Lights, Action, Ditto

I’m sending this out early because, as you know, the construction crew is taking us offline soon after the dismissal bell today.  It is hard to believe we are at semester.  If time flies when you’re having fun, we must be having a blast.  Either that or we are so busy trying to stay ahead of the constant demands that time gets away from us.

No doubt about it, we do have a lot on our plates.  We are still figuring out TEDS, HSE21 pushes us to look at instructional practices, the building project has officially broken ground, budget cuts keep worrying us, and in the meantime, kids keep coming through the doors. 

My Neighbors

Below are pictures of two houses which sit side-by-side in our neighborhood.  The first one belongs to the Fishers version of Clark Grizwold.  Chances are good that you have a house like this in your neighborhood as well. You can’t tell from the picture, but his lights are synchronized to a radio station.  If you tune in to the right station, you can watch the lights flash on and off to the rhythm of the music.  When my wife and I were out walking a few weeks ago, our neighbor was putting up the lights and called out, “Just wait until Friday.  You’re in for a treat.”  He was right.  It is a veritable House of Wonder.  Our kids want us to take the long route through our neighborhood when we come in at night, so we drive by slowly and are appropriately dazzled by the light show.

Lights, Action....

This next picture is a neighbor who lives to the immediate east of the Holiday House of Wonder.  My guess is this homeowner knew he wasn’t going to be able to compete, so he used a little humor and ingenuity to get a response. 

Ditto

If I have my etymology right, ditto is Latin for something that has been said before.  In this case, I think the neighbor is saying, “I can’t beat him.  I might as well join him. I’ll make his lights become my lights.”

HSE: So what does this have to do with us?

It’s a bit of a stretch, but I suggest that sometimes we are like the House of Wonder, and sometimes all we can manage is “ditto.”  That’s okay.  We do what we can do, use a little humor, keep our spirits up, and we all keep taking steps forward. 

I hope your holiday break is a good one.  Find time to relax, enjoy friends and family, and come back ready to light up your part of the HSHS neighborhood.  When that seems like too much, maybe a little Ditto can help keep you going.

Even though it has been said before, have a great break, HSE. 

Phil

I would like to end with a few words from a variety of faith traditions that seem appropriate for this time of the year:

• Always wear a smile.  The gift of life will then be yours to give.  –Rabbi Nachman
• Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.  --Thich Nhat Hanh
• Kindness in words creates confidence.  Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.  Kindness in giving creates love.  –Lao Tzu
• The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.   –Mahatma Gandhi
• May you live fully.  May you love wastefully.  May you become all you were meant to be.  –John Shelby Spong

To those words, I’ll add, “Ditto.”  Enjoy your Winter Break.

Essential?

Third in a Series on Understanding by Design: Essential Questions

What makes a question so important that it is essential to ask during a lesson, unit, or semester?  Arriving at an answer to this particular question is no easy task.  You would need to think carefully and ponder long in order to identify questions that are significant enough to reach the level of being essential to student learning.  

Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, early in their book Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding, include this paragraph penned by Stigler and Stevenson, who studied different approaches to education around the globe:

Teachers ask questions for different reasons in the United States and in Japan. In the United States, the purpose of a question is to get an answer. In Japan, teachers pose questions to stimulate thought. A Japanese teacher considers a question to be a poor one if it elicits an immediate answer, for this indicates that students were not challenged to think. One teacher we interviewed told us of discussions she had with her fellow teachers on how to improve teaching practices. “What do you talk about?” we wondered. “A great deal of time,” she reported, “is spent talking about questions we can pose to the class—which wordings work best to get students involved in thinking and discussing the material. One good question can keep a whole class going for a long time; a bad one produces little more than a simple answer.”

In the rest of their book, McTighe and Wiggins discuss what Essential Questions are and what they can do to improve student learning.  I will only scratch the surface of this topic today, but I want to include a few key concepts from the developers of Understanding by Design. They begin by suggesting a helpful approach is to think of Big Ideas and Essential Questions as the “flip sides of the same coin.”  The Big Ideas are the key concepts, knowledge, and skills that you most fervently hope students will take with them beyond your class and be able to transfer to other contents and to life.  The Essential Questions are the way to unpack the ideas.  As students start to find answers, they deepen their understanding.

Remember that UbD is a lesson planning framework.  It is not prescriptive and gives you lots of freedom and options to use Essential Questions in a variety of ways.  They might be used to hook the learner, to lead the learning during a lesson, to guide the students to focus on key concepts, and/or to stimulate ongoing thinking and inquiry.  They can provide a structure for lessons, units, and even whole courses.  They can be used as the daily or unit objectives.  They can be used as checks for understanding, as discussion starters, or as writing prompts. 

However you choose to use them, to be essential, these questions reach a slightly higher plane than commonly used questions—and even higher than very important questions.  Wiggins and McTighe say Essential Questions…

• Are open-ended and have no simple “right answer”
• Are meant to be investigated, argued, and looked at from different points of view
• Encourage active “meaning making” by the learner about important ideas
• Naturally arise in everyday life, and/or in “doing” the subject
• Constantly and appropriately recur and can be asked and re-asked over time

The Essential Questions are the key questions that students must examine and attempt to answer if they are to come to an understanding of the content to the extent that they can transfer the learning to new situations. 

