Let's Solve Our Educational Problems Together

            Many of us have wondered why the Mt. Abraham Unified School District (MAUSD) would be considering closing elementary schools, and why MAUSD would support consolidating middle and high schools with Addison Northwest (the Vergennes area) and becoming one large uber-district. After all, the financial worries plaguing the MAUSD are the result of declining student enrollment and a state education funding system that was designed when student enrollment in Vermont was stable. Closing (or even threatening to close) town elementary schools; and consolidating (or even threatening to consolidate) middle and high schools with another district, will only make the enrollment decline worse. We are already hearing this concern from local real-estate agents. Why would young families move to our five towns without assurance that town schools will remain open and vibrant, and school bus rides will remain relatively short? 

            If declining student enrollment is part of the cause of the problem, let’s take steps to attract more families to our region. It seems to us that the solution consists of three key parts: 

• Increase the availability of jobs. Supporting the universal broadband efforts now underway across Addison County is one way to help here. Not only will affordable, universal high-speed internet enable many current and future residents to work from home, but it will promote economic development across our towns, creating more jobs and making it much easier for residents to find information that leads to gainful employment. For more information, please visit the Maple Broadband website. 
• Increase the availability of reasonably priced housing. The recent Population and Housing Report from the Addison County Regional Planning Commission suggests some solutions, including repurposing existing housing stock (Repurpose existing housing stock, not schools!). Our local and regional planning commissions have already been doing some great work on this issue. They need our questions and ideas, and they deserve our support in considering steps that will increase housing availability, especially for young families just starting out. There are a number of steps that towns can take, and a number of resource people and organizations that would help our towns with this part of the solution. 
• Increase the availability of early childcare. The scarcity of quality care for very young children is a huge obstacle to employment that discourages young families from settling in our rural towns. There must be ways to increase access to early childcare - including by locating it some of the extra space we currently have in our schools. 

            Wouldn’t it be a more productive and harmonious use of our time and resources to work together on these steps toward solutions, rather than just treating the symptom of the problem with measures (closing schools and further consolidating school governance) that would have so many negative effects on our students and our communities? Imagine MAUSD Board members, the MAUSD administration, and community members from across our five towns, intentionally collaborating to keep our schools open, vibrant, thriving and cost effective. With that kind of effort there’s nothing we couldn’t accomplish. While we’re at it, let’s also collaborate in calling on the Vermont Legislature to make needed changes to the state’s system for funding public schools, so Vermont’s rural communities won’t have to suburbanize our school systems in order to be able to afford them. 

 By Nancy Cornell on behalf of the Starksboro SOS (Save Our Schools) Committee

Please note: This editorial appeared in the December 23, 2021 edition of The Addison Independent.

What Are the Results When Elementary Teachers Specialize?

          In this Annenberg Institute paper, NaYoung Hwang and Brian Kisida (University of Missouri) report on their study of the impact of elementary schools having teachers focus on fewer subjects – for example, one teaches math and science while another teaches ELA and social studies. While the majority of U.S. elementary students learn in self-contained classes, with the homeroom teacher covering all major subjects, a growing number of schools are using a semi-departmentalized structure, with teachers specializing in one or more subjects and working with two or more homerooms. The percent of schools using this model has increased from 5 percent in the mid-1990s to 20 percent by the early 2000s. 

          Over the years, advocates have advanced a number of arguments for elementary specialization:

• Although highly effective teachers in one subject are usually effective in others, there is variation; teachers are more proficient in some subjects than others. 
• This suggests that getting teachers working in their best subject will have a positive effect on student achievement. 
• When teachers specialize, they can more easily hone their skills. 
• Training and PD are streamlined and less time-consuming. 
• Teaching the same lesson two or more times a day improves performance. 
• Having fewer preps reduces teachers’ workload and stress and increases job satisfaction. 

Despite these appealing advantages, specialization has some downsides: 

• Teachers are responsible for at least twice as many students, making it more difficult to know each students’ strengths and weaknesses, needs, and special circumstances. 
• It’s more challenging for students to build trusting relationships with teachers and develop a sense of belonging in the school. 
• That’s concerning since research consistently shows that relationships play an important part in student success, especially in the early grades and for vulnerable students.
• For parents, having to deal with several teachers makes it more challenging to communicate about their children’s development and learning. 

 Hwang and Kisida say these pros and cons of elementary specialization haven’t been adequately researched, despite more than a century of debate. However, two recent studies – one in Houston, the other in North Carolina – cast doubt on the practice, documenting negative effects on student achievement. 

          Hwang and Kisida followed up on those studies by looking at statewide data on fourth and fifth grade teachers in Indiana public schools from 2011 to 2017. The researchers were able to compare data on the same teachers in years when they taught self-contained classes and years when they specialized in one or two areas. The data linked 591,311 students to 15,895 math teachers and 17,101 reading teachers. Here are the conclusions. 

• Teachers performed less well when they specialized than when they taught self-contained classes.
• Students with specialized teachers performed less well in reading and math than students with self-contained homeroom teachers. 
• This was especially true with low-achieving students, English language learners, students with special needs, and those eligible for free and reduced-price meals. 
• Schools implementing specialization saw no improvements in student achievement, attendance, or disciplinary infractions. 
• The researchers found that teachers who specialized tended to be less qualified by Indiana standards and often had a prior track record of lower impact on student achievement. 
• However, the researchers don’t believe this was the reason specialized teachers did less well; that’s because in the North Carolina study, specialized teachers more often had higher effectiveness ratings. 

