Solstice Poem

Solstice Poem

A Ritual to Read to Each Other – by William E Stafford 

If you don’t know the kind of person I am 

and I don’t know the kind of person you are 

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world 

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, 

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break 

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life together get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep:

the signals we give -- yes or no, or maybe -- should be clear:

the darkness around us is deep.

Jon Saphier on High-Expertise Teaching

            In this Kappan article, author/consultant Jon Saphier says many districts have idealistic vision statements like these: 

• Students loving learning; 
• Developing 21st-century skills;
• Capable, responsible citizens. 

But high-flown goals, says Saphier, aren’t helpful for generating actionable plans for improving teaching and learning. 

            Similarly, he believes, education reform efforts have lacked an effective guiding principle, resulting in three decades of lurching from one initiative to another: teacher evaluation, small schools, site-based decision-making, PLCs, active learning, habits of mind, social-emotional learning, project-based learning, cooperative learning, student agency, advisories, digital literacy, and more. Teachers get cynical, wondering what happened to last year’s grand plan, and administrators are often distracted by crises and lose their focus on the initiative of the year. 

            What really matters in schools, says Saphier, is high-expertise teaching. “This is because the overall knowledge and skill of the individual teacher is the most important factor in student achievement. It dwarfs everything else” – and it’s directly tied to closing achievement gaps. That’s why he believes the North Star for every district’s improvement efforts should be: 

            Make every school an engine for continuous improvement of high-expertise teaching for equity. 

This vision statement, Saphier believes, synthesizes 70 years of insights on sustainable improvement in teaching and learning. It “conjures concrete images of what to do to improve the experiences of children and their learning. It comes with anchors in the research base on instructional improvement, deep roots in the literature of healthy organizational culture, and direct ties to the lived experiences of students.” Here’s how he unpacks the vision: 

• Every school – There should be a certain amount of autonomy from school to school within a district, says Saphier, allowing for “individual creativity, different implementation, or idiosyncratic approaches.” But high-quality teaching, clearly defined, is non-negotiable – for example, the way teachers scaffold complex texts to bring grade-level content within reach for all students. Superintendents also need to develop, recruit, hire, and support principals who can sustain teaching quality over time. 
• Engine for continuous improvement – Principals’ number one job is building a culture that supports the kind of teaching that gets results for all students, which means first-rate professional learning, deep collaboration within and across teams, and non-defensive examination of practices through analysis of student learning. Superintendents need to bring principals together in a collective we, promoting collaboration versus competition among schools. 
• High-expertise teaching – This is built on the vast, complex, and often untapped knowledge base about classroom practices that make the biggest difference in student learning and promote equitable outcomes. Teaching really is more complex than brain surgery. 
• Teaching for equity – This is a personal journey for teachers as school and district leaders support them in examining their beliefs and current practices in light of their impact on different students and developing a sense of urgency in changing historical patterns of achievement. 
• Professional working conditions – The infrastructure of teachers’ daily lives – team meetings, collegiality, student scheduling, professional development, hiring and onboarding, supervision, evaluation, coaching, and support – is often ragged, says Saphier: “If we don’t address this problem, no other reform movement has a prayer of accomplishing its goals.” The school district leadership is key to addressing this challenge, ideally supported by a higher education partner.
• Getting started – Saphier suggests several steps to move a district toward implementing this ambitious vision: 
• Developing a common definition of high-expertise teaching and identifying the elements that are most important for the district – for example, cultural proficiency, active reading and writing in every class, formative assessments, and robust classroom discussions.
• Focusing on hiring and supporting principals who have a good eye for teaching, are committed to dismantling inequitable structures and practices, and can mobilize teacher teamwork around looking at student work and continuously improving practice. 
• Reducing variance among schools by ensuring strong instructional leadership, professional learning opportunities, time and structures for teacher collaboration, support systems for students, and a relentless focus on equity. 
• District office personnel interacting with school-based educators in ways that move everyone toward this North Star. “If we want schools to have adult cultures of trust and constant learning,” says Saphier, “it must be modeled from the top.” 
• Stay focused on a simple, compelling vision: Make every school a reliable engine for constant learning about high-expertise teaching for equity. Put it on the wall, in the header of every agenda, in back-to-school speeches and year-end summaries. “Make it the North Star of every journey,” says Saphier, “and cancel the trips that can’t connect to this destination. Avoid statements too abstract to indicate action, worthy though they may sound.” 

 “A New North Star” by Jon Saphier in Kappan, December 2023/January 2024 (Vol. 105, #4, pp, 52-56); Saphier can be reached at Saphier@RBTeach.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1016 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Helping Young Adolescents Stay Safe When They're Online

            In this School Library Journal article, Louisiana librarian Amanda Jones (2021 School Librarian of the Year) describes how she raised students’ consciousness about their online activity (social media, YouTube, and gaming systems with Internet connectivity). Although almost all of her middle-school students are under 13, most have social media accounts, some without parental permission, some cleverly working around parental controls. Students confide that their parents don’t know about a lot of the inappropriate and upsetting comments and images they’re seeing online. 

            Jones started the lesson by displaying two prompts: 

• Share something inappropriate you’ve seen online. 
• What are several steps you can take to protect yourself online? 

She asked students to reflect for a moment and then write their responses on sticky notes (without their names). Students put their sticky notes on large posters at the front of the library, and Jones read aloud Nerdy Birdy Tweets, a book by Aaron Reynolds about friendship and oversharing online. 

            She then asked students if using Instagram and Snapchat was dangerous for people their age. Everyone said yes. Students then looked at their sticky notes. Responses to the first prompt included fat shaming, racist comments, kids and adults ganging up on one student and harassing them over and over, an adult asking for their address, people sending pictures that were “bad,” and KYS (kids explained to Jones that this means Kill Yourself). In each of the 27 classes at Jones’s school, some students said they’d received this last message. 

            In response to the second prompt, students showed that, at least collectively, they knew what to do: Tell an adult. Take a break from social media. Block and mute the person. Don’t give out personal information. Never post your picture. “Amazing answers,” says Jones. “But when pressed about whether they always follow their own advice, unsurprisingly, students admitted they do not. Most confessed to giving out personal information, posting pictures, and engaging with people who posted cruel or inappropriate comments instead of muting and blocking.” Why? The desire to save face and seem cool, and perhaps the fear of having their devices taken away by parents. 

            The conversations that followed were “extended, deep, and earnest,” says Jones. “It was almost as if they had been waiting for an adult to ask them these questions. The discussion was honest and difficult – and eye-opening for me and their other teachers. The trauma these kids can face while simply playing a game online or chatting with friends on social media did not escape me. I wonder how this generation will be as adults navigating the Internet. Will some become more empathetic after having faced such toxic behaviors at such a young age, or will they continue the pattern as they grow older?”