No question, creating these questions is not an easy task.  When you get it right, however, you take a big step toward increasing student learning.  I started with an excerpt from Stigler and Stevenson about the importance of good questions, but I also discovered many other great minds share their perspective on the importance of questions. 

• The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.  –Thomas Berger
• Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.  –e.e. cummings
• Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and the importance of the question.  –Tennessee Williams
• Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.  –Voltaire
• Successful people ask better questions; they get better answers.  –Tony Robbins
• You don’t want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions.  The questions are diamonds you hold in the light.  Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.  –Richard Bach
• Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.  –Francis Bacon
• I never learn anything talking.  I only learn things when I ask questions.  –Lou Holtz

Have a great week, HSE.  May it be filled with questions that lead to learning.

Phil

Kudos this week to our media center staff.  I have been in schools where media centers are lifeless places.  Dust collects among the books and whispers are shushed to silence.  That is not the case at HSHS.  Our media center is a place of laughter, deck umbrellas, hard work, good talk, fun, and learning.  

Test Central

“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” –Nelson Mandela

This past week the boxes of End of Course Assessments were carted into HSHS and took up residence in Test Central, the Small Office Conference Room.  Starting this Tuesday, our students will start taking these high-stakes tests.  During the work of sorting and packing the ECAs, I tend to ruminate on how testing has changed education.

No question about it: Our current students are the most tested generation ever.

Like most educators, I have some biases about testing and am asked about these at times, often when I am unprepared for the conversation.  If this happens to you, the following three points about assessments in general and high-stakes testing specifically may be useful.

1)      ECAs Do What They Were Designed to Do

End of Course Assessments do a good job of measuring what they were designed to measure. They are very good indicators of whether or not students have reached minimum competency in three content areas: English/Language Arts, Biology, and Algebra I.  But let’s be clear: This is all they were designed to do.  They are not diagnostic in nature, and they are not designed to measure teacher or school effectiveness.  Certainly, there are attempts to use these tests for other purposes, but they were designed to measure minimum student achievement in three specific areas. 

Sometimes I think we lose track of this fact, and it is helpful to keep their designed purpose in mind.

2)      One Problem with Single Assessments: Margin of Error

Single Assessments are all imprecise to a certain degree.  Imprecision in assessments can be the result of many factors: poorly constructed test items, student lack of attention or effort, and/or mistakes in scoring or grading.  The impact of imprecision on interpretation of test scores is often surprising to educators and completely startling to non-educators.  To illustrate, Robert Marzano uses this equation:

Observed Score = True Score + Error Score

He explains: 

This equation indicates that a student’s observed score on an assessment (the final score on the assessment) consists of two components—the student’s true score and the student’s error score.  The student’s true score is that which represents the student’s true level of understanding or skill regarding the topic being measured.  The error score is the part of an observed score that is due to factors other than the student’s level of understanding or skill.

In other words, error is inherent in scores assigned to students on every assessment.  In his book, Formative Assessments and Standards-Based Grading, Robert Marzano provides this chart to show how dramatic the impact of error can be. 

Reliability of Assessment	Score Student Receives on the Assessment	Lowest Possible Score	Highest Possible Score	Range
0.85	70	60	80	20
0.75	70	58	82	24
0.65	70	56	84	28
0.55	70	54	86	32
0.45	70	52	88	36

Consider this: The typical reliability of a state standardized test is 0.85, which is very good.  Again, I defer to Marzano’s chart and his own words: “For an assessment with a reliability of 0.85 and an observed score of 70, one would be 95 percent sure the student’s true score is anywhere between a score of 60 and 80.”  Reread that line until it is clear because this is a really important concept about a single-shot assessment. 

Another way to look at the same numbers: Using our typical in-house scoring scale, we could be fairly confident that a student with an observed score of 70 is likely to have a true score between a D- and a B-. 

Spend some time considering this chart and the idea of reliability, and I think you will agree that good assessment and grading practice requires multiple assessments to get us closer to identifying a student’s true ability.

3)      It’s Not Just Standardized Tests: We Face the Same Problems in Our Classrooms

Bob Marzano doesn’t let us off easily at the school level either.  He states that the highest reliability we can expect from an assessment designed by a teacher, school, or district is 0.75.  Again, this is very good reliability for a school-based assessment.  The research from Marzano Laboratories, however, is that the typical reliability for classroom assessments is 0.45.  If we use the same example from above, this means that with the typical classroom assessment (which has a reliability of 0.45 and a range of 36) we can with confidence say that a student with an observed score of 70 is likely to have a true score between 52 and 88.  On a typical grading scale, this falls somewhere between an F and a B+.  That’s a bit frightening!

The good news is that our common practice is to have multiple assessment points, rather than just one exam.  The more evidence we gather, the better our understanding of a student’s true ability.  This is good practice and why multiple forms of assessment are more reliable than any one single assessment.

In Summary

If Marzano is right—and let’s face it, he is perhaps the leading educational researcher of the past two decades—his findings have major implications for our grading practice.  But that is a discussion for another day.  The topic for today is testing, especially high stakes testing.   Marzano’s research makes a very, very strong argument for using multiple and varied assessments at the classroom level, and it also reminds us exactly what our state standardized tests do well and what they may or may not tell us about student performance.