What explains the negative findings on specialized elementary classrooms? Hwang and Kisida believe it’s because “specialization weakens student-teacher relationships.” They were able to test this hypothesis by looking at schools where students looped with specialist teachers – had the same combination of teachers two years in a row. In these classes, the negative effect of specialization on math achievement was significant lower. These data, say the authors, “show that finding strategies to increase student-teacher familiarity with specialists may improve their effectiveness.” There’s also the option of not specializing. 

 “Spread Too Thin: The Effects of Teacher Specialization on Student Achievement” by NaYoung Hwang and Brian Kisida, Annenberg Institute, October 2021; the authors can be reached at nhwang@missouri.edu and kisidab@missouri.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #915 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Coaching Teachers Who Are Perfectionists

In this three-part series in Education Week, coaching guru Elena Aguilar suggests ways to work with a teacher who is never, ever satisfied with what they do, or what their students do. “At the heart of perfectionism,” says Aguilar, “is a belief that, in order to be loved and accepted, we must strive to act and be the best all the time. Our very worth as a human being is tied to our perfection.” Some tendencies: 

• Getting upset when things aren’t just right; 
• Having uncompromising rules; 
• Blaming oneself or others for things that aren’t under their control; 
• Thinking in black-and-white terms; 
• Quickly discounting positive news; 
• Holding rigidly high, unrealistic standards; 
• Saying should a lot; 
• Claiming not to be a perfectionist. 

Because things aren’t ever perfect, perfectionists often see themselves as failures. They’re especially vulnerable to criticism, blame, feelings of inadequacy, and shame. Perfectionism is all tied up with self-worth, and may go back to childhood experiences. It’s a “dysfunctional emotional tendency,” says Aguilar, “… associated with increased stress, physical health problems, mental-health issues, and a high risk of burnout.” 

Perfectionism should not be confused with a strong work ethic and a commitment to excellence, says Aguilar. “You can have tremendous energy, conscientiousness, and persistence and not be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is about seeking external validation, whereas healthy striving is all about internal drive. A healthy striver has high expectations and commits to a task while also making mistakes and knowing that those mistakes don’t indicate a personal flaw. A perfectionist’s sense of self-worth is overly tied to external praise and accomplishments.” 

 A coach working with a perfectionist teacher needs to draw on specific tools and approaches. Aguilar suggests these eleven: 

• Facilitate, don’t direct. The coach needs to help them discover their internal power. “You cannot fix a perfectionist teacher,” she says. “They have to take care of themselves.” 
• Coach toward emotional awareness. This is true for all coachees, but is especially important for perfectionists, who need help putting their emotions into words. 
• Help them find indicators of success. The teacher probably has a long list of unattainable goals for the class, project, unit, or school year. “Attainable, realistic goals help a perfectionist feel successful,” says Aguilar. 
• Be cautious with praise. “A perfectionist won’t actually feel any better from it and may feel unsatisfied with your coaching,” says Aguilar, “or feel that your praise wasn’t enough, or wasn’t authentic, or wasn’t the right kind of praise.” What works is specific, genuine appreciation in bite-size chunks. 
• Help identify strengths. “The perfectionist needs to hone their ability to see their own skills and to praise themselves,” says Aguilar. Debriefing a lesson, a coach might ask the teacher to identify three things that went well and persist if the teacher waves off the compliments. 
• Normalize struggle and imperfection. A light touch is helpful here, reminding the teacher that it’s normal to mess up sometimes and mistakes are a learning opportunity. 
• Coach around what the teacher can control. Help the teacher focus on areas where they have the most impact and steer them away from areas where they have no influence. 
• Coach away from stark generalizations. “Help your client see the nuances, gray zones, and complexity of every situation,” advises Aguilar. “Guide them to unpack ‘total failure’ so that they can see the 1 percent of the lesson that was neutral, or even strong.” 
• Cultivate self-compassion. Possible questions: Would you talk to your best friend/ sibling/child/student the way you talk to yourself? What would it take for you to treat yourself the way you treat those you love the most in the world? 
• Teach relaxation strategies. “Perfectionists are anxious and live with a lot of fear,” says Aguilar. “Mindfulness is an invaluable tool in this area.” 
• Suggest a mantra. “Perfectionists need to rewire their brain,” she says. “They’ve spent decades, most likely, telling themselves they aren’t doing a good enough job.” They need to learn a new language, and a phrase or sentence that helps them accept partial perfection can be very helpful. 

Aguilar describes working with a perfectionist teacher named Katie and suddenly realizing that her own emotional responses – frustration, impatience, anger – were adding to a “wall” between them and preventing the teacher from trusting and listening. “I was firmly attached to how I thought she should change and what she should do and when,” says Aguilar, “and when I didn’t see the kind of evidence I wanted to see, I felt frustrated. Impatient. I wasn’t a very good coach at that point… because what I value most in a coach is that the coaching emerges from a place of deep compassion and curiosity… I had to acknowledge my own fears, anger, sadness, and insecurities first – and engage with those and understand them – before I could be the kind of coach I wanted to be, and that Katie needed me to be.” 

Patience, she says, is what was needed – not resignation or passivity, but being open to Katie’s realities. Aguilar took this lesson into all her other coaching. “Slowing down helps me tremendously to recognize what I’m feeling,” she says. “Now, when fear or anger surface during a coaching session, I acknowledge them and ask them to sit on the side while I’m working and I promise them we’ll have a chat later. And then, once I’m in a place where I can reflect, I say, ‘Hello, my little fearful coach-self. What happened in that session that triggered your insecurities?’ And then I dig and uncover sometimes a new insight or sometimes the same old stuff.” 