            The lesson closed with students writing down their biggest takeaways, and Jones posted them outside the library as an ongoing reminder about responsible digital citizenship. 

 “The Dangers in Their Hands” by Amanda Jones in School Library Journal, December 2023 (Vol. 69, #12, pp. 12-13)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1015 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Engaging Math Thinking Tasks with a Low Floor and High Ceiling

            In his book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Peter Liljedahl advocates having students work on challenging, highly engaging tasks in mixed-achievement groups of two (at the primary level) or three (in grades 3 to 12). Each group works collaboratively on a vertical whiteboard, standing up, sharing one marker, with the teacher observing their work and, as described in the summary just above, answering only “keep-thinking” questions. Liljedahl suggests starting with fun problems to establish a collaborative culture, then segueing into the regular curriculum, always posing open-ended tasks that challenge students to put their heads together and think at higher levels. The teacher encourages students to observe and learn from other groups’ work and brings closure at the end of each class. From his book, here are some examples of the types of tasks Liljedahl suggests: 

Lower elementary: 

How many squares are in this image? 

             (Image: 4x4 table of squares)

You have 16 jellybeans and four jars: 

    - Place the jellybeans in the jars so that each jar has either 3 or 6 jellybeans. Are there some things that are not possible? 

    - Place the jellybeans such that each jar has one more than the jar before it. How many ways can you do this? 

    - Place the jellybeans so that each jar has twice as many as the jar before it. Three times as many. The 

Ice Dream ice cream shop has 10 flavors of ice cream. How many different two-scoop ice cream cones can you make? What if there were 11 flavors? What if there were 12 flavors? How about with 20 flavors? What if each cone had at most three scoops? 

A farm has some chickens and some pigs. One day the owner notices that the animals have a total of 22 legs. How many chickens and how many pigs might there be? Can you come up with another solution? And another? Can you come up with all the solutions? How do you know that you have all the solutions? 

Upper elementary and middle school: 

If 6 cats can kill 6 rats in 6 minutes, how many will be needed to kill 100 rats in 50 minutes? 

If I were to write the numbers from 1 to 100, how many times would I use the digit 7? What if I wrote 1 to 1000? How many zeroes? 

Select four numbers from 1 to 9 at random. Using these four numbers and any operations, make the values from 1 to 30. 

How many ways are there to make a dollar using only nickels, dimes, and quarters? 

I have a four-minute egg timer and a seven-minute egg timer – the kind you turn over and let the sand run through. Can I use these to cook a nine-minute egg? If so, how long will someone have to wait for their egg? 

High school: 

Decompose 25 using addition, for example: 25 = 10+15, 25 = 10 + 10 + 5… What is the biggest product you can make if you multiply the addends together? 

You want to arrange four candles on a birthday cake. How many ways can you place the candles such that there are no more than two different distances between two candles? 

 From Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl (Corwin, 2021)

Recommended Books that Feature Unreliable Narrators

             In this School Library Journal feature, retired librarian Steven Engelfried touts books with the unusual characteristic of deliberately misleading storytelling: 

- The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M.T. Anderson, illustrated by Eugene Yelchin, grade 4-7 

- The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill, grade 3-7 

- Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow, grade 5 and up 

- The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett, grade 3-7 

- Invisible by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, grade 4-7 - Ground Zero: A Novel of 9/11 by Alan Gratz, grade 4-7 

- The Worlds We Leave Behind by A.F. Harrold, illustrated by Levi Pinfold, grade 5 and up 

- Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker, illustrated by Junyi Wu, grade 4 and up 

- Linked by Gordon Korman, grade 4-8 

- The Windeby Puzzle by Lois Lowry, grade 5 and up 

- When Sea Becomes Sky by Gillian McDunn, grade 3-7 

- The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Daniel Miyares, grade 4-8 

- The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead, grade 5-8 

 “Telling It Like It Isn’t: Unreliable Narrators Keep Readers on Their Toes” by Steven Engelfried in School Library Journal, November 2023 (Vol. 69, #11, pp. 38-40)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1013 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Which Student Questions Should Teachers Not Answer?

            In this chapter of his book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Peter Liljedahl (Simon Fraser University) says research and his own classroom observations show that teachers typically answer between 200 and 400 student questions a day – some teachers as many as 600. The problem is that the hard work of answering all those questions often lets students off the hook from doing their own thinking. 

            So what should teachers do? “The answer lies not in whether or not we answer students’ question,” says Liljedahl, “but which questions we answer.” He’s found there are three types of questions in classrooms: 

• Proximity questions – Students ask these questions when the teacher happens to be close by, and most often the questions are about something kids don’t really need help on – for example, For Question 3, were we supposed to find all the answers? or Are we doing this right? Why do students ask proximity questions? Because of highly socialized roles in classrooms, says Liljedahl. Asking a question is one of the most “studently” things a kid can do, and answering the question is one of the most “teacherly” things a teacher can do.

            Sometimes a shy student will take advantage of the teacher’s proximity to ask a question they wouldn’t raise their hand or stand in line to ask, but most of the time, proximity questions are socialized filler and add little value. Sometimes these questions are a way for a student to distract the teacher from catching them on their cell phone or some other off-task behavior. 

• Stop-thinking questions – Examples of this type: Is this right? Is this going to be on the test? Do we have to learn this? “These questions,” says Liljedahl, “are motivated by the reality that, for students, thinking is difficult, and it’s hard to decide for themselves that what they are doing is correct. If they can just get you to do that for them, their life would be so much easier.” 
• Keep-thinking questions – These clarifying or extension questions are asked when students are motivated and engaged with the task at hand – for example, We’re having trouble here. Were we supposed to do this for all the possible sizes? or Are we supposed to now look at the general case? 

            Liljedahl has found that about 90 percent of the questions students ask are in the first two categories. The result: teachers are knocking themselves out doing something that contributes very little to students building their thinking muscles. In many cases it completely shuts down thinking. 

            The solution, says Liljedahl, is for teachers to answer only the third type – the keep-thinking questions. This requires knowing how to quickly spot proximity and stop-thinking questions and developing a skillset for deflecting them. He’s found that most teachers have no trouble discerning the type of question being asked. Most of the questions students ask immediately after being given an assignment are for clarification or to avoid having to do the work of seeing what’s being asked and deciding how to solve the problem. The moments just after an assignment has been given are when the most questions are asked, and it’s wise for the teacher to not circulate at this point. 

            Once students have their heads into the assignment, circulating is important and the teacher needs to decide on the effect answering a question will have: Are they asking for more activity or less, more work or less, more thinking or less? Students may be inventive, making a statement and quizzically raising their eyebrows at the end: We are thinking this is correct. [What do you think?] This is correct [Right?] I think we are going the right way. [Right?] “Don’t be fooled by these pseudo-statements,” advises Liljedahl. “If their tone is inviting a response from you, they are really asking a question – and by the nature of the disguise, it is almost always a stop-thinking question.” 

