In This Issue:

1. Self-awareness 101

2. Jon Saphier on high-expertise teaching and cultural proficiency

3. A roadmap for professional learning communities

4. Keys to effective team collaboration

5. Ideas for carving out time for teacher team meetings

6. What clickers can do for teaching and learning

7. The potential of repeated reading in elementary classrooms

8. Children’s books that respectfully portray people with disabilities

 

Quotes of the Week

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

            Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

            Steven Pinker in “The Bright Side” in Time Magazine, January 15, 2018,

            http://ti.me/2ETwYM2

 

“The quest for racial awareness and antiracist teaching should propel us to push back on negative stereotypes, correct distortions, and remedy omissions in our behavior and curriculum that stem from racism. Most powerfully, it should inspire us to ensure that if some students of color doubt themselves, it is our job to make them believe they can grow their ability and teach them how to act effectively from that belief. In the process, we will have to work hard to convince ourselves, since we are all, without exception, tainted by traces of racism and belief in the bell curve of ability.”

            Jon Saphier (see item #2)

 

“It is vitally important to consider who is represented, who is underrepresented, who is misrepresented, and who is ignored in literature.

            Ashley Pennell and David Koppenhaver (see item #8)

 

“With a tsunami of non-vetted content courtesy of the Internet, students, teachers, and parents are suffering the effects of unmitigated intellectual malnourishment… Our entire value system around information and what is factual has been forever altered by a white-noise construct that values the provocative over the precise.”

            Evan Lifer in “Five Ed-Tech Elephants” in School Library Journal, January 2018 (Vol.

64, #1, p. 12-13), http://bit.ly/2muvOz9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Self-Awareness 101

            In this Harvard Business Review article, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich says that people with good self-awareness are more confident and creative, communicate more effectively, build stronger relationships, make sounder decisions, and are less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. These insights came from four years of research with almost 5,000 subjects. An initial takeaway: although most people believe they are self-aware, only 10-15 percent really are. This led the researchers to look more closely at the whole subject. Three major findings:

• There are two ways of knowing ourselves. The first is internal self-awareness – how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, weaknesses), and impact on others. People with good internal self-awareness have higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness. Those with poor internal self-awareness are more prone to anxiety, stress, and depression.

The second is external self-awareness – understanding how other people view us on the dimensions above. Those with good external self-awareness are better at showing empathy and taking the perspective of others, and their colleagues have better relationships with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective.

Surprisingly, the researchers found virtually no relationship between internal and external self-awareness. Teasing out the permutations, they defined four types of leaders:

-   Seekers (low internal and low external self-awareness) – They don’t yet know who they are, what they stand for, or how their teams see them, and may feel stuck or frustrated with their performance and relationships.

-   Pleasers (low internal and high external self-awareness) – They can be so focused on appearing a certain way to others that they could be overlooking what matters to them, and over time make choices that don’t serve their own success and fulfillment.

-   Introspectors (high internal and low external self-awareness) – They’re clear on who they are but don’t challenge their own views or search for blind spots by getting feedback from others.

-   Aware (high internal and high external self-awareness) – They know who they are, what they want to accomplish, and seek out and value others’ opinions.

“The bottom line,” says Eurich, “is that self-awareness isn’t one truth. It’s a delicate balance of

two distinct, even competing, viewpoints.” The most effective leaders consciously cultivate both types.

            • Experience doesn’t improve self-awareness. Quite the contrary, as leaders became more experienced and powerful, their self-awareness became less and less accurate. “Contrary to popular belief,” says Eurich, “studies have shown that people do not always learn from experience, that expertise does not help people root out false information, and that seeing ourselves as highly experienced can keep us from doing our homework, seeking disconfirming evidence, and questioning our assumptions.”

Why does this happen? First, as people rise in the hierarchy there are fewer people above them who can provide candid feedback. Second, the more powerful a leader is, the less comfortable people are giving critical feedback (for fear of their own status). And third, as one’s power increases, one’s willingness to seek out and listen to feedback shrinks.

