insightful. She provided electronic downloads of her presentation slides, which I downloaded to my Evernote app. This allowed me to easily keep up with her fast pace. I also used the Evernote app to take a few notes, disorganized and jumbled as they are, I think I could piece a coherent summary together, if necessary. I used the diigo add-on within Safari to bookmark a two Amazon pages on books, and one PBS article/video on Brockton High, where Mrs. Szachowicz worked. Overall, I would say that I used my technology tools effectively and efficiently through the day.

By the afternoon the battery was running low, and so I only used the iPad when necessary. Throughout the day I was able to visit and talk with several old teaching buddies who I had not seen for some time. Overall, I feel like it was a successful day on two fronts, the second front being the encouragement I received in hearing Mrs. Szachowicz’s story and the brief discussion at my table.

What I most valued from the day was not my experiment with my new/renewed tech tools, but the clear and specific message Mrs. Szachowicz shared about her own experiences in “turning around a failing school.” Led by teachers in the building, the school implemented a literacy program with laser-like focus and monitored their progress like crazy. This story speaks of courage by teachers, trust among teachers, hard work by teachers, and wisdom by teachers. Certainly Mrs. Szachowicz tells of vivid disagreements throughout the implementation, roadblocks that came in the form of fellow faculty members, students, money for resources, and time. And still they plugged away, because they surely also held a strong belief in the work they were doing. The work paid off too. The students came to realize that the teachers were a unified front, focused on their success. And as the teachers were found successful in their efforts to work with each other to improve their own practices, the students likewise were found successful in their efforts to learn and use what the teachers were teaching.

I would love to get together with fellow teachers at Pleasant View, both middle school and elementary teachers, in order to develop a cross-categorical method for teaching students to write effective Constructed Response answers and longer informational/expository/argumentative essays. I would love to also develop a standard scoring guide used across all classrooms when scoring Constructed Response answers and those longer informational/expository/argumentative essays. I would love to also develop a standard strategy/procedure for students when they read questions: to effectively identify the task, to clarify what they need to know and do to complete the task, and to identify and leverage any expository information provided that might help them complete the task. As an English teacher, I would love to see something like this spread across the entire district.

The truth is, though, that we’re in a big, bureaucratic district. We’ve got many, many schools, with lots of different teachers and administrators who all have their own personal ideas and agendas. And we’ve got lots of really important administrative people who really make the big, hard decisions, and they have their own ideas and agendas as well. Pleasant View is little, and far away, and doesn’t have the opportunity to make these types of decisions. Brockton High, where Mrs. Szachowicz worked, was able to accomplish great and positive change because teachers were leaders in purposeful professional development that was adaptive to the desires of a site-based committee. That doesn’t happen in Springfield. Or, if it does, I have never seen it happen. Could it happen? Yeah, I do think it could. Would it be easy? Certainly not; Mrs. Szachowicz shared many-a-story about the roadblocks and obstacles. Would it be beneficial to students? I think it would.

Where I go from here, I’m not quite sure. I’m motivated to participate in something, should that indescribable opportunity arise. I’m fearful though, that it may never happen, or if it does, I won't see it in order to take full advantage. 

grit - from Mind/Shift and the Department of Education

I enjoy reading the Mind/Shift blog on KQED’s website. Recently a featured article included a topic—grit—that I have been reading quite a bit about and promoting among my team of teachers. Ms. Long and I have had some very rich conversations regarding how essential the skill is to success in class, but I think we are still both very much in need of further understanding regarding how the skill might be developed in our students.

My introduction to the idea of grit came when I discovered the work of Angela Duckworth, who I first heard about on Daniel Pink’s Office Hours podcast with Paul Tough. I shared Angela Duckworth’s Ted Talk on her research on grit with Ms. Long, and we’ve even discussed sharing it with our students. I think, in both our minds, helping the students become aware of this noncognitive skill can help us to have conversations with the students about its importance. Still, how to teach it or develop it is a bit beyond us, or at least me.

This brings me back to the Mind/Shift article by Tina Barseghian. First, I highly recommend to anyone who might take the time to read this post that you also take the time to read the original article. Second, it makes me terribly happy to see mindset take a prominent and early role in the promotion of grit. In my mind, mindset and grit are highly connected cognitive-noncognitive skills. Yes, I consider them each a skill—an ability evidenced by one’s performance. Finally, I’m similarly happy to see willpower mentioned within the realm of grit development. It seems to me that the term willpower has become more popular than my traditional favorite—self-control. Regardless, from my own experiences, willpower/self-control is conceptually so very important to success throughout life, including school.