With Katie, there was a moment when Aguilar had deep empathy for how difficult it was for this teacher to always think she was a terrible teacher. “Katie,” she said, “I can hear how much you’re suffering, and my heart aches. I wish I could take it all away because I know how badly you want to teach and how much you want to meet the needs of your kids.” Katie sensed her kindness and compassion and sighed deeply, and they had a profound connection. “And she talked,” says Aguilar. “And I listened. The wall crumbled.” 

 “How to Coach the Perfectionist Teacher: Understanding Perfectionism Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3” by Elena Aguilar in Education Week, February 27, 28, and March 5, 2019; Aguilar can be reached at elena@brightmorningteam.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #910 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Is Elementary Literacy Coaching Worth It?

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Jacy Ippolito (Salem State University), Allison Swan Dagen (West Virginia University), and Rita Bean (University of Pittsburgh) say the role of elementary literacy coaches “remains underspecified, variable, and often misunderstood.” They believe that now, as schools emerge from the disruptions of the pandemic, is a good time to examine how coaching has been implemented and take a critical look at its impact on teaching and learning. 

Studies have generally supported the efficacy of this job-imbedded form of professional development, but there are caveats. Ippolito, Dagen, and Bean report on the research in several key areas and list their “wonderings” with each: 

• Scale – Coaching seems to have the most positive impact on teaching and learning when implemented in a manageable number of schools, with coaches able to maintain authentic relationships with teachers. When coaching is scaled up, impact diminishes. Questions: 

    - What is the optimal number of teachers, classrooms, and schools for a coach? 

    - Can virtual coaching increase the number of teachers coaches partner with and avoid sacrificing impact? 

    - What systems and structures do districts need to maximize coaches’ impact? 

 • Coach-teacher relationships – These matter a great deal, and the research consensus seems to be that coaches and teachers should “co-construct” knowledge and expertise in a relatively egalitarian partnership. Questions: 

    - Does online coaching detract from teacher-coach relationships? 

    - How do coaches’ relationships with principals affect impact? 

    - How do reading specialists, literacy directors, and coaches interact most productively? 

• Roles and responsibilities – Instructional coaching is an informal leadership position that’s relatively new in schools, and it’s been used in a variety of ways: focusing on teachers, students, and assessment data; providing individual support and leveraging systemic change; and over the last 18 months, providing training on new technology tools, supporting the social and emotional needs of teachers and students, and engaging in equity and social justice work. Questions: 

    - Will additional responsibilities dilute the effectiveness of literacy coaches or enhance their impact through a new synergy? 

    - Will technology, SEL, and equity work remain with literacy coaches or be handed off to specialists?

    - Who in schools is best positioned to lead equity and social justice work? 

• How coaches spend their time – Studies have found that when they work directly with teachers – conferring, modeling, observing, co-teaching, analyzing assessment data – coaches have the greatest impact. There’s also great value in working with teacher teams as they look at student work, engage with curriculum content, view classroom videos, and rehearse high-leverage teaching practices. Questions: 

    - How does a school’s culture influence the work coaches do with individual teachers and teacher teams? 

     - How important is the coach’s understanding of the change process for individuals and systems? 

    - What preparation and inservice support do coaches need to become systems thinkers, thought leaders, and change agents? 

• Virtual coaching – During the pandemic, coaches had to shift to supporting teachers online, observing virtual lessons, reviewing digital tools, and helping colleagues master Google Classroom, Pear Deck, and other online platforms, often conferring after school hours. Questions: 

    - Is virtual coaching as effective as in-person work? 

    - What new and unanticipated challenges come with online coaching? 

    - Which online coaching practices will continue and which will be discarded as schools resume in-person instruction?

     - Can teachers be persuaded to make their teaching more public by sharing it virtually with coaches and peers? 

• Coaching done by other educators – Some districts have used reading specialists, assistant principals, generic instructional coaches, outside consultants, and university personnel to do literacy coaching. In lean budget times, coaches may be laid off, depriving teachers of the support they’d been receiving. Questions: 

    - Should districts train reading/literacy specialists and informal teacher leaders in key skills so they can take on coaching? 

    - Will that help develop teacher leaders who can collaborate with their peers and build a sense of collective efficacy? 

    - What research is needed on various coaching roles and the common elements of successful coaching? 

• Preparation for literacy support – An International Literacy Association 2017 standards document clarified the distinction between literacy specialists (focused primarily on students), literacy coaches (working mostly with teachers), and literacy coordinators/directors (spending most of their time on systems). It also broadened the scope of literacy work to reading, writing, language, and communication and spelled out the skills and knowledge needed for each role. Questions remain about university and state education department training and certification: 

    - How are the 2017 standards influencing training programs for coaches, including in the post-pandemic world? 

     - Which districts and other entities are providing the best training and ongoing professional learning, and what are they doing? 

    - Do we need a streamlined national coach endorsement and certification process? 

Is coaching worth it, given the expense? ask Ippolito, Dagen, and Bean. Yes, but… they say: “Perhaps more now than ever, elementary schools need the pedagogical, content, and facilitative expertise of literacy coaches in order to lead schoolwide literacy efforts effectively. Coaches are well positioned to advise principals on the strength and direction of the school’s literacy program. They can support teachers during times of rapid changes in teaching modalities. Coaches are perfect sounding boards for teachers wondering how to provide students with authentic literacy learning experiences while also shoring up foundational word recognition and language comprehension skills.” 

 The “but…” is important, conclude the authors. “To be successful, coaches need regular consultations with and support from principals; clear role descriptions that guide their work; schedules that allow for ample time with teachers in large and small groups as well as one-on-one; and ongoing professional learning and coaching colleagues (near or far) with whom to collaborate. Coaching programs are only as successful as the degree to which they are supported. The myth of the hero coach working single-handedly to shift teaching and learning in a school is just that – a myth… Remember also, coaching is only one part of each school’s vision for literacy teaching, learning, and continual improvement.” 