Robert Marzano’s argument is neither for nor against state standardized testing.  Rather, he encourages us to be informed about the science of testing and to communicate accurate information to people outside of education, especially those making decisions about how test results will be used.

I hope this helps you talk to friends, family, and acquaintances about these high-stakes tests, and I hope this week of giving ECAs doesn’t test your patience too much.

Keep fighting the good fight, HSE.

Phil

I started this week’s memo with a few words from Nelson Mandela, a man who exemplified to the world a life well-lived.  So Kudos go this week to our Set a Good Example students.  I love walking by the display case by the media center and seeing pictures of our SAGE students.  It’s a gift to have kids like this at our school.  We have the opportunity to teach them and learn from them. 

“There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”  --Nelson Mandela

Head Fake

I hope you are rested and recovering from giving thanks. 

By the way, I did a little light research and found out that the “Turkey Coma,” supposedly caused by the tryptophan in turkey is a myth.  I have no intention of letting facts get in the way of my after-meal tradition and would advise the same for you when Thanksgiving rolls around on the calendar again next year.

And speaking of the calendar, I’m sure you are aware that we have only 15 school days to the end of the semester.  The last three of these, of course, are dedicated to final exams.  Since I was in the research mode, I typed into Google “Cramming vs. Studying” and came up with 149,000 hits.  I looked through the first five links, and it was fascinating reading.  There is overwhelming evidence and research about preparing students for final exams.  Two things jump out: 1) Depending how much sleep you get, cramming may help for one isolated test—sort of.  2) Cramming has no long-term benefits for learning.

If the goal is to have students pass the final exam and then forget the material, encourage them to stuff it in just like we did with the turkey this past week.  Give them a study guide a day or two before the test, and encourage students to put in as much time as possible in the days leading up to the test cramming (thus the name) their heads with information for the exam.  After the test, they can go take a nap on the couch and everything they just “learned” will fade away.

Another option is to take into account the way our brains actually function and build in review as part of daily lessons.  For the past few weeks, I have been creating a short list of best practices that teachers at HSHS are using right now to help students develop good studying habits.  The research is crystal clear that distributed practice leads to long-term retention, and the good news is that many of you are being proactive in your approach to studying for exams.  For example:

• Begin or end each day with a few review questions or quick discussions about key course content.
• Have students take a few minutes occasionally to go back through their notes and find one topic where they might be confused.  Have several students give a quick share-out to the class and then clarify the misconceptions.
• Add one or two questions from previous units to quizzes, tests, and/or homework.  Then discuss these questions when you hand back results.
• Have students make connections to previous learning as a regular part of lessons.  Take two minutes for pair-and-share during which students connect today’s learning to something—anything—in previous lessons.  This helps to solidify the day’s lesson and review previous lessons.
• Create a study calendar for the next three weeks, where students make their own schedules for studying for the final exam.  Make sure key content is included and distributed over time.

I’m sure there are many more ways to include distributed practice in daily lessons, but these are ones I have seen in practice during the past few weeks.

We have incredible kids at Hamilton Southeastern High School.  The vast majority of them want to do well.  We should share with them the brain research and the value of distributed studying.  Realistically, the odds are good they won’t implement these strategies completely on their own.  We can, however, teach our motivated students ways to avoid the need for cramming.  This is a skill that will pay dividends for them now and in the future. 

Of course, other students are less motivated for a wide variety of reasons.  For some, the lack of motivation is cumulative from years of school being difficult, from lack of academic success, and/or from poor study habits.  The practices listed above just might help.  These approaches are what Randy Pausch in his “Last Lecture” called a head fake, teaching a deeper lesson under the pretense of teaching something simple.  Planning distributed practice into your lessons can help all students, even Intentional Non-Learners, use good study habits—and they may not even recognize it as studying.  

We never know what impact one instance of success can have.  It just might be the spark that lights the fire.

Thanks for all you do for the students and for the school.  Time is always precious, and especially so near the end of a semester.  Plan carefully to use it well, and find ways to teach your students how to get the biggest return on their investment of time spent studying.

Have a great week, HSE.  I hope it is crammed full of joy, laughter, and learning.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of you helping students prepare for next week’s End of Course Assessments.  These high-stakes tests are stressful for everyone.  Thanks to all of you who take the time to teach skills and to reassure students.  All of us benefit when students do well on these tests.

Hey, What's the Big Idea? Second in a Series on UbD

I have a brother-in-law who is a dreamer and an inventor.  His vocation is that of a computer specialist, but his avocation is creating, transforming, and thinking outside the box.  He gets a great deal of energy from deconstructing ideas (and physical items) and reconstructing them in innovative ways.  His grandest dream involves a whole new kind of building.  It is one in which humans create part of the energy needed to power the facility.  His plans include walking paths that generate energy, solar power, fish farming, and hydroponics as part of a self-sustaining restaurant and recreation center.  Putting together this concept required him to take many different ideas and reconfigure them in whole new ways.

