In This Issue:

1. A principal remembers how she built trust

2. Giving and receiving feedback with grace and skill

3. A Georgia district works to improve classroom observations

4. Douglas Reeves takes on five myths about grading

5. Enlisting students to comment helpfully on each others’ work

6. Unintended consequences from New York City’s discipline policies

7. The minefield that girls and young women must traverse

8. Thomas Friedman on what the new era portends for young people

9. Short item: An online social-emotional survey

 

Quotes of the Week

“Trust happens through thousands of small, purposeful interactions over time.”

Sarah Fiarman (see item #1)

 

“We should want our students to like us, but not because we awkwardly talk about rap music and basketball. Our students should like us because we seem genuinely interested in their lives, their interests, and their frustrations… [W]alk into the classroom with the confidence in knowing that your success isn’t based on your hipster haircut or your perfectly-fitted skinny jeans. Look your students in their eyes and ask them how they are doing. Then, listen. You’ll be amazed at what happens.”

            Jason Boll in “Why Teaching Is Like Dating” in Cult of Pedagogy, May 14, 2017,

            https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/why-teaching-is-like-dating/

 

“Since I was a young child, I have been aware that inside every person is a universe, and that we’ll never know what it feels like to be another person.”

            Author Elizabeth Strout in “9 Questions” in Time Magazine, May 15, 2017,

            http://time.com/4766617/elizabeth-strout/

 

“When schools dig in on the underlying reasons why kids violate norms, rather than reflexively and automatically punishing and sending kids away, outcomes can change quickly and dramatically. It’s especially important for everyone in a school to dig deep to decrease head-to-head conflict and understand behaviors that are often quickly labeled insubordination or disrespect.”

            Robert Runcie and Antwan Wilson in “How We Stopped Sending Students to Jail” in

Education Week, May 10, 2017 (Vol. 36, #30, p. 24-25), http://bit.ly/2rfR8bz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. A Principal Remembers How She Built Trust

            “Trust happens through thousands of small, purposeful interactions over time,” says Sarah Fiarman in this article in Principal. “[L]eaders earn trust when they keep promises, respond when teachers ask for help, and have difficult conversations with adults to ensure high-quality teaching for everyone.” Integral to all this is listening well, speaking wisely, and acknowledging one’s own biases.

            • Listening well – “When we listen to truly understand what people mean, not just what they’re saying, we build trust,” says Fiarman. “This requires slowing down, checking to be sure we understand correctly, and sharing back what we hear.” When a parent charged into her school’s office enraged about a bus snafu, Fiarman knew that explaining what happened was not going to work. “You must have felt scared when you didn’t see your son,” she said. “You’re worried this will happen again.” The parent emphatically agreed and cooled down; she subsequently became one of Fiarman’s best allies. Meeting anger or frustration with genuine, compassionate interest builds trust. It’s also possible, says Fiarman, “that a consequence of sincere listening is that leaders will realize that they’re wrong sometimes. Changing course based on input is a sign of integrity, not weakness.”

            Sometimes listening requires active outreach. Fiarman noticed that families of immigrant and low-income families weren’t attending her school’s events, so she invited all the families from a particular housing project to meet and suggest how the school could better support their children. “As their children ate pizza, mothers from Ethiopia, Haiti, Eritrea, and Guyana used their developing English to tell me they wanted their children to be challenged, they wanted good teachers, and they wanted to know that their children would do well in high school,” says Fiarman. “After they spoke, I repeated what I heard them say and promised to do my best… For years, I reaped trust from this outreach.”

            • Speaking wisely – “People pay attention when the principal speaks,” says Fiarman. “It’s one of the privileges (and perils) of the role. Wise principals use that voice of authority to communicate their values.” A key value she worked to communicated was about listening to dissent and changing course if necessary. In Fiarman’s first year as principal, a quiet teacher gingerly disagreed with an initiative; she embraced the suggestion and it greatly improved the program, indicating that Fiarman had walked the talk on this value.