The final section in the article, which is an excerpt from the Department of Education’s full report, is probably most important to an overly excited novice like myself. It seems to me that there should be a real fear of misuse or misattribution of the term grit, or that grit as a term could become something much more unwieldy through the connotation that it takes on. Grit is becoming a new, popular term in education, but if it balloons in popularity and does not remain grounded in the research from whence it came, it could lose all meaning altogether. 

I’ve watched Angela Duckworth and read some of her research. I’ve read other articles on grit and perseverance. I’m going to read the full report from the Department of Education. I’ve read Mindset by Carol Dweck and Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. That may sound like I’ve read a lot, but really I haven’t. And even though I’ve tried to, when time allows, immerse myself in this topic, I could have a really poor understanding of it. And even though I believe it, through personal and anecdotal evidence, I could be completely off base.

I’m a middle school English teacher. I read as much as I can. I observe my students and reflect upon my own practices as a teacher. I don’t think that gives me the knowledge, wisdom, or discernment to determine which students show grit and which don’t. And I don’t think that provides me the ability to now integrate grit development into the curriculum. But after having experienced some pretty diverse learning situations myself, and now in my seventh year of teaching, I think I do get to make some observations, or at least ask some questions.

The only observation I will currently contribute is my belief that school, especially elementary and middle school, is a developmentally rich time in a child’s life, and ignoring the importance of the noncognitive is foolish.

To argue that schools/teachers should only measure, in the form of grades, a student’s knowledge is ignorant of the fact that the measurement will inherently include noncognitive factors (page four has a nice, easy-to-understand graphic). And to argue that schools/teachers should only measure, in the form of grades, a student’s knowledge is ignorant of the job market our students will be entering.

Perseverance is almost always the first word used to define grit. I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t had to persevere to learn something, from my youngest memories to last week. Nothing has come easy for me. When my mom had me practice my addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division flash cards, I had to persevere until I learned the facts. (I will leave the discussion of the importance of facts to those more inclined to believe that every person has a smartphone/tablet/computer with high speed internet, and knows how to ask the right questions to get the right answers, and has all day to do it.) Now I don’t have to persevere when I figure the tip or tax on a bill, but there once was a time when I did have to persevere. Noncognitive factors played a role in the formation of my cognitive proficiency. When I have to create a data table in Excel in order to analyze the data created from a Performance Series Assessment, I often have to persevere with the program and with my own memory in order to make the tools do as I wish. It’s a slow process. It’s a process that I am compelled to do, one which I do not do voluntarily. Noncognitive factors enable me to see the task through to the end, when my cognitive abilities slow me down or otherwise fail me.

This leaves me with a few questions.

Is it possible to point to grit being manifested through a student’s actions? I can point to a metaphor that a student has written on a piece of paper. I can point to a student displaying the proper form of a throw-in in soccer. Can I point to a student showing grit? Is it a single moment in time? Is it the display of certain actions over time? If it is the display of certain actions over time, do we then call it a process? If it is a process, does that change our stance toward assessment, especially assessment which only allows for a single, defined attempt?

Maybe, most importantly: If it is possible to point to grit, can it then be taught or developed?

And just for fun, let’s follow this rabbit hole. For all those feigning concern (lawmakers, talking-heads, statisticians) out there—if it can be taught, how will it be assessed? If it can be assessed, what company will get the contract for the development and scoring of the assessments? If it can be assessed, how will we remediate those who can’t pass the assessment? If it can be assessed, what company or guru will develop the professional development books/training on it, so that teachers can be taught how to properly teach it? If it can be assessed, how will teachers be held accountable for not properly teaching it? If it can be assessed, what national program that ties funding to the assessment results can be developed in order to motivate state departments of education to do what the federal government wants them to do? If it can be assessed, and if a national program can be developed, what lobbying groups will hold sway over the lawmakers and what corporations will fund the talking heads in order to influence public opinion on the matter?