            But how can teachers get away with not answering stop-thinking and low-value proximity questions? “Students can be very persistent in their efforts to get you to help them reduce their workload,” says Liljedahl, “and how you respond to this is important.” One approach is answering the question with a question – for example: 

    - Isn’t that interesting?

    - Can you find something else? 

    - Can you show me how you did that? 

    - Is that always true? 

    - Why do you think that is? 

    - Are you sure? 

    - Does that make sense? 

    - Why don’t you try something else? 

    - Why don’t you try another one? 

    - Are you asking me or telling me? 

            Some of the teachers Liljedahl was working with said this strategy was successful, but others found it was a slippery slope. Here’s how one dialogue with a student went: 

    - Why don’t you try something else? 

    - Like what? 

    - Maybe you need to consider the cases where x is negative. 

    - You mean like this? 

    - Right! 

            Answering a question with a question was only effective, Liljedahl found, when it was immediately followed by the teacher walking away without saying more. This annoyed students, but teachers found that within a few days using this approach, there were far fewer proximity and stop-thinking questions… 

            Except in primary-grade classrooms. “If a six-year-old asks a question and it is not answered,” says Liljedahl, “they ask it again. If it is still not answered, they ask it again. And if it is still not answered they do something that a 16-year-old does not. They reach out and touch the teacher – tap them on the arm or pull on their clothing. And if the teacher walks away, they follow. I have multiple videos of kindergarten and grade 1 teachers walking around the room with a row of little ducklings following them.” 

            With young students, when the teacher didn’t respond a question, they assumed it hadn’t been heard and felt ignored. So Liljedahl came up with a modification for primary grades: look at the student asking the question, maybe ask a question, smile, and then walk away. This turned out to be effective for all grade levels. Students knew their question had been heard and that the teacher’s decision not to answer was deliberate. 

            “Many students took this to mean that they needed to do more work,” says Liljedahl. “Over time, the students began to see the smile and walking away as a sign that the teacher had confidence in their ability to resolve the question on their own. There were still a few students who were frustrated by these encounters. But they were thinking more – or no longer having the teacher do their thinking for them.” 

            What if students insist that the teacher answer a stop-thinking question? If it’s an Is this right? question, Liljedahl suggests being explicit: “I’m not going to answer that question. Me telling you that it is right is worth almost nothing. If you can tell me that it is right, however, that is worth everything.”

            Should teachers explain the three types of questions to students, telling them which will be answered and which won’t? Liljedahl has found this is a good idea, but only after a couple of weeks of responding only to keep-thinking questions, and with the others, answering a question with a question, smiling, and walking away. When it’s handled this way, students say, “So that’s what’s going on!” and “It’s cool that he told us that.” When working in groups, students also begin monitoring themselves: “Dude! She’s not going to answer that. That’s a stop-thinking question.” 

            Does answering a question with a question and smiling and walking away work for all students? There are some “who can’t get past the fact that you have not answered their question,” says Liljedahl. “This may be because they are insecure about their own abilities, have learned helplessness, or have a spectrum disorder – such as obsessive compulsive disorder – that does not allow them to move forward without resolution.” And students have years of experience in classrooms where their questions get answered. Teachers need to read the situation and know when “a nod, a wink, or an encouraging remark – ‘I have complete confidence that you can figure this out’ – is needed.” 

            Should parents be told about the question-answering policy? Absolutely, says Liljedahl – and parents should hear about it first from the teacher, with an explanation that the goal is to encourage students to do their own thinking and that answering only certain types of questions is part of a deliberate strategy. 

“How We Answer Questions in a Thinking Classroom” by Peter Liljedahl, Chapter 5 in his book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (Corwin, 2021); see Memos 976 and 992 for two other summaries of Liljedahl’s work. Jenn David-Lang recently did a thorough summary of the book in The Main Idea and is making it available to Marshall Memo readers here. Liljedahl can be reached at liljedahl@sfu.ca.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1013 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Discussion-Worthy Tasks for Upper Elementary Math Groups

            In this Mathematics Teacher article, Nicola Hodkowski (Digital Promise) and Carolyn Carhart-Quezada (Cignition) say students learn more about mathematics when they discuss with classmates, connecting what they know with formal math content. To spark meaningful discussions, say the authors, teachers need to pose open tasks – that is, questions with multiple entry points, varied solution strategies, and more than one right answer. Well-chosen tasks allow students to “discuss, argue, represent, hear, and compare one another’s viewpoints.” 

            Hodkowski and Carhart-Quezada came up with a series of open tasks to help below-level fourth and fifth graders better understand fractional reasoning. Working on the tasks online in groups of four, facilitated by a tutor, students made significant progress. “By prioritizing conceptual understanding and promoting mathematical discourse,” say the authors, “we were able to both change traditional tutoring and empower our students to see themselves as doers and sense-makers of mathematics.” 

            Hodkowski and Carhart-Quezada developed five types of open tasks for their program and thought about where each type was most helpful: 

• Multiple strategies – More than one strategy can be used, but the solution or answer is the same – for example: The answer is ½. What is the question? 
• Multiple outcomes – Solution strategies may be similar, but solutions are different – for example: Add something to ¾ that sums to a number close to 1 but not exactly 1. Who is closest? How do we know? 
• Sorting and ordering – Students are asked to invent a sorting criterion, with different criteria leading to different sorting – for example: With the following fractions, quickly decide if they are bigger or smaller than ½. How did you decide? 3/11, ¼, 5/6, 7/8, 7/10, 6/12 
• Justification – Students need to explain and justify their answers to groupmates – for example: Ana says that 1/8 is bigger than 1/3 because 8 is bigger than 3. Margo thinks that Ana is not right. Who do you agree with? Explain your reasoning. 
• Group challenge tasks – Students work in pairs and discuss outcomes with another pair – for example: 6 people are going to share these 5 candy bars equally [show 5 rectangles]. Write a fraction that shows how much one person gets. 

            Students’ prior knowledge and readiness determine which type of problem will spark the best discussions. With students who are new to a concept, multiple-strategy tasks seem more engaging, allowing for more exploration as the group works toward a single solution. With students who had already been introduced to a concept and are working to deepen their understanding, a multiple-outcome task is more appropriate, with students discussing how they came up with different answers.                Hodkowski and Carhart-Quezada noticed that at first, students talked less and the tutors talked more – the opposite of what was intended. Why? Students weren’t used to having discussion in math classes and lacked confidence in their insights. “We quickly realized,” say the authors, “that rituals, routines, and collaborative norms were needed when using open tasks.” The tutors were prompted to establish these norms: 

• Explain why, not just the right answer. 
• Show active listening. 
• Compare and critique with groupmates. 
• Summarize what you’ve learned. 

Tutors supported these norms by saying, “Yes, and…” rather than immediately telling the answer and nudging students for “deeper noticings and wonderings about others’ work.” 