            “But this doesn’t have to be the case,” says Eurich. The most successful leaders in the study pushed back on all three tendencies: they actively sought feedback, encouraged those around them to speak honestly (they actually loved their critics!), listened, checked in with others when they got critical feedback, and continuously improved their internal and external self-awareness.

            • Introspection doesn’t always lead to self-awareness. It turns out that navel-gazers “are less self-aware and report worse job satisfaction and well-being,” says Eurich. But the problem isn’t with introspection itself; it’s that most people are doing it wrong. A prime example: asking “why” to understand our emotions:

-   Why don’t I like this person?

-   Why did I fly off the handle?

-   Why am I so against this idea?

“As it turns out,” says Eurich, “‘why’ is a surprisingly ineffective self-awareness question. Research has shown that we simply do not have access to many of the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives we’re searching for. And because so much is trapped outside our conscious awareness, we tend to invent answers that feel true but are often wrong… We tend to pounce on whatever ‘insights’ we find without questioning their validity or value, we ignore contradictory evidence, and we force our thoughts to conform to our initial explanation.” Sometimes anger or self-doubt is the result of something as simple as low blood sugar, but people caught in a self-awareness loop may obsess about their fears, shortcomings, and insecurities.

            A better self-awareness question than Why? is What? “‘What’ questions help us stay objective, future-focused, and empowered to act on our new insights,” says Eurich. A manager who hated his job didn’t ask himself, “Why do I feel so terrible?” Rather, he asked, “What are the situations that make me feel terrible, and what do they have in common?” The answers led him to quit his job and pursue a far more fulfilling career in another field.

            Eurich’s conclusion: “Leaders who focus on building both internal and external self-awareness, who seek honest feedback from loving critics, and who ask what instead of why, can learn to see themselves more clearly – and reap the many rewards that increased self-knowledge delivers. And no matter how much progress we make, there’s always more to learn. That’s one of the things that makes the journey to self-awareness so exciting.”

 

“What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)” by Tasha Eurich in Harvard Business Review, January 4, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it

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2. Jon Saphier on High-Expertise Teaching and Cultural Proficiency

            “There are many outstanding professional teachers at work in our schools, including those serving our most economically disadvantaged children,” says PD guru Jon Saphier in this article in The Learning Professional. “But there are simply not enough of them… The fundamentals of high-expertise teaching have not been provided to or expected of large portions of our teacher corps.” What’s missing in too many cases, says Saphier, is a good understanding at the federal, state, district, and school level of the complexity of teaching and the kind of continuous professional learning needed to bring everyone up to par.

            Saphier imagines a situation where a teacher tells you about a successful classroom practice that’s different from the one you’ve been using. If you believe there’s generally a right and a wrong way to teach something (the effectiveness or “best practices” paradigm), your reaction may be that this colleague is trying to show you up or is patronizing you. But if you view teaching as a vast repertoire of practices that need to be matched to individual classroom situations, you’ll have a different reaction: Hmmm, that’s an interesting alternative. I might want to try it. “That view of professional knowledge not only accepts the legitimacy of different ways of doing things,” says Saphier, “but also encourages debate and professional problem solving.”

            A crucial first step for principals, then, is shifting colleagues from the “best practices” to the “repertoire and matching” way of thinking. Step two is orchestrating team meetings in which teachers are constantly talking about what’s working and what’s not, based on assessment evidence. Step three is getting people to see beyond their silos: “Fully professional teachers,” says Saphier, “are leaders who take the initiative to influence colleagues toward ideas they value and move the school toward practices they believe will strengthen everyone.” This involves giving up some classroom autonomy in service of the greater good.

