Trees, Teaching, and Hope

Since this is the last “From B106” for this school year, I would like to end with a few thoughts about hope.

There is something inherently hopeful in the act of planting a tree.  I thought about this last week when Lisa and I picked out a Bruns Serbian Spruce and planted it in our yard.  We dug the hole, amended the soil, and spread the mulch.  We will provide water occasionally, but with a tree like this, our work is basically done. 

When I plant trees, I am reminded of a story from the Talmud that I heard long ago:

The righteous man Honi once encountered a man planting a carob tree.  “How long will it take to bear fruit?” he inquired. 

“About seventy years,” the man replied. 

“So, do you think you will live long enough to taste its fruits?”

The man explained, “I have found ready-grown carob trees in the world.  As my forefathers planted them for me, so I plant for my children.”

I did a little research and discovered that a spruce tree like the one we planted can live up to 200 years.  We plan to enjoy the beauty of this small tree for a while.  Obviously, we will never see it fully grown.  I tell this story because I was struck by the similarity to our work here at HSE.

We have prepared our students the best we can for what will follow once they leave the halls of HSE, but we are not likely see the end results.  Planting a tree and teaching are both inherently acts of hope.

Warren Buffet wrote, “I am sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  Mr. Buffett knows a bit about money, but he apparently understands the importance of looking at the long view as well.  (Maybe those are related topics.)

My hope for you is that you have a great summer.  Find time to rest, relax, and rejuvenate.  Sit in the shade of an old tree when you get a chance—and perhaps think about the person who planted it many years ago.  When you do so, take heart that the seeds you are planting here at HSE will also take root and grow.  You may never see the final results, but the world will be better for your efforts.

Have a great week and an even better summer break.  It’s a great season to be a Royal.

Phil

A few ending thoughts:

•    “There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.”  --Andrew Jackson
• “We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves.  And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.”  --Thich Nhat Hanh
• “Just play.  Have fun.  Enjoy the game.”  --Michael Jordan

The Courage of an Artist

“When it is work, people try to figure out how to do less.  When it is art, people try to figure out how to do more.  Thus the question: Will this be on the test?”  --Seth Godin

Humor me for a minute.  I want to ask a question that may not have a good answer and may even make you mad:

How can we get students as emotionally and mentally involved in our academic final exams and projects as they are in creating art—both musical and visual?

The simple answer might be, “We can’t.”  Yet we have all seen glimpses and possibilities.

The Background:

Hamilton Southeastern Choir performing a medley from Wicked

I stood backstage several Fridays ago and watched our choir seniors perform their final song together as a class.  The performance was outstanding, and emotions ran high.  After the show, there were hugs all around.  Smiles and tears were evident in equal numbers.  The performance was a fitting conclusion to an outstanding evening of music featuring hits from Broadway musicals.  These seniors put in a tremendous amount of time, energy, and work to make the show a success.

Choir students are not the only artists pouring their energy, talents, and hearts into the end of the year performances.  HSE Wind Ensemble will soon play at the Palladium, the Orchestra students have their final concert Monday, and throughout the school student artwork is on exhibit.  All of these artists take the risk of putting themselves and their work out for public display.  It is an act of courage.

 

Self Portrait by Katherine Thomas
Used with permission 

What is school for?

This past week, I watched Seth Godin’s TED Talk on changes coming to education.  I quoted him at the top of this entry.  It might be worth reading his words again.  In his TED Talk, he asks the essential question, “What are schools for?”  He explains that during the Industrial Era, the purpose was clear:  Schools were designed to create compliant and interchangeable students who could work in factories and become consumers.  (He points out that these institutions were even called “normal” schools.)  Today, this purpose is neither what our world nor our students need.

Godin argues that an educational system designed to create compliance cannot generate creative, independent, problem-solvers.  It will not generate passion.  Who, for example, can be creative if there is only one right answer, and who can become passionate about a multiple-choice test or reading a chapter in a textbook and answering the questions at the end? 

Another Possibility?

Think of times when you have seen students do much, much more than you asked or expected.  Recall those days when students became fully engaged and invested in an assignment, when they become so interested in the doing and learning that the question “Will this be on the test?” never came into consideration.  Think of classes where students argued passionately about a topic, discussed deeply and thoroughly, or were so interested that they researched on their own and came back with new and innovative ideas. 

When this happens, students are creating and co-creating.  We have all experienced this phenomenon, and when it happens, we are every bit as energized as the students.  Together, we become part of the creative process.  It is the difference between work and art that Godin speaks of. 

The Question Again

Is it possible to get students in all classes as excited, as energized, as committed to a final exam as the choir, orchestra, band, and art students are to their final performances and products?  The answer may depend on our definition of what makes a final exam.  What if a final exam wasn’t something students took?  What if it was something students gave? 