 “Elementary Literacy Coaching in 2021: What We Know and What We Wonder” by Jacy Ippolito, Allison Swan Dagen, and Rita Bean in The Reading Teacher, September/October 2021 (Vol. 75, #2, pp. 179-187); the authors can be reached at jippolito@salemstate.edu, Allison.Swan@mail.wvu.edu, and ritabean@pitt.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #909 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Giving Feedback That Isn't Consigned to the Bottom of the Backpack

In this Tang Institute article, Bowman Dickson and Andy Housiaux describe every teacher’s least-favorite scenario: after spending hours reading students’ papers, correcting errors, and writing comments, students glance briefly at the grade, compare what they got with a few classmates, and continue to make the same mistakes on the next assignment. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” say Dickson and Housiaux, and provide a synthesis of the academic research on feedback that actually works. 

They start with Grant Wiggins’s definition: Feedback is information about how we are doing that guides our efforts to reach a goal. “It can come from others, oneself, or even the task itself,” say Dickson and Housiaux. “It aims to improve subsequent efforts and not just correct work that has already been done.” They give several examples of feedback containing evaluation, advice, and praise, each followed by teacher feedback that’s far more likely to improve students’ work: 

• Ineffective: B+ You still need to master exponent rules. 
• Better: You are confusing the two main exponent rules – when multiplying two bases you need to add the exponent, not multiply. Practice a few of these types of problems for the next homework assignment. 
• Ineffective: Make sure your main idea paragraph relates to your topic. 
• Better: Your first sentence is about therapy dogs, but the rest of your paragraph talks about what dogs eat and where dogs sleep. Look at the examples of effective writing on your handout and then rewrite the paragraph. 
• Ineffective: Wow! Your lab report is really nicely done. 
• Better: You explained your results with good scientific nuance, your methods section is appropriately detailed, and your data presentation is just as polished as the sample lab reports.

 “Feedback that is delivered effectively,” say Dickson and Housiaux, “will advance student learning in ways that even the most well-intentioned evaluation, advice, and praise simply cannot.” They boil down the research on effective feedback to four big ideas: 

• Big idea #1: Students must engage with feedback in order to learn from it. “Feedback should cause thinking,” says British assessment guru Dylan Wiliam. “Feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor.” This means reserving classroom time for students to process the teacher’s comments (often posed as questions or hints) and engage with a brief follow-up task – which might be correcting an error or writing about what they learned from the comments, what they did well, and what they will do differently next time. Students need to learn how to be “feedback seekers,” looking for it, taking it in, and following up. 
• Big idea #2: Relationships matter. Establishing trust is an essential precursor; then the teacher can be a “warm demander,” setting high expectations and conveying feedback with growth-mindset language that speaks to students’ work, not their identity. Without a trusting relationship, teachers’ power position, along with their gender, race, or other characteristics, can trigger stereotype threat in students. “Don’t withhold criticism or overpraise mediocre work,” say Dickson and Housiaux. And create a classroom culture in which mistakes are seen as an important part of learning. 
• Big idea #3: Focus on specific instructional goals. “If students do not understand where they are aiming, they will not be able to make sense of the feedback they receive on their performance,” say Dickson and Housiaux. That’s why it’s vital to be transparent about learning outcomes and assessment criteria, and provide exemplars of student work at different levels of proficiency. The teacher’s goal is to build skills and habits of mind that will help students think differently and get better. “Feedback should change the way students think and engage with future material,” say the authors, “instead of just fixing mistakes on past work.” To that end, less is more; feedback should target only a few key areas. 
• Big idea #4: Separate feedback from grading. Giving grades is a requirement in almost all schools, but teachers should be under no illusions that grades improve performance. The challenge is getting students less focused on grades and more on continuous improvement. “Teachers can encourage students to focus more on the feedback they receive by spending time explaining the difference between feedback and grades,” say Dickson and Housiaux, “and then showing the ways in which students can improve by attending carefully to the teacher’s feedback.” Teachers also need to nudge students toward autonomy and independence, providing opportunities for and instruction in self-assessment and peer feedback versus constant dependence on teachers. 

At the end of their paper, Dickson and Housiaux include six case studies showing how these big ideas play out in classrooms – a student demanding to know why a classmate got a better grade; students not improving despite copious written feedback on their work; a teacher’s comment taken the wrong way by a student; a student not doing homework and failing to ask for help. Each case is followed by focusing questions on what might change a frustrating situation. 

 “Feedback in Practice: Research for Teachers” by Bowman Dickson and Andy Housiaux, Tang Institute at Andover, August 2021; Housiaux can be reached at ahousiaux@andover.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #907 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How School Librarians Can Maximize Their Impact in Unsettled Times

        In this article in Knowledge Quest, Kristin Fontichiaro (University of Michigan) and Wendy Steadman Stephens (Jacksonville State University) suggest 40 ways that school librarians can maximize learning in a time of uncertainty. A selection: 