            Cultural proficiency is a particularly important area for professional development, Saphier continues, given the increasing percentage of students from the Caribbean, Central and South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. “Cultural improficiency in the classroom leaves students who are culturally and linguistically diverse feeling misunderstood and excluded,” he says. “Like all children in all schools, they need to feel known and valued to have their energy available for learning.” Among the proficiencies that need to be affirmed and developed in all teachers:

-   Curiosity and continuous learning about the cultures of all students;

-   Acknowledging and valuing cultures different from one’s own;

-   All students feeling valued and that they have a place in the classroom and school;

-   Curriculum, classroom artifacts, and instructional examples reflecting diverse cultures.

One problem is that discussions of culture are sometimes taken as an accusation of racism. “Racism is certainly a first cousin of cultural blindness and cultural improficiency,” says Saphier, “but it is profoundly different. Cultural improficiency arises from lack of interest, awareness, and respect for other cultures. It assumes the dominant white culture is just ‘normal.’ But racism comes from an ancient tradition of dominance and control,” he says. Some ways racism manifests itself in schools:

-   Views of intelligence as innate, fixed, and unevenly distributed by group;

-   Different educator behaviors toward students believed to be academically less able;

-   Tracking and disproportionate placement of students in special education;

-   Unequal application of discipline to some subgroups;

-   Microaggressions committed by unaware individuals;

-   Internalized racism in individuals belonging to marginalized groups;

-   Stereotype threat – the unconscious loss of performance edge based on racial cues.

“The quest for racial awareness and antiracist teaching should propel us to push back on negative stereotypes, correct distortions, and remedy omissions in our behavior and curriculum that stem from racism,” says Saphier. “Most powerfully, it should inspire us to ensure that if some students of color doubt themselves, it is our job to make them believe they can grow their ability and teach them how to act effectively from that belief. In the process, we will have to work hard to convince ourselves, since we are all, without exception, tainted by traces of racism and belief in the bell curve of ability.”

All this requires humble and skillful leadership by district officials, school principals, and teachers.

 

“The Equitable Classroom” by Jon Saphier in The Learning Professional, December 2017 (Vol. 38, #6, p. 28-31), e-link for members only http://bit.ly/2r55IHH; Saphier can be reached at [email protected].

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3. A Roadmap for Professional Learning Communities

            In this article in The Learning Professional, Anita Stewart McCafferty and Jeffrey Beaudry (University of Southern Maine) recommend a step-by-step process for teacher teamwork centering on three guiding questions (this is based on the work of Chappuis and Hattie):

• Where are we going?

-   Clear learning targets

-   Examples of strong and weak student work with criteria (rubrics)

• Where are we now?

-   Timely, descriptive feedback that directly affects learning

-   Student self-assessment and goal-setting

• What strategies will close the gap?

-   Teachers use evidence of student learning to decide on next steps

-   Focused practice and revision

-   Student self-reflection, tracking progress, and sharing learning with peers and others

McCafferty and Beaudry describe a professional development activity in which teachers from an entire district did a gallery walk of artifacts from each of the steps and made major gains in assessment literacy and team efficacy.

 

“The Gallery Walk: Educators Step Up to Build Assessment Literacy” by Anita Stewart McCafferty and Jeffrey Beaudry in The Learning Professional, December 2017 (Vol. 38, #6, p. 48-53), e-link for members only http://bit.ly/2Dkoe3Q; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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4. Keys to Effective Teacher Collaboration

            In this column in The Learning Professional, Stephanie Hirsh says five conditions are essential to effective teacher collaboration:

            • Clarity of purpose – School leaders communicate the belief that teamwork is the key to fostering continuous professional growth for all adults and effective teaching for every child.

            • Norms for respectful and productive teamwork – These include starting and ending meetings on time, respectful listening, limited birdwalking and agenda-hijacking, confidentiality, and trust.

            • Support – Teams need sufficient time to meet, a comfortable space, and access to help when it’s needed. “Not having to worry about fighting for resources enables teams to focus on what is most important to them,” says Hirsh.