            Fiarman found that making quick visits to classrooms every day communicated respect and made her far more knowledgeable about instruction. “Many teachers are reassured when the principal visits regularly enough to know the routines and identify the small victories in student behavior and learning,” she says. “Teachers pour energy and effort into their work every day. It’s easy to take this for granted; after all, it’s what we do. However, it engenders trust when your boss can speak to the specifics of your work.”

            • Acknowledging biases – Fiarman has come to realize that she, like the vast majority of white Americans, has unconscious biases about people of color. As a principal, she constantly checked her decisions:

-   Did she file child neglect reports more quickly with a family of color than a white family?

-   Did she label an African-American parent “pushy” while a white parent displaying similar affect was seen as a “strong advocate”?

-   Did she not follow up when a low-income family failed to attend a conference, but feel worried when a more-affluent family didn’t show up?

-   Did she have a different response when children of different groups failed high-stakes tests?

“Asking such questions helps me counteract my unconscious bias,” says Fiarman. “Recognizing the pervasiveness of bias is an important first step. Acknowledging that I might make mistakes because of this bias – then actively working to counter it – builds trust.”

 

“Worth the Investment: Trust” by Sarah Fiarman in Principal, May/June 2017 (Vol. 96, #5, p. 8-11), https://www.naesp.org/principal-mayjune-2017-next-level-leadership/worth-investment-trust; Fiarman can be reached at [email protected].

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2. Giving and Receiving Feedback With Grace and Skill

(Originally titled “Stop Sabotaging Feedback”)

            “Feedback is fraught and complex because human relationships are fraught and complex,” say Douglas Stone (Triad Consulting, Harvard Law School) and Jenn David-Lang (consultant, The Main Idea) in this Educational Leadership article. Here are their ideas on making feedback less threatening and more productive:

            • Separate coaching from evaluation. Teachers need evaluations to know where they stand, and principals need to give them for compliance and decisions about tenure, promotions, and dismissals. But when an evaluation is shared in the same meeting as coaching, judgments hijack teachers’ attention: What will my evaluation score be? Will it be fair? Does the principal know what I’ve been contributing? What if I don’t get the evaluation I deserve? What will I say to my spouse? The coaching feedback goes in one ear and out the other.

            The solution to this perennial problem is to separate evaluation meetings (conducted once or twice a year) from coaching (much more frequent). “Coaching sessions should include no rubric scoring or other evaluations,” say Stone and David-Lang.

            • Be thoughtful about receiving criticism. “The person getting the feedback has the power to decide whether it’s on target, fair, or helpful,” say the authors, “and to decide whether to use the feedback or dismiss it.” This inconvenient truth challenges feedback-givers to tune in to the recipient’s responses and know that if the interaction isn’t handled skillfully, it’s going to waste both people’s time.

            When a principal is the recipient of critical feedback – for example, the superintendent e-mails expressing concern about a decline in math scores – the immediate reaction may be to discount the feedback: “This superintendent has no idea of the extraordinary efforts we’re been making on this front now that the Algebra 2 test has become Common Core-aligned. He was an English teacher with little background in math, and he should respect the efforts the math teachers have made.” This is an understandable reaction, say Stone and David-Lang, but it’s important to look at what might be right about the feedback, pull in an assessment expert, and compose a thoughtful response to the boss.

            When feedback rubs you the wrong way, it’s also important to dig deeper to understand what’s really going. For example, a principal expresses displeasure with the way an assistant principal is supervising grade-level teams. The AP needs to find out if the principal observed something that was amiss in a team meeting, if it’s an issue of supervisory style, or another problem. Time for a quick face-to-face meeting to unpack the principal’s concern.

            “For school leaders, becoming good at giving and receiving feedback comes with an added benefit,” say Stone and David-Lang: “There is no training you can offer, no teaching you can provide, that will improve the quality of feedback at your school as much as your own example… Be noisy about the importance of improving your school’s feedback culture – for students, for teachers, for parents, and for yourself.”