• Realize your leadership potential – what Ewan McIntosh describes as “agile, whole-school interdisciplinary work that is needed to create the exceptional learning experience our young people deserve.”
• Define success by the impact you make, not by how busy you are, leaning into the influential, urgent, critical tasks in your building role. 
• Replenish your “surge capacity” by carving out time to connect with others, exercising, practicing hobbies, and living your faith. 
• Retool your website so it works for students who are learning remotely. 
• “Go spelunking” into a database to find advanced features, tuning into webinars, and updating assignments with new tools. 
• Reconsider punitive overdue policies – for example, letting items auto-renew, permitting students to renew on their own, and ending fines. 
• Adapt online lessons for offline students, partnering with special educators to keep lessons accessible for students with learning differences. 
• Do a diversity audit of your collection and adapt selection criteria to reflect the richness of a global society and a multicultural community. 
• Remember that parents are watching, with some ready to pounce on cultural differences between home and school; anticipate these conflicts and mediate a new level of family involvement in the curriculum. 
• Consider taking on the role of supporting families as they master virtual connections with the school. 
• Tune in to school board and public library meetings. 
• Teach students how to explore multiple perspectives on the news, including Freedom Forum’s collection of front pages. 
• Curate e-books available to students at home, creating “bookshelves” of hand-picked titles.
• Explore how you will address widespread misinformation and disinformation – for example, by using Rand Corporation’s Media Literacy Standards to Counter Truth Decay.
• Explore and share Google Scholar, a powerful search tool to find scholarly papers. 
• Evaluate your media diet and that of your school with tools like Ad Fontes Media and AllSides.
• Build in some time for students to wonder, using digital resources like livecams or remote locales, Google Arts and Culture, and digitized museum collections. 
• Do one thing you’ve put off. “You’ll feel relief and accomplishment,” say Fontichiaro and Steadman. 

 “Pushing Forward While Treading Water” by Kristin Fontichiaro and Wendy Steadman Stephens in Knowledge Quest, September/October 2021 (Vol. 50, #1, pp. 42-48); the authors can be reached at font@umich.edu and wstephens@jsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #905 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A Tribute to Roland Barth by Kim Marshall

        My friend and mentor Roland Barth died on Sunday at 84. Throughout his storied career as a teacher, principal, writer, and developer of school leaders, Roland was foursquare for quality, equity, shared leadership, humor, and great metaphors. Here are a few quotes (see Memos 127 and 504 for summaries of two of his articles): 

         “The nature of relationships among the adults within a school has a greater influence on the character and quality of that school and on student accomplishment than anything else. If the relationships between administrators and teachers are trusting, generous, helpful, and cooperative, then the relationships between teachers and students, between students and students, and between teachers and parents are likely to be trusting, generous, helpful, and cooperative. If, on the other hand, relationships between administrators and teachers are fearful, competitive, suspicious, and corrosive, then these qualities will disseminate throughout the school community.” 

         “A precondition for doing anything to strengthen our practice and improve a school is the existence of a collegial culture in which professionals talk about practice, share their craft knowledge, and observe and root for the success of one another. Without these in place, no meaningful improvement – no staff or curriculum development, no teacher leadership, no student appraisal, no team teaching, no parent involvement, and no sustained change – is possible.” 

         “For a long time, people have realized that the principal alone can’t run something as complex and enormous as a school. But now I think principals realize that.” “In many respects, principals do not possess power until they share it.” 

         “What the principal needs is helpful, nonjudgmental, nonpunitive assistance in sorting out, reflecting upon, and sharpening professional practice. Unfortunately, what most principals find is at best benign neglect, at worst inservice training.” 

         “If all teachers are expected to be leaders, no one is breaking the taboo about standing higher than the others because everyone is on the same higher level… The shift comes when you also take a piece of leading the school. There’s tremendous satisfaction that comes from making that jump, to being an owner rather than a renter here.” 

         “The primary problem with public education is not that teachers and principals aren’t doing their jobs. The problem is that they are frequently under pressure to behave in ways dictated by others…”

         “From the teacher’s standpoint, a resentful parent can make a school year a torment. As one teacher put it, ‘It’s a little like driving down the turnpike with a hornet in the car. It’s only one hornet, but it can sure interfere with where you’re trying to go, getting there, and how you feel about the trip!’ If Ms. Smith is trying to educate children while some of their parents are persistently trying to educate her, she has her hands full.” 

         “Many parents control the hour at which a child goes to bed at night, but much as they might like to, these parents cannot control the hour that a child goes to sleep. Similarly, we in the schools can control to some extent what is taught, but we cannot ensure what is learned.” 

         “Rather than viewing differences among children and teachers as problems to be solved, I have explored the flip side of the coin. I have tried to find ways in which differences can be turned to educational advantage and enlisted in the service of personal and intellectual growth for those within the school.” 

         “The teacher who can intelligently appraise what children are doing today can prepare an effective lesson tomorrow.” 

         “Good education is neither gerbils nor workbooks; it is not externally prescribed behavior for teacher or student. Rather, good education is rooted in a teacher’s personal belief about how children learn best. Good education grows in a situation where the teacher’s behavior is a response to first-hand observations of children’s behavior. Thus, good education necessarily varies from classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher, year to year.” 

         “Leadership is attempting to hold the flood of daily administrivia – forms to fill out, meetings to attend, reports to submit – at arm’s length so that other important issues like staff organization, placement, evaluation of students, and staff development can be closely addressed.” 

         “Selective risk taking is somewhat like working on an old car. I once asked a neighbor who was helping me rebuild the engine of a Model A Ford how much I should tighten a head nut. ‘Stop a quarter of a turn before you strip it,’ he said. I think that is an apt way to think about school administration. I stop a quarter of a turn before I strip the organizational nut.” 

         “My objective is for all of us to come to school each September with at least one significant new element in our professional (and therefore personal) lives – something to dream about, think about, worry about, get excited about, be afraid about, lose sleep about, become and remain alive about.”

Please Note: This tribute is reprinted with permission from issue #902 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

An Invitation to Brave Space

Together we will create brave space

because there is no such thing as a "safe space" --

We exist in the real world

We all carry scars

And we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world, 

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,

We call each other to more truth and love

We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.

