In This Issue:

  1. The secret life of shy people

  2. Strategies to prevent and deal with bullying

  3. How to get the most out of small-group math conversations

  4. The continuum from teacher-controlled to student-centered learning

  5. Personalizing homework

  6. A personalization skeptic

  7. Distinguishing personalization, differentiation, and individualization

  8. How not to lead a school

  9. Why administrators should make time to teach

10. Short item: A graphic display of immigration history

 

Quotes of the Week

“If I had to name one feeling that I associate with my shyness, it wouldn’t be fear or timidity, but uncertainty. Being shy manifests itself for me as an uncertainty with social codes, a sense that I have failed to grasp some invisible thread that holds communal life together.”

            Joe Moran (see item #1)

 

“[A]s obvious as it might sound, teachers can’t just preach kindness; they need to actually be nice to one another and to their students.”

            Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstorm (quoted in item #2)

 

“Whatever process the school decides to take, we have to be careful of what we like to call Moses moments, where the head of school goes to the top of the mountain and comes down with stone tablets on which are inscribed the vision for the future. I don’t think that’s what we need in our schools. We need to build expeditionary teams that are inventing and working together to see the future of the school emerge.”

            Tim Fish in “On the Innovation Journey,” an interview with Ari Pinkus in Independent

School, Spring 2017 (Vol. 76, #3, p. 44-50), no e-link available

 

“Real innovation focuses on developing the culture and skills of the whole school to solve problem after problem after problem with grace and ease… [I]nnovation, as counterintuitive as it may sound, is not about ‘fixing’ broken systems. It inoculates a school from becoming irrelevant… Only by being relevant can a school be excellent. And only by being excellent can it be sustainable.”

            Jamie Feild Baker in “Innovation, Culture, and Radical Thinking” in Independent

School, Spring 2017 (Vol. 76, #3, p. 88-93), no e-link available; Baker can be reached

at [email protected].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The Secret Life of Shy People

            “If I had to name one feeling that I associate with my shyness, it wouldn’t be fear or timidity, but uncertainty,” says Joe Moran (Liverpool John Moores University, England) in this Chronicle of Higher Education article. “Being shy manifests itself for me as an uncertainty with social codes, a sense that I have failed to grasp some invisible thread that holds communal life together.” Researching this subject for a book, Moran found that shyness has many faces: “The shy imagine themselves surrounded by virtuosos of sociability, all doing word-perfect routines while they alone fluff their lines… But I have come to see that everyone struggles with these unwritten social rules – even if some of us are the class dunces, learning them more slow-wittedly than most.”

            Human shyness is unique in one way, Moran continues: “We are uniquely gifted, and burdened, with self-consciousness. We are meaning-making animals, compelled to reflect on and make stories out of our lives. Our feelings of shyness are intimately tied up with the ways we think and talk about shyness and the connotations we attach to it. Shyness is a longing for connection with others, which foils that longing through the self-fulfilling cycles of metathought at which humans excel.”

            Analyzing his own shyness, Moran has realized that he can’t simply shuck it off, like giving up smoking or cutting down on carbohydrates. “My best plan,” he says, “is Zen acceptance. I now know, as the software developers say, that my shyness is a feature, not a bug. Shyness feeds on itself, so if I stop berating myself over it, the symptoms abate, and I can pay more attention to the world and to others.”

            Oddly, Moran has no difficulty getting up and lecturing to his university students. “Shyness is weirdly situational,” he says, “and searching for reason and method in the way it comes and goes, like the weather, would be like looking for intelligent design in an accident of evolution… The shy learn to redirect their frustrated social impulses into unlikely areas, becoming as fearless in some contexts as they are timid in others… Human behavior is endlessly rich and strange.”

 

“The Complex Puzzle of Shyness” by Joe Moran in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2017 (Vol. LXIII, #27, p. B16), no e-link available; Moran’s book on shyness (Yale University Press) has just been published. He can be reached at [email protected].