In traditional academic classes, we don’t typically have performances or shows, nor do we often see students fully committed to the creative process associated with the arts.  I would argue that doesn’t mean we don’t try to move students in that direction.  As we continue to think about performance assessments, our definitions of what makes a final could change.

One or the Other: A False Dichotomy

Education is a wonderful profession, and one of the joys is that we don’t have to do what we have always done.  We can experiment and try new approaches.  Maybe we can’t design exams and assignments that encourage and create the emotional energy required of the students who sang and danced to the songs of Wicked last Friday night, and maybe we can’t create a traditional test that personally involves a student to the degree of the huge self-portraits we see in our hallways.

On the other hand, we can include performance assessments that give choice, involve student interests and passions, or provide authentic audiences.  It is not like we have to do one and not the other.  We can give a traditional final exam, and we can include engaging performance assessments.  The art of teaching also involves creativity, passion, and perseverance.  No artist creates a masterpiece on the first attempt, and neither will we.  We can, however, persevere on our journey to inspire excellence. 

Henri Matisse said, “Creativity takes courage.”  Do we dare, like our students, to be artists?

Have a great week, HSE.

Phil

• “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.”  --Scott Adams
• “Every  child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  --Pablo Picasso
• “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”  --Arthur O’Shaughnessy

Like a Rock

My Grandma's Story: Rock of Ages

I come from a long line of educators.  My grandmother, Nona Kauffman, was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Northern Indiana.  Many of her students were Amish, and the others came from the local farming community.  She used to tell stories about these students and could remember names and details of specific events many, many decades later. 

Memory was never an issue for Grandma.  She was an avid Scrabble player, wrote a weekly column for her church newsletter until late in her 90s, and could rattle off long passages of Shakespeare or full poems of Wordsworth or Browning well into her ninth decade.  She passed away soon after her 100th birthday, but lives on in many ways, as this story may show.

After I had been teaching for a few years and Grandma was in her late 80s, I stopped in one day to talk a bit, but mostly to listen.  When I arrived for this particular visit, she was excited about an encounter she had that morning with a former student.  Grandma had been down to the main office of the nursing home talking to one of the secretaries when a head popped around the corner, and a woman who was thinking of moving into the nursing home said, "Nona Kauffman, is that you?  I thought I recognized your voice."

This elderly woman, in her 70s herself, had been Grandma's student in the one-room schoolhouse in Honeyville, Indiana, many years ago.  Even after six decades had passed, her former student still recognized the voice of her favorite teacher.  

Grandma's comment to me as I left that day: "You have picked the right profession.  The rewards of teaching will follow you all of your life."

My Story: Classic Rock

About two weeks ago, I received an email from a former student who both my wife and I had in class when we first started teaching at Hesston Middle School in rural Kansas in the early 1980s.  Now an elementary teacher with middle school-age children of her own, she has kept in touch with many of her former classmates.  They had been trading school stories on Facebook, and one of them posted a picture that stirred memories and led to her email.  This is the picture:

At Hesston Middle School in the early 80s, all of the students were placed in homerooms.  The students chose names for their groups, designed and made t-shirts, and met weekly to work on all the things a middle schooler might need to work on in order to be successful.  This t-shirt was from my one of my homeroom groups.  How and why she kept this t-shirt is a mystery, but I’m glad she did.

Since that first email, I have heard from other of my ex-seventh graders.  It has been great fun to see what they are up to and all they have accomplished in the past 30 or so years.  I'm amazed, both at these students and that so many years have passed so very quickly.  

Time does fly when you're having fun!

So have a great week, HSE.  Be secure in the knowledge that you do make a difference in the lives of your students.  Remember the words of a very wise and very wonderful woman who once told me that the rewards of our profession last a lifetime.  She was right in the 1980s, and her words still ring true today.

Bring it home strong.  Rock on!

Phil

“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”

--Nelson Mandela

Cacophony

We can't help but hear the almost deafening noise surrounding standards, testing, and school accountability measures.  It's coming from downtown and all around the nation.  Turn on the TV or radio, and we are blasted by the raucous debate.  Open up the newspaper, and the print screams from headlines and the editorial pages about school accountability and high-stakes testing.

It seems that most everyone has an idea about what schools should be doing and how we should be doing it—regardless of the level of expertise about educational issues.  For every argument, someone else puts forth a counter.  We live in a time where the loudest voice often is the one heard, so civil discourse tends to turn into something much less civil.  

The discordant cacophony surrounding school accountability can, at times, make me want to scream.