He has ideas on a smaller scale as well.  For example, he created an air filtration system which combines live plants, charcoal, and a small fan.  He also built a heavy-duty custom trailer that he pulls with his bike.  The last time I talked to him, he had bought a welder and was piecing together his own version of a recumbent bicycle.  Perhaps he will use his new bike to pull a previous invention, the collapsible canoe, behind him down to the river.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.  I know he rides his bike to work year round, and he recently hauled home a dishwasher from Lowe’s on his bicycle trailer.  (Check out the picture below and imagine a trailer attached to the back.)

Actually, I enjoy the way he thinks.  He is always looking at new possibilities and making unusual connections. His ideas have merit and often cause me to pause and reconsider previous assumptions.  And his enthusiasm is infectious. 

Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding: Transfer

I tell you about my brother-in-law because he is the guy who soon came to mind as I was learning about Stage 1 of Understanding by Design: Identify the Desired Results. 

This is what Wiggins and McTighe say about Stage 1:

Learning priorities are established by long-term performance goals—what it is we want students, in the end, to be able to do with what they have learned.  The bottom line is transfer.  The point of school is not to simply excel in each class, but to be able to use one’s learning in other settings.

These two educators urge us to see our priorities as going well beyond what will be on the end of the unit test or final exam.  (Certainly these tests are important, but we need to start the process with something bigger, something more audacious, in mind.)   For this first stage of UbD, we need to be—and to create—dreamers.  In five or ten years, what do we want students to be able to transfer to new situations well after the lesson, unit, and course is only a faint memory?  The answers to this question are the Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings. 

Knowing vs. Understanding

The difference between knowing and understanding is at the heart of this discussion.  There are lots and lots of “things” that we would like students to be familiar with and that are even important for them to know.  Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings, however, require us to go beyond the level of knowing to identify those understandings that are at the core of our content.  The understanding has to be deep enough that students will be able transfer the learning to new situations and connect the learning to other contents and to life.

This doesn’t happen every day in every class.  It may not happen every week, but this level of understanding is essential if we want students to transfer learning.  When it does happen, it takes more than memorization, telling, or coverage of content.  It takes finding ways for students to connect with something larger.  In reading through the work of Wiggins and McTighe, I found a variety of descriptions for the Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding.  Some are metaphors, and others are more concrete definitions. 

According to the designers of UbD, Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding…

• Are “deliberate choices” about the “top priorities”
• Include concepts and skills that “connect the dots for learners”
• Become the “linchpin” that holds the wheel on the axle of student understanding
• Are knowledge and skills chosen for their “power to explain”
• Are not self-evident, but rather need to be “uncovered” so students see the “core of the subject”
• Require “teacher-led inquiry” and “student self-reflection”

Our Dreamers

We need our students to be dreamers.  It doesn’t take long reading the paper or browsing the web newscasts to realize that we are in desperate need of a generation of students who can deconstruct, reconstruct, and co-construct ideas in order to create something new.  We need creative and innovative thinking now more than ever, with no end in sight.

We are in a unique position to help develop this exact kind of thinker, but we absolutely must start by helping students go beyond knowing to understanding.  Our students must learn to look beyond the unit tests and final exams in order to make independent and innovative connections.  To help them in this process, UbD suggests at least some of the time we must connect student learning to the Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings that prepare them to create something new in the future.  This “something new” might be an innovative building, a different kind of bike, a folding canoe, or something as yet unknowable.  Whatever the innovation, it will likely start as a series of connections to past learning, maybe learning that took place in your classroom.

And that, HSE, is a really big idea. 

Have a great week.

Phil

Kudos this week to those of you who promoted the food drive with your kids.  The canned goods are a mountain in our lobby.  A school-wide effort like this helps in ways we may never know and people we may never meet.  It also reminds us all that we do, indeed, have much to be thankful for.  

Open Doors

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in a wonderful and thought-provoking Ted Talk, makes the point that culture is composed of many, many overlapping stories.  In fact, the title of her speech is “The Danger of the Single Story.”  Adichie argues that if we listen to only the single story about a person, we run the risk of misunderstanding.

The past few weeks Della has been collecting the door signs that you are creating.  Occasionally, I have paged through these documents. It is a beautiful thing to look through your pictures, the bits of information you chose to include about yourselves, and the quotes that relate to you in some way.  In doing so, I have been reminded that Adichie is absolutely correct.    

Certainly, all of us are educators, but that is only a single story.  These door signs provide a glimpse of other possible narratives about our lives.  Look at the examples below which were gleaned from your submissions.  Take a moment to imagine some of the backstories that led to these statements.  Then enjoy trying to guess which teachers chose to include these details about their lives.

• I am a Crossfit Competitive Athlete and Level 1 Instructor.
• I enjoy fixing vintage bicycles, playing old country music, and watching black and white Samurai movies.
• I participate in geocaching and prepare for the zombie apocalypse.
• I spend time metal detecting and recovering lost artifacts.
• I played the clarinet and was a drum major in high school.
• I enjoy acting in musicals and plays.
• I enjoy herding cats and defeating socialism wherever it rears its ugly head.
• I create crafts I see on Pinterest.
• I sing, play guitar and bass, and record music.  (Not a music teacher!)
• I’m learning to swing dance.