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2. Strategies to Prevent and Deal with Bullying

            In this article in Independent School, teacher/author/consultant Jane Katch recalls that when she was in high school, two students standing on either side of her said they could always tell a Jew when they saw one. “I wanted to say, ‘No, you can’t. I’m Jewish and you didn’t know that,’” says Katch, “but I couldn’t get any words to come out, like a nightmare in which you try to talk but no sound comes from your mouth. No adult could have imagined that scenario or prepared me to voice my feelings at that moment. What children need in order to have the confidence to say what they feel in a strong and empowered way is to practice, in a safe environment, coming up with their own answers so that they gain the confidence that they know how they feel and to believe that others will listen to them.”

            That means bullying prevention and conflict resolution need to be an organized, deliberate part of schooling. Katch quotes Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstorm of Williams College: “Children need to know that adults consider kindness and collaboration to be every bit as important as algebra and reading. In groups and one-on-one sessions, students and teachers need to be having conversations about relationships every day. And, as obvious as it might sound, teachers can’t just preach kindness; they need to actually be nice to one another and to their students.”

            Classroom meetings implementing a proven program like Olweus Bullying Prevention are an ideal forum for developing students’ skills, says Katch. A good conversation starter is asking students to come up with a solution to a real-life scenario. An example: a fourth-grade girl has just moved from a school where students wear a wide variety of clothing styles to a school where conformity is the norm. On the bus to school, the student is a target for spitballs thrown by a group of girls. What can she do? The class can brainstorm ideas, role-play those that seem plausible, and zero in on one that might work best. This scenario came from Katch’s own daughter who, after rejecting her mother’s ideas, came up with this strategy: “I think that I could say that on Mondays and Wednesdays, they can throw spitballs at me. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could throw spitballs at them, and on Fridays, no one would throw spitballs.” The bullying stopped. Katch believes the bullies backed off because her daughter “knew how she felt, she expressed her expectation of fairness in an unusual but strong way, and they responded to that.”

            Katch goes on to describe an impromptu problem-solving scenario in her own kindergarten. Zoe, a strong-willed five-year-old who could be manipulative and hurtful, was upset when it was her turn to stand at the end of the line (the class alternated lining up in alphabetical and reverse-alphabetical order). “I don’t want to be the caboose!” she wailed, refusing to take her place in the line. Katch asked the class to come up with ideas that might work and told Zoe to listen to all the ideas without interrupting and see if they could reach consensus. After hearing several suggestions, Zoe agreed to be the caboose if she could have a partner, and someone volunteered. “Rather than learning that the person with the most power wins,” says Katch, “Zoe learned that by listening to others, she could find a solution that worked for everyone and was fair for all. She learned this, not because I told her, but through her own experience.”

            At first, these discussions take time, but with practice, students get better and faster at solving problems and even develop the ability to do so without adult supervision – at recess, for example.

            Katch relates another incident where she was critical of her own reaction. Walking through a common area of her school at the end of the day, she noticed a group of 8-10-year-old students in the after-school program building a five-foot-high block structure. At the very top was a large, hand-drawn swastika. “My first impulse was to tell them to take it down,” says Katch. She knew the boys and had no problem giving them an order. But as she walked toward them, she was curious about the reason for the offensive symbol. She asked if they knew what the swastika stood for and why it might be upsetting to adults. She explained that her grandfather’s sister, Tema, had been killed in a Nazi concentration camp, and Tema was Katch’s middle name. “I told the boys, in their dark sweatshirts with their hoods up, that when I walked into the room and saw the swastika, I felt as though someone in that room wanted me to be dead, too.”

            The boys were stunned. They had no idea their structure would evoke that kind of response. But then they told Katch the full story of their project. This was part of a unit on World War II, and the structure was a town right before the Allied forces moved in. The swastika was going to be taken down and replaced with an Allied flag. Katch suggested using another flag for this stage of the drama.

            “I love this example because it shows how much more interesting kids are when we are honest with them and when we listen to them,” says Katch. “But I also like it because it shows that we don’t need to do it perfectly. It took me three tries before I listened to them rather than, first, making assumptions about what they were doing, and second, lecturing them. Even though I work on listening to kids every day, even though I’ve been working on this issue for decades, when I felt threatened, I reverted back into a stance of being the expert, knowing the answers, like a toddler reaching back for his father’s pant leg when faced with a stranger.”