 

“Stop Sabotaging Feedback” by Douglas Stone and Jenn David-Lang in Educational Leadership, May 2017 (Vol. 74, #8, p. 47-50), http://bit.ly/2qJ7wRA; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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3. A Georgia District Works to Improve Classroom Observations

(Originally titled “Conversation Walks: Improving Instructional Leadership”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Sally Zepeda (University of Georgia/Athens) and Philip Lanoue (former superintendent, Clarke County, Georgia) describe a process Lanoue’s district used to build principals’ skills in classroom observation and instructional leadership. The goal was effective teaching for every child, as described in a set of observable practices written by teachers, principals, and central office leaders. But there was a gap between these desiderata and what was actually happening in classrooms on a day-to-day basis.

The district’s theory of action for closing the gap was that if principals were highly skilled at classroom observations and gave effective feedback, the quality of teaching would improve – and so would student learning. The strategy the district hit upon was “Conversation walks.” Several times a year, a central office leader visits 4-6 classrooms with the principal and discusses each visit. After finishing all the visits and debriefs, the two sit down to discuss common threads across classrooms, how teachers are doing on a particular instructional focus (for example, differentiation or lesson planning), and ways instruction might be strengthened. After the central office leader departs, teachers get feedback from the principal.

These informal yet focused principal/central leader observations and conversations have accomplished several things:

-   Thinking through the best way to give feedback to each teacher;

-   Providing a safe place in which to challenge understandings and examine competing interpretations of classroom phenomena;

-   Helping principals rethink their observation and feedback practices;

-   Helping principals learn about instructional practices that might be new to them;

-   Increasing individual and collective knowledge and understanding about student learning;

-   Supporting principals who might need to have difficult conversations with teachers;

-   Informing principals’ professional learning and facilitating ongoing conversations and professional development for teachers and principals across the district.

Principals and central leaders have found these conversation walks highly illuminating – everything from celebrating exemplary practices to noticing that a teacher was going over homework for the first 30 minutes of a class.

“Creating the knowledge and confidence to lead instructional improvement takes time, practice, and feedback,” conclude Zepeda and Lanoue, “– all within a relationship of trust and respect. It is imperative that central office leaders create multiple opportunities to coach, supervise, and evaluate principals as they lead the instructional program.”

 

“Conversation Walks: Improving Instructional Leadership” by Sally Zepeda and Philip Lanoue in Education Leadership, May 2017 (Vol. 74, #8, p. 58-61), http://bit.ly/2rjPy9A; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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4. Douglas Reeves Takes On Five Myths About Grading

            In this article in All Things PLC, consultant/author Douglas Reeves confronts these widely espoused misconceptions about grading:

            • Myth #1: Grades motivate students. Grades may have motivated teachers and administrators when they were young, but that’s not the case with many of their students today. The evidence is right in front of our noses, says Reeves: We’ve just conducted a decades-long experiment on the efficacy of grades as motivators; if grades were effective motivators, homework completion, classroom engagement, and overall diligence would be sky-high. Not so!

            • Myth #2: Grading homework and practice improves achievement. There are three problems here, says Reeves. First, for practice to be an effective tool for improvement, students need to be pushing the limits of current performance and getting continuous feedback – very difficult to orchestrate for 30 students working in their bedrooms. Second, as soon as teachers give grades for practice work, the incentive is for students to play it safe and not push into challenging or unknown territory. “No one gets feedback that is meaningful,” says Reeves, “because the only feedback that matters is that the work was finished on time and correctly. No one gets feedback to improve specific skills because everyone is doing the same dreary and unchallenging work.” And third, it’s unfair and demotivating for students to have their final grade pulled down for practice work.