Of course, this list only scratches the surface.  To get the full picture would take more time and conversation.  If we had these discussions, more stories would emerge and individual threads of dialogue would begin to weave a rich tapestry, creating a more vivid picture of the individuals.

A Door Opens Both Ways

Perhaps these signs will open the door to conversations that enable students to see past the single story of you as “teacher.”  Of course, conversations like this work both ways.  This past week I have heard of student stories about the joys of academic accomplishments, the sadness of losing a loved one, the fear of rejection, and of an incredible act of kindness from a teacher.  I know that many of you have had similar experiences this week.  In the give and take of these conversations, we have the opportunity to move beyond our single stories and deepen our understanding and appreciation of each other.

Near the end of her Ted Talk, Adichie says, “I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging in all of the stories of that place and that person.  The consequence of a single story is this: It robs people of dignity.  It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.  It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

Our door signs might be a good reminder that we are much more than a single story.  They also can be a daily reminder to us that we should find ways to hear the multiple narratives of our students.

Have a great week, HSE.  Tell your stories and listen to others.  It is an important part of what we do and who we are. 

Phil

Kudos this week to all of the students and staff involved in the Fall Play.  The production, according to all accounts, was frighteningly good.

If you are interested, this is the link to Adichie’s Ted Talk: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of the Single Story

Primary Purpose

An essential question for Hamilton Southeastern High School: What is the primary goal of our school?

In our professional discussions, we ask this question in a variety of ways.  Recently, one discussion has been around Understanding by Design, which makes the distinction between knowing and understanding.  In this framework, understanding has a specific meaning that goes well beyond merely knowing. 

Over the next few months, this weekly memo will return to this topic occasionally and take a closer look at parts of the Understanding by Design framework.  Feel free to read them now if they are helpful, or save them for future reference. 

Background Information

As a way to provide background and a solid foundation, a good place to start is with “Seven Key Tenets of the UbD Framework,” stolen and/or paraphrased directly from Wiggins and McTighe.  Note the words in bold because these are key concepts in UbD.

1. Learning is enhanced when teachers think purposefully about curricular planning.  UbD provides a framework for this process, but it is neither rigid nor prescriptive.  Use the framework but do what works for you and your students.
2. The focus of UbD is transfer.  Teaching must help students to deepen their understanding so they can effectively use the knowledge and skills in new situations.  Our purpose is more than simply helping students do well in school; our purpose is to prepare them to do well in life.
3. Understanding is revealed when teachers plan authentic performance tasks for students.  These tasks allow students to make sense of their learning and practice the transfer their learning in a supportive environment.
4. Effective curriculum uses backward planning through a three-stage process (Desired Results, Evidence, and Learning Planning).  This process avoids common problems of treating the textbook as the curriculum and/or providing activity-oriented teaching with no clear priorities.
5. Teachers are coaches of understanding, not mere purveyors of content knowledge, skill, or activity.  Learning, not just teaching, is the focus of a teacher’s work.
6. Regularly reviewing units and curriculum against UbD design qualities enhances learning and provides engaging professional discussions.
7. UbD involves a continual improvement approach to student achievement and teacher craft.  Reflection and revisions are part of the framework.

If our goals are only to have students do well in our classes and to get good grades, knowing is probably enough.  If, however, our goal is for students to take the learning beyond our classes, outside the halls of HSHS, and into new situations, making sure students understand is essential. 

The bottom line is that students who understand can and do apply learning to new situations.  With UbD, we know this to be true because we have designed learning opportunities that provide practice in doing so as part of the classroom experience.  Simply put, students can transfer learning because we have provided opportunities for them to understand by design.

I hope your week is designed to be a good one.

Phil

Kudos to our technology people.  During the past few weeks they were hit with the Perfect Storm of technological issues.  It was incredibly frustrating for everyone, but the techies put in long hours trying to identify the problems and come up with solutions.  Persistence in the face of frustration may not be fun, but it is an admirable trait and worthy of note.

Fog Lights

The Bad News: Fog Warning

New learning is always a bit messy.  As teachers, we recognize this reality with our students, but it doesn’t make it any easier to be on the other side of the experience.  We like being experts and tend to be uncomfortable as beginners.  You are likely feeling some of this discomfort with Understanding by Design.  This feeling of discomfort is compounded if you feel uncertain about the final destination.  It may feel like driving in heavy fog, seeing only what the headlights illuminate.

The Good News: The Right Road

Administratively, we spent time this past week looking at the first drafts of UbD units that you worked on last Thursday in an attempt to assess where we stand in the process.  It may or may not feel like it right now, but we are heading in the right direction.  The “Understandings” you are developing and the “Essential Questions” you are asking are spot on.  The “Performance Tasks” are especially interesting, and we are excited to think about how HSE students will benefit from this type of assessment. 

Awareness and Exploration: Lifting the Fog

Remember that the district goal for this year is awareness and exploration.  At this point, if you are getting glimpses of how Understanding by Design weaves together all of the various topics we have been working on this year (and in previous years) you are right on track.  If you already see many of the natural connections to school-wide and district-wide initiatives, you are out ahead of the timeline.