            • Facilitation – Team leaders bring data and resources to the table, guide the discussion, get everyone engaged, listen,  bring closure, and follow through.

            • Focus on results – The team’s work is driven by one imperative: improving teaching practices and student learning in measurable ways.

 

“Let’s Make the Most of Teachers’ Time Together” by Stephanie Hirsh in The Learning Professional, December 2017 (Vol. 38, #6, p. 8), http://bit.ly/2EGOW3K; Hirsh can be reached at [email protected].

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5. Ideas for Carving Out Time for Teacher Team Meetings 

In this article in The Learning Professional, Anne Jolly lays out an extensive menu of ways to give teams time to meet during and after the school day:

• Bank time:

-   Lengthen the regular school day and save the extra minutes to create larger blocks of time for team meetings.

-   Start school 30 minutes earlier Monday through Thursday and dismiss two hours early on Friday to create a weekly block of time for meetings.

-   Schedule regular early-dismissal or late-start days.

-   Shave minutes off lunch and bank the time for team meetings.

-   Total the hours teachers meet after school and don’t require teachers to report to school for that amount of time on regularly scheduled teacher workdays (when practical).

• Buy time:

-   Use paraprofessionals to release teachers during the school day for meetings.

-   Hire a team of rotating substitute teachers to release teachers for meetings.

-   Hire one or two permanent substitute teachers to regularly free teachers to meet.

-   Schedule a team of substitute teachers for a day a week to release teachers on a rotating basis.

-   Hire more teachers, clerks, and support staff to expand or add teacher meeting time.

• Use common time:

-   Schedule common planning time for same-grade/same-subject teachers to meet.

-   Organize special subjects into blocks to create common time for teams to meet.

-   Schedule planning periods immediately before or after lunch to allow for double-period meeting time.

-   Create double planning periods in the schedule.

• Use resource personnel for student learning activities:

-   Get administrators teaching some classes to free up teachers for meetings.

-   Allow teaching assistants and/or college interns to monitor classes.

-   Pair teachers so one teaches while the other meets with colleagues.

-   Plan off-site student field trips and use the time for meetings.

-   Ask parent volunteers to monitor classes for an hour while teams meet.

-   Have professionals from local colleges, businesses, government agencies, and community agencies lead student activities and use the time for teacher meetings.

• Free teachers from non-instructional requirements:

-   Use non-homeroom teachers to occasionally perform homeroom duties to give teachers a block of before-school and homeroom time.

-   Reassign school personnel to allow teachers to meet during pep rallies and assemblies.

-   Reassign non-instructional clerical and management tasks so teachers have more time to focus on instruction and collaboration.

• Add professional days to the school year:

-   Create multi-day summer learning institutes for in-depth PD.

-   Create a midyear break for students and use those days for teacher learning.

• Use existing time more effectively:

-   Put routine announcements in newsletters and/or e-mails to staff and reserve faculty meetings for professional learning,

-   Provide shorter, more-frequent meetings by spreading time from existing planning days across the calendar.

 

 

“Team Basics” by Anne Jolly in The Learning Professional, December 2017 (Vol. 38, #6, p.

63-68), drawn from Jolly’s book, Team to Teach: A Facilitator’s Guide to Professional

Learning Teams (National Staff Development Council, 2008), no e-link available

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6. What Clickers Can Do For Teaching and Learning

            In this article in Edutopia, John Rich (Delaware State University) gives six reasons for using audience response devices in classrooms, whether clickers or free programs like Poll Everywhere that allow students to use their phones as response devices.

            • Teachers can get a response from every student. In all too many classrooms, only a few students engage in discussions and, says Rich, “The teacher has no idea what’s brewing in the minds of the students.” After asking a well-framed clicker question, the teacher can get immediate data on students’ thinking and how well the content is getting across. Students can’t hide.

            • Students are more active and engaged. The fact that clicker questions are anonymous takes the risk out of getting a wrong answer, and the public display of the whole class’s data increases students’ curiosity about how their responses compare to those of classmates.