We will not be perfect.

This space will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be

But

It will be our brave space together 

and

We will work on it side by side.

            by Micky ScottBey Jones

James Baldwin on American History

 American history is 

longer, larger, more

various, more beautiful,

and more terrible than

anything anyone has

ever said about it.

James Baldwin

What Kinds of Mathematics Do Students Need for the Real World?

        In this article in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, Jo Boaler, Tanya LaMar, and Cathy Williams (Stanford University) report on a project that started with a phone call Boaler received from Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame. Levitt had been helping his own children with their high-school mathematics homework and was struck by what he considered the antiquated nature of the work they were doing. Very little of it, he said, was the kind of math that he used in his professional and personal life. 

         To check this perception with a wider group, Levitt and his colleagues at the University of Chicago did a survey of visitors to the Freakonomics website asking what kinds of math they used on a daily basis, and 913 people responded. Boaler, LaMar, and Williams saw the results and noticed that almost 3/4 of the respondents were men, so they asked the same questions of education leaders; 427 responded, mostly women. Strikingly, the responses from the two groups were quite similar. Here are the percentages in each group saying they used each kind of mathematics “daily”: 

                                                   Freakonomics                  Educators 

- Use Excel/Google sheets                66                                56 

- Access and use databases                42                               37 

- Analyze and interpret data              31                                21 

- Visual data                                      23                                12 

- Algebra                                           11                                  4 

- Geometry                                         4                                   0 

- Calculus                                           2                                   1

- Trigonometry                                   2                                   0 

The percentages who said they “never” used algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry were 28, 50, 70, and 79 respectively for the Freakonomics group and 41, 59, 71, and 82 for the educators. 

        Clearly these adults don’t use much of the math they learned in school – but they do make heavy use of data knowledge and tools. “For generations,” say Boaler, LaMar, and Williams, “high schools in the United States have focused on one course as the ultimate, college-attractive, and high-level course – calculus. This has led to a heavy focus on algebraic content in the earlier years even though a tiny proportion of students in the school system take calculus. When students do take calculus, it is often taken after rushing through years of content without the development of deep understanding.” And most students who take calculus in high school end up repeating it in college, or taking a lower-level course.

        The Common Core standards put more emphasis on data and statistics – but not enough, say the authors, which is why some states, including California, are beefing up data literacy in their curriculum standards. In that spirit, the Stanford and University of Chicago teams joined with colleagues around the world and spent 18 months thinking through what needs to change. “It quickly became clear,” say Boaler, LaMar, and Williams, “that all students – starting from the youngest in prekindergarten to those in college – need to learn the mathematics that will help them develop data literacy, to make sense of the data-filled world in which we all live… Whatever job your students go into, they will be making sense of data… Data awareness and data literacy are needed to not only be an effective employee but also function in the modern world… If we do not help students become data literate, they will be vulnerable to people who are misrepresenting issues and data.” 

        This line of thinking has spawned an initiative called YouCubed; the website has had more than 51 million visitors so far. It includes a series of “data talks,” which show students a data representation and ask, What do you notice? and What do you wonder? Among the topics: basketball, endangered species, popular dogs, and data ethics. Here’s an example of a middle-school data talk (see the article link below for more). Naturally, Boaler, LaMar, and Williams advocate a K-12 curriculum with an alternative pathway focused on data science and statistics. “Research suggests that the content of such a pathway is much more engaging for broader groups of students,” they say, “providing more-equitable participation in higher-level courses.” 

 “Making Sense of a Data-Filled World” by Jo Boaler, Tanya LaMar, and Cathy Williams in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, July 2021 (Vol. 114, #7, pp. 508-517); the authors can be reached at joboaler@stanford.edu, tlamar@stanford.edu, and cathyw11@stanford.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #897 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How Effective is Orton-Gillingham?

        In this article in Exceptional Children, Elizabeth Stevens (Georgia State University), Clint Moore, Nancy Scammacca, Alexis Boucher, and Sharon Vaughn (University of Texas/Austin), and Christy Austin (University of Utah) report on their meta-analysis of 16 studies of Orton-Gillingham, a popular and widely used approach to reading instruction. Orton- Gillingham is described as a “direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive” method for teaching children with (or at risk for) word-level reading disabilities, including dyslexia. 

        The researchers’ conclusion: although the mean effect size (0.22) was positive and somewhat promising, Orton-Gillingham did not substantially improve children’s phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. “Despite the continued widespread acceptance, use, and support for Orton-Gillingham instruction,” conclude Stevens et al., “there is little evidence to date that these interventions significantly improve reading outcomes for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities over and above comparison group instruction.” 

        This finding certainly raises concerns about the fact that a number of states have adopted legislation mandating Orton-Gillingham. “More high-quality, rigorous research with larger samples of students with word-level reading disabilities,” say the authors, “is needed to fully understand the effects of Orton-Gillingham interventions on the reading outcomes of this population.” 

 “Current State of the Evidence: Examining the Effects of Orton-Gillingham Reading Interventions for Students with or at Risk for Word-Level Reading Disabilities” by Elizabeth Stevens, Christy Austin, Clint Moore, Nancy Scammacca, Alexis Boucher, and Sharon Vaughn in Exceptional Children, July 2021 (Vol. 87, #4, pp. 397-417); Stevens can be reached at estevens11@gsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #897 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

What is the Purpose of Mathematics?

