Listen to the Customers (Kids)

Most for profit companies make it a point to gain input from their customers so as to improve their product or service.  It just makes sense to listen your customers.  They will tell you what works, what doesn't and provide information that can help the company improve the experience.

So, who are the customers in our public schools?  We often talk about stakeholders, but that doesn't quite sound like a true customer.  I think a customer is someone with first hand knowledge of the product or service they used.  If you use this notion, it's easy to define the customers - they're the kids!  Who better to let us know how we are doing?  Who better to give us the honest answers about our practices than those directly affected?

Recently a school conducted focus group interviews on a variety of topics.  The responses were put together into some common themes and school leadership started to look at the data.  The school then looked at the themes that came from prompts about instructional practices, and an interesting thing came to light.  The things the kids said made classrooms effective was the same as you would find in current educational research.

My bet is those kids never read the research; how could they possibly know what makes an effective classroom - they have no expertise in pedagogy?  They know because they're the customers and understand what works for them.  We don't know a lot about many of the products we use - but we know if they work.  This is the same for kids - they don't know brain research, but can tell us what practices are effective and which aren't.

So here's the aha: if you can find out what the kids think, most likely you can attach it to an area of improvement, and provide professional development or support that is targeted to a defined need. We can take their input and put it into the professional jargon, attach it to research, or define needs based on educational lingo.  But first, we have to ask.

The beauty is that if you use this process you will be directly addressing the needs of your kids - the customers.

Toby

The Complexity of Teaching

We have all undoubtedly encountered those teachers that seem to have a knack for really connecting to kids and run classrooms we would love to clone. Some do it with humor, some are more stoic, some have bustling rooms with lots of physical movement, some keep the kids in the chairs; but they all have one thing in common - kids learn.

So what is it that makes these environments rich examples of the best teachers? Well, it isn't just one thing - teaching is complex. It's complex because we are dealing with human behavior, and as one teacher put it "people are messy". What works for one teacher might not work for another - there are just too many variables; course content, class climate, teacher and student personalities, even time of day.

I think Marzano Research Laboratory (MRL) has hit on something that makes sense - teaching is complex, so let your model of instruction be complex - or "robust" as they put it. The key is that every teacher doesn't have to do everything, just get a little better at things in the model they think will help their kids. They have a nice way to look at the broad expanse of what teaching entails and have put it into the 10 design questions many of you are familiar with from the Art and Science of Teaching:

1. What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate success?
2. What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?
3. What will I do to help students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge?
4. What will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge?
5. What will I do to engage students?
6. What will I do to establish or maintain classroom rules and procedures?
7. What will I do to recognize and acknowledge adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures?
8. What will I do to establish and maintain effective relationships with students?
9. What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?
10. What will I do to develop effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit?

So, how do we expect teachers to be proficient on all 10 design questions?  The answer is -we don't! As has been stated in previous blogs, it takes about 10 years (or 10,000 hours) to master anything, so our focus should be on continuous improvement on just a few of the myriad of things that make good teaching.  I believe this is why supervision models that rely on checklists of static criteria are insufficient to really capture the complexity of teaching - and improve teacher performance.  Rather, we have the opportunity to try and capture a model of quality teaching behaviors and let teachers focus on incremental improvement. 

We then open the door for truly differentiated professional development - teachers can focus on the areas identified for improvement.  Rather than train the entire faculty on the use of physical movement in the classroom, why not train those that have identified a need in this area?  Let those that already have good movement and transitions improve on other areas of the model based on their needs.

It's like the old adage - "How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."  Why not have an elephant that represents quality teaching and improve instruction through small, yet intentional bites?

Toby

Learning to Change-Changing to Learn

I saw this video over a year ago and was reminded of it this week.  You may have seen it - yet I think it makes a powerful statement about changes in education.

Toby

Drive - Whiteboard Magic

I think Drive by Daniel Pink has a host of implications for education.  I can see application to student engagement, motivation, grades, even to teacher training and work flow.  The following link will take you to a whiteboard video that is a nice overview of the book.
Take a look,

Drive - Whiteboard Magic

Toby

A Connection to "Drive"

The previous post really took a look at how people are motivated.  The following is an interview with Daniel Pink that makes a strong connection to this notion of human satisfaction.  According to Pink, the critical areas are autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

 Listen to the short interview by Joel Capperella as posted on the Seamless Workforce site:
Daniel Pink Interview


Toby

What I Learned about Expertise

I just had the opportunity to attend a Marzano Research Laboratory training that focused on three areas: supervision of instruction, assessment, and building background knowledge.  I will post some thoughts on each as I have a chance to reflect - but I was really struck by Dr. Marzano's discussion about building expertise.  Research was cited by that we are all truly satisfied in our jobs when 3 conditions exist:

1. We pick something difficult and get really good at it. 
2. The thing that we pick affects people in a positive way.
3. People need some autonomy about their job.

It seems that the teaching profession fits the bill on all three criteria - teaching is a complex process that takes years to really get good at, we do affect people in a positive way, and by in large teachers have autonomy in their job. 

Dr. Marzano went on to state that it really takes 10 years to become an expert - this is also supported by Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" from the book Outliers.  Gladwell asserts that to gain true expertise, one has to put in about 10,000 hours of practice to hone their skills.