            • Myth #3: Grades drive future performance. True, there’s a correlation between good grades and college success, and between poor grades and dropping out of school, but Reeves questions whether grades cause success and failure. He cites “the ‘good girl effect’ in which female students are disproportionately rewarded for quiet compliance, behavior that may lead to good grades but does not necessarily correlate to success after secondary school… While it is possible that intelligence and work ethic forge the path from kindergarten to Ivy League and Wall Street, it is also possible that zip code, tutors, and connections – all artifacts of family socioeconomic status – are the underlying causes.”

            • Myth #4: Punishment deters unwanted behavior. This is no more true than the persistent belief that corporal punishment improves behavior (research has shown it actually breeds aggression and antisocial behavior). Teachers giving zeros for missed assignments and refusing to accept late work lets students off the hook – and starts a spiral of doom with their final grades. Averaging grades through a semester punishes students for early failures versus rewarding them for using early problems to improve final performance. “Rather than using the last two months of the semester to build momentum and finish strong,” says Reeves, “because of a punitive grading system, they are doomed to failure well before the semester is over. There is nothing left for them to do except cut class, be disruptive, or ultimately, quit school.”

            • Myth #5: It’s okay for teachers to have their own grading systems. Reeves has conducted the following experiment with gatherings of educators: A student receives these grades (in this sequence) over a semester: C, C, missed, D, C, B, missed, missed, B, and A. What final grade should the student receive? Audience members come up with final grades ranging from A to F, depending on whether they average grades, count missed assignments as zeros, or consider the last grade as the ultimate attainment and therefore more important than the preceding grades. Is it okay, Reeves asks, for the same student producing the same work to have this range of outcomes depending on which teacher he or she happens to have? Obviously not. Worse still, he says, “grading policies are matters of equity, with disparate impacts on students, particularly based on ethnicity and gender. Boys and minority males receive lower grades just as they are more likely to be more severely disciplined for an infraction. Girls receive higher grades for the same level of proficiency. If racial and gender disparities of this sort took place in any other area of public life, the consequences would be swift and sure.”

            What is to be done about these pernicious and persistent misconceptions? Trying to convince educators with reasoned arguments and book study groups won’t work, says Reeves. The myths are too deeply embedded. Instead, he suggests replacing each statement of fact – Punishment deters unwanted behavior – with a testable hypothesis – If I penalize students for late, incomplete, and absent homework, then student achievement will improve – and conducting real-time experiments within the school. “We can then compare two classes with students of similar backgrounds,” he says, “one of which has punitive policies and the other of which engages in in-class gold standard practice and assess the degree of student success at the end of each semester.”

Reeves has found that the outcomes of such experiments clearly demonstrate the problems with grading myths and can embolden school leaders to implement more-effective practices. “When we explode grading myths and establish constructive policies,” he concludes, “the results are immediate. Reduction in failures, improvements in discipline, high levels of student engagement, and dramatic gains in teacher morale can be observed in months, not years.”

 

“Busting Myths About Grading” by Douglas Reeves in All Things PLC, Spring 2017,

https://issuu.com/mm905/docs/atplc_magazine__spring_2017_look-in; Reeves can be reached at [email protected].

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5. Enlisting Students to Comment Helpfully on Each Others’ Work

(Originally titled “Peer Feedback Without the Sting”)

            In this Education Update article, editor Sarah McKibben says students often get defensive when their schoolwork is assessed. One approach to avoiding this dynamic is to orchestrate peer feedback focused on nonjudgmental observations rather than evaluation. In his sixth-grade classroom, Bill Ferriter has students read each others’ papers and refrain from explicit criticism or fixes. “Don’t make a suggestion,” he says. “Don’t make an evaluation about whether that’s a good or bad thing.” He’s found that non-evaluative comments are “easy to receive, easy to give, and easy to act on.”