            • There’s increased motivation to understand the material. Students who want to do well will more readily grapple with questions because they’ll get immediate feedback on where they stand. Students can also be encouraged to discuss questions in dyads or small groups.

            • Questions help students clarify their thinking. Errors are powerful sources of information and nudge students to correct misconceptions and learning problems. Most important, the question-answer-feedback loop can prevent students from walking out of a class with incorrect information. As one student said: “The questions are either a confidence builder or a wake-up call.”

            • Devices can be seen as part of the learning process. In classrooms where students’ devices are forbidden, being asked to use them as part of instruction can be exciting and motivating.

            • The process can do a lot for the teacher. Formulating clicker questions up front focuses attention on essential content and skills and how best to assess mastery; seeing students’ responses provides immediate feedback on what’s understood and what’s not; and clicker data guide mid-course corrections, important corrections and clarifications, and productive discussions.

 

“Polling Students to Check for Understanding” by John Rich in Edutopia, December 14, 2017,

https://www.edutopia.org/article/polling-students-check-understanding; Rich can be reached at [email protected].

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7. The Potential of Repeated Reading in Elementary Classrooms

            In this article in The Reading Teacher, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher (San Diego State University) note that young children’s frequent “Read it again!” demand after hearing a favorite book morphs into “We read it already!” within a few years of arriving in school. This is too bad, say Frey and Fisher, since it’s well established that repeated reading is an excellent way to build fluency, comprehension, and confidence. What’s going on here?

The researchers observed 22 classrooms from kindergarten through sixth grade in six elementary schools and noticed teacher practices that inadvertently turned students off rereading and repeated reading:

• Not referring to print during shared reading – When students were discussing a story, teachers seldom insisted that they look back at the text to check for accuracy, answer a question, or confirm an important detail. “Rereading can be devalued during a shared reading lesson when questions are not text-dependent,” say Frey and Fisher, “and the rush to discussion takes precedence over slowing down to reread.”

• Rereading for narrow purposes – When teachers got students rereading passages only to increase their reading rate, they inadvertently conveyed the message that comprehension wasn’t important: “After all, if the teacher didn’t seem to care about my understanding, thinks the student, why should I?”

• Privileging novelty in independent reading – Teachers knew how important it was to get students reading a lot, but Frey and Fisher observed a number of occasions when students wanted to reread a beloved book and the teacher discouraged them (“You read that already”), telling them to choose a new book. “Any dedicated reader will tell you about the pleasure of returning to a book that he or she has read before,” say Frey and Fisher, “enjoying it for different reasons each time.”

They believe step one is for teachers to be aware of the ways in which they might be inadvertently discouraging students from rereading and repeated reading. Step two is using these ways to enhance the power of repeated reading and keep students engaged:

-   Change the task and purpose. A teacher might tell students to listen for one detail on the first reading of a passage and a second upon rereading, or might ask students to annotate the text during the second reading.

-   Ask really good questions. Teachers can use rereading to get students thinking about a word, phrase, or passage at a deeper level.

-   Press for evidence. “Young readers tend to rely on memory and recall rather than textual evidence if not asked to do so,” say Frey and Fisher. “Asking follow-up questions that require students to locate evidence facilitates rereading.” Asking Where did you find that? and How do you know? slows students down and gets more of them involved in the discussion.

-   Provide an audience. This can motivate students by providing a purpose and fresh listeners. Readers Theatre is one effective approach, especially with passages that have dialogue.