A School's Reality

At the school level, if you want to get a feel for the impact of the current accountability debate, swing by the office.  You will find that Naomi and her crew have been working for weeks getting ready for all the AP exams.  The tests are stacked, boxed, and ready to go.  Proctors have been trained, students have registered and paid, and starting next week, literally thousands of AP exams will be given to HSE students.

In the front office conference room, if you dare stick your head past the security signs, you can find boxes and boxes of End of Course Assessments.  Counselors, teachers, and administrators have been working for weeks preparing testing lists, organizing rooms, training proctors, and getting ready for the tests that begin on Tuesday.  Before the last of these high-stakes tests are boxed for shipment out of the school, our students will have taken over 2,000 ECAs.  

One night last week, when I was unable to sleep, I tried to add up the individual hours spent on testing at Hamilton Southeastern High School alone.  I gave up when the numbers started getting too large.  As opposed to counting sheep, counting these mind-numbing numbers caused agitation rather than relaxation.

Some Calm in the Storm

In the midst of the noisy testing frenzy, I have found an interesting refuge, a bit of peace and quiet coming from HSE faculty and staff.  I hope that some of you reading this recognize that I am talking about you.  

I have been and continue to be grateful for the response from teachers and staff when asked to help.  May is not the easiest month of the school year.  It is filled with the end-of-year activities and stress.  Teachers, coaches, and students are completing courses, preparing for graduation, performing music concerts and theatrical productions, competing in athletic playoffs, and doing all of the other necessities required to wind down the school year.

In the midst of these activities and on top of the already busy schedules, teachers, counselors, and secretaries are often asked to be flexible to accommodate the added tasks required to complete the testing.  They are asked to adjust schedules, attend trainings, contact students, and proctor tests.

Here is the piece that is almost astounding: I have found that when requests are made to add the extra duties of testing, without exception, HSE teachers, counselors, and staff say, "Yes."  You continue to stay positive and respond professionally.  This is the quiet in the storm.  

I admire and appreciate your willingness to provide a calming presence during these stressful and noisy times.

So thanks to all of you who will go the extra mile during these final weeks of school and help get us through May.  You continue to rise to the occasion and pass this test.

It's a great day to be a Royal.  

Phil

Questioning Sequences

Robert Marzano, in his newly published Questioning Sequences in the Classroom, makes the argument that the exact same question can require Higher Order Thinking for one student but Lower Order Thinking for another.  He gives the example of this question:

Why is it that tides are equally high on both sides of the earth when the moon’s gravity is pulling from only one side?

If the student has not been exposed to this line of reasoning before, to arrive at a plausible answer, he or she must go through a complex thinking process in order to analyze the impact of the moon’s gravity and earth’s gravity and resulting force and counterforce.  No doubt about it: This requires higher level thinking.  But if the student has heard or read the explanation before and stored the information in long-term memory, it would be a simple act of recall to respond correctly to the question.

This creates a dilemma: How do you ask questions that keep all student working and thinking?

The solution, according to Marzano, is to use Questioning Sequences, rather than single questions.  His research, which is always impeccable, verifies that using a sequence of questions will elicit deeper and more rigorous thinking in students.  In his book, Marzano goes into great detail about why sequencing questions works so well.  He also gives exemplars from multiple content areas and makes suggestions of how to successfully incorporate questioning sequences into your classroom. 

If reading a full book right now seems overwhelming, save it for the summer.  But you could still experiment yet this year.

A Place to Start

One alternative that you could implement today is to use the questions listed below.  This poster from Edutopia is trending right now on educational Twitter channels and looks great.  Try using these “Five Simple Questions” and explore the impact they have on your students’ thinking and learning if you used them in sequence.

From Rebecca Alber, Consulting Online Editor, Edutopia, April 2014

Using questioning sequences is a doable, simple, concrete approach to questioning.  You can implement this strategy today with almost no training.  Give it a try—and let me know your results.

No question about it, HSE, I hope you have a great week.

Bring it home strong!

Phil

“Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom.”  

                                                                                                                       --Chip Bell

Of Snow, Spring Fever, and Diligence

I was talking to a student at lunch last Tuesday, and he was complaining about the overnight snow.  I said to him, “At least it’s not snowing now” and then looked out into the courtyard to see I was wrong.  The weather may not have caught up with us, but spring is supposed to be here, and with it comes spring fever.  It’s the time of year when we struggle to keep focus—both our own and of our students.

I recently read an article by Atul Gawande about this tendency of ours to lose focus.  Gawande is a surgeon, Harvard professor, and journalist and has been widely published and referenced in a variety of ways.  In one of his books, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, he argues that creating checklists and sticking to them with diligence makes a difference.

His words: “Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.”  He agrees that diligence seems mundane, but it is the daily effort that makes the difference over the long haul in all areas: “Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence.”

That is us, by the way.  Educators “take on tasks of risk and consequence” on a daily basis.