            But in some groups, setting norms was not enough. Over time, Hodkowski and Carhart-Quezada worked with tutors to develop several other ways to jumpstart discussions: 

• Individual think time before sharing in the group 
• Giving students 20-30 seconds to ponder the problem before beginning the group discussion.
• After presenting the problem, the tutor divides a slide into four sections, one for each student; students solve the problem on their section and then look at their groupmates’ solutions and discuss. 
• Students think about the task alone, then work together on solving it on one slide, then the teacher chooses one student to explain their solution, discuss, and decide on the correct solution. 
• Taco talk – Students are assigned to be tomato, lettuce, cheese, and taco shell, the first three present their ideas in that order, then the fourth student (taco shell) wraps up the discussion by explaining what their groupmates said. 

 “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About” by Nicola Hodkowski and Carolyn Carhart-Quezada in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, November 2023 (Vol. 116, #11, pp. 837-844); the authors can be reached at nhodkowski@digitalpromise.org and carhart-quezada@cignition.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1012 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Literacy As a Springboard for Student Empowerment

            In this article in Language Arts, Chris Hass (James Madison University) says that as a second- and third-grade teacher, he used to ask his students, What is reading? At first they said reading was figuring out unfamiliar words and learning new vocabulary, but as he continued to ask the question, their responses evolved: 

• Reading is imagining you’re the character in a book. 
• It’s trying to figure out what might happen next. 
• It’s forgetting what’s going on around you because you’re so into the story. 

“The power of returning to this question over time,” says Hass, “was that it scaffolded my students to continue thinking more deeply about their practice as well as their relationship to reading.” 

            Then he began asking a follow-up question: Why is it important that we’re growing as readers, writers, and speakers? At first, students’ responses were pedestrian: to get ready for fourth grade, do well on “those tests,” go to a good college and get a well-paying job. 

            But one day a quiet student raised her hand and suggested, “So we’ll be able to stand up for ourselves.” This comment got the class thinking about literacy at a different level. Students recalled reading Malala Yousafzai’s story, doing a project on saving sea animals, lobbying a state legislator, and writing letters to a city council member. 

            “Once they had the eyes to see how literacy and democratic practices go hand in hand,” said Hass, “they could not help but continue to share more expansive visions of literacy…” – talking out disagreements, reading a news article about unfair dress codes, exploring reports of problems around the world. Hass built on this pivotal discussion for the remainder of the school year, continuing to see literacy as a tool for students standing up for themselves and others. There were three main vehicles for the theme: 

• Keeping classroom journals – As part of morning meetings, students added to journals (made of stapled sheets of art paper) that explored a wide range of questions: Why do worms crawl on the driveway when it rains? Why do things look darker when they’re wet? Why do people want to ban books at school? Why aren’t there any female presidents? Why is there racism? “The discussions that grew from these questions,” says Hass, “created a culture of inquiry in the classroom – one that positioned each of us to think more critically about the workings of the world around us.”
• Inquiring about activism – Hass purchased a set of books with stories about different types of community advocacy – the 1909 Shirtwaist Factory strike, protecting Egypt’s treasured books, African-American freedom fighters, how Selma’s teachers changed history – and led discussions about the problems confronted in each story. Students took the books home and reported back on insights from discussions with family members. Realizing that they all had the power to create change, students generated a list of what taking action looks like in practice. 
• Acting on their convictions – Hass asked each student to choose one issue from the list that was especially important to them. Kids read a variety of texts on their chosen issue, conducted surveys and interviews, and created a culminating project. There were petitions, schoolwide signature drives, and letters sent to city officials and state legislators, school board members, food service providers, and the school’s principal. 

            “By the end of the school year,” Hass says, “my students learned there is much more to reading than simply decoding words or gaining skills to do well on a test.” Students were informed about issues in their communities and around the world, built understanding and empathy for others, became more-critical consumers of information, and took action on issues that were important to them. 

“Learning to Stand Up for Themselves: Using Literacy As a Vehicle for Change” by Chris Hass in Language Arts, September 2023 (Vol. 101, #1, pp. 65-68); Hass can be reached at hasscl@jmu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1009 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Debunking Myths About Creativity and the Brain

             “A common challenge to the effective realization of creativity is knowing too little about it,” say Mathias Benedek (University of Graz, Austria) and 11 colleagues in this article in Personality and Individual Differences, “but it may be even worse when we assume to know but are wrong.” Demystifying creativity really matters, say the authors, because it’s actually the “extraordinary result of ordinary processes.” As long as educators and families cling to common misconceptions, fostering creativity will be stymied. 

            Benedek et al. conducted an online survey of 1,261 adults in six countries (Austria, China, Georgia, Germany, Poland, and the U.S.) to identify widely held myths about creativity that span continents and cultures. The researchers found that the myths were most often held by people with a lower level of education who relied on undependable sources and were willing to accept questionable notions based on the opinions of others. 

            Here are the myths about creativity that emerged from the study, believed on average by 50 percent of the survey respondents, followed by neuromyths – misconceptions about the human brain. The researchers then present evidence-based facts about creativity and the brain. (All these are quoted verbatim.) 

• Myth #1 - Creativity cannot be measured. 
• Myth #2 – Creativity is essentially the same as art. 
• Myth #3 – Creative ideas are naturally a good thing. 
• Myth #4 – Most people would not be able to distinguish abstract art from abstract children’s drawings. 
• Myth #5 – Creative accomplishments are usually the result of sudden inspiration. 
• Myth #6 – Creative thinking mostly happens in the right hemisphere of the brain. 
• Myth #7 – Creativity tends to be a solitary activity. 
• Myth #8 – Creativity is a rare gift. 
• Myth #9 – People have a certain amount of creativity and cannot do much to change it (this was the least widely-held misconception, held by only 20 percent of respondents). 
• Myth #10 – Children are more creative than adults. 
• Myth #11 – Exceptional creativity is usually accompanied by mental health disorders. 
• Myth #12 – People get more creative ideas under the influence of alcohol or marijuana. 
• Myth #13 – Long-term schooling has a negative impact on the creativity of children. 
• Myth #14 – Brainstorming in a group generates more ideas than if people were thinking by themselves (this was the most widely-held misconception at 80 percent of respondents). 
• Myth #15 – One is most creative with total freedom in one’s actions. 

Neuromyths: 

• Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic). 
• Short bouts of coordination exercises can improve integration of left- and right-hemispheric brain functions. 
• Children are less attentive after sugary drinks and snacks. 
• Differences in hemispheric dominance (left brain or right brain) can help to explain individual differences among learners. 
• We mostly use only 10% of our brain. 