 

“Spitballs and Swastikas: Helping Children Stand Up for Themselves and Listen to Others” by Jane Katch in Independent School, Spring 2017 (Vol. 76, #3, p. 98-102), no e-link available; Katch can be reached at [email protected].

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3. How to Get the Most Out of Small-Group Math Conversations

            In this article in Teaching Children Mathematics, Hala Ghousseini, Sarah Lord, and Aimee Cardon (University of Wisconsin/Madison) address the challenge of getting elementary students to have good math discussions when they’re working in small groups. Some teacher frustrations they’ve encountered:

-   “Because students do not listen to me when I give directions, I end up talking too much during group work, mainly explaining the directions over and over.”

-   “I spend my time settling disagreements because students don’t know how to work with each other.”

-   “The strongest students just end up doing all the work.”

-   “My students always want me to help them right away if they think they’re stuck – and they want to check with me all the time to see if they’re doing it right. They just don’t know how to be independent.”

The key to productive small-group work, say Ghousseini, Lord, and Cardon, is how teachers launch the lesson before students begin working in groups:

            • Modeling good collaboration – Many students are inexperienced at sharing their thinking in clear ways and negotiating solutions to problems with their peers, so it’s helpful for the teacher to demonstrate a possible scenario. For example, a teacher preparing students to work in pairs skip-counting by fives and tens acts out the back-and-forth with a student and makes a deliberate error, saying 58 instead of 60. What should her partner do now? she asks the class, and guides them to a good coaching response: “Take another look at your skip-counting chart. So far, all the numbers we’ve said have ended in five or zero, and fifty-eight ends in an eight.” Teaching a lesson on fractions, she might say, “When you throw out your idea, you don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you’re wrong! You did that wrong! You’re not good at fractions.’ You don’t want people to feel that way about fractions.”

            • Providing opportunities for guided mathematical talk – During the lesson launch, the teacher can walk students through the kind of thinking they’ll be asked to do in groups. For example, a teacher introducing a small-group activity on comparing fractions elicits several different ways of expressing equivalence – How do you know that this drawing of 1/6 is the same as that one? “Her requests for multiple explanations engaged students in different ways of articulating their thinking and reasoning,” say Ghousseini, Lord, and Cardon. “This form of guided math talk during the lesson launch gives all students space to get into the habit of listening, responding to one another’s ideas, and providing explanations for mathematical concepts. It allows students with different levels of mathematical proficiency to learn skills that can support equitable participation in small-group work.” A teacher might also ask students to do a quick turn-and-talk about a specific question – for example, How would you know how to circle multiples of three on a hundreds chart?

            • Providing resources that support mathematical talk – In the lesson launch, the teacher can draw students’ attention to manipulatives, visuals, or props that support high-quality math talk in groups. For example, with the 5-10 skip-counting activity, the teacher might say, “I would make sure I had my skip-counting chart in front of me. If you don’t need to use it, don’t use it. It’s there just in case you ever get stuck on a number.” A teacher could also remind students of vocabulary they’d learned, perhaps referring to a word wall or an anchor chart.

            Then, while students work in pairs or small groups, the teacher circulates, monitors, and intervenes as necessary, watching for insights or misconceptions to bring up when the class comes back together.

 

“Supporting Math Talk in Small Groups” by Hala Ghousseini, Sarah Lord, and Aimee Cardon in Teaching Children Mathematics, March 2017 (Vol. 23, #7, p. 422-428), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2nfiy3e; the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

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4. The Continuum from Teacher-Controlled to Student-Centered Learning

(Originally titled “Orchestrating the Move to Student-Driven Learning”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Bena Kallick (Institute for Habits of Mind) and Allison Zmuda (a curriculum consultant) say that teachers who want to personalize instruction must manipulate seven variables in the same way an audio technician uses a sound board. “For each component,” say Kallick and Zmuda, “the teacher can turn the volume up or down, amplifying or reducing the amount of student agency as the teacher and students begin to feel more comfortable with student self-direction.” Key questions: How ready are my students to take control? How much can I trust that what’s important in the subject matter will be covered if I release some control? How will I know whether the students are really learning? If I begin to release control, what is my new role with students?