        In this article in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, Lucy Watson (Belmont University) and Christopher Bonnesen and Jeremy Strayer (Middle Tennessee State University) describe a common dilemma for math teachers: what do you say when students ask, Why do I need to know that? Some teachers point to practical, real-life applications in science, technology, engineering, and math education. Others extoll the beauty and wonder of mathematics. What teachers say might reveal one of three views of the nature of mathematics: 

        - It’s a set of facts, rules, and tools that need to be memorized; 

        - It’s a static body of knowledge bound by discovered truths that never change; 

        - It’s a dynamic, problem-driven discipline defined by creativity, inquiry, and openness to revision. Students taught by a teacher holding each view will learn mathematics quite differently, and will likely be exposed to distinct teaching methods, from rote lectures to discussions and hands-on projects.          

        Watson, Bonnesen, and Strayer believe there hasn’t been enough guidance for math teachers on exactly what the nature of mathematics is, leaving the field wide open to a variety of rationales – and probably some pretty dull teaching. Drawing on several guiding documents in the field, the authors suggest this five-point view of the nature of mathematics: 

        • Mathematics is a product of the exploration of structure and patterns. 

        • Mathematics uses multiple strategies and multiple representations to make claims. 

        • Mathematics is critiqued and verified by people within particular cultures through justification or             proof that is communicated to oneself and others. 

        • Mathematics is refined over time as cultures interact and change. 

        • Mathematics is worthwhile, beautiful, often useful, and can be produced by each and every                         person. 

         The authors believe that as students grapple with high-quality math problems, teachers should get them thinking about this broader view of the nature of mathematics, asking students about purpose before, during, and after solving the problems. Watson, Bonnesen, and Strayer suggest repeating this meaning-seeking activity at intervals through the grades – perhaps with a unit on counting in kindergarten, equivalent fractions in third grade, area relationships in middle school, and absolute value in high school. If this occurs, say the authors, teachers will less frequently hear the question, Why do I need to know that? 

 “The Nature of Mathematics: Let’s Talk About It” by Lucy Watson, Christopher Bonnesen, and Jeremy Strayer in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, May 2021 (Vol. 114, #5, pp. 552-561); the authors can be reached at Lucy.watson@belmont.edu, ctb4d@mtmail.mtsu.edu, and jeremy.strayer@mtsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #888 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

"Learning Loss" - Wrong and Right Solutions

        In this online article, Harvey Silver and Jay McTighe worry that “lost learning” is an unfortunate way to define the challenge schools face as they reopen for in-person instruction. By framing the challenge as instructional time lost, there’s a tendency to think the solution is rapidly covering the curriculum that students missed – which has two downsides. “At the classroom level,” say Silver and McTighe, “this solution could take the form of cutting out any of those time-consuming learning activities such as discussions, debates, hands-on science investigations, art creation, and authentic performance tasks and projects” – instead “trying to blitz through lots of factual information.” 

        Rather than focusing on the content that wasn’t covered during remote and hybrid instruction, they propose two more-productive approaches: 

        • Prioritizing the curriculum on outcomes that matter the most – A simple but effective way to accomplish this is preceding the title of each curriculum unit with the words, A study in… Several examples: 

        - The calendar – A study in systems 

        - Linear equations – A study in mathematical modeling 

        - Media literacy – A study in critical thinking 

        - Any sport – A study in technique 

        - Argumentation – A study in craftsmanship 

Preceding a unit title with those three words, say Silver and McTighe, “establishes a conceptual lens to focus learning on transferable ideas, rather than isolated facts or discrete skills.” 

        It’s also helpful to frame the unit around Essential Questions. For the five units above, here are some possibilities: 

        - How is the calendar a system? What makes a system a system? 

        - How can mathematics model or represent change? What are the limits of a mathematical model? 

        - Can I trust this source? How do I know what to believe in what I read, hear, and view? 

        - Why does technique matter? How can I achieve maximum power without losing control? 

        - What makes an argument convincing? How do you craft a persuasive argument? 

Well-framed Essential Questions are open-ended, stimulate thinking, discussions, and debate, and raise additional questions. 

        • Engaging learners in deeper learning that will endure – “To learn deeply,” say Silver and McTighe, “students need to interact with content, e.g., by linking new information with prior knowledge, wrestling with questions and problems, considering different points of view, and trying to apply their learning to novel situations.” The most important skills are comparing, conceptualizing, reading for understanding, predicting and hypothesizing, perspective-taking, and exercising empathy. 

        A kindergarten example: challenging students to predict how high they can stack blocks before a tower falls down, then having them try different hypotheses and see what works best, and note the success factors. “This focus on cause and effect will become a yearlong inquiry for students,” say Silver and McTighe, “as they learn to use it to examine scientific phenomena, characters’ behavior in stories, and even their own attitudes and motivations as learners.” (The full article, linked below, includes a middle-school unit on genetically modified food and a high-school unit comparing the educational philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.) 

        This two-part approach to curriculum is not just “a stopgap measure tied to current anxieties about learning loss,” conclude Silver and McTighe: “Framing content around big ideas and actively engaging students in powerful forms of thinking is good practice – in any year, under any conditions.” 

“Learning Loss: Are We Defining the Problem Correctly?” by Harvey Silver and Jay McTighe on McTighe’s website, May 7, 2021; McTighe can be reached at jmctigh@aol.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #886 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Online Groups for School Leaders

         In this article on The Main Idea website, Jenn David-Lang says school leaders are hungry for professional development, but receive less than other educators – which may explain some of the attrition we’re seeing among administrators. While schools were closed during the pandemic, David-Lang had an idea: why not involve groups of administrators in Masterminds, an online version of accountable, results-focused teacher PLCs? The term Masterminds was coined almost 100 years ago by author Napoleon Hill, but has only recently found its way into the world of K-12 schools. 