As examples, below are three ways in which the pieces of the professional development puzzle fit together:

• The Teacher Effectiveness Rubric:  We spent most of last year’s professional development time looking at the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  The TER includes direct references to UbD planning.  The rubric lists good questioning techniques, student engagement, formative assessments, differentiation, and higher order thinking as part of the “Effective” and “Highly Effective” categories.  All of these are included in a solid UbD unit.
• Professional Development Sessions: We spent time in the first release day working on integrating technology into classroom instruction in order to increase student engagement.  The HSE21 Committee introduced inquiry-learning during the second release day.  Engaging students and asking “Essential Questions” fit seamlessly into UbD units. 
• Best Practice Instruction: The four quadrants of HSE21 are 1) Student-Centered Approaches, 2) Cognitive Curriculum, 3) Fundamental Classroom Conditions, and 4) Transfer of Learning.  Read through the HSE Best Practice Model and you will see that UbD units hit all four quadrants.

To Repeat…

The goal with UbD for this year is awareness and exploration.  This first semester the focus is on awareness.  Next semester it switches to exploration.  If you find yourself saying, “It’s too much, too soon,” or if you are thinking, “It’s something new—again,” please give yourself permission to relax.  All of the work we have been doing is leading us in the same direction.  In time, the lines between the initiatives that seem so bright and bold now will begin to blur and blend as you make more and more connections between UbD, HSE21, Inquiry Learning, and TEDS. 

The UbD products you created last Thursday are another step forward in this process, and they are a solid indication that we are heading in the right direction.

Essential Questions for Right Now

• Do you have at least a beginning understanding of the UbD framework?
• Do you see how asking Essential Questions, focusing on Big Ideas, and requiring Performance Tasks might help students transfer learning beyond your classroom? 
• Do you understand that we have until 2017 until full implementation if the UbD framework? 

If so, the rising sun may be breaking up the fog bank.

I would be interested in hearing back from you about what would help you as we continue down the road of implementing UbD across the district.  If you have time, hit “reply” and tell me what might deepen your understanding and/or what you need as a next step on the journey.

Have a great week.  I hope the sun shines brightly in your part of HSHS.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of our marching band students—and their directors.  They started practicing in the blistering heat of summer and finished last weekend in the cold and wind of the Ben Davis High School stadium.  Their performance and perseverance is commendable.

This picture doesn't do justice in capturing the impact of the performance, but it may give you a feel for the cold and wind!

Rocking Back and Forth

For the past few weeks I have been a little obsessed with quotations.  First, I started noticing what people put in their signature lines in their emails.  Then Della showed me some of the door posters that people are putting together, and I started reading quotations you have chosen to include.  Finally, this past week, somebody quoted a line from Jack Handy’s “Deep Thoughts,” which aired on the old Saturday Night Live episodes.

The long and short is that below is compilation of some of my favorite thoughts, quotes, and truisms that I have collected recently.  They may inspire you.  They may make you laugh. My hope is you find all of them enjoyable in some way.

• “When you’re riding in a time machine way far into the future, don’t stick your elbow out the window, or it’ll turn into a fossil.”  --Jack Handy

• “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”  --Thomas Alva Edison 

• “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”  --Steve Martin 

• “If a student can Google the answers to the questions we ask, we are asking the wrong questions.”  --Anonymous

• “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.  Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education.”  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

•  “I went to a restaurant that serves breakfast at any time.  So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”  --Steven Wright

•  “A child is so much more than a test score.”  --Bumper Sticker

• “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”  --Norman Vincent Peale

• “Be kind whenever possible.  It is always possible.”  --Dalai Lama

• “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”  --C. S. Lewis

•  “Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.”  --Oscar Wilde

•  “It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money.  And I guess that’s what I like about it.  It’s easy.  Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.”  --Jack Handy

I hope you enjoyed the long weekend, and I hope that whether you are in the need of motivation, consolation, or humor one of the quotes touched you in some way. 

Have a great week, HSE.  Pay attention to the words by which we are surrounded.  Perhaps you can add to this list or make up new words of wisdom to pass down to future lovers of words.  And perhaps one day, someone will just sit there, rocking back and forth, being touched by your wisdom….

Phil

Kudos this week to our department chairs.  Theirs is no easy task.  They teach, they push, they support, and they keep us moving forward.  We are lucky to have this gifted group providing leadership to our school.

A Feedback Quiz

The Challenge:

Take this one-question quiz on giving academic feedback to your students.  (See if you do better than I did.)

Which approach to giving feedback to students has the greatest impact on learning?

1. Giving students a score;
2. Giving students constructive feedback – specific comments on errors, suggestions on how to improve, and at least one positive remark;
3. Giving students constructive feedback and a score.

Background: Not All Students Learn at the Same Pace

Earlier this year I wrote about Dylan Wiliam (the guy with two first names) and used his statement, “Students don’t learn what we teach them.”  This describes a phenomenon you almost certainly have experienced.  You check for understanding and realize that students are all over the place with their learning of key concepts or skills.  Some get it; some don’t.  Others are everywhere in between.