Here are the levers in the personalizing sound board, sliding from (a) teacher-generated to (b) co-created to (c) student-generated:

• Learning goals – In a unit on extreme weather: (a) the teacher says the objective is to understand the causes of hurricanes and tornadoes; (b) the teacher works with students to identify two locations and explore how extreme weather affects them; and (c) a student with family in Haiti studies hurricanes’ impact there.

• Inquiry and idea generation – In a unit on drug abuse: (a) the teacher assigns students an article on the dangers of cigarettes and has them list the five worst; (b) the teacher asks, “Should smoking be banned in public places?” and students research the question; and (c) students decide on a drug to study.

• Task and audience – In an 8^th-grade unit on argumentation: (a) the teacher has students design a print advertisement for a fundraiser; (b) the teacher offers a variety of possible tasks and presentation formats; and (c) the teacher outlines the parameters and criteria and has students apply what they’ve learned to advocate for a position they’ve chosen.

• Evaluation – In a mathematics unit on using data: (a) the teacher decides on the final criteria; (b) teacher and students develop performance criteria together; and (c) students consult with the teacher on scoring the task, considering growth from previous performances.

• Feedback – In a unit on renewable energy: (a) the teacher offers suggestions on the thesis statement of a student’s research paper; (b) the teacher orchestrates opportunities for students to network with each other or outside experts for feedback; and (c) students are responsible for independently seeking and using feedback.

            • Instructional plan – In a 10^th-grade ELA unit on coming-of-age literary fiction: (a) the teacher guides students through reading and discussing The Catcher in the Rye, culminating in a final paper; (b) students choose from three novels, form book groups, discuss central questions, and decide how to share ideas with the whole class; and (c) each student chooses a text from an extensive list and develops a plan to gain a deep understanding of the book.

• Cumulative demonstration of learning – (a) Students follow the teacher’s directions and collect pieces of work documenting their learning according to the teacher’s criteria;

(b) students identify artifacts to demonstrate their learning; and (c) students are the stewards of

their work portfolios or exhibitions, recognizing strengths and weaknesses and reflecting on whether the work meets standards and is something they’re proud of.

 

“Orchestrating the Move to Student-Driven Learning” by Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda in Educational Leadership, March 2017 (Vol. 74, #6, p. 53-57), available for purchase at

http://bit.ly/2nmReNu; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and

[email protected].

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5. Personalizing Homework

(Originally titled “One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All Homework”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Cathy Vatterott (University of Missouri/St. Louis) describes how five teachers in a suburban Massachusetts elementary school experimented with customized homework. “In my 23 years of teaching, I have never seen a group of students get this excited about homework,” said one teacher. Working from teacher suggestions and expectations, curriculum standards, unit big ideas, and individual needs, students decided on weekly projects and took increasing responsibility for monitoring their own progress. Some examples:

-   Creating a song with lyrics on multiplication facts;

-   Writing detailed descriptions of characters and plotlines in books read;

-   Writing word problems based on real-world situations;

-   Preparing a class presentation to build self-confidence and speaking skills;

-   Writing reports on airplanes, snakes, 3-D structures, and other interests.

Teachers told Vatterott that the element of choice and the wide range of options changed the hum-drum homework routine. “The assignments were generally longer, had more depth, and were much more creative when compared to traditional homework I had assigned,” said one. There’s definitely more work for teachers to monitor and evaluate multiple projects, but they say the payoff in student engagement makes it worthwhile. Some parents were skeptical at first, but became converts when they saw their children’s engagement and motivation.