No, not all of those questions are important or valid. But if the Department of Education is putting out a 107 page document on the topic, I’m quite confident somebody has something in the works. I just want to see how it can help improve me as a teacher and help my students have a better life. Is that too romantic? 

pictures and poetry project feedback

We recently finished the Pictures and Poetry Project, and were able to take a class to share all of our awesome work. Students provided feedback regarding their favorite picture and poem combinations, recognizing fellow students for good work. Students also provided feedback regarding the process they went through in order to create their picture and poem combinations, along with their overall feelings and input regarding what they enjoyed about the process and what they would change.

Below you can find some of the student responses. As I have previously done, I've highlighted a few of my favorites.

·         I personally loved doing this project, but I would have enjoyed it much more if we did it individually. I really liked doing this!

·         I loved it!! No changes!! Very fun!! Loved having a partner!!!

·         I really enjoyed this project, and the project helped me learn how to write poetry.

·         I really liked the project. It gave us all a chance to be creative. I really wouldn’t change anything.

·         I don’t like poetry, but with this project I actually liked to create poetry.

·         I loved this. I’m not good at writing poems but this is a lot of fun.

·         The things I wished we would have done different would have been more creative with how we put the stanzas on the picture.

·         I liked being able to work with a partner.

·         I think we could have been more creative with our poems.

·         The project was fun but I would have liked to pick my partner and used my own pictures.

·         We should have been able to get our pictures off the internet and been able to pick our teams.

·         I like picking our own teams. I wish we could have gotten our own pictures.

·         I wish we made ours longer instead of just 3 and 4 lines.

·         I wish I would have spent a little bit more time on my poem, and picture choice because I don’t think I gave it my best effort.

·         Maybe next time let us pick partners. I was lucky to sit by a friend but if I wasn’t sitting by a friend then I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much.

·         I kind of wish I had a different partner, just because I’ll have someone I can talk to without it being awkward.

·         I liked this project a lot! It gives you a chance to collaborate with other people and get new ideas.

·         I wish I could have wrote more poems that meant something, and were deeper than writing about mustaches.

·         I like this project but I would have liked to pick my pictures.

·         I loved this project! Everything about it was awesome!

·         I would like to pick my partner, and I loved using the computer. Even though I don’t like poetry. I kind of like this project.

·         I wish we would have put more time into our poem because our poems did not rhyme or have repetition.

·         I liked that I didn’t have to come up with the poems all by myself, but I would have liked to choose our partners. I also liked that we used pictures for inspiration, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to come up with a poem without the pictures!

·         I liked using smartnotebook, on the computer for this assignment; I also liked working with Elie very much, because she helped me with the revision of some of my poetry. Elie also helped pick out some of the pictures for the backgrounds, and she wrote two poems that we could have used. All in all, I enjoyed the assignment, due to the partner I was working with. I did not enjoy the assignment, because it involved poetry and I don’t like poetry.

·         I enjoyed this activity. I always enjoyed working on the computers. This activity also helped me understand poems structure. This helped me immensely.

·         I really liked this project, as I enjoy writing poetry. I also really liked working with a partner, I got to find out how they thought a bit.

·         I liked working with a partner, but I would want to pick my partner next time. I feel my team did well and we worked together very well.

·         I really liked doing this. I think it was more challenging on my own. I would’ve loved to have a partner.

·         GarciaHodges_2: its an acronym and its really meaningful. I liked how the text matches the picture’s letters.

·         There is nothing that could make me wish I have done something different with my poems, because they are the poems that I had made and nothing could be more special than that.

If you're interested in seeing the work the students created, come by the classroom and I'll show you. Unfortunately, various soul-crushing time-takers stop us from fully publishing the student work on the web. Hopefully you can enjoy the student feedback, which seems to be more important than the actual work itself.

Elements of Style

Today I went to Hooked on Books and sold three books, two of which I remember: Sharp, by David Fitzpatrick, and 1421 by Gavin Menzies. I purchased two books: The Elements of Style, fourth edition, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, and The Elements of Grammar, by Margaret Shertzer.

I immediately began reading The Elements of Style. So immediately, in fact, that I read it in the car on my way to Redeemed Music and Books, where I was hoping to sell two NOOMA DVDs, which I unfortunately did not.

I read the “Forward” by Roger Angell in the car, not wholly on the road, and have now just finished the “Introduction” while sitting at the safety of my kitchen table. Both short sections are worthy of my processing.