Creativity facts: Now here are research-based creativity facts and neurofacts, knowledge of which varied widely among respondents, averaging 68 percent:

• To be considered creative, something has to be both novel and useful or appropriate. 
• Teachers appreciate the idea of creativity but not necessarily creative pupils. 
• Whether or not something is viewed as creative depends on the zeitgeist and social norms.
• Creativity is an important part of mathematical thinking. 
• Creative ideas are typically based on remembered information that is combined in new ways. 
• The first idea someone has is often not the best one. 
• Alpha activity in the brain plays an important role in creative thought. 
• Creative people are usually more open to new experiences. 
• Creative people are usually more intelligent. 
• Achieving a creative breakthrough in a domain (e.g., publishing a successful novel) typically requires at least 10 years of deliberate practice and work (this was the least-commonly known fact, at 37 percent among respondents). 
• Men and women generally do not differ in their creativity. 
• A man’s creativity increases his attractiveness to potential partners. 
• When stuck on a problem, it is helpful to continue working on it after taking a break (this was highest among respondents at 97 percent). 
• Positive moods help people get creative ideas. 
• Getting rewarded for creative performance at work increases one’s creativity. 

Neurofacts: 

• We use our brains 24 hours a day. 
• Extended cognitive training can change the shape and structure of some parts of the brain. 
• The brains of boys are generally larger than those of girls. 
• Learning occurs through modification of the brain’s neural connections. 
• Normal development of the human brain involves the birth and death of brain cells. 

            The findings, conclude Benedek et al., “highlight the need for better communication of evidence-based knowledge to enable more-effective support of creativity.” 

 “Creativity Myths: Prevalence and Correlates of Misconceptions on Creativity” by Mathias Benedek, Martin Karstendiek, Simon Ceh, Roland Grabner, Georg Krammer, Isabela Lebuda, Paul Silvia, Katherine Cotter, Yangping Li, Weiping Hu, Khatuna Martskvishvili, and James Kaufman in Personality and Individual Differences, November 2021 (Vol. 182, pp. 1-25); Benedek can be reached at mathias.benedek@uni-graz.at.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1007 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Helping First Graders Distinguish Between Equality and Fairness

        In this article in Social Studies for the Young Learner, Debbie Sonu (Hunter College, CUNY) and Eve Herold (Teachers College, Columbia University) describe a New York City first-grade class reading and discussing the book Fair Is Fair in which three animals in a zoo – a hare, giraffe, and elephant – get different amounts of food (here’s a 10-minute video of the class: https://vimeo.com/848024021). Is this fair? ask the teachers. What happens if the food is divided equally among the three animals? This raises the question of equity versus equality, and a lively discussion ensues, extending to questions of fairness and equity in the community. 

        Is first grade too young to raise issues like these? Not at all, say Sonu and Herold. Young children have strong feelings about fairness, and talking them through helps kids understand why, for example, some peers in this neurodiverse inclusion class might have accommodations for their learning differences. Students need help shifting from feelings of envy, frustration, perhaps contempt to acceptance, understanding, and even advocacy for their classmates. 

        More broadly, say Sonu and Herold, lessons like this address children’s evolving beliefs about economic inequality. As young as preschool, kids can distinguish between those who are rich and poor, tending to express sympathy for the less fortunate. But as children get older (age 10-12), they are “more likely to describe poor people negatively and attribute economic circumstances to individual characteristics,” say the authors. “These beliefs manifest in ways children socialize with each other, perform class differences with their peers, and, at worst, instigate acts of teasing, bullying, or public shaming, most often directed at those with fewer material belongings.” 

        So a lesson about the nutritional needs of an elephant, giraffe, and hare can help children begin to build mental models about equality, equity, and fairness. 

 “Meeting Individual Needs: Teaching First Graders About Resource Allocation and Equity-versus-Equality in an Integrated Co-Teaching Classroom” by Debbie Sonu and Eve Herold in Social Studies for the Young Learner, September/October 2023 (Vol. 36, #1, pp. 3-8); the authors can be reached at dsonu@huntersoe.org and erh2163@tc.columbia.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1004 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

To Go to College - or Not

        In this New York Times Magazine article, Paul Tough reports that in 2009, an all-time high of 70 percent of U.S. high-school graduates went straight to college, poised to take advantage of the long-term wage benefits of a college degree. In the early 2010s, polls showed robust public support of a college education: 

• 86 percent of college graduates said college had been a good investment. 
• 74 percent of young adults said a college education was “very important.” 
• 60 percent of Americans said colleges and universities had a positive impact. 
• 96 percent of Democrats said they expected their children to attend college. 
• 99 percent of Republicans said the same. 

Recent polls show a significant change in enrollment in, and opinions about, higher education; 

• Only 62 percent of high-school graduates went straight to college in 2023. 
• 18 million undergraduates enrolled in colleges and universities in 2010; 15.5 million are undergraduates today. 
• Only 41 percent of young adults say a college degree is very important. 
• Only a third of Americans say they have a lot of confidence in higher education. 
• 45 percent of Generation Z say a high-school diploma is all they need for financial security.
• Almost half of American parents say they’d prefer that their children not enroll in a four-year college. 

This precipitous decline in college enrollment and public confidence contrasts with other developed nations, where enrollment and support have remained high. What happened in the U.S.? 

        For starters, says Tough, while the college wage premium (the earning advantage of a college degree versus a high-school diploma) has remained high, the college wealth premium (the lifetime accumulation, taking debt into account) has plummeted for people born in the 1980s and after. This decline is even more pronounced for people of color; African-American and Latin college graduates born after 1980 had almost no wealth premium compared to those with only a high-school diploma. The same is true for the post-graduate wealth premium for all racial groups. 

        “These are startling data,” says Tough, “and they present a kind of paradox. Millennials with college degrees are earning a good bit more than those without, but they aren’t accumulating any more wealth. How can that be?” 

        The answer is the debt incurred by loans to pay the doubled cost of college or graduate school, eroding income and preventing wealth-generating steps like buying a house, starting a small business, or growing a nest egg for retirement. “For many borrowers,” says Tough, “their debt is becoming a serious burden. Among student borrowers who opened their loans between 2010 and 2019, more than half now owe more than what they originally borrowed.” 

        This changes the calculation high-school students make on whether to apply to college. Post-secondary education used to be a solid, blue-chip investment, but now, says Tough, it’s more like going to the casino. According to Douglas Webber, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board, here are some possible outcomes in this game of chance: 

• Assuming free tuition and graduation within six years, a college graduate has a 96 percent chance of having lifetime earnings greater than a typical high-school graduate. 
• Factoring in the 40 percent of college-goers who don’t graduate, if tuition is still free, the odds of coming out ahead over a lifetime decline to 75 percent. 
• If tuition isn’t free and you’re paying $25,000 a year in tuition and expenses, the odds of coming out ahead are 66 percent. 
• If college costs $50,000 a year, the odds fall to 50 percent – a coin toss on whether you’ll wind up with more than a high-school graduate, or less. 
• With a STEM degree, the odds of coming out ahead, even with $50,000 expenses, go back up to 75 percent. 
• But majoring in the arts, humanities, or social sciences, the odds are worse than a coin toss, even if expenses are $25,000. 
• Those who do worst in this casino are those who borrow money to attend college and don’t graduate. They are doing less well than adults who never went to college, and would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense. 