 

“Addressing Unintended Instructional Messages About Repeated Reading” by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher in The Reading Teacher, January/February 2018 (Vol. 71, #4, p. 441-449),

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1617/abstract; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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8. Children’s Books That Respectfully Portray People with Disabilities

            In this article in The Reading Teacher, Ashley Pennell and David Koppenhaver (Appalachian State University) and Barbara Wollak (University of St. Thomas/St. Paul) say that well-chosen children’s books can act as mirrors (reflecting kids’ own thoughts, feelings, and experiences), windows (opening new worlds through characters’ experiences and responses), and doors (transporting them into adventure, fantasy, and mystery). “It is vitally important,” say Pennell, Wollak, and Koppenhaver, “to consider who is represented, who is underrepresented, who is misrepresented, and who is ignored in literature. When books painting diverse and accurate portraits of the incredible range of ability and disability are not available to students, we must question what we are teaching them about who is valued and what is important.”

The authors did a systematic search for picture books that depict people with disabilities in a respectful way, using these criteria:

-   Easy to read – third-grade readability or below, accessible to students in upper elementary grades who are reading below grade level;

-   Not overly didactic – the character with a disability is not pitied or patronized;

-   Respectful language portraying characters with disabilities as rich and complex individuals who are defined by more than their disability;

-   An interesting and engaging story line involving characters with depth;

-   Readily available from booksellers and public libraries.

The authors’ initial search identified 700 fiction and 1,100 nonfiction books, which they narrowed down to a much smaller number. Below is a sampling of the best they found. “Each book,” say the authors, “has the potential to transcend the disability category and could be enjoyed, and learned from, by all students.”

• King for a Day by Rukhsana Khan (2014) – Malik, a boy in Pakistan who uses a wheelchair, struggles with a bully and hopes to become the best kite fighter in Lahore.

• Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson (2015) – A boy in Ghana is born with a physical disability but hops the two miles to and from school, learns to play soccer, and eventually bicycles 400 miles across Ghana.

            • The Snow Rabbit by Camille Garoche (2015) – In this wordless book, two sisters, one using a wheelchair, watch snow falling outside their window; one goes out and makes a snow rabbit, brings the snow sculpture inside, and when it starts to melt, they go outside and play and the magic begins.

            • El Deafo by Cece Bell (2014) – This autobiographical graphic novel tells how the author lost her hearing at age 4, struggled to read lips and decipher sounds through her hearing aid, sought friendship, and imagined herself as El Deafo, a superhero who was able to hear everything.

            • Miss Little’s Gift by Douglas Wood (2009) – An autobiographical picture book about a boy with ADHD who has difficulty learning to read. With the help of a caring teacher, Douglas finds a book that interests him and discovers the joy of reading.

            • Kami and the Yaks by Andrea Stenn Stryer (2007) – A young Sherpa boy, who is deaf and unable to speak, races a big storm in the Himalayas to rescue a group of yaks who strayed from their owners.

            • A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz (2014) – A true story of a boy who spent his school years in a special classroom because of his stuttering. His teachers believe he’s incompetent, but he finds his voice through imaginary conversations with animals and becomes a strong advocate for wildlife conservation.

            • I’m Here by Peter Reynolds (2011) – A boy with autism is isolated but fully aware of his surroundings. Sitting in a playground, he makes a paper airplane and launches it into flight, and the plane is returned by a girl who may become a new friend.

            • Skateboard Sonar by Eric Stevens (2010) – A graphic novel about a skateboard competition in which Matty, who is blind, wins the competition against several bullies, showing that “seeing isn’t everything.”

            • My Three Best Friends and Me, Zulay by Cari Best (2015) – Zulay is a blind girl who is included in a regular education classroom. She and three of her best friends debate which field day events to take part in, and Zulay ends up running a race with the help of her friends.

            • Zoom by Robert Munsch (2003) – Lauretta needs a new wheelchair and chooses a 92-speed dirt-bike model and takes it home for a trial run despite her mother’s misgivings. Then the real adventures begin.

 

“Respectful Representations of Disability in Picture Books” by Ashley Pennell, Barbara Wollak, and David Koppenhaver in The Reading Teacher, January/February 2018 (Vol. 71, #4, p 411-419), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1632/abstract; the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

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