I also told you that in Embedded Formative Assessment, Wiliam gives specific information on what increases the probability of students learning what we teach.  You can probably guess from the title of the book that he is a huge proponent of formative assessments, which give low-stakes feedback to both the teacher and the students and allow both to make adjustments in the learning process.  William says if we believe that students learn in different ways and in different timeframes, formative assessments are not just good instruction, they are essential.

And the Answer Is….

The answer to the quiz may surprise you.  According to the research, Wiliam says that students in the second group learned twice as fast as students in the first. That may not be surprising, but keep reading! The students in the third group (comments and a score) made little progress.  I had to double-check to make sure I was reading correctly.   In fact, giving students a score and feedback was less effective than a score alone, and not nearly as effective as feedback alone.

The reason according to Wiliam: Those with the highest scores felt no need to read the comments and those with the lowest scores didn't want to read the comments. The score was all they remembered.

If you want a research-based argument in favor of formative assessments, this is it.  Formative assessments allow students to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.  They allow teachers to adjust instruction, and they increase student learning when they include:  

• Specific comments on errors,
• Suggestions to improve, and
• At least one positive remark.

If you don’t believe it, I encourage you to try it for yourself.  Experiment with feedback using the three steps bulleted above and hold the score until students have worked through the comments and suggestions.     

I would love to hear your feedback on this experiment.  I promise to give you a positive comment, and I promise not to give you a score.

Have a great week.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of you who rolled with the punches.  PLAN and PSAT causes weird schedule issues.  If you said, “It is what it is” and kept on keeping on, this one is for you!  Thanks for staying positive and supportive of school-wide initiatives.

Work with Laughter

I was sitting in the athletic office with two wise men—or perhaps two wise guys—who asked me how I deal with stress.  I didn’t have good answers right off the top of my head, but I’ve been kicking around some ideas and have come to the conclusion that humor, and more specifically, laughter, may be one of the most important components for me. 

Out of curiosity, I did a little research and found that laughter is indeed the best medicine:

• Laughter relaxes the whole body.  A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.
• Laughter boosts the immune system.  Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
• Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

Inoculate Yourself

We are told that laughter is the best medicine, and that laughter is contagious.  If both statements are true, then ironically laughter is both the medicine and the disease.  Fortunately, we can find ways to get a dose of this medicine by exposing ourselves to it. Click on the link and take a few minutes to watch a short video clip.  Judge for yourself how contagious laughter can be:

Laughter Chain

What Matters in the End

We do live in stressful times and work in a stressful profession.  We feel the urgency of being at the top of our game daily because we impact the lives of our students each and every day.  My hope for you this week is that whether it is inside or outside the halls of HSHS, you find times to laugh.

Kris Kristofferson, the singer, actor, and Rhodes Scholar, made this musical argument: “Tell the truth.  Sing with passion.  Work with laughter.  Love with heart.  ‘Cause that’s all that matters in the end.”  

Have a great week, Southeastern.  May it be filled with laughter.

Phil

Kudos this week to the HSE21 Professional Development Committee.  Thanks for your thoughtfulness and hard work that made last week’s release time successful and meaningful.

A few more thoughts on laughter:

• “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”  --Mark Twain
• “Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”  --Oscar Wilde
• “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion.  I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” --Kurt Vonnegut
• “From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter.  Someday I intend to read it.”  --Groucho Marx
• “Laughter gives us distance.  It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it, and then move on.”  --Bob Newhart
• “Laughter is the best medicine—unless you’re a diabetic, then insulin comes pretty high on the list.”  --Jasper Carrott
• “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”  --Karl Barth

One more, just for fun… 

This is the sign that was awaiting our Spell Bowl team last week as the bus pulled up to one of our neighboring schools.  The irony was not lost on our students!

Desirable Difficulties

“It takes a great meeting to beat no meeting at all.” –Steve Barone

Spoiler alert: This memo is not about meetings.  It’s about homework.

Annie Murphy Paul, writing for Time Magazine, states that the arguments about homework are often about “too much” or “too little.”  This misses the point, says Paul.  Instead we should be asking this question: How effectively do after-school assignments advance learning?

Paul suggests many current homework assignments don’t “make the grade,” but this doesn’t mean we need to get rid of homework.  Instead, we should use what we know about the human brain to craft homework assignments that actually impact and improve student learning.

Three of her suggestions:

• Spaced Repetition: We tend to give homework based on what happened that day in class or on the unit we are currently in.  Consider an alternative.  Instead, assign homework that returns to key skills or concepts from earlier in the unit or even the semester.  Researchers from the University of California San Diego say this method works because of the way our brains work.  When we first acquire memories, they are “volatile, subject to change, or likely to disappear.”  The learning is fixed permanently in our minds when we are re-exposed to the content over time.  The research shows impressive results, nearly double the retention rate using the spaced approach as opposed to studying material in one consolidated unit.  As a bonus, consider how this practice could have a positive impact on your Student Learning Objective.
• Retrieval Practice: This brain-based approach involves testing, but a different kind of test.  These are short, specific assessments that require students to “retrieve” information.  Our minds are not storage tanks that we dig into to retrieve information.  Rather, our brains build paths that we navigate to pull up information.  The more often we pull up a memory, the stronger the path becomes.  Design homework that requires students to retrieve material from memory.  Research from Purdue University indicates that science students retained 50% more material using the retrieval practice strategy.
• Interleaving to Create Cognitive Disfluency: (I like this phrase so much, I had to use it even though I had no idea what it meant before doing more reading!)  One interesting paradox is that if learning is easy, it is not as likely to stay with us.  The extra effort needed to learn something triggers our brains to remember the knowledge.  Psychologists call this phenomenon “Cognitive Disfluency.”  Researchers say we need to include “desirable difficulties” to make the work challenging and even interesting.  One easy way to do this is to use “Interleaving,” which simply means “mix-it-up.”  Create homework that mixes up situations, problems, or tasks, rather than grouping all similar types.  Brains have to work harder to come up with solutions.  Shorter assignments using interleaving and cognitive disfluency can be more effective for learning than longer, single topic assignments.