        Here’s how David-Lang and her colleague Mitch Center have implemented the concept. They’re running several year-long Mastermind groups, each with about eight school- and district-based leaders from varied locations (“from Baltimore to Bangkok,” says David-Lang). Groups meet twice a month via Zoom to learn new ideas, share strategies, solve problems, and support one another. The one-hour meetings go quickly, following this structure: 

    • Check-ins – Everyone briefly shares a struggle or a win. “Getting an inside view of how everyone is doing and what is going on at each other’s schools builds trust,” says David-Lang; “principals are rarely given space to share how they’re honestly doing without the need to put on their ‘principal face.’” 

        • Goal sharing – In two-person breakout rooms, members report on a goal they committed to in a shared Google Doc at the end of the previous session. This provides continuity from meeting to meeting and keeps people accountable for actions to which they have committed. 

         • New content – David-Lang and Center share a one-page summary of ideas or research on their screens and everyone reads it silently. A recent example: a synthesis of five mindset shifts described in a recent book on unconscious bias by Sarah Fiarman and Tracey Benson. David-Lang and Center then facilitate a discussion of the ideas, sometimes regrouping into two breakout rooms, or participants fill out a shared graphic organizer. 

         • Think tank – One member presents a real-life dilemma, including the background and context of the problem (one example: dealing with a new assistant principal who is not garnering respect from colleagues). Other members ask clarifying questions, and then the presenter remains silent while the rest of the team discusses the issue and suggests possible solutions. Finally, the presenter recaps those ideas and thinks out loud about the ones that seem most likely to work. 

        • One Big Thing (OBT) – In the Chat area, there’s a link to a shared Google Sheet with a row for each member, and they write their biggest takeaways from the session. This makes available to everyone the collective learning from the reading, discussion, and problem-solving. This segment was inspired by John Dewey’s insight that true understanding comes not from doing, but from reflecting on what’s been done. 

        • Committing to a goal. Each session ends with each member writing a commitment for specific action, to be reviewed at the beginning of the next meeting. 

        Reflecting on a year of leading Mastermind groups, David-Lang looked up the criteria for effective professional development compiled by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues. It turned out that her groups were meeting every one of them:

• Focused on content;
• Incorporating active learning; 
• Supporting collaboration; 
• Using models of effective practice; 
• Providing coaching and expert support; 
• Offering opportunities for feedback and reflection; 
• Sustained over time. 

 “While my co-facilitator and I have coached school leaders individually,” says David-Lang, “we were immediately struck by the exponential power of coaching that comes from all members sharing their own learned strategies and diverse perspectives… It is the collective wisdom, energy, and passion that truly distinguishes Masterminds from other forms of PD for educational leaders.” 

         While the sessions have been particularly valuable during the disruptions of the pandemic, David-Lang believes they should continue to be an important forum in the new normal. 

 “Masterminds: When PL Meets PLC” by Jenn David-Lang, The Main Idea, May 2021; David-Lang can be reached at Jenn@TheMainIdea.net. 

 Please note: This summary was reprinted with permission from issue # 886 of the Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Four Key Teacher Roles in a Personalized Classroom

           In this Elementary School Journal article, Penny Bishop, John Downes, Steven Netcoh, Katy Farber, Jessica DeMink-Carthew, Tricia Brown, and Rachel Mark (University of Vermont) report on their interviews with a number of elementary and middle-school teachers on personalized learning.  The researchers define personalization "as an approach that encourages partnership between individual students and teachers in the design of learning that emerges from students' interests, questions, needs, and preferences to foster self-directed learning."  Assessments may take the form of portfolios of student work, authentic performance tasks, and exhibitions of learning in which students demonstrate their skills and understandings.

          Teachers in the study described the shift from running adult-centered classrooms to supporting students as they brought their interests, needs, and different levels of readiness to the classroom.  One teacher drew a distinction between personalization and individualization, the latter being about getting all students "to arrive at the same spot through different means."

          Synthesizing what they learned from interviews, the researchers identified four roles teachers played in personalized classrooms:

• Empowerer - Teachers sought to increase students' independence and ownership of learning by letting them lead, offering choices, enabling students to work at their own pace and level, increasing student talk, and learning with and from students.

• Scout - Teachers often needed to seek out resources to support students and figure out next steps in their learning progressions.  This involved ascertaining students' interests, aligning the curriculum with those interests, curating digital and material resources, and connecting students with helpful people inside and outside the school.  "We can't offer everything," said one teachers, "but it's not our job to offer everything.  It's our job to explain how to navigate the world."

• Scaffolder - Teachers constantly worked to ensure that students engaged productively in learning.  This involved structuring routines, time, and learning experiences, fading the support when students didn't need as much, modeling possible approaches, and asking questions.  "Okay," said one teacher to her students, "you have your team leaders. You have your roles.  You can do it.  Sign up on the board if you need my help." She then "floated" around the room.

• Assessor - Teachers said it was important to distinguish between assessment and evaluation (with the latter, offering lots of narrative feedback to students,) provide ongoing formative assessment (a lot of over-the-shoulder checking for understanding and redirection) and be clear about learning targets and rubrics posted around the room.

"Teacher Roles in Personalized Learning Environments" by Penny Bishop, John Downes, Steven Netcoh, Katy Farber, Jessica DeMink-Carthew, Tricia Brown, and Rachel Mark in Elementary School Journal, December 2020 (Vol. 121,#2, pp. 311-336); Bishop can be reached at Penny.Bishop@uvm.edu.

(Please Note: The summary above is reprinted with permission from issue #871 of 

The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.)