Based on Gawande’s suggestion, Bryan Goodwin and Elizabeth Ross Hubbell, educational writers and consultants, created the following checklist for educators.  This is what they think should happen every day in your classes:

• Create an oasis of safety and respect in the classroom.
• Use standards to guide every learning opportunity.
• Make performance expectations clear.
• Have students set personal learning objectives.
• Engage students’ interest.
• Interact meaningfully with every student.
• Make the most of every minute.
• Use feedback to encourage effort.
• Coach students to mastery.
• Help students develop deep knowledge.
• Help students apply their learning.
• Measure understanding against high expectations.

That’s a pretty tough list for every day in every class!  I wonder about narrowing the scope, at least to start.  If you had to pick a few of these, which would you pick and stick to with diligence until the end of the year?  If you had to create a checklist of your own, what items would make your list?

These are interesting questions think about at any time of year, but they may be essential questions to ask in April.

Have a great week, HSE.  I hope no metaphorical or tangible snow falls in your courtyard this week.  Keep fighting the good fight all the way to the end of the year.

Phil

A Call to 911

Since the last “From B106” was about questions, I have a few to ask:

What is the purpose of school? 

When I was in elementary school in the 60s, part of my reading education came through the SRA reading program.  SRA was housed in a large white box with color-coded “cards” containing short readings and a series of required questions.  Students would move at their own pace through these cards from red, to yellow, to purple and green, and end up with the blues (pun intended).  Each level successfully completed was recorded on a wall chart for each student, so everyone had a colorful visual of who the good and struggling readers were.  It was the 60s, after all.

I recall the thrill of making it to the end of the box, placing the last blue card neatly back in its folder, and reporting to my teacher that I had finished.  Rather than sharing my joy, my teacher said, “Come with me.”  She took me to the back cupboard, opened it up, and showed me Box Two sitting right beside Boxes Three and Four.  It turns out that “finished” is only a relative term.

I started on my first red folder of Box Two that day.  I honestly don’t remember if I finished Box Two, but I do remember the moment I realized SRA was going to be a long journey to an unclear destination.

Do we SRA our kids at HSE?  Do we teach with the primary goal of getting students ready for a test or for the next level or course?  Comments like this might be an indicator: “Okay third graders, you will need to know this for fourth grade?”  Or “You have to know this for the test next week.”  Or “When you get to college, you will have to write a paper just like this one.”  Perhaps there is nothing wrong with these statements.  This approach may even be necessary, but it seems somewhat joyless and artificial and to be honest, a bit depressing. 

I was pretty good at “doing school,” and fortunately I discovered the real joy of reading with a different teacher in a different class.  That is a story for another time, but I still wonder if we continue to send the message that students should learn to “do school” so they can “do school” at a higher level next year.  “Do well on Box One, so you can go on to Box Two….”

Shouldn’t it be more?

This is an email one of our students sent to her teacher recently:

Hola Señora! Excuse my English but I had a proud moment today that I wanted to share with you. After fourth period I leave to go to my internship at the Indiana State Police. Lately I have been with the dispatch just listening and learning their ways. Anyways, today a frantic lady called and she only spoke Spanish. The dispatchers on duty had no idea what she was saying so I got to take over and talk to her. It was such a surreal moment and it showed me that I often overthink talking in Spanish, but if I just let it go, it actually comes natural!

Sorry for the random email, just thought I'd let you know

No apology is necessary!  This student beautifully illustrated the value of her education by independently applying it to a unique situation.  It is also an example of the real purpose of school.  School is much more than simply doing school for the sake of school.  It is about doing life well.

Can we develop activities and tasks that recreate the authenticity and urgency of a call to dispatch?

The simple answer is likely “No.”  But a more complicated answer is “Perhaps.”  When our HSE student translated the call to 911 for the dispatcher, she put into practice her learning in a way that would be difficult to replicate in the classroom.  I wonder, however, whether or not other classroom tasks might be able to simulate at least a little of the situation.  To use our student’s words, could we create a situation that would allow students to “let it go”?

When we think about, create, and use Performance Tasks, we won’t always be perfect, but these tasks certainly are more engaging and purposeful than working our way through rainbow-colored folders.  There may be times for the SRA approach, but there are also times for creating an opportunity to call 911.

Those of you from my era, check out the picture again to bring back memories.  Tell me your stories.  What do you remember about SRA moments?  Those of you a few years younger, my guess is you experienced something similar on your educational journey.  Let me know what that might be.

Also let me know those experiences you had in school that you still remember as engaging, meaningful, or transformational.  If you are teaching now, my bet is you had these somewhere along the way.  In fact, those moments may be why you are teaching today.

Have a great week, HSE.

Phil