Interestingly enough, if you consider a typical teaching day as 6 hours, with 180 school days in a year; at the end of 10 years a teacher has put in 10,800 hours.

What this does for me is beg the question; why do we expect all teachers to be expert when they first begin?  Why are we not providing relevant feedback over the course of a teacher's career that assumes people won't be expert, but will improve? 

I learned that teaching is a complex job that is difficult to quantify into checklists.

I learned that the supervision of instruction with quality feedback is imperative to improving student achievement.

I learned that we need a growth model for teachers that assumes they will be novices when they begin, but will grow and improve over time. 

Toby

What I Learned about Pencils

Great blog by a teacher. More evidence that it's the teacher that makes the difference no matter the tool!

Tim Johnson's adventure in Pencil Integration

What I Learned about The Education Paradigm

The following video was posted by Cory Dahl from ESU 8 and I think it goes back to this notion of mission. My comment on the ESU 8 Tech blog was the quote by one of our schools that "we 'educate' a lot of this out of our students."   Thanks to Corey for the link!

At some point we have to answer the question; what are schools about?

Take a look at the video - it's an RSA whiteboard animation - and consider how in the world do we change the paradigm?

Toby

What I Learned about Mission

Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to work with schools to refine or redefine their mission. I have learned that people don't usually relish the chance to craft another mission statement - maybe because the one they have took innumerable committee meetings in which every phrase was exhaustively scrutinized. After all that - do we really know what is in our mission statement? Does it guide the kind of schooling we offer?

I learned that effective schools use their mission to guide the teaching and learning process and that they ensure certain things as a result. An instructive exercise is to look at the current document and determine what things the mission obligates the school to do. Is is to simply provide opportunities for learning? Or is it to ensure certain well defined learning takes place?

I learned that in effective schools the mission is determined in collaboration with stakeholders and supported by everyone. I also learned this doesn't take endless committee work and "wordsmithing". Schools need to write the mission with input from everyone - but that doesn't mean everyone gets to write the mission. Remember - a camel was a horse created by a committee. An effective method is to ask all of the stakeholder groups the same question: "What do you want for our kids?" The mission can then be drafted from themes that arise into a genuine document based on everyone's input - not just those on the committee.

I learned that mission matters. I notice a lot of discussion about what kind of education our students need - which seems to include things like critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. If schools really intend to base their operations on 21st Century skills, it would seem the school mission must guide the efforts of the school.

So what is our mission?

Toby

What I Learned about "The Why".

I learned a lot from a 10 minute clip by Simon Sinek about how leaders can inspire action. Sinek discusses the "Golden Circle" with three components: what you do, how you do it and why you do it. Most people know what they do and how they do it - but the ones that truly inspire us let us know why they do it.

I discussed this notion with my wife about how she teaches high school math. I think she operates differently because she has the why figured out. I suggest that for some teachers the description could be "I teach math, I use good instructional strategies - want to take my class?" But I think my wife - who knows the why - would state it like this: "I believe every student can be successful in math, I put everything into making sure they are a confident and capable math student, want to take my class?"

Who do you want as a math teacher?

Sinek states "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."

I learned that people are inspired when they really understand your core beliefs about the why.

What I Learned about Great Teachers

Something I learned about teachers came from a training session this past week. As we were discussing curriculum and instruction, the following information was provided from the Atlantic Monthly:

Great Teachers
• Set big goals for students
• Perpetually look for ways to improve their effectiveness
• Avidly recruit students and their families into the process
• Maintain focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning
• Plan exhaustively and purposefully - for the next day or the year ahead - by working backward from the desired outcome
• Work relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls. - Atlantic Monthly, 2010

Think about the best teachers you know - to what extent do they have one or more of the above qualities?

I also learned that great teachers routinely "blow up" their practice. They constantly reflect, change, and adjust their practice. They are never satisfied. They are their own toughest critics. They are continually restless about their teaching.

I learned that great teachers can't separate teaching from learning. They view their job as the dynamic between themselves and the students. They observe and judge teaching only through the reflection of student learning.

I learned I want great teachers for my children every second of every day.

Toby

The Value of an Outside Perspective

This past week we had the opportunity to host an external team that conducted an external Quality Assurance Review (QAR).  ESU 6 did this as part of the AdvancED accreditation process which is voluntary, yet rigorous.  We could have used a less stringent process, but we decided that we would use the accreditation process to move our organization forward and improve - not just meet the compliance requirements. 

The visiting team included 3 in-state and 3 out of state members, which seemed to provide a high degree of objectivity to the process.  We believe the team scrutinized the data to find evidence of meeting the accreditation standards, and provided us with honest, objective feedback about our organization.  We think this will give us the necessary urgency and guidance to be in a different place by the time we host another visit five years from now.

Every once in awhile it is good to get an outsider's perspective on what you do - which will in many cases validate your operation, but also give you authentic feedback about how to improve.

New library book!!

'Continuous Improvement in the Mathematics Classroom' by Melody J. Russell. This book is a narrative that combines the "how to" with the real story of how it has worked for a person in the classroom with students for 185 days a year.  To check out this book, contact Tammy at twilliam@esu6.org.