        Polls show another striking change, says Tough: public attitudes toward higher education now break down by political affiliation. A decade ago, there wasn’t much difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of college. Around 2015, Republicans’ views started to nose-dive. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 19 percent of Republicans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education, down from 56 percent in 2015. Why? A 2019 poll found that 79 percent of Republicans said a major problem was that professors were bringing their liberal political and social views into the classroom (only 17 percent of Democrats agreed). 

        This perception of left-leaning college campuses isn’t too far off base, says Tough. The percent of students, professors, and administrators who identify as liberal has increased in recent years, and college graduates, a majority of whom voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, swung in the other direction by 2016, with 74 percent voting for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Republicans have become increasingly skeptical that colleges are places where their ideas and their children are welcome.         There’s also a social-class divide, says Tough. As tuitions in selective colleges have risen and they compete for more-affluent students, they engage in affirmative action for the wealthy, creating a more-stratified dynamic among colleges. Elite colleges, more than in the past, are launching pads for high-paying careers, with the affluent paying an expensive toll to jump the queue for good jobs. One group of researchers concluded that “highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations.” 

        That’s the situation in the 10 percent of colleges that are selective (admitting fewer than half of applicants). The vast majority of students who attend less-selective public institutions, community colleges, and for-profit schools (who are more likely to be rural, working class, low-income, and students of color) are less likely to graduate, and more likely to incur debt they can’t repay. “For them,” says Tough, “– a large majority of American college students – the risks they face when they walk into the casino are considerably higher. Faced with those odds, it is not a surprise that young Americans, especially, are eager to believe that they will be able to thrive in the job market without having to worry about college.” 

        But the future of the U.S. job market points in exactly the opposite direction. The demand for people with a college degree is rising faster than colleges can keep up, says Tough. One projection found that by 2030, there will be a shortage of 6.5 million college graduates in the U.S. economy. This means the college wage premium will continue to rise. 

        Meanwhile, the fastest-growing jobs requiring only a high-school diploma – home health aides, food-service workers, restaurant cooks, and warehouse workers – have a median salary under $31,000 a year. True, plumbers make almost $60,000 a year, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects fewer than 10,000 new plumbing jobs between now and 2031. 

        Tough’s conclusion: those who don’t go to college, and those who enroll and drop out, will pay a large lifetime cost, and there will be a major societal cost for those millions of missing college graduates – a projected $1.2 trillion in lost economic output by the end of the decade. “That is one cost we are likely to bear together,” he says, “winners and losers alike.” 

“Saying No to College” by Paul Tough in The New York Times Magazine, September 10, 2023 (pp 31-35)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1003 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Vermont Portrait of a Graduate plus Personalized Learning Plan Overview - Register ASAP

 Audience: Superintendents, Curriculum Directors, Principals, and K-12 Educators 

With support from the AOE, Great Schools Partnership (GSP) is continuing to share information related to the Portrait of a Graduate (PoG) development process. The GSP team is offering a series of virtual coaching sessions throughout the fall. These sessions will include discussions focused on particular topics as well as opportunities for individual coaching. The first session, The Vermont PoG and Personalized Learning Plans Overview on September 19 from 3 to 4 p.m., will provide an overview of the development process and explore ways to build connections between the PoG and students’ Personalized Learning Plans. Registration for the virtual coaching sessions is now open.  
Contact: Pat Fitzsimmons, pat.fitzsimmons@vermont.gov  

(excerpt from the VT AOE Weekly Field Memo - Volume 17, Issue 32)

Books for Students Who Have Seen the Movie Oppenheimer

            This School Library Journal article recommends books aligned with the current film Oppenheimer: 

• The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Sue DiCicco and Masahiro Sasaki, grade 4-6 
• Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, grade 5 and up 
• Bomb (Graphic Novel): The Race to Build – and Steal – the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, illustrated by Nick Bertozzi, grade 5 and up
• Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story by Caren Stelson, grade 5-8
• Soul Lanterns by Shaw Kuzki, grade 5-8
• Atomic Women: The Untold Stories of the Scientists Who Helped Create the Nuclear Bomb by Roseanne Montillo, grade 6-8 
• Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard, distributed by the Video Project, grade 9 and up 

 “Beyond the Blockbuster” in School Library Journal, September 2023 (Vol. 69, #9, pp. 19-20)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1002 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Are Book Fairs a "Necessary Evil"?

            In this School Library Journal article, Virginia school librarian Maura Madigan describes her “like-hate” relationship with book fairs. It’s great to get more books into students’ hands, she says, but there are the administrative and money-counting hassles and, more important, some families don’t have enough disposable income to spend on books. “Having students make lists of coveted items, knowing some families can’t afford it, is kind of cruel, when you think about it,” says Madigan. “Yes, life can be unfair. Our students will have plenty of opportunities to learn that. They don’t have to learn it in the library.” 

            Running books fairs she inherited when she became a school librarian, Madigan used the profits to make sure all students got books. But “kids are smart,” she says. “No matter how I tried to dress it up, many still considered it charity.” 

             Madigan has another concern: “Book fairs contradict what most school librarians hold fundamental – free and open access to books.” So why do we have book fairs? She surveyed almost 400 school librarians using an anonymous Google form and found that most (63 percent) said they felt good about book fairs. Some of the reasons: 

• Excitement among students, staff, and parents, promoting a love of books; 
• Building students’ home libraries;
• Giving students a chance to shop, handle money, prioritize, and make decisions;
• Profits can be used for books, author visits, programs, and supplies; for many librarians, book    fairs are an essential supplement to school funding. 

Librarians who responded also listed what they disliked about book fairs: 

• Inequity; 
• Exhaustion running fairs on top of their other duties; running one, even with volunteers, seems like a full-time job. 
• Frustration with lack of diversity in book titles, high prices, low-quality books, and non-book “junk” items; 
• Acting as “a for-profit satellite shop for publishers;” 
• One librarian called book fairs a “necessary evil.” 

“But what if there were other ways,” asks Madigan, “to generate library funds, spark excitement about books, and let students add to their home libraries, all with less effort and more equity?” She suggests two options: 

• Free book fairs – Funds to make fairs free for students can be raised from the school budget, Title I funds, grants, DonorsChoose, the PTA, parent donations, donations from authors, advance reader copies, free books from conferences, and buying low-cost books from First Book and Scholastic Warehouse sales. The first time Madigan tried this, she raised enough money to buy 1,385 books – almost enough for each student to choose three. “Hands down, this was the best book fair I’ve had,” she says. “Student excitement was high!” Students chose books for themselves and family members. It was almost as exhausting as regular book fairs, but she didn’t have to deal with money transactions for each book. 