I started with a maxim from Steve Barone, a man I admire a great deal.  His truism about meetings may be useful in thinking about homework: It takes a great homework assignment to beat no homework at all.

That certainly sets a high bar, but it is one worth considering.  I encourage you to experiment with Paul’s suggestions.  Start by examining the homework you give this week.  Time and effort are valuable commodities—for us and for our students.  We should hold high expectations for student performance on our assignments, and we should hold equally high expectations for ourselves when it comes to designing the tasks we ask them to complete.

I hope your week is a good one, one that is filled cognitive disfluency.   Teaching is no easy task.  It is filled with “desirable difficulties” but also with the rich rewards of student growth and learning.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of our Best Buddy students.  I find the relationships built with this program profoundly moving.  Lives are forever changed for the better because of the interactions between the students, and we are a better and kinder school because of the Best Buddies.

If you are not familiar with Best Buddies, check this link to senior Emilie Turner’s YouTube video from last year about Best Buddies.  I guarantee it is worth five minutes of your time.  Click here to see the video: HSE Best Buddies

By the way, I hear a new Best Buddy video will come out later this year.  (Maybe it is part of an ongoing homework assignment!)

The Forces of Perversity

You are surrounded!  Hundreds of students pour through your doors each day, you meet with many colleagues regularly, and you often interact with parents and community members.  Inevitably, when dealing with this many people, you are going to find yourself in times of disagreement and even conflict.

It shouldn't be unexpected, but conflict often catches us by surprise.  It might come in the middle of a class discussion, it might arrive in the form of an unpleasant and vitriolic email or poorly timed phone call, or it could occur at the check-out counter at Kroger or while on a walk through your neighborhood.

For years, my father has used the term “Forces of Perversity” to describe the way these things happen.  The confrontations tend to come when we least expect them and may catch us when we are tired or emotionally drained.  Maintaining professionalism when the Forces of Perversity strike is not an easy task.  For most of us, the first and most natural response is “Talk and Defend.” We think we can quickly make difficulties go away if we take charge of the conversation and talk fast enough.  While understandable and perhaps even immediately satisfying, this approach can cause more problems than it solves. 

It may be counterintuitive, but putting in time up front to really listen, will inevitably save you time in the long run.  The reason is simple: the real issues often are not apparent—or even mentioned—in the first interactions.  It takes work to get to the heart of the matter, and it takes time.  Until we understand the underlying issues, our comments and responses may well be superficial and unproductive at best.  And at worst, our comments may come across as combative or alienating.

Find Time and Space

When you find yourself caught off guard, the first step is to buy the time and find the space you need to really listen.  “I want to understand more.  Let’s set up a time to talk.”    These words are magic.  Use them when others are around, especially students.  For some reason this concept of finding time and space is easy to forget in the heat of the moment, so memorize these words and have them readily available.

Once you have the time to talk, Dan Rockwell, a leadership consultant, gives several ideas on how to approach combative situations. 

• Stay Calm: Monitor your calmness level while listening. Imagine yourself watching yourself. Self-awareness usually does the trick, and calmness is an invitation that says people matter.
• Body Language: Open your hands and hold your palms up, or sit with your arms open.  Your body should reflect the openness of your mind.
• Ask Questions: Ask at least three questions before making one statement. Assume you don’t understand the point being made.  Use clarifying questions to get to the real issues.
• Explore Options: Forget your answer.  Test and explore theirs, rather than defend.   See if you can get to the heart of the matter, and assume the other person has a large piece of the puzzle you are putting together.

Together is the key word.  Together you can start resolving the conflict, and together you can begin to address the issues.  Real solutions require listening, clarifying and co-creating responses.

Rockwell adds a “bonus” suggestion:  express gratitude.  We should be thankful that students or parents have opened doors to conversation and problem solving.  True, these doors aren’t always opened in the time, place, or manner we would prefer, but it does begin an important process.

Expect the unexpected, HSE.  Have a plan for when you are bushwhacked.  Arm yourself ahead of time with a strategy to battle the Forces of Perversity.  The odds are good they are hanging around waiting for just the wrong moment. 

Have a great week!

Phil

Kudos this week to Natalie, Paula, Jacquie, and all of you who helped make Homecoming Week so much fun for the students.  From hall decorating on Sunday night to the Saturday dance, it was a great week to be a Royal.