            Of course some students had difficulty with the responsibility of choosing a topic or project, staying on track, and completing the week’s homework by the deadline (usually Monday). “They didn’t know what to do when given a voice in directing their own learning,” says Vatterott, “and most of them had no experience with self-assessing their strengths and weaknesses.” Teachers found it took a lot of modeling and “gentle guidance” to bring these students up to speed – including a sheet with suggestions and weekly all-class discussions to generate ideas. Some students struggled with procrastination – Sunday night syndrome – and learned (with varying degrees of teacher support) how to pace themselves through the week. “The experience provided students with helpful insights into their work habits,” says Vatterott. “Without this opportunity, they may not have learned these lessons until much later in their education.”

            How has homework compliance compared to the traditional model? On balance, more

students are doing their homework. “They are motivated and interested to complete what is assigned,” said one teacher. “It is meaningful to them, so they do it – it’s as simple as that!”

 

“One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All Homework” by Cathy Vatterott in Educational Leadership, March 2017 (Vol. 74, #6, p. 34-39), http://bit.ly/2mAlUdz; Vatterott is at [email protected].

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6. A Personalization Skeptic

(Originally titled “Personalization vs. How People Learn”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Benjamin Riley (Deans for Impact) offers this definition of personalized learning:

-   Students have greater control over the content they learn;

-   Students have greater control over the pace at which they learn;

-   Technology is used to customize learning.

Riley goes on to say that all the glowing articles about personalization in this issue of Educational Leadership are wrong. Why? Because (a) There’s virtually no research evidence that personalization improves student outcomes; and (b) Cognitive science tells us that personalized instruction is not the best way to learn.

            Riley says that for years he was an avid proponent of personalization, which seemed logical and alluring: “Of course we want students to feel more empowered in their learning, right? Of course we want students to learn at their own pace – who could possibly argue against that?” But two core principles of cognitive science have made him a skeptic:

• Working memory and long-term memory – Every subject area, says Riley, has a set of facts, concepts, and skills that need to be committed to long-term memory so they don’t have to be constantly refreshed and consciously thought about. Because we can hold only a small number of items in working memory, long-term memory is vital to higher-order thinking. For example, memorizing times tables creates cognitive space to tackle related math problems, and knowing the English language allows a person to engage in deep thinking about a text.

Why is this a knock on personalized learning? Because, says Riley, “Students who pull content from the Internet as a central part of their learning may be able to make short-term use of the facts they encounter, but unless they’ve somehow stored these facts in long-term memory – a process unlikely to happen by chance – they won’t have really learned them.” Won’t students who are passionate about a subject be motivated to commit information to long-term memory? No, says Riley: (a) It’s difficult for students to distinguish “good” Internet resources from untrustworthy ones; (b) the process of searching for information is not an effective strategy for storing it in long-term memory; and (c) what students find fascinating on the Internet is not always academic subject matter.

• The need for structure and guidance – The second push-back from cognitive science addresses the idea that students should have control over the pace of learning. The problem, says Riley, is that effortful thinking is hard work. “To be sure, there are some students who, for whatever reason, are able to self-direct and accelerate the pace of their own learning. But the

majority of students need the equivalent of the trainer in the gym to help them keep up the pace to learn. We call these trainers teachers. It’s their job to make sure students are getting their mental exercise at the appropriate pace.” It’s telling that schools implementing personalized learning find they need “guardrails” or pacing guides to keep students on track.

Riley closes with a shout-out for “scientific professionals” – principals and teachers who know cognitive science and are empowered to use technology in the most effective ways – for example, using electronic response systems to check for student understanding in real time, and using technology to “elicit and capture student thinking in ways that go beyond ‘showing your work.’”

 

“Personalization vs. How People Learn” by Benjamin Riley in Educational Leadership, March 2017 (Vol. 74, #6, p. 68-72), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2mDgkYt; Riley can be reached at [email protected].

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7. Distinguishing Personalization, Differentiation, and Individualization

            In this chart, Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey (Personalize Learning) identify key differences among three closely related concepts:

            • Personalization – Learners drive their learning; connect learning with their interests, talents, passions, and aspirations; actively participate in the design of their learning; own and are responsible for their learning, including their voice and choice of how and what they learn; identify goals for their learning plan and benchmarks as they progress along their learning path with guidance from the teacher; acquire the skills to select and use the appropriate technology and resources to support and enhance their learning; build a network of peers, experts, and teachers to guide and support their learning; demonstrate mastery of content in a competency-based system; become self-directed, expert learners who monitor progress and reflect on learning based on mastery of content and skills.