• Online, in-store, and more – For school libraries that must have book fairs to pay for the basics, Madigan suggests holding them virtually and on weekends. “Purchases are private,” she says, “which many parents appreciate. The virtual and in-store versions are a lot less work for you, and all three options don’t disrupt normal library services.” 
•  One online option is Love My Library, where families are encouraged to register and pledge money, and each student who registers gets a participation prize even if they don’t raise funds. Half of the funds raised go to students’ books and half to the library. 
•  Another option is Bookworm Central, a Virginia-based business that offers traditional in-school book fairs locally and online book fairs nationally. With the latter, students choose books and get them shipped to their homes. A book drive feature allows local businesses and community members to donate money so all students can choose free books. 
• Barnes and Noble offers in-store and virtual book fairs with vouchers that can be distributed to students and presented in stores or used online. 

 “Building Better Book Fairs” by Maura Madigan in School Library Journal, August 2023 (Vol.69, #8, pp.32-36)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #998 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How Exceptionally Effective Teachers Think About Their Work

           “How can it be that some teachers succeed in remaining in our memory for years or even decades, whereas others fade into oblivion after just a short period of time?” ask John Hattie and Klaus Zierer in their book, Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success. They believe the answer lies in the way successful teachers think about teaching, which can be summed up in ten “mindframes”: 

Impact: 

- I am an evaluator of my impact on student learning. 

- I see assessment as informing my impact and next steps. 

- I collaborate with my peers and my students about my conceptions of progress and my impact. 

Change and challenge: 

- I am a change agent and believe all students can improve. 

- I strive for challenge and not merely “doing your best.” 

Learning focus: 

- I give and help students understand feedback and I interpret and act on feedback given to me. 

- I engage as much in dialogue as monologue. 

- I explicitly inform students what successful impact looks like from the outset. 

- I build relationships and trust so that learning can occur in a place where it is safe to make mistakes and learn from others. 

- I focus on learning and the language of learning. 

 Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success by John Hattie and Klaus Zierer (Routledge, 2018)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #989 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Leave One, Add One: An End-of-Year Retrieval Activity

          In this Retrieval Practice article, psychologist Pooja Agarwal (Berklee School of Music) suggests this 30-minute classroom activity for the final days of the school year (suitable for grade 6 through post-graduate): 

- Each student is given a blank sheet of paper. 

- Students sketch an animal of their choice in the top right-hand corner of their paper to anonymously identify their paper. 

- Everyone silently writes down one idea or concept they’ve learned over the semester or year – at least one full sentence. 

- Papers are collected and the teacher explains the subsequent steps. 

- Papers are randomly redistributed and students silently write on the paper they received one additional thing they learned in the class – different from their initial thought and different from what the student wrote on the paper they just received. 

- As each student finishes writing another idea, they hold up their paper and the teacher collects it and gives it to another student. The activity is now self-paced. 

 - This continues for 5-6 rounds, becoming “a bit zany as you run around collecting and handing out papers,” says Agarwal, “but it’s a lot of fun, too.” 

 - The teacher collects all papers and, calling out the name of each animal sketch, hands them back to the original student. 

 - In an all-class discussion, students share one cool thing that someone else wrote on their paper, perhaps two thoughts if there’s time. 

- Students can keep their papers as a vivid reminder of the many things that were learned in the class, or give them to the teacher for a self-assessment of what was learned – and what wasn’t. 

This is an ungraded activity, Agarwal emphasizes. “Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy.” It also serves to boost long-term learning. 

 “Classroom Activity for: Leave One, Add One” by Pooja Agarwal in Retrieval Practice, May 2023; Agarwal can be reached at ask@retrievalpractice.org.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #987 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Instructional Coherence - and What Works Against It

         In this passage from his book, So Much Reform, So Little Change, Charles Payne (Rutgers University) summarizes research on school conditions that greatly improve students’ opportunity to learn – especially students who enter school with disadvantages: 

- A common instructional framework guides curriculum, teaching, assessment, and learning climate, combining specific expectations for students’ learning with specific instructional strategies, materials, and assessments. “There is a logical progression of material from grade to grade and within each grade,” says Payne, “Teachers at a grade level talk about what to teach, how to teach, and how to figure out what’s been learned.” 

- Staff working conditions support implementation of the framework. This includes time for same-grade/same-course teacher teams to meet and discuss curriculum and pedagogy, supportive professional development and facilitation of meetings, and norms and expectations for collaborative work. 

- The allocation of materials, time, and staff assignments is done in a way that advances the common instructional framework. “Teacher assignments reflect student need,” says Payne, “not political considerations. Assignments… remain stable enough to give teachers time to learn to do them well.” 

        When a school has these three elements of instructional coherence in place, it’s better able to put qualified staff in place and overcome the impediments to effective teaching and learning that Payne has observed: 

• A fragmented, poorly-paced curriculum; 
• Teachers asked to teach one thing while students are tested on different content; 
• Teachers and departments not coordinating with each another; 
• Unmet resource needs, including personnel, materials, and space; 
• Fragmented, “drive-by” staff development;
• Inadequate instructional supervision of teachers; lack of accountability; 
• Gaps in staff content knowledge; 
• Weak classroom management skills; conditions not conducive to learning; 
• Teacher isolation: What goes on in my classroom is my business. 
• Low sense of teacher agency; 
• Teacher skepticism about students’ learning capacity; 
• Inadequate informal staff knowledge about students’ backgrounds and interests; 
• Rigidity of teachers’ attitudes about how students learn; 
• Reluctance of teachers to accept leadership from colleagues: She must think she knows more than we do. 
• Generalized belief in program failure: We’ve seen programs come, we’ve seen ’em go.
• Generalized skepticism about professional development; 
• Attrition of effective instructional staff; the best people move on. 

So Much Reform, So Little Change by Charles Payne (Harvard Education Press, 2008, 2022, pp. 89-90, 81); Payne can be reached at cp840@newark.rutgers.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #986 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

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 frameworks or 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.

