Teaching is Hard

Teaching is a complicated business.  I thought the December - January issue of Educational Leadership did a nice job of presenting some good points about effective teaching.  Some themes I noticed  (or looked for) throughout the issue are:

• Teaching is hard - it's a complicated human activity
• Humility - great teachers understand they don't have all the answers and there is not a magic bullet
• Reflection is key - the effective teachers are reflective about their craft and adapt their strategies
• Great teachers are learners - they always look to improve their instruction
• Purpose - the best teachers have a passion, and their excitement transfers to the students

When you put some of these together it seems evident that we need to recognize the complexity of teaching and foster growth among teachers in every stage of their career.  I think a pretty commonsense approach to helping teachers improve would be:

• Define a model or language of instruction- Marzano and Danielson provide a couple good ones that are more than the quick checklists
• Have teachers set some goals - let them decide what they want to improve upon.  Marzano suggests that about three goals a year per teacher.
• Promote professional development - Charlotte Danielson writes that this is "not because teaching is of poor quality and must be 'fixed' but rather because teaching is so hard that we can always improve it."

This notion of continuous improvement is what we expect from our schools, so it seems natural that we provide a way for each teacher to reflect upon and improve their practice.  The notion of incremental gains as opposed to a massive "fix" is more appealing as it provides a differentiated approach.  How much more will our students learn if all of our teachers get a little better at a few things each year?

Toby

The December - January issue of Educational Leadership can be viewed at 

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec10/vol68/num04/toc.aspx

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