            Successful peer feedback, of course, depends on “a spirit of kindness, compassion, and inclusion so the class doesn’t feel like there’s a hierarchy of who’s important and who’s not,” says Ron Berger of EL Education. “This isn’t a strategy that you can just drop into a classroom if there’s not a strong, respectful culture.” Some messages for students engaged in peer feedback:

            • Be kind. This applies not only to the words used (“Wow, that’s great!”) but also the tone of voice and body language; sarcasm and eye rolls can reverse the meaning of what’s said. Teaching sentence stems can be helpful: I’m not sure I understand the opening of this piece… I’m not sure why you did this; can you explain it more?

            • Be specific. “I really liked your opening” is too global to contribute much. Is it the wording of the first sentence? The metaphor? The hook? Before students can get specific, many will need explicit teaching on the components of effective writing. The teacher should then circulate, doing over-the-shoulder coaching.

            • Be helpful. Middle and high-school students may give comments “just to sound clever in front of their peers,” says Berger, “to show off how astute they can be in noticing details in the work.” Prior to peer feedback, the teacher should introduce a rubric and lead the class in a group critique of an exemplar paper, focusing on suggestions that will make a difference. The teacher might also display samples of feedback statements and have students break into groups and rank them from helpful to unhelpful, taking note of sentence starters and phrases they can use in their own feedback conversations.

            • Be timely. One of the greatest advantages of well-orchestrated peer feedback is that students can get comments on their work immediately, rather than waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the teacher to wade through piles of papers.

 

“Peer Feedback Without the Sting” by Sarah McKibben in Education Update, May 2017 (Vol. 59, #5, p. 1, 4-5), available to ASCD members at http://bit.ly/2qj0xC2

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6. Unintended Consequences from New York City’s Discipline Policies  

In this Manhattan Institute white paper, Max Eden reports on the impact of New York City initiatives aimed at improving school climate and reducing the number of suspensions, as well as racial disparities in suspensions. New York City is unique in having not only detailed discipline data but also, over the last ten years, an annual school climate survey filled out by hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and parents. It was thus possible for Eden to track the data and comment on the effectiveness of reforms under two different mayors: Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. The details:

            • Bloomberg reforms – In September 2012, New York City made two changes in the discipline code: (a) students could no longer be suspended for first-time, low-level offenses including “uncooperative/noncompliant” or “disorderly” behavior, for example, being late for school, speaking rudely to peers or adults, lying to school staff, or misusing the property of others; (b) for K-3 students, the maximum suspension was reduced from ten to five days for mid-level offenses such as shoving a fellow student, using a racial slur, or engaging in inappropriate physical contact. School staff were also informed that restorative practices could be used for prevention and intervention. Suspensions dropped by 16,169 the first year of these changes.

            • De Blasio reforms – Principals were required to get written approval from the Office of Safety and Youth Development to suspend a student for uncooperative/noncompliant and disorderly behavior. Principals also had to get OSYD approval to suspend a K-3 student. Teachers were told, “Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through guidance interventions and other school-based strategies such as restorative practices.” A $1.2 million initiative trained staff in 100 schools in restorative justice. In the first year of implementation, suspensions fell by 8,878 and the following year by another 6,979. In 2016, de Blasio mandated an end to suspensions in kindergarten through second grade, replacing them with “positive disciplinary interventions,” and required principals to provide documentation of restorative interventions before applying to OSYD to suspend a student and to ensure that mitigating factors would be taken into account in disciplinary actions.

What did Eden find? There were major reductions in the number of suspensions under both mayors, but student and teacher perceptions of school safety changed dramatically. Here is a brief summary of Eden’s detailed report:

-   School safety survey data were mostly stable during the Bloomberg changes;

-   There was a dramatic deterioration in perceptions of school safety under de Blasio, with higher percentages of teachers and students reporting a worsening of mutual respect, violence, drug and alcohol use, and gang activity;

-   The most negative climate shifts took place in schools with predominantly minority student populations.

What accounts for the worsening perception of school climate under the de Blasio reforms? Eden argues that, for a variety of reasons, principals dealt less effectively with disruptive behavior under the new restrictions, and that restorative practices by themselves were no match for rising levels of disruptive behavior. He closes with these observations:

-   Discipline reform can harm school climate if it’s not handled effectively.