I’ve known of The Elements of Style for some time and, like many other students, was required to purchase and use it in class—whether middle or high school, I cannot remember. It was not until today, as I was reading the “Forward,” that I made the connection between E. B. White, the coauthor of this short book, and E. B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web. I also did not know that E. B. White was an essayist, but I am now motivated to dig up his old commentaries for The New Yorker.

The “Introduction” is by E. B. White, and was written for the 1979 edition. It begins with a retelling of White’s experiences in an English 8 class taught by William Strunk Jr. My strongest personal connection came near the end, as White wrote:

Style rules of this sort are, of course, somewhat a matter of individual preference, and even the established rules of grammar are open to challenge. Professor Strunk, although one of the most inflexible and choosy of men, was quick to acknowledge the fallacy of inflexibility and the danger of doctrine.

This explanation is, in my mind, so pivotal a point for any reader of the book to maintain. Strunk was clearly a particular fellow, with very clear and specific expectations for writing English, but, apparently, even he recognized that the “rules” he put forth are not “rules” to the extent that English teachers, like myself, currently teach “rules.” These rules are strong suggestions that any person who so desires to be a good writer could and should follow, evidenced by looking to good writing.

Why then, are these considered rules? Because when we look to good writing, this is what we see. Yes, occasionally these rules are broken, or ignored, or disregarded. But always, if studied closely enough, intentionally and thus for some effect.

This brings me to my second observation from the “Introduction.” Strunk was, as I see myself, very much a man sold on confidence—whether real or fake. White describes Strunk as a man who “scorned the vague, the tame, the colorless, the irresolute.” So, as Strunk might recognize that his rules are flexible, he would in no way present them as such. As a further illustration, White describes a class in which Strunk instructed his students to loudly mispronounce a word, if the correct pronunciation were unknown. “This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?”

I love the last question. It’s as if to say: “if you’re going to be wrong, and you know it, do it convincingly.” I rephrase, in my mind, this way: “Own whatever you do—right or wrong. Always do what you believe is right, and do it confidently. But when told otherwise, take heed.”

So, as I go about my duties as an 8^th grade English teacher, I hope to learn from Strunk and White. I hope to gain insight for myself and for my students. And I hope to become a better writer and teacher along the way.

I make every commitment to be clear in my presentation, lofty in my expectations, stern in my corrections, and loud in my celebrations. I will own every bit of my instruction, and take heed when told otherwise. I will hold myself to a high standard, and when unmet, I hope those around me will be kind enough to instruct me otherwise. 

feedback - some readings and some questions

I try to read as much as possible, and I generally process the reading through writing. I don’t always offer it up here, on the school blog, but this is one of those times when I will.

At the beginning of the year, teachers were notified that we would be trained in the SPS Learning Model, which seems to be highly founded upon the work of John Hattie in his book Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. We were also given Hattie’s follow up book, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. I haven’t been able to read all of Visible Learning for Teachers, or I guess I should say that I haven’t chosen to spend my time reading it, since I do choose to read other books. Nonetheless, one of the ways that we as a school have decided to maximize our impact on learning is through implementing various feedback strategies.

Feedback was a term that I had previously heard bandied about, but now it has become ubiquitous in use, even among students. Rather than asking for “student input” or “ideas,” and rather than offering up “things to think about” or “redirecting,” we asked students for “feedback” and provided our own “feedback” to the students. I guess I have to admit that it came as a pretty significant surprise that teachers would be seeking feedback from students on a regular basis, regarding skills students had not learned yet or processes in which students were not practiced.

I’ll be honest, in all of the books that I have read that address feedback, I haven’t come across any that consider students or learners offering feedback to teachers or instructors. Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better and Getting Better by Doug Lemov, Katie Yezzi, and Erica Woolway, has a whole section dedicated to feedback, but not once can I recall feedback going from student to teacher. Geoff Colvin, in Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, writes about feedback from a chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, a business mentor, within a music model regarding practice, but never from a student to teacher.

I also regularly check the Harvard Business Review website for interesting blog articles. On Friday, after 3.5 hours of professional learning, much on the topic of feedback, I found a blog on that same subject: “Sometimes Negative Feedback is Best” by Heidi Grant Halvorson. In the blog, Dr. Halvorson references studies by Stacey Finkelstein and Ayelet Fishbach. Finkelstein and Fishbach’s research on feedback is very instructive to me, and Dr. Halvorson does a great job of boiling down the most important parts. From her Harvard Business Review blog post:

Positive feedback (e.g., Here's what you did really well....) increases commitment to the work you do, by enhancing both your experience and your confidence. Negative feedback (e.g., Here's where you went wrong....), on the other hand, is informative — it tells you where you need to spend your effort, and offers insight into how you might improve.