            • Differentiation – The teacher provides instruction to groups of learners; adjusts instruction for the needs of different groups of learners; identifies the same objectives for different groups of learners; selects technology and resources to support the learning needs of different groups of learners; monitors learning based on Carnegie unit (seat time) and grade level; uses data and assessments to modify instruction for groups of learners and provides feedback to individual learners to advance learning.

            • Individualization – The teacher provides instruction for an individual learner; accommodates learning needs for the individual learner; customizes instruction based on the individual’s learning needs; identifies the same objectives for all learners with specific objectives for individuals who need one-on-one support; selects technology and resources to support individual learning needs; understands the individual learner is dependent on them to support their learning; monitors learning based on Carnegie unit (seat time) and grade level; uses data and assessments to measure individual progress and decide next steps.

 

“Updated Personalization vs. Differentiation vs. Individualization Chart” by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey, https://www.slideshare.net/barbarabray1/pdi-v3-2

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8. How Not to Lead a School

            In this Education Week article, author Peter DeWitt riffs off Stephen Covey’s list of the seven habits of highly effective people to vent on ineffective school leadership practices:

-   Be reactive – These leaders never seem to see things coming.

-   There’s no end in mind – The leader hasn’t worked with colleagues on a collective goal; people are doing their own thing and the leader is mired in the present.

-   Ego first – “Unfortunately,” says DeWitt, “there are leaders who let their ego rule and that’s what they lead with every time.”

-   My way or the highway – These leaders are focused on controlling everything and getting their own way. “They walk into a faculty meeting with one idea and walk out with the same one,” says DeWitt.

-   Push to be understood – The message is, buy into my ideas or get out.

-   Discord – These leaders always seem to disagree with or vilify someone, and see consensus building as getting others to agree with them.

-   Efficacy killers – These leaders micromanage and look for compliance, or keep bringing in new initiatives, leaving their colleagues tired, lost, and insecure. “Teachers with a low level of self-efficacy don’t feel as though they can have a positive impact on their students,” says DeWitt.

“Leadership is hard but it’s also important,” he concludes. “Vitally important. And it begins with how leaders treat people.”

 

“7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders” by Peter DeWitt in Education Week, March 7, 2017,

http://bit.ly/2mG4RJF

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9. Why Administrators Should Make Time to Teach

            In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Richard Greenwald (Brooklyn College/ CUNY) makes the case for administrators in colleges and universities teaching a course; his ideas also apply in K-12 schools. “It’s too easy to lose sight of the educational mission as an administrator,” says Greenwald. “The news is always bad, the problems many, the work Sisyphean. In teaching, I am reminded of and witness the transformational potential of the classroom…” Some specifics:

-   Teaching makes you a better administrator by giving a deeper perspective of what teachers face every day – the students, the facility, the schedule, technology, grading process, ordering books, and more.

-   Teaching keeps you on top of developments in your field.

-   Teaching gets you thinking about pedagogy and how it’s evolving.

-   Teaching gives you a chance to touch base with students, many of whom aren’t shy about sharing their opinions.

“We must remember that teaching is a nourishing act of hope,” Greenwald concludes. “Teaching reminds us of the daily grind of education, how it builds class upon class, term upon term, year upon year. It provides perspective that no spreadsheet can replace.”

 

“Why Administrators Should Teach” by Richard Greenwald in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2017 (Vol. LXIII, #27, p. B14), no e-link available; Greenwald can be reached at [email protected].

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10. Short Item:

            A graphic display of immigration history – This graphic gives a comprehensive picture of the flow of immigration into the U.S. from 19 countries and regions of origin over the last two centuries:  http://insightfulinteraction.com/immigration200years.html.

 

“200 Years of Immigration to the U.S.” from the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2017

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