-   The harm associated with discipline reform appears to have a disparate impact by race and social class.

-   Discipline reform by itself doesn’t have to have a negative effect on school climate. It’s the implementation details that make the difference.

-   The number of suspensions is not a reliable measure of school safety and climate.

-   Restorative interventions should complement, not replace, traditional discipline.

-   Without school climate surveys, district leaders and policymakers are flying blind.

-   The more aggressive the discipline reform, the higher the risk of disorder.

-   Discipline reforms may be doing great harm to students, especially the most vulnerable.

“Unfortunately,” Eden concludes, “by second-guessing teachers’ judgments about how to maintain order, policymakers and district administrators are likely harming the education of many millions of well-behaved students in an effort to help the misbehaving few.”

 

“School Discipline Reform and Disorder: Evidence from New York City Public Schools, 2012-16” by Max Eden, Manhattan Institute, March 2017,

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-ME-0217v2.pdf

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7. The Minefield That Girls and Young Women Must Traverse

            In this Education Week interview with Kate Stoltzfus, author Peggy Orenstein talks about the interviews and research reported in her book, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (Harper, 2016). Some excerpts:

            • Looking “hot” – “There is this disconnect between the new entitlement that young women feel in the public realm and their disempowerment in the private realm,” says Orenstein. “[T]hey are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as ‘sexy’ – not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. What’s particularly complicated is they’re sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected.”

            • Harassment and assault – Every one of the 70 young women Orenstein interviewed said she had faced sexual harassment in middle school, high school, college, or all three, and some had been assaulted. She says that young women “are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they don’t think they have any power to really stop it.” In schools, she says, the “everyday chipping away of girls’ self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored.” From the early grades, says Orenstein, schools need to do more, starting with boys getting a strong message about being “responsible for their own reactions and responses.”

            • Sex education – Orenstein heaps scorn on “abstinence only” sex education programs, which, according to decades of research, have virtually no impact on when young people become sexually active. “Kids are educated by the culture and often educated by pornography,” she says. “And that’s not where we want our children to learn about how people interact sexually… We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives.”

            • The Internet – “Unfortunately,” says Orenstein, “the first thing kids Google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11. We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before they’ve even had their first kiss and how that’s shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex.” Parents and schools need to explicitly teach kids to apply a critical lens to what they’re seeing, and shape values that will help them safely and wisely navigate this very challenging era.

 

“Let’s Talk to K-12 Girls About Sex: Q&A with Peggy Orenstein” by Kate Stoltzfus in Education Week, May 10, 2017 (Vol. 36, #30, p. 26), http://bit.ly/2qar2ZR

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8. Thomas Friedman on What the New Era Portends for Young People

            “The notion that we can go to college for four years and then spend that knowledge for the next 30 is over,” says Thomas Friedman in this New York Times column. “If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He quotes education-to-work expert Heather McGowan: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21^st century.”

            Friedman reports that the College Board is reshaping its PSAT and SAT tests to encourage lifelong learning. A study showed that students who analyzed their PSAT results and spent 20 hours with free Khan Academy instructional videos racked up 115-point gains on the SAT they took subsequently – double the average gain of students who didn’t self-improve. Those gains occurred for students regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or level of parental education.

            “So the tough news is that more will be on you,” Friedman concludes. “The good news is that systems – like Khan-College Board – are emerging everywhere to enable anyone to accelerate learning for the age of acceleration.”

“Owning Your Own Future” by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, May 10, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/opinion/owning-your-own-future.html

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9. Short Item:

            An online social-emotional survey – Panorama Education has made available a free survey https://www.panoramaed.com/resources that schools can use to measure students’ social-emotional needs. This site also gives access to family and teacher surveys and a beginning-of-the-year “get to know you” questionnaire.

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