            …

           

When you don't really know what you are doing, positive feedback helps you to stay optimistic and feel more at ease with the challenges you are facing — something novices tend to need. But when you are an expert, and you already more or less know what you are doing, it's negative feedback that can help you do what it takes to get to the top of your game.

Here’s something pretty funny. When I was reading the original blog post, I stopped immediately when I saw the reference to the research by Finkelstein and Fishbach. I love research, and I love going to original sources. So that’s what I did. I googled “Stacey Finkelstein” and found her school homepage, which had links to three papers she had coauthored on feedback. I’ve only read one of the papers, “How Positive and Negative Feedback Motivate Goal Pursuit,” which she coauthored with Ayelet Fishbach and Tal Eyal. And this isn’t even the paper that Dr. Halvorson references.

So I didn’t even finish the blog until after I had read the paper that wasn’t even referenced therein. That’s pretty funny, if you ask me. But other than being funny, it makes me think I need to approach feedback differently, when discussing, conferencing, and scoring my student work.

Here’s a bit of my internal dialogue after finally finishing reading both articles:

• Are my students always novices? If so, should I never give negative feedback?
• Most students are novices in the skills I’m practicing with them. My philosophy, and my students should know this, is that we’re NEVER FINISHED reading, writing, or practicing the many different skills utilized while reading or writing.  
• By 8^th grade, most students are experts at being students. They know how to “do” school really well. Some of them do school really well by showing they’re really smart. Some of them do school really well by showing they’re really good students. Some of them do school really well by showing they’re really good athletes. Some of them do school really well by showing they’re really good at having friends and entertaining people. In all of these situations, they’re experts at school.   
• If I know a student is a novice in a certain situation—combining sentences, forming the structure of haiku, analyzing an argument—then I should probably not give negative feedback. Yeah, that makes sense. If I have a new student who doesn’t know how to use the system at our school for checking out books in the library, then they’re a novice. Negative feedback won’t work in that situation.
• Are my students ever experts? Is this how I can justify giving negative feedback?  
• See bullet two from previous questions.   
• Sometimes, some students are experts at a skill while others are still novices. That’s why we also receive training in differentiated instruction, although it seems that idea isn’t as popular as it used to be. So, those students who are experts seem to need negative feedback, and also seem to be able to handle it.   
• I guess if I’m unsure, I probably shouldn’t give negative feedback.   
• What’s it take to become an expert? When is the transition from novice to expert? Is it visible? Or audible?
• Seriously, what is feedback?   
• Sometimes, I think I just teach. This looks and sounds different depending upon lots of factors. It always has the same goal, or desired end result, but it doesn’t always follow the same process, or predictable means.   
• Sometimes I have to grade, even though I call it “scoring.” And when I score, I identify what students have done well and what they have done incorrectly. I recognize the cool stuff with smiley faces or check marks or positive comments. I point to the incorrect stuff with circles and arrows, and then I write how to fix the problem.   
• Sometimes, unfortunately, when a student is doing something distracting or problematic in the classroom, I have to correct. I usually want this to happen privately, one on one, but it’s not always that way. A lot of times I’m pretty sure the students know what the right thing to do is, they just happened to have stopped thinking, because they’re 14. When I was 14 I often stopped thinking too. They, just like I did, sometimes need someone to snap them out of that loop so they can realize what’s going on. Usually, then, they can get things together.    
• So, seriously, what is feedback? Is all that feedback? If it is, then this whole thing feels like some greedy teacher/administrator/writer/editor guy looking to make some money before retirement, so he comes up with a new phrase that everybody trendy now wants to use. Is none of it feedback? If that’s the case, then I’ve missed something terribly.
• How come my school keeps emphasizing that I need to get feedback from my students, but nobody is writing about that? Is that really a thing? Or is this just another name for CQI?    
• I don’t know how to answer this one. Certainly it must be a thing, because I guess Hattie may have written about it, and a big school district wouldn’t just make up something, just because.   
• I’ve heard people talk about this CQI connection, but I’m not sure what to make of it. I guess I’m naïve and believe that dressing the wolf in sheep’s clothing is a cheap way to achieve anything.