Captivating Science Books for Children

           In this Language Arts review, Aeriale Johnson and Clare Landrigan recommend these nonfiction books on a variety of science topics: 

• When You Breathe by Diana Farid, illustrated by Billy Renkl 
• The Secret Code Inside You: All About Your DNA by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Steven Salerno 
• Earth Squad: 50 People Who Are Saving the Planet by Alexandra Zissu, illustrated by Nhung Lê
• The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics by Susan Hood, illustrated by Christine Engel 
• To Change a Planet by Christina Soontornvat, illustrated by Rachele Jomepour Bel 
• Curious Comparisons: A Life-Size Look at the World Around You by Jorge Doneiger, photographs by Guido Chouela, Cristina Reche, Marcelo Setton, and David Sisso 
• Bionic Beasts: Saving Animal Lives with Artificial Flippers, Legs, and Beaks by Jolene Gutiérrez
• Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell, illustrations by Natasha Donovan
• Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton, illustrated by Don Tata 
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon 
• She Persisted in Science by Chelsea Clinton, illustrated by Alexandra Boiger 
• Get to Know Your Universe: Science Comics Series by Molly Brooks, Jacob Chabot, Jon Chad, Anne Drozd, Joe Flood, Zack Giallongo, Andy Hirsch, Falynn Koch, Jason Viola, and Maris Wicks 
• The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter by Shabazz Larkin 

 “‘I Wanna Learn More About That!’ Providing Access to Scientific Literacy for All Through Inclusive Nonfiction Science Texts” by Aeriale Johnson and Clare Landrigan in Language Arts, March 2023 (Vol. 100, #4, pp. 338-343)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #985 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

What Makes Good Conversation - and What Doesn't

           In this Psychology Today article, Valerie Fridland (University of Nevada) says that even though very few of us get formal instruction on how to conduct a conversation, we follow several “culturally absorbed conventions” that foster cooperation and increase the chance that a chat will be rewarding: 

• Mutuality – taking turns; 
• Relevance – what’s said relates to what has been said before; 
• Quantity – saying enough to be informative, but not too much; 
• Quality – being truthful; 
• Manner – being direct and clear, unless there’s a good reason not to. 

Fridland says people “unconsciously adjust loudness, pitch, syntax, and speech rate to match those they talk to,” even unconsciously shifting to the other person’s accent and idioms. She also lists six conversational habits to avoid: 

• Interrupting, which can make it seem we don’t care what the other person is saying; 
• Story-topping, which shifts the conversation from connection to competition; 
• Being right, which makes the conversation about winning an argument; 
• Being all-knowing, explaining information without being asked for our expertise; 
• Bright-siding; “Always encouraging others to be positive can feel invalidating,” says Fridland.
• Advice-giving when our conversational partner just wants empathy. 

 

“The Hidden Heart of Every Conversation” by Valerie Fridland in Psychology Today, May/ June 2023 (Vol. 56, #3, pp. 40-43); Fridland can be reached at fridland@unr.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #984 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Helping Students Engage in Civil Discourse

(Originally titled “Teaching Students to Talk Across Political Difference”) 

          In this Educational Leadership article, Richard Weissbourd, Glenn Manning, and Eric Torres (Harvard University) take note of the extreme political polarization of our era. Schools can’t solve this problem alone, they say, but “schools are the only institution that can, on a large scale, cultivate in young people the sensibilities and skills to engage constructively with those with opposing ideologies – to view them not as stock characters or villains, but as complex individuals – and seek common ground.” The authors offer the following strategies for addressing hot topics that will inevitably find their way into classrooms: 

• Establish norms. Ground rules for debating controversial issues are best adopted with student input and should include seeking to understand others’ intentions and challenging ideas, not people. 
• Use humanizing classroom activities. Relationship- and culture-building interactions early in the school year help students see those on “the other side” as people, creating a climate where difficult conversations feel safer. An example: a scavenger hunt in which students find fun and meaningful facts about their classmates and teachers. In classrooms where students share the same political orientation, different points of view can be introduced through readings and visiting speakers. 
• Help students get better at asking questions and listening. These are especially important skills when addressing fraught topics. 
• Build a common understanding of facts. “Agreeing on a shared set of practices for investigating reality,” say Weissbourd, Manning, and Torres, “– such as identifying criteria for valid news sources, developing a process for reconciling conflicting information, and making explicit how evidence supports one’s views – can help clarify points of disagreement and dispel claims that lack support.” It’s also important to teach about cognitive biases that lead people to ignore disconfirming information. 
• Uphold basic principles and rights. Moral relativism – the belief that everyone has a right to their opinion and no one can claim their opinion is superior – is dangerous in classroom discussions, say the authors. It’s important for teachers to articulate some key moral principles that can serve as guardrails, perhaps drawing on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. 
• Work with parents. This includes being transparent about what’s being discussed in the classroom, focusing on shared values, and presenting varied perspectives (but not those that violate the rights of others). “Too often,” say Weissbourd, Manning, and Torres, “it’s the loudest, most partisan parents that claim administrators’ and teachers’ time and attention, while research suggests that the majority of parents care about healing divides in this country and are ‘exhausted’ by partisan hostility. Elevate these moderate parents who want to dial down the hostility.” Conducting surveys of parents may reveal a surprisingly moderate spectrum of opinion. 
• Give students practice debating hot topics, initially with scaffolded discussions. The authors suggest starting with less-inflammatory topics – for example, the ethics of eating meat – and guiding students as they get better at agreeing on facts, debating the substance, and listening well. Fishbowl discussions, where students take turns participating and observing, are helpful in building skills, with frequent reference to key principles of civil discourse – perhaps these from the Better Arguments Project: 

- Take winning off the table 

- Prioritize relationships and listen passionately.

- Pay attention to context. 

- Embrace vulnerability. 

- Make room to transform.

“Teaching Students to Talk Across Political Difference” by Richard Weissbourd, Glenn Manning, and Eric Torres in Educational Leadership, April 2023 (Vol. 80, #7, pp. 20-26); the authors can be reached at richard_weissbourd@gse.harvard.edu, glenn_manning@gse.harvard.edu, and etorres@g.harvard.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #981 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Books About Friends for Young Adolescents

          In this School Library Journal article, Gail Cornwall reports on her hunt for books that help tweens unpack the “stormy, frustrating, and sometimes sad aspects of friendship.” Cornwall cites studies showing that only half of friendships survive a middle-school year, one in a hundred seventh-grade friendships are still intact by the senior year of high school, and 80 percent of students experience loneliness at school. Friendships come and go, with kids often asking themselves, Do they like me? What have I done? Am I okay? Am I fitting in? As for cliques, they can be loose, ephemeral, and porous, with an uneven distribution of power. 

          Books can help tweens explore these complexities, see beyond the “ideal best friend” myth, and learn the friendship-enhancing power of admitting fault and making amends. Cornwall’s book recommendations: 

Fiction:

- Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone by Tae Keller

- Invisible by Christina Diaz Gonzalez and Gabriela Epstein

- Eggs by Jerry Spinelli - Troublemaker by John Chou

- When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Getten

- Booked by Kwame Alexander 

- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 

Nonfiction: 

- Like Ability: The Truth About Popularity by Lori Getz and Mitch Prinstein (age 12 and up)

- Growing Friendships: A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends by Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Christine McLaughlin (age 6-9) 

 “Between Friends” by Gail Cornwall in School Library Journal, March 2023 (Vol. 69, #3, pp. 48-51); here’s a related article by Cornwall: “How Understanding Middle-School Friendships Can Help Students with Ups and Downs” in KQED, November 30, 